Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (retitled Blade Runner: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in some later printings) is a science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in 1968. The novel is set in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco, where Earth’s life has been greatly damaged by nuclearglobal war. Most animal species are endangered or extinct from extreme radiation poisoning, so that owning an animal is now a sign of status and empathy, an attitude encouraged towards animals. The book served as the primary basis for the 1982 film Blade Runner, and many elements and themes from it were used in its 2017 sequel Blade Runner 2049.
The main plot follows Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter who is tasked with “retiring” (i.e. killing) six escaped Nexus-6 model androids, while a secondary plot follows John Isidore, a man of sub-par IQ who aids the fugitive androids. In connection with Deckard’s mission, the novel explores the issue of what it is to be human and whether empathy is a purely human ability.
Synopsis
Background
In post-apocalyptic 1992 (2021 in later editions),[2] after “World War Terminus”, the Earth’s radioactively polluted atmosphere leads the United Nations to encourage mass emigrations to off-world colonies to preserve humanity’s genetic integrity. This comes with the incentive of free personal androids: robot servants identical to humans. On Earth, owning real live animals has become a fashionable status symbol, because of mass extinctions and the accompanying cultural push for greater empathy, which has coincidentally motivated a new technology-based religion called Mercerism. Mercerism uses “empathy boxes” to link users simultaneously to a virtual reality of collective suffering, centered on a martyr-like character, Wilbur Mercer, who eternally climbs up a hill while being hit with crashing stones. In terms of the owning of live animals, poor people can only afford realistic-looking electric imitations of animals. Rick Deckard, for example, owns a robotic black-faced sheep. The story also contains passing mention of “Penfield mood organs”, similar to mind-altering drugs in other Dick stories, and used as a technology for inducing any desired mood among people in its vicinity.
Plot summary
Bounty hunter Rick Deckard signs on to a new police mission in order to earn enough money to buy a live animal to replace his lone electric sheep, seeking greater existential fulfillment for himself and his depressed wife, Iran. The mission involves hunting down (“retiring”) six Nexus-6 androids that violently went rogue after their creation by the Rosen Association and fled Mars for Earth. Deckard visits the Rosen headquarters in Seattle to confirm the validity of a question-and-answer empathy test: the typical method for identifying any androids posing as humans. Deckard is greeted by Rachael Rosen, who quickly fails his test. Rachael herself attempts to bribe Deckard into silence, but he verifies that she is indeed a Nexus-6 model used by Rosen to attempt to discredit the test.
Deckard soon meets a Soviet police contact who turns out to be one of the Nexus-6 renegades in disguise. Deckard retires the android, then flies off to retire his next target: an opera singer android. However, he is suddenly arrested and detained at a police department he has never heard of by a police officer whom he is surprised never to have met. At this strange station, Deckard’s worldview is shaken when an official named Garland accuses Deckard himself of being an android. After a series of mysterious revelations at the station, Deckard ponders the ethical and philosophical questions his line of work raises regarding android intelligence, empathy, and what it means to be human. Phil Resch, the station’s resident bounty hunter, retrieves testing equipment to determine if his coworkers—including Deckard and Resch himself—are androids or humans. Garland subsequently reveals that the entire station is a sham, staffed entirely by androids, including Garland himself. Resch shoots Garland in the head, allowing him and Deckard to escape; together, they find the opera singer, whom Resch brutally retires in cold blood. Although Resch and Deckard are now collaborators, each still worries that he (or the other) might be an android. Deckard administers the empathy test to himself and to Resch, which confirms that Resch is a human being—simply a particularly ruthless one—and that Deckard is also human, but with a sense of empathy for the androids.
Only three of the Nexus-6 android fugitives remain, and one, Pris Stratton, moves into an apartment building whose only other inhabitant is John R. Isidore, a radioactively damaged, intellectually below-average human classified as a “special.” The lonely Isidore attempts to befriend her. Roy and Irmgard Baty, the final two rogue androids, visit the building, and together they all plan how to survive. Meanwhile, Deckard buys Iran an authentic Nubian goat with his reward money. After quitting, Deckard is pulled back in after being notified of a new lead and experiencing a vision of the prophet-like Mercer confusingly telling him to proceed, despite the immorality of the mission. Deckard calls on Rachael Rosen again, since her own knowledge as an android will aid his investigation. Rachael reveals that she and Pris are the same exact model, meaning that he will have to shoot down an android that looks just like her. Rachael coaxes Deckard into sex, after which they confess their love for one another. However, she reveals she has slept with many bounty hunters, having been programmed to do so in order to dissuade them from their missions. He threatens to kill her, but instead he abruptly leaves.
Isidore develops friendships with the three android fugitives, and they all watch a television program giving definitive evidence that Mercerism is a hoax. Roy Baty tells Isidore that the show was produced by androids to discredit Mercerism and blur the distinction with humans. Suddenly Deckard enters the building, with strange, supernatural premonitions of Mercer appearing to both him and Isidore. Since they attack him first, Deckard is legally justified as he shoots down all three androids without previously testing them. Isidore is devastated, and Deckard is soon rewarded for a record number of Nexus-6 kills in a single day. When Deckard returns home, he finds Iran grieving because Rachael Rosen recently showed up and killed their goat.
Deckard goes to an uninhabited, obliterated region of Oregon to reflect. He climbs a hill when he is hit by falling rocks and realizes this is an experience eerily similar to Mercer’s martyrdom. Rushing back to his car, he stumbles abruptly upon a toad, an animal previously thought to be extinct, and one of the animals sacred to Mercer. With newfound joy, Deckard brings the toad home, where Iran quickly discovers it is just a robot. While Deckard is unhappy, he decides that he at least prefers to know the truth, making the remark that “the electrical things have their lives too, paltry as those lives are”.
In 1982, Hampton Fancher and David Peoples wrote a loose cinematic adaptation that became the film Blade Runner, featuring several of the novel’s characters. It was directed by Ridley Scott. Following the international success of the film,[3] the title Blade Runner was adopted for some later editions of the novel, although the term itself was not used in the original.
Radio
As part of their Dangerous Visions dystopia series in 2014, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a two-part adaptation of the novel. It was produced and directed by Sasha Yevtushenko from an adaption by Jonathan Holloway. It stars James Purefoy as Rick Deckard and Jessica Raine as Rachael Rosen.[4] The episodes were originally broadcast on Sunday 15 June and 22 June 2014.
A new audiobook version was released in 2007 by Random House Audio to coincide with the release of Blade Runner: The Final Cut. This version, read by Scott Brick, is unabridged and runs approximately 9.5 hours over eight CDs. This version is a tie-in, using the Blade Runner: The Final Cut film poster and Blade Runner title.[5]
Theater
A stage adaptation of the book, written by Edward Einhorn, ran from November 18 to December 10, 2010 at the 3LD Art & Technology Center in New York[6] and made its West Coast Premiere on September 13, playing until October 10, 2013 at the Sacred Fools Theater Company in Los Angeles.[7]
These official and authorized sequels were written by Dick’s friend K. W. Jeter.[12] They continue the story of Rick Deckard and attempt to reconcile many of the differences between the novel and the 1982 film.
Critical reception
Critical reception of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? has been overshadowed by the popularity of its 1982 film adaptation, Blade Runner. Of those critics who focus on the novel, several nest it predominantly in the history of Philip K. Dick‘s body of work. In particular, Dick’s 1972 speech “The Human and the Android” is cited in this connection. Jill Galvan[13] calls attention to the correspondence between Dick’s portrayal of the narrative’s dystopian, polluted, man-made setting and the description Dick gives in his speech of the increasingly artificial and potentially sentient or “quasi-alive” environment of his present. Summarizing the essential point of Dick’s speech, Galvan argues,”[o]nly by recognizing how [technology] has encroached upon our understanding of ‘life’ can we come to full terms with the technologies we have produced” (414). As a “bildungsroman of the cybernetic age,” Galvan maintains, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? follows one person’s gradual acceptance of the new reality. Christopher Palmer[14] emphasizes Dick’s speech to bring to attention the increasingly dangerous risk of humans becoming “mechanical”.[15] “Androids threaten reduction of what makes life valuable, yet promise expansion or redefinition of it, and so do aliens and gods”.[15] Gregg Rickman[16] cites another, earlier and lesser known Dick novel that also deals with androids, We Can Build You, asserting that Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? can be read as a sequel.
In a departure from the tendency among most critics to examine the novel in relation to Dick’s other texts, Klaus Benesch[17] examined Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? primarily in connection with Lacan’s essay on the mirror stage. There, Lacan claims that the formation and reassurance of the self depends on the construction of an Other through imagery, beginning with a double as seen in the mirror. The androids, Benesch argues, perform a doubling function similar to the mirror image of the self, but they do this on a social, not individual, scale. Therefore, human anxiety about androids expresses uncertainty about human identity and society. Benesch draws on Kathleen Woodward’s[18] emphasis on the body to illustrate the shape of human anxiety about an android Other. Woodward asserts that the debate over distinctions between human and machine usually fails to acknowledge the presence of the body. “If machines are invariably contrived as technological prostheses that are designed to amplify the physical faculties of the body, they are also built, according to this logic, to outdo, to surpass the human in the sphere of physicality altogether”.[19]
Jump up^Note: This change counteracts a problem common to near-future stories, where the passage of time overtakes the period in which the story is set; for a list of other works that have fallen prey to this phenomenon, see the List of stories set in a future now past.
Jump up^Sammon, Paul M (1996). Future Noir: the Making of Blade Runner. London: Orion Media. pp. 318–329. ISBN0-06-105314-7.
Jump up^Galvan, Jill (1997). “Entering the Postman Collective: Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”. Science Fiction Studies. 24 (3): 413–429.
Jump up^Palmer, Christopher (2003). Philip K. Dick: Exhilaration and Terror of the Postmodern. Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press. p. 259.
^ Jump up to:abPalmer, Christopher (2003). Philip K. Dick: Exhilaration and Terror of the Postmodern. Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press. p. 225.
Jump up^Rickman, Gregg (1995). “What Is This Sickness?”: “Schizophrenia” and We Can Build You. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 143–157.
Jump up^Benesch, Klaus (1999). “Technology, Art, and the Cybernetic Body: The Cyborg as Cultural Other in Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” and Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?““. Amerikastudien/American Studies. 44 (3 Body/Art): 379–392.
Jump up^Woodward, Kathleen (1997). “Prosthetic Emotions”. In Hoffman, Gerhard. Emotions in the Postmodern. Heidelberg: Alfred Hornung. pp. 75–107.
Jump up^Woodward, Kathleen (1997). “Prosthetic Emotions”. In Hoffman, Gerhard. Emotions in the Postmodern. Heidelberg: Alfred Hornung. p. 391.
Dick, Philip K. (1996) [1968]. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN0-345-40447-5. First published in Philip K. Dick: Electric Shepherd, Norstrilla Press. Zelazny, Roger (1975). “Introduction”
Scott, Ridley (1982). Blade Runner. Warner Brothers.
The Electric Sheep screensaver software is an homage to Do Androids dream of electric sheep?.
Philip K. Dick, The Little Black Box, 1964 – a short story depicting Mercerisms origin, published 4 years prior to “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”
Criticism
Benesch, Klaus (1999). “Technology, Art, and the Cybernetic Body: The Cyborg As Cultural Other in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep“. Amerikastudien/American Studies. 44 (3): 379–392. JSTOR41157479.
Butler, Andrew M. (1991). “Reality versus Transience: An Examination of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner“. In Merrifield, Jeff. Philip K. Dick: A Celebration (Programme Book). Epping Forest College, Loughton: Connections.
Gallo, Domenico (2002). “Avvampando gli angeli caddero: Blade Runner, Philip K. Dick e il cyberpunk”. In Bertetti; Scolari. Lo sguardo degli angeli: Intorno e oltre Blade Runner (in Italian). Torino: Testo & Immagine. pp. 206–218. ISBN88-8382-075-4.
Galvan, Jill (1997). “Entering the Posthuman Collective in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?“. Science-Fiction Studies. 24 (3): 413–429. JSTOR4240644.
McCarthy, Patrick A. (1999–2000). “Do Androids Dream of Magic Flutes?”. Paradoxa. 5 (13–14): 344–352.
Dick’s writing produced 44 published novels and approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime.[5]
In 2005, Time named Ubik one of the hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923.[6] In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.[7][8][9][10]
Early life
Philip Kindred Dick and his twin sister, Jane Charlotte Dick, were born six weeks prematurely on December 16, 1928, in Chicago, Illinois, to Dorothy (née Kindred; 1900–1978) and Joseph Edgar Dick (1899–1985), who worked for the United States Department of Agriculture.[11][12] His paternal grandparents were Irish.[13] The death of Jane six weeks later, on January 26, 1929, profoundly affected Philip’s life, leading to the recurrent motif of the “phantom twin” in his books.[11]
His family later moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. When Philip was five, his father was transferred to Reno, Nevada; when Dorothy refused to move, she and Joseph divorced. Both parents fought for custody of Philip, which was awarded to the mother. Dorothy, determined to raise Philip alone, took a job in Washington, D.C., and moved there with her son. Philip was enrolled at John Eaton Elementary School (1936–1938), completing the second through fourth grades. His lowest grade was a “C” in Written Composition, although a teacher remarked that he “shows interest and ability in story telling”. He was educated in Quaker schools.[14] In June 1938, Dorothy and Philip returned to California, and it was around this time that he became interested in science fiction.[15] Dick stated that he read his first science fiction magazine, Stirring Science Stories in 1940 at the age of 12.[15]
Dick attended Berkeley High School in Berkeley, California. He and fellow science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin were members of the same graduating class (1947) but did not know each other at the time. After graduation, he briefly attended the University of California, Berkeley, (September 1949 to November 11, 1949) with an honorable dismissal granted January 1, 1950. Dick did not declare a major and took classes in history, psychology, philosophy, and zoology. Through his studies in philosophy, he believed that existence is based on internal human perception, which does not necessarily correspond to external reality; he described himself as “an acosmic panentheist,” believing in the universe only as an extension of God.[16] After reading the works of Plato and pondering the possibilities of metaphysical realms, Dick came to the conclusion that, in a certain sense, the world is not entirely real and there is no way to confirm whether it is truly there. This question from his early studies persisted as a theme in many of his novels. Dick dropped out because of ongoing anxiety problems, according to his third wife Anne’s memoir. She also says he disliked the mandatory ROTC training. At Berkeley, Dick befriended poet Robert Duncan and poet and linguistJack Spicer, who gave Dick ideas for a Martian language. Dick claimed to have hosted a classical music program on KSMO Radio in 1947.[17] From 1948 to 1952, Dick worked at Art Music Company, a record store on Telegraph Avenue.
Dick sold his first story in 1951, and from then on wrote full-time. During 1952 his first speculative fiction publications appeared in July and September numbers of Planet Stories, edited by Jack O’Sullivan, and in If and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction that year.[18] His debut novel was Solar Lottery, published in 1955 as half of Ace Double #D-103 alongside The Big Jump by Leigh Brackett.[18] The 1950s were a difficult and impoverished time for Dick, who once lamented, “We couldn’t even pay the late fees on a library book.” He published almost exclusively within the science fiction genre, but dreamed of a career in mainstream fiction.[19] During the 1950s he produced a series of non-genre, relatively conventional novels. In 1960 he wrote that he was willing to “take twenty to thirty years to succeed as a literary writer”. The dream of mainstream success formally died in January 1963 when the Scott Meredith Literary Agency returned all of his unsold mainstream novels. Only one of these works, Confessions of a Crap Artist, was published during Dick’s lifetime.
In 1963, Dick won the Hugo Award for The Man in the High Castle.[2] Although he was hailed as a genius in the science fiction world, the mainstream literary world was unappreciative, and he could publish books only through low-paying science fiction publishers such as Ace. Even in his later years, he continued to have financial troubles. In the introduction to the 1980 short story collection The Golden Man, Dick wrote:
Several years ago, when I was ill, Heinlein offered his help, anything he could do, and we had never met; he would phone me to cheer me up and see how I was doing. He wanted to buy me an electric typewriter, God bless him—one of the few true gentlemen in this world. I don’t agree with any ideas he puts forth in his writing, but that is neither here nor there. One time when I owed the IRS a lot of money and couldn’t raise it, Heinlein loaned the money to me. I think a great deal of him and his wife; I dedicated a book to them in appreciation. Robert Heinlein is a fine-looking man, very impressive and very military in stance; you can tell he has a military background, even to the haircut. He knows I’m a flipped-out freak and still he helped me and my wife when we were in trouble. That is the best in humanity, there; that is who and what I love.
Flight to Canada and suicide attempt
In 1971, Dick’s marriage to Nancy Hackett broke down, and she moved out of their house in Santa Venetia, California. Having struggled with amphetamine abuse for much of the past decade (stemming in part from his need to maintain a prolific writing regimen due to the financial exigencies of the science fiction field), he allowed other drug users to move into the house. Following the release of 21 novels between 1960 and 1970, these developments were exacerbated by unprecedented periods of writer’s block, with Dick ultimately failing to publish new fiction until 1974.[20]
One day in November, Dick returned to his home to discover that it had been burglarized, with his safe blown open and personal papers missing. The police were unable to determine the culprit, and even suspected Dick of having done it himself.[21] Shortly afterwards, he was invited to be guest of honor at the Vancouver Science Fiction Convention in February 1972. Within a day of arriving at the conference and giving his speech The Android and the Human, he informed people that he had fallen in love with a woman named Janis whom he had met there and announced that he would be remaining in Vancouver.[21] An attendee of the conference, Michael Walsh, movie critic for local newspaper The Province, invited Dick to stay in his home, but asked him to leave two weeks later due to his erratic behavior. This was followed by Janis ending her and Dick’s relationship and moving away. On March 23, 1972, Dick attempted suicide by taking an overdose of the sedative potassium bromide.[21] Subsequently, after deciding to seek help, Dick became a participant in X-Kalay (a Canadian Synanon-type recovery program), and was well enough by April to return to California.[21]
Upon relocating to Orange County, California at the behest of California State University, Fullerton professor Willis McNelly (who initiated a correspondence with Dick during his X-Kalay stint), he donated manuscripts, papers and other materials to the University’s Special Collections Library, where they are archived in the Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Collection in the Pollak Library. During this period, Dick befriended a circle of Fullerton State students that encompassed several aspiring science fiction writers, including K. W. Jeter, James Blaylock and Tim Powers.
Dick returned to the events of these months while writing his 1977 novel A Scanner Darkly,[22] which contains fictionalized depictions of the burglary of his home, his time using amphetamines and living with addicts, and his experiences of X-Kalay (portrayed in the novel as “New-Path”). A factual account of Dick’s recovery program participation was portrayed in his posthumously released book The Dark Haired Girl, a collection of letters and journals from the period.
Paranormal experiences
On February 20, 1974, while recovering from the effects of sodium pentothal administered for the extraction of an impacted wisdom tooth, Dick received a home delivery of Darvon from a young woman. When he opened the door, he was struck by the beauty of the dark-haired girl and was especially drawn to her golden necklace. He asked her about its curious fish-shaped design. “This is a sign used by the early Christians,” she said, and then left. Dick called the symbol the “vesicle pisces”. This name seems to have been based on his conflation of two related symbols, the Christian ichthys symbol (two intersecting arcs delineating a fish in profile) which the woman was wearing, and the vesica piscis.[23]
Dick recounted that as the sun glinted off the gold pendant, the reflection caused the generation of a “pink beam” of light that mesmerized him. He came to believe the beam imparted wisdom and clairvoyance, and also believed it to be intelligent. On one occasion, Dick was startled by a separate recurrence of the pink beam. It imparted the information to him that his infant son was ill. The Dicks rushed the child to the hospital, where his suspicion was confirmed by professional diagnosis.[24][verification needed]
After the woman’s departure, Dick began experiencing strange hallucinations. Although initially attributing them to side effects from medication, he considered this explanation implausible after weeks of continued hallucinations. “I experienced an invasion of my mind by a transcendentally rational mind, as if I had been insane all my life and suddenly I had become sane,” Dick told Charles Platt.[25]
Throughout February and March 1974, Dick experienced a series of hallucinations, which he referred to as “2-3-74”,[19] shorthand for February–March 1974. Aside from the “pink beam”, Dick described the initial hallucinations as geometric patterns, and, occasionally, brief pictures of Jesus and ancient Rome. As the hallucinations increased in length and frequency, Dick claimed he began to live two parallel lives, one as himself, “Philip K. Dick”, and one as “Thomas”, a Christian persecuted by Romans in the first century AD. He referred to the “transcendentally rational mind” as “Zebra”, “God” and “VALIS“. Dick wrote about the experiences, first in the semi-autobiographical novel Radio Free Albemuth and then in VALIS, The Divine Invasion and the unfinished The Owl in Daylight (the VALIS trilogy).
At one point Dick felt that he had been taken over by the spirit of the prophet Elijah. He believed that an episode in his novel Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said was a detailed retelling of a biblical story from the Book of Acts, which he had never read.[28] Dick documented and discussed his experiences and faith in a private journal he called his “exegesis”, portions of which were later published as The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick. The last novel Dick wrote was The Transmigration of Timothy Archer; it was published shortly after his death in 1982.
Personal life
Dick was married five times:
Jeanette Marlin (May to November 1948)
Kleo Apostolides (June 14, 1950 to 1959)
Anne Williams Rubinstein (April 1, 1959 to October 1965)
Nancy Hackett (July 6, 1966 to 1972)
Leslie (Tessa) Busby (April 18, 1973 to 1977)
Dick had three children, Laura Archer (February 25, 1960), Isolde Freya (now Isa Dick Hackett) (March 15, 1967), and Christopher Kenneth (July 25, 1973).
In 1955, he and his second wife, Kleo Apostolides, received a visit from the FBI, which they believed to be the result of Kleo’s socialist views and left-wing activities. The couple briefly befriended one of the FBI agents.[29]
He was physically abusive with his third wife; after one argument in 1963, he attempted to push her off a cliff in a car, then later claimed she was trying to kill him, and convinced a psychiatrist to commit her involuntarily. After filing for divorce in 1964, he moved to Oakland to live with a fan, Grania Davis. Shortly after, he attempted suicide by driving off the road while she was a passenger.[30]
On February 17, 1982, after completing an interview, Dick contacted his therapist, complaining of failing eyesight, and was advised to go to a hospital immediately, but did not. The following day, he was found unconscious on the floor of his Santa Ana, California home, having suffered a stroke. On February 25, 1982, Dick suffered another stroke in the hospital, which led to brain death. Five days later, on March 2, 1982, he was disconnected from life support and died. After his death, Dick’s father, Joseph, took his son’s ashes to Riverside Cemetery in Fort Morgan, Colorado, (section K, block 1, lot 56), where they were buried next to his twin sister Jane, who died in infancy. Her tombstone had been inscribed with both of their names at the time of her death, 53 years earlier.[32][33][34]
Style and works
Themes
Dick’s third major theme is his fascination with war and his fear and hatred of it. One hardly sees critical mention of it, yet it is as integral to his body of work as oxygen is to water.[35]
—Steven Owen Godersky
Dick’s stories typically focus on the fragile nature of what is real and the construction of personal identity. His stories often become surreal fantasies, as the main characters slowly discover that their everyday world is actually an illusion assembled by powerful external entities, such as the suspended animation in Ubik,[36] vast political conspiracies or the vicissitudes of an unreliable narrator. “All of his work starts with the basic assumption that there cannot be one, single, objective reality”, writes science fiction author Charles Platt. “Everything is a matter of perception. The ground is liable to shift under your feet. A protagonist may find himself living out another person’s dream, or he may enter a drug-induced state that actually makes better sense than the real world, or he may cross into a different universe completely.”[25]
Alternate universes and simulacra are common plot devices, with fictional worlds inhabited by common, working people, rather than galactic elites. “There are no heroes in Dick’s books”, Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, “but there are heroics. One is reminded of Dickens: what counts is the honesty, constancy, kindness and patience of ordinary people.”[36] Dick made no secret that much of his thinking and work was heavily influenced by the writings of Carl Jung.[32][37] The Jungian constructs and models that most concerned Dick seem to be the archetypes of the collective unconscious, group projection/hallucination, synchronicities, and personality theory.[32] Many of Dick’s protagonists overtly analyze reality and their perceptions in Jungian terms (see Lies Inc.). Dick’s self-named Exegesis also contained many notes on Jung in relation to theology and mysticism.[citation needed]
Dick identified one major theme of his work as the question, “What constitutes the authentic human being?”[38] In works such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, beings can appear totally human in every respect while lacking soul or compassion, while completely alien beings such as Glimmung in Galactic Pot-Healer may be more humane and complex than their human peers.
Mental illness was a constant interest of Dick’s, and themes of mental illness permeate his work. The character Jack Bohlen in the 1964 novel Martian Time-Slip is an “ex-schizophrenic”. The novel Clans of the Alphane Moon centers on an entire society made up of descendants of lunatic asylum inmates. In 1965 he wrote the essay titled “Schizophrenia and the Book of Changes”.[39]
Drug use (including religious, recreational, and abuse) was also a theme in many of Dick’s works, such as A Scanner Darkly and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Dick himself was a drug user for much of his life. According to a 1975 interview in Rolling Stone,[40]Dick wrote all of his books published before 1970 while on amphetamines. “A Scanner Darkly (1977) was the first complete novel I had written without speed”, said Dick in the interview. He also experimented briefly with psychedelics, but wrote The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, which Rolling Stone dubs “the classic LSD novel of all time”, before he had ever tried them. Despite his heavy amphetamine use, however, Dick later said that doctors told him the amphetamines never actually affected him, that his liver had processed them before they reached his brain.[40]
Summing up all these themes in Understanding Philip K. Dick, Eric Carl Link discussed eight themes or ‘ideas and motifs’:[41] Epistemology and the Nature of Reality, Know Thyself, The Android and the Human, Entropy and Pot Healing, The Theodicy Problem, Warfare and Power Politics, The Evolved Human, and ‘Technology, Media, Drugs and Madness’.[42]
Pen names
Dick had two professional stories published under the pen names Richard Phillipps and Jack Dowland. “Some Kinds of Life” was published in October 1953 in Fantastic Universe under byline Richard Phillipps, apparently because the magazine had a policy against publishing multiple stories by the same author in the same issue; “Planet for Transients” was published in the same issue under his own name.[43]
The short story “Orpheus with Clay Feet” was published under the pen name Jack Dowland. The protagonist desires to be the muse for fictional author Jack Dowland, considered the greatest science fiction author of the 20th century. In the story, Dowland publishes a short story titled “Orpheus with Clay Feet” under the pen name Philip K. Dick.
The surname Dowland refers to Renaissance composer John Dowland, who is featured in several works. The title Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said directly refers to Dowland’s best-known composition, “Flow My Tears”. In the novel The Divine Invasion, the character Linda Fox, created specifically with Linda Ronstadt in mind, is an intergalactically famous singer whose entire body of work consists of recordings of John Dowland compositions.
The Man in the High Castle (1962) is set in an alternate history in which the United States is ruled by the victorious Axis powers. It is the only Dick novel to win a Hugo Award. Most recently this has been adapted into a television series provided by Amazon and available through Amazon Prime video.
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) utilizes an array of science fiction concepts and features several layers of reality and unreality. It is also one of Dick’s first works to explore religious themes. The novel takes place in the 21st century, when, under UN authority, mankind has colonized the Solar System‘s every habitableplanet and moon. Life is physically daunting and psychologically monotonous for most colonists, so the UN must draft people to go to the colonies. Most entertain themselves using “Perky Pat” dolls and accessories manufactured by Earth-based “P.P. Layouts”. The company also secretly creates “Can-D”, an illegal but widely available hallucinogenic drug allowing the user to “translate” into Perky Pat (if the drug user is a woman) or Pat’s boyfriend, Walt (if the drug user is a man). This recreational use of Can-D allows colonists to experience a few minutes of an idealized life on Earth by participating in a collective hallucination.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) is the story of a bounty hunter policing the local android population. It occurs on a dying, poisoned Earth de-populated of almost all animals and all “successful” humans; the only remaining inhabitants of the planet are people with no prospects off-world. The 1968 novel is the literary source of the film Blade Runner (1982).[44] It is both a conflation and an intensification of the pivotally Dickian question: What is real, what is fake? What crucial factor defines humanity as distinctly “alive”, versus those merely alive only in their outward appearance?
Ubik (1969) employs extensive psychic telepathy and a suspended state after death in creating a state of eroding reality. A group of psychics is sent to investigate a rival organisation, but several of them are apparently killed by a saboteur’s bomb. Much of the following novel flicks between different equally plausible realities; the “real” reality, a state of half-life and psychically manipulated realities. In 2005, Time magazine listed it among the “All-TIME 100 Greatest Novels” published since 1923.[6]
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974) concerns Jason Taverner, a television star living in a dystopian near-future police state. After being attacked by an angry ex-girlfriend, Taverner awakens in a dingy Los Angeles hotel room. He still has his money in his wallet, but his identification cards are missing. This is no minor inconvenience, as security checkpoints (manned by “pols” and “nats”, the police and National Guard) are set up throughout the city to stop and arrest anyone without valid ID. Jason at first thinks that he was robbed, but soon discovers that his entire identity has been erased. There is no record of him in any official database, and even his closest associates do not recognize or remember him. For the first time in many years, Jason has no fame or reputation to rely on. He has only his innate charm and social graces to help him as he tries to find out what happened to his past while avoiding the attention of the pols. The novel was Dick’s first published novel after years of silence, during which time his critical reputation had grown, and this novel was awarded the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.[3] It is the only Philip K. Dick novel nominated for both a Hugo and a Nebula Award.
In an essay written two years before his death, Dick described how he learned from his Episcopal priest that an important scene in Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said – involving its other main character, the eponymous Police General Felix Buckman, was very similar to a scene in Acts of the Apostles,[28] a book of the New Testament. Film director Richard Linklater discusses this novel in his film Waking Life, which begins with a scene reminiscent of another Dick novel, Time Out of Joint.
A Scanner Darkly (1977) is a bleak mixture of science fiction and police procedural novels; in its story, an undercover narcotics police detective begins to lose touch with reality after falling victim to the same permanently mind-altering drug, Substance D, he was enlisted to help fight. Substance D is instantly addictive, beginning with a pleasant euphoria which is quickly replaced with increasing confusion, hallucinations and eventually total psychosis. In this novel, as with all Dick novels, there is an underlying thread of paranoia and dissociation with multiple realities perceived simultaneously. It was adapted to film by Richard Linklater.
VALIS (1980) is perhaps Dick’s most postmodern and autobiographical novel, examining his own unexplained experiences. It may also be his most academically studied work, and was adapted as an opera by Tod Machover.[46] Later works like the VALIS trilogy were heavily autobiographical, many with “two-three-seventy-four” (2-3-74) references and influences. The word VALIS is the acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System. Later, Dick theorized that VALIS was both a “reality generator” and a means of extraterrestrial communication. A fourth VALIS manuscript, Radio Free Albemuth, although composed in 1976, was posthumously published in 1985. This work is described by the publisher (Arbor House) as “an introduction and key to his magnificent VALIS trilogy”.
Regardless of the feeling that he was somehow experiencing a divine communication, Dick was never fully able to rationalize the events. For the rest of his life, he struggled to comprehend what was occurring, questioning his own sanity and perception of reality. He transcribed what thoughts he could into an eight-thousand-page, one-million-word journal dubbed the Exegesis. From 1974 until his death in 1982, Dick spent many nights writing in this journal. A recurring theme in Exegesis is Dick’s hypothesis that history had been stopped in the first century AD, and that “the Empire never ended”. He saw Rome as the pinnacle of materialism and despotism, which, after forcing the Gnostics underground, had kept the population of Earth enslaved to worldly possessions. Dick believed that VALIS had communicated with him, and anonymous others, to induce the impeachment of U.S. President Richard Nixon, whom Dick believed to be the current Emperor of Rome incarnate.
Several of Dick’s stories have been made into films. Dick himself wrote a screenplay for an intended film adaptation of Ubik in 1974, but the film was never made. Many film adaptations have not used Dick’s original titles. When asked why this was, Dick’s ex-wife Tessa said, “Actually, the books rarely carry Phil’s original titles, as the editors usually wrote new titles after reading his manuscripts. Phil often commented that he couldn’t write good titles. If he could, he would have been an advertising writer instead of a novelist.”[49] Films based on Dick’s writing had accumulated a total revenue of over US $1 billion by 2009.[50]
Blade Runner (1982), based on Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford. A screenplay had been in the works for years before Scott took the helm, with Dick being extremely critical of all versions. Dick was still apprehensive about how his story would be adapted for the film when the project was finally put into motion. Among other things, he refused to do a novelization of the film. But contrary to his initial reactions, when he was given an opportunity to see some of the special effects sequences of Los Angeles 2019, Dick was amazed that the environment was “exactly as how I’d imagined it!”, though Ridley Scott has mentioned he had never even read the source material.[51] Following the screening, Dick and Scott had a frank but cordial discussion of Blade Runner’s themes and characters, and although they had wildly differing views, Dick fully backed the film from then on, stating that his “life and creative work are justified and completed by Blade Runner“.[52] Dick died from a stroke less than four months before the release of the film.
Future films based on Dick’s writing include an animated adaptation of The King of the Elves from Walt Disney Animation Studios, which was set to be released in the spring of 2016 but is currently still in preproduction; and a film adaptation of Ubik which, according to Dick’s daughter, Isa Dick Hackett, is in advanced negotiation.[53] Ubik was set to be made into a film by Michel Gondry.[54] In 2014, however, Gondry told French outlet Telerama (via Jeux Actu), that he was no longer working on the project.
It was reported in 2010 that Ridley Scott would produce an adaptation of The Man in the High Castle for the BBC, in the form of a mini-series.[56] A pilot episode was released on Amazon Prime in January 2015 and Season 1 was fully released in ten episodes of about 60 minutes each on November 20, 2015.[57] Premiering in January 2015, the pilot was Amazon’s “most-watched since the original series development program began.” The next month Amazon ordered episodes to fill out a ten-episode season, which was released in November, to positive reviews. A second season of ten episodes premiered in December 2016, with a third season announced a few weeks later to be released in 2018.
Four of Dick’s works have been adapted for the stage.
One was the opera VALIS, composed and with libretto by Tod Machover, which premiered at the Pompidou Center in Paris on December 1, 1987, with a French libretto. It was subsequently revised and readapted into English, and was recorded and released on CD (Bridge Records BCD9007) in 1988.
Another was Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, adapted by Linda Hartinian and produced by the New York-based avant-garde company Mabou Mines. It premiered in Boston at the Boston Shakespeare Theatre (June 18–30, 1985) and was subsequently staged in New York and Chicago. Productions of Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said were also staged by the Evidence Room [60] in Los Angeles in 1999[61] and by the Fifth Column Theatre Company at the Oval House Theatre in London in the same year.[62]
A radio drama adaptation of Dick’s short story “Mr. Spaceship” was aired by the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yleisradio) in 1996 under the name Menolippu Paratiisiin. Radio dramatizations of Dick’s short stories Colony and The Defenders[64] were aired by NBC in 1956 as part of the series X Minus One.
In January 2006, a The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (English for Trzy stygmaty Palmera Eldritcha) theatre adaptation premiered in Stary Teatr in Cracov, with an extensive use of lights and laser choreography.[65][66]
In June 2014 the BBC broadcast a two part adaptation of ‘Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?’ on Radio 4, starring James Purefoy as Rick Deckard.[67]
In 2011, Dynamite Entertainment published a 4-issue miniseries “Total Recall,” a sequel to the 1990 film Total Recall, inspired by Philip K. Dick’s short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale“.[71] In 1990, DC Comics published the official adaptation of the original film as a DC Movie Special: Total Recall.[72]
Alternative formats
In response to a 1975 request from the National Library for the Blind for permission to make use of The Man in the High Castle, Dick responded, “I also grant you a general permission to transcribe any of my former, present or future work, so indeed you can add my name to your ‘general permission’ list.”[73] Some of his books and stories are available in braille and other specialized formats through the NLS.[74]
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
As of December 2012, thirteen of Philip K. Dick’s early works in the public domain in the United States are available in ebook form from Project Gutenberg. As of April 4, 2012, Wikisource has one of Philip K. Dick’s early works in the public domain in the United States available in ebook form which is not from Project Gutenberg.
Influence and legacy
Lawrence Sutin‘s 1989 biography of Dick, Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick, is considered the standard biographical treatment of Dick’s life.[39]
In 1993, French writer Emmanuel Carrère published Je suis vivant et vous êtes morts which was first translated and published in English in 2004 as I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey Into the Mind of Philip K. Dick, which the author describes in his preface in this way:
The book you hold in your hands is a very peculiar book. I have tried to depict the life of Philip K. Dick from the inside, in other words, with the same freedom and empathy – indeed with the same truth – with which he depicted his own characters.[32]
Critics of the book have complained about the lack of fact checking, sourcing, notes and index, “the usual evidence of deep research that gives a biography the solid stamp of authority.”[75][76][77] It can be considered a non-fiction novel about his life.
The Philip K. Dick Society was an organization dedicated to promoting the literary works of Dick and was led by Dick’s longtime friend and music journalist Paul Williams. Williams also served as Dick’s literary executor for several years after Dick’s death and wrote one of the first biographies of Dick, entitled Only Apparently Real: The World of Philip K. Dick.
The Philip K. Dick estate owns and operates the production company Electric Shepherd Productions,[94] which has produced the films Adjustment Bureau (2011) and the upcoming Walt Disney Company film King of the Elves, the TV series The Man in the High Castle[95]and also a Marvel Comics 5-issue adaptation of Electric Ant.[96]
Dick was recreated by his fans in the form of a simulacrum or remote-controlled android designed in his likeness.[97][98][99] Such simulacra had been themes of many of Dick’s works. The Philip K. Dick simulacrum was included on a discussion panel in a San Diego Comic Con presentation about the film adaptation of the novel, A Scanner Darkly. In February 2006, an America West Airlines employee misplaced the android’s head, and it has not yet been found.[100] In January 2011, it was announced that Hanson Robotics had built a replacement.[101]
Film
BBC2 released in 1994 a biographical documentary as part of its Arena arts series called Philip K. Dick: A Day in the Afterlife.[102]
The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick was a documentary film produced in 2001.[103]
The Penultimate Truth About Philip K. Dick was another biographical documentary film produced in 2007.[104]
The 1987 film The Trouble with Dick, in which Tom Villard plays a character named “Dick Kendred” (cf. Philip Kindred Dick), who is a science fiction author[105]
The dialogue of Nikos Nikolaidis‘ 1987 film Morning Patrol contains excerpts taken from published works authored by Philip K. Dick.
Michael Bishop‘s The Secret Ascension (1987; currently published as Philip K. Dick Is Dead, Alas), which is set in an alternative universe where his non-genre work is published but his science fiction is banned by a totalitarian United States in thrall to a demonically possessed Richard Nixon.
The comics magazine Weirdo published “The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick” by artist R. Crumb in 1986. Though this is not an adaptation of a specific book or story by Dick, it incorporates elements of Dick’s experience which he related in short stories, novels, essays, and the Exegesis. The story parodies the form of a Chick tract, a type of evangelical comic, many of which relate the story of an epiphany leading to a conversion to fundamentalist Christianity.
In the Batman Beyond episode “Sentries of the Last Cosmos”, the character Eldon Michaels claims a typewriter on his desk to have belonged to Philip K. Dick.
In the 1976 alternate history novel The Alteration by Kingsley Amis, one of the novels-within-a-novel depicted is The Man in the High Castle (mirroring The Grasshopper Lies Heavy in the real-life novel), still written by Philip K. Dick.[114] Instead of the novel being set in 1962 in an alternate universe where the Axis Powers won the Second World War and named for Hawthorne Abendsen, the author of its novel-within-a-novel, it depicts an alternate universe where the Protestant Reformation occurred (events including the continuation of Henry VIII’s Schismatic policies by his son, Henry IX, and the creation of an independent North America in 1848), with one character speculating that the titular character was a wizard.
In the Japanese science fiction animePsycho-Pass, Dick’s works are referred to as recommended reading material to help reflect on the current state of affairs of those characters world.
The 2016 video game Californium was developed as a tribute to Philip K. Dick and his writings to coincide with an Arte‘s documentary series.[115]
The short film trilogy Code 7 written and directed by Nacho Vigalondo starts with the line “Philip K. Dick presents”. The story also contains some other references to Philip K. Dick’s body of work.[116]
Music
“Flow My Tears” is the name of an instrumental by bassist Stuart Hamm, inspired by Dick’s novel of the same name. The track is found on his album Radio Free Albemuth, also named after a Dick novel.[117]
“Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said” and other seminal Ph. K. Dick novels inspired the electronic music concept album “The Dowland Shores of Philip K. Dick’s Universe“[118] by Levente
“Flow My Tears the Spider Said” is the final song on They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, the second album by experimental Los Angeles punk-rock outfit Liars.
“Listen to the Sirens”, the first song on Tubeway Army‘s 1978 debut album has as its first line “flow my tears, the new police song”.
American rapper and producer El-P is a noted fan of Dick and other science fiction, as many of Dick’s themes, such as paranoia and questions about the nature of reality, feature in El-P’s work.[119] A song on the 2002 album Fantastic Damage is titled “T.O.J.” and the chorus makes reference to the Dick work Time Out of Joint.
English singer Hugh Cornwell included an instrumental called “Philip K. Ridiculous” on his 2008 album “Hooverdam”.[120]
Janelle Monáe‘s song “Make the Bus” in her album The ArchAndroid has the lyrics “You’ve got ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ under your pillow” at the end of the first stanza.
Blind Guardian‘s song “Time What is Time” from the 1992 album “Somewhere Far Beyond” is loosely based on the book “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”.[122]
Radio
In June 2014, BBC Radio 4 broadcast The Two Georges by Stephen Keyworth, inspired by the FBI’s investigation of Phil and his wife Kleo in 1955, and the subsequent friendship that developed between Phil and FBI Agent Scruggs.[123]
Theater
The short play Kindred Blood in Kensington Gore (1992) by Brian W. Aldiss
A 2005 play, 800 Words: the Transmigration of Philip K. Dick by Victoria Stewart, which re-imagines Dick’s final days.[124]
It is hyperreal. It is a universe of simulation, which is something altogether different. And this is so not because Dick speaks specifically of simulacra. SF has always done so, but it has always played upon the double, on artificial replication or imaginary duplication, whereas here the double has disappeared. There is no more double; one is always already in the other world, an other world which is not another, without mirrors or projection or utopias as means for reflection. The simulation is impassable, unsurpassable, checkmated, without exteriority. We can no longer move “through the mirror” to the other side, as we could during the golden age of transcendence.[126]
For his anti-government skepticism, Philip K. Dick was afforded minor mention in Mythmakers and Lawbreakers, a collection of interviews about fiction by anarchist authors. Noting his early authorship of The Last of the Masters, an anarchist-themed novelette, author Margaret Killjoy expressed that while Dick never fully sided with anarchism, his opposition to government centralization and organized religion has influenced anarchist interpretations of gnosticism.[127]
The award was inaugurated in 1983, the year after Dick’s death. It was founded by Thomas Disch with assistance from David G. Hartwell, Paul S. Williams, and Charles N. Brown. Past administrators include Algis J. Budrys and David Alexander Smith.[citation needed]
Jump up^Behrens, Richard; Allen B. Ruch (March 21, 2003). “Philip K. Dick”. The Scriptorium. The Modern Word. Archived from the original on April 12, 2008. Retrieved April 14, 2008.
^ Jump up to:abKucukalic, Lejla (2008). Philip K. Dick: canonical writer of the digital age. Taylor and Francis. p. 27. ISBN0-415-96242-0.
Jump up^Sutin, Lawrence (2003). “Philip K. Dick”. Author – Official Biography. Philip K. Dick Trust. Archived from the original on April 10, 2008. Retrieved April 14, 2008.
Jump up^The Search for Philip K Dick by Anne R Dick, Tachyon Publications 2010
^ Jump up to:abDick, Philip K. “An Interview With America’s Most Brilliant Science-Fiction Writer” Interview by Joe Vitale. Interview With Philip K Dick. Print Interviews. Web. October 22, 2011.
^ Jump up to:abPhilip K. Dick at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database(ISFDB). Retrieved April 23, 2013. Select a title to see its linked publication history and general information. Select a particular edition (title) for more data at that level, such as a front cover image or linked contents.
^ Jump up to:abcdCarrère, Emmanuel (2004). I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey Into the Mind of Philp K. Dick. New York: Metropolitan Books. ISBN0-8050-5464-2.
Jump up^Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions, London and New York: Verso, 2005, p. 345; p. 347.
Precious Artifacts : A Philip K. Dick Bibliography, United States of America and United Kingdom Editions, 1955 – 2012. Compiled by Henri Wintz and David Hyde. (Wide Books 2012). http://www.wide-books.com
Precious Artifacts 2: A Philip K. Dick Bibliography, The Short Stories, United States, United Kingdom and Oceania, 1952 – 2014. Compiled by Henri Wintz and David Hyde (Wide Books 2014). http://www.wide-books.com
Sir Ridley Scott (born 30 November 1937) is an English film director and producer. Following his commercial breakthrough with the science-fiction horror film Alien (1979), further works include the neo-noirdystopian science fiction film Blade Runner, historical drama Gladiator (which won the Academy Award for Best Picture), and science fiction film The Martian.
Scott’s work has an atmospheric, highly concentrated visual style.[1][2] Though his films range widely in setting and period, they frequently showcase memorable imagery of urban environments, whether 2nd century Rome (Gladiator), 12th century Jerusalem (Kingdom of Heaven), Medieval England (Robin Hood), contemporary Mogadishu (Black Hawk Down), the future cityscapes of Blade Runner, or the distant planets in Alien, Prometheus, The Martian and Alien: Covenant. His films are also known for their strong female characters.[3]
Scott has been nominated for three Academy Awards for Directing (for Thelma & Louise, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down).[1] In 1995, both Ridley and his brother Tony received a BAFTA for Outstanding British Contribution To Cinema.[4] In 2003, Scott was knighted for his “services to the British film industry”.[5] In a 2004 BBC poll Scott was named the tenth most influential person in British culture.[6] In 2015 he received an honorary doctorate from the Royal College of Art in London. In 2018 Scott received the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement.[7]
Early life and career
“My mum brought three boys up: my dad was in the army and so he was frequently away. During the war (World War II) and post-war, we tended to travel following him around so my mum was the boss. She laid down the law and the law was God. We just said ‘Yup, okay’ – we didn’t argue. I think that’s where the respect has come from, because she was tough.”
— A supporter of heroines in his work, Scott credits his mother Elizabeth as his first female role model.[8]
Scott was born in South Shields, County Durham, North East England,[9] to Elizabeth (Williams) and Colonel Francis Percy Scott.[10][11] Born shortly before the Second World War, he was brought up in an army family. His father – an officer in the Royal Engineers – was absent for most of his early life. His elder brother, Frank, joined the British Merchant Navy when he was still young, and the pair had little contact.[12] During this time the family moved around, living in (among other areas) Cumberland in North West England, Wales and Germany. He had a younger brother, Tony, who also became a film director. After World War II, the Scott family moved back to their native North East, eventually settling on Greens Beck Road in Hartburn, County Durham, whose industrial landscape would later inspire similar scenes in Blade Runner.[13] His interest in science fiction began by reading the works of H. G. Wells as a child.[14]He studied at Grangefield Grammar School and West Hartlepool College of Art from 1954 to 1958, obtaining a diploma in design.[15]
“I use everything I learned every day at art school. It’s all about white sheets of paper, pens and drawing.”
— Scott speaking on the influence the Royal College of Art has had in designing the visuals for his films.[16]
Scott went on to study at the Royal College of Art in London, contributing to college magazine ARKand helping to establish the college film department. For his final show, he made a black and white short film, Boy and Bicycle, starring both his younger brother and his father (the film was later released on the “Extras” section of The Duellists DVD). In February 1963 Scott was named in title credits as “Designer” for the BBC television programme Tonight, about the severe winter of 1963. After graduation in 1963, he secured a job as a trainee set designer with the BBC, leading to work on the popular television police series Z-Cars and science fiction series Out of the Unknown. He was originally assigned to design the second Doctor Who serial, The Daleks, which would have entailed realising the serial’s eponymous alien creatures. However, shortly before Scott was due to start work, a schedule conflict meant he was replaced by Raymond Cusick.[17] In 1965, he began directing episodes of television series for the BBC, only one of which, an episode of Adam Adamant Lives!, is available commercially.[18]
Gold Hill, Shaftesbury in the English county of Dorset where Scott filmed the 1973 Hovis television commercial
In 1968, Ridley and Tony Scott founded Ridley Scott Associates (RSA), a film and commercial production company.[19] Working alongside Alan Parker, Hugh Hudson and cinematographer Hugh Johnson, Ridley Scott made many commercials at RSA during the 1970s, including a notable 1973 Hovis advertisement, “Bike Round” (underscored by the slow movement of Dvořák’s “New World” symphony rearranged for brass), set in the north of England but filmed in Gold Hill, Shaftesbury, Dorset.[20][21] A nostalgia themed television advertisement that captured the public imagination, it was voted the UK’s all-time favourite commercial in a 2006 poll.[22][23] In the 1970s the Chanel No. 5brand needed revitalisation having run the risk of being labelled as mass market and passé.[24] Directed by Scott in the 1970s and 1980s, Chanel television commercials were inventive mini-films with production values of surreal fantasy and seduction, which “played on the same visual imagery, with the same silhouette of the bottle.”[24]
Five members of the Scott family are directors, and all have worked for RSA.[25] His brother Tony was a successful film director whose career spanned more than two decades; his sons Jake and Luke are both acclaimed directors of commercials, as is his daughter, Jordan Scott. Jake and Jordan both work from Los Angeles; Luke is based in London. In 1995, Shepperton Studios was purchased by a consortium headed by Ridley and Tony Scott, which extensively renovated the studios while also expanding and improving its grounds.[26]
The Duellists (1977) marked Ridley Scott’s first feature film as director. Shot in Europe, it was nominated for the main prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and won an award for Best Debut Film. The Duellists had limited commercial impact internationally. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, it follows two French Hussar officers, D’Hubert and Feraud (Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel) whose quarrel over an initially minor incident turns into a bitter extended feud spanning fifteen years, interwoven with the larger conflict that provides its backdrop. The film has been acclaimed for providing a historically authentic portrayal of Napoleonic uniforms and military conduct.[27][28] The 2013 release of the film on Blu-ray coincided with the publication of an essay on the film in a collection of scholarly essays on Scott.[29]
Scott had originally planned next to adapt a version of Tristan and Iseult, but after seeing Star Wars, he became convinced of the potential of large scale, effects-driven films. He accepted the job of directing Alien, the 1979 horror/science-fiction film that would win him international success. Scott made the decision to switch Ellen Ripley from the standard male action hero to a heroine.[30] Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver), who appeared in the first four Alien films, would become a cinematic icon.[30] The final scene of John Hurt‘s character has been named by a number of publications as one of the most memorable in cinematic history.[31] Filmed at Shepperton Studios in England, Alien was the sixth highest-grossing film of 1979, earning over $104 million worldwide.[32] Scott was involved in the 2003 restoration and re-release of the original film. In promotional interviews at the time, Scott indicated he had been in discussions to make a fifth film in the Alien franchise. However, in a 2006 interview, Scott remarked that he had been unhappy about Alien: The Director’s Cut, feeling that the original was “pretty flawless” and that the additions were merely a marketing tool.[33] Scott later returned to Alien-related projects when he directed Prometheus and Alien: Covenant three decades after the original film’s release.[34]
“Outside Star Wars, no sci-fi universe has been etched into cinematic consciousness more thoroughly than Blade Runner. Ridley Scott’s definitive 1982 neo-noir offered an immersive dystopia of rain-soaked windows and shadowy buildings adorned with animated neon billboards, where flying cars hum through the endless night.”
After a year working on the film adaptation of Dune, and following the sudden death of his brother Frank, Scott signed to direct the film version of Philip K. Dick‘s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Re-titled Blade Runner and starring Harrison Ford, the film was a commercial disappointment in cinemas in 1982, but is now regarded as a classic.[36][37] In 1991, Scott’s notes were used by Warner Brothers to create a rushed director’s cut which removed the main character’s voiceover and made a number of other small changes, including to the ending. Later Scott personally supervised a digital restoration of Blade Runner and approved what was called The Final Cut. This version was released in Los Angeles, New York City and Toronto cinemas on 5 October 2007, and as an elaborate DVD release in December 2007.[38]
Today, Blade Runner is ranked by many critics as one of the most important and influential science fiction films ever made,[39] partly thanks to its much imitated portraits of a future cityscape.[40] It is often discussed along with William Gibson‘s novel Neuromancer as initiating the cyberpunk genre. Scott has described Blade Runner as his “most complete and personal film”.[41]
In 1984, Scott directed a big-budget ($900,000) television commercial, “1984“, to launch Apple‘s Macintosh computer.[42] Scott filmed the advertisement in England for about $370,000;[43] which was given a showcase airing in the US on 22 January 1984, during Super Bowl XVIII, alongside screenings in cinemas.[44] Some consider this advertisement a “watershed event” in advertising[45] and a “masterpiece”.[46]Advertising Age placed it top of its list of the 50 greatest commercials.[47]
Set in a dystopian future modelled after George Orwell‘s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Scott’s advertisement used its heroine (portrayed by English athlete Anya Major) to represent the coming of the Macintosh (indicated by her white tank top adorned with a picture of the Apple Macintosh computer) as a means of saving humanity from “conformity” (Big Brother), an allusion to IBM, at that time the dominant force in computing.[48]
In 1985, Scott directed Legend, a fantasy film produced by Arnon Milchan. Scott decided to create a “once upon a time” tale set in a world of princesses, unicorns and goblins, filming almost entirely inside the studio. Scott cast Tom Cruise as the film’s hero, Jack, Mia Saraas Princess Lili and Tim Curry as the Satan-horned Lord of Darkness.[49] Scott had a forest set built on the 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, with trees 60 feet high and trunks 30 feet in diameter.[50] In the final stages of filming, the forest set was destroyed by fire; Jerry Goldsmith‘s original score was used for European release, but replaced in North America with a score by Tangerine Dream. Rob Bottin provided the film’s Academy Award-nominated make-up effects, most notably Curry’s red-coloured Satan figure. Though a major commercial failure on release, the film has gone on to become a cult classic. The 2002 Director’s Cut restored Goldsmith’s original score.[51]
The road film Thelma & Louise (1991) starring Geena Davis as Thelma, Susan Sarandon as Louise, in addition to the breakthrough role for Brad Pitt as J.D, proved to be one of Scott’s biggest critical successes, helping revive the director’s reputation and receiving his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director.[54][55] His next project, independently-funded historical epic 1492: Conquest of Paradise, was a box office failure. The film recounts the expeditions to the Americas by Christopher Columbus (French star Gérard Depardieu). Scott did not release another film for four years.
1993–1999
In 1995, Ridley and his brother Tony formed a production company, Scott Free Productions, in Los Angeles. All Ridley’s subsequent feature films, starting with White Squall and G.I. Jane, have been produced under the Scott Free banner. In 1995 the two brothers purchased a controlling interest in the British film studio Shepperton Studios. In 2001, Shepperton merged with Pinewood Studios to become The Pinewood Studios Group, which is headquartered in Buckinghamshire, England.[56]
2000–2005
Scott’s historical drama Gladiator (2000) proved to be one of his biggest critical and commercial successes. It won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor for the film’s star Russell Crowe, and saw Scott nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director.[1] Scott worked with British visual effects company The Mill for the film’s computer-generated imagery, and the film was dedicated to Oliver Reed who died during filming – The Mill created a digital body double for Reed’s remaining scenes.[57][58] Some have credited Gladiator with reviving the nearly defunct “sword and sandal” historical genre. The film was named the fifth best action film of all time in the ABC special Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time.[59]
Scott directed Hannibal (2001) starring Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter. The film was commercially successful despite receiving mixed reviews. Scott’s next film, Black Hawk Down (2001), featuring Tom Hardy in his film debut, was based on a group of stranded US soldiers fighting for their lives in Somalia; Scott was nominated for an Oscar for Best Director.[1] In 2003, Scott directed a smaller scale project, Matchstick Men, adapted from the novel by Eric Garcia and starring Nicolas Cage, Sam Rockwell and Alison Lohman. It received mostly positive reviews, but performed moderately at the box office.
In 2005, he made the modestly successful Kingdom of Heaven, a film about the Crusades. The film starred Orlando Bloom, and marked Scott’s first collaboration with the composer Harry Gregson-Williams.[60] The Moroccan government sent the Moroccan cavalry as extras for some battle scenes.[61] Unhappy with the theatrical version of Kingdom of Heaven (which he blamed on paying too much attention to the opinions of preview audiences in addition to relenting when Fox wanted 45 minutes shaved off), Scott supervised a director’s cut of the film, the true version of what he wanted, which was released on DVD in 2006.[62] The director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven has been met with critical acclaim, with Empire magazine calling the film an “epic”, adding: “The added 45 minutes in the director’s cut are like pieces missing from a beautiful but incomplete puzzle.”[63] “This is the one that should have gone out” reflected Scott.[63] Asked if he was against previewing in general in 2006, Scott stated: “It depends who’s in the driving seat. If you’ve got a lunatic doing my job, then you need to preview. But a good director should be experienced enough to judge what he thinks is the correct version to go out into the cinema.”[64]
Recent and upcoming films
2006–2011
Scott teamed up again with Gladiator star Russell Crowe, for A Good Year, based on the best-selling book by Peter Mayle about an investment banker who finds a new life in Provence. The film was released on 10 November 2006. A few days later Rupert Murdoch, chairman of studio 20th Century Fox (who backed the film) dismissed A Good Year as “a flop” at a shareholders’ meeting.[65]
Scott’s next film was American Gangster, based on the story of real-life drug kingpin Frank Lucas. Scott took over the project in early 2006, and had screenwriter Steven Zaillian rewrite his script to focus on the dynamic between Frank Lucas and Richie Roberts. Denzel Washington signed on to the project as Lucas, with Russell Crowe co-starring. The film premiered in November 2007 to positive reviews and box office success, and Scott was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Director.[1]
In late 2008, Scott’s espionage thriller Body of Lies, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe, opened to lukewarm ticket-sales and mixed reviews. Scott directed a revisionist adaptation of Robin Hood, which starred Russell Crowe as Robin Hood and Cate Blanchettas Maid Marian. It was released in May 2010 to mixed reviews, but a respectable box-office.
On 31 July 2009, news surfaced of a two-part prequel to Alien with Scott attached to direct.[34][66] The project, ultimately reduced to a single film called Prometheus, which Scott described as sharing “strands of Alien’s DNA” while not being a direct prequel, was released in June 2012. The film starred Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender, with Noomi Rapace playing the leading role of the scientist named Elizabeth Shaw. The film received mostly positive reviews and grossed $403 million at the box office.[67][68]
In August 2009, Scott planned to direct an adaptation of Aldous Huxley‘s Brave New World set in a dystopian London with Leonardo DiCaprio.[69] In 2009, the TV Series The Good Wife premiered with Ridley and his brother Tonycredited as executive producers. On 6 July 2010, YouTube announced the launch of Life in a Day, an experimental documentary executive produced by Scott. Released at the Sundance Film Festival on 27 January 2011, it incorporates footage shot on 24 July 2010 submitted by YouTube users from around the world.[70] As part of the buildup to the 2012 London Olympics, Scott produced Britain in a Day, a documentary film consisting of footage shot by the British public on 12 November 2011.[71]
2012–present
In 2012, Scott produced the commercial for Lady Gaga‘s fragrance, “Fame.” It was touted as the first ever black Eau de Parfum, in the informal credits attached to the trailer for this advertisement. On 24 June 2013, Scott’s series Crimes of the Century debuted on CNN.[72] In November 2012 it was announced that Scott would produce the documentary, Springsteen & I directed by Baillie Walsh and inspired by Life in a Day, which Scott also produced. The film featured fan footage from throughout the world on what musician Bruce Springsteen meant to them and how he impacted their lives.[73] The film was released for one day only in 50 countries and on over 2000 film screens on 22 July 2013.[73]
Scott directed The Counselor (2013), with a screenplay by author Cormac McCarthy.[74][75] On 25 October 2013, Indiewire reported that “Before McCarthy sold his first spec script for Scott’s (Counselor) film, the director was heavily involved in developing an adaptation of the author’s 1985 novel Blood Meridian with screenwriter Bill Monahan (The Departed). But as Scott said in a Time Out interview, ‘[Studios] didn’t want to make it. The book is so uncompromising, which is what’s great about it.’ Described as an ‘anti-western’…”[76] Scott directed the biblically-inspiredepic filmExodus: Gods and Kings, released in December 2014 which received mixed-to-negative reviews from critics while earning $268 million on a $140 million budget. Filmed at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, the film starred Christian Bale in the lead role.[77]
Scott participates in a question and answer session about NASA’s journey to Mars and his film The Martian, 18 August 2015
In May 2014, Scott began negotiations to direct The Martian, starring Matt Damon as Mark Watney.[78] Like many of Scott’s previous works, The Martian features a heroine in the form of Jessica Chastain‘s character who is the mission commander.[79] The film was originally scheduled for release on 25 November 2015, but Fox later switched its release date with that of Victor Frankenstein, and thus The Martian was released on 2 October 2015.[80][81]The Martian was a critical and commercial success, grossed over $630 million worldwide, becoming Scott’s highest-grossing film to date.[82][83][84]
A sequel to Prometheus, Alien: Covenant, started filming in 2016, premiered in London on 4 May 2017, and received general release on 19 May 2017.[85] The film received generally positive reviews from critics, with many praising Michael Fassbender‘s dual performance and calling the film a return to form for both director Ridley Scott and the franchise.[86][87]
In August 2011, information leaked about production of a sequel to Blade Runner by Alcon Entertainment, with Alcon partners Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove.[88] Scott informed the Variety publication in November 2014 that he was no longer the director for the film and would only fulfill a producer’s role. Scott also revealed that filming would begin sometime within 2015, and that Harrison Ford has signed on to reprise his role from the original film but his character should only appear in “the third act” of the sequel.[89] On 26 February 2015, the sequel was officially confirmed, with Denis Villeneuve hired to direct the film, and Scott being an executive producer.[90] The sequel, Blade Runner 2049, was released on 6 October 2017.[91]
From May to August 2017, Scott filmed All the Money in the World, a drama about the kidnapping of John Paul Getty III, starring Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Williams.[92][93]Kevin Spacey originally portrayed Getty Sr. However, after multiple sexual assault allegations against the actor, Scott made the decision to replace him with Christopher Plummer, saying “You can’t condone that kind of behaviour in any shape or form. We cannot let one person’s action affect the good work of all these other people. It’s that simple.”[94] Scott began re-shooting Spacey’s scenes with Plummer on 20 November, which included filming at Elveden Hall in west Suffolk, England.[94] With a release date of 25 December 2017, the film studio had its doubts that Scott would manage it, saying: “They were like, ‘You’ll never do it. God be with you.'”[94][95]
Future projects
In January 2016, Scott was in early negotiations to direct the screen version of the 1968 British TV series The Prisoner.[96] In May 2016, it was announced that Scott and Drew Goddard (who had worked together on The Martian) would be reteaming to adapt the book Wraiths of the Broken Land by S. Craig Zahler. It is described as a piece of fiction that combines elements of “horror, noir, and Asian ultra-violence.”[97] In April 2017, 20th Century Fox lined up Scott to direct a film about the Battle of Britain from WWII, where the Royal Air Force defended the country from German Luftwaffe attacks, which is described as a “passion project” for the director.[98] Scott has said that a sequel to Alien: Covenant would film 14 months from May 2017. It will be the final film in his prequel series to his original film, Alien.[99] As of September 2018 there has been no update on the film development. On 4 January 2018, it was reported that Scott is in talks to direct a Disney film adaptation of The Merlin Saga, which is based on a 12-book series written by T. A. Barron, with a screenplay from Philippa Boyens.[100] On 15 March it was reported that Scott is in talks to adapt Greg Rucka’s graphic novel Queen & Country for 20th Century Fox.[101]
Television projects
Ridley Scott and his brother Tony produced CBS series Numb3rs (2005–10), a crime drama about a genius mathematician who helps the FBI solve crimes; and The Good Wife (2009–2016), a legal drama about an attorney balancing her job with her husband, a former state attorney trying to rebuild his political career after a major scandal. The two Scotts also produced a 2010 film adaptation of 1980s television show The A-Team, directed by Joe Carnahan.[102][103]
Ridley Scott was married to Felicity Heywood from 1964 to 1975. The couple had two sons, Jake and Luke, both of whom work as directors on Scott’s production company, Ridley Scott Associates. Scott later married advertising executive Sandy Watson in 1979, with whom he had a daughter, Jordan Scott, and divorced in 1989.[110] His current partner is actress Giannina Facio,[111] whom he has cast in all his films since White Squall except American Gangster and The Martian.[112] He divides his time between homes in London, France, and Los Angeles.[77]
His eldest brother Frank died, aged 45, of skin cancer in 1980.[113] His younger brother Tony, who was also his business partner in their company Scott Free, died on 19 August 2012 at the age of 68 after jumping from the Vincent Thomas Bridge which spans Los Angeles Harbor, after an originally disputed long struggle with cancer.[114] Before Tony’s death, he and Ridley collaborated on a miniseries based on Robin Cook‘s novel, Coma for A&E. The two-part miniseries premiered on A&E on 3 September 2012, to mixed reviews.[115] In 2013, Ridley stated that he is an atheist.[116]
Ridley has dedicated several of his films in memory of his family: Blade Runner to his brother Frank, Black Hawk Down to his mother, and The Counselor and Exodus: Gods and Kings to his brother Tony.[117] Ridley also paid tribute to his late brother Tony at the 2016 Golden Globes, after his film, The Martian, won Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.[118]
When asked by the BBC in a September 2014 interview if he believes in God, Scott replied:
I’m not sure. I think there’s all kinds of questions raised… that’s such an exotic question. If we looked at the whole thing practically speaking, the big bang occurred and then we go through this evolution of millions, billions of years where, by coincidence, all the right biological accidents came out the right way. To an extent, that doesn’t make sense unless there was a controlling decider or mediator in all of that. So who was that? Or what was that? Are we one big grand experiment in the basic overall blink of the universe, or the galaxy? In which case, who is behind it? Maybe we’re an experiment which can last a billion years, but which is a blink in their terms and they can then say: ‘Right that didn’t work, let’s blow them up!’[119]
Approach and style
Appearing in the lead role in Scott’s Gladiator and Robin Hood, Russell Crowe commented, “I like being on Ridley’s set because actors can perform […] and the focus is on the performers.”[120] Paul M. Sammon, in his book Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner, commented in an interview with Brmovie.com that Scott’s relationship with his actors has improved considerably over the years.[121] More recently during the filming of Scott’s 2012 film, Prometheus, Charlize Theron praised the director’s willingness to listen to suggestions from the cast for improvements in the way their characters are portrayed on screen. Theron worked alongside the writers and Scott to give more depth to her character during filming.[122]
Scott’s work is identified for its striking visuals, with heroines also a common theme.[1][3][8][123] His visual style, incorporating a detailed approach to production design and innovative, atmospheric lighting, has been influential on a subsequent generation of filmmakers.[1][2]Scott commonly uses slow pacing until the action sequences. Examples include Alien and Blade Runner; the LA Times critic Sheila Benson, for example, would call the latter “Blade Crawler” “because it’s so damn slow”. Another technique he employs is use of sound or music to build tension, as heard in Alien, with hissing steam, beeping computers and the noise of the machinery in the space ship. Scott claims to have an eidetic memory, which he says aids him in visualising and storyboarding the scenes in his films.[124]
Scott has developed a method for filming intricate shots as swiftly as possible: “I like working, always, with a minimum of three cameras. […] So those 50 set-ups [a day] might only be 25 set-ups except I’m covering in the set-up. So you’re finished. I mean, if you take a little bit more time to prep on three cameras, or if it’s a big stunt, eleven cameras, and – whilst it may take 45 minutes to set up – then when you’re ready you say ‘Action!’, and you do three takes, two takes and is everybody happy? You say, ‘Yeah, that’s it.’ So you move on.”[120]
Artificial intelligence is a unifying theme throughout Scott’s career as a director, particularly in Blade Runner, Alien, and Prometheus.[125] The recent book The Culture and Philosophy of Ridley Scott identifies Alan Turing and John Searle, a professor at the University of California, as presenting relevant models of testing artificial intelligence known as the Turing test and the Chinese Room Thought Experiment, respectively, in the chapter titled “What’s Wrong with Building Replicants,” which has been a recurring theme for many of Scott’s films.[126] The chapter titled “Artificial Intelligence in Blade Runner, Alien, and Prometheus,” concludes by citing the writings of John Stuart Mill in the context of Scott’s Nexus-6 Replicants in Blade Runner (Rutger Hauer), the android Ash (Ian Holm) in Alien, and the android David 8 (Michael Fassbender) in Prometheus, where Mill is applied to assert that measures and tests of intelligence must also assess actions and moral behaviour in androids to effectively address the themes which Scott explores in these films.[127]
DVD format and Director’s Cut
Scott is known for his enthusiasm for the DVD format, providing audio commentaries and interviews for all his films where possible. In the July 2006 issue of Total Film magazine, he stated: “After all the work we go through, to have it run in the cinema and then disappear forever is a great pity. To give the film added life is really cool for both those who missed it and those who really loved it.”[64]
Running alongside his enthusiasm for DVD, Scott is known for his use of the director’s cut.[63] The positive reaction to the Blade Runner Director’s Cut encouraged Scott to re-cut several movies that were a disappointment at the time of their release (including Legend and Kingdom of Heaven), which have been met with great acclaim.[63] Today the practice of alternative cuts is more commonplace, though often as a way to make a film stand out in the DVD marketplace by adding new material.
Scott was appointed Knight Bachelor in the 2003 New Year Honours for services to the British film industry.[128] He received his accolade from Queen Elizabeth II at a investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace on 8 July 2003.[5]Scott admitted feeling “stunned and truly humbled” after the ceremony, saying, “As a boy growing up in South Shields, I could never have imagined that I would receive such a special recognition. I am truly humbled to receive this treasured award and believe it also further recognises the excellence of the British film industry.”[129]
In 2012, Scott was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life that he most admires to mark his 80th birthday.[133] On 3 July 2015, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Royal College of Art in a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London at which he described how he still keeps on his office wall his school report placing him 31st out of 31 in his class, and how his teacher encouraged him to pursue what became his passion at art school.[134][135]
Jump up^Iain Sinclair (20 January 2011). “The Raging Peloton”. 33 (2). London Review of Books: 3–8. Retrieved 11 April 2016. As proudly as the freshly baked loaves in Ridley Scott’s celebrated [Hovis] commercial, shot in 1973, on the picturesque slopes of Shaftesbury.
Jump up^Adam Barkman, Ashley Barkman, Nancy Kang (2013). “The Culture and Philosophy of Ridley Scott”. Chapter 10. Celebrating Historical Accuracy in The Duellists. p.171-178. Lexington Books
Jump up^Russell Smith (19 October 1993). “Brad Pitt Only Does Interesting Movie Roles”. Deseret News. p. EV6. It was in 1991, when he hitched his ride with Geena Davis and Susan Sarandonin Thelma & Louise, that Pitt’s star began to twinkle in earnest.
^ Jump up to:abTotal Film magazine, July 2006: ‘Three hours, eight minutes. It’s beautiful.’ (Interview to promote Kingdom of Heaven: The Director’s Cut)
In my most recent video essay on blade runner I said Deckard, the protagonist of the first film and prominent character in the second is not a replicant despite the fact Ridley Scott (the director of the first film) has said on many occasions that his character is in fact a replicant. In this cheeky little post I want to defend my statement and I want to voice an invaluable lesson Ridley Scott has unknowingly taught me about storytelling.
But first, in order for me to make my point I want to tell you a story, it is a story that may or may not be true but then again why are you trusting me, I’m a writer, I lie for a living. So here’s how the story goes. One day, a 14 year old english student was set an assignment by her teacher to create an essay on a novel. The teacher for weeks lectured the class on what the novel is about, the intricacies of what it’s themes are, its use of symbolism and a number of meanings intended by the creator by the means of a particularly boring powerpoint presentation.
However there was a rather happy coincidence, her father just so happened to be the writer who created the book in the first place so she did what any resourceful student would do an asked him about the book. What did he mean when he used that piece of symbolism? What are the core morals and themes of the story? The father happily answered all of her questions and spent a whole hour telling her about his intentions and thoughts that went through his head when he wrote it and all the while the girl jotted down every nugget of information on her notepad.
So the following week the essay was due and using her notes straight from the source she explained the symbolism and themes with a great big smile on her face and without even checking over the paper twice she handed it in to the teacher gleaming with confidence.
The next day the teacher came to her desk and handed back her paper, the result, a C+. She didn’t know how to feel, shocked might of been the most accurate word. She stomped up to her teacher after class asking why she got such a mediocre grade on a paper she was dead certain she should of gotten at least a B.
The teacher turned to her. “I’m sorry, it was certainly a well thought out essay but you totally ignored everything I said. The core theme is clearly about the fragility of life however you have put that it is about the relationship between a father and his daughter not to mention the vast majority of what you said went totally against what I taught you. You clearly weren’t paying much attention in my class.”
The girl got one of the lowest grades in the class because the interpretation she provided, despite the fact it was from the original writer was totally different to what the teacher had said it was.
A number of months ago I told a family friend that story and I said
“Isn’t that just absurd, how could that teacher be any more in the wrong?”
To which he replied
“Not really, what makes her interpretation any more valid than the writer’s?”
Now whether that story I told you was entirely true or just pure fiction is ultimately irrelevant. Now was the teacher in the wrong? Absolutely, all art is a very malleable medium and often the best pieces are ones where five people consume it and all come out with their own interpretation. The fact the English teacher thought her interpretation was correct and all others where incorrect was just flat out ignorant however it does raise a fascinating question. Why is the writer’s intended meanings any more or less valid than the meanings of a person who reads said work?
This all comes back to blade runner because when Ridley Scott said Deckard is a replicant it taught me a valuable lesson; that the best policy a writer can adhere to is to never state what one means when one writes a certain line because when like Scott one states exactly what something means then it spoils the fun of the viewer/reader trying to come to their own opinions as to what a certain shot or scene or even the entire story meant.
Part of the reason a truly great film like blade runner is great is because it invites the viewer to come to their own conclusions as to what it means and when Scott said what he did it, to a small degree it hindered my enjoyment of the film because there is a reason a magician never reveals his secrets because part of the fun is trying to realise how he did it and the moment he explains how, the show suddenly becomes less engaging for the viewer.
So that is the lesson Ridley Scott unknowingly taught me. That if a fan comes up to you and says…
“I love how the protagonist’s struggle to never kill anyone was an allegory for our societies struggle with capital punishment”
And even when their interpretation in ‘wrong’ and nowhere near what you intended you should never correct them because not only does it make you look more clever than you actually are but it also spoils the fun of consuming one’s art as the individual coming to their own conclusions is in part, what great art is all about.
(Drops mic)
Also a big thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring my blade runner video and giving me this site for free. If you want to get your own site for no initial fee and then 10% off your first purchase please use this link: http://www.squarespace.com/closerlook
If you use that link you will be directly supporting me 🙂
Oldest American, Cigar Smoker, Whisky Drinker and World War II Veteran, Richard Overton, Robbed of Savings and Identity in Austin, Texas — Videos
The oldest living World War II veteran, Richard Overton, is 112-years old. He is shown here celebrating his 111th birthday in Texas in 2017. Relatives say someone has stolen his identity and emptied his bank account. (Image source: YouTube screenshot)
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We are too solicitous for government intervention, on the theory, first, that the people themselves are helpless, and second, that the Government has superior capacity for action. Often times both of these conclusions are wrong.
Calvin Coolidge
“If you want government to intervene domestically, you’re a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you’re a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you’re a moderate.
If you don’t want government to intervene anywhere, you’re an extremist.”
~ Joseph Sobran
I’m a little embarrassed about how long it took me to see the folly of most government intervention. It was probably 15 years before I really woke up to the fact that almost everything government attempts to do, it makes worse.
John Stossel
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Stephen Hawking’s final warning to humanity: Legendary physicist believed we must leave Earth in the next 200 years or face EXTINCTION
Professor Hawking believed life on Earth could easily be wiped out
Dangers include asteroids, AI, over-population and climate change
Making contact with aliens and human aggression could also spell the end
Future generations must forge a new life in space if we want to survive, he said
PUBLISHED: 03:51 EDT, 14 March 2018 | UPDATED: 06:31 EDT, 14 March 2018
Humans must leave Earth in the next 200 years if we want to survive.
That was the stark warning issued by Professor Stephen Hawking in the months before his death today at the age of 76.
The legendary physicists believed that life on Earth could be wiped out by a disaster such as an asteroid strike, AI or an alien invasion.
He also warned over-population, human aggression and climate change could cause humanity to self-destruct.
He believed, if our species had any hope of survival, future generations would need to forge a new life in space.
Scroll down for video
Humans must leave Earth within 200 years if we want to survive. That was the stark warning issued by Professor Stephen Hawking in the months before he death today at the age of 76
Climate change
One of Hawking’s main fears for the planet was global warming.
‘Our physical resources are being drained, at an alarming rate. We have given our planet the disastrous gift of climate change,’ Hawking warned in July.
‘Rising temperatures, reduction of the polar ice caps, deforestation, and decimation of animal species. We can be an ignorant, unthinking lot.’
Hawking said that Earth will one day look like the 460°C (860°F) planet Venus if we don’t cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Hawking said that Earth (stock image) will one day look like the 460°C (860°F) planet Venus if we don’t cut greenhouse gas emissions
‘Next time you meet a climate change denier, tell them to take a trip to Venus. I will pay the fare,’ Hawking quipped.
The physicist also believed President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement has doomed our planet.
He warned Trump’s decision would caused avoidable damage to our ‘beautiful planet’ for generations to come.
‘We are close to the tipping point where global warming becomes irreversible,’ the celebrated scientist told BBC last year.
Asteroid strikes
If global warming doesn’t wipe us out, Hawking believed Earth would be destroyed by an asteroid strike.
‘This is not science fiction. It is guaranteed by the laws of physics and probability,’ he said.
‘To stay risks being annihilated.
‘Spreading out into space will completely change the future of humanity. It may also determine whether we have any future at all.’
Hawking was working with Russian billionaire Yuri Milner’s Breakthrough Starshot project to send a fleet of tiny ‘nanocraft’ carrying light sails on a four light-year journey to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to Earth.
‘If we succeed we will send a probe to Alpha Centauri within the lifetime of some of you alive today,’ he said.
Astronomers estimate that there is a reasonable chance of an Earth-like planet existing in the ‘habitable zones’ of Alpha Centauri’s three-star system.
If global warming doesn’t wipe us out, Hawking believed Earth would be destroyed by an asteroid strike (stock image)
‘It is clear we are entering a new space age. We are standing at the threshold of a new era’, said Hawking.
‘Human colonisation and other planets is no longer science fiction, it can be science fact.’
Hawking believed that In the long run the human race should not have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet.
‘I just hope we can avoid dropping the basket until then’, he said.
Hawking claimed that AI will soon reach a level where it will be a ‘new form of life that will outperform humans.’
He even went so far as to say that AI may replace humans altogether, although he didn’t specify a timeline for his predictions.
The chilling comments during a recent interview with Wired.
He said: ‘The genie is out of the bottle. I fear that AI may replace humans altogether.
Hawking even went so far as to say that AI may replace humans altogether, although he didn’t specify a timeline for his predictions (stock image)
The world pays tribute to the late Stephen Hawking on Twitter
‘If people design computer viruses, someone will design AI that improves and replicates itself.
‘This will be a new form of life that outperforms humans.’
He also he said the AI apocalypse was impending and ‘some form of government’ would be needed to control the technology.
During the interview, Hawking also urged more people to take an interest in science, claiming that there would be ‘serious consequences’ if this didn’t happen.
Stephen Hawking’s pearls of wisdom
– On the reason why the universe exists: ‘If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we would know the mind of God’ – A Brief History Of Time, published 1988.
– On being diagnosed with motor neurone disease: ‘My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus’ – Interview in The New York Times, December 2004.
– On black holes: ‘Einstein was wrong when he said, ‘God does not play dice’. Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can’t be seen’ – The Nature Of Space And Time, published 1996.
– On God: ‘It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going’ – The Grand Design, published 2010.
– On commercial success: ‘I want my books sold on airport bookstalls’ – Interview in The New York Times, December 2004.
– On fame: ‘The downside of my celebrity is that I cannot go anywhere in the world without being recognised. It is not enough for me to wear dark sunglasses and a wig. The wheelchair gives me away’ – Interview on Israeli TV, December 2006.
– On an imperfect world: ‘Without imperfection, you or I would not exist’ – In Into The Universe With Stephen Hawking, The Discovery Channel, 2010.
– On euthanasia: ‘The victim should have the right to end his life, if he wants. But I think it would be a great mistake. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there’s life, there is hope’ – Quoted in People’s Daily Online, June 2006.
– On intellectual showboating: ‘People who boast about their IQ are losers’ – Interview in The New York Times, December 2004.
– On the possibility of contact between humans and aliens: ‘I think it would be a disaster. The extraterrestrials would probably be far in advance of us. The history of advanced races meeting more primitive people on this planet is not very happy, and they were the same species. I think we should keep our heads low’ – In Naked Science: Alien Contact, The National Geographic Channel, 2004.
– On the importance of having a sense of humour: ‘Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny’ – Interview in The New York Times, December 2004.
– On death: ‘I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first’ – Interview in The Guardian, May 2011.’
Human aggression
Hawking has previously warned aggression is humanity’s biggest failing and could ‘destroy it all’.
The remark was made back in 2015 in response to a question about what human shortcomings he would change.
Talking to an audience in the Science Museum, the renowned scientist said ‘The human failing I would most like to correct is aggression’.
‘It may have had survival advantage in caveman days, to get more food, territory or a partner with whom to reproduce, but now it threatens to destroy us all’, writes the Independent.
He said he feared evolution has ‘inbuilt’ it into the human genome, commenting that there was no sign of conflict lessening.
What’s more, he said the development of militarised technology and weapons of mass destruction could make this instinct even more dangerous.
He said empathy was the best of human emotions and meant we could be brought together in a loving state.
Aliens
Hawking also warned that if we ever did find aliens they would probably wipe us out.
‘As I grow older I am more convinced than ever that we are not alone,’ he said in a video posted online called Stephen Hawking’s Favourite Places.
The clip showed him visiting different locations across the cosmos, writes the Independent.
One of the places he visits is Gliese 832c, a planet that people speculate could be home to alien life.
‘One day we might receive a signal from a planet like Gliese 832c, but we should be wary of answering back.
‘Meeting an advanced civilization could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus. That didn’t turn out so well’, he said.
Hawking became increasing convinced there was other life out there as he got older and he led a new project called the Breakthrough Listen project to find out.
He said that any alien civilisation would be ‘vastly more powerful and may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria.’
Overpopulation
The renowned scientist also warned that a man-made catastrophe could spell the end for our species.
The renowned physicist believed that life on Earth is at an ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as asteroid strikes, epidemics, over-population (stock image) and climate change
‘For me, the really concerning aspect of this is that now, more than at any time in our history, our species needs to work together,’ Hawking said in a Guardian opinion piece in 2016.
‘We face awesome environmental challenges: climate change, food production, overpopulation, the decimation of other species, epidemic disease, acidification of the oceans.
‘Together, they are a reminder that we are at the most dangerous moment in the development of humanity’, he said.
In November 2016, Hawking was more conservative in his estimates.
Jane and Stephen in the mis-1960s, shortly after his diagnosis with motor neurone disease and being given two years to live
He warned that humans could not survive another 1,000 years on ‘fragile’ Earth.
At a talk in Cambridge, Hawking gave a one-hour whirlwind history of man’s understanding of the origin of the universe from primordial creation myths to the most cutting edge predictions made by ‘M-theory’.
He said: ‘Perhaps one day we will be able to use gravitational waves to look back into the heart of the Big Bang.
‘Most recent advances in cosmology have been achieved from space where there are uninterrupted views of our Universe but we must also continue to go into space for the future of humanity.
Astrophysicist Hawking floats on a zero-gravity jet in April 2007. The modified jet carrying Hawking, physicians and nurses, and dozens of others first flew up to 24,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean off Florida
‘I don’t think we will survive another 1,000 years without escaping our fragile planet.’
Hawking, who has said he wanted to go into space on Virgin boss Richard Branson’s Ride Virgin Atlantic spaceship, continued: ‘I therefore want to encourage public interest in space, and I have been getting my training in early.’
Hawking added: ‘It has been a glorious time to be alive and doing research in theoretical physics.
‘Our picture of the universe has changed a great deal in the last 50 years and I am happy if I have made a small contribution.
‘The fact that we humans who are ourselves mere collections of fundamental particles of nature have been able to come so close to understanding the laws that are governing us and our universe is a great achievement.’
Hawking has previously described his views on the future of space travel, in the afterword of the book, ‘How to Make a Spaceship.’
He said: ‘I believe that life on Earth is at an ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as a sudden nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, or other dangers,’ he said.
‘I think the human race has no future if it doesn’t go to space.’
Making a poignant plea to his young audience of students from the University of Oxford, where he himself did his undergraduate degree, he said: ‘Remember to look up to the stars and not down at your feet.
‘Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist.
‘Be curious and however life may seem there’s always something you can do and succeed at – it matters that you don’t just give up.’
‘Medical miracle’ Stephen Hawking defied the odds for 55 years
Stephen Hawking was one of the world’s most acclaimed cosmologists, a medical miracle, and probably the galaxy’s most unlikely superstar celebrity.
After being diagnosed with a rare form of motor neurone disease in 1964 at the age of 22, he was given just a few years to live.
Yet against all odds Professor Hawking celebrated his 70th birthday nearly half a century later as one of the most brilliant and famous scientists of the modern age.
Despite being wheelchair-bound, almost completely paralysed and unable to speak except through his trademark voice synthesiser, he wrote a plethora of scientific papers that earned him comparisons with Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton.
At the same time he embraced popular culture with enthusiasm and humour, appearing in TV cartoon The Simpsons, starring in Star Trek and providing the voice-over for a British Telecom commercial that was later sampled on rock band Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell album.
His rise to fame and relationship with his first wife, Jane, was dramatised in a 2014 film, The Theory Of Everything, in which Eddie Redmayne put in an Oscar-winning performance as the physicist battling with a devastating illness.
He was best known for his work on black holes, the mysterious infinitely dense regions of compressed matter where the normal laws of physics break down, which dominated the whole of his academic life.
Hawking is pictured with his children Robert, Lucy & Tim and his first wife Jane
Prof Hawking’s crowning achievement was his prediction in the 1970s that black holes can emit energy, despite the classical view that nothing – not even light – can escape their gravity.
Hawking Radiation, based on mathematical concepts arising from quantum mechanics, the branch of science that deals with the weird world of sub-atomic particles, eventually causes black holes to ‘evaporate’ and vanish, according to the theory.
Had the existence of Hawking Radiation been proved by astronomers or physicists, it would almost certainly have earned Prof Hawking a Nobel Prize. As it turned out, the greatest scientific accolade eluded him until the time of this death.
Born in Oxford on January 8 1942 – 300 years after the death of astronomer Galileo Galilei – Prof Hawking grew up in St Albans.
He had a difficult time at the local public school and was persecuted as a ‘swot’ who was more interested in jazz, classical music and debating than sport and pop.
Although not top of the class, he was good at maths and ‘chaotically enthusiastic in chemistry’.
As an undergraduate at Oxford, the young Hawking was so good at physics that he got through with little effort.
He later calculated that his work there ‘amounted to an average of just an hour a day’ and commented: ‘I’m not proud of this lack of work, I’m just describing my attitude at the time, which I shared with most of my fellow students.
‘You were supposed to be brilliant without effort, or to accept your limitations and get a fourth-class degree.’
Hawking got a first and went to Cambridge to begin work on his PhD, but already he was beginning to experience early symptoms of his illness.
During his last year at Oxford he became clumsy, and twice fell over for no apparent reason. Shortly after his 21st birthday he went for tests, and at 22 he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease.
The news came as an enormous shock that for a time plunged the budding academic into deep despair. But he was rescued by an old friend, Jane Wilde, who went on to become his first wife, giving him a family with three children.
After a painful period coming to terms with his condition, Prof Hawking threw himself into his work.
At one Royal Society meeting, the still-unknown Hawking interrupted a lecture by renowned astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle, then at the pinnacle of his career, to inform him that he had made a mistake.
An irritated Sir Fred asked how Hawking presumed to know that his calculations were wrong. Hawking replied: ‘Because I’ve worked them out in my head.’
Eddie Redmayne won a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Hawking in 2014
In the 1980s, Prof Hawking and Professor Jim Hartle, from the University of California at Santa Barbara, proposed a model of the universe which had no boundaries in space or time.
The concept was described in his best-selling popular science book A Brief History Of Time, published in 1988, which sold 25 million copies worldwide.
As well as razor sharp intellect, Prof Hawking also possessed an almost child-like sense of fun, which helped to endear him to members of the public.
He booked a seat on Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic sub-orbital space plane and rehearsed for the trip by floating inside a steep-diving Nasa aircraft – dubbed the ‘vomit comet’ – used to simulate weightlessness.
On one wall of his office at Cambridge University was a clock depicting Homer Simpson, whose theory of a ‘doughnut-shaped universe’ he threatened to steal in an episode of the cartoon show. He is said to have glared at the clock whenever a visitor was late.
From 1979 to 2009 he was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the university – a post once held by Sir Isaac Newton. He went on to become director of research in the university’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics.
Upheaval in his personal life also hit the headlines, and in February 1990 he left Jane, his wife of 25 years, to set up home with one of his nurses, Elaine Mason. The couple married in September 1995 but divorced in 2006.
Throughout his career Prof Hawking was showered with honorary degrees, medals, awards and prizes, and in 1982 he was made a CBE.
But he also ruffled a few feathers within the scientific establishment with far-fetched statements about the existence of extraterrestrials, time travel, and the creation of humans through genetic engineering.
He has also predicted the end of humanity, due to global warming, a new killer virus, or the impact of a large comet.
In 2015 he teamed up with Russian billionaire Yuri Milner who has launched a series of projects aimed at finding evidence of alien life.
Hawking and his new bride Elaine Mason pose for pictures after the blessing of their wedding at St. Barnabus Church September 16, 1995
The decade-long Breakthrough Listen initiative aims to step up the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti) by listening out for alien signals with more sensitivity than ever before.
The even bolder Starshot Initiative, announced in 2016, envisages sending tiny light-propelled robot space craft on a 20-year voyage to the Alpha Centauri star system.
Meanwhile Prof Hawking’s ‘serious’ work continued, focusing on the thorny question of what happens to all the information that disappears into a black hole. One of the fundamental tenets of physics is that information data can never be completely erased from the universe.
A paper co-authored by Prof Hawking and published online in Physical Review Letters in June 2016 suggests that even after a black hole has evaporated, the information it consumed during its life remains in a fuzzy ‘halo’ – but not necessarily in the proper order.
Prof Hawking outlined his theories about black holes in a series of Reith Lectures broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January and February 2016.
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House Republicans say probe found no evidence of collusion between Trump, Russia
Patricia Zengerle
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – House Intelligence Committee Republicans said on Monday the panel had finished conducting interviews in its investigation of Russia and the 2016 U.S. election, and found no collusion between President Donald Trump’s associates and Moscow’s efforts to influence the campaign.
“We have found no evidence of collusion, coordination, or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians,” committee Republicans said as they released an overview of their probe.
Representative Mike Conaway, who has led the panel’s investigation, said the panel had finished the interview phase of its probe.
“You never know what you never know, but we found no reason to think that there’s something we’re missing in this regard. We’ve talked to everybody we think we need to talk to,” Conaway said in an interview on Fox News Channel.
Committee Democrats had no immediate response to the announcement, which was expected. Panel Republicans have been saying for weeks they were near the end of the interview phase of the probe.
Reflecting a deep partisan divide on the House of Representatives panel, Democrats have been arguing that the probe is far from over. Representative Adam Schiff, the panel’s ranking Democrat, said last week that there were dozens more witnesses who should be called before the panel, and many more documents that should be subpoenaed.
Democrats have accused Republicans on the committee of shirking the investigation in order to protect Trump and his associates, some of whom have pleaded guilty to charges including lying to investigators and conspiring against the United States.
Trump has repeatedly denied collusion between his associates and Russia.
Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Jonathan Oatis
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Trump praises protesters for challenging Iran’s ‘brutal and corrupt’ regime after official warns demonstrators face the DEATH PENALTY as nine die overnight and 450 have been arrested
US President said Iranians are ‘finally acting against brutal and corrupt regime’
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ‘has met senior officials for talks’
Notes from meeting say ‘God help us’ and reveal economic impact of unrest
Khamenei this morning said ‘enemies’ of the Islamic Republic had stirred unrest
Nine more have been killed overnight while 450 have been arrested during riots
By Julian Robinson for MailOnline
PUBLISHED: 02:57 EST, 2 January 2018 | UPDATED: 16:22 EST, 2 January 2018
Donald Trump has praised protesters for challenging Iran‘s ‘brutal and corrupt’ regime after a Tehran official warned demonstrators face the death penalty.
After days of unrest that have seen 21 people killed and more than 450 arrested, the US President said Iranians were ‘finally acting’.
‘All of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their ‘pockets.’ The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching!’ he wrote this morning.
Iran’s foreign ministry hit back saying Trump should focus on ‘homeless and hungry people’ in his own country rather than insulting Iranians.
‘Instead of wasting his time sending useless and insulting tweets regarding other countries, he would be better off seeing to the domestic issues of his own country such as daily killings of dozens of people… and the existence of millions of homeless and hungry people,’ said ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi.
It comes after nine people died in overnight clashes and the head of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court reportedly warned detained protesters could be executed.
The death toll from violent protests in Iran has risen to 21 after nine more people were killed in clashes overnight. New pictures have emerged showing some of the unrest on New Year’s Eve with a building on fire in Dorud
Six of the most recent decent deaths happened when protesters clashed with security forces as they tried to storm a police station in Qahderijan, a town of 30,000 in the Isfahan region of central Iran. People stand near a burning car in Tuyserkan, Hamadan Province, Iran on December 31
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (pictured today) has blamed the country’s ‘enemies’ for riots that have claimed nine more lives overnight
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (pictured) has dismissed the protests taking place across Iran on Monday as ‘nothing’, in a bid to downplay the significance of the increasingly violent demonstrations
Donald Trump has praised protesters for challenging Iran’s ‘brutal and corrupt’ regime after a Tehran official warned demonstrators face the death penalty. In a tweet, the US President said saluted Iranians for ‘finally acting’ after days of unrest that have seen 21 people killed and more than 450 arrested
Mousa Ghazanfarabadi said: ‘Obviously one of their charges can be Moharebeh,’ or waging war against God. That’s a death penalty offense in Iran. He was also quoted as saying some protesters will come to trial soon on charges of acting against national security and damaging public properties.
It comes after Iran‘s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blamed the country’s ‘enemies’ for the riots. Khamenei is said to have met with top political leaders and security chiefs to discuss a clamp down on protests.
A report of the meeting states: ‘God help us, this is a very complex situation and is different from previous occasions.’
The documents emerged as nine were killed in clashes overnight bringing to 21 the total number of those killed in the unrest so far. Six deaths happened when protesters clashed with security forces as they tried to storm a police station in Qahderijan, a town of 30,000 in the Isfahan region of central Iran.
A member of the Revolutionary Guards and a passer-by were killed in nearby Kahriz Sang. Around 100 people were arrested overnight in the same region, Iranian state television reported.
Khamenei this morning said enemies of the Islamic Republic had stirred unrest, using ‘different tools including cash, weapons, politics and intelligence apparatus to create troubles’.
According to Fox News, a leaked report of his meeting was given to the National Council of Resistance of Iran by senior government sources. It suggested the protests have hit the country’s economy and ‘threatens the regime’s security’.
‘The first step, therefore, is to find a way out of this situation,’ it added.
Twelve people have been reported dead during a fourth straight night of protests in Iran, including reports of three people killed in the city of Isfahan
Video purportedly taken in Isfahan on Sunday night shows dozens of people on the street before what sounds like gunshots are heard
Khamenei this morning said enemies of the Islamic Republic had stirred unrest, using ‘different tools including cash, weapons, politics and intelligence apparatus to create troubles’
‘Religious leaders and the leadership must come to the scene as soon as possible and prevent the situation (from) deteriorating further. God help us, this is a very complex situation and is different from previous occasions.’
Despite the unrest, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani yesterday dismissed the protests as ‘nothing’
Earlier reports had already said a policeman was killed and three others injured in Najafabad after being shot with a hunting rifle.
That brings the estimated death toll to 21 in unrest linked to the protests, that began last Thursday in second city Mashhad and quickly spread across the country.
The unrest has remained focused on provincial towns and cities, with only sporadic protests reported in Tehran on Monday evening.
Some 450 people have been arrested in the Iranian capital, an official told local media on Tuesday.
‘200 people were arrested on Saturday, 150 on Sunday and around 100 on Monday,’ Ali-Asghar Naserbakht, a deputy in the Tehran city governor’s office, told the reformist-linked ILNA news agency.
IRAN BLOCKS SOCIAL MEDIA IN BID TO STOP SPREAD OF UNREST
Iran has shut down social media in an attempt to stop unrest from spreading widely as deadly anti-government protests continue across the country.
Authorities have blocked access to Instagram and the Telegram messaging app as part of a clamp down on its citizens’ internet communications.
Meanwhile, Google has faced calls to lift restrictions on its services for internet users in Iran so that millions of protesters can ‘connect and organise’.
President Hassan Rouhani has insisted people are ‘absolutely free’ to express their anger but ‘criticism is different to violence and destroying public property.’
But the demonstrations, which have claimed 21 lives and led to 450 arrests so far, were fanned in part by messages sent on social media platforms prompting a black out of some services on Sunday.
Iran has shut down social media in an attempt to stop unrest from spreading widely as deadly anti-government protests continue across the country. An iranian man is pictured showing how one of his apps is no longer functioning
Telegram in particular is very popular in Iran, with more than 50 per cent of the country’s 80m population said to be active on the app.
Iran state TV website reported the decision citing an anonymous source who said it was ‘in line with maintaining peace and security of the citizens.’
The source said: ‘With a decision by the Supreme National Security Council, activities of Telegram and Instagram are temporarily limited.’
Google meanwhile has been urged to lift internet restrictions in the country.
Dr Steven Murdoch, a security researcher in the Computer Science Department, University College London, told Sky News that Google blocks users from Iran from accessing many of its services because of US sanctions.
But as a result, people have encountered difficulties trying to use counter-censorship apps such as Signal, which was set up to bypass blocking by disguising itself amongst Google’s services.
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden later tweeted: ‘Many US politicians say they want to help Iranian protesters. If they’re serious, one phone call could get @Google to restore millions of protesters’ ability to connect and organize.’
Google has not yet responded to requests for comments, Sky said.
Iran’s reformist politicians on Tuesday condemned violence that has rocked the country in recent days, accusing the US of stirring unrest while still calling on their government to address economic grievances.
‘Without doubt the Iranian people are confronted with difficulties in their daily lives… and have the right to peacefully demand and protest,’ said a statement from the Association of Combattant Clerics, headed by reformist ex-president Mohammad Khatami.
‘But the events of recent days have shown that opportunists and trouble-makers have exploited the demonstrations to create problems, insecurity and destroy public buildings, while insulting sacred religious and national values.’
Khatami led the country from 1997 to 2005 but was later barred from public appearances for his role in leading mass demonstrations in 2009.
The group said the violence seen through five days of protests across the country would help Iran’s ‘enemies’.
‘The enemies of Iran, headed by the United States and their agents… have encouraged the trouble-makers and the violent actions.’
Protests have been relatively small in Tehran compared with many parts of the country since the unrest began last Thursday.
‘We feel the situation in Tehran is more calm than previous days. Already yesterday, it was calmer than before,’ said Naserbakht.
He added that no request had yet been put to the Revolutionary Guards to intervene in the capital.
Crowds continued to gather in Iran despite the government blacking out the Telegram messaging app and Instagram
Police have used water cannon to disperse protesters who had gathered in Ferdowsi Square, Tehran
‘We will not permit insecurity to continue in any way in Tehran. If it continues, officials will take decisions to finish it,’ said Esmail Kowsari, a deputy commander for a local branch of the Revolutionary Guards, on state television.
Rouhani yesterday attempted to downplay the significance of the mass demonstrations.
In what has become the biggest threat to Iranian leaders since the presidential protests in 2009, Rouhani’s words have so far failed to quell the increasingly violent uprising.
‘Our great nation has witnessed a number of similar incidents in the past and has comfortably dealt with them. This is nothing,’ Rouhani said in a meeting with Iranian members of parliament on Monday, CNN reported.
Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, described the unrest – the biggest challenge to the regime since mass protests in 2009 – as a ‘proxy war against the Iranian people’.
‘Hashtags and messages about the situation in Iran come from the United States, Britain and Saudi Arabia,’ he told local media.
Iran’s intelligence ministry released a statement saying ‘instigators’ have been identified ‘and will be dealt with seriously soon’.
Iranian police use water cannon to disperse protesters
Hassan Rouhani said people were ‘completely free to express their criticism’ of the government but violence would not be tolerated in his first public remarks on the crisis
Protests started in the north east city of Mashhad last week but have since spread around the country in the most serious challenge to the regime since 2009
The Revolutionary Guards have yet to fully intervene against the protesters, but published photos on Monday of three wanted people and called on the public to report any ‘seditionist elements’.
Pro-regime rallies were held across several towns and cities – reflecting continued support among a large conservative section of society.
Reporting restrictions remained tight, but videos on social media continued to show widespread anti-government protests in many areas.
Rouhani came to power in 2013 promising to mend the economy and ease social tensions, but high living costs and a 12 percent unemployment rate have left many feeling that progress is too slow.
The young are most affected, with as many as 40 percent out of work according to analysts, and rural areas particularly hard-hit.
‘People have had enough, especially the young people. They have nothing to be happy about,’ said Sarita Mohammadi, a 35-year-old teacher in Tehran.
‘The situation is far worse in provinces. Agriculture has been destroyed. I know many who have left the north of the country to come to Tehran to work,’ she added.
Rouhani acknowledged there was ‘no problem bigger than unemployment’ in a speech on Sunday, and also vowed a more balanced media and more transparency.
President Trump continued his attacks on the Iranian regime via Twitter as Rouhani said he has ‘no right to feel pity for the people of Iran’
US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly criticised Tehran over four days of demonstrations, said it was ‘time for a change’ and that Iran’s people were ‘hungry’ for freedom.
The European Union on Monday pushed Iran to guarantee the right to protest and separately British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said ‘the UK is watching events in Iran closely’.
‘We believe that there should be meaningful debate about the legitimate and important issues the protesters are raising and we look to the Iranian authorities to permit this,’ Johnson said in a statement.
In 2009, authorities ruthlessly put down protests against the re-election of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. At least 36 people were killed in 2009, according to an official toll, while the opposition says 72 died.
e pro-Western foreign policy of the regime it overthrew. Since then, Iran has oscillated between the two opposing tendencies of revolutionary ardour (promoting the Islamic revolution and struggling against non-Muslim tendencies abroad) and moves towards pragmatism (economic development and normalization of foreign relations). Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa calling for the killing of British citizen Salman Rushdie for his allegedly blasphemous book, The Satanic Verses, demonstrated the willingness of the Islamic revolutionaries to sacrifice trade and other ties with western countries to threaten an individual citizen of a foreign country living thousands of miles away. On the other hand, Khomeini’s death in 1989 led more pragmatic policies, with Presidents Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami leading the charge for more stable relations with the west as well as its surrounding, non-Revolutionary-Islamic neighbors—i.e., Saudi Arabia. Following the 2005 election of President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Iran has returned to more a more hardline stance, frequently antagonizing the west and its neighbors while battling for control over the region.
In the immediate aftermath of the revolution, the Islamic Republic went to war against Saddam Hussein‘s Iraq after the latter launched a military offensive in the 1980s. With most foreign aid going to Iraq, Iran was forced to accept a ceasefire by 1988. Tensions with Iraq remained long after the war; it was not until the death of Saddam himself that Iran and Iraq have started improving their relations.
The Islamic Republic founded and sponsored the Lebanese group known as Hezbollah; its leaders were followers of Khomeini. The creation of Hezbollah, and its funding from Iran, was in response to the Israeli occupation of Lebanon. Since then, Hezbollah has served as both an ally and a surrogate for Iran during its conflict with America and Israel. Author Olivier Roy describes the Islamic Republic’s as having “lost most of its allure among non-Iranian Shia’s,” giving as examples the 1995 house arrest in Qom of the two sons of Grand Ayatollah Shirazi, spiritual leader of the Bahraini Shia; and the close cooperation between the Afghan Shia party Wahdat and the U.S. Army after November 2001.[7]
The Islamic Republic strongly supports the Palestinian cause. Government aid goes to everything from Palestinian hospitals to arms supplies. There is vigorous media publicity, an official “Quds (Jerusalem) Day”, and squares and streets named after Palestine crisscross Iranian cities. Some question whether the issue has domestic grassroots support, arguing that Iranians “lack emotional and cultural ties to Palestinians,”[8] or has been too costly in terms of opportunity cost compared to peaceful coexistence.[9]
Net Iranian migration (1979–2008). A positive value represents more people entering Iran than leaving the country.
Despite stagnation in the economy, Iran’s Human Development Index rating (including life expectancy, literacy, education, and standard of living) improved significantly in the years after the revolution, climbing from 0.569 in 1980 to 0.759 in 2007/8.[10] It now ranks 94th out of 177 countries with data.[11] This is approximately the same rate, as neighbor Turkey which has a somewhat higher HDI rating (0.775).[12] One factor in the HDI rise has been literacy rates among Iranian women which “rose from 28% to 80% between 1976 and 1996.”[13]
Although the Shah’s regime had created a popular and successful Literacy Corps and also worked to raise literacy rates,[14] the Islamic Republic based its educational reforms on Islamic principles. The Literacy Movement Organization (LMO), replaced the Literacy Corps following the revolution[15] and is credited with much of Iran’s continued success in reducing illiteracy from 52.5 per cent in 1976 to just 24 per cent, at the last count in 2002.[16]The movement has established over 2,000 community learning centers across the country, employed some 55,000 instructors, distributed 300 easy-to-read books and manuals, and provided literacy classes to a million people, men as well as women.[17][18] The increase in literacy “meant that for the first time in history most of the population, including Azeris, Kurds, Gilakis, and Moazanderanis, could converse and read in Persian.”[19]
In the field of health, maternal and infant mortality rates have been cut significantly.[20] Infant mortality per 1000 dropped from 104 to 25.[19]
In particular conditions improved in the countryside. The Reconstruction Jihad “extended roads, electricity, piped water, and most important of all, health clinics into villages. … turning peasants into farmers. Soon most farmers had access not only to roads, schools, … but also … radios, refrigerators, telephones, televisions, motorbikes, even pickup trucks. …on the eve of the revolution, life expectancy at birth had been less than 56; by the end of the century, it was near 70.”[19]
Under the Islamic Republic, Iran’s economy has been dominated by oil and gas exports which constituted 70% of government revenue and 80% of export earnings as of 2008.[21] It has a large public sector, with an estimated 60% of the economy directly controlled and centrally planned by the state.[22] A unique feature of Iran‘s economy is the large size of the religious foundations, or Bonyads, whose combined budgets are said to make up as much as half that of the central government.[22][23]
Top oil-producing countries
(million barrels per day)
Economic problems include the shattering of the Iranian oil sector and consequent loss of output from the revolution and Iran–Iraq War (Iran sustained economic losses estimated at $500 billion[24]), a soaring population over the same period, inefficiency in the state sector, dependence on petroleum exports,[25] and corruption.[26][27]
The constitution of the Islamic Republic calls for the state sector “to include all large-scale and mother industries, foreign trade”, natural resources and communication; and calls on the private sector to “supplement the … state and cooperative sectors.”[28][29]
However, complaining about the economy is said to have become “a national pastime” among Iranians.[31] According to international economic consultant Jahangir Amuzegar, as of 2003:
Despite a 100 percent rise in average annual oil income since the revolution, most indicators of economic welfare have steadily deteriorated. … Average inflation in the years after the revolution has been at least twice as high as during the 1970s, unemployment has been three times higher, and economic growth is two-thirds lower. As a result, Iran’s per capita income has declined by at least 30 percent since 1979. By official admission, more than 15 percent of the population now lives below the absolute poverty line, and private estimates run as high as 40 percent.[32]
Per capita income declines when the price of oil declines (per capita income reportedly fell at one point (1995) to 1/4 of what it was prior to the revolution);[33][34] Accumulated assets of the Iranian middle class—carpets, gold, apartments—that were acquired in the four-year boom after the 1973 oil price rise and served to cushion the fall in standards of living, have now reportedly “largely been sold off.”[35][36]
The poor have also exhibited dissatisfaction. Absolute poverty rose by nearly 45% during the first 6 years of the Islamic revolution[37] and on several occasions the mustazafin have rioted, protesting the demolition of their shantytowns and rising food prices. Disabled war veterans have demonstrated against mismanagement of the Foundation of the Disinherited.[38] Hardship has compelled some children to take odd jobs rather than go to school.[39]
A 2002 study leaked from Iran’s Interior Ministry, reported nearly 90% of respondents dissatisfied with the present government according to Amuzegar. Of this total, 28% wanted “fundamental” changes, 66% “gradual reforms.” 10% expressed satisfaction with the status quo.
According to British-Iranian scholar, Ali M. Ansari, “Iranians joke” that with the world’s second or third largest reserves of oil and natural gas, extensive deposits of copper, gold, uranium, as well as an educated and cohesive workforce, “they are blessed with all the facilities to be the industrial engine of the region, except good governance.”[40]
Sahabi family (Ezzatollah Sahabi, Yadollah and Haleh Sahabi), active members of National party were imprisoned and Haleh was killed for their peaceful activism.
Corruption is a problem in the Islamic Republic.[26][27] According to some observers, its level compares unfavorably with pre-revolutionary days. Foreign journalist Robin Wright quotes a bazaari as saying “The clergy tries to keep itself clean. But you can’t-do anything anymore without paying off this mullah’s son or that mullah’s brother-in-law – and these days usually both.”
Bribery in Iran was increasingly becoming the biggest part of business deals—and a lot of other transactions too. Iranians called it “oiling the mustache,” and it was commonly practiced before the revolution, but payoffs then were usually a one-time thing of a known amount. Two decades after the revolution, even the smallest service called for bribes to several different parties.[41]
Journalists report complaints that, “these days, if a student is lucky enough to study in the West, he will rarely come home. There are so few good jobs that everyone, from students to middle-aged engineers, is looking for a way out.”[42] An estimated “two to four million entrepreneurs, professionals, technicians, and skilled craftspeople (and their capital)” emigrated to other countries following the revolution,[43] and continue to do so at a rate of more than 150,000 a year. This flight of intellectual capital is estimated to come to almost $6 billion a year in growth opportunities, based on the average Iranian professional contributing $40,000 per year to gross capital formation.[citation needed]
Emigration from Iran, starting with young males fleeing from the Iran–Iraq War draft, is thought by some to be the feature of the Islamic Republic most resented by Iranians. According to Shirin Ebadi, “If you ask most Iranians what keener, what grievance, they nurture most bitterly against the Islamic Republic, it is the tearing apart of their families … had the revolutionaries tempered their wild radicalism, had they not replaced the Shah with a regime that prompted mass flight, their families would still be whole.”[44]
While the revolution brought about some re-Islamisation of Iran, particularly in terms of personal appearance—beards, hijab—it has not prompted a reversal of some modernizing trends or a return to traditional patterns of family life, (such as polygamy and the extended family with numerous children).
Despite the lowering of the legal age of marriage for women fell to 9,[45] and the Ayatollah Khomeini’s support for early marriage for females,
It is recommended that one hurries in giving the husband to a daughter who has attained puberty, meaning that she is of the age of religious accountability. His Holiness, Sadegh [the 6th Imam] salutations to him, bade that it is one of a man’s good fortunes that his daughter does not see menses in his own house.[46]
the actual average age of marriage for women rose to 22 by 1996. Thus the age difference between husbands and wives in Iran actually fell between 1980 and 2000, from 7 to 2.1 years.[47] (The man’s average age at marriage has remained around 24.4 over the past 20 years, which means greater educational equality between spouses.)
Nor has Islamisation of family law lead to an increase in the number of polygamous families or more frequent divorces. Polygamy has remained at about 2% of permanent marriages during the past 40 years and the divorce rate has decreased slightly since the 1970s.[48]
Population growth was encouraged for the first nine years of the revolution, but in 1988 youth unemployment concerns prompted the government to do “an amazing U-turn” and Iran now has “one of the world’s most effective” family planning programs.[49]
After the Iranian revolution, Iranian women have continued to occupy high positions in the political system. In the late 1990s, Iranians sent more women to Iranian parliament than Americans sent to U.S. senate.[50]
Gharbzadegi (“westoxification”) or western cultural influence stubbornly remains, entering via (illegal) music recordings, videos, and satellite dishes,[51] despite government efforts. Compulsory hijab (veiling) for women has been given extensive police enforcement,[52]Shorts, necklaces, “glamorous” hairstyles, and neckties (in government buildings) are forbidden for men.[53][54] Western music is banned even more thoroughly,[55] but observers note it is nonetheless popular and widespread.[56] One post-revolutionary opinion poll found 61% of students in Tehran chose “Western artists” as their role models with only 17% choosing “Iran’s officials.”[57]
In the first five years of the Islamic Republic, during its consolidation, approximately 8000 political opponents were executed. Thousands of political prisoners were also executed in 1988. Like other revolutions before it, the Iranian Revolution took a higher toll on those who had participated in the revolution than those in the regime it overthrew.[58]
In recent years the killing of dissidents has been much less frequent and reported abuses are more likely to include harsh penalties for crimes; punishment of fornication, homosexuality, apostasy, poor hijab (covering the head for women); restrictions on freedom of speech, and the press, including the imprisonment of journalists; unequal treatment according to religion and gender; torture to extract repudiations by prisoners of their cause and comrades on video for propaganda purposes,[59] and allowing prisoners to die by withholding medical treatment.[60]
The funeral of Grand Ayatollah Hosein-Ali Montazeri who challenged the regime for several decades.
Iran is governed by Sharia law. It is one of the few Muslim countries where hijab for women is required by law. At the same time, it has “the lowest mosque attendance of any Islamic country,” according to Zohreh Soleimani of the BBC.[61] Iranian clergy have complained that more than 70% of the population do not perform their daily prayers and that less than 2% attend Friday mosques.[62]
For religious minorities, life has been mixed under the Islamic Republic. Khomeini also called for unity between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims (Sunni Muslims are the largest religious minority in Iran).[63] Pre-revolutionary statements by Khomeini were antagonistic towards Jews, but shortly after his return from exile in 1979, he issued a fatwa ordering that Jews and other minorities (except Baha’is) be treated well.[64][65] Non-Muslim religious minorities do not have equal rights in the Islamic Republic (For example, senior government posts are reserved for Muslims and Jewish, Christian and Zoroastrian schools must be run by Muslim principals[66]) but four of the 270 seats in parliament are reserved for three non-Islamic minority religions.
The 300,000 members of the Bahá’í Faith, are actively harassed. “Some 200 of whom have been executed and the rest forced to convert or subjected to the most horrendous disabilities.”[67] Starting in late 1979 the new government systematically targeted the leadership of the Bahá’í community by focusing on the Bahá’í leadership.[68]
Iran’s scientific progress is subject to many problems including funding, international sanctions, and management. However, in some areas such as medicine, surgery, pharmacology, stem cell research and theoretical physics (e.g. string theory),[69] Iranian scientists have found international reputation since the Iranian revolution. Nuclear technology and stem cell research were the two fields that have enjoyed special support from the central government and Iranian leadership since the revolution.
In 2005 Iran’s national science budget was less than $1 billion and had not been subject to any significant increase since 15 years ago.[70] But according to Science-Metrix, since 1990 Iran’s scientific production has had a rapid buildup, and Iran currently has the fastest growth rate in science and technology worldwide.[71]
Iran is among the international leaders of stem cell technology[72] and was the 10th country to produce embryonic human stem cells,[73] although in terms of articles per capita basis, it reportedly ranked 16th in the world.[74][75]
Khomeini’s reign
Ayatollah Khomeini was the ruler of (or at least dominant figure in) Iran for a decade, from the founding of the Islamic Republic in April 1979 until his death in mid-1989. During that time the revolution was being consolidated as a theocratic republic under Khomeini, and Iran was fighting a costly and bloody war with Iraq.
The Islamic Republic of Iran began with the Iranian Revolution. The first major demonstrations to overthrow Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi began in January 1978.[76] The new theocratic Constitution — whereby Khomeini became Supreme Leader of the country — was approved in December 1979. In between, the Shah fled Iran in January 1979 after strikes and demonstrations paralyzed the country, and on February 1, 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Tehran to a greeting by several million Iranians.[77] The final collapse of the Pahlavi dynasty occurred shortly after on February 11 when Iran’s military declared itself “neutral” after guerrillas and rebel troops overwhelmed troops loyal to the Shah in armed street fighting. Iran officially became the Islamic Republic on April 1, 1979, when Iranians overwhelmingly approved a national referendum to make it so.[78]
Initial international impact
The initial impact of the Islamic revolution around the world was tremendous. In the non-Muslim world it has changed the image of Islam, generating much interest in the politics and spirituality of Islam,[79] along with “fear and distrust towards Islam” and particularly the Islamic Republic and its founder.[80] In the Mideast and Muslim world, particularly in its early years, it triggered enormous enthusiasm and redoubled opposition to western intervention and influence. Islamist insurgents rose in Saudi Arabia (the 1979 week-long takeover of the Grand Mosque), Egypt (the 1981 machine-gunning of the Egyptian President Sadat), Syria (the Muslim Brotherhood rebellion in Hama), and Lebanon (the 1983 bombing of the American Embassy and French and American peace-keeping troops).[81]
Instability in Iran did not end with the creation of the Islamic Republic and remained high for a few years. The country’s economy and apparatus of government had collapsed. Military and security forces were in disarray. But by 1982[82] (or 1983)[83] Khomeini and his supporters had crushed the rival factions and consolidated power.
Constitution
The first draft of the constitution for the Islamic Republic contained a conventional president and parliament but its only theocratic element was a Guardian Council to veto unIslamic legislation.[84] However, in the summer of 1979 an Assembly of Experts for Constitution, dominated by Khomeini supporters, was elected. Their new draft gave the guardians much more power and added a powerful post of guardian jurist ruler intended for Khomeini.[85] The new constitution was opposed by non-theocratic groups, both secular and Islamic, and set for approval by referendum in December 1979.
US hostages were released after 444 days of detention in Tehran.
An event that helped pass the constitution, radicalize the revolution and strengthen its anti-American stance, was the Iran hostage crisis. On November 4, 1979, Iranian students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran holding 52 embassy employees hostage for 444 days. The Carter administration severed diplomatic relations and imposed economic sanctions on April 7, 1980, and later that month unsuccessfully attempted a rescue that further enhanced Khomeini’s prestige in Iran. On May 24 the International Court of Justice called for the hostages to be released. Finally, the hostages were released 20 January 1981, by agreement of the Carter Administration, see Algiers Accords Jan. 19, 1981. The crisis also marked the beginning of American legal action, or sanctions, that economically separated Iran from America. Sanctions blocked all property within US jurisdiction owned by the Central Bank and Government of Iran.[86]
Suppression of opposition
Revolutionary factions disagreed on the shape of the new Iran. Those who thought the Shah would be replaced by a democratic government soon found Khomeini disagreed. In early March 1979, he announced, “do not use this term, ‘democratic.’ That is the Western style.”[87]
Explanations for why Khomeini supporters were successful in crushing the opposition include lack of unity in the opposition. According to Asghar Schirazi, the moderates lacked ambition and were not well organized, while the radicals (such People’s Mujahedin of Iranor PMOI) were “unrealistic” about the conservatism of the Iranian masses and unprepared to work with moderates to fight against theocracy. Moderate Islamists, such as Banisadr, were “credulous and submissive” towards Khomeini.[88]
Terrorist attacks
The ouster of President Banisadr did not put an immediate end to the opposition but moved it to terror. Hundreds of PMOI supporters and members were killed from 1979 to 1981, and some 3,000 were arrested,[89] but unlike other opposition is driven underground by the regime, the PMOI was able to retaliate.
On 28 June 1981, bombs were detonated at the headquarters of the since-dissolved Islamic Republic Party. Around 70 high-ranking officials, including Chief Justice Mohammad Beheshti (who was the second most powerful figure in the revolution after Ayatollah Khomeini at the time), cabinet members, and members of parliament, were killed. The PMOI never publicly confirmed or denied any responsibility for the deed, but only stated the attack was `a natural and necessary reaction to the regime’s atrocities.` Khomeini did accuse them of responsibility and, according to BBC journalist Baqer Moin, the PMOI were “generally perceived as the culprits” for it in Iran.[90] Two months later on August 30, another bomb was detonated killing President Rajai and Premier Mohammad Javad Bahonar. A member of the PMOI, Mas’ud Kashmiri, was announced as the perpetrator, and according to regime reports came close to killing the entire government including Khomeini.[91] The reaction following both bombings was intense with thousands of arrests and hundreds of executions of PMOI and other leftist groups,[92] but “assassinations of leading officials and active supporters of the regime by the PMOI were to continue for the next year or two.”[93]
The eight-year-long Iran–Iraq War (September 1980 – August 1988) was the most important international event for the first decade of the Islamic Republic and possibly for its history so far. It helped to strengthen the revolution although it cost Iran much in lives and treasure.
Shortly after the success of the revolution, revolutionary leader Ruhollah Khomeini began calling for Islamic revolutions across the Muslim world, including Iran’s Arab neighbor Iraq,[94] the one large state besides Iran in the Gulf with a Shia Muslim majority population. The leadership in Tehran believed that they would launch a massive Shiite uprising across the Middle East and after Iraq’s defeat, march on Israel and destroy it.
The war began with Iraq‘s invasion of Iran, in an attempt by Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein to take advantage of the perceived post-revolutionary military weakness in Iran and the Revolution’s unpopularity with Western governments. Much of the top leadership of Iran’s once-strong Iranian military had been executed. Saddam sought to expand Iraq’s access to the Persian Gulf and the oil reserves in Khuzestan (which also only has a substantial Arab population), and to undermine Iranian Islamic revolutionary attempts to incite the Shi’a majority of his country. The Iraqis used the WMDs against Iranian soldiers. Iranians also believe Saddam invaded with the encouragement of the United States, Saudi Arabia and other countries.
A combination of fierce resistance by Iranians and military incompetence by Iraqi forces soon stalled the Iraqi advance and by early 1982 Iran regained almost all the territory lost to the invasion. The invasion rallied Iranians behind the new regime, enhancing Khomeini’s stature and allowed him to consolidate and stabilize his leadership. After this reversal, Khomeini refused an Iraqi offer of a truce, declaring “the regime in Baghdad must fall and must be replaced by the Islamic Republic.”[95][96]
The war continued for another six years under the slogans `War, War until Victory,` and `The Road to Jerusalem Goes through Baghdad,`[97] but other countries, particularly the Soviet Union gave crucial aid to Iraq. As the costs mounted and Iranian morale waned, Khomeini finally accepted a truce called for by UN Security Council Resolution 598. By 1988, Iran was nearly bankrupted by the ruinous costs of the war and its manpower pool also exhausted. The Iranian Army in desperation began resorting to using boys as young as 14 in human wave attacks against Iraqi machine gun emplacements. Khomeini remarked that agreeing to peace with Iraq was “like drinking hemlock”, but there was no other choice.[98] Although neither borders nor regimes were changed[99] the war helped to `awaken the people and to fight the problems that threaten the revolution,` according to future president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.[100] An estimated 200,000 Iranians were killed[101] and the war is estimated to have cost Iran $627 billion in total direct and indirect charges (in 1990 dollars).[102]
Early laws of the Islamic Republic
The new regime undid the Shah’s old Family Protection Law, lowering the marriage age for girls back to nine and allowed husbands to divorce wives with the Triple talaq, without court permission. It purged women from the judiciary and secular teachers from the educational system. It removed Baha’is from government positions, closed down Baha’i Centers, and arrested and even executed their leaders. A strict “Islamic code of public appearance” was enforced—men were discouraged from wearing ties, women were obliged to wear either scarf and long coats or preferably the full chador.[103]
Economy
Iran’s economy suffered during the first decade following the revolution. Its currency, the rial, fell from 7 to the dollar before the revolution, to 1749 to the dollar in 1989.[104] The revolution also is said to have put an end to the influence of “the notables”, and created a very large public sector of the economy, when the government “nationalizing their enterprises in order to keep their employees working… the state ended up with more than 2000 factories many of them operating in the red.”[105]
Human Rights
In its early years, the revolutionary regime was especially criticized for its human rights record.[106] In the first 28 months of the Islamic Republic, between February 1979 and June 1981, revolutionary courts executed 497 political opponents as “counterrevolutionaries”, and “sowers of corruption on earth” (Mofsed-e-filarz). In the next four years from June 1981 until June 1985, the courts sentenced more than 8000 opponents to death.[107] After a relative lull, thousands of political prisoners were executed in 1988. Like other revolutions before it, the Iranian Revolution took a higher toll on those who had participated in the revolution than those in the regime it overthrew.[58]
Two major changes in the ideological underpinnings of the Islamic Republic occurred toward the end of Khomeini’s reign. In January 1988, he issued an edict declaring that the Islamic “Government is among the most important divine injunctions and has priority over all peripheral divine orders … even prayers, fasting and the Hajj.”[108] In April of the next year he decreed a task force to revise the country’s constitution to separate the post of Supreme Leader of Iran from that of Shia marja, (the `highest source of religious emulation`), since he found none of Marja to be suitable successors as none had given strong support for his policies.[109] The amendments were drafted and approved by the public about one month after Khomeini’s death (1989 July 9). They paved the way for Ali Khamenei – a long time lieutenant of Khomeini, but a relatively low ranking cleric – to be Khomeini’s successor as Supreme Leader,[110] but to critics they undermined the “intellectual foundations” of the Islamic Republic theocracy,[111][112] breaking “the charismatic bond between leader and followers.”[113]
Political struggle
The first post-war decade in Iran has been described as a time of pragmatism, and an `economy-first` policy.[114] According to Shirin Ebadi, “about two years into the postwar period, the Islamic Republic quietly changed course. … It was fairly clear by then that the Shiarevolution would not be sweeping the region.”[115]
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was elected president shortly after Khomeini’s death, and has been described as less revolutionary and “isolationist” than his rivals — “economically liberal, politically authoritarian, and philosophically traditional.”[116] (He served from August 17, 1989, to August 1997.) While Leader Khamenei and the Council of Guardians generally supported these policies, in the parliament radical deputies initially had control, outnumbered Rafsanjani’s “pragmatic-conservative camp” 90 to 160.[117]
The two groups differed strongly over economic and foreign policy, with radicals tending to support mass political participation and state control of the economy, and oppose normalization of relations with the West.[118] Conservatives used the power to disqualification candidates from running for office to deal with this problem. “The Council of Guardians disqualified nearly all radical candidates from the fall 1990 Assembly of Experts elections because they had failed to pass written and oral tests in Islamic jurisprudence.”[119] In the winter and spring of 1992 nearly one-third of the 3150 candidates for the 1992 election for the parliament were rejected, including 39 incumbents. Leading radicals such as Khalkhali, Nabvi, Bayat, and Hajjat al-Islam Hadi Ghaffari were sent packing because they lacked the “proper Islamic credentials.”[120]
In late 1992 Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Seyed Mohammad Khatami and director of the Voice and Vision Broadcasting company Mohammad Hashemi Rafsanjani (brother of the president) were both forced out. By 1994 “hundreds of intellectuals and supposed dissidents were in prison and some had been executed.” These purges cleared the regime of opponents but are thought to have set the stage for the reform movement, as exiled radicals warmed to the “liberal” values of freedom of speech, assembly, due process, etc.[120]
Persian Gulf War
Iraq invaded and overran Kuwait on August 2, 1990, causing a multinational coalition of UN forces to be assembled in response. Although Iran criticized the invasion and supported sanctions against its neighbor, it refused any active participation in the war, not surprising given the country’s anti-Western attitudes and state of exhaustion from the recent conflict with its neighbor. As a result of the war and its aftermath, more than one million Kurds crossed the Iraqi border into Iran as refugees.
Despite the “economy first” focus, Iran suffered serious economic problems during the Rafsanjani era. According to economist Bijan Khajehpour, economic growth in Iran between 1989 and 1994 was “mainly financed through the accumulation of some $30 billion in foreign debt. In 1993, the ratio of Iran’s foreign debt to the country’s GDP reached 38%, which was alarming.”[121] A lack of foreign investment along with a fall in oil prices from $20 to $12 per barrel added to this external debt, and triggered an economic recession. The Iranian rial plummeted from 1749 to 6400 to the dollar in 1995. Unemployment reached 30%. The price of sugar, rice, and butter rose threefold, and that of bread sixfold.[104]
In part this economic downturn came from American economic sanctions leveled in 1995, when America suspended all trade with Iran, accusing Iran of supporting terrorist groups and attempting to develop nuclear weapons. The sanctions, in turn, may be traceable to the earlier hostage crisis and the enmity of the US government which continued to see Iran as a major regional threat both to America and Israel.[104]
A new policy regarded as a success of the new government was its promotion of birth control. In 1989, the government, “having previously encouraged population growth, reversed gears and declared that Islam favored families with only two children”. Birth control clinics were opened – especially for women. Condoms and pills were distributed. Subsidies to large families were cut. Sex education was introduced into the school curriculum, mandatory classes for newlyweds were held.[122])
Khatami administration
Between March 2001 and April 2003, the TSE index (Topix) bucked the trend by going up nearly 80%.[123]
The eight years of Mohammad Khatami‘s two terms as president in 1997–2005 are sometimes called Iran’s Reform Era.[124]
Khatami based his campaign on a reform program promising a more democratic and tolerant society, promotion of civil society, the rule of law and improvement of social rights.[125][126] This included city council elections, adherence to Iran’s constitution, freedom to criticize high ranking authorities – including the supreme leader, permission to operate newspapers of a wide range of political views, reopening the embassies of all European countries, reorganizing the Ministry of Intelligence of Iran after the Iran’s Chain Murders of Intellectuals, initiating a dialogue between people of different faith inside and outside Iran, also called “Dialogue Among Civilizations.”
Iran’s large youth demographic (by 1995, about half of the country’s 60.5 million people had not been born after the Islamic Revolution) is one of Khatami’s bases of support.
At first, the new era saw significant liberalization. The number of daily newspapers published in Iran increased from five to twenty-six. Journal and book publishing also soared. Iran’s film industry boomed under the Khatami regime and Iranian films won prizes at Cannes, and Venice.[127] Local elections promised in the Islamic Republic’s constitution but delayed for over a decade were held for towns, villages, and hamlets and the number of elected officials in Iran increased from 400 to almost 200,000.[128]
Conservative reaction
After taking office, Khatami faced fierce opposition from his powerful opponents within the unelected institutions of the state which he had no legal power over, and this led to repeated clashes between his government and these institutions (including the Guardian Council, the state radio, and television, the police, the armed forces, the judiciary, the prisons, etc.).
In 1999, new curbs were put on the press. Courts banned more than 60 newspapers.[127] Important allies of President Khatami were arrested, tried and imprisoned on what outside observers considered “trumped up”[129] or ideological grounds. Tehranmayor, Gholamhossein Karbaschi was tried on corruption charges and Interior Minister Abdollah Nouri for “sacrilege” – despite their credentials as activists in the Islamic revolution.[citation needed] In 2002 history professor and reformist activist Hashem Aghajari was sentenced to death for apostasy for calling for “Islamic Protestantism” and reform in Islam.[130]
In July 1999 conservatives closed the reformist newspaper, Salam, and attacked a Tehran University student dormitory after students protested the closing. Prodemocracy student demonstrations erupted at Tehran University and other urban campuses. These were followed by a wave of counter-demonstrations by conservative factions.
Reformers won a substantial victory in Feb. 2000, parliamentary elections, capturing about two-thirds of the seats, but conservative elements in the government forced the closure of the reformist press. Attempts by parliament to repeal restrictive press laws were forbidden by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Despite these conditions, President Khatami was overwhelming re-elected in June 2001. Tensions between reformers in parliament and conservatives in the judiciary and the Guardian Council, over both social and economic changes, increased after Khatami’s reelection.
Foreign policy
Military expenditures (% GDP)
Khatami worked to improve relations with other countries visiting many other countries and holding a dialogue between civilizations and encouraged foreigners to invest in Iran. He announced Iran would accept a two-state solution for Palestine if Palestinians agreed to one, relaxed restrictions on the Bahais, and assured Britain Iran would not implement the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.[131] Several European Union countries began renewing economic ties with Iran in the late 1990s, and trade and investment increased. In 1998, Britain re-established diplomatic relations with Iran, broken since the 1979 revolution. The United States loosened its economic embargo, but it continued to block more normalized relations, arguing that the country had been implicated in international terrorism and was developing a nuclear weapons capacity. In his State of the Union Address, United States President George W. Bush labeled Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, as an “Axis of evil.”
Tensions with the United States increased after the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in March 2003, as U.S. officials increasingly denounced Iran for pursuing the alleged development of nuclear weapons.
The reform era ended with the conservatives defeat of Iranian reformists in the elections of 2003, 2004 and 2005 – the local, parliamentary, and presidential elections. According to at least one observer, the reformists were defeated not so much by a growth of support for conservative Islamist policies as by division within the reformist movement and the banning of many reform candidates which discouraged pro-reform voters from voting.[5]
This article needs to be updated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(December 2009)
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected to the presidency twice, in 2005 and 2009. Ahmadinejad ran for office as a conservative populist pledging to fight corruption, defend the interests of the poor, and strengthen Iran’s national security.[132] In 2005 he defeated former president Rafsanjani by a wide margin in the runoff, his victory credited to the popularity of his economic promises and a very low reformist voter turnout compared to the 1997 and 2001 elections.[132] This victory gave conservatives control of all branches of Iran’s government.
His administration has been marked by controversy over his outspoken pronouncements against American “arrogance” and “imperialism,” and description of the state of Israel as a “fabricated entity … doomed to go,”[133] and over high unemployment and inflation opponents blamed on his populist economic policies of cheap loans for small businesses, and generous subsidies on petrol and food.[134]
In 2009 Ahmadinejad’s victory was hotly disputed and marred by large protests that formed the “greatest domestic challenge” to the leadership of the Islamic Republic “in 30 years”,[135] as well as clashes with parliament.[136] Despite high turnout and large enthusiastic crowds for reformist opponent Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Ahmadinejad was officially declared to have won by a 2–1 margin against three opponents. Allegations of voting irregularities and protest by Mousavi his supporters were immediate and continued off and on into 2011. Some 36–72 were killed and 4000 arrested.[137][138][138] Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declared Ahmadinejad’s victory a “divine assessment”[139] and called for unity. He and others Islamic officials blamed foreign powers for fomenting the protest.[140]
However, by late 2010 several sources detected a “growing rift” between Ahmadinejad, and Khamenei and his supporters,[141] with talk of impeachment of Ahmadinejad.[142] The dispute centered on Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, a top adviser and close confidant of Ahmadinejad,[143] and accused leader of a “deviant current”[144] opposing greater involvement of clerics in politics.[145]
Although functions such as the appointment of the commanders of the armed forces and the members of national security councils are handled by the Supreme Leader and not by Iran’s president, Ahmadinejad gained considerable international attention for his foreign policy. Under Ahmadinejad, Iran’s strong ties with the Republic of Syria and Hezbollah of Lebanon continued, and new relationships with predominantly Shia neighbor Iraq and fellow opponent of U.S. foreign policy Hugo Chavez of Venezuela were developed.
Ahmadinejad’s outspoken pronouncements in foreign affairs included personal letters to a number of world leaders including one to American president George W. Bush inviting him to “monotheism and justice”,[146] an open letter to the American people,[147] the declaration that there were no homosexuals in Iran,[148] an expression of happiness at the 2008 global economic crisis which would “put an end to liberal economy”.[149]
Hezbollah’s dependence on Iran for military and financial aid is not universally supported in Iran. The 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War exposed the world to a number of weapons in Hezbollah possession said to be Iranian imports.[citation needed]
President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad also made several controversial statements about the Holocaust and Israel, and was quoted in foreign media sources as saying “Israel should be wiped off the map.”[150] Iran’s foreign minister denied that Tehran wanted to see Israel“wiped off the map,” saying “Ahmadinejad had been misunderstood.” It was asserted that the correct translation of Ahmadinejad’s remark was, “the regime currently occupying Jerusalem will be erased from the pages of time.” Reviewing the controversy over the translation, New York Times deputy foreign editor Ethan Bronner observed that “all official translations” of the comments, including the foreign ministry and president’s office, “refer to wiping Israel away”.[151] His comments were strongly criticized by a number of foreign leaders.[152][153]
Iran’s stated policy on Israel is to urge a one-state solution through a countrywide referendum in which a government would be elected that all Palestinians and all Israelis would jointly vote for; which would normally be an end to the “Zionist state”. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, rejecting any attack on Israel, called for a referendum in Palestine. Ahmadinejad himself has also repeatedly called for such solution.[154][155][156][157] Moreover, Khamenei’s main advisor in foreign policy, Ali Akbar Velayati, said that Holocaust was a genocide and a historical reality.[158]Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other prominent officials have however on other occasion called for the destruction of Israel.[159]
After, in August 2005, Iran resumed converting raw uranium into gas, a necessary step for enrichment, the IAEA passed a resolution that accused Iran of failing to comply with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and called for the agency to report Iran to the UN Security Council. The timetable for the reporting, however, was left undetermined. Iran’s stated position is that it is in full compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, that it has allowed the IAEA inspections beyond what is required, and that it has no ambitions to build atomic weapons.
In February 2004, elections, conservatives won control of parliament, securing some two-thirds of the seats. Many Iranians, however, were unhappy with the failure of the current parliament to achieve any significant reforms or diminish the influence of the hardliners. In mid-2004 Iran began resuming the processing of nuclear fuel as part of its plan to achieve self-sufficiency in civilian nuclear power production, stating that the negotiations with European Union nations had failed to bring access to the advanced nuclear technologythat was promised. The action was denounced by the United States as one which would give Iran the capability to develop nuclear weapons. The IAEA said that there was no evidence that Iran was seeking to develop such arms. However, the IAEA also called for Iran to abandon its plans to produce enriched uranium. In November 2004, Iran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment but subsequently indicated that it would not be held to the suspension if the negotiations the EU nations failed.
During an October 2013 meeting, however, Iran agreed, in negotiations with several Western European nations, to toughen international inspections of its nuclear installations.[160] Nonetheless, the international community continued to express concerns over Iran’s nuclear program. At least five Iranian nuclear scientists during 2010 and 2011 had been killed, by unknown attackers.[161]
President Ahmadinejad has vouched to fight “economic Mafia” at all echelons of government.[162] President Ahmadinejad has also proposed that lawmakers consider a bill, based on which the wealth and property of all officials who have held high governmental posts since 1979 could be investigated.[163]
According to Farda newspaper, the difference between President Ahmadinejad administration’s revenues and the amount deposited with the Central Bank of Iran exceeds $66 billion.[164] This is a large number as it is equal one-tenth of Iran’s total oil revenuessince the 1979 revolution. This amount is broken down as follows:
Vice President for Executive Affairs Ali Saeedlou said in 2008 that “mafia groups” in Iran are trying to divert public opinion away from the government’s determination to fight economic corruption by creating impediments, spreading rumors and promoting despair in the society.[166][167]
In 2010, more than 230 lawmakers in a letter to Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani said it is the duty of his organization to start from the top echelons of power in the drive against corruption. The letter added,
“It is the duty of the judiciary to start from higher echelons of power in this challenging but sacred drive. It does not make a difference whether the suspect is a high-ranking official or kith and kin of the officialdom. The legislators assure the people that they will endorse this Jihad of the judiciary alongside the Leader and people.”[168][169]
In June 2006, 50 Iranian economists wrote a letter to Ahmadinejad that criticized his price interventions to stabilize prices of goods, cement, government services, and his decree issued by the High Labor Council and the Ministry of Labor that proposed an increase of workers’ salaries by 40 percent. Ahmadinejad publicly responded harshly to the letter and denounced the accusations.[170][171]
In July 2007, Ahmadinejad ordered the dissolution of the Management and Planning Organisation of Iran, a relatively independent planning body with a supervisory role in addition to its responsibility to allocate the national budget,[172] and replaced it with a new budget planning body directly under his control, a move that may give him a freer hand to implement populist policies.[173][174]
In November 2008, a group of 60 Iranian economists condemned Ahmadinejad’s economic policies, saying Iran faces deep economic problems, including stunted growth, double-digit inflation, and widespread unemployment, and must drastically change course. It also criticized Ahmadinejad’s foreign policy calling it “tension-creating” and saying it has “scared off foreign investment and inflicted heavy damage” on the economy. Ahmadinejad replied that Iran has been “least affected by this international financial crisis.”[175]
In 2007, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad‘s cabinet launched the Gas Rationing Plan to reduce the country’s fuel consumption. Although Iran is one of the world’s largest producers of petroleum, mismanagement, kleptocracy, rapid increases in demand and limited refining capacity has forced the country to import about 40% of its gasoline, at an annual cost of up to $7 billion.[176][177]
According to the group Human Rights Watch, Iran’s human rights record “has deteriorated markedly” under the administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Beginning in 2005, the number of offenders executed increased from 86 in 2005 to 317 in 2007. Months-long arbitrary detentions of “peaceful activists, journalists, students, and human rights defenders” and often charged with “acting against national security,” has intensified.[178]
In April 2007, the Tehran police began the most fierce crackdown on “bad hijab” in more than a decade. In the capital Tehran thousands of Iranian women were cautioned over their poor Islamic dress and several hundred arrested.[52] In 2011, an estimated 70,000 police in Tehran alone, patrolled for clothing and hair infractions.[179] As of 2011, men are barred from wearing necklaces, “glamorous” hairstyles, ponytails, and shorts.[53] Neckties are forbidden in the holy city of Qom.[53] After a leading cleric (Hojatoleslam Gholamreza Hassani) issued a fatwa against keeping dogs as pets, a crackdown on dog ownership commenced.[180]
Several controversial proposals by President Ahmadinejad and conservatives have not come to fruition. Plans to encourage larger families,[181] to encourage polygamy by permitting it despite the opposition of a husband’s first wife; and to put a tax on Mahriyeh—a stipulated sum that a groom agrees to give or owe to his bride which is seen by many women “as a financial safety net in the event a husband leaves the marriage and is not forced to pay alimony”[182][183]—have not gone anywhere.
Ahmadinejad’s 2009 election victory was hotly disputed and marred by large protests that formed the “greatest domestic challenge” to the leadership of the Islamic Republic “in 30 years”.[135] Despite high turnout and large enthusiastic crowds for reformist opponent Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Ahmadinejad was officially declared to have won by a 2–1 margin against three opponents. Allegations of voting irregularities and protest by Mousavi his supporters were immediate and by 1 July 2009 1000 people had been arrested and 20 killed in street demonstrations.[184] Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and others Islamic officials blamed foreign powers for fomenting the protest.[140] However, according to World Public Opinion (a United States poll), the protest does not mean Iran is in a “pre-revolutionary” situation as a WPO poll of Iranians taken in early September 2009 found high levels of satisfaction with the regime. 80% of the Iranians respondents said President Ahmadinejad was honest, 64% expressed a lot of confidence in him, and nine in ten said they were satisfied with Iran’s system of government.[185]
Rising tensions sparked hostility toward the US, Europe, and U.N.
Favor nuclear arms and do not want to back deals to halt enrichment.
Independent polls do not contradict official turnout of 2009 election, which gave around 60% of the vote to Ahmadinejad.
Post election of Rouhani in 2013
Hassan Rouhani was elected as President of Iran on 12 June 2013 and took office on 3 August. He is known as a moderate left-leaner, supported by reformists in the election. He has open ideas in the area of economics and a high-level foreign policy, as he served as a diplomat before his election. He has moved quickly to engage in diplomatic negotiations with Western countries, seeking the lifting of crippling economic sanctions on oil exports in exchange for Iran’s cooperation with UN treaties regarding the development of nuclear weapons.
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DALLAS, TX – JULY 12: Police officers arrive at an interfaith memorial service, honoring five slain police officers, at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center on July 12, 2016 in Dallas, Texas. A sniper opend fire following a Black Lives Matter march in Dallas killing five police officers and injuring 12 others. (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)
A Police officer stands guard at a baracade following the sniper shooting in Dallas on July 7, 2016.
DALLAS, TX – JULY 8: Flags fly at half mast at Dallas City Hall following the fatal shootings of five police officers on July 8, 2016 in Dallas, Texas. Micah Xavier Johnson has been identified as the suspected sniper in the fatal shooting of five police officers, and injuring seven more at a Black Lives Matter demonstration held on July 7, 2016 in Dallas, Texas. Stewart F. House/Getty Images/AFP
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Lone Gunman Laughed, Sang During Standoff: Sources
Micah Xavier Johnson was killed by an explosive device attached to a robot after talks broke down. He was laughing and singing and not at all anxious during the standoff, a source said.
By Todd L. Davis and Scott Friedman
A North Texas Army veteran has been identified as the lone gunman responsible for the sniper attacks that killed five police officers and injured seven others in Dallas, authorities say.
Micah Xavier Johnson, of Mesquite, ambushed officers at a peaceful protest against nationwide police-involved shootings in Dallas on Thursday, police said.
The investigation into Johnson’s attack is still ongoing, and much remains is still unknown. But a picture is beginning to emerge of what went on inside the standoff — a source tells NBC Investigates that the 25-year-old was wounded by gunfire before being killed by a robot outfitted with a bomb — and how he prepared for the deadly assault.
LONE GUNMAN
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings confirmed Friday what multiple senior U.S. law enforcement officials had told NBC News Friday afternoon: Micah Xavier Johnson was the lone gunman in the rampage.
Police Search Micah Xavier Johnson’s Home
Dallas police searched the home Friday where shooting suspect Micah Xavier Johnson lived in North Texas. (Published Friday, July 8, 2016)
“This was a mobile shooter that had written manifestos on how to shoot and move, shoot and move, and he did that. He did his damage,” Rawlings said.
Officials told NBC News the investigation so far has yielded no additional suspects that may have played a role in the shooting. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Friday that there is no information about additional co-conspirators, but if any are found, they will be brought to justice.
Sources tell NBC News they have found no ties between Johnson and any extremist groups so far.
“We believe now, that the city is safe,” Rawlings said. “The suspect is dead, and we can move on to healing.”
We believe now, that the city is safe. The suspect is dead and we can move on to healing.
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings
INSIDE THE STANDOFF
Johnson was laughing and singing and not at all anxious during the standoff at the El Centro College building, a law enforcement source with knowledge of the incident told NBC 5 Investigates senior reporter Scott Friedman.
Johnson told police he had specifically been training for this event and working out in preparation for Thursday night. NBC 5 Investigates has also learned Johnson was wearing a military-style bulletproof vest.
Johnson told police he spent time in the military and was carrying a military-style rifle.
Johnson was hit by gunfire before going into the El Centro college building and that officers followed Johnson’s blood trail into the building, according to a law enforcement source.
Officers found him on the second floor, and then fired more rounds through a wall, apparently hitting Johnson again and wounding him.
After that, the negotiations began and spanned several hours. Johnson threatened many times to charge the officers, according to the source.
Johnson at first said that he only wanted to talk to black police officers – he said he didn’t want to have anything to do with white people. He shared police conspiracies and his dislike for police officers, a law enforcement source said.
Officers cornered Johnson and negotiated with him for hours before talks broke down, police said.
Army Veteran Identified As a Gunman in Dallas Protest Shootings
A law enforcement source describes Micah Xavier Johnson’s behavior Thursday as cold and unafraid, saying he was laughing and singing during the hours-long standoff with police. (Published Friday, July 8, 2016)
Dallas Police Chief David Brown said Johnson told officers he was upset about recent shootings involving police and “wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”
After an exchange of gunfire, officers attached an explosive device to a bomb robot and detonated it near Johnson, killing him, Brown said.
A police source tells NBC 5 Investigates that the robot carried 3/4 of a pound of C-4, a plastic explosive. The robot reportedly suffered some damage but may not be a total loss.
The decision on how much to use was made by Dallas SWAT officers trained in explosives along with ATF experts on the scene.
Reporter Recounts Experience After Shots Were Fired
(Published Friday, July 8, 2016)
A law enforcement source told Friedman on a scale of 1 to 10 this situation was a 30.
During a search of his home Friday, detectives found bomb making materials, ballistic vests, rifles, ammunition and a personal journal of combat tactics, police said.
Dallas shooting victims: three police officers identified as colleagues mourn
Tributes pour in for transit officer Brent Thompson, who was recently married, and Dallas police officers Patrick Zamarripa and Michael Krol
From left to right: Michael Krol, Patrick Zamarripa and Brent Thompson.
The identities of three of the five officers who died in the mass shooting that targeted police in Dallas emerged on Friday morning, as family, friends and the public paid tribute.
They include a newlywed transit officer, a Dallas police department officer who had expressed love for his job and his country, and a Detroit-area native whose family said it was his life’s dream to become an officer. Seven other officers were injured as sniper fire broke out while police were patrolling a peaceful protest in Dallas on Thursday evening organized to demonstrate against the police shooting deaths of Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Louisiana earlier this week.
Dallas police shootings: what we know so far
Brent Thompson
Brent Thompson, 43, was killed in the gunfire and was the first officer of the Dallas area rapid transit (Dart) division to be killed in the line of duty since the department was established in 1989. The force provides law enforcement on the city’s bus, light rail, commuter rail and high-occupancy road lanes in a transit system serving Dallas and 12 suburbs in the greater metropolis.
Thompson joined the division in 2009. The Dart chief, James Spiller, said: “He was an outstanding patrol officer as well as a rail officer.”
Thompson married a fellow Dart officer just last month, said Spiller on NBC Today.
“He was recently married in the last two weeks, so this is very heartbreaking. We will definitely miss him, and we are also making sure his family is taken care of,” he said.
A statement from Dart said: “Our hearts are broken.”
A picture was posted on Twitter of Thompson with his grandson.
Before joining the mass transit police, Thompson worked with US police officers in Iraq and Afghanistan for the military contractor Dyncorp, according to his LinkedIn page.
Patrick Zamarripa
Tributes were posted on social media for the Dallas police department officer Patrick Zamarripa, 32, on Friday morning, with a family member sharing a picture of the officer with his father.
One post from his stepbrother, Dylan Martinez, read: “No father should have to bury his son. You are a hero, Patrick. Love you man.…”
Patrick Zamarripa
Patrick Zamarripa. Photograph: @KDylanMartinez/Twitter
He was described as a family man and a military veteran who had survived three tours in Iraq, according to the Washington Post.
On Zamarripa’s Twitter page, he had written: “Addicted to the thrill of this job. I own the night. I love my Country, Texas, Family, God, Friends, and Sports! Don’t Tread on Me! ’Merica.”
On the Fourth of July, Zamarripa posted a patriotic tweet, saying: “Happy Birthday to the greatest country on the face of this planet. My beloved America!”
He had also tweeted about getting ready to police a recent rally for Donald Trump in Dallas and posted in support of the victims of the mass shooting at the gay nightclub Pulse, in Orlando.
He has been hailed as a hero on social media.
Michael Krol
Michael Krol, 40, became an officer in the Dallas police department in 2007 after previously working in his local county jail system in Michigan.
Krol worked for the Wayne County sheriff’s office in the county jail system from 2003-2007, according to a statement.
His uncle, Jim Ehlke, told WDVI his nephew had a passion for helping people and that being an officer was his life dream.
“He got into law enforcement and worked really hard to be a police officer. He spent some time at the correctional facility. It wasn’t quite what he was looking for, so he worked pretty hard to find a job and got one in Dallas,” Ehlke said. “He was all in, he was all in.”
“He knew the danger of the job but he never shied away from his duty as a police officer,” Krol’s mother, Susan Ehlke, told WXYZ. “He was a great, caring person and wanted to help people. A wonderful son, brother, uncle, nephew and friend.”
He lived in the Dallas-Fort Worth area with his girlfriend, ABC also reported.
The Wayne County sheriff’s office issued a statement on Friday morning.
“We are saddened by the loss of the dedicated officers in Dallas – one of whom was a former member of this agency – and also the wounding of the other officers,” said sheriff Benny Napoleon . “Those officers made the ultimate sacrifice and died honoring their oaths to protect and serve. Our thoughts and prayers go out to their families and also the Dallas police department,” he added.
The other victims are believed to be Dallas police officers, but they have not yet been identified.
Army Veteran Identified As a Gunman in Dallas Protest Shootings
Micah Xavier Johnson was killed by an explosive device attached to a robot after talks broke down. He was laughing and singing and not at all anxious during the standoff, a source said.
By Todd L. Davis and Scott Friedman
A North Texas Army veteran has been identified as the lone gunman responsible for the sniper attacks that killed five police officers and injured seven others in Dallas, authorities say.
Micah Xavier Johnson, of Mesquite, ambushed officers at a peaceful protest against nationwide police-involved shootings in Dallas on Thursday, police said.
The investigation into Johnson’s attack is still ongoing, and much remains is still unknown. But a picture is beginning to emerge of what went on inside the standoff — a source tells NBC Investigates that the 25-year-old was wounded by gunfire before being killed by a robot outfitted with a bomb — and how he prepared for the deadly assault.
LONE GUNMAN
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings confirmed Friday what multiple senior U.S. law enforcement officials had told NBC News Friday afternoon: Micah Xavier Johnson was the lone gunman in the rampage.
We believe now, that the city is safe. The suspect is dead and we can move on to healing.
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings
“This was a mobile shooter that had written manifestos on how to shoot and move, shoot and move, and he did that. He did his damage,” Rawlings said.
Officials told NBC News the investigation so far has yielded no additional suspects that may have played a role in the shooting. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Friday that there is no information about additional co-conspirators, but if any are found, they will be brought to justice.
Sources tell NBC News they have found no ties between Johnson and any extremist groups so far.
“We believe now, that the city is safe,” Rawlings said. “The suspect is dead, and we can move on to healing.”
Dallas Shooter Laughed, Sang During Standoff: Source
A North Texas Army veteran has been identified as a gunman responsible for the sniper attacks that killed five police officers and injured seven others in Dallas, according to authorities. According to a law enforcement source, Micah Xavier Johnson laughed and sang during an hours-long standoff with police. (Published 3 hours ago)
INSIDE THE STANDOFF
Johnson was laughing and singing and not at all anxious during the standoff at the El Centro College building, a law enforcement source with knowledge of the incident told NBC 5 Investigates senior reporter Scott Friedman.
Johnson told police he had specifically been training for this event and working out in preparation for Thursday night. NBC 5 Investigates has also learned Johnson was wearing a military-style bulletproof vest.
Johnson told police he spent time in the military and was carrying a military-style rifle.
Johnson was hit by gunfire before going into the El Centro college building and that officers followed Johnson’s blood trail into the building, according to a law enforcement source.
Officers found him on the second floor, and then fired more rounds through a wall, apparently hitting Johnson again and wounding him.
After that, the negotiations began and spanned several hours. Johnson threatened many times to charge the officers, according to the source.
Johnson at first said that he only wanted to talk to black police officers – he said he didn’t want to have anything to do with white people. He shared police conspiracies and his dislike for police officers, a law enforcement source said.
Officers cornered Johnson and negotiated with him for hours before talks broke down, police said.
Dallas Police Chief, Mayor 7:30 A.M. Update (Raw Video)
Dallas Police Chief David Brown and Mayor Mike Rawlings provided a 7:30 a.m. update on the shootings in downtown Dallas. “It has been a long, long morning,” said Mike Rawlings, mayor of Dallas. Here is the full 17-minutes of remarks with what was known at the time, including the use of a robot bomb used to kill the suspect. (Published Friday, July 8, 2016)
Dallas Police Chief David Brown said Johnson told officers he was upset about recent shootings involving police and “wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”
After an exchange of gunfire, officers attached an explosive device to a bomb robot and detonated it near Johnson, killing him, Brown said.
A law enforcement source told Friedman on a scale of 1 to 10 this situation was a 30.
MILITARY HISTORY
AG Lynch: ‘The Answer Is Never Violence’
Attorney General Loretta Lynch denounced the sniper attack that killed five police officers in Dallas on Thursday, urging people to reflect on “the country that we want to build and the kind of society that we are choosing to pass on to our children.” (Published 3 hours ago)
The Army said Johnson served in the Army Reserve and did one tour of duty in Afghanistan, from November 2013 to July 2014.
Johnson was a private first class and his military occupational specialty was carpentry and masonry.
His service dates, as provided by the Army, were March 2009 to April 2015.
Dallas police said Johnson has no criminal history.
During a search of his home Friday, detectives found bomb making materials, ballistic vests, rifles, ammunition and a personal journal of combat tactics, police said.
Friday 8 July 2016 12.27 EDTLast modified on Friday 8 July 201618.02 ED
What we know
Five police officers have been killed and at least seven more injured after shots were fired during an anti-violence protest in Dallas, Texas, on Thursday evening.
Three officers have been identified. One of the dead officers has been named as Brent Thompson, 43 – the first Dart (transit) officer to be killed in the line of duty. Another was identified by his family as officer Patrick Zamarripa. Michael Krol, a native of Detroit who joined the Dallas police department in 2007, was named on Friday.
Barack Obama condemned the killings as “a vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement”. Speaking in Warsaw, where he is attending a two-day Nato summit, Obama again called for gun control. “When people are armed with powerful weapons unfortunately it makes attacks like these more deadly and more tragic,” he said.
Three people have been detained by police: a woman who was stopped close to the garage, plus two people who were stopped in a dark Mercedes.
A fourth suspect was identified as Micah Johnson, 25, a Texas law enforcement official told the AP. Johnson died after an armed standoff with police on a second floor parking lot close to El Centro College. The mayor of Dallas, Mike Rawlings, said he did not know how the man died or what weapons had been found on him, but that police had used explosives to “blast him out”. Johnson said he wanted to “kill white people, especially white officers”, according to Dallas police chief David Brown. During hours of negotiations with police, Johnson said he was unaffiliated with any groups and “did this alone”. Brown said the suspect was upset about Black Lives Matter, the recent shootings and white people.
A police robot was used to kill Johnson. Dallas police used a bomb-disposal robot with an explosive device on its manipulator arm. Experts believe it was the first time a lethally armed robot has been used by police.
No bombs were found after two police searches. Major Max Geron of Dallaspolice tweeted: “Primary and secondary sweeps for explosives are complete and no explosives found.”
One civilian was also wounded: Shetamia Taylor, who was attending the protest with her sons, was shot in the leg but her injuries are not thought to be life-threatening.
Mark Hughes, who mistakenly became a suspect after being pictured holding a long rifle in a photo circulated by the police department, has been released after turning himself in. “I could easily have been shot,” he told CBS, adding that he was not satisfied with a police apology after getting death threats on social media.
What we don’t know
The motive for the killing. The shootings came at the end of a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest sparked by the killing of two black men by police officers in separate incidents earlier this week. Obama said: “We will learn more about their twisted motivations, but let’s be clear; there is no possible justification for these kinds of attacks or any violence against law enforcement.”
How many shooters were involved? At least one shooter opened fire from an elevated position. It is unclear whether more than one opened fire.
Whether the suspects worked together to launch the attack. Johnson told police that he “did this alone”. Brown later told a crowd at an interfaith vigil that the attack, “was a well planned, well thought out, evil tragedy by these suspects, and we won’t rest until we bring everyone involved to justice.”
Lynch to Dallas protesters: ‘Do not be discouraged’
SICK: ‘BLACK LIVES MATTER’ SUPPORTERS CELEBRATE MURDER OF DALLAS COPS
BLM agitators joyful about slaughter of “pigs”
Paul Joseph Watson – JULY 8, 2016
‘Black Lives Matter’ supporters responded to the sniper attack in Dallas by celebrating the murder of the five police officers who were gunned down in cold blood.
BLM sympathizers took to Twitter to express their joy at the carnage, with one commenting, “Y’all pigs got what was coming for y’all.”
“Next time a group wants to organize a police shoot, do like Dallas tonight, but have extra men/women to flank the Pigs!,” added another.
“Dude hell yeah someone is shooting pigs in dallas. Solidarity,” commented another user.
“DALLAS keep smoking dem pigs keep up the work,” remarked another.
Last night’s events in Dallas were as painfully predictable as they were tragic.
As I wrote almost a year ago after BLM supporters had plotted to bomb a police station in Ferguson, “Black Lives Matter cannot be described as anything other than a domestic terrorist organization.”
One had to look no further than the fact that the ideological guru behind ‘Black Lives Matter’ – the individual whom its founders cite as their inspiration – Assata Shakur – is a convicted cop killer who is on the FBI’s ‘Most Wanted Terrorists’ list.
BLM protesters have also repeatedly invoked violent rhetoric. During a march in New York, demonstrators chanted, “What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now!”
BLM agitators have also used the refrain “pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon!” on numerous occasions to promote violence against police officers.
A selection of tweets illustrating how ‘Black Lives Matter’ supporters are celebrating last night’s sniper attack appears below.
The Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) casts itself as a spontaneous uprising born of inner city frustration, but is, in fact, the latest and most dangerous face of a web of well-funded communist/socialist organizations that have been agitating against America for decades. Its agitation has provoked police killings and other violence, lawlessness and unrest in minority communities throughout the U.S. If allowed to continue, that agitation could devolve into anarchy and civil war. The BLM crowd appears to be spoiling for just such an outcome.
Nevertheless, BLM appears to be exercising considerable leverage over the Democratic Party, in part by pressuring and intimidating Democratic candidates such as Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders (VT) into embracing their cause. The movement could also assist President Obama’s exploitation of racial divisions in society beyond his final term in office.
This report examines in detail, for the first time, how communist groups have manipulated the cause of Black Lives Matter, and how money from liberal foundations has made it all possible.
Leftist origins
Exploiting blacks to promote Marxist revolution is an old tactic. The late Larry Grathwohl, former FBI informant in the Weather Underground, understood from personal experience how white communists exploited blacks and other minority groups. He said that Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn regarded Barack Obama, whose political career they sponsored, as a tool – a puppet – to use against white America. Obama’s legacy at home will certainly include more racial division.
BLM launched in 2013 with a Twitter hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter, after neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman was acquitted in the Trayvon Martin killing. Radical Left activists Alicia Garza,Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi claim credit for the slogan and hashtag. Following the Michael Brown shooting in August 2014, Dream Defenders, an organization led by Working Families Party (ACORN) activist and Occupy Wall Street anarchist Nelini Stamp, popularized the phrase “Hands Up–Don’t Shoot!” which has since become BLM’s widely recognized slogan.
Garza, Cullors and Tometi all work for front groups of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), one of the four largest radical Left organizations in the country. The others are the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). Nelini Stamp’s ACORN – now rebranded under a variety of different names – works with all four organizations, and Dream Defenders is backed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center and others.
FRSO is a hereditary descendant of the New Communist Movement, which was inspired by Mao and the many communist revolutions throughout the world in the 1960s and 1970s. FRSO split into two separate groups in 1999, FRSO/Fight Back and FRSO/OSCL (Freedom Road Socialist Organization/Organizaciόn Socialista del Camino para la Libertad). Black Lives Matter and its founders are allied with the latter group. Future references to FRSO in this article refer to FRSO/OSCL.
FRSO is comprised of dozens of groups. The radical Left model is based on alliances of many organizations that are working on separate issues but dedicated ultimately to the same thing: overthrowing our society in order to replace it with a hardcore socialist (read communist) one.
The goal is to present the appearance of a formidable mass of organizations. Some are large, but many are little more than a website or Facebook page. When necessary, they can all come together to promote the cause du jour. The deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and others were mere pretexts for socialist agitation. The real enemy is “the system.” This is why the BLM crowd denies the facts of those cases. As Stamp has said, “we are actually trying to change the capitalist system we have today because it’s not working for any of us.”
BLM is one of many projects undertaken by the FRSO. Except for the website, blacklivesmatter.com, there is no actual organization. The website implicitly acknowledges this, describing #BlackLivesMatter as “an online forum intended to build connections between Black people and our allies to fight anti-Black racism, to spark dialogue among Black people, and to facilitate the types of connections necessary to encourage social action and engagement.”
FRSO membership is disproportionately represented by blacks, gays and women, and self-consciously emphasizes those issues. Garza, who penned a “Herstory” of BLM, is a ” queer,” black veteran activist involved in numerous FRSO organizations. Her resumé includes:
Cullors describes herself as a “working class, queer, black woman.” She claims the country killed her father, a drug addict. At a 2015 Netroots Nation conference, Cullors led chants shouting, “If I die in police custody, burn everything down… rise the f— up! That is the only way mother—–s like you will listen!” Cullors founded and directs Dignity and Power Now (DPN), which claims to seek “dignity and power of incarcerated people, their families, and communities.”
Cullors was trained by Eric Mann, a former Weather Underground leader who exhorts followers to become “anti-racist, anti-imperialist” activists. Mann runs another FRSO front, the Labor/Community Strategy Center. Like most professional leftists, he makes good money – over $225,000 annually – living in “the system” he advocates destroying.
Tometi is the daughter of illegal aliens from Nigeria. While in college, she worked for the ACLU defending illegal aliens against “vigilantes” opposed to illegal immigration. She is currently the executive director of Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI).
The funding
FRSO/BLM organizations are generously supported by a universe of wealthy foundations. Some, like those employing BLM founders Garza and Tometi, receive money directly. Others, like Cullors’ DPN, are financed by organizations designed specifically to underwrite the activities of others. Amounts reflect donations received over approximately the past decade.
POWER (Garza) – 2013 revenues were $456,676, including $92,173 in government grants. POWER evolved from the now defunct communist group STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement). Obama’s former “Green Jobs Czar” the self-described communist, Van Jones, served on STORM’s board.
RTTC (Garza) – 2013 revenues were $248,190. RTTC is a nationwide network of activist organizations that resists the gentrification of inner cities because it displaces “low-income people, people of color, marginalized LGBTQ communities, and youths of color…”
BAJI (Tometi) – 2013 revenues were $321,570. This modest organization only lists two full-time staff, yet receives support from many recognizable foundations.
Cullors’ DPN is underwritten by Community Partners, a Los Angeles based non-profit with a $24 million budget (including $4 million in government grants) that fiscally sponsors non-profits. It is not an FRSO organization.
Advancement Project (AP) – an FRSO group that funds a variety of radical causes. AP sees America as a racist, oppressive nation and, according to Discover the Networks, “works to organize ‘communities of color’ into politically cohesive units while disseminating its leftist worldviews and values as broadly as possible by way of a sophisticated communications department.” Its 2013 revenues were $11.3 million.
Movement Strategy Center (MSC) – also facilitates funding, development and advancement of FRSO organizations. Its 2013 revenues were $7.5 million, including $156,032 in government grants.
Mainstream funders have helped fund BLM as well. For example, United Way has partnered with A&E and iHeartMedia to create Shining the Light Advisors, a committee of “nationally known experts and leaders in racial and social justice,” to oversee grant disbursements. These “advisors” include such radicals as Van Jones, Advancement Project co-director Judith Browne Dianis, and Rinku Sen, president of the Applied Research Center (ARC).
BLM’s mission includes a kitchen sink of favored radical Left causes, including support of poverty elimination programs, prison deinstitutionalization, illegal immigration and gay rights. Highlighting FRSO’s orientation toward gay blacks, it describes how “Black, queer and trans folks bear a unique burden from a hetero-patriarchal society that disposes of us like garbage and simultaneously fetishizes us and profits off of us, and that is state violence.”
Its wide network of affiliates and partner organizations like CPUSA and ACORN allows BLM to turn out large crowds. Many participate simply to protest, commit violence, loot or all three.
FRSO was prominent at the Ferguson protests and videoed the event. It has even created a Black Lives Matter button. Following are more FRSO organizations involved with BLM. (Funding estimates provided when known).
Causa Justa/Just Cause – A Black/Latino solidarity organization allied with the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, RTTC and others. Its 2013 revenues were $1.6 million, including $689,484 in government grants.
Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ) – “a national alliance of US-based grassroots organizing (GRO) groups organizing to build an agenda for power for working and poor people and communities of color.”
Hands Up United – Works for “liberation of oppressed Black, Brown, and poor people through education, art, civil disobedience, advocacy, and agriculture.”
Revolutionary Student Coordinating Committee (RSCC) a militant group founded in 2012 by CUNY students. It is networked at different U.S. colleges. This group organized the infamous pro-abortion <A href=”http://www.acahnman.blogspot.com/2013/07/texas-capital-abortion-supporters-chant.html “Hail Satan” chant at Texas capital. Its extremism is captured in the following video:
Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) is a “national network of groups and individuals organizing White people for racial justice.” SURJ quotes Garza saying that “We need you defecting from White supremacy and changing the narrative of White supremacy by breaking White silence.”
Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE) – Its 2013 revenues were $2.8 million. Led by Anthony Thigpenn, a former Black Panther and board member of the Apollo Alliance. Apollo is the secretive alliance of labor, environment and other Left activists that formulated Obama’s trillion dollar “stimulus” plan. Board member Van Jones described Apollo “as sort of a grand unified field theory for progressive Left causes.” It is now a project of the Blue Green Alliance.
BLM groups have also joined with CPUSA, CCDS, DSA, SEIU, Color of Change and many others. Anarchist and top OWS organizer Lisa Fithian, who orchestrated the 1999 Seattle World Trade Organization riots, trained Ferguson protesters. Fithian says “Create crisis, because crisis is that edge where change is possible.”
Fithian echoes Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven – creators of the infamous Cloward/Piven Crisis Strategy – who spent decades attempting to provoke ghetto blacks to riot, because “Poor people can advance only when ‘the rest of society is afraid of them.’” Rasheen Aldridge, seen above meeting President Obama, was a leader of the Ferguson protests. He has participated in numerous CPUSA events in 2013, 2014 and 2015. Another prominent CPUSA member active in BLM protests is Michael McPhearson, who leads the Don’t Shoot Coalition.
Carl Davidson and Pat Fry, co-chairs of CCDS, exploited the revolutionary atmosphere of the Ferguson riots to create an eight-point plan for “Left Unity” demanding “a common aspiration for socialism.”
Interestingly, MORE doesn’t believe in socialism when it is footing the bill. MORE promised to pay Ferguson protesters $5,000/month to hang out and cause trouble. But just as ACORN stiffed its employees while preaching socialist generosity, MORE stiffed the protesters.
Islamist organizations have also jumped on the BLM bandwagon, reminding us of the unholy alliance that exists between them and the radical Left. In September 2015, the Muslim Brotherhood front-group Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) joined BLM activists in storming California Governor Jerry Brown’s office. CAIR also participated in the Ferguson protests. Meanwhile ISIS is recruiting American blacks for its cause.
Intellectual genealogy of Black Lives Matter
“We must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, law-breaking, withholding and concealing truth… We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us.” – Vladimir Lenin
That quote from the Soviet Union’s first leader captures the entire essence of the Left’s strategy. No matter what the issue, no matter what the facts, the Left advances a relentless, hate-filled narrative that America is irredeemably evil and must be destroyed as soon as possible. The BLM movement is only the latest but perhaps most dangerous variant on this divisive theme.
Communists use language and psychology as weapons. Their constant vilification is a form of psychological terror. It puts America and Americans on trial. The verdict is always guilty. Facts don’t matter because the Left does not want to resolve the problems they complain about. They use those problems to agitate and provoke, hoping conflict becomes unavoidable – thereby creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Their hatred is tactical.
Obama’s favorite Harvard professor Derrick Bell devised Critical Race Theory, which exemplifies Lenin’s strategy as applied to race. According to Discover the Networks:
“Critical race theory contends that America is permanently racist to its core, and that consequently the nation’s legal structures are, by definition, racist and invalid … members of ‘oppressed’ racial groups are entitled – in fact obligated – to determine for themselves which laws and traditions have merit and are worth observing…”
Bell’s theory is in turn an innovation of Critical Theory – developed by philosophers of the communist Frankfurt School. The school was founded in Frankfurt, Germany in 1923. Its Jewish communist scholars fled Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s, relocating to Columbia Teachers College in New York. Critical Theory – which discredits all aspects of Western society – rapidly infected the minds of newly-minted college professors, who then spread its poison throughout the university system. We know it today as political correctness.
White privilege
The “racist” narrative was turbocharged with the concept of “White Privilege,” the notion that whites – the dominant group in capitalist America – are irretrievably racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, fill-in-the-blank-ophobic, imperialistic oppressors who exploit everyone. Whites are the only true evil in the world and should be exterminated.
The “White Skin Privilege” idea was created in 1967 by Noel Ignatiev, an acolyte of Bell and professor at Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute (Du Bois was a Communist black leader who helped found the NAACP). Ignatiev was a member of CPUSA’s most radical wing, the Maoist/Stalinist Provisional Organizing Committee to Reconstitute the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (POC). POC was the intellectual forerunner to FRSO.
Writing under the alias Noel Ignatin, Ignatiev co-authored an SDS pamphlet with fellow radical Ted Allen, titled “White Blindspot.” In 1992 he co-founded “Race Traitor: Journal of the New Abolitionism.” Its first issue coined the slogan, “Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.” Its stated objective was to “abolish the white race.” More specifically, the New Abolitionist newsletter stated:
“The way to abolish the white race is to challenge, disrupt and eventually overturn the institutions and behavior patterns that reproduce the privileges of whiteness, including the schools, job and housing markets, and the criminal justice system. The abolitionists do not limit themselves to socially acceptable means of protest, but reject in advance no means of attaining their goal (emphasis added).”
But do not be confused; “White” does not mean white. “White” in radical construction means anyone of any race, creed, nationality, color, sex, or sexual preference who embraces capitalism, free markets, limited government and American traditional culture and values. By definition, these beliefs are irredeemably evil and anyone who aligns with them is “white” in spirit and thus equally guilty of “white crimes.” Ignatiev still teaches, now at the Massachusetts College of Art.
The Black Lives Matter movement carries this narrative to unprecedented heights, claiming that only whites can be racists. And while justifying violence to achieve “social justice,” the movement’s goal is to overthrow our society to replace it with a Marxist one. Many members of the black community would be shocked to learn that the intellectual godfathers of this movement are mostly white Communists, “queers” and leftist Democrats, intent on making blacks into cannon fodder for the revolution.
Since the Ferguson protests, participants in the movement have demonstrated against the deaths of numerous other African Americans by police actions or while in police custody, including those of Tamir Rice, Eric Harris, Walter Scott, Jonathan Ferrell, Sandra Bland, Samuel DuBose, and Freddie Gray, which led to protests and rioting in Baltimore. In the summer of 2015, Black Lives Matter began to publicly challenge politicians—including politicians in the 2016 United States presidential election—to state their positions on BLM issues. The overall Black Lives Matter movement, however, is a decentralized network and has no formal hierarchy or structure.[3]
Garza, Cullors and Tometi met through “Black Organizing for Leadership & Dignity” (BOLD), a national organization that trains community organizers.[7] They began to question how they were going to respond to the devaluation of black lives after Zimmerman’s acquittal. Garza wrote a Facebook post titled “A Love Note to Black People” in which she wrote: “Our Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter”. Cullors replied: “#BlackLivesMatter”. Tometi then added her support, and Black Lives Matter was born as an online campaign.[7]
In August 2014, BLM members organized their first in-person national protest in the form of a “Black Lives Matter Freedom Ride” to Ferguson, Missouri after the shooting of Michael Brown.[7] More than five hundred members descended upon Ferguson to participate in non-violent demonstrations. Of the many groups that descended on Ferguson, Black Lives Matter emerged from Ferguson as one of the best organized and most visible groups, becoming nationally recognized as symbolic of the emerging movement.[7]Since August 2014, Black Lives Matter has organized more than one thousand protest demonstrations. On Black Friday in November, Black Lives Matter staged demonstrations at stores and malls across the United States.[7]
In 2015, after the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland, black activists around the world modeled efforts for reform on Black Lives Matter and the Arab Spring.[7] This international movement has been referred to as the “Black Spring”.[8][9] Connections have also been forged with parallel international efforts such as the Dalit rights movement.[10] Expanding beyond street protests, BLM has expanded to activism, such as the 2015 University of Missouri protests, on American college campuses.[11]
Black Lives Matter originally used social media—including hashtag activism—to reach thousands of people rapidly.[7] Since then, Black Lives Matters has embraced a diversity of tactics.[13] BLM generally engages in direct action tactics that make people uncomfortable enough that they must address the issue.[14]
BLM has been known to build power through protest.[15] BLM has held rallies and marches, including one for the death of Corey Jones in Palm Beach, Florida.[16] BLM has also staged die-ins and held one during the 2015 Twin Cities Marathon.[17]
It is important to note that music is an important repertoire of contention for the black lives matter movement. Rappers such as Kendrick Lamar have used music to promote structural conduciveness necessary for a social movement to maintain momentum according to value added theory.[26] Songs such as “Alright” have been used as a rallying call.[27]Beyoncé‘s most recent production lemonade featured Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin’s mothers crying while holding the last images they have of their sons, in effect propelling the issue of police brutality to a national stage.[28] The video for her single “Formation” (2016) celebrates southern black culture and features a line of policemen holding up their hands while a hooded black boy dances in front of them. The video also features a shot of graffiti on a wall reading “stop shooting us”.[29]
Memes are also important in garnering support for and against the Black Lives Matter new social movement. Information communication technologies such as Facebook and Twitter spread memes and are important tools for garnering web support in hopes of producing a spillover effect into the offline world.[30] The use of ICTs facilitate the spread of the message “All Lives Matter” as a response to the Black Lives Matter hashtag as well as the “Blue Lives Matter” hashtag as a response to Beyonce’s halftime performance speaking out against police brutality.[31][32]
Black Lives Matter incorporates those traditionally on the margins of black freedom movements.[7] The organization’s website, for instance, states that Black Lives Matter is “a unique contribution that goes beyond extrajudicial killings of black people by police and vigilantes” and, embracing intersectionality, that “Black Lives Matter affirms the lives ofblack queer and trans folks, disabled folks, black undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all black lives along the gender spectrum.”[33]
Founder Alicia Garza summed up the philosophy behind Black Lives Matter as follows: “When we say Black Lives Matter, we are talking about the ways in which Black people are deprived of our basic human rights and dignity. It is an acknowledgement Black poverty and genocide is state violence. It is an acknowledgment that 1 million Black people are locked in cages in this country–one half of all people in prisons or jails–is an act of state violence. It is an acknowledgment that Black women continue to bear the burden of a relentless assault on our children and our families and that assault is an act of state violence.”
Garza went on: “Black queer and trans folks bearing a unique burden in a hetero-patriarchal society that disposes of us like garbage and simultaneously fetishizes us and profits off of us is state violence; the fact that 500,000 Black people in the US are undocumented immigrants and relegated to the shadows is state violence; the fact that Black girls are used as negotiating chips during times of conflict and war is state violence; Black folks living with disabilities and different abilities bear the burden of state-sponsored Darwinian experiments that attempt to squeeze us into boxes of normality defined by White supremacy is state violence. And the fact is that the lives of Black people—not ALL people—exist within these conditions is consequence of state violence.”[34]
In 2014, the American Dialect Society chose #BlackLivesMatter as their word of the year.[35][36] Over eleven hundred black professors expressed support for BLM.[37] Several media organizations have referred to BLM as “a new civil rights movement”.[1][38][39] #BlackLivesMatter was voted as one of the twelve hashtags that changed the world in 2014.[40]
In 2015, Serena Williams expressed her support for Black Lives Matter, writing to BLM: “Keep it up. Don’t let those trolls stop you. We’ve been through so much for so many centuries, and we shall overcome this too.”[41]
On May 9, 2016 Delrish Moss was sworn in as the first permanent African-American police chief in Ferguson, where he acknowledges he faces such challenges as diversifying the police force, creating dramatic improvements in community relations, and addressing issues that catalyzed the Black Lives Matter movement.[46]
In August 2014, during Labor Day weekend, Black Lives Matter organized a “Freedom Ride”, that brought more than 500 African-Americans from across the United States intoFerguson, Missouri, to support the work being done on the ground by local organizations.[47]
Black Lives Matter members and supporters rode in from New York City, Newark, Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Miami, Detroit, Houston, Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Nashville, Portland, Tucson, Washington, D.C., and more, in a similar way to that of the Freedom Riders in the 1960s.[48] The movement has been generally involved in theFerguson unrest, following the death of Michael Brown.[49]
In November in Oakland, California, fourteen Black Lives Matter activists were arrested after they stopped a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train for more than an hour onBlack Friday, one of the biggest shopping days of the year. The protest, which was led by Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, was organized in response to the grand jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson for the death of Mike Brown. [50][51]
Also in December, in response to the decision by the grand jury not to indict Darren Wilson on any charges related to the death of Michael Brown, a protest march was held inBerkeley, California. Later, in 2015, protesters and journalists who participated in that rally filed a lawsuit alleging “unconstitutional police attacks” on attendees.[57]
2015
This section is outdated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(December 2015)
In April, Black Lives Matter across the United States protested over the death of Freddie Gray which included the 2015 Baltimore protests.[60][61] Black Lives Matter organizers supported the fast food strike in solidarity with fast food workers, and to oppose racial income inequality.[62] On April 14, BLM protested across U.S. cities.[63] In Zion, Illinois, several hundred protested over the fatal shooting of Justus Howell.[64] After the shooting of Walter Scott, Black Lives Matter called for citizen oversight of police.[65]
In July, BLM protesters shut down Allen Road in Toronto, Ontario, protesting the shooting deaths of two black men in the metropolitan area—Andrew Loku and Jermaine Carby—at the hands of police.[76] BLM activists across the United States began protests over the death of Sandra Bland, an African-American woman, who was allegedly found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas.[77][78] In Cincinnati, Ohio, BLM rallied and protested the Death of Samuel DuBose after he was shot and killed by a University of Cincinnati police officer.[79] In Newark, New Jersey, over a thousand BLM activists marched against police brutality, racial injustice, and economic inequality.[80]
In September, BLM activists shut down streets in Toronto, rallied against police brutality, and stood in solidarity with marginalized black lives. Black Lives Matter was a featured part of the Take Back the Night event in Toronto.[87] In Austin, Texas, over five hundred BLM protesters rallied against police brutality, and several briefly carried protest banners onto Interstate 35.[88] In Baltimore, Maryland, BLM activists marched and protested as hearings began in the Freddie Graypolice brutality case.[89] In Sacramento, California, about eight hundred BLM protesters rallied to support a California Senate bill that would increase police oversight.[90] BLM protested the Shooting of Jeremy McDole.[91]
Black Lives Matter protest against St. Paul police brutality at Metro Green Line
In October, Black Lives Matters activists were arrested during a protest of a police chiefs conference in Chicago.[92] Activists in Los Angeles Black Lives Matter activists were among several organizations that disrupted a community meeting with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti at a church in South L.A. [93] The protesters said that Garcetti had broken a promise to work with their organization to plan a meeting. The pastor of the church that hosted the meeting denied that Black Lives Matter organizers had been excluded. [94]
In November, BLM activists protested after Jamar Clark was shot by Minneapolis Police Department.[99] Later that month, after continuous protest at the Minneapolis 4th Precinct Police Station, a march was organized to honor Jamar Clark, from the 4th Precinct to downtown Minneapolis. After the march, masked men carrying firearms appeared and began calling the protesters racial slurs. After protesters asked the armed men to leave, the men opened fire, shooting five protesters.[100] All injuries required hospitalization, but were not life-threatening. The men fled the scene only to later be found and arrested. The men arrested were young, one white, one Hispanic, both believed to be white supremacists.[101]
In November 2015, students at Dartmouth College held a peaceful meeting and march after a Black Lives Matter art installation on the campus was vandalized. After the march, a smaller group of students entered the university library and conducted a protest there.[102]The Dartmouth Review, a conservative campus publication, reported that the protesters had shoved other students and used profanity. Campus police and college officials claimed they had not observed any incidents of shoving or other physical violence.[103]
2016
In late May, BLM activists[disputed– discuss] disrupted a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos at DePaul University. Security did not intervene to stop the protests, despite the university requiring organizers to cover the cost of additional security.[104][105]
In the summer of 2015, Black Lives Matter began to publicly challenge politicians—including 2016 United States presidential candidates—to state their positions on BLM issues.[106]
In the first Democratic debate, the presidential candidates were asked whether black lives matter or all lives matter.[108] In reply, Bernie Sanders stated “black lives matter.”[108]Martin O’Malley said, “Black lives matter,” and that the “movement is making is a very, very legitimate and serious point, and that is that as a nation we have undervalued the lives of black lives, people of color.”[109]Jim Webb, on the other hand, replied: “as the president of the United States, every life in this country matters.”[108]Hillary Clinton was not directly asked the same question, but was instead asked: “What would you do for African Americans in this country that President Obama couldn’t?”[110]
In response to what she would do differently from President Obama for African-Americans, Hillary Clinton pushed for criminal justice reform, and said, “We need a new New Deal for communities of color.”[111] Clinton had already met with Black Lives Matter representatives in August 2015, and expressed skepticism in the movement’s practical application.[clarification needed][112] In June 2015, Clinton was reported to have said “All lives matter.”[113]
Republican candidates have been mostly critical of BLM. In August 2015, Ben Carson, the only African American vying for the presidency, called the movement “silly”.[114]Carson also said that BLM should care for all black lives, not just a few.[115] In the first Republican presidential debate, which took place in Cleveland, only one question referenced Black Lives Matter.[116] In response to the question, Scott Walker did not acknowledge Black Lives Matter and advocated for the proper training of law enforcement.[116]
Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker blamed the movement for rising anti-police sentiment,[117] while Marco Rubio was the first candidate to publicly sympathize with the movement’s point of view.[118]
Several conservative pundits have labeled the movement a “hate group”.[119] Candidate Chris Christie, the New Jersey Governor, criticized President Obama for supporting BLM, claiming the movement calls for the murder of police officers,[120] which was condemned by New Jersey chapters of the NAACP and ACLU.[121]
BLM activists called on the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee to have a presidential debate focused on issues of racial justice.[122] Both parties, however, declined to alter their debate schedule, and instead the parties support a townhall or forum.[123]
At the Netroots Nation Conference in July 2015, dozens of Black Lives Matter activists took over the stage at an event featuring Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders. Activists, including Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors, asked both candidates for specific policy proposals to address deaths in police custody.[124] The protesters chanted several slogans, including “if I die in police custody, burn everything down”. After conference organizers pleaded with the protesters for several minutes, O’Malley responded by pledging to release a wide-ranging plan for criminal justice reform. Protesters later booed O’Malley when he stated “Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter.”[125]O’Malley later apologized for his remarks, saying that he didn’t mean to disrespect the black community.[125]
On August 8, 2015, a speech by Democratic presidential candidate and civil rights activist Bernie Sanders was disrupted by a group from the Seattle Chapter of Black Lives Matter including chapter co-founder Marissa Johnson[126] who walked onstage, seized the microphone from him and called his supporters racists and white supremacists.[127][128][129] Sanders issued a platform in response.[130]
Nikki Stephens, the operator of a Facebook page called “Black Lives Matter: Seattle” issued an apology to Sanders’ supporters, claiming these actions did not represent her understanding of BLM. She was then sent messages by members of the Seattle Chapter which she described as threatening, and was forced to change the name of her group to “Black in Seattle”. The founders of Black Lives Matter stated that they had not issued an apology.[131]
In August, activists chanting “Black Lives Matter” interrupted the Las Vegas rally of Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush.[132] As Bush exited early, some of his supporters started responding to the protesters by chanting “white lives matter” or “all lives matter”.[133]
In November, a BLM protester was physically assaulted at a Donald Trump rally in Birmingham, Alabama. In response, Trump said, “maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.”[135] Trump had previously threatened to fight any Black Lives Matter protesters if they attempted to speak at one of his events.[136]
In March 2016, Black Lives Matter helped organize the 2016 Donald Trump Chicago rally protest that forced Trump to cancel the event.[137][138] Four individuals were arrested and charged in the incident. Two were “charged with felony aggravated battery to a police officer and resisting arrest”, one was “charged with two misdemeanor counts of resisting and obstructing a peace officer”, and the fourth “was charged with one misdemeanor count of resisting and obstructing a peace officer”.[139] A CBS reporter was one of those arrested outside the rally. He was charged with resisting arrest.[140]
“All Lives Matter”
Some[who?] have responded to the Black Lives Matter movement by countering that the phrase “All Lives Matter” would be a more proper title. Tim Scott has defended the usage of the “All Lives Matter” term.[141]
On Real Time with Bill MaherBill Maher expressed support of the “Black Lives Matter” phrase, stating that “‘All Lives Matter’ implies that all lives are equally at risk, and they’re not”.[142] Founders have responded to criticism of the movement’s exclusivity, saying, “#BlackLivesMatter doesn’t mean your life isn’t important – it means that Black lives, which are seen without value within White supremacy, are important to your liberation.”[143]
In a video interview with Laura Flanders, Garza discussed how “changing Black Lives Matter to All Lives Matter is a demonstration of how we don’t actually understand structural racism in this country”. She went on to discuss how other lives are valued more than black lives, which she strongly feels is wrong, and that to take blackness out of this equation is inappropriate.[144]
The movement challenges the “universalizing politics” implied in the notion of a Post-racial America, and the phrase ‘All Lives Matter’ reflects a view of “racial dismissal, ignoring, and denial”, according to critical race theory scholar David Theo Goldberg.[145]
President Barack Obama spoke to the debate between Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter.[146] Obama said, “I think that the reason that the organizers used the phrase Black Lives Matter was not because they were suggesting that no one else’s lives matter … rather what they were suggesting was there is a specific problem that is happening in the African American community that’s not happening in other communities.” He also said “that is a legitimate issue that we’ve got to address.”[14]
On February 24, 2016, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, sent out a company-wide internal memo to employees formally rebuking employees who had crossed out handwritten “Black Lives Matter” phrases on the company walls and had written “All Lives Matter” in their place. Facebook allows employees to free-write thoughts and phrases on company walls. The memo was then leaked by several employees. As Zuckerberg had previously condemned this practice at previous company meetings, and other similar requests had been issued by other leaders at Facebook, Zuckerberg wrote in the memo that he would now consider this overwriting practice not only disrespectful, but “malicious as well”.[147]
According to Zuckerberg’s memo, “Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean other lives don’t – it’s simply asking that the black community also achieves the justice they deserve.” The memo noted that the act of crossing something out in itself, “means silencing speech, or that one person’s speech is more important than another’s”.[148][149][150]
Deroy Murdock questioned the number of black people killed by police that is reported by BLM. He wrote, “But the notion that America’s cops simply are gunning down innocent black people is one of today’s biggest and deadliest lies.”[153] The hashtag #BlueLivesMatter was created by supporters who stood up for police officers’ lives.[154] Some critics also accuse Black Lives Matter of “anti-white and anti-police radicalism”.[155]
Many individuals in law enforcement have been critical of BLM. Sheriff David A. Clarke, Jr of Milwaukee County has been critical of Black Lives Matter, stating that there is no police brutality problem in America and that “there is no racism in the hearts of police officers”.[156] John McWhorter said that the Black Lives Matter movement should take on black-on-black crime.[157]
Seattle SeahawksRichard Sherman said about the “Black Lives Matter” movement, “I dealt with a best friend getting killed, and it was [by] two 35-year-old black men. There was no police officer involved, there wasn’t anybody else involved, and I didn’t hear anybody shouting ‘black lives matter’ then.”[158]
Breitbart journalist Milo Yiannopoulos has criticized the structure and main goals of the BLM movement.[159]
Some black civil rights leaders, such as Rev. Cecil “Chip” Murray, Najee Ali, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, have criticized the tactics of BLM.[160] Marchers using a BLM banner were recorded in a video chanting, “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon” at the Minnesota State Fair. Law enforcement groups said that the chant promotes death to police. The protest organizer disputed that interpretation.[161]
A North Carolina police chief retired after calling BLM a terrorist group.[162] A police officer in Oregon was removed from street duty following a social media post in which he said he would have to “babysit these fools”, in reference to planned BLM event.[163]
Some commentators and law enforcement have said that BLM has made it hard for police to do their job, leading to a rise in crime rates.[153] Commentators have referred to this as the “Ferguson effect.”[153]FBI DirectorJames Comey, for example, suggested that the movement is partly leading to a national rise in crime rates because police officers have pulled back from doing their jobs.[164] However, there had been even larger crime spikes prior to the events in Ferguson.[165]
White groups
In response to BLM, Facebook pages purporting to represent “White Student Unions” with the slogan “White Lives Matter” have been linked to college campuses in the United States.[166] The pages often promise a “safe space” for white students and condemn alleged anti-white racism on campus.[167] However, many of the groups were not verified as legitimate student organizations registered with their respective universities.[166]
The TV drama Scandal depicted Black Lives Matter on their March 5, 2015, episode that showed an unarmed black teen shot by a police officer.[168]
The documentary short film Bars4Justice features brief appearances by various activists and recording artists affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement. The film is an official selection of the 24th AnnualPan African Film Festival.
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis both rap and sample protest chants in their single, “White Privilege II“, including the eponymous chant, “black lives matter,” as well as “it’s not about you!” and “no justice, no peace”.
Hillary Clinton Blames Whites, Cops for Deaths of Young Black Men
Hillary Clinton used a CNN interview on Friday to completely embrace the Democrats’ claim that white people and cops must change to help reduce the number of African-Americans killed in tense exchanges with cops.
by NEIL MUNRO
“I will call for white people, like myself, to put ourselves in the shoes of those African-Americanfamilies who fear every time their children go somewhere, who have to have ‘The Talk,’ about, you now, how to really protect themselves [from police], when they’re the ones who should be expecting protection from encounters with police,” Clinton told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
“I’m going to be talking to white people, we’re the ones who have to start listening to the legitimate cries coming from our African-American fellow citizens,” she said.
“We’ve got to figure out what is happening when routine traffic stops, when routine arrests, escalate into killings … Clearly, there seems to be a terrible disconnect between many police departments and officers and the people they have sworn to protect,” she said.
Federal policing guidelines are needed because “we have 18,000 police departments… [some of which need more training to] go after systemic racism, which is a reality, and to go after systemic bias,” she said.
“We’ve got to start once again respecting and treating each other with the dignity that every person deserves,” she said.
White Americans need to do a better job of listening when African Americans talk about the seen and unseen barriers you face every day.
To win in November, Clinton need a high turnout of African-American voters.
Neither Blitzer nor Clinton suggested that African-American communities have a role in reducing police-encounter deaths, which usually occur in tense engagements between a few cops and a few suspects with extensive criminal histories.
In general, young African-American men are far more likely to commit crimes than young white men, young Asian men or young Latino men. A November 2011 report by the Justice Department showed that young African-American men are just 1 percent of the population, yet are responsible for a disproportionate percentage of murders in the nation.
Clinton suggested that people who disagree with her agenda are racists. “There is so much more to be done… we can’t be engaging in hateful rhetoric or incitement of violence, we need to be bringing people together … we need more love and kindness.”
Black Lives Matter protesters sprayed with tear gas in Phoenix as rally spirals out of control and thousands demonstrate against police brutality, with cops on high alert following Dallas massacre
Police fired pepper spray at the protesters in Phoenix, who were seen running away and shielding their eyes
A white man holding a Donald Trump ‘Make America Great Again’ placard interrupted the protest on Friday night
In Rochester, New York, 74 people were arrested for blocking the street after protesters sat down
Thousands of protesters blocked a highway in Atlanta, Georgia, as they marched against police brutality
An estimated 5,000 people halted traffic as they demanded justice for black men killed at the hands of police
There was a heavy police presence during the protest, with officers on high alert following the massacre in Dallas
By OLLIE GILLMAN and KHALEDA RAHMAN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and ASSOCIATED PRESS
PUBLISHED: 12:41 EST, 8 July 2016 | UPDATED: 08:13 EST, 9 July 2016
Black Lives Matter protesters have been sprayed with tear gas in Phoenix after a march against police brutality spiraled out of control.
Police also fired bean bag rounds and pepper spray at the protesters, who were seen running away and shielding their eyes.
One image showed a white man holding a Donald Trump ‘Make America Great Again’ placard interrupting the protest on Friday night.
Less than three hours after the demonstration began at 8pm, police declared the protest an ‘unlawful assembly’ and ordered people to leave after objects were thrown at officers, the Arizona Republic reported.
In Rochester, New York, the SWAT team arrived and police arrested 74 protesters who were blocking the streets. One organizer, Ashley Gantt, said they sat down because they did not want any movement to be misinterpreted as violence after the shootings in Dallas.
Other protests were calmer, with an estimated 5,000 people marching peacefully along a highway in Atlanta as they demanded justice for black men killed by police officers in recent days.
There was a heavy police presence at the Atlanta rally as protesters halted traffic, with officers on high alert following Thursday’s massacre in Dallas.
Gunman Micah Xavier Johnson, 25, shot 12 officers and two civilians on a rampage that killed five Dallas cops.
Friday evening’s protest came as police forces across the country braced for any fall-out from the horrific shooting in Texas.
Black Lives Matter protesters have been sprayed with tear gas in Phoenix after a march against police brutality spiraled out of control. Pictured, a white man holding a Donald Trump ‘Make America Great Again’ placard interrupting the protest on Friday night
A protester gets help after being knocked to the ground after being pepper sprayed by police as marchers numbering nearly 1,000 take to the streets to protest against the recent fatal shootings of black men by police
Demonstrators try to ease the burning with several jugs of milk, which is commonly used as an antidote against capsicum, the same chemical found in hot chili peppers. Experts advise using water or saline instead, before washing the area with non-oil based soap
A protester raises him arms in front of a police blockade as marchers take to the streets to demonstrate against the recent fatal shootings of black men by police
Police in riot gear move in to break up a group of marchers as hundreds take to the streets to protest against the fatal shootings
Police declared the protest an ‘unlawful assembly’ by 11pm and ordered people to leave after objects were thrown at officers, the Arizona Republic reported (pictured, two protesters in downtown Phoenix last night)
Peaceful protests erupted around the country to protest the recent deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, but tensions were high in Phoenix
Three people were arrested, according to Phoenix police. Crowds had thinned out considerably by 11pm as police repeatedly asked people to return home
People began gathering outside Phoenix City Hall for the march scheduled at 8pm on Friday. By 10pm, police had begun using pepper spray to control the crowds
Civil rights leader Reverend Jarrett Maupin led the march and tried to shut down the freeway at one point before diverting the crowds. Police had blocked off the ramps to Interstate 10 as a precaution (pictured, one man kneeling with his arms up before police in riot gear)
Police shot bean bags into the crowd after rocks were reportedly thrown at them. While bean bags are meant to deliver a blow without penetrating the body like a bullet would, they can cause internal bleeding or break bones
Police departments around the country have taken extra precautions following the shooting at a protest in Dallas. Gunman Micah Xavier Johnson shot dead five police officers and injured seven more (pictured, demonstrators at the rally in Phoenix)
In Rochester, New York, the SWAT team arrived and police arrested 74 protesters who were blocking the streets (pictured, one demonstrator in Phoenix holding the flag upside down, a signal for dire distress)
Thousands more people took part in smaller protests across America, with demonstrations in Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Utah and Washington, DC
Thousands more people took part in smaller protests across America, with demonstrations in Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Utah and Washington, DC.
Also, in Los Angeles, rappers Snoop Dogg and The Game led a peaceful march to the LAPD’s headquarters, where they met with the mayor and police chief and urged improved relations between authorities and minority communities. Protests were also planned in Oakland and San Francisco on Friday night.
In Atlanta, demonstrators flooded the streets and brought traffic to a standstill Friday after gathering at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights near Centennial Olympic Park.
Police break up a group outside a store as nearly 1,000 protesters march in the streets to protest against the recent fatal shootings of two black men by police
Police send out tear gas to break up marchers numbering nearly 1,000 as they take to the streets to protest
Thousands of protesters have blocked a highway in Atlanta as they march through the city to demonstrate against police brutality
‘Who do you call when the murderer wears a badge?’ An estimated 5,000 people halted traffic as they demanded justice for black men killed at the hands of police officers
There was a heavy police presence during the peaceful protest (pictured), with officers on high alert following Thursday’s massacre of cops in Dallas
Friday evening’s protest came as police forces across the country braced for any fall-out from the horrific shooting in Texas
Killer: Dallas gunman Micah Johnson (pictured) told officers he was upset about recent shootings and wanted to kill whites, ‘especially white officers’
Protesters chanted: ‘Hands up, don’t shoot.’
People protesting police brutality in Dallas on Thursday evening were belting out the same chant when Johnson first opened fire.
Tonight’s protests have been peaceful and no arrests have been made.
The marches are in response to the recent shootings of black men Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, who were shot by white police officers in Louisiana and Minnesota respectively.
Protesters shut down Atlanta highway after Dallas rampage
‘Hands up don’t shoot’: Demonstrators march through downtown Atlanta to protest the shootings of two black men by police officers
The marches are in response to the recent shootings of black men Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, who were shot by white police officers in Louisiana and Minnesota respectively
Sterling (left) was killed following a confrontation outside a Baton Rouge convenience store early Tuesday morning. Castile (right), 32, was shot dead by a cop during a traffic stop in Minnesota
NYC Police Commissioner William Bratton says city is on high alert
Police chiefs in New York, Washington, D.C, Boston, Las Vegas, St. Louis, and Nassau County have ordered officers to partner up for assignments.
The NYPD’s chief of department James O’Neill said until further notice, officers are banned from responding to calls alone.
‘Effective immediately and until further notice, all uniform members of service are to be assigned in pairs,’ an internal memo from O’Neill says, according to WPIX reporter Myles Miller.
Demonstrators march through downtown Atlanta
O’Neill added: ‘There will be no solo assignments citywide.’
Washington’s police chief Cathy Lanier ordered officers and supervisors in the capital to also pair up while on duty.
‘Looking at the type of attack that happened in Dallas, a two-man car, a four-man car, a 10-man car, isn’t going to make much of a difference,’ Lanier said, according to the Washington Post.
‘But it makes the officers feel much safer.’
Meanwhile, Cincinnati police spokeswoman Tiffaney Hardy says police will use two-officer patrols throughout the weekend, ‘then we will re-evaluate.’
A police union official says some officers had expressed desire to be in two-officer cars for increased safety.
Boston Police Department tweeted: ‘In light of the tragedy in Dallas and in the best interests of officer safety, all #BPD patrols will be conducted by two-officer units.’
The Las Vegas Police Department said officers will be operating in pairs because of reports of planned protests in cities across the country.
‘Based on reports of protests in several major cities across the US, on-duty #LVMPD officers will be working in pairs until further notice,’ the department tweeted.
In St Louis, Missouri, police chief Sam Dotson said all officers will also be required to wear bulletproof vests.
In a statement, Dotson said late on Thursday night: ‘Due to events unfolding in Dallas, Texas, effective immediately, all on-duty officers will work in pairs until further notice.
‘No police officers, park rangers or mashals will be sent or handle any assignments without a partner.
‘In addition to this, all personnel leaving any of the stations for enforcement activities will be required to wear their ballistic vest.’
He added: ‘Although locally we are not experiencing any civil unrest, this decision is precautionary and is to maximize the safety of officers and our community.’
The Nassau County Police Department officials said that all necessary steps were being taken to ensure the safety of police officers and the public.
In a statement on Friday, the department said: ‘Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of this heinous act of violence and their families.
‘The NCPD is taking all necessary steps to ensure the safety of the public and our police officers.
‘We will intensify patrols in areas of public gatherings and near critical infrastructure.
‘Social media outlets will be intensely monitored and we request the public’s assistance in any way possible to stop threats to public safety.’
Five Dallas police officers were fatally shot and seven others wounded during a protest over the deaths of black men killed by police this week in Louisiana and Minnesota – the deadliest day for U.S. law enforcement since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Police officers are on alert across the country in the wake of deadly sniper attacks in Dallas on Thursday that left five cops dead. Above, Dallas police chief David Brown (left) and Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings
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Police chiefs in New York, Washington, D.C, Boston, Las Vegas, St. Louis, and Nassau County have ordered officers to partner up for assignment
BLACK LIVES MATTER: PROGRESSIVE FINANCED VANGUARD OF SOCIALIST CONTROL
CIA sponsored Cloward–Piven strategy bankrolled by liberal dupes aims for race war and order out of chaos
Kurt Nimmo – JULY 10, 2016
Black Lives Matter: Progressive Financed Vanguard of Socialist Control
Is it possible liberal billionaires would support a racist group that markets white guilt for political gain and embraces activists calling for the lynching of white people and cops?
In November, members of Black Lives Matter (BLM) met behind closed doors with Democracy Alliance, a coterie of wealthy liberals who have pledged to fund leftist organizations.
The donor club was founded by former Clinton Treasury official Rob Stein. Members include the billionaire “philanthropist” George Soros, Taco Bell silver spoon baby Rob McKay, uber liberal Norman Lear, “meathead” Rob Reiner, co-founder of Tides Network Drummond Pike, SEIU boss Anna Burger (members of the union like to beat up opponents), and former Rockefeller Family Fund president Anne Bartley.
“The DA, as the club is known in Democratic circles, is recommending its donors step up check writing to a handful of endorsed groups that have supported the Black Lives Matter movement. And the club and some of its members also are considering ways to funnel support directly to scrappier local groups that have utilized confrontational tactics to inject their grievances into the political debate,” Politico reported.
Investigative journalist James Simpson has exposed connections between BLM and a constellation of leftist and Marxist groups, a number of them established as fronts by the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO).
“BLM is one of many projects undertaken by the FRSO,” writes Simpson. He points out that FRSO and BLM receive funding through the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA). “FRSO/BLM organizations are generously supported by a universe of wealthy foundations. Some, like those employing BLM founders [Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi] receive money directly.”
Many FRSO connected leftist and Marxist groups are also funded by other wealthy individuals, foundations, and corporations, including Kellogg, Ben & Jerry’s, Soros Funds, Hewlett, Rockefeller, Heinz, and others.
The Ford Foundation tops the list of NDWA financial contributors. It has funded CIA cultural fronts since the 1950s.
“At times it seemed as if the Ford Foundation was simply an extension of Government in the area of international cultural propaganda. The Ford Foundation had a record of close involvement in covert actions in Europe, working closely with Marshall Plan and CIA officials on specific projects,” writes the author of The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, Frances Stonor Saunders.
It may seem contradictory for the state and wealthy liberals—many undoubtedly brainwashed dupes—to support organizations and individuals calling for abolishing capitalism and advocating the most severe form of Marxist ideology.
As the late Gary Allen so eloquently pointed out (None Dare Call It Conspiracy), socialism is a perfect mechanism for controlling humanity.
“If one understands that socialism is not a share-the-wealth program, but is in reality a method to consolidate and control the wealth, then the seeming paradox of superrich men promoting socialism becomes no paradox at all. Instead it becomes the logical, even the perfect tool of power-seeking megalomaniacs. Communism, or more accurately, socialism, is not a movement of the downtrodden masses, but of the economic elite.”
Story 1: First The CIA Director Now The State Department Contradict Obama’s Islamic State, Syria and Iraq Policies — The Hillary Clinton Support Network Of Lying Lunatic Leftists Throws Obama Under The Bus — Work Place Violence — Hate Crime — Terrorist Act — Radical Islam — Radical Islamic Terrorist — Radical Islamic Terrorist Jihadists — Face Reality and Stopping Lying Obama — Radical Islamists Are A Majority of The World’s 1,600+ Million Muslims And Want Sharia Law — Ban All Radical Islamists From United States Permanently — Videos
Radical Islam: The Most Dangerous Ideology
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The rise of ISIS, explained in 6 minutes
The Basics of Islam 8: Robert Spencer on The Meaning of the Word “Jihad”
Robert Spencer Moment: Trump Was Right.
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The Basics of Islam 1: Robert Spencer on “Islamophobia”
What Does Jihad Really Mean? | For the Record
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Gorka: CIA director no longer spreading Obama’s narrative
CIA CHIEF CONTRADICTS PRESIDENT OBAMA ON ISIS
Robert Spencer speaks on the Syrian refugee crisis and the Islamic idea of hijrah
State Department diplomats slam Obama’s Syria policy
Diplomats slam Obama’s Syria policy
Dozens of State Department officials just revolted against Obama’s Syria policy
How will Trump react to the diplomats’ memo on Syrian war?
Syria’s war: Who is fighting and why
The war in Syria explained in five minutes | Guardian Animations
State Department dissent memo critical of Obama policy on Syria and Assad
State Department Demands Policy Shift In Syria | MSNBC
DHS Whistleblower Phil Haney exposes Obama administration during Press Conference
DHS Whistleblower Exposes Government’s Submission To Jihad (FULL Press Conference)
Government Insider BLOWS WHISTLE on Obama’s ‘Countering Violent Extremism’ Policy
State Dept Under Fire For Including Syria In Top Foreign Policy Moments – America’s Newsroom
Ben Shapiro: The Myth of the Tiny Radical Muslim Minority
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Obama goes on tirade against Trump over ‘dangerous’ Muslim ban, ‘radical Islam’
Obama on ‘Radical Islam’
Speech by President Barack Obama After Counter-ISIL Meeting
President Obama On Orlando Shooting
Top Ex-CIA Agent Has ‘Chilling Warning’ About Obama’s Plans for Islamic State!
CIA Director on Islamic State
CIA Director John Brennan on ISIS and Global Threats at CSIS
CIA Chief Warns Islamic State Isn’t Finished Yet
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Shariamerica: Islam, Obama, and the Establishment Clause
Full Event: Donald Trump Rally in Dallas, TX (6-16-16)
An ’embarrassing’ break: Dozens of State Department officials just revolted against Obama’s Syria policy
At least 51 “mid-to-high-level State Department officials” have signed a dissent channel cable breaking with President Barack Obama’s policy on Syria and calling for US airstrikes on the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“Failure to stem Assad’s flagrant abuses will only bolster the ideological appeal of groups such as Daesh, even as they endure tactical setbacks on the battlefield,” the cable reads, according to The Journal.
Daesh is an alternate name for ISIS, aka the Islamic State or ISIL.
“We are aware of a dissent channel cable written by a group of State Department employees regarding the situation in Syria,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told The Wall Street Journal.
“We are reviewing the cable now, which came up very recently, and I am not going to comment on the contents,” he said.
The officials who signed the document “range from a Syria desk officer in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs to a former deputy to the American ambassador in Damascus,” and have all been involved in formulating or carrying out the administration’s Syria policy.
That policy has largely emphasized defeating the Islamic State over bolstering Syria’s anti-Assad rebel groups.
According to the American Foreign Service Association, the dissent channel is “a serious policy channel reserved only for consideration of responsible dissenting and alternative views on substantive foreign policy issues that cannot be communicated in a full and timely manner through regular operating channels and procedures.”
It is available to all “regular or re-employed annuitant employees” of the State Department and the US Agency for International Development.
The number of officials – at least 50 – who have signed the internal document calling for military action against Assad is unusual, a former State Department official who worked on Middle East policy told The Journal.
“It’s embarrassing for the administration to have so many rank-and-file members break on Syria,” they said.
Fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces sit in a lookout position in the western rural area of Manbij.Thomson Reuters
The cable calls for the Obama administration to place more emphasis on defeating Assad – whose brutality is seen by many experts as the driver of Syria’s jihadist problem – by arming and regaining the trust of Syria’s moderate opposition.
That, in turn, will “turn the tide of the conflict against the regime [to] increase the chances for peace by sending a clear signal to the regime and its backers that there will be no military solution to the conflict,” the cable reportedly says.
The CIA-backed factions of the Free Syrian Army – the majority of which are Arab and battling forces loyal to Assad – have at times clashed with Pentagon-trained fighters associated with the Syrian Democratic Forces, who are predominantly Kurdish and focused on defeating the Islamic State.
Their divergent military objectives and ethnicities have bred mistrust and fighting that is ultimately counterproductive to the cause of the revolution.
Several high-ranking government officials, moreover – including Robert S. Ford, a former ambassador to Syria, and Obama’s former defense secretary, Chuck Hagel – have left their positions over Obama’s failure to act decisively against Assad, whose brutality continues to fuel a bloody revolution that has left over 400,000 people dead and millions displaced.
“Many people working on Syria for the State Department have long urged a tougher policy with the Assad government as a means of facilitating arrival at a negotiated political deal to set up a new Syrian government,” Ford told The New York Times on Thursday.
Protesters carry Free Syrian Army flags and chant slogans during an antigovernment protest in the town of Marat Numan in Idlib Province, Syria, on March 4.REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
“The moral rationale for taking steps to end the deaths and suffering in Syria, after five years of brutal war, is evident and unquestionable,” the cable said. ” The status quo in Syria will continue to present increasingly dire, if not disastrous, humanitarian, diplomatic and terrorism-related challenges.”
Assad crossed Obama’s now infamous “red line” for airstrikes in 2013, when he used chemical weapons to kill more than 1,000 people in the eastern Damascus suburb of Ghouta. Obama backed away from that red line when Assad agreed to a Russia-brokered deal to destroy his chemical-weapons stockpile.
Some experts say, however, that the entire stockpile has not been destroyed as promised.
“The US’ Syria policy has always been in the head of one man, and one man only: Barack Obama. No one else has ever really had a say in what happens in Syria,” Tony Badran, a Middle East expert and researcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Business Insiderin a previous interview.
“Obama has owned it since day one – and from day one, he never intended to remove Assad,” he said.
The cable addresses Russia’s bombing campaign in Syria as well, asserting that Moscow and Assad have not taken past ceasefires and “consequential negotiations” seriously.
Russia entered the war in late September 2015 on behalf of Assad under the guise of fighting ISIS. Russian warplanes have primarily targeted non-jihadist, anti-Assad rebel groups, however, many of which are backed by the US, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia.
Government warplanes bombarded the besieged Syrian town of Darayya with barrel bombs last weekend, shortly after food aid was delivered to the town for the first time in nearly four years.
Chart: Obama Admin. On Pace to Issue One Million Green Cards to Migrants from Majority-Muslim Countries
SWEN PFOERTNER/AFP/Getty Images
by CAROLINE MAY
The Obama Administration is on pace to issue more than a million green cards to migrants from majority-Muslim countries, according to an analysis of Department of Homeland Security data.
A chart released by the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest Friday details the surge in immigration to the U.S. from majority-Muslim countries since President Barack Obama took office in 2009.
Specifically, in the first six fiscal years of Obama’s presidency (FY2009 – FY2014), his administration issued 832,014 green cards to migrants majority-Muslim countries, the most of which were issued to migrants from Pakistan (102,000), Iraq (102,000), Bangladesh (90,000), Iran (85,000), Egypt (56,000), and Somalia (37,000).
The total 832,014 new permanent residents do not include migrants on temporary, nonimmigrant visas — which allow foreign nationals to come to the U.S. temporarily for work, study, tourism and the like. As the subcommittee notes, the number also does not include those migrants who overstayed the terms of their visas.
Regardless, as the subcommittee explained in its analysis, the U.S. is playing host to immigrants from majority Muslim countries at an increasing pace.
Between FY 2013 and FY 2014, the number of green cards issued to migrants from Muslim-majority countries increased dramatically – from 117,423 in FY 2013, to 148,810 in FY 2014, a nearly 27 percent increase. Throughout the Obama Administration’s tenure, the United States has issued green cards to an average of 138,669 migrants from Muslim-majority countries per year, meaning that it is nearly certain the United States will have issued green cards to at least 1.1 million migrants from Muslim-majority countries on the President’s watch. It has also been reported that migration from Muslim-majority countries represents the fastest growing class of migrants.
Green cards, or Lawful Permanent Residency, puts immigrants on the path to citizenship and allows for lifetime residency, federal benefits, and work authorization. Included in the totals are refugees, who are required to apply for a green card after one year of residency in the U.S. Unlike other types of immigrants, refugees are immediately eligible for welfare benefits including Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), food stamps, and Medicaid.
A report from the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) indicated that in FY 2013, 91.4 percent of Middle Eastern refugees (accepted to the U.S. between 2008-2013) received food stamps, 73.1 percent were on Medicaid or Refugee Medical Assistance and 68.3 percent were on cash welfare.
Green Card Totals, FY09-FY14:
Pakistan (102K), Iraq (102K), Bangladesh (90K), Iran (85K), Egypt (56K), Somalia (37K), Uzbekistan (30K), Turkey (26K), Morocco (25K), Jordan (25K), Albania (24K), Afghanistan (21K), Lebanon (20K), Yemen (20K), Syria (18K), Indonesia (17K), Sudan (15K), Sierra Leone (12K), Guinea (9K), Senegal (8K), Saudi Arabia (9K), Algeria (8K), Kazakhstan (8K), Kuwait (6K), Gambia (6K), United Arab Emirates (5K), Azerbaijan (4K), Mali (4K), Burkina Faso (3K), Kyrgyzstan (3K), Kosovo (3K), Mauritania (3K), Tunisia (2K), Tajikistan (2K), Libya (2K), Turkmenistan (1K), Qatar (1K), Chad (1K)
51% of U.S. Muslims want Sharia; 60% of young Muslims more loyal to Islam than to U.S.
OCTOBER 15, 2015 3:43 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER
Really, what did you expect? A considerable portion of U.S. domestic and foreign policy is based on the assumption that Islam in the U.S. will be different: that Muslims here believe differently from those elsewhere, and do not accept the doctrines of violence against and subjugation of unbelievers that have characterized Islam throughout its history. But on what is that assumption based? Nothing but wishful thinking. And future generations of non-Muslims will pay the price.
“Meanwhile, An Islamic Fifth Column Builds Inside America,” by Paul Sperry, IBD, October 1, 2015 (thanks to Pamela Geller)
In berating GOP presidential hopeful Ben Carson for suggesting a loyalty test for Muslims seeking high office, CNN host Jake Tapper maintained that he doesn’t know a single observant Muslim-American who wants to Islamize America.
“I just don’t know any Muslim-Americans — and I know plenty — who feel that way, even if they are observant Muslims,” he scowled.
Tapper doesn’t get out much. If he did, chances are he’d run into some of the 51% of Muslims living in the U.S. who just this June told Polling Co. they preferred having “the choice of being governed according to Shariah,” or Islamic law. Or the 60% of Muslim-Americans under 30 who told Pew Research they’re more loyal to Islam than America.
Maybe they’re all heretics, so let’s see what the enlightened Muslims think.
If Tapper did a little independent research he’d quickly find that America’s most respected Islamic leaders and scholars also want theocracy, not democracy, and even advocate trading the Constitution for the Quran.
These aren’t fringe players. These are the top officials representing the Muslim establishment in America today.
Hopefully none of them ever runs for president, because here’s what he’d have to say about the U.S. system of government:
• Muzammil Siddiqi, chairman of both the Fiqh Council of North America, which dispenses Islamic rulings, and the North American Islamic Trust, which owns most of the mosques in the U.S.: “As Muslims, we should participate in the system to safeguard our interests and try to bring gradual change, (but) we must not forget that Allah’s rules have to be established in all lands, and all our efforts should lead to that direction.”
• Omar Ahmad, co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the top Muslim lobby group in Washington: “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Quran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.”
• CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper: “I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future.”
• Imam Siraj Wahhaj, director of the Muslim Alliance in North America: “In time, this so-called democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing. And the only thing that will remain will be Islam.”
• Imam Zaid Shakir, co-founder of Zaytuna College in Berkeley, Calif.: “If we put a nationwide infrastructure in place and marshaled our resources, we’d take over this country in a very short time. . . . What a great victory it will be for Islam to have this country in the fold and ranks of the Muslims.”…
John Owen Brennan (born September 22, 1955)[1][2] is an American government official who is the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He has served as chief counterterrorism advisor to U.S. President Barack Obama; his title was Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and Assistant to the President.[1][3][4] His responsibilities included overseeing plans to protect the country from terrorism and respond to natural disasters, and he met with the President daily.[5][6]Previously, he advised President Obama on foreign policy and intelligence issues during the 2008 presidential campaign and transition.[7] Brennan withdrew his name from consideration for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the first Obama administration over concerns about his support for transferring terror suspects to countries where they may be tortured while serving under President George W. Bush.[3][5] Instead, Brennan was appointed Deputy National Security Advisor, a position which did not require Senate confirmation.[3][5][8]
President Barack Obama nominated Brennan as his next director of the CIA on January 7, 2013.[11][12][13] The ACLU called for the Senate not to proceed with the appointment until it confirms that “all of his conduct was within the law” at the CIA and White House.[14] John Brennan was approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee on March 5, 2013 to succeedDavid Petraeus as the Director of the CIA by a vote of 12 to 3.[15]
While riding a bus to class at Fordham, he saw an ad in The New York Times that said the CIA was recruiting, and he felt a CIA career would be a good match for his “wanderlust” and his desire to do public service.[5] He received a B.A. in political science from Fordham in 1977.[3] His studies included a junior year abroad learning Arabic and taking Middle Eastern studies courses at the American University in Cairo.[3][5] He also received a Master of Arts in government with a concentration in Middle Eastern studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 1980.[5] He speaks Arabic fluently.[9]
Brennan is married to Kathy Pokluda Brennan, with whom he has had one son and two daughters.[2][3][16]
Brennan began his CIA career as an analyst, presumably in the Washington D.C. area, and spent 25 years with the agency.[1][5][17] At one point in his career, he was a daily intelligence briefer for President Bill Clinton.[5] In 1996 he was CIA station chief in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia when the Khobar Towers bombing killed 19 U.S. servicemen.[5] In 1999 he was appointed chief of staff to George Tenet, then-Director of the CIA.[3][5] Brennan became deputy executive director of the CIA in March 2001.[3] He was director of the newly created Terrorist Threat Integration Center from 2003 to 2004, an office that sifted through and compiled information for President Bush’s daily top secret intelligence briefings and employed the services of analysts from a dozen U.S. agencies and entities.[18] One of the controversies in his career involves the distribution of intelligence to the Bush White House that helped lead to an “Orange Terror Alert“, over Christmas 2003. The intelligence, which purported to list terror targets, was highly controversial within the CIA and was later discredited. An Obama administration official does not dispute that Brennan distributed the intelligence during the Bush era but said Brennan passed it along because that was his job.[19] His last post within the Intelligence Community was as director of the National Counterterrorism Center in 2004 and 2005, which incorporated information on terrorist activities across U.S. agencies.[3][20]
Brennan then left government service for a few years, becoming Chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) and the CEO of The Analysis Corporation (TAC). He continued to lead TAC after its acquisition by Global Strategies Group in 2007 and its growth as the Global Intelligence Solutions division of Global’s North American technology business GTEC, before returning to government service with the Obama administration as Homeland Security Advisor on January 20, 2009.[10]
On January 7, 2013, Brennan was nominated by President Barack Obama to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency.[21]
Counterterrorism advisor to President Obama
In late 2008 Brennan was the reported choice for Director of the CIA in the incoming Obama administration. Brennan withdrew his name from consideration because of opposition to his CIA service under President George W. Bush and past public statements he had made in support of enhanced interrogation and the transfer of terrorism suspects to countries where they might be tortured (extraordinary rendition).[3][5][22] President Obama then appointed him to be his chief counterterrorism advisor, a position that did not require Senate confirmation.[3][5][8]
Brennan and President Barack Obama at a meeting of the Homeland Security Council, May 2009
In August 2009, Brennan criticized some Bush-administration anti-terror policies, saying that waterboarding had threatened national security by increasing the recruitment of terrorists and decreasing the willingness of other nations to cooperate with the U.S.[23] He also described the Obama administration’s focus as being on “extremists” and not “jihadists“. He said that using the second term, which means one who is struggling for a holy goal, gives “these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek” and suggests the US is at war with the religion of Islam.[23]
In an early December 2009 interview with the Bergen Record Brennan remarked, “the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities have to bat 1.000 every day. The terrorists are trying to be successful just once”.[5] At a press conferences days after the failed Christmas Day bomb attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Brennan said U.S. intelligence agencies did not miss any signs that could have prevented the attempt but later said he had let the President down by underestimating a small group of Yemeni terrorists and not connecting them to the attempted bomber.[1][24] Within two weeks after the incident, however, he produced a report highly critical of the performance of U.S. intelligence agencies, concluding that their focus on terrorist attempts aimed at U.S. soil was inadequate.[17] In February 2010, he claimed on Meet the Press that he was tired of Republican lawmakers using national security issues as political footballs, and making allegations where they did not know the facts.[25]
Drone program
In April 2012 Brennan was the first Obama administration official to publicly acknowledge CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. In his speech he argued for the legality, morality, and effectiveness of the program.[26][27][28] The ACLU and other organizations disagreed. In 2011/2012 he also helped reorganize the process, under the aegis of the Disposition Matrix database, by which people outside of war zones were put on the list of drone targets. According to an Associated Press story, the reorganization helped “concentrate power” over the process inside the White House administration.[29][30][31]
In June 2011, Brennan claimed that US counter-terrorism operations had not resulted in “a single collateral death” in the past year because of the “precision of the capabilities that we’ve been able to develop.”[32][33] Nine months later, Brennan claimed he had said “we had no information” about any civilian, noncombatant deaths during the timeframe in question.[33][34] The Bureau of Investigative Journalism disagreed with Brennan, citing their own research[35] that initially led them to believe that 45 to 56 civilians, including six children, had been killed by ten US drone strikes during the year-long period in question.[33] Additional research led the Bureau to raise their estimate to 76 deaths, including eight children and two women.[33] According to the Bureau, Brennan’s claims “do not appear to bear scrutiny.”[33]The Atlantic has been harsher in its criticism, saying that “Brennan has been willing to lie about those drone strikes to hide ugly realities.”[36]
According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Brennan’s comments about collateral death are perhaps explained by a counting method that treats all military-aged males in a strike zone as combatants unless there is explicit information to prove them innocent.[33][37]
CIA Director (2013–present)
Nomination
Brennan being sworn in as CIA Director, March 8, 2013
Morris Davis, a former Chief Prosecutor for the Guantanamo Military Commissions compared Brennan to Canadian Omar Khadr, who was convicted of “committing murder in violation of the law of war”.[38] He suggested that Brennan’s role in targeting individuals for CIA missile strikes was no more authorized than the throwing of the grenade Khadr was accused of.
On February 27, 2013, the Senate Intelligence Committee postponed a vote, expected to be taken the next day on the confirmation of Brennan until the following week. On March 5, the Intelligence Committee approved the nomination 12–3. The Senate was set to vote on Brennan’s nomination on March 6, 2013. However, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul began a talking Senate filibuster of the vote, citing President Barack Obama and his administration’s use of combat drones, stating “No one politician should be allowed to judge the guilt, to charge an individual, to judge the guilt of an individual and to execute an individual. It goes against everything that we fundamentally believe in our country.”[39][40] Paul’s filibuster continued for 13 hours, after which Brennan was confirmed by a vote of 63–34.
Brennan was sworn into the office of CIA Director on March 8, 2013.[41]
Story 1: Trump Targets Terrorist Control vs. Clinton and Obama Talk Gun Control — Lying Lunatic Left Losers — Americans Armed Against Gun Grabbing Government Tyrants — Defend The Second Amendment — Videos
Oath of office of the President of the United States
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”[1]
ARTICLE II, SECTION 3, United States Constitution
[The President] shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed….
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CIA chief: IS working to send operatives to the West
CIA Director John Brennan will tell Congress on Thursday that Islamic State militants are training and attempting to deploy operatives for further attacks on the West and will rely more on guerrilla-style tactics to compensate for their territorial losses.
CIA Director John Brennan will tell Congress on Thursday that Islamic State militants are training and attempting to deploy operatives for further attacks on the West and will rely more on guerrilla-style tactics to compensate for their territorial losses.
In remarks prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee, Brennan says IS has been working to build an apparatus to direct and inspire attacks against its foreign enemies, as in the recent attacks in Paris and Brussels — ones the CIA believes were directed by IS leaders.
“ISIL has a large cadre of Western fighters who could potentially serve as operatives for attacks in the West,” Brennan said, using another acronym for the group. He said IS probably is working to smuggle them into countries, perhaps among refugee flows or through legitimate means of travel.
Brennan also noted the group’s call for followers to conduct so-called lone-wolf attacks in their home countries. He called last week’s attack in Orlando a “heinous act of wanton violence” and an “assault on the values of openness and tolerance” that define the United States as a nation.
He said IS is gradually cultivating its various branches into an interconnected network. The branch in Libya is likely the most advanced and most dangerous, but IS is trying to increase its influence in Africa, he said. The IS branch in the Sinai has become the “most active and capable terrorist group in Egypt,” attacking the Egyptian military and government targets in addition to foreigners and tourists, such as the downing of a Russian passenger jet last October.
Other branches have struggled to gain traction, he says. “The Yemen branch, for instance, has been riven with factionalism. And the Afghanistan-Pakistan branch has struggled to maintain its cohesion, in part because of competition with the Taliban.”
He called IS a “formidable adversary,” but said the U.S.-led coalition has made progress combatting the group, which has had to surrender large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria and has lost some of its leaders in airstrikes. IS has struggled to replenish its ranks of fighters, Brennan said, because fewer of them are traveling to Syria and others have defected.
“The group appears to be a long way from realizing the vision that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi laid out when he declared the caliphate two years ago in Mosul,” Iraq, Brennan said.
He said the group’s ability to raise money has also been curtailed, although the group still continues to generate at least tens of millions of dollars in revenue each month, mostly from taxation and from sales of crude oil.
“Unfortunately, despite all our progress against ISIL on the battlefield and in the financial realm, our efforts have not reduced the group’s terrorism capability and global reach,” he said.
“In fact, as the pressure mounts on ISIL, we judge that it will intensify its global terror campaign to maintain its dominance of the global terrorism agenda.”
Story 1: House Select Committee investigating Benghazi — The Unintended Consequences Of President Obama’s Undeclared War on Libya and Central Intelligence Agency Covert Operations in Libya and Syria — Congress Did Nothing To Stop An Imperial President — The Lying and Blame Game On Display — “Disgusting and Reprehensible” — Videos
Background Information
Obama and Hillary Blame Youtube Video for Benghazi Terrorist Attack as Coffins Arrive
Our Fallen Heroes
Published on Sep 15, 2012
President Obama speaks about the tragic loss of four of our fellow Americans who were serving in our diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya. These Americans represented the best of our country; without people like them, we could not sustain our freedoms or security, or provide the leadership that the entire world depends on. During this time of turmoil in many different countries, the President makes it clear that the United States has a profound respect for people of all faiths, but as Commander in Chief, he will never tolerate efforts to harm our fellow Americans and will ensure that those who attack our people find no escape from justice.
Obama and Press Secretary Carney Blame a Video for the Benghazi Attack
YouTube Video Maker Blamed for Benghazi Attacks Breaks Silence on CNN
White House Covers Up Benghazi Terrorist Attack
13 hours in Benghazi FULL VERSION INTERVIEW 5 parts combined.
ABC News’ Jon Karl hammers Jay Carney over New bombshell Benghazi emails
Benghazi Whistleblower Embarrassed by Obama Admin Placing Blame on a YouTube Video
Benghazi Gate – Rand Paul and Hillary Clinton – Question & Answer
Email Reveals Obama Advisor Urged Susan Rice to Blame Video for Benghazi
Exclusive: Docs Show Weapons Going From Benghazi To Syria – Benghazi Gate – Happening Now
Breaking: Hillary Clinton Knew About Libyan Arms Shipments to Syria in 2011
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knew that the US was sending arms from Libya to Syria back in 2011. She denied this during public testimony (under oath) in early 2013 after the Benghazi terrorist attack.
Melvin Goodman on why CIA Director Brennan is dangerous
The show is going to be about the response to CIA director Brennan’s press conference two weeks ago and then an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations last week, an on the record interview with Charlie Rose in New York about his plans to restructure the CIA to try to bring a more integrity to intelligence and make it less politicized. We are going to hear from today Melvin Goodman. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. He is he is a former CIA analyst. Melvin Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: the Decline and Fall of the CIA and the forthcoming book On the Path to Dissent: A Whistleblower at the CIA. Goodman is the national security columnist for Counterpunch, and he said of CIA director ‘s plan to restructure the CIA and I quote “Simply, it takes the CIA further from Truman’s concept and closer to the ability to politicize intelligence. Operations are part of the policy world and not the intelligence world. The Centers have made it too easy to provide the intelligence that the ‘masters’ desire, whether they are the masters on CIA’s 7th floor or the policy masters. Brennan’s world was the Center for Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism, and many of the intelligence errors and operational errors of the past 15 years have emanated from those centers. Organizationally, it makes no sense — what are the directorates of operations and analysis — they sound as if they are HR experts.”
CNN Benghazi Claims: Report alleges CIA operatives in Libya were sending weapons to Syrian rebels
Retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin suspects US Was Running Guns To Syrian Rebels Via Benghazi
Clinton Donors Got Weapons Deals From Hillary
Even by the standards of arms deals between the United States and Saudi Arabia, this one was enormous. A consortium of American defense contractors led by Boeing would deliver $29 billion worth of advanced fighter jets to the United States’ oil-rich ally in the Middle East…E
Why is Benghazi still a big issue for Hillary Clinton? BBC News
General Petraeus Testifies Before Congress For The First Time Since Resigning As Director Of CIA
Select Committee on Benghazi Holds First Hearing
Former CIA Director and General David Petraeus (Ret.) testified at a hearing on U.S. policy toward the Middle East and combating ISIS* in the region. He talked about his support for military enclaves in Syria and for greater military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ISIS. He also gave his assessment of the Russian military build-up in Syria and of the Iran nuclear agreement.
At the beginning of his testimony, General Petraeus apologized for what what he called his “serious mistake” of sharing classified information with his biographer, with whom he also had an extramarital affair.
Select Committee on Benghazi Holds Second Hearing
Select Committee on Benghazi Holds Third Hearing
Rep. Gowdy: Either Petraeus Will Come Before Congressional Committee Or He Will Be Subpoenaed
Rep. Trey Gowdy addresses Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during his opening statement at a hearing Thursday by the House Select Committee on Benghazi. trey gowdy elivers opening statement of benghazi committee hearing with hillary clinton. trey gowdy says ‘We are going to find the #Truth because there is no expiration of it.’ Chairman Trey Gowdy opens #Benghazi hearing: ‘Previous investigations were not thorough. Trey Gowdy to Clinton: Trey Gowdy addressed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally at a high-stakes hearing on Thursday, telling the Democratic presidential candidate that the panel’s investigation is not about her. “Madame Secretary, I understand some people — frankly in both parties — have suggested this investigation is about you,” Gowdy said. “Let me assure you it is not. And let me assure you why it is not. This work is about something much more important than any single person. It is about four U.S. government workers, including our Ambassador, murdered by terrorists on foreign soil. It is about what happened before, during, and after the attacks that killed these four men.” He continued: “It is about what this country owes those who risk their lives to serve it. It is about the fundamental obligation of our government to tell the truth — always — to the American people. Not a single member of this Committee signed up for an investigation into you or your email system. We signed up because we wanted to honor the service and sacrifice of four people sent to a foreign land to represent us – who were killed – and do everything we can to prevent it from happening to others.” Gowdy also presented several key questions he would be asking in his opening statement: Why were there so many requests for more security personnel and equipment, and why were those requests denied in Washington? Why did the State Department compound in Benghazi not even come close to meeting proper security specifications? What policies were we pursuing in Libya that required a physical presence in spite of the escalating violence? Who in Washington was aware of the escalating violence in Libya? What special precautions, if any, were taken on the anniversary of 9-11? What happened in Washington after the first attack and what was the response to that attack? What did the military do or not do? What did our leaders in Washington do or not do and when? Why was the American public given such divergent accounts of what caused these attacks? And why is it so hard to get information from the very government these four men were representing and serving and sacrificing for?
Benghazi panel chair: Investigation not about Hillary Clinton
South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, the chairman of the House Select Committee investigating Benghazi, tells Hillary Clinton in his opening statement that the probe is not singularly focused on the former secretary of state.
Hillary Clinton gave her opening statement to the House Select Committee investigating the 2012 attacks at the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya.
Benghazi Hearing Committee Chairman on Hillary Clinton’s Emails | The New York Times
Trey Gowdy questions Hillary Clinton (Part 1)
Trey Gowdy questions Hillary Clinton (Part 2)
Clinton to panel: 3 things we learned from Benghazi
Trey Gowdy GRILLS Hillary Clinton Benghazi Committee Hearing
Trey Gowdy GRILLS Hillary Clinton during the Benghazi Committee Hearing. trey gowdy went off on hillary clinton about blumenthal and more. watch the explosive exchange. Hillary Clinton coolly hit back at her Republican interrogators on the Benghazi committee during her long-awaited testimony on Thursday, rebuffing claims she was detached as the situation in Libya deteriorated and asserting she did not use email to conduct the “vast majority” of her work as secretary of state.
The Democratic front-runner told the House Selection Committee on Benghazi, which is 18 months into its probe of the 2012 attacks on the consulate in Libya, that the tragedy does not deserve partisan attacks, while insisting the U.S. needs to stay committed to diplomatic engagement.
“Despite all the previous investigations and all the talk about partisan agendas, I’m here to honor those we lost and to do what I can to aid those who serve us still,” Clinton said, speaking slowly and deliberately during her opening statement. “My challenge to you, members of this committee, is the same challenge I put to myself…. Let’s be worthy of the trust the American people bestow on us… they expect us to rise above partisanship. And I hopes it’s what we’ll strive for today and in the future.”
Republicans questioned Clinton about why numerous requests for additional security never made it Clinton’s attention. She said they went to the right place: to personnel who handled security. And when they pressed her on why she kept the compound open or did not give it additional, she retorted that she never received a recommendation to shut down the mission—even after two attacks on the compound.
The hearing kicked off on Thursday with the partisan sniping that has been the hallmark of the committee’s work, with House Benghazi Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy defended his investigation, assuring Clinton that his probe is not centered on her.
Hour_2_151022_hillary_clinton_2_gty_1160.jpg
WATCH LIVE: Hillary Clinton testifies before Benghazi Committee
“Madame Secretary, I understand some people — frankly in both parties — have suggested this investigation is about you. Let me assure you it is not,” Gowdy said in his opening statement, adding that it was about the people who were killed.
He also blamed her in part for the fact that the inquiry has dragged on for a year and a half.
The State Department only realized it did not have Clinton’s emails after they requested documents, triggering a lengthy process by which the department had to ask her and her top aides who also sometimes used private email for work purposes to turn them over.
“You had an unusual email arrangement with yourself, which meant the State Department could not produce your emails to us,” Gowdy said. “When you left the State Department you kept those public records to yourself for almost two years….Those decisions were your decisions, not ours… It just took longer to get them and garnered more attention in the process.
Ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) blasted the committee as a partisan witch-hunt out to get Clinton, saying Republicans formed the panel because they “did not like the answers they got” in previous probe—“so they set up this select committee with no rules, no deadlines and a unlimited budget.”
“They set the noose because you’re running for president,” Cummings said, raising his voice before calling for the panel to disband. “It is time for Republicans to end this …fishing expedition.”
It only took Cummings a few minutes to highlight a number of embarrassing moments for Gowdy in recent weeks, including comments by Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Rep. Richard Hanna (R-N.Y) and a fired GOP Benghazi investigator who all suggested the panel was either out to hurt Clinton or increasingly focused on investigating her.
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More Background Information
Weekly Address: Carrying on the Work of
America’s intelligence community, explained
THE RECRUIT – Spy School: Inside the CIA Training Program, 1 of 2
THE RECRUIT – Spy School: Inside the CIA Training Program, 2 of 2
Special Activities Division
Published on Aug 15, 2014
The Special Activities Division (SAD) is a division in the United States Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) National Clandestine Service (NCS) responsible for covert operations known as “special activities”. Within SAD there are two separate groups, SAD/SOG for tactical paramilitary operations and SAD/PAG for covert political action.
Special Operations Group (SOG) is the department within SAD responsible for operations that include the collection of intelligence in hostile countries and regions, and all high threat military or intelligence operations with which the U.S. government does not wish to be overtly associated. As such, members of the unit (called Paramilitary Operations Officers and Specialized Skills Officers) normally do not carry any objects or clothing (e.g., military uniforms) that would associate them with the United States government. If they are compromised during a mission, the government of the United States may deny all knowledge.
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The CIA began as a spy agency after World War Two, but soon the CIA was planning and executing covert operations across the globe without proper congressional oversight. From the removal of the democratically elected leaders of Iran and Guatemala to the attempted invasion of Cuba, to the removal of every secular government in the Middle East, the influence of the agency is insidious. But how can a democratic society tolerate such a secret and lethal institution that works against the very values America seeks to uphold around the world?
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According to the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, a covert operation (also as CoveOps or covert ops) is “an operation that is so planned and executed as to conceal the identity of or permit plausible denial by the sponsor.” It is intended to create a political effect which can have implications in the military, intelligence or law enforcement arenas. Covert operations aim to fulfill their mission objectives without any parties knowing who sponsored or carried out the operation. It is normally financed by government revenues but in this age of super-empowered individuals and corporations they could become a common tool of power beyond traditional war and diplomacy.
Under United States law, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) must lead covert operations unless the president finds that another agency should do so and properly informs the congress. Normally, the CIA is the US Government agency legally allowed to carry out covert action. The CIA’s authority to conduct covert action comes from the National Security Act of 1947. President Ronald Reagan issued Executive Order 12333 titled in 1984. This order defined covert action as “special activities”, both political and military, that the US Government could legally deny. The CIA was also designated as the sole authority under the 1991 Intelligence Authorization Act and in Title 50 of the United States Code Section 413(e). The CIA must have a “Presidential Finding” issued by the President of the United States in order to conduct these activities under the Hughes-Ryan amendment to the 1991 Intelligence Authorization Act. These findings are then monitored by the oversight committees in both the US Senate and the House of Representatives. As a result of this framework, the CIA “receives more oversight from the Congress than any other agency in the federal government”. The Special Activities Division (SAD) is a division of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, responsible for Covert Action and “Special Activities”. These special activities include covert political influence and paramilitary operations. The division is overseen by the United States Secretary of State.
Special Activities Division – Special Operations Group | SAD SOG
Published on Jun 30, 2015
The Special Activities Division (SAD) is a division in the United States Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) National Clandestine Service responsible for covert operations known as “special activities”. Within SAD there are two separate groups, SAD/SOG for tactical paramilitary operations and SAD/PAG for covert political action. The Special Activities Division reports directly to the Deputy Director of the National Clandestine Service.
Special Operations Group (SOG) is the department within SAD responsible for operations that include the collection of intelligence in hostile countries and regions, and all high threat military or intelligence operations with which the U.S. government does not wish to be overtly associated. As such, members of the unit (called Paramilitary Operations Officers and Specialized Skills Officers) normally do not carry any objects or clothing (e.g., military uniforms) that would associate them with the United States government. If they are compromised during a mission, the United States government may deny all knowledge.
SOG is generally considered the most secretive special operations force in the United States. The group selects operatives from other tier one special mission units such as Delta Force, DEVGRU and ISA, as well as other United States special operations forces, such as USNSWC, MARSOC, Special Forces, SEALs and 24th STS.
SOG Paramilitary Operations Officers account for a majority of Distinguished Intelligence Cross and Intelligence Star recipients during any given conflict or incident which elicits CIA involvement. An award bestowing either of these citations represents the highest honors awarded within the CIA organization in recognition of distinguished valor and excellence in the line of duty. SAD/SOG operatives also account for the majority of the names displayed on the Memorial Wall at CIA headquarters indicating that the agent died while on active duty.
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Special Operations Group (SOG) is the department within SAD responsible for operations that include the collection ofintelligence in hostile countries and regions, and all high threat military or intelligence operations with which the U.S. government does not wish to be overtly associated.[2] As such, members of the unit (called Paramilitary Operations Officers and Specialized Skills Officers) normally do not carry any objects or clothing (e.g., military uniforms) that would associate them with the United States government.[3] If they are compromised during a mission, the United States government maydeny all knowledge.[4]
SOG Paramilitary Operations Officers account for a majority of Distinguished Intelligence Cross and Intelligence Star recipients during any given conflict or incident which elicits CIA involvement. An award bestowing either of these citations represents the highest honors awarded within the CIA organization in recognition of distinguished valor and excellence in the line of duty. SAD/SOG operatives also account for the majority of the names displayed on the Memorial Wall at CIA headquarters indicating that the agent died while on active duty.[5]
Political Action Group (PAG) is responsible for covert activities related to political influence, psychological operations and economic warfare. The rapid development of technology has added cyberwarfare to their mission. Tactical units within SAD are also capable of carrying out covert political action while deployed in hostile and austere environments. A large covert operation usually has components that involve many, or all, of these categories, as well as paramilitary operations. Political and Influence covert operations are used to support U.S. foreign policy. Often overt support for one element of an insurgency would be counter-productive due to the impression it would have on the local population. In such cases, covert assistance allows the U.S. to assist without damaging these elements in the process. Many of the other activities (such as propaganda, economic and cyber) support the overall political effort. There have been issues in the past with attempts to influence the US media such as in Operation Mockingbird. However, these activities are now subject to the same oversight as all covert action operations.[6]
SAD provides the President of the United States with an option when overt military and/or diplomatic actions are not viable or politically feasible. SAD can be directly tasked by the President of the United States or the National Security Council at the President’s direction. This is unlike any other U.S. special mission force. However, SAD/SOG has far fewer members than most of the other special missions units, such as the U.S. Army’s 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (Delta Force) or Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU).[7][8][9]
As the action arm of the DO, SAD/SOG conducts direct action missions such as raids, ambushes, sabotage, targeted killings[10][11][12] and unconventional warfare(e.g., training and leading guerrilla and military units of other countries in combat). SAD/SOG also conducts special reconnaissance, that can be either military orintelligence driven, but is carried out by Paramilitary Officers (also called Paramilitary Operatives) when in “non-permissive environments“. Paramilitary Operations Officers are also fully trained case officers (i.e., “spies”) and as such conduct clandestine human intelligence (HUMINT) operations throughout the world.[13]SAD/SOG officers are selected from the most elite U.S. military units.[9]
The political action group within SAD conducts the deniable psychological operations, also known as black propaganda, as well as “Covert Influence” to effect political change as an important part of any Administration’s foreign policy.[1] Covert intervention in a foreign election is the most significant form of political action. This could involve financial support for favored candidates, media guidance, technical support for public relations, get-out-the-vote or political organizing efforts, legal expertise, advertising campaigns, assistance with poll-watching, and other means of direct action. Policy decisions could be influenced by assets, such as subversion of officials of the country, to make decisions in their official capacity that are in the furtherance of U.S. policy aims. In addition, mechanisms for forming and developing opinions involve the covert use of propaganda.[14]
Propaganda includes leaflets, newspapers, magazines, books, radio, and television, all of which are geared to convey the U.S. message appropriate to the region. These techniques have expanded to cover the internet as well. They may employ officers to work as journalists, recruit agents of influence, operate media platforms, plant certain stories or information in places it is hoped it will come to public attention, or seek to deny and/or discredit information that is public knowledge. In all such propaganda efforts, “black” operations denote those in which the audience is to be kept ignorant of the source; “white” efforts are those in which the originator openly acknowledges himself; and “gray” operations are those in which the source is partly but not fully acknowledged.[14][15]
SAD’s existence became better known as a result of the “Global War on Terror“. Beginning in autumn of 2001, SAD/SOG paramilitary teams arrived in Afghanistanto hunt down al-Qaeda leaders, facilitate the entry of U.S. Army Special Forces and lead the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan against the rulingTaliban. SAD/SOG units also defeated Ansar al-Islam in Iraqi Kurdistan prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003[17][18] and trained, equipped, organized and led theKurdishpeshmerga forces to defeat the Iraqi army in northern Iraq.[13][17] Despite being the most covert unit in U.S. Special Operations, numerous books have been published on the exploits of CIA paramilitary officers, including Conboy and Morrison’s Feet to the Fire: CIA Covert Operations in Indonesia,[19] and Warner’sShooting at the Moon: The Story of America’s Clandestine War in Laos.[20] Most experts consider SAD/SOG the premiere force for unconventional warfare (UW), whether that warfare consists of either creating or combating an insurgency in a foreign country.[7][21][22]
There remains some conflict between the National Clandestine Service and the more clandestine parts of the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM),[23] such as the Joint Special Operations Command. This is usually confined to the civilian/political heads of the respective Department/Agency. The combination of SAD and USSOCOM units has resulted in some of the most notable successes of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to include the locating and killing of Osama bin Laden.[22][24] SAD/SOG has several missions. One of these missions is the recruiting, training, and leading of indigenous forces in combat operations.[22] SAD/SOG and its successors have been used when it was considered desirable to have plausible deniability about U.S. support (this is called a covert operation or “covert action”).[13] Unlike other special missions units, SAD/SOG operatives combine special operations and clandestine intelligence capabilities in one individual.[9] These individuals can operate in any environment (sea, air or ground) with limited to no support.[7]
The Pentagon commissioned a study to determine whether the CIA or the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) should conduct covert action paramilitary operations. Their study determined that the CIA should maintain this capability and be the “sole government agency conducting covert action.” The DoD found that, even under U.S. law, it does not have the legal authority to conduct covert action, nor the operational agility to carry out these types of missions.[27] The operation in May 2011 that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden was a covert action under the authority of the CIA.[24][28]
SAD/SOG has several hundred officers, mostly former members of special operations forces (SOF) and a majority from theJoint Special Operations Command (JSOC).[29] The CIA has also recruited individuals within the agency.[30] The CIA’s formal position for these individuals is “Paramilitary Operations Officers” and “Specialized Skills Officers.” Paramilitary Operations Officers attend the Clandestine Service Trainee (CST) program, which trains them as clandestine intelligence operatives (known as “Core Collectors” within the Agency). The primary strengths of SAD/SOG Paramilitary Officers are operational agility, adaptability, and deniability. They often operate in small teams, typically made up of six operators (with some operations being carried out by a single officer), all with extensive military special operations expertise and a set of specialized skills that does not exist in any other unit.[9] As fully trained intelligence case officers, Paramilitary Operations Officers possess all the clandestine skills to collect human intelligence—and most importantly—to recruit assets from among the indigenous troops receiving their training. These officers often operate in remote locations behind enemy lines to carry out direct action (including raids and sabotage), counter-intelligence, guerrilla/unconventional warfare, counter-terrorism, and hostage rescue missions, in addition to being able to conduct espionage via HUMINT assets.
There are four principal elements within SAD’s Special Operations Group: the Air Branch, the Maritime Branch, the Ground Branch, and the Armor and Special Programs Branch. The Armor and Special Programs Branch is charged with development, testing, and covert procurement of new personnel and vehicular armor and maintenance of stockpiles of ordnance and weapons systems used by SOG, almost all of which must be obtained from clandestine sources abroad, in order to provide SOG operatives and their foreign trainees with plausible deniability in accordance with U.S. Congressional directives.
Together, SAD/SOG contains a complete combined arms covert military. Paramilitary Operations Officers are the core of each branch and routinely move between the branches to gain expertise in all aspects of SOG.[30] As such, Paramilitary Operations Officers are trained to operate in a multitude of environments. Because these officers are taken from the most highly trained units in the U.S. military and then provided with extensive additional training to become CIA clandestine intelligence officers, many U.S. security experts assess them as the most elite of the U.S. special missions units.[31]
While the World War IIOffice of Strategic Services (OSS) was technically a military agency under the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in practice it was fairly autonomous of military control and enjoyed direct access to PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt. Major General William Joseph Donovan was the head of the OSS. Donovan was a soldier and Medal of Honor recipient from World War I. He was also a lawyer and former classmate of FDR at Columbia Law School.[37] Like its successor, the CIA, OSS included both human intelligence functions and special operations paramilitary functions. Its Secret Intelligence division was responsible for espionage, while its Jedburgh teams, a joint U.S.-UK-French unit, were forerunners of groups that create guerrilla units, such as the U.S. Army Special Forces and the CIA. OSS’ Operational Groups were larger U.S. units that carried out direct action behind enemy lines. Even during World War II, the idea of intelligence and special operations units not under strict military control was controversial. OSS operated primarily in the European Theater of Operations (ETO) and to some extent in the China-Burma-India Theater, while General of the ArmyDouglas MacArthur was extremely reluctant to have any OSS personnel within his area of operations.
One of the OSS’ greatest accomplishments during World War II was its penetration of Nazi Germany by OSS operatives. The OSS was responsible for training German and Austrian commandos for missions inside Nazi Germany. Some of these agents included exiled communists and socialist party members, labor activists, anti-NaziPOWs, and German and Jewish refugees. At the height of its influence during World War II, the OSS employed almost 24,000 people.[38]
OSS Paramilitary Officers parachuted into many countries then behind enemy lines, including France, Norway, Greece and The Netherlands. In Crete, OSS paramilitary officers linked up with, equipped and fought alongside Greek resistance forces against the Axis occupation.
OSS was disbanded shortly after World War II, with its intelligence analysis functions moving temporarily into the U.S. Department of State. Espionage and counterintelligence went into military units, while paramilitary and related functions went into an assortment of ‘ad hoc’ groups, such as the Office of Policy Coordination. Between the original creation of the CIA by the National Security Act of 1947 and various mergers and reorganizations through 1952, the wartime OSS functions generally went into CIA. The mission of training and leading guerrillas generally stayed in the United States Army Special Forces, but those missions required to remain covert were folded into the paramilitary arm of the CIA. The direct descendant of the OSS’ Special Operations is the CIA’s Special Activities Division.
Tibet
After the Chinese invasion of Tibet in October 1950, the CIA inserted SAD paramilitary teams into Tibet to train and lead Tibetan resistance fighters against thePeople’s Liberation Army of China. These teams selected and then trained Tibetan soldiers in the Rocky Mountains of the United States;[39] training occurred atCamp Hale.[40][41] The SAD teams then advised and led these commandos against the Chinese, both from Nepal and India. In addition, SAD Paramilitary Officers were responsible for the Dalai Lama‘s clandestine escape to India, narrowly escaping capture and certain execution by the Chinese government.[39]
According to a book by retired CIA officer John Kenneth Knaus, entitled Orphans Of The Cold War: America And The Tibetan Struggle For Survival, Gyalo Thondup, the older brother of the 14th (and current) Dalai Lama, sent the CIA five Tibetan recruits. These recruits were then trained in paramilitary tactics on the island ofSaipan in the Northern Marianas.[42] Shortly thereafter, the five men were covertly returned to Tibet “to assess and organize the resistance” and selected another 300 Tibetans for training. U.S. assistance to the Tibetan resistance ceased after the 1972 Nixon visit to China, after which the United States and China normalized relations.[43]
The CIA sponsored a variety of activities during the Korean War. These activities included maritime operations behind North Korean lines. Yong Do Island, connected by a rugged isthmus to Pusan, served as the base for those operations. These operations were carried out by well-trained Korean guerrillas. The four principal U.S. advisers responsible for the training and operational planning of those special missions were Dutch Kramer, Tom Curtis, George Atcheson and Joe Pagnella. All of these Paramilitary Operations Officers operated through a CIA front organization called the Joint Advisory Commission, Korea (JACK), headquartered at Tongnae, a village near Pusan, on the peninsula’s southeast coast.[44] These paramilitary teams were responsible for numerous maritime raids and ambushes behind North Korean lines, as well as prisoner of warrescue operations. These were the first maritime unconventional warfare units that trained indigenous forces as surrogates. They also provided a model, along with the other CIA-sponsored ground based paramilitary Korean operations, for theMilitary Assistance Command, Vietnam-Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG) activities conducted by the U.S. military and the CIA/SAD in Vietnam.[7][44] In addition, CIA paramilitary ground-based teams worked directly for U.S. military commanders, specifically with the 8th Army, on the “White Tiger” initiative. This initiative included inserting South Korean commandos and CIA Paramilitary Operations Officers prior to the two major amphibious assaults on North Korea, including the landing at Inchon.[7]
The Bay of Pigs Invasion (known as “La Batalla de Girón”, or “Playa Girón” in Cuba), was an unsuccessful attempt by a U.S.-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba and overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The plan was launched in April 1961, less than three months after John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency of the United States. TheCuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, trained and equipped by Eastern Bloc nations, defeated the exile-combatants in three days.
The sea-borne invasion force landed on April 17, and fighting lasted until April 19, 1961. CIA Paramilitary Operations OfficersGrayston Lynch and William “Rip” Robertson led the first assault on the beaches, and supervised the amphibious landings.[45] Four American aircrew instructors from Alabama Air National Guard were killed while flying attack sorties.[45]Various sources estimate Cuban Army casualties (killed or injured) to be in the thousands (between 2,000 and 5,000).[46] This invasion followed the successful overthrow by the CIA of the Mosaddeqgovernment in Iran in 1953[47] and Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954,[48] but was a failure both militarily and politically.[49] Deteriorating Cuban-American relations were made worse by the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Bolivia
The National Liberation Army of Bolivia (ELN-Ejército de Liberación Nacional de Bolivia) was a communist guerrilla force that operated from the remote Ñancahuazú region against the pro-U.S. Bolivian government. They were joined by Che Guevara in the mid-1960s.[50][51] The ELN was well equipped and scored a number of early successes against the Bolivian army in the difficult terrain of the mountainous Camiri region.[52] In the late 1960s, the CIA deployed teams of SAD Paramilitary Operations Officers to Bolivia to train the Bolivian army in order to counter the ELN.[52] These SAD teams linked up with U.S. Army Special Forces and Bolivian Special Forces to track down and capture Guevara, who was a special prize because of his leading role in the Cuban Revolution.[52] On October 9, 1967, Guevara was executed by Bolivian soldiers on the orders of CIA paramilitary operative Félix Rodríguez shortly after being captured, according to CIA documents.[53]
Vietnam and Laos
South Vietnam, Military Regions, 1967
The original OSS mission in Vietnam under MajorArchimedes Patti was to work with Ho Chi Minh in order to prepare his forces to assist the United States and their Allies in fighting the Japanese. After the end of World War II, the US agreed at Potsdam to turn Vietnam back to their previous French rulers and in 1950 the US began providing military aid to the French.[54]
CIA Paramilitary Operations Officers trained and led Hmong tribesmen in Laos and Vietnam, and their actions of these officers were not known for several years. Air America was the air component of the CIA’s paramilitary mission in Southeast Asia and was responsible for all combat, logistics and search and rescue operations in Laos and certain sections of Vietnam.[55] The ethnic minority forces numbered in the tens of thousands and they conducted direct actions mission, led by Paramilitary Operations Officers, against the communist Pathet Lao forces and their North Vietnamese allies.[7]
Elements of SAD were seen in the CIA’s Phoenix Program. One component of the Phoenix Program was involved in the capture and killing of suspected Viet Cong (National Liberation Front – NLF) members.[56] Between 1968 and 1972, the Phoenix Program captured 81,740 National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF or Viet Cong) members, of whom 26,369 were killed. This was a large proportion of U.S. killings between 1969 and 1971. The program was also successful in destroying their infrastructure. By 1970, communist plans repeatedly emphasized attacking the government’s “pacification” program and specifically targeted Phoenix agents. The NLF also imposed quotas. In 1970, for example, communist officials near Da Nang in northern South Vietnam instructed their agents to “kill 400 persons” deemed to be government “tyrant[s]” and to “annihilate” anyone involved with the “pacification” program. Several North Vietnamese officials have made statements about the effectiveness of Phoenix.[57][58]
MAC-V SOG (Studies and Observations Group) (which was originally named the Special Operations Group, but was changed for cover purposes), was created and active during the Vietnam War. While CIA was just one part of MAC-V SOG, it did have operational control of some of the programs. Many of the military members of MAC-V SOG joined the CIA after their military service. The legacy of MAC-V SOG continues within SAD’s Special Operations Group.[59]
Maritime activities against the USSR
In 1973, SAD/SOG and the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology built and deployed the USNS Glomar Explorer (T-AG-193), a large deep-sea salvage ship, on a secret operation. This operation was called Project Azorian (erroneously called Project Jennifer by the press).[60] Her mission was to recover a sunken Sovietsubmarine, K-129, which had been lost in April 1968.[61][62] A mechanical failure caused two-thirds of the submarine to break off during recovery,[60] but SAD recovered two nuclear-tipped torpedoes, cryptographic machines and the bodies of six Soviet submariners.[63] An alternative theory claims that all of K-129 was recovered[64] and that the official account was an “elaborate cover-up”.[65]
Also in the 1970s, the U.S. Navy, the National Security Agency (NSA) and SAD/SOG [66] conducted Operation Ivy Bells and a series of other missions to place wire taps on Soviet underwater communications cables. These operations were covered in detail in the 1998 book Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage.[67] In the 1985 edition of “Studies in Intelligence”, the CIA’s in-house journal that outsiders rarely get to see, the CIA describes the “staggering expense and improbable engineering feats” that culminated in the August 1974 mission.[68]
Nicaragua
In 1979, the U.S.-backed Anastasio Somoza Debayle dictatorship in Nicaragua fell to the socialist Sandinistas. Once in power, the Sandinistas disbanded theNicaraguan National Guard, who had committed many human rights abuses, and arrested and executed some of its members. Other former National Guard members helped to form the backbone of the Nicaraguan Counterrevolution or Contra. SAD/SOG paramilitary teams were deployed to train and lead these forces against the Sandinista government. These paramilitary activities were based in Honduras and Costa Rica. Direct military aid by the United States was eventually forbidden by the Boland Amendment of the Defense Appropriations Act of 1983. The Boland Amendment was extended in October 1984 to forbid action by not only the Defense Department, but also to include the Central Intelligence Agency.[69][70]
The Boland Amendment was a compromise because the U.S. Democratic Party did not have enough votes for a comprehensive ban on military aid. It covered only appropriated funds spent by intelligence agencies. Some of Reagan’s national security officials used non-appropriated money of the National Security Council (NSC) to circumvent the Amendment. NSC officials sought to arrange funding by third parties. These efforts resulted in the Iran-Contra Affair of 1987, which concerned Contra funding through the proceeds of arms sales to the Islamic Republic of Iran. No court ever made a determination whether Boland covered the NSC and on the grounds that it was a prohibition rather than a criminal statute, no one was indicted for violating it. Congress later resumed aid to the Contras, totaling over $300 million. The Contra war ended when the Sandinistas were voted out of power by a war-weary populace in 1990.[70][71]Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega was re-elected as President of Nicaragua in 2006 and took office again on January 10, 2007.
El Salvador
CIA personnel were also involved in the Salvadoran civil war.[72] Some allege that the techniques used to interrogate prisoners in El Salvador foreshadowed those later used in Iraq and Afghanistan.[73] In fact, when a similar counter-insurgency program was proposed in Iraq, it was referred to as “the Salvador Option”.[74]
Somalia
Location of Somalia
SAD sent in teams of Paramilitary Operations Officers into Somalia prior to the U.S. intervention in 1992. On December 23, 1992, Paramilitary Officer Larry Freedman became the first casualty of the conflict in Somalia. Freedman was a former ArmyDelta Force operator who had served in every conflict that the U.S. was involved in, both officially and unofficially, since Vietnam.[75] Freedman was killed while conducting special reconnaissance in advance of the entry of U.S. military forces. His mission was completely voluntary, as it required entry into a very hostile area without any support. Freedman was awarded the Intelligence Star on January 5, 1993 for his “extraordinary heroism”.[76]
SAD/SOG teams were key in working with JSOC and tracking high value targets (HVT), known as “Tier One Personalities”. Their efforts, working under extremely dangerous conditions with little to no support, led to several very successful joint JSOC/CIA operations.[77] In one specific operation, a CIA case officer, Michael Shanklin[78] and codenamed “Condor”, working with a CIA Technical Operations Officer from the Directorate of Science and Technology, managed to get a cane with a beacon in it to Osman Ato, a wealthy businessman, arms importer, and Mohammed Aideed, a money man whose name was right below Mohamed Farrah Aidid’s on the Tier One list.
Once Condor confirmed that Ato was in a vehicle, JSOC‘s Delta Force launched a capture operation.
a Little Bird helicopter dropped out of the sky and a sniper leaned out and fired three shots into the car’s engine block. The car ground to a halt as commandos roped down from hovering Blackhawks [sic], surrounded the car and handcuffed Ato. It was the first known helicopter takedown of suspects in a moving car. The next time Jones saw the magic cane, an hour later, Garrison had it in his hand. “I like this cane,” Jones remembers the general exclaiming, a big grin on his face. “Let’s use this again.” Finally, a tier one personality was in custody.[77]
President Bill Clinton withdrew U.S. forces on May 4, 1994.[79]
In June 2006, the Islamic Courts Union seized control of southern Somalia, including the country’s capital Mogadishu, prompting the Ethiopian government to send in troops to try to protect the transitional government. In December, the Islamic Courts warned Ethiopia they would declare war if Ethiopia did not remove all its troops from Somalia. Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, leader of the Islamic Courts, called for a jihad, or holy war, against Ethiopia and encouraged foreign Muslim fighters to come to Somalia. At that time, the United States accused the group of being controlled by al-Qaeda, but the Islamic Courts denied that charge.[80]
In 2009, PBS reported that al-Qaeda had been training terrorists in Somalia for years. Until December 2006, Somalia’s government had no power outside of the town of Baidoa, 150 miles (240 km) from the capital. The countryside and the capital were run by warlords and militia groups who could be paid to protect terrorist groups.[80]
CIA officers kept close tabs on the country and paid a group of Somali warlords to help hunt down members of al-Qaeda according to the New York Times.[citation needed] Meanwhile, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the deputy to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, issued a message calling for all Muslims to go to Somalia.[80]On January 9, 2007, a U.S. official said that ten militants were killed in one airstrike.[81]
On September 14, 2009, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a senior al-Qaeda leader in East Africa as well as a senior leader in Shabaab, al Qaeda’s surrogate in Somalia, was killed by elements of U.S. Special Operations. According to a witness, at least two AH-6 Little Bird attack helicopters strafed a two-car convoy. Navy SEALs then seized the body of Nabhan and took two other wounded fighters captive.[82][83] JSOC and the CIA had been trying to kill Nabhan for some time including back in January 2007, when an AC-130 Gunship was called in on one attempt. A U.S. intelligence source stated that CIA paramilitary teams are directly embedded with Ethiopian forces in Somalia, allowing for the tactical intelligence to launch these operations.[84] Nabhan was wanted for his involvement in the 1998 United States embassy bombings, as well as leading the cell behind the 2002 Mombasa attacks.[82][85]
From 2010 to 2013, the CIA set up the Somalia National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) by providing training, funding and diplomatic access. In the same time period, the EU and UN has spent millions of dollars for the military training of the Somali National Army (SNA). NISA is considered a professional Somali security force that can be relied upon to neutralize the terrorist threat.[86] This force responded to the complex al-Shabaab attack on the Banadir Regional Courthouse in Mogadishu which killed 25 civilians. NISA’s response however saved 100s and resulted in the death of all the al-Shabaab guerrillas involved.[87]
Significant events during this timeframe included the targeted drone strikes against British al-Qaida operative Bilal el-Berjawi [88] and Moroccan al-Qaida operative Abu Ibrahim.[89] It also included the rescue of U.S. citizen Jessica Buchanan by U.S. Navy SEALs.[90] All likely aided by intelligence collection efforts in Somalia.[91]
Afghanistan
Hamid Karzai with Special Forces and CIA Paramilitary in late 2001.
During the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Paramilitary Operations Officers were instrumental in equippingMujaheddin forces against the Soviet Army. Although the CIA in general, and a Texas congressman named Charlie Wilson in particular, have received most of the attention, the key architect of this strategy was Michael G. Vickers. Vickers was a young Paramilitary Operations Officer from SAD/SOG. The CIA’s efforts have been given credit for assisting in ending the Sovietinvolvement in Afghanistan and bringing Taliban to power.[92]
SAD paramilitary teams were active in Afghanistan in the 1990s in clandestine operations to locate and kill or capture Osama Bin Laden. These teams planned several operations, but did not receive the order to execute from President Bill Clintonbecause the available intelligence did not guarantee a successful outcome weighed against the extraordinary risk to the SAD/SOG teams that would execute the mission.[13] These efforts did however build many of the relationships that would prove essential in the 2001 U.S. Invasion of Afghanistan.[13]
On September 26, 2001, members of the Special Activities Division, led by Gary Schroen, were the first U.S. forces inserted into Afghanistan. The Northern Afghanistan Liaison Team entered the country nine days after the 9/11 attack[93][94] and linked up with the Northern Alliance as part of Task Force Dagger.[95]
They provided the Northern Alliance with resources including cash to buy weapons and prepared for the arrival of USSOCOM forces. The plan for the invasion of Afghanistan was developed by the CIA, the first time in United States history that such a large-scale military operation was planned by the CIA.[96] SAD, U.S. Army Special Forces, and the Northern Alliance combined to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan with minimal loss of U.S. lives. They did this without the use of conventional U.S. military ground forces.[13][97][98][99]
What made the Afghan campaign a landmark in the U.S. Military’s history is that it was prosecuted by Special Operations forces from all the services, along with Navy and Air Force tactical power, operations by the Afghan Northern Alliance and the CIA were equally important and fully integrated. No large Army or Marine force was employed”.[100]
The valor exhibited by Afghan and American soldiers, fighting to free Afghanistan from a horribly cruel regime, will inspire even the most jaded reader. The stunning victory of the horse soldiers – 350 Special Forces soldiers, 100 C.I.A. officers and 15,000 Northern Alliance fighters routing a Taliban army 50,000 strong – deserves a hallowed place in American military history”.[101]
Small and highly agile paramilitary mobile teams spread out over the countryside to meet with locals and gather information about the Taliban and al-Qa’ida. During that time, one of the teams was approached in a village and asked by a young man for help in retrieving his teenage sister. He explained that a senior Taliban official had taken her as a wife and had sharply restricted the time she could spend with her family. The team gave the man a small hand-held tracking device to pass along to his sister, with instructions for her to activate it when the Taliban leader returned home. The team responded to her emergency signal, capturing the senior Taliban official and rescuing the sister. The siblings’ tearful reunion left the team at a loss for words—a rarity for the normally loud warriors of CIA’s Special Activities Division.[102]
In December 2001, SAD/SOG and the Army’s Delta Force tracked down Osama bin Laden in the rugged mountains near the Khyber Pass in Afghanistan.[103]Former CIA station chief Gary Berntsen as well as a subsequent Senate investigation claimed that the combined American special operations task force was largely outnumbered by al-Qaeda forces and that they were denied additional US troops by higher command.[104] The task force also requested munitions to block the avenues of egress of bin Laden, but that request was also denied.[105] The team allegedly uncovered evidence in the subsequent site exploration that bin Laden’s ultimate aim was to obtain and detonate a nuclear device in a terrorist attack.[96] According to other press reports, SAD were ineffectual and “Bin Laden and bodyguards walked uncontested out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan’s unregulated tribal area.”[106]
Surge
In September 2009, the CIA planned on “deploying teams of spies, analysts and paramilitary operatives to Afghanistan, part of a broad intelligence ‘surge’ ordered by President Obama. This will make its station there among the largest in the agency’s history.”[107] This presence is expected to surpass the size of the stations in Iraq and Vietnam at the height of those wars.[107] The station is located at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and is led “by a veteran with an extensive background in paramilitary operations”.[108] The majority of the CIA’s workforce is located among secret bases and military special operations posts throughout the country.[108][109]
Also in 2009, General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, planned to request an increase in teams of CIA operatives, including their elite paramilitary officers, to join with U.S. military special operations forces. This combination worked well in Iraq and is largely credited with the success of that surge.[108][110] There have been basically three options described in the media: McChrystal’s increased counterinsurgency campaign; a counter-terror campaign using special operations raids and drone strikes; and withdrawal. The most successful combination in both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has been the linking up of SAD and military special forces to fight alongside highly trained indigenous units. One thing all of these options have in common is a requirement for greater CIA participation.[110]
The End Game
According to the current and former intelligence officials, General McChrystal also had his own preferred candidate for the Chief of Station (COS) job, a good friend and decorated CIA paramilitary officer.[111] The officer had extensive experience in war zones, including two previous tours in Afghanistan with one as the Chief of Station, as well as tours in the Balkans, Baghdad and Yemen. He is well known in CIA lore as “the man who saved Hamid Karzai‘s life when the CIA led the effort to oust the Taliban from power in 2001″. President Karzai is said to be greatly indebted to this officer and was pleased when the officer was named chief of station again. According to interviews with several senior officials, this officer “was uniformly well-liked and admired. A career paramilitary officer, he came to the CIA after several years in an elite Marine unit”.[111][112]
General McChrystal’s strategy included the lash up of special operations forces from the U.S. Military and from SAD/SOG to duplicate the initial success and the defeat of the Taliban in 2001[113] and the success of the “Surge” in Iraq in 2007.[114] This strategy proved highly successful and worked very well in Afghanistan with SAD/SOG and JSOC forces conducting raids nearly every night having “superb results” against the enemy.[115]
In 2001, the CIA’s SAD/SOG began creating what would come to be called Counter-terrorism Pursuit Teams (CTPT).[116][117] These units grew to include over 3,000 operatives by 2010 and have been involved in sustained heavy fighting against the enemy. It is considered the “best Afghan fighting force”.
Located at 7,800 feet (2,400 m) above sea level, Firebase Lilley in Shkin serves as a “nerve center for the covert war”.[117] This covert war includes being a hub for these CTPT operations with Firebase Lilley being just one in a constellation of CIA bases across Afghanistan.[117] These units have not only been highly effective in combat operations against the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces, but have also been used to engage with the tribes in areas with no other official government presence.[118]
This covert war also includes a large SOG/CTPT expansion into Pakistan to target senior al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership in the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA).[119] CTPT units are the main effort in both the “Counterterrorism plus” and the full “Counterinsurgency” options being discussed by the Obama administration in the December 2010 review.[120] SOG/CTPT are also key to any exit strategy for the U.S. government to leave Afghanistan, while still being able to deny al-Qaeda and other trans-national extremists groups a safehaven both in Afghanistan and in the FATA of Pakistan.[121]
In January 2013, a CIA drone strike killed Mullah Nazir a senior Taliban commander in the South Waziristan area of Pakistan believed responsible for carrying out the insurgent effort against the US military in Afghanistan. Nazir’s death degraded the Taliban.[122]
The U.S. has decided to lean heavily on CIA in general and SAD specifically in their efforts to withdraw from Afghanistan as it did in Iraq.[123] There are plans being considered to have several US Military special operations elements assigned to CIA after the withdrawal.[124]
Yemen
On November 5, 2002, a missile launched from a CIA-controlled Predator drone killed al-Qaeda members traveling in a remote area in Yemen. SAD/SOG paramilitary teams had been on the ground tracking their movements for months and called in this air strike.[125] One of those in the car was Ali Qaed Senyan al-Harthi, al-Qaeda’s chief operative in Yemen and a suspect in the October 2000 bombing of the destroyer USS Cole. Five other people, believed to be low-level al-Qaeda members, were also killed to include an American named Kamal Derwish.[126][127] Former Deputy U.S. Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz called it “a very successful tactical operation” and said “such strikes are useful not only in killing terrorists but in forcing al-Qaeda to change its tactics”.[126]
“It’s an important step that has been taken in that it has eliminated another level of experienced leadership from al-Qaeda,” said Vince Cannistraro, former head of counter-terrorism for the CIA and current ABC News consultant. “It will help weaken the organization and make it much less effective.”[128][129] Harithi was on the run, pursued by several security forces who were looking for him and Muhammad Hamdi al-Ahdal, another suspect in the USS Cole bombing case.[130]
In 2009, the Obama administration authorized continued lethal operations in Yemen by the CIA.[131] As a result, the SAD/SOG and JSOC have joined together to aggressively target al-Qaeda operatives in that country, both through leading Yemenese special forces and intelligence driven drone strikes.[131] A major target of these operations is ImamAnwar al-Aulaqi, an American citizen with ties to both Nidal Hassan, the alleged Fort Hood attacker, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas 2009 attempted bomber of Northwest Airline flight 253.[132] Imam al-Aulaki was killed on September 30, 2011 by an air attack carried out by the Joint Special Operations Command.[133]
Iraq
SAD paramilitary teams entered Iraq before the 2003 invasion. Once on the ground they prepared the battle space for the subsequent arrival of U.S. military forces. SAD teams then combined with U.S. Army special forces (on a team called the Northern Iraq Liaison Element or NILE).[17] This team organized the KurdishPeshmerga for the subsequent U.S. led invasion. This joint team combined in Operation Viking Hammer to defeat Ansar al-Islam, an Islamist group allied to al-Qaeda, which several battle-hardened fighters from Afghanistan had joined after the fall of the Taliban, in a battle for control over the northeast of Iraq – a battle that turned out being one of the “most intense battles of Special Forces since Vietnam”.[134] This battle was for an entire territory that was completely occupied by Ansar al-Islam and was executed prior to the invasion in February 2003. If this battle had not been as successful as it was, there would have been a considerable hostile force in the rear of the U.S./secular Kurdish force in the subsequent assault on the Iraqi army to the south. The U.S. side was represented by paramilitary operations officers from SAD/SOG and the army’s 10th Special Forces Group (10th SFG). 10th SFG soldiers were awarded three Silver Stars and six Bronze Stars with V for valor for this battle alone [135] and several paramilitary officers were awarded the Intelligence Star for valor in combat.[136] This battle was a significant direct attack and victory on a key U.S. opponent. It resulted in the deaths of a substantial number of militants and the uncovering of a crude laboratory that had traces of poisons and information on chemical weapons at Sargat.[17][137] The team found foreign identity cards, visas, and passports on the enemy bodies. They had come from a wide variety of Middle Eastern and north African countries including Yemen, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Tunisia, Morocco, and Iran.[135]Sargat was also the only facility that had traces of chemical weapons discovered in the Iraq war.[18][136][138]
The village of Biyara and Base of Ansar al-Islam 2001–2003
In a 2004 U.S. News & World Report article, “A firefight in the mountains”, the author states:
“Viking Hammer would go down in the annals of Special Forces history—a battle fought on foot, under sustained fire from an enemy lodged in the mountains, and with minimal artillery and air support.”[135]
SAD/SOG teams also conducted high risk special reconnaissance missions behind Iraqi lines to identify senior leadership targets. These missions led to the initial assassination attempts against Iraqi PresidentSaddam Hussein and his key generals. Although the initial air strike against Hussein was unsuccessful in killing the dictator, it was successful in effectively ending his ability to command and control his forces. Other strikes against key generals were successful and significantly degraded the command’s ability to react to and maneuver against the U.S.-led invasion force.[17][139] SAD operations officers were also successful in convincing key Iraqi army officers to surrender their units once the fighting started and/or not to oppose the invasion force.[18]
NATO member Turkey refused to allow its territory to be used by the U.S. Army’s 4th Infantry Division for the invasion. As a result, the SAD/SOG, U.S. Army special forces joint teams, the Kurdish Peshmerga and the 173d Airborne Brigade were the entire northern force against the Iraqi army during the invasion. Their efforts kept the 13 divisions of the Iraqi Army in place to defend against the Kurds rather allowing them to contest the coalition force coming from the south.[134] This combined U.S. special operations and Kurdish force defeated the Iraqi Army.[17] Four members of the SAD/SOG team received CIA’s rare Intelligence Star for “extraordinary heroism”.[18]
The mission that captured Saddam Hussein was called “Operation Red Dawn“. It was planned and carried out by JSOC’s Delta Force and SAD/SOG teams (together called Task Force 121). The operation eventually included around 600 soldiers from the 1st Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division.[140][141] Special operations troops probably numbered around 40. Much of the publicity and credit for the capture went to the 4th Infantry Division soldiers, but CIA and JSOC were the driving force. “Task Force 121 were actually the ones who pulled Saddam out of the hole” said Robert Andrews, former deputy assistant Secretary of Defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict. “They can’t be denied a role anymore.”[140]
CIA paramilitary units continued to team up with the JSOC in Iraq and in 2007 the combination created a lethal force many credit with having a major impact in the success of “the Surge“. They did this by killing or capturing many of the key al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq.[142][143] In a CBS60 Minutes interview, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Woodward described a new special operations capability that allowed for this success. This capability was developed by the joint teams of CIA and JSOC.[144] Several senior U.S. officials stated that the “joint efforts of JSOC and CIA paramilitary units was the most significant contributor to the defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq”.[142][145]
In May 2007, Marine Major Douglas A. Zembiec was serving in SAD Ground Branch in Iraq when he was killed by small arms fire while leading a raid.[146][147]Reports from fellow paramilitary officers stated that the flash radio report sent was “five wounded and one martyred”[148] Major Zembiec was killed while saving his soldiers, Iraqi soldiers. He was honored with an intelligence star for his valor in combat.[149]
On October 26, 2008, SAD/SOG and JSOC conducted an operation in Syria targeting the “foreign fighter logistics network” bringing al-Qaeda operatives into Iraq (See 2008 Abu Kamal raid).[150] A U.S. source told CBS News that “the leader of the foreign fighters, an al-Qaeda officer, was the target of Sunday’s cross-border raid.” He said the attack was successful, but did not say whether or not the al-Qaeda officer was killed.[151]Fox News later reported that Abu Ghadiya, “al-Qa’ida’s senior coordinator operating in Syria”, was killed in the attack.[152]The New York Times reported that during the raid U.S. forces killed several armed males who “posed a threat”.[153]
In September 2014 with the rise of the Islamic State, the U.S. government began aggressive military operations against them in both Iraq and Syria. SAD Ground Branch was placed in charge of the ground war.[154] This is a testament to SAD being the preeminent force for unconventional warfare and their long-standing relationship with the most effective fighting force in the region, the Kurdish Peshmerga.[155]
SAD/SOG has been very active “on the ground” inside Pakistan targeting al-Qaeda operatives for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Predator strikes and along with USSOCOM elements they have been training Pakistani Special Service Group Commandos.[156] Before leaving office, President George W. Bush authorized SAD’s successful killing of eight senior al-Qaeda operatives via targeted air strikes.[157] Among those killed were the mastermind of a 2006 plot to detonate explosives aboard planes flying across the Atlantic Rashid Rauf and the man thought to have planned the Islamabad Marriott Hotel bombing on September 20, 2008 that killed 53 people.[158][159] The CIA Director authorized the continuation of these operations and on January 23, SAD/SOG performed killings of 20 individuals in northwestern Pakistan that were terrorists. Some experts assess that the CIA Director – at that time Leon Panetta – has been more aggressive in conducting paramilitary operations in Pakistan than his predecessor.[160] A Pakistani security official stated that other strikes killed at least 10 insurgents, including five foreign nationals and possibly “a high-value target” such as a senior al-Qaeda or Taliban official.[161] On February 14, the CIA drone killed 27 taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in a missile strike in south Waziristan, a militant stronghold near the Afghan border where al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri were believed to be hiding.[162]
According to the documentary film Drone, by Tonje Schei, since 2002 the U.S. Air Force17th Reconnaissance Squadronhas been working for the CIA as “customer”, carrying out at least some of the armed missions in Pakistan.[163]
In a National Public Radio (NPR) report dated February 3, 2008, a senior official stated that al-Qaeda has been “decimated” by SAD/SOG’s air and ground operations. This senior U.S. counter-terrorism official goes on to say, “The enemy is really, really struggling. These attacks have produced the broadest, deepest and most rapid reduction in al-Qaida senior leadership that we’ve seen in several years.”[164] President Obama’s CIA Director Leon Panetta stated that SAD/SOG’s efforts in Pakistan have been “the most effective weapon” against senior al-Qaeda leadership.[165][166]
These covert attacks have increased significantly under President Obama, with as many at 50 al-Qaeda militants being killed in the month of May 2009 alone.[167][168][169] In June 2009, sixty Taliban fighters were killed while at a funeral to bury fighters that had been killed in previous CIA attacks.[170] On July 22, 2009, National Public Radio reported that U.S. officials believeSaad bin Laden, a son of Osama bin Laden, was killed by a CIA strike in Pakistan. Saad bin Laden spent years under house arrest in Iran before traveling last year to Pakistan, according to former National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell. It’s believed he was killed sometime in 2009. A senior U.S. counter-terrorism said U.S. intelligence agencies are “80 to 85 percent” certain that Saad bin Laden is dead.[171]
On August 6, 2009, the CIA announced that Baitullah Mehsud was killed by a SAD/SOG drone strike in Pakistan.[172]The New York Times said, “Although President Obama has distanced himself from many of the Bush administration’s counter-terrorism policies, he has embraced and even expanded the C.I.A.’s covert campaign in Pakistan using Predator and Reaper drones”.[172] The biggest loss may be to “Osama bin Laden’s al-Qa’ida”. For the past eight years, al-Qaeda had depended on Mehsud for protection after Mullah Mohammed Omar fled Afghanistan in late 2001. “Mehsud’s death means the tent sheltering Al Qaeda has collapsed,” an Afghan Taliban intelligence officer who had met Mehsud many times told Newsweek. “Without a doubt he was Al Qaeda’s No. 1 guy in Pakistan,” adds Mahmood Shah, a retired Pakistani Army brigadier and a former chief of the Federally Administered Tribal Area, or FATA, Mehsud’s base.[173]
Airstrikes from CIA drones struck targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan on September 8, 2009. Reports stated that seven to ten militants were killed to include one top al-Qaida leaders. He was Mustafa al-Jaziri, an Algerian national described as an “important and effective” leader and senior military commander for al-Qaida. The success of these operations are believed to have caused senior Taliban leaders to significantly alter their operations and cancel key planning meetings.[174][175]
The CIA is also increasing its campaign using Predator missile strikes on al-Qaeda in Pakistan. The number of strikes in 2009 exceeded the 2008 total, according to data compiled by the Long War Journal, which tracks strikes in Pakistan.[108] In December 2009, the New York Times reported that President Obama ordered an expansion of the drone program with senior officials describing the program as “a resounding success, eliminating key terrorists and throwing their operations into disarray”.[176] The article also cites a Pakistani official who stated that about 80 missile attacks in less than two years have killed “more than 400” enemy fighters, a number lower than most estimates but in the same range. His account of collateral damage was strikingly lower than many unofficial counts: “We believe the number of civilian casualties is just over 20, and those were people who were either at the side of major terrorists or were at facilities used by terrorists.”[176]
On December 6, 2009, a senior al-Qaeda operative, Saleh al-Somali, was killed in a drone strike in Pakistan. He was responsible for their operations outside of the Afghanistan-Pakistan region and formed part of the senior leadership. Al-Somali was engaged in plotting terrorist acts around the world and “given his central role, this probably included plotting attacks against the United States and Europe”.[177][178] On December 31, 2009, senior Taliban leader and strong Haqqani ally Haji Omar Khan, brother of Arif Khan, was killed in the strike along with the son of local tribal leader Karim Khan.[179]
In January 2010, al-Qaeda in Pakistan announced that Lashkar al-Zil leader Abdullah Said al Libi was killed in a drone missile strike. Neither al-Qaeda nor the US has revealed the date of the attack that killed Libi.[180] On January 14, 2010, subsequent to the suicide attack at Camp Chapman, the CIA located and killed the senior Taliban leader in Pakistan, Hakimullah Mehsud. Mehsud had claimed responsibility in a video he made with the suicide bomber Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi.[181]
On February 5, 2010, the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and CIA’s SAD/SOG conducted a joint raid and apprehended Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Baradar was the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the beginning of the Afghan War more than eight years ago until that date. He ranked second to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder and was known to be a close associate of Osama bin Laden. Mullah Baradar was interrogated by CIA and ISI officers for several days before news of his capture was released.[182] This capture sent the message that the Taliban leadership is not safe in Afghanistan or Pakistan.[183] “The seizure of the Afghan Taliban’s top military leader in Pakistan represents a turning point in the U.S.-led war against the militants”, U.S. officials and analysts said.[184] Per Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik, several raids in Karachi in early February netted dozens of suspected Afghan militants.[184] In other joint raids that occurred around the same time, Afghan officials said that the Taliban “shadow governorsP for two provinces in northern Afghanistan had also been detained. Mullah Abdul Salam, the Taliban’s leader in Kunduz, and Mullah Mir Mohammed of Baghlan were captured in Akora Khattack.[185]
On February 20, Muhammad Haqqani, son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, was one of four people killed in the drone strike in Pakistan’s tribal region in North Waziristan, according to two Pakistani intelligence sources.[186]
On May 31, 2010, the New York Times reported that Mustafa Abu al Yazid (AKA Saeed al Masri), a senior operational leader for Al Qaeda, was killed in an American missile strike in Pakistan’s tribal areas.[187]
From July to December 2010, predator strikes killed 535 suspected militants in the FATA to include Sheikh Fateh Al Misri, Al-Qaeda’s new third in command on September 25.[188] Al Misri was planning a major terrorist attack in Europe by recruiting British Muslims who would then go on a shooting rampage similar to what transpired in Mumbai in November 2008.[189]
The operation in the Bilal military cantonment area in the city of Abbottabad resulted in the acquisition of extensive intelligence on the future attack plans of al-Qaeda.[194][195][196] The body of bin Laden was flown to Afghanistan to be identified and then out to the USS Carl Vinson for a burial at sea.[197] DNA from bin Laden’s body, compared with DNA samples on record from his dead sister, confirmed his identity.
The operation was a result of years of intelligence work that included the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the CIA, the DSS, and the Delta Force‘s, apprehension and interrogation of Khalid Sheik Mohammad (KSM),[198][199][200] the discovery of the real name of the courier disclosed by KSM, the tracking, via signal intelligence, of the courier to the Abbottobad compound by paramilitary operatives and the establishment of a CIA safe house that provided critical advance intelligence for the operation.[201][202][203][203]
The material discovered in the raid indicated that bin Laden was still in charge of his Al-Qaeda organization and was developing plans and issuing orders at the time of his death. There is considerable controversy over claims that elements of the Pakistani government, particularly the ISI, may have been concealing the presence of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.[204][205][206] Bin Laden’s death has been labeled a “game changer” and a fatal blow to Al-Qaeda, by senior U.S. officials.[207]
Iran
In the early 1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency and Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service were ordered to overthrow the government of Iran, Prime MinisterMohammed Mosaddeq, and re-install deposed ShahMohammad Reza Pahlavi.[208] This event was called Operation Ajax.[209][210] The senior CIA officer was Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., the grandson of American president Theodore Roosevelt. The operation utilized all of SAD’s components to include political action, covert influence and paramilitary operations. The paramilitary component included training anti-Communist guerrillas to fight the Tudeh Party if they seized power in the chaos of Operation Ajax.[211] Although a significant tactical/operational success, Operation Ajax is considered very controversial with many critics.[212]
On March 9, 2007 alleged CIA Agent Robert Levinson was kidnapped from Iran’s Kish Island. On July 7, 2008, Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist and author Seymour Hersh wrote an article in the New Yorker stating that the Bush Administration had signed a Presidential Finding authorizing the CIA to begin cross border paramilitary operations from Iraq and Afghanistan into Iran. These operations would be against Quds Force, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, public and private sector strategic targets, and “high-value targets” in the war on terror. Also enrolled to support CIA objectives were the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, known in the West as the M.E.K.,and the Baluchis insurgents. “The Finding was focused on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” a person familiar with its contents said, and involved “working with opposition groups and passing money.”[215] Any significant effort against Iran by the Obama Administration would likely come directly from SAD.[216] and in July 2010, Director Panetta chose a former chief of SAD as the new NCS Director.[217]
Libya
After the Arab Spring movements overthrew the rulers of Tunisia and Egypt, its neighbours to the west and east respectively, Libya had a major revolt beginning in February 2011.[218][219] In response, the Obama administration sent in SAD paramilitary operatives to assess the situation and gather information on the opposition forces.[220][221] Experts speculated that these teams could be determining the capability of these forces to defeat the Muammar Gaddafi regime and whether Al-Qaeda had a presence in these rebel elements.
U.S. officials had made it clear that no U.S. troops would be “on the ground”, making the use of covert paramilitary operatives the only alternative.[222] During the early phases of the Libyan offensive of U.S. led air strikes, paramilitary operatives assisted in the recovery of a U.S. Air Force pilot who had crashed due to mechanical problems.[223][224] There was speculation that President Obama issued a covert action finding in March 2011 that authorizes the CIA to carry out a clandestine effort to provide arms and support to the Libyan opposition.[225]
Syria
CIA paramilitary teams have been deployed to Syria to report on the uprising, to access the rebel groups, leadership and to potentially train, equip and lead one of those rebel groups against the Bashar al-Assad regime.[226] In early September 2013, President Obama told U.S. Senators that the CIA had trained the first 50-man insurgent element and that they had been inserted into Syria.[227] The deployment of this unit and the supplying of weapons may be the first tangible measure of support since the U.S. stated they would begin providing assistance to the opposition.[228][229]
In October 2013, SAD was tasked with overthrowing the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. This program was considered too limited to have the desired outcome.[230] However, with the rise of the Islamic State, SAD was given the overall command and control of the ground fight against them. This fight will cross the borders between Iraq and Syria.[154][231]
The CIA has always had a Special Activities Division, which secretly carries out special operations mission. However, since September 11, 2001 the US government has relied much more on SAD/SOG because fighting terrorists does not usually involve fighting other armies. Rather, it involves secretly moving in and out of countries like Pakistan, Iran and Somaliawhere the American military is not legally allowed to operate.[232]
If there are missions in these countries that are denied to U.S. military special operations forces, SAD/SOG units are the primary national special missions units to execute those operations.[233]
In the War on Terror, SAD has the lead in the covert war being waged against al Qaeda.[11][234] SAD/SOG paramilitary teams have apprehended many of the senior leaders. These include: Abu Zubaydah,[235] the chief of operations for al-Qaeda;Ramzi bin al-Shibh,[236] the so-called the “20th hijacker”;[237]Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.;[238]Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, alleged to be the mastermind of theUSS Cole bombing and leader of al Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf prior to his capture in November 2002;[239]Abu Faraj al-Libi, al Qaeda’s “field general” believed to have taken the role of No. 3 in al Qaeda following the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Pakistan;[240] andMullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the number two taliban commander and the highest level taliban commander apprehended in the Afghan War.[241] Prior to the beginning of the “War on Terror”, SAD/SOG located and captured many notable militants and international criminals, including Abimael Guzman and Carlos the Jackal. These were just three of the over 50 caught by SAD/SOG just between 1983 and 1995.[242]
In 2002, the George W. Bush Administration prepared a list of “terrorist leaders” the CIA is authorized to kill in a targeted killing, if capture is impractical and civilian casualties can be kept to an acceptable number. The list includes key al Qaeda leaders like Osama bin Laden (deceased) and his chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, as well as other principal figures from al Qaeda and affiliated groups. This list is called the “high value target list”.[243] The U.S. president is not legally required to approve each name added to the list, nor is the CIA required to obtain presidential approval for specific attacks, although the president is kept well informed about operations.[243]
SAD/SOG teams have been dispatched to the country of Georgia, where dozens of al Qaeda fugitives from Afghanistan are believed to have taken refuge withChechen separatists and thousands of refugees in the Pankisi Gorge. Their efforts have already resulted in 15 Arab militants linked to al Qaeda being captured.[125]
The SAD/SOG teams have also been active in the Philippines, where 1,200 U.S. military advisers helped to train local soldiers in “counter-terrorist operations” against Abu Sayyaf, a radical Islamist group suspected of ties with al Qaeda. Little is known about this U.S. covert action program, but some analysts believe that “the CIA’s paramilitary wing, the Special Activities Division (SAD), has been allowed to pursue terrorist suspects in the Philippines on the basis that its actions will never be acknowledged”.[125]
On July 14, 2009, several newspapers reported that DCIA Leon Panetta was briefed on a CIA program that had not been briefed to the oversight committees in Congress. Panetta cancelled the initiative and reported its existence to Congress and the President. The program consisted of teams of SAD paramilitary officers organized to execute targeted killing operations against al Qaeda operatives around the world in any country. According to the Los Angeles Times, DCIA Panetta “has not ruled out reviving the program”.[11] There is some question as to whether former Vice President Dick Cheney instructed the CIA not to inform Congress.[244]Per senior intelligence officers, this program was an attempt to avoid the civilian casualties that can occur during predator drone strikes using Hellfire missiles.[245][246]
According to many experts, the Obama administration has relied on the CIA and their paramilitary capabilities, even more than they have on U.S. military forces, to maintain the fight against terrorists in the Afghanistan and Pakistan region, as well as places like Yemen, Somalia and North Africa.[247][248] Ronald Kessler states in his book The CIA at War: Inside the Secret War Against Terror, that although paramilitary operations are a strain on resources, they’re winning the war against terrorism.[247][249]
SAD/SOG paramilitary officers executed the clandestine evacuation of U.S. citizens and diplomatic personnel in Somalia, Iraq (during the Persian Gulf War) andLiberia during periods of hostility, as well as the insertion of Paramilitary Operations Officers prior to the entry of U.S. military forces in every conflict since World War II.[250] SAD officers have operated covertly since 1947 in places such as North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Libya, Iraq, El Salvador,Guatemala, Colombia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras, Chile, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Pakistan.[251]
The Fulton surface-to-air recovery system (STARS) is a system developed in the early 1950s by CIA paramilitary officers for retrieving persons on the ground from a MC-130E Combat Talon I aircraft. It uses a harness and a self-inflating balloon that carries an attached lift line. An MC-130E engages the line with its V-shaped yoke and the individual is reeled on board.[252]Project COLDFEET was a very successful mission in 1962 in which two military officers parachuted into a remote abandoned Soviet site in the Arctic. The two were subsequently extracted by the Fulton sky hook. The team gathered evidence of advanced research on acoustical systems to detect under-ice US submarines and efforts to develop Arctic anti-submarine warfare techniques.[253]
Sergeant Major (SgtMaj) Billy Waugh was a Special Forces soldier attached to CIA in the 1960s. During his time at MACV-SOG in Vietnam, he developed and conducted the first combat High Altitude-Low Opening (HALO) jump, “In October 1970, my team made a practice Combat Infiltration into the NVA owned War Zone D, in South Vietnam, for reassembly training, etc. This was the first one in a combat zone.”[254] HALO is a method of delivering personnel, equipment, and supplies from a transport aircraft at a high altitude via free-fall parachute insertion. HALO andHAHO (High Altitude-High Opening) are also known as Military Free Fall (MFF). In the HALO technique, the parachutist opens his parachute at a low altitude after free-falling for a period of time to avoid detection by the enemy. Waugh also led the last combat special reconnaissance parachute insertion into enemy territory occupied by communist North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops on June 22, 1971.[255]
On October 25, 2003, paramilitary officers Christopher Mueller and William “Chief” Carlson were killed while conducting an operation to kill/capture high level al-Qa’ida leaders near Shkin, Afghanistan. Both these officers were honored with Stars on the CIA Memorial Wall at their Headquarters in Langley, Virginia.[256] “The bravery of these two men cannot be overstated,” Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet told a gathering of several hundred Agency employees and family members. “Chris and Chief put the lives of others ahead of their own. That is heroism defined.” Mueller, a former US Navy SEAL and Carlson, a former Army Special Forces soldier, Delta Force operator, and member of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana, died while on this covert operation. Both officers saved the lives of others, including Afghan soldiers, during the engagement with al-Qa’ida forces.[256][257][258] In Oliver North’s book American Heroes in Special Operations, a chapter is devoted to their story.[259]
Notable political action officers
Virginia Hall Goillot started as the only female paramilitary officer in the OSS. She shot herself in the leg while hunting in Turkey in 1932, which was then amputated below the knee. She parachuted into France to organize the resistance with her prosthesis strapped to her body. She was awarded theDistinguished Service Cross. She married an OSS officer named Paul Goillot and the two joined the CIA as paramilitary operations officers in SAD. Once aboard, Mrs. Goillot made her mark as a political action officer playing significant roles in the Guatemala and Guyana operations. These operations involved the covert removal of the governments of these two countries, as directed by the President of the United States.[260]
E. Howard Hunt (October 9, 1918 – January 23, 2007) was an Ivy league educated Naval officer who joined the CIA in 1949 after serving with the OSS in World War II. Hunt was a political action officer in what came to be called their Special Activities Division.[261] He became station chief in Mexico City in 1950, and supervised William F. Buckley, Jr., (Not to be confused with a famous SAD Paramilitary Officer of the same name) who worked for the CIA in Mexico during the period 1951–1952. Buckley, another SAD political action specialist, only served briefly in the CIA and went on to be considered the father of the modern American conservative movement. Buckley and Hunt remained lifelong friends.[262] Hunt ran Operation PBSUCCESS, which overthrew the government in Guatemala in 1954, was heavily involved in theBay of Pigs Invasion operation, frequently mentioned in the JFK assassination, and was one of the operatives in the Watergate scandal.[263]Hunt was also a well-known author with over 50 books to his credit. These books were published under several alias names and several were made into motion pictures.[264]
David Atlee Phillips Perhaps the most famous propaganda officer ever to serve in CIA, Phillips began his career as a journalist and amateur actor in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He joined the Agency in the 1950s and was one of the chief architects of the operation to overthrow Communist president Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954. He was later heavily engaged as a principal member of the Bay of Pigs Task Force at Langley, and in subsequent anti-Castro operations throughout the 1960s. He founded the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) after successfully contesting a libel suit against him.
The CIA Memorial Wall is located at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It honors CIA employees who died in the line of duty.[265] As of August 6, 2012, there were 103 stars carved into the marble wall,[266] each one representing an officer. A majority of these were paramilitary officers.[265] A black book, called the “Book of Honor”, lies beneath the stars and is encased in an inch-thick plate of glass.[266] Inside this book are stars, arranged by year of death, and the names of 77 employees who died in CIA service alongside them.[265][266] The other names remain secret, even in death.[265]
For the United States, Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution says “Congress shall have power to … declare War”. However, that passage provides no specific format for what form legislation must have in order to be considered a “declaration of war” nor does the Constitution itself use this term. Many[who?] have postulated “Declaration(s) of War” must contain that phrase as or within the title. Others oppose that reasoning. In the courts, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Doe v. Bush, said: “[T]he text of the October Resolution itself spells out justifications for a war and frames itself as an ‘authorization’ of such a war.”[1] in effect saying an authorization suffices for declaration and what some may view as a formal Congressional “Declaration of War” was not required by the Constitution.
This article will use the term “formal declaration of war” to mean Congressional legislation that uses the phrase “declaration of war” in the title. Elsewhere, this article will use the terms “authorized by Congress”, “funded by Congress” or “undeclared war” to describe other such conflicts.
History
The United States has formally declared war against foreign nations five separate times, each upon prior request by the President of the United States. Four of those five declarations came after hostilities had begun.[2] James Madison reported that in the Federal Convention of 1787, the phrase “make war” was changed to “declare war” in order to leave to the Executive the power to repel sudden attacks but not to commence war without the explicit approval of Congress.[3] Debate continues as to the legal extent of the President’s authority in this regard.
After Congress repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in January 1971 and President Richard Nixon continued to wage war in Vietnam, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution (Pub.L. 93–148) over the veto of Nixon in an attempt to rein in some of the president’s claimed powers. The War Powers Resolution proscribes the only power of the president to wage war which is recognized by Congress.
Declarations of war
Formal
The table below lists the five wars in which the United States has formally declared war against eleven foreign nations.[4] The only country against which the United States has declared war more than once is Germany, against which the United States has declared war twice (though a case could be made for Hungary as asuccessor state to Austria-Hungary).
Force withdrawn after six months. However, the Joint Resolution was likely used to authorize the Pancho Villa Expedition. In the Senate, “when word reached the Senate that the invasion had gone forward before the use-of-force resolution had been approved, Republicans reacted angrily” saying it was a violation of the Constitution, but eventually after the action had already started, a resolution was passed after the action to “justify” it since Senators did not think it was a declaration of war.[13][14]
Ba’athist Iraqi government deposed April 2003. U.S. combat operations ended August 31, 2010. War ended December 15, 2011. Destabilization of Iraq and emergence of ISIL in the region 2011–present.[18]
Military engagements authorized by United Nations Security Council Resolutions and funded by Congress
In many instances, the United States has engaged in extended military engagements that were authorized by United Nations Security Council Resolutions and funded by appropriations from Congress.
On at least 125 occasions, the President has acted without prior express military authorization from Congress.[20] These include instances in which the United States fought in the Philippine–American War from 1898–1903, in Nicaragua in 1927, as well as the NATO bombing campaign of Yugoslavia in 1999.
The United States’ longest war was fought between approximately 1840 and 1886 against the Apache Nation. During that entire 46-year period, there was never more than 90 days of peace.[citation needed]
The Indian Wars comprise at least 28 conflicts and engagements. These localized conflicts, with Native Americans, began with European colonists coming to North America, long before the establishment of the United States. For the purpose of this discussion, the Indian Wars are defined as conflicts with the United States of America. They begin as one front in the American Revolutionary War in 1775 and had concluded by 1918. The United States Army still maintains a campaign streamer for Pine Ridge 1890–1891 despite opposition from certain Native American groups.[21]
The American Civil War was not an international conflict under the laws of war, because the Confederate States of America was not a government that had been granted full diplomatic recognition as a sovereign nation by other sovereign states.[22][23] The CSA was recognized by the United States government as a belligerent power, a different status of recognition that authorized Confederate warships to visit non-U.S. ports. This recognition of the CSA’s status as a belligerent power did not impose any duty upon the United States to recognize the sovereignty of the Confederacy, and the United States never did so.
The War Powers Resolution
In 1973, following the withdrawal of most American troops from the Vietnam War, a debate emerged about the extent of presidential power in deploying troops without a declaration of war. A compromise in the debate was reached with the War Powers Resolution. This act clearly defined how many soldiers could be deployed by the President of the United States and for how long. It also required formal reports by the President to Congress regarding the status of such deployments, and limited the total amount of time that American forces could be deployed without a formal declaration of war.
Although the constitutionality of the act has never been tested, it is usually followed, most notably during the Grenada Conflict, the Panamanian Conflict, the Somalia Conflict, the Persian Gulf War, and the Iraq War[clarification needed]. The only exception was President Clinton’s use of U.S. troops in the 78-day NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War.[citation needed] In all other cases, the President asserted the constitutional authority to commit troops without the necessity of Congressional approval, but in each case the President received Congressional authorization that satisfied the provisions of the War Powers Act.
On March 21, 2011, a number of lawmakers expressed concern that the decision of President Barack Obama to order the U.S. military to join in attacks of Libyan air defenses and government forces exceeded his constitutional authority because the decision to authorize the attack was made without Congressional permission.[24]
Jump up^Whereas the Government of Germany has formally declared war against the government and the people of the United States of America… the state of war between the United States and the Government of Germany which has thus been thrust upon the United States is hereby formally declared. The War Resolution
SOG considered the most secretive special operations force in America
The Special Activities Division (SAD) is a division in the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency‘s (CIA) National Clandestine Service (NCS) responsible for covert operations known as “special activities”. Within SAD there are two groups, one for tactical paramilitary operations and another for covert political action.
The “Political Action Group” within SAD is in charge of “covert activities” related to political influence, psychological, economic and cyber warfare A large CIA covert operation usually has components that involve many of these categories, as well as paramilitary operations.
Special Operations Group (SOG) is the department within SAD responsible for operations which include the gathering of intelligence information in hostile enemy countries and regions, and all high threat military or intelligence operations with which the U.S. government does not wish to be associated.
As such, members of the unit (called “Paramilitary Operations Officers” and “Specialized Skills Officers”) normally do not carry any objects, identification or clothing (e.g., military uniforms) that would associate them with the United States government (see article: Secret CIA Units Playing a Central Combat Role http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/CIA18.html).
If members are compromised or killed during a mission, the government of the United States may deny all knowledge (see Congressional Research Service report: Special Operations Forces (SOF) and CIA Paramilitary Operations: Issues for Congresshttp://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/RS22017.pdf ).
The SOG is considered the most secretive special operations force in the United States.
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Donald Trump Leads in Expectations, Shows Strength on Attributes (POLL)
By JULIE PHELAN
Donald Trump leads the Republican presidential field in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, not only in vote preferences but in expectations as well -– a remarkable feat for the non-politician who’s surprised the GOP establishment with his staying power as well as his support.Trump has leveled off with backing from 32 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who are registered to vote, easily enough to retain his frontrunner status. Fellow outsider Ben Carson follows with 22 percent, also flat this month after sharp summertime gains.Notably, even more leaned Republicans — 42 percent — say they expect Trump to win the GOP nomination for president. And given a list of six potential nominees, 43 percent pick Trump as having the best chance to win the general election just more than a year from now.See PDF with full results here.
Trump also fares well on many key attributes. Nearly half of leaned Republicans — 47 percent — view him as the strongest leader; 39 percent think he’d be best able to handle immigration; 32 percent feel he is closest to them on the issues; and 29 percent say he “best understands the problems of people like you.” In each case he leads the other top-five contenders for the nomination, Carson, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina.
Trump has weaknesses nonetheless. More view Carson as the most honest and trustworthy (33 percent vs. 21 percent for Trump), and Trump trails Bush in having the best experience (31 vs. 23 percent). While 19 percent say Trump has the best personality and temperament to serve effectively as president, that compares with a similar 24 percent for Carson.
Trump and Bush are particularly weak in another measure in this poll, produced for ABC byLanger Research Associates. Roughly equal numbers of leaned Republicans say the more they hear about Trump the less they like him, compared with liking him more, 45 vs. 47 percent. Albeit not a statistically significant result, Bush goes numerically underwater in this gauge, 47-41 percent.
Compare that to Carson: Sixty-four percent say as they hear more about him they like him more, vs. just 18 percent who like him less, a vast 46-point net positive. Scores for Rubio, Fiorina and Cruz also are net positive on this measure by 23, 17 and 8 points, respectively.
Horserace
For all the campaigning under way, the overall race for the GOP nomination looks to be on pause, with essentially no change in candidate support since last month. That reflects a loss of momentum for Trump and Carson alike. Still, among their opponents only Rubio cracks the double digits, and just barely, with 10 percent.
In addition to his appeal to anti-immigration Republicans, Trump’s candidacy is very much bolstered by desire in the party for a political outsider. Republicans and Republican-leaning independents by 57-39 percent say they’re looking for someone from outside the political establishment rather than someone with political experience – drastically different from the 21-76 percent division on this issue among leaned Democrats. And Trump wins 41 percent support from registered leaned Republicans looking for an outsider, vs. 18 percent from those who prefer political experience.
Trump also continues to garner greater support among less educated potential voters -– 46 percent among those who haven’t gone beyond high school, vs. 23 percent among those who’ve attended college. And he’s still more popular among men than women, with 37 vs. 27 percent. Indeed white men without a college degree (leaned Republicans overwhelmingly are white) are among his strongest groups in voter preference and on issues and attributes alike.
Trump also does particularly well among leaned Republicans who oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement he, too, opposes. He’s backed by 45 percent of its critics vs. 21 percent of its supporters.
Further, Trump is maintaining his support among groups where it might not be expected -– for example, he’s backed by a third of evangelical white Protestants, “very” conservative leaned Republicans and Southerners alike. He has 36 percent support in non-urban areas, vs. 24 percent in cities.
Groups
These results also are reflected in perceptions of candidate attributes. Men, those with less education, those who prefer a political outsider and opponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership generally are more apt to rate Trump positively.
In one potential trouble spot for Trump, very conservative Republicans –- a key GOP group –- are less likely than “somewhat” conservatives to view him as the strongest leader of the lot, although he leads on this attribute in both groups, picked as strongest leader by 40 percent of strong conservatives and 52 percent of somewhat conservatives.
Additionally, just 14 percent of very conservatives think Trump’s the most honest and trustworthy; 40 percent say it’s Carson. And while very conservative leaned Republicans say by 53-35 percent that the more they hear about Trump the more they like him, that swells to 78-10 percent for Carson.
Methodology
This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Oct. 15-18, 2015, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,001 adults, including 423 leaned Republicans. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 points for the full sample and 5.5 points for leaned Republicans, including the survey’s design effect. Partisan divisions are 30-24-39 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents.
The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates of New York, N.Y., with sampling, data collection and tabulation by Abt-SRBI of New York, N.Y. See details on the survey’s methodology here.
Get real-time updates as this story unfolds. To start, just “star” this story in ABC News’ phone app. Download ABC News for iPhone here or ABC News for Android here.
Paul Ryan’s bid for House speaker splinters conservative Freedom Caucus
Lisa Mascaro
e conditions that Rep. Paul Ryan has set to become the next House speaker are driving a wedge in the fiery House Freedom Caucus, potentially weakening the unity of the conservative group that pushed out the current speaker.
Conservatives appear torn over the offer posed Tuesday by Ryan, the popular Wisconsin Republican, who has given his GOP colleagues until Friday to decide whether they are willing to end their infighting and unite around him.
The Freedom Caucus has so far maintained powerful cohesion as a 40-plus bloc of votes — a force that nudged Speaker John A. Boehner’s early retirement and then blocked the rise of Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield). But that unity is showing signs of fraying.
Some members of the caucus said Ryan’s bid for speaker offered a compelling solution to the GOP’s leadership struggle. Others, though, appeared unwilling to yield to Ryan’s various conditions — a position amplified by conservative groups outside the Capitol.
Signs of division inside the caucus were already apparent.
Two lawmakers recently exited the group; one, California Rep. Tom McClintock, among the most conservative Republicans in the House, detailed the caucus’ “many missteps that have made it counterproductive to its stated goals.”
Deepening the wedge in the influential conservative caucus may become central to finding a new GOP speaker who can lead the divided majority and end the cycle of dysfunction that is damaging the party’s standing with voters ahead the 2016 presidential election.
On the other hand, if the Freedom Caucus unites against Ryan or withholds enough votes it would almost certainly prolong the chaotic leadership struggle.
“Listen, I think Paul is going to get the support he’s looking for,” Boehner said Wednesday after a closed-door party meeting. “But this decision is up to the members.”
Ryan, the party’s former vice presidential nominee, has said he is willing to take on the job to replace Boehner if the House majority’s three main factions pledge support.
His chief obstacle remains the Freedom Caucus, which had thrown its support to one of its own, a little known newcomer, Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.).
With party elections set for Oct. 28, Ryan — like Boehner and McCarthy – would be expected to easily win a majority from within the House GOP. But the challenge will come the next day, when a full House floor vote poses a less certain outcome if all Republicans do not unite against Democrats.
Even if Ryan does not win the official support of the Freedom Caucus, he may be able to peel away enough votes to assure success, and some caucus members are already voicing support for him.
“We’re not a monolithic group by any stretch,” said Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), a leader of the Freedom Caucus, who warned that it may be difficult for the group to change its endorsement. “So the fact we have a difference of opinion amongst the various members is not at all unusual.”
Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), a Freedom Caucus member who backed Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) for speaker rather Webster, was leaning toward Ryan. Chaffetz dropped out of the running Tuesday and threw his support to Ryan.
“I’m not sure that Paul Ryan could walk on water today,” Lummis said after hearing his pitch, “but give him 10 days.”
Outside conservative groups, though, have already turned against Ryan and revved up their attacks.
And Republican voters appear to be in a fighting mood. Polling released Wednesday showed they want a new speaker who is not quick to compromise. Among GOP voters, 62% prefer a speaker who sticks to conservative principles, even if that leads to a government shutdown, according to the Associated Press-GfK poll.
Although Ryan is willing to consider some of the rules changes conservatives want to weaken the speaker’s grip on power, he has several demands of his own that the Freedom Caucus is hesitant to support.
Top among them is making it harder for conservatives to deploy one of their most powerful tools: calling a procedural vote to oust the speaker, which led to Boehner’s early retirement and warned McCarthy off the job.
Ryan told fellow Republicans he was willing to take “arrows in the chest, but not in the back,” according to those familiar with his remarks to the private meeting Tuesday evening.
That will be a tough sell for conservatives who see the motion to “vacate the chair” as the strongest leverage they have over the leadership.
Some changes, such as raising the threshold for bringing such a motion to the floor or approving it, could be acceptable.
Conservative radio talk show host Laura Ingraham raised particular objection over Ryan’s condition that he wouldn’t travel as much for the party as Boehner had so that he could spend more time at home with his family.
“George Washington left the luxury and beauty of Mount Vernon for Valley Forge,” she tweeted, referring to the Washington’s role in the Revolutionary War. “He even worked wkends & morning workouts for his people.”
The Freedom Caucus held a private meeting with Ryan later Wednesday. The group, which includes newer members of Congress as well as more veteran conservatives, is guided by internal rules that require 80% support to endorse a candidate, which Webster was able to win.
But the endorsement of Webster was binding only through the internal party election, meaning lawmakers in the group would be free to vote as they wish on the floor.
Ryan had indicated to his colleagues that he wanted the support from all three caucuses — the Freedom Caucus, the conservative Republican Study Committee and a small moderate GOP wing.
It’s unlikely that Ryan will settle for a promise that the Freedom Caucus will support him during the floor vote if it keeps its previous endorsement for his rival. A Ryan aide said he wants the full caucus’ formal endorsement now.
Paul Ryan is still talking to conservatives about supporting his speaker bid
Erin Kelly and Deirdre Shegreen
Rep. Paul Ryan has apparently not yet been able to secure the support of House conservatives for his bid for speaker, despite the confident assertion by the man he hopes to succeed that Ryan will be able to unite the fractious Republican conference.
“I think Paul is going to get the support that he is looking for,” speaker John Boehner told reporters Wednesday after a meeting of House Republicans. Boehner announced that Republicans will choose a new speaker next week, voting in conference next Wednesday to pick their nominee and on the House floor next Thursday.
But after an hour-long meeting with the rebellious Freedom Caucus Wednesday, Ryan shrugged off questions about whether he had won the group’s endorsement. “We had a nice meeting, a good chat,” Ryan said. Asked if he got a commitment, he said, “we just had an exchange of ideas” and a conversation about “how to make Congress work better.”
Members of the Freedom Caucus said they planned to meet again Wednesday night to talk about Ryan’s bid.
“We’re not done yet,” said Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan. “Everything’s still being discussed.”
Ryan announced Tuesday night that he will run for the top leadership job if he gets the support of all GOP factions. The Wisconsin Republican gave his colleagues until Friday to decide whether they can support him. Ryan, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and the 2012 Republican nominee for vice president, had repeatedly said he did not want the job but was pressed to run by Republicans who see him as the best candidate to unite the GOP conference.
“We as a conference should unify now,” Ryan told reporters Tuesday night after meeting with his Republican colleagues. “What I told members is if you can agree to these requests and if I can truly be a unifying figure, then I will gladly serve, and if I am not unifying, that is fine as well — I will be happy to stay where I am.”
Rep. Paul Ryan will run for House speaker if GOP factions endorse him
The Freedom Caucus, a group of about 40 conservative members, has been the most nettlesome. The group helped force Boehner into retirement by threatening to call a no-confidence vote on his speakership. Boehner plans to leave Congress at the end of next week, assuming that House members have elected a new speaker.
The influential group also convinced Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to withdraw his bid to become speaker when it became clear he could not win their support. The Freedom Caucus has already endorsed Rep. Daniel Webster, R-Fla., to be the next speaker.
The Caucus is seeking changes to House rules that will allow them to offer more amendments, get more conservative bills on the floor and restore the independence of committee chairmen. Those changes would diminish the speaker’s power. “The next speaker must follow House rules and commit to an open process for debating and amending legislation,” the Freedom Caucus said in a recent Twitter post. “Let the House work its will.”
Before the meeting, Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., a member of the group, sounded skeptical that Ryan could win the group’s support. For the Freedom Caucus to endorse, 80 percent of the group’s 40 members have to agree, Mulvaney said, adding that is a “very difficult” bar to meet.
Mulvaney said one of his questions for Ryan will be whether he really wants to serve as speaker. “If you listen to Paul, what you hear is ‘I don’t want the job’,” Mulvaney said.
Ryan said Tuesday he is willing to consider rule changes to give all members a greater voice in the House. But he also said he wants to ensure that “we do not experience constant leadership challenges and crises.”
Boehner said Wednesday that Republicans already know Ryan well. “He works hard; he’s very bright.”
Story 1: Benghazi Scandal Is A Massive Cover-up of President Obama’s Secret Finding For Central Intelligence Agency’s Covert Operations In Libya and Syria — American People Demand Declassification And Release of Entire CIA Covert Operations Finding For Libya and Syria and Public Testimony By Former CIA Director General Petraeus, CIA Director Brennan, CIA Libya Station Chief and Chief of Mission and CIA Employees in Benghazi, Libya On September 11, 2012 — Massive Scandal and Foreign Policy Disaster — Stop The Cover-up, Stonewalling and Slow-walking! — “Why Was The United States in Libya?” — No More Behind Closed Doors — Videos
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Breaking: CNN Reports CIA Engaged in Massive Intimidation Campaign to Keep Benghazi a Secret
August 1, 2013 – Breaking: CNN Reports CIA Engaged in Massive Intimidation Campaign to Keep Benghazi a Secret — This is HUGE. Basically the CIA is reportedly giving polygraph tests EVERY MONTH to more than a dozen CIA employees that were on the ground in Benghazi during the attack, to ensure that none of them talk about what happened that night. CNN — CNN has uncovered exclusive new information about what
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Benghazi Bombshell – Whistleblower’s Lawyer: 400 Surface To Air Missiles Stolen – Wake Up America
Attorney for Benghazi Whistleblower says 400 missiles stolen during attack
Published on Aug 13, 2013
An attorney for the Benghazi whistleblowers says that some 400 surface to air missles (SAMs) were ‘taken from Libya’ during the terror attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.
He added that the U.S. intelligence community is terrified they might be used to shoot down airliners.
Joe diGenova, whose wife Victoria Toensing — a former deputy assistant attorney general — also represents Benghazi witnesses and others with knowledge of the terror attack, told WMAL radio that the loss of those missiles is also one the reasons the U.S. State Department shut down 19 embassies across the Middle East last week.
‘A lot of people have come forward to share information with us,’ he said during the radio station’s ‘Mornings On The Mall’ program Monday morning.
‘We have learned that one of the reasons the administration is so deeply concerned’ is that ‘there were 400 surface-to-air missiles stolen, and that they are … in the hands of many people, and that the biggest fear in the U.S. intelligence community is that one of these missiles will be used to shoot down an airliner. 400 missiles, surface-to-air missiles, taken from Libya.’
Asked if the missiles are now ‘in the hands of al-Qaeda operatives,’ DiGenova replied, ‘That is what these people are telling us.’
DiGenova said his sources are ‘former intelligence officials who stay in constant contact with people in the Special Ops and intelligence community.’
‘And it’s pretty clear that the biggest concern right now are 400 missiles which have been diverted in Libya and have gotten in the hands of some very ugly people.’
diGenova said that while he was uncertain whether the stolen weapons were being kept at the U.S. Consulate’s CIA annex, ‘it is clear that the annex was somehow involved in the process of the distribution of those missiles.’
‘They were afraid that there was going to be a missile attack on one of the embassies. Remember, you can take a shoulder-held missile and shoot it into an embassy. Not just into the sky.’ ‘That’s what this was all about,’ he insisted. ‘That’s why they’re so worried. That’s why they have lied repeatedly about what happened in Benghazi, because they are now responsible for all of the stepchildren of violence that happens as a result of this. This is a very serious matter.’
FSA rocket shoots down Assad helicopter – Truthloader
White House Knew at 6:07 PM EST That Ansar Al-Sharia Was Behind the Benghazi Attack
Death And Deceit In Benghazi – Did Obama Amind Try Hide The Truth? – W Bret Bair
CIA operators were denied request for help during Benghazi attack, sources say
The Benghazi Select Committee: Many Questions Remain Unanswered
The House Select Committee on Benghazi is gearing up to investigate the many unanswered questions surrounding the attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility on September 11, 2012. Contrary to the Obama Administration’s assertions, numerous questions remain unanswered about what happened that fateful day both in Benghazi and here in Washington. This, despite the determined efforts of members of Congress to extract answered from a reluctant White House and State Department. Yet, in order to prevent a recurrence of unnecessary loss of American lives, systemic failures must be addressed, as well as the lack of accountability among those responsible for diplomatic security. Equally importantly, the families of the victims and indeed Americans need to know why no retaliation or justice has been visited upon those who killed U.S. diplomats.
“Peace President” Obama Let Benghazi Happen
As the Mail Online out it, “The Citizens Commission on Benghazi, a self-selected group of former top military officers, CIA insiders and think-tankers, declared Tuesday in Washington that a seven-month review of the deadly 2012 terrorist attack has determined that it could have been prevented — if the U.S. hadn’t been helping to arm al-Qaeda militias throughout Libya a year earlier.”
Obama “Switched Sides” in War on Terror
Former CIA officer Clare Lopez argues: Libya in 2011 marks the place and the time that the United States (U.S.) and the Obama administration formally switched sides in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). A mere 10 years after al-Qa’eda (supported by Hizballah and Iran) attacked the American homeland in the worst act of terrorism ever suffered by this country, U.S. leadership decided to facilitate the provision of weapons to jihadist militias known to be affiliated with al-Qa’eda and the Muslim Brotherhood in order to bring down a brutal dictator who also just happened to be a U.S. ally in the GWOT at the time.
Obama Let Them Die at Benghazi
Wayne Simmons spent 27 years working with the CIA to combat terrorism, narco-terrorism and narcotics trafficking, arms smuggling, counterfeiting, cyber-terrorists, and industrial and economic espionage. He sits on the Advisory Council for the Intelligence Summit, and is a contributor to the conservative publication Human Events.
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13 hours in Benghazi FULL VERSION INTERVIEW 5 parts combined.
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9-19-2013 “Reviews of the Benghazi Attack and
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9-19-2013 “Reviews of the Benghazi Attack and Unanswered Questions” Part II
9-19-2013 “Reviews of the Benghazi Attack and Unanswered Questions” Part III
Benghazi Scandal Review Of The Benghazi Attack & Questions That Remain Unanswered
Rep. Gowdy Talks Obamacare and Benghazi with Lou Dobbs
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Chaffetz to Families of Benghazi Victims: “We have a duty to find out the truth.”
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Congressman Mica questions Administration on Benghazi
In an exchange with witnesses during our Congressional Oversight Hearing, Congressman John Mica explains to Administration officials that most Americans believe the State Department report on responsibility for the Bengazhi attack was a “whitewash”. Those conducting the review were appointed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who they failed to interview along with other top State and Administration officials. Mica stated that this looks like an inside job where no one was held accountable, fired and none of the killers captured or brought to justice.
Benghazi Scandal – “It Was Clear Pretty Quickly” – General: Benghazi Was No Demonstration!
Independent Benghazi Review Briefed Clinton, Mills on Report Before Released
House Of Scandals Obama Gives Speech To Distract Americans – Rand Paul (R-KY)- Hannity
The Benghazi Testimony Fox Doesn t Want You To See
Rep. Meehan Questions Officials Responses to Location of Embassy in Benghazi
CNN Benghazi Claims: Report alleges CIA operatives in Libya were sending weapons to Syrian rebels
Obama authorized CIA covert operation in Libya
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Benghazi Scandal Investigation Widening Lawmakers Seek Interviews Of 13 Top Officials
Benghazi Scandal Is Obama Admin Trying To Hide Something! Force Into Silence! OReilly
David Petraeus Scandal: Benghazi Attack Testimony Behind Closed Doors
The former CIA head will go behind closed doors to give testimony on the terror attacks.
General Petraeus leaked secret info on Benghazi attack to his mistress?
Glenn Beck: Military Action In Syria Is Designed To Cover Up Benghazi
REVEALED: If This Is True, Benghazi Is Even Worse Than We Ever Thought
The feature story that Michael Lewis just published about President Obama’s decisionmaking prior to the war in Libya includes a lot of details that inspire confidence in his leadership. By all accounts he’s intelligent, sober-minded, and inclined to seek out an array of perspectives. And he’s frequently forced to make extraordinarily difficult tradeoffs with imperfect information. I don’t envy his job.
But the article also raises serious questions about his honesty and regard for the constitution. Let’s take them in turn.
INCONSISTENT EXPLANATIONS
On March 28, 2011, Obama gave a televised address about Libya. It included this passage about his actions:
Confronted by this brutal repression and a looming humanitarian crisis, I ordered warships into the Mediterranean. European allies declared their willingness to commit resources to stop the killing. The Libyan opposition, and the Arab League, appealed to the world to save lives in Libya. At my direction, America led an effort with our allies at the United Nations Security Council to pass an historic Resolution that authorized a No0Fly Zone to stop the regime’s attacks from the air, and further authorized all necessary measures to protect the Libyan people.
In his telling, (a) America led the effort to establish the No-Fly Zone; and (b) the No-Fly Zone would stop the Libyan regime’s attacks from the air.
Compare these assertions to the inside account reported by Lewis (which wasvetted by the White House prior to publication):
If you were president just then and you turned your television to some cable news channel you would have seen many Republican senators screaming at you to invade Libya and many Democratic congressmen hollering at you that you had no business putting American lives at risk in Libya. If you flipped over to the networks on March 7 you might have caught ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper saying to your press secretary, Jay Carney, “More than a thousand people have died, according to the United Nations. How many more people have to die before the United States decides, O.K., we’re going to take this one step of a no-fly zone?”
By March 13, Qaddafi appeared to be roughly two weeks from getting to Benghazi. On that day the French announced they were planning to introduce a resolution in the United Nations to use U.N. forces to secure the skies over Libya in order to prevent Libyan planes from flying. A “no-fly zone” this was called, and it forced Obama’s hand. The president had to decide whether to support the no-fly-zone resolution or not. At 4:10 p.m. on March 15 the White House held a meeting to discuss the issue. “Here is what we knew,” recalls Obama, by which he means here is what I knew. “We knew that Qaddafi was moving on Benghazi, and that his history was such that he could carry out a threat to kill tens of thousands of people. We knew we didn’t have a lot of time–somewhere between two days and two weeks. We knew they were moving faster than we originally anticipated. We knew that Europe was proposing a no-fly zone.”
That much had been in the news. One crucial piece of information had not. “We knew that a no-fly zone would not save the people of Benghazi,” says Obama. “The no-fly zone was an expression of concern that didn’t really do anything.” European leaders wanted to create a no-fly zone to stop Qaddafi, but Qaddafi wasn’t flying. His army was racing across the North African desert in jeeps and tanks. Obama had to have wondered just how aware of this were these foreign leaders supposedly interested in the fate of these Libyan civilians. He didn’t know if they knew that a no-fly zone was pointless, but if they’d talked to any military leader for five minutes they would have. And that was not all. “The last thing we knew,” he adds, “is that if you announced a no-fly zone and if it appeared feckless, there would be additional pressure for us to go further. As enthusiastic as France and Britain were about the no-fly zone, there was a danger that if we participated the U.S. would own the operation. Because we had the capacity.”
To summarize, (a) America did not lead the effort to establish a no-fly zone — it reluctantly signed on to the idea after its hand was forced by the French; (b) the no-fly zone wouldn’t stop the regime’s attacks because they weren’t coming from the air. It was, rather, a preamble to escalation.
Due to the nature of the Libya conflict, these misrepresentations weren’t nearly as consequential as, say, the way George W. Bush spoke out about weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq war. It is nevertheless an example of the president deliberately misleading the American people in order to facilitate false impressions about foreign military actions that he finds convenient.
ZERO REGARD FOR CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL
It’s long been established that Obama failed to secure a congressional declaration of war, as the constitution and Senator Obama’s understanding of it dictated; and that he violated the War Powers Resolution. It is nevertheless worth revisiting the subject given these new details about his thought process:
Obama insists that he still had not made up his mind what to do when he returned to the Situation Room — that he was still considering doing nothing at all. A million people in Benghazi were waiting to find out whether they would live or die, and he honestly did not know. There were things the Pentagon might have said to deter him, for instance. “If somebody had said to me that we could not take out their air defense without putting our fliers at risk in a significant way; if the level of risk for our military personnel had been ratcheted up–that might have changed my decision,” says Obama. “Or if I did not feel Sarkozy or Cameron were far enough out there to follow through. Or if I did not think we could get a U.N resolution passed.” Once again he polled the people in the room for their views. Of the principals only Susan Rice (enthusiastically) and Hillary Clinton (who would have settled for a no-fly zone) had the view that any sort of intervention made sense. “How are we going to explain to the American people why we’re in Libya,” asked William Daley, according to one of those present. “And Daley had a point: who gives a shit about Libya?”
From the president’s point of view there was a certain benefit in the indifference of the American public to whatever was happening in Libya. It enabled him to do, at least for a moment, pretty much whatever he wanted to do. Libya was the hole in the White House lawn.
Obama made his decision: push for the U.N resolution and effectively invade another Arab country. Of the choice not to intervene he says, “That’s not who we are,” by which he means that’s not who I am. The decision was extraordinarily personal. “No one in the Cabinet was for it,” says one witness. “There was no constituency for doing what he did.” Then Obama went upstairs to the Oval Office to call European heads of state and, as he puts it, “call their bluff.” Cameron first, then Sarkozy. It was three a.m. in Paris when he reached the French president, but Sarkozy insisted he was still awake. (“I’m a young man!”) In formal and stilted tones the European leaders committed to taking over after the initial bombing. The next morning Obama called Medvedev to make sure that the Russians would not block his U.N. resolution. There was no obvious reason why Russia should want to see Qaddafi murder a city of Libyans, but in the president’s foreign dealings the Russians play the role that Republicans currently more or less play in his domestic affairs. The Russians’ view of the world tends to be zero-sum: if an American president is for it, they are, by definition, against it. Obama thought that he had made more progress with the Russians than he had with the Republicans; Medvedev had come to trust him, he felt, and believed him when he said the United States had no intention of moving into Libya for the long term. A senior American official at the United Nations thought that perhaps the Russians let Obama have his resolution only because they thought it would end in disaster for the United States.
And it could have. All that exists for any president are the odds. On March 17 the U.N. gave Obama his resolution. The next day he flew to Brazil and was there on the 19th, when the bombing began. A group of Democrats in Congress issued a statement demanding Obama withdraw from Libya; Ohio Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich asked if Obama had just committed an impeachable offense. All sorts of people who had been hounding the president for his inaction now flipped and questioned the wisdom of action. A few days earlier Newt Gingrich, busy running for president, had said, “We don’t need the United Nations. All we have to say is that we think slaughtering your own citizens is unacceptable and that we’re intervening.” Four days after the bombing began, Gingrich went on the Today show to say he wouldn’t have intervened and was quoted on Politico as saying, “It is impossible to make sense of the standard of intervention in Libya except opportunism and news media publicity.” The tone of the news coverage shifted dramatically, too. One day it was “Why aren’t you doing anything?” The next it was “What have you gotten us into?” As one White House staffer puts it, “All the people who had been demanding intervention went nuts after we intervened and said it was outrageous. That’s because the controversy machine is bigger than the reality machine.”
Put more succinctly, going to war in Libya was a close call; there are things various folks could have said to deter him; he ran the decision through executive branch and international channels; most people told him not to do it; but if Congress came into the picture at all, it wasn’t enough to merit mention in the retelling, and certainly not enough to follow the constitution and put the prospective war to a vote. The people’s representatives were excluded.
The imperial presidency is so well entrenched that a journalist like Michael Lewis needn’t really question circumventing Congress to feel as though he’s including all the crucial parts of the story about going to war.
That remains a scandal.
And it is telling that Michael Lewis, one of America’s finest journalists, didn’t even ask Obama about failing to put the decision about Libya before Congress. He didn’t ask despite the plain language of the Constitution, Obama’s prior statements indicating he fully understood his legal obligations, and the fact that various members of Congress complained about his unilateral action. The imperial presidency is so well entrenched that a journalist like Lewis needn’t really question those things to feel as though he’s including all the crucial parts of the story about going to war.
That is quite a precedent Obama has set. And Mitt Romney is ready to exploit it if he wins. As he put it: “I can assure you if I’m president, the Iranians will have no question but that I will be willing to take military action if necessary to prevent them from becoming a nuclear threat to the world. I don’t believe at this stage, therefore, if I’m president that we need to have a war powers approval or special authorization for military force. The president has that capacity now.”
War is commonly defined as “a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations.” By that definition, the United States and its allies have been at war with Libya since late last week. “At my direction,” President Obama told Congress, “U.S. military forces commenced operations” in Libya.
Article I, section 8 of the United States Constitution states that “Congress shall have the power … to declare war…” Since Congress has not declared war on Libya, is American involvement in the Libyan war unconstitutional?
Some members of Congress think so. Rep. Scott Ringell, a freshman from Virginia, said that the Libya hostilities “should trigger a debate within Congress and [among] the American people about proper interpretation and application of [the] Constitution. I’m surprised more conservatives aren’t speaking out about this issue.” Some Democrats have spoken out questioning the validity of the action. In the past, Senators Obama and Biden both said the president lacks the authority to do what President Obama has done.
The question of the constitutionality of the Libyan effort depends on the original public meaning of Article I, section 8 of the Constitution. Vice President (then Senator) Joseph Biden recalled that meaning in a speech on the Senate floor on July 30, 1998. He noted that the original draft of the Constitution would have empowered Congress to “make war.” James Madison and Elbridge Gerry moved that the language be changed to “declare war” so that the president would have the power “to repel sudden attacks.” Biden pointed out that only one framer, Pierce Butler of South Carolina, thought the president should have the power to initiate war.
Biden concluded that under the Constitution, the president could not use force without prior authorization unless it was necessary to “repel a sudden attack.” Presidential candidate Barack Obama agreed in 2007: “the President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”
Senator Biden also expounded on the framers’ reasons for limiting presidential discretion:
The rationale for vesting the power to launch war in Congress was simple. The Framers’ views were dominated by their experience with the British King, who had unfettered power to start wars. Such powers the Framers were determined to deny the President.
Of course, in 1998 and today, some claim the president has broad powers to initiate and carry on war under the “executive power” and the commander-in-chief clauses of Article II. But the framers rejected this “monarchist view” of the presidency.
The framers of the Constitution knew that the English king possessed certain prerogatives or discretionary powers to act for the public interest. Among these prerogatives was the power to declare war. He could also carry on undeclared wars. Yet the framers explicitly gave Congress the power to declare war. Apart from repelling sudden attacks, the Constitution is silent on the president’s power to conduct undeclared wars. Read against the English background, the text of the Constitution creates a constrained executive for the new nation.
What does this history imply for the present? President Obama told Congress that the use of force in Libya was intended “to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and address the threat posed to international peace and security by the crisis in Libya.” But the framers did not empower the president to initiate war to prevent humanitarian catastrophes, deal with threats to international peace and security, or protect the lives of foreign nationals. The framers stated that the Constitution was instituted to provide for the common defense of We, the People, not the defense of people everywhere.
They did recognize a limited power to repel sudden attacks. The Libyan regime did not suddenly attack the United States or its citizens. There is nothing to repel. America’s war in Libya thus cannot be constitutional.
What now? The Supreme Court is unlikely to invalidate presidential actions in Libya. The task of vindicating the Constitution falls to Congress. It needs to hear from its conservatives, those who believe in the original meaning of the Constitution. Congress also needs to hear from its liberals, those who believe what Senators Biden and Obama once said about presidential power. Together members of Congress could finally live up to their constitutional obligations and impose restraints on a president who has become too much of a king.
John Samples directs the Cato Institute’s Center for Representative Government and is the author of The Struggle to Limit Government: A Modern Political History.
March 2011: U.S. secretly approves arms shipments from Qatar to Libyan rebels.
May 2011: Al-Qaeda flags raised over Benghazi. November 2011: Rebel leader Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi admits a significant number of Libyan rebels were al-Qaeda fighters who fought American troops in Iraq.
April 19, 2012: State Department rejects ambassador to Libya’s request for more security personnel.
June 20, 2012: Assassination attempt on the British Ambassador to Libya.
July 9, 2012: Ambassador Stevens asks the State Department for more security personnel.
August 8, 2012: The number of security personnel at Benghazi reduced by State Department.
August 16, 2012: U.S. Site Security in Benghazi alerts the State Department that conditions are perilous. September 4, 2012: Gallup presidential tracking poll: Obama 47 percent; Romney 46 percent. September 4–6, 2012: Democratic National Convention (“al-Qaeda decimated; bin Laden is dead and GM is alive; al-Qaeda is on the run”).
September 11, 2012: Ambassador Stevens alerts the State Department that conditions in Benghazi are deteriorating.
3:40 p.m. (D.C. time): Stevens calls deputy chief of mission Greg Hicks in Tripoli and alerts him that the consulate in Benghazi is under attack.
4:00 p.m.: The White House is advised that the consulate is under attack. 10th Special Forces Group in Croatia is three hours away; Brigadier General (Ret.) Robert Lovell, Deputy Director of Intelligence for AFRICOM, later testifies that intelligence knew immediately that it was not a protest but a terrorist attack; no request for aid comes from the State Department.
5:00 p.m.: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta discusses attack with President Obama.
6:00 p.m.: U.S. Embassy in Tripoli advises the White House and the State Department that al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar al-Sharia has claimed responsibility for the attack. CIA deputy director Mike Morrell later testifies that “analysts knew from the get-go that al Qaeda was involved with this attack.”
8:00 p.m.: Greg Hicks calls Clinton and tells her that consulate is under terrorist attack.
10:00 p.m.: Clinton and Obama talk.
10:30 p.m.: Clinton issues a statement linking the attack to an inflammatory internet video.
11:00–11:30 p.m.: Former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Ty Woods killed.
September 12, 2012: Redacted e-mail from a State Department official says the official advised the Libyan government that the attack was carried out by Ansar al-Sharia. No mention of video.
September 12–15, 2012: CIA drafts several iterations of talking points; contains no known references to video as cause of the attack.
September 13, 2012: State Department memo blames the attack on terrorists.
September 13, 2012: Defense Intelligence Agency assigns blame for the attack on Ansar al-Sharia in Libya. No mention of a video.
September 13, 2012: Clinton condemns violence against U.S. consulate in Libya due to a video. September 13, 2012: Jay Carney condemns attack due to a video.
September 14, 2012: State Department says the attack was a spontaneous demonstration due to a video.
September 14, 2012: Obama and Clinton receive the families of the fallen as their caskets arrive at Andrews Air Force Base; blame the attack on a video. Clinton tells Ty Woods’s father, Charles, that they will “get” the producer of the video.
September 14, 2012: Jay Carney blames the video.
September 14, 2012, 8:00 p.m.: Deputy national-security adviser Ben Rhodes sends an e-mail regarding the preparation of Susan Rice for the Sunday talk shows, advising Rice to underscore the video and that the attack is “not a broader failure of policy.” September 15, 2012: Obama blames the video.
September 16, 2012: Susan Rice appears on five Sunday talk shows and characterizes the attacks as a spontaneous reaction due to a video. September 16, 2012: Libyan president disputes Rice’s comments, asserting Benghazi was a planned attack.
September 18, 2012: Obama appears on the David Letterman show, blames the video.
September 19, 2012: The head of the National Counterterrorism Center testifies that the attack was not a protest but a terrorist attack.
September 20, 2012: Obama blames the video. September 20, 2012: Obama and Clinton run an ad on Pakistani TV apologizing for the video.
September 21, 2012: Clinton says it was a terrorist attack.
September 24, 2012: Obama appears on The View, blames the video.
October 4, 2012: Clinton establishes the Accountability Review Board (“ARB”) to examine the circumstances surrounding the loss of personnel in Benghazi. Clinton not interviewed by ARB.
October 11, 2012: At the vice-presidential debate, Joe Biden claims the administration was not informed about requests for more security at the consulate in Benghazi.
October 16, 2012: Obama, in a response to a question from a reporter about whether he denied requests for aid to Benghazi on September 11 responds, “The minute I found out this was going on, I gave three directives. Number one, make sure we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to. Number two, we are going to investigate exactly what happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again. Number three, find out who did this so that we can bring them to justice.”
October 18, 2012: Judicial Watch makes a Freedom of Information Act request to the administration for talking points and communications regarding the events in Benghazi. The administration ignores the request.
October 20, 2012: Obama claims that he was not aware of any requests for additional security in Benghazi.
January 23, 2013: Clinton asks, “What difference, at this point, does it make whether it was a terrorist attack or a spontaneous demonstration?”
June 21, 2013: Judicial Watch sues the administration for unlawfully withholding documents pertaining to Benghazi.
July 25, 2013: Obama slams the “endless parade of distractions, political posturing, and phony scandals.”
August 2013: The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform requests Benghazi e-mails. The Ben Rhodes e-mail is not among those produced.
April 18, 2014: Federal court orders the administration to turn over documents to Judicial Watch. 41 documents are released, including the Ben Rhodes e-mail.
May 1, 2014: Tommy Vietor tells Fox News the president was not in the Situation Room on September 11, 2012.
May 2, 2014: Speaker John Boehner announces a vote to form a select committee on Benghazi.
May 4, 2014: Representative Adam Schiff (D.., Calif.), member of the House Intelligence Committee, suggests Democrats boycott the House select committee as a “colossal waste of time.”
May 5, 2014: Carney will not say whether White House will cooperate with the select committee. (Clearly, much remains to be filled in by the select committee. Numerous questions and lines of inquiry are prompted by the above. The chronology is based on congressional testimony and reports from, among others, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the New York Times, the New York Post and Fox News, and the reporting of Steve Hayes and Jennifer Griffin.)
Posted on October 26, 2012 | Updated on May 2, 2014
Summary
The question won’t go away: Did President Obama and administration officials mislead the public when they initially claimed that the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi began “spontaneously” in response to an anti-Muslim video?
The question surfaced again on Oct. 25 — more than six weeks after the incident — when government emails showed the White House and the State Department were told even as the attack was going on that Ansar al-Sharia, a little-known militant group, had claimed credit for it.
We cannot say whether the administration was intentionally misleading the public. We cannot prove intent. There is also more information to come — both from the FBI, which is conducting an investigation, and Congress, which has been holding hearings.
But, at this point, we do know that Obama and others in the administration were quick to cite the anti-Muslim video as the underlying cause for the attack in Benghazi that killed four U.S. diplomats, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. And they were slow to acknowledge it was a premeditated terrorist attack, and they downplayed reports that it might have been.
What follows is a timeline of events that we hope will help put the incident into perspective. We call attention in particular to these key facts:
There were no protesters at the Benghazi consulate prior to the attack, even though Obama and others repeatedly said the attackers joined an angry mob that had formed in opposition to the anti-Muslim film that had triggered protests in Egypt and elsewhere. The State Department disclosed this fact Oct. 9 — nearly a month after the attack.
Libya President Mohamed Magariaf insisted on Sept. 16 — five days after the attack — that it was a planned terrorist attack, but administration officials continued for days later to say there was no evidence of a planned attack.
Magariaf also said the idea that the attack was a “spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous.” This, too, was on Sept. 16. Yet, Obama and others continued to describe the incident in exactly those terms — including during the president’s Sept. 18 appearance on the “Late Show With David Letterman.”
Matt Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, was the first administration official to call it “a terrorist attack” during a Sept. 19 congressional hearing. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did the same on Sept. 20. Even so, Obama declined opportunities to call it a terrorist attack when asked at a town hall meeting on Sept. 20 and during a taping of “The View” on Sept. 24.
Here is our timeline:
Analysis
Sept. 11: The Attack
2:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (8:30 p.m. Benghazi time): U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens steps outside the consulate to say goodbye to a Turkish diplomat. There are no protesters at this time. (“Everything is calm at 8:30,” a State Department official would later say at an Oct. 9 background briefing for reporters. “There’s nothing unusual. There has been nothing unusual during the day at all outside.”)
3 p.m.: Ambassador Stevens retires to his bedroom for the evening. (See Oct. 9 briefing.)
Approximately 3:40 p.m. A security agent at the Benghazi compound hears “loud noises” coming from the front gate and “gunfire and an explosion.” A senior State Department official at the Oct. 9 briefing says that “the camera on the main gate reveals a large number of people – a large number of men, armed men, flowing into the compound.”
About 4 p.m.: This is the approximate time of attack that was given to reporters at a Sept. 12 State Department background briefing. An administration official identified only as “senior administration official one” provides an official timeline of events at the consulate, but only from the time of the attack — not prior to the attack. The official says, “The compound where our office is in Benghazi began taking fire from unidentified Libyan extremists.” (Six of the next seven entries in this timeline — through 8:30 p.m. EDT — all come from the Sept. 12 briefing. The exception being the 6:07 p.m. entry, which comes from Reuters.)
About 4:15 p.m.: “The attackers gained access to the compound and began firing into the main building, setting it on fire. The Libyan guard force and our mission security personnel responded. At that time, there were three people inside the building: Ambassador Stevens, one of our regional security officers, and Information Management Officer Sean Smith.”
Between 4:15 p.m.-4:45 p.m.: Sean Smith is found dead.
About 4:45 p.m.: “U.S. security personnel assigned to the mission annex tried to regain the main building, but that group also took heavy fire and had to return to the mission annex.”
About 5:20 p.m.: “U.S. and Libyan security personnel … regain the main building and they were able to secure it.”
Around 6 p.m.: “The mission annex then came under fire itself at around 6 o’clock in the evening our time, and that continued for about two hours. It was during that time that two additional U.S. personnel were killed and two more were wounded during that ongoing attack.”
6:07 p.m.: The State Department’s Operations Center sends an email to the White House, Pentagon, FBI and other government agencies that said Ansar al-Sharia has claimed credit for the attack on its Facebook and Twitter accounts. (The existence of the email was not disclosed until Reuters reported it on Oct. 24.)
About 8:30 p.m.: “Libyan security forces were able to assist us in regaining control of the situation. At some point in all of this – and frankly, we do not know when – we believe that Ambassador Stevens got out of the building and was taken to a hospital in Benghazi. We do not have any information what his condition was at that time. His body was later returned to U.S. personnel at the Benghazi airport.”
About 10:00 p.m.: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issues a statement confirming that one State official was killed in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Her statement, which MSNBC posted at 10:32 p.m., made reference to the anti-Muslim video.
Clinton: Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.
Sept.12: Obama Labels Attack ‘Act of Terror,’ Not ‘Terrorism’
Sept. 12: Clinton issues a statement confirming that four U.S. officials, not one, had been killed. She called it a “violent attack.”
Clinton: All the Americans we lost in yesterday’s attacks made the ultimate sacrifice. We condemn this vicious and violent attack that took their lives, which they had committed to helping the Libyan people reach for a better future.
Sept. 12: Clinton delivers a speech at the State Department to condemn the attack in Benghazi and to praise the victims as “heroes.” She again makes reference to the anti-Muslim video in similar language.
Clinton: Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior, along with the protest that took place at our Embassy in Cairo yesterday, as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. America’s commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear — there is no justification for this, none.
Sept. 12: Obama delivers a morning speech in the Rose Garden to address the deaths of U.S. diplomats in Libya. He said, “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.” He also makes reference to the anti-Muslim video when he says: “Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But there is absolutely no justification to this type of senseless violence. None.” He uses the term “act of terror” later that night when talking about the attack at a campaign event in Las Vegas.
Sept. 12: After his Rose Garden speech, Obama tapes an interview for “60 Minutes.” Obama says he didn’t use the word “terrorism” in his Rose Garden speech because “it’s too early to know exactly how this came about.” Steve Kroft, the show’s host, wonders how the attack could be described as a “mob action” since the attackers were “very heavily armed.” Obama says “we’re still investigating,” but he suspects “folks involved in this . . . were looking to target Americans from the start.”
Kroft: Mr. President, this morning you went out of your way to avoid the use of the word terrorism in connection with the Libya attack.
Obama: Right.
Kroft: Do you believe that this was a terrorist attack?
Obama: Well, it’s too early to know exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans and we are going to be working with the Libyan government to make sure that we bring these folks to justice one way or the other.
Kroft: It’s been described as a mob action. But there are reports that they were very heavily armed with grenades. That doesn’t sound like your normal demonstration.
Obama: As I said, we’re still investigating exactly what happened. I don’t want to jump the gun on this. But you’re right that this is not a situation that was exactly the same as what happened in Egypt. And my suspicion is, is that there are folks involved in this, who were looking to target Americans from the start.
Sept. 12: Senior administration officials, who did not permit use of their names, hold a briefing with reporters to answer questions about the attack. Twice officials characterize those involved in the attack as “extremists.” In one case, an official identified only as “senior administration official one” is asked by Fox News reporter Justin Fishel if the administration had ruled out the possibly that the attack was in response to the anti-Muslim video. The official says, “We just don’t know.”
Senior administration official one: With regard to whether there is any connection between this Internet activity and this extremist attack in Benghazi, frankly, we just don’t know. We’re not going to know until we have a chance to investigate. And I’m sorry that it is frustrating for you that so many of our answers are “We don’t know,” but they are truthful in that.
NBC’s Andrea Mitchell asks officials to address news reports that the attack has been “linked to a terror attack, an organized terror attack,” possibly al Qaeda. The official refers to it as a “complex attack,” but says it is “too early to say who they were” and their affiliation.
Senior administration official one: Frankly, we are not in a position to speak any further to the perpetrators of this attack. It was clearly a complex attack. We’re going to have to do a full investigation. We are committed to working with the Libyans both on the investigation and to ensure that we bring the perpetrators to justice. The FBI is already committed to assisting in that, but I just – we’re – it’s just too early to speak to who they were and if they might have been otherwise affiliated beyond Libya.
Sept. 12, 4:09 p.m.: At a press briefing en route to Las Vegas, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney is asked, “Does the White House believe that the attack in Benghazi was planned and premeditated?” He responds, “It’s too early for us to make that judgment. I think — I know that this is being investigated, and we’re working with the Libyan government to investigate the incident. So I would not want to speculate on that at this time.”
Sept. 12: Libya’s deputy ambassador to London, Ahmad Jibril, tells the BBC that Ansar al-Sharia was behind the attack. The little-known militant group issues a statement that says it “didn’t participate as a sole entity,” neither confirming nor denying the report.
Sept. 12, 6:06 p.m.: Beth Jones, the acting assistant secretary of state for the Near East, sends an email to top State Department officials that reads in part: “[T]he group that conducted the attacks, Ansar al-Sharia, is affiliated with Islamic extremists.” (An excerpt of Jones’ email was read by Rep. Trey Gowdy at the May 8, 2013, House oversight hearing.)
Sept. 12: Citing unnamed “U.S. government officials,” Reuters reports that “the Benghazi attack may have been planned in advance” and that members of Ansar al-Sharia “may have been involved.” Reuters quotes one of the U.S. officials as saying: “It bears the hallmarks of an organized attack.”
Sept. 13: ‘Clearly Planned’ or ‘Spontaneous’ Attack?
Sept. 13: Clinton meets with Ali Suleiman Aujali — the Libyan ambassador to the U.S. — at a State Department event to mark the end of Ramadan. Ambassador Aujali apologizes to Clinton for what he called “this terrorist attack which took place against the American consulate in Libya.” Clinton, in her remarks, does not refer to it as a terrorist attack. She condemns the anti-Muslim video, but adds that there is “never any justification for violent acts of this kind.”
Clinton: Religious freedom and religious tolerance are essential to the stability of any nation, any people. Hatred and violence in the name of religion only poison the well. All people of faith and good will know that the actions of a small and savage group in Benghazi do not honor religion or God in any way. Nor do they speak for the more than 1 billion Muslims around the world, many of whom have shown an outpouring of support during this time.
Unfortunately, however, over the last 24 hours, we have also seen violence spread elsewhere. Some seek to justify this behavior as a response to inflammatory, despicable material posted on the Internet. As I said earlier today, the United States rejects both the content and the message of that video. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. At our meeting earlier today, my colleague, the foreign minister of Morocco, said that all prophets should be respected because they are all symbols of our humanity, for all humanity.
But both of us were crystal clear in this paramount message: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind. And we look to leaders around the world to stand up and speak out against violence, and to take steps to protect diplomatic missions from attack.
Sept. 13: At a daily press briefing, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland was asked if the Benghazi attack was “purely spontaneous or was premeditated by militants.” She declined to say, reiterating that the administration did not want to “jump to conclusions.”
Nuland: Well, as we said yesterday when we were on background, we are very cautious about drawing any conclusions with regard to who the perpetrators were, what their motivations were, whether it was premeditated, whether they had any external contacts, whether there was any link, until we have a chance to investigate along with the Libyans. So I know that’s going to be frustrating for you, but we really want to make sure that we do this right and we don’t jump to conclusions.
That said, obviously, there are plenty of people around the region citing this disgusting video as something that has been motivating. As the Secretary said this morning, while we as Americans, of course, respect free speech, respect free expression, there’s never an excuse for it to become violent.
Sept. 13: Clinton met with Moroccan Foreign Minister Saad-Eddine Al-Othmani. She condemned what she called the “disgusting and reprehensible” anti-Muslim video and the violence that it triggered. She said, “Islam, like other religions, respects the fundamental dignity of human beings, and it is a violation of that fundamental dignity to wage attacks on innocents. As long as there are those who are willing to shed blood and take innocent life in the name of religion, the name of God, the world will never know a true and lasting peace.”
Sept. 13: At a campaign event in Colorado, Obama again uses the phrase “act of terror.” He says: “I want people around the world to hear me: To all those who would do us harm, no act of terror will go unpunished.”
Sept. 13: CNN reports that unnamed “State Department officials” say the incident in Benghazi was a “clearly planned military-type attack” unrelated to the anti-Muslim movie.
CNN: “It was not an innocent mob,” one senior official said. “The video or 9/11 made a handy excuse and could be fortuitous from their perspective but this was a clearly planned military-type attack.”
Sept. 14: White House Says No Evidence of Planned Attack
Sept. 14: Clinton spoke at Andrews Air Force Base at a ceremony to receive the remains of those killed in Benghazi. She remarked that she received a letter from the president of the Palestinian Authority praising Stevens and “deploring — and I quote — ‘an act of ugly terror.’ ” She, however, did not call it an act of terror or a terrorist attack and neither did the president.
Sept. 14: At a State Department press briefing, spokeswoman Nuland says the department will no longer answer any questions about the Benghazi attack. “It is now something that you need to talk to the FBI about, not to us about, because it’s their investigation.”
Sept. 14: At a White House press briefing, Press Secretary Carney denies reports that it was a preplanned attack. “I have seen that report, and the story is absolutely wrong. We were not aware of any actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi was planned or imminent. That report is false.” Later in that same briefing, Carney is told that Pentagon officials informed members of Congress at a closed-door meeting that the Benghazi attack was a planned terrorist attack. Carney said the matter is being investigated but White House officials “don’t have and did not have concrete evidence to suggest that this was not in reaction to the film.”
Question: Jay, one last question — while we were sitting here — [Defense] Secretary [Leon] Panetta and the Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs briefed the Senate Armed Services Committee. And the senators came out and said their indication was that this, or the attack on Benghazi was a terrorist attack organized and carried out by terrorists, that it was premeditated, a calculated act of terror. Levin said — Senator Levin — I think it was a planned, premeditated attack. The kind of equipment that they had used was evidence it was a planned, premeditated attack. Is there anything more you can — now that the administration is briefing senators on this, is there anything more you can tell us?
Carney: Well, I think we wait to hear from administration officials. Again, it’s actively under investigation, both the Benghazi attack and incidents elsewhere. And my point was that we don’t have and did not have concrete evidence to suggest that this was not in reaction to the film. But we’re obviously investigating the matter, and I’ll certainly — I’m sure both the Department of Defense and the White House and other places will have more to say about that as more information becomes available.
Sept. 14: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta meets with the Senate Armed Services Committee. Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, reports that Republicans and Democrats came away with the conclusion that the Benghazi attack was a planned terrorist attack.
The Hill: Senators spoke with Panetta about the response to the situation in Libya. Four Americans were killed in an attack Tuesday on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.
Senators said it has become clearer the attack was coordinated, although they would not say anything specific about any connection to the broader protests that came after an anti-Muslim video was released.
“I think it was a planned, premeditated attack,” Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said. He added he did not know the specific group responsible for the assault on the complex.
[Sen. John] McCain expressed a similar view.“People don’t go to demonstrate and carry RPGs and automatic weapons,” he said, adding that the facts suggest “this was not a ‘mob’ action [or] a group of protesters.”
Sept. 15-16: Susan Rice Contradicts Libyan President
Sept. 15: Obama discusses the Benghazi attack in his weekly address. He makes no mention of terror, terrorists or extremists. He does talk about the anti-Muslim film and “every angry mob” that it inspired in pockets of the Middle East.
Obama: This tragic attack [in Benghazi] takes place at a time of turmoil and protest in many different countries. I have made it clear that the United States has a profound respect for people of all faiths. We stand for religious freedom. And we reject the denigration of any religion — including Islam.
Yet there is never any justification for violence. There is no religion that condones the targeting of innocent men and women. There is no excuse for attacks on our Embassies and Consulates.
Sept. 16: Libya President Mohamed Magariaf says on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that the attack on the U.S. consulate was planned months in advance. But Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, tells CBS News’ Bob Schieffer: “We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned.” She says it began “spontaneously … as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo,” and “extremist elements” joined in the protest. (It was later learned that Rice received her information from talking points developed by the CIA.)
Update, May 16, 2013: The talking points given to Rice were extensively revised, largely at the request of the State Department. The original CIA talking points said, “We do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qa’ida participated in the attack.” And they said that “[i]nitial press reporting linked the attack to Ansar al-Sharia.” References to al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Sharia were removed. However, all of the drafts say the attack began “spontaneously” in response to the Cairo protest. Read our article “Benghazi Attack, Revisited” for more information on what changes were made to the talking points.
Update, May 2, 2014: Two days before Rice’s appearance on the Sunday talk show circuit, Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes sent an email to other administration officials, including White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, with the subject line “PREP CALL with Susan: Saturday at 4:00 pm ET.” Rhodes’ email outlined four “goals” for Rice’s TV appearances. One of the goals: “To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.” The email contained a mock Q&A session, and the third question asked whether the Benghazi attack was “an intelligence failure.” The answer in the email parroted — nearly word for word — Rice’s talking points when it said: “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US Consulate and subsequently its annex.” The Rhodes email was released April 29 by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that obtained 41 State Department documents under the Freedom of Information Act.
Schieffer: Was this a long-planned attack, as far as you know? Or what– what do you know about that?
Magariaf: The way these perpetrators acted and moved … this leaves us with no doubt that this has preplanned, determined– predetermined.
Schieffer: And you believe that this was the work of al Qaeda and you believe that it was led by foreigners. Is that — is that what you are telling us?
Magariaf: It was planned — definitely, it was planned by foreigners, by people who — who entered the country a few months ago, and they were planning this criminal act since their — since their arrival. …
Schieffer: And joining us now, Susan Rice, the U.N. ambassador, our U.N. ambassador. Madam Ambassador, [Magariaf] says this is something that has been in the planning stages for months. I understand you have been saying that you think it was spontaneous? Are we not on the same page here?
Rice: Bob, let me tell you what we understand to be the assessment at present. First of all, very importantly, as you discussed with the president, there is an investigation that the United States government will launch led by the FBI, that has begun and —
They are not on the ground yet, but they have already begun looking at all sorts of evidence of — of various sorts already available to them and to us. And they will get on the ground and continue the investigation. So we’ll want to see the results of that investigation to draw any definitive conclusions.
But based on the best information we have to date, what our assessment is as of the present is in fact what began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy — sparked by this hateful video. But soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that– in that effort with heavy weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post-revolution. And that it spun from there into something much, much more violent.
Schieffer: But you do not agree with him that this was something that had been plotted out several months ago?
Rice: We do not– we do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned.
Schieffer: Do you agree or disagree with him that al Qaeda had some part in this?
Rice: Well, we’ll have to find out that out. I mean I think it’s clear that there were extremist elements that joined in and escalated the violence. Whether they were al Qaeda affiliates, whether they were Libyan-based extremists or al Qaeda itself I think is one of the things we’ll have to determine.
Sept. 16: Magariaf says in an interview with NPR: “The idea that this criminal and cowardly act was a spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous. We firmly believe that this was a precalculated, preplanned attack that was carried out specifically to attack the U.S. consulate.”
Sept. 17: State Defends Rice and ‘Initial Assessment’
Sept. 17: Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman, is asked about Rice’s comments on “Face the Nation” and four other Sunday talk shows. Nuland says, “The comments that Ambassador Rice made accurately reflect our government’s initial assessment.” Nuland uses the phrase “initial assessment” three times when discussing Rice’s comments.
Sept. 18: Obama Says ‘Extremists’ Used Video As ‘Excuse’
Sept. 18: Obama was asked about the Benghazi attack on “The Late Show with David Letterman.” The president said, “Here’s what happened,” and began discussing the impact of the anti-Muslim video. He then said, “Extremists and terrorists used this as an excuse to attack a variety of our embassies, including the consulate in Libya.” He also said, “As offensive as this video was and, obviously, we’ve denounced it and the United States government had nothing to do with it. That’s never an excuse for violence.”
Sept. 18: Asked about Magariaf’s assessment that the video had nothing to do with the terrorist attack in Benghazi, the White House spokesman says Obama “would rather wait” for the investigation to be completed. “But at this time, as Ambassador Rice said and as I said, our understanding and our belief based on the information we have is it was the video that caused the unrest in Cairo, and the video and the unrest in Cairo that helped — that precipitated some of the unrest in Benghazi and elsewhere,” Carney says. “What other factors were involved is a matter of investigation.”
Sept. 18: After meeting with Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations Patricia Espinosa, Clinton speaks with reporters and is asked if the Libyan president is “wrong” that “this attack was planned for months.” Clinton says, “The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has said we had no actionable intelligence that an attack on our post in Benghazi was planned or imminent.” She does not say if Magariaf is right or wrong.
Sept. 19: Olsen Calls It a ‘Terrorist Attack’
Sept. 19: Matt Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, tells a Senate subcommittee (at 1:06:49 in the video) that the four State Department officials in Benghazi “were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy.” It is the first time an administration official labeled it a “terrorist attack.” But he also tells the senators that he has no “specific evidence of significant advanced planning.”
Olsen: Yes, they were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy. … The best information we have now, the facts that we have now, indicate that this was an opportunist attack on our embassy. The attack began and evolved and escalated over several hours. … [I]t appears that individuals who were certainly well armed seized on the opportunity presented as the events unfolded. … What we don’t have, at this point, is specific intelligence that there was a significant advanced planning or coordination for this attack.
Sept. 19: At a State Department briefing, the department spokeswoman is asked if she now believes that the attack was a “terrorist attack”? She says, “Well, I didn’t get a chance to see the whole testimony that was given by Matt Olsen of the NCTC, but obviously we stand by comments made by our intelligence community who has first responsibility for evaluating the intelligence and what they believe that we are seeing.”
Sept. 19: The White House spokesman does not call it a “terrorist attack” in his press briefing. Carney says, “Based on the information we had at the time — we have now, we do not yet have indication that it was preplanned or premeditated. There’s an active investigation. If that active investigation produces facts that lead to a different conclusion, we will make clear that that’s where the investigation has led.”
Sept. 20: W.H. Spokesman Calls It a ‘Terrorist Attack’ — Not Obama
Sept. 20: Carney calls it a “terrorist attack” after being asked how the White House now classifies the attack. But he says the White House has no evidence that it was “a significantly preplanned attack” and blames the video for igniting the incident in Benghazi.
Carney: It is, I think, self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack. Our embassy was attacked violently, and the result was four deaths of American officials. So, again, that’s self-evident. I would point you to a couple of things that Mr. Olsen said, which is that at this point it appears that a number of different elements were involved in the attack, including individuals connected to militant groups that are prevalent in Eastern Libya.
He also made clear that at this point, based on the information he has — and he is briefing the Hill on the most up-to-date intelligence — we have no information at this point that suggests that this was a significantly preplanned attack, but this was the result of opportunism, taking advantage of and exploiting what was happening as a result of reaction to the video that was found to be offensive.
Sept. 20: Obama, at a town hall meeting, says “extremists” took advantage of the “natural protests” to the anti-Muslim video to attack the consulate in Benghazi. He does not call it a “terrorist attack.”
Question: We have reports that the White House said today that the attacks in Libya were a terrorist attack. Do you have information indicating that it was Iran, or al Qaeda was behind organizing the protests?
Obama: Well, we’re still doing an investigation, and there are going to be different circumstances in different countries. And so I don’t want to speak to something until we have all the information. What we do know is that the natural protests that arose because of the outrage over the video were used as an excuse by extremists to see if they can also directly harm U.S. interests.
Sept. 21: Clinton Calls It a ‘Terrorist Attack’
Sept. 21: Clinton, speaking to reporters before a meeting with Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, calls it a “terrorist attack” for the first time. She says, “Yesterday afternoon when I briefed the Congress, I made it clear that keeping our people everywhere in the world safe is our top priority. What happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack, and we will not rest until we have tracked down and brought to justice the terrorists who murdered four Americans.”
Sept. 24-25: Obama Refuses to Call It a Terrorist Attack
Sept. 24: Clinton meets with the Libyan president and calls the Benghazi attack a “terrorist assault.” She says, “As we all know, the United States lost a great ambassador and the Libyan people lost a true friend when Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the terrorist assault on our consulate in Benghazi.”
Sept. 24: Obama tapes an appearance on “The View,” and he’s asked by co-host Joy Behar whether the Libya attack was an act of terrorism or caused by the anti-Muslim video. He does not call it a terrorist attack and says, “We’re still doing an investigation.”
Joy Behar: It was reported that people just went crazy and wild because of this anti-Muslim movie, or anti-Muhammad, I guess, movie. But then I heard Hillary Clinton say that it was an act of terrorism. Is it? What do you say?
Obama: Well, we’re still doing an investigation. There’s no doubt that the kind of weapons that were used, the ongoing assault, that it wasn’t just a mob action. Now, we don’t have all the information yet, so we’re still gathering it. But what’s clear is that around the world, there’s still a lot of threats out there. That’s why we have to maintain the strongest military in the world, that’s why we can’t let down our guard when it comes to the intelligence work that we do and staying on top of — not just al Qaeda, the traditional al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan. …
Sept. 25: Obama speaks at the United Nations. He praises Chris Stevens as “the best of America” and condemns the anti-Muslim video as “crude and disgusting.” He does not describe the Benghazi attack as a terrorist attack.
Sept. 26: ‘Let’s Be Clear, It Was a Terrorist Attack’
Sept. 26: Carney is asked at a press briefing aboard Air Force One en route to Ohio why the president has not called the Benghazi incident a “terrorist attack.” He said, “The president — our position is, as reflected by the NCTC director, that it was a terrorist attack. It is, I think by definition, a terrorist attack when there is a prolonged assault on an embassy with weapons. … So, let’s be clear, it was a terrorist attack and it was an inexcusable attack.”
Sept. 26: Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, in an interview with Al Jazeera, is asked whether he agrees with the president of Libya that the Benghazi attack was premeditated and had nothing to do with the anti-Muslim video. He said: “It’s clear that the attack which took the lives of Chris Stevens and three other colleagues was clearly choreographed and directed and involved a fair amount of firepower, but exactly what kind of planning went into that and how it emerged on that awful night, we just don’t know right now. But I’m confident we’ll get to the bottom of it.”
Sept. 27: When Did Administration Know?
Sept. 27: At a press briefing, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says that “it was a terrorist attack,” but declines to say when he came to that conclusion. “It took a while to really get some of the feedback from what exactly happened at that location,” he said. “As we determined the details of what took place there, and how that attack took place, that it became clear that there were terrorists who had planned that attack.”
Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the same briefing addresses what the U.S. knew in advance of the Benghazi attack. He says there was “a thread of intelligence reporting that groups in … eastern Libya were seeking to coalesce, but there wasn’t anything specific and certainly not a specific threat to the consulate that I’m aware of.”
Sept. 27: In a report on “Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees,” Fran Townsend, former Homeland Security adviser to President George W. Bush, says the administration knew early on that it was a terrorist attack. “The law enforcement source who said to me, from day one we had known clearly that this was a terrorist attack,” she says.
Sept. 27-28: Intelligence ‘Evolved’
Sept. 27: The White House spokesman is asked yet again why the president has refused to call the incident a terrorist attack. “The president’s position [is] that this was a terrorist attack,” Carney says.
Question: If the president does not call it, label it a terrorist attack as you and others have, is there some legal or diplomatic trigger that that brings? Why hasn’t he said that?
Carney: I think you’re misunderstanding something here. I’m the president’s spokesman. When the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, Matt Olsen, in open testimony in Congress answered a question by saying yes, by the definitions we go by — this is me paraphrasing — this was a terrorist attack — I echoed that, because this president, this administration, everybody looks to the intelligence community for the assessments on this. And it has been since I said so, the president’s position that this was a terrorist attack.
Sept. 28: Shawn Turner, a spokesman for the director of national intelligence, says in a statement that the office’s position on the attack evolved. It was first believed that “the attack began spontaneously,” but it was later determined that “it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack,” he says.
Turner: In the immediate aftermath, there was information that led us to assess that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo. We provided that initial assessment to Executive Branch officials and members of Congress, who used that information to discuss the attack publicly and provide updates as they became available. Throughout our investigation we continued to emphasize that information gathered was preliminary and evolving.
As we learned more about the attack, we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists. It remains unclear if any group or person exercised overall command and control of the attack, and if extremist group leaders directed their members to participate.
Oct. 2-3: Clinton Cites ‘Continuing Questions’
Oct. 2: White House spokesman Carney at a press briefing in Nevada: “At every step of the way, the administration has based its public statements on the best assessments that were provided by the intelligence community. As the intelligence community learned more information they updated Congress and the American people on it.”
Oct. 3: Clinton tells reporters after a meeting with Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan Erlan Idrissov: “There are continuing questions about what exactly happened in Benghazi on that night three weeks ago. And we will not rest until we answer those questions and until we track down the terrorists who killed our people.”
Oct. 9: ‘Everything Calm’ Prior to Benghazi Attack, No Protests
Oct. 9: At a background briefing, senior state department officials reveal there were no protests prior to the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi — contrary to what administration officials have been saying for weeks. A senior department official says “everything is calm at 8:30 p.m.” (Libya time) when Stevens was outside the building to bid a visitor goodbye. The ambassador retired to his bedroom for the evening at 9 p.m. The calm was shattered by 9:40 p.m. when “loud noises” and “gunfire and an explosion” are heard. (The background briefing provided on Sept. 12 also said the attack began at about 10 p.m., or about 4 p.m. EDT, but it did not provide information about what happened prior to the attack.)
A senior official says it was “not our conclusion” that the Benghazi attack started as a spontaneous protest to the anti-Muslim video. He also said “there was no actionable intelligence of any planned or imminent attack.”
Question: What in all of these events that you’ve described led officials to believe for the first several days that this was prompted by protests against the video?
Senior state department official two: That is a question that you would have to ask others. That was not our conclusion. I’m not saying that we had a conclusion, but we outlined what happened. The Ambassador walked guests out around 8:30 or so, there was no one on the street at approximately 9:40, then there was the noise and then we saw on the cameras the – a large number of armed men assaulting the compound.
Oct. 10: Administration Says It Gave Public ‘Best Information’
Oct. 10: Carney, the White House spokesman, is asked at a press briefing why the president and administration officials described the anti-Muslim video as the underlying cause of the attack on Benghazi when the State Department “never concluded that the assault in Benghazi was part of a protest on the anti-Muslim film.” He replied, in part: “Again, from the beginning, we have provided information based on the facts that we knew as they became available, based on assessments by the intelligence community — not opinions — assessments by the IC, by the intelligence community. And we have been clear all along that this was an ongoing investigation, that as more facts became available we would make you aware of them as appropriate, and we’ve done that.”
Oct. 10: After testifying before a House committee, Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy is asked at a press briefing what the State Department should have done differently in releasing information about the Benghazi attack. He said, “We are giving out the best information we have at the time.”
Kennedy: [T]his is obviously an incredibly complicated situation. We’ve always made clear from the very beginning that we are giving out the best information we have at the time we are giving it out. That information has evolved over time. For example, if any Administration official, including any career official, had been on television on Sunday, September 16th, they would have said the same thing that Ambassador Rice would have said. She had information at that point from the intelligence community, and that is the same information I had and this – I would have made exactly the same points. Clearly, we know more today, but we knew what we knew when we knew it.
Oct. 10: The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform releases State Department memos requesting additional security in Libya. Charlene Lamb, a State Department official who denied those requests, tells the committee that the State Department had been training local Libyans for nearly a year and additional U.S. security personnel were not needed. As reported by Foreign Policy: “We had the correct number of assets in Benghazi on the night of 9/11,” Lamb testified. Others testified differently. “All of us at post were in sync that we wanted these resources,” testified Eric Nordstrom, the top regional security officer in Libya over the summer, Foreign Policy reported.
Oct. 15: Clinton Blames ‘Fog of War’
Oct. 15: Clinton, in an interview on CNN, blamed the “fog of war” when asked why the administration initially claimed the attack began with the anti-Muslim video, even though the State Department never reached that conclusion. “In the wake of an attack like this in the fog of war, there’s always going to be confusion, and I think it is absolutely fair to say that everyone had the same intelligence,” Clinton said. “Everyone who spoke tried to give the information they had. As time has gone on, the information has changed, we’ve gotten more detail, but that’s not surprising. That always happens.”
Oct. 15: The New York Timesreports that the Benghazi attack came “without any warning or protest,” but “Libyans who witnessed the assault and know the attackers” say it was “in retaliation for the video.”
Oct. 24: White House, State Department Emails on Ansar al-Sharia
Oct. 24: Reuters reports the White House, Pentagon and other government agencies learned just two hours into the Benghazi attack that Ansar al-Sharia, an Islamic militant group, had “claimed credit” for it. The wire service report was based on three emails from the State Department’s Operations Center. One of the emails said, “Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripol.” The article also noted, “Intelligence experts caution that initial reports from the scene of any attack or disaster are often inaccurate.” (It should be noted that Reuters first reported on Sept. 12 that unnamed U.S. officials believed that Ansar al-Sharia may have been involved.)
Oct. 24: Clinton warns at a press conference that you cannot draw conclusions from the leaked emails because “cherry-picking one story here or one document there” can be misleading. She said, “The independent Accountability Review Board is already hard at work looking at everything — not cherry-picking one story here or one document there — but looking at everything, which I highly recommend as the appropriate approach to something as complex as an attack like this. Posting something on Facebook is not in and of itself evidence, and I think it just underscores how fluid the reporting was at the time and continued for some time to be.”
Oct. 24: Carney, the White House spokesman, says that “within a few hours” of the attack Ansar al-Sharia “claimed that it had not been responsible.” He added, “Neither should be taken as fact — that’s why there’s an investigation underway.”
May 8, 2013: At a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform, Rep. Trey Gowdy reads excerpts of a Sept. 12, 2011, email written by Acting Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East Beth Jones. According to Gowdy, Jones wrote, “I spoke to the Libyan ambassador and emphasized the importance of Libyan leaders to continue to make strong statements,” and “When he said his government suspected that former Qaddafi regime elements carried out the attack, I told him that the group that conducted the attacks, Ansar al-Sharia, is affiliated with Islamic extremists.” Gowdy said the email was sent to several top State Department officials, including Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy. The committee did not release the full contents of the email. House Speaker John Boehner said the State Department did not allow the House to keep a copy of it.)
May 15, 2013: The White House releases 100 pages of emails regarding the CIA’s original talking points that were developed for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and used by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice during her Sept. 16 Sunday talk show appearances. The emails show there were extensive changes made at the request of the State Department. (See “Sept. 16″ in our timeline for more information.)
Update, Nov. 6, 2012: This article was updated to add the president’s Sept. 12 interview with “60 Minutes,” which did not release the video and transcript until Nov. 4.
Update, May 9, 2013: This article was updated to include testimony from the May 8, 2013, hearing of the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform.
The timeline below details the ongoing investigation into the September 11, 2012 attack upon the American diplomatic mission at Benghazi, in Libya. The attack and the investigation are the subject of much controversy in the American political sphere.
The New York Times reported: “American and European officials said that while many details about the attack remained unclear, the assailants seemed organized, well trained and heavily armed, and they appeared to have at least some level of advance planning.” The article also noted that a senior Obama administration official told reporters that “it was clearly a complex attack,” but provided no details.[4]
CBS News reported that Wanis al-Sharef (also spelled al-Sharif), a Libyan Interior Ministry official in Benghazi, said that an angry mob had gathered outside the consulate to protest a U.S.-made film that ridicules Islam’s Prophet Muhammad. According to al-Sharef, the mob stormed the consulate after the U.S. troops who responded fired rounds into the air to try and disperse the crowd.[5]
CBS News later reported that U.S. officials said the attack was not an out-of-control demonstration as first suspected, but a well-executed assault. From the wording of the report it is unclear whether the protesters were a group distinct from the attackers or were the attackers themselves.[6]
The Guardian published a video interview of a local Libyan on the consulate compound right after the attack, who presumed and empathized that the attack was in response to the anti-Islamic film.[7]
The Washington Post reported that U.S. officials and Middle East analysts said that the attack “may have been planned by extremists and inspired by al-Qaeda.”[8]
In a press release, the Qulliam Foundation, a counter-extremism think tank based in London, stated that the “military assault” was not related to the film but was to “avenge the death of Abu Yahya al-Libi, al-Qaeda’s second in command killed a few months ago.”[9]
BBC reported that Libya’s deputy ambassador to London, Ahmad Jibril, named Ansar al-Sharia, also known as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the perpetrators. They also said a Libyan reporter told them that the attack was executed by as many as 80 militiamen “armed with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and 14.5 mm anti-aircraft machine guns.”[10][11]
Deputy Interior Minister Wanis al-Sharif of the Libyan government told a news conference in Benghazi that it was likely that the perpetrators had been Gaddafi loyalists, suggesting the attack could have been intended as a revenge for the extradition of Abdullah al-Senoussi (Gaddafi’s former intelligence chief) from Mauritania the previous month.[12]
September 13
The FBI opened an investigation into the deaths; a team was sent to investigate, with another team for security.[13] The FBI officials were set to arrive by September 21 in Benghazi to work with Libyan officials.[14]
In a briefing to congressional staffers, State Department Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy said that the attack appeared planned because it was so extensive and because of the “proliferation” of small and medium weapons.[15]
CNN reported that the attackers were part of an Al Qaeda spinoff group. They spoke with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who said the killings were possibly linked to the terrorist group blamed for the 9/11 hijackings. According to Sen. Feinstein, “The weapons were somewhat sophisticated, and they blew a big hole in the building and started a big fire.”[16]
September 14
The Senate Armed Services Committee was briefed by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta about the response to the situation in Libya. Afterwards, Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) was quoted as saying, “I think it was a planned, premeditated attack.” He added that he did not know the group responsible for the attack.[17]
Talking points prepared by the CIA, stated “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.” [19]
September 16
In an interview with NPR in Benghazi, President Mohammed el-Megarif said that foreigners infiltrated Libya over the past few months, planned the attack, and used Libyans to carry it out.[20] According to el-Megarif: “The idea that this criminal and cowardly act was a spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous. We firmly believe that this was a precalculated, preplanned attack that was carried out specifically to attack the U.S. Consulate.” He said the attackers used the protesters outside the consulate as a cover, and there is evidence showing that elements of Ansar al-Sharia, an extremist group in eastern Benghazi, were used by foreign citizens with ties to al-Qaida to attack the consulate.[21]
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice appeared on several Sunday morning talk shows and stated, “Putting together the best information that we have available to us today our current assessment is that what happened in Benghazi was in fact initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo, almost a copycat of– of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo, which were prompted, of course, by the video. What we think then transpired in Benghazi is that opportunistic extremist elements came to the consulate as this was unfolding. They came with heavy weapons which unfortunately are readily available in post revolutionary Libya. And it escalated into a much more violent episode.”[22][23]
Senator John McCain (R-AZ), the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, voiced suspicion that the attack was planned in advance and not prompted by the furor over the film. He noted that “[m]ost people don’t bring rocket-propelled grenades and heavy weapons to demonstrations. That was an act of terror.”[24]
September 17
Fox News reported that an “intelligence source on the ground in Libya” said “there was no demonstration outside the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi” before the attack.[25] The source was quoted as saying, “There was no protest and the attacks were not spontaneous.” The source also said that the attack “was planned and had nothing to do with the movie.” The source said the assault came with no warning at about 9:35 p.m. local time and included fire from more than two locations. The information for the time and for multiple directions of the attack corroborates an eyewitness report.[26]
Representative Mike Rogers (R) Michigan, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview with Real Clear Politics that there were reports that the Consulate sustained “indirect fire, artillery type fire from mortars. They had direct unit action. It was coordinated in a way that was very unusual. They repulsed a quick reaction force that came to the facility….”[27]
September 19
The director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Matthew Olson, appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. During the hearing Olsen said that the Americans killed in Libya died “in the course of a terrorist attack.”[28] But he said that “the facts that we have now indicate that this was an opportunistic attack,” one in which heavily armed militants took advantage of an ongoing demonstration at the Consulate.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) disagreed with Olsen’s statement that the attack did not appear pre-planned. She said, “Based on the briefings I have had, I’ve come to the opposite conclusion. I just don’t think that people come to protests equipped with RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] and other heavy weapons. And the reports of complicity—and they are many—with Libyan guards who were assigned to guard the consulate also suggest to me that this was premeditated.” Olsen told committee members that the U.S. is “looking at indications” that some attackers had connections to al-Qaeda or its North African affiliate, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
Fox News reported intelligence sources that the attack was tied to Al Qaeda via the involvement of Abu Sufian bin Qumu, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee.[29][30] However, a US national security official tells Mother Jones that “that report is wrong, there’s no intelligence suggesting that he was leading the attack on the consulate that evening.”[31]
September 20
Reuters reported that U.S. authorities are investigating the prospect of collusion between the militants who launched the attack on the consulate and locally hired Libyan personnel guarding the facility.[32] This corroborates earlier statements by U.S. government officials who stated there were multiple accounts of collusion between the attackers and the Libyan security guards.[28]
Secretary Clinton announced the formation of a panel to investigate the attack,[33] which is separate from the FBI investigation.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney for the first time called the event “a terrorist attack.” In the same report CNN noted conflicting reports that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens “believed he was on an al Qaeda hit list.”[34]
September 21
U.S. officials said that the heavily armed extremists who laid siege to the consulate used “military-style tactics” in what appeared to be a “sophisticated operation”. Intelligence reports indicated that 50 or more people, many of them masked, took part in the attack and used gun trucks and precise mortar fire.[35] Intelligence reports also indicated that the attackers set up a perimeter to control access in and out of the compound.
September 23
A report in The New York Times has stated that there were two facilities used by the Americans in Benghazi, one for the American mission and an annex a half-mile away [36] and that:
Neither was heavily guarded, and the annex was never intended to be a “safe house,” as initial accounts suggested. Two of the mission’s guards — Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty, former members of the Navy SEALs — were killed just outside the villa’s front gate.
September 25
U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) sent a letter to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice seeking clarification on statements she made on the five Sunday talk shows on September 16 that the September 11 attack in Benghazi was the result of a “spontaneous reaction.” The senators wrote that the evidence clearly showed the attack was planned and coordinated.[37] Ms. Rice wrote in her reply letter, “I relied solely and squarely on the information the intelligence community provided to me … This information represented the intelligence community’s best, current assessment as of the date of my television appearances.” The four senators replied in a statement: “Elements of the intelligence community apparently told the administration within hours of the attack that militants connected with al Qaeda were involved, yet Ambassador Rice claims her comments five days later reflected the ‘best’ and ‘current’ assessment of the intelligence community. Either the Obama administration is misleading Congress and the American people, or it is blaming the entire failure on the intelligence community.”[38]
September 26
The Daily Beast reported that three separate U.S. intelligence officials knew within 24 hours of the attack that it was “planned and the work of al Qaeda affiliates operating in Eastern Libya.”[39]
Libyan president Mohamed Magariefd, in an interview with NBC News, said that there were no protestors at the site before the attack and that the anti-Islam film had “nothing to do with” the attack.[40] “Reaction should have been, if it was genuine, should have been six months earlier. So it was postponed until the 11th of September,” he said. “They chose this date, 11th of September to carry a certain message.”
Eight Republican Representatives on the House Armed Services Committee sent a letter to President Obama asking him to provide answers to questions in a classified format.[41] Their letter reads in part: “While we appreciate your willingness to provide the House of Representatives with an interagency briefing last week, many of the members’ questions were left unanswered. To that end, we are seeking additional information regarding the intelligence leading up to the attack, the security posture of our embassy, the role former Guantanamo Bay detainees may have played, as well as the way forward in Libya and, indeed, the region.”
September 28
A statement released by the Director of Public Affairs for the Director of National Intelligence, Shawn Turner, on the intelligence related to the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, read in part:[42] “As we learned more about the attack, we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists. It remains unclear if any group or person exercised overall command and control of the attack, and if extremist group leaders directed their members to participate. However, we do assess that some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al-Qa’ida. We continue to make progress, but there remain many unanswered questions. As more information becomes available our analysis will continue to evolve and we will obtain a more complete understanding of the circumstances surrounding the terrorist attack.”
October 2012
October 2
In a letter to Secretary of State Clinton, Darrell Issa (R-CA, chairman of the Committee) and Jason Chaffetz (R-UT, chairman of the subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense, and Foreign Operations) write that “the attack that claimed the Ambassador’s life was the latest in a long line of attacks on Western diplomats and officials in Libya in the months leading up to September 11, 2012. It was clearly never, as Administration officials once insisted, the result of a popular protest.”[43] The letter goes on to state that the mission in Benghazi was denied increased security they repeatedly requested. Subpoenaed witnesses set to testify before the committee on October 10 are Charlene Lamb, Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Programs, Bureau of Diplomatic Security, U.S. Department of State; Eric Nordstrom, Regional Security Officer, U.S. Department of State; and Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, Utah National Guard, U.S. Army.[44] According to Lt. Col. Wood, his 16-member team and a six-member State Department elite force called a Mobile Security Deployment team left Libya in August, one month before the assault on the diplomatic mission. Wood says that’s despite the fact that U.S. officials in Libya wanted security increased, not decreased.[45]
In an evening briefing to reporters, the State Department said it never concluded that the consulate attack in Libya stemmed from protests over the video.[50][51]
Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Bob Corker (R-TN) met with Libyan officials in Tripoli, and said that investigators are examining video from security cameras at the primary Benghazi compound to help them reconstruct what happened in the attack and identify attack participants.[52]
Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) sent letters to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director David Petraeus, and John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, asking them to respond to “specific questions regarding the shifting official explanations” about the attack.[53]
October 10
The four witnesses called to testify at the October 10, 2012 hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (l to r) were Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, Utah National Guard, U.S. Army; Eric Nordstrom, Regional Security Officer, U.S. Department of State; Charlene Lamb, Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Programs, Bureau of Diplomatic Security, U.S. Department of State; and Ambassador Patrick Kennedy, Under Secretary for Management, U.S. Department of State. An image of the U.S. compound can be seen behind Ms. Lamb.
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held its hearing, “The Security Failures of Benghazi.”[44] In addition to the three witnesses originally named, a fourth witness testified: Ambassador Patrick Kennedy, Under Secretary for Management, U.S. Department of State.
In sworn testimony, Mr. Kennedy said, “…if any administration official, including any career official, were on television on Sunday, September 16th, they would have said what Ambassador Rice said. The information she had at that point from the intelligence community is the same that I had at that point.”[54] However, in a briefing to congressional staffers on September 13, Mr. Kennedy said that the attack appeared planned.[15] With regard to the so-called “talking points” memo UN Ambassador Susan Rice relied upon for information during television interviews following the Benghazi attack, The Guardian reports that on 16 November 2012, former CIA Director David Petraeus told congressional hearings, references to al-Queda had been removed from the memo. The references where remove so as not to give up information which could compromise classified sources. Rice was unaware of al-Qaida ties to the Benghazi attack.[55]
During testimony State Department witnesses acknowledged that it rejected appeals for more security at its diplomatic posts in Libya in the months before the attack.[56] The “annex” and “safe house” in the second diplomatic compound was inadvertently revealed to be a U.S. intelligence post.[57][58][59]
Charlene Lamb, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Programs, said in her prepared testimony that she had a firm grasp on what happened in Benghazi, starting moments after the assault began. ”When the attack began, a Diplomatic Security agent working in the tactical operations center immediately … alerted the annex U.S. quick reaction security team stationed nearby … and the Diplomatic Security Command Center in Washington. From that point on, I could follow what was happening in almost real-time.”[60]
During testimony Representative Issa described the existence of video tape of the attack taken from consulate security cameras; the tape was not available to committee members at the time of the hearing.
October 12
U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs announced its plan to conduct a bipartisan investigation. Part of their investigation will seek to determine “why the Administration’s initial public assessments of this attack were subsequently proven inaccurate.”[61]
October 14
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), speaking on CBS’ Face the Nation, said that “[t]he intelligence community on the ground in Libya has told Senator Corker and myself that within twenty-four hours, they communicated up to Washington that this was a terrorist attack.”[62]
October 15
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton assumed responsibility for the Benghazi attack, saying that she is in charge of her 60,000-plus staff all over the world and “the president and the vice president wouldn’t be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security professionals. They’re the ones who weigh all of the threats and the risks and the needs and make a considered decision.”[63] Republican Senator John McCain praised her “laudable gesture, especially when the White House is trying to avoid any responsibility whatsoever” but insisted that either there were drastic failures in the national security operation in not keeping the president aware of ongoing threats, or Obama himself knew of the threats and needed to take responsibility for the shortcomings.[64]
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, the two Libyan militiamen guarding the consulate denied aiding the attackers. The compound was “lazily quiet” in the hours before the assault, they said. Around 9:30 p.m., the guards heard cries of “Allahu akbar!”—”God is great”—three times from outside the walls, then a voice called out in Arabic “You infidels!” and the attackers raced inside.[65]
The New York Times reported that witnesses of the attack knowledgeable of the circumstances were very convinced that it was carried out by a group of local Islamic militants in response to the video. According to local militia leaders familiar with the militant group, it was capable of carrying out the attack on short notice with only a few hour’s planning.[66]
October 17
Libyan officials report that the founder of Libya’s Islamist militia Ansar al-Sharia was at the compound during the attack, but that he remains free a week after those allegations were disclosed to Libyan political leaders and U.S. investigators.[67] The militia commander, identified as Ahmed Abu Khattalah, is a former political prisoner whose fighters were also blamed for assassinating a senior military officer after he defected to the opposition during last year’s revolution against Moammar Kadafi.[68]
October 18
The New York Times reported that Ahmed Abu Khattala, 41, claimed the Benghazi attack had grown out of a peaceful protest against a video made in the United States that mocked the Prophet Muhammad and Islam.[69] On or about 15 June 2014 American military and law enforcement personnel operating in Libya captured Ahmed Abu Khattala, who had been secretly indicted in the U.S. for his alleged role as a mastermind and/or ring-leader in the Benghazi attack.
Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs made its first request for documents and briefings into the circumstances surrounding the attack. In separate letters to Secretary Hillary Clinton, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, the committee requested a classified briefing for members of the committee. The briefing is to address threat assessments before the attack, security needs, requests for security, description and chronology of the attack, and what the Obama administration knew about the attack in the immediate aftermath and “whether any initial public statements issued by members of the Administration in the days following the attack were inaccurate and, if so, why.”[70]
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, questioned the security at the compound and the initial intelligence surrounding the attack. Feinstein was quoted in an interview: “I think what happened was the director of national intelligence, which we call the DNI, who is a very good individual, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Gen. Jim Clapper, put out some speaking points on the initial intelligence assessment. I think that was possibly a mistake.”[71]
October 19
Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and National Security Subcommittee Chairman Jason Chaffetz sent a 10-page letter to President Obama,[72] accompanied by 166 pages of unclassified documents[73] and photos.[74] The committee stated that the “letter requests that the White House respond to questions about its role in the controversial decision to have the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya pursue a course of ‘normalization’ that was intended to help create the perception of success in Libya and contrast it to U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.”[75]
Representative Peter T. King (R-NY), Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, sent a letter to President Obama requesting him to release Intelligence Community (1) reporting that led Obama Administration officials to initially characterize the assault as a “spontaneous reaction” to a film and (2) data and intelligence that led the Administration to change its characterization from a “spontaneous reaction” to a “terrorist attack.”[76]
Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) renewed their request from 10 days ago that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director David Petraeus and John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, answer questions regarding “the shifting official explanations surrounding” the attack. The senators wrote, “Our questions should not be hard to answer, and the American people have a right to learn what our intelligence communities knew about the events of September 11, 2012, and when they knew it.”[77]
U.S. officials told The Associated Press that the CIA station chief in Libya compiled intelligence reports within 24 hours of the attack that indicated there was evidence it was carried out by militants, using the pretext of demonstrations against U.S. facilities in Egypt against the film to cover their intent. The report from the station chief was written late Wednesday, Sept. 12, and reached intelligence agencies in Washington the next day. It was not clear how widely the information was circulated.[78]
October 20
The Washington Post reported that talking points prepared by the CIA on Sept. 15 stated: “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.” [19]
CBS News reported Congress members have asked why military assistance was not sent. General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta “looked at available options, and the ones we exercised had our military forces arrive in less than 24 hours, well ahead of timelines laid out in established policies.” An unmanned Predator drone was sent to Benghazi, and the drone observed the final hours of the attack. The Pentagon said it moved a team of special operators from central Europe to Naval Air Station Sigonella; other nearby military forces available were fighter jets and AC-130 gunships. Gary Berntsen stated, “They made zero adjustments in this. They stood and they watched and our people died.”[79]
October 22
The New York Times reported that Ms. Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, “has said that the judgments she offered on the five talk shows on Sept. 16 came from talking points prepared by the C.I.A., which reckoned that the attack that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans had resulted from a spontaneous mob that was angry about an anti-Islamic video that had set off protests elsewhere. That assessment, described to Ms. Rice in briefings the day before her television appearances, was based on intercepted communications, informants’ tips and Libyan press reports, officials said.” [80]
October 23
Media reports indicate that the State Department’s Operations Center sent a “Sensitive but unclassified” email at 4:05 p.m. Washington time (10:05 p.m. Benghazi time) on September 11 titled “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack” to the White House Situation Room and other U.S. security units and two hours later sent an email titled “Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack.”[81][82] The first email reads in part: “approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well. Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four COM (Chief of Mission/embassy) personnel are in the compound safe haven.”[83] Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton cautioned that those emails are “not in and of itself evidence” that the administration had definitively assessed the assault as a terrorist attack from the beginning.[84] A Tunisian man who was arrested in Turkey earlier this month with reported links to the Benghazi attack has been returned to Tunisia and is facing terrorism charges.[85][86]
October 24
It is reported that both Reuters and Fox News obtained copies of an email sent about 2 hours after the attack in which the White House, Pentagon, and other agencies are told that the Islamist militant group Ansar al-Sharia had “claimed responsibility.”[87]
October 25
A suspected Al-Qaeda member who was believed to have been involved in the Consulate attack was shot dead by Egyptian police, after they received a tip that he was staying in an apartment in Madinat Nasr. Egyptian police also arrested a seven-member cell in Cairo, five of whom are Libyans and the other two Egyptians.[88]
October 26
Republican Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Kelly Ayotte wrote to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, CIA Director David Petraeus, and Attorney General Eric Holder requesting they make public the surveillance video taken at the consulate during the attack.[89]Fox News reported that military back-up was denied by the CIA chain of command, and the annex was instructed twice to “stand down”. Woods, and two others, ignored those instructions and evacuated the consulate. Upon returning to the annex, and after beginning to taking fire, the annex requested fire support as they had a laser targeted on the mortar team that was attacking them. A CIA spokeswoman, Jennifer Youngblood, denied the claims.[90]
October 27
The Associated Press published a timeline of the comments by the administration and Libyan officials regarding the Benghazi attack,[91] as well as Libyan witnesses account.[92] The AP article noted that a witness said he militants before the attack gathering around 20 youths from nearby to chant against the anti-Islam film. The article reports that American officials suggest it was a planned militant assault and that the attackers may have used the film controversy as a cover for the attack.
October 31
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich suggested that “at least two networks have emails from the National Security Adviser’s office telling a counterterrorism group to stand down” in assisting the besieged U.S. consulate in Benghazi.[93] Gingrich said that the bombshell emails could be revealed within the next two days.Fox News reported that a cable marked “SECRET” and addressed to the Office of the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton summarized an “emergency meeting” convened by the U.S. Mission in Benghazi on August 15, 2012. In the meeting the State Department’s regional security officer “expressed concerns with the ability to defend Post in the event of a coordinated attack due to limited manpower, security measures, weapons capabilities, host nation support, and the overall size of the compound.” According to Fox News, “The details in the cable seemed to foreshadow the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. compound, which was a coordinated, commando-style assault using direct and indirect fire. Al Qaeda in North Africa and Ansar al-Sharia, both mentioned in the cable, have since been implicated in the consulate attack.”[94]
November 2012
November 1
CBS News reported that during the attack the Obama administration did not convene its top interagency counterterrorism resource: the Counterterrorism Security Group, (CSG). A high-ranking government official was quoted: “The CSG is the one group that’s supposed to know what resources every agency has. They know of multiple options and have the ability to coordinate counterterrorism assets across all the agencies. They were not allowed to do their job. They were not called upon.”[95] The article goes on to state that counterterrorism sources and internal emails reviewed by CBS News expressed frustration that key responders were ready to deploy but were not called upon to help in the attack.
Documents found by reporters for the American magazine Foreign Policy on Oct. 26 amid the wreckage of the U.S. consulate indicate there was concern about security at the compound. One letter dated Sept. 11 and addressed to Mohamed Obeidi, the head of the Libyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ office in Benghazi, reads in part: “Finally, early this morning at 0643, September 11, 2012, one of our diligent guards made a troubling report. Near our main gate, a member of the police force was seen in the upper level of a building across from our compound. It is reported that this person was photographing the inside of the U.S. special mission and furthermore that this person was part of the police unit sent to protect the mission.”[96] The article states that this accords with a message written by Smith, the IT officer who was killed in the assault, on a gaming forum on Sept. 11. “Assuming we don’t die tonight. We saw one of our ‘police’ that guard the compound taking pictures,” he wrote hours before the assault.
Washington Post published a detailed CIA timeline of the attack described by a senior intelligence official.[97]
November 2
Fifty-three members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to President Obama and Secretary Clinton requesting responses to oversight questions, including questions on the president’s Daily Brief, how the State Department designated the Benghazi compound (and how it affected security requirements), contradictions in the administration’s public statements of the attack as a deliberate terrorist attack or a spontaneous protest, and discrepancies between danger pay increases for mission personnel but denial for additional security.[98]Senior U.S. intelligence officials acknowledged that Woods and Doherty were contracted by the Central Intelligence Agency, not the State Department as originally publicly identified.[99]
Fox News reported that U.S. military intelligence informed senior commanders as early as 7 p.m. ET (that is, less than 4 hours after the attack began) that Ansar al-Sharia carried out the attack. The intelligence was relayed with no caveats, according to a source familiar with the intelligence.[100]
The Pentagon said that two U.S. service members volunteered to join the CIA team that travelled from Tripoli to Benghazi on the rescue mission.[101]
November 3
U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) urged the immediate creation of a temporary Select Committee to investigate the Benghazi attack.[102]Fox News reported that the Blue Mountain Security manager (who was in charge of the local force hired to guard the consulate perimeter) made calls on both two-way radios and cell phones to colleagues in Benghazi warning of problems at least an hour earlier than the attack. Allegedly, those calls were to local security contractors, who say that the annex was also notified much earlier than 9:40 p.m., when the attack started. U.S. military intelligence also said that armed militias were gathering up to 3 hours before the attack.[103]
November 9
David H. Petraeus resigned his position as CIA Director and admitted to having an extramarital affair; he was scheduled to testify before Congress the week of November 12 on the Benghazi attack.[104] As of then it was not clear that General Petraeus would have to testify, and whether he would be disposed to do so if requested or required by Congress, though Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, indicated that the Congress would need to interview him. On Wednesday, November 14, 2012, it was made known that he had agreed to testify the following day, Thursday, November 15.[105]
November 10
The Department of Defense released a press release stating they released a detailed timeline yesterday of the Pentagon’s response to the attack.[106]
November 12
Paula Broadwell gave a talk on October 26 at the University of Denver in which she revealed that the CIA annex was used to imprison Libyan militia members.[107] In the same speech, Broadwell speculated that this may have been the motivation behind the attack on the consulate.[108] A Fox News Source confirmed to them that the CIA Annex was used as a detention center for not just militia members, but for prisoners from all parts of Northern Africa and the Middle East. The CIA has denied these allegations.[109]
November 15
U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials testified in congressional public and closed hearings today.[110] CNN reported that legislators saw “real-time film (showing) exactly what happened”, starting before the attack began up “through the incident and the exodus,” according to Sen. Dianne Feinstein. The video was reported to be from “a combination of video from a surveillance camera and a drone.”[111]
November 16
Former CIA Director David Petraeus testified in closed hearings to both congressional intelligence committees. Speaking with reporters after the hearing, Representative Peter T. King (R-NY), Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said that Petraeus testified that he knew that the attack was a terrorist attack linked to al-Qaeda affiliates and not sparked by a protest over an anti-Islam video, as White House officials and President Obama had said for days afterwards.[112] “The original talking points put out by the CIA were different from what was later put out,” King said. “Petraeus says his initial assessment was from the start it was a terrorist attack.” King said a CIA analyst specifically told lawmakers that the al-Qaeda affiliates line “was taken out.”[113]
Other House members in attendance at the hearing said that Petraeus made clear that the modifications of the original talking points were not done for political reasons. Petraeus “was adamant there was no politicization of the process, no White House interference or political agenda,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA). “He completely debunked that idea.” Regarding Ambassador Susan Rice‘s comments during television interviews after the attack, Schiff went on to say that the, according to Petraeus, the comments “reflected the best intelligence at the time that could be released publicly”. “There was an interagency process to draft it, not a political process,” Schiff said. “They came up with the best assessment without compromising classified information or source or methods. So changes were made to protect classified information.”[114] According to Petraeus’s statements during the hearing, administration officials were concerned that, by publicly disclosing the involvement of Al Qaeda affiliates and sympathizers in the attack, those groups would be tipped off that US government agencies were aware of their involvement.[115]
The Washington Post reported that, since the attack, the CIA and other intelligence analysts have settled on a hybrid view of the attack, suggesting that the Cairo protest sparked militants in Libya, who quickly mobilized the assault on U.S. facilities in Benghazi.[116] Details about possible al-Qaeda links were not in initial talking points used by both Petraeus and UN Ambassador Susan Rice because they were preliminary and based on classified sources, intelligence officials said.
November 20
CBS News reported that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) cut specific references to “al Qaeda” and “terrorism” from the unclassified talking points given to Ambassador Susan Rice on the attack, with the agreement of the CIA and FBI.[117]
November 27
In a White House press briefing to reporters, Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters: “There was no protest outside the Benghazi facility. To this day, it is the assessment of this administration and of our intelligence community and certainly the assessment of your colleagues and the press who have interviewed participants on the ground in the assault on our facilities in Benghazi that they acted at least in part in response to what they saw happening in Cairo and took advantage of that situation.”[118]
U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice testified for about an hour in a closed session with Republican Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Kelly Ayotte.[119] McCain told reporters after the meeting: “We are significantly troubled by many of the answers that we got, and some that we didn’t get, concerning evidence that was overwhelming leading up to the attack on our consulate…. It is clear that the information that she gave the American people was incorrect when she said that it was a spontaneous demonstration triggered by a hateful video.” Rice later issued a statement saying: “We explained that the talking points provided by the intelligence community, and the initial assessment upon which they were based, were incorrect in a key respect: there was no protest or demonstration in Benghazi…. While, we certainly wish that we had had perfect information just days after the terrorist attack, as is often the case, the intelligence assessment has evolved.”
December 2012
December 7
The House Committee on Foreign Affairs announced that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will testify, as early as next week, at an open hearing on the Benghazi attack.[120]
December 15
Hillary Clinton faints and suffers a concussion. As a result, her aides announce that they no longer expect her to testify at the hearing on the Benghazi attack.[121]
December 18
An independent inquiry into the attack sharply criticises State Department officials in Washington for ignoring requests for more guards and safety upgrades, and for failing to adapt security procedures to a deteriorating security environment.[122]
December 31
A bipartisan SenateHomeland Security Committee report faults the State Department and Pentagon for providing inadequate protection to the U.S. Consulate. It also criticized the Obama Administration’s handling of the attack.[123]
January 2013
January 23
Hillary Clinton testifies before Congress on the subject of the attack. She decries the “politicization” of incident, and defends the State Department.[124][125] Noteworthy highlights from her testimony include her comment, “What difference, at this point, does it make?” in response to questions about why the Benghazi attack occurred and how the controversial talking points were created. She also stated, in response to Senator Rand Paul‘s question about the U.S. transferring weapons to Turkey from Libya, “I do not know. I don’t have any information on that,” further stating, “you’ll have to direct that question to the agency that ran the annex.”[126]
February 2013
February 07
Leon Panetta and Martin Dempsey testify before Senate Armed Services Committee on the subject of the attack. Under questioning by Lindsey Graham, Panetta and Dempsey said that they both only talked to President Obama one time on the day of the attack.[127][128][129]
February 18
The United States has been denied access to individuals who were detained after a raid in the Nasr City neighborhood of Cairo by Egyptian officials. One of these individuals is Muhammad Jamal al Kashef, who is suspected of establishing training camps where attackers of the Benghazi consulate and CIA annex had trained.[130][131]
April 2013
April 23
House Republicans released a report on the Benghazi attack that was highly critical of the White House and the State Department; the White House dismissed the report, and House Democrats called the report biased.[132]Among dozens of findings, the report[133] states that:
“Senior State Department officials knew that the threat environment in Benghazi was high and that the Benghazi compound was vulnerable and unable to withstand an attack, yet the department continued to systematically withdraw security personnel”
The “[Obama] Administration willfully perpetuated a deliberately misleading and incomplete narrative that the attacks evolved from a political demonstration caused by a YouTube video.”
“… after a White House Deputies Meeting on Saturday, September 15, 2012, the Administration altered the talking points to remove references to the likely participation of Islamic extremists in the attacks. The Administration also removed references to the threat of extremists linked to al-Qa’ida in Benghazi and eastern Libya….”
“The Administration deflected responsibility by blaming the IC [intelligence community] for the information it communicated to the public in both the talking points and the subsequent narrative it perpetuated.”
May 2013
May 8
Gregory Hicks, Eric Nordstrom, and Mark Thompson testify before the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,[134] and were called “whistleblowers” by the committee chairman.[135] Hicks testified that more assistance from the U.S. military could have been provided, that attempts to send additional forces were told to stand down by another authority, and he was demoted for telling his recollection of events; the Defense Department disputed Hicks’ testimony, and the State Department did not respond.[136][137] Hicks further stated that since the Libyan government had called the attack a terrorist attack, and the United States did not, complicated the FBI investigation.[136] Thompson testified that a Foreign Emergency Support Team was not sent due to instructions from the State Department, which the State Department said would have taken too long to be effective; Nordstrom criticized the Accountability Review Board, that it did not look into decisions made by those individuals in higher authority.[136] Furthermore, they testified that their previous attempts to increase security leading up to the attacks were denied.[136] Democrats charged that the Republicans were politicizing the investigation.[138]
August 2013
August 06
The United States Department of Justice filed the first criminal charges in the Benghazi attack against Ahmed Abu Khattala, leader of a Libyan militia. The charges were sealed and their exact nature wasn’t clear, nor was the number of suspects named in the case. The Justice Department declined to comment on specific charges.[139][140]
Ansar al-Sharia in Libya (ASL, English: Partisans of Islamic Law) is a SalafistIslamistmilitia group that advocates the implementation of strict Sharia law across Libya.[1] Ansar al-Sharia came into being in 2011, during the Libyan Civil War. Until January 2015, it was led by its “Emir“, Mohamed al-Zahawi.[4] The organization has deliberately targeted both Libyan and American civilians and took part in the 2012 Benghazi attack. The group has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United Nations,[10] Turkey, the UAE, the United Kingdom and the United States.[11]
Ansar al-Sharia was formed during the Libyan Civil War and rose to prominence after the killing of Muammar Gaddafi. Made up of former rebels from the Abu Obayda Bin Aljarah Brigade, Malik Brigade and February 17th Martyrs Brigade and many more,[7] the Salafist militia initially made their name by posting videos of themselves fighting in the Battle of Sirte, the final battle in the war.[12]
Their first major public appearance occurred on 7 June 2012, when they led a rally of as many as 200 pickup trucks mounted with artillery[13] along Benghazi’s Tahrir Square and demanded the imposition of Sharia law.[14] According to the New York Times, “Western diplomats who watched said they were stunned by the scale and weaponry of the display.”[13]
The leader of Ansar al-Sharia, Sheikh Muhammad al-Zahawi, later gave an interview on a local TV station forbidding participation in Libya’s first post-civil war parliamentary elections on the grounds that they were un-Islamic.[15] The militia went on to provide security to some public property in eastern Libya, including Benghazi’s Al Jala Hospital.[12] The group is reportedly the military arm of Al-Dawa wa Al-Islah, a charitable organization.[16]
Ansar al-Sharia carried out destruction of Sufishrines in Benghazi, which they regarded as idolatrous.[20] In November 2011, Libyan Salafis engaged in a series of attacks on Sufi shrines all over the country.[21]Mohamed Yousef el-Magariaf, the president of the General National Congress (GNC) denounced the shrine attacks as “disgraceful acts” and said “those involved were criminals who would be pursued.”[21]
Ansar al-Sharia used its online presence to denounce the 2013 capture and removal from Libya of al-Qaeda operative Abu Anas al-Libi, by American military forces.[22]
Aside from militant activities, Ansar al-Sharia has attempted to gain local support through Dawah (missionary activities), the provision of social services, ranging from security patrols to garbage collection, and the establishment of medical clinics and religious schools.[8] In January 2015, the group introduced Islamic religious police and a sharia court in parts of Benghazi.[23]
2012 U.S. Consulate attack in Benghazi
On 11 September 2012, the United States Department of State Operations Center advised the White House Situation Room and other U.S. security units that Ansar al-Sharia was claiming responsibility for the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi that had just occurred.[24] Witnesses said they saw vehicles with the group’s logo at the scene of the assault and that fighters there acknowledged at the time that they belonged to Ansar al-Sharia.[19] Witnesses also said they saw Ahmed Abu Khattala, a commander of Ansar al-Sharia, leading the embassy attack, a claim Mr. Khattala denied.[25] According to longwarjournal.org, the group issued a statement asserting that it “didn’t participate as a sole entity” and that the attack “was a spontaneous popular uprising” to the film trailer Innocence of Muslims, widely condemned as anti-Islamic.[26]
As of 6 August 2013, U.S. officials confirmed that Ahmed Abu Khattala, the Libyan leader of Ansar al-Sharia, has been charged with playing a significant role in last year’s attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi. According to NBC, the charges were filed under seal in Washington, D.C. in late July.[27] Khattalah was arrested by U.S. Delta Force special operations personnel in a raid on Libya on 15 June 2014.[28][29] He is being transported to the United States aboard the USS New York aircraft carrier and is expected to face trial in a U.S. criminal court.[30]
Temporary withdrawal and resurgence
On 21 September 2012, after massive anti-militia protests in Benghazi which largely blamed Ansar al-Sharia for the mission attack, hundreds of protesters stormed the militia headquarters, pulled down flags of the militia and torched a vehicle inside the base.[31] The group was forced out of its bases in Benghazi the next day.[32]
A few hours after the attack, Martyrs of February 17, together with Bou Salim Martyrs brigade, allegedly agreed to disband,[33] however about 150-200 militiamen moved from Benghazi to Jebel Akhdar area.[34]
As of December 2012, the group still existed, although it had adopted a low-key position.[35] By March 2013, the group had returned to Benghazi and began patrolling hospitals and manning checkpoints, as well as providing humanitarian services to residents.[36] By late 2013, the group had opened up a branch in Derna, under the slogan “A step toward building the Islamic state”.[37] The group also established a presence in the Libyan cities of Ajdabiya and Sirte.[6]
Following prolonged tensions between Islamists and non-Islamists in Libya, on 16 May 2014 military forces loyal to General Khalifa Belqasim Haftar launched a large scale air and ground offensive codenamed Operation Dignity on Islamist militia groups in Benghazi including Ansar al-Sharia.[38][39]
After initial reverses, Ansar al-Sharia, and other Islamist and jihadist militias fighting together as the Shura Council of Benghazi Revolutionaries, launched a counteroffensive against units loyal to Haftar in the following months, largely driving them out of the city by August of the same year.[40][41] After capturing several army bases in this offensive, Ansar al Sharia posted images on the internet of the weapons and equipment that had seized, including D-30 Howitzers, Multiple rocket launchers, Strela 2Man-portable air-defense systems, large quantities of ammunition and vehicles.[41][42]
In late 2014, the group’s leader, Mohamed al-Zahawi, died of wounds he had received from the fighting.[4] In the months that followed, many members of Ansar al-Sharia, including the majority of its organisation in Sirte, reportedly defected to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in Libya.[43][44] On 30 March 2015, the group’s chief Sharia jurist, Abu Abdullah Al-Libi, pledged allegiance to ISIL,[45] and defected with a number of fighters. Ansar al-Sharia quickly announced that Abu Tamim al Libi has been selected as his replacement.[46] While there have been rumors that the group could pledge allegiance to ISIL, it has retained its independence.[23]
Designation as a terrorist organization
The countries and organizations below have officially listed the Ansar Al Sharia as a terrorist organization.
This article is about a particular use of the term connected with military and political organizations. For covert operations in intelligence gathering, organized crime and religious or minor political groups, see Front organization.
“Covert operative” redirects here. For the legal definition of covert agents or operatives, see covert agent.
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The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (December 2009)
This article needs additional citations for verification. (January 2013)
According to the U.S. Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, a covert operation (also as CoveOps or covert ops) is “an operation that is so planned and executed as to conceal the identity of or permit plausible denial by the sponsor.” It is intended to create a political effect which can have implications in the military, intelligence or law enforcement arenas. Covert operations aim to fulfill their mission objectives without any parties knowing who sponsored or carried out the operation.
Under United States law, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) must lead covert operations unless the president finds that another agency should do so and properly informs the Congress. Normally, the CIA is the US Government agency legally allowed to carry out covert action.[1] The CIA’s authority to conduct covert action comes from the National Security Act of 1947.[2] President Ronald Reagan issued Executive Order 12333 titled United States Intelligence Activities in 1984. This order defined covert action as “special activities”, both political and military, that the US Government could legally deny. The CIA was also designated as the sole authority under the 1991 Intelligence Authorization Act and in Title 50 of the United States Code Section 413(e).[2][3] The CIA must have a “Presidential Finding” issued by the President of the United States in order to conduct these activities under the Hughes-Ryan amendment to the 1991 Intelligence Authorization Act.[1] These findings are then monitored by the oversight committees in both the US Senate and the House of Representatives.[4] As a result of this framework, the CIA “receives more oversight from the Congress than any other agency in the federal government”.[5] The Special Activities Division (SAD) is a division of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, responsible for Covert Action and “Special Activities”. These special activities include covert political influence and paramilitary operations. The division is overseen by the United States Secretary of State.[2]
In a covert operation, the identity of the sponsor is concealed, while in a clandestine operation the operation itself is concealed. Put differently, clandestine means “hidden,” while covert means “deniable.” The term stealth refers both to a broad set of tactics aimed at providing and preserving the element of surprise and reducing enemy resistance and to a set of technologies (stealth technology) to aid in those tactics. While secrecy and stealthiness are often desired in clandestine and covert operations, the terms secret and stealthy are not used to formally describe types of missions.
Covert operations are employed in situations where openly operating against a target would be disadvantageous. These operations are generally illegal in the target state and are frequently in violation of the laws of the sponsoring country. Operations may be directed at or conducted with allies and friends to secure their support for controversial components of foreign policy throughout the world. Covert operations may include sabotage, assassinations, support for coups d’état, or support for subversion. Tactics include the use of a false flag or front group.
The activity of organizations engaged in covert operations is in some instances similar to, or overlaps with, the activity of front organizations. While covert organizations are generally of a more official military or paramilitary nature, like the DVS German Air Transport School in the Nazi era, the line between both becomes muddled in the case of front organizations engaged in terrorist activities and organized crime.
The following persons are known to have participated in covert operations, as distinct from clandestine intelligence gathering (espionage) either by their own admission or by the accounts of others:
Roy Farran Major Roy Alexandar Farran DSO MC and Two Bars served in her majesty’s SAS during WW2 taking part in Operation Tombola, author of Winged Dagger lived 2 January 1921 – 2 June 2006.
Charles Beckwith, US Army colonel who was an early exchange officer with the British Special Air Service (SAS), and created the Delta Force (1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta) based on the SAS.
Richard Meinertzhagen, British officer who engaged in deceptive operations against Turkish forces in World War I, although falsifying later operations.
Richard Quirin, German World War II saboteur landed by German submarine in the US, as part of Operation Pastorius. Captured and executed. ex parte Quirin was a Supreme Court case challenging the constitutionality of execution of unlawful combatants.
Pavel Sudoplatov, major general in Soviet state security (under many organizational names), with roles ranging from assassin to director of field operations.
Jesús Villamor, Filipino Air Force officer that helped organize World War II guerilla movements.
Executive Secrets: Coved the Presidency, William J. Daugherty, University of Kentucky Press, 2004, page 25.
Executive Secrets: Covert Action and the Presidency, William J. Daugherty, University of Kentucky Press, 2004.
All Necessary Means: Employing CIA operatives in a Warfighting Role Alongside Special Operations Forces, Colonel Kathryn Stone, Professor Anthony R. Williams (Project Advisor), United States Army War College (USAWC), 7 April 2003, page 7
Special Operations Group (SOG) is the department within SAD responsible for operations that include the collection of intelligence in hostile countries and regions, and all high threat military or intelligence operations with which the U.S. government does not wish to be overtly associated.[2] As such, members of the unit (called Paramilitary Operations Officers and Specialized Skills Officers) normally do not carry any objects or clothing (e.g., military uniforms) that would associate them with the United States government.[3] If they are compromised during a mission, the United States government may deny all knowledge.[4]
SOG Paramilitary Operations Officers account for a majority of Distinguished Intelligence Cross and Intelligence Star recipients during any given conflict or incident which elicits CIA involvement. An award bestowing either of these citations represents the highest honors awarded within the CIA organization in recognition of distinguished valor and excellence in the line of duty. SAD/SOG operatives also account for the majority of the names displayed on the Memorial Wall at CIA headquarters indicating that the agent died while on active duty.[5]
Political Action Group (PAG) is responsible for covert activities related to political influence, psychological operations and economic warfare. The rapid development of technology has added cyberwarfare to their mission. Tactical units within SAD are also capable of carrying out covert political action while deployed in hostile and austere environments. A large covert operation usually has components that involve many, or all, of these categories, as well as paramilitary operations. Political and Influence covert operations are used to support U.S. foreign policy. Often overt support for one element of an insurgency would be counter-productive due to the impression it would have on the local population. In such cases, covert assistance allows the U.S. to assist without damaging these elements in the process. Many of the other activities (such as propaganda, economic and cyber) support the overall political effort. There have been issues in the past with attempts to influence the US media such as in Operation Mockingbird. However, these activities are now subject to the same oversight as all covert action operations.[6]
SAD provides the President of the United States with an option when overt military and/or diplomatic actions are not viable or politically feasible. SAD can be directly tasked by the President of the United States or the National Security Council at the President’s direction. This is unlike any other U.S. special mission force. However, SAD/SOG has far fewer members than most of the other special missions units, such as the U.S. Army’s 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (Delta Force) or Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU).[7][8][9]
As the action arm of the DO, SAD/SOG conducts direct action missions such as raids, ambushes, sabotage, targeted killings[10][11][12] and unconventional warfare (e.g., training and leading guerrilla and military units of other countries in combat). SAD/SOG also conducts special reconnaissance, that can be either military or intelligence driven, but is carried out by Paramilitary Officers (also called Paramilitary Operatives) when in “non-permissive environments“. Paramilitary Operations Officers are also fully trained case officers (i.e., “spies”) and as such conduct clandestine human intelligence (HUMINT) operations throughout the world.[13] SAD/SOG officers are selected from the most elite U.S. military units.[9]
The political action group within SAD conducts the deniable psychological operations, also known as black propaganda, as well as “Covert Influence” to effect political change as an important part of any Administration’s foreign policy.[1] Covert intervention in a foreign election is the most significant form of political action. This could involve financial support for favored candidates, media guidance, technical support for public relations, get-out-the-vote or political organizing efforts, legal expertise, advertising campaigns, assistance with poll-watching, and other means of direct action. Policy decisions could be influenced by assets, such as subversion of officials of the country, to make decisions in their official capacity that are in the furtherance of U.S. policy aims. In addition, mechanisms for forming and developing opinions involve the covert use of propaganda.[14]
Propaganda includes leaflets, newspapers, magazines, books, radio, and television, all of which are geared to convey the U.S. message appropriate to the region. These techniques have expanded to cover the internet as well. They may employ officers to work as journalists, recruit agents of influence, operate media platforms, plant certain stories or information in places it is hoped it will come to public attention, or seek to deny and/or discredit information that is public knowledge. In all such propaganda efforts, “black” operations denote those in which the audience is to be kept ignorant of the source; “white” efforts are those in which the originator openly acknowledges himself; and “gray” operations are those in which the source is partly but not fully acknowledged.[14][15]
SAD’s existence became better known as a result of the “Global War on Terror“. Beginning in autumn of 2001, SAD/SOG paramilitary teams arrived in Afghanistan to hunt down al-Qaeda leaders, facilitate the entry of U.S. Army Special Forces and lead the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan against the ruling Taliban. SAD/SOG units also defeated Ansar al-Islam in Iraqi Kurdistan prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003[17][18] and trained, equipped, organized and led the Kurdishpeshmerga forces to defeat the Iraqi army in northern Iraq.[13][17] Despite being the most covert unit in U.S. Special Operations, numerous books have been published on the exploits of CIA paramilitary officers, including Conboy and Morrison’s Feet to the Fire: CIA Covert Operations in Indonesia,[19] and Warner’s Shooting at the Moon: The Story of America’s Clandestine War in Laos.[20] Most experts consider SAD/SOG the premiere force for unconventional warfare (UW), whether that warfare consists of either creating or combating an insurgency in a foreign country.[7][21][22]
There remains some conflict between the National Clandestine Service and the more clandestine parts of the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM),[23] such as the Joint Special Operations Command. This is usually confined to the civilian/political heads of the respective Department/Agency. The combination of SAD and USSOCOM units has resulted in some of the most notable successes of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to include the locating and killing of Osama bin Laden.[22][24] SAD/SOG has several missions. One of these missions is the recruiting, training, and leading of indigenous forces in combat operations.[22] SAD/SOG and its successors have been used when it was considered desirable to have plausible deniability about U.S. support (this is called a covert operation or “covert action”).[13] Unlike other special missions units, SAD/SOG operatives combine special operations and clandestine intelligence capabilities in one individual.[9] These individuals can operate in any environment (sea, air or ground) with limited to no support.[7]
The Pentagon commissioned a study to determine whether the CIA or the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) should conduct covert action paramilitary operations. Their study determined that the CIA should maintain this capability and be the “sole government agency conducting covert action.” The DoD found that, even under U.S. law, it does not have the legal authority to conduct covert action, nor the operational agility to carry out these types of missions.[27] The operation in May 2011 that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden was a covert action under the authority of the CIA.[24][28]
SAD/SOG has several hundred officers, mostly former members of special operations forces (SOF) and a majority from the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).[29] The CIA has also recruited individuals within the agency.[30] The CIA’s formal position for these individuals is “Paramilitary Operations Officers” and “Specialized Skills Officers.” Paramilitary Operations Officers attend the Clandestine Service Trainee (CST) program, which trains them as clandestine intelligence operatives (known as “Core Collectors” within the Agency). The primary strengths of SAD/SOG Paramilitary Officers are operational agility, adaptability, and deniability. They often operate in small teams, typically made up of six operators (with some operations being carried out by a single officer), all with extensive military special operations expertise and a set of specialized skills that does not exist in any other unit.[9] As fully trained intelligence case officers, Paramilitary Operations Officers possess all the clandestine skills to collect human intelligence—and most importantly—to recruit assets from among the indigenous troops receiving their training. These officers often operate in remote locations behind enemy lines to carry out direct action (including raids and sabotage), counter-intelligence, guerrilla/unconventional warfare, counter-terrorism, and hostage rescue missions, in addition to being able to conduct espionage via HUMINT assets.
There are four principal elements within SAD’s Special Operations Group: the Air Branch, the Maritime Branch, the Ground Branch, and the Armor and Special Programs Branch. The Armor and Special Programs Branch is charged with development, testing, and covert procurement of new personnel and vehicular armor and maintenance of stockpiles of ordnance and weapons systems used by SOG, almost all of which must be obtained from clandestine sources abroad, in order to provide SOG operatives and their foreign trainees with plausible deniability in accordance with U.S. Congressional directives.
Together, SAD/SOG contains a complete combined arms covert military. Paramilitary Operations Officers are the core of each branch and routinely move between the branches to gain expertise in all aspects of SOG.[30] As such, Paramilitary Operations Officers are trained to operate in a multitude of environments. Because these officers are taken from the most highly trained units in the U.S. military and then provided with extensive additional training to become CIA clandestine intelligence officers, many U.S. security experts assess them as the most elite of the U.S. special missions units.[31]
While the World War IIOffice of Strategic Services (OSS) was technically a military agency under the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in practice it was fairly autonomous of military control and enjoyed direct access to PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt. Major General William Joseph Donovan was the head of the OSS. Donovan was a soldier and Medal of Honor recipient from World War I. He was also a lawyer and former classmate of FDR at Columbia Law School.[37] Like its successor, the CIA, OSS included both human intelligence functions and special operations paramilitary functions. Its Secret Intelligence division was responsible for espionage, while its Jedburgh teams, a joint U.S.-UK-French unit, were forerunners of groups that create guerrilla units, such as the U.S. Army Special Forces and the CIA. OSS’ Operational Groups were larger U.S. units that carried out direct action behind enemy lines. Even during World War II, the idea of intelligence and special operations units not under strict military control was controversial. OSS operated primarily in the European Theater of Operations (ETO) and to some extent in the China-Burma-India Theater, while General of the ArmyDouglas MacArthur was extremely reluctant to have any OSS personnel within his area of operations.
One of the OSS’ greatest accomplishments during World War II was its penetration of Nazi Germany by OSS operatives. The OSS was responsible for training German and Austrian commandos for missions inside Nazi Germany. Some of these agents included exiled communists and socialist party members, labor activists, anti-NaziPOWs, and German and Jewish refugees. At the height of its influence during World War II, the OSS employed almost 24,000 people.[38]
OSS Paramilitary Officers parachuted into many countries then behind enemy lines, including France, Norway, Greece and The Netherlands. In Crete, OSS paramilitary officers linked up with, equipped and fought alongside Greek resistance forces against the Axis occupation.
OSS was disbanded shortly after World War II, with its intelligence analysis functions moving temporarily into the U.S. Department of State. Espionage and counterintelligence went into military units, while paramilitary and related functions went into an assortment of ‘ad hoc’ groups, such as the Office of Policy Coordination. Between the original creation of the CIA by the National Security Act of 1947 and various mergers and reorganizations through 1952, the wartime OSS functions generally went into CIA. The mission of training and leading guerrillas generally stayed in the United States Army Special Forces, but those missions required to remain covert were folded into the paramilitary arm of the CIA. The direct descendant of the OSS’ Special Operations is the CIA’s Special Activities Division.
Tibet
After the Chinese invasion of Tibet in October 1950, the CIA inserted SAD paramilitary teams into Tibet to train and lead Tibetan resistance fighters against the People’s Liberation Army of China. These teams selected and then trained Tibetan soldiers in the Rocky Mountains of the United States;[39] training occurred at Camp Hale.[40][41] The SAD teams then advised and led these commandos against the Chinese, both from Nepal and India. In addition, SAD Paramilitary Officers were responsible for the Dalai Lama‘s clandestine escape to India, narrowly escaping capture and certain execution by the Chinese government.[39]
According to a book by retired CIA officer John Kenneth Knaus, entitled Orphans Of The Cold War: America And The Tibetan Struggle For Survival, Gyalo Thondup, the older brother of the 14th (and current) Dalai Lama, sent the CIA five Tibetan recruits. These recruits were then trained in paramilitary tactics on the island of Saipan in the Northern Marianas.[42] Shortly thereafter, the five men were covertly returned to Tibet “to assess and organize the resistance” and selected another 300 Tibetans for training. U.S. assistance to the Tibetan resistance ceased after the 1972 Nixon visit to China, after which the United States and China normalized relations.[43]
The CIA sponsored a variety of activities during the Korean War. These activities included maritime operations behind North Korean lines. Yong Do Island, connected by a rugged isthmus to Pusan, served as the base for those operations. These operations were carried out by well-trained Korean guerrillas. The four principal U.S. advisers responsible for the training and operational planning of those special missions were Dutch Kramer, Tom Curtis, George Atcheson and Joe Pagnella. All of these Paramilitary Operations Officers operated through a CIA front organization called the Joint Advisory Commission, Korea (JACK), headquartered at Tongnae, a village near Pusan, on the peninsula’s southeast coast.[44] These paramilitary teams were responsible for numerous maritime raids and ambushes behind North Korean lines, as well as prisoner of war rescue operations. These were the first maritime unconventional warfare units that trained indigenous forces as surrogates. They also provided a model, along with the other CIA-sponsored ground based paramilitary Korean operations, for the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam-Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG) activities conducted by the U.S. military and the CIA/SAD in Vietnam.[7][44] In addition, CIA paramilitary ground-based teams worked directly for U.S. military commanders, specifically with the 8th Army, on the “White Tiger” initiative. This initiative included inserting South Korean commandos and CIA Paramilitary Operations Officers prior to the two major amphibious assaults on North Korea, including the landing at Inchon.[7]
The Bay of Pigs Invasion (known as “La Batalla de Girón”, or “Playa Girón” in Cuba), was an unsuccessful attempt by a U.S.-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba and overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The plan was launched in April 1961, less than three months after John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency of the United States. The Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, trained and equipped by Eastern Bloc nations, defeated the exile-combatants in three days.
The sea-borne invasion force landed on April 17, and fighting lasted until April 19, 1961. CIA Paramilitary Operations Officers Grayston Lynch and William “Rip” Robertson led the first assault on the beaches, and supervised the amphibious landings.[45] Four American aircrew instructors from Alabama Air National Guard were killed while flying attack sorties.[45] Various sources estimate Cuban Army casualties (killed or injured) to be in the thousands (between 2,000 and 5,000).[46] This invasion followed the successful overthrow by the CIA of the Mosaddeqgovernment in Iran in 1953[47] and Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954,[48] but was a failure both militarily and politically.[49] Deteriorating Cuban-American relations were made worse by the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Bolivia
The National Liberation Army of Bolivia (ELN-Ejército de Liberación Nacional de Bolivia) was a communist guerrilla force that operated from the remote Ñancahuazú region against the pro-U.S. Bolivian government. They were joined by Che Guevara in the mid-1960s.[50][51] The ELN was well equipped and scored a number of early successes against the Bolivian army in the difficult terrain of the mountainous Camiri region.[52] In the late 1960s, the CIA deployed teams of SAD Paramilitary Operations Officers to Bolivia to train the Bolivian army in order to counter the ELN.[52] These SAD teams linked up with U.S. Army Special Forces and Bolivian Special Forces to track down and capture Guevara, who was a special prize because of his leading role in the Cuban Revolution.[52] On October 9, 1967, Guevara was executed by Bolivian soldiers on the orders of CIA paramilitary operative Félix Rodríguez shortly after being captured, according to CIA documents.[53]
Vietnam and Laos
South Vietnam, Military Regions, 1967
The original OSS mission in Vietnam under MajorArchimedes Patti was to work with Ho Chi Minh in order to prepare his forces to assist the United States and their Allies in fighting the Japanese. After the end of World War II, the US agreed at Potsdam to turn Vietnam back to their previous French rulers and in 1950 the US began providing military aid to the French.[54]
CIA Paramilitary Operations Officers trained and led Hmong tribesmen in Laos and Vietnam, and their actions of these officers were not known for several years. Air America was the air component of the CIA’s paramilitary mission in Southeast Asia and was responsible for all combat, logistics and search and rescue operations in Laos and certain sections of Vietnam.[55] The ethnic minority forces numbered in the tens of thousands and they conducted direct actions mission, led by Paramilitary Operations Officers, against the communist Pathet Lao forces and their North Vietnamese allies.[7]
Elements of SAD were seen in the CIA’s Phoenix Program. One component of the Phoenix Program was involved in the capture and killing of suspected Viet Cong (National Liberation Front – NLF) members.[56] Between 1968 and 1972, the Phoenix Program captured 81,740 National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF or Viet Cong) members, of whom 26,369 were killed. This was a large proportion of U.S. killings between 1969 and 1971. The program was also successful in destroying their infrastructure. By 1970, communist plans repeatedly emphasized attacking the government’s “pacification” program and specifically targeted Phoenix agents. The NLF also imposed quotas. In 1970, for example, communist officials near Da Nang in northern South Vietnam instructed their agents to “kill 400 persons” deemed to be government “tyrant[s]” and to “annihilate” anyone involved with the “pacification” program. Several North Vietnamese officials have made statements about the effectiveness of Phoenix.[57][58]
MAC-V SOG (Studies and Observations Group) (which was originally named the Special Operations Group, but was changed for cover purposes), was created and active during the Vietnam War. While CIA was just one part of MAC-V SOG, it did have operational control of some of the programs. Many of the military members of MAC-V SOG joined the CIA after their military service. The legacy of MAC-V SOG continues within SAD’s Special Operations Group.[59]
Maritime activities against the USSR
In 1973, SAD/SOG and the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology built and deployed the USNS Glomar Explorer (T-AG-193), a large deep-sea salvage ship, on a secret operation. This operation was called Project Azorian (erroneously called Project Jennifer by the press).[60] Her mission was to recover a sunken Sovietsubmarine, K-129, which had been lost in April 1968.[61][62] A mechanical failure caused two-thirds of the submarine to break off during recovery,[60] but SAD recovered two nuclear-tipped torpedoes, cryptographic machines and the bodies of six Soviet submariners.[63] An alternative theory claims that all of K-129 was recovered[64] and that the official account was an “elaborate cover-up”.[65]
Also in the 1970s, the U.S. Navy, the National Security Agency (NSA) and SAD/SOG [66] conducted Operation Ivy Bells and a series of other missions to place wire taps on Soviet underwater communications cables. These operations were covered in detail in the 1998 book Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage.[67] In the 1985 edition of “Studies in Intelligence”, the CIA’s in-house journal that outsiders rarely get to see, the CIA describes the “staggering expense and improbable engineering feats” that culminated in the August 1974 mission.[68]
Nicaragua
In 1979, the U.S.-backed Anastasio Somoza Debayle dictatorship in Nicaragua fell to the socialist Sandinistas. Once in power, the Sandinistas disbanded the Nicaraguan National Guard, who had committed many human rights abuses, and arrested and executed some of its members. Other former National Guard members helped to form the backbone of the Nicaraguan Counterrevolution or Contra. SAD/SOG paramilitary teams were deployed to train and lead these forces against the Sandinista government. These paramilitary activities were based in Honduras and Costa Rica. Direct military aid by the United States was eventually forbidden by the Boland Amendment of the Defense Appropriations Act of 1983. The Boland Amendment was extended in October 1984 to forbid action by not only the Defense Department, but also to include the Central Intelligence Agency.[69][70]
The Boland Amendment was a compromise because the U.S. Democratic Party did not have enough votes for a comprehensive ban on military aid. It covered only appropriated funds spent by intelligence agencies. Some of Reagan’s national security officials used non-appropriated money of the National Security Council (NSC) to circumvent the Amendment. NSC officials sought to arrange funding by third parties. These efforts resulted in the Iran-Contra Affair of 1987, which concerned Contra funding through the proceeds of arms sales to the Islamic Republic of Iran. No court ever made a determination whether Boland covered the NSC and on the grounds that it was a prohibition rather than a criminal statute, no one was indicted for violating it. Congress later resumed aid to the Contras, totaling over $300 million. The Contra war ended when the Sandinistas were voted out of power by a war-weary populace in 1990.[70][71]Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega was re-elected as President of Nicaragua in 2006 and took office again on January 10, 2007.
El Salvador
CIA personnel were also involved in the Salvadoran civil war.[72] Some allege that the techniques used to interrogate prisoners in El Salvador foreshadowed those later used in Iraq and Afghanistan.[73] In fact, when a similar counter-insurgency program was proposed in Iraq, it was referred to as “the Salvador Option”.[74]
Somalia
Location of Somalia
SAD sent in teams of Paramilitary Operations Officers into Somalia prior to the U.S. intervention in 1992. On December 23, 1992, Paramilitary Officer Larry Freedman became the first casualty of the conflict in Somalia. Freedman was a former Army Delta Force operator who had served in every conflict that the U.S. was involved in, both officially and unofficially, since Vietnam.[75] Freedman was killed while conducting special reconnaissance in advance of the entry of U.S. military forces. His mission was completely voluntary, as it required entry into a very hostile area without any support. Freedman was awarded the Intelligence Star on January 5, 1993 for his “extraordinary heroism”.[76]
SAD/SOG teams were key in working with JSOC and tracking high value targets (HVT), known as “Tier One Personalities”. Their efforts, working under extremely dangerous conditions with little to no support, led to several very successful joint JSOC/CIA operations.[77] In one specific operation, a CIA case officer, Michael Shanklin[78] and codenamed “Condor”, working with a CIA Technical Operations Officer from the Directorate of Science and Technology, managed to get a cane with a beacon in it to Osman Ato, a wealthy businessman, arms importer, and Mohammed Aideed, a money man whose name was right below Mohamed Farrah Aidid’s on the Tier One list.
Once Condor confirmed that Ato was in a vehicle, JSOC‘s Delta Force launched a capture operation.
a Little Bird helicopter dropped out of the sky and a sniper leaned out and fired three shots into the car’s engine block. The car ground to a halt as commandos roped down from hovering Blackhawks [sic], surrounded the car and handcuffed Ato. It was the first known helicopter takedown of suspects in a moving car. The next time Jones saw the magic cane, an hour later, Garrison had it in his hand. “I like this cane,” Jones remembers the general exclaiming, a big grin on his face. “Let’s use this again.” Finally, a tier one personality was in custody.[77]
President Bill Clinton withdrew U.S. forces on May 4, 1994.[79]
In June 2006, the Islamic Courts Union seized control of southern Somalia, including the country’s capital Mogadishu, prompting the Ethiopian government to send in troops to try to protect the transitional government. In December, the Islamic Courts warned Ethiopia they would declare war if Ethiopia did not remove all its troops from Somalia. Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, leader of the Islamic Courts, called for a jihad, or holy war, against Ethiopia and encouraged foreign Muslim fighters to come to Somalia. At that time, the United States accused the group of being controlled by al-Qaeda, but the Islamic Courts denied that charge.[80]
In 2009, PBS reported that al-Qaeda had been training terrorists in Somalia for years. Until December 2006, Somalia’s government had no power outside of the town of Baidoa, 150 miles (240 km) from the capital. The countryside and the capital were run by warlords and militia groups who could be paid to protect terrorist groups.[80]
CIA officers kept close tabs on the country and paid a group of Somali warlords to help hunt down members of al-Qaeda according to the New York Times.[citation needed] Meanwhile, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the deputy to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, issued a message calling for all Muslims to go to Somalia.[80] On January 9, 2007, a U.S. official said that ten militants were killed in one airstrike.[81]
On September 14, 2009, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a senior al-Qaeda leader in East Africa as well as a senior leader in Shabaab, al Qaeda’s surrogate in Somalia, was killed by elements of U.S. Special Operations. According to a witness, at least two AH-6 Little Bird attack helicopters strafed a two-car convoy. Navy SEALs then seized the body of Nabhan and took two other wounded fighters captive.[82][83] JSOC and the CIA had been trying to kill Nabhan for some time including back in January 2007, when an AC-130 Gunship was called in on one attempt. A U.S. intelligence source stated that CIA paramilitary teams are directly embedded with Ethiopian forces in Somalia, allowing for the tactical intelligence to launch these operations.[84] Nabhan was wanted for his involvement in the 1998 United States embassy bombings, as well as leading the cell behind the 2002 Mombasa attacks.[82][85]
From 2010 to 2013, the CIA set up the Somalia National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) by providing training, funding and diplomatic access. In the same time period, the EU and UN has spent millions of dollars for the military training of the Somali National Army (SNA). NISA is considered a professional Somali security force that can be relied upon to neutralize the terrorist threat.[86] This force responded to the complex al-Shabaab attack on the Banadir Regional Courthouse in Mogadishu which killed 25 civilians. NISA’s response however saved 100s and resulted in the death of all the al-Shabaab guerrillas involved.[87]
Significant events during this timeframe included the targeted drone strikes against British al-Qaida operative Bilal el-Berjawi [88] and Moroccan al-Qaida operative Abu Ibrahim.[89] It also included the rescue of U.S. citizen Jessica Buchanan by U.S. Navy SEALs.[90] All likely aided by intelligence collection efforts in Somalia.[91]
Afghanistan
Hamid Karzai with Special Forces and CIA Paramilitary in late 2001.
During the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Paramilitary Operations Officers were instrumental in equipping Mujaheddin forces against the Soviet Army. Although the CIA in general, and a Texas congressman named Charlie Wilson in particular, have received most of the attention, the key architect of this strategy was Michael G. Vickers. Vickers was a young Paramilitary Operations Officer from SAD/SOG. The CIA’s efforts have been given credit for assisting in ending the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan and bringing Taliban to power.[92]
SAD paramilitary teams were active in Afghanistan in the 1990s in clandestine operations to locate and kill or capture Osama Bin Laden. These teams planned several operations, but did not receive the order to execute from President Bill Clinton because the available intelligence did not guarantee a successful outcome weighed against the extraordinary risk to the SAD/SOG teams that would execute the mission.[13] These efforts did however build many of the relationships that would prove essential in the 2001 U.S. Invasion of Afghanistan.[13]
On September 26, 2001, members of the Special Activities Division, led by Gary Schroen, were the first U.S. forces inserted into Afghanistan. The Northern Afghanistan Liaison Team entered the country nine days after the 9/11 attack[93][94] and linked up with the Northern Alliance as part of Task Force Dagger.[95]
They provided the Northern Alliance with resources including cash to buy weapons and prepared for the arrival of USSOCOM forces. The plan for the invasion of Afghanistan was developed by the CIA, the first time in United States history that such a large-scale military operation was planned by the CIA.[96] SAD, U.S. Army Special Forces, and the Northern Alliance combined to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan with minimal loss of U.S. lives. They did this without the use of conventional U.S. military ground forces.[13][97][98][99]
What made the Afghan campaign a landmark in the U.S. Military’s history is that it was prosecuted by Special Operations forces from all the services, along with Navy and Air Force tactical power, operations by the Afghan Northern Alliance and the CIA were equally important and fully integrated. No large Army or Marine force was employed”.[100]
The valor exhibited by Afghan and American soldiers, fighting to free Afghanistan from a horribly cruel regime, will inspire even the most jaded reader. The stunning victory of the horse soldiers – 350 Special Forces soldiers, 100 C.I.A. officers and 15,000 Northern Alliance fighters routing a Taliban army 50,000 strong – deserves a hallowed place in American military history”.[101]
Small and highly agile paramilitary mobile teams spread out over the countryside to meet with locals and gather information about the Taliban and al-Qa’ida. During that time, one of the teams was approached in a village and asked by a young man for help in retrieving his teenage sister. He explained that a senior Taliban official had taken her as a wife and had sharply restricted the time she could spend with her family. The team gave the man a small hand-held tracking device to pass along to his sister, with instructions for her to activate it when the Taliban leader returned home. The team responded to her emergency signal, capturing the senior Taliban official and rescuing the sister. The siblings’ tearful reunion left the team at a loss for words—a rarity for the normally loud warriors of CIA’s Special Activities Division.[102]
In December 2001, SAD/SOG and the Army’s Delta Force tracked down Osama bin Laden in the rugged mountains near the Khyber Pass in Afghanistan.[103] Former CIA station chief Gary Berntsen as well as a subsequent Senate investigation claimed that the combined American special operations task force was largely outnumbered by al-Qaeda forces and that they were denied additional US troops by higher command.[104] The task force also requested munitions to block the avenues of egress of bin Laden, but that request was also denied.[105] The team allegedly uncovered evidence in the subsequent site exploration that bin Laden’s ultimate aim was to obtain and detonate a nuclear device in a terrorist attack.[96] According to other press reports, SAD were ineffectual and “Bin Laden and bodyguards walked uncontested out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan’s unregulated tribal area.”[106]
Surge
In September 2009, the CIA planned on “deploying teams of spies, analysts and paramilitary operatives to Afghanistan, part of a broad intelligence ‘surge’ ordered by President Obama. This will make its station there among the largest in the agency’s history.”[107] This presence is expected to surpass the size of the stations in Iraq and Vietnam at the height of those wars.[107] The station is located at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and is led “by a veteran with an extensive background in paramilitary operations”.[108] The majority of the CIA’s workforce is located among secret bases and military special operations posts throughout the country.[108][109]
Also in 2009, General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, planned to request an increase in teams of CIA operatives, including their elite paramilitary officers, to join with U.S. military special operations forces. This combination worked well in Iraq and is largely credited with the success of that surge.[108][110] There have been basically three options described in the media: McChrystal’s increased counterinsurgency campaign; a counter-terror campaign using special operations raids and drone strikes; and withdrawal. The most successful combination in both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has been the linking up of SAD and military special forces to fight alongside highly trained indigenous units. One thing all of these options have in common is a requirement for greater CIA participation.[110]
The End Game
According to the current and former intelligence officials, General McChrystal also had his own preferred candidate for the Chief of Station (COS) job, a good friend and decorated CIA paramilitary officer.[111] The officer had extensive experience in war zones, including two previous tours in Afghanistan with one as the Chief of Station, as well as tours in the Balkans, Baghdad and Yemen. He is well known in CIA lore as “the man who saved Hamid Karzai‘s life when the CIA led the effort to oust the Taliban from power in 2001″. President Karzai is said to be greatly indebted to this officer and was pleased when the officer was named chief of station again. According to interviews with several senior officials, this officer “was uniformly well-liked and admired. A career paramilitary officer, he came to the CIA after several years in an elite Marine unit”.[111][112]
General McChrystal’s strategy included the lash up of special operations forces from the U.S. Military and from SAD/SOG to duplicate the initial success and the defeat of the Taliban in 2001[113] and the success of the “Surge” in Iraq in 2007.[114] This strategy proved highly successful and worked very well in Afghanistan with SAD/SOG and JSOC forces conducting raids nearly every night having “superb results” against the enemy.[115]
In 2001, the CIA’s SAD/SOG began creating what would come to be called Counter-terrorism Pursuit Teams (CTPT).[116][117] These units grew to include over 3,000 operatives by 2010 and have been involved in sustained heavy fighting against the enemy. It is considered the “best Afghan fighting force”.
Located at 7,800 feet (2,400 m) above sea level, Firebase Lilley in Shkin serves as a “nerve center for the covert war”.[117] This covert war includes being a hub for these CTPT operations with Firebase Lilley being just one in a constellation of CIA bases across Afghanistan.[117] These units have not only been highly effective in combat operations against the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces, but have also been used to engage with the tribes in areas with no other official government presence.[118]
This covert war also includes a large SOG/CTPT expansion into Pakistan to target senior al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership in the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA).[119] CTPT units are the main effort in both the “Counterterrorism plus” and the full “Counterinsurgency” options being discussed by the Obama administration in the December 2010 review.[120] SOG/CTPT are also key to any exit strategy for the U.S. government to leave Afghanistan, while still being able to deny al-Qaeda and other trans-national extremists groups a safehaven both in Afghanistan and in the FATA of Pakistan.[121]
In January 2013, a CIA drone strike killed Mullah Nazir a senior Taliban commander in the South Waziristan area of Pakistan believed responsible for carrying out the insurgent effort against the US military in Afghanistan. Nazir’s death degraded the Taliban.[122]
The U.S. has decided to lean heavily on CIA in general and SAD specifically in their efforts to withdraw from Afghanistan as it did in Iraq.[123] There are plans being considered to have several US Military special operations elements assigned to CIA after the withdrawal.[124]
Yemen
On November 5, 2002, a missile launched from a CIA-controlled Predator drone killed al-Qaeda members traveling in a remote area in Yemen. SAD/SOG paramilitary teams had been on the ground tracking their movements for months and called in this air strike.[125] One of those in the car was Ali Qaed Senyan al-Harthi, al-Qaeda’s chief operative in Yemen and a suspect in the October 2000 bombing of the destroyer USS Cole. Five other people, believed to be low-level al-Qaeda members, were also killed to include an American named Kamal Derwish.[126][127] Former Deputy U.S. Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz called it “a very successful tactical operation” and said “such strikes are useful not only in killing terrorists but in forcing al-Qaeda to change its tactics”.[126]
“It’s an important step that has been taken in that it has eliminated another level of experienced leadership from al-Qaeda,” said Vince Cannistraro, former head of counter-terrorism for the CIA and current ABC News consultant. “It will help weaken the organization and make it much less effective.”[128][129] Harithi was on the run, pursued by several security forces who were looking for him and Muhammad Hamdi al-Ahdal, another suspect in the USS Cole bombing case.[130]
In 2009, the Obama administration authorized continued lethal operations in Yemen by the CIA.[131] As a result, the SAD/SOG and JSOC have joined together to aggressively target al-Qaeda operatives in that country, both through leading Yemenese special forces and intelligence driven drone strikes.[131] A major target of these operations is ImamAnwar al-Aulaqi, an American citizen with ties to both Nidal Hassan, the alleged Fort Hood attacker, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas 2009 attempted bomber of Northwest Airline flight 253.[132] Imam al-Aulaki was killed on September 30, 2011 by an air attack carried out by the Joint Special Operations Command.[133]
Iraq
SAD paramilitary teams entered Iraq before the 2003 invasion. Once on the ground they prepared the battle space for the subsequent arrival of U.S. military forces. SAD teams then combined with U.S. Army special forces (on a team called the Northern Iraq Liaison Element or NILE).[17] This team organized the KurdishPeshmerga for the subsequent U.S. led invasion. This joint team combined in Operation Viking Hammer to defeat Ansar al-Islam, an Islamist group allied to al-Qaeda, which several battle-hardened fighters from Afghanistan had joined after the fall of the Taliban, in a battle for control over the northeast of Iraq – a battle that turned out being one of the “most intense battles of Special Forces since Vietnam”.[134] This battle was for an entire territory that was completely occupied by Ansar al-Islam and was executed prior to the invasion in February 2003. If this battle had not been as successful as it was, there would have been a considerable hostile force in the rear of the U.S./secular Kurdish force in the subsequent assault on the Iraqi army to the south. The U.S. side was represented by paramilitary operations officers from SAD/SOG and the army’s 10th Special Forces Group (10th SFG). 10th SFG soldiers were awarded three Silver Stars and six Bronze Stars with V for valor for this battle alone [135] and several paramilitary officers were awarded the Intelligence Star for valor in combat.[136] This battle was a significant direct attack and victory on a key U.S. opponent. It resulted in the deaths of a substantial number of militants and the uncovering of a crude laboratory that had traces of poisons and information on chemical weapons at Sargat.[17][137] The team found foreign identity cards, visas, and passports on the enemy bodies. They had come from a wide variety of Middle Eastern and north African countries including Yemen, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Tunisia, Morocco, and Iran.[135] Sargat was also the only facility that had traces of chemical weapons discovered in the Iraq war.[18][136][138]
The village of Biyara and Base of Ansar al-Islam 2001–2003
In a 2004 U.S. News & World Report article, “A firefight in the mountains”, the author states:
“Viking Hammer would go down in the annals of Special Forces history—a battle fought on foot, under sustained fire from an enemy lodged in the mountains, and with minimal artillery and air support.”[135]
SAD/SOG teams also conducted high risk special reconnaissance missions behind Iraqi lines to identify senior leadership targets. These missions led to the initial assassination attempts against Iraqi PresidentSaddam Hussein and his key generals. Although the initial air strike against Hussein was unsuccessful in killing the dictator, it was successful in effectively ending his ability to command and control his forces. Other strikes against key generals were successful and significantly degraded the command’s ability to react to and maneuver against the U.S.-led invasion force.[17][139] SAD operations officers were also successful in convincing key Iraqi army officers to surrender their units once the fighting started and/or not to oppose the invasion force.[18]
NATO member Turkey refused to allow its territory to be used by the U.S. Army’s 4th Infantry Division for the invasion. As a result, the SAD/SOG, U.S. Army special forces joint teams, the Kurdish Peshmerga and the 173d Airborne Brigade were the entire northern force against the Iraqi army during the invasion. Their efforts kept the 13 divisions of the Iraqi Army in place to defend against the Kurds rather allowing them to contest the coalition force coming from the south.[134] This combined U.S. special operations and Kurdish force defeated the Iraqi Army.[17] Four members of the SAD/SOG team received CIA’s rare Intelligence Star for “extraordinary heroism”.[18]
The mission that captured Saddam Hussein was called “Operation Red Dawn“. It was planned and carried out by JSOC’s Delta Force and SAD/SOG teams (together called Task Force 121). The operation eventually included around 600 soldiers from the 1st Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division.[140][141] Special operations troops probably numbered around 40. Much of the publicity and credit for the capture went to the 4th Infantry Division soldiers, but CIA and JSOC were the driving force. “Task Force 121 were actually the ones who pulled Saddam out of the hole” said Robert Andrews, former deputy assistant Secretary of Defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict. “They can’t be denied a role anymore.”[140]
CIA paramilitary units continued to team up with the JSOC in Iraq and in 2007 the combination created a lethal force many credit with having a major impact in the success of “the Surge“. They did this by killing or capturing many of the key al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq.[142][143] In a CBS60 Minutes interview, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Woodward described a new special operations capability that allowed for this success. This capability was developed by the joint teams of CIA and JSOC.[144] Several senior U.S. officials stated that the “joint efforts of JSOC and CIA paramilitary units was the most significant contributor to the defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq”.[142][145]
In May 2007, Marine Major Douglas A. Zembiec was serving in SAD Ground Branch in Iraq when he was killed by small arms fire while leading a raid.[146][147] Reports from fellow paramilitary officers stated that the flash radio report sent was “five wounded and one martyred”[148] Major Zembiec was killed while saving his soldiers, Iraqi soldiers. He was honored with an intelligence star for his valor in combat.[149]
On October 26, 2008, SAD/SOG and JSOC conducted an operation in Syria targeting the “foreign fighter logistics network” bringing al-Qaeda operatives into Iraq (See 2008 Abu Kamal raid).[150] A U.S. source told CBS News that “the leader of the foreign fighters, an al-Qaeda officer, was the target of Sunday’s cross-border raid.” He said the attack was successful, but did not say whether or not the al-Qaeda officer was killed.[151]Fox News later reported that Abu Ghadiya, “al-Qa’ida’s senior coordinator operating in Syria”, was killed in the attack.[152]The New York Times reported that during the raid U.S. forces killed several armed males who “posed a threat”.[153]
In September 2014 with the rise of the Islamic State, the U.S. government began aggressive military operations against them in both Iraq and Syria. SAD Ground Branch was placed in charge of the ground war.[154] This is a testament to SAD being the preeminent force for unconventional warfare and their long-standing relationship with the most effective fighting force in the region, the Kurdish Peshmerga.[155]
SAD/SOG has been very active “on the ground” inside Pakistan targeting al-Qaeda operatives for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Predator strikes and along with USSOCOM elements they have been training Pakistani Special Service Group Commandos.[156] Before leaving office, President George W. Bush authorized SAD’s successful killing of eight senior al-Qaeda operatives via targeted air strikes.[157] Among those killed were the mastermind of a 2006 plot to detonate explosives aboard planes flying across the Atlantic Rashid Rauf and the man thought to have planned the Islamabad Marriott Hotel bombing on September 20, 2008 that killed 53 people.[158][159] The CIA Director authorized the continuation of these operations and on January 23, SAD/SOG performed killings of 20 individuals in northwestern Pakistan that were terrorists. Some experts assess that the CIA Director – at that time Leon Panetta – has been more aggressive in conducting paramilitary operations in Pakistan than his predecessor.[160] A Pakistani security official stated that other strikes killed at least 10 insurgents, including five foreign nationals and possibly “a high-value target” such as a senior al-Qaeda or Taliban official.[161] On February 14, the CIA drone killed 27 taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in a missile strike in south Waziristan, a militant stronghold near the Afghan border where al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri were believed to be hiding.[162]
According to the documentary film Drone, by Tonje Schei, since 2002 the U.S. Air Force17th Reconnaissance Squadron has been working for the CIA as “customer”, carrying out at least some of the armed missions in Pakistan.[163]
In a National Public Radio (NPR) report dated February 3, 2008, a senior official stated that al-Qaeda has been “decimated” by SAD/SOG’s air and ground operations. This senior U.S. counter-terrorism official goes on to say, “The enemy is really, really struggling. These attacks have produced the broadest, deepest and most rapid reduction in al-Qaida senior leadership that we’ve seen in several years.”[164] President Obama’s CIA Director Leon Panetta stated that SAD/SOG’s efforts in Pakistan have been “the most effective weapon” against senior al-Qaeda leadership.[165][166]
These covert attacks have increased significantly under President Obama, with as many at 50 al-Qaeda militants being killed in the month of May 2009 alone.[167][168][169] In June 2009, sixty Taliban fighters were killed while at a funeral to bury fighters that had been killed in previous CIA attacks.[170] On July 22, 2009, National Public Radio reported that U.S. officials believe Saad bin Laden, a son of Osama bin Laden, was killed by a CIA strike in Pakistan. Saad bin Laden spent years under house arrest in Iran before traveling last year to Pakistan, according to former National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell. It’s believed he was killed sometime in 2009. A senior U.S. counter-terrorism said U.S. intelligence agencies are “80 to 85 percent” certain that Saad bin Laden is dead.[171]
On August 6, 2009, the CIA announced that Baitullah Mehsud was killed by a SAD/SOG drone strike in Pakistan.[172]The New York Times said, “Although President Obama has distanced himself from many of the Bush administration’s counter-terrorism policies, he has embraced and even expanded the C.I.A.’s covert campaign in Pakistan using Predator and Reaper drones”.[172] The biggest loss may be to “Osama bin Laden’s al-Qa’ida”. For the past eight years, al-Qaeda had depended on Mehsud for protection after Mullah Mohammed Omar fled Afghanistan in late 2001. “Mehsud’s death means the tent sheltering Al Qaeda has collapsed,” an Afghan Taliban intelligence officer who had met Mehsud many times told Newsweek. “Without a doubt he was Al Qaeda’s No. 1 guy in Pakistan,” adds Mahmood Shah, a retired Pakistani Army brigadier and a former chief of the Federally Administered Tribal Area, or FATA, Mehsud’s base.[173]
Airstrikes from CIA drones struck targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan on September 8, 2009. Reports stated that seven to ten militants were killed to include one top al-Qaida leaders. He was Mustafa al-Jaziri, an Algerian national described as an “important and effective” leader and senior military commander for al-Qaida. The success of these operations are believed to have caused senior Taliban leaders to significantly alter their operations and cancel key planning meetings.[174][175]
The CIA is also increasing its campaign using Predator missile strikes on al-Qaeda in Pakistan. The number of strikes in 2009 exceeded the 2008 total, according to data compiled by the Long War Journal, which tracks strikes in Pakistan.[108] In December 2009, the New York Times reported that President Obama ordered an expansion of the drone program with senior officials describing the program as “a resounding success, eliminating key terrorists and throwing their operations into disarray”.[176] The article also cites a Pakistani official who stated that about 80 missile attacks in less than two years have killed “more than 400” enemy fighters, a number lower than most estimates but in the same range. His account of collateral damage was strikingly lower than many unofficial counts: “We believe the number of civilian casualties is just over 20, and those were people who were either at the side of major terrorists or were at facilities used by terrorists.”[176]
On December 6, 2009, a senior al-Qaeda operative, Saleh al-Somali, was killed in a drone strike in Pakistan. He was responsible for their operations outside of the Afghanistan-Pakistan region and formed part of the senior leadership. Al-Somali was engaged in plotting terrorist acts around the world and “given his central role, this probably included plotting attacks against the United States and Europe”.[177][178] On December 31, 2009, senior Taliban leader and strong Haqqani ally Haji Omar Khan, brother of Arif Khan, was killed in the strike along with the son of local tribal leader Karim Khan.[179]
In January 2010, al-Qaeda in Pakistan announced that Lashkar al-Zil leader Abdullah Said al Libi was killed in a drone missile strike. Neither al-Qaeda nor the US has revealed the date of the attack that killed Libi.[180] On January 14, 2010, subsequent to the suicide attack at Camp Chapman, the CIA located and killed the senior Taliban leader in Pakistan, Hakimullah Mehsud. Mehsud had claimed responsibility in a video he made with the suicide bomber Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi.[181]
On February 5, 2010, the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and CIA’s SAD/SOG conducted a joint raid and apprehended Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Baradar was the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the beginning of the Afghan War more than eight years ago until that date. He ranked second to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder and was known to be a close associate of Osama bin Laden. Mullah Baradar was interrogated by CIA and ISI officers for several days before news of his capture was released.[182] This capture sent the message that the Taliban leadership is not safe in Afghanistan or Pakistan.[183] “The seizure of the Afghan Taliban’s top military leader in Pakistan represents a turning point in the U.S.-led war against the militants”, U.S. officials and analysts said.[184] Per Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik, several raids in Karachi in early February netted dozens of suspected Afghan militants.[184] In other joint raids that occurred around the same time, Afghan officials said that the Taliban “shadow governorsP for two provinces in northern Afghanistan had also been detained. Mullah Abdul Salam, the Taliban’s leader in Kunduz, and Mullah Mir Mohammed of Baghlan were captured in Akora Khattack.[185]
On February 20, Muhammad Haqqani, son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, was one of four people killed in the drone strike in Pakistan’s tribal region in North Waziristan, according to two Pakistani intelligence sources.[186]
On May 31, 2010, the New York Times reported that Mustafa Abu al Yazid (AKA Saeed al Masri), a senior operational leader for Al Qaeda, was killed in an American missile strike in Pakistan’s tribal areas.[187]
From July to December 2010, predator strikes killed 535 suspected militants in the FATA to include Sheikh Fateh Al Misri, Al-Qaeda’s new third in command on September 25.[188] Al Misri was planning a major terrorist attack in Europe by recruiting British Muslims who would then go on a shooting rampage similar to what transpired in Mumbai in November 2008.[189]
The operation in the Bilal military cantonment area in the city of Abbottabad resulted in the acquisition of extensive intelligence on the future attack plans of al-Qaeda.[194][195][196] The body of bin Laden was flown to Afghanistan to be identified and then out to the USS Carl Vinson for a burial at sea.[197] DNA from bin Laden’s body, compared with DNA samples on record from his dead sister, confirmed his identity.
The operation was a result of years of intelligence work that included the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the CIA, the DSS, and the Delta Force‘s, apprehension and interrogation of Khalid Sheik Mohammad (KSM),[198][199][200] the discovery of the real name of the courier disclosed by KSM, the tracking, via signal intelligence, of the courier to the Abbottobad compound by paramilitary operatives and the establishment of a CIA safe house that provided critical advance intelligence for the operation.[201][202][203][203]
The material discovered in the raid indicated that bin Laden was still in charge of his Al-Qaeda organization and was developing plans and issuing orders at the time of his death. There is considerable controversy over claims that elements of the Pakistani government, particularly the ISI, may have been concealing the presence of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.[204][205][206] Bin Laden’s death has been labeled a “game changer” and a fatal blow to Al-Qaeda, by senior U.S. officials.[207]
Iran
In the early 1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency and Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service were ordered to overthrow the government of Iran, Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq, and re-install deposed ShahMohammad Reza Pahlavi.[208] This event was called Operation Ajax.[209][210] The senior CIA officer was Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., the grandson of American president Theodore Roosevelt. The operation utilized all of SAD’s components to include political action, covert influence and paramilitary operations. The paramilitary component included training anti-Communist guerrillas to fight the Tudeh Party if they seized power in the chaos of Operation Ajax.[211] Although a significant tactical/operational success, Operation Ajax is considered very controversial with many critics.[212]
On March 9, 2007 alleged CIA Agent Robert Levinson was kidnapped from Iran’s Kish Island. On July 7, 2008, Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist and author Seymour Hersh wrote an article in the New Yorker stating that the Bush Administration had signed a Presidential Finding authorizing the CIA to begin cross border paramilitary operations from Iraq and Afghanistan into Iran. These operations would be against Quds Force, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, public and private sector strategic targets, and “high-value targets” in the war on terror. Also enrolled to support CIA objectives were the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, known in the West as the M.E.K.,and the Baluchis insurgents. “The Finding was focused on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” a person familiar with its contents said, and involved “working with opposition groups and passing money.”[215] Any significant effort against Iran by the Obama Administration would likely come directly from SAD.[216] and in July 2010, Director Panetta chose a former chief of SAD as the new NCS Director.[217]
Libya
After the Arab Spring movements overthrew the rulers of Tunisia and Egypt, its neighbours to the west and east respectively, Libya had a major revolt beginning in February 2011.[218][219] In response, the Obama administration sent in SAD paramilitary operatives to assess the situation and gather information on the opposition forces.[220][221] Experts speculated that these teams could be determining the capability of these forces to defeat the Muammar Gaddafi regime and whether Al-Qaeda had a presence in these rebel elements.
U.S. officials had made it clear that no U.S. troops would be “on the ground”, making the use of covert paramilitary operatives the only alternative.[222] During the early phases of the Libyan offensive of U.S. led air strikes, paramilitary operatives assisted in the recovery of a U.S. Air Force pilot who had crashed due to mechanical problems.[223][224] There was speculation that President Obama issued a covert action finding in March 2011 that authorizes the CIA to carry out a clandestine effort to provide arms and support to the Libyan opposition.[225]
Syria
CIA paramilitary teams have been deployed to Syria to report on the uprising, to access the rebel groups, leadership and to potentially train, equip and lead one of those rebel groups against the Bashar al-Assad regime.[226] In early September 2013, President Obama told U.S. Senators that the CIA had trained the first 50-man insurgent element and that they had been inserted into Syria.[227] The deployment of this unit and the supplying of weapons may be the first tangible measure of support since the U.S. stated they would begin providing assistance to the opposition.[228][229]
In October 2013, SAD was tasked with overthrowing the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. This program was considered too limited to have the desired outcome.[230] However, with the rise of the Islamic State, SAD was given the overall command and control of the ground fight against them. This fight will cross the borders between Iraq and Syria.[154][231]
The CIA has always had a Special Activities Division, which secretly carries out special operations mission. However, since September 11, 2001 the US government has relied much more on SAD/SOG because fighting terrorists does not usually involve fighting other armies. Rather, it involves secretly moving in and out of countries like Pakistan, Iran and Somalia where the American military is not legally allowed to operate.[232]
If there are missions in these countries that are denied to U.S. military special operations forces, SAD/SOG units are the primary national special missions units to execute those operations.[233]
In the War on Terror, SAD has the lead in the covert war being waged against al Qaeda.[11][234] SAD/SOG paramilitary teams have apprehended many of the senior leaders. These include: Abu Zubaydah,[235] the chief of operations for al-Qaeda; Ramzi bin al-Shibh,[236] the so-called the “20th hijacker”;[237]Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.;[238]Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, alleged to be the mastermind of the USS Cole bombing and leader of al Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf prior to his capture in November 2002;[239]Abu Faraj al-Libi, al Qaeda’s “field general” believed to have taken the role of No. 3 in al Qaeda following the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Pakistan;[240] and Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the number two taliban commander and the highest level taliban commander apprehended in the Afghan War.[241] Prior to the beginning of the “War on Terror”, SAD/SOG located and captured many notable militants and international criminals, including Abimael Guzman and Carlos the Jackal. These were just three of the over 50 caught by SAD/SOG just between 1983 and 1995.[242]
In 2002, the George W. Bush Administration prepared a list of “terrorist leaders” the CIA is authorized to kill in a targeted killing, if capture is impractical and civilian casualties can be kept to an acceptable number. The list includes key al Qaeda leaders like Osama bin Laden (deceased) and his chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, as well as other principal figures from al Qaeda and affiliated groups. This list is called the “high value target list”.[243] The U.S. president is not legally required to approve each name added to the list, nor is the CIA required to obtain presidential approval for specific attacks, although the president is kept well informed about operations.[243]
SAD/SOG teams have been dispatched to the country of Georgia, where dozens of al Qaeda fugitives from Afghanistan are believed to have taken refuge with Chechen separatists and thousands of refugees in the Pankisi Gorge. Their efforts have already resulted in 15 Arab militants linked to al Qaeda being captured.[125]
The SAD/SOG teams have also been active in the Philippines, where 1,200 U.S. military advisers helped to train local soldiers in “counter-terrorist operations” against Abu Sayyaf, a radical Islamist group suspected of ties with al Qaeda. Little is known about this U.S. covert action program, but some analysts believe that “the CIA’s paramilitary wing, the Special Activities Division (SAD), has been allowed to pursue terrorist suspects in the Philippines on the basis that its actions will never be acknowledged”.[125]
On July 14, 2009, several newspapers reported that DCIA Leon Panetta was briefed on a CIA program that had not been briefed to the oversight committees in Congress. Panetta cancelled the initiative and reported its existence to Congress and the President. The program consisted of teams of SAD paramilitary officers organized to execute targeted killing operations against al Qaeda operatives around the world in any country. According to the Los Angeles Times, DCIA Panetta “has not ruled out reviving the program”.[11] There is some question as to whether former Vice President Dick Cheney instructed the CIA not to inform Congress.[244] Per senior intelligence officers, this program was an attempt to avoid the civilian casualties that can occur during predator drone strikes using Hellfire missiles.[245][246]
According to many experts, the Obama administration has relied on the CIA and their paramilitary capabilities, even more than they have on U.S. military forces, to maintain the fight against terrorists in the Afghanistan and Pakistan region, as well as places like Yemen, Somalia and North Africa.[247][248] Ronald Kessler states in his book The CIA at War: Inside the Secret War Against Terror, that although paramilitary operations are a strain on resources, they’re winning the war against terrorism.[247][249]
SAD/SOG paramilitary officers executed the clandestine evacuation of U.S. citizens and diplomatic personnel in Somalia, Iraq (during the Persian Gulf War) and Liberia during periods of hostility, as well as the insertion of Paramilitary Operations Officers prior to the entry of U.S. military forces in every conflict since World War II.[250] SAD officers have operated covertly since 1947 in places such as North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Libya, Iraq, El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras, Chile, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Pakistan.[251]
The Fulton surface-to-air recovery system (STARS) is a system developed in the early 1950s by CIA paramilitary officers for retrieving persons on the ground from a MC-130E Combat Talon I aircraft. It uses a harness and a self-inflating balloon that carries an attached lift line. An MC-130E engages the line with its V-shaped yoke and the individual is reeled on board.[252]Project COLDFEET was a very successful mission in 1962 in which two military officers parachuted into a remote abandoned Soviet site in the Arctic. The two were subsequently extracted by the Fulton sky hook. The team gathered evidence of advanced research on acoustical systems to detect under-ice US submarines and efforts to develop Arctic anti-submarine warfare techniques.[253]
Sergeant Major (SgtMaj) Billy Waugh was a Special Forces soldier attached to CIA in the 1960s. During his time at MACV-SOG in Vietnam, he developed and conducted the first combat High Altitude-Low Opening (HALO) jump, “In October 1970, my team made a practice Combat Infiltration into the NVA owned War Zone D, in South Vietnam, for reassembly training, etc. This was the first one in a combat zone.”[254] HALO is a method of delivering personnel, equipment, and supplies from a transport aircraft at a high altitude via free-fall parachute insertion. HALO and HAHO (High Altitude-High Opening) are also known as Military Free Fall (MFF). In the HALO technique, the parachutist opens his parachute at a low altitude after free-falling for a period of time to avoid detection by the enemy. Waugh also led the last combat special reconnaissance parachute insertion into enemy territory occupied by communist North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops on June 22, 1971.[255]
On October 25, 2003, paramilitary officers Christopher Mueller and William “Chief” Carlson were killed while conducting an operation to kill/capture high level al-Qa’ida leaders near Shkin, Afghanistan. Both these officers were honored with Stars on the CIA Memorial Wall at their Headquarters in Langley, Virginia.[256] “The bravery of these two men cannot be overstated,” Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet told a gathering of several hundred Agency employees and family members. “Chris and Chief put the lives of others ahead of their own. That is heroism defined.” Mueller, a former US Navy SEAL and Carlson, a former Army Special Forces soldier, Delta Force operator, and member of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana, died while on this covert operation. Both officers saved the lives of others, including Afghan soldiers, during the engagement with al-Qa’ida forces.[256][257][258] In Oliver North’s book American Heroes in Special Operations, a chapter is devoted to their story.[259]
Notable political action officers
Virginia Hall Goillot started as the only female paramilitary officer in the OSS. She shot herself in the leg while hunting in Turkey in 1932, which was then amputated below the knee. She parachuted into France to organize the resistance with her prosthesis strapped to her body. She was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. She married an OSS officer named Paul Goillot and the two joined the CIA as paramilitary operations officers in SAD. Once aboard, Mrs. Goillot made her mark as a political action officer playing significant roles in the Guatemala and Guyana operations. These operations involved the covert removal of the governments of these two countries, as directed by the President of the United States.[260]
E. Howard Hunt (October 9, 1918 – January 23, 2007) was an Ivy league educated Naval officer who joined the CIA in 1949 after serving with the OSS in World War II. Hunt was a political action officer in what came to be called their Special Activities Division.[261] He became station chief in Mexico City in 1950, and supervised William F. Buckley, Jr., (Not to be confused with a famous SAD Paramilitary Officer of the same name) who worked for the CIA in Mexico during the period 1951–1952. Buckley, another SAD political action specialist, only served briefly in the CIA and went on to be considered the father of the modern American conservative movement. Buckley and Hunt remained lifelong friends.[262] Hunt ran Operation PBSUCCESS, which overthrew the government in Guatemala in 1954, was heavily involved in the Bay of Pigs Invasion operation, frequently mentioned in the JFK assassination, and was one of the operatives in the Watergate scandal.[263] Hunt was also a well-known author with over 50 books to his credit. These books were published under several alias names and several were made into motion pictures.[264]
David Atlee Phillips Perhaps the most famous propaganda officer ever to serve in CIA, Phillips began his career as a journalist and amateur actor in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He joined the Agency in the 1950s and was one of the chief architects of the operation to overthrow Communist president Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954. He was later heavily engaged as a principal member of the Bay of Pigs Task Force at Langley, and in subsequent anti-Castro operations throughout the 1960s. He founded the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) after successfully contesting a libel suit against him.
The CIA Memorial Wall is located at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It honors CIA employees who died in the line of duty.[265] As of August 6, 2012, there were 103 stars carved into the marble wall,[266] each one representing an officer. A majority of these were paramilitary officers.[265] A black book, called the “Book of Honor”, lies beneath the stars and is encased in an inch-thick plate of glass.[266] Inside this book are stars, arranged by year of death, and the names of 77 employees who died in CIA service alongside them.[265][266] The other names remain secret, even in death.[265]
Story 1: Playing The Blame Game — Avoiding Responsibility and Accountability — Government Failure! — 9/11: Trump Blames Bush — Clinton Blames Republicans ! — Videos
Hillary Clinton and the “Dark Forces” in Benghazi
Kenneth Timmerman, author of Dark forces: The Truth About What Happened in Benghazi, looks at Hillary Clinton’s next scheduled appearance before the Benghazi special committee and the Iranian nuclear deal. He cites evidence that the Iranians were behind the attack in Benghazi that killed four Americans on September 11, 2012. In addition, Timmerman says Iran was involved in the September 11, 2001, attacks. Timmerman also discusses Russian backing for Iran and the Russian role in attacking the opponents of Assad in Syria. Timmerman also looks at: Will Russia attack the Kurds? And who are the Kurds? Is Obama a Muslim? Will Israel strike Iran?
Donald Trump blames George W. Bush for 9/11
Did Donald Trump blame Bush for 9/11?
Jake Tapper calls out Jeb Bush for saying his brother is blameless for 9/11
9-11 WTC Attacks Original Sound
Who Was Really Behind the 9/11 Attacks?
George Bush Takes Questions After Meeting With 9/11 Commission – 4/29/2004
Richard Clarke, Former Counterterrorism Chief, Apologizes for 9/11
Why Government Failure Occurs: Richard Clarke on National Security Disasters (2008)
Your Government Failed You: Richard Clarke at the September 11 Commission on Counterterrorism (2004)
Richard Alan Clarke (born October 27, 1950) is the former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism for the United States.
Clarke worked for the State Department during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush appointed him to chair the Counter-terrorism Security Group and to a seat on the United States National Security Council. President Bill Clinton retained Clarke and in 1998 promoted him to be the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism, the chief counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council. Under President George W. Bush, Clarke initially continued in the same position, but the position was no longer given cabinet-level access. He later became the Special Advisor to the President on cybersecurity. Clarke left the Bush administration in 2003.
Clarke came to widespread public attention for his role as counter-terrorism czar in the Clinton and Bush administrations in March 2004, when he appeared on the 60 Minutes television news magazine, released his memoir about his service in government, Against All Enemies, and testified before the 9/11 Commission. In all three instances, Clarke was sharply critical of the Bush administration’s attitude toward counter-terrorism before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and of the decision to go to war with Iraq.
On March 24, 2004, Clarke testified at the public 9/11 Commission hearings.[17] At the outset of his testimony Clarke offered an apology to the families of 9/11 victims and an acknowledgment that the government had failed: “I also welcome the hearings because it is finally a forum where I can apologize to the loved ones of the victims of 9/11…To the loved ones of the victims of 9/11, to them who are here in this room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn’t matter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask, once all the facts are out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness.”[17]
Many of the events Clarke recounted during the hearings were also published in his memoir. Clarke charged that before and during the 9/11 crisis, many in the Administration were distracted from efforts against Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda organization by a pre-occupation with Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Clarke had written that on September 12, 2001, President Bush pulled him and a couple of aides aside and “testily” asked him to try to find evidence that Saddam was connected to the terrorist attacks. In response he wrote a report stating there was no evidence of Iraqi involvement and got it signed by all relevant agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the CIA. The paper was quickly returned by a deputy with a note saying “Please update and resubmit.”[18] After initially denying that such a meeting between the President and Clarke took place, the White House later reversed its denial when others present backed Clarke’s version of the events.
Clarke is currently Chairman of Good Harbor Consulting and Good Harbour International, two strategic planning and corporate risk management firms; an on-air consultant for ABC News, and a contributor to the Good Harbor Report, an online community discussing homeland security, defense, and politics. He is an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School and a faculty affiliate of its Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.[35] He has also become an author of fiction, publishing his first novel, The Scorpion’s Gate, in 2005, and a second, Breakpoint, in 2007.
Clarke wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post on May 31, 2009 harshly critical of other Bush administration officials, entitled “The Trauma of 9/11 Is No Excuse”.[36] Clarke wrote that he had little sympathy for his fellow officials who seemed to want to use the excuse of being traumatized, and caught unaware by Al-Qaeda’s attacks on the USA, because their being caught unaware was due to their ignoring clear reports a major attack on U.S. soil was imminent. Clarke particularly singled out former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.
911 Press for Truth
Intelligence Stove Piping Is System Failure
Fannie Mae, Jamie Gorelick and The 911 Commission
911 Commission Co-Chair Explains Need for New Investigation
Jamie Gorelick for FBI director? Are you kidding me?
Inside Libya’s Militias
Libya War: What They Don’t Want You to Know
How Will History Judge U.S., Coalition Intervention in Libya?
Libyan No Fly Zone Necessary But Intervention Has Imperialist Objectives
Debate The Libyan Intervention: Humanitarian or an Aggression?
Democracy and Hypocrisy in Libya
Backlash? Wave of terror feared in Europe over Libya intervention
Semantics – The Rise and Fall of Muammar al Gaddafi
Why Did America and the West Intervene in Libya?
Former State Department officer Ethan Chorin explains, the United States and the West provided Muammar Qaddafi and his forces with many of the weapons they used to fight the rebels during the 2011 Libyan revolution. Therefore, the U.S. and NATO had a moral responsibility to help the anti-Qaddafi forces
US special forces already on ground in Libya – FoxNews 110324
Obama authorized CIA covert operation in Libya – FoxNews 110331
The Truth About The War On Libya Government Lies Revealed A Goverment Conspiracy 2011
SYRIA Retired General Suspects A US Covert Operation For Running Libya Arms To Syria
LIBYA TIMELINE SHOWING LIE AFTER LIE BY OBAMA ADMINISTRATION – LYBYAGATE COVERUP
Murder Of Chris Stevens In Benghazi Attack Ordered By American Military Leadership, Possibly Obama
Know The TRUTH ~ Step By Step ~ Bret Baier’s ~ ‘Death and Deceit in Benghazi’
FLASHBACK] Hillary Clinton blames youtube video for Benghazi
Obama and Hillary Blame Youtube Video for Benghazi Terrorist Attack as Coffins Arrive
Rand Paul Destroys Hillary Clinton Over Benghazi-Gate During Capitol Hill Press Conference
Benghazi Attack Cover Up! Obama Armed Al Qaeda?
Former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson: Emails Reveal White House Hid Truths About Benghazi Attack
Sharyl Attkisson: White House Hiding Photos of Obama on Night of Benghazi Attack
Benghazi Hearing Trey Gowdy — “I don’t give a damn whose careers are ruined
Hillary Ad Hammers Republicans On Bogus Benghazi Investigation
Why Is Hillary Clinton Blamed For The Benghazi Attack?
For The Record-Zero Footprint
Treason Exposed! Obama Used Benghazi Attack to Cover Up Arms Shipments to Muslim Brotherhood
Trump’s take on birthright citizenships
Mark Levin: No Birthright Citizenship – Hannity 8/19/2015
Mark Levin: The Citizenship Clause of 14th Amendment, birthright citizenship & illegal immigration
Donald Trump’s Tense Presser, Illegal Immigration, Birthright Citizenship Debate- Mark Levin Hannity
Jeb Bush dismisses Donald Trump’s immigration plans
Jamie Gorelick’s wall
By – The Washington Times – Thursday, April 15, 2004
The disclosure that Jamie Gorelick, a member of the September 11 commission, was personally responsible for instituting a key obstacle to cooperation between law enforcement and intelligence operations before the terrorist attacks raises disturbing questions about the integrity of the commission itself. Ms. Gorelick should not be cross-examining witnesses; instead, she should be required to testify about her own behavior under oath. Specifically, commission members need to ask her about a 1995 directive she wrote that made it more difficult for the FBI to locate two of the September 11 hijackers who had already entered the country by the summer of 2001.
On Tuesday, Attorney General John Ashcroft declassified a four-page directive sent by Ms. Gorelick (the No. 2 official in the Clinton Justice Department) on March 4, 1995, to FBI Director Louis Freeh and Mary Jo White, the New York-based U.S. attorney investigating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In the memo, Ms. Gorelick ordered Mr. Freeh and Ms. White to follow information-sharing procedures that “go beyond what is legally required,” in order to avoid “any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance” that the Justice Department was using Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants, instead of ordinary criminal investigative procedures, in an effort to undermine the civil liberties of terrorism suspects.
At issue was the oft-noted wall of separation that prevented counterterrorism agents and federal prosecutors from communicating with one another prior to September 11. Information collected under special FISA warrants, which do not require a probable cause, was generally not to be shared with personnel responsible for enforcing federal criminal laws — where probable cause must be demonstrated for a warrant to be issued. As lawyers David Rivkin and Lee Casey noted on our Op-Ed page yesterday, the practical effect of the wall was that counterintelligence information was generally kept away from law enforcement personnel who were investigating al Qaeda activities. But Ms. Gorelick’s memo clearly indicated that the Clinton administration had decided as a matter of policy to go even beyond the law’s already stringent requirements in order to further choke off information sharing.
As Mr. Ashcroft noted during his testimony before the September 11 commission, all of this had a devastating effect into the investigation of al Qaeda operations in this country in the summer of 2001. For example, in late August, when the CIA told the FBI that Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi had entered the country, FBI investigators refused to permit criminal investigators with considerable knowledge about the most recent al Qaeda attack to join the manhunt. Also, a criminal search warrant to examine the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, whose interest in flying aircraft had attracted attention, was rejected because FBI officials were afraid of breaching the wall.
Ms. Gorelick has been among the most partisan and aggressive Democratic panel members in questioning the anti-terror efforts of the Bush administration. The nation deserves a full accounting from Ms. Gorelick of why the Clinton administration felt it necessary to go the extra mile in order to hamper the capability of law enforcement and intelligence agents to talk to one another. If Ms. Gorelick fails to provide this, her actions would bring into serious doubt the credibility of the commission.
Ken Lay and Jack Abramoff must be green with envy over the all the mischief that has been accomplished by Jamie Gorelick, with scarcely any demonization in the press.
Imagine playing a central role in the biggest national defense disaster in 50 years. Imagine playing a central role in one of the biggest economic disasters in your country’s history. Imagine doing both as an un-elected official. Imagine getting filthy rich in the process, and even being allowed to sit self-righteously on a commission appointed to get to the bottom of the first disaster, which of course did not get to the bottom of that disaster or anything else for that matter.
Imagine ending, ruining or at least causing signficant quality deterioration in the lives of millions of people, most of whom will never know your name. Imagine counting your millions of dollars while people who tried to stop you from causing all this mayhem were getting blamed for most of the ills you actually contributed to.
Well, as un-imagineable as this is, there is one American who doesn’t have to imagine it. One Jamie Gorelick is this American. And without pretending that she caused the loss of countless thousands of lives and countless billions of dollars of wealth by herself, she certainly did push some of the early domino’s in catastrophic chain events that are a major factors in life in America today.
This is not a bad millineums’s work, when you think about it. Gorelick, an appointee of Bill Clinton, is the one who constructed the wall of separation that kept the CIA and the FBI from comparing notes and therefore invading the privacy of nice young men like, say, Muhammed Atta and Zacarius Moussaoui. While countless problems were uncovered in our intelligence operations in the wake of 9-11, no single factor comes close to in importance to Jamie Gorelick’s wall.
In fact, it was Gorelick’s wall, perhaps more than any other single factor, that induces some people to blame Clinton himself for 9-11 since he appointed her and she acted consistent with his philosophy of “crime fighting.” She put the wall into place as Deputy Attorney General in 1995.
And for good measure, she was appointed by Tom Daschle to serve on the “non partisan” 9-11 Commission. And we thought the fox in the henhouse was simply a metaphor. Of course, in a splendid example of “reaching across the aisle,” feckless Republican Slade Gorton of Washington did all he could to exonerate Gorelick in the commission. Thanks, Slade. God forbid the nation actually knows the truth.
But for Ms. Gorelick, one earth shaking catastrophe is just not enough. You might think that she caused enough carnage to us infidels on 9-11 as to qualify her for the 72 virgins upon her death. (this would also keep her consistent with several of Clinton’s philosophies).
Alas, that’s only part of her resume. Her fingerprints are all over the Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac mess, which is to say the mess that is central in the entire mortgage-housing crisis. Without so much as one scintilla of real estate or finance experience, she was appointed as Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae in 1997 and served in that role through 2003, which is when most of the systemic cancers that came home to roost today happened. She was instrumental in covering up problems with Fannie Mae while employed there and took multiple millions in bonuses as she helped construct this house of cards.
From Wikipedia:
One example of falsified financial transactions that helped the company meet earnings targets for 1998, a “manipulation” that triggered multimillion-dollar bonuses for top executives. On March 25, 2002, Business Week Gorelick is quoted as saying, “We believe we are managed safely. Fannie Mae is among the handful of top-quality institutions.” One year later, Government Regulators “accused Fannie Mae of improper accounting to the tune of $9 billion in unrecorded losses”
As we know, the financial damage done by the housing related problems in this country are still incalculable. Ms. Gorelick’s evil tab is still growing.
But it doesn’t stop there. She managed to be on the wrong side of the Duke LaCrosse case, working for Duke University to protect that school from it’s damaging knee jerk reactions to the spectacularly unbelievable charges filed by a stripper. (excuse me, exotic dancer). So, even on a smaller scale, she continues to make money while working to ruin the lives of innocent Americans in defense of liberal dogma. At the Department of Defense, when she served as legal counsel there in 1993, she drafted the “Don’t ask /don’t tell” policy.
From what can be gleaned, it all comes from being well connected. She was educated (is that what they call it?) at Harvard undergrad and Harvard Law. From there, she kept getting appointed to positions above her experience level where she could flex her liberal muscles, add a resume item, and move upward. http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/mistress_of_disaster_jamie_gor.html#ixzz3p3M8KxQf
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Story 1: Stop Believing The Lying Lunatic Left: Hillary Clinton: “It Was Allowed.”, Receiving And Sending Classified Documents on Personal Email Server Is Not Allowed — It is A Serious Federal Crime Under Title 18 U.S. Code § 1924 and § 793 — Hillary Clinton’s Race To The White House or Sing Sing Prison — October Surprise on October 22 in Congressional Hearing on Benghazi! — Videos
Savannah Guthrie Grills Hillary on Emails
NBC’s Savannah Guthrie grilled Hillary Clinton during a Today show town hall Monday, asking pointedly if she realized how bad her private email looked to an outside observer.
Guthrie noted that while Clinton had apologized for using a private email, she also kept saying that it was an invented issue used by Republicans to attack her. “And I guess my question to you is, which is it?” she said. “If you’re blaming the Republicans, some might wonder how genuine is that apology?”
“Well, actually it’s both,” Clinton said. “I mean, I’m sorry that I made a choice that has resulted in this kind of situation, and I’ve said I’ve made a mistake. Obviously if I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t. It was allowed and everybody has confirmed that. But it’s also, as we now know very clearly, the way that the Republicans are trying to bring my– as they admit– poll numbers down.”
“So it’s really both, Savannah,” Clinton said. “It’s both, ‘Hey, you know what, turn the clock back, it was allowed.’ I was thinking about many other things [than] my email account when I became Secretary of State.”
“It’s allowed, but you know, anybody who works in government knows it’s really not encouraged to use your personal email. And I just — do you get how bad it looks?” Guthrie asked.
“It looks like you set up a personal server, you set up your own email so that you would have control of those emails and you and you alone would decide when to release, whether to release them. And that’s in fact what happened,” she continued.
“Well, Savannah, first of all, it was allowed,” Clinton said. “And I’ve said it wasn’t the best choice. And every government official gets to decide what is personal and work-related.”
Another Tech Company Joins FBI Clinton Email Probe
Democrats on the Select Committee on Benghazi released a new video and fact sheet rebutting claims made by Chairman Trey Gowdy that the Committee is not focused on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The new video and fact sheet come after Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy admitted on national television that the purpose of the Select Committee has always been to damage Hillary Clinton’s bid for President.
Admit | Hillary Clinton
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Ex-Counter Intel Agent Nails Hillary Clinton With Two Laws She Broke
Chris Farrell, a former Army counterintelligence agent and now director of investigations for Judicial Watch, argues Hillary Clinton has violated two national security laws.
The first is Title 18 of U.S. Code Sec. 1924 which outlaws the unauthorized removal and storage of classified information. Penalties include fines and imprisonment for up to one year.
The second is Title 18 of U.S. Code Sec. 793, a more serious felony, which outlaws people from misusing national defense information, and carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
Liberal media not buying Hillary Clinton’s email excuses?
Judge Orders State Dept To Help FBI Recover Hillary Clinton’s Deleted Emails America’s News HQ
Hillary Clinton Explains What’s in Her Classified Emails
Rep. Trey Gowdy on Hillary Clinton’s widening email scandal – FoxTV Political News
• Criminal Charges Hang Over Clinton • “Hillary Blew It” – Chuck Todd • 7/24/15 •
NSA Whistleblower: Everyone in US under virtual surveillance, all info stored, no matter the post
NSA Whistleblower William Binney on how they target us, abuse us, spy on us
NSA Whistleblower William Binney: The Future of FREEDOM
A 36-year veteran of America’s Intelligence Community, William Binney resigned from his position as Director for Global Communications Intelligence (COMINT) at the National Security Agency (NSA) and blew the whistle, after discovering that his efforts to protect the privacy and security of Americans were being undermined by those above him in the chain of command.
The NSA data-monitoring program which Binney and his team had developed — codenamed ThinThread — was being aimed not at foreign targets as intended, but at Americans (codenamed as Stellar Wind); destroying privacy here and around the world. Binney voices his call to action for the billions of individuals whose rights are currently being violated.
William Binney speaks out in this feature-length interview with Tragedy and Hope’s Richard Grove, focused on the topic of the ever-growing Surveillance State in America.
On January 22, 2015: (Berlin, Germany) – The Government Accountability Project (GAP) is proud to announce that retired NSA Technical Director and GAP client, William “Bill” Binney, will accept the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence Award today in Berlin, Germany. The award is presented annually by the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) to a professional who has taken a strong stand for ethics and integrity. http://whistleblower.org/press/nsa-wh…
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Gowdy: Clinton to testify in October before Benghazi panel, all questions ‘asked’ and ‘answered’
South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy said Sunday that Hillary Clinton will indeed testify Oct. 22 about her activities as secretary of state at the time of the Benghazi attacks but suggested that her demand for a one-time appearance will result in a long, hard day.
“We have agreed on the date,” Gowdy, a Republican and chairman of House’s Select Committee on Benghazi, told “Fox News Sunday.”
“And the ground rules are simple: You’re going to stay there until all of the questions are asked and answered with respect to Benghazi,” he continued. “If she’s going to insist that she’s only coming once, I’m going to insist that once be fully constructed, which means she’s going to be there for a while.”
Gowdy said questions about Clinton’s growing email controversy will be part of the hearing only because they’re relevant to his task of finding out what Clinton knew prior to the fatal Sept. 11, 2012, terror attacks on the U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya.
U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the attacks.
Clinton was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. Among questions still being pursued are how much did the Obama administration know about the possibility of a terror attack and did the outpost have adequate security.
The email controversy essentially centers on Clinton using a private server and email accounts while serving as the country’s top diplomat.
“Had she not had this email arrangement with herself, you wouldn’t be talking to me this morning,” Gowdy told Fox on Sunday. “So, my focus is on the four murdered Americans in Benghazi. But before I can write the final definitive accounting of that, I have to make sure that the public record is complete.”
Clinton, the front running Democratic presidential candidate, has said she had no knowledge of sending or receiving information marked as classified, that she has done nothing wrong and intends to cooperate with investigations.
However, thousands of pages of her emails publicly released in recent months show she received messages later marked classified, including some that contained material regarding the production and dissemination of U.S. intelligence information.
And a recent inspector general probe raised concerns about whether classified information had traversed the email system, resulting in a counterintelligence referral being sent to the Justice Department. However, the referral did not allege criminal wrongdoing.
Intentionally transmitting classified information through an unsecured system would appear to be a violation of federal regulations.
This weekend, Clinton suggested the email controversy is also politically motivated.
“I won’t get down in the mud with them,” she said. “I won’t play politics with national security or dishonor the memory of those who we lost. I won’t pretend that this is anything other than what it is, the same old partisan games we’ve seen so many times before.”
Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, has repeatedly declined to comment on whether he thinks Clinton broke federal law with what he calls her “unique email arrangement.”
However, he said Sunday that he has confidence in the FBI’s handling of the server, which Clinton turned over last week, after repeated requests, and that the agency will be the neutral observer for which he has asked.
“I think (the FBI is) the premiere law enforcement agency in the world,” Gowdy said. “I think that they’re as apolitical as anything can be in this culture, and I think they’re going to go wherever the facts take them.”
Clinton will testify before Benghazi panel on Oct. 22
Circle Oct. 22 with a red pen on the calendar: That’s when Hillary Clinton will testify before the Select Committee on Benghazi, the panel confirmed on Wednesday.
The former Secretary of State will answer questions about her role in the events that led up to the 2012 Benghazi, Libya terrorist attack that left four Americans dead — and, more than likely, her email practices that have come under fire in recent weeks.
Story Continued Below
“Secretary Clinton’s attorney, Mr. David Kendall, late today confirmed she has accepted the Select Committee’s offer to appear before the committee, which will take place Oct. 22nd,” spokesman Jamal Ware said in a statement. “Members of the Committee will question the former Secretary about Libya, Benghazi and her email arrangement consistent with the scope and jurisdiction of the Committee laid out in the House Resolution.”
Clinton’s campaign had made a similar announcement last Saturday following a series of reports calling into question the 2016 Democratic front-runner’s handling of classified information.
But the panel balked at the announcement, saying Kendall and the panel hadn’t agreed on the scope of what could be asked. They worried Kendall would demand that the panel stay away from questions about her email practices. Clinton used a home-brewed email server for work instead of a State.gov account as is required under government transparency rules.
Second IT firm agrees to give Clinton’s server data to FBI
Former secretary of state hired Datto Inc. to provide a private cloud backup of her emails
FBI asked the Connecticut company to turn over data. It agreed.
State Department also asking again whether she turned over all of her business emails
BY GREG GORDON AND ANITA KUMAR
Hillary Clinton hired a Connecticut company to back up her emails on a “cloud” storage system, and her lawyers have agreed to turn whatever it contains over to the FBI, a person familiar with the situation said Tuesday.
The disclosure came as a Republican Senate committee chairman, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, also asked the firm to turn over to the committee copies of any Clinton emails still in its possession.
There were conflicting accounts as to whether the development could lead to recovery of any of Clinton’s more than 31,000 personal emails, which she said she deleted from her private server upon turning over her work-related emails to the State Department, at its request, in December 2014.
Congressional Republicans have voiced skepticism as to whether the 30,940 business emails that the Democratic presidential candidate handed over represented all of those related to her position as secretary of state. The FBI is separately investigating whether Clinton’s arrangement put classified information at risk but has yet to characterize it as a criminal inquiry.
Datto Inc., based in Norwalk, Conn., became the second data storage firm to become entangled in the inquiry into Clinton’s unusual email arrangement, which has sparked a furor that has dogged her campaign. In August, Clinton and the firm that had managed her server since June 2013, Colorado-based Platte River Networks, agreed to surrender it for examination by the FBI.
On Friday, Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, and Platte River agreed to allow Datto to turn over the data from the backup server to the FBI, said the person familiar with Datto’s storage, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Datto said in a statement that “with the consent of our client and their end user, and consistent with our policies regarding data privacy, Datto is working with the FBI to provide data in conjunction with its investigation.”
The source said, however, that Platte River had set up a 60-day retention policy for the backup server, meaning that any emails to which incremental changes were made at least 60 days prior would be deleted and “gone forever.” While the server wouldn’t have been “wiped clean,” the source said, any underlying data likely would have been written over and would be difficult to recover.
Since Clinton has said she deleted all of her personal emails, the configuration might complicate any attempt by FBI forensics experts to resurrect emails from the backup. However, Bloomberg reported recently that the FBI has recovered some of Clinton’s emails, apparently from the server they seized from Platte River.
In laying out facts gathered by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which he chairs, Johnson offered the first public confirmation that Clinton or her representatives had arranged for a backup of her email server after she left office in early 2013.
His letter also cited internal emails recounting requests in late 2014 and early 2015 from Clinton representatives for Colorado-based Platte River Networks, the firm managing Clinton’s primary server, to direct Datto to reduce the amount of her emails it was backing up. These communications led a Platte River employee to air suspicions that “this whole thing really is covering up some shaddy (sic) shit,” according to an excerpt of an email cited by Johnson.
The controversy seems sure to come up on Oct. 22, when Clinton is scheduled to testify to a House committee investigating the fatal 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya. It was the panel’s chairman who first declared last March that she had “wiped” her server clean based on a letter from Clinton’s attorney.
Spokesmen for Clinton’s campaign declined to respond to requests for comment about Johnson’s letter Tuesday.
On May 31, 2013, four months after Clinton left office, the Clinton Executive Service Corp., which oversaw her email server contracts, hired Platte River to maintain her account. Its New Jersey-based server replaced the server in her New York home that had handled her emails throughout her tenure as secretary of state.
Several weeks ago, Platte River employees discovered that her private server was syncing with an offsite Datto server, he said.
When Datto acknowledged that was the case, a Platte River employee replied in an email: “This is a problem.”
Johnson said that “Datto apparently possessed a backup of the server’s contents since June 2013.”
Upon that discovery, Platte River “directed Datto to not delete the saved data and worked with Datto to find a way to move the saved information . . . back to Secretary Clinton’s private server.”
CLINTON WILL TESTIFY ON CAPITOL HILL ABOUT HER EMAIL PRACTICES OCT. 22
The letter also noted that Platte River employees were directed to reduce the amount of email data being stored with each backup. Late this summer, Johnson wrote, a Platte River employee took note of this change and inquired whether the company could search its archives for an email from Clinton Executive Service Corp. directing such a reduction in October or November 2014 and then again around February, advising Platte River to save only emails sent during the most recent 30 days.
Those reductions would have occurred after the State Department requested that Clinton turn over her emails.
IT IS UNCLEAR WHY SECRETARY CLINTON’S REPRESENTATIVES APPARENTLY DIRECTED (PLATTE RIVER) TO REDUCE THE BACKUP TIME PERIOD OF HER EMAILS AROUND THE SAME TIME PERIOD OR IN THE MONTHS FOLLOWING THE STATE DEPARTMENT’S REQUEST.
Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, in letter to Datto
It was here that a Platte River employee voiced suspicions about a cover-up and sought to protect the company. “If we have it in writing that they told us to cut the backups,” the employee wrote, “and that we can go public with our statement saying we have had backups since day one, then we were told to trim to 30 days, it would make us look a WHOLE LOT better,” according to the email cited by Johnson.
In the letter to Austin McChord, Datto’s CEO, Johnson asked the firm to produce copies of all communications it had relating to Clinton’s server, including those with Platte River and the Clinton firm.” He also asked whether Datto and its employees were authorized to store and view classified information and for details of any cyberattacks on the backup server.
In an ongoing review of Clinton’s work emails, the State Department and intelligence agencies have found more than 400 containing classified information, including at least two declared “Top Secret,” the most sensitive national security data. Clinton has said none of the emails were marked classified during her tenure although some communications by their nature are classified at creation.
In other developments, the State Department is asking Clinton to search again for any emails, regardless of format, from the first two months of her tenure, according to a document filed Tuesday by the State Department in response to a lawsuit about her emails.
The request to Clinton attorney David Kendall, dated Oct. 2, comes weeks after the State Department obtained a series of emails that Clinton did not turn over despite her claim that she sent the agency all her work-related correspondence.
TO THE EXTENT HER EMAILS MIGHT BE FOUND ON ANY INTERNET SERVICE AND EMAIL PROVIDERS, WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO CONTACT THEM.
Patrick Kennedy, under secretay of state for management
The chain of emails, dating from Jan. 10, 2009 to Feb. 1, 2009, were exchanged with former Gen. David Petraeus when he headed the military’s U.S. Central Command, responsible for running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and mostly relate to personnel matters.
“These emails are now in our possession and will be subject to Freedom of Information Act requests,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said last week. “Furthermore, we asked the IG to incorporate this matter into the review Secretary Kerry requested in March. We have also informed Congress of this matter.”
Clinton said she was unable to turn over emails she sent or received from late January to March 18, 2009, because she continued to use the AT&T Blackberry account she had when she was a senator. But after the Petraeus emails surfaced and showed she had not turned over emails sent or received on her new account, aides said said she could not turn over emails because they had not been captured on her private server.
Clinton’s campaign and Kendall did not immediately respond to questions about Johnon’s letter or the State Department’s new request.
18 U.S. Code § 1924 – Unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material
(a)
Whoever, being an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States, and, by virtue of his office, employment, position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.
(b)
For purposes of this section, the provision of documents and materials to the Congress shall not constitute an offense under subsection (a).
(c)
In this section, the term “classified information of the United States” means information originated, owned, or possessed by the United States Government concerning the national defense or foreign relations of the United States that has been determined pursuant to law or Executive order to require protection against unauthorized disclosure in the interests of national security.
18 U.S. Code § 793 – Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information
(a)
Whoever, for the purpose of obtaining information respecting the national defense with intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation, goes upon, enters, flies over, or otherwise obtains information concerning any vessel, aircraft, work of defense, navy yard, naval station, submarine base, fueling station, fort, battery, torpedo station, dockyard, canal, railroad, arsenal, camp, factory, mine, telegraph, telephone, wireless, or signal station, building, office, research laboratory or station or other place connected with the national defense owned or constructed, or in progress of construction by the United States or under the control of the United States, or of any of its officers, departments, or agencies, or within the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States, or any place in which any vessel, aircraft, arms, munitions, or other materials or instruments for use in time of war are being made, prepared, repaired, stored, or are the subject of research or development, under any contract or agreement with the United States, or any department or agency thereof, or with any person on behalf of the United States, or otherwise on behalf of the United States, or any prohibited place so designated by the President by proclamation in time of war or in case of national emergency in which anything for the use of the Army, Navy, or Air Force is being prepared or constructed or stored, information as to which prohibited place the President has determined would be prejudicial to the national defense; or
(b)
Whoever, for the purpose aforesaid, and with like intent or reason to believe, copies, takes, makes, or obtains, or attempts to copy, take, make, or obtain, any sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, document, writing, or note of anything connected with the national defense; or
(c)
Whoever, for the purpose aforesaid, receives or obtains or agrees or attempts to receive or obtain from any person, or from any source whatever, any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note, of anything connected with the national defense, knowing or having reason to believe, at the time he receives or obtains, or agrees or attempts to receive or obtain it, that it has been or will be obtained, taken, made, or disposed of by any person contrary to the provisions of this chapter; or
(d)
Whoever, lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it; or
(e)
Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it; or
(f)
Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
(g)
If two or more persons conspire to violate any of the foregoing provisions of this section, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy shall be subject to the punishment provided for the offense which is the object of such conspiracy.
(h)
(1)
Any person convicted of a violation of this section shall forfeit to the United States, irrespective of any provision of State law, any property constituting, or derived from, any proceeds the person obtained, directly or indirectly, from any foreign government, or any faction or party or military or naval force within a foreign country, whether recognized or unrecognized by the United States, as the result of such violation. For the purposes of this subsection, the term “State” includes a State of the United States, the District of Columbia, and any commonwealth, territory, or possession of the United States.
(2)
The court, in imposing sentence on a defendant for a conviction of a violation of this section, shall order that the defendant forfeit to the United States all property described in paragraph (1) of this subsection.
(3)The provisions of subsections (b), (c), and (e) through (p) of section 413 of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 (21 U.S.C. 853(b), (c), and (e)–(p)) shall apply to—
(A)
property subject to forfeiture under this subsection;
(B)
any seizure or disposition of such property; and
(C)
any administrative or judicial proceeding in relation to such property,
if not inconsistent with this subsection.
(4)
Notwithstanding section 524(c) of title 28, there shall be deposited in the Crime Victims Fund in the Treasury all amounts from the forfeiture of property under this subsection remaining after the payment of expenses for forfeiture and sale authorized by law.
In 1970, the name of the facility was changed to “Ossining Correctional Facility” and, in 1985, it received its present name.[3] “Sing Sing” was derived from the name of a Native American Nation, “Sinck Sinck” (or “Sint Sinck”), from whom the land was purchased in 1685.[4]
Sing Sing prison confines about 1,700 prisoners.[5] There are plans to convert the original 1825 cell block into a time specific museum.[6]
Story 1: Should President Obama and Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Apologize For A Failed Foreign Policy Leading To Genocide and Democide in Iraq, Syria, and Libya? — Yes, but They Never Take Responsibility For Their Failures But Blame It On Others — No Wonder Carson and American People Oppose A Muslim President — ‘How Do You Spell Genocide? O-B-A-M-A’ — Videos
United States Constitution
Article VI
All debts contracted and engagements entered into, before the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.
This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
Amendment I (1):Freedom of religion, speech, and the press; rights of assembly and petition
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Sharia law is the law of Islam. The Sharia (also spelled Shariah or Shari’a) law is cast from the actions and words of Muhammad, which are called “Sunnah,” and the Quran, which he authored.
The Sharia law itself cannot be altered, but the interpretation of the Sharia law, called “figh,” by imams is given some leeway.
As a legal system, the Sharia law covers a very wide range of topics. While other legal codes deal primarily with public behavior, Sharia law covers public behavior, private behavior and private beliefs. Of all legal systems in the world today, Islam’s Sharia law is the most intrusive and strict, especially against women.
According to the Sharia law:
• Theft is punishable by amputation of the right hand (above).
• Criticizing or denying any part of the Quran is punishable by death.
• Criticizing or denying Muhammad is a prophet is punishable by death.
• Criticizing or denying Allah, the moon god of Islam is punishable by death.
• A Muslim who becomes a non-Muslim is punishable by death.
• A non-Muslim who leads a Muslim away from Islam is punishable by death.
• A non-Muslim man who marries a Muslim woman is punishable by death.
• A man can marry an infant girl and consummate the marriage when she is 9 years old.
• Girls’ clitoris should be cut (per Muhammad‘s words in Book 41, Kitab Al-Adab, Hadith 5251).
• A woman can have 1 husband, but a man can have up to 4 wives; Muhammad can have more.
• A man can unilaterally divorce his wife but a woman needs her husband’s consent to divorce.
• A man can beat his wife for insubordination.
• Testimonies of four male witnesses are required to prove rape against a woman.
• A woman who has been raped cannot testify in court against her rapist(s).
• A woman’s testimony in court, allowed only in property cases, carries half the weight of a man’s.
• A female heir inherits half of what a male heir inherits.
• A woman cannot drive a car, as it leads to fitnah (upheaval).
• A woman cannot speak alone to a man who is not her husband or relative.
• Meat to be eaten must come from animals that have been sacrificed to Allah – i.e., be Halal.
• Muslims should engage in Taqiyya and lie to non-Muslims to advance Islam.
• The list goes on.
HUMAN GENOCIDE DOCUMENTARY. IRAQ AND SYRIA . ISIS, USA, UN ::: 2ND AUGUST 2014
Christians in Iraq are heeding an ultimatum by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to convert to Islam, get out or be killed.
Reports from the Middle East say that large numbers of Christians have fled the northern city of Mosul — now under control of the ISIL — after a message warning them to get out by Saturday was broadcast by loudspeakers on the city’s mosques.
An ISIL document reviewed by AFP said that there would be “nothing for them but the sword” if Christians didn’t adhere to the deadline.
The ISIL announcement also said that Christians could stay and pay a tax, often known as a “jizya,” though the exact amount was unspecified. A jizya is a historical policy of allowing non-Muslims to keep their own religion and their property if they pay a certain amount to Islamic rulers.
In centuries past, there have been examples of Christians paying the tax and living peacefully with Muslims. Recently however, it has often been exploited as a form of extortion against non-Muslims.
Many Christian families fleeing Mosul didn’t seem to put much trust in the promise of peace.
The aim of this documentary is to raise awareness.
WE ARE URGING ALL: PEOPLE TO SPEAK UP AND DO SOMETHING!!!
Fox’s Oliver North: ‘How Do You Spell Genocide? O-B-A-M-A’
Priests from Iraq and Syria: what’s happening in the Middle East is genocide
What Is Sharia Law?
How Is Sharia Law Dangerous for Western Society?
484. Is Islam A Religion Of Peace?
485. Was Muhammad A Prophet Of Peace?
493. What Is Sharia Law?
Enforcing Sharia in Raqqa: The Islamic State (Part 3)
Shocking documentary about Islam – The world’s most dangerous cult! ISIS ISLAMIC STATE
ISIS – “Islamic” Extremism? | Full Documentary – HD
Is Sharia Law Coming to America?
Sharia Law In America‽
David woods story of sharia law in America!
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Shariamerica: Islam, Obama, and the Establishment Clause
US caught working to impose Islamic Sharia Law
Irving, Texas says “take a hike” to foreign (i.e. Sharia) laws
Ann Coulter on Muslims
Ben Carson Does Not Believe a Muslim Should Be President Meet The Press
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said today he would not support a Muslim as president on meet the press The retired neurosurgeon also said Islam, as a religion, was inconsistent with the Constitution. Carson told NBC’s “Meet the Press” he believed a president’s faith should matter “depending on what that faith is.” “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that,” Carson said. “If it’s [a president’s faith] inconsistent with the values and principles of America, then of course it should matter.” Carson, who has been near the top of several presidential polls, said he would consider voting for a Muslim in Congress “[depending] on who that Muslim is and what their policies are.” ABC News has reached out to Carson’s campaign for comment.
Ben Carson Does ‘Not Advocate’ A Muslim As President Sun, Sep 20 Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson tells Chuck Todd that the faith of a presidential candidate should matter to voters “if it is inconsistent with the values … of America.”
GOP candidate Carson: Muslim shouldn’t be elected president
Cruz says no religious test for the presidency
The Alex Jones Show (VIDEO Commercial Free) Sunday September 20 2015: Sharia vs. Constitution
Muslim-American group calls on Ben Carson to drop out
Important: 260 Million Unarmed Civilians Killed – Democide = Death By Government
Sharia Law and the U.S. Constitution
PublishedFriday, June 25, A.D. 2010 | ByTito Edwards
[Update I: I have streamlined the following post to be easily readable to the average layman, but informative enough for a lawyer or law professor to learn a bit more on the similarities and differences between Sharia and U.S. Law]
Is Sharia compatible with the U.S. Constitution?
The simple answer is of course “no”.
But lets take a look at some aspects of Sharia Law and where it may or may not conflict with the U.S. Constitution. (For disclosure I am not a lawyer nor a legal expert in Sharia or U.S. Law.)
First, what is Sharia?
Wikipedia states Sharia refers to the sacred law of Islam. All Muslims believe Sharia is God’s law, but they have differences between themselves as to exactly what it entails. Which will be difficult to discern what to apply when, but we’ll labor along for the sake of discussion.
In Western countries, where Muslim immigration is more recent, Muslim minorities have introduced Sharia family law, for use in their own disputes. Attempts to impose Sharia have been accompanied by controversy, violence, and even warfare (Second Sudanese Civil War).
The following is a truncated version with a couple of modifications (eliminating repetitious ibids and links) of multiple Wikipedia entries [with my comments]:
Legal and Court Proceedings:
Wikipedia states that Sharia judicial proceedings have significant differences with other legal traditions, including those in both common law and civil law.
1. Sharia courts do not generally employ lawyers; plaintiffs and defendants represent themselves.
2. Trials are conducted solely by the judge, and there is no jury system.
3. There is no pre-trial discovery process, no cross-examination of witnesses, and no penalty of perjury (on the assumption that no witness would thus endanger his soul) Unlike common law, judges’ verdicts do not set binding precedents under the principle of stare decisis and unlike civil law, Sharia does not utilize formally codified statutes (these were first introduced only in the late 19th century during the decline of the Ottoman Empire, cf. mecelle).
4. Instead of precedents and codes, Sharia relies on medieval jurist’s manuals and collections of non-binding legal opinions, or fatwas, issued by religious scholars (ulama, particularly a mufti); these can be made binding for a particular case at the discretion of a judge.
5. Sharia courts’ rules of evidence also maintain a distinctive custom of prioritizing oral testimony and excluding written and documentary evidence (including forensic and circumstantial evidence), on the basis that it could be tampered with or forged.
6. A confession, an oath, or the oral testimony of a witness are the only evidence admissible in a Sharia court, written evidence is only admissible with the attestations of multiple, witnesses deemed reliable by the judge, i.e. notaries.
7. Testimony must be from at least two witnesses, and preferably free Muslim male witnesses, who are not related parties and who are of sound mind and reliable character; testimony to establish the crime of adultery, or zina must be from four direct witnesses.
8.Forensic evidence (i.e. fingerprints, ballistics, blood samples, DNA etc.) and othercircumstantial evidence is likewise rejected in hudud cases in favor of eyewitnesses, a practice which can cause severe difficulties for women plaintiffs in rape cases.
9. Testimony from women is given only half the weight of men [in most sources outside of Wikipedia Sharia states that a woman’s testimony only carries the weight of 1/4th of a man’s], and testimony from non-Muslims may be excluded altogether (if against a Muslim).
10. In lieu of written evidence, oaths are accorded much greater weight; rather than being used simply to guarantee the truth of ensuing testimony, they are themselves used as evidence.
11. Plaintiffs lacking other evidence to support their claims may demand that defendants take an oath swearing their innocence, refusal thereof can result in a verdict for the plaintiff.
12. Sharia courts, with their tradition of pro se representation, simple rules of evidence, and absence of appeals courts, prosecutors, cross examination, complex documentary evidence and discovery proceedings, juries and voir dire proceedings, circumstantial evidence, forensics, case law, standardized codes, exclusionary rules, and most of the other infrastructure of civil and common law court systems, have as a result, comparatively informal and streamlined proceedings. [that’s one way of putting it]
13. This can provide significant increases in speed and efficiency (at the cost of the safeguards provided in secular legal systems), and can be an advantage in jurisdictions where the general court system is slow or corrupt, and where few litigants can afford lawyers. (end Wikipedia)
This is not a concise review of the difference nor similarities between U.S. Law and Sharia. It is only meant to educate us on what Sharia law is in comparison to our legal system.
Sharia or sharia law (Arabic: شريعة (IPA: [ʃaˈriːʕa]), is the Islamic legal system[1] derived from the religious precepts of Islam, particularly the Quran and the Hadith. The term sharia comes from the Arabic language term sharīʿah, which means a body of moral and religious law derived from religious prophecy, as opposed to human legislation.[2][3][4]
Sharia deals with many topics, including crime, politics, and economics, as well as personal matters such as sexual intercourse, hygiene, diet, prayer, everyday etiquette and fasting. Adherence to sharia has served as one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Muslim faith historically.[5] In its strictest and most historically coherent definition, sharia is considered in Islam as the infallible law of God.[6]
There are two primary sources of sharia: the Quran, and the Hadiths (opinions and life example of Muhammad).[7] For topics and issues not directly addressed in these primary sources, sharia is derived. The derivation differs between the various sects of Islam (Sunni and Shia), and various jurisprudence schools such as Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, Hanbali andJafari.[8][9] The sharia in these schools is derived hierarchically using one or more of the following guidelines: Ijma(usually the consensus of Muhammad’s companions), Qiyas (analogy derived from the primary sources), Istihsan(ruling that serves the interest of Islam in the discretion of Islamic jurists) and Urf (customs).[8][10]
Sharia is a significant source of legislation in various Muslim countries. Some apply all or a majority of the sharia code, and these include Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Brunei, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Yemen andMauritania. In these countries, sharia prescribed punishments such as beheading, flogging and stoning continue to be practiced judicially or extra-judicially.[11][12] The introduction of sharia is a longstanding goal for Islamist movements globally, including in Western countries, but attempts to impose sharia have been accompanied by controversy,[13]violence,[14] and even warfare.[15] Most countries do not recognize sharia; however, some countries in Asia, Africa and Europe recognize parts of sharia and accept it as the law on divorce, inheritance and other personal affairs of their Islamic population.[16] In Britain, the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal makes use of sharia family law to settle disputes, and this limited adoption of sharia is controversial.[17]
The concept of crime, judicial process, justice and punishment embodied in sharia is different from that of secular law.[18] The differences between sharia and secular laws have led to an ongoing controversy as to whether sharia is compatible with secular forms of government, human rights, freedom of thought, and women’s rights.[19][20][21]
Scholars describe the word sharia (/ʃɑːˈriːɑː/, also shari’a, šarīʿah) as an archaic Arabic word denoting “pathway to be followed” (analogous to the Hebrew termHalakhah [“The Way to Go”]),[22] or “path to the water hole”. The latter definition comes from the fact that the path to water is the whole way of life in an arid desert environment.[23]
The etymology of sharia as a “path” or “way” comes from the Quranic verse[Quran45:18]: “Then we put thee on the (right) Way of religion so follow thou that (Way), and follow not the desires of those who know not.”[22]Malik Ghulam Farid in his Dictionary of the Holy Quran, believes the “Way” in 45:18 (quoted above) derives from shara’a (as prf. 3rd. p.m. sing.), meaning “He ordained”. Other forms also appear: shara’u[Quran45:13] as (prf. 3rd. p.m. plu.), “they decreed (a law)”[Quran42:21]; and shir’atun (n.) meaning “spiritual law”[Quran5:48].[24]
The Arabic word sharīʿa has origins in the concept of ‘religious law’; the word is commonly used by Arabic-speaking peoples of the Middle East and designates a prophetic religion in its totality. Thus, sharīʿat Mūsā means religious law of Moses (Judaism), sharīʿat al-Masīḥ means religious law of Christianity, sharīʿat al-Madjūs means religious law of Zoroastrianism.[3]
The Arabic expression شريعة الله (God’s Law) is a common translation for תורת אלוהים (‘God’s Law’ in Hebrew) and νόμος τοῦ θεοῦ (‘God’s Law’ in Greek in the New Testament [Rom. 7: 22]).[25] In contemporary Islamic literature, sharia refers to divine law of Islam as revealed by prophet Muhammad, as well as in his function as model and exemplar of the law.[3]
Sharia in the Islamic world is also known as Qānūn-e Islāmī (قانون اسلامی).[citation needed]
History
In Islam, the origin of sharia is the Qu’ran, and traditions gathered from the life of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad (born ca. 570 CE in Mecca).[26]
Sharia underwent fundamental development, beginning with the reigns of caliphsAbu Bakr (632–34) and Umar (634–44) for Sunni Muslims, and Imam Ali for Shia Muslims, during which time many questions were brought to the attention of Muhammad’s closest comrades for consultation.[27] During the reign of Muawiya b. Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, ca. 662 CE, Islam undertook an urban transformation, raising questions not originally covered by Islamic law.[27] Since then, changes in Islamic society have played an ongoing role in developing sharia, which branches out into fiqh and Qanun respectively.
The formative period of fiqh stretches back to the time of the early Muslim communities. In this period, jurists were more concerned with pragmatic issues of authority and teaching than with theory.[28] Progress in theory was started by 8th and 9th century Islamic scholars Abu Hanifa, Malik bin Anas, Al-Shafi’i, Ahmad ibn Hanbal and others.[8][29]Al-Shafi‘i is credited with deriving the theory of valid norms for sharia (uṣūl al-fiqh), arguing for a traditionalist, literal interpretation of Quran, Hadiths and methodology for law as revealed therein, to formulate sharia.[30][31]
A number of legal concepts and institutions were developed by Islamic jurists during the classical period of Islam, known as the Islamic Golden Age, dated from the 7th to 13th centuries. These shaped different versions of sharia in different schools of Islamic jurisprudence, called fiqhs.[32][33][34]
The Umayyads initiated the office of appointing qadis, or Islamic judges. The jurisdiction of the qadi extended only to Muslims, while non-Muslim populations retained their own legal institutions.[35] Under the Umayyads Islamic scholars were “sidelined” from administration of justice and attempts to systematically uphold and develope Islamic law would wait for Abbasid rule.[36] The qadis were usually pious specialists in Islam. As these grew in number, they began to theorize and systemize Islamic jurisprudence.[37] The Abbasid made the institution of qadiindependent from the government, but this separation wasn’t always respected.[38]
Both the Umayyad caliph Umar II and the Abbasids had agreed that the caliph could not legislate contrary to the Quran or the sunnah. Imam Shafi’i declared: “atradition from the Prophet must be accepted as soon as it become known…If there has been an action on the part of a caliph, and a tradition from the Prophet to the contrary becomes known later, that action must be discarded in favor of the tradition from the Prophet.” Thus, under the Abbasids the main features of sharia were definitively established and sharia was recognized as the law of behavior for Muslims.[39]
In modern times, the Muslim community have divided points of view: secularists believe that the law of the state should be based on secular principles, not on Islamic legal doctrines; traditionalists believe that the law of the state should be based on the traditional legal schools;[40] reformers believe that new Islamic legal theories can produce modernized Islamic law[41] and lead to acceptable opinions in areas such as women’s rights.[42] This division persists until the present day (Brown 1996, Hallaq 2001, Ramadan 2005, Aslan 2006, Safi 2003, Nenezich 2006).
There has been a growing religious revival in Islam, beginning in the eighteenth century and continuing today. This movement has expressed itself in various forms ranging from wars to efforts towards improving education.[43][44]
Definitions and disagreements
Sharia, in its strictest definition, is a divine law, as expressed in the Quran and Muhammad’s example (often called the sunnah). As such, it is related to but different from fiqh, which is emphasized as the human interpretation of the law.[45][46] Many scholars have pointed out that the sharia is not formally a code,[47] nor a well-defined set of rules.[48] The sharia is characterized as a discussion on the duties of Muslims[47] based on both the opinion of the Muslim community and extensive literature.[49] Hunt Janin and Andre Kahlmeyer thus conclude that the sharia is “long, diverse, and complicated.”[48]
From the 9th century onward, the power to interpret and refine law in traditional Islamic societies was in the hands of the scholars (ulema). This separation of powers served to limit the range of actions available to the ruler, who could not easily decree or reinterpret law independently and expect the continued support of the community.[50] Through succeeding centuries and empires, the balance between the ulema and the rulers shifted and reformed, but the balance of power was never decisively changed.[51] Over the course of many centuries, imperial, political and technological change, including the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution, ushered in an era of European world hegemony that gradually included the domination of many of the lands which had previously been ruled by Islamic empires.[52][53] At the end of the Second World War, the European powers found themselves too weakened to maintain their empires as before.[54] The wide variety of forms of government, systems of law, attitudes toward modernity and interpretations of sharia are a result of the ensuing drives for independence and modernity in the Muslim world.[55][56]
According to Jan Michiel Otto, Professor of Law and Governance in Developing Countries at Leiden University, “Anthropological research shows that people in local communities often do not distinguish clearly whether and to what extent their norms and practices are based on local tradition, tribal custom, or religion. Those who adhere to a confrontational view of sharia tend to ascribe many undesirable practices to sharia and religion overlooking custom and culture, even if high-ranking religious authorities have stated the opposite.” Otto’s analysis appears in a paper commissioned by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.[57]
There are two sources of sharia (understood as the divine law): the Quran and the Sunnah. The Quran is viewed as the unalterable word of God. It is considered in Islam to be an infallible part of sharia. The Quran covers a host of topics including God, personal laws for Muslim men and Muslim women, laws on community life, laws on expected interaction of Muslims with non-Muslims, apostates and ex-Muslims, laws on finance, morals, eschatology, and others.[58][59] The Sunnah is the life and example of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The Sunnah’s importance as a source of sharia, is confirmed by several verses of the Quran (e.g.[Quran33:21]).[60] The Sunnah is primarily contained in the hadith or reports of Muhammad’s sayings, his actions, his tacit approval of actions and his demeanor. While there is only one Quran, there are many compilations of hadith, with the most authentic ones forming during the sahih period (850 to 915 CE). The six acclaimed Sunni collections were compiled by (in order of decreasing importance) Muhammad al-Bukhari, Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, Abu Dawood, Tirmidhi, Al-Nasa’i, Ibn Majah. The collections by al-Bukhari and Muslim, regarded the most authentic, contain about 7,000 and 12,000 hadiths respectively (although the majority of entries are repetitions). The hadiths have been evaluated on authenticity, usually by determining the reliability of the narrators that transmitted them.[61] For Shias, the Sunnah include life and sayings of The Twelve Imams.[62]
Quran versus Hadith
Muslims who reject the Hadith as a source of law, sometimes referred to as Quranists,[63][64] suggest that only laws derived exclusively from the Quran are valid.[65]They state that the hadiths in modern use are not explicitly mentioned in the Quran as a source of Islamic theology and practice, they were not recorded in written form until more than two centuries after the death of the prophet Muhammed.[63] They also state that the authenticity of the hadiths remains a question.[66][67]
The vast majority of Muslims, however, consider hadiths, which describe the words, conduct and example set by Muhammad during his life, as a source of law and religious authority second only to the Qur’an.[68] Similarly, most Islamic scholars believe both Quran and sahih hadiths to be a valid source of sharia, with Quranic verse 33.21, among others,[69][70] as justification for this belief.[64]
Ye have indeed in the Messenger of Allah a beautiful pattern (of conduct) for any one whose hope is in Allah and the Final Day, and who engages much in the Praise of Allah.
It is not fitting for a Believer, man or woman, when a matter has been decided by Allah and His Messenger to have any option about their decision: if any one disobeys Allah and His Messenger, he is indeed on a clearly wrong Path.
For vast majority of Muslims, sharia has historically been, and continues to be derived from both the Quran and the Hadiths.[64][68][70] The Sahih Hadiths of Sunni Muslims contain isnad, or a chain of guarantors reaching back to a companion of Muhammad who directly observed the words, conduct and example he set – thus providing the theological ground to consider the hadith to be a sound basis for sharia.[64][70] For Sunni Muslims, the musannaf in Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim is most trusted and relied upon as source for Sunni Sharia.[71]Shia Muslims, however, do not consider the chain of transmitters of Sunni hadiths as reliable, given these transmitters belonged to Sunni side in Sunni-Shia civil wars that followed after Muhammad’s death.[72] Shia rely on their own chain of reliable guarantors, trusting compilations such as Kitab al-Kafi and Tahdhib al-Ahkam instead, and later hadiths (usually called akhbār by Shi’i).[73][74] The Shia version of hadiths contain the words, conduct and example set by Muhammad and Imams, which they consider as sinless, infallible and an essential source of sharia for Shi’ite Muslims.[72][75]However, in substance, the Shi’ite hadiths resemble the Sunni hadiths, with one difference – the Shia hadiths additionally include words and actions of its Imams (al-hadith al-walawi), the biological descendants of Muhammad, and these too are considered an important source for sharia by Shi’ites.[73][76]
Some scholars such as John Wansbrough have challenged the authenticity of the Quran and whether it was written in the time of Muhammad.[77] In contrast, Estelle Whelan has refuted Wansbrough presenting evidence such as the inscriptions on the Dome of the Rock.[78][79] John Burton states that medieval era Islamic texts claiming Quran was compiled after the death of the Prophet were forged to preserve the status-quo.[80] The final version of the Quran, states Burton, was compiled while the Prophet was still alive.[81] Most scholars accept that the Quran as is used for Sharia, was compiled into the final current form during the caliphate of Uthman.[82][83]
Abrogation and textual inconsistencies
From the founding of Islam, the Muslim community has also debated the authenticity of compiled verses and the consistency within the Quran.[84][85] The inconsistencies in deriving sharia from the Quran, were recognized and formally complicated by verses 2.106 and 16.101 of the Quran, which are known as the “verses of abrogation (Naskh)”,[86]
When We substitute one revelation for another, – and Allah knows best what He reveals (in stages),– they say, “Thou art but a forger”: but most of them understand not.
The principle of abrogation has been historically accepted and applied by Islamic jurists on both the Quran and the Sunnah.[84][86] Sharia is thus determined through a chronological study of the primary sources, where older revelations are considered invalid and overruled by later revelations.[86][87] While an overwhelming majority of historical and modern Islamic scholars have accepted the principle of abrogation for the Quran and the Sunnah, some modern scholars disagree that the principle of abrogation necessarily applies to the Quran.[88]
Fiqh (school of Islamic jurisprudence) represents the process of deducing and applying sharia principles, as well as the collective body of specific laws deduced from sharia using the fiqh methodology.[8] While Quran and Hadith sources are regarded as infallible, the fiqh standards may change in different contexts. Fiqh covers all aspects of law, including religious, civil, political, constitutional and procedural law.[89] Fiqh deploys the following to create Islamic laws:[8]
Injunctions, revealed principles and interpretations of the Quran (Used by all schools and sects of Islam)
Interpretation of the Sunnah (Muhammad’s practices, opinions and traditions) and principles therein, after establishing the degree of reliability of hadith’s chain of reporters (Used by all schools and sects of Islam)
If the above two sources do not provide guidance for an issue, then different fiqhs deploy the following in a hierarchical way:[8]
Ijma, collective reasoning and consensus amongst authoritative Muslims of a particular generation, and its interpretation by Islamic scholars. This fiqh principle for sharia is derived from Quranic verse 4:59.[90] Typically, the recorded consensus of Sahabah (Muhammad’s companions) is considered authoritative and most trusted. If this is unavailable, then the recorded individual reasoning (Ijtihad) of Muhammad companions is sought. In Islam’s history, some Muslim scholars have argued that Ijtihad allows individual reasoning of both the earliest generations of Muslims and later generation Muslims, while others have argued that Ijtihad allows individual reasoning of only the earliest generations of Muslims. (Used by all schools of Islam, Jafari fiqh accepts only Ijtihad of Shia Imams)[8][91]
Qiyas, analogy is deployed if Ijma or historic collective reasoning on the issue is not available. Qiyas represents analogical deduction, the support for using it in fiqh is based on Quranic verse 2:59, and this methodology was started by Abu Hanifa.[92] This principle is considered weak by Hanbali fiqh, and it usually avoids Qiyas for sharia. (Used by all Sunni schools of Islam, but rejected by Shia Jafari)[8][10]
Istihsan, which is the principle of serving the interest of Islam and public as determined by Islamic jurists. This method is deployed if Ijtihad and Qiyas fail to provide guidance. It was started by Hanafi fiqh as a form of Ijtihad (individual reasoning). Maliki fiqh called it Masalih Al-Mursalah, or departure from strict adherence to the Texts for public welfare. The Hanbali fiqh called it Istislah and rejected it, as did Shafi’i fiqh. (Used by Hanafi, Maliki, but rejected by Shafii, Hanbali and Shia Jafari fiqhs)[8][10][30]
Istihab and Urf which mean continuity of pre-Islamic customs and customary law. This is considered as the weakest principle, accepted by just two fiqhs, and even in them recognized only when the custom does not violate or contradict any Quran, Hadiths or other fiqh source. (Used by Hanafi, Maliki, but rejected by Shafii, Hanbali and Shia Jafari fiqhs)[8][10]
Map of the Muslim world with the main schools of Islamic law (madhhab)
A Madhhab is a Muslim school of law that follows a fiqh (school of religious jurisprudence). In the first 150 years of Islam, there were many madhhab. Several of the Sahābah, or contemporary “companions” of Muhammad, are credited with founding their own. In the Sunni sect of Islam, the Islamic jurisprudence schools of Medina (Al-Hijaz, now in Saudi Arabia) created the Maliki madhhab, while those in Kufa (now in Iraq) created the Hanafimadhhab.[93]Abu al-Shafi’i, who started as a student of Maliki school of Islamic law, and later was influenced by Hanafi school of Islamic law, disagreed with some of the discretion these schools gave to jurists, and founded the more conservative Shafi’i madhhab, which spread from jurisprudence schools in Baghdad (Iraq) and Cairo (Egypt).[94]Ahmad ibn Hanbal, a student of al-Shafi’i, went further in his criticism of Maliki and Hanafi fiqhs, criticizing the abuse and corruption of sharia from jurist discretion and consensus of later generation Muslims, and he founded the more strict, traditionalist Hanbali school of Islamic law.[95] Other schools such as the Jaririwere established later, which eventually died out.
Sunni sect of Islam has four major surviving schools of sharia: Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, Hanbali; one minor school is named Ẓāhirī. Shii sect of Islam has three: Ja’fari(major), Zaydi and Ismaili.[96][97][98] There are other minority fiqhs as well, such as the Ibadi school of Khawarij sect, and those of Sufi and Ahmadi sects.[89][99] All Sunni and Shia schools of sharia rely first on the Quran and the sayings/practices of Muhammad in the Sunnah. Their differences lie in the procedure each uses to create Islam-compliant laws when those two sources do not provide guidance on a topic.[100] The Salafi movement creates sharia based on the Quran, Sunnah and the actions and sayings of the first three generations of Muslims.[101]
Hanafi-based sharia spread with the patronage and military expansions led by Turkic Sultans and Ottoman Empire in West Asia, Southeast Europe, Central Asia and South Asia.[102][103] It is currently the largest madhhab of Sunni Muslims.[104]Maliki-based sharia is predominantly found in West Africa, North Africa and parts of Arabia.[104]Shafii-based sharia spread with patronage and military expansions led by maritime Sultans, and is mostly found in coastal regions of East Africa, Arabia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and islands in the Indian ocean.[105] The Hanbali-based sharia prevails in the smallest Sunni madhhab, predominantly found in the Arabian peninsula.[104] The Shia Jafari-based sharia is mostly found in Persian region and parts of West Asia and South Asia.
Categories of law
Along with interpretation, each fiqh classifies its interpretation of sharia into one of the following five categories: fard (obligatory), mustahabb (recommended),mubah (neutral), makruh (discouraged), and haraam (forbidden). A Muslim is expected to adhere to that tenet of sharia accordingly.[106]
Actions in the fard category are those mandatory on all Muslims. They include the five daily prayers, fasting, articles of faith, obligatory giving of zakat (charity, tax) to zakat collectors,[107][108] and the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.[106]
The mustahabb category includes proper behaviour in matters such as marriage, funeral rites and family life. As such, it covers many of the same areas as civil law in the West. Sharia courts attempt to reconcile parties to disputes in this area using the recommended behaviour as their guide. A person whose behaviour is not mustahabb can be ruled against by the judge.[109]
Mubah category of behaviour is neither discouraged nor recommended, neither forbidden nor required; it is permissible.[106]
Makruh behaviour, while it is not sinful of itself, is considered undesirable among Muslims. It may also make a Muslim liable to criminal penalties under certain circumstances.[109]
Haraam behaviour is explicitly forbidden. It is both sinful and criminal. It includes all actions expressly forbidden in the Quran. Certain Muslim dietary and clothing restrictions also fall into this category.[106]
The recommended, neutral and discouraged categories are drawn largely from accounts of the life of Muhammad. To say a behaviour is sunnah is to say it is recommended as an example of the life and sayings of Muhammad. These categories form the basis for proper behaviour in matters such as courtesy and manners, interpersonal relations, generosity, personal habits and hygiene.[106]
Shari’ah law has been grouped in different ways, such as:[110][111] Family relations, Crime and punishment, Inheritance and disposal of property, The economic system, External and other relations.
“Reliance of the Traveller“, an English translation of a fourteenth-century CE reference on the Shafi’i school of fiqh written by Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, organizes sharia law into the following topics: Purification, prayer, funeral prayer, taxes, fasting, pilgrimage, trade, inheritance, marriage, divorce and justice.
In some areas, there are substantial differences in the law between different schools of fiqh, countries, cultures and schools of thought.
A number of scholars have advanced “objectives” (مقاصد maqaṣid al-Shariah also “goals” or “purposes”) they believe the Sharia is intended to achieve. Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali argued that they were the preservation of Islamic religion, and in the temporal world the protection of life, progeny, intellect and wealth of Muslims.[112][113]Yazid et al summarize sharia’s objective to be recognize the limitations of reason, and complement the role of reason with revelation.[114] They state that objective of sharia in Islamic finance is to provide rules and regulations from the Quran and Sunnah.[114]
Jan Otto writes that moderate Muslims and puritan Muslims differ in their interpretation of the objectives of sharia.[115] The moderate Muslims consider sharia to be a flexible code of law, where technicalities of its wording cannot subvert sharia’s objectives to “help Muslims in their quest for submission, humility, gratitude before God, and a quest for Godliness”.[115] In contrast, according to Otto, puritan Muslims believe that sharia is a strict, complete and exact set of rules that one must submit to, by strict compliance, because it is only “through meticulous obedience, Muslims will avoid punishment of God in after-life and will enter heaven” which is the ultimate objective, and it does not matter if some sharia “law is harsh or that its application results in social suffering, this perception is considered delusional”.[115]
Most Muslim-majority countries incorporate sharia at some level in their legal framework, with many calling it the highest law or the source of law of the land in their constitution.[116][117] Most use sharia for personal law (marriage, divorce, domestic violence, child support, family law, inheritance and such matters).[118][119] Elements of sharia are present, to varying extents, in the criminal justice system of many Muslim-majority countries.[12]Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Brunei, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan andMauritania apply the code predominantly or entirely.[12][120]
Most Muslim-majority countries with sharia-prescribed hudud punishments in their legal code, do not prescribe it routinely and use other punishments instead.[116][121] The harshest sharia penalties such as stoning, beheadingand the death penalty are enforced with varying levels of consistency.[122]
Since 1970s, most Muslim-majority countries have faced vociferous demands from their religious groups and political parties for immediate adoption of sharia as the sole, or at least primary legal framework.[123] Some moderates and liberal scholars within these Muslim countries have argued for limited expansion of sharia.[124]
With the growing muslim immigrant communities in Europe, there have been reports in some media of “no-go zones” being established where sharia law reigns supreme.[125][126] However, there is no evidence of the existence of “no-go zones”, and these allegations are sourced from anti-immigrant groups falsely equating low-income neighborhoods predominantly inhabited by immigrants as “no-go zones.”[127][128]
Hisbah (Arabic: حسبة ḥisb(ah), or hisba) is a historic Islamic doctrine which means “accountability”.[134] Hisbah doctrine holds that it is a religious obligation of every Muslim that he or she report to the ruler (Sultan, government authorities) any wrong behavior of a neighbor or relative that violates sharia or insults Islam. The doctrine states that it is the divinely sanctioned duty of the ruler to intervene when such charges are made, and coercively “command right and forbid wrong” in order to keep everything in order according to sharia.[135][136][137] Some Salafist suggest that enforcement of sharia under the Hisbah doctrine is the sacred duty of all Muslims, not just rulers.[135] The doctrine of Hisbah in Islam has traditionally allowed any Muslim to accuse another Muslim, ex-Muslim or non-Muslim for beliefs or behavior that may harm Islamic society. This principle has been used in countries such as Egypt, Pakistan and others to bring blasphemy charges against apostates.[138]For example, in Egypt, sharia was enforced on the Muslim scholar Nasr Abu Zayd, through the doctrine of Hasbah, when he committed apostasy.[139][140] Similarly, in Nigeria, after twelve northern Muslim-majority states such as Kano adopted sharia-based penal code between 1999 and 2000, hisbah became the allowed method of sharia enforcement, where all Muslim citizens could police compliance of moral order based on sharia.[141] In Aceh province of Indonesia, Islamic vigilante activists have invoked Hasbah doctrine to enforce sharia on fellow Muslims as well as demanding non-Muslims to respect sharia.[142]Hisbah has been used in many Muslim majority countries, from Morocco to Egypt and in West Asia to enforce sharia restrictions on blasphemy and criticism of Islam over internet and social media.[143][144][145]
Legal and court proceedings
Sharia judicial proceedings have significant differences from other legal traditions, including those in both common law and civil law. Sharia courts traditionally do not rely on lawyers; plaintiffs and defendants represent themselves. Trials are conducted solely by the judge, and there is no jury system. There is no pre-trial discoveryprocess, and no cross-examination of witnesses. Unlike common law, judges’ verdicts do not set binding precedents[146][147] under the principle of stare decisis,[148]and unlike civil law, sharia is left to the interpretation in each case and has no formally codified universal statutes.[149]
The rules of evidence in sharia courts also maintain a distinctive custom of prioritizing oral testimony.[150] Witnesses, in a sharia court system, must be faithful, that is Muslim.[151] Male Muslim witnesses are deemed more reliable than female Muslim witnesses, and non-Muslim witnesses considered unreliable and receive no priority in a sharia court.[152][153] In civil cases, a Muslim woman witness is considered half the worth and reliability than a Muslim man witness.[154][155] In criminal cases, women witnesses are unacceptable in stricter, traditional interpretations of sharia, such as those found in Hanbali madhhab.[151]
Criminal cases
A confession, an oath, or the oral testimony of Muslim witnesses are the main evidence admissible, in sharia courts, for hudud crimes, that is the religious crimes of adultery, fornication, rape, accusing someone of illicit sex but failing to prove it, apostasy, drinking intoxicants and theft.[156][157][158] Testimony must be from at least two free Muslim male witnesses, or one Muslim male and two Muslim females, who are not related parties and who are of sound mind and reliable character. Testimony to establish the crime of adultery, fornication or rape must be from four Muslim male witnesses, with some fiqhs allowing substitution of up to three male with six female witnesses; however, at least one must be a Muslim male.[159]Forensic evidence (i.e., fingerprints, ballistics, blood samples, DNA etc.) and othercircumstantial evidence is likewise rejected in hudud cases in favor of eyewitnesses, a practice which can cause severe difficulties for women plaintiffs in rape cases.[160][161]
Muslim jurists have debated whether and when coerced confession and coerced witnesses are acceptable. The majority opinion of jurists in the Hanafi madhhab, for example, ruled that torture to get evidence is acceptable and such evidence is valid, but a 17th-century text by Hanafi jurist Muhammad Shaykhzade argued that coerced confession should be invalid; Shaykhzade acknowledged that beating to get confession has been authorized in fatwas by many Islamic jurists.[162]
Civil cases
Quran recommends written contracts in the case of debt-related transactions, and oral contracts for commercial and other civil contracts.[155][163] Marriage is solemnized as a written financial contract, in the presence of two Muslim male witnesses, and it includes a brideprice (Mahr) payable from a Muslim man to a Muslim woman. The brideprice is considered by a sharia court as a form of debt. Written contracts are paramount, in sharia courts, in the matters of dispute that are debt-related, which includes marriage contracts.[164] Written contracts in debt-related cases, when notarized by a judge, is deemed more reliable.[165]
In commercial and civil contracts, such as those relating to exchange of merchandise, agreement to supply or purchase goods or property, and others, oral contracts and the testimony of Muslim witnesses triumph over written contracts. Sharia system has held that written commercial contracts may be forged.[165][166]Timur Kuran states that the treatment of written evidence in religious courts in Islamic regions created an incentive for opaque transactions, and the avoidance of written contracts in economic relations. This led to a continuation of a “largely oral contracting culture” in Muslim nations and communities.[166][167]
In lieu of written evidence, oaths are accorded much greater weight; rather than being used simply to guarantee the truth of ensuing testimony, they are themselves used as evidence. Plaintiffs lacking other evidence to support their claims may demand that defendants take an oath swearing their innocence, refusal thereof can result in a verdict for the plaintiff.[168] Taking an oath for Muslims can be a grave act; one study of courts in Morocco found that lying litigants would often “maintain their testimony ‘right up to the moment of oath-taking and then to stop, refuse the oath, and surrender the case.”[169] Accordingly, defendants are not routinely required to swear before testifying, which would risk casually profaning the Quran should the defendant commit perjury;[169] instead oaths are a solemn procedure performed as a final part of the evidence process.
Sharia courts treat women and men as unequal, with Muslim woman’s life and blood-money compensation sentence (Diyya) as half as that of a Muslim man’s life.[170][171] Sharia also treats Muslims and non-Muslims as unequal in the sentencing process.[172] Human Rights Watch and United States’ Religious Freedom Report note that in sharia courts of Saudi Arabia, “The calculation of accidental death or injury compensation is discriminatory. In the event a court renders a judgment in favor of a plaintiff who is a Jewish or Christian male, the plaintiff is only entitled to receive 50 percent of the compensation a Muslim male would receive; all other non-Muslims [Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Atheists] are only entitled to receive one-sixteenth of the amount a male Muslim would receive”.[173][174][175]
Saudi Arabia follows Hanbali sharia, whose historic jurisprudence texts considered a Christian or Jew life as half the worth of a Muslim. Jurists of other schools of law in Islam have ruled differently. For example, Shafi’i sharia considers a Christian or Jew life as a third the worth of a Muslim, and Maliki‘s sharia considers it worth half.[172] The legal schools of Hanafi, Maliki and Shafi’i Sunni Islam as well as those of twelver Shia Islam have considered the life of polytheists and atheists as one-fifteenth the value of a Muslim during sentencing.[172]
Support
Anti-democracy, pro-Sharia public demonstration in 2014 in Maldives.
A 2013 survey based on interviews of 38,000 Muslims, randomly selected from urban and rural parts in 39 countries using area probability designs, by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that support for making sharia the official law of the land is very high in many Muslim-majority countries: Afghanistan (99%), Iraq (91%), Niger (86%), Malaysia (86%), Pakistan (84%), Morocco (83%), Bangladesh (82%), Egypt (74%), Indonesia (72%), Jordan (71%), Uganda (66%), Ethiopia (65%), Mali (63%), Ghana (58%), and Tunisia (56%).[176] In Muslim regions of Southern-Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the support is less then 50%: Kosovo (20%), Albania (12%), Russia (42%), Kyrgyzstan (35%), Tajikistan (27%), Turkey (12%), Azerbaijan (8%).[176]
In Muslim-majority countries and among Muslims who say sharia should be the law of the land, a percentage between 74% (Egypt) and 19% (Kazakhstan) want sharia law to apply to non-Muslims as well.[177]
A 2008 YouGov poll in the United Kingdom found 40% of Muslim students interviewed wanted sharia in British law.[178]
Since the 1970s, the Islamist movements have become prominent; their goals are the establishment of Islamic states and sharia not just within their own borders; their means are political in nature. The Islamist power base is the millions of poor, particularly urban poor moving into the cities from the countryside. They are not international in nature (one exception being the Muslim Brotherhood). Their rhetoric opposes western culture and western power.[179] Political groups wishing to return to more traditional Islamic values are the source of threat to Turkey’s secular government.[179] These movements can be considered neo-Sharism.[180]
Extremism
Fundamentalists, wishing to return to basic Islamic religious values and law, have in some instances imposed harsh sharia punishments for crimes, curtailed civil rights and violated human rights. Extremists have used the Quran and their own particular version of sharia to justify acts of war and terror against Muslim as well as non-Muslim individuals and governments, using alternate, conflicting interpretations of sharia and their notions of jihad.[181][182]
The sharia basis of arguments of those advocating terrorism, however, remain controversial. Some scholars state that Islamic law prohibits the killing of civilian non-combatants; in contrast, others interpret Islamic law differently, concluding that all means are legitimate to reach their aims, including targeting Muslim non-combatants and the mass killing of non-Muslim civilians, in order to universalize Islam.[181] Islam, in these interpretations, “does not make target differences between militaries and civilians but between Muslims and unbelievers. Therefore it is legitimated (sic) to spill civilians’ blood”.[181] Other scholars of Islam, interpret sharia differently, stating, according to Engeland-Nourai, “attacking innocent people is not courageous; it is stupid and will be punished on the Day of Judgment […]. It’s not courageous to attack innocent children, women and civilians. It is courageous to protect freedom; it is courageous to defend one and not to attack”.[181][183]
Criticism
A protester opposing the Park51project, carries an anti-sharia sign.
Ali Khan states that “constitutional orders founded on the principles of sharia are fully compatible with democracy, provided that religious minorities are protected and the incumbent Islamic leadership remains committed to the right to recall”.[184][185]Other scholars say sharia is not compatible with democracy, particularly where the country’s constitution demands separation of religion and the democratic state.[186][187]
Courts in non-Muslim majority nations have generally ruled against the implementation of sharia, both in jurisprudence and within a community context, based on sharia’s religious background. In Muslim nations, sharia has wide support with some exceptions.[188] For example, in 1998 the Constitutional Court of Turkey banned and dissolved Turkey’s Refah Party on the grounds that “Democracy is the antithesis of Sharia”, the latter of which Refah sought to introduce.[189][190]
On appeal by Refah the European Court of Human Rights determined that “sharia is incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy”.[191][192][193] Refah’s sharia-based notion of a “plurality of legal systems, grounded on religion” was ruled to contravene the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. It was determined that it would “do away with the State’s role as the guarantor of individual rights and freedoms” and “infringe the principle of non-discrimination between individuals as regards their enjoyment of public freedoms, which is one of the fundamental principles of democracy”.[194]
Human rights
Several major, predominantly Muslim countries have criticized the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) for its perceived failure to take into account the cultural and religious context of non-Western countries. Iran declared in the UN assembly that UDHR was “a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition”, which could not be implemented by Muslims without trespassing the Islamic law.[195] Islamic scholars and Islamist political parties consider ‘universal human rights’ arguments as imposition of a non-Muslim culture on Muslim people, a disrespect of customary cultural practices and of Islam.[196][197] In 1990, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, a group representing all Muslim majority nations, met in Cairo to respond to the UDHR, then adopted the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam.[198][199]
Ann Elizabeth Mayer points to notable absences from the Cairo Declaration: provisions for democratic principles, protection for religious freedom, freedom of association and freedom of the press, as well as equality in rights and equal protection under the law. Article 24 of the Cairo declaration states that “all the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic shari’a“.[200]
In 2009, the journal Free Inquiry summarized the criticism of the Cairo Declaration in an editorial: “We are deeply concerned with the changes to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by a coalition of Islamic states within the United Nations that wishes to prohibit any criticism of religion and would thus protect Islam’s limited view of human rights. In view of the conditions inside the Islamic Republic of Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Syria, Bangdalesh, Iraq, and Afghanistan, we should expect that at the top of their human rights agenda would be to rectify the legal inequality of women, the suppression of political dissent, the curtailment of free expression, the persecution of ethnic minorities and religious dissenters — in short, protecting their citizens from egregious human rights violations. Instead, they are worrying about protecting Islam.”[201]
H. Patrick Glenn states that sharia is structured around the concept of mutual obligations of a collective, and it considers individual human rights as potentially disruptive and unnecessary to its revealed code of mutual obligations. In giving priority to this religious collective rather than individual liberty, the Islamic law justifies the formal inequality of individuals (women, non-Islamic people).[202] Bassam Tibi states that sharia framework and human rights are incompatible.[203] Abdel al-Hakeem Carney, in contrast, states that sharia is misunderstood from a failure to distinguish sharia from siyasah (politics).[204]
Blasphemy in Islam is any form of cursing, questioning or annoying God, Muhammad or anything considered sacred in Islam.[205][206][207] The sharia of various Islamic schools of jurisprudence specify different punishment for blasphemy against Islam, by Muslims and non-Muslims, ranging from imprisonment, fines, flogging, amputation, hanging, or beheading.[205][208][209] In some cases, sharia allows non-Muslims to escape death by converting and becoming a devout follower of Islam.[210]
Blasphemy, as interpreted under sharia, is controversial. Muslim nations have petitioned the United Nations to limit “freedom of speech” because “unrestricted and disrespectful opinion against Islam creates hatred”.[211] Other nations, in contrast, consider blasphemy laws as violation of “freedom of speech”,[212] stating that freedom of expression is essential to empowering both Muslims and non-Muslims, and point to the abuse of blasphemy laws, where hundreds, often members of religious minorities, are being lynched, killed and incarcerated in Muslim nations, on flimsy accusations of insulting Islam.[213][214]
Freedom of thought, conscience and religion
According to the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights,[215] every human has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change their religion or belief. Sharia has been criticized for not recognizing this human right. According to scholars[19][216][217] of Islamic law, the applicable rules for religious conversion under sharia are as follows:
If a person converts to Islam, or is born and raised as a Muslim, then he or she will have full rights of citizenship in an Islamic state.[218]
Leaving Islam is a sin and a religious crime. Once any man or woman is officially classified as Muslim, because of birth or religious conversion, he or she will be subject to the death penalty if he or she becomes an apostate, that is, abandons his or her faith in Islam in order to become an atheist, agnostic or to convert to another religion. Before executing the death penalty, sharia demands that the individual be offered one chance to return to Islam.[218]
If a person has never been a Muslim, and is not a kafir (infidel, unbeliever), he or she can live in an Islamic state by accepting to be a dhimmi, or under a special permission called aman. As a dhimmi or under aman, he or she will suffer certain limitations of rights as a subject of an Islamic state, and will not enjoy complete legal equality with Muslims.[218]
If a person has never been a Muslim, and is a kafir (infidel, unbeliever), sharia demands that he or she should be offered the choice to convert to Islam and become a Muslim; if he or she rejects the offer, he or she may become a dhimmi. failure to pay the tax may lead the non-muslim to either be enslaved, killed or ransomed if captured.[218]
According to sharia theory, conversion of disbelievers and non-Muslims to Islam is encouraged as a religious duty for all Muslims, and leaving Islam (apostasy), expressing contempt for Islam (blasphemy), and religious conversion of Muslims is prohibited.[219][220] Not all Islamic scholars agree with this interpretation of sharia theory. In practice, as of 2011, 20 Islamic nations had laws declaring apostasy from Islam as illegal and a criminal offense. Such laws are incompatible with the UDHR’s requirement of freedom of thought, conscience and religion.[221][222][223][224] In another 2013 report based on international survey of religious attitudes, more than 50% of Muslim population in 6 out of 49 Islamic countries supported death penalty for any Muslim who leaves Islam (apostasy).[225][226] However it is also shown that the majority of Muslims in the 43 nations surveyed did not agree with this interpretation of sharia.
Some scholars claim sharia allows religious freedom because a Shari’a verse teaches, “there is no compulsion in religion.”[227] Other scholars claim sharia recognizes only one proper religion, considers apostasy as sin punishable with death, and members of other religions as kafir (infidel);[228] or hold that Shari’a demands that all apostates and kafir must be put to death, enslaved or be ransomed.[229][230][231][232] Yet other scholars suggest that Shari’a has become a product of human interpretation and inevitably leads to disagreements about the “precise contents of the Shari’a.” In the end, then, what is being applied is not sharia, but what a particular group of clerics and government decide is sharia. It is these differing interpretations of Shari’a that explain why many Islamic countries have laws that restrict and criminalize apostasy, proselytism and their citizens’ freedom of conscience and religion.[233][234]
Homosexual intercourse is illegal under sharia law, though the prescribed penalties differ from one school of jurisprudence to another. For example, only a few Muslim-majority countries impose the death penalty for acts perceived as sodomy and homosexual activities: Iran,[235]Saudi Arabia,[236] and Somalia.[237] In other Muslim-majority countries such as Egypt, Iraq, and the Indonesian province of Aceh,[238] same-sex sexual acts are illegal,[239] and LGBT people regularly face violence and discrimination.[240]
Many scholars[20][241] claim Shari’a law encourages domestic violence against women, when a husband suspects nushuz (disobedience, disloyalty, rebellion, ill conduct) in his wife.[242] Other scholars claim wife beating, for nashizah, is not consistent with modern perspectives of the Quran.[243]
One of the verses of the Quran relating to permissibility of domestic violence is Surah 4:34.[244][245] In deference to Surah 4:34, many nations with Shari’a law have refused to consider or prosecute cases of domestic abuse.[246][247][248][249] Shari’a has been criticized for ignoring women’s rights in domestic abuse cases.[250][251][252][253] Musawah, CEDAW, KAFA and other organizations have proposed ways to modify Shari’a-inspired laws to improve women’s rights in Islamic nations, including women’s rights in domestic abuse cases.[254][255][256][257]
Personal status laws and child marriag
Shari’a is the basis for personal status laws in most Islamic majority nations. These personal status laws determine rights of women in matters of marriage, divorce and child custody. A 2011 UNICEF report concludes that Shari’a law provisions are discriminatory against women from a human rights perspective. In legal proceedings under Shari’a law, a woman’s testimony is worth half of a man’s before a court.[154]
Except for Iran, Lebanon and Bahrain which allow child marriages, the civil code in Islamic majority countries do not allow child marriage of girls. However, with Shari’a personal status laws, Shari’a courts in all these nations have the power to override the civil code. The religious courts permit girls less than 18 years old to marry. As of 2011, child marriages are common in a few Middle Eastern countries, accounting for 1 in 6 all marriages in Egypt and 1 in 3 marriages in Yemen.UNICEF and other studies state that the top five nations in the world with highest observed child marriage rates — Niger (75%), Chad (72%), Mali (71%), Bangladesh (64%), Guinea (63%) — are Islamic-majority countries where the personal laws for Muslims are sharia-based.[258][259]
Rape is considered a crime in all countries, but Shari’a courts in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia in some cases allow a rapist to escape punishment by marrying his victim, while in other cases the victim who complains is often prosecuted with the crime of Zina (adultery).[154][260][261]
Women’s right to property and consent
Sharia grants women the right to inherit property from other family members, and these rights are detailed in the Quran.[262] A woman’s inheritance is unequal and less than a man’s, and dependent on many factors.[Quran4:12][263] For instance, a daughter’s inheritance is usually half that of her brother’s.[Quran4:11][263]
Until the 20th century, Islamic law granted Muslim women certain legal rights, such as the right to own property received as Mahr (brideprice) at her marriage, that Western legal systems did not grant to women.[264][265] However, Islamic law does not grant non-Muslim women the same legal rights as the few it did grant Muslim women. Sharia recognizes the basic inequality between master and women slave, between free women and slave women, between Believers and non-Believers, as well as their unequal rights.[266][267] Sharia authorized the institution of slavery, using the words abd (slave) and the phrase ma malakat aymanukum (“that which your right hand owns”) to refer to women slaves, seized as captives of war.[266][268] Under Islamic law, Muslim men could have sexual relations with female captives and slaves without her consent.[269][270]
Slave women under sharia did not have a right to own property, right to free movement or right to consent.[271][272] Sharia, in Islam’s history, provided religious foundation for enslaving non-Muslim women (and men), as well as encouraged slave’s manumission. However, manumission required that the non-Muslim slave first convert to Islam.[273][274] Non-Muslim slave women who bore children to their Muslim masters became legally free upon her master’s death, and her children were presumed to be Muslims as their father, in Africa,[273] and elsewhere.[275]
Starting with the 20th century, Western legal systems evolved to expand women’s rights, but women’s rights under Islamic law have remained tied to Quran, hadiths and their faithful interpretation as sharia by Islamic jurists.[270][276]
Parallels with Western legal systems
Elements of Islamic law have influenced western legal systems. As example, the influence of Islamic influence on the development of an international law of the sea” can be discerned alongside that of the Roman influence.[277]
Makdisi states Islamic law also influenced the legal scholastic system of the West.[278] The study of legal text and degrees have parallels between Islamic studies of sharia and the Western system of legal studies. For example, the status of faqih (meaning “master of law“), mufti (meaning “professor of legal opinions“) andmudarris (meaning “teacher”), which were later translated into Latin as magister, professor and doctor respectively.[278]
There are differences between Islamic and Western legal systems. For example, sharia classically recognizes only natural persons, and never developed the concept of a legal person, or corporation, i.e., a legal entity that limits the liabilities of its managers, shareholders, and employees; exists beyond the lifetimes of its founders; and that can own assets, sign contracts, and appear in court through representatives.[279] Interest prohibitions also imposed secondary costs by discouraging record keeping, and delaying the introduction of modern accounting.[280] Such factors, according to Timur Kuran, have played a significant role in retarding economic development in the Middle East.[281]
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Khan, Muhammad Muhsin (1996). The English Translation of Ṣaḥīḥ Al Bukhārī with the Arabic Text. Alexandria, Va.: Al-Saadawi Publications. ISBN 978-1-881963-59-2. OCLC35673415. The complete translation (in nine volumes) of a popular Sunni collection of hadith.
Mahmassani, Sobhi (1961). The Philosophy of Jurisprudence in Islam, translated by Farhat J. Ziadeh. Leiden: Brill.
Mahmassani, Sobhi (1966). The Principles of International Law in the Light of Islamic Doctrine, publications of The Hague Academy of International Law, Leiden.
Ben Carson says no Muslim should ever become US president
2016 hopeful: ‘I would not advocate we put a Muslim in charge of this nation’
Retired neurosurgeon says Islam is not consistent with US constitution
The Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson has said no Muslim should be president of the United States of America.
In an interview with NBC for broadcast on Sunday morning, the retired neurosurgeon said: “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that.”
Carson’s discussion with Meet the Press host Chuck Todd centered around controversy that arose this week when Donald Trump – the real-estate mogul keeping Carson in second place in the polls – failed to correct an audience member at a New Hampshire campaign rally who said President Obama was a Muslim.
The audience member also appeared to advocate the forcible removal of Muslims from the US.
On Saturday, in a series of tweets on the subject, Trump defended himself and said: “Am I morally obligated to defend the president every time somebody says something bad or controversial about him? I don’t think so!”
Trump: I was not obligated to correct questioner who called Obama Muslim
Read more
He also addressed the issue in an appearance before an evangelical audience in Iowa, at which he brandished a Bible and said: “You see, I’m better than you thought.”
In such circles, Trump has lost some support to Carson.
In his NBC interview, Carson was asked: “So do you believe that Islam is consistent with the constitution?”
“No,” he said, “I don’t, I do not.”
Article VI of the US constitution states: “No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
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The first amendment to the constitution begins: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …”
Carson, a Christian, is a member of the Seventh Day Adventist church. In October, he will publish a new book, written with his wife Candy Carson and entitled A More Perfect Union: What We the People Can Do to Reclaim Our Constitutional Liberties.
In publicity material issued by Penguin Random House, Carson is quoted as saying: “I believe that making a difference starts with understanding our amazing founding document, the US constitution.
“And as someone who has performed brain surgery thousands of times, I can assure you that the constitution isn’t brain surgery.
He adds that he and his wife wrote the book to “help defend” the constitution “from those who misinterpret and undermine it”.
Carson did have a constituency to speak to, however. In a recent poll, 38% of voters said they would not vote for a Muslim president.
Quiet rise of Ben Carson is shaking up Republican presidential race
Read more
The Ohio governor, John Kasich, who is polling an average of 2.5%, enough for 10th place out of 16, was also asked by NBC if he “would ever have a problem with a Muslim becoming president”.
Kasich, one of the more moderate candidates in the GOP field, also had to field a question about whether he was a Republican at all. He did not say he would have a problem with a Muslim president, but nor did he dismiss the question.
“You know, I mean, that’s such a hypothetical question,” Kasich said. “The answer is, at the end of the day, you’ve got to go through the rigours, and people will look at everything.
“But, for me, the most important thing about being president is you have leadership skills, you know what you’re doing, and you can help fix this country and raise this country. Those are the qualifications that matter to me.”
Carson was also asked if he would consider voting for a Muslim candidate for Congress.
He said: “Congress is a different story, but it depends on who that Muslim is and what their policies are, just as it depends on what anybody else says, you know.”
Two members of Congress, both Democrats, are Muslim: Keith Ellison of Minnesota was elected to the House of Representatives in 2007 and André Carson of Indiana followed in 2008.
Every American should be disturbed … national figures are engaging in and tolerating blatant acts of religious bigotry
Representative Keith Ellison
This week, Ellison carried a clock around Congress to show support for Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old boy who was arrested at his school in Irving, Texas, over suspicions a homemade clock was in fact a bomb.
On Sunday Ellison, the first Muslim ever elected to Congress, released a statement in answer to Carson’s comments.
“For Ben Carson, Donald Trump, or any other Republican politician to suggest that someone of any faith is unfit for office is out of touch with who we are as a people,” he said.
“It’s unimaginable that the leading GOP presidential candidates are resorting to fear mongering to benefit their campaigns, and every American should be disturbed that these national figures are engaging in and tolerating blatant acts of religious bigotry.”
Ahmed Mohamed is tired, excited to meet Obama – and wants his clock back
Read more
According to the Pew Research Center, the 114th Congress contains 491 Christians, of which 306 are Protestant, split between 13 sects though without any declared Anabaptists, Quakers or Pietists.
Another 164 members of Congress are Catholic, while 16 are Mormon and five Orthodox Christian. As well as the two Muslims there are 28 Jewish and two Buddhist members of Congress; there is one Hindu member, one Unitarian Universalist and one “unaffiliated”.
Nine members of Congress either told the Pew researchers they didn’t know what religion they were, or refused to answer the question.
On Meet the Press, Carson continued: “And, you know, if there’s somebody who’s of any faith, but they say things, and their life has been consistent with things that will elevate this nation and make it possible for everybody to succeed, and bring peace and harmony, then I’m with them.”
Asked if he believed President Obama was both born in the US – another issue raised at the Trump rally on Thursday and not rebutted by the candidate – and a Christian, Carson said: “I believe that he is. I have no reason to doubt what he says.”
Carson says he does not agree with a Muslim being elected president
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson suggested Sunday that a Muslim should not be president, extending the new and unexpected religion debate on the 2016 campaign trail.
“I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation,” Carson, a Christian and retired neurosurgeon, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I absolutely would not agree with that.”
Carson, a top-tier 2016 candidate and popular among the GOP’s evangelical wing, made the statement after fellow Republican candidate Donald Trump was addressed by a man during a rally Thursday in New Hampshire who said President Obama is a Muslim.
“We have a problem in this country,” the unidentified man said. “It’s called Muslim. … You know our current president is one.”
Obama says he is a Christian. But Trump has declined to address the issue, saying he is not “morally obligated” to set straight the record.
Carson also described the Islamic faith as inconsistent with the Constitution. However, he did not specify in what way Islam ran counter to constitutional principles.
Carson said he believes Obama is a Christian and has “no reason to doubt what he says.”
He also said he would consider voting for a Muslim running for Congress, depending on “who that Muslim is and what their policies are.”
Carson also made a distinction when it came to electing Muslims to Congress, calling it a “different story” from the presidency that “depends on who that Muslim is and what their policies are, just as it depends on what anybody else says.”
Congress has two Muslim members, Democratic Reps. Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Andre Carson of Indiana.
“If there’s somebody who’s of any faith, but they say things, and their life has been consistent with things that will elevate this nation and make it possible for everybody to succeed, and bring peace and harmony, then I’m with them,” Carson said.
Trump on Sunday told ABC’s “This Week” that he doesn’t talk about other people’s faith and that Obama is “very capable of defending himself.”
He also said the politically correct statement is that Muslims are not a problem in the United States but the reality is that “some” associated with terrorism pose a worldwide threat.
“We can say … everything’s wonderful,” Trump said. “But certainly it is a problem. … if I want to say no, not at all, people would laugh at me.”
Fellow GOP contender and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio told ABC about the Muslim debate: “This has nothing to do with the future of our country. These issues have been discussed ad nauseam over the last few years. It’s a big waste of time. Barack Obama will not be president in a year and a half. It’s time to start talking about the future of America and the people that are at home.”
Carson’s comments drew strong criticism from the country’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“To me this really means he is not qualified to be president of the United States,” said the group’s spokesman, Ibrahim Hooper. “You cannot hold these kinds of views and at the same time say you will represent all Americans, of all faiths and backgrounds.”
Hooper said the Constitution expressly forbids religious tests for those seeking public office and called for the repudiation of “these un-American comments.”
In a separate appearance on NBC, fellow 2016 GOP candidate Ohio Gov. John Kasich, was asked whether he would have a problem with a Muslim in the White House.
“The answer is, at the end of the day, you’ve got to go through the rigors, and people will look at everything. But, for me, the most important thing about being president is you have leadership skills, you know what you’re doing and you can help fix this country and raise this country. Those are the qualifications that matter to me.”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who taped Sunday an episode of Iowa Press, an Iowa Public Television program, was asked if he agreed with Carson’s statements on Muslims being president. “The Constitution specifies that there shall be no religious test for public office, and I am a constitutionalist,” Cruz said.
Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said, “It’s hard to understand what’s so difficult about supporting an American citizen’s right to run for president.
“But unsurprisingly, this left Republicans scratching their heads. Of course a Muslim, or any other American citizen, can run for president, end of story.”
Story 1: Should President Obama and Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Apologize For A Failed Foreign Policy Leading To Genocide and Democide in Iraq, Syria, and Libya? — Yes, but They Never Take Responsibility For Their Failures But Blame It On Others — No Wonder Carson and American People Oppose A Muslim President — ‘How Do You Spell Genocide? O-B-A-M-A’ — Videos
United States Constitution
Article VI
All debts contracted and engagements entered into, before the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.
This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
Amendment I (1):Freedom of religion, speech, and the press; rights of assembly and petition
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Sharia law is the law of Islam. The Sharia (also spelled Shariah or Shari’a) law is cast from the actions and words of Muhammad, which are called “Sunnah,” and the Quran, which he authored.
The Sharia law itself cannot be altered, but the interpretation of the Sharia law, called “figh,” by imams is given some leeway.
As a legal system, the Sharia law covers a very wide range of topics. While other legal codes deal primarily with public behavior, Sharia law covers public behavior, private behavior and private beliefs. Of all legal systems in the world today, Islam’s Sharia law is the most intrusive and strict, especially against women.
According to the Sharia law:
• Theft is punishable by amputation of the right hand (above).
• Criticizing or denying any part of the Quran is punishable by death.
• Criticizing or denying Muhammad is a prophet is punishable by death.
• Criticizing or denying Allah, the moon god of Islam is punishable by death.
• A Muslim who becomes a non-Muslim is punishable by death.
• A non-Muslim who leads a Muslim away from Islam is punishable by death.
• A non-Muslim man who marries a Muslim woman is punishable by death.
• A man can marry an infant girl and consummate the marriage when she is 9 years old.
• Girls’ clitoris should be cut (per Muhammad‘s words in Book 41, Kitab Al-Adab, Hadith 5251).
• A woman can have 1 husband, but a man can have up to 4 wives; Muhammad can have more.
• A man can unilaterally divorce his wife but a woman needs her husband’s consent to divorce.
• A man can beat his wife for insubordination.
• Testimonies of four male witnesses are required to prove rape against a woman.
• A woman who has been raped cannot testify in court against her rapist(s).
• A woman’s testimony in court, allowed only in property cases, carries half the weight of a man’s.
• A female heir inherits half of what a male heir inherits.
• A woman cannot drive a car, as it leads to fitnah (upheaval).
• A woman cannot speak alone to a man who is not her husband or relative.
• Meat to be eaten must come from animals that have been sacrificed to Allah – i.e., be Halal.
• Muslims should engage in Taqiyya and lie to non-Muslims to advance Islam.
• The list goes on.
HUMAN GENOCIDE DOCUMENTARY. IRAQ AND SYRIA . ISIS, USA, UN ::: 2ND AUGUST 2014
Christians in Iraq are heeding an ultimatum by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to convert to Islam, get out or be killed.
Reports from the Middle East say that large numbers of Christians have fled the northern city of Mosul — now under control of the ISIL — after a message warning them to get out by Saturday was broadcast by loudspeakers on the city’s mosques.
An ISIL document reviewed by AFP said that there would be “nothing for them but the sword” if Christians didn’t adhere to the deadline.
The ISIL announcement also said that Christians could stay and pay a tax, often known as a “jizya,” though the exact amount was unspecified. A jizya is a historical policy of allowing non-Muslims to keep their own religion and their property if they pay a certain amount to Islamic rulers.
In centuries past, there have been examples of Christians paying the tax and living peacefully with Muslims. Recently however, it has often been exploited as a form of extortion against non-Muslims.
Many Christian families fleeing Mosul didn’t seem to put much trust in the promise of peace.
The aim of this documentary is to raise awareness.
WE ARE URGING ALL: PEOPLE TO SPEAK UP AND DO SOMETHING!!!
Fox’s Oliver North: ‘How Do You Spell Genocide? O-B-A-M-A’
Priests from Iraq and Syria: what’s happening in the Middle East is genocide
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How Is Sharia Law Dangerous for Western Society?
484. Is Islam A Religion Of Peace?
485. Was Muhammad A Prophet Of Peace?
493. What Is Sharia Law?
Enforcing Sharia in Raqqa: The Islamic State (Part 3)
Shocking documentary about Islam – The world’s most dangerous cult! ISIS ISLAMIC STATE
ISIS – “Islamic” Extremism? | Full Documentary – HD
Is Sharia Law Coming to America?
Sharia Law In America‽
David woods story of sharia law in America!
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Shariamerica: Islam, Obama, and the Establishment Clause
US caught working to impose Islamic Sharia Law
Irving, Texas says “take a hike” to foreign (i.e. Sharia) laws
Ann Coulter on Muslims
Ben Carson Does Not Believe a Muslim Should Be President Meet The Press
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said today he would not support a Muslim as president on meet the press The retired neurosurgeon also said Islam, as a religion, was inconsistent with the Constitution. Carson told NBC’s “Meet the Press” he believed a president’s faith should matter “depending on what that faith is.” “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that,” Carson said. “If it’s [a president’s faith] inconsistent with the values and principles of America, then of course it should matter.” Carson, who has been near the top of several presidential polls, said he would consider voting for a Muslim in Congress “[depending] on who that Muslim is and what their policies are.” ABC News has reached out to Carson’s campaign for comment.
Ben Carson Does ‘Not Advocate’ A Muslim As President Sun, Sep 20 Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson tells Chuck Todd that the faith of a presidential candidate should matter to voters “if it is inconsistent with the values … of America.”
GOP candidate Carson: Muslim shouldn’t be elected president
Cruz says no religious test for the presidency
The Alex Jones Show (VIDEO Commercial Free) Sunday September 20 2015: Sharia vs. Constitution
Muslim-American group calls on Ben Carson to drop out
Important: 260 Million Unarmed Civilians Killed – Democide = Death By Government
Sharia Law and the U.S. Constitution
PublishedFriday, June 25, A.D. 2010 | ByTito Edwards
[Update I: I have streamlined the following post to be easily readable to the average layman, but informative enough for a lawyer or law professor to learn a bit more on the similarities and differences between Sharia and U.S. Law]
Is Sharia compatible with the U.S. Constitution?
The simple answer is of course “no”.
But lets take a look at some aspects of Sharia Law and where it may or may not conflict with the U.S. Constitution. (For disclosure I am not a lawyer nor a legal expert in Sharia or U.S. Law.)
First, what is Sharia?
Wikipedia states Sharia refers to the sacred law of Islam. All Muslims believe Sharia is God’s law, but they have differences between themselves as to exactly what it entails. Which will be difficult to discern what to apply when, but we’ll labor along for the sake of discussion.
In Western countries, where Muslim immigration is more recent, Muslim minorities have introduced Sharia family law, for use in their own disputes. Attempts to impose Sharia have been accompanied by controversy, violence, and even warfare (Second Sudanese Civil War).
The following is a truncated version with a couple of modifications (eliminating repetitious ibids and links) of multiple Wikipedia entries [with my comments]:
Legal and Court Proceedings:
Wikipedia states that Sharia judicial proceedings have significant differences with other legal traditions, including those in both common law and civil law.
1. Sharia courts do not generally employ lawyers; plaintiffs and defendants represent themselves.
2. Trials are conducted solely by the judge, and there is no jury system.
3. There is no pre-trial discovery process, no cross-examination of witnesses, and no penalty of perjury (on the assumption that no witness would thus endanger his soul) Unlike common law, judges’ verdicts do not set binding precedents under the principle of stare decisis and unlike civil law, Sharia does not utilize formally codified statutes (these were first introduced only in the late 19th century during the decline of the Ottoman Empire, cf. mecelle).
4. Instead of precedents and codes, Sharia relies on medieval jurist’s manuals and collections of non-binding legal opinions, or fatwas, issued by religious scholars (ulama, particularly a mufti); these can be made binding for a particular case at the discretion of a judge.
5. Sharia courts’ rules of evidence also maintain a distinctive custom of prioritizing oral testimony and excluding written and documentary evidence (including forensic and circumstantial evidence), on the basis that it could be tampered with or forged.
6. A confession, an oath, or the oral testimony of a witness are the only evidence admissible in a Sharia court, written evidence is only admissible with the attestations of multiple, witnesses deemed reliable by the judge, i.e. notaries.
7. Testimony must be from at least two witnesses, and preferably free Muslim male witnesses, who are not related parties and who are of sound mind and reliable character; testimony to establish the crime of adultery, or zina must be from four direct witnesses.
8.Forensic evidence (i.e. fingerprints, ballistics, blood samples, DNA etc.) and othercircumstantial evidence is likewise rejected in hudud cases in favor of eyewitnesses, a practice which can cause severe difficulties for women plaintiffs in rape cases.
9. Testimony from women is given only half the weight of men [in most sources outside of Wikipedia Sharia states that a woman’s testimony only carries the weight of 1/4th of a man’s], and testimony from non-Muslims may be excluded altogether (if against a Muslim).
10. In lieu of written evidence, oaths are accorded much greater weight; rather than being used simply to guarantee the truth of ensuing testimony, they are themselves used as evidence.
11. Plaintiffs lacking other evidence to support their claims may demand that defendants take an oath swearing their innocence, refusal thereof can result in a verdict for the plaintiff.
12. Sharia courts, with their tradition of pro se representation, simple rules of evidence, and absence of appeals courts, prosecutors, cross examination, complex documentary evidence and discovery proceedings, juries and voir dire proceedings, circumstantial evidence, forensics, case law, standardized codes, exclusionary rules, and most of the other infrastructure of civil and common law court systems, have as a result, comparatively informal and streamlined proceedings. [that’s one way of putting it]
13. This can provide significant increases in speed and efficiency (at the cost of the safeguards provided in secular legal systems), and can be an advantage in jurisdictions where the general court system is slow or corrupt, and where few litigants can afford lawyers. (end Wikipedia)
This is not a concise review of the difference nor similarities between U.S. Law and Sharia. It is only meant to educate us on what Sharia law is in comparison to our legal system.
Sharia or sharia law (Arabic: شريعة (IPA: [ʃaˈriːʕa]), is the Islamic legal system[1] derived from the religious precepts of Islam, particularly the Quran and the Hadith. The term sharia comes from the Arabic language term sharīʿah, which means a body of moral and religious law derived from religious prophecy, as opposed to human legislation.[2][3][4]
Sharia deals with many topics, including crime, politics, and economics, as well as personal matters such as sexual intercourse, hygiene, diet, prayer, everyday etiquette and fasting. Adherence to sharia has served as one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Muslim faith historically.[5] In its strictest and most historically coherent definition, sharia is considered in Islam as the infallible law of God.[6]
There are two primary sources of sharia: the Quran, and the Hadiths (opinions and life example of Muhammad).[7] For topics and issues not directly addressed in these primary sources, sharia is derived. The derivation differs between the various sects of Islam (Sunni and Shia), and various jurisprudence schools such as Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, Hanbali andJafari.[8][9] The sharia in these schools is derived hierarchically using one or more of the following guidelines: Ijma(usually the consensus of Muhammad’s companions), Qiyas (analogy derived from the primary sources), Istihsan(ruling that serves the interest of Islam in the discretion of Islamic jurists) and Urf (customs).[8][10]
Sharia is a significant source of legislation in various Muslim countries. Some apply all or a majority of the sharia code, and these include Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Brunei, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Yemen andMauritania. In these countries, sharia prescribed punishments such as beheading, flogging and stoning continue to be practiced judicially or extra-judicially.[11][12] The introduction of sharia is a longstanding goal for Islamist movements globally, including in Western countries, but attempts to impose sharia have been accompanied by controversy,[13]violence,[14] and even warfare.[15] Most countries do not recognize sharia; however, some countries in Asia, Africa and Europe recognize parts of sharia and accept it as the law on divorce, inheritance and other personal affairs of their Islamic population.[16] In Britain, the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal makes use of sharia family law to settle disputes, and this limited adoption of sharia is controversial.[17]
The concept of crime, judicial process, justice and punishment embodied in sharia is different from that of secular law.[18] The differences between sharia and secular laws have led to an ongoing controversy as to whether sharia is compatible with secular forms of government, human rights, freedom of thought, and women’s rights.[19][20][21]
Scholars describe the word sharia (/ʃɑːˈriːɑː/, also shari’a, šarīʿah) as an archaic Arabic word denoting “pathway to be followed” (analogous to the Hebrew termHalakhah [“The Way to Go”]),[22] or “path to the water hole”. The latter definition comes from the fact that the path to water is the whole way of life in an arid desert environment.[23]
The etymology of sharia as a “path” or “way” comes from the Quranic verse[Quran45:18]: “Then we put thee on the (right) Way of religion so follow thou that (Way), and follow not the desires of those who know not.”[22]Malik Ghulam Farid in his Dictionary of the Holy Quran, believes the “Way” in 45:18 (quoted above) derives from shara’a (as prf. 3rd. p.m. sing.), meaning “He ordained”. Other forms also appear: shara’u[Quran45:13] as (prf. 3rd. p.m. plu.), “they decreed (a law)”[Quran42:21]; and shir’atun (n.) meaning “spiritual law”[Quran5:48].[24]
The Arabic word sharīʿa has origins in the concept of ‘religious law’; the word is commonly used by Arabic-speaking peoples of the Middle East and designates a prophetic religion in its totality. Thus, sharīʿat Mūsā means religious law of Moses (Judaism), sharīʿat al-Masīḥ means religious law of Christianity, sharīʿat al-Madjūs means religious law of Zoroastrianism.[3]
The Arabic expression شريعة الله (God’s Law) is a common translation for תורת אלוהים (‘God’s Law’ in Hebrew) and νόμος τοῦ θεοῦ (‘God’s Law’ in Greek in the New Testament [Rom. 7: 22]).[25] In contemporary Islamic literature, sharia refers to divine law of Islam as revealed by prophet Muhammad, as well as in his function as model and exemplar of the law.[3]
Sharia in the Islamic world is also known as Qānūn-e Islāmī (قانون اسلامی).[citation needed]
History
In Islam, the origin of sharia is the Qu’ran, and traditions gathered from the life of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad (born ca. 570 CE in Mecca).[26]
Sharia underwent fundamental development, beginning with the reigns of caliphsAbu Bakr (632–34) and Umar (634–44) for Sunni Muslims, and Imam Ali for Shia Muslims, during which time many questions were brought to the attention of Muhammad’s closest comrades for consultation.[27] During the reign of Muawiya b. Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, ca. 662 CE, Islam undertook an urban transformation, raising questions not originally covered by Islamic law.[27] Since then, changes in Islamic society have played an ongoing role in developing sharia, which branches out into fiqh and Qanun respectively.
The formative period of fiqh stretches back to the time of the early Muslim communities. In this period, jurists were more concerned with pragmatic issues of authority and teaching than with theory.[28] Progress in theory was started by 8th and 9th century Islamic scholars Abu Hanifa, Malik bin Anas, Al-Shafi’i, Ahmad ibn Hanbal and others.[8][29]Al-Shafi‘i is credited with deriving the theory of valid norms for sharia (uṣūl al-fiqh), arguing for a traditionalist, literal interpretation of Quran, Hadiths and methodology for law as revealed therein, to formulate sharia.[30][31]
A number of legal concepts and institutions were developed by Islamic jurists during the classical period of Islam, known as the Islamic Golden Age, dated from the 7th to 13th centuries. These shaped different versions of sharia in different schools of Islamic jurisprudence, called fiqhs.[32][33][34]
The Umayyads initiated the office of appointing qadis, or Islamic judges. The jurisdiction of the qadi extended only to Muslims, while non-Muslim populations retained their own legal institutions.[35] Under the Umayyads Islamic scholars were “sidelined” from administration of justice and attempts to systematically uphold and develope Islamic law would wait for Abbasid rule.[36] The qadis were usually pious specialists in Islam. As these grew in number, they began to theorize and systemize Islamic jurisprudence.[37] The Abbasid made the institution of qadiindependent from the government, but this separation wasn’t always respected.[38]
Both the Umayyad caliph Umar II and the Abbasids had agreed that the caliph could not legislate contrary to the Quran or the sunnah. Imam Shafi’i declared: “atradition from the Prophet must be accepted as soon as it become known…If there has been an action on the part of a caliph, and a tradition from the Prophet to the contrary becomes known later, that action must be discarded in favor of the tradition from the Prophet.” Thus, under the Abbasids the main features of sharia were definitively established and sharia was recognized as the law of behavior for Muslims.[39]
In modern times, the Muslim community have divided points of view: secularists believe that the law of the state should be based on secular principles, not on Islamic legal doctrines; traditionalists believe that the law of the state should be based on the traditional legal schools;[40] reformers believe that new Islamic legal theories can produce modernized Islamic law[41] and lead to acceptable opinions in areas such as women’s rights.[42] This division persists until the present day (Brown 1996, Hallaq 2001, Ramadan 2005, Aslan 2006, Safi 2003, Nenezich 2006).
There has been a growing religious revival in Islam, beginning in the eighteenth century and continuing today. This movement has expressed itself in various forms ranging from wars to efforts towards improving education.[43][44]
Definitions and disagreements
Sharia, in its strictest definition, is a divine law, as expressed in the Quran and Muhammad’s example (often called the sunnah). As such, it is related to but different from fiqh, which is emphasized as the human interpretation of the law.[45][46] Many scholars have pointed out that the sharia is not formally a code,[47] nor a well-defined set of rules.[48] The sharia is characterized as a discussion on the duties of Muslims[47] based on both the opinion of the Muslim community and extensive literature.[49] Hunt Janin and Andre Kahlmeyer thus conclude that the sharia is “long, diverse, and complicated.”[48]
From the 9th century onward, the power to interpret and refine law in traditional Islamic societies was in the hands of the scholars (ulema). This separation of powers served to limit the range of actions available to the ruler, who could not easily decree or reinterpret law independently and expect the continued support of the community.[50] Through succeeding centuries and empires, the balance between the ulema and the rulers shifted and reformed, but the balance of power was never decisively changed.[51] Over the course of many centuries, imperial, political and technological change, including the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution, ushered in an era of European world hegemony that gradually included the domination of many of the lands which had previously been ruled by Islamic empires.[52][53] At the end of the Second World War, the European powers found themselves too weakened to maintain their empires as before.[54] The wide variety of forms of government, systems of law, attitudes toward modernity and interpretations of sharia are a result of the ensuing drives for independence and modernity in the Muslim world.[55][56]
According to Jan Michiel Otto, Professor of Law and Governance in Developing Countries at Leiden University, “Anthropological research shows that people in local communities often do not distinguish clearly whether and to what extent their norms and practices are based on local tradition, tribal custom, or religion. Those who adhere to a confrontational view of sharia tend to ascribe many undesirable practices to sharia and religion overlooking custom and culture, even if high-ranking religious authorities have stated the opposite.” Otto’s analysis appears in a paper commissioned by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.[57]
There are two sources of sharia (understood as the divine law): the Quran and the Sunnah. The Quran is viewed as the unalterable word of God. It is considered in Islam to be an infallible part of sharia. The Quran covers a host of topics including God, personal laws for Muslim men and Muslim women, laws on community life, laws on expected interaction of Muslims with non-Muslims, apostates and ex-Muslims, laws on finance, morals, eschatology, and others.[58][59] The Sunnah is the life and example of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The Sunnah’s importance as a source of sharia, is confirmed by several verses of the Quran (e.g.[Quran33:21]).[60] The Sunnah is primarily contained in the hadith or reports of Muhammad’s sayings, his actions, his tacit approval of actions and his demeanor. While there is only one Quran, there are many compilations of hadith, with the most authentic ones forming during the sahih period (850 to 915 CE). The six acclaimed Sunni collections were compiled by (in order of decreasing importance) Muhammad al-Bukhari, Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, Abu Dawood, Tirmidhi, Al-Nasa’i, Ibn Majah. The collections by al-Bukhari and Muslim, regarded the most authentic, contain about 7,000 and 12,000 hadiths respectively (although the majority of entries are repetitions). The hadiths have been evaluated on authenticity, usually by determining the reliability of the narrators that transmitted them.[61] For Shias, the Sunnah include life and sayings of The Twelve Imams.[62]
Quran versus Hadith
Muslims who reject the Hadith as a source of law, sometimes referred to as Quranists,[63][64] suggest that only laws derived exclusively from the Quran are valid.[65]They state that the hadiths in modern use are not explicitly mentioned in the Quran as a source of Islamic theology and practice, they were not recorded in written form until more than two centuries after the death of the prophet Muhammed.[63] They also state that the authenticity of the hadiths remains a question.[66][67]
The vast majority of Muslims, however, consider hadiths, which describe the words, conduct and example set by Muhammad during his life, as a source of law and religious authority second only to the Qur’an.[68] Similarly, most Islamic scholars believe both Quran and sahih hadiths to be a valid source of sharia, with Quranic verse 33.21, among others,[69][70] as justification for this belief.[64]
Ye have indeed in the Messenger of Allah a beautiful pattern (of conduct) for any one whose hope is in Allah and the Final Day, and who engages much in the Praise of Allah.
It is not fitting for a Believer, man or woman, when a matter has been decided by Allah and His Messenger to have any option about their decision: if any one disobeys Allah and His Messenger, he is indeed on a clearly wrong Path.
For vast majority of Muslims, sharia has historically been, and continues to be derived from both the Quran and the Hadiths.[64][68][70] The Sahih Hadiths of Sunni Muslims contain isnad, or a chain of guarantors reaching back to a companion of Muhammad who directly observed the words, conduct and example he set – thus providing the theological ground to consider the hadith to be a sound basis for sharia.[64][70] For Sunni Muslims, the musannaf in Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim is most trusted and relied upon as source for Sunni Sharia.[71]Shia Muslims, however, do not consider the chain of transmitters of Sunni hadiths as reliable, given these transmitters belonged to Sunni side in Sunni-Shia civil wars that followed after Muhammad’s death.[72] Shia rely on their own chain of reliable guarantors, trusting compilations such as Kitab al-Kafi and Tahdhib al-Ahkam instead, and later hadiths (usually called akhbār by Shi’i).[73][74] The Shia version of hadiths contain the words, conduct and example set by Muhammad and Imams, which they consider as sinless, infallible and an essential source of sharia for Shi’ite Muslims.[72][75]However, in substance, the Shi’ite hadiths resemble the Sunni hadiths, with one difference – the Shia hadiths additionally include words and actions of its Imams (al-hadith al-walawi), the biological descendants of Muhammad, and these too are considered an important source for sharia by Shi’ites.[73][76]
Some scholars such as John Wansbrough have challenged the authenticity of the Quran and whether it was written in the time of Muhammad.[77] In contrast, Estelle Whelan has refuted Wansbrough presenting evidence such as the inscriptions on the Dome of the Rock.[78][79] John Burton states that medieval era Islamic texts claiming Quran was compiled after the death of the Prophet were forged to preserve the status-quo.[80] The final version of the Quran, states Burton, was compiled while the Prophet was still alive.[81] Most scholars accept that the Quran as is used for Sharia, was compiled into the final current form during the caliphate of Uthman.[82][83]
Abrogation and textual inconsistencies
From the founding of Islam, the Muslim community has also debated the authenticity of compiled verses and the consistency within the Quran.[84][85] The inconsistencies in deriving sharia from the Quran, were recognized and formally complicated by verses 2.106 and 16.101 of the Quran, which are known as the “verses of abrogation (Naskh)”,[86]
When We substitute one revelation for another, – and Allah knows best what He reveals (in stages),– they say, “Thou art but a forger”: but most of them understand not.
The principle of abrogation has been historically accepted and applied by Islamic jurists on both the Quran and the Sunnah.[84][86] Sharia is thus determined through a chronological study of the primary sources, where older revelations are considered invalid and overruled by later revelations.[86][87] While an overwhelming majority of historical and modern Islamic scholars have accepted the principle of abrogation for the Quran and the Sunnah, some modern scholars disagree that the principle of abrogation necessarily applies to the Quran.[88]
Fiqh (school of Islamic jurisprudence) represents the process of deducing and applying sharia principles, as well as the collective body of specific laws deduced from sharia using the fiqh methodology.[8] While Quran and Hadith sources are regarded as infallible, the fiqh standards may change in different contexts. Fiqh covers all aspects of law, including religious, civil, political, constitutional and procedural law.[89] Fiqh deploys the following to create Islamic laws:[8]
Injunctions, revealed principles and interpretations of the Quran (Used by all schools and sects of Islam)
Interpretation of the Sunnah (Muhammad’s practices, opinions and traditions) and principles therein, after establishing the degree of reliability of hadith’s chain of reporters (Used by all schools and sects of Islam)
If the above two sources do not provide guidance for an issue, then different fiqhs deploy the following in a hierarchical way:[8]
Ijma, collective reasoning and consensus amongst authoritative Muslims of a particular generation, and its interpretation by Islamic scholars. This fiqh principle for sharia is derived from Quranic verse 4:59.[90] Typically, the recorded consensus of Sahabah (Muhammad’s companions) is considered authoritative and most trusted. If this is unavailable, then the recorded individual reasoning (Ijtihad) of Muhammad companions is sought. In Islam’s history, some Muslim scholars have argued that Ijtihad allows individual reasoning of both the earliest generations of Muslims and later generation Muslims, while others have argued that Ijtihad allows individual reasoning of only the earliest generations of Muslims. (Used by all schools of Islam, Jafari fiqh accepts only Ijtihad of Shia Imams)[8][91]
Qiyas, analogy is deployed if Ijma or historic collective reasoning on the issue is not available. Qiyas represents analogical deduction, the support for using it in fiqh is based on Quranic verse 2:59, and this methodology was started by Abu Hanifa.[92] This principle is considered weak by Hanbali fiqh, and it usually avoids Qiyas for sharia. (Used by all Sunni schools of Islam, but rejected by Shia Jafari)[8][10]
Istihsan, which is the principle of serving the interest of Islam and public as determined by Islamic jurists. This method is deployed if Ijtihad and Qiyas fail to provide guidance. It was started by Hanafi fiqh as a form of Ijtihad (individual reasoning). Maliki fiqh called it Masalih Al-Mursalah, or departure from strict adherence to the Texts for public welfare. The Hanbali fiqh called it Istislah and rejected it, as did Shafi’i fiqh. (Used by Hanafi, Maliki, but rejected by Shafii, Hanbali and Shia Jafari fiqhs)[8][10][30]
Istihab and Urf which mean continuity of pre-Islamic customs and customary law. This is considered as the weakest principle, accepted by just two fiqhs, and even in them recognized only when the custom does not violate or contradict any Quran, Hadiths or other fiqh source. (Used by Hanafi, Maliki, but rejected by Shafii, Hanbali and Shia Jafari fiqhs)[8][10]
Map of the Muslim world with the main schools of Islamic law (madhhab)
A Madhhab is a Muslim school of law that follows a fiqh (school of religious jurisprudence). In the first 150 years of Islam, there were many madhhab. Several of the Sahābah, or contemporary “companions” of Muhammad, are credited with founding their own. In the Sunni sect of Islam, the Islamic jurisprudence schools of Medina (Al-Hijaz, now in Saudi Arabia) created the Maliki madhhab, while those in Kufa (now in Iraq) created the Hanafimadhhab.[93]Abu al-Shafi’i, who started as a student of Maliki school of Islamic law, and later was influenced by Hanafi school of Islamic law, disagreed with some of the discretion these schools gave to jurists, and founded the more conservative Shafi’i madhhab, which spread from jurisprudence schools in Baghdad (Iraq) and Cairo (Egypt).[94]Ahmad ibn Hanbal, a student of al-Shafi’i, went further in his criticism of Maliki and Hanafi fiqhs, criticizing the abuse and corruption of sharia from jurist discretion and consensus of later generation Muslims, and he founded the more strict, traditionalist Hanbali school of Islamic law.[95] Other schools such as the Jaririwere established later, which eventually died out.
Sunni sect of Islam has four major surviving schools of sharia: Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, Hanbali; one minor school is named Ẓāhirī. Shii sect of Islam has three: Ja’fari(major), Zaydi and Ismaili.[96][97][98] There are other minority fiqhs as well, such as the Ibadi school of Khawarij sect, and those of Sufi and Ahmadi sects.[89][99] All Sunni and Shia schools of sharia rely first on the Quran and the sayings/practices of Muhammad in the Sunnah. Their differences lie in the procedure each uses to create Islam-compliant laws when those two sources do not provide guidance on a topic.[100] The Salafi movement creates sharia based on the Quran, Sunnah and the actions and sayings of the first three generations of Muslims.[101]
Hanafi-based sharia spread with the patronage and military expansions led by Turkic Sultans and Ottoman Empire in West Asia, Southeast Europe, Central Asia and South Asia.[102][103] It is currently the largest madhhab of Sunni Muslims.[104]Maliki-based sharia is predominantly found in West Africa, North Africa and parts of Arabia.[104]Shafii-based sharia spread with patronage and military expansions led by maritime Sultans, and is mostly found in coastal regions of East Africa, Arabia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and islands in the Indian ocean.[105] The Hanbali-based sharia prevails in the smallest Sunni madhhab, predominantly found in the Arabian peninsula.[104] The Shia Jafari-based sharia is mostly found in Persian region and parts of West Asia and South Asia.
Categories of law
Along with interpretation, each fiqh classifies its interpretation of sharia into one of the following five categories: fard (obligatory), mustahabb (recommended),mubah (neutral), makruh (discouraged), and haraam (forbidden). A Muslim is expected to adhere to that tenet of sharia accordingly.[106]
Actions in the fard category are those mandatory on all Muslims. They include the five daily prayers, fasting, articles of faith, obligatory giving of zakat (charity, tax) to zakat collectors,[107][108] and the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.[106]
The mustahabb category includes proper behaviour in matters such as marriage, funeral rites and family life. As such, it covers many of the same areas as civil law in the West. Sharia courts attempt to reconcile parties to disputes in this area using the recommended behaviour as their guide. A person whose behaviour is not mustahabb can be ruled against by the judge.[109]
Mubah category of behaviour is neither discouraged nor recommended, neither forbidden nor required; it is permissible.[106]
Makruh behaviour, while it is not sinful of itself, is considered undesirable among Muslims. It may also make a Muslim liable to criminal penalties under certain circumstances.[109]
Haraam behaviour is explicitly forbidden. It is both sinful and criminal. It includes all actions expressly forbidden in the Quran. Certain Muslim dietary and clothing restrictions also fall into this category.[106]
The recommended, neutral and discouraged categories are drawn largely from accounts of the life of Muhammad. To say a behaviour is sunnah is to say it is recommended as an example of the life and sayings of Muhammad. These categories form the basis for proper behaviour in matters such as courtesy and manners, interpersonal relations, generosity, personal habits and hygiene.[106]
Shari’ah law has been grouped in different ways, such as:[110][111] Family relations, Crime and punishment, Inheritance and disposal of property, The economic system, External and other relations.
“Reliance of the Traveller“, an English translation of a fourteenth-century CE reference on the Shafi’i school of fiqh written by Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, organizes sharia law into the following topics: Purification, prayer, funeral prayer, taxes, fasting, pilgrimage, trade, inheritance, marriage, divorce and justice.
In some areas, there are substantial differences in the law between different schools of fiqh, countries, cultures and schools of thought.
A number of scholars have advanced “objectives” (مقاصد maqaṣid al-Shariah also “goals” or “purposes”) they believe the Sharia is intended to achieve. Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali argued that they were the preservation of Islamic religion, and in the temporal world the protection of life, progeny, intellect and wealth of Muslims.[112][113]Yazid et al summarize sharia’s objective to be recognize the limitations of reason, and complement the role of reason with revelation.[114] They state that objective of sharia in Islamic finance is to provide rules and regulations from the Quran and Sunnah.[114]
Jan Otto writes that moderate Muslims and puritan Muslims differ in their interpretation of the objectives of sharia.[115] The moderate Muslims consider sharia to be a flexible code of law, where technicalities of its wording cannot subvert sharia’s objectives to “help Muslims in their quest for submission, humility, gratitude before God, and a quest for Godliness”.[115] In contrast, according to Otto, puritan Muslims believe that sharia is a strict, complete and exact set of rules that one must submit to, by strict compliance, because it is only “through meticulous obedience, Muslims will avoid punishment of God in after-life and will enter heaven” which is the ultimate objective, and it does not matter if some sharia “law is harsh or that its application results in social suffering, this perception is considered delusional”.[115]
Most Muslim-majority countries incorporate sharia at some level in their legal framework, with many calling it the highest law or the source of law of the land in their constitution.[116][117] Most use sharia for personal law (marriage, divorce, domestic violence, child support, family law, inheritance and such matters).[118][119] Elements of sharia are present, to varying extents, in the criminal justice system of many Muslim-majority countries.[12]Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Brunei, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan andMauritania apply the code predominantly or entirely.[12][120]
Most Muslim-majority countries with sharia-prescribed hudud punishments in their legal code, do not prescribe it routinely and use other punishments instead.[116][121] The harshest sharia penalties such as stoning, beheadingand the death penalty are enforced with varying levels of consistency.[122]
Since 1970s, most Muslim-majority countries have faced vociferous demands from their religious groups and political parties for immediate adoption of sharia as the sole, or at least primary legal framework.[123] Some moderates and liberal scholars within these Muslim countries have argued for limited expansion of sharia.[124]
With the growing muslim immigrant communities in Europe, there have been reports in some media of “no-go zones” being established where sharia law reigns supreme.[125][126] However, there is no evidence of the existence of “no-go zones”, and these allegations are sourced from anti-immigrant groups falsely equating low-income neighborhoods predominantly inhabited by immigrants as “no-go zones.”[127][128]
Hisbah (Arabic: حسبة ḥisb(ah), or hisba) is a historic Islamic doctrine which means “accountability”.[134] Hisbah doctrine holds that it is a religious obligation of every Muslim that he or she report to the ruler (Sultan, government authorities) any wrong behavior of a neighbor or relative that violates sharia or insults Islam. The doctrine states that it is the divinely sanctioned duty of the ruler to intervene when such charges are made, and coercively “command right and forbid wrong” in order to keep everything in order according to sharia.[135][136][137] Some Salafist suggest that enforcement of sharia under the Hisbah doctrine is the sacred duty of all Muslims, not just rulers.[135] The doctrine of Hisbah in Islam has traditionally allowed any Muslim to accuse another Muslim, ex-Muslim or non-Muslim for beliefs or behavior that may harm Islamic society. This principle has been used in countries such as Egypt, Pakistan and others to bring blasphemy charges against apostates.[138]For example, in Egypt, sharia was enforced on the Muslim scholar Nasr Abu Zayd, through the doctrine of Hasbah, when he committed apostasy.[139][140] Similarly, in Nigeria, after twelve northern Muslim-majority states such as Kano adopted sharia-based penal code between 1999 and 2000, hisbah became the allowed method of sharia enforcement, where all Muslim citizens could police compliance of moral order based on sharia.[141] In Aceh province of Indonesia, Islamic vigilante activists have invoked Hasbah doctrine to enforce sharia on fellow Muslims as well as demanding non-Muslims to respect sharia.[142]Hisbah has been used in many Muslim majority countries, from Morocco to Egypt and in West Asia to enforce sharia restrictions on blasphemy and criticism of Islam over internet and social media.[143][144][145]
Legal and court proceedings
Sharia judicial proceedings have significant differences from other legal traditions, including those in both common law and civil law. Sharia courts traditionally do not rely on lawyers; plaintiffs and defendants represent themselves. Trials are conducted solely by the judge, and there is no jury system. There is no pre-trial discoveryprocess, and no cross-examination of witnesses. Unlike common law, judges’ verdicts do not set binding precedents[146][147] under the principle of stare decisis,[148]and unlike civil law, sharia is left to the interpretation in each case and has no formally codified universal statutes.[149]
The rules of evidence in sharia courts also maintain a distinctive custom of prioritizing oral testimony.[150] Witnesses, in a sharia court system, must be faithful, that is Muslim.[151] Male Muslim witnesses are deemed more reliable than female Muslim witnesses, and non-Muslim witnesses considered unreliable and receive no priority in a sharia court.[152][153] In civil cases, a Muslim woman witness is considered half the worth and reliability than a Muslim man witness.[154][155] In criminal cases, women witnesses are unacceptable in stricter, traditional interpretations of sharia, such as those found in Hanbali madhhab.[151]
Criminal cases
A confession, an oath, or the oral testimony of Muslim witnesses are the main evidence admissible, in sharia courts, for hudud crimes, that is the religious crimes of adultery, fornication, rape, accusing someone of illicit sex but failing to prove it, apostasy, drinking intoxicants and theft.[156][157][158] Testimony must be from at least two free Muslim male witnesses, or one Muslim male and two Muslim females, who are not related parties and who are of sound mind and reliable character. Testimony to establish the crime of adultery, fornication or rape must be from four Muslim male witnesses, with some fiqhs allowing substitution of up to three male with six female witnesses; however, at least one must be a Muslim male.[159]Forensic evidence (i.e., fingerprints, ballistics, blood samples, DNA etc.) and othercircumstantial evidence is likewise rejected in hudud cases in favor of eyewitnesses, a practice which can cause severe difficulties for women plaintiffs in rape cases.[160][161]
Muslim jurists have debated whether and when coerced confession and coerced witnesses are acceptable. The majority opinion of jurists in the Hanafi madhhab, for example, ruled that torture to get evidence is acceptable and such evidence is valid, but a 17th-century text by Hanafi jurist Muhammad Shaykhzade argued that coerced confession should be invalid; Shaykhzade acknowledged that beating to get confession has been authorized in fatwas by many Islamic jurists.[162]
Civil cases
Quran recommends written contracts in the case of debt-related transactions, and oral contracts for commercial and other civil contracts.[155][163] Marriage is solemnized as a written financial contract, in the presence of two Muslim male witnesses, and it includes a brideprice (Mahr) payable from a Muslim man to a Muslim woman. The brideprice is considered by a sharia court as a form of debt. Written contracts are paramount, in sharia courts, in the matters of dispute that are debt-related, which includes marriage contracts.[164] Written contracts in debt-related cases, when notarized by a judge, is deemed more reliable.[165]
In commercial and civil contracts, such as those relating to exchange of merchandise, agreement to supply or purchase goods or property, and others, oral contracts and the testimony of Muslim witnesses triumph over written contracts. Sharia system has held that written commercial contracts may be forged.[165][166]Timur Kuran states that the treatment of written evidence in religious courts in Islamic regions created an incentive for opaque transactions, and the avoidance of written contracts in economic relations. This led to a continuation of a “largely oral contracting culture” in Muslim nations and communities.[166][167]
In lieu of written evidence, oaths are accorded much greater weight; rather than being used simply to guarantee the truth of ensuing testimony, they are themselves used as evidence. Plaintiffs lacking other evidence to support their claims may demand that defendants take an oath swearing their innocence, refusal thereof can result in a verdict for the plaintiff.[168] Taking an oath for Muslims can be a grave act; one study of courts in Morocco found that lying litigants would often “maintain their testimony ‘right up to the moment of oath-taking and then to stop, refuse the oath, and surrender the case.”[169] Accordingly, defendants are not routinely required to swear before testifying, which would risk casually profaning the Quran should the defendant commit perjury;[169] instead oaths are a solemn procedure performed as a final part of the evidence process.
Sharia courts treat women and men as unequal, with Muslim woman’s life and blood-money compensation sentence (Diyya) as half as that of a Muslim man’s life.[170][171] Sharia also treats Muslims and non-Muslims as unequal in the sentencing process.[172] Human Rights Watch and United States’ Religious Freedom Report note that in sharia courts of Saudi Arabia, “The calculation of accidental death or injury compensation is discriminatory. In the event a court renders a judgment in favor of a plaintiff who is a Jewish or Christian male, the plaintiff is only entitled to receive 50 percent of the compensation a Muslim male would receive; all other non-Muslims [Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Atheists] are only entitled to receive one-sixteenth of the amount a male Muslim would receive”.[173][174][175]
Saudi Arabia follows Hanbali sharia, whose historic jurisprudence texts considered a Christian or Jew life as half the worth of a Muslim. Jurists of other schools of law in Islam have ruled differently. For example, Shafi’i sharia considers a Christian or Jew life as a third the worth of a Muslim, and Maliki‘s sharia considers it worth half.[172] The legal schools of Hanafi, Maliki and Shafi’i Sunni Islam as well as those of twelver Shia Islam have considered the life of polytheists and atheists as one-fifteenth the value of a Muslim during sentencing.[172]
Support
Anti-democracy, pro-Sharia public demonstration in 2014 in Maldives.
A 2013 survey based on interviews of 38,000 Muslims, randomly selected from urban and rural parts in 39 countries using area probability designs, by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that support for making sharia the official law of the land is very high in many Muslim-majority countries: Afghanistan (99%), Iraq (91%), Niger (86%), Malaysia (86%), Pakistan (84%), Morocco (83%), Bangladesh (82%), Egypt (74%), Indonesia (72%), Jordan (71%), Uganda (66%), Ethiopia (65%), Mali (63%), Ghana (58%), and Tunisia (56%).[176] In Muslim regions of Southern-Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the support is less then 50%: Kosovo (20%), Albania (12%), Russia (42%), Kyrgyzstan (35%), Tajikistan (27%), Turkey (12%), Azerbaijan (8%).[176]
In Muslim-majority countries and among Muslims who say sharia should be the law of the land, a percentage between 74% (Egypt) and 19% (Kazakhstan) want sharia law to apply to non-Muslims as well.[177]
A 2008 YouGov poll in the United Kingdom found 40% of Muslim students interviewed wanted sharia in British law.[178]
Since the 1970s, the Islamist movements have become prominent; their goals are the establishment of Islamic states and sharia not just within their own borders; their means are political in nature. The Islamist power base is the millions of poor, particularly urban poor moving into the cities from the countryside. They are not international in nature (one exception being the Muslim Brotherhood). Their rhetoric opposes western culture and western power.[179] Political groups wishing to return to more traditional Islamic values are the source of threat to Turkey’s secular government.[179] These movements can be considered neo-Sharism.[180]
Extremism
Fundamentalists, wishing to return to basic Islamic religious values and law, have in some instances imposed harsh sharia punishments for crimes, curtailed civil rights and violated human rights. Extremists have used the Quran and their own particular version of sharia to justify acts of war and terror against Muslim as well as non-Muslim individuals and governments, using alternate, conflicting interpretations of sharia and their notions of jihad.[181][182]
The sharia basis of arguments of those advocating terrorism, however, remain controversial. Some scholars state that Islamic law prohibits the killing of civilian non-combatants; in contrast, others interpret Islamic law differently, concluding that all means are legitimate to reach their aims, including targeting Muslim non-combatants and the mass killing of non-Muslim civilians, in order to universalize Islam.[181] Islam, in these interpretations, “does not make target differences between militaries and civilians but between Muslims and unbelievers. Therefore it is legitimated (sic) to spill civilians’ blood”.[181] Other scholars of Islam, interpret sharia differently, stating, according to Engeland-Nourai, “attacking innocent people is not courageous; it is stupid and will be punished on the Day of Judgment […]. It’s not courageous to attack innocent children, women and civilians. It is courageous to protect freedom; it is courageous to defend one and not to attack”.[181][183]
Criticism
A protester opposing the Park51project, carries an anti-sharia sign.
Ali Khan states that “constitutional orders founded on the principles of sharia are fully compatible with democracy, provided that religious minorities are protected and the incumbent Islamic leadership remains committed to the right to recall”.[184][185]Other scholars say sharia is not compatible with democracy, particularly where the country’s constitution demands separation of religion and the democratic state.[186][187]
Courts in non-Muslim majority nations have generally ruled against the implementation of sharia, both in jurisprudence and within a community context, based on sharia’s religious background. In Muslim nations, sharia has wide support with some exceptions.[188] For example, in 1998 the Constitutional Court of Turkey banned and dissolved Turkey’s Refah Party on the grounds that “Democracy is the antithesis of Sharia”, the latter of which Refah sought to introduce.[189][190]
On appeal by Refah the European Court of Human Rights determined that “sharia is incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy”.[191][192][193] Refah’s sharia-based notion of a “plurality of legal systems, grounded on religion” was ruled to contravene the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. It was determined that it would “do away with the State’s role as the guarantor of individual rights and freedoms” and “infringe the principle of non-discrimination between individuals as regards their enjoyment of public freedoms, which is one of the fundamental principles of democracy”.[194]
Human rights
Several major, predominantly Muslim countries have criticized the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) for its perceived failure to take into account the cultural and religious context of non-Western countries. Iran declared in the UN assembly that UDHR was “a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition”, which could not be implemented by Muslims without trespassing the Islamic law.[195] Islamic scholars and Islamist political parties consider ‘universal human rights’ arguments as imposition of a non-Muslim culture on Muslim people, a disrespect of customary cultural practices and of Islam.[196][197] In 1990, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, a group representing all Muslim majority nations, met in Cairo to respond to the UDHR, then adopted the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam.[198][199]
Ann Elizabeth Mayer points to notable absences from the Cairo Declaration: provisions for democratic principles, protection for religious freedom, freedom of association and freedom of the press, as well as equality in rights and equal protection under the law. Article 24 of the Cairo declaration states that “all the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic shari’a“.[200]
In 2009, the journal Free Inquiry summarized the criticism of the Cairo Declaration in an editorial: “We are deeply concerned with the changes to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by a coalition of Islamic states within the United Nations that wishes to prohibit any criticism of religion and would thus protect Islam’s limited view of human rights. In view of the conditions inside the Islamic Republic of Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Syria, Bangdalesh, Iraq, and Afghanistan, we should expect that at the top of their human rights agenda would be to rectify the legal inequality of women, the suppression of political dissent, the curtailment of free expression, the persecution of ethnic minorities and religious dissenters — in short, protecting their citizens from egregious human rights violations. Instead, they are worrying about protecting Islam.”[201]
H. Patrick Glenn states that sharia is structured around the concept of mutual obligations of a collective, and it considers individual human rights as potentially disruptive and unnecessary to its revealed code of mutual obligations. In giving priority to this religious collective rather than individual liberty, the Islamic law justifies the formal inequality of individuals (women, non-Islamic people).[202] Bassam Tibi states that sharia framework and human rights are incompatible.[203] Abdel al-Hakeem Carney, in contrast, states that sharia is misunderstood from a failure to distinguish sharia from siyasah (politics).[204]
Blasphemy in Islam is any form of cursing, questioning or annoying God, Muhammad or anything considered sacred in Islam.[205][206][207] The sharia of various Islamic schools of jurisprudence specify different punishment for blasphemy against Islam, by Muslims and non-Muslims, ranging from imprisonment, fines, flogging, amputation, hanging, or beheading.[205][208][209] In some cases, sharia allows non-Muslims to escape death by converting and becoming a devout follower of Islam.[210]
Blasphemy, as interpreted under sharia, is controversial. Muslim nations have petitioned the United Nations to limit “freedom of speech” because “unrestricted and disrespectful opinion against Islam creates hatred”.[211] Other nations, in contrast, consider blasphemy laws as violation of “freedom of speech”,[212] stating that freedom of expression is essential to empowering both Muslims and non-Muslims, and point to the abuse of blasphemy laws, where hundreds, often members of religious minorities, are being lynched, killed and incarcerated in Muslim nations, on flimsy accusations of insulting Islam.[213][214]
Freedom of thought, conscience and religion
According to the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights,[215] every human has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change their religion or belief. Sharia has been criticized for not recognizing this human right. According to scholars[19][216][217] of Islamic law, the applicable rules for religious conversion under sharia are as follows:
If a person converts to Islam, or is born and raised as a Muslim, then he or she will have full rights of citizenship in an Islamic state.[218]
Leaving Islam is a sin and a religious crime. Once any man or woman is officially classified as Muslim, because of birth or religious conversion, he or she will be subject to the death penalty if he or she becomes an apostate, that is, abandons his or her faith in Islam in order to become an atheist, agnostic or to convert to another religion. Before executing the death penalty, sharia demands that the individual be offered one chance to return to Islam.[218]
If a person has never been a Muslim, and is not a kafir (infidel, unbeliever), he or she can live in an Islamic state by accepting to be a dhimmi, or under a special permission called aman. As a dhimmi or under aman, he or she will suffer certain limitations of rights as a subject of an Islamic state, and will not enjoy complete legal equality with Muslims.[218]
If a person has never been a Muslim, and is a kafir (infidel, unbeliever), sharia demands that he or she should be offered the choice to convert to Islam and become a Muslim; if he or she rejects the offer, he or she may become a dhimmi. failure to pay the tax may lead the non-muslim to either be enslaved, killed or ransomed if captured.[218]
According to sharia theory, conversion of disbelievers and non-Muslims to Islam is encouraged as a religious duty for all Muslims, and leaving Islam (apostasy), expressing contempt for Islam (blasphemy), and religious conversion of Muslims is prohibited.[219][220] Not all Islamic scholars agree with this interpretation of sharia theory. In practice, as of 2011, 20 Islamic nations had laws declaring apostasy from Islam as illegal and a criminal offense. Such laws are incompatible with the UDHR’s requirement of freedom of thought, conscience and religion.[221][222][223][224] In another 2013 report based on international survey of religious attitudes, more than 50% of Muslim population in 6 out of 49 Islamic countries supported death penalty for any Muslim who leaves Islam (apostasy).[225][226] However it is also shown that the majority of Muslims in the 43 nations surveyed did not agree with this interpretation of sharia.
Some scholars claim sharia allows religious freedom because a Shari’a verse teaches, “there is no compulsion in religion.”[227] Other scholars claim sharia recognizes only one proper religion, considers apostasy as sin punishable with death, and members of other religions as kafir (infidel);[228] or hold that Shari’a demands that all apostates and kafir must be put to death, enslaved or be ransomed.[229][230][231][232] Yet other scholars suggest that Shari’a has become a product of human interpretation and inevitably leads to disagreements about the “precise contents of the Shari’a.” In the end, then, what is being applied is not sharia, but what a particular group of clerics and government decide is sharia. It is these differing interpretations of Shari’a that explain why many Islamic countries have laws that restrict and criminalize apostasy, proselytism and their citizens’ freedom of conscience and religion.[233][234]
Homosexual intercourse is illegal under sharia law, though the prescribed penalties differ from one school of jurisprudence to another. For example, only a few Muslim-majority countries impose the death penalty for acts perceived as sodomy and homosexual activities: Iran,[235]Saudi Arabia,[236] and Somalia.[237] In other Muslim-majority countries such as Egypt, Iraq, and the Indonesian province of Aceh,[238] same-sex sexual acts are illegal,[239] and LGBT people regularly face violence and discrimination.[240]
Many scholars[20][241] claim Shari’a law encourages domestic violence against women, when a husband suspects nushuz (disobedience, disloyalty, rebellion, ill conduct) in his wife.[242] Other scholars claim wife beating, for nashizah, is not consistent with modern perspectives of the Quran.[243]
One of the verses of the Quran relating to permissibility of domestic violence is Surah 4:34.[244][245] In deference to Surah 4:34, many nations with Shari’a law have refused to consider or prosecute cases of domestic abuse.[246][247][248][249] Shari’a has been criticized for ignoring women’s rights in domestic abuse cases.[250][251][252][253] Musawah, CEDAW, KAFA and other organizations have proposed ways to modify Shari’a-inspired laws to improve women’s rights in Islamic nations, including women’s rights in domestic abuse cases.[254][255][256][257]
Personal status laws and child marriag
Shari’a is the basis for personal status laws in most Islamic majority nations. These personal status laws determine rights of women in matters of marriage, divorce and child custody. A 2011 UNICEF report concludes that Shari’a law provisions are discriminatory against women from a human rights perspective. In legal proceedings under Shari’a law, a woman’s testimony is worth half of a man’s before a court.[154]
Except for Iran, Lebanon and Bahrain which allow child marriages, the civil code in Islamic majority countries do not allow child marriage of girls. However, with Shari’a personal status laws, Shari’a courts in all these nations have the power to override the civil code. The religious courts permit girls less than 18 years old to marry. As of 2011, child marriages are common in a few Middle Eastern countries, accounting for 1 in 6 all marriages in Egypt and 1 in 3 marriages in Yemen.UNICEF and other studies state that the top five nations in the world with highest observed child marriage rates — Niger (75%), Chad (72%), Mali (71%), Bangladesh (64%), Guinea (63%) — are Islamic-majority countries where the personal laws for Muslims are sharia-based.[258][259]
Rape is considered a crime in all countries, but Shari’a courts in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia in some cases allow a rapist to escape punishment by marrying his victim, while in other cases the victim who complains is often prosecuted with the crime of Zina (adultery).[154][260][261]
Women’s right to property and consent
Sharia grants women the right to inherit property from other family members, and these rights are detailed in the Quran.[262] A woman’s inheritance is unequal and less than a man’s, and dependent on many factors.[Quran4:12][263] For instance, a daughter’s inheritance is usually half that of her brother’s.[Quran4:11][263]
Until the 20th century, Islamic law granted Muslim women certain legal rights, such as the right to own property received as Mahr (brideprice) at her marriage, that Western legal systems did not grant to women.[264][265] However, Islamic law does not grant non-Muslim women the same legal rights as the few it did grant Muslim women. Sharia recognizes the basic inequality between master and women slave, between free women and slave women, between Believers and non-Believers, as well as their unequal rights.[266][267] Sharia authorized the institution of slavery, using the words abd (slave) and the phrase ma malakat aymanukum (“that which your right hand owns”) to refer to women slaves, seized as captives of war.[266][268] Under Islamic law, Muslim men could have sexual relations with female captives and slaves without her consent.[269][270]
Slave women under sharia did not have a right to own property, right to free movement or right to consent.[271][272] Sharia, in Islam’s history, provided religious foundation for enslaving non-Muslim women (and men), as well as encouraged slave’s manumission. However, manumission required that the non-Muslim slave first convert to Islam.[273][274] Non-Muslim slave women who bore children to their Muslim masters became legally free upon her master’s death, and her children were presumed to be Muslims as their father, in Africa,[273] and elsewhere.[275]
Starting with the 20th century, Western legal systems evolved to expand women’s rights, but women’s rights under Islamic law have remained tied to Quran, hadiths and their faithful interpretation as sharia by Islamic jurists.[270][276]
Parallels with Western legal systems
Elements of Islamic law have influenced western legal systems. As example, the influence of Islamic influence on the development of an international law of the sea” can be discerned alongside that of the Roman influence.[277]
Makdisi states Islamic law also influenced the legal scholastic system of the West.[278] The study of legal text and degrees have parallels between Islamic studies of sharia and the Western system of legal studies. For example, the status of faqih (meaning “master of law“), mufti (meaning “professor of legal opinions“) andmudarris (meaning “teacher”), which were later translated into Latin as magister, professor and doctor respectively.[278]
There are differences between Islamic and Western legal systems. For example, sharia classically recognizes only natural persons, and never developed the concept of a legal person, or corporation, i.e., a legal entity that limits the liabilities of its managers, shareholders, and employees; exists beyond the lifetimes of its founders; and that can own assets, sign contracts, and appear in court through representatives.[279] Interest prohibitions also imposed secondary costs by discouraging record keeping, and delaying the introduction of modern accounting.[280] Such factors, according to Timur Kuran, have played a significant role in retarding economic development in the Middle East.[281]
Ali, Abdullah Yusuf (2000). The Holy Qur’an (Translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali). Ware, Hertfordshire, England: Wordsworth Editions. ISBN 978-1-85326-782-6. A popular translation of the Quran.
Bostom, Andrew (2012). Sharia Versus Freedom: The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism. Prometheus Books. ISBN1616146664.
Coulson, Noel J. (1964). A History of Islamic Law. Edinburgh: Edinburgh U.P.
Hallaq, Wael B. (2009). An Introduction to Islamic Law. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P. ISBN 978-0-52167-873-5
Hussain, Jamila (2011). Islam: Its Law and Society (3rd edition). Annandale, N.S.W., Australia: The Federation Press. ISBN 1-86287-499-9.OCLC742018517. A modern discourse on Sharia law.
Khan, Muhammad Muhsin (1996). The English Translation of Ṣaḥīḥ Al Bukhārī with the Arabic Text. Alexandria, Va.: Al-Saadawi Publications. ISBN 978-1-881963-59-2. OCLC35673415. The complete translation (in nine volumes) of a popular Sunni collection of hadith.
Mahmassani, Sobhi (1961). The Philosophy of Jurisprudence in Islam, translated by Farhat J. Ziadeh. Leiden: Brill.
Mahmassani, Sobhi (1966). The Principles of International Law in the Light of Islamic Doctrine, publications of The Hague Academy of International Law, Leiden.
Ben Carson says no Muslim should ever become US president
2016 hopeful: ‘I would not advocate we put a Muslim in charge of this nation’
Retired neurosurgeon says Islam is not consistent with US constitution
The Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson has said no Muslim should be president of the United States of America.
In an interview with NBC for broadcast on Sunday morning, the retired neurosurgeon said: “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that.”
Carson’s discussion with Meet the Press host Chuck Todd centered around controversy that arose this week when Donald Trump – the real-estate mogul keeping Carson in second place in the polls – failed to correct an audience member at a New Hampshire campaign rally who said President Obama was a Muslim.
The audience member also appeared to advocate the forcible removal of Muslims from the US.
On Saturday, in a series of tweets on the subject, Trump defended himself and said: “Am I morally obligated to defend the president every time somebody says something bad or controversial about him? I don’t think so!”
Trump: I was not obligated to correct questioner who called Obama Muslim
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He also addressed the issue in an appearance before an evangelical audience in Iowa, at which he brandished a Bible and said: “You see, I’m better than you thought.”
In such circles, Trump has lost some support to Carson.
In his NBC interview, Carson was asked: “So do you believe that Islam is consistent with the constitution?”
“No,” he said, “I don’t, I do not.”
Article VI of the US constitution states: “No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
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The first amendment to the constitution begins: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …”
Carson, a Christian, is a member of the Seventh Day Adventist church. In October, he will publish a new book, written with his wife Candy Carson and entitled A More Perfect Union: What We the People Can Do to Reclaim Our Constitutional Liberties.
In publicity material issued by Penguin Random House, Carson is quoted as saying: “I believe that making a difference starts with understanding our amazing founding document, the US constitution.
“And as someone who has performed brain surgery thousands of times, I can assure you that the constitution isn’t brain surgery.
He adds that he and his wife wrote the book to “help defend” the constitution “from those who misinterpret and undermine it”.
Carson did have a constituency to speak to, however. In a recent poll, 38% of voters said they would not vote for a Muslim president.
Quiet rise of Ben Carson is shaking up Republican presidential race
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The Ohio governor, John Kasich, who is polling an average of 2.5%, enough for 10th place out of 16, was also asked by NBC if he “would ever have a problem with a Muslim becoming president”.
Kasich, one of the more moderate candidates in the GOP field, also had to field a question about whether he was a Republican at all. He did not say he would have a problem with a Muslim president, but nor did he dismiss the question.
“You know, I mean, that’s such a hypothetical question,” Kasich said. “The answer is, at the end of the day, you’ve got to go through the rigours, and people will look at everything.
“But, for me, the most important thing about being president is you have leadership skills, you know what you’re doing, and you can help fix this country and raise this country. Those are the qualifications that matter to me.”
Carson was also asked if he would consider voting for a Muslim candidate for Congress.
He said: “Congress is a different story, but it depends on who that Muslim is and what their policies are, just as it depends on what anybody else says, you know.”
Two members of Congress, both Democrats, are Muslim: Keith Ellison of Minnesota was elected to the House of Representatives in 2007 and André Carson of Indiana followed in 2008.
Every American should be disturbed … national figures are engaging in and tolerating blatant acts of religious bigotry
Representative Keith Ellison
This week, Ellison carried a clock around Congress to show support for Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old boy who was arrested at his school in Irving, Texas, over suspicions a homemade clock was in fact a bomb.
On Sunday Ellison, the first Muslim ever elected to Congress, released a statement in answer to Carson’s comments.
“For Ben Carson, Donald Trump, or any other Republican politician to suggest that someone of any faith is unfit for office is out of touch with who we are as a people,” he said.
“It’s unimaginable that the leading GOP presidential candidates are resorting to fear mongering to benefit their campaigns, and every American should be disturbed that these national figures are engaging in and tolerating blatant acts of religious bigotry.”
Ahmed Mohamed is tired, excited to meet Obama – and wants his clock back
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According to the Pew Research Center, the 114th Congress contains 491 Christians, of which 306 are Protestant, split between 13 sects though without any declared Anabaptists, Quakers or Pietists.
Another 164 members of Congress are Catholic, while 16 are Mormon and five Orthodox Christian. As well as the two Muslims there are 28 Jewish and two Buddhist members of Congress; there is one Hindu member, one Unitarian Universalist and one “unaffiliated”.
Nine members of Congress either told the Pew researchers they didn’t know what religion they were, or refused to answer the question.
On Meet the Press, Carson continued: “And, you know, if there’s somebody who’s of any faith, but they say things, and their life has been consistent with things that will elevate this nation and make it possible for everybody to succeed, and bring peace and harmony, then I’m with them.”
Asked if he believed President Obama was both born in the US – another issue raised at the Trump rally on Thursday and not rebutted by the candidate – and a Christian, Carson said: “I believe that he is. I have no reason to doubt what he says.”
Carson says he does not agree with a Muslim being elected president
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson suggested Sunday that a Muslim should not be president, extending the new and unexpected religion debate on the 2016 campaign trail.
“I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation,” Carson, a Christian and retired neurosurgeon, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I absolutely would not agree with that.”
Carson, a top-tier 2016 candidate and popular among the GOP’s evangelical wing, made the statement after fellow Republican candidate Donald Trump was addressed by a man during a rally Thursday in New Hampshire who said President Obama is a Muslim.
“We have a problem in this country,” the unidentified man said. “It’s called Muslim. … You know our current president is one.”
Obama says he is a Christian. But Trump has declined to address the issue, saying he is not “morally obligated” to set straight the record.
Carson also described the Islamic faith as inconsistent with the Constitution. However, he did not specify in what way Islam ran counter to constitutional principles.
Carson said he believes Obama is a Christian and has “no reason to doubt what he says.”
He also said he would consider voting for a Muslim running for Congress, depending on “who that Muslim is and what their policies are.”
Carson also made a distinction when it came to electing Muslims to Congress, calling it a “different story” from the presidency that “depends on who that Muslim is and what their policies are, just as it depends on what anybody else says.”
Congress has two Muslim members, Democratic Reps. Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Andre Carson of Indiana.
“If there’s somebody who’s of any faith, but they say things, and their life has been consistent with things that will elevate this nation and make it possible for everybody to succeed, and bring peace and harmony, then I’m with them,” Carson said.
Trump on Sunday told ABC’s “This Week” that he doesn’t talk about other people’s faith and that Obama is “very capable of defending himself.”
He also said the politically correct statement is that Muslims are not a problem in the United States but the reality is that “some” associated with terrorism pose a worldwide threat.
“We can say … everything’s wonderful,” Trump said. “But certainly it is a problem. … if I want to say no, not at all, people would laugh at me.”
Fellow GOP contender and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio told ABC about the Muslim debate: “This has nothing to do with the future of our country. These issues have been discussed ad nauseam over the last few years. It’s a big waste of time. Barack Obama will not be president in a year and a half. It’s time to start talking about the future of America and the people that are at home.”
Carson’s comments drew strong criticism from the country’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“To me this really means he is not qualified to be president of the United States,” said the group’s spokesman, Ibrahim Hooper. “You cannot hold these kinds of views and at the same time say you will represent all Americans, of all faiths and backgrounds.”
Hooper said the Constitution expressly forbids religious tests for those seeking public office and called for the repudiation of “these un-American comments.”
In a separate appearance on NBC, fellow 2016 GOP candidate Ohio Gov. John Kasich, was asked whether he would have a problem with a Muslim in the White House.
“The answer is, at the end of the day, you’ve got to go through the rigors, and people will look at everything. But, for me, the most important thing about being president is you have leadership skills, you know what you’re doing and you can help fix this country and raise this country. Those are the qualifications that matter to me.”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who taped Sunday an episode of Iowa Press, an Iowa Public Television program, was asked if he agreed with Carson’s statements on Muslims being president. “The Constitution specifies that there shall be no religious test for public office, and I am a constitutionalist,” Cruz said.
Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said, “It’s hard to understand what’s so difficult about supporting an American citizen’s right to run for president.
“But unsurprisingly, this left Republicans scratching their heads. Of course a Muslim, or any other American citizen, can run for president, end of story.”
Story 1: Breaking News: 5 Dead including 4 Marines and gunman killed in shootings and 3 wounded at Navy Reserve Center, Chattanooga, Tennessee –Gun Free Zone Except For Killer — Gunman Identified as Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez — Lone Wolf Terrorist? — Videos
Tennessee Highway Patrol Trooper Paul Clendenen guards the top of the C.B. Robinson Bridge at Amnicola Highway after a morning shooting near the Naval Reserve Center, in Chattanooga, Tenn. on Thursday, July 16, 2015. Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke said there’s “an officer down” at a military reserve center. (Tim Barber/Chattanooga Times Free Press via AP) THE DAILY CITIZEN OUT; NOOGA.COM OUT; CLEVELAND DAILY BANNER OUT; LOCAL INTERNET OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT
4 Marines Killed In Chattanooga Shooting; Suspect Also Dead
4 U.S. Marines, gunman dead in Chattanooga shooting
Chattanooga shooting: 4 Marines killed, gunman dead
Raw: Police at Home Near Chattanooga Shooting
Donald Trump Reacts to Chattanooga Shootings on ‘The O’Reilly Factor’
Gun Grabbers Responsible for Chattanooga Shooting
News Wrap: Chattanooga military sites targeted by gunman
More Information Discovered About Chattanooga Shooting Suspect
4 Marines Among Dead In Chattanooga Shootings | msnbc
‘Heartbreaking’: President Obama Speaks on Chattanooga Shooting
Chattanooga Shooting Naval Military Reserve – 4 Marines Killed
Shooting At Military Centers In Chattanooga (VIDEO) Tennessee
BREAKING 4 Marines, gunman killed in Chattanooga shootings Military Reserve Centers, Tennessee
Police Pursue Tenn. Navy Recruiting Shooting
Four servicemen dead and one critical after gunman opens fire on military recruitment center
Mimi’s Interview with Jeffrey Simon “Lone Wolf Terrorism”
Mimi’s Interview with Jeffrey Simon “Lone Wolf Terrorism”
LIVE UPDATES: Attacker identified in shooting attack on military installations that killed four
Two military centers attacked by UTC engineering graduate
ONFIRMED: TVA says Chattanooga Shooting suspect Mohammad Youssduf Adbulazeez was a student intern while he attended UTC.
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Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez’s family photo in Chattanooga. Via Facebook.
The federally-owned Tennessee Valley Authority confirms to BuzzFeed News Chattanooga suspect was an intern there pic.twitter.com/DynSWsz42s
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Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke on CNN: “Today our hearts are breaking in this city.”
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Ryan Smith, who wrestled with Andulazeez at Red Bank High School, said he was a “swell guy.”
“He was an unbelievable nice person,” Smith said. “He was honestly one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met.”
Smith said that Abdulazeez was very religious, and that he would argue “back and forth” with the boys’ high school wrestling coach during fasting rituals.
“His whole family was really religious,” Smith said. “His family, they all wore the drapes and stuff, all the women in his family wore the little hoods.”
Andulazeez became an mixed martial artist after high school, Smith said. Smith did not know what motivated his former friend to attack the military installations in Chattanooga.
“You’ve got to make good decisions, and he didn’t make a good decision,” Smith said.
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The U.S. National Counterterrorism Center is reporting no apparent nexus to terrorism has been uncovered in the investigation of the fatal shootings in Tennessee, but intelligence officials are monitoring the investigation closely.
It also says there has been no credible claim of responsibility so far for anyone who might have influenced the gunman, who also was killed.
Those details were in a report the counterterrorism center circulated Thursday evening to U.S. law enforcement agencies. The Associated Press reviewed the report.
Even though the report says there was no connection uncovered so far to terrorism, it described efforts by the Islamic State group to revitalize homegrown extremists to conduct physical attacks inside the United States.
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Navy Secretary Ray Mabus is expressing condolences for four Marines killed in shootings in Tennessee. He called the victims “four heroes.”
Maybus says “the tragedy in Chattanooga is both devastating and senseless.”
The Marines were killed at the Navy Operational Support Center, often referred to as a “reserve center.” It’s used by both Navy and Marine personnel to provide training and readiness support for reserve components to support the services. The Navy maintains 123 such facilities across the United States and its territories.
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Attorney General Loretta Lynch says she’s directing the FBI to take the lead on a “national security” investigation into the Chattanooga attacks.
In a statement, she said the two shootings at military sites in Chattanooga represented a “heinous attack.”
Federal authorities have not identified a motive but have said they are investigating the possibility it was an act of terrorism.
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Crissy Essex, left, 44, Sabrina Cupell, and Cheyenne Essex bring signs and an American flag to a building memorial at the 6215 Lee Highway location where a gunman fired multiple rounds into the Armed Forces Career Center.
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St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 305 W. Seventh St., will remain open until 8 p.m. tonight. All are welcome to enter through the front doors for prayer in the Nave.
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BREAKING: Two women were led away in handcuffs from the suspect’s home. It’s not clear at this time who these females are.
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Vice President Joe Biden says the United States will get to the bottom of the shootings that killed at least four Marines in Chattanooga.
Biden says the young Marines killed were part of what he’s calling “probably the most incredible generation that this country has seen.” He’s pointing out that more than 4 million Americans have signed up for military service since 9/11, even though they knew they’d almost certainly be put in harm’s way.
Biden says the families of those troops have already given a lot to the country.
Biden is asking Americans to keep the families of the victims in their prayers.
The vice president was speaking at a summit of liberal activists in Washington.
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Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton has described the shootings as an episode of “senseless violence” that she linked to other recent mass shootings.
“It’s terrible when we lose Marines anywhere in the world. But to lose four in Chattanooga, Tennessee is just heartbreaking,” she told reporters after holding her first town hall event in New Hampshire.
“I hope that we can find a way to stop this kind of violence that is stalking our children and people in study and people who wear the uniform of our country,” Clinton said.
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BREAKING: Shooting suspect did wrestling and mixed marial arts. Video here.
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Chattanooga Police Department instructor Ricky Ballard guards the front door at the Chattanooga Fire Training center prior to a news conference about a domestic terror incident that killed four Marines at the nearby Naval Reserve facility on Amnicola Highway.
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BREAKING: Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam is coming to Chattanooga this evening for a briefing from TEMA Director Purkey at the Emergency Operations Center.
‘We expect that to take place around 7:30 p.m. ET,’ Dave Smith says
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Statement by President Obama:
I just received a briefing from FBI Director Comey, as well as my White House team, about the tragic shooting that took place in Chattanooga today. We don’t know yet all the details. We know that what appears to be a lone gunman carried out these attacks. We’ve identified a name. And at this point, a full investigation is taking place. The FBI will be in the lead, working closely with local law enforcement.
We’ve also been in contact with the Department of Defense to make sure that all our Defense facilities are properly attentive and vigilant as we sort through exactly what happened. And as details of the investigation proceed, we’ll make sure that the FBI, as well as local law enforcement are providing the public with all the information that’s involved.
My main message right now is, obviously, the deepest sympathies of the American people to the four Marines that have been killed. It is a heartbreaking circumstance for these individuals who have served our country with great valor to be killed in this fashion.
And although the families are still in the process of being contacted, I want them to know that I speak for the American people in expressing our deepest condolences, and knowing that they have our full support as they try to overcome the grief that’s involved here.
I also want to say that there are reports of injuries to Chattanooga local law enforcement officials. Thankfully, as far as we know at this point, they have survived the assault. And we want to make sure that they know that we’re thinking of them. They’re in our thoughts and prayers.
We take all shootings very seriously. Obviously, when you have an attack on a U.S. military facility, then we have to make sure that we have all the information necessary to make an assessment in terms of how this attack took place, and what further precautions we can take in the future. And as we have more information, we’ll let the public know.
But in the meantime, I’d ask all Americans to pray for the families who are grief-stricken at this point. And I want everybody to understand that we will be thorough and prompt in figuring out exactly what happened.
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A Hamilton County Sheriff’s officer carries a rifle out of Erlanger Hospital’s emergency room when the lockdown is ended after a shooting at both the Amnicola Highway Armed Forces Career Center and the Naval Operational Support Center on Amnicola Highway.
Police, FBI, bomb squad were staging earlier at old Food Lion on Hixson Pk. for raid on shooters homepic.twitter.com/AYDQhGjQkc
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Carol, we’re still working to gather the details on that. Stay here for the latest details.
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Comment From Carol L
Where did the shooter work?
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TN House Majority Leader Gerald McCormick: I am deeply saddened to hear of today’s horrific events in our hometown of Chattanooga. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families. I have been in contact with state and local officials to monitor any developments. I have the utmost confidence in our law enforcement agencies to handle this situation in a swift and professional manner.
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Congressman Marsha Blackburn:
I am deeply saddened by this senseless act of violence that has been carried out on our military facilities in Chattanooga today, resulting in the deaths of four Marines. This is a heartbreaking loss for our nation’s military and the entire Chattanooga community. My thoughts and prayers are with the families of those involved and the people of Chattanooga. I know that the community will come together to help each other heal.
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Rep. Tom Graves: My thoughts and prayers are with the families of the Marines who were killed in the horrific attack in Chattanooga today. These Marines perished while serving our country and I know that our community in Northwest Georgia is forever grateful for their sacrifice.
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Rep. Chuck Fleischmann: “This has been a tragic day for Chattanooga and Southeast Tennessee. My heart and prayers go out to everyone involved in this horrendous situation. I have spoken with local, state and federal officials and will continue to monitor this situation closely.”
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President Barack Obama pauses as he speaks to members of the media in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on the shooting in Chattanooga.
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POTUS said he was briefed by FBI director and White House team on Chatonooga shooting. We don’t yet know all details, POTUS said. The attacker appears to be a lone gunman, he said.
POTUS said he’s in contact with DOD. FBI is taking lead in investigation along with local law enforcement, POTUS said.
POTUS said his main message is “deepest sympathies to the American people” and the death of four Marines is “heartbreaking.” POTUS asked all Americans to pray for families of victims, who are still in process of being contacted.
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Multiple people who said they went to Red Bank High School with Abdulazeez sent the Times Free Press photos of what appears to be his senior picture and senior quote in the school’s yearbook.
“My name causes national security alerts,” the quote reads. “What does yours do?”
Obama: “I’d ask all Americans to pray for tHe families that are grief stricken.” #ChattanoogaShooting
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Violence Policy Center Statement on Chattanooga Shooting
Washington, DC — Following today’s shooting in Chattanooga, Tennessee which left four U.S. Marines dead, Violence Policy Center (VPC) Executive Director Josh Sugarmann issued the following statement:
“Another day in America, another mass shooting. While we are still learning the facts behind this latest mass murder, easy access to increasingly lethal firearms is the one factor that is almost constant in these attacks. Lives are lost, families are devastated, and communities are scarred, yet all too often we look for answers while ignoring the very tools that are commonly used to perpetrate these heinous acts. Until this changes, such horrific events are inevitable.”
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BREAKING: President Obama is expected to make a statement on the Chattanooga shooting from the Oval Office shortly.
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The shooting suspect’s father was appointed as a special policeman (unarmed) by the Chattanooga City Council.
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It’s confirmed that shooter’s father works for the City of Chattanooga Public Works Department.
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Abdulazeez means “servant of the almighty” in Arabic.
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Comment From tn wife
We need not forget to pray for the young man doing the shooting. How sad to get to this point
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BREAKING: Mohammad Youssduf Adbulazeer was arrested on a DUI charge on April 20, 2015.
4 Marines, gunman killed in Chattanooga shootings Military Reserve Centers, Tennessee
Four U.S. marines are dead after a gunman opened fired at two military facilities in Chattanooga, Tennessee on Thursday.
Authorities say the shooter was also killed. One police officer was being treated after he was shot in the ankle while “actively and enthusiastically engaging” the gunman.
“This is a nightmare for the city,” Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke said at a news conference. “It is incomprehensible to see what happened.”
Gunfire was reported at a military recruitment centre in a strip mall as well as the Navy Operational Support Center. The two scenes are roughly 10 kilometres apart.
Bill Killian, the U.S. Attorney for the eastern district of Tennessee, told the he was treating the shootings as an “act of domestic terrorism.”
FBI special agent Ed Reinhold later clarified that investigators weren’t clear on motive and were treating the shooting as a “terrorism investigation until it can be determined that it was not.”
“We are looking at every possible avenue — whether is as terrorism, whether it was domestic or international, or whether it was a simple criminal act,” Reinhold said.
U.S President Barack Obama was briefed on the shootings Thursday.
Photos of the recruiting centre at the strip mall showed its doors were riddled with more than 20 bullet holes.
Chattanooga’s Lee University was in lockdown around noon Thursday, advising all on campus to “stay inside until further notice.” A woman who answered the phone at Chattanooga State Community College said the campus was also in lockdown.
“Somebody brutally and brazenly attacked members of our armed services,”Chattanooga Police Chief Fred Fletcher said at the Thursday news conference.
Loretta Blevins, head server at the Track’s End Restaurant less than a kilometre down the road from the recruiting centre, said there was about 16 people huddled inside the restaurant as emergency vehicles streamed up and down the road.
“It’s breathtaking when you see all the emergency vehicles and you have no idea what’s going on or how close it is to you,” she said.
Brian Lepley, a spokesman with the U.S. Army Recruiting Command out of Fort Knox, Kentucky, said the recruiting centre on Old Lee Highway in Chattanooga has recruiting services for all four branches of the military. The Army recruiters told Lepley they were not hit and not injured. They have evacuated and are safe. He has no information about recruiters for the other branches.
Sgt. 1st Class Robert Dodge, 36, was working at the recruitment centre and heard “one single shot, which kind of sparked our attention.”
“Shortly after that, just a few seconds, the shooter began shooting more rounds,” he said. “We realized it was an actual shooting, so we then initiated our active shooter drill: getting down low to the ground, moving to a safe location. And we waited until everything seemed to be clear.”
Four Marines and gunman killed in Tennessee shooting that officials call ‘domestic terrorism’
By Mark Berman
Four Marines were killed when a gunman opened fire at a Naval facility and an armed forces recruiting center in Tennessee on Thursday morning, a violent spree that authorities say they are investigating as a possible terrorist attack.
The gunman, who has not been identified, was also killed.
“While we expect our sailors and Marines to go into harm’s way, and they do so without hesitation, an attack at home, in our community, is insidious and unfathomable,” Ray Mabus, Secretary of the Navy, said in a statement.
In addition to the four Marines, the gunman injured another military service member, a Chattanooga police officer and one other person, according to military officials.
“Somebody brutally and brazenly attacked members of our armed services,” Fred Fletcher, the Chattanooga police chief, said at at a news conference.
The Marine Corps said four Marines were killed in the shootings. Ed Reinhold, the special agent in charge for the FBI, declined to discuss details of the investigation, which he described as in its initial stages.
“We will treat this as a terrorism investigation until we determine it was not,” he said. He added: “We have not determined if it was an act of terrorism or a criminal act.”
Reinhold said that the shooting appeared to be the work of a lone gunman, who he said was from the area or at least lived in the area. This gunman, who did not work at either facility, had “numerous weapons” on him, Reinhold said, and was not wearing body armor.
One of the shootings occurred at a Navy Operational Support Center, which the U.S. Navy said was a facility that provides support for reserve component personnel. The other shooting took place at an armed forces recruiting center. The Pentagon said Thursday afternoon the Marines would be identified after next of kin were notified.
The shooting is being viewed as “an act of domestic terrorism,” U.S. Attorney William C. Killian said. However, Killian said the investigation would bear out precisely what kind of crime this was, cautioning people not to get caught up in the label.
4 Marines killed in attacks on Chattanooga military facilities
Last Updated Jul 16, 2015 4:11 PM EDT
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — A gunman unleashed a barrage of gunfire at two military facilities Thursday in Tennessee, killing at least four Marines and wounding a soldier and a police officer, officials told CBS News.
The shooter also was killed. Two law enforcement sources told CBS News that the shooting suspect was identified as Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez.
“Today was a nightmare for the city of Chattanooga,” Mayor Andy Berke said. “As a city, we will respond to this with every available resource that we have.”
9PHOTOS
Chattanooga shooting
U.S. Attorney Bill Killian said officials were treating the attacks as an “act of domestic terrorism,” though FBI Special Agent in Charge Ed Reinhold said authorities were still investigating a motive. The first shooting happened around 10:45 a.m.; the attacks were over within a half-hour.
Berke said five people died in all, including the gunman. A police officer was shot in the ankle, and others were wounded, he said.
U.S. officials told CBS News correspondent David Martin that four U.S. Marines were among the dead.
A Marine recruiter was treated at a hospital for a gunshot wound to the leg, the Marine Corps said on its Facebook page.
“Lives have been lost from some faithful people who have been serving our country, and I think I join all Tennesseans in being both sickened and saddened by this,” Gov. Bill Haslam said.
Shooting at military recruiting center in Chattanooga
The shootings began at a recruiting center on Old Lee Highway in Chattanooga where five branches of the military all have adjoining offices. A gunshot rang out around 10:30 or 10:45 a.m., said Sgt. 1st Class Robert Dodge, 36, the center leader for U.S. Army recruiting at the center.
“Shortly after that, just a few seconds, the shooter began shooting more rounds. We realized it was an actual shooting,” he said.
He and his colleagues then got on the ground and barricaded themselves in a safe place. Dodge estimated there were 30 to 50 shots fired.
He did not see the shooter or a vehicle. The Army recruiting office was not damaged, but doors and glass were damaged at the neighboring Air Force, Navy and Marine offices, he said.
Law enforcement officials told recruiters that the shooter was in a car, stopped in front of the facility, shot at the building and drove off, said Brian Lepley, a spokesman with the U.S. Army Recruiting Command in Fort Knox, Kentucky.
One witness told CBS affiliate WDEF that a man who was in a silver Mustang convertible was “just unloading a large gun on the Naval recruiting office.”
The recruiting center sits in a short strip between a Cricket Wireless and an Italian restaurant with no apparent additional security. Nearby, Nicholas Donohue heard a blast of gunshots while working at Desktop Solutions. But he had music playing and wasn’t quite sure what the noise had been. He turned off the music and seconds later, a second blast thundered. He took shelter in a back room.
“Even though it knew it was most likely gunfire I heard, you also don’t want to believe it’s happening in the moment,” he said. “Since I didn’t see anything, I couldn’t be sure.”
By the time he emerged, police were cordoning off the area.
Within minutes of that attack, the shooter then opened fire at the Navy Operational Support Center and Marine Corps Reserve Center Chattanooga, about 7 miles away. Reinhold said all of the dead were killed there.
The center sits between the highway and a pathway that runs through Tennessee RiverPark, a popular park at a bend in the Tennessee River northeast of downtown Chattanooga. It’s in a light industrial area that includes a Coca-Cola bottling plant.
The two entrances to the fenced facility have unmanned gates and concrete barriers that require approaching cars to slow down to drive around them.
“I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many,” she said. “It was rapid fire, like pow pow pow pow pow, so quickly. The next thing I knew, there were police cars coming from every direction.”
She ran inside, where she remained locked down with other employees and a customer. The gunfire continued with occasional bursts she estimated for 20 minutes.
“We’re apprehensive,” Hutcheson said. “Not knowing what transpired, if it was a grievance or terroristic related, we just don’t know.”
They saw dozens of emergency vehicles rush by: bomb teams, SWAT teams, and state, local and federal authorities.
Five dead, including gunman, in Tennessee military facilities shootings
The other four killed were Marines at a Naval Reserve Center, a military official said in Washington, DC.
Charlie Hebdo
Shooting at Charlie Hebdo’s news office. (photo credit:REUTERS)
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Five people were killed on Thursday including a suspected gunman who opened fire at two military-related facilities in Chattanooga, Tennessee in an attack local officials described as brazen, brutal and an act of domestic terrorism.
CBS News quoted two law enforcement officials as saying the suspect was Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez. No motive has yet been given. The suspected shooter, who has not been officially identified, is believed to have lived in the area and acted alone, local police said.
The other four killed were Marines at a Naval Reserve Center, a military official said in Washington, DC.
“We are treating this as an act of domestic terrorism,” said Bill Killian, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, adding that no official determination of the nature of the crime had yet been made.
The suspect, seen driving in an open-top Mustang, is believed to have first gone to a joint military recruiting center in a strip mall, and peppered the facility with gunfire. No one was injured in the attack.
“Everybody was at a standstill and as soon as he pulled away everyone scrabbled trying to make sure everyone was OK,” said Erica Wright, who works two doors down from the center.
The gunman then drove off to a Naval Reserve Center about 6 miles (10 km) away, fatally shooting the four Marines before being fatally shot himself in a firefight with police.
Three others were wounded in the attacks, including a police officer and a Marine. The shootings began at about 10:45 a.m. local time and ended about 30 minutes later.
“There were numerous Chattanooga and Hamilton County officers who responded. They arrived on the scene extremely quickly. They actively and enthusiastically engaged this brazen criminal, and one of those officers was injured by gunfire from this criminal,” Chattanooga Police Chief Fred Fletcher told a news conference.
A White House spokesman said President Barack Obama had been told about the shooting.
“The President has been briefed by his national security staff on the Chattanooga shooting, and will continue to get updates as warranted,” said spokesman Eric Schultz.
Lockdowns had been put in place at businesses, a college and other facilities near the shooting sites.
The city along the Tennessee River is in the southeastern section of the state just north of the Georgia border. Just over 173,000 people live there, according to a 2013 estimate from the U.S. Census Bureau.
A common definition of terrorism is the systematic use or threatened use of violence in order to intimidate a population or government and thereby effect political, religious, or ideological change.[1][2] This article serves as a list and compilation of acts of terrorism, attempts of terrorism, and other such items pertaining to terrorist activities within the domestic borders of the United States by persons acting in the interests of states or non-state actors. It does not include actions by agents of the U.S. government itself, such as the 1985 MOVE bombing in Philadelphia or the 1993Waco Massacre in Texas, which are regarded by some as acts of state terrorism.
May 21, 1856: Sacking of Lawrence – Pro-Slavery forces enter Lawrence, Kansas to disarm residents and destroy the town’s presses and the Free State Hotel.
October 16, 1859: Anti-slavery Pottawatomie massacre – In response to the sacking of Lawrence, John Brown led a group of abolitionists in the murders of five pro-slavery Kansas settlers.
April 14, 1865: Pro-slavery Abraham Lincoln assassination – Part of a conspiracy by Confederate supporters John Wilkes Booth, Lewis Powell and George Atzerodt to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward in Washington, D.C. to create chaos for the purpose of overthrowing the Federal Government. Booth succeeded in assassinating Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre, Seward survived numerous stabbings by Powell who stabbed others as he was chased out of Seward’s home, and Atzerodt failed to carry out the planned murder of Johnson. Booth was killed by soldiers when he failed to surrender. Eight conspirators were tried and convicted for their role in the conspiracy by a military tribunal, including Powell and Atzerodt. Four defendants were executed for their roles including Powell, Azterodt and Mary Surratt, the first woman ever to be hanged by the U.S. government.
October 28, 1893: Carter Harrison assassination-Patrick Eugene Joseph Prendergast was upset that the Mayor of Chicago, Carter Harrison, Sr., advocated for the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, seeing it as an action against the citizenry and acting under the influence of England, the Rothschild bankers of Europe, and Wall St. Prendergast imagined this as part of a larger conspiracy that betrayed the will of Jesus Christ. As a delusional newspaper man, he found himself unable to influence policy in Washington or Chicago and ultimately took it upon himself to change the course of history by assassinating the powerful mayor. He felt that his inevitable acquittal would establish a precedent wherein Christian law would be established throughout the city. Prendergast was found sane by a jury and hanged on July 14, 1894.[3]
October 1, 1910: Los Angeles Times bombing. The Los Angeles Times building in Los Angeles was destroyed by dynamite, killing 21 workers. The bomb was apparently placed due to the paper’s opposition to unionization in the city;[4] two labor organizers, the McNamara brothers, were found guilty.
July 2, 1915: Frank Holt (also known as Eric Muenter), a German professor who wanted to stop American support of the Allies in World War I, exploded a bomb in the reception room of the U.S. Senate. The next morning he tried to assassinate J. P. Morgan, Jr. the son of the financier whose company served as Great Britain’s principal U.S. purchasing agent for munitions and other war supplies. Muenter was overpowered by Morgan in Morgan’s Long Island home before killing himself in prison on July 7.[6][7]
July 22, 1916: The Preparedness Day Bombing killed ten people and injured 40 in San Francisco. Two radical labor leaders, Warren K. Billings and Thomas Mooney, were convicted of the crime and sentenced to hang, but with little evidence of their guilt both sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. They were eventually pardoned, and the actual bombers’ identities remain unknown.
1916, July 30: The Black Tom explosion in Jersey City, New Jersey was an act of sabotage on American ammunition supplies by German agents to prevent the material from being used by the Allies in World War I.
November 24, 1917: A bomb exploded in a Milwaukee police station, killing nine officers and a civilian. Anarchists were suspected.[8][9]
1919 United States anarchist bombings: A series of package bombs were mailed to prominent business and government leaders around the country. Most were intercepted and did not go off, with only one person killed. Italian Galleanist anarchists were suspected, but not convicted.
1920 Wall Street bombing: A horse-drawn wagon filled with explosives was detonated in front of the J. P. Morgan bank on Wall Street, killing 38 and wounding 143. Galleanist anarchists were again suspected, but the perpetrators were never caught.
May 31, 1921: During the Tulsa race riot, there were reports that whites dropped dynamite from airplanes onto a black ghetto in Tulsa. The riot killed 39–300 people and destroyed more than 1,100 homes.[10]
May 18, 1927: The Bath School disaster (bombings) killed 45 people and injured 58. Most of the victims were children in the second to sixth grades (7–12 years of age) attending the Bath Consolidated School. Their deaths constitute the deadliest act of mass murder in a school in U.S. history. The perpetrator was school board member Andrew Kehoe.
October 10, 1933: A Boeing 247 was destroyed in mid-flight over Indiana by a nitroglycerin bomb. All seven people aboard were killed. This incident was the first proven case of air sabotage in the history of aviation. The identity of the perpetrator and the motive for the attack are unknown.
July 4, 1940: Two New York City policemen were killed and two critically wounded while examining a bomb they had found at the British Pavilion at the World’s Fair
1940–1956: George Metesky, the Mad Bomber, placed over 30 bombs in New York City in public places such as Grand Central Station and The Paramount Theatre injuring ten during this period in protest of the high rates of a local electric utility. He also sent many threatening letters to various high profile individuals.
1951: A wave of hate related terrorist attacks occurred in Florida. African-Americans were dragged and beaten to death, with 11 race-related bombings, the dynamiting of synagogues, and a Jewish School in Miami and explosives found outside of Catholic Churches in Miami.[11][12]
The most active perpetrators of terrorism in New York City were Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional (FALN), a Puerto Rican separatist group, responsible for 40 NYC attacks in this decade. The Jewish Defense League (JDL), which engaged in attacks against targets it perceived to be anti-Semitic, launched 27 attacks during this period. Both the Independent Armed Revolutionary Commandos (CRIA), another Puerto Rican separatist group, and Omega 7, an anti-Castro Cuban organization, were also each responsible for 16 attacks during this period.[21]
April 1970: At Stanford University over a period of several nights bands of student radicals systematically set fires, break windows and throw rocks.[17]
November 21, 1970: Bombing of the City Hall of Portland, Oregon in an attempt to destroy the state’s bronze Liberty Bell replica. The late night explosion destroyed the display foyer, blew out the building doors, damaged the council hall, and blew out windows more than a block away. The night janitor was injured in the blast. The crime remains unsolved, though a number of local anti-war and radical leftist groups of the era remain the primary suspects.
1971: The Jewish Defense League was linked to a detonation outside of Soviet cultural offices in Washington, D.C. and rifle fire into the Soviet mission to the United Nations.
June 1, 1973: Yosef Alon, the Israeli Air Force attache in Washington, D.C., was shot and killed outside his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. The Palestinian militant group Black September was suspected, though the case remains unsolved.[22]
June 13, 1974: The 29th floor of the Gulf Tower in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was bombed with dynamite at 9:41 pm resulting in no injuries. The radical leftist group Weatherman took credit, but no suspects have ever been identified.[23]
Summer 1974: “Alphabet Bomber” Muharem Kurbegovich bombed the Pan Am Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport, killing three and injuring eight. He also firebombed the houses of a judge and two police commissioners as well as one of the commissioner’s cars. He burned down two Marina Del Rey apartment buildings and threatened Los Angeles with a gas attack. His bomb defused at the Greyhound Bus station was the most powerful the LAPD bomb squad had handled up until that time. His personal vendetta against a judge and the commissioners grew into demands for an end to immigration and naturalization laws, as well as any laws about sex.[24]
January 24, 1975: A bomb was exploded in the Fraunces Tavern of New York City, killing four people and injuring more than 50 others. The Puerto Rico nationalist group FALN, the Armed Forces of Puerto Rican National Liberation, which had other bomb incidents in New York in the 1970s, claimed responsibility. No one was ever prosecuted for the bombing.
September 11, 1976: Croatian terrorists hijacked a TWA airliner and diverted it to Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador, and then Paris, demanding a manifesto be printed. One police officer was killed and three injured during an attempt to defuse a bomb that contained their communiques in a New York City train station locker.[26]Zvonko Bušić who served 32 years in prison for the attack, was released and returned to Croatia in July 2008. In September 2013 Bušić shot himselfand was given a hero’s funeral by the Croatian government.[27]
1976 September 21: Orlando Letelier, a former member of the Chilean government, was killed by a car bomb in Washington, D.C. along with his assistant Ronni Moffitt. The killing was carried out by members of the Chilean Intelligence Agency, DINA.
1980s
1980 June 3: Bombing of the Statue of Liberty. At 7:30 pm, a time delayed explosive device detonated in the Statue of Liberty’s Story Room. Detonated after business hours, the bomb did not injure anyone, but caused $18,000 in damage, destroying many of the exhibits. The room was sealed off and left unrepaired until the Statue of Liberty restoration project that began years later. FBI investigators believed the perpetrators were Croatian seeking for media coverage of living conditions of Croats in Yugoslavia, though no arrests were made.
1981 December 7: James W. von Brunn served 6 years in prison for attempting to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve at their headquarters in Washington, D.C. He testified his motive was to raise awareness of alleged “treacherous and unconstitutional” acts by the Federal Reserve.[29]
1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack: In what is believed to be the first incident of bioterrorism in the United States the Rajneesh movement spreads salmonella in salad bars at 10 restaurants in The Dalles, Oregon, to influence a local election which backfired as suspicious residents came out in droves to prevent the election of Rajneeshee candidates. Health officials say that 751 people were sickened and more than 40 hospitalized. All but one of the establishments attacked went out of business. Investigators believed that similar attacks had previously been carried out in Salem, Portland and other cities in Oregon.[30]
1984 July 18: Alan Berg, Jewish lawyer-talk show host was shot and killed in the driveway of his home on Capitol Hill, Denver, Colorado, by members of a White Nationalist group called The Order. Berg had stridently argued with a member of the group on the show earlier who was convicted in his murder.
1990 November 5: Assassination of Meir Kahane was carried out by an Egyptian gunman.
1993 January 25: CIA Shooting: Mir Aimal Kasi opened fire to cars waiting at the stop light in front of CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, killing two and injuring three others.
1993 March 10: David Gunn was murdered by anti-abortion activist Michael F. Griffin.
1994 March 1: The Brooklyn Bridge Shooting occurred when Lebanese-born Rashid Baz shot at a van of Jewish students that was traveling on the Brooklyn Bridge from a visit to Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, killing one and injuring three others.
1993 September 5: Charles F. Hockenbarger of the Westboro Baptist Church assaults the Rev. W. Gerald Weeks while the Reverend was counter-protesting a WBC anti-homosexuality protest outside Topeka‘s First Lutheran Church by carrying a sign that read “God’s Love Speaks Loudest”. Hockenbarger receives a sentence of 5 days in jail, appeals the sentence, and loses the appeal.[33]
1994 December 10: Advertising executive, Thomas J. Mosser, was killed after opening a mail package from the Unabomber, being the second fatality of the mailbomb campaign.
1994 December 30: Shannon Lowney and Lee Ann Nichols, two receptionists in abortion and family planning clinics, were killed by John Salvi.
1997 February 24: 69-year-old Palestinian Ali Hassan Abu Kamal opened fire on tourists at an observation deck atop the Empire State Building killing a Danish national and wounding visitors from the United States, Argentina, Switzerland and France before turning the gun on himself.[34] A handwritten note carried by the gunman claims this was a punishment attack against the “enemies of Palestine“. His widow claimed he became suicidal after losing $300,000 in a business venture. In a 2007 interview with the New York Daily News his daughter said her mother’s story was a cover crafted by the Palestinian Authority and that her father wanted to punish the United States for its support of Israel.[35]
1999 August 10: In the Los Angeles Jewish Community Center shooting, white supremacist Buford O. Furrow, Jr. fired 70 shots into the lobby of a Jewish Community Center in the suburb of Granada Hills, wounding five people, and then killed a postal worker in a spree targeting Jews and minorities.[36]
1999 December 31: An arson fire caused one million dollars in damage and destroyed the fourth floor of Michigan State University’s Agriculture Hall. In 2008 four people that the government claimed were Earth Liberation Front members were indicted for that incident.[37][38]
2001 September 11: the September 11, 2001 attacks were carried out by Muslim extremists. The attacks killed 2,507civilians, 72 law enforcement officers, 343 firefighters, and 55 military personnel, and were carried out using hijacked commercial airplanes to damage the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington, D.C. The 110-story skyscrapers in New York City were ultimately destroyed, and the Pentagon received extensive damage in the western side of the building. Building 7 of the World Trade Center was also destroyed in the attack, though there were no casualties. A fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania before it could reach its target.
2001 September 18 – November: 2001 anthrax attacks. Letters tainted with anthrax killed five across the U.S., with politicians and media officials as the apparent targets. On July 31, 2008 Bruce E. Ivins a top biodefense researcher committed suicide.[41] On August 6, 2008, the FBI concluded that Ivins was solely responsible for the attacks, and suggested that Ivins wanted to bolster support for a vaccine he helped create and that he targeted two lawmakers because they were Catholics who held pro-choice views.[42] However, subsequent evaluations have found that the FBI’s investigation failed to provide any direct evidence linking Ivins to the mailings.[43]
October 2002 Beltway sniper attacks: During three weeks in October 2002, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo killed 10 people and critically injured 3 others in Washington D.C., Baltimore, and Virginia. The pair were also suspected of earlier shootings in Maryland, Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, and Washington state.[46] No motivation was given at the trial, but evidence presented showed an affinity to the cause of the Islamic jihad.
2006 March 5: Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar injured 6 when he drove an SUV into a group of pedestrians at UNC-Chapel Hill to “avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world”.[47]
2006 July 28: Seattle Jewish Federation shooting, Naveed Afzal Haq, an American citizen of Pakistani descent, killed one woman and shoots five others at the Jewish Federation building in Seattle. During the shooting, Haq told a 911 dispatcher that he was angry with American foreign policy in the Middle East.[48]
2007 October 26: A pair of improvised explosive devices were thrown at the Mexican Consulate in New York City. The fake grenades were filled with black powder, and detonated by fuses, causing very minor damage. Police were investigating the connection between this and a similar attack against the British Consulate in New York in 2005.[49]
2008 February: In the first reported incident of animal-rights extremists physically assaulted the family members of animal researchers, six masked activists attempted to force their way into the home of a University of California, Santa Cruz, researcher and injured the researcher’s husband.[50][51]
2008 March 6: A homemade bomb damaged a Recruiting Office in Times Square.[53] In June 2013 The FBI and New York City police offered a $65,000 reward for information in the case and revealed that ammunition used for the bomb is the same as is used in the Iraq and Afghanistan war zones.[54] On April 15, 2015 the F.B.I increased the award to $115,000 and said they have persons of interest[55]
2008 May 4: Multiple pipe bombs exploded at 1:40 am at the Edward J. Schwartz United States Courthouse in San Diego causing “considerable damage” to the entrance and lobby and sending shrapnel two blocks away, but causing no injuries. The F.B.I. is investigating links between this attack and an April 25 explosion at the FedEx building also in San Diego.[56]
2008 August 2, August 3 University of California-Santa Cruzmolecular biologist David Feldheim’s home was firebombed. A car belonging to another researcher from that university was destroyed by a firebomb in what is presumed to be related. FBI is investigating incidents as domestic terrorism related to animal rights groups.[57][58]
2009 April 8: According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, intruders left malware in power grids, water, and sewage systems that could be activated at a later date. While the attacks which have occurred over a period of time seem to have originated in China and Russia, it is unknown if they are state-sponsored[59] or errors in the computer code.[60][61]
2009 May 31: Assassination of George Tiller: Scott Roeder shoots and kills Dr. George Tiller in a Wichita, Kansas church. Roeder, an anti-abortion extremistwho believes in justifiable homicide of abortion providers, was arrested soon afterward. Roeder was convicted of the crime and sentenced to 50 years in prison in 2010. Tiller, who performed late-term abortions, had long been a target of anti-abortion extremists; his clinic was firebombed in 1986 and Tiller was shot and wounded five times in 1993 in a shooting attack by Shelley Shannon.[62][63]
2009 May 25: 17-year-old Kyle Shaw sets off a crude explosive device at a Starbucks at East 92nd Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, shattering windows and destroyed a bench at the coffee shop. There were no injuries. The attack was a “bizarre tribute” of the movie Fight Club, in an attempt to emulate “Project Mayhem”, a series of assaults on corporate America portrayed in the film. Shaw took a plea agreement and was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison in November 2010.[64][65]
2009 June 1: Arkansas recruiting office shooting: Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad shot and killed one military recruiter and seriously wounded another at a Little Rock, Arkansas Army/Navy Career Center in an act of Islamic terrorism. Muhammad, a convert to Islam, had visited Yemen for 16 months where he spent time in prison and became radicalized. Muhammad, said he was part of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and was upset over U.S. killing of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.[66]
2009 November 5: 2009 Fort Hood shooting: Nidal Malik Hasan, a US Army Major serving as a Psychiatrist, opens fire at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 and wounding 29. On August 23, 2013 Hasan was convicted by a Military tribunal. Hasan acted as his own attorney and took responsibility for the attack saying his motive was jihad to fight “illegal and immoral aggression against Muslims”.[67] On August 28 Hasan was sentenced to death.[68]
2010 February 18: Austin suicide attack: Andrew Joseph Stack III flying his single engine plane flew into the Austin Texas IRS building killing himself and one IRS employee and injuring 13 others. Stack left a suicide note online, comparing the IRS to Big Brother from the novel 1984.
2012 August 5: Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting: Six people were killed and three others were injured, including a police officer who was tending to victims at aSikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. The gunman, 40-year-old Wade Michael Page, killed himself after being shot by police.[71] The shooting is being treated by authorities as an act of domestic terrorism.[72][73] While a motive has not been clearly defined Page had been active in white supremacist groups.[71]
2013 April 15: Boston Marathon bombings: Two bombs detonated within seconds of each other near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing 3 and injuring more than 180 people.[74][75] Late in the evening of April 18 in Cambridge, Massachusetts an MIT campus police officer was shot and killed while sitting in his squad car. Two suspects then carjacked an SUV and fled to nearby Watertown, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. A massive police chase ensued, resulting in a shootout during which several IED‘s were thrown by the suspects. A Boston transit police officer was critically wounded and suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a Russian immigrant of Chechen ethnicity, was killed. The second suspect, Tsarnaev’s younger brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, escaped. A “Shelter in place” order was given for Boston, Watertown, and the surrounding areas while house-to-house searches were conducted, but the suspect remained at large. Shortly after the search was called off Tsarnaev was discovered by a local resident hiding inside a boat parked in the resident’s driveway less than three blocks from the scene of the shootout. He was taken into custody after another exchange of gunfire and taken to nearby Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, where he was treated for injuries received during his pursuit and capture. Tsarnaev was arraigned on federal terrorism charges from his hospital bed on April 22, 2013.[76][77][78][79] Preliminary questioning indicated the Tsarnaev brothers had no ties to terrorist organizations.[80] A note written by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the boat where he was captured said the bombings were retaliation for US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan against Muslims.[81] On April 8, 2015 Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found guilty on all 30 counts related to the bombing and shootout with police.[82] On May 15, 2015 Tsarnaev was sentenced to death.[83]
2014 April 13: Overland Park Jewish Community Center shooting: A pair of shootings committed by a lone gunman occurred at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City and Village Shalom, a Jewish retirement community, in Overland Park, Kansas. A total of three people died in the shootings. One suspect, identified as Frazier Glenn Miller, Jr., a neo-Nazi neo-Pagan, was arrested and charged with capital murder, first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, and aggravated assault.
2014 June 8: 2014 Las Vegas shootings: Two police officers and one civilian died in a shooting spree in the Las Vegas Valley committed by a couple, identified as Jerad and Amanda Miller, who espoused anti-government views and were reportedly inspired by the outcome of the Bundy standoff. The Millers both died during a gunfight with responding police; Jerad Miller was fatally shot by officers, while Amanda Miller committed suicide after being wounded.
2014 October 23: 2014 New York City hatchet attack: Zale Thompson injured two New York City police officers, once critically at a Queens, New York shopping district by striking them with a hatchet. 4 officers were posing for a photograph when Thompson charged them. The police opened fire killing Thompson and injuring a bystander. Thompson who converted to Islam 2 years before the attack posted “anti-government, anti-Western, anti-white” messages online.[84]
2014 November 28: Austin, Texas: Right-wing and anti-government extremist Larry Steven McQuilliams set a fire at the Mexican Consulate and shot towards several government buildings. Police arrived on scene and shot him dead. McQuilliams had a prior criminal history including drug possession and robbery.
2014 December: “The Guardians of Peace” linked by the United States to North Korea launched a cyber attack against SONY pictures. Embarrassing private emails were published and the organization threatened attacks against theaters that showed The Interview a satire which depicted the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Following the refusal of theater chains to show the movie, SONY Pictures withdrew release of the movie, a decision that was criticized by President Obama and others. Obama said the USA will respond. North Korea denied responsibility for the attack and proposed a joint investigation with the U.S.[85][86][87]
2014 December 20: Ismaaiyl Brinsley, a reported gang member, allegedly assassinated New York City police officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu in theBedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Brinsley was reported to have walked up and fired directly into the officers squad car. Other officers chased the suspect into a nearby subway station, where Brinsley fatally shot himself in the head. Prior to the shooting, Brinsley had written Instagram messages calling for revenge attacks in response to the police killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. He also allegedly shot his girlfriend in Maryland earlier that day.[88][89]
2015 May 3: Curtis Culwell Center attack: Two gunmen opened fire outside the Curtis Culwell Center during an art exhibit hosted by an anti-Muslim group called the American Freedom Defense Initiative in Garland, Texas. The center was hosting a contest for cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Both gunmen were killed by police. A Garland Independent School District (ISD) police officer was injured by a shot to the ankle but survived. The attackers, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, were motivated by the Charlie Hebdo shooting in France and the 2015 Copenhagen shooting in Denmark earlier in the year. TheIslamic State of Iraq and the Levant claimed responsibility for the attack through a Twitter post.[90]
1865–77: Over 3,000 Freedmen and their Republican Party allies were killed by a combination of the Ku Klux Klan and well organized campaigns of violence by local whites in a campaign of terrorist violence that overthrew Reconstructionist governments in the south and reestablished segregation.[93][94]
1898 November 10: In the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, white supremacists overthrew the biracial Republican government of Wilmington, North Carolina, killing at least 22 African Americans, marking the beginning of the Jim Crow era in North Carolina.
1927: The Ku Klux Klan launched a wave of political terror in Alabama, attempting to undermine African American rights.
1951 December 25: Harry T. Moore state co-coordinator of the Florida NAACP and his wife were killed by dynamite bomb in his Mims, Florida home. Despite extensive FBI investigation no one was arrested but Orlando KKK suspected.[11][12]
1963 June 12: NAACP organizer Medgar Evers was killed in front of his Mississippi home by member of the Ku Klux Klan.
March 25, 1965: The Ku Klux Klan murdered Viola Liuzzo, a Southern-raised white mother of five who was visiting Alabama from her home in Detroit to attend acivil rights march. At the time of her murder, Liuzzo was transporting Civil Rights Marchers.
1966 January 10: Vernon Dahmer died in the firebombing of his own home in Mississippi at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan.
March 20, 1981: Michael Donald was randomly selected to be lynched by two Ku Klux Klan members near his Alabama home. He was beaten, had his throat slit, and was hanged.
White supremacy
1951 Wave of hate related terrorist attacks in Florida. Blacks dragged and beaten to death, 11 race related bombings, dynamiting of synagogues and a Jewish School in Miami and explosives found outside of Catholic Churches in Miami.[11][12]
1984 July 18: Alan Berg, Jewish lawyer-talk show host was shot and killed in the driveway of his home on Capitol Hill, Denver, Colorado, by members of a White Nationalist group called The Order. Berg had stridently argued with a member of the group on the show earlier who was convicted in his murder.
1988 Frazier Glenn Miller, Jr. a Vietnam Veteran and who according to the Southern Poverty Law Center founded the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1980s served three years in Federal penitentiary for trying to assassinate Morris Dees founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The FBI found a cache of weapons in his home after they used tear gas to drive him out and arrest him. He testified against 14 White Supremacists as part of a plea bargain deal.[95]
2015 June 17: Charleston church shooting a mass shooting took place at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, United States. The church is one of the United States’ oldest black churches and has long been a site for community organization around civil rights. Nine people were killed, including the senior pastor, Clementa C. Pinckney, a state senator. A tenth victim was also shot, but survived. The FBI has not classified the act as terrorism, which was met with controversy.
Anti-government, Anti-liberal, and fascist extremism
2002 May: Lucas John Helder rigged pipe bombs in private mailboxes to explode when the boxes were opened. He injured 6 people in Nebraska, Colorado, Texas, Illinois, and Iowa. His motivation was to garner media attention so that he could spread a message denouncing government control over daily lives and the illegality of marijuana, as well as promote astral projection.
2008 July 27: Knoxville Unitarian Universalist church shooting: Jim David Adkisson enters the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee with a shotgun, killing two and injuring several congregants before being tackled to the ground. Adkisson stated to the police and in a manifesto that he desired to kill Democrats, liberals, African Americans and homosexuals. Adkisson pled guilty to the crime in February 2009 and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.[99][100]
2009 June 10: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting: 88-year-old James Wenneker von Brunn, a white supremacist and neo-Nazi, walked into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., shooting and mortally wounding Stephen Tyrone Johns, a security guard. Von Brunn was wounded when other museum guards immediately returned fire and on January 6, 2010, von Brunn died of natural causes at a hospital near where he was imprisoned awaiting trial.[101][102][103] During the investigation it was discovered that von Brunn had planned to target White House senior adviser David Axelrod leading to increased protection for Axelrod and other steps.[104]
2011 January 6: Three packages detonate in the mail rooms of two Maryland state government buildings, causing minor injuries to the fingers of two government workers.[105]
2013 November 1 2013 Los Angeles International Airport shooting 23-year-old Paul Ciancia kills a Transportation Security Administration agent and wounds 7 others, 3 of them TSA agents. Ciancia was shot and taken into custody. A note found in Ciancia’s pocket said he believed he was a patriot and wanted to kill “patriot” upset at former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and that he wanted to kill “TSA and pigs”.[106]
2014 June 8: Two Las Vegas police officers while eating pizza in a restaurant and one civilian were shot to death allegedly by Jerad and Amanda Miller a married couple in a suicide attack. A Gadsden flag, swastika and a note promising “revolution,” was placed on the deceased officers bodies. The couple were thrown out a patriot group defending rancher Cliven Bundy[107][108]
2014 September 16- Eric Matthew Frein described as a survivalist is alleged to have killed a Pennsylvania State trooper and critically wounded another at theBlooming Grove barracks. Life was disrupted in the region during the ensuing manhunt. On October 30 Frein was captured near an abandoned airport hangar and was shackled with the handcuff belonging to the trooper he is accused of killing. Prosecutors said they would pursue the death penalty.[109][110]
1996–98: anti-abortion extremist Eric Rudolph cited biblical passages as his motivation for a series of bombings, including Atlanta’s Olympic Centennial Park, aLesbian bar, and several abortion clinics. Rudolph acknowledges his attacks were religiously motivated, but denies that his brief association with the racistChristian Identity movement was a motivation for his attacks.
1998: James Kopp killed at least one and went on a series of anti-abortion shooting sprees, both in the U.S. and Canada.
Between 1993 and 2001, the major attacks or attempts against US interests stemmed from militant Islamic jihad extremism except for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.[197] In 2001 nearly 3,000 people were killed in the September 11 attacks organised by al-Qaeda and largely perpetrated by Saudi nationals, sparking the War on Terror. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden considers homegrown terrorism to be the most dangerous threat and concern faced by American citizens today.[198] As of July 2011, there have been 52 homegrown jihadist extremist plots or attacks in the United States since the September 11 attacks.[199]
2013 April 15: Boston Marathon bombings: Two bombs detonated within seconds of each other near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing 3 and injuring more than 180 people.[72][73] Late in the evening of April 18 in Cambridge, Massachusetts an MIT campus police officer was shot and killed while sitting in his squad car. Two suspects then carjacked an SUV and fled to nearby Watertown, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. A massive police chase ensued, resulting in a shootout during which several IED’s were thrown by the suspects. A Boston transit police officer was critically wounded and suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a Russian immigrant of Chechen ethnicity, was killed. The second suspect, Tsarnaev’s younger brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, escaped. A “Shelter in place” order was given for Boston, Watertown, and the surrounding areas while house-to-house searches were conducted, but the suspect remained at large. Shortly after the search was called off Tsarnaev was discovered by a local resident hiding inside a boat parked in the resident’s driveway less than three blocks from the scene of the shootout. He was taken into custody after another exchange of gunfire and taken to nearby Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, where he was treated for injuries received during his pursuit and capture. Tsarnaev was arraigned on federal terrorism charges from his hospital bed on April 22, 2013.[74][75][76][77] Preliminary questioning indicated the Tsarnaev brothers had no ties to terrorist organizations.[78] A note written by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the boat where he was captured said the bombings were retaliation for US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan against Muslims.[79] On April 8, 2015 Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found guilty on all 30 counts related to the bombing and shootout with police. The death penalty phase of the trail is scheduled to follow.[80]
2015 May 3: Garland, Texas. Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi roommates from North Phoenix, Arizona killed by a security guard when they started shooting at a building holding a Mohammad cartoon contest sponsored by Stop Islamization of America. A school security helping with security at the event was shot in the leg.[151]
1971: Jewish Defense League linked to a detonation outside of Soviet cultural offices in Washington, D.C. and rifle fire into the Soviet mission to the United Nations
1974 June 13: The 29th floor of the Gulf Tower in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was bombed with dynamite at 9:41 pm resulting in no injuries. The radical leftist group Weatherman took credit, but no suspects have ever been identified.[23]
1970 October 22: An antipersonnel time bomb explodes outside a San Francisco church, showering steel shrapnel on mourners of a patrolman slain in a bank holdup; no one is injured. The Black Liberation Army is suspected.[112]
1971: During this year the Black Liberation Army is suspected of killing three policemen one at his desk in San Francisco, shooting four others and opening fire on three patrol cars and rolling a grenade which heavily damages a police car and injures two officers. An attempt is made to bomb a police station. These incidents happen in various cities around the country. In August the group runs a one-month-long guerrilla warfare school in Fayetteville, Georgia. Seven are arrested in January 2007 in connection with the San Francisco desk shooting incident.[112][113]
1972 January 22: Two St. Louis policemen, Gregory Foster and Rocco Laurie, are shot in the back by at least three persons; four suspects in the case are members of the Black Liberation Army; one suspect is later killed in a street battle with police; the recovered pistol matches Laurie’s.[112]
1972 December 28: A Brooklyn, New York bartender is held for $12000 ransom by the Black Liberation Army.[112]
1973 January 7: After shooting a police officer a week earlier Mark Essex a former Black Panther party member shoots nineteen people, ten of them police officers, in retaliation for police killings in and around a Howard Johnson’s hotel in New Orleans. He also set fires in the hotel before being killed by police.
1973: A New York City transit detective is killed and ten law enforcement personnel are shot four by machine gun during the year mostly in and around New York City by the Black Liberation Army. Also two members of that organization are arrested with a car full of explosives. In the next few years there are a number of violent incidents involving this organization but they are more criminal in nature.[112]
1975 January 24: FALN bombs Fraunces Tavern in New York City, killing four and injuring more than 50.
1975 December 29: A bomb set off by FALN in East Harlem, New York, permanently disables a police officer while causing him to lose an eye.
1977 August 3: FALN bombs exploded on the twenty-first floor of 342 Madison Avenue in New York City, which housed United States Department of Defensesecurity personnel, as well as the Mobil Building at 150 East Forty-Second Street, killing one. In addition the group warned that bombs were located in thirteen other buildings, including the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center resulting in the evacuation of one hundred thousand people. Five days later a bomb attributed to the group was found in the AMEX building.[114]
May 3, 1979: FALN exploded a bomb outside of the Shubert Theatre in Chicago, injuring five people.
1980 March 15 Armed members of FALN raided the campaign headquarters of President Jimmy Carter in Chicago and the campaign headquarters of George H. W. Bush in New York City. Seven people in Chicago and ten people in New York were tied up as the offices were vandalized before the FALN members fled. A few days later, Carter delegates in Chicago received threatening letters from FALN.
1981 May 16: One was killed in an explosion in the toilets at the Pan Am terminal at New York’s JFK airport. The bombing is claimed by the Puerto Rican Resistance Army.[115]
1973 June 1: Yosef Alon, the Israeli Air Force attache in Washington, D.C., was shot and killed outside his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Palestinian militant group Black September is suspected, though the case remains unsolved.[22]
Failed attacks
1864 November 25: Confederate Army of Manhattan Fires were set at 19 New York City hotels, P.T. Barnum‘s Museum, and 2 hay barges resulting in minor damage. Plot to burn down New York City organized by Confederate Lieutenant Colonel Robert Martin failed because the Greek fire incendiary devices were defective and the Lincoln Administration had been tipped off by a double agent and intercepted telegraph messages. After the conspirators found out the plot had been discovered they escaped to Canada. Confederate Captain Robert C. Kennedy became the only conspirator apprehended when he was arrested following his return to the U.S. Kennedy was tried by a military tribunal and hanged.[118][119]
1920 September 16: The Wall Street bombing: A suspected attempt to kill financier J.P. Morgan by exploding the first car bomb. Bomb was created by putting scrap metal and 100 pounds of dynamite on a horse-drawn cart and blowing it up on Wall Street. Morgan was out of town but 38 people were killed. Responsibility for the attack has never been firmly established.[120]
1970 March 6 Three members of the Weather Underground are killed when their “bomb factory” located in New York’s Greenwich Village accidentally explodes. WUO members Theodore Gold, Diana Oughton, and Terry Robbins die in this accident. The bomb was intended to be planted at a non-commissioned officer’s dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey. The bomb was packed with nails to inflict maximum casualties upon detonation. See Greenwich Village townhouse explosion.
1971 April Pipe bombs found at the embassies of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in Washington, D.C.[123]
1972 Two Jewish Defense League members were arrested and charged with bomb possession and burglary in a conspiracy to blow up the Long Islandresidence of the Soviet mission to the United Nations
1972 March 7 4.5 pounds of C-4 explosives found on a plane by New York City Police Bomb Squad.
1973 March 6: 1973 New York bomb plot Explosives found in the trunks of cars were defused at the El Al air terminal at Kennedy Airport, the First Israel Bank and Trust Company, and the Israel Discount Bank, in New York City. The plot was foiled when the National Security Agency intercepted an encrypted message sent to the Iraqi foreign ministry in Baghdad to the Palestine Liberation Organization‘s office. The attacks were meant to coincide with visit of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. Khalid Duhham al-Jawary of the Black September was convicted on charges relating to the attacks in 1993 and was released to immigration authorities in 2009.[124][125]
1975 September 22: Sarah Jane Moore tries to assassinate President Gerald Ford outside of the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. The attempt fails when a bystander grabs her arm and deflects the shot. Moore has stated the motive was to create chaos to bring “the winds of change” because the government had declared war on the left wing.[126][127][128]
April 1985: The FBI arrested several members of a Sikh terrorist group who were plotting to kill Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi when he visited New York in June.
March 1995: Charles Ray Polk is arrested while attempting to buy a quantity of plastic explosives and machine guns in order to assassinate four police officers and a female judge, and to use in a planned bombing of the IRS offices in Tyler, Texas.[132]
April 1996: Anti-government activist & survivalist Ray Hamblin is arrested after authorities find 460 pounds of the high explosive Tovex, 746 pounds of ANFOblasting agent, and 15 homemade hand grenades on his property in Hood River, Oregon during an investigation into a series of explosions in his storage sheds.[135]
July 1996: Twelve members of an Arizonamilitia group called the Viper Team are arrested on federal conspiracy, weapons and explosive charges after planning to bomb a number of Federal office buildings, including one that houses the office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearmsand the FBI.[136]
July 1996: Washington State Militia leader John Pitner and seven others are arrested on weapons and explosives charges in connection with a plot to build pipe bombs for a confrontation with the federal government. Pitner and four others will be convicted on weapons charges, while conspiracy charges against all eight will end in a mistrial.[137] Pitner will later be retried on that charge, convicted and sentenced to four years in prison.[138]
1997 March 17: anti-abortion extremist Peter Howard puts 13 gas cans and three propane tanks in his truck, and drives it through the door of a California women’s clinic in a failed attempt to fire bomb the clinic.[140]
September 1999: anti-abortion extremist Clayton Lee Waagner was pulled over by the Pennsylvania State Police, but fled into the woods and evaded capture, leaving behind a stolen car that contained firearms, explosives, fake ID, and a list of abortion clinics. Later in September 1999, while on a self-described “Mission from God”, he took his wife and their nine children on a cross-country road trip headed west in a stolen Winnebago, planning to murder various abortion doctors, beginning with one in Seattle, Washington. However, after crossing into Illinois his vehicle broke down, and Waagner was arrested when Illinois State Policestopped to investigate. Waagner was convicted on charges of interstate transportation of a stolen motor vehicle and for being a convicted felon in possession offirearms. Waagner later escaped and used a cross country crime spree to continue to fund his anti-abortion mission.
2001 December 22: British citizen and self-proclaimed Al Qaeda member Richard Reid attempted to detonate the C-4 explosive PETN concealed in his shoeswhile on a flight from Paris to Miami. He was subdued by crew and passengers with the plane landing safely in Boston.
2004 Columbus Shopping Mall bombing plot: A loosely organized group of young men planned to carry out an attack on an unnamed shopping mall.
June 2006: The Animal Liberation Front targets UCLA professor Lynn Fairbanks with a firebomb due to her research on animals. The bomb was placed on the doorstep of a house occupied by her neighbor and a tenant. According to the FBI, the device was lit but failed to ignite and was powerful enough to have killed the occupants.
2006 September 11: A man rammed his car into a women’s clinic that he thought was an abortion clinic and set it ablaze in Davenport, Iowa causing $20,000 worth of damage to the building.[141]
2007 April 25: A bomb was left in a women’s clinic in Austin, Texas but failed to explode.[142][143]
2009 December 25: British and Nigerian citizen and self-described Al-Qaeda member Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly attempted to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in flight over Detroit by igniting his underpants which were filled with the C-4 explosive PETN.[144][145] He has been indicted in a U.S. federal court; charges include the attempted murder of 289 people.[146] Several days later, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen and Saudi Arabia claimed responsibility for the attempted attack. Addressing America, the group threatened to “come for you to slaughter.”[147] On January 24, 2010 an audio tape that US intelligence believes is authentic was broadcast in which Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing. The intelligence officials expressed doubt about the veracity of bin Laden’s claim.[148] On October 12, 2011 Abdulmutallab plead guilty to all counts against him and read a statement to the court saying “I attempted to use an explosive device which in the U.S. law is a weapon of mass destruction, which I call a blessed weapon to save the lives of innocent Muslims, for U.S. use of weapons of mass destruction on Muslim populations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and beyond”.[149]
2010 May 1 2010 Times Square car bomb attempt and plot: An attempted evening car bombing in crowded Times Square in New York City failed when a street vendor saw smoke emanating from an SUV and called police. The White House has blamed Tehrik-e-Taliban the Pakistani Taliban for the failed attack and saidFaisal Shahzad aged 30, an American of Pakistani origin who has been arrested in relation to the incident was working for the group.[150] In July 2010, the Pakistani Taliban released a video featuring Shahzad in which he urged other Muslims in the West to follow his example and to wage similar attacks.[151] On May 3, Shahzad was arrested at Kennedy Airport as he was preparing to fly to Dubai.[152] The device was described as crude and amateurish but potent enough to cause casualties.[153] On May 13 the F.B.I. raided several locations in the Northeast and arrested 3 on alleged immigration violations.[154] Several suspects were arrested in Pakistan including the co-owner of a prominent catering firm used by the US embassy.[155] On June 21 Shahzad plead guilty to 10 counts saying he created the bomb to force the US military to withdraw troops and stop drone attacks in a number of Muslim countries. Shahzad said he chose the location to cause mass civilian casualties because the civilians elected the government that carried out the allegedly anti Muslim policies.[156] On October 4, 2010 Shahzad was sentenced to life in prison.[157] During his sentencing, he threatened that “the defeat of the U.S. is imminent” and that “we will keep on terrorizing you until you leave our lands.”[151] Shahzad planned on detonating a second bomb in Times Square two weeks later.[158]
2011 January 17: Spokane bombing attempt: A small pipe bomb in a backpack designed to be detonated by remote control and spread shrapnel in a specific direction was discovered during a Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane, Washington. White supremacist Kevin Harpham is convicted and sentenced to 32 years in federal prison.[160][161]
2013 April 8: Letters believed to contain the poison Ricin were sent to President Barack Obama and Mississippi Republican Senator Roger Wicker and a Mississippi Justice official. Tests on the granular substance found in the letters tested positive for “low grade” ricin.
2013 April 25: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev the suspect in the Boston Marathon Bombings told investigators that he and his brother discussed using leftover explosives to attack Times Square.[162] According to NYC Police commissioner Raymond Kelly the plan was conceived after they attacked Boston and was foiled when their SUV ran out of gas as they tried to escape from the Boston marathon bombing manhunt.[163]
2015 January 15: Washington, DC. U.S. Capitol Terror Attack Stopped By FBI. Investigators say a 20-year-old Ohio man now in FBI custody wanted to set off pipe bombs at the U.S. Capitol as a way of supporting ISIS. Federal authorities identified the man as Christopher Lee Cornell, also known as Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah. Cornell, who lives in the Cincinnati area, allegedly told an FBI informant they should “wage jihad,” and showed his plans for bombing the Capitol and shooting people, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court. The FBI said Cornell expressed his desire to support the Islamic State.[164] Authorities say Cornell was arrested Wednesday after buying two semi-automatic rifles and about 600 rounds of ammunition, but an FBI agent says the public was never in danger.
2015 May 3: Garland, Texas. Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi roommates from North Phoenix, Arizona killed by a security guard when they started shooting at a building holding a Mohammad cartoon contest sponsored by Stop Islamization of America. A school security helping with security at the event was shot in the leg.[165]
1864 November: Plan by Confederate Lieutenant Colonel Robert Martin and the Copperheads organization Sons of Liberty to attack New York City and disrupt elections collapsed when the Sons of Liberty backed out upon seeing large numbers of Union troops.[118]
1865 February 28 Dahlgren Affair: Alleged plot by Union General Judson Kilpatrick to burn down Richmond, Virginia and kill Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet. Allegations based on papers recovered by a 13-year-old member of the Confederate home guard. The authenticity of the papers have been a matter of dispute.[166]
1940 January: The FBI shuts down the Christian Front after discovering its members were arming themselves for a plot to “murder Jews, communists, and ‘a dozen Congressmen'” and establishing a government modeled after Nazi Germany.[167][168]
1943 March 31: Clarence Cull arrested and charged with attempting to assassinate President Franklin D. Roosevelt by suicide bombing. Cull blamed Roosevelt for lost convoys of Merchant Ships.
1996 January 1: Members of the Viper Team militia are arrested after they caught surveying government buildings in Arizona.[169]
1996 July 13: John J. Ford, 47, of Bellport, Long Island, a former court officer and president of the Long Island U.F.O. Network, and Joseph Mazzachelli plotted to poison local politicians with radium and shoot them if that did not work. They believed the government was covering up knowledge of UFO landings.[171][172]
1997 July 4: Members of the splinter militia group the Third Continental Congress are arrested while planning attacks on military bases which they believed were being used to train United Nations troops to attack U.S. citizens.[169]
1997 July 30 Two men who were planning to bomb the New York City subway the next day arrested. A resident of their apartment informed police after he overheard the men discussing the plot.[173]
1998 March 18: Members of the North American Militia are arrested in plot to bomb Federal Buildings in Michigan, a television station and an interstate highway intersection.[169]
1999 December 5: Members of the San Joaquin Militia are arrested on charges of plotting to bomb critical infrastructure locations in hopes of sparking an insurrection. The leaders of the group plead guilty to charges of plotting to kill a Federal judge.[169]
1999 December 8: The leader of the Southeastern States Alliance militia group is arrested in plot to bomb energy faculties with the goal of causing power outages in Florida and Georgia.[169]
2000 March 9: The former leader of the Texas Militia is arrested in a plot to attack the Federal Building in Houston.[169]
2002 February 8: Two members of Project 7 are arrested plotting to kill judges and law enforcement officials in order to kick off a revolution.[169]
2002 September 3: An Idaho Mountain Militia Boys plot to kill a judge and a police officer and break a friend out of jail is uncovered.[169]
2003 April 24: William Krar is charged for his part in the Tyler poison gas plot, a white supremacist related plan. A sodium cyanide bomb was seized with at least 100 other bombs, bomb components, machine guns, and 500,000 rounds of ammunition. He faces up to 10 years in prison.[175][176]
2003 May 1: Iyman Faris pleads guilty to providing material support to al-Qaeda and plotting to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge by cutting through cables with blowtorches. He had been working as a double for the FBI since March, but in October was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
2005 August 31 2005 Los Angeles bomb plot: Kevin James, Hammad Samana, Gregory Patterson, and Levar Washington were indicted on charges to wage war against the U.S. government through terrorism in California. The men planned attacks against Jewish institutions and American military locations in Los Angeles during the Yom Kippur holiday.[177]
2006 February 21: The Toledo terror plot where three men were accused of conspiring to wage a “holy war” against the United States, supply help to the terrorist in Iraq, and threatening to kill the US president.
2006 June 23: The Miami bomb plot to attack the Sears Tower where seven men were arrested after an FBI agent infiltrated a group while posing as an al-Qaeda member. No weapons or other materials were found. On May 12, 2009 after two mistrials due to hung juries five men were convicted and one acquitted on charges related to the plot. Narseal Batiste, the groups ringleader, was convicted on four charges, the only defendant to be convicted on all four charges brought against the defendants.[178]
2007 March 5 A Rikers Island inmate offered to pay an undercover police officer posing as a hit man to behead New York City police commissioner Raymond Kelly and bomb police headquarters in retaliation for the controversial police shooting of Sean Bell. The suspect wanted the bombing to be considered a terrorist act.[181][182]
2007 May 1: Five members of a self-styled Birmingham, Alabama area anti-immigration militia were arrested for planning a machine gun attack on Mexicans.[183]
2007 May 7: Fort Dix attack plot. Six men inspired by Jihadist videos arrested in a failed homegrown terrorism plot to kill soldiers. Plot unravels when Circuit Cityclerk becomes suspicious of the DVDs the men had created and report it to authorities who place an informant in the group. In October 2008 one man pleaded guilty to charges related to the plot. On December 22, 2008 five other men were convicted with conspiracy to kill American soldiers but were acquitted of attempted murder.[184] Dritan, Shain and Eljvir Duka were sentenced to life in prison.[185]
2007 June 3: John F. Kennedy International Airport terror plot. Four men indicted in plot to blow up jet-fuel supply tanks at JFK Airport and a 40-mile (64 km) connecting pipeline. One suspect is a U.S. citizen and one, Abdul Kadir, a former member of parliament in Guyana. The airport was targeted because one of the suspects saw arms shipments and missiles being shipped to Israel from that locale. In a recorded conversation one of the suspects allegedly told an informant that “Anytime you hit Kennedy, it is the most hurtful thing to the United States. To hit John F. Kennedy, wow…. They love JFK – he’s like the man”. Plot unraveled when a person from law enforcement was recruited.[186][187][188] On June 29, 2010 Abdel Nur plead guilty to material support charges. Due to health reasons Kareem Ibrahim was removed from the case and will be tried separately.[189] On August 2 Russell M. Defreitas and Abdul Kadir were convicted for their role in the plot.[190]
2008 March 26: Michael S. Gorbey who was detained in January 2008 for carrying a loaded shotgun two blocks from the Capitol Building has been charged planning to set off a bomb after a device containing can of gunpowder duct-taped to a box of shotgun shells and a bottle containing buckshot or BB pellets was found in the pickup truck he was driving. The pickup truck was moved to a government parking lot where for a three-week period the device inside it went unnoticed.[191] Michael Gorbey gets 22 years prison, but he insisted that police planted weapons.[192]
2008 October 27 Federal agents claim to thwarted a plot by two white power skinheads to target an African American High School and kill 88 blacks and decapitate 14 more (the numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic to white supremacists) and although expecting to fail try to assassinate Barack Obama.[193][194]
2009 May 20: 2009 New York City bomb plot Three U.S. citizens and one Haitian from Newburgh, New York were arrested in a plot to bomb a Riverdale Templeand a Riverdale Jewish Center in The Bronx, New York City in an alleged homegrown terrorist plot. It was also alleged that they planned to shoot down military planes operating out of Stewart Air National Guard Base also in Newburgh. One of the suspects whose parents are from Afghanistan was said to be “unhappy that many Muslim people were being killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the United States Military forces.”[195][196][197] On October 18, 2010, the four were convicted on most of the charges brought against them.[198] On June 29, 2011 three of the men were sentenced to 25 years imprisonment by a judge who criticized the governments handling of the case.[199][200]
2009 September New York City Subway and United Kingdom plot: Najibullah Zazi of Denver was indicted on charges of trying to build and detonate a weapon of mass destruction by purchasing hydrogen peroxide, acetone and other chemicals. He and two others allegedly planned to detonate the homemade explosives on the New York City subway system.[201] On February 22, 2010 Zazi plead guilty to conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country and providing material support for a terrorist organization. Zazi said he was recruited by al-Qaeda as part of a “martyrdom plan”.[202]Zazi agreed to cooperate with authorities and has told them that the groups planned to walk into the Times Square and Grand Central stations with backpack bombs at rush hour and then choose which subway lines to attack.[203] Several days later Adis Medunjanin and Zarein Ahmedzay high school classmates of Zazi were indicted and plead not guilty to charges of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country and providing material support for a terrorist organization.[204] On April 12 a fourth man was arrested in Pakistan.[203] On April 23 Prosecutors said that two Senior Al Queda officials who were reportedly later killed in drone attacks ordered the attacks and Zarein Ahmedzay pled guilty to plot related charges.[205] On July 7 five others were indicted including al-Qaeda leader Adnan Shukrijumah, and it was alleged the United Kingdom was also a target of the plot.[206] While in Pakistan, Zazi, Ahmedzay and Medunjanin were allegedly recruited and directed by Shukrijumah, a former Florida student who is designated as one of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists, to conduct a terrorist attack in the U.S.[207] On August 6 new charges were brought against Medunjanin and 4 others including Shukrijumah. Medunjanin pled not guilty.[208]
2009 August – September: On September 24 William Boyd and Hysen Sherifi charged with “conducting reconnaissance of the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Virginia and obtaining armor-piercing ammunition with the intent to attack Americans”. Boyd, two of his sons and several other suspects had been charged on international terrorism charges in August, but at the time there was no indication that they wanted to plot a United States attack. An audio tape of Boyd decrying the U.S. military, discussing the honor of martyrdom, and bemoaning the struggle of Muslims was played at an August hearing. It is the first case of a ring ofhomegrown terrorists having specific targets.[209][210]
2010 January 7 Adis Medunjanin an alleged 2009 New York City Subway plotter attempts a suicide attack by intentionally crashing his car on the Whitestone Bridge in New York City. He is indicted for this on July 7.[212] Medunjanin has since been charged for his role in an Al Qaeda plot to conduct coordinated suicide bombings on New York’s subway system.[213]
2010 May Paul Rockwood Jr. a meteorologist who took official weather observations and his pregnant wife Nancy from King Salmon, Alaska compiled a list of 20 targets, including members of the military and media and had moved to the operational phase of their plan plead guilty to lying to FBI about the list and making false statements to the FBI. Under a plea agreement Mr. Rockwood will serve eight years in prison and three years probation while Ms. Rockwood will serve probation. Motive was revenge for alleged descecration of Islam.[214][215]
2010 September 20: Sami Samir Hassoun, 22, a Lebanese citizen living in Chicago, was charged with one count each of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and attempted use of an explosive device after placing a backpack with what he thought was a bomb near Wrigley Field. Alleged plot was foiled by FBI informant. Hassoun discussed other ideas for mass destruction attacks with informant.[216][217]
2010 October 27: Farooque Ahmed, 34, a naturalized U.S. citizen indicted for conspiracy to bomb 4 Washington Metro stations with people he thought were al-Qaeda.[218]
2010 December 8: Antonio Martinez, also known as Muhammad Hussain arrested after a sting operation in an alleged plot to bomb a military recruiting center inCatonsville, Maryland. The 21-year-old suspect is an American who converted to Islam. The suspect was reported to be upset that the military continues to kill Muslims.[222]
2010 December 21: Internet radio broadcaster Hal Turner sentenced to 33 months in prison after he published the work addresses and photographs of three judges who had upheld gun control laws and advocated for their assassination.[223]
2011 February 24: Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari a 20-year-old Saudi Arabian student arrested for building bombs to use in alleged terrorist attacks. Targets allegedly were home of George W. Bush, hydroelectric dams, nuclear power plants, nightclubs and the homes of soldiers who were formerly stationed at the Abu Ghraib prison. In Aldawsari’s journal he wrote he was inspired by the speeches of Osama bin Laden. Alleged plot uncovered when supplier noticed suspicious purchases.[224]
2011 May 11: In the 2011 Manhattan terrorism plot, Ahmed Ferhani resident of Queens, New York and native of Algeria and Mohamed Mamdouh aged 20 also from Queens and Moroccan native arrested in a lone wolf plot against a New York Synagogue that had yet to be chosen. It also alleged that they hoped to attack the Empire State Building. The pair were arrested after buying two Browning semi-automatic pistols, one Smith & Wesson revolver, ammunition and one grenade. The pair disguised themselves as Jewish temple goers and pretended to pray. The suspects were said to be “committed to violent jihad“.[225]
2011 June 23: Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif and Walli Mujahidh of Long Beach, California are arrested on charges of buying machine guns and grenades and conspiring to attack a federal building housing a Military Entrance Processing Station in Seattle, Washington.Plot was uncovered by informent. Motive was to send message in protest of US action abroad. On April 8, 2013 Walli Mujahidh apologized and was sentenced to 17 years for his role in the plot.[226][227]
2011 July 27: AWOL U.S. Army Private, and conscientious objector, Naser Jason Abdo from Garland, Texas was arrested in an alleged plot against Fort Hood, Texas. Materials for up to two bombs were found with jihadist materials in Abdo’s motel room. Investigation began when owner of a local gun store called police after becoming suspicious when Abdo asked questions indicating he did not know about the items he was purchasing.[228][229]
2011 September 28: Rezwan Ferdaus, a US citizen,was indicted for allegedly plotting to use remote-controlled aircraft carrying explosives to bomb the Pentagon and the US Capitol. He also allegedly planned to hire people to shoot at people fleeing the Pentagon. Ferdaus was said to be motivated by Al Queada videos and the alleged plot was uncovered by an F.B.I. sting operation.[230] In July 2012 he pleaded guilty to plotting an attack on the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol and attempting to provide material support to terrorists. Under a plea bargain, he was sentenced to 17 years in prison and then 10 years of supervised release.[231]
2011 October 11: Operation Red Coalition. Alleged plot that was “conceived, sponsored and was directed from Iran” to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States Adel al-Jubeir with a bomb and bomb the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington, D.C. It is not known if Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had knowledge of the plot. The alleged plot was disrupted by an FBI and DEA investigation. The investigation began in May 2011 when an Iranian-American approached a DEA informant seeking the help of a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador. Iran has denied the allegations.[232]
2011 October–November: Georgia terrorist plot Four elderly men from a Georgia militia arrested for plotting to buy ricin in preparation for an attack they claimed would “save the Constitution”. They allegedly discussed blowing up IRS and ATF buildings, dispensing ricin from a plane over Atlanta and other cities, and assassinating “un American” politicians. Informant used to break up alleged plot.[233]
2011 November 20: Jose Pimentel aged 27 an American citizen and a convert to Islam from New York City arrested and accused of being the process of building pipe bombs (and one hour away from his building his first bomb) to target post offices police cars and U.S. military personnel returning from abroad in New York City and Bayonne, New Jersey. Was said to be a follower of the late al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki. The FBI did not consider Pimentel who was said to be radicalized via the internet by enough of a threat to investigate but NYC police considered him a 2 on a threat scale of 1 to 5.[234][235][236]
2012 January 7: Sami Osmakac a naturalized American from Kosovo arrested in plot to create mayhem in Tampa, Florida by car bombing, hostage taking and exploding a suicide belt. Allege bomb targets included by night clubs in the Ybor City, a bar, and the operations center of the sheriff’s office and South Tampabusinesses. Osmakac allegedly told an FBI undercover agent “We all have to die, so why not die the Islamic way?”. Osmakac plead not guilty on February 8.[237]
2012 February 17: Amine El Khalifi a Moroccan man from Alexandria, Virginia arrested in alleged suicide bombing plot of U.S. Capital. Was arrested was a result of F.B.I. sting operation.[238] As a result of a plea agreement El Khalifi was sentenced to 30 years in prison on September 14.[239]
2012 May 1: 5 self described anarchists were arrested in an alleged plot to blow up a bridge in Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Brecksville, Ohio. The group was being monitored as part of an F.B.I. undercover operation and had considered other plots previously. One of the suspects expressed a desire to cause financial damage to companies while avoiding casualties.[240][241]
2012 August 27: Four non-commissioned officers from Fort Stewart in Georgia, along with five other men, were charged in an alleged plot to poison an apple orchard and blow up a dam in Washington State, seize control of Fort Stewart, set off explosives in a park in Savannah, Georgia, and assassinate President Barack Obama. The alleged plot was on behalf of the “FEAR” militia for the long term purpose of overthrowing the government.[242][243]
2012 October 17: Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis age 21 arrested in plot to bomb the Manhattan office of the Federal Reserve Bank on behalf of “our beloved Sheikh Osama bin Laden”. Motive was to destroy the economy and possibly force cancellation of the Presidential election. Suspect who has a student visa is a Bangladeshi national who come to the U.S. to launch a terrorist attack. Arrest was result a joint FBI-New York City police sting operation. Suspect was pulling detonator on disabled 1000 pound van bomb when arrested.[244] On August 9, 2013 Nafis was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Prior to his sentencing Nafis wrote a letter apologizing to the people of America and New York for his actions which he said were caused by personal and family problems and said he is now pro American.[245][246]
2012 November 29 Raees Alam Qazi and his brother Sheheryar Alam Qazi of Florida naturalized citizens of Pakistani descent arrested for being in the aspirational stages of a plot to attack New York City. Raees Alam Qazi is alleged be inspired by Al Queda and of trying to contact terrorists abroad.[247] On June 11, 2015 Reees and Sheheryar were sentenced to 35 and 20 years respectively for the plot and attacking federal officials while in custody.[248]
2013 June 19 Two middle aged upstate New York men Scott Crawford and Eric J. Feight arrested by FBI in alleged plot to target a political figure reported to be President Obama and a Muslim group deemed enemies of Israel by constructing and using an X-Ray Gun that was described by the FBI as “useful and “functional”. Obama was believed by the pair to be allowing Muslims into the country without background checks. Investigation was launched when a synagogue and the Ku Klux Klan whom Crawford was a member of told authorities that Crawford tried to recruit them to take part in the alleged plot.[249]
2015 March 26 Hasan R. Edmonds an Illinois National Guardsman and his cousin Jonas M. Edmonds arrested in an alleged terrorist plot against a Northern Illinois military base. The alleged plot involved Hasan leaving the country and Jones using Hasan’s uniform to gain access. Motive was to bring “the flames of war to the heart” of America. Alleged plot broken up by sting operation.[255]
2015 April 2 Two women from Queens, New York 28-year-old Noelle Velentzas and 31-year-old Asia Siddiqui arrested on charges of trying to detonate explosives in the US. They had purchased propane tanks. It is believed to be first case of a women only conceived terror plot in the US. Suspected busted by sting operation. Siddiqui alleged to have Al Quaeda contact.[256] On May 7 the two plead not guilty.[257]
2015 April 10 the FBI arrested Robert Rankin Doggart, a 63-year-old Tennessee man who ran as a congressional candidate in 2014. He was wiretapped explaining plans to raise a militia to burn down a mosque, school and cafeteria and gun down Muslims in an enclave called Islamberg in New York. He planned to amass M4 carbines, pistols, Molotov cocktails and machetes, saying “We will offer [our] lives as collateral to prove our commitment to our God,” and “We shall be Warriors who inflict horrible numbers of casualties upon the enemies,” and “If it gets down to the machete, we will cut them to shreds.”[258] He has a Ph.D. from a diploma mill and an ordination from an ordination mill.[259]
2015 May 15 Robert Doggart of Signal Mountain, Tennessee and a former candidate for the 4th Congressional District plead guilty to interstate communication of threats after confessing to plotting to firebomb a school, a mosque and a cafeteria in a Muslim community in upstate, New York.[260]
2015 June 15, 17 Fareed Mumuni of Staten Island and Munther Omar Saleh of Queens arrested for allegedly trying to conspire to assist ISIS in committing an attack in the New York area. Both suspects allegedly charged at law enforcement trying to arrest them with a knife.[261]
2015 July 3-5 F.B.I. Director James Comey said his agency disrupted multiple July 4th weekend terror plots.[262]
2015 July 13 Alexander Ciccolo, 23, of Adams, Massachusetts a son of a Boston police captain arrested in plot to attack a state college and broadcast executions of students on the internet. Suspect who was turned in by his father is said to be inspired by ISIS and reportedly characterized America as “Satan” and “disgusting”. Ciccolo has guns and possible bomb making equipment.[263]
Story 1: When Will Obama and Kerry Walk Like Men Out Of Negotiations With The World Leading Terrorist Nation The Islamic Republic of Iran? Never! — Yakety Yak– Where Is The Written Signed Agreement/Treaty Stopping Iran From Having Nuclear Weapons President Obama? — Time To Release Some Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) — Bunker Busters on Iran’s Nuclear Bomb Factories — Bombs Away — Videos
Divine – Walk Like A Man (1985) HQ
Walk Like a Man – The Four Seasons
“Walk Like A Man”
oo woo-oo-oo oo woo-oo-oo
(Wop wop wop wop)
oo woo-oo-oo oo woo-oo-oo
Walk like a manOh how you tried
To cut me down to size
by telling dirty lies to my friends
But my own father
Said give her up, don’t bother
The world isn’t coming to an endHe said walk like a man
Talk like a man
Walk like a man my son
No woman’s worth
Crawling on the earth
So walk like a man my sonoo woo-oo-oo oo woo-oo-oo
(Wop wop wop wop)
oo woo-oo-oo oo woo-oo-ooFine eyed baby
I don’t mean maybe
We’re gonna get along somehow
Soon you’ll be crying
On ‘count of all you’re lying
Oh yeah, just look who’s laughing nowI’m gonna walk like a man
Fast as I can
Walk like a man from you
I’ll tell the world
Forget about it girl
And walk like a man from youoo woo-oo-oo oo woo-oo-oo
(Wop wop wop wop)
oo woo-oo-oo oo woo-oo-oo
(Wop wop wop wop)
oo woo-oo-oo oo woo-oo-oo
(Wop wop wop wop)
oo woo-oo-oo oo woo-oo-oo
Walk Like a Man Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons Lyrics
July 2015 Breaking News USA ready to attack Iranian nuclear facilities with awe-inspiring plan B
30,000 Pound Bunker Buster Bomb designed to detour Iran Nuclear Threat
As negotiations with Iran continue towards a nuclear arms agreement, the United States still holds a trump card. The 30,000 Pound Boeing GBU-57 Bunker Buster bomb, the largest non-nuclear weapon in U.S. inventory, designed to destroy nuclear weapons bunkers in Iran and North Korea. The bunker buster, known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), is 30,000 pounds (13,608 kg.) and has been improved with “adjusted fuses to maximize its burrowing power, upgraded guidance systems to improve its precision and hi-tech equipment intended to allow it to evade Iranian air defenses in order to reach and destroy the Fordow nuclear enrichment complex.”
“Hopefully we never have to use it, but if we had to, it would work.”
The existence of a bomb that has the capability of destroying the underground facility from the air could also give the West extra bargaining power in nuclear negotiations with the Iran.
US officials believe the improved MOP will serve to convince Israel to hold off on unilaterally attacking Iran and give Washington more time to diplomatically neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat.
US military chiefs openly admitted the weapon was built to attack the fortified nuclear facilities of “rogue states” such as Iran and North Korea. Although the Pentagon insists that it is not aimed at a specific threat, unnamed officials within the ministry have repeatedly claimed the bomb is being tailor-made to disable Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordo.
Vienna talks on Iran nuclear deal will continue over weekend
U.S.’s Kerry says not in rush to get Iran nuclear deal
Iran Nuclear Deal Deadlocked Over Arms
Weapons of War: Pentagon Upgrades Biggest ‘Bunker Buster’ Bomb
Bunkers & Bunker Busting Bombs
MOP Massive Ordnance Penetrator GBU-57A-B Penetrator bunker buster bomb Iran United States
World War 3 Pentagon unveils 30,000 pound M O P Bunker Buster Bomb against Iran May 03, 2013
Boeing Delivers Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) 37,000 LB Bombs To The USAF – GBU-57
Israel Air Force Refuels Mid-air
Only on AP: US Tankers Refuel for IS Fight
WATCH OUT IRAN Israeli Air Force unveils Refueling aircraft for possible Airstrike
Israel To Buy 25 More F-35 Lockheed Stealth Fighters: Sources
December 2014 Breaking News USA F35 Israel to buy second squadron of stealth F35 jets
News Wrap: As deadline looms, Kerry says Iran nuclear talks not ‘open-ended’
Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons In Concert Live
Frankie Valli And 4 Seasons Live on Ice 2008
The Coasters – Yakety Yak – ORIGINAL MONO VERSION
Yakety Yak – The Coasters with lyrics
Where Have all the Flowers Gone: Eve of Destruction
Iran Made Illegal Purchases of Nuclear Weapons Technology Last Month
The question is not whether Iran can be trusted to uphold the nuclear deal now being negotiated in Vienna (it can’t), but whether the Obama administration and its P5+1 partners can be trusted to punish Iran when it violates the agreement?
Experience shows that unless Iran violates the deal egregiously, the temptation will be to ignore it. For instance, Iran got away with selling more oil than it should have under the interim agreement. More ominously, Tehran repeatedly pushed the envelope on technical aspects of the agreement—such as caps on its uranium stockpile—and got away with it. The Obama administration and other Western powers have so much invested in their diplomatic efforts that they’ll deny such violations ever occurred.
More evidence of Iranian violations has now surfaced. Two reports regarding Iran’s attempts to illicitly and clandestinely procure technology for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs have recently been published. They show that Iran’s procurement continues apace, if not faster than before the Joint Plan of Action was signed in November 2013. But fear of potentially embarrassing negotiators and derailing negotiations has made some states reluctant to report Tehran’s illegal efforts. If these countries have hesitated to expose Iran during the negotiations, it is more likely they will refrain from reporting after a deal is struck.
The first report was released last month by the U.N. panel of experts in charge of reporting compliance with U.N. Security Council resolutions regarding Iran. The panel noted that U.N. member states had not reported significant violations of U.N. sanctions and speculated as to why: either Iran was complying, or countries did not wish to interfere with negotiations.
Paddle, pedal, jog or Segway through North America’s largest urban parkland—Edmonton’s river valley.
The second report, released last week by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, is less ambiguous. The agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, confirmed to us that Iran continues to seek illicit technology for its nuclear and ballistic missiles programs.
Iran has had a long history of trying to obtain nuclear technology from German companies, particularly by seeking ways to transport merchandise in circumvention of international sanctions. Since November 2013, Tehran has sought industry computers, high-speed cameras, cable fiber, and pumps for its nuclear and missile program. It appears that Iran’s readiness to negotiate does not reflect any substantive policy change. Rather, it is a diplomatic tactic retreat forced by economic distress, not a strategic rethinking of its priorities.
Iran’s cheating should give Western negotiators additional resolve to impose ironclad guarantees in the agreement. They should compel Iran to reveal its past activities, including its post-JPOA procurement efforts, and impose tough, intrusive, “anytime, anywhere” inspections before sanctions are suspended, let alone lifted.
Instead, the lack of reporting to the U.N. despite evidence of cheating suggests a lack of resolve on the part of Western nations, and their willingness to downplay all but the most egregious violations. This does not bode well for the future. If Western powers are reluctant to penalize Iran for trying to evade sanctions because they’re afraid of spoiling the negotiations, what will happen in the future when Western powers have even more invested in preserving an agreement?
Emanuele Ottolenghi is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Benjamin Weinthal is a research fellow.
In 2002, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin were working on the development of a 30,000-lb (13,600 kg) earth-penetrating weapon, said to be known as “Big BLU“. But funding and technical difficulties resulted in the development work being abandoned. Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, analysis of sites that had been attacked with bunker-buster bombs revealed poor penetration and inadequate levels of destruction.[citation needed]This renewed interest in the development of a super-large bunker-buster, and the MOP project was initiated by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to fulfill a long-standing Air Force requirement.[3]
The U.S. Air Force has not officially recognized specific military requirement for an ultra-large bomb, but it does have a concept for a collection of massively sized penetrator and blast weapons, the so-called “Big BLU” collection, which includes the MOAB (Massive Ordnance Air Burst) bomb. Development of the MOP was performed at the Air Force Research Laboratory, Munitions Directorate, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida with design and testing work performed by Boeing. It is intended that the bomb will be deployed on the B-2 bomber, and will be guided by the use of GPS.[4][5]
Northrop Grumman announced a $2.5-million stealth-bomber refit contract on 19 July 2007. Each of the U.S. Air Force’s B-2s is to be able to carry two 14-ton MOPs.[6][7]
On 6 October 2009, ABC News reported that the Pentagon had requested and obtained permission from the U.S. Congress to shift funding in order to accelerate the project.[8][9] It was later announced by the U.S. military that “funding delays and enhancements to the planned test schedule” meant the bomb would not be deployable until December 2010, six months later than the original availability date.[10]
The project has had at least one successful Flight Test MOP launch.[11] The final testing will be completed in 2012.[3]
The Air Force took delivery of 20 bombs, designed to be delivered by the B-2 bomber, in September 2011. In February 2012, Congress approved $81.6 million to further develop and improve the weapon.[12]
Recent development
On 7 April 2011, the USAF ordered eight MOPs plus supporting equipment for $28 million.[13]
On 14 November 2011, Bloomberg reported that the Air Force Global Strike Command started receiving the Massive Ordnance Penetrator and that the deliveries “will meet requirements for the current operational need”.[14] The Air Force now has received delivery of 16 MOPs as of November 2011.[15] And as of March 2012, there is an “operational stockpile” at Whiteman Air Force Base.[16]
In 2012, the Pentagon requested $82 million to develop greater penetration power for the existing weapon.[1] A 2013 report stated that the development had been a success,[17] and B-2 integration testing began that year.[18]
MOP being offloaded in preparation for its first explosive test, 2007.
Mock up of MOP inside a bomb bay of a B-2 simulator, 2007.[6]
B-52 releases a MOP during a weapons test, 2009.
Next-generation Penetrator Munition
On 25 June 2010, USAF Lt. Gen. Phillip Breedlove said that the Next-generation Penetrator Munition should be about a third the size of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator so it could be carried by affordable aircraft.[19] In December 2010, the USAF had a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for the Next Generation Penetrator (NGP).[20]
Global Strike Command has indicated that one of the objectives for the Next-Generation Bomber is for it to carry a weapon with the effects of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. This would either be with the same weapon or a smaller weapon that uses rocket power to reach sufficient speed to match the penetrating power of the larger weapon.[21]
One of the current limitations of the MOP is that it lacks a void-sensing fuze and will therefore detonate after it has come to a stop, even if it passed by the target area.[22]
Iran Agrees to Nuclear Limits, But Key Issues Are Unresolved
Iran and European nations say they have reached an understanding about next steps, but key issues need to be resolved before a final agreement by June 30.
According to European officials, roughly 5,000 centrifuges will remain spinning enriched uranium at Natanz, about half the number currently running. The underground enrichment site at Fordo — which Israeli and some American officials fear is impervious to bombing — will be partly converted to advanced nuclear research and the production of medical isotopes.
A major reactor at Arak, which officials fear could produce plutonium, will operate on a limited basis that will not provide enough fuel for a bomb.
In return the European Union and the United States will begin to lift sanctions, as Iran complies.
Kerry Announces Extension to Iran Talks Video by Reuters/ Photo by Roland Schlager/European Pressphoto Agency
U.S. and Allies Extend Iran Nuclear Talks by 7 Months
A yearlong effort to reach an enduring accord with Iran to dismantle large parts of its nuclear infrastructure fell short, forcing the United States and its allies to declare a seven-month extension, but with no clear indication of how they plan to bridge fundamental differences.
The Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, left, Catherine Ashton, who is representing the European Union, and Secretary of State John Kerry in Vienna. Leonhard Foeger/Reuters
Negotiators Scrambling as Deadline Looms in Nuclear Talks
As six world powers and Iran race to meet a Monday deadline for an agreement that would constrain Iran’s nuclear program, the United States stakes out an ambitious goal for what an accord should accomplish.
American officials say the agreement should slow the Iranian nuclear program enough that it would take Iran at least a year to make enough material for a nuclear bomb if it decided to ignore the accord.
It has become increasingly unlikely that any accord announced on Monday would be a complete one. And whatever deal is reached, it may not matter if Iranian hard-liners have their way. In Iran, the final decision on a nuclear deal lies with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader.
Under a proposed deal, Russia will convert uranium into specialized fuel rods for Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant.Majid Asgaripour/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Role for Russia Gives Iran Talks a Possible Boost
Iran tentatively agrees to ship much of its huge stockpile of uranium to Russia for conversion into specialized fuel rods for the Bushehr nuclear power plant, Iran’s only commercial reactor. The agreement is potentially a major breakthrough in talks that have until now been deadlocked.
A key question remains about the negotiations that American officials have been loath to discuss in public: In a final deal, would Iran be required to publicly admit its past activities, or merely provide a mechanism for monitoring its actions in the future?
Iran’s nuclear reactor in Arak, about 150 miles southwest of Tehran, is being redesigned.Hamid Foroutan/Iranian Students News Agency, via Associated Press
Iran Altering Arak Reactor in Bid for Nuclear Deal
Atomic power engineers in Iran start redesigning a partly constructed reactor in Arak to limit the amount of plutonium it produces, Ali Akbar Salehi, the director of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, says, expressing hope that the change will help alleviate Western objections that the plutonium can be used in weapons.
Iran, the United States and the five other countries agree to a four-month extension of the negotiations, giving them more time to try to bridge a major difference over whether the country will be forced to dismantle parts of its nuclear infrastructure, according to senior Western diplomats involved in the talks.
Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, accuses the West of trying to sabotage a reactor being built near Arak.Atta Kenare/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Iran Outlines Nuclear Deal; Accepts Limit
As the deadline for the talks approaches on Sunday, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, says the country could accept a freeze on its capacity to produce nuclear fuel at current levels for several years, provided it could eventually produce fuel unhindered.
The proposal will effectively extend a limited series of concessions Iran made last November as part of a temporary deal to get negotiations started on a permanent accord. In return, Iran wants step-by-step relief from sanctions that have substantially weakened its economy.
Iran Is Providing Information on Its Detonators, Report Says
The I.A.E.A. releases a report stating that Iran is beginning to turn over information related to its nuclear detonators. The agency says that Iran has provided “additional information and explanations,” including documents, to substantiate its claim that it had tested the detonators for “a civilian application.”
From left, Foreign Ministers Laurent Fabius of France and William Hague of Britain, and Secretary of State John Kerry with Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh of Jordan, in Paris. Thierry Chesnot/Getty Images
Negotiators Put Final Touches on Iran Accord
Iran and a group of six world powers complete a deal that will temporarily freeze much of Tehran’s nuclear program starting Jan. 20, in exchange for limited relief from Western economic sanctions.
The agreement faced opposition from Iranian hard-liners and Israeli leaders, as well as heavy criticism from some American lawmakers, who have threatened to approve further sanctions despite President Obama’s promise of a veto.
The negotiators in Geneva early Sunday morning. President Obama hailed the agreement. Denis Balibouse/Reuters
Deal With Iran Halts Nuclear Program
The United States and five other world powers announce a landmark accord that would temporarily freeze Iran’s nuclear program and lay the foundation for a more sweeping agreement.
The aim of the accord, which is to last six months, is to give international negotiators time to pursue a more comprehensive accord that would ratchet back much of Iran’s nuclear program and ensure that it could only be used for peaceful purposes.
I.A.E.A. inspectors release a report stating that for the first time in years, they saw evidence that the Iranians have put the brakes on their nuclear expansion.
President Obama makes an appeal to Congress to give breathing space to his efforts to forge a nuclear deal with Iran.
Iran is in a much different position now to negotiate on its nuclear program than it was four years ago when President Obama first broached the subject.
Iran Says It Agrees to ‘Road Map’ With U.N. on Nuclear Inspections
The I.A.E.A. says that Iran has agreed to resolve all outstanding issues with the agency, and will permit “managed access” by international inspectors to two key nuclear facilities. But the promise does not extend to the Parchin military site, which inspectors have been trying to see for months.
Marathon talks between major powers and Iran fail to ease sanctions on the country and produce a deal to freeze its nuclear program.
Iran and a group of six world powers say that they have engaged in “substantive” and “forward-looking” discussions on the disputed Iranian nuclear program and that they will reconvene on November 7.
The account of the two days of talks in Geneva came in a rare joint statement from Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, and Catherine Ashton, the foreign policy chief for the European Union, who is the lead negotiator with Iran.
President Obama says he has spoken by phone with President Hassan Rouhani, the first direct contact between the leaders of Iran and the United States since 1979. Mr. Obama, speaking in the White House briefing room, said the two leaders discussed Iran’s nuclear program and said he was persuaded there was a basis for an agreement.
Moments before Mr. Obama’s announcement, Mr. Rouhani’s Twitter account posted this now-deleted message: “In a phone conversation b/w #Iranian & #US Presidents just now: @HassanRouhani: “Have a Nice Day!” @BarackObama: “Thank you. Khodahafez.”
Rouhani, Blunt and Charming, Pitches a Moderate Iran in First U.N. Appearance
Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, turns himself into a high-speed salesman offering a flurry of speeches, tweets, televised interviews and carefully curated private meetings, intended to end Iran’s economic isolation.
At the United Nations General Assembly, he preaches tolerance and understanding, decries as a form of violence the Western sanctions imposed on his country and says nuclear weapons have no place in its future. He takes aim at Israel’s nuclear arsenal in a public – while the country’s leaders caution over what they deem as an empty charm offensive.
Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s new leader, received a private letter from President Obama about easing tensions between the countries.Vahid Salemi/Associated Press
Iran Said to Seek a Nuclear Accord to End Sanctions
Seizing on a perceived flexibility in a letter from President Obama to President Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s leaders are focused on getting quick relief from crippling sanctions, a top adviser to the Iranian leadership says.
The adviser says that Mr. Obama’s letter, delivered about three weeks ago, promised relief from sanctions if Tehran demonstrated a willingness to “cooperate with the international community, keep your commitments and remove ambiguities.”
Iran Slows Its Gathering of Enriched Uranium, Report Says
I.A.E.A. inspectors say that Iran is slowing its accumulation of enriched uranium that can be quickly turned into fuel for an atomic bomb. The report’s disclosure is significant politically because it delays the day when Iran could breach what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel last fall called a “red line” beyond which Iran would not be allowed to pass — the point at which it has enough purified uranium to quickly make a single nuclear weapon.
Hassan Rouhani, a moderate, has been elected the next president of Iran.
Iran Elects New President
Voters overwhelmingly elect Hassan Rouhani, 64, a mild-mannered cleric who advocates greater personal freedoms and a more conciliatory approach to the world.
The diplomat sheik played a key role in Iran’s voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment in 2004, which Western powers responded to by asking for more concessions from Iran.
Mr. Rouhani replaces his predecessors’ foreign minister with Mohammad Javad Zarif, an American-educated diplomat known for his understanding of the West, and makes him responsible for negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Mr. Rouhani also removes a hard-line nuclear scientists as head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, and replaces him with the former foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi. In September, Iran’s longtime ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency will be replaced as well.
The Obama administration escalates sanctions against Iran for the fourth time in a week, blacklisting what it describes as a global network of front companies controlled by Iran’s top leaders, accusing them of hiding assets and generating billions of dollars worth of revenue to help Tehran evade sanctions.
The White House also accuses Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of personally directing an effort to bypass them.
The United States also blacklists Iranian petrochemical companies, its automotive industry and more than 50 Iranian officials, and threatens to sanction foreign banks that trade or hold Iran’s national currency, the rial.
The I.A.E.A. says Iran has made significant progress across the board in its nuclear program, while negotiations with the West dragged on this spring. But it said that it has not gone past the “red line” that Israel’s leaders have declared could trigger military action.
In its last report before the Iranian elections next month, the agency also gives details that point to an emerging production strategy by the Iranians. One strategy involves speeding ahead with another potential route to a bomb: producing plutonium. The report indicates that Iran is making significant progress at its Arak complex, where it has built a heavy-water facility and is expected to have a reactor running by the end of next year.
The United States expands its roster of those violating Iran sanctions, blacklisting four Iranian companies and one individual suspected of helping the country enrich nuclear fuel. It also singles out two other companies, including a Venezuelan-Iranian bank, accused of helping Iran evade other Western-imposed prohibitions on oil sales and financial dealings.
The penalties came a day after the Senate introduced legislation that could effectively deny the Iran government access to an estimated $100 billion worth of its own money parked in overseas banks, a step that proponents said could significantly damage Iran’s financial stability.
Iranians rush to supermarkets to buy cooking oil, red meat and other staples, stockpiling the goods over new fears of price spikes from a change in the official exchange rate that could severely reduce the already weakened purchasing power of the rial, the national currency.
Prices of staples are set to increase by as much as 60 percent because of the currency change.
Economists say the result is from a combination of severe Western sanctions and what many call the government’s economic mismanagement.
Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon. Next week he will travel to the Middle East to finalize the arms sale.Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
U.S. Arms Deal With Israel and 2 Arab Nations Is Near
The Defense Department is expecting to finalize a $10 billion arms deal with Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates next week that will provide missiles, warplanes and troop transports to help them counter any future threat from Iran.
Israeli Officials Stress Readiness for Lone Strike on Iran
In an interview with the BBC, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat, saying Israel has “different vulnerabilities and different capabilities” than the United States. “We have to make our own calculations, when we lose the capacity to defend ourselves by ourselves.”
Israeli defense and military officials have been issuing explicit warnings this week that Israel was prepared and had the capability to carry out a lone military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
US Blacklists an Iranian and Businesses Over Violation of Sanctions
The United States blacklists an affluent Iranian business executive, Babak Morteza Zanjani, and what it describes as his multibillion-dollar money laundering network, accusing them of selling oil for Iran in violation of the Western economic sanctions imposed over Iran’s disputed nuclear program.
On March 14, The Treasury Department, which administers the government’s Iran sanctions, blacklisted a Greek shipping tycoon, Dimitris Cambis, over what it called his scheme to acquire a fleet of oil tankers on Iran’s behalf and disguise their ownership to ship Iranian oil.
Family members of slain nuclear scientists stood with Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, far right, a nuclear official. Arash Khamoushi/Iranian Students News Agency, ISNA, via Associated Press
After Talks End, Iran Announces an Expansion of Nuclear Fuel Production
Iran’s president announces an expansion of the country’s uranium production and claims other atomic energy advances, striking a pugnacious tone in the aftermath of diplomatic talks thatended in an impasse with the big powers on April 6 in Kazakhstan.
A look, provided by the United States Navy, at how its laser attack weapon works. The video is silent.
Navy Deploying Laser Weapon Prototype Near Iran
The U.S. announces that the Navy will deploy a laser weapon prototype in the Persian Gulf, where Iranian fast-attack boats have harassed American warships and where the government in Tehran is building remotely piloted aircraft carrying surveillance pods and, someday potentially, rockets.
The laser will not be operational until next year. It has been shown in tests to disable patrol boats and blind or destroy surveillance drones.
President Obama traveled to Israel on March 20, in a symbolic two-day visit to the country, the first of his presidency.
Iran Nuclear Weapon to Take Year or More, Obama Says
President Obama tells an Israeli television station that his administration believes it would take Iran “over a year or so” to develop a nuclear weapon.
Mr. Obama’s estimated timeline contrasts with Mr. Netanyahu’s stated belief that Israel and its Western allies are likely to have to intervene by the spring or summer, when, he says, Iran’s scientists will have enriched enough uranium to become a nuclear threat.
Iran meets with the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany in Kazakhstan, but talks end with no specific agreement over a proposal that would sharply constrain Iran’s stockpile of the most dangerous enriched uranium, in return for a modest lifting of some sanctions.
The six powers also agreed that Iran could keep a small amount of 20 percent enriched uranium — which can be converted to bomb grade with modest additional processing — for use in a reactor to produce medical isotopes.
Iranian oil sales have been reduced by half as a result of the international pressure on the country, and restrictions on financial transactions and transportation have created many difficulties for its leaders.
The state news agency IRNA quotes a report by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, saying that it had found significant new deposits of raw uranium and identified sites for 16 more nuclear power stations.
Iran’s raw uranium reserves now total around 4,400 tons, including discoveries over the past 18 months, IRNA quoted the report as saying.
A few weeks earlier, Ayatollah Khamenei said that his country was not seeking nuclear weapons but added that if Iran ever decided to build them, no “global power” could stop it.
Speaking to air force commanders in Tehran on Feb. 6, Ayatollah Khamenei said Iran “will not negotiate under pressure.” Khamenei Official Web site, via European Pressphoto Agency
U.S. Bolsters Sanctions
A new round of American sanctions take effect which state that any country that buys Iranian oil must put the purchase money into a local bank account. Iran cannot repatriate the money and can use it only to buy goods within that country. Violators risk severe penalties in doing business with the United States. Oil exports from Iran have already dropped by a million barrels a day.
A week earlier, Iran announces that it would deploy a new generation of centrifuges, four to six times as powerful as the current generation.
Most of that decline comes in a frenzy of speculative selling by Iranians worried that rapid inflation could render their money worthless. The government responds with a crackdown in which some money traders are arrested.
The depressed value of the rial forces Iranians to carry ever-fatter wads of bank notes to buy everyday items. But the sanctions also present a new complication to Iran’s banking authorities: they may not be able to print enough money.
Meanwhile, the European Union toughens sanctions against Iran, banning trade in industries like finance, metals and natural gas, and making other business transactions far more cumbersome.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations, displaying his red line for Iran’s nuclear program. Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Israel’s ‘Red Line’
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel tells the United Nations that Iran’s capability to enrich uranium must be stopped before the spring or early summer, arguing that by that time Iran will be in a position to make a short, perhaps undetectable, sprint to manufacture its first nuclear weapon.
The United Nations atomic agency reports that Iran has installed three-quarters of the nuclear centrifuges needed to complete a deep-underground site under a mountain near Qum for the production of nuclear fuel.
The I.A.E.A. also says that Iran may have sought to cleanse another site where the agency has said it suspects that the country has conducted explosive experiments that could be relevant to the production of a nuclear weapon.
Meanwhile, the United States imposes more punishing sanctions against Iran, aimed at its oil and petrochemical sectors, as well as its shipping trade, intensifying existing sanctions intended to choke off the revenue that Iran reaps from its two largest export industries.
The Neptune, an oil tanker in the Persian Gulf, is part of a fleet of about 65 Iranian tankers serving as floating storage facilities for Iranian oil, each one given a nautical makeover to conceal its origin and make a buyer easier to find. Thomas Erdbrink
Embargo on Iranian Oil
A European Union embargo on Iranian oil takes effect, playing a large role in severely restricting Iran’s ability to sell its most important export.
In retaliation, Iran announces legislation intended to disrupt traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital Persian Gulf shipping lane, and tests missiles in a desert drill clearly intended as a warning to Israel and the United States.
In January 2013, Iran’s oil minister, Rostam Qasemi, acknowledged for the first time that petroleum exports and sales had fallen by at least 40 percent in the previous year, costing the country $4 billion to $8 billion each month.
Iran’s nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, in Baghdad. Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters
Talks With West Falter
After a brief spurt of optimism, talks between Iran and six world powers on its disputed nuclear program fail to produce a breakthrough in Baghdad. The United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany wanted a freeze on Iranian production of uranium enriched to 20 percent purity, which is considered a short step from bomb grade. The Iranians wanted an easing of the onerous economic sanctions imposed by the West and a recognition of what they call their right to enrich. The countries agree to meet again in June, but talks were further slowed after a new regimen of harsh economic sanctions and a statement from the International Atomic Energy Agency that said Iran had made ”no progress” toward providing access to restricted sites it suspects of being used to test potential triggers for nuclear warheads.
March 2012
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad surveying the centrifuges at Iran’s underground complex at Natanz in March 2007.Office of the Iranian President
Meanwhile, I.A.E.A. inspectors are still trying to gain access to the Parchin site, 20 miles south of Tehran, to ascertain whether tests have been carried out there on nuclear bomb triggers.
But satellites images show that the site has been extensively cleaned by the Iranians.
Jan. 11, 2012
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Iran’s semiofficial Fars News Agency supplied this photo of what it said was Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan’s car after the bombing.Meghdad Madadi/Fars News Agency, via Associated Press
Bomb Kills Nuclear Scientist
A bomber on a motorcycle kills Mostafa Ahmadi Rosha, a scientist from the Natanz site, and his bodyguard. Iran blames Israel and the United States. The Americans deny the accusation, but Israel is more circumspect.
Iran displayed the drone for propaganda purposes, with photographs of ayatollahs who led Iran’s revolution behind it and a desecrated version of the American flag. Revolutionary Guards, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A Blow to U.S., as Drone Crashes
A stealth C.I.A. drone, the RQ-170 Sentinel, crashes near the Iranian town of Kashmar, 140 miles from the Afghan border. It is part of a stepped-up surveillance program that has frequently sent the United States’ most hard-to-detect drone into Iran to map suspected nuclear sites.
Iran asserts that its military downed the aircraft, but American officials say the drone was lost because of a malfunction.
Iran’s nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz.Hasan Sarbakhshian/Associated Press
Natanz Plant Recovers
After a dip in enriched uranium production in 2010 because of the cyberattacks, Iranian production recovers. While the United States and Israel never acknowledged responsibility for the cyberprogram, Olympic Games, some experts argue that it set the Iranians back a year or two. Others say that estimate overstates the effect.
With the program still running, intelligence agencies in the United States and Israel seek out new targets that could further slow Iran’s progress.
A poster of an Iranian gas field is a backdrop to passers-by in Asaluyeh. Newsha Tavakolian for The New York Times
West Expands Sanctions, and U.N. Offers Evidence on Nuclear Work
Major Western powers take significant steps to cut Iran off from the international financial system, announcing coordinated sanctions aimed at its central bank and commercial banks. The United States also imposes sanctions on companies involved in Iran’s nuclear industry, as well as on its petrochemical and oil industries.
The United Nations atomic agency releases evidence that it says make a “credible” case that “Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device” at its Parchin military base and that the project may still be under way.
Unidentified attackers riding motorcycles bomb two of Iran’s top nuclear scientists, killing one and prompting accusations that the United States and Israel are again trying to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program.
The scientist who was killed, Majid Shahriari, reportedly managed a ”major project” for the country’s Atomic Energy Organization. His wounded colleague, Fereydoon Abbasi, is believed to be even more important; he is on the United Nations Security Council’s sanctions list for ties to the Iranian nuclear effort.
The Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri, with his 7-year-old son, greeting family members in Tehran.Newsha Tavakolian/Polaris, for The New York Times
Iranian Scientist Defects to U.S., Then Reconsiders
Shahram Amiri, an Iranian nuclear scientist who American officials say defected to the United States in 2009, provided information about Iran’s nuclear weapons program and then developed second thoughts, returning to Iran. (After a hero’s welcome, he was imprisoned on treason charges and tortured, according to reports from Iran.)
The bizarre episode was the latest in a tale that has featured a mysterious disappearance from a hotel room in Saudi Arabia, rumors of a trove of new intelligence about Iran’s nuclear plants and a series of contradictory YouTube videos. It immediately set off a renewed propaganda war between Iran and the United States.
Ambassadors to the United Nations, from right: Susan E. Rice of the United States, Mark Lyall Grant of Britain and Ruhakana Rugunda of Uganda voted to affirm a Security Council resolution on Iran while Turkey’s ambassador, Ertugrul Apakan, voted against it. Mario Tama/Getty Images
U.N. Approves New Sanctions
The United Nations Security Council levels its fourth round of sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program. The sanctions curtail military purchases, trade and financial transactions carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which controls the nuclear program.
The Security Council also requires countries to inspect ships or planes headed to or from Iran if they suspect banned cargo. In addition, Iran is barred from investing in other countries’ nuclear enrichment plants, uranium mines and related technologies, and the Security Council sets up a committee to monitor enforcement.
The United States and Israel realize that copies of the computer sabotage program introduced in Natanz are available on the Internet, where they are replicating quickly. In a few weeks, articles appear in the news media about a mysterious new computer worm carried on USB keys that exploits a hole in the Windows operating system. The worm is named Stuxnet.
President Obama decides not to kill the program, and a subsequent attack takes out nearly 1,000 Iranian centrifuges, nearly a fifth of those operating.
Yukiya Amano, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.Herwig Prammer/Reuters
Work on Warhead
The United Nations’ nuclear inspectors declare for the first time that they have extensive evidence of “past or current undisclosed activities” by Iran’s military to develop a nuclear warhead.
The report also concludes that some Iranian weapons-related activity apparently continued “beyond 2004,” contradicting an American intelligence assessment published in 2008 that concluded that work on a bomb was suspended at the end of 2003.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in 2011. Francois Lenoir/Reuters
Leaked Gates Memo on U.S. Policy
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warns in a secret three-page memorandum to top White House officials that the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear capability.
When the memo becomes public in April, Mr. Gates issues a statement saying that he wishes to dispel any perception among allies that the administration had failed to adequately think through how to deal with Iran.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and President Obama, in Pittsburgh, accused Iran of building a secret nuclear fuel plant.Doug Mills/The New York Times
Warning on Nuclear ‘Deception’
American, British and French officials declassify some of their most closely held intelligence and describe a multiyear Iranian effort, tracked by spies and satellites, to build a secret uranium enrichment plant deep inside a mountain.
The new plant, which Iran strongly denies is intended to be kept secret or used for making weapons, is months from completion and does nothing to shorten intelligence estimates of how long it would take Iran to produce a bomb. American intelligence officials say it will take at least a year, perhaps five, for Iran to develop the full ability to make a nuclear weapon.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announces that the United States will participate in talks with Iran involving five other nations: Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.
The negotiators Saeed Jalili of Iran, left, and William J. Burns, third from right, in Geneva. Pool photo by Denis Balibouse
Talks End in Deadlock
International talks on Iran’s nuclear ambitions end in deadlock despite the Bush administration’s decision to reverse policy and send William J. Burns, a senior American official, to the table for the first time.
Iran responds with a written document that fails to address the main issue: international demands that it stop enriching uranium. Iranian diplomats reiterate before the talks that they consider the issue nonnegotiable.
President George W. Bush rejects a secret request by Israel for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wants for an attack on Iran’s nuclear program. The Bush administration is alarmed by the Israeli idea to fly over Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz and decides to step up intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on new American efforts to subtly sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Mr. Bush will hand off the major covert program to President Obama.
The United States works with Israel to begin cyberattacks, code-named Olympic Games, on computer systems at the Natanz plant. A year later, the program is introduced undetected into a controller computer at Natanz. Centrifuges begin crashing and engineers have no clue that the plant is under attack.
The Security Council unanimously approves sanctions intended to curb Iran’s nuclear program. The sanctions ban the import and export of materials and technology used in uranium enrichment and reprocessing and in the production of ballistic missiles.
The heavy-water plant in Arak, south of Tehran.Iran/Reuters
Iran Opens a Heavy-Water Reactor
Just days before Iran is supposed to suspend enrichment of uranium or face the prospect of sanctions, President Ahmadinejad formally kicks off a heavy-water production plant in Arak, 120 miles southwest of Tehran, which would put Iran on the path to obtaining plutonium, a fuel used in nuclear weapons.
In November, Iran seeks international assistance to ensure safe operation for a 40-megawatt reactor it is building. Citing broader doubts about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the United Nations atomic agency, the United States and European countries oppose offering help.
A satellite image of Natanz in 2007.GeoEye/SIME, via Associated Press
Natanz Production Is Restarted
Iran resumes uranium enrichment at Natanz after negotiations with European and American officials collapse.
The I.A.E.A. approves a resolution to report Iran’s nuclear program to the Security Council, citing “the absence of confidence” among the atomic agency’s members “that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes.”
President Ahmadinejad offended Israel in his speech on the rule of law at a United Nations conference in 2012. Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
Ahmadinejad Elected President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, known only as a secular conservative and a former mayor of Tehran, becomes president. He becomes a divisive figure in world affairs, cheering on the development of Iran’s nuclear program despite orders from the United Nations Security Council to halt it, calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map’’ and describing the Holocaust as “a myth.”
Mid-July, 2005
With Laptop Files, U.S. Seeks to Prove Iran’s Nuclear Aims
Senior American intelligence officials present the International Atomic Energy Agency with the contents of what they say is a stolen Iranian laptop containing more than a thousand pages of Iranian computer simulations and accounts of experiments — studies for crucial features of a nuclear warhead.
Intelligence reports reveal that Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a little-known Iranian scientist, leads elements of Iran’s weaponization program known as Project 110 and Project 111.
But doubts about the intelligence persist among some experts, in part because American officials, citing the need to protect their source, have largely refused to provide details of the origins of the laptop beyond saying that they obtained it in mid-2004 from a source in Iran who they said had received it from a second person, now believed to be dead.
Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi talking to reporters in Tehran ahead of nuclear talks in Paris. Abedin Taherkenareh/European Pressphoto Agency
Violation and New Agreement
Iran violates the agreement, charging that the Europeans reneged on their promises of economic and political incentives. After 22 hours of negotiations, an Iranian delegation and senior officials from France, Germany, Britain and the European Union come to a preliminary agreement to immediately suspend Iran’s production of enriched uranium. The Iranian foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, praises the so-called Paris Agreement but emphasizes that any suspension will be temporary.
In a few weeks, the I.A.E.A verifies Iran’s suspension of its enrichment activities, with one exception: its request to use up to 20 sets of centrifuge components for research and development.
An Iranian missile displayed by the Revolutionary Guards under a portrait of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, in September 2003. Henghameh Fahimi/Agence France-Presse
Nuclear Program Is Suspended
Possibly in response to the American invasion of Iraq, which was originally justified by the Bush administration on the grounds that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, Ayatollah Khamenei orders a suspension of work on what appear to be weapons-related technologies, although he allows uranium enrichment efforts to continue.
Inspectors with the United Nations atomic agency find traces of highly enriched uranium at the Natanz plant, and Iran concedes to demands, after talks with Britain, France and Germany, to accept stricter international inspections of its nuclear sites and to suspend production of enriched uranium.
2002
Discovery of Secret Plants
Mujahedeen Khalq, an Iranian dissident group also known as the M.E.K., obtains and shares documents revealing a clandestine nuclear program previously unknown to the United Nations.
The program includes a vast uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy water plant at Arak. In December, satellite photographs of Natanz and Arak appear widely in the news media. The United States accuses Tehran of an “across-the-board pursuit of weapons of mass destruction,” but takes relatively little action because it is focused on the approaching invasion of Iraq the next year.
Iran agrees to inspections by the I.A.E.A. It also signs an accord with Russia to speed up completion of the nuclear power plant at Bushehr.
May 1999
Mohammad Khatami in 2009. Hasan Sarbakhshian/Associated Press
Proposal for Nuclear-Free Mideast
President Mohammad Khatami of Iran goes to Saudi Arabia, becoming the first Iranian leader since 1979 to visit the Arab world.
He issues a joint statement with King Fahd expressing concerns about Israel’s nuclear weapons program and support for ridding the Middle East of nuclear weapons. In 2003, Iran supports such a proposal initiated by Syria.
July 1996
President Bill Clinton addressing reporters in July 1996. Joe Marquette/Associated Press
Sanctions Against Iran and Libya
With growing intelligence estimates that Iran may secretly be trying to build a nuclear weapon, President Bill Clinton signs a bill imposing sanctions on foreign companies with investments in Iran and Libya. Such rules are already in place for American companies.
A Russian engineer checking equipment at the Bushehr nuclear plant in April 2007.Behrouz Mehri/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Iran and Russia Sign Nuclear Contract
Iran announces that it will sign an $800 million contract with Russia to complete construction on one of two light water reactors at the Bushehr nuclear plant within four years. After many delays, the project was completed in 2010.
The United States has been persuading countries like Argentina, India, Spain, Germany and France to prohibit the sale of nuclear technology to Iran’s civilian program.
In 2005, the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency is on the verge of reviewing Tehran’s nuclear program when Iranian officials admit to a 1987 meetingwith Dr. Khan’s representatives. But Tehran tells the agency that it turned down the chance to buy the equipment required to build the core of a bomb.
1984
Iraqi gunners used a Soviet 130-milllimeter field gun to shell the Iranian cities of Abadan and Khurramshahr.United Press International
Nuclear Program Restarts
The Iran-Iraq war, from 1980 to 1988, changes Iran’s thinking about the nuclear program. With Saddam Hussein pursuing a nuclear program in Iraq, Ayatollah Khomeini secretly decides to restart Iran’s program and seeks the assistance of German partners to complete the construction at Bushehr, which was damaged by bombs during the war.
Feb. 11, 1979
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini descending from the Air France plane that returned him to Tehran after 15 years in exile.United Press International
Khomeini Comes to Power
Prime Minister Bakhtiar is overthrown by followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, an exiled cleric, after bloody clashes in Tehran.
The new leader is uninterested in the nuclear program and ends the shah’s effort. Many nuclear experts flee the country.
Any nuclear cooperation between Iran and the United States breaks down completely with the American Embassy hostage crisis from November 1979 until January 1981.
The deposed shah, with Empress Farah and two of their children, in the Bahamas in 1979, where they dodged questions from photographers. Associated Press
Shah Flees
The shah is overthrown and flees the country, in what becomes known as the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
Prime Minister Shahpur Bakhtiar takes over and cancels the $6.2 billion contract for the construction of two nuclear power plants at the Bushehr complex.
The United States retracts a deal it had made with Iran a year earlier and stops supplying enriched uranium for the Tehran research reactor.
The Bushehr nuclear plant on Aug. 21, 2010, as its first fuel rod was loaded. Getty Images
Creation of Atomic Energy Body
The shah creates the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, which conducts training for its personnel and nuclear deals with countries including the United States, France, West Germany, Namibia and South Africa. By training engineers in Iran and abroad, the country gains a solid understanding of nuclear technologies and capabilities.
A year later, Kraftwerk Union, a West German company, agrees to construct two light water reactors to produce nuclear energy at the Bushehr complex, 470 miles south of Tehran. Construction begins in 1974 but the contract is not signed until 1976.
By the late 1970s, the United States becomes worried that Iran may harbor nuclear weapon ambitions.
July 1, 1968
Iran Signs Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
With the American-provided research reactor running, starting in 1967, Iran becomes one of 51 nations to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, agreeing to never become a nuclear-weapon state.
Iran begins a civilian nuclear program in the 1950s, led by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who reaches a deal through the Eisenhower administration’s Atoms for Peace program. Under the agreement, the United States agrees to provide a nuclear research reactor in Tehran and power plants.
Story 1: Part 2 of 2, Christian Crusades Commences: Congress Declares War On Islamic State and Islamic Republic of Iran? All We Are Saying Is Give Total War A Chance — Obama’s DC (Delay and Contain) Strategy vs. Neoconservative Strategy of Total War — There Is No Substitute For Victory — Videos
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.”
“There is no substitute for victory.”
“The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
~ General Douglas MacArthur
“If You Can’t Hear the Drums of War You Must Be Deaf”
“Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.”
Satire of Henry Kissinger
Give Peace A Chance (1969) – Official Video
War – Edwin Starr
In 90 seconds: Iran & Iraq: An ancient rivalry – BBC News
Nonproliferation Expert: Iran Nuclear Deal Perhaps The Single Greatest Strategic Mistake In Decades
The emerging nuclear agreement with Iran would be a “historic blunder” that eclipses other foreign policy debacles in recent decades, former undersecretary of state for arms control and international security Robert Joseph told lawmakers on Wednesday.
General Michael Flynn and Ambassador Robert Joseph on Iran’s Missile Program and a Nuclear Deal
Former DIA Director Lt. General Michael Flynn and Ambassador Robert Joseph discuss their concerns about the exclusion of Iran’s ballistic missile program from the nuclear agreement currently being negotiated with Tehran and their belief that this deal will not stop or slow Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Araqchi: Drafting nuclear deal tough task
Expert-level talks in progress over Iran’s nuclear energy program in Vienna
Jack Devine: The Nuclear Deal & Iran’s Instability
Jack Devine, a retired 32-year CIA veteran, says it is the right thing for the United States to be negotiating with Iran, but he doesn’t think the Islamic Republic’s regime is stable enough for it to safely have nuclear weapons.
Bernard Haykel: Criticism of the Iran Nuclear Deal
Bernard Haykel: Saudi Arabia’s New Power Structure
What does Iran’s strategy against Islamic State mean for us?
General Wesley Clark: The US will attack 7 countries in 5 years
June 10 2015 Breaking News USA superpower Obama says has no winning strategy against ISIS ISIL DAESH
Congressman Ron Paul, MD – We’ve Been NeoConned
Thomas Barnett: Rethinking America’s military strategy
In this bracingly honest and funny talk, international security strategist Thomas P.M. Barnett outlines a post-Cold War solution for the foundering US military: Break it in two. He suggests the military re-form into two groups: a Leviathan force, a small group of young and fierce soldiers capable of swift and immediate victories; and an internationally supported network of System Administrators, an older, wiser, more diverse organization that actually has the diplomacy and power it takes to build and maintain peace.
Wikistrat’s “The World According to Tom Barnett” 2011 brief, Pt 1 (Pentagon’s new map)
Wikistrat’s “The World According to Tom Barnett” 2011 brief, Pt 2 (Flow of People)
Wikistrat’s “The World According to Tom Barnett” 2011 brief, Pt 3 (Flow of Money)
Wikistrat’s “The World According to Tom Barnett” 2011 brief, Pt 4 (Flow of Energy)
Wikistrat’s “The World According to Tom Barnett” 2011 brief, Pt 5 (Flow of Food)
Wikistrat’s “The World According to Tom Barnett” 2011 brief, Pt 6 (Flow of Security)
Wikistrat’s “The World According to Tom Barnett” 2011 brief, Pt 7 (Q&A – Religion )
Wikistrat’s “The World According to Tom Barnett” 2011 brief, Pt 8 (Q&A – Global Economic Crisis)
Wikistrat’s “The World According to Tom Barnett” 2011 brief, Pt 9 – Final (Q&A – U.S. Allies)
Conversations with History: Thomas P.M. Barnett
John Bolton: Obama ‘in denial,’ ‘blinded’ by ‘ideology’ on Islamic State
The Islamic State, Iran, and the Geopolitics of the Middle East
Obama Asks Congress To Declare War On Islamic State | Authorization for Military Force Against ISIS
Why US Attack Iran Full Documentary – British Army Documentary 2015
ISIS World’s Richest Terror Army – Full Documentary 2015
Origins of ISIS – Special Coverage
O’Reilly: Obama Has No Strategy to Defeat Islamic Jihadists
Krauthammer’s Take: Obama Does Not Think He Needs a Strategy to Defeat Islamic Terrorism
The Situation Room Special Report: The War Against ISIS (2015)
Top Commander: Islamic State Not Making ‘Major Advances’ in Iraq
What is driving American civilians to fight ISIS around the world?
Islamic State: The rise of Iraqi insurgency
US Airstrikes Against Islamic State ISIS or ISIL – 10,000 Militants Killed
U.S., Allies Conduct 23 Air Strikes Against Islamic State in Iraq, Syria: Task Force
ISLAMIC STATE – US raids hit jihadists fighting rebels
Obama Rallies America To War & Why ISIS Should Be Thrilled
Pinned Down by the Islamic State: The Road to Mosul (Part 1)
Life After Islamic State Massacres: The Road to Mosul (Part 2)
The Islamic State (Full Length)
The Powers Behind The Islamic State
Why US Airstrikes Won’t Defeat ISIS
Fighting Back Against ISIS: The Battle for Iraq (Dispatch 1)
The ISIS Uprising: The Battle for Iraq (Dispatch 2)
Kurds Fight for Control of Kirkuk: The Battle for Iraq (Dispatch 3)
RAND PAUL TELLS US THE TRUTH “CIA FUNDED ISIS UNDER OBAMA ADMIN TO PROMOTE MORE WAR IN MIDDLE EAST”
US vs. the Islamic State: Why Hasn’t Congress Authorized War? (On Assignment, Oct. 3, 2014)
ISIS : Lt. General McInerney says Obama helped build ISIS with Weapons from Benghazi (Sept 03, 2014)
2015 new BBC Documentary The Iraq War – Baghdad’s History
Iran-Iraq War 1980 to 1988 – Part 1 of 3
Iran-Iraq War 1980 to 1988 – Part 2 of 3
Iran-Iraq War 1980 to 1988 – Part 3 of 3
“I have known war as few men now living know it.
It’s very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.”
~General Douglas MacArthur
Iran Abandons Past Nuclear Promises as Deal Deadline Looms
Tehran backslides on past agreements made in talks
BY: Adam Kredo
Iran is backsliding on promises made to U.S. negotiators during previous rounds of discussions aimed at reaching an agreement to curb the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, according to recent comments.
While senior U.S. officials have insisted Iran will agree to a deal that they describe as a “forever agreement,” a top Iranian negotiator disputed this claim in comments this week.
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister and senior negotiator Seyed Abbas Araqchi insisted this week that any agreement reached with Western powers will only be temporary and not binding in the long term.
“If any final agreement is struck, it will last for a specified period of time and none of the measures envisaged in it will be permanent,” Araqchi was quoted as saying on Tuesday as he refuted recent comments by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
Araqchi referred to repeated promises by U.S. officials that a final nuclear deal would last “forever” as “a worthless fallacy.”
“Of course, the undertakings that Iran has accepted based on the international treaties, including the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will continue as long as Iran is a member of these treaties, and the American side’s resort to such issues which is done for domestic consumption or satisfying allies is just a worthless fallacy,” Araqchi was quoted as saying by Iran’s state-controlled Fars News Agency.
These comments run counter to multiple comments by Obama administration officials claiming that Iran would be subject to certain nuclear restrictions well into the future under the terms of any deal.
On April 2, for instance, Secretary of State John Kerry promised that certain measures to clamp down on Iran’s program “will be in place indefinitely.”
“I’d like also to make one more point very, very clear because it has been misinterpreted and misstated, misrepresented for much of this discussion: There will be no sunset to the deal that we are working to finalize—no sunset, none,” Kerry said in April from Lausanne, Switzerland, where ongoing talks with Iran have been taking place.
“The parameters of this agreement will be implemented in phases. Some provisions will be in place for 10 years; others will be in place for 15 years; others still will be in place for 25 years,” Kerry said. “But certain provisions, including many transparency measures, will be in place indefinitely into the future. They will never expire.”
Several days later, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz publicly described a final deal as a “forever agreement” with Iran.
“It’s not a fixed-year agreement; it’s a forever agreement,” Moniz was quoted as telling reporters. “The access and transparency is unprecedented.”
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf also referred to the agreement as a “forever commitment” in threeconsecutivepress briefings from April 6 to April 8.
Again on April 30, Kerry said Iran has given assurances that a deal will be “forever, forever.”
“There are a lot of the assurances and visibility on their program that aren’t for 10 years,” Kerry said. “They’re for 15, they’re for 20, they’re for 25, and they’re forever, forever. And the forever alone gives us, we believe, the capacity to know what Iran is doing. We will not disappoint Israel. We will have inspectors in there every single day. That is not a 10-year deal; that’s forever there have to be inspections.”
However, Araqchi described these statement this week as “more myth than fact.”
He also pushed back against claims that Iran would permit international inspectors to have unprecedented access to Iran’s military and non-military sites.
“I have explained this many times that there is no difference between inspection and visiting the military and non-military centers, that are, in fact, non-nuclear; we don’t accept such a thing,” Araqchi said last week.
Iran will only permit limited and “managed access” to these disputed sites.
A State Department official did not respond to multiple requests for comment clarifying the gap between the United States and Iran.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution, sometimes referred to as the War Powers Clause, vests in the Congress the power to declare war, in the following wording:
[The Congress shall have Power…] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
A number of wars have been declared under the United States Constitution, although there is some controversy as to the exact number, as the Constitution does not specify the form of such a declaration.
The Pentagon’s ISIS Strategy, By Its Own Accounting, Is a Mess
By Bing West
On June 5, at a Pentagon press conference, Lieutenant General John W. Hesterman III, Combined Forces Air Component Commander, vigorously championed both the success of the bombing in Iraq and Syria, and the Defense Department’s method for controlling air strikes. The briefing illustrated how, as in Vietnam, the military becomes politicized and loses focus.
A few observations:
Attrition is not a strategy.
The general began by saying that bombing was “killing 1000 [ISIS] fighters a month.” These deaths, he asserted, have “a profound effect upon the enemy.”
Stop right there.
Bombing is not a strategy. It is weapon, like a rifle. If attrition were our strategy, then the measure is the number of enemy killed as compared to the total number of fighters plus replacements. For years in Vietnam the CIA and the military claimed that bombing was having a severe effect and that North Vietnamese morale under B-52 strikes was at rock bottom. Maybe so, but North Vietnam eventually conquered South Vietnam.
Pentagon officials shouldn’t be political mouthpieces. It was disappointing that the general asserted, “air power is giving coalition nations the time to execute the effort to finish Daesh. . . . There’ll be tactical setbacks . . . [but] we are fully committed to a strategic defeat of the Daesh terrorists.”
“Fully committed” is a political pledge only the commander-in-chief can make. And President Obama has promised we will not be fully committed. Generals must refrain from being thrust out in front to defend political decisions.
Our mission in Iraq and Syria is incoherent.
No can define the American military mission, because it has no clearly articulated political strategy or end state. Yesterday, retired General McChrystal criticized Hesterman’s Air Force briefing. In his book, he wrote, ”I directed all units cease reporting . . . insurgents killed. . . . I wanted to take away any incentives that might drive commanders and their men to see killing insurgents as the primary goal.”
Today, killing is being trotted out as the primary measure of American effectiveness.
Who speaks for American military objectives and means?
Air-strike control is much too centralized.
I called in strikes in 1966 on the ground in I Corps. No pilot ever hesitated or questioned me. Over the course of dozens of embeds since 2003 in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I have been on the battlefield with our air controllers and observed the process firsthand. The difference in air-strike control is huge.
In his briefing, Hesterman declined to mention how centralized and difficult it has become for a JTAC or a pilot to release a bomb. Today, a pilot is held morally responsible for satisfying himself that the controller on the ground has made the correct call. The videotape of every bombing is reviewed back at base, often by a lawyer. The pilot shares the responsibility for dropping a bomb, regardless of what the man on the ground tells him. I have been out there on the lines looking at Taliban, and heard the air controller next to me talking to the air officer at battalion, with a lawyer present, talking to higher headquarters, while the pilot circled, asking questions about the certainty of the target. The confirmation loop today is much, much longer than in previous wars, both in terms of time and in the number of personnel involved.
When he was asked about the centralization of air support in his briefing, the general answered with these words: ”we use a multitude of sources to initially ID the enemy. Then JTACS in operations centers do a collateral damage estimate and we de-conflict friendlies. And, a senior officer then clears the sortie . . . JTACs are in operations centers watching with ISR . . . in some cases, [op centers] have better situational awareness because they have more input.”
Let me ‘deconflict’ those elliptical sentences: When an air-support operation is conducted in 2015, operations centers hundreds of miles from the target review what the pilot is watching, record what he is saying, give him advice, and overrule him in those cases where the senior watch officer is not convinced.
Is the application of air strikes in 2015 more centralized and more sensitive about civilian casualties than it was during Vietnam, or the bombing of Serbia in the 90s, or even the bombing of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003? Of course it is. For the general to imply that the system has not become more centralized during his 32 years as a pilot was disappointing. At the least, our senior military leadership should acknowledge and forthrightly defend this centralized trend. In sum, the threat in Syria and Iraq will not be eliminated by generals who assert “we are fully committed,” and who take credit for killing from the air without acknowledging serious issues with how we apply air power and whether we are on the path to defeating an enemy we won’t even acknowledge is Islamist. — Bing West, a former combat Marine and assistant secretary of defense, has written three books about the war in Iraq, including No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah.
Henry Kissinger: “If You Can’t Hear the Drums of War You Must Be Deaf”
ACCURATE SATIRE: Kissinger, the most famous living practitioner of international statecraft
In a remarkable admission by former Nixon era Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, reveals what is happening at the moment in the world and particularly the Middle East. [please note this is a SATIRE, which in many regards says the truth regarding the current situation, the interview is fiction, it never took place, some of the quotes are from Henry Kissinger]
Speaking from his luxurious Manhattan apartment, the elder statesman, who will be 89 in May, is all too forward with his analysis of the current situation in the world forum of Geo-politics and economics.
“The United States is bating China and Russia, and the final nail in the coffin will be Iran, which is, of course, the main target of Israel. We have allowed China to increase their military strength and Russia to recover from Sovietization, to give them a false sense of bravado, this will create an all together faster demise for them. We’re like the sharp shooter daring the noob to pick up the gun, and when they try, it’s bang bang. The coming war will will be so severe that only one superpower can win, and that’s us folks. This is why the EU is in such a hurry to form a complete superstate because they know what is coming, and to survive, Europe will have to be one whole cohesive state. Their urgency tells me that they know full well that the big showdown is upon us. O how I have dreamed of this delightful moment.”
“Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.”
Mr Kissinger then added: “If you are an ordinary person, then you can prepare yourself for war by moving to the countryside and building a farm, but you must take guns with you, as the hordes of starving will be roaming. Also, even though the elite will have their safe havens and specialist shelters, they must be just as careful during the war as the ordinary civilians, because their shelters can still be compromised.”
After pausing for a few minutes to collect his thoughts, Mr Kissinger, carried on:
“We told the military that we would have to take over seven Middle Eastern countries for their resources and they have nearly completed their job. We all know what I think of the military, but I have to say they have obeyed orders superfluously this time. It is just that last stepping stone, i.e. Iran which will really tip the balance. How long can China and Russia stand by and watch America clean up? The great Russian bear and Chinese sickle will be roused from their slumber and this is when Israel will have to fight with all its might and weapons to kill as many Arabs as it can. Hopefully if all goes well, half the Middle East will be Israeli. Our young have been trained well for the last decade or so on combat console games, it was interesting to see the new Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 game, which mirrors exactly what is to come in the near future with its predictive programming. Our young, in the US and West, are prepared because they have been programmed to be good soldiers, cannon fodder, and when they will be ordered to go out into the streets and fight those crazy Chins and Russkies, they will obey their orders. Out of the ashes we shall build a new society, there will only be one superpower left, and that one will be the global government that wins. Don’t forget, the United States, has the best weapons, we have stuff that no other nation has, and we will introduce those weapons to the world when the time is right.”
End of interview. Our reporter is ushered out of the room by Kissinger’s minder.
Story 1: Part 1 of 2, Christian Crusades Commences: Congress Declares War On Islamic State and Islamic Republic of Iran? All We Are Saying Is Give Total War A Chance — Obama’s DC (Delay and Contain) Strategy vs. Neoconservative Strategy of Total War — There Is No Substitute For Victory — Videos
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.”
“There is no substitute for victory.”
“The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
~ General Douglas MacArthur
“If You Can’t Hear the Drums of War You Must Be Deaf”
“Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.”
Satire of Henry Kissinger
Give Peace A Chance (1969) – Official Video
War – Edwin Starr
In 90 seconds: Iran & Iraq: An ancient rivalry – BBC News
What does Iran’s strategy against Islamic State mean for us?
General Wesley Clark: The US will attack 7 countries in 5 years
Congressman Ron Paul, MD – We’ve Been NeoConned
Thomas Barnett: Rethinking America’s military strategy
In this bracingly honest and funny talk, international security strategist Thomas P.M. Barnett outlines a post-Cold War solution for the foundering US military: Break it in two. He suggests the military re-form into two groups: a Leviathan force, a small group of young and fierce soldiers capable of swift and immediate victories; and an internationally supported network of System Administrators, an older, wiser, more diverse organization that actually has the diplomacy and power it takes to build and maintain peace.
The Islamic State, Iran, and the Geopolitics of the Middle East
Obama Asks Congress To Declare War On Islamic State | Authorization for Military Force Against ISIS
Why US Attack Iran Full Documentary – British Army Documentary 2015
ISIS World’s Richest Terror Army – Full Documentary 2015
Origins of ISIS – Special Coverage
O’Reilly: Obama Has No Strategy to Defeat Islamic Jihadists
Krauthammer’s Take: Obama Does Not Think He Needs a Strategy to Defeat Islamic Terrorism
The Situation Room Special Report: The War Against ISIS (2015)
Top Commander: Islamic State Not Making ‘Major Advances’ in Iraq
What is driving American civilians to fight ISIS around the world?
Islamic State: The rise of Iraqi insurgency
US Airstrikes Against Islamic State ISIS or ISIL – 10,000 Militants Killed
U.S., Allies Conduct 23 Air Strikes Against Islamic State in Iraq, Syria: Task Force
ISLAMIC STATE – US raids hit jihadists fighting rebels
Obama Rallies America To War & Why ISIS Should Be Thrilled
Pinned Down by the Islamic State: The Road to Mosul (Part 1)
Life After Islamic State Massacres: The Road to Mosul (Part 2)
The Islamic State (Full Length)
The Powers Behind The Islamic State
Why US Airstrikes Won’t Defeat ISIS
Fighting Back Against ISIS: The Battle for Iraq (Dispatch 1)
The ISIS Uprising: The Battle for Iraq (Dispatch 2)
Kurds Fight for Control of Kirkuk: The Battle for Iraq (Dispatch 3)
RAND PAUL TELLS US THE TRUTH “CIA FUNDED ISIS UNDER OBAMA ADMIN TO PROMOTE MORE WAR IN MIDDLE EAST”
US vs. the Islamic State: Why Hasn’t Congress Authorized War? (On Assignment, Oct. 3, 2014)
ISIS : Lt. General McInerney says Obama helped build ISIS with Weapons from Benghazi (Sept 03, 2014)
2015 new BBC Documentary The Iraq War – Baghdad’s History
Iran-Iraq War 1980 to 1988 – Part 1 of 3
Iran-Iraq War 1980 to 1988 – Part 2 of 3
Iran-Iraq War 1980 to 1988 – Part 3 of 3
“I have known war as few men now living know it.
It’s very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.”
~General Douglas MacArthur
War Powers Clause
Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution, sometimes referred to as the War Powers Clause, vests in the Congress the power to declare war, in the following wording:
[The Congress shall have Power…] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
A number of wars have been declared under the United States Constitution, although there is some controversy as to the exact number, as the Constitution does not specify the form of such a declaration.
The Pentagon’s ISIS Strategy, By Its Own Accounting, Is a Mess
By Bing West
On June 5, at a Pentagon press conference, Lieutenant General John W. Hesterman III, Combined Forces Air Component Commander, vigorously championed both the success of the bombing in Iraq and Syria, and the Defense Department’s method for controlling air strikes. The briefing illustrated how, as in Vietnam, the military becomes politicized and loses focus.
A few observations:
Attrition is not a strategy.
The general began by saying that bombing was “killing 1000 [ISIS] fighters a month.” These deaths, he asserted, have “a profound effect upon the enemy.”
Stop right there.
Bombing is not a strategy. It is weapon, like a rifle. If attrition were our strategy, then the measure is the number of enemy killed as compared to the total number of fighters plus replacements. For years in Vietnam the CIA and the military claimed that bombing was having a severe effect and that North Vietnamese morale under B-52 strikes was at rock bottom. Maybe so, but North Vietnam eventually conquered South Vietnam.
Pentagon officials shouldn’t be political mouthpieces. It was disappointing that the general asserted, “air power is giving coalition nations the time to execute the effort to finish Daesh. . . . There’ll be tactical setbacks . . . [but] we are fully committed to a strategic defeat of the Daesh terrorists.”
“Fully committed” is a political pledge only the commander-in-chief can make. And President Obama has promised we will not be fully committed. Generals must refrain from being thrust out in front to defend political decisions.
Our mission in Iraq and Syria is incoherent.
No can define the American military mission, because it has no clearly articulated political strategy or end state. Yesterday, retired General McChrystal criticized Hesterman’s Air Force briefing. In his book, he wrote, ”I directed all units cease reporting . . . insurgents killed. . . . I wanted to take away any incentives that might drive commanders and their men to see killing insurgents as the primary goal.”
Today, killing is being trotted out as the primary measure of American effectiveness.
Who speaks for American military objectives and means?
Air-strike control is much too centralized.
I called in strikes in 1966 on the ground in I Corps. No pilot ever hesitated or questioned me. Over the course of dozens of embeds since 2003 in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I have been on the battlefield with our air controllers and observed the process firsthand. The difference in air-strike control is huge.
In his briefing, Hesterman declined to mention how centralized and difficult it has become for a JTAC or a pilot to release a bomb. Today, a pilot is held morally responsible for satisfying himself that the controller on the ground has made the correct call. The videotape of every bombing is reviewed back at base, often by a lawyer. The pilot shares the responsibility for dropping a bomb, regardless of what the man on the ground tells him. I have been out there on the lines looking at Taliban, and heard the air controller next to me talking to the air officer at battalion, with a lawyer present, talking to higher headquarters, while the pilot circled, asking questions about the certainty of the target. The confirmation loop today is much, much longer than in previous wars, both in terms of time and in the number of personnel involved.
When he was asked about the centralization of air support in his briefing, the general answered with these words: ”we use a multitude of sources to initially ID the enemy. Then JTACS in operations centers do a collateral damage estimate and we de-conflict friendlies. And, a senior officer then clears the sortie . . . JTACs are in operations centers watching with ISR . . . in some cases, [op centers] have better situational awareness because they have more input.”
Let me ‘deconflict’ those elliptical sentences: When an air-support operation is conducted in 2015, operations centers hundreds of miles from the target review what the pilot is watching, record what he is saying, give him advice, and overrule him in those cases where the senior watch officer is not convinced.
Is the application of air strikes in 2015 more centralized and more sensitive about civilian casualties than it was during Vietnam, or the bombing of Serbia in the 90s, or even the bombing of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003? Of course it is. For the general to imply that the system has not become more centralized during his 32 years as a pilot was disappointing. At the least, our senior military leadership should acknowledge and forthrightly defend this centralized trend. In sum, the threat in Syria and Iraq will not be eliminated by generals who assert “we are fully committed,” and who take credit for killing from the air without acknowledging serious issues with how we apply air power and whether we are on the path to defeating an enemy we won’t even acknowledge is Islamist. — Bing West, a former combat Marine and assistant secretary of defense, has written three books about the war in Iraq, including No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah.
Henry Kissinger: “If You Can’t Hear the Drums of War You Must Be Deaf”
ACCURATE SATIRE: Kissinger, the most famous living practitioner of international statecraft
In a remarkable admission by former Nixon era Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, reveals what is happening at the moment in the world and particularly the Middle East. [please note this is a SATIRE, which in many regards says the truth regarding the current situation, the interview is fiction, it never took place, some of the quotes are from Henry Kissinger]
Speaking from his luxurious Manhattan apartment, the elder statesman, who will be 89 in May, is all too forward with his analysis of the current situation in the world forum of Geo-politics and economics.
“The United States is bating China and Russia, and the final nail in the coffin will be Iran, which is, of course, the main target of Israel. We have allowed China to increase their military strength and Russia to recover from Sovietization, to give them a false sense of bravado, this will create an all together faster demise for them. We’re like the sharp shooter daring the noob to pick up the gun, and when they try, it’s bang bang. The coming war will will be so severe that only one superpower can win, and that’s us folks. This is why the EU is in such a hurry to form a complete superstate because they know what is coming, and to survive, Europe will have to be one whole cohesive state. Their urgency tells me that they know full well that the big showdown is upon us. O how I have dreamed of this delightful moment.”
“Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.”
Mr Kissinger then added: “If you are an ordinary person, then you can prepare yourself for war by moving to the countryside and building a farm, but you must take guns with you, as the hordes of starving will be roaming. Also, even though the elite will have their safe havens and specialist shelters, they must be just as careful during the war as the ordinary civilians, because their shelters can still be compromised.”
After pausing for a few minutes to collect his thoughts, Mr Kissinger, carried on:
“We told the military that we would have to take over seven Middle Eastern countries for their resources and they have nearly completed their job. We all know what I think of the military, but I have to say they have obeyed orders superfluously this time. It is just that last stepping stone, i.e. Iran which will really tip the balance. How long can China and Russia stand by and watch America clean up? The great Russian bear and Chinese sickle will be roused from their slumber and this is when Israel will have to fight with all its might and weapons to kill as many Arabs as it can. Hopefully if all goes well, half the Middle East will be Israeli. Our young have been trained well for the last decade or so on combat console games, it was interesting to see the new Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 game, which mirrors exactly what is to come in the near future with its predictive programming. Our young, in the US and West, are prepared because they have been programmed to be good soldiers, cannon fodder, and when they will be ordered to go out into the streets and fight those crazy Chins and Russkies, they will obey their orders. Out of the ashes we shall build a new society, there will only be one superpower left, and that one will be the global government that wins. Don’t forget, the United States, has the best weapons, we have stuff that no other nation has, and we will introduce those weapons to the world when the time is right.”
End of interview. Our reporter is ushered out of the room by Kissinger’s minder.
Story 1: Round Up The Usual Suspects: Waco Texas Police Massive Arrests of Bikers, Massive Bail Set by Judges of $1 Million, Massive Civil Law Suits For Wrongful Arrest and Detention and Violating Civil Rights — 170 Arrested But 115 Have No Criminal Record — Waco Busted — Taxpayers Will Be Paying The Bill For A Very Long Time — I Say We Let Them Go — Videos
Twin Peaks Waco- What the Video Will Show (as soon as it is released)- Biker Witnesses’s Perspective
Stephen Stubbs (aka “Bowtie”), with permission from biker eye witnesses, releases details of the Twin Peaks Waco incident from May 17, 2015. Until now, the police don’t even know much of this information.
Casablanca (1942) Round Up The Usual Suspects
Biker Fight
Start of biker brawl at Twin Peaks in Waco TX.
Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association:
The Waco situation of recent days raises serious concerns. It seems unprecedented that you have 170 individuals charged with the same or similar crimes and identical bail amounts set at 1 Million Dollars each. When you consider the constitutional prohibition against excessive bail as well as the requirement for probable cause prior to arresting an individual, the risks of abuse in the Waco case seem obvious.
Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyer – What is probable cause?
ere, DFW criminal defense attorney Cheves Ligon explains what is required for police to arrest you. You can’t be arrested without probable cause, which can seem confusing. No matter what you’ve been accused of the police must be able to prove your arrest complied with the 4th Amendment.
What Is Probable Cause?
Shocking Waco/Cleveland Shooting Update
Motorcycle Club Member Files Federal Lawsuit Alleging Violation of Rights
Marine Unfairly Arrested In Waco Shooting
What happened in Waco Shootout?
3 BIG Questions about Waco Twin Peaks Biker Shootings
The Truth about the May 17, 2015 Shooting Tragedy at Twin Peaks Restaurant in Waco, TX
Waco, Texas: Biker Shootout or Police Massacre
Inside the Bandidos Motorcycle Gang
Biker explains Waco, Tex. brawl
Biker gang turf war: Bandidos and Cossacks have a rivalry going back to the 1960s – TomoNews
Bandidos Mc The Hardest Motorcycle Gang Crime Documentary
When her husband was arrested after a shootout at a biker club gathering at a Twin Peaks restaurant May 17, Sheree Clendennen figured security camera video would soon clear him.
“At first I just thought they’re going to take all these guys, look at the video, see who’s innocent and let all these guys go,” said Clendennen, 29, of nearby Hewitt.
“Then week two it was like ‘Oh my gosh — they’re not letting people go. They don’t care what’s on the video,’” she said of police. “With all of the security cameras and all of them out in the parking lot watching what went on, there is no reason all of these guys should have been held so long.”
But 17 days later, of the 177 people arrested in connection with the shooting that killed nine people and wounded more than a dozen, 143 remain jailed this week, many in lieu of $1 million bail. Some face at least a monthlong wait for a bail-reduction hearing, and attorneys say it’s unlikely their clients will post bail. They have been arraigned but have not been formally charged.
‘Wholesale roundup’
Prosecutors have 90 days to present a case to indict to a grand jury before those in custody are entitled to reduced bail.
The bikers were arrested on allegations of engaging in organized crime, but none have been specifically charged in the shootings and the investigation is still in progress this week, said Waco police Sgt. Patrick Swanton.
The delays in prosecuting those at the scene of the shooting have triggered legal complaints and controversy, including a hearing Thursday about whether two state district judges should recuse themselves.
“It’s unprecedented, this wholesale roundup of people,” said F. Clinton Broden, a Dallas attorney who represents Matthew Clendennen. “It seems like something out ofCasablanca — just round everybody up. You’re arresting people for being at the scene of a crime. It’s scary that this can happen in America.”
Amy Kuzniarek, a spokeswoman for the McLennan County district attorney’s office, said this week that “this is an open, active criminal case. … Therefore our office cannot and will not comment.”
Clendennen, who has no criminal record, is a landscaper, father of four, former firefighter and member of the Scimitars motorcycle club. He recently filed a complaint with the state Commission on Judicial Conduct against the justice of the peace who arraigned him, and a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of Waco, McLennan County and prosecutors, alleging he was wrongfully arrested and detained.
“He spent 17 days in jail, he’s likely to lose his business, he’s sole provider to his current family, a wife and two children, and he shares custody with his ex-wife, who is going back into court to get custody,” Broden said.
In his complaints, Clendennen claims that McLennan County Justice of the Peace Walter “Pete” Peterson said at arraignment that he set the bikers’ bail at $1 million “to send a message” and that District Attorney Abelino Reyna created “fill-in-the-blank” arrest warrants without probable cause, alleging that the bikers were not cooperating and were therefore not victims.
Petersen declined to comment this week.
Bail reduced
Broden said his client did cooperate, but that even if he didn’t, “that’s his Fifth Amendment right. He got Mirandized.”
As for Clendennen’s arrest, Broden said “there’s got to be individual probable cause. They’ve got the tapes of the scene. There’s no reason they can’t be reviewed to make determinations. You just can’t keep bystanders locked up because you don’t know who did the shooting.”
Clendennen’s attorney negotiated to have his bail reduced to $100,000, and his family chipped in to bail him out Wednesday, paying $10,000 to a bondsman.
Sheree Clendennen said her husband immediately returned to work before he loses any more landscaping customers. His next court date is set for Aug. 6.
Broden noted that for some others, bail reduction hearings have not been scheduled until late July. “My guess is the Department of Justice is going to have to come in at some point. It does not seem the local people are competent to handle this in a constitutional manner.”
Spokesmen for the Justice Department referred questions to local officials this week.
At least 47 of those arrested qualified as indigent and have had attorneys appointed to represent them, according to Cathy Edwards, the local indigent defense coordinator.
She said attorneys for the indigent are typically appointed from a list the county maintains but she has had to draw from surrounding counties because only 15 attorneys on the list are local.
Local bikers gather Sunday in Arlington to show support for those still jailed in Waco
Nearly 100 bikers gathered Sunday morning near the old Six Flags Mall in Arlington to show their support for the 143 people still jailed in connection with a shootout last month outside a Waco restaurant.
The bikers plan to ride together to Waco where they plan to meet hundreds of other motorcyclists outside the McLennan County Courthouse to protest how law enforcement has treated the people arrested after a shootout that killed nine and wounded more than a dozen. Authorities arrested 177 people after a shootout May 17 outside the Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco, and 143 remain jailed, many in lieu of $1 million bail.
The 177 bikers were arrested on allegations of engaging in organized crime, and critics have said that police lumped everyone under the same umbrella. They say that most of the people who were at the Twin Peaks aren’t criminals and had no part in the shootout. Many jailed have no criminal record, and those who do have prior misdemeanor charges.
“I think they were trying to set an example, throw their weight around,” Dwayne Stobaugh said Sunday morning of Waco police. “There may have been a few bad apples, but not all of them.”
Stobaugh, an independent biker, said he wanted to ride to Waco for the rally to show “that not everyone who rides a motorcycle is a gang member, because we’re not.”
“It’s all peaceful protest,” he said. “We’re not there to stir up any trouble.”
He said he has been to six Confederation of Clubs meetings, like the one planned at the Twin Peaks in May. He described the meetings as peaceful gatherings where members discuss issues important to them, like motorcycle safety.
Mel Robins, a member of Sons of Liberty Riders, said bikers are being unfairly stereotyped and harassed by police. He said the arrests in Waco have “slanted public opinion against bikers.”
Many restaurants now have posted signs saying bikers wearing their club vests won’t be allowed inside, and police are stopping motorcyclists on the highway for what seems like no reason, he said.
“Bikers are basically regular people,” Robins said. “They’re doctors, lawyers. I’m a grandfather, a veteran.”
There are an estimated 300,000 bikers in Texas, and most of them aren’t involved in criminal enterprises, as authorities suggested was the case in the Waco incident, Robins said.
Several bikers gathered Sunday morning expressed concern for those still in jail. Many of those jailed are facing long waits for bond reduction hearings.
“You’ve got innocent people in jail,” Robins said. “You have ruined lives.”
The attorney for nine of the Twin Peaks bikers told Breitbart Texas that he was in effect told “You Sir, are poured the f*** out.” A hearing was held this week on motions to remove three McLennan County judges who set and retained $1 million bonds on bikers arrested at the Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco, Texas. The attorney argued that the judges demonstrated bias and should be recused from making future rulings.
Austin lawyer Adam Reposa argued that the $1 million bonds were unreasonably oppressive, unconstitutional, and the judges clearly showed bias in setting them.
Breitbart Texas reported the story when Reposa filed his motions to remove these judges.
Breitbart Texas also reported that two of the same judges had three bikers re-arrested after they bonded out on reduced bonds. Their bonds were reset to $1 million but they were able to bond out again. The article was entitled in part, Waco Judges Gone Wild.
The judge appointed to hear the motions to remove the judges, retired criminal district judge Doug Shaver from Houston, denied the motions to recuse and said that the bond process should be expedited so the men would not be a burden on taxpayers who are paying to keep them in jail.
Reposa told Breitbart Texas that “At the end of the hearing, the judge focused less on the innocent people and their constitutional rights and more on the taxpayers.” He also focused less on the $1 million bonds and more on them wearing a patch (referring to the bikers’ motorcycle club membership).
The defense lawyer also added, “There has been no focus on due process, or probable cause. There is no probable cause connected to a crime. We are going on 24 days of all 170 being arrested on a defective probable cause affidavit.”
Those arrested and incarcerated are concerned about losing their jobs, and losing their wages while incarcerated. A $1 million bond costs approximately $100,000 in order to bond out.
Reposa argued at the hearing on the motions to remove the judges that the judges’ impartiality could reasonably be questioned – one of the standards for removing a judge from hearing a case.
Reposa filed the motion to remove Justice of the Peace W.H. “Pete” Peterson because he not only set $1 million bonds for 174 bikers, but added he was doing so to “send a message.” Peterson does not have a law degree.
According to the Waco Tribune Herald, Peterson said “I think it is important to send a message… We had nine people killed in our community. These people just came in, and most of them were from out of town. Very few of them were from in town.”
Motions to remove Judges Matt Johnson and Ralph Strother were also filed because they approved the $1 million bonds, and ordered that no other judge could rule on motions to reduce the bonds.
The judges were questioned by Reposa during the hearing on the motions.
Breitbart Texastalked to Houston-based lawyer Kent A. Schaffer, who has over 30 years of criminal law practice. Schaffer called the bonds “absurd and unconstitutional.”
Schaffer continued, “Bond is supposed to guarantee the defendant’s appearance in court, but this judge set bonds based upon his desire to teach the defendants a lesson, and not out of some concern that they will not appear in court.”
He said “The hearing should not take place in front of the same judge who has already made comments that evidence his lack of respect for the constitution and the rule of law,” Schaffer told Breitbart Texas. “Sending a message is not one of the factors that is to be considered by the court in setting a bond.”
Breitbart Texastalked to Randy Kubosh of Kubosh Bail Bonding in Houston, which includes Harris County, Texas, the third largest county in the United States. He called the $1 million bond “astronomical” and noted that the bail schedule in Harris County for a non-capital murder is $50,000.
Kubosh said, “Bail is supposed to guarantee someone’s appearance in court, not punishthem.” He continued, “It appears that the judge intended to be punitive,” he added.
Breitbart Texasalso talked to Joe Ash, of Ash Bail Bonds in Waco. He said that “$10,000 is mostly what we see on that charge (engaging in criminal activity) but I can also pull up at least 40 cases where it was $5,000.” Ash has two clients who were involved in the Twin Peaks incident and it cost them $100,000 to bond out on a $1 million bond.
Breitbart Texasalso obtained this statement from the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association:
The Waco situation of recent days raises serious concerns. It seems unprecedented that you have 170 individuals charged with the same or similar crimes and identical bail amounts set at 1 Million Dollars each. When you consider the constitutional prohibition against excessive bail as well as the requirement for probable cause prior to arresting an individual, the risks of abuse in the Waco case seem obvious.
Reposa told Breitbart Texas that “The judges have broad discretion but then the constitution steps-in.” He added, “That’s where the constitution is being denied.”
The Austin lawyer said “I think the judge agreed that you can’t hold someone on a $1 million bond if they don’t have probable cause or a criminal action against them, but I was chopped off.”
“The judge basically admitted that people are in jail that don’t belong there which is a problem, but he did not believe it rose to the level of questioning the bias of the judges.”
According to the Waco Tribune Herald, the judges have approved reduced bonds for 58 bikers after agreement were reached between the district attorney’s office and defense lawyers. The publication also reported that 47 bikers have been released from jail as of Thursday evening.
The judges who testified during the hearing said they had not rejected any agreements for reduced bonds since negotiations began on May 30th.
AP: Majority of 170 bikers arrested have no convictions in Texas
Records searched by The Associated Press show more than 115 of the 170 people arrested in the aftermath of a motorcycle gang shootout outside a Central Texas restaurant have not been convicted of a crime in Texas.
Waco police have said that all those arrested after the shooting belonged to criminal motorcycle gangs. Most of them were being held on $1 million bonds Thursday, charged with engaging in criminal enterprise. Nine people were killed in Sunday’s shootout.
Although dozens of those arrested do have criminal records, 117 did not have any convictions listed under their names and birthdates in a database maintained by the Texas Department of Public Safety. The database also shows five of the people killed had convictions in Texas.
DPS acknowledges its data may contain some errors and omissions.
___
6:30 p.m. (CDT)
Police are being less specific about gang affiliations of the nine people killed in a biker shootout outside a Texas restaurant.
Waco police spokesman Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said Thursday all those killed or injured on Sunday were members of five criminal motorcycle gangs at the restaurant for a biker meeting. A day earlier he told The Associated Press that all those killed were members of the two rival gangs at the center of the violence.
Family members of one of the men killed — 65-year-old Jesus Delgado Rodriguez — dispute Swanton’s claims. They say Rodriguez was not part of a gang and did not lead a life of violence.
An Associated Press review of court records and a database maintained by the Texas Department of Public Safety found no criminal history in Texas for Rodriguez.
___
4 p.m. (CDT)
A Texas restaurant that was the scene of a motorcycle club conference that ended in gunfire is being sued by a restaurant next door.
A lawsuit was filed Thursday in Dallas. Attorneys for Don Carlos Mexican Restaurant allege the Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco was grossly negligent and reckless in hosting the gathering of armed motorcycle gang members on Sunday.
Don Carlos attorney Tony Buzbee says his client was forced to close and was designated as a crime scene despite having had no role in the event. He says “inviting armed rival gangs to a place where alcohol is served is not only unwise, it is reckless.”
The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensation for lost profits and property damage.
The Dallas-based corporate parent of Twin Peaks didn’t return a message Thursday seeking comment on the lawsuit.
___
3:30 p.m. (CDT)
The district attorney for the county where nine bikers were killed in a gunfight outside a Texas restaurant is defending the $1 million bond set for about 170 people charged in the incident.
McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna told The Associated Press on Thursday that he supported a local judge’s decision to set the bonds that high.
One person is known to have posted bond so far.
A confederation of motorcycle groups had gathered at a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco Sunday when a dispute in the parking lot escalated into deadly violence.
Reyna mentioned the size and scope of the violence, what led up to the shooting and “the fact that a lot of these individuals weren’t even from our county.”
Reyna says he doesn’t know whether he will ask for outside prosecutors to help with the large number of cases.
___
2:30 p.m. (CDT)
Military records show one of the nine bikers killed outside a Texas restaurant was a Purple Heart recipient who served in Vietnam.
Jesus Delgado Rodriguez of New Braunfels, Texas, was an active-duty Marine from 1969 to 1973. He received the Purple Heart, as well as a Navy commendation medal and several other awards. The Purple Heart is given to those wounded or killed in action.
Rodriguez’s family says he was not part of an outlaw biker gang, despite police claims that all nine bikers who died were members of criminal gangs.
An Associated Press review of court records and a database maintained by the Texas Department of Public Safety found no criminal history in Texas for Rodriguez.
A confederation of motorcycle groups had gathered at a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco Sunday when a dispute in the parking lot escalated into deadly violence.
___
1:30 p.m. (CDT)
Family members of a man killed in a biker shootout at a Texas restaurant say he was not part of an outlaw motorcycle gang.
That contradicts police claims that all nine bikers who died were members of criminal gangs.
The son of 65-year-old Jesus Delgado Rodriguez, of New Braunfels, told the San Antonio Express-News that his father did not lead a life of violence. An Associated Press review of court records and a database maintained by the Texas Department of Public Safety found no criminal history in Texas for Rodriguez.
Family members said Rodriguez had belonged to two now defunct motorcycle clubs but was not part of any club when he was shot and killed at Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco.
Waco police spokesman Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton told the AP on Wednesday that all those killed were members of the Bandidos or the Cossacks. Swanton did not immediately return a message Thursday.
One of the bikers arrested sues Waco police for having no cause for the arrest.
What was initially reported as a motorcycle gang shootout that killed nine and wounded 18 to which police heroically responded last month in Waco, TX, at the Twin Peaks restaurant seems a bit more complicated, and bit worse for the cops, than that as further details have been revealed.
This week one of the people arrested at the scene, Matthew Clendennen, filed a lawsuit directly against the officers involved in the incident (Manuel Chavez by name, the others as John and Jane Does) as well as the city.
From that suit filing, in which Mr. Clendennen presents himself as a man with no criminal record, former fireman, small business owner on whom employees depend, and father of three who also depend on his ability to earn income, not to rot in jail. He insists he committed no crime and had no intention of committing any crime when he was arrested while in the Twin Peaks restaurant in the aftermath of the shooting event, and that:
Despite the fact that…Clendennen committed no criminal acts he was arrested at Twin Peaks on or about May 17, 2015 without probable cause and his motorcycle was illegally seized….On or about May 18, 2015, Chavez, aided by [unnamed other police officers], presented a criminal complaint (the “criminal complaint”) against…Clendennen to Justice of the Peace Walter H. “Pete” Peterson (Peterson)….The criminal complaint alleges that Plaintiff Matthew Alan Clendennen committed the capital offense of engaging in organized criminal activity and is attached hereto as Attachment A.
It is believed that Peterson was chosen by Chavez, Does 1-10 and Does 11-20 because he is a former Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper with no formal legal training……the identical criminal complaint used in Plaintiff Matthew Alan Clendennen’s case was used to justify the arrest of more than 100 other individuals and only the names were changed in the various criminal complaints.
The complaint alleges absolutely no individualize probable cause to establish that Plaintiff Matthew Alan Clendennen engaged in organized criminal activity. Moreover, Chavez…failed to inform Peterson that Plaintiff Matthew Alan Clendennen was not a member of the Cossacks nor the Bandidos and that he did not participate in any of the violence occurring at Twin Peaks but instead hid from the violence.
Clendennen is claiming that 170 people on the scene were just rounded up and arrested, in many cases had their motorcycles stolen by police, and were given a uniform $1 million dollar bond with no particular individual reason to believe they had committed any crime at all. He’s actually trying to hit not just the city government, but the specific officers who arrested him, with liability for violating his rights. He claims to be at risk of losing both any custody of two of his children and his landscaping business while in jail.
According to this local NBC report, it will bemonths before those arrested at Twin Peaks get a probable cause hearing. But this week the insanely high bond was reduced for many of them, andsome of them started getting out.
There are at least four reasons to wonder if the police account and actions about the motorcycle gang shootout that they allege to have pacified are above reproach:
1) As Clendennen’s lawsuit notes, there is insufficient reason to believe that all the 170 arrested even committed any actual crime.
2) The police originally claimed that all those they arrested were members of the two “criminal gangs” most implicated in the deaths, the Bandidos and Cossacks; Associated Press found that not only were they not all members of those specific gangs, but whatever the criminality of the gangs, 115 of the arrested had no criminal records in Texas at least.
4) Despite police reports that the fighting and shooting began inside the restaurant and spilled out, closed-circuit footage of the restaurant seen by AP and reports from the restaurateurs to the APindicate the shooting began outside, which is where the police already were.
Waco restaurant video shows bikers, others seeking cover
As gunfire broke out in the parking lot of a Texas restaurant, dozens of motorcycle riders ran inside seeking cover and tried to guide others to safety, security video reviewed exclusively by The Associated Press showed Wednesday.
The video, shared by representatives of the restaurant, shows bikers on the patio ducking under tables and trying to get inside. At least three people were holding handguns. One biker was seen running with blood on his face, hands and torso.
The footage shows only one round being fired — by a biker on the patio who then ran inside.
Authorities have said the shooting began during an apparent confrontation between two rival motorcycle gangs — the Bandidos and the Cossacks. Some bikers have complained that police acted too hastily in making arrests and scooped up riders who had nothing to do with the violence.
Before the shooting begins, the inside of the restaurant appears to be mostly empty. Bikers and other patrons can be seen walking to the windows facing the parking lot where most of the shooting happened.
When gunfire erupts at 12:24 p.m., most bikers, other patrons and staff immediately run away from the windows and into the restaurant’s interior. At least three people can be seen holding handguns.
Police: Biker Turf Dispute Erupted Into ShootoutPlay video
One camera angle shows bikers running into the men’s bathroom. When there’s no space left in the bathroom, they dash toward the kitchen.
Another camera angle, on the far side of the restaurant from the gunfire, shows patrons who are not wearing biker gear crawling behind tables toward the kitchen. At least three bikers appear to be gesturing for the patrons to crawl to safety.
None of the nine video angles shows the parking lot.
Only one angle, taken from inside a back office in the restaurant, had audio. At 12:24 p.m., a woman is heard screaming, “Oh my God!” That’s followed by multiple cries of “Get back!” Two minutes later, three gunshots are heard. It’s not clear who fired.
Video shows police with assault rifles entering the front door at about the same time. As two officers enter, bikers can be seen lying on the floor with their hands spread.
View gallery
Waco police officers walk along the perimeter of Twin Peaks restaurant during an investigation Wedne …
Before the shooting, at least 20 members of the Cossacks gang can be seen on the patio. Members of the Scimitars, Boozefighters and Leathernecks can also be seen on the tape. While no Bandidos are immediately visible, police and one member of that biker gang have said some of their members were at the event.
The AP was shown the video by representatives of the Twin Peaks franchise, who have said the fighting began outside the restaurant, not inside as police have previously said. The franchise did not release the video publicly, citing the ongoing investigation.
Waco police spokesman Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said police have the video, but he had not seen it and would not discuss its contents.
Authorities on Sunday swept up around 170 bikers who descended on the restaurant. Among those arrested was Theron Rhoten, who had just pulled into the parking lot on his vintage Harley chopper when the bullets started flying.
Rhoten showed up at the Twin Peaks restaurant for a regional motorcycle club meeting. But, according to his wife, he soon found himself in the middle of a deadly shootout involving scores of other bikers.
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A Waco police officer and a city employee collect empty water bottles during an investigation at Twi …
Katie Rhoten said her husband ran for cover and was later arrested, along with motorcycle-riding friends and other “nonviolent, noncriminal people.”
“He’s good to his family,” she said. “He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t do drugs. He doesn’t party. He’s just got a passion for motorcycles.”
Police have said that all those arrested were part of criminal motorcycle gangs, but only five of the nine people killed had criminal histories in Texas, based on court records and a search of their names in a database maintained by the Texas Department of Public Safety.
In addition, Manuel Isaac Rodriguez was arrested in 2010 and served probation for unlawfully carrying a weapon at a bar in Lewisville.
Police have acknowledged firing on armed bikers, but it is not clear how many of the dead were shot by gang members and how many were shot by officers.
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A Waco police officer collects empty water bottles during an investigation at Twin Peaks restaurant, …
Authorities have said the gathering of five biker groups was to resolve a dispute over turf. Some bikers dispute that, saying the meeting was organized to discuss laws protecting motorcycle riders and other subjects.
Katie Rhoten said her husband, a mechanic from Austin, called her from jail and said that he and two other members of Vise Grip motorcycle club ducked and ran for cover as the violence raged around them.
The arrested bikers have all been charged with engaging in organized crime and each is being held on $1 million bonds.
The eight members of Theron Rhoten’s group, the Vise Grip Club, specialize in building and riding vintage and antique motorcycles, particularly pre-1970 Harley Davidson big twin choppers, according to spokesman Brian Buscemi.
Buscemi said the bimonthly meetings have been happening for 18 years.
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A Waco police officer takes down crime scene tape, Wednesday, May 20, 2015, as they re-open Central …
“Yes, there was a problem at this scene, and it was absolutely horrific,” he said. “But there just also happened to be a significant amount of people there who had nothing to do with it.”
One Quarter Of Twin Peaks Shootout Suspects From Central Texas
Forty-two of the approximately 170 suspects in custody in connection with the deadly shootout between rival biker gangs and police Sunday at Waco’s Twin Peaks restaurant are from Central Texas and 17 are from Waco or a Waco suburb, according to information released Wednesday.
That supports the early contention that most of the bikers involved in the brawl that left nine dead and 18 injured were not local.
One Suspect Freed On Bond
One of the members of a motorcycle gang arrested in connection with the gun battle Sunday outside of Waco’s Twin Peaks restaurant was in the process of posting $1 million bond Wednesday at the McLennan County Jail.
Jeff Battey, 50, was among the 170 bikers arrested after the shootout Sunday that left nine bikers dead and 18 injured.
All 170 were charged with engaging in organized crime and were ordered held in lieu of $1 million bonds.
Battey had to post 10 percent of that amount, or $100,000, in cash, in order to secure his release.
Hundreds Of Weapons Recovered
Meanwhile Wednesday, Waco police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said investigators recovered about 300 weapons from the shooting scene including everything from pocket knives to assault-style knives to guns to chains to brass knuckles, to an AK-47 and body armor.
Earlier in the day, Swanton said about 1,000 weapons were recovered.
He said on-scene investigators were relaying the information to him.
“The crime scene officers specifically stopped at my request to count weapons and have now been able to determine that count and it is 318 and still counting. We do expect the numbers to continue to rise,” he said late Wednesday afternoon.
Investigators found weapons hidden throughout the restaurant, evidently abandoned by bikers as they attempted to flee, Swanton said.
“They have been found in sacks of chips, stuffed between bags of flour, stuffed into the bench seating, hidden in shelves, thrown into trash cans, placed in the kitchen stoves, discarded on floors and even so far as to attempt to flush a handgun down a commode,” he said.
As of late Wednesday afternoon, investigators had recovered 188 handguns, an AK-47 rifle and 157 knives, he said.
Swanton walked through the restaurant earlier Wednesday
“When you enter through the doors, it is just an eerie feeling knowing what occurred there, he said.
“There was blood everywhere, evidence in the bathroom.”
“It’s a pretty traumatic looking scene,” he said.
“It’s almost surreal.”
“There’s blood splatter blood evidence everywhere there still food on the tables half eaten hamburgers half-drunk margaritas. It’s the most surreal thing I’ve ever seen.”
“There are still purses on the table from a small number of citizens.”
“We’re talking unimaginable numbers of evidence that we’re going to have to live from this crime scene,” he said.
“Blood still on parking lot is an environmental issue at this point,” he said.
Meanwhile Wednesday San Antonio officials confirmed that one of the men arrested in connection with the shootout is a retired San Antonio police detective.
Martin Lewis 62, worked for the department for more than 30 years before he retired in 2004.
He remains jailed in lieu of $1 million bond charged with engaging ni organized crime.
Autopsy Reports Released
Preliminary autopsy reports released Tuesday identify the nine bikers who died Sunday afternoon in a shootout with rival gang members and police at Waco’s Twin Peaks restaurant, and at least two of them have local ties.
The nine bikers, all of whom were members of either the Bandidos or the Cossacks, all died of gunshot wounds.
Jesus Delgado Rodriguez, 65, died of gunshot wounds of the head and trunk.
Jacob Lee Rhyne, 39, died of gunshot wounds to the neck.
Richard Vincent Kirshner, Jr., 47, died of gunshot wounds but the report did not specify where he was shot.
Richard Matthew Jordan, III, 31, died of gunshot wounds to the head.
Wayne Lee Campbell, 43, died of gunshot wounds to the head and trunk.
Daniel Raymond Boyett, 44, died of gunshot wounds to the head.
Matthew Mark Smith, 27, died of gunshot wounds to the trunk
Manuel Issac Rodriguez, 40, died of gunshot wounds but the report did not specify where he was shot.
And Charles Wayne Russell, 46, died of gunshot wounds to the chest.
Jordan and Boyett both lived in Waco at least at one time, according to online Texas driver’s license records.
Boyett’s most recent renewal listed an address in the Chalk Bluff area just outside of Waco.
Jordan’s most recent license renewal, however, showed a Pasadena address.
Online records show addresses in New Braunfels for Jesus Rodriguez, Ranger for Jacob Rhyne, Arlington for Wayne Campbell, Keller for Matthew Smith, Allen for Manuel Rodriguez and Tyler for Charles Russell.
No records were found for Richard Kirshner.
Eight of the dead bikers were members of the Cossacks and one was a Bandido, authorities confirmed.
About 50 weapons were recovered at the shooting scene including guns, knives and a chain with a padlock that could be used to beat someone, police said Monday.
Other weapons have been discovered in some off the vehicles towed from the shooting scene, police said.
Investigators, meanwhile, continued to process evidence for a third day Tuesday at the Waco Twin Peaks restaurant where a gun battle between rival biker gangs and police left nine dead and 18 injured.
Stores on the west side of the Central Texas Marketplace from Men’s Warehouse to Kohl’s were open again Tuesday, but those on the south side, from Cabella’s to Best Buy were still closed Tuesday.
Access to the south side of the complex was still restricted.
The shooting investigation will take weeks if not months, Waco police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said during a news conference Tuesday morning.
He later said investigators hope to clear the crime scene by mid-morning Wednesday.
Crews continued to remove an estimated 135 motorcycles and at least 80 cars and pickup trucks from the restaurant’s parking lot Tuesday, a process that started Monday evening.
Police are escorting the flatbed trucks carrying the cycles and vehicles from the scene to an impound site, Swanton said.
Seven of the 18 bikers injured in the shootout remained in hospitals Tuesday, Swanton said.
All of them are in stable condition and most are improving he said.
He declined to release the names of the nine bikers who were killed, however, because investigators are having trouble locating family members to notify, he said.
Swanton discounted media reports that four of the nine bikers were killed by police, saying that will be impossible to determine until autopsies and ballistic tests have been completed.
“Is it possible? Yes. Is it a fact? No,” he said.
Most of the dead, the injured and the about 170 suspects arrested after the shooting are not from the Waco area, he said.
By mid-morning Tuesday, more than 160 suspects had been booked into the McLennan County Jail, according to online records.
The incident that triggered the violence evidently occurred in the parking lot Sunday as a coalition of several biker groups gathered to meet in the patio bar area of the restaurant, Swanton said.
Members of a biker group that wasn’t part of the coalition showed up and it appears that “someone had their foot run over” in the parking lot he said.
Investigators have identified crime scenes inside and outside of Twin Peaks including bathroom areas, the restaurant area and the patio bar area, he said.
They’ve found evidence of “some type of altercation inside,” he said, including blood.
“We will figure it out,” he said.
“We do know that we have crime scenes inside and outside and we know that assaults occurred inside and outside the establishment,” he said.
He confirmed that there have been “credible threats to law enforcement in and around our area,” but said those have toned down over the past 24 hours.
“We’re thankful for that,” he said.
“We are asking (the biker groups) to stand down, we are asking them to let us sort through our investigation and we will be honest with them as we have with you and will continue to be,” Swanton told reporters.
Patrol officers have arrested a few bikers in the area, he said, and report that they are seeing fewer bikers Tuesday.
The violent feud likely hasn’t ended, though, he said.
Is this over? Most likely not,” he said.
“We would like it to be. Would like some sort of truce,”
he said.
The 18 Waco officers and four Texas Department of Public Safety Officers involved in the incident remain on duty as Waco police, Texas Rangers and the DPS Criminal Investigation Division investigate, he said.
Charges Filed Against About 170
The approximately 170 suspects arrested after the shootout Sunday were all charged with engaging in organized crime and were ordered held in lieu of $1 million bonds.
Investigators are questioning them and are encountering varying degrees of cooperation, Swanton said.
One of the 170, Justin Nash Waddington, is a drainage maintenance supervisor for the City of Killeen, city spokeswoman Hillary Shine confirmed Tuesday.
She had no further comment.
McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara said Tuesday he plans to keep all 170 suspects in his jail for as long as he can.
There were 161 inmates charged in the shooting listed on the McLennan County Jail roster at 10 a.m. Tuesday and a few suspects remained to be booked, McNamara said.
“We’ve had to make sure (the inmates) are separated by gang,” McNarama said.
So far they’ve caused no problem in the jail, he said.
McNamara said his staff is capable of handling the influx and there is ample room to keep them all until their court dates begin to be set.
Affidavits and arrest warrants totaled more than 500 pages, an official said.
At least some and technically all of those in custody could be charged with capital murder because of the number of victims, Waco Swanton said Monday.
All of those killed and injured were members of the Bandidos and Cossacks motorcycle groups, authorities said.
No officers or bystanders were hurt.
Restaurant Franchise Revoked
Meanwhile the Twin Peaks corporate office Monday revoked the franchise of the restaurant where the shooting occurred.
“We are in the people business and the safety of the employees and guests in our restaurants is priority one,” the company said.
“Unfortunately the management team of the franchised restaurant in Waco chose to ignore the warnings and advice from both the police and our company, and did not uphold the high security standards we have in place to ensure everyone is safe at our restaurants.
“We will not tolerate the actions of this relatively new franchisee and are revoking their franchise agreement immediately. Our sympathies continue to be with the families of those who died and are very thankful no employees, guests, police officers or bystanders were hurt or injured,” the statement said.
Trouble at Twin Peaks among rival bikers had been brewing for some time, District Attorney Abel Reyna told News 10 about two weeks ago.
Reyna said local police were on heightened alert in anticipation of trouble on Thursday nights, when Twin Peaks hosts a Biker Night.
Reyna said some weeks ago trouble erupted between two local motorcycle gangs and that spilled over into gangs from the Dallas-Fort Worth area showing up to support the local groups.
Jay Patel, Operating Partner for the Waco Twin Peaks, issued a statement Sunday evening that said the restaurant management and employees share in the community’s trauma.
“We are horrified by the criminal, violent acts that occurred outside of our Waco restaurant today.
“We share in the community’s trauma.
“Our management team has had ongoing and positive communications with the police and we will continue to work with them as we all want to keep violent crime out of our businesses and community,” he said.
On Monday, however, Swanton said the restaurant’s owners were not cooperative with police.
“They have some answering not only to do to you, but to our community as well,” he told reporters.
Late Monday afternoon the restaurant’s operators issued another statement in which they said law enforcement officials did not ask the operator or the franchisor to cancel the patio reservation on Sunday.
The event Sunday afternoon was not a Bike Night, the statement said, but instead the result of a “regular patio reservation made by a female customer who has been to the restaurant previously.”
“Based on the information to date, we also believe that the violence began outside in the area of the parking lot, and not inside our restaurant or on our patio, as has been widely reported,” the statement said.
“We are disappointed that the franchisor, Twin Peaks, made a sudden decision to cancel our Waco franchise before all of the facts are learned. We will continue to assist the authorities in any way possible that will assist in their efforts to bring the wrongdoers to justice,” the statement said.
The statement said the restaurant has hosted seven Bike Nights since last fall “without altercations such as this.”
“We are in the process of gathering additional facts, and urge that people avoid rushing to judgment before those facts are fully known,” the statement said.
Security Tight At Crime Scene
Police were on alert for additional violence Monday and security was tight around the crime scene.
Snipers were positioned on the restaurant’s roof and on overpasses that overlook the crime scene to protect not only investigators, but also the media gathered to cover the shooting.
The danger Sunday at the restaurant was significant, Swanton said, but on Monday he described the scene as secure.
He confirmed, however, that death threats have targeted uniformed police officers.
The nine bodies of gang members who died in the shooting have been taken to various morgues for autopsy.
McLennan County Justice of the Peace Pete Peterson ordered the autopsies, but declined to identify them until their families have been notified.
They all were from Texas, he said.
Three of the dead were found in the parking lot just outside of the restaurant, four were found in front of the building and one had been dragged behind a neighboring restaurant, Swanton said.
All nine were members of two of the five gangs involved in the melee, he said.
Waco crime scene investigators assisted by officers from federal, state and county agencies including the FBI, the ATF and the Department of Public Safety, were meticulously diagramming the crime scene Monday, Swanton said.
Once that process is finished, Swanton said, about 100 motorcycles and many of the 50 to 75 private vehicles in the restaurant’s parking lot will be towed away as evidence.
Investigators say they expect to remain at the scene at least until dark Monday night, Swanton said.
Portions of the Central Texas Marketplace, meanwhile, remained closed on Monday as the investigation continued.
Stores on the west side of the complex from Men’s Warehouse to Kohl’s were open Monday morning, but those on the south side, from Cabella’s to Best Buy were ordered to remain closed.
Traffic into the shopping center off Interstate 35 and Loop 340 was still restricted Monday.
Restaurant’s Alcohol Sales Suspended
The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission Monday announced it is suspending alcohol sales at the restaurant for seven days because of the shooting.
State law allows the agency to suspend a business license to sell alcohol after a shooting, stabbing or murder on premises that’s likely to result in subsequent leadership.
“Any wrongdoing uncovered during the investigation could result in further action against the restaurant, including monetary fines, further suspension, or cancellation of its TABC license to sell alcohol,” the agency said in a press release Monday.
“Our investigators will continue to work with the Waco Police Department to collect statements from any party involved, especially the restaurant staff,” said Maj. Victor Kuykendoll, TABC District 2 Regional Commander.
“We will continue to investigate the operations of the restaurant to determine if they failed to properly manage the folks on the premises and enabled this event to take place.”
The Harker Heights Twin Peaks restaurant has the same owner as the Waco restaurant, the TABC confirmed Monday, but the license suspension will not affect the Harker Heights operation.
The restaurant will be allowed to resume normal operations after seven days, pending the results of the investigation, which could take several weeks to complete.
Once police clear the crime scene the restaurant could resume food sales, but Swanton said Monday he hopes the owners will allow for a cooling-off period and will keep the business closed for the immediate future.
DPS Director: Twin Peaks Gunfight Unprecedented
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw, a former FBI agent, said Monday that the shootout Sunday was the first time “we’ve seen this type of violence in broad daylight.”
McCraw’s agency sent Texas Rangers to process the crime scene and special agents who target motorcycle gangs.
McCraw says DPS is constantly monitoring biker gangs and that motorcycle gang violence dates back to at least the 1970s.
Officers “Did A Hell Of A Job”
Waco police anticipated possible violence Sunday based on the previous disturbances at the restaurant and on unspecified intelligence.
Eighteen uniformed Waco police officers including an assistant chief, sergeants and one rookie were standing by outside the restaurant Sunday and responded within a matter of seconds after the violence broke out between members of five rival gangs, Swanton said.
“They did a hell of job in response to a very deadly scene,” he said.
He declined to name the gangs, saying “we’re not going to give them publicity,” but they included the Bandidos, the Cossacks and the Scimitars.
The catalyst for the violence was a fight that broke out in a restaurant restroom and spilled into the outdoor party bar area, Swanton said.
Shots were fired inside the restaurant and bikers were shot, stabbed and beaten before the fight quickly moved outside to the parking lot, Swanton said.
As the officers responded, the bikers directed gunfire in their direction, police said.
“Our officers took fire and responded appropriately, returning fire,” he said.
The number of shots fired and who fired them won’t be released immediately pending completion of the investigation, he said.
“Those officers quickly gained control of a very violent scene and took numerous biker individuals into temporary custody,” he said.
They called for backup and officers from agencies throughout McLennan County responded, he said.
Officers from those agencies remained at the scene Monday, he said.
Off-duty officers who were shopping nearby also responded, even though they lacked protective gear, Swanton said.
Diners and some employees locked themselves in a freezer to escape the violence.
The scene at the Market Place between Don Carlos and Twin Peaks was absolute chaos, Swanton said earlier.
“It is one of the most violent scenes I’ve seen in my 34 years as a police officer in Waco,” Swanton said.
Swanton said officers recovered more than 100 weapons from the scene and there were several vehicles that had bullet holes in them.
The 18 injured victims were taken by ambulance to Baylor Scott & White Hillcrest Medical Center, Providence Health Center and two were reportedly transferred to Scott & White Hospital in Temple because of the severity of their injuries.
Their names and information about their conditions weren’t available Monday.
Neither Hillcrest nor Providence would comment Monday on how many patients from the shooting they have or on security measures in place in the aftermath of the violence.
Scores of suspects were transported in vans and buses to the Waco Convention Center downtown, which was also under tight security.
The suspects were processed there before they were transferred to jail.
Officers also were also sent to the Flying J Truck Stop, at New Road and Interstate 35 because of reports a large number of bikers had been seen gathering there.
Customers At Nearby Restaurant Took Cover
A witness who was having lunch across the parking lot at Don Carlos said he and his family had just finished eating and walked into the parking lot when they heard several gunshots and saw wounded being taken from the fight scene.
“We crouched down in front of our pickup truck because that was the only cover we had,” the man, who asked not to be identified, said.
He and his family were traveling to Salina, Kansas and decided to stop for lunch.
He said he saw several wounded men being treated.
He also said there were several police officers at the scene and ambulances were responding to the scene to aid those hit by gunfire.
Ambulances from Waco and a number of surrounding communities responded to the scene, Swanton said.
Area businesses, after learning of the shooting, sent water and food to officers at the scene, he said.
Baylor University police deployed additional officers as a precaution after the gun battle, but in an email said the campus was never in any danger.
“Baylor police have been monitoring and will continue to monitor the situation,” the campus-wide email said.
Waco Mayor Thanks Officers
Waco Mayor Malcolm Duncan, Jr., issued a statement Monday evening in which he thanked the law enforcement officers and first responders to “joined forces to control and minimize the tragic loss that occurred in our city.
“We are fortunate to have such well trained professionals who are prepared at a moment’s notice to step forward, risking their own life and safety, to protect the lives of others and to make a strong collective statement that we will not tolerate wrongful acts of violence in our community,” he said.
“I am thankful that innocent bystanders were not harmed in this incident and I want to assure all of our citizens that your safety is and has been our priority and we are confident that this rogue event will not disrupt or endanger our community,” he said
“Waco’s location on I-35 has always been a strategic advantage but in this case it only facilitated the convening of a large group of people with criminal capability. We are fairly certain most of the criminal activity was perpetrated by non-residents. We want to also assure the tourists and other travelers that Waco is safe and secure and back to work,” he said.
Biker Sues Waco, McLennan County, Alleges Unconstitutional Arrest, Detention
A lawyer representing one of the more than 170 bikers arrested outside of a Waco restaurant May 17 has filed a civil rights lawsuit saying his client’s arrest and detention is unconstitutional.
F. Clinton Broden released a statement Friday saying 30-year-old Matthew Alan Clendennen, arrested outside the Twin Peaks restaurant earlier this month after nine people were killed and 18 injured, is suing the City of Waco, McLennan County and Waco Police Officer Manuel Chavez.
Texas Biker Gang Mug Shots
In the suit, “Chavez is accused of signing a “fill in the name” warrant he knew lacked individual probable cause and deceiving the Justice of the Peace who signed the criminal complaint. The City of Waco and McLennan county are accused of “caus[ing] the arrest and detention of numerous individuals…regardless of whether or not there was individualized probable cause to arrest and detain a particular individual.”
Broden’s news release on the suit goes on to say Clendennen is a longtime McLennan County resident, a Baylor graduate and a former firefighter for the Hewitt and Marlin fire departments. It also says his client’s continued detention is putting a strain on the shared custody of his children, the management of his landscaping company and the welfare of his employees.
Broden said Clendennen, a member of the Scimitar Motorcycle Club, was present on the patio but took cover in the restaurant after a fight broke out. He said his client did not engage in any violent behavior and did nothing to encourage such behavior.
“Mr. Clendennen was arrested on a “fill in the name” criminal complaint and has been incarcerated for almost two weeks on a $1,000,000.00 bond. As a result, Mr. Clendennen’s ex-wife has petitioned for full custody of the two children they currently share custody of and Mr. Clendennen is at risk of losing his landscaping business although his father is attempting to run the business in his absence. If Mr. Clendennen loses the business, his employees will be without jobs,” Broden said in a news release.
“In order to arrest somebody in the United States, the Supreme Court has made clear that there must be individualized probable cause to believe that a particular person actually committed a crime. In this case, there was absolutely no evidence that Mr. Clendennen committed any crime” said Broden.
Broden’s statement added that bond hearings to reduce the $1 million bonds are not being heard until June 5 and, after consultation with the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office, the Justice of Peace has refused to schedule a “probable cause hearing” until Aug. 6.
“In America we normally do not hold an innocent person in custody for three months before according them a probable cause hearing. From a constitutional perspective, what is occurring in McLennan County is extremely troubling,” Broden said.
Waco police spokesman Sgt. Patrick Swanton could not immediately be reached for comment, per the Associated Press.
Released Waco bikers: ‘They made us feel like animals’
For the first time in two weeks and one day, Morgan English ran into the arms of her husband, William. They are bikers from Brenham, Texas, but have spent every day since May 17 inside the McLennan County Jail.
They were among the 170 people arrested in the aftermath of the bloody May 17 shootout at the Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco. Nine people were killed and 18 others were injured.
The Englishes’ attorney was able to negotiate a smaller bond to secure their release.
USA TODAY
Biker in Waco shootout files civil rights lawsuit
“They made us all feel like animals, like they herded us,” said Morgan English.
The couples’ attorney, Paul Looney, said William and Morgan English had nothing to do with the violence that day.
“They intentionally went there because they knew there was going to be a big gathering of bikes,” Looney explained. “They had absolutely no clue that anyone had any other agenda at any time.”
The Englishes said they had no part in the fight, and aren’t members of the Cossacks or Banditos gangs.
Still, Waco police handcuffed them and some 170 others at the scene.
“They didn’t pinpoint who did what; they didn’t ask, ‘Are you innocent? Tell us what happened.’ They just arrested all of us!” Morgan English said.
USA TODAY
Waco police call for truce after deadly biker violence
Looney presented their case to the county’s district attorney on Monday, who reduced their bail from $1 million to $25,000, making their reunion possible.
“This has been like a death in the family,” Looney said. “Everybody has come in, and they’ve sat by the phone waiting for the next call from jail.”
The Englishes now wait to see where their case goes next.
Bikers will be back in Central Texas this weekend as the All For 1 Waco Freedom Ride is set for Sunday. Bikers will end up at the McLennan County Courthouse in support of those still in jail.
Waco witness: ‘It was a setup from start to finish’
Richie was the first to die, then Diesel, then Dog.
Whatever else they were in life, the men with the biker nicknames were Cossacks, loud and proud and riders in a Texas motorcycle gang. And that’s what got them killed, shot to death in a brawl with a rival gang in the parking lot of a Texas “breastaurant” that advertised hot waitresses and cold beer.
“I saw the first three of our guys fall, and we started running,” said their brother-in-arms, another Cossack, who said he was there a week ago when the shooting started at the Twin Peaks restaurant.
The Cossack, president of a North Texas chapter of the motorcycle gang, asked not to be identified because he is in hiding and said he fears for his life. He is a rare eyewitness speaking publicly about the Waco shootings, one of the worst eruptions of biker-gang violence in U.S. history.
Since last week’s violence, Waco police have offered few conclusions in their investigation. But they have said that the violence was touched off when an uninvited group, presumed to be the Cossacks, showed up at a meeting of a larger confederation of motorcycle clubs dominated by the Bandidos.
In several interviews in recent days, the Cossacks rider offered a different story. He said the Cossacks were invited to the Twin Peaks patio that day — by a Bandido leader, who offered to make peace in a long-running feud between the two gangs. That invitation was a setup for an ambush, though, according to the Cossack. That’s why the dead included six Cossacks, one Scimitar (an ally of the Cossacks) and only two Bandidos.
The biker’s story could not be independently verified; most of those involved in the shootout are still in jail. But significant parts of his account square with police statements, as well as security camera videos obtained by The Associated Press.
The biker culture has unwritten rules that everybody in its world knows and has predictable consequences for stepping out of line.
So when a biker from the Bandidos, the oldest gang in Texas and one of the largest in the world, ran into a young Cossack in the Twin Peaks parking lot last Sunday, everyone knew what was coming. First words, then fists, then guns. Within seconds, Richie, Diesel and Dog were dead.
“I took off,” the Cossacks rider said. “I got out of there. I didn’t have a weapon. I couldn’t fight anybody.”
At odds for years
It started with a phone call.
About a week before the gunfight, according to the Cossack, a leader of the Bandidos, a man named Marshall from East Texas, contacted Owen Reeves, the “nomad,” or leader, of the Cossacks’ Central Texas region.
The two gangs had been at odds for years. The Bandidos consider themselves the big dogs of the Texas biker world, and other gangs — or clubs, as they prefer to be called — generally don’t cross them.
The Bandidos wear their claim to the Lone Star State on their backs. Their vests have“Bandidos” across the shoulders, just above their logo, a caricature based on Frito-Lay’s Frito Bandito. Below, the word “Texas” is stitched boldly in an inverted crescent.
That crescent, the “Texas rocker,” has long belonged to the Bandidos, and they consider it a provocation if someone else wears it without permission, which is exactly what the Cossacks did.
The Bandidos are second in numbers only to the Hells Angels and have as many as 2,500 members in 13 countries, according to the Justice Department, which considers the group a violent criminal enterprise engaged in running drugs and guns. The Cossacks, a smaller group, do not show up on law enforcement lists of criminal gangs, but the group has been growing more aggressive in recent years. Officials have warned of the potential for violence between the two gangs.
“We don’t claim any territory, but the reason that the Bandidos have such an issue with us is that we wear the Texas rocker on our back, but we don’t pay them $100 a month per chapter to do it,” the Cossack said.
On May 1, the Texas Department of Public Safety issued a bulletin to law enforcement agencies across the state warning about the Bandidos having “discussed the possibility of going to war” with the Cossacks, largely over the issue of the Texas rocker.
The bulletin noted that on March 22, several Cossacks attacked a Bandido with chains, batons and metal pipes. On the same day, Bandidos attacked a Cossack with a hammer and demanded that he remove the Texas rocker from his vest.
After all that, the phone call from Marshall was a welcome olive branch, the Cossack said.
Marshall invited the Cossacks to Twin Peaks last week when the Texas Confederation of Clubs and Independents was scheduled to hold a major meeting. Those meetings are generally about bikers’ rights, safety and other administrative issues. The Bandidos dominate that organization; the Cossacks are not members.
Marshall said that the Bandidos “wanted to get this cleared up,” according to the Cossack, who was relating what he said Reeves told him.
“He said, ‘Bring your brothers, hang out, and let’s get this fixed and we can all leave in peace and be happy.’ He was talking to our chapter in Waco. … The leader of our Central Texas chapter said, ‘OK, I’m going to make this happen.’ ”
Reeves, who was jailed after the melee, could not be reached for comment. No members of the Bandidos could be reached for comment.
On the patio
Last week, about 70 Cossacks on Harley-Davidsons thundered down Interstate 35 through Waco and rolled into the parking lot of the Twin Peaks.
The Cossack said he and the others congregated on the outdoor patio and started ordering food and drinks. They chatted with other bikers from smaller mom-and-pop bike clubs ahead of the 1 p.m. confederation meeting.
Guns and other weapons are a common part of biker culture, and the Cossack acknowledged that members of his gang were armed.
“But not all of us,” he said. “We had no reason to believe that this was going to go that way.”
The parley with the Bandidos had been set for 11 a.m., the Cossack said, but the Bandidos didn’t arrive until about 12:15, when about 100 of them pulled up in a long, loud line of Harleys.
Trouble started almost immediately, he said: One of the Bandidos, wearing a patch that identified him as a chapter president, ran his bike into a Cossack standing in the parking lot. The Cossack who was hit was a prospect, a man seeking to become a full member of the club.
“They came up really fast, and the prospect turned and faced the bikes,” the Cossack chapter president said. “He fell backward into other parked bikes. The guy who hit him stopped and got off of his bike and said, ‘What are you doing? Get … out of my way. We’re trying to park.’”
Cossacks quickly jumped to the prospect’s defense, he said: “Guys were saying, ‘You’re disrespecting us,’ or, ‘We’re not backing down.’ ”
In a blink, it started, he said: “Two punches: One from them, one from us.”
A Bandido with a patch identifying him as sergeant-at-arms of the same chapter threw a punch at Richard Matthew Jordan II, 31, known as “Richie,” who was from Pasadena. Jordan punched back.
“At that point in time, the sergeant-at-arms shot Richie point-blank,” the Cossack said.
Police said Jordan died of a gunshot wound to the head.
“Then all the Bandidos standing in the parking lot started pulling guns and shooting at us,” he said. “There were maybe 60 or 70 of us in the parking lot. … We took off running. We scattered. Three of our guys went down instantly. They caught a couple more that tripped and fell, and Bandidos were shooting at them.”
He said that the second man to die was Daniel Raymond Boyett, 44, a Cossack known as “Diesel.” Police said that the Waco man died from gunshot wounds to the head.
The third man down was “Dog,” Charles Wayne Russell, 46, of Winona. Russell’s cause of death was listed as a gunshot wound to the chest.
The Cossack said that he believes the Bandidos had no intention of making peace that day.
“It was a setup from start to finish,” he said.
A parking issue
The Cossack’s story has been impossible to verify, but it is largely consistent with what police have said about how the brawl began.
Waco police spokesman Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said the shooting started in the parking lot with a confrontation over what he called a parking issue. A leader of the Bandidos, who goes by “Gimmi Jimmy,” told TheNew York Times that there had been no incident in the parking lot but that he had heard there was a fight in the restaurant bathroom. He did not respond to numerous emails.
The Cossack’s account is also consistent with a Twin Peaks security video. The Associated Press reported that the video shows the shooting started in the parking lot at 12:24 p.m., and that panicked bikers started running into the restaurant to flee.
The AP reported that the video shows one shot being fired, but it did not say who fired the shot.
After the bloodshed, Texas authorities warned of the threat of further violence, saying that the Bandidos had called for reinforcements from outside the state.
“History has a way of repeating itself,” Swanton said. “Violence amongst these groups leads to more violence amongst these groups.”
The Cossack said he, too, believes more violence is brewing. He said he received a call late Thursday from a friend in Bandidos leadership, who warned him to get out of his house and spread the word that the Bandidos were “coming hard” after Cossacks.
He said he was told “they’re going to hit houses. They’re going to hit funerals. And if another Cossack or a cop gets in the way, so be it.”
The death toll from the “Twin Peaks” shootout was greater than the total number of homicides Waco police investigated in all of 2014 – And all of the “Twin Peaks” dead were shot by police.
Previously Waco Police Spokesman W. Patrick Swanton stated 22 members of law enforcement were present prior to the outbreak of the shooting. Including 10 members of the Waco SWAT unit, 2 sergeants, 1 rookie, the Asst. Police Chief and 4 state troopers.
Newly released information today includes the Waco Police stating 14 Waco PD officers were involved in firing shots which killed 9 bike club members and wounded 18 more.
The 14 officers involved in the gun battle are all now on administrative leave, which is standard protocol in officer-involved shootings, Swanton said. (link)
In addition Sgt Swanton previously stated that all of the 170 arrested bikers were known “criminal gang members”. However, a review by the Associated Press of court records finds at least 115 of the 170 had no police records:
Waco police have said that all those arrested after the shooting belonged to criminal motorcycle gangs. Most of them were being held on $1 million bonds Thursday, charged with engaging in criminal enterprise. Nine people were killed in Sunday’s shootout.
Records searched by The Associated Press show more than 115 of the 170 people arrested in the aftermath of a motorcycle gang shootout outside a Central Texas restaurant have not been convicted of a crime in Texas. (link)
After previously saying he had not watched the CCTV video from the restaurant/bar yesterday (Wed) -which was reviewed by Associated Press reporters- Swanton now says he has watch the CCTV video.
He said he has viewed surveillance videos of the violence, and said they tell a different story from the some of the accounts being spun online.
“We can’t wait to show you what truly happened,” he said. (link)
Which is a disingenuous statement at best because all they need to do is authorize the restaurant to release the video, and the public can decide for ourselves.
One of the bikers the police killed, Jesus Delgado Rodriquez (65), was a purple heart recipient.
Family members of a man killed in a biker shootout at a Texas restaurant say he was not part of an outlaw motorcycle gang. That contradicts police claims that all nine bikers who died were members of criminal gangs.
The son of 65-year-old Jesus Delgado Rodriguez, of New Braunfels, told the San Antonio Express-News that his father did not lead a life of violence. An Associated Press review of court records and a database maintained by the Texas Department of Public Safety found no criminal history in Texas for Rodriguez.
Family members said Rodriguez had belonged to two now defunct motorcycle clubs but was not part of any club when he was shot and killed at Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco.
Waco police spokesman Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton told the AP on Wednesday that all those killed were members of the Bandidos or the Cossacks. Swanton did not immediately return a message Thursday. (link)
In addition from a lawsuit filed against Twin Peaks by the neighboring restaurant Don Carlos it is claimed the police fired “thousands of rounds” toward the bikers; striking not only bike club members but also Don Carlos customer vehicles.
Summary and personal thoughts: It is entirely possible that some of the bikers were criminals; and it is also entirely possible that twitchy police responded excessively and overreacted to a perceived threat. These two possibilities are not mutually exclusive.
Who shot at whom first; who did or did not pull the trigger; and what might have spurred the 14 police officers to fire “thousands of rounds” at a group of 3 to 5 potentially armed bikers when the downrange backdrop was a patio filled with hundreds of unarmed bikers is not yet known.
Look closely at this picture:
You can see bullet holes in the customer vehicles in the Don Carlos parking lot.
♦ NOTE: Direction of fire from Don Carlos toward Twin Peaks. ♦ NOTE: The downrange backdrop of that fire (for the bullets that miss their target) is the patio of Twin Peaks.
However, apparently pointing out a strong possibility for an overreaction by twitchy police is now considered “Conspiracy Theory”, or something. A radio broadcast today calls our previous outline (which quoting MSM information) as conspiracy theory. [Listen at 8:15]
I find it interesting how intelligent people cannot bring themselves to believe the police may have influenced, initiated, created and/or worsened the events with their militarized (SWAT) presence at a bike club meeting.
Ruby Ridge?… How about M.O.V.E (Philadelphia)? … Or maybe Waco 1.0? … or perhaps more recently “Baby Bou-Bou” ringing any bells? Cops make mistakes too !!
Doesn’t anyone else find it curious that an Asst. Police Chief was on scene at Twin Peaks along with the SWAT unit, presumably as scene commander prior to the shootings, and yet no-one has heard from him/her?
Doesn’t anyone else find it curious that initial police statements claimed they had “an active intelligence operation” on the “Bike Gang” which customarily would include monitoring (camera’s, video, etc) and yet the police release NO VIDEO to support their “we were under fire” claims?
A previous comment by J.D. sums up the strange sniff of it all nicely:
I’m former law enforcement for over 20 years. I have ridden with 2 different LEMC clubs. I worked undercover back in late 80’s and have dealt with 1% clubs many times. I have friends in 1% clubs.
I’m pro law enforcement but have a funny feeling that there is lots of horseshit in the story that Waco PD is telling.
I have family living and Working in that area. They have had interaction with the clubs and never felt scared or intimidated. Always felt safe.
Now are we going get the truth or more bullshit? I’m tending on believing the bikers sides on this deal more with every day that passes. Too many people arrested and charged with RICO that were just spending time at TP.
I think LE has overstepped it’s authority on filing these type charges on most these people. $1,000,000 bonds??? BS…
Even if you find reasonable excuses for all the LEO contradictions (fight in bathroom, shots inside, all killed were inside/dragged out etc.); even if you ignore all the misleading statements by law enforcement spokesman Patrick Swanton (100 weapons, 50 weapons, 1000 weapons etc); even if you ignore the lack of willingness to produce factual data to support their claims, ….you are still left with a ridiculous assertion that 170 non-criminal people deserve a million dollar bond because they rode a motorcycle last Sunday to a meeting, and possibly witnessed what happened.
The total number of bikers on scene, according to Swanton, was 200. 170 are arrested, 18 were wounded, 9 were killed, that totals 197. So only 3 people were non-conspirators?
This nonsense about weapons found in vehicles etc. is just that, nonsense.
If you go to a Waco Texas Wal-Mart on Sunday, rope off the parking lot, arrest the first 200 people you see and search their pick-up trucks, suv’s and various vehicles you’ll probably come up with a similar set of statistics.
50 out of 200 people captured at Wal-Mart with prior arrest records; some with pocket knives, chains, handguns, and even rifles in their vehicles etc.
So what? None of that is illegal or unlawful. Ridiculous. Go to a Bass Pro shop on Saturday and you’ll probably find even better stats if that’s the goal.
Another factor which makes it all the more curious is these are the ACTUAL talking points Sgt. Patrick Swanton is relying on to justify the shooting. This innocuous nonsense is what they are focused on. That itself indicates -to a reasonably discerning person- there’s something uncomfortable about the narrative the LEO responders are trying to avoid.
That’s not conspiracy, that’s just common sense.
It is not conspiracy theory the incident occurred at 12:24pm Central Time (1:24 pm Eastern) and in around 90 minutes, 2:04pm CST (3:04pm EST) this press conference was held, giving the specifics of 9 dead and 18 wounded and a restaurant owner who needs to be shut down for non-compliance.
Bikers jailed under $1 million bonds; one bond-reduction hearing set
By TOMMY WITHERSPOON
The more than 170 members of biker gangs that Waco law enforcement officials say were involved in a deadly biker gang shootout Sunday at Twin Peaks won’t be going anywhere soon.
Justice of the Peace W.H. “Pete” Peterson set bonds for 174 gang members charged with engaging in organized criminal activity at $1 million each.
“I think it is important to send a message,” Peterson said. “We had nine people killed in our community. These people just came in, and most of them were from out of town. Very few of them were from in town.”
Meanwhile, a lawyer for Jimmy Don Smith, 59, of Caldwell, moved quickly Monday in getting a bond-reduction hearing set. Dan Jones, a Bryan lawyer, was in Judge Ralph Strother’s 19th State District Court on Monday to request the hearing for Smith, a mechanic with Novosad Enterprises of Caldwell. Strother set the hearing for June 5.
Peterson declined to release the identities of the nine men killed Sunday because he said only one man’s family has been notified that he knows of so far.
He said all but two of those killed were not from the Waco area, but declined to say where they were from.
In affidavits to support the arrests of the bikers issued by Peterson on Monday morning, Waco police Officer Manuel Chavez officially identifies the groups as “members and associates of the Cossacks Motorcycle Club and the Bandidos Motorcycle Club.”
“The members and associates of the Cossacks and Bandidos were wearing common identifying distinctive signs or symbols and/or had an identifiable leadership and/or continuously or regularly associate in the commission of criminal activities,” the affidavit says. “The Texas Department of Public Safety maintains a database containing information identifying the Cossacks and their associates as a criminal street gang and the Bandidos and their associates as a criminal street gang.”
After the shootout, firearms, knives or “other unknown edged weapons,” batons, clubs, brass knuckles and other weapons were recovered from members and associates of both gangs, the complaint alleges.
Other weapons also were found on their motorcycles.
Story 1: First Official Explosive Documentation From Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) — Profiles in Deceit — Obama And Clinton Lying To The Families That Died in Benghazi and The American People — Why? Coverup of CIA Covert Operation Including Supervision of Arms Shipments Through Third Party Cutout To Syrian Rebels Including Al Qaeda and Islamic Jihadist Terrorists (Now Islamic State) And Win Second Term For Obama and First Term For Hillary Clinton — Both Incompetent and Untrustworthy Leftist Liars — Impeach Obama Now! — Videos
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), dated September 12, 2012, the day after the Benghazi attack
The attack was planned ten or more days prior on approximately 01 September 2012. The intention was to attack the consulate and to kill as many Americans as possible to seek revenge for U.S. killing of Aboyahiye ((ALALIBY)) in Pakistan and in memorial of the 11 September 2001 atacks on the World Trade Center buildings.
Weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the Port of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The weapons shipped during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s, and 125 mm and 155mm howitzers missiles.
During the immediate aftermath of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the ((Qaddafi)) regime in October 2011 and up until early September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The Syrian ports were chosen due to the small amount of cargo traffic transiting these two ports. The ships used to transport the weapons were medium-sized and able to hold 10 or less shipping containers of cargo.
The weapons shipped from Syria during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s and 125mm and 155mm howitzers missiles. The numbers for each weapon were estimated to be: 500 Sniper rifles, 100 RPG launchers with 300 total rounds, and approximately 400 howitzers missiles [200 ea – 125mm and 200ea – 155 mm.]
The deterioration of the situation has dire consequences on the Iraqi situation and are as follows:
This creates the ideal atmosphere for AQI [al Qaeda Iraq] to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi, and will provide a renewed momentum under the presumption of unifying the jihad among Sunni Iraq and Syria, and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against what it considers one enemy, the dissenters. ISI could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory.
US Intel knew about weapons going from Benghazi to Syria
Daily News Collective For May 19, 2015
Hillary Clinton Fires Back Over Benghazi Select Committee On The Record
Hillary’s Benghazi Lies Exposed!
Hillary Clinton feigned ignorance when she was questioned about the Benghazi gun-running program by Senator Rand Paul in January 2013.
However, explosive new documents obtained by Judicial Watch prove conclusively that US intelligence agencies were fully aware weapons were being transferred from Libya to Syria before the attack.
That’s not the only Benghazi fact given the spin by the Obama Administration.
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Military intel predicted rise of ISIS in 2012, detailed arms shipments from Benghazi to Syria
Rep. Mike Pompeo Discusses 13 Hours At Benghazi
(FULL) 13 Hours in Benghazi: Fox News Special Report
Benghazi: The Truth Behind the Smokescreen
Herridge: Fmr. CIA Director Morell May Have Altered Benghazi Talking Points to Benefit Obama Admin
The Truth About How The US Will Save Syria
CNN Benghazi Claims: Report alleges CIA operatives in Libya were sending weapons to Syrian rebels
Retired Lt Gen Jerry Boykin suspects US Was Running Guns To Syrian Rebels Via Benghazi
SYRIA CNBC: Benghazi Is Not About Libya But An Operation To Put Arms & Men In Syria
Former CIA Spy: Benghazi Was CIA Operation
Benghazi Bombshell: Insiders Confirm CIA Sent Missiles to FSA Rebels
Judge Jeanine Pirro Opening Statement President Obama’s Benghazi Attack Claims
Judicial Watch: Defense, State Department Documents Reveal Obama Administration Knew that al Qaeda Terrorists Had Planned Benghazi Attack 10 Days in Advance
Administration knew three months before the November 2012 presidential election of ISIS plans to establish a caliphate in Iraq
Administration knew of arms being shipped from Benghazi to Syria
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it obtained more than 100 pages of previously classified “Secret” documents from the Department of Defense (DOD)and the Department of State revealing that DOD almost immediately reported that the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was committed by the al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood-linked “Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman” (BCOAR), and had been planned at least 10 days in advance. Rahman is known as the Blind Sheikh, and is serving life in prison for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist acts. The new documents also provide the first official confirmation that shows the U.S. government was aware of arms shipments from Benghazi to Syria. The documents also include an August 2012 analysis warning of the rise of ISIS and the predicted failure of the Obama policy of regime change in Syria.
The documents were released in response to a court order in accordance with a May 15, 2014, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against both the DOD and State Department seeking communications between the two agencies and congressional leaders “on matters related to the activities of any agency or department of the U.S. government at the Special Mission Compound and/or classified annex in Benghazi.”
Spelling and punctuation is duplicated in this release without corrections.
A Defense Department document from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), dated September 12, 2012, the day after the Benghazi attack, details that the attack on the compound had been carefully planned by the BOCAR terrorist group “to kill as many Americans as possible.” The document was sent to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Obama White House National Security Council. The heavily redacted Defense Department “information report” says that the attack on the Benghazi facility “was planned and executed by The Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman (BCOAR).” The group subscribes to “AQ ideologies:”
The attack was planned ten or more days prior on approximately 01 September 2012. The intention was to attack the consulate and to kill as many Americans as possible to seek revenge for U.S. killing of Aboyahiye ((ALALIBY)) in Pakistan and in memorial of the 11 September 2001 atacks on the World Trade Center buildings.
“A violent radical,” the DIA report says, is “the leader of BCOAR is Abdul Baset ((AZUZ)), AZUZ was sent by ((ZAWARI)) to set up Al Qaeda (AQ) bases in Libya.” The group’s headquarters was set up with the approval of a “member of the Muslim brother hood movement…where they have large caches of weapons. Some of these caches are disguised by feeding troughs for livestock. They have SA-7 and SA-23/4 MANPADS…they train almost every day focusing on religious lessons and scriptures including three lessons a day of jihadist ideology.”
The Defense Department reported the group maintained written documents, in “a small rectangular room, approximately 12 meters by 6 meters…that contain information on all of the AQ activity in Libya.”
(Azuz is again blamed for the Benghazi attack in an October 2012 DIA document.)
The DOD documents also contain the first official documentation that the Obama administration knew that weapons were being shipped from the Port of Benghazi to rebel troops in Syria. An October 2012 report confirms:
Weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the Port of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The weapons shipped during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s, and 125 mm and 155mm howitzers missiles.
During the immediate aftermath of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the ((Qaddafi)) regime in October 2011 and up until early September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The Syrian ports were chosen due to the small amount of cargo traffic transiting these two ports. The ships used to transport the weapons were medium-sized and able to hold 10 or less shipping containers of cargo.
The DIA document further details:
The weapons shipped from Syria during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s and 125mm and 155mm howitzers missiles. The numbers for each weapon were estimated to be: 500 Sniper rifles, 100 RPG launchers with 300 total rounds, and approximately 400 howitzers missiles [200 ea – 125mm and 200ea – 155 mm.]
The heavily redacted document does not disclose who was shipping the weapons.
Another DIA report, written in August 2012 (the same time period the U.S. was monitoring weapons flows from Libya to Syria), said that the opposition in Syria was driven by al Qaeda and other extremist Muslim groups: “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.” The growing sectarian direction of the war was predicted to have dire consequences for Iraq, which included the “grave danger” of the rise of ISIS:
The deterioration of the situation has dire consequences on the Iraqi situation and are as follows:
This creates the ideal atmosphere for AQI [al Qaeda Iraq] to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi, and will provide a renewed momentum under the presumption of unifying the jihad among Sunni Iraq and Syria, and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against what it considers one enemy, the dissenters. ISI could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory.
Some of the “dire consequences” are blacked out but the DIA presciently warned one such consequence would be the “renewing facilitation of terrorist elements from all over the Arab world entering into Iraqi Arena.”
From a separate lawsuit, the State Department produced a document created the morning after the Benghazi attack by Hillary Clinton’s offices, and the Operations Center in the Office of the Executive Secretariat that was sent widely through the agency, including to Joseph McManus (then-Hillary Clinton’s executive assistant). At 6:00 am, a few hours after the attack, the top office of the State Department sent a “spot report” on the “Attack on U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi” that makes no mention of videos or demonstrations:
Four COM personnel were killed and three were wounded in an attack by dozens of fighters on the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi beginning approximately 1550 Eastern Time….
The State Department has yet to turn over any documents from the secret email accounts of Hillary Clinton and other top State Department officials.
“These documents are jaw-dropping. No wonder we had to file more FOIA lawsuits and wait over two years for them. If the American people had known the truth – that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other top administration officials knew that the Benghazi attack was an al-Qaeda terrorist attack from the get-go – and yet lied and covered this fact up – Mitt Romney might very well be president. And why would the Obama administration continue to support the Muslim Brotherhood even after it knew it was tied to the Benghazi terrorist attack and to al Qaeda? These documents also point to connection between the collapse in Libya and the ISIS war – and confirm that the U.S. knew remarkable details about the transfer of arms from Benghazi to Syrian jihadists,” stated Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch president. “These documents show that the Benghazi cover-up has continued for years and is only unraveling through our independent lawsuits. The Benghazi scandal just got a whole lot worse for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.”
In fact, she’s had a series of bad days since she announced her presidential bid April 12. But Monday was the worst of them.
In a bombshell report, the New York Times reported that Clinton, as secretary of state, used her private email to share private intelligence reports from noted conspiracy theorist and political hitman Sidney Blumenthal, at a time when Blumenthal was being paid by the Clinton Foundation and liberal political organizations that helped lay the groundwork for Clinton’s presidential campaign.
The emails included reports on Libya at a time when Blumenthal was seeking business in the country and included dubious information. The Times reported that Clinton nonetheless “took Mr. Blumenthal’s advice seriously” and “continued to pass around his emails even after other senior diplomats concluded that Mr. Blumenthal’s assessments were often unreliable.”
A second story about Clinton and Libya broke the same day, this one casting further doubt on the Obama administration’s narrative about the attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, and specifically on claims Clinton made about nature of those attacks and motivations of the attackers. An intelligence report prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency and sent to Clinton and other senior administration officials on September 12, 2012, just one day after the attacks, concluded that the attack “was planned ten or more days” in advance and was meant to “kill as many Americans as possible.” The report identifies al Qaeda-linked terrorists believed to have been involved in the assault.
Despite this, the Obama administration crafted a public narrative that the attack had evolved from a “spontaneous” protest over a YouTube video and included a wide range of individuals. Clinton cited the video in remarks at a memorial service on September 14, 2012, for those killed in the attacks. She told members of the victims’ families that the administration would bring to justice those responsible for the video. The DIA report and several other Benghazi-related documents were released to Judicial Watch pursuant to a court order in response to a FOIA request.
The DIA report further undermines the administration’s already-tattered claims that its public case was based on intelligence assessments. Emails released in response to a previous Judicial Watch requestshowed that the White House had drafted a set of political talking points that sought to blame the video and not administration policy.
That the DIA report was not released as a result of any previous Benghazi investigations raises additional questions about the administration’s unwillingness to turn over documents related to the attacks and how comprehensive those previous investigations have been. Many of the revelations that have undermined administration claims about Benghazi have come outside of the regular congressional oversight efforts, in part because of the administration’s disinclination to cooperate and in part because of the half-hearted inquiries led by the committees of jurisdiction.
Administration defenders and many in the media claimed that an additional investigation of Benghazi would be unnecessary because of these previous efforts. But these recent revelations validate the decision of House speaker John Boehner to create a select committee and make clear that there is still much more to learn. The State Department only recently turned over documents related to the State Department’s Administrative Review Board examination of Benghazi. The House Oversight Committee first requested those documents more than two years ago – on January 28, 2013. The Benghazi Select Committee is still waiting for reams of documents from the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department.
Beyond that, of course, are questions about emails and documents that the public may never see because Hillary Clinton used private emails to circumvent the record retention requirements of the U.S. government. The committee is examining all options in its attempt to find or recover those discarded emails.
It has been nearly a month since Hillary Clinton took questions from the media. And with the growing stench of scandal it’s likely that she’ll continue to seek to avoid circumstances that might require her to provide answers. That’s a short-term solution to a long-term problem. And even a media that is ideologically sympathetic is showing signs of frustration with her games.
Story 1: 3 Criminal Biker Gangs aka Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (OMGSs) in Waco, Texas Kill 9 and Islamic State Takes Back Ramadi, Iraq — U.S. Army’s Delta force kills senior ISIS commander — Videos
Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (OMGs) are organizations whose members use their motorcycle clubs as conduits for criminal enterprises. OMGs are highly structured criminal organizations whose members engage in criminal activities such as violent crime, weapons trafficking, and drug trafficking. There are more than 300 active OMGs within the United States, ranging in size from single chapters with five or six members to hundreds of chapters with thousands of members worldwide. The Hells Angels, Mongols, Bandidos, Outlaws, and Sons of Silence pose a serious national domestic threat and conduct the majority of criminal activity linked to OMGs, especially activity relating to drug-trafficking and, more specifically, to cross-border drug smuggling. Because of their transnational scope, these OMGs are able to coordinate drug smuggling operations in partnership with major international drug-trafficking
9 Dead in Waco Biker Gang Shooting 18 Injured 5-17-15
Biker brawl breaks out at Waco restaurant
Waco Biker Gang Shooting. 9 Dead At Waco Shooting Twin Peaks
Waco Shooting Updates — Ten people killed in Waco, Texas biker gang shooting
[AERIAL FOOTAGE] Biker Gang Shootout Waco, Texas – 17 May 2015
( ORIGINAL FOOTAGE ) Waco Texas Shooting 9 biker gangs Dead In Waco Texas
9 dead in Texas biker brawl
Gunfire erupted Sunday among rival biker gangs in Waco, Texas, leaving at least nine people dead, according to police.
Authorities had anticipated trouble and pre-positioned officers.
“There were at least three rival gang groups here this morning for whatever reason. As they were here, we had officers on scene. We expected issues,” said Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton, a police spokesman. He later said there were at least five gangs.
The fight broke out at Twin Peaks restaurant and spilled into the parking lot. It quickly escalated from hands and feet, as weapons, to gunfire, Swanton said.
“In my nearly 35 years of law enforcement experience,” he said, “this is the most violent and gruesome scene that I have dealt with.”
Bikers shot at each other and at officers, who returned fire.
Swanton expressed anger at Twin Peaks, which he claims had been less than helpful in dealing with gangs in the past. He declined to identify the specific groups involved in Sunday’s shooting.
“Are we frustrated? Sure. Because we feel like there may have been more that could have been done by a business to prevent this,” he said.
Corporate management at Twin Peaks released a statement saying it was reviewing the circumstances of the shooting. The Waco restaurant is franchised.
“We are thankful no employees, guests or police were injured in this senseless violence outside the restaurant, and our sympathies are with the families of those killed,” the statement said.
To escape the fight, some restaurant customers and employees took cover in the freezer, according to CNN affiliate KWTX. The station reported that more than 100 weapons were recovered, and Waco police said officers were continuing to arrest people arriving with weapons.
Swanton told reporters that eight people were dead on the scene and another was pronounced dead at an area hospital. A total of 18 people were taken to the hospital. It was not immediately clear whether that figure included the person who died. All those injured or dead are believed to be bikers.
No officers were hurt, Swanton said, praising their response.
“Their action has saved lives in keeping this from spilling into a very busy Sunday morning,” the spokesman said. “Thank goodness the officers were here, and took the action that they needed to take to save numerous lives.”
Police: Deadly Waco biker gang shooting is capital murder
By Patrick Tolbert and Jackie Vega
At last count, 170 people have been arrested and are in the process of being booked and charged with engaging in organized crime in connection to the deadly shooting that broke out between five biker gangs at a Twin Peaks in Waco. Police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton says this shooting is now considered a capital murder case “because of the number of people killed in one episode.”
Swanton says the details of the charges are still being worked out, but everyone is in the process of being booked on charges of engaging in organized crime. That organized crime is capital murder, said Swanton.
“That’s a pretty severe charge — engaging in organized crime in reference to nine individuals killed. It doesn’t get much more significant than that,” said Swanton. “There may be warrants on individuals that may be attached to that as well, but that’s a pretty serious charge.”
Some 18 Waco police officers and four Texas Department of Public Safety officers were involved in the gunfight in a matter of seconds, according to Swanton. Off-duty officers even responded to the incident. He also added that they are in the process of going through “every blood spot” and “every body” involved in the shootout that spanned a large area.
Under a Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission mandate, the restaurant shut down its alcohol sales for the next seven days as the investigation continues into the shooting that left nine people dead and at least 18 people injured — an investigation that has included biker gang death threats made against uniformed officers. The restaurant’s corporate officials later said they were immediately revoking its franchise agreement,and Waco police are urging the restaurant to remain closed entirely — at least for the next week — out of respect for the incident.
“They are threatening to kill uniformed officers, and we’re aware of that. We’re sharing the intelligence that we’re getting. We know that we had a heavy influx of biker members coming into our area yesterday. We believe that was in an attempt to come in,” said Swanton early Monday morning, who added that the people arrested could be looking at capital murder charges. “They saw the show of force that we had here; they saw the large number of officers that we had here — not only at this location but scattered throughout Waco. We were prepared for a worst-case scenario if they tried to bring a fight to us.”
Swanton said local, state and federal officers are prepared if the biker gangs decide to act on those threats. He also added that if you could name a local agency in the area, they were there helping them Sunday afternoon following the shootout.
“I can tell you that yesterday’s events started as bad guys on bad guys,” said Swanton. “When our officers got there and intervened in the active-shooter situation, those bad guys turned their hostility on our officers, which included Waco and DPS.”
Meanwhile, authorities continue to comb through evidence that spans a Central Texas shopping center, much of which is closed Monday morning due to the amount of evidence they have to go through. Some 50 weapons — including knives, brass knuckles, chains and clubs — have been recovered from the scene so far.
“These were bad-guy weapons. They ranged from brass knucks to knives to chains to clubs and to firearms,” said Swanton. “This was a true gang fight.”
It started with a fist fight in the bathroom of the restaurant near the intersection of Interstate 35 and State Highway 6 Sunday afternoon in Waco. It spilled into the bar, where it quickly escalated into knife fight — and then out into the parking lot where a gun battle raged between five different biker gangs and heavily armed police. Swanton says the shooting began inside the restaurant and spilled out into the parking lot and surrounding area.
Three bodies were found in the immediate Twin Peaks parking lot, and another four were found throughout the extended parking lot. Eight people died at the scene, and another person died at the hospital. Most of the injured either had stab wounds or gunshot wounds — or both. Two people had to be take out of the Waco area because of the severity of the injuries, and most of the others injured were taken to Scott & White Baylor Hillcrest.
“They had a little bit of an issue there as well, with individuals showing up, being threatening to staff, demanding answers and had some problems there,” said Swanton of the hospital situation.
Waco police are questioning hundreds of people.
“In 34 years of law enforcement, this is the most violent crime scene I have ever been involved in,” Swanton said. “There is blood everywhere.”
The altercation between biker gangs began just as churchgoers arrived at the Central Texas Marketplace for Sunday Lunch.
In anticipation of any problems, Waco police were already on scene when the violence broke out. Officers say bikers were attacking one another with chains, knives, bats, clubs and firearms.
“These are officers that ran into gunfire to protect our citizens, and they — without a doubt — did a hell of a job doing that yesterday, and we’re very proud of them. And again, we think that saved numerous lives,” said Swanton. “We were quickly able to gain control because of the number of officers we had here on scene. And we began calling for additional resources due to the large number of people that were there and the threat to not only our officers, but the citizens as well.”
It is still unclear if those killed and injured were hit by police gunfire or gunfire from the bikers involved.
“What I want you all to understand: This is not a bunch of doctors and dentists and lawyers riding Harleys,” said Swanton on Sunday afternoon. “These are criminals on Harley-Davidsons that are members of a criminal biker gang, and we know who they are. We know which clubs that they’re with.”
Meanwhile, the shopping center is shut down from Cabela’s to Best Buy. The shopping center is open for business starting from Kohl’s.
Could it have been prevented?
“What happened here today could have been avoided,” Swanton told the media during a news conference. He went on to say that police alerted the restaurant to the threat of violence and that the manager was asked to discontinue ‘bike night.’”
Swanton says police presence has been at that Twin Peaks for about two months now, adding that this incident wasn’t the first Sunday that they’d been out there.
“They were aware that there were issues here. We have been working with management here — to no avail. And I have to say: That was local management here,” said Swanton. “We told them of the issues. We tried to get assistance from them in dealing with this crowd, but they would not cooperate … There was a statement that local management put out last night that was absolute fabrication. It was a lie.”
Jay Patel, operating partner of the Twin Peaks Waco franchise, offered up a statement on Facebook.
“We are horrified by the criminal, violent acts that occurred outside of our Waco restaurant today. We share in the community’s trauma. Our priority is to provide a safe and enjoyable environment for our customers and employees, and we consider the police our partners in doing so. Our management team has had ongoing and positive communications with the police, and we will continue to work with them as we all want to keep violent crime out of our businesses and community. We will continue to cooperate with the police as they investigate this terrible crime.”
Swanton doesn’t agree.
“We feel like they could’ve done more. We feel like that they did not take our advice and try to keep the bike groups from being here,” said Swanton on Sunday after the shooting. “They absolutely have a right to refuse service to people that may be a harm to their patrons and employees. They didn’t do that, and today is the ultimate aftermath of what their decision was.”
Swanton says that the police department has had officers in plain clothes — in large numbers — at the restaurant for the past two months. He also said there have been several arrests stemming from incidents at Twin Peaks, most of them minor skirmishes, warrant arrests and arrests of that nature.
“As of about a week ago, we were in contact with the national management of Twin Peaks because we were getting no cooperation locally, and we were going to them for assistance,” said Swanton. “People have civil rights. Until a law is broken, there’s nothing we can do if we don’t have management to support — to assist us — in keeping individuals out of a business. There’s nothing we can do until a law is broken.”
No bystanders were hurt, despite another packed restaurant just 25 feet from the gun battle.
As bikers from across the state began to pour into town Sunday afternoon, Waco police decided to close the mall where the restaurant is located.
While five different gangs are believed to be involved in the fight, officers on scene said it appeared some of the gangs appeared to be in alliance with one another.
Twin Peaks corporate statement
“We are in the people business, and the safety of the employees and guests in our restaurants is priority one. Unfortunately, the management team of the franchised restaurant in Waco chose to ignore the warnings and advice from both the police and our company, and did not uphold the high security standards we have in place to ensure everyone is safe at our restaurants. We will not tolerate the actions of this relatively new franchisee and are revoking their franchise agreement immediately. Our sympathies continue to be with the families of those who died and are very thankful on employees, guests, police officers of bystanders were hurt or injured.”
Why Waco?
Waco’s proximity to Austin and Dallas, by way of Interstate 35 and less-traveled highways, has made it a popular destination for bikers since the 1970s. The city has several biker bars on the outskirts bearing signs barring gang members from wearing “colors” inside.
Investigators in Waco say the gangs involved in Sunday’s violence were apparently in town in effort to recruit new members.
The motorcycle gangs involved in Sunday’s shootout in a Waco, Texas, restaurant parking lot are a breed apart from weekend hobbyists on bikes, authorities say.
The groups are serious criminal organizations — including one that the FBI alleges is among the largest outlaw motorcycle gangs in the USA.
Police in Waco say the melee involved five gangs, including the Bandidos and the Cossacks, who clashed at a weekend recruiting event. The FBI says on its organized crime Web page that the Bandidos is one of the largest outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMGs) in the USA, with about 900 members and 93 chapters. The group itself says it has over 200 chapters with more than 2,500 members in 16 countries.
The FBI says OMGs such as the Bandidos “pose a serious national domestic threat.” It defines them as “organizations whose members use their motorcycle clubs as conduits for criminal enterprises” including drug trafficking, cross-border drug smuggling, prostitution and human trafficking. More than 300 OMGs are active in the USA, it says, coordinating smuggling operations with “major international drug-trafficking organizations.”
The FBI says the Bandidos “are involved in transporting and distributing cocaine and marijuana and are involved in the production, transportation and distribution of methamphetamine.” The group is most active in the Pacific, Southeastern,Southwestern and the West Central regions of the USA.
The FBI’s National Gang Intelligence Center in 2013 found that just 2.5% of U.S. gang members belonged to an OMG — by contrast, 88% were street gang members and 9.5% were prison gang members. OMGs were considered the greatest threat in only about 11% of jurisdictions.
But the center said the low percentage is misleading. OMGs, it said, “are more problematic than their modest numbers suggest. This is likely due to their solid organizational structure, criminal sophistication, and their tendency to employ violence to protect their interests.”
On one of its websites, the Bandidos says a U.S. Marine named Donald Eugene “Mother” Chambers formed the group in San Leon, Texas, in 1966, after he and other veterans returning home from Vietnam found themselves abandoned by the U.S. government, living in poverty “and without any respect for what they have done” during the Vietnam War.
“What they have learned in their unit of companionship and unconditional support … has no existence in the civilian life,” according to the site. The club chose the red and gold colors of the U.S. Marine Corps. The group’s motto: “We are the people our parents warned us about.”
The FBI in 2013 said the Bandidos and other groups use their ties to “military-affiliated gang members” to extend their operations, through transfers and deployment, “and thereby potentially undermine security at military installations.”
The FBI identified at least 60 gangs whose members or associates “have been either enlisted or have attempted to gain employment in the military or various government agencies.” Of the 60, 54 had members who served in the military or who were affiliated with the military. It also said the Bandidos and others were encouraging members without criminal records to enlist in the military “to obtain weapons expertise, combat training, or access to sensitive information.”
A McLennan County deputy stands guard near a group of bikers in the parking lot of a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco, Texas. Waco Police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton told KWTX-TV there were “multiple victims” after gunfire erupted between rival biker gangs at the restaurant. (Photo: Rod Aydelotte, Waco Tribune-Herald via AP)
The Cossacks, a smaller, local Texas gang, had been challenging the Bandidos’ dominance, including discussing a possible alliance with rival gang the Hell’s Angels, Steve Cook, executive director of the Midwest Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association, told Vox.
The biggest provocation came, he said, when the Cossacks began wearing a Texas patch on their clothing, which was “basically a slap in the face” to the Bandidos.
“We knew the tensions with the Cossacks were as high as they’d ever been,” he said. “I don’t think anybody could have forecasted it to the degree that it happened.”
Cook said Sunday’s shootout parallels previous encounters between the Bandidos and Hells Angels. Cook told The Washington Post that the shootout started because the Cossacks, backed by the Angels, challenged the Bandidos for control of Texas. Several other bike gangs might have joined the battle, too, angry over recent killings by Bandidos members, he said.
“My perception is that the Cossacks have been flirting, if you will, with Hell’s Angles,” Cook said. “If I’m a Bandido, my immediate reaction is: ‘These guys are going to try to make a move and bring an international gang into our state, which is going to cause a war.'”
Cook said he hoped Sunday’s shooting will draw more attention to the gangs. “Maybe it’ll be time for law enforcement and the public to take the blinders off and recognize these groups for what they are: criminals.”
Talking to reporters on Sunday, Waco Police spokesman Sgt. Patrick Swanton cautioned that the groups involved in the shootout were not “a friendly group of motorcycle enthusiasts,” but criminal gangs.
Cook agreed. “They can pretend like they’re these fraternal organizations — I can’t tell you the last time the Kiwanis and the Shriners had a shootout at a public venue.”
Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (OMGs) are organizations whose members use their motorcycle clubs as conduits for criminal enterprises. OMGs are highly structured criminal organizations whose members engage in criminal activities such as violent crime, weapons trafficking, and drug trafficking. There are more than 300 active OMGs within the United States, ranging in size from single chapters with five or six members to hundreds of chapters with thousands of members worldwide. The Hells Angels, Mongols, Bandidos, Outlaws, and Sons of Silence pose a serious national domestic threat and conduct the majority of criminal activity linked to OMGs, especially activity relating to drug-trafficking and, more specifically, to cross-border drug smuggling. Because of their transnational scope, these OMGs are able to coordinate drug smuggling operations in partnership with major international drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs).
The Bandidos Motorcycle Club (Bandidos) is an OMG with a membership of 2,000 to 2,500 persons in the U.S. and in 13 other countries. The Bandidos constitute a growing criminal threat to the U.S. Law enforcement authorities estimate that the Bandidos are one of the two largest OMGs operating in the U.S., with approximately 900 members belonging to 93 chapters. The Bandidos are involved in transporting and distributing cocaine and marijuana and are involved in the production, transportation and distribution of methamphetamine. The Bandidos are most active in the Pacific, Southeastern, Southwestern and the West Central regions of the U.S. The Bandidos are expanding in each of these regions by forming additional chapters and allowing members of supporting clubs, known as “puppet” or “duck” club members who have sworn allegiance to another club but who support and do the “dirty work” of a mother club – to form new or join existing Bandidos chapters.
Black Pistons Motorcycle Club
The Black Pistons Motorcycle Club (Black Pistons) is the official support club for the Outlaws Motorcycle Club (Outlaws). Established in 2002 with the backing of the Outlaws, the Black Pistons have expanded rapidly throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe. The Black Pistons have an estimated 70 domestic chapters in 20 states and an unknown number of foreign chapters in Belgium, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Norway and Poland. The exact number of Black Pistons members is unknown but the figure is estimated to be more than 200 in the U.S. The Outlaws use the Black Pistons chapters as a recruitment source for prospective Outlaws members. The Outlaws also use the Black Pistons chapters to conduct criminal activity, especially for the transportation and distribution of drugs. Members of the Black Pistons are also known to engage in assault, extortion, fraud, intimidation and theft.
Hells Angels Motorcycle Club
The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club (Hells Angels) is an OMG with between 2,000 and 2,500 members who belong to over 230 chapters in the U.S. and in 26 foreign countries. The Hells Angels pose a criminal threat on six continents. U.S. law enforcement authorities estimate that the Hells Angels have more than 92 chapters in 27 states with a membership in excess of 800 persons. The Hells Angels are involved in the production, transportation and distribution of marijuana and methamphetamine. Additionally, the Hells Angels are involved in the transportation and distribution of cocaine, hashish, heroin, LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), ecstasy, PCP (phencyclidine) and diverted pharmaceuticals. The Hells Angels are also involved in other criminal activity including assault, extortion, homicide, money laundering and motorcycle theft.
Mongols Motorcycle Club
The Mongols Motorcycle Club (Mongols) is an extremely violent OMG that poses a serious criminal threat to the Pacific and Southwestern regions of the U.S. The Mongols are engaged in the transportation and distribution of cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine. The Mongols are also known to frequently commit violent crime including assault, intimidation and murder in defense of their territory, and to uphold the reputation of the club. A majority of the Mongols membership consists of Hispanic males who live in the Los Angeles area, and many are former street gang members with a long history of using violence to settle grievances. Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms (ATF) have called the Mongols the most violent and dangerous OMG in the nation. In the 1980’s the Mongols seized control of Southern California from the Hells Angels, and today, the Mongols are allied with the Bandidos, the Outlaws, the Sons of Silence and the Pagans against the Hells Angels. The Mongols have also maintained their ties with Hispanic street gangs in Los Angeles.
Outlaws Motorcycle Club
The Outlaws Motorcycle Club (Outlaws) have more than 1,700 members who belong to 176 chapters in the U.S. and in 12 foreign countries. U.S. law enforcement authorities estimate that the Outlaws have more than 86 chapters in 20 states with over 700 members. The Outlaws also identify themselves as the A.O.A. (American Outlaws Association) and the Outlaws Nation. The Outlaws are the dominant OMG in the Great Lakes region. The Outlaws are involved in the production, transportation and distribution of methamphetamine, the transportation and distribution of cocaine, marijuana and, to a lesser extent, ecstasy. The Outlaws engage in various criminal activities including arson, assault, explosives, extortion, fraud, homicide, intimidation, kidnapping, money laundering, prostitution, robbery, theft and weapons violations. The Outlaws compete with the Hells Angels for both members and territory.
Pagans Motorcycle Club
The Pagans Motorcycle Club (Pagans) is a violent OMG whose membership distribute cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana and PCP (phencyclidine). The Pagans are one of the most prominent OMGs in the Mid-Atlantic region. The Pagans have an estimated 200 to 250 members among 41 chapters in 11 states. The Pagans have been tied to traditional organized crime groups in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and New York and have engaged in criminal activities such as arson, assault, bombing, extortion and murder.
Sons of Silence
Sons of Silence Motorcycle Club (SOSMC) is one of the largest OMGs in the United States, with 250 to 275 members among 30 chapters in 12 states. The club also has five chapters in Germany. SOSMC members have been implicated in numerous criminal activities, including murder, assault, drug trafficking, intimidation, extortion, prostitution operations, money laundering, weapons trafficking, and motorcycle and motorcycle parts theft.
May 17 2015 Breaking News IRAN led Shiite paramilitaries have been deployed to Ramadi Iraq
ISIL seizes Iraq’s Ramadi
Islamic State ‘seizes Iraqi city of Ramadi’ – BBC News
Watch: ‘Islamic State forces’ march into Ramadi after seizing the Iraqi city
ISIS Seizes Government Headquarters in Ramadi, Iraq
PBS NewsHour Weekend full episode May 17, 2015
US Special Forces Secret Night Mission kills senior ISIS Commander Abu Sayyaf in Syria
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U.S. Army’s Delta force kills senior ISIS commander
U.S. troops kill ISIS leader
Syria: 1st SFOD-D Kill Abu Sayyaf, Capture His Wife, Free Yazidi Slave Girl, Secure Intelligence
ISIS Leader Killed USA (Boots On The Ground)
Iraqi city of Ramadi falls to Islamic State as police, military retreat
By Hugh Naylor and Mustafa Salim
BAGHDAD — The capital of Anbar province fell to Islamic State militants Sunday as hundreds of police personnel, soldiers and tribal fighters abandoned the city, prompting the Iraqi premier to order Iranian-aligned Shiite militias to join the fight to win back control.
The fall of Ramadi represented a huge victory for the Islamic State and dealt a profound blow to Iraq’s U.S.-backed government, led by Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, and its military campaign to drive the extremist group out of the war-torn country. Just 24 hours before, officials in Baghdad announced that military reinforcements had been dispatched to defend the city, capital of Iraq’s largest province, against a brutal assault that began on Thursday.
But by Sunday, even the roads to Baghdad, 80 miles to the east, appeared vulnerable to the militant advance.
“Ramadi has fallen,” Muhannad Haimour, a spokesman for the Anbar governor told the Associated Press. “The city was completely taken…It was a gradual deterioration. The military is fleeing.”
Sunday’s developments, including Abadi’s decision to deploy Shiite militias to the country’s Sunni heartland, could complicate the U.S.-led campaign targeting the extremist group, which in recent days has included American airstrikes against militant positions in Ramadi in an effort to keep the city in government hands. U.S. officials have expressed concern over the divisive, sectarian-motivated — and increasingly powerful — Iranian-backed Shiite militias.
Carried by state television on Sunday evening, Abadi’s announcement, which contained few details, also included a plea for pro-government forces not to abandon their positions in Anbar.
The rapid disintegration of pro-government forces in Ramadi conjured memories of the Islamic State’s similar lighting defeat of Iraq’s weak military during sweeping advances throughout northern areas of the country last summer. Security forces retreated from the Malaab area of Ramadi at 1:30 p.m., abandoning about 60 military vehicles, including military-grade Humvees, to the militants, said Col. Nasser al-Alwani of the Ramadi police force. About half of the abandoned vehicles were sent by the U.S.-backed government on Saturday to reinforce the neighborhood, he added.
“Today, everybody retreated from the Malaab area, including counterterrorism units, army and police,” he said by telephone. Along with soldiers and counterterrorism units, the force of about 400 police officers who fall under Alwani’s command retreated in their vehicles to the east, he said. Islamic State fighters besieged them on all roads, forcing them to abandon the vehicles and escape on foot. A military convoy from the al-Habbaniyah air base later retrieved the fleeing Iraqi forces, he added.
“The retreat was complete chaos. There was no organization,” Alwani said, describing attacks by “hundreds” of Islamic State militants.
Earlier in the day, militants posted a statement on social media by the Islamic State that described Sunday’s events as a major military success, saying that the group “had imposed its control over all of Ramadi.”
In Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, which the group captured in June, loud street celebrations were being held that involved fighters shooting automatic weapons into the air and passing out candy, according to a resident in the city. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing concern for his safety.
“The streets are full of cars honking horns and shouting Allahu Akbar because of Ramadi,” he said in a Facebook message.
In a sign of the seriousness over the situation in Anbar, the prime minister’s order to Shiite militias came just hours after Anbar’s provincial council voted in favor of allowing the irregular forces — known by the government as “popular mobilization units” — to participate in the battle to retake the city.
Iraqis, particularly in the Sunni-dominated province, are wary of the militias and the Shiite-led government in Baghdad. The Islamic State has capitalized on Sunni grievances to take control of most of most of Anbar.
“We voted yes to the measure,” said Kahtan Abed, officer manager for the provincial council’s head, Sabah Karhout. “We took this decision because we have nowhere else to turn. We’ve literally lost everything.”
Diplomats, analysts and Iraqis say that the powerful militias threaten to undermine Iraq’s government as well as delicate sectarian relations in the country. With aid from Shiite Iran, the militiamen carried out scores of attacks against American soldiers when U.S. forces were still fighting in Iraq. But more recently, the militias have proved to be a crucial force in retaking territory, including the city of Tikrit last month, from the Islamic State.
An official in one of the Iranian-backed Shiite militias, Kitaeb Hezbollah, confirmed by text message that the group’s militiamen have mobilized and been put on high alert. Jawad al-Talibawi, a spokesman for the armed wing of Asaib Ahl al-Haq, another Iran-aligned militia, said the group had mobilized 1,500 members of its special forces to enter Anbar. The fighters had spent months battling in Syria’s civil war against rebels seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, also an ally of Iran.
“Those 1,500 fighters are now awaiting the order to go in,” Talibawi said by telephone.
Omar al-Alwani, a pro-government tribal fighter from Ramadi, said no soldiers are left to defend eastern roads to the capital, Baghdad. He said he was among those who fled Malaab with the group of pro-government forces, which he estimated at more than 500. They left behind weapons that included artillery, machine-gun trucks and machine guns, he said.
“Daesh seized the police station, the big mosque” in the area, he said, adding that Islamic State fighters surrounded the area police station and fatally shot the senior officer there, Col. Muthana al-Jabari. Daesh is the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.
He and others expressed concern about several hundred pro-government forces who are still surrounded by militants in a military operations hub in the city. According to unconfirmed reports, as many as 40 people in that facility were killed Sunday in two suicide bombings.
“Only God can help those people now. There is no one left to protect them,” said Alwani the tribal fighter.
However, Majed Abdullah, a captain in the Iraqi army who was besieged in the compound, said that scores of pro-government forces managed to escape the facility. They drove away, heading west, he said, adding that they left behind dozens on wounded soldiers and police. It is unclear whether the Islamic State has entered the compound, although there is fear that those who have been left behind could be executed by the militants.
“We’re on the Iraq-Jordan highway now and we’re waiting for orders to either reconstitute our forces and attack or retreat entirely,” Abdullah said by telephone. Using car bombings and heavy shelling, Islamic State militants launched a surprise attack Thursday on Ramadi, capturing most of the city’s neighborhoods by the following day. Residents, pro-government forces and officials accuse the militants of carrying out dozens of executions and systematic destruction of homes belonging to members of the security services.
Before the assault on Thursday, the Islamic State had already taken control of most of Anbar during sweeping advances last summer throughout Iraq.
Just under a decade ago, U.S.-backed Sunni tribes in Anbar led a revolt against al-Qaeda in Iraq, the precursor to the Islamic State. But frustration with Iraq’s Shiite-led government persuaded a number of tribesmen in the province to side with the Islamic State.
Rafia al-Fahdawi, an elder in the province’s Albu Fahed tribe, expressed doubt that a similar tribal uprising could be waged at the moment against the extremist group. On Saturday, he and dozens of fellow Sunni tribal leaders also issued a call for Shiite militias to intervene in Anbar.
“The army has let us down. The SWAT team has let us down. We can’t depend on these forces, and we need forces that are inspired to fight hard,” he said, referring to the militias.
Islamic State captures government compound in Ramadi
An Iraqi official says Islamic State militants have captured the main government compound inRamadi, the capital of the western Anbar province, after fierce clashes with security forces.
Ramadi’s Mayor Dalaf al-Kubaisi says the militants raised the black flag of the IS group over the area on Friday after troops were forced to withdraw from the compound, which houses most of the city’s government offices.
He says the IS militants are now attacking the Anbar Operation Command, the military headquarters for the province.
U.S. troops saw some of the heaviest fighting of the eight-year Iraq intervention in Anbar, and Ramadi was a major insurgent stronghold.
The IS assault on the government compound began with three nearly simultaneous suicide car bombings that killed 10 police and wounded seven others.
Following heavy defeats at Tikrit in Iraq and the appalling costly siege of Kobane, Islamic State have launched their own social media rules to censor coverage on its recent defeats.
The image of the rules began to circulate on social media, two weeks after Islamic State was forced to abandon the Iraqi city of Tikrit.
With ISIS propaganda team releasing endless sets of dull publicity photos from life inside Iraq and Syria, the senior commanders appear keen to eradicate any hint of problems within the group’s territory.
The media crackdown appears to be an attempt by ISIS senior commanders to eradicate any knowledge of the extremist group’s defeats or internal problems.
+8
Some ISIS supporters on social media appear to be exasperated by the apparent leaking of information and discussions of the defeat at Tikrit.
Specific details like the manufacturing of new weapons and any pictures of ISIS fighters, have been deemed by ISIS as a breach of online security.
Perhaps the strangest and most unclear rule reads: ‘The stupendous spread of Mujahideen along a specific locations’ It appears unknown what the extremist group meant by ‘the stupendous spread of mujahideen.’
Whilst it remains unknown how Islamic State will manage to enforce these rules, the jihadi group has previously struggled to keep any control of its fighters and supporters on social media.
One exasperated ISIS supporter wrote: ‘Brothers, please stop posting news about anything in Tirkit or Ramadi walla. You are doing more harm to the mujahideen than good. Fear Allah.’
Some of the rules, particularly regarding the publishing information on the location of fighters and the use of tactics, appears to come after a series of calamitous social media errors by some fighters.
Islamic State fighter Mark Taylor, originally from New Zealand, shot to fame after accidentally tweeting his location whilst fighting in Syria.
Taylor forgot to turn off the geo-locator setting on his account, allowing intelligence services to successfully track his every movement. He even managed to give away where he was living in al-Tabaqah, south west Raqqa.
Known as Ali Al-Farsi, 19-year-old Ali Kalantar’s death was first tweeted by Halane, under the nom de guerre, Umm Jafar al-Britaniyah.
British terror twin Zahra Halane (left) and Kiwi fighter Mark Taylor (right), have both been criticised by ISIS supporters for giving away information on fighters and locations.
Islamic State commander fear that with the deadly coalition air strikes decimating their ranks, such lapses in security is proving costly.
In particular female jihadis have been criticized by fellow ISIS supporters for their loose lipped attitude on social media. One of the British terror twins, Zahra Halane, has previously broken the rules by announcing the death of her husband on social media.
Known as Ali Al-Farsi, 19-year-old Ali Kalantar’s death was first tweeted by Halane, under the nom de guerre, Umm Jafar al-Britaniyah. Halane quickly deleted the tweets but not before a screenshot had sent them viral.
Islamic State propaganda remains highly important to their strategy for recruitment and legitimacy. ISIS media continue to churn out endless propaganda photos from inside ISIS territory.
Islamic State fighters have recently made worrying gains near the Iraqi city of Ramadi, Anbar province. Shiite paramilitary groups and other reinforcements are reportedly heading to Ramadi to provide support against the ISIS threat.
+8
New propaganda photos from Anbar province claim that ISIS were warmly welcomed as they entered a nearby town near Ramadi.
Islamic State continue to launch new offensives, targeting the strategic Iraqi oil fields at Baiji and the city of Ramadi in Anbar province.
Islamic State continue to launch new offensives, targeting the strategic Iraqi oil fields at Baiji and the city of Ramadi in Anbar province.
Using suicide bombers to destroy the surrounding fence, Islamic State fighters have been managed to fight their way inside the oil field compound in Salahuddin province.
Parts of the oil fields have frequently changed hands between the Iraqi army and militants from Islamic State. Due to its remote desert location, it has proved to be a difficult base to maintain.
Newly published photos and a brief video shows dozens of ISIS fighters celebrating inside the oil field’s facilities.
It remains unknown how long they will manage to hold out before the Baghdad forces re-take it.
Using suicide bombers to destroy the surrounding fence, Islamic State fighters have been managed to fight their way inside the oil field compound
Situated in Salahuddin province, the Baiji oil fields has long been seen as a key stategic target for Islamic State. it remains unknown how long they will manage to hold out before the Baghdad forces re-take it.
Delta Force Commandos Kill Key ISIS Leader in Ground Raid in Syria
In a ground raid deep in Syrian territory, U.S. special operations forces killed a top ISIS leader who they were attempting to capture and interrogate about American hostages and how the terror group finances its war machine, the Obama…
U.S. conducts raid in Syria, says it kills senior Islamic State leader
WASHINGTON| BY WILL DUNHAM AND MATT SPETALNICK
American special operations forces killed a senior Islamic State leader in a raid in Syria, U.S. officials said on Saturday, an operation that marked a departure from Washington’s strategy of relying primarily on air strikes to target militants there.
Delta Force commandos used UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft to punch deep into eastern Syria from Iraq. They engaged in a firefight and hand-to-hand combat with Islamic State fighters, killed a key figure in the group named as Abu Sayyaf and captured his wife, U.S. officials said.
The officials described Sayyaf, a Tunisian, as an Islamic State commander who helped manage the group’s black-market sales of oil and gas to raise funds. The officials said President Barack Obama ordered the overnight operation, which killed about a dozen Islamic State fighters and had been planned for several weeks.
It marked the first known U.S. special forces operation inside Syria apart from a failed mission last year to rescue U.S. and other foreign hostages held by Islamic State in northeastern Syria.
Wary of the United States getting pulled deeper into Middle East conflicts, Obama has promised not to commit major ground forces in the fight against Islamic State, which has seized swathes of Syria and Iraq. But he has left open the prospect of special forces raids.
It was not immediately clear if this one marked the start of a new chapter in Syria.
U.S. and Arab forces have carried out almost daily air raids against hardline Islamist militant groups in Syria including Islamic State since last September, and U.S.-led forces are also targeting the group in Iraq.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the operation was intended to capture Abu Sayyaf but he was killed “when he engaged U.S. forces.” His wife, Umm Sayyaf, was captured, then placed in U.S. military detention in Iraq and was being questioned about Islamic State operations and hostages held by the group.
No U.S. forces were killed or wounded during the operation, Carter said.
“The operation represents another significant blow to ISIL, and it is a reminder that the United States will never waver in denying safe haven to terrorists who threaten our citizens, and those of our friends and allies,” Carter said, using an acronym for the Islamic State organization.
Local Syrian sources contacted by Reuters said two other senior Islamic State operatives, a Syrian and a Saudi, were also killed alongside Abu Sayyaf. The raid lasted no more than half an hour, according to the sources.
The accounts could not be independently verified. U.S. officials had no immediate comment on whether other senior Islamic State militants were killed in the raid.
The raid in Syria came at a time when Islamic State, which has declared a caliphate in areas it controls and has carried out beheadings and massacres, has scored high-profile gains in Iraq and made advances in Syria.
Islamic State militants raised their black flag over the local government headquarters in the Iraqi city of Ramadi on Friday and claimed victory after overrunning most of the provincial capital.
If Ramadi were to fall it would be the first major city seized by the Sunni insurgents in Iraq since security forces and paramilitary groups began pushing them back last year.
U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said he extended his “gratitude and continued support” for the U.S. troops involved in the Syria raid. But Boehner, a Republican, said he was “gravely concerned” by Islamic State’s advances in Ramadi, which he said “threatens the stability and sovereignty of Iraq, which is vital to America’s interests.”
Hawkish Republican critics of Obama, a Democrat, say he has not acted forcefully enough to rein in the rise of Islamic State.
GREEN LIGHT FROM OBAMA
White House National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said the Syria raid was conducted “with the full consent of Iraqi authorities.” She said the United States did not give any advance warning or coordinate with the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who Washington opposes.
“The president authorized this operation upon the unanimous recommendation of his national security team and as soon as we had developed sufficient intelligence and were confident the mission could be carried out successfully,” Meehan said.
Meehan said U.S. forces freed a young Yezidi woman “who appears to have been held as a slave” by Abu Sayyaf and his wife. His wife was suspected of playing “an important role in ISIL’s terrorist activities,” Meehan said.
The U.S. military last summer carried out a failed mission in Syria to rescue journalist James Foley, held hostage by Islamic State. Foley was later beheaded by the group in August 2014.
In December, al Qaeda militants shot and fatally wounded American photo journalist Luke Somers and South African teacher Pierre Korkie during a failed rescue attempt led by U.S. commandos in Yemen.
Saturday’s raid followed a summit Obama held at Camp David earlier this week with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab allies who have pressed the United States to be more militarily assertive in Syria, especially in support of moderate rebels seeking to oust Assad.
Story 1: Two Terrorist Islamic Jihadists Attack Garland Texas Curtis Culwell Center Where Mohammed Cartoon Contest Free Speech Event Was Ending — Suspect Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi Shot Dead — Don’t Mess With Texas — Videos
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Robert Spencer on Hannity’s Great American Panel, January 10, 2015: “Rise of Radical Islam”
Michael Coren & Robert Spencer – Jihad Watch – Jan 15, 2015
Two Gunmen killed at Muhammad Art Contest in Garland Texas identified as Jihad sympathizers
Shooting at Muhammad Cartoon Contest Garland, Texas: 2 Gunmen Killed, Officer Down -FIRST VIDEO
Garland TX Mohammed Cartoon Contest Shooting: First report
Garland Shooting: Elton Simpson, Nadir Soofi Suspects Attack Muhammad Carton Drawing in Texas |VIDEO
The Secret of The Muhammad Garland TX Shooting
Police won’t call Garland attack a TERRORIST ATTACK even though suspect was a wannabe terrorist
Pamela Geller Battles CNN Host over Garland Shooting: Why Is Media ‘Targeting’ Us? |FULL INTERVIEW
Muslim extremists attack Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Texas – TomoNews
Pamela Geller on anti-jihad ad
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Interview with Robert Spencer about Islam حوار مع الكاتب روبرت سبنسر
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WAS THE TEXAS MOHAMMED SHOOTING A FALSE FLAG?
Robert Spencer on Why ISIS is Islamic
Lying Lunatic Left
Video: CAIR Rep on MSNBC’s ‘NOW with Alex Wagner’ to Discuss Shooting in Garland, Texas
SPLC Labels Muhammad Cartoon Group ‘anti-muslim’
FBI had known about suspected Texas shooter for years
By Adam Goldman and Mark Berman
One of the gunmen authorities say opened fire Sunday outside an exhibition of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad had previously been suspected of trying to fly overseas and wage violent jihad, according to court records.
He was identified as Elton Simpson, 30, of Phoenix, according to a U.S. law enforcement official. Law enforcement officials said Monday afternoon that the second shooter in the Texas attack was Nadir Soofi, 34, Simpson’s roommate.
FBI agents searched a Phoenix apartment Monday as part of the investigation into the shooting, which occurred Sunday evening in Garland, a city near Dallas.
The FBI had begun monitoring Simpson again recently. Authorities said Monday that they were still working to determine details about the two men and who may have instigated the plan. The FBI does not believe the shooting was directed by an international terrorist group, but is still investigating.
Police say the two gunmen drove up to the Curtis Culwell Center during a controversial art exhibition and, at around 6:50 p.m., opened fire with assault rifles, striking a security guard in the leg.
An officer who normally works on traffic was there as part of a heavy security detail for the event, and this officer shot and killed both gunmen using his duty pistol, said Joe Harn, a spokesman for the Garland police.
“Both those men died there on the street next to their car,” Harn said during a news conference Monday morning.
The gunmen had additional ammunition as well as suitcases in their vehicle, but no bombs or explosives were found, Harn said. They were also wearing some form of protective gear, he said.
While Harn would not say if police believed the shooting was directly connected with the event, he said the two gunmen intended to get inside the center and shoot people.
“We were able to stop those men before they were able to penetrate the area and attempt to shoot anyone else,” Harn said.
The guns recovered by authorities in Garland were being traced Monday by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Officer ‘probably saved lives’ in Tex. shootings(1:57)
Police planned security for months before a Texas event showing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, a police spokesperson said. (Reuters)
City officials said that Bruce Joiner was the Garland Independent School District security officer who was shot at by the two gunmen. Joiner was treated for an ankle wound and released, the city said in a statement.
The inflammatory event was hosted by a New York group that had promised $10,000 for the best cartoon depicting Muhammad. Drawing or otherwise depicting Muhammad is largely forbidden under Islam.
Authorities said there was considerable discussion on social media in the days leading up to the cartoon event, which prompted authorities to deploy heavy security. One tweet sent out on Sunday referred to taking a pledge of allegiance and referred to a #texasattack, but it was unclear whether the account belonged to either of the men involved.
Simpson was born in Illinois and converted to Islam at a young age, court documents show. The government began investigating him in 2006, recording conversations between him and a paid informant.
In May 2009, according a federal court document, Simpson told an FBI informant: “It’s time to go to Somalia, brother.” He added: “It’s time. I’m tellin’ you man. We gonna make it to the battlefield…it’s time to roll.”
Simpson was arrested by the FBI in January 2010 after a lengthy investigation. He was charged with lying to agents in connection with terrorism. Authorities suspected he was trying to fly to Somalia, but Simpson claimed at the time he had intended to travel to South Africa to go to school and study Islam there.
Following a bench trial, a judge dropped the terrorism enhancement, citing insufficient evidence. The judge, Mary H. Murguia, said in March 2011 that the government had failed to prove that Simpson intended to wage violent jihad in Somalia. Murguia reduced the charge to making a false statement to federal officials and sentenced Simpson to three years of probation. Authorities also returned his passport, which they had confiscated after his arrest.
Simpson’s lawyer described him as a very religious man who had converted to Islam.
“He didn’t seem to me to be any threat to anybody,” Kristina Sitton, Simpson’s lawyer, said in a telephone interview Monday. “He seemed to be very kind but entrenched in Islam. He wouldn’t shake my hand.”
She said that after he was sentenced to probation, Simpson called her saying that he had tried to board a domestic flight and was told he could not fly. Sitton said she believed he was on the no-fly list.
Soofi was a pre-med student at the University of Utah from 1998 to 2003, according to a spokeswoman for the school. He left the school in the summer of 2003 without having earned a degree, she said.
Former terror suspect well known to the FBI is named as one of two gunmen shot dead by cops after attack on anti-Islam ‘draw Muhammad’ art contest near Dallas
Elton Simpson, 30, and his roommate Nadir Soofi, 34, were gunned down after shooting a guard in the leg outside the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas on Sunday evening
Simpson was convicted of lying to federal agents about traveling to Africa five years ago – but a judge ruled it could not be proved that he was going to join a terror group
Their Phoenix, Arizona home has been surrounded and a bomb squad is carrying out a search
The American Freedom Defense Initiative event had offered a $10,000 prize for the best caricature of the prophet; local residents had expressed their concerns about the event but organizers said they were exercising free speech
The security guard who was shot, Bruce Joiner, was taken to hospital in stable condition and has been released
One traffic officer shot both men dead and has been praised by cops for potentially saving many lives
ISIS fighter claimed on Twitter that the shooting was carried out by two pro-ISIS individuals
A former terror suspect has been named as one of the gunmen shot dead by police after the two attackers blasted an unarmed security guard in the ankle during an anti-Islam art contest in Texas on Sunday night.
Elton Simpson, 30, who was previously the subject of a terror investigation, and his roommate Nadir Soofi, 34, were armed with assault rifles when they were killed by a quick-thinking traffic officer after opening fire outside the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Dallas, at around 7pm.
The shooting unfolded as the American Freedom Defense Initiative held an event inside the building where caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad were being displayed. Followers of Islam deem that any physical depiction of the prophet – even a positive one – is blasphemous.
Simpson, identified in court papers as an American Muslim, had been convicted of lying to federal agents about his plans to travel to Somalia five years ago, but a judge ultimately ruled it could not be proved that he was heading there to join a terror group. He was placed on probation.
Soofi, named as the second gunman by the Washington Post, shared an apartment with Simpson at the Autumn Ridge complex in Phoenix.
On Monday morning, FBI agents and investigators could be seen cordoning off and searching the apartment, as well as a white van believed to belong to Simpson. Investigators are also reviewing computer records from materials found at the home.
Shot dead: Elton Simpson, pictured, was one of the two gunmen who stormed an anti-Islam event on Sunday evening in Texas
Killed: FBI crime scene investigators look at the bodies of the two killed gunmen outside the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas on Monday. Police killed the two men after they opened fire at an anti-Islam event on Sunday
Destroyed: Investigators destroyed some of the belongings found inside the back of the suspects’ car, pictured, as a precaution
Investigation: Agents work on the scene near to where the men opened fire before they were shot dead by a traffic officer
Search: Reporters gather near the home of Elton Simpson, one of the suspected attackers, in Phoenix, Arizona on Monday morning
Raid: Police tape surrounds a vehicle, believed to belong to one of the two gunmen, in Phoenix, Arizona on Monday
Probe: Investigators pull belongings from the back of the truck and carry items inside the complex on Monday morning
ISIS supporters claimed on Twitter that one of the gunmen was a man calling himself Shariah Is Light on the social media site
Investigators also searched the car that the two gunmen drove to the scene and found luggage and further ammunition inside. Some of the belongings were destroyed as a precaution but no explosives were found inside the vehicle, Garland Police Officer Joe Harn said on Monday.
On Monday, Simpson’s father said that he believes his son, who had worked in a dentist’s office, ‘made a bad choice’.
‘We are Americans and we believe in America,’ Dunston Simpson told ABC News. ‘What my son did reflects very badly on my family.’
Ahead of the attack on Sunday evening, several Twitter messages were sent out, and authorities believe Simpson was behind them. The last one was shared just half an hour before the shooting.
Followers of ISIS had been calling for an attack online for more than a week after learning that the competition in Garland would feature a ‘draw Muhammad’ art contest, with a prize of $10,000 for the best caricatur
After the attack, the SITE Intelligence Group reported that an Islamic State fighter claimed on Twitter that the shooting was carried out by two pro-Isis individuals.
In a series of tweets and links, a jihadist named as Abu Hussain AlBritani, which SITE said was British IS fighter Junaid Hussain, claimed that ‘2 of our brothers just opened fire’ at the Prophet Muhammad exhibition in Texas.
‘They Thought They Was Safe In Texas From The Soldiers of The Islamic State,’ added the tweet.
Other ISIS supporters claimed on Twitter that one of the gunmen was a man calling himself Shariah Is Light on the social media site, using the now-suspended account name @atawaakul, according to New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi.
He had posted a message earlier that said ‘the bro with me and myself have given bay’ah [oath] to Amirul Mu’mineen [ISIS leader Al Baghdadi]. May Allah accept us as mujahideen #texasattack’.
The contest was just minutes from finishing when multiple gunshots were heard.
The two suspects had pulled up in a vehicle before getting out and firing at a security officer, 57-year-old Bruce Joiner, who was employed by the independent school district. He was later taken to hospital in a stable condition and was released on Sunday evening.
FBI search home of gunman killed at Muhammad exhibit
Attack: The bodies of shooting suspects are seen next to their vehicle as it is searched for explosives at an anti-Muslim event in Texas on Sunday. The two men had got out the vehicle and opened fire, wounding a security guard in the leg, before they were shot by police
Controversial: On Sunday, two heavily armed police officers can be seen securing art work following the shooting. The art competition, which was awarding $10,000 to the best caricature of the Prophet Muhammad, had been condemned by critics
An officer prevents two people from leaving the building as the area was placed on lockdown after multiple gunshots were heard
TAPES OF A TERROR SUSPECT: RECORDINGS SHOW SIMPSON’S INTENTIONS TO WAGE A WAR
Elton Simpson was well known to the FBI. In 2010, he was convicted of lying to federal agents about his plans to travel to Somalia – although a judge ultimately ruled it could not be proved that he was heading there to join a terror group.
During the investigation, an FBI informant recorded their conversations, which showed Simpson talking about his intentions to fight for the Muslim way of life.
Court documents state: ‘Mr. Simpson said that the reward is high because “If you get shot, or you get killed, it’s [heaven] straight away”…. “[Heaven] that’s what we here for…so why not take that route?”‘
He added that in countries, such as Palestine, Iraq and Somalia, ‘they trying to bring democracy over there man, they’re trying to make them live by man-made laws, not by Allah’s laws’.
He went on: ‘That’s why they get fought. You try to make us become slaves to man? No we slave to Allah, we going to fight you to the death.’
In a recording from 2009, he told the informant that it was time they went to Somalia.
‘It’s time,’ he said. ‘I’m tellin’ you man. We gonna make it to the battlefield… It’s time to roll…
‘People fighting and killing your kids, and dropping bombs on people that have nothing to do with nothing. You got to fight back you can’t be just sitting down… smiling at each other…’
As the gunmen got out of their car with their weapons, one police officer – a tenured traffic cop – shot both men dead, Garland Police officer Joe Harn said at a press conference on Monday. The officer used his service pistol to shoot the men, who were carrying assault weapons.
‘With what he was faced with and his reaction and his shooting with a pistol, he did a good job,’ Harn said of the officer.
‘He did what he was trained to do, and under the fire that he was put under, he did a very good job and probably saved lives. We think their strategy was to get into the events center and they were not able to get past that outer perimeter.’
Randy Potts, a contributor for The Daily Beast, recalled how he was watching the speeches wrap up when a man wearing camouflage shouted: ‘Get inside the conference room now!’
‘The room was oddly quiet,’ he said. ‘A hush fell over the crowd of about 150, as if we were listening for something outside. Then a camo-clad security guard with a rifle got up on stage and announced that a cop and two suspects had been shot.’
He described how security surrounding the event was evident even as he drove up to the Curtis Culwell Center. The parking lot was surrounded by yellow tape and his ID was checked twice before he was allowed to enter.
Johnny Roby of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, had also been attending the conference. He said he was outside the building when he heard around 20 shots that appeared to be coming from the direction of a passing car.
Roby said he then heard two single shots before officers yelled that they had the car before he was sent inside the building.
The building, which had about 100 people inside, and surrounding areas were placed on lockdown by SWAT teams.
FBI bomb squad robots were then sent in to check the suspects’ vehicle, as the two bodies of the gunmen lay on the road beside it. The bodies were not immediately taken from the scene because they were too close to the car, which police feared had incendiary devices inside.
Shortly before midnight, police alerted media that a strong electronic pulse would be activated near the scene, presumably as part of the bomb squad’s work, and a loud boom was heard moments later, though police did not comment further on what was carried out.
The art event had been condemned by critics as an attack on Islam, but the organizers insisted they were exercising free speech.
Some Twitter users began posting about the shooting using a #JeSuisGarland hashtag, mirroring the #JesuisCharlie hashtag that became popular after January’s jihadist attacks in France. In that incident, gunmen killed 12 people in the Paris offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in revenge for its cartoons of the prophet.
After the gunfire in Garland, those inside the building started to sing patriotic songs, including the national anthem and God Bless America, and said a prayer for the injured security guard after one woman pulled out an American flag from her bag.
Garland Police officer Joe Harn said on Sunday evening they had been monitoring the build-up to the event and had not received any credible threats.
During a press conference, he described how the shootout lasted only seconds. A large area around the Center remained blocked off late into the night.
Update: On Monday, Garland Police spokesperson Joe Harn praised the traffic officer who took down both of the attackers
Keeping calm: A policeman keeps members of the audience inside the auditorium after the shots were fired at the controversial event
At the ready: Members of the Garland Police Department stand guard inside the Curtis Culwell Center in the aftermath of the shooting
Safe: Attendees of the event were led off of a school bus into another building where they were questioned by law enforcemen
Two heavily-armed officers stand guard as police blocked off the street surrounding the scene in Garland, Texas
Two gunmen shot dead outside anti-Islam cartoon contest
He said: ‘Because of the situation of what was going on today and the history of what we’ve been told has happened at other events like this, we are considering their car (is) possibly containing a bomb.’
Texas Governor Greg Abbott described the incident as a ‘senseless attack’ and praised the ‘swift action’ of Garland law enforcement.
Security guard Bruce Joiner was shot in the leg while standing outside the building. His injuries were not life-threatening
The attack unfolded shortly after Dutch member of parliament and leader of the far-right Party for Freedom, Geert Wilders, had delivered his keynote speech. There had been calls by members of Congress for him to be stopped at the border so he would not be able to speak.
‘We are here in defiance of Islam to stand for our rights and freedom of speech,’ he said during his speech shortly before the building was shut down. ‘That is our duty… Our message today is very simple: we will never allow barbarism, never allow Islam, to rob us of our freedom of speech.’
His remarks were met with a standing ovation. He then told the audience that most terrorists are Muslims, and ‘the less Islam the better’.
In 2009, he sparked controversy for showing a controversial film which linked the Koran to terrorism and has previously said the Netherlands is being taken over by a ‘tsunami of Islamisation’.
Pamela Geller, the organizer of the event and the leader of Stop Islamisation of America, wrote on her personal website after the attack: ‘This is a war. This is war on free speech. What are we going to do? Are we going to surrender to these monsters?’
In a post in late March, she insisted that the event was necessary to fight back against what she described as ‘the jihad against freedom’.
It was set up by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and had been described by opponents as an attack on Islam. They booked the center a little more than a week after Islamic militants in France killed 12 people at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
The Garland Independent School district, who own the cultural center, allowed the event to go ahead despite criticism from residents and local Muslims that it was a risk to public safety.
The group spent $10,000 on 40 additional security officers, aware of potential threats they may attract, while Garland Police officers were fully prepared to deal with any issues that arose.
Before the event, the New York-based organisation made the headlines for its sponsorship of anti-Islamic adverts which it paid to run on transit systems in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and San Francisco.
A picture taken from inside the event just before the attack showed Geller giving a check for $12,500 to Bosch Fawtin who won the event.
He told the Dallas Morning News he believed there would be no danger because of the high levels of security surrounding the event.
‘I had known it would be secure, but seeing it is a whole new thing,’ he said before the shootings.
Locals in Garland said they were upset with the exhibit being held in their town, and tried to convince the city council to intervene.
One resident, Dorothy Brooks, said that the event was like shouting ‘fire!’ in a theater – an oft-cited example of freedom of speech taken too far.
She continued: ‘I understand that participants have a right to express themselves with cartoons, but I regret that this will be happening in our city.’
Another, Lena Griffin, asked at a city council meeting: ‘Do we want to be involved with this type of rhetoric?’ It is not an issue of free speech but clearly one of public safety.’
Aerial footage of robot checking for explosives at shooting scene
Winner: Artist Bosh Fawstin (left) is presented with a check for $12,500 by Dutch politician Geert Wilders (center) and Pamela Geller (right) during a ceremony at the Curtis Culwell Center just before the shootings occurred
Proud: Wilders, leader of the anti-Islam Freedom Party, center, poses for a photograph with officers who responded to the shooting
Pamela Geller, co-founder and President of Stop Islamization of America, also spoke just before the two gunmen opened fire
Wilders, who has sparked controversy for linking the Koran with terrorism, speaks at the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest
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Scene: An aerial view shows the Curtis Culwell Center and the black car (seen center bottom) that was used by the two gunmen
The event had already been the subject of disapproval from further afield, according to ForeignPolicy.com.
The site obtained a letter from congressmen Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota) and André Carson (D-Indiana) sent to John Kerry and Homeland Security asking them to bar a speaker for the event from entering the United States.
Caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed have triggered violent protests in the past, including when the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten published 12 satirical cartoons in 2005, triggering deadly protests in some Muslim countries.
In January, just weeks after the Paris attacks, an event called Stand with the Prophet was held in the same center. Muslim leaders from across the world gathered to try and combat ‘Islamophobes in America’ who had turned Muhammad into an ‘object of hate’.
Geller spearheaded about 1,000 picketers at the event. One chanted: ‘Go back to your own countries! We don’t want you here!’ Others held signs with messages such as, ‘Insult those who behead others,’ an apparent reference to recent beheadings by the militant group Islamic State.
Mr Abbott said state officials are investigating, and Dallas FBI spokeswoman Katherine Chaumont said that the agency is providing investigative and bomb technician assistance.
The Charlie Hebdo attack was followed by another a month later in Europe. A masked gunman sprayed bullets into a Copenhagen meeting in February attended by a Swedish artist who had been threatened with death for his cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.
A civilian was killed and three police officers were injured in the attack, aimed at artist Lars Vilks, who stirred controversy in 2007 with published drawings depicting the Prophet Mohammad as a dog.
Denmark itself became a target 10 years ago after the publication of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad. The images led to sometimes fatal protests in the Muslim world.
CONTROVERSIAL CARICATURES: WHY DEPICTING THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD IS BANNED BY MUSLIMS
It’s not mentioned in Islam’s holy book, the Quran, but the religion’s ban on depicting the Prophet Muhammad — even favorably — has run firm through the centuries.
Religious traditions built over the years have prohibited such depictions out of respect for Muhammad and to discourage idolatry, according to Muslim scholars and clerics. The ban is further rooted in a wider prohibition against images or statues of human beings.
There have been exceptions. A rich tradition of depicting Muhammad emerged in miniatures and illustrations for manuscripts from around 1200 to 1700. The art is mainly from Turkey and Iran, where pictorial traditions were stronger than in the Arab world. The paintings often show traditional stories from Muhammad’s life, such as his journey to heaven, though in some the prophet’s face is obscured by a veil or a plume of flame.
Shiites also differ from Sunnis by depicting Muhammad’s son-in-law Ali, revered by Shiites who see him as the prophet’s rightful successor. His image — and those of his sons Hassan and Hussein — are plentiful among Shiites, adorning posters, banners, jewelry and even keychains. For Sunnis, the ban on depictions extends beyond the prophet to his close companions and wives.
‘The Prophet Muhammad enjoys sublime and supreme status among Muslims and it is impossible to let a normal person depict or act the role of the prophet,’ said Iraqi Shiite cleric Fadhil al-Saadi. ‘There is no confirmed information about the shape or the features of the Prophet … So nobody should come up with a painting or an image of him. That would represent an insult to the status of the prophet.’
With no explicit text against depictions — or against images of humans in general — the prohibition comes from deduction by Muslim scholars and interpreters over the centuries from the collections of Hadeeth, or sayings and actions of Muhammad.
The prohibition against depicting humans and other living beings, which emerged from scholars as early as the 9th century, came from reported sayings of Muhammad, in some of which he refused to enter a room with such depictions or challenged their creators to breathe life into them. The presumption was that such art would suggest man can emulate God’s powers of creation — and there were worries that statues in particular could encourage idolatry.
Islamic tradition is full of written descriptions of Muhammad and his qualities — describing him as the ideal human being. But clerics have generally agreed that trying to depict that ideal is forbidden. That puts satirical — and obscene — depictions like those in the French magazing Charlie Hebdo far beyond the pale.
While no one knows Muhammad’s true appearance, followers of the relatively modern, ultraconservative Salafi movement in Islam seek to emulate him as closely as possible — including in what they believe to be his physical features and dress. Hardcore Salafis wear a beard without a moustache, let their hair grow long, line their eyes with kohl or wear robes stopping around mid-shin, contending that was the prophet’s manner.
The ban also extends to his wives, daughters, sons-in-law, the first caliphs who succeeded him and his closest companions. In fact, Egypt’s al-Azhar mosque, the Sunni world’s foremost seat of religious learning, has complained when ‘Mohammed, Messenger of God,’ an epic 1970s Hollywood production, depicted the prophet’s camel.
There is a thriving production of religious TV series in the Arab world depicting the times of the prophet. But Muhammad and his companions are never themselves shown. At times, a white light stands in for Muhammad in the films or in movie posters — and when they are meant to be addressing Muhammad, the actors usually speak into the camera.
How Texas “Terror” Shooter Elton Simpson Avoided Prison In 2011
Wiretaps of Texas shooter Elton Simpson talking about jihad didn’t convince a federal judge that he was a potential terrorist
The attorney who once defended one of two men who opened fire at a “Draw Muhammad” event in Texas on Sunday says she was “shocked” to learn that he was involved in the attack. She says she has represented a number of people charged with terrorism-related crimes. Some of them are the “worst of the worst,” but Elton Simpson was “one of the good ones,” she said.
“He was always respectful to me and my staff—did everything he was supposed to do,” attorney Kristina Sitton told Vocativ.
According to Sitton, Simpson didn’t come from a Muslim family and didn’t convert to Islam until he was in high school. “He said he was running with a bad crowd in high school—smoking, drinking and stuff,” she said. “He said Islam got him away from that stuff.”
Sitton defended Simpson against charges that he made false statements to an FBI agent in 2010 about a trip he was planning to take to Somalia to study Islam. He was facing up to eight years in prison if federal prosecutors had been able to convince Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Mary Murguia that the trip was related to international or domestic terrorism. Ultimately, Murguia in 2011 sentenced him to three years probation for the false statement. According to federal court records obtained by Vocativ, the judge determined that the feds didn’t make their case—despite audio recordings of Simpson talking about “jihad” with an FBI informant.
The FBI began investigating Simpson in 2006 after he was found to be in contact with a man who authorities believe was attempting to set up a terror cell in Phoenix, Arizona. Investigators began recording conversations between Simpson and the informant, Dabla Deng. The federal government paid Deng $132,000 to befriend Simpson under the guise of being new to Islam and needing guidance.
Between March 2007 and November 2009, Deng recorded more than 1,500 hours of conversations he had with Simpson, during which the two discussed fighting non-Muslims and how getting killed while waging jihad made it possible to get to heaven “straight away.”
“[Heaven] that’s what we (sic) here for, so why not take [the jihad] route,” Simpson said during a conversation with Deng on July 31, 2007.
In another recording, from May 29, 2009, Simpson tells Deng: “It’s time to go to Somalia, brother,” before explaining, “we gonna make it to the battlefield…it’s time to roll.” On January 7, 2010, FBI agents contacted Simpson and specifically asked whether he “discussed traveling to, or are you planning to, travel to Somalia?”
Simpson said “no.”
“I thought [the case] was completely ridiculous, to tell you the truth,” said Sitton, who told Vocativ that she’s “not a bleeding heart — I’m a Republican.”
“They show up at his house and ask him about something that happened two years ago, and he says ‘no’ and then faces federal charges?” Sitton said that in the 1,500 hours of recordings with Deng, Simpson only mentioned Al-Shabaab, a Somali terrorist organization, twice.
Federal prosecutors wanted Simpson to receive the beefed-up sentence of eight years because, they argued, his crime of lying to federal authorities involved terrorism. But Judge Murguia—an Obama appointee on what is often considered to be the most left-leaning appeals court in the country—found that there was insufficient evidence that Simpson’s false statement to authorities involved international terrorism.
On Sunday, Simpson posted on Twitter: “May Allah accept us as mujahideen,” with the hashtag “#texasattack,” before he and another man drove to the “Draw Muhammad” event at a conference center in a Dallas suburb and opened fire. Both men were fatally shot by security.
Sitton says the narrative of the shooting is not representative of the client she describes as a kind, respectful young man who frequently tried to convert her and others to Islam. “He was always kind about it,” she said. “He would say, ‘the Koran says this and the Koran says that,’ but it was always respectful.”
She questioned the motivation of the organizers of the “Draw Muhammad” event, as images of the prophet are highly offensive to many Muslims. “I kind of wonder what this event was about,” she says. “It just seems like they want to provoke people.”
Story 1: Clash of Islamic Sects — War On: Middle East Islamic Sectarian War (Sunni vs. Shia, Arab vs. Persians) — Sunni Coalition of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates and Kuwait vs. Islamic Republic of Iran vs. Iranian Proxies (Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Iraqi Shite Militias, Yemen Houthis) vs. Islamic State vs. Al Quaeda vs Israel and United States of America — Videos
Arab League agrees to set up a joint military force
An Arab NATO: Why The Arab League Wants A Joint Army
Arab League agrees to form coalition to counter militant threat in region
Arab League summit: Can it bring peace to the region?
Richard Engel: Military Officials Say Allies No Longer Trust Us, Fear Intel Might Leak to Iran
Sunni, Shia An All Out Middle East War Spiral Out Of Control – Special Report 1st Segment
What’s the Difference Between Sunni and Shia Muslims?
Saudi Arabia And Iran’s Fight to Control The Middle East
Why is Saudi Arabia launching airstrikes in Yemen?
What Is ISIS And What Do They Want In Iraq?
Who Supports ISIS?
Iran accused of proxy war in Yemen
U.S. assistance offered for Saudi-led strikes in Yemen
Saudi Arabia Conducts Airstrikes On Shiite Houthi Rebels In Yemen – Yemen War 2015
FDD Chairman James Woolsey comments on the presence of Iranian proxies in Yemen
Yemen: A Failed State
Saudi Arabia & Iran Have Nukes!
Iranium – The Islamic Republic’s Race to Obtain Nuclear Weapons
Thomas Reed: A Political History of Nuclear Weapons: 1938 – 2008
Arab leaders agree joint military force
By Haitham El-Tabei
Arab leaders agreed on Sunday to form a joint military force after a summit dominated by a Saudi-led offensive on Shiite rebels in Yemen and the threat from Islamist extremism.
Arab representatives will meet over the next month to study the creation of the force and present their findings to defence ministers within four months, according to the resolution adopted by the leaders.
“Assuming the great responsibility imposed by the great challenges facing our Arab nation and threatening its capabilities, the Arab leaders had decided to agree on the principle of a joint Arab military force,” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi told the summit in the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.
The decision was mostly aimed at fighting jihadists who have overrun swathes of Iraq and Syria and secured a foothold in Libya, Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi said ahead of the summit.
On Sunday, Arabi told the meeting the region was threatened by a “destructive” force that threatened “ethnic and religious diversity”, in an apparent reference to the Islamic State group.
“What is important is that today there is an important decision, in light of the tumult afflicting the Arab world,” he said.
View gallery
A handout picture made available by the Egyptian presidency shows Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al …
Egypt had pushed for the creation of the rapid response force to fight militants, and the matter gained urgency this week after Saudi Arabia and Arab allies launched air strikes on Huthi rebels in Yemen.
Arabi, reading a statement at the conclusion of the summit, said on Sunday the offensive would continue until the Huthis withdraw from regions they have overrun and surrender their weapons.
Several Arab states including Egypt are taking part in the military campaign, which Saudi King Salman said on Saturday would continue until the Yemeni people “enjoy security”.
– ‘Months to create’ –
Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi at the start of the summit called for the offensive to end only when the Huthis “surrender”, calling the rebel leader an Iranian “puppet”.
View gallery
Saudi Brigadier General Ahmed Asiri, spokesman of the Saudi-led coalition forces, speaks to the medi …
However, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the leaders to find a peaceful resolution in Yemen.
“It is my fervent hope that at this Arab League summit, leaders will lay down clear guidelines to peacefully resolve the crisis in Yemen,” he said.
James Dorsey, a Middle East analyst with the Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said that despite support for a joint-Arab force, “it would still take months to create and then operate on an ad-hoc basis.
“I don’t think we will get an integrated command anytime soon, as no Arab leader would cede control of any part of their army anytime soon,” he said.
“Today we will have a formal declaration that would be negotiated every time during action.”
Sisi said in a recent interview that the proposal for a joint force was welcomed especially by Jordan, which might take part alongside Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.
Aaron Reese, deputy research director at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, said “each of these countries would bring a different capability.
“The Jordanians are well known for their special forces capability… the Egyptians of course have the most manpower and bases close to Libya.”
Before Egyptian air strikes in February targeting the IS in Libya, the United Arab Emirates, which shares Cairo’s antipathy towards Islamists, had reportedly used Egyptian bases to launch its own air strikes there.
Cairo had sought UN backing for intervention in Libya, dismissing attempted peace talks between the rival governments in its violence-plagued North African neighbour as ineffective.
Story 1: Operation Jade Helm: America’s Military Training Exercise in Southwest United States With 1,200 Special Forces — DisInfo Psyop Against American People — Texas Is Hostile — Ruling Elite Afraid of American People? — Videos
SOCOM Plans to Invade HOSTILE Texas Revealed
MSM Caught Lying: Breaking Jade Helm Update
OPERATION:JADE HELM 1 5…GOV TRAINING TO TAKE OVER TEXAS
ARMY and MSM Launch DisInfo Psyop Against American People
Army Betrays One Of Their Own
Jade Helm 15: 2 More States Join, Green Beret Says Drill Ends On 9/11 In Florida
Jade Helm 15: 10 States Now Involved with Massive US Military Exercise
Army Planing a Surprise Visit to US Towns! WHY? The Answer Will Make You Rethink Everything!
Jade Helm 15 – the low down
DEBUNK THIS: OP JADE HELM 15 Surgical Strikes Included
Psy Op Colonel Texas Needs To Submit
Army Special Ops Command Pushes Back Against Infowars
PSYOP and MISO
History of Psychological Operations and Military Information Support Operations
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Army MOS 37F Psychological Operations Specialist
304th PSYOP Company – Information video
US Army Reserves Psychological Operations
37F Psychological Operations Specialist (Reserve)
PSYOP Soldiers Training
Army embeds PSYOPS soldiers at local TV stations
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Sentient World Simulation by James Corbett
The Sentient World Simulation’s aim, according to its creator, is to be a “continuously running, continually updated mirror model of the real world that can be used to predict and evaluate future events and courses of action.” In practical terms that equates to a computer simulation of the planet complete with billions of “nodes” representing every person on the earth.
The EyeOpener- PSYOPS 101: The Technology of Psych Warfare
Yuri Bezmenov: Psychological Warfare Subversion & Control of Western Society (Complete)
Soviet Subversion of the Free World Press, 1984 – Complete
The Quigley Formula – G. Edward Griffin lecture
An excellent lecture by G. Edward Griffin entitled “The Quigley Formula: A conspiratorial view of history as taught by the conspirators themselves”
“Quigley” is the late Carroll Quigley, a Council on Foreign Relations member and historian, as well as mentor to CFR & Trilateral Commission member Bill Clinton.
The lecture is based around the following quote from his book Tragedy & Hope, pp. 1247-1248:
“The National parties and their presidential candidates, with the Eastern Establishment assiduously fostering the process behind the scenes, moved closer together and nearly met in the center with almost identical candidates and platforms, although the process was concealed as much as possible, by the revival of obsolescent or meaningless war cries and slogans (often going back to the Civil War)….The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy. … Either party in office becomes in time corrupt, tired, unenterprising, and vigorless. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.”
Carroll Quigley on Tragedy And Hope
Michael Hastings: Army Deploys Psychological Operations on U.S. Senators in Afghanistan War Effort
Sgt. Biggs On Military Life and Why Michael Hastings was Murdered
Michael Hastings Widow Speaks Out For The First Time To Piers Morgan,Piers Asks Was His Death
Infowars Special Report: Introduction to Media Manipulation & Psychological Operations
Minority Report: Fiction Has Become Reality
Minority Report 2012 Full – CG (Tom Cruise)
Special forces set to swarm Southwest and operate undetected among civilians in massive military exercise
Operation Jade Helm will see 1,200 service members including Green Berets and SEALs and special forces from the Air Force and Marines in July
Soldiers armed with blank rounds will operate in and around towns in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah and Colorado for 8 weeks
The so-called Realistic Military Training has some residents fearful the drill is a preparation for martial law
By DAILYMAIL.COM REPORTER
Seven Southwestern states will soon be infiltrated by 1,200 military special ops personnel as part of a controversial domestic military training in which some of the elite soldiers will operate undetected among civilians.
Operation Jade Helm begins in July and will last for eight weeks. Soldiers will operate in and around towns in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah and Colorado where some of them wil drop from planes while carrying weapons loaded with blanks in what military officials have dubbed Realistic Military Training.
But with residents of the entire states of Texas and Utah dubbed ‘hostile’ for the purposes of the exercises, Jade Helm has some concerned the drills are too realistic.
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Hostile: An unclassified military document reveals the states involved in a controversial multi-agency training exercises that will place 1,200 military personnel into 7 Southwest states–with residents of Utah, Texas and part of Southern California designated as ‘hostile’
Special ops: Operation Jade Helm will involve Green Berets and SEALs and special forces from the Air Force and Marines starting in July and lasting 8 weeks
Headlines like Freedom Outpost‘s ‘Operation Jade Helm—military trains for martial law in American South-west’ abound across the Right-leaning blogosphere and Info Wars warns that Jade Helm is simply ‘an effort to test the effectiveness of infiltration techniques’ on the American public.
‘They’re having Delta Force, Navy SEALS with the Army trained to basically take over,’ Info Wars’ Alex Jones said Sunday. ‘Texas is listed as a hostile sector, and of course, we are…We’re here defending the republic.’
The Houston Chronicle reports that, among the planned exercises, soldiers will attempt to operate undetected among civilian populations.
Residents, in turn, will be asked to report suspicious activity in order to gauge the effectiveness of the soldiers.
Military officials say they’ve gotten the go ahead for the operations from local authorities such as mayors and county commissions.
And sheriff’s deputies told the Houston Chronicle they would ensure residents living near where aircraft were slated to create disturbances and drop soldiers, civilian and military vehicles will barrel through and where blank rounds would be fired.
Jim Stewart with the Brazos County, Texas Sheriff’s Office told the Chronicle that such exercises are far from anything new.
‘Special ops for years have trained off-post for years, where they go out and have folks that are role players out on the economy,’ said the Army intelligence veteran. ‘They’ll have a scenario they’ll be following and they’ll interact with these role players as if they’re in another country.’
However, the U.S. Army Special Operations Command themselves say Jade Helm is different.
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Reassuring? Sheriff’s deputies say they will ensure residents living near where aircraft were slated to create disturbances and drop soldiers, civilian and military vehicles will barrel through and where blank rounds would be fired [FILE PHOTO]
Texas, which the military has designated as ‘hostile’ for the purposes of the training, was chosen to be a hub of the unprecedentedly large program because ‘Texans are historically supportive of efforts to prepare our soldiers’ writes the USASOC
‘The size and scope of Jade Helm sets this one apart. To stay ahead of the environmental challenges faced overseas, Jade Helm will take place across seven states,’ the USASOC wrote in a March 24 release.
‘The diverse terrain in these states replicates areas Special Operations Soldiers regularly find themselves operating in overseas.’
The military has also reacted to widespread fear of the operation by calling some ultra-conservative coverage of the ‘martial law’ drills alarmist and inaccurate.
‘That notion was proposed by a few individuals who are unfamiliar with how and why USASOC conducts training exercises,’ USASOC spokesman Army Lt. Col. Mark Lastoria told Stripes.
‘This exercise is routine training to maintain a high level of readiness for Army Special Operations Forces because they must be ready to support potential missions anywhere in the world on a moment’s notice.’
Army Special Operations Command pushes back against alarmist claims about upcoming exercise
U.S. Army Special Operations Command is pushing back against alarmist claims that an upcoming U.S. military exercise is a preparation for imposing martial law or subduing right-leaning groups and individuals.
Conspiracy theories about the exercise, known as JADE HELM 15, appeared online this week. Some commentators railing against the event referred to an online slide show allegedly created by USASOC, which outlined a special operations exercise slated to take place across multiple states, outside the confines of U.S. military bases. In the slide show, a map of the southwest region of the United States labels Texas and other territory as “hostile” or “insurgent pocket.” The document also refers to coordination with law enforcement agencies.
Officials at USASOCM were not able to immediately verify the authenticity of the slide show because their computer firewalls prevented them from accessing the websites where the document appeared.
Army Lt. Col. Mark Lastoria, a USASOC spokesman, confirmed that there is an upcoming exercise called Jade Helm 15 which is scheduled to take place this summer at locations in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, California and Nevada. But he denied the event is preparation for some sort of military takeover.
“That notion was proposed by a few individuals who are unfamiliar with how and why USASOC conducts training exercises,” he said in an email. “This exercise is routine training to maintain a high level of readiness for Army Special Operations Forces because they must be ready to support potential missions anywhere in the world on a moment’s notice.”
He said the only thing unique about this particular exercise, which is slated to take place between July 15 and Sept. 15, is “the use of new challenging terrain” which was chosen because it is similar to conditions special operations forces operate in overseas.
Lastoria said coordination with local law enforcement is necessary for safety reasons because some of the training will take place outside of military bases where civilian agencies have jurisdiction.
He said his office has been receiving a lot of calls from people who heard about the exercise and are concerned about “the nature of the training objectives.”
Reserve Army – U.S. Army Civil Affairs Psychological Operations Command(USACAPOC)Garrison/HQFort Bragg, NCPatronSaint GabrielMotto”Persuade, Change, Influence”ColorsArmy – Bottle-green piped withsilver gray.InsigniaIdentification
symbolArmy – Knight chess piece (Often mistaken for the Trojan Horse)
Psychological operations (PSYOP) or, as it has been known since 2010, Military Information Support Operations (MISO),[1] are planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.[2]
The purpose of United States psychological operations is to induce or reinforce behavior favorable to U.S. objectives. They are an important part of the range of diplomatic, informational, military, and economic activities available to the U.S. They can be utilized during both peacetime and conflict. There are three main types: strategic, operational, and tactical. Strategic PSYOP include informational activities conducted by the U.S. government agencies outside of the military arena, though many utilize Department of Defense (DOD) assets.Operational PSYOP are conducted across the range of military operations, including during peacetime, in a defined operational area to promote the effectiveness of the joint force commander’s (JFC) campaigns and strategies. Tactical PSYOP are conducted in the area assigned to a tactical commander across the range of military operations to support the tactical mission against opposing forces.
PSYOP can encourage popular discontent with the opposition’s leadership and by combining persuasion with a credible threat, degrade an adversary’s ability to conduct or sustain military operations. They can also disrupt, confuse, and protract the adversary’s decision-making process, undermining command and control.[3] When properly employed, PSYOP have the potential to save the lives of friendly or enemy forces by reducing the adversary’s will to fight. By lowering the adversary’s morale and then its efficiency, PSYOP can also discourage aggressive actions by creating disaffection within their ranks, ultimately leading to surrender.
The integrated employment of the core capabilities of electronic warfare, computer network operations, psychological operations, military deception, and operations security, in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own.[4]
Products
A Somali boy holding up a leaflet dispersed during Operation Restore Hope in the early 1990s
PSYOP involves the careful creation and dissemination of a product message. There are three types of products that are used to create these messages. They include White products which are used in overt operations and Gray and Black products which are used in covert PSYOP. White, Gray, and Black don’t refer to the product’s content but rather the methods used to carry out the operation.
In order for PSYOP to be successful they must be based in reality. All messages must be consistent and must not contradict each other. Any gap between the product and reality will be quickly noticed. A credible “truth” must be presented which is consistent to all audiences. Primarily it is a component of offensive counterinformation but can be used defensively as well. PSYOP are used in support of special operations, unconventional warfare, and counterinsurgency (COIN) operations. PSYOP can include military operations other than warfare and also include joint operations. They include counterterrorism operations, peace operations, noncombatant evacuation, enforcement of sanctions and maritime interception operations, strikes and raids, etc.
White PSYOP
White PSYOP is attributable to PSYOP as a source.
U.S. Army PSYOP soldiers with Detachment 1080, 318th Psychological Operations Company distribute newspaper products in the East Rashid region of Baghdad, Iraq, July 11, 2007.
White is acknowledged as an official statement or act of the U.S. Government, or emanates from a source associated closely enough with the U.S. Government to reflect an official viewpoint. The information should be true and factual. It also includes all output identified as coming from U.S. official sources.
Authorized to engage in white activity directed at foreign audiences are: The State Department, USIA, the Foreign Operations Administration (a predecessor of the Agency for International Development), the Defense Department and other U.S. Government departments and agencies as necessary.[5]
Gray PSYOP
The source of the gray PSYOP product is deliberately ambiguous.
The true source (U.S. Government) is not revealed to the target audience. The activity engaged in plausibly appears to emanate from a non-official American source, or an indigenous, non-hostile source, or there may be no attribution.
Gray is that information whose content is such that the effect will be increased if the hand of the U.S. Government and in some cases any American participation are not revealed. It is simply a means for the U.S. to present viewpoints which are in the interest of U.S. foreign policy, but which will be acceptable or more acceptable to the intended target audience than will an official government statement.[5][dead link]
Black PSYOP
The activity engaged in appears to emanate from a source (government, party, group, organization, person) usually hostile in nature. The interest of the U.S. Government is concealed and the U.S. Government would deny responsibility. It is best used in support of strategic plans.
Covert PSYOP is not a function of the U.S. military but instead is used in special operations due to their political sensitivity and need for higher level compartmentalization. Further, black PSYOP, to be credible, may need to disclose sensitive material, with the damage caused by information disclosure considered to be outweighed by the impact of successful deception.[6] In order to achieve maximum results and to prevent compromise of overt PSYOP, overt and covert operations need to be kept separate. Personnel involved in one must not be engaged in the other.
Media
PSYOP conveys messages via visual, audio, and audiovisual media. Military psychological operations, at the tactical level, are usually delivered by loudspeaker, and face to face communication. For more deliberate campaigns, they may use leaflets, radio or television. Strategic operations may use radio or television broadcasts, various publications, airdropped leaflets, or, as part of a covert operation, with material placed in foreign news media.
Process
In order to create a successful PSYOP the following must be established: 1) clearly define the mission so that it aligns with national objectives 2) need a PSYOP estimate of the situation 3) prepare the plan 4) media selection 5) product development 6) pretesting – determines the probable impact of the PSYOP on the target audience 7) production and dissemination of PSYOP material 8) implementation 9) posttesting – evaluates audience responses 10) feedback
Before these steps can occur, intelligence analysts must profile potential targets in order to determine which ones it would be most beneficial to target. In order to figure this out, analysts must determine the vulnerabilities of these groups and what they would be susceptible to. The analysts also determine the attitudes of the targets toward the current situation, their complaints, ethnic origin, frustrations, languages, problems, tensions, attitudes, motivations, and perceptions, and so on. Once the appropriate target(s) have been determined, the PSYOP can be created.
Psychological operations should be planned carefully, in that even a tactical message, with modern news media, can spread worldwide and be treated as the policy of the United States. The U.S. Army is responsible for military psychological warfare doctrine.[6] See the World War I section for an example of how a tactical leaflet, not properly coordinated, can cause national-level harm.
Psychological operations, at any level, must be consistent with the policies of higher levels of command
The message to be delivered can be adapted to tactical situations, but promises made must be consistent with national policy.
U.S. PSYOP forces are forbidden to target (i.e., attempt to change the opinions of) U.S. citizens at any time, in any location globally, or under any circumstances.[7] However, commanders may use PSYOP forces to provide public information to U.S. audiences during times of disaster or crisis. The use of PSYOP forces to deliver necessary public information to a U.S. audience was established in relief activities after Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Tactical Psychological Operations teams (TPTs) were employed to disseminate information by loudspeaker on locations of relief shelters and facilities. Information support to a noncombatant evacuation operation (NEO) by PSYOP forces to provide evacuation information to U.S. and third-country nationals would also adhere to the order.[6]
As an example of the use of PSYOP in a humanitarian relief operation Major General Anthony Zinni, Director of Operations for Unified Task Force Somalia, said
Psychological operations were a key Battlefield Operating System used extensively to support Unified Task Force (UNITAF) Somalia operations. In order to maximize the PSYOP impact, we established a Joint PSYOP Task Force under the supervision of the Director of Operations, integrated PSYOP into all plans and operations, and limited the PSYOP focus to the operational and tactical levels. Psychological operations do not accomplish missions alone. They work best when they are combined with and integrated in an overall theater campaign plan. In Operation RESTORE HOPE, we were successful in doing that.[6]
United States PSYOP units and soldiers of all branches of the military are prohibited by law from conducting PSYOP missions on domestic audiences.[7] While PSYOP soldiers may offer non-PSYOP related support to domestic military missions, PSYOP can only target foreign audiences. Though, it is worth noting that this does not rule out PSYOP targeting foreign audiences of allied nations. Additionally, in the Information Operations Roadmap made public January 2006 but originally approved by Defense SecretaryDonald Rumsfeld in October 2003, it stated “information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa.”[10]
Army
Chieu Hoi Mission by Craig L. Stewart, U. S. Army Vietnam Combat Artists Team IX (CAT IX 1969-70). Painting shows army soldiers airdropping Psy Op leaflets during the Vietnam War.
Soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 350th Tactical Psychological Operations, 10th Mountain Division, drop leaflets over a village near Hawijah in Kirkuk province, Iraq, on March 6, 2008.
U.S. Army PSYOP Force structure
Until recently, the Army’s Psychological Operations elements were administratively organized alongside Civil Affairs to form the U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (USACAPOC), forming a part of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC). However, in May 2006 USCAPOC was reorganized to instead fall under the Army reserve command, and all active duty PSYOP elements were placed directly into USASOC. While reserve PSYOP forces no longer belong to USASOC, that command retains control of PSYOP doctrine. Operationally, PSYOP individuals and organizations support Army and Joint maneuver forces or interagency organizations.
Army Psychological Operations support operations ranging from strategic planning down to tactical employment.
PSYOP Support Elements generally support Corps sized elements. Tactical Psychological Operations Companies typically support Division sized elements, with Tactical Control through G-3. Brigades are typically supported by a Tactical PSYOP Detachment. The PSYOP Commander maintains Operational Control of PSYOP elements, advises the Commander and General Staff on the psychological battlespace.
The smallest organizational PSYOP element is the Tactical PSYOP Team (TPT). A TPT generally consists of a PSYOP team chief (Staff Sergeant or Sergeant), an assistant team chief (Sergeant or Specialist), and an additional soldier to serve as a gunner and to operate the speaker system (Specialist). A team is equipped with a Humvee fitted with a loud speaker, and often works with a local translator indigenous to the host or occupied country.
Generally, each maneuver battalion-sized element in a theater of war or operational area has at least one TPT attached to it. Women are not allowed to serve on TPTs in a war zone due to a PSYOP team’s high chance of contact with the enemy.
U.S. Army PSYOP branch of service collar insignia and regimental distinctive insignia.
PSYOP soldiers are required to complete nine weeks of Basic Combat Training. All enlisted PSYOP soldiers report to Fort Bragg to complete the 13-week Psychological Operation Advanced Individual Training (AIT) course. After AIT, the active duty-component PSYOP soldier is then required to attend Airborne training. Sometime after initial training, PSYOP soldiers will spend up to a year (or perhaps more for specific languages) in foreign language qualification training. Certain reserve soldiers serving in units designated as Airborne are also required to attend Airborne training, while language training and Airborne qualification for PSYOP soldiers assigned to non-Airborne units is awarded on a merit and need basis.
A U.S. Army field manual released in January 2013 states that “Inform and Influence Activities” are critical for describing, directing, and leading military operations. Several Army Division leadership staff are assigned to “planning, integration and synchronization of designated information-related capabilities.”[11]
245th Psychological Operations Company (POC) – Dallas, Texas
*Became the 345th PSYOP Company. Deployed soldiers during Operation Desert Storm (The Gulf War).
The 345th also deployed post 9-11 to Afghanistan working with U.S. Army Special Forces. In 2003 the 345th deployed to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Since November 2001, the 345th Tactical Psychological Operations Company (Airborne) has continuously had a detachment of deployed soldiers in Afghanistan, Iraq and / or Horn of Africa.
Commando Solo flies low over theStatue of Liberty in New York Harbor in 2001.
The Air National Guard provides support for Psychological Operations using a modified C-130 Hercules aircraft named EC-130 COMMANDO SOLO, operated by the 193d Special Operations Wing. The purpose of COMMANDO SOLO is to provide an aerial platform for broadcast media on both television and radio. The media broadcast is created by various agencies and organizations. As part of the broader function of information operations, COMMANDO SOLO can also jam the enemy’s broadcasts to his own people, or his psychological warfare broadcasting.
The Commando Solo aircraft currently is the only stand-off, high-altitude means available to PSYOP forces to disseminate information to large denied areas. Two orbits were established during Operation Iraqi Freedom, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, one in the northern area and one in the southern part of the country, both far enough from harm’s way to keep the aircraft out of reach of potential enemy attack. At their operational altitude of 18,000 feet (5,500 m) and assuming clear channels, these aircraft can transmit radio and TV signals approximately 170 miles (270 km), which does not reach the objective areas near Baghdad. Straightforward physics dictate the range, given the power installed and the antenna configuration and assuming clear channels.
The enhanced altitude capability of the Commando Solo EC–130J (now funded) is increasing transmitter range. While this is an improvement over 130E capability, it is a small step, since the
increase in altitude is only 7,000 feet (less than 50 percent) and the range increase is governed by a square root function (that is, a 14 percent increase in range).[12]
A challenge to COMMANDO SOLO is the increasing use of cable television, which will not receive signals from airborne, ground, or any other transmitters that the cable operator does not want to connect to the system. At best, in the presence of cable TV, COMMANDO SOLO may be able to jam enemy broadcasts that are not, themselves, transmitted by cable.
Navy
Navy psychological operations policy is specified in OPNAVINST 3434.1, “Psychological Operations”.[9] The Navy provides support to Joint PSYOP programs by providing assets (such as broadcast platforms using shortwave and very high frequency (VHF) frequencies) for the production and dissemination of PSYOP materials. With the ability of naval vessels (especially the larger task forces) to produce audio-visual materials the Navy can often produce PSYOP products for use in denied areas. Leaflets are dropped utilizing the PDU-5B dispenser unit (aka Leaflet Bomb). The Navy coordinates extensively with the Army as the majority of PSYOP assets reside within USASOC. PSYOP planning and execution is coordinated through the Naval Network Warfare Command (NETWARCOM) and the Naval Information Operations Command (NIOC), both located in Norfolk, VA.
The U.S. Navy possesses the capability to produce audiovisual products in the Fleet Audiovisual Command, Pacific; the Fleet Imagery Command, Atlantic; the Fleet Combat Camera Groups; Naval Imaging Command; various film libraries; and limited capability from ships and aircraft of the fleet. A Naval Reserve PSYOP audiovisual unit supports the Atlantic Fleet. Navy personnel assets have the capability to produce documents, posters, articles, and other material suitable for PSYOP. Administrative capabilities exist ashore and afloat that prepare and produce various quantities of printed materials. Language capabilities exist in naval intelligence and among naval personnel for most European and Asian languages. The Fleet Tactical Readiness Group provides equipment and technical maintenance support to conduct civil radio broadcasts and broadcast jamming in the amplitude modulation frequency band. This unit is not trained to produce PSYOP products and must be augmented with PSYOP personnel or linguists when necessary. The unit is capable of being fully operational within 48 hours of receipt of tasking. The unit’s equipment consists of a 10.6 kW AM band broadcast radio transmitter; a broadcast studio van; antenna tuner; two antennas (a pneumatically raised 100-foot (30 m) top-loaded antenna mast and a 500-foot (150 m) wire helium balloon antenna); and a 30 kW generator that provides power to the system.
Central Intelligence Agency
Psychological operations was assigned to the pre-CIA Office of Policy Coordination, with oversight by the Department of State.[13] The overall psychological operations of the United States, overt and covert, were to be under the policy direction of the U.S. Department of State during peacetime and the early stages of war:
The Secretary of State shall be responsible for:
(1) The formulation of policies and plans for a national foreign information program in time of peace. This program shall include all foreign information activities conducted by departments and agencies of the U. S. Government.[13]
(2) The formulation of national psychological warfare policy in time of national emergency and the initial stages of war.[13]
(3) The coordination of policies and plans for the national foreign information program and for overt psychological warfare with the Department of Defense, with other appropriate departments and agencies of the U.S. Government, and with related planning…[13]
(4) Plans prepared by this organization for overt psychological
warfare in time of national emergency or the initial stages of war shall
b. The employment and expansion, insofar as is feasible, of the activities and facilities which compose the national foreign information program in time of peace, in order to assure rapid transition to operations in time of national emergency or war.[13]
c. Control of the execution of approved plans and policies by:
(1) the Department of Defense in theaters of military operations;
(2) the Department of State in areas other than theaters of military operations.[13]
d. Transmittal of approved psychological warfare plans and policies to theater commanders through the Joint Chiefs of Staff.[13]
After the OPC was consolidated into the CIA,[5] there has been a psychological operations staff, under various names, in what has variously been named the Deputy Directorate of Plans, the Directorate of Operations, or the National Clandestine Service.
History of U.S. Psychological Warfare
World War I
During World War I, the Propaganda Sub-Section was established under the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) Military Intelligence Branch within the Executive Division of the General Staff in early 1918. Although they produced most propaganda, the AEF Propaganda Sub-Section did not produce a few of the leaflets. General Pershing is supposed to have personally composed Leaflet “Y,” Austria Is Out of the War, which was run off on First Army presses, but distributed by the Propaganda Sub-Section. That Sub-Section, perhaps reflecting some professional jealousy, thought the leaflet sound in principle, but too prolix and a little too “brotherly.” Corps and Army presses issued several small leaflet editions containing a “news flash,” after the Sub-Section had approved their content. But in one or two cases that approval was not obtained, and in one unfortunate example a leaflet in Romanian committed the Allies and the United States to the union of all Romanians in Austria-Hungary with Romania. Such geopolitics was emphatically not the job of AEF propaganda and had the potential to cause serious embarrassment.[6]
World War II
There was extensive use of psychological operations in World War II, from the strategic to the tactical. National-level white propaganda was the responsibility of theOffice of War Information, while black propaganda was most often the responsibility of the Morale Operations branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).[14]
Psychological operations planning started before the U.S. entry into the war, with the creation of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCIAA), under Nelson Rockefeller, with the responsibility for psychological operations targeted at Latin America.[15] Special operations and intelligence concerning Latin America was a bureaucratic problem throughout the war. Where the OSS eventually had most such responsibilities, the FBI had its own intelligence system in Latin America.
On 11 July 1941, William Donovan was named the Coordinator of Information, which subsequently became the OSS. At first, there was a unit called the Foreign Information Service inside COI, headed by Robert Sherwood, which produced white propaganda outside Latin America.[15]
To deal with some of the bureaucratic problems, the Office of War Information (OWl) was created with Elmer Davis as director. FIS, still under Sherwood, became the Overseas Branch of OWl, dealing in white propaganda. OSS was created at the same time. Donovan obtained considerable help from the British, especially with black propaganda, from the British Political Warfare Executive (PWE), part of the Ministry of Economic Warfare. PWE was a sister organization to the Special Operations Executive, which conducted guerilla warfare. The British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also known as MI6), was an essentially independent organization. For the U.S., the OSS included the functions of SIS and SOE, and the black propaganda work of PWE.
The OSS Morale Operations (MO) branch was the psychological operations arm of OSS. In general, its units worked on a theater-by-theater basis, without a great deal of central coordination.[15] It was present in most theaters, with the exception of the Southwest Pacific theater under Douglas MacArthur, who was hostile to OSS.
OSS was responsible for strategic propaganda, while the military commanders had operational and tactical responsibility. Dwight Eisenhower was notably supportive of psychological operations, had psychological warfare organization in the staff of all his commands, and worked with OSS and OWI.[15] The military did theater-level white propaganda, although the black propaganda function varied, often carried out by joint U.S.-UK organizations.
For the first time in U.S. history, American psywarriors employed electronic psywar in the field, in September 1944. Engineers of the 1st Radio Section of the 1st MRBC recorded POW interviews for front- line broadcasts, and reproduced the sound effects of vast numbers of tanks and other motor vehicles for Allied armored units in attempts to mislead German intelligence and lower enemy morale.[6]
Leaflets were delivered principally from aircraft, but also with artillery shells.[16]
Psychological operations were used extensively during the Korean War. The first unit, the 1st Loudspeaker and Leaflet Company, was sent to Korea in fall 1950.[19][20] Especially for the operations directed against troops of the Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK; North Korea), it was essential to work with Republic of Korea (ROK; South Korea personnel) to develop propaganda with the most effective linguistic and cultural context.
Since the war was a United Nations mandated operation, political sensitivities were high. While rules limited mentioning thePeoples Republic of China or the Soviet Union, first due to fear it would increase their intervention, and later because it might demoralize ROK civilians, Stalin was depicted and Chinese troops were targeted in leafleting.[21][20]
Various methods were used to deliver propaganda, with constraints imposed by exceptionally rugged terrain and that radios were relatively uncommon among DPRK and PRC troops. Loudspeaker teams often had to get dangerously close to enemy positions. Artillery and light aircraft delivered leaflets on the front lines, while heavy bombers dropped leaflets in the rear. Over 2.5 billion leaflets were dropped over North Korea during the war.[19] There was a somewhat artificial distinction made between strategic and tactical leaflets: rather than differentiating by the message, tactical leaflets were delivered within 40 miles (64 km) of the front lines and strategic leaflets were those delivered farther away.
Less direct and immediate correlation between tactical PSYOP efforts and target audience behavior may still be substantiated after the fact, especially by means of polling and interviews. For example, in the Korean War, approximately one-third of the total prisoner of war (POW) population polled by the United Nations (UN) forces claimed to have surrendered at least in part because of the propaganda leaflets. The contributions of PSYOP in the first Persian Gulf War have also been corroborated through POW interviews. Ninety-eight percent of the 87,000 POWs captured either possessed or had seen PSYOP leaflets that provided them with instructions on how to approach U.S. troops to surrender. Fifty-eight percent of the prisoners interviewed claimed to have heard coalition radio broadcasts, and 46 percent believed that the coalition broadcasts were truthful despite coming from their enemy. Again, some portion of the surrenders might have occurred even without PSYOP encouragement; but certainly, there would appear to be a correlation between PSYOP, which offered the enemy a way to escape the onslaught of U.S. military power, and their compliance with those instructions.[12]
One such operation, is Operation Moolah. The objective of the psychological operation was to target Communist pilots to defect to South Korea with a MiG-15, in order for the U.S. to conduct analysis of the capabilities of the MiG.
Some leafleting of North Korea was resumed after the Korean War, such as in the Cold WarOperation Jilli from 1964 to 1968.[22]
Guatemala
The CIA’s operation to overthrow the Government of Guatemala in 1954 marked an early zenith in the Agency’s long record of covert action. Following closely on two successful operations, one of which was the installation of the Shah as ruler of Iran in August 1953, the Guatemalan operation, known as PBSUCCESS, was both more ambitious and more thoroughly successful than either precedent. Rather than helping a prominent contender gain power with a few inducements, PBSUCCESS used an intensive paramilitary and psychological campaign to replace a popular, elected government with a political non-entity. In method scale and conception it had no antecedent, and its triumph confirmed the belief of many in the Eisenhower Administration that covert operations offered a safe, inexpensive substitute for armed force in resisting what they declared was Communist inroad in the Third World.[23]
As early as August 1964, almost one year before the activation of the Joint U.S. Public Affairs Office (JUSPAO), General William Westmoreland told a CA and PSYOP conference that “psychological warfare and civic action are the very essence of the counterinsurgency campaign here in Vietnam…you cannot win this war by military means alone.” Westmoreland’s successor, Creighton Abrams, is known to have sent down guidelines to the 4th Psychological Operations Group that resulted in the drawing up of no fewer than 17 leaflets along those lines. In fact, the interest in PSYOP went all the way up to the Presidency; weekly reports from JUSPAO were sent to the White House, as well as to the Pentagon and the Ambassador in Saigon. In sum, it is a myth that the United States, stubbornly fixated on a World War II-style conventional war, was unaware of the “other war.”[6]
Safe conduct pass.
During the Vietnam era, the organization of the 4th Psychological Operations Group was very different. The four battalions of the group were divided by geographic region rather than area of expertise as they are now.
The 6th PSYOP Battalion was stationed at Bien Hoa and provided services to the tactical units, both American and Vietnamese, and to the various political entities such as provinces and cities in the area of III Corps.
The 7th PSYOP Battalion was stationed in Da Nang and provided service to I Corps.
The 8th PSYOP Battalion was based at Nha Trang, but it its B Company, which was its field teams, was based out ofPleiku nearly 100 kilometers away. The 8th Battalion served the II Corps area of Vietnam.
The 10th PSYOP Battalion was stationed in Can Tho and served IV Corps.
The A company of each battalion consisted of a command section, S-1, S-2, S-3, and a Psyop Development Center (PDC). Additionally, they generally had extensive printing facilities.
The B companies consisted of the field teams that were stationed throughout their respective corps billeted with MACV teams and combat units.
There are individual authors who claim that U.S. submarines and other vessels “frequently” and “regularly” operated in the territorial waters of neutral Sweden, including in Stockholm harbor, as part of an elaborate psychological warfare operation whose target was the Swedish people. The Swedish people and government were led to believe that the vessels were Soviet. U.S. operations were likely conducted by the National Underwater Reconnaissance Office (NURO) and aspects of the operations were coordinated with the secret NATO “stay-behind” network deployed in Sweden. See Strategy of tension and Operation Gladio. British submarines also participated in such secret operations. The campaign was successful in totally changing the psychology of the Swedish people: the Swedish population was convinced of the “present danger” posed by the desired enemy, the Soviet Union, and was prepared for war against it. Also, since the Swedish government continued to release “enemy” submarines, large parts of the Swedish population turned against their government’s conciliatory attitude and adopted more hard-line views.[24]
Most PSYOP activities and accomplishments in Panama were hardly noticed by either the U.S. public or the general military community. But the special operations community did notice. The lessons learned in Panama were incorporated into standard operating procedures. Where possible, immediate changes were made to capitalize on the PSYOP successes of the Grenada and Panama operations. This led to improved production, performance, and effect in the next contingency, which took place within 6 months after the return of the last PSYOP elements from Panama. Operations [in Iraq] employed PSYOP of an order of magnitude and effectiveness which many credit to the lessons learned from Panama.[6]
The broader scope of information operations in Panama included denying the Noriega regime use of their own broadcasting facilities. A direct action missionremoved key parts of the transmitters.[25] After-action reports indicate that this action should have had a much higher priority and been done very early in the operation.
An unusual technique, developed in real time, was termed the “Ma Bell Mission”, or, more formally, capitulation missions. There were a number of Panamian strongpoints that continued to have telephone access. By attaching Spanish-speaking Special Forces personnel to a combat unit that would otherwise take the strongpoint by force, the Spanish-speaking personnel would phone the Panamian commander, tell him to put away his weapons and assemble his men on the parade ground, or face lethal consequences. Because of the heavy reliance on telephones, these missions were nicknamed “Ma Bell” operations. “During this ten day period, TF BLACK elements were instrumental in the surrender of 14 cuartels (strongpoints), almost 2,000 troops, and over 6,000 weapons without a single U.S. casualty. Several high-ranking cronies of Manuel Noriega who were on the “most wanted” list were also captured in Ma Bell operations.[25]
Psychological operations sometimes are intimately linked to combat operations, with the use of force driving home the propaganda mission. During the Panamanian operation, it was necessary ? Ft. Amador, an installation shared by the U.S. and Panamanian Defence Forces (PDF). There were U.S. dependents at the installation, but security considerations prevented evacuating them before the attack. Concern for U.S. citizens, and rules of engagement (ROE) that directed casualties be minimized, PSYOP loudspeaker teams, from the 1st Bn, 4th PSYOP Gp, became a key asset. When the PDF did not surrender after initial appeals, the message changed, with the tactical commander warning “that resistance was hopeless in the face of overwhelming firepower and a series of demonstrations took place, escalating from small arms to 105 mm howitzer rounds. Subsequent broadcasts convinced the PDF to give up. The entire process allowed Ft. Amador to be secured with few casualties and minimal damage.”[26]
United States PSYOP became a part of popular culture during the U.S. invasion of Panama, the America public watched on TV as PSYOP soldiers blasted rock music into the Vatican Embassy to drive out ousted leader Manuel Noriega. However, it is widely believed inside the PSYOP community that the reasoning for the music was not actually to drive Noriega out, but to keep American news reporters from listening in on the negotiations for Noriega’s surrender.[citation needed]
The 1991 Gulf War
Psychological Operations was extremely valuable during the Gulf War due to the Iraqi military’s desire to avoid combat. Through leaflets and loudspeaker broadcasts, PSYOP forces walked many enemy soldiers through successful surrender.
Coalition forces worked extensively with Saudi, Kuwaiti, and other partners, to be sure psychological operations were culturally and linguistically appropriate.[27] One unusual technique involved dropping leaflets telling Iraqi troops that they would be bombed the next day by B-52 bombers, and urged them to surrender and save their lives. After the bombing the next day, which was not done in a manner to maximize casualties, another set of leaflets were dropped, saying the promise was kept and the survivors should surrender to save themselves. Variants of this technique were used on other units, telling them the specific unit that had been bombed the previous day. By the number of prisoners who surrendered, presenting the leaflet that identified itself as a safe-conduct pass, this program was effective.
United States PSYOP was widely employed in both Bosnia and Kosovo, most famously for their “mine awareness” campaign and its Superman comic.[citation needed]
In the 1990s it came to light that soldiers from the 4th Psychological Operations Group had been interning at the American news networks Cable News Network (CNN) and National Public Radio (NPR). The program was an attempt to provide its PSYOP personnel with the expertise developed by the private sector under its “Training with Industry” program. The program caused concern about the influence these soldiers might have on American news and the programs were terminated.
National Public Radio reported on April 10, 2000:
The U.S. Army’s Psychological Operations unit placed interns at CNN and NPR in 1998 and 1999. The placements at CNN were reported in the European press in February of this year and the program was terminated. The NPR placements will be reported this week in TV Guide.[28]
Toppling of Saddam Hussein statue
Arguably the most visible image of the 2003 invasion of Iraq was the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square in central Baghdad. Allegations that the event was staged have been published. It is claimed it was actually an idea hatched by an Army psychological operations team.[29] Allegations surfaced that not only were the cheering group of people surrounding the statue in fact smaller than they were made out to be, in media depictions, but that also the group were not local to the area and were instead brought in by the military for the specific purpose of watching and lending credence to the pre-planned toppling.[30][31][32]
PSYOP pamphlet disseminated inIraq. The text translates as “This is your future al-Zarqawi,” and depicts al-Qaeda terrorist al-Zarqawi caught in a rat trap which is being held by an Iraqi Army soldier or an Iraqi Policeman.
In 2003 Sergeant Mark Hadsell claimed to have used loud music during the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners:[33]
“These people haven’t heard heavy metal. They can’t take it. If you play it for 24 hours, your brain and body functions start to slide, your train of thought slows down and your will is broken. That’s when we come in and talk to them.”[33]
Other reports of the use of music during interrogation have occasionally plagued PSYOP.[34]
On 9 December 2008 the Associated Press reported that various musicians were coordinating their objections to the use of their music as a technique for softening up captives through an initiative called Zero dB.[35][36] However, not all musicians have taken issue with the possibility that their music is being used during interrogations. Stevie Benton of the groupDrowning Pool commented supportively:[36]
“I take it as an honor to think that perhaps our song could be used to quell another 9/11 attack or something like that.”[36]
Afghanistan burning bodies incident
On 1 October 2005 in Gumbad, Afghanistan, Soldiers from the 173rd Airborne decided to burn the bodies of two Taliban fighters killed in a firefight the previous day for hygienic reasons. Despite Islamic customs that forbid cremation, they chose to proceed. The Platoon Leader also failed to properly notify his Battalion Commander of the decision prior to burning the bodies. When his Battalion Commander was notified, he ordered the flaming bodies extinguished. An official investigation into the incident found evidence of poor decision making, poor judgement, poor reporting, a lack of knowledge and respect for local Afghan custom and tradition. The Infantry Officer received a General Officer letter of reprimand. Reserve PSYOP soldiers were involved because they heard about the incident and used the information to incite Taliban fighters in another area where freelance journalist Stephen Dupont was located. Dupont reported that the PSYOP soldiers claimed the bodies were to be burned due to hygiene concerns.[37]
During the War on Terror, U.S. PSYOP teams often broadcast abrasive messages over loudspeakers to try tempting enemy fighters into a direct confrontation where the Americans have the upper hand. Other times, they use their loudspeaker to convince enemy soldiers to surrender. In the Afghanistan incident, a PSYOP sergeant allegedly broadcast the following message to the Taliban:
Attention, Taliban, you are all cowardly dogs. You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned. You are too scared to retrieve their bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be.
Another soldier stated:
You attack and run away like women. You call yourself Talibs but you are a disgrace to the Muslim religion and you bring shame upon your family. Come and fight like men instead of the cowardly dogs you are.
U. S. authorities investigated the incident and the two Reserve PSYOP Soldiers received administrative punishment for broadcasting messages which were not approved. Investigators found no evidence that the bodies were burned for a psychological effect. They concluded that the broadcast violated standing policies for the content of loudspeaker messages and urged that all soldiers in the command undergo training on Afghan sensitivities.[38]
Pentagon Analysts and the Main Stream Media
In 2008, The New York Times exposed how analysts portrayed in the U.S. news media as independent and objective were in fact under the tutelage of the Pentagon.[39] From the NYT:
Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance
2009 congressional delegation to Afghanistan
In February 2011, journalist Michael Hastings published an article in Rolling Stone reported that Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the supposed leader of a PSYOP group in Afghanistan, alleged that Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell a three-star General in charge of training troops in Afghanistan,[40] ordered Holmes and his group to perform in-depth research on visiting U.S. congressmen in order to spin presentations and visits.[41] According to Holmes, his team was tasked with “illegally providing themes and messages to influence the people and leadership of the United States.”[42] Reported targets included United States Senators John McCain,Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken, Carl Levin, Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and think-tank analysts.[41] Under the 1948 Smith–Mundt Act, such operations may not be used to target Americans. When Holmes attempted to seek counsel and to protest, he was placed under investigation by the military at the behest of General Caldwell’s chief of staff.[41]
Caldwell’s spokesman, Lt. Col. Shawn Stroud, denied Holmes’s assertions, and other unnamed military officials disputed Holmes’s claims as false and misleading, saying there are no records of him ever completing any PSYOP training. Subsequently Holmes conceded that he was not a Psychological Operations officer nor was he in charge of a Psychological Operations unit and acknowledged that Caldwell’s orders were “fairly innocuous.”[43] Officials say that Holmes spent his time in theater starting a strategic communications business with Maj. Laural Levine, with whom he conducted an improper relationship in Afghanistan. A former aid said, “At no point did Holmes ever provide a product to Gen. Caldwell”. General David Petraeus has since ordered an investigation into the alleged incident.[42]
Portrayals in popular culture
The general’s daughter from both the novel and blockbuster movie The General’s Daughter was a PSYOP officer.
A USACAPOC combat patch (FWS-SSI) can be seen being worn by a soldier in the film X-Men: The Last Stand in the President’s command center.
In the 9th season of the television series NCIS, Jamie Lee Curtis plays a recurring role as the civilian PSYOPs director at the US Department of Defense.
Purdue University‘s Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulations, or SEAS, is currently being used by Homeland Security and the US Defense Department to simulate crises on the US mainland.[1] SEAS “enables researchers and organizations to try out their models or techniques in a publicly known, realistically detailed environment.”[2] It “is now capable of running real-time simulations for up to 62 nations, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and China. The simulations gobble up breaking news, census data, economic indicators, and climactic events in the real world, along with proprietary information such as military intelligence. […] The Iraq and Afghanistan computer models are the most highly developed and complex of the 62 available to JFCOM-J9. Each has about five million individual nodes representing things such as hospitals, mosques, pipelines, and people.”[1]
SEAS was developed to help Fortune 500 companies with strategic planning. Then it was used to help “recruiting commanders to strategize ways to improve recruiting potential soldiers”. In 2004 SEAS was evaluated for its ability to help simulate “the non-kinetic aspects of combat, things like the diplomatic, economic, political, infrastructure and social issues”.[3]
Sentient World Simulation is the name given to the current vision of making SEAS a “continuously running, continually updated mirror model of the real world that can be used to predict and evaluate future events and courses of action.”[4]
Development and use
SEAS technology resulted from over ten years of research at Purdue University, funded by the Department of Defense, several Fortune 500 companies, the National Science Foundation, the Century Fund of the state of Indiana, and the Office of Naval Research. Originally, SEAS was developed to help Fortune 500 companies with strategic planning. It was also used to model the population of the U.S. that is eligible for military service to help “recruiting commanders to strategize ways to improve recruiting potential soldiers”[3]and to study biological attacks.[5]
In January 2004 SEAS was evaluated by the Joint Innovation and Experimentation Directorate (J9) of the US Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) for its ability to help simulate “the non-kinetic aspects of combat, things like the diplomatic, economic, political, infrastructure and social issues” at the Purdue Technology Park during Breaking Point 2004, an environment-shaping war game resulting in the conclusion that it “moves us from the current situation where everyone comes together and sits around a table discussing what they would do, to a situation where they actually play in the simulation and their actions have consequences.”[3]
In 2006 JFCOM-J9 used SEAS to war game warfare scenarios for Baghdad in 2015. In April 2007 JFCOM-J9 began working with Homeland Security and multinational forces in a homeland defense war gaming exercise.[1]
Sentient World Simulation
The Sentient World Simulation project (SWS) is to be based on SEAS. The ultimate goal envisioned by Alok R. Chaturvedi on March 10, 2006 was for SWS to be a “continuously running, continually updated mirror model of the real world that can be used to predict and evaluate future events and courses of action. SWS will react to actual events that occur anywhere in the world and incorporate newly sensed data from the real world. […] As the models influence each other and the shared synthetic environment, behaviors and trends emerge in the synthetic world as they do in the real world. Analysis can be performed on the trends in the synthetic world to validate alternate worldviews. […] Information can be easily displayed and readily transitioned from one focus to another using detailed modeling, such as engineering level modeling, to aggregated strategic, theater, or campaign-level modeling.”[4]
^ Jump up to:abcPurdue University article USJFCOM teams with Purdue University to add the human factor to war game simulations published February 6, 2004
^ Jump up to:abPurdue University abstract from Alok Chaturvedi titled Computational Challenges for a Sentient World Simulation published March 10, 2006
Jump up^Purdue University article Indiana researchers tap into grid computing to prepare for disasters published June 24, 2002
NATO article Using the Multinational Experiment 4 (MNE4) Modeling and Simulation Federation to Support Joint Experimentation begins with: “Multinational experimentation is a critical element of the United States Joint Forces Command’s (USJFCOM) Experimentation Directorate (J9) joint concept development and experimentation program. The Multinational Experiment (MNE) series explores ways to achieve a coalition’s political goals by influencing the behaviour of our adversaries by relying on the full weight of the coalition’s collective national powers (diplomatic, information, military and economics actions). MNE4, conducted in February – March 2006, was one such experimentation venue that explored new ways to apply the various elements of the coalition’s considerable influence, short of direct military conflict. MNE4 required an extensive international modeling and simulation (M&S) development effort with models provided by France, Germany and the United States.”
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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (pictured) has dismissed the protests taking place across Iran on Monday as ‘nothing’, in a bid to downplay the significance of the increasingly violent demonstrations
bama Spy Scandal: Obama Administration Officials Including National Security Adviser Rice, CIA Director Brennan and United Nations Ambassador Power Spied On American People and Trump Campaign By Massive Unmasking Using Intelligence Community For Political Purposes — An Abuse of Power and Felonies Under U.S. Law — Videos
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The Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, left, Catherine Ashton, who is representing the European Union, and Secretary of State John Kerry in Vienna. Leonhard Foeger/Reuters
Under a proposed deal, Russia will convert uranium into specialized fuel rods for Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant.Majid Asgaripour/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Iran’s nuclear reactor in Arak, about 150 miles southwest of Tehran, is being redesigned.Hamid Foroutan/Iranian Students News Agency, via Associated Press
Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, accuses the West of trying to sabotage a reactor being built near Arak.Atta Kenare/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
From left, Foreign Ministers Laurent Fabius of France and William Hague of Britain, and Secretary of State John Kerry with Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh of Jordan, in Paris. Thierry Chesnot/Getty Images
Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s new leader, received a private letter from President Obama about easing tensions between the countries.Vahid Salemi/Associated Press
Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon. Next week he will travel to the Middle East to finalize the arms sale.Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Family members of slain nuclear scientists stood with Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, far right, a nuclear official. Arash Khamoushi/Iranian Students News Agency, ISNA, via Associated Press
Speaking to air force commanders in Tehran on Feb. 6, Ayatollah Khamenei said Iran “will not negotiate under pressure.” Khamenei Official Web site, via European Pressphoto Agency
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations, displaying his red line for Iran’s nuclear program. Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
The Neptune, an oil tanker in the Persian Gulf, is part of a fleet of about 65 Iranian tankers serving as floating storage facilities for Iranian oil, each one given a nautical makeover to conceal its origin and make a buyer easier to find. Thomas Erdbrink
Iran’s nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, in Baghdad. Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad surveying the centrifuges at Iran’s underground complex at Natanz in March 2007.Office of the Iranian President
Iran displayed the drone for propaganda purposes, with photographs of ayatollahs who led Iran’s revolution behind it and a desecrated version of the American flag. Revolutionary Guards, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Iran’s nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz.Hasan Sarbakhshian/Associated Press
A poster of an Iranian gas field is a backdrop to passers-by in Asaluyeh. Newsha Tavakolian for The New York Times
One of the two cars bombed in Tehran. Reuters
The Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri, with his 7-year-old son, greeting family members in Tehran.Newsha Tavakolian/Polaris, for The New York Times
Ambassadors to the United Nations, from right: Susan E. Rice of the United States, Mark Lyall Grant of Britain and Ruhakana Rugunda of Uganda voted to affirm a Security Council resolution on Iran while Turkey’s ambassador, Ertugrul Apakan, voted against it. Mario Tama/Getty Images
Yukiya Amano, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.Herwig Prammer/Reuters
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in 2011. Francois Lenoir/Reuters
Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and President Obama, in Pittsburgh, accused Iran of building a secret nuclear fuel plant.Doug Mills/The New York Times
The negotiators Saeed Jalili of Iran, left, and William J. Burns, third from right, in Geneva. Pool photo by Denis Balibouse
The heavy-water plant in Arak, south of Tehran.Iran/Reuters
A satellite image of Natanz in 2007.GeoEye/SIME, via Associated Press
President Ahmadinejad offended Israel in his speech on the rule of law at a United Nations conference in 2012. Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi talking to reporters in Tehran ahead of nuclear talks in Paris. Abedin Taherkenareh/European Pressphoto Agency
An Iranian missile displayed by the Revolutionary Guards under a portrait of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, in September 2003. Henghameh Fahimi/Agence France-Presse
Mohammad Khatami in 2009. Hasan Sarbakhshian/Associated Press
President Bill Clinton addressing reporters in July 1996. Joe Marquette/Associated Press
A Russian engineer checking equipment at the Bushehr nuclear plant in April 2007.Behrouz Mehri/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The body of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was displayed to hundreds of thousands of Iranians at his funeral.Agence France-Presse
The Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan in Islamabad in 1988.B.K.Bangash/Associated Press
Iraqi gunners used a Soviet 130-milllimeter field gun to shell the Iranian cities of Abadan and Khurramshahr.United Press International
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini descending from the Air France plane that returned him to Tehran after 15 years in exile.United Press International
The deposed shah, with Empress Farah and two of their children, in the Bahamas in 1979, where they dodged questions from photographers. Associated Press
The Bushehr nuclear plant on Aug. 21, 2010, as its first fuel rod was loaded. Getty Images
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Story 1: 12 Dallas Police Officers Shot In Ambush Assassination with 5 Killed –Shooter Killed By Robot With Explosive Device — Black Lives Matters Provoking Black Racism — Lying Lunatic Left — Dallas Police Chief Brown, Former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama Speech at Dallas Memorial Service Honoring Police Officers — Videos
DALLAS, TX – JULY 12: Police officers arrive at an interfaith memorial service, honoring five slain police officers, at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center on July 12, 2016 in Dallas, Texas. A sniper opend fire following a Black Lives Matter march in Dallas killing five police officers and injuring 12 others. (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)
A Police officer stands guard at a baracade following the sniper shooting in Dallas on July 7, 2016.
DALLAS, TX – JULY 8: Flags fly at half mast at Dallas City Hall following the fatal shootings of five police officers on July 8, 2016 in Dallas, Texas. Micah Xavier Johnson has been identified as the suspected sniper in the fatal shooting of five police officers, and injuring seven more at a Black Lives Matter demonstration held on July 7, 2016 in Dallas, Texas. Stewart F. House/Getty Images/AFP
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Lone Gunman Laughed, Sang During Standoff: Sources
Micah Xavier Johnson was killed by an explosive device attached to a robot after talks broke down. He was laughing and singing and not at all anxious during the standoff, a source said.
By Todd L. Davis and Scott Friedman
A North Texas Army veteran has been identified as the lone gunman responsible for the sniper attacks that killed five police officers and injured seven others in Dallas, authorities say.
Micah Xavier Johnson, of Mesquite, ambushed officers at a peaceful protest against nationwide police-involved shootings in Dallas on Thursday, police said.
Obama: America Is ‘Horrified’ Over Dallas Attack
The investigation into Johnson’s attack is still ongoing, and much remains is still unknown. But a picture is beginning to emerge of what went on inside the standoff — a source tells NBC Investigates that the 25-year-old was wounded by gunfire before being killed by a robot outfitted with a bomb — and how he prepared for the deadly assault.
LONE GUNMAN
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings confirmed Friday what multiple senior U.S. law enforcement officials had told NBC News Friday afternoon: Micah Xavier Johnson was the lone gunman in the rampage.
Police Search Micah Xavier Johnson’s Home
“This was a mobile shooter that had written manifestos on how to shoot and move, shoot and move, and he did that. He did his damage,” Rawlings said.
Officials told NBC News the investigation so far has yielded no additional suspects that may have played a role in the shooting. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Friday that there is no information about additional co-conspirators, but if any are found, they will be brought to justice.
Slain Dallas Officer ‘Always Had a Smile’: LA Deputies
Sources tell NBC News they have found no ties between Johnson and any extremist groups so far.
“We believe now, that the city is safe,” Rawlings said. “The suspect is dead, and we can move on to healing.”
We believe now, that the city is safe. The suspect is dead and we can move on to healing.
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings
INSIDE THE STANDOFF
Johnson was laughing and singing and not at all anxious during the standoff at the El Centro College building, a law enforcement source with knowledge of the incident told NBC 5 Investigates senior reporter Scott Friedman.
Johnson told police he had specifically been training for this event and working out in preparation for Thursday night. NBC 5 Investigates has also learned Johnson was wearing a military-style bulletproof vest.
Dallas Police Finally Delete Wrong Sniper Suspect Tweet
Johnson told police he spent time in the military and was carrying a military-style rifle.
Johnson was hit by gunfire before going into the El Centro college building and that officers followed Johnson’s blood trail into the building, according to a law enforcement source.
Officers found him on the second floor, and then fired more rounds through a wall, apparently hitting Johnson again and wounding him.
After that, the negotiations began and spanned several hours. Johnson threatened many times to charge the officers, according to the source.
Clinton Addresses Dallas Attacks in Church Speech
Johnson at first said that he only wanted to talk to black police officers – he said he didn’t want to have anything to do with white people. He shared police conspiracies and his dislike for police officers, a law enforcement source said.
Officers cornered Johnson and negotiated with him for hours before talks broke down, police said.
Army Veteran Identified As a Gunman in Dallas Protest Shootings
Dallas Police Chief David Brown said Johnson told officers he was upset about recent shootings involving police and “wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”
After an exchange of gunfire, officers attached an explosive device to a bomb robot and detonated it near Johnson, killing him, Brown said.
UPDATED Officer Who Survived 3 Iraq Tours Killed in Dallas: Father
A police source tells NBC 5 Investigates that the robot carried 3/4 of a pound of C-4, a plastic explosive. The robot reportedly suffered some damage but may not be a total loss.
The decision on how much to use was made by Dallas SWAT officers trained in explosives along with ATF experts on the scene.
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A law enforcement source told Friedman on a scale of 1 to 10 this situation was a 30.
MILITARY HISTORY
Sniper Ambush Kills 5 Officers, Injures 7 in Dallas
The Army said Johnson served in the Army Reserve and did one tour of duty in Afghanistan, from November 2013 to July 2014.
Johnson was a private first class and his military occupational specialty was carpentry and masonry.
https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FDallasPD%2Fposts%2F10154256428977412&width=500
His service dates, as provided by the Army, were March 2009 to April 2015.
Dallas police said Johnson has no criminal history.
Prayer Service Held in Thanks-Giving Square
During a search of his home Friday, detectives found bomb making materials, ballistic vests, rifles, ammunition and a personal journal of combat tactics, police said.
Lone Gunman Laughed, Sang During Standoff: Sources | NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth
http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Dallas-Police-Identify-Gunman-in-Dallas-Protest-Shootings-386015971.html#ixzz4DvwXgqSv
Dallas shooting victims: three police officers identified as colleagues mourn
Tributes pour in for transit officer Brent Thompson, who was recently married, and Dallas police officers Patrick Zamarripa and Michael Krol
From left to right: Michael Krol, Patrick Zamarripa and Brent Thompson.
The identities of three of the five officers who died in the mass shooting that targeted police in Dallas emerged on Friday morning, as family, friends and the public paid tribute.
They include a newlywed transit officer, a Dallas police department officer who had expressed love for his job and his country, and a Detroit-area native whose family said it was his life’s dream to become an officer. Seven other officers were injured as sniper fire broke out while police were patrolling a peaceful protest in Dallas on Thursday evening organized to demonstrate against the police shooting deaths of Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Louisiana earlier this week.
Dallas police shootings: what we know so far
Brent Thompson
Brent Thompson, 43, was killed in the gunfire and was the first officer of the Dallas area rapid transit (Dart) division to be killed in the line of duty since the department was established in 1989. The force provides law enforcement on the city’s bus, light rail, commuter rail and high-occupancy road lanes in a transit system serving Dallas and 12 suburbs in the greater metropolis.
Thompson joined the division in 2009. The Dart chief, James Spiller, said: “He was an outstanding patrol officer as well as a rail officer.”
Thompson married a fellow Dart officer just last month, said Spiller on NBC Today.
“He was recently married in the last two weeks, so this is very heartbreaking. We will definitely miss him, and we are also making sure his family is taken care of,” he said.
A statement from Dart said: “Our hearts are broken.”
A picture was posted on Twitter of Thompson with his grandson.
Before joining the mass transit police, Thompson worked with US police officers in Iraq and Afghanistan for the military contractor Dyncorp, according to his LinkedIn page.
Patrick Zamarripa
Tributes were posted on social media for the Dallas police department officer Patrick Zamarripa, 32, on Friday morning, with a family member sharing a picture of the officer with his father.
One post from his stepbrother, Dylan Martinez, read: “No father should have to bury his son. You are a hero, Patrick. Love you man.…”
Patrick Zamarripa
Patrick Zamarripa. Photograph: @KDylanMartinez/Twitter
He was described as a family man and a military veteran who had survived three tours in Iraq, according to the Washington Post.
On Zamarripa’s Twitter page, he had written: “Addicted to the thrill of this job. I own the night. I love my Country, Texas, Family, God, Friends, and Sports! Don’t Tread on Me! ’Merica.”
On the Fourth of July, Zamarripa posted a patriotic tweet, saying: “Happy Birthday to the greatest country on the face of this planet. My beloved America!”
He had also tweeted about getting ready to police a recent rally for Donald Trump in Dallas and posted in support of the victims of the mass shooting at the gay nightclub Pulse, in Orlando.
He has been hailed as a hero on social media.
Michael Krol
Michael Krol, 40, became an officer in the Dallas police department in 2007 after previously working in his local county jail system in Michigan.
Krol worked for the Wayne County sheriff’s office in the county jail system from 2003-2007, according to a statement.
His uncle, Jim Ehlke, told WDVI his nephew had a passion for helping people and that being an officer was his life dream.
“He got into law enforcement and worked really hard to be a police officer. He spent some time at the correctional facility. It wasn’t quite what he was looking for, so he worked pretty hard to find a job and got one in Dallas,” Ehlke said. “He was all in, he was all in.”
“He knew the danger of the job but he never shied away from his duty as a police officer,” Krol’s mother, Susan Ehlke, told WXYZ. “He was a great, caring person and wanted to help people. A wonderful son, brother, uncle, nephew and friend.”
He lived in the Dallas-Fort Worth area with his girlfriend, ABC also reported.
The Wayne County sheriff’s office issued a statement on Friday morning.
“We are saddened by the loss of the dedicated officers in Dallas – one of whom was a former member of this agency – and also the wounding of the other officers,” said sheriff Benny Napoleon . “Those officers made the ultimate sacrifice and died honoring their oaths to protect and serve. Our thoughts and prayers go out to their families and also the Dallas police department,” he added.
The other victims are believed to be Dallas police officers, but they have not yet been identified.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/08/dallas-protest-shooting-police-victims-named-brent-thompson-patrick-zamarripa
Army Veteran Identified As a Gunman in Dallas Protest Shootings
Micah Xavier Johnson was killed by an explosive device attached to a robot after talks broke down. He was laughing and singing and not at all anxious during the standoff, a source said.
By Todd L. Davis and Scott Friedman
A North Texas Army veteran has been identified as the lone gunman responsible for the sniper attacks that killed five police officers and injured seven others in Dallas, authorities say.
Micah Xavier Johnson, of Mesquite, ambushed officers at a peaceful protest against nationwide police-involved shootings in Dallas on Thursday, police said.
UPDATED 8-Year Police Veteran Michael Krol Among Dallas Victims
The investigation into Johnson’s attack is still ongoing, and much remains is still unknown. But a picture is beginning to emerge of what went on inside the standoff — a source tells NBC Investigates that the 25-year-old was wounded by gunfire before being killed by a robot outfitted with a bomb — and how he prepared for the deadly assault.
LONE GUNMAN
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings confirmed Friday what multiple senior U.S. law enforcement officials had told NBC News Friday afternoon: Micah Xavier Johnson was the lone gunman in the rampage.
We believe now, that the city is safe. The suspect is dead and we can move on to healing.
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings
“This was a mobile shooter that had written manifestos on how to shoot and move, shoot and move, and he did that. He did his damage,” Rawlings said.
Officials told NBC News the investigation so far has yielded no additional suspects that may have played a role in the shooting. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Friday that there is no information about additional co-conspirators, but if any are found, they will be brought to justice.
UPDATED Officer Who Survived 3 Iraq Tours Killed in Dallas: Father
Sources tell NBC News they have found no ties between Johnson and any extremist groups so far.
“We believe now, that the city is safe,” Rawlings said. “The suspect is dead, and we can move on to healing.”
Dallas Shooter Laughed, Sang During Standoff: Source
INSIDE THE STANDOFF
Johnson was laughing and singing and not at all anxious during the standoff at the El Centro College building, a law enforcement source with knowledge of the incident told NBC 5 Investigates senior reporter Scott Friedman.
Johnson told police he had specifically been training for this event and working out in preparation for Thursday night. NBC 5 Investigates has also learned Johnson was wearing a military-style bulletproof vest.
Sniper Ambush Kills 5 Officers, Injures 7 in Dallas
Johnson told police he spent time in the military and was carrying a military-style rifle.
Johnson was hit by gunfire before going into the El Centro college building and that officers followed Johnson’s blood trail into the building, according to a law enforcement source.
Officers found him on the second floor, and then fired more rounds through a wall, apparently hitting Johnson again and wounding him.
After that, the negotiations began and spanned several hours. Johnson threatened many times to charge the officers, according to the source.
Clinton Addresses Dallas Attacks in Church Speech
Johnson at first said that he only wanted to talk to black police officers – he said he didn’t want to have anything to do with white people. He shared police conspiracies and his dislike for police officers, a law enforcement source said.
Officers cornered Johnson and negotiated with him for hours before talks broke down, police said.
Dallas Police Chief, Mayor 7:30 A.M. Update (Raw Video)
Dallas Police Chief David Brown said Johnson told officers he was upset about recent shootings involving police and “wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”
After an exchange of gunfire, officers attached an explosive device to a bomb robot and detonated it near Johnson, killing him, Brown said.
Prayer Service Held in Thanks-Giving Square
A law enforcement source told Friedman on a scale of 1 to 10 this situation was a 30.
MILITARY HISTORY
AG Lynch: ‘The Answer Is Never Violence’
The Army said Johnson served in the Army Reserve and did one tour of duty in Afghanistan, from November 2013 to July 2014.
Johnson was a private first class and his military occupational specialty was carpentry and masonry.
His service dates, as provided by the Army, were March 2009 to April 2015.
Dallas police said Johnson has no criminal history.
Dramatic Photos: Deadly Sniper Attack in Downtown Dallas
During a search of his home Friday, detectives found bomb making materials, ballistic vests, rifles, ammunition and a personal journal of combat tactics, police said.
http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Dallas-Police-Identify-Gunman-in-Dallas-Protest-Shootings-386015971.html
What we know – and what we don’t know – about the Dallas protest shooting
Matthew Weaver and Claire Phipps
Friday 8 July 2016 12.27 EDTLast modified on Friday 8 July 201618.02 ED
What we know
What we don’t know
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/08/dallas-shootings-what-we-know-so-far
Lynch to Dallas protesters: ‘Do not be discouraged’
SICK: ‘BLACK LIVES MATTER’ SUPPORTERS CELEBRATE MURDER OF DALLAS COPS
BLM agitators joyful about slaughter of “pigs”
Paul Joseph Watson – JULY 8, 2016
‘Black Lives Matter’ supporters responded to the sniper attack in Dallas by celebrating the murder of the five police officers who were gunned down in cold blood.
BLM sympathizers took to Twitter to express their joy at the carnage, with one commenting, “Y’all pigs got what was coming for y’all.”
“Next time a group wants to organize a police shoot, do like Dallas tonight, but have extra men/women to flank the Pigs!,” added another.
“Dude hell yeah someone is shooting pigs in dallas. Solidarity,” commented another user.
“DALLAS keep smoking dem pigs keep up the work,” remarked another.
Last night’s events in Dallas were as painfully predictable as they were tragic.
As I wrote almost a year ago after BLM supporters had plotted to bomb a police station in Ferguson, “Black Lives Matter cannot be described as anything other than a domestic terrorist organization.”
View image on Twitter
One had to look no further than the fact that the ideological guru behind ‘Black Lives Matter’ – the individual whom its founders cite as their inspiration – Assata Shakur – is a convicted cop killer who is on the FBI’s ‘Most Wanted Terrorists’ list.
BLM protesters have also repeatedly invoked violent rhetoric. During a march in New York, demonstrators chanted, “What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now!”
BLM agitators have also used the refrain “pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon!” on numerous occasions to promote violence against police officers.
A selection of tweets illustrating how ‘Black Lives Matter’ supporters are celebrating last night’s sniper attack appears below.
THE ROOTS OF BLACK LIVES MATTER UNVEILED
Special report reveals stunner: Except for website, there is no actual organization
Published: 01/16/2016
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/01/the-roots-of-black-lives-matter-unveiled/#D1DZi6TVEDpfQLRh.99
Editor’s Note: This is a special report from the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism.
By James Simpson
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/01/BLM1.jpg
The Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) casts itself as a spontaneous uprising born of inner city frustration, but is, in fact, the latest and most dangerous face of a web of well-funded communist/socialist organizations that have been agitating against America for decades. Its agitation has provoked police killings and other violence, lawlessness and unrest in minority communities throughout the U.S. If allowed to continue, that agitation could devolve into anarchy and civil war. The BLM crowd appears to be spoiling for just such an outcome.
Nevertheless, BLM appears to be exercising considerable leverage over the Democratic Party, in part by pressuring and intimidating Democratic candidates such as Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders (VT) into embracing their cause. The movement could also assist President Obama’s exploitation of racial divisions in society beyond his final term in office.
This report examines in detail, for the first time, how communist groups have manipulated the cause of Black Lives Matter, and how money from liberal foundations has made it all possible.
Leftist origins
Exploiting blacks to promote Marxist revolution is an old tactic. The late Larry Grathwohl, former FBI informant in the Weather Underground, understood from personal experience how white communists exploited blacks and other minority groups. He said that Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn regarded Barack Obama, whose political career they sponsored, as a tool – a puppet – to use against white America. Obama’s legacy at home will certainly include more racial division.
BLM launched in 2013 with a Twitter hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter, after neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman was acquitted in the Trayvon Martin killing. Radical Left activists Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi claim credit for the slogan and hashtag. Following the Michael Brown shooting in August 2014, Dream Defenders, an organization led by Working Families Party (ACORN) activist and Occupy Wall Street anarchist Nelini Stamp, popularized the phrase “Hands Up–Don’t Shoot!” which has since become BLM’s widely recognized slogan.
Garza, Cullors and Tometi all work for front groups of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), one of the four largest radical Left organizations in the country. The others are the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). Nelini Stamp’s ACORN – now rebranded under a variety of different names – works with all four organizations, and Dream Defenders is backed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center and others.
FRSO is a hereditary descendant of the New Communist Movement, which was inspired by Mao and the many communist revolutions throughout the world in the 1960s and 1970s. FRSO split into two separate groups in 1999, FRSO/Fight Back and FRSO/OSCL (Freedom Road Socialist Organization/Organizaciόn Socialista del Camino para la Libertad). Black Lives Matter and its founders are allied with the latter group. Future references to FRSO in this article refer to FRSO/OSCL.
FRSO is comprised of dozens of groups. The radical Left model is based on alliances of many organizations that are working on separate issues but dedicated ultimately to the same thing: overthrowing our society in order to replace it with a hardcore socialist (read communist) one.
The goal is to present the appearance of a formidable mass of organizations. Some are large, but many are little more than a website or Facebook page. When necessary, they can all come together to promote the cause du jour. The deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and others were mere pretexts for socialist agitation. The real enemy is “the system.” This is why the BLM crowd denies the facts of those cases. As Stamp has said, “we are actually trying to change the capitalist system we have today because it’s not working for any of us.”
BLM is one of many projects undertaken by the FRSO. Except for the website, blacklivesmatter.com, there is no actual organization. The website implicitly acknowledges this, describing #BlackLivesMatter as “an online forum intended to build connections between Black people and our allies to fight anti-Black racism, to spark dialogue among Black people, and to facilitate the types of connections necessary to encourage social action and engagement.”
FRSO membership is disproportionately represented by blacks, gays and women, and self-consciously emphasizes those issues. Garza, who penned a “Herstory” of BLM, is a ” queer,” black veteran activist involved in numerous FRSO organizations. Her resumé includes:
Cullors describes herself as a “working class, queer, black woman.” She claims the country killed her father, a drug addict. At a 2015 Netroots Nation conference, Cullors led chants shouting, “If I die in police custody, burn everything down… rise the f— up! That is the only way mother—–s like you will listen!” Cullors founded and directs Dignity and Power Now (DPN), which claims to seek “dignity and power of incarcerated people, their families, and communities.”
Cullors was trained by Eric Mann, a former Weather Underground leader who exhorts followers to become “anti-racist, anti-imperialist” activists. Mann runs another FRSO front, the Labor/Community Strategy Center. Like most professional leftists, he makes good money – over $225,000 annually – living in “the system” he advocates destroying.
Tometi is the daughter of illegal aliens from Nigeria. While in college, she worked for the ACLU defending illegal aliens against “vigilantes” opposed to illegal immigration. She is currently the executive director of Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI).
The funding
FRSO/BLM organizations are generously supported by a universe of wealthy foundations. Some, like those employing BLM founders Garza and Tometi, receive money directly. Others, like Cullors’ DPN, are financed by organizations designed specifically to underwrite the activities of others. Amounts reflect donations received over approximately the past decade.
NDWA (Garza) – 2013 revenues were $5.5 million. The NDWA board includes two members of CASA de Maryland, the Illegals’ version of ACORN. CASA also received a grant from NDWA in 2013, as did the radical Left Institute for Policy Studies. NDWA receives funding from the following foundations:
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/01/BLM2.jpg
POWER (Garza) – 2013 revenues were $456,676, including $92,173 in government grants. POWER evolved from the now defunct communist group STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement). Obama’s former “Green Jobs Czar” the self-described communist, Van Jones, served on STORM’s board.
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/01/BLM3.jpg
RTTC (Garza) – 2013 revenues were $248,190. RTTC is a nationwide network of activist organizations that resists the gentrification of inner cities because it displaces “low-income people, people of color, marginalized LGBTQ communities, and youths of color…”
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/01/BLM4.jpg
SOUL (Garza) – Despite its small size (2013 revenues at $110,304), SOUL claims to have trained 679 organizers in 2013.
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/01/BLM5.jpg
BAJI (Tometi) – 2013 revenues were $321,570. This modest organization only lists two full-time staff, yet receives support from many recognizable foundations.
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/01/BLM6.jpg
Cullors’ DPN is underwritten by Community Partners, a Los Angeles based non-profit with a $24 million budget (including $4 million in government grants) that fiscally sponsors non-profits. It is not an FRSO organization.
Advancement Project (AP) – an FRSO group that funds a variety of radical causes. AP sees America as a racist, oppressive nation and, according to Discover the Networks, “works to organize ‘communities of color’ into politically cohesive units while disseminating its leftist worldviews and values as broadly as possible by way of a sophisticated communications department.” Its 2013 revenues were $11.3 million.
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/01/BLM7.jpg
Movement Strategy Center (MSC) – also facilitates funding, development and advancement of FRSO organizations. Its 2013 revenues were $7.5 million, including $156,032 in government grants.
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/01/BLM8.jpg
The return of Van Jones
Mainstream funders have helped fund BLM as well. For example, United Way has partnered with A&E and iHeartMedia to create Shining the Light Advisors, a committee of “nationally known experts and leaders in racial and social justice,” to oversee grant disbursements. These “advisors” include such radicals as Van Jones, Advancement Project co-director Judith Browne Dianis, and Rinku Sen, president of the Applied Research Center (ARC).
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/01/BLM9.jpg
BLM’s mission includes a kitchen sink of favored radical Left causes, including support of poverty elimination programs, prison deinstitutionalization, illegal immigration and gay rights. Highlighting FRSO’s orientation toward gay blacks, it describes how “Black, queer and trans folks bear a unique burden from a hetero-patriarchal society that disposes of us like garbage and simultaneously fetishizes us and profits off of us, and that is state violence.”
Its wide network of affiliates and partner organizations like CPUSA and ACORN allows BLM to turn out large crowds. Many participate simply to protest, commit violence, loot or all three.
FRSO was prominent at the Ferguson protests and videoed the event. It has even created a Black Lives Matter button. Following are more FRSO organizations involved with BLM. (Funding estimates provided when known).
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/01/BLM10.jpg
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/01/BLM11.jpg
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/01/BLM12.jpg
BLM groups have also joined with CPUSA, CCDS, DSA, SEIU, Color of Change and many others. Anarchist and top OWS organizer Lisa Fithian, who orchestrated the 1999 Seattle World Trade Organization riots, trained Ferguson protesters. Fithian says “Create crisis, because crisis is that edge where change is possible.”
Fithian echoes Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven – creators of the infamous Cloward/Piven Crisis Strategy – who spent decades attempting to provoke ghetto blacks to riot, because “Poor people can advance only when ‘the rest of society is afraid of them.’” Rasheen Aldridge, seen above meeting President Obama, was a leader of the Ferguson protests. He has participated in numerous CPUSA events in 2013, 2014 and 2015. Another prominent CPUSA member active in BLM protests is Michael McPhearson, who leads the Don’t Shoot Coalition.
Carl Davidson and Pat Fry, co-chairs of CCDS, exploited the revolutionary atmosphere of the Ferguson riots to create an eight-point plan for “Left Unity” demanding “a common aspiration for socialism.”
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/01/BLM13.jpg
Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE) is Missouri’s rebranded ACORN group. It created an illustrative chart offering a snapshot of the Left’s grievance agenda. Capitalism is always the problem. Socialism is always the solution.
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/01/BLM14.jpg
Interestingly, MORE doesn’t believe in socialism when it is footing the bill. MORE promised to pay Ferguson protesters $5,000/month to hang out and cause trouble. But just as ACORN stiffed its employees while preaching socialist generosity, MORE stiffed the protesters.
Islamist organizations have also jumped on the BLM bandwagon, reminding us of the unholy alliance that exists between them and the radical Left. In September 2015, the Muslim Brotherhood front-group Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) joined BLM activists in storming California Governor Jerry Brown’s office. CAIR also participated in the Ferguson protests. Meanwhile ISIS is recruiting American blacks for its cause.
Intellectual genealogy of Black Lives Matter
“We must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, law-breaking, withholding and concealing truth… We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us.” – Vladimir Lenin
That quote from the Soviet Union’s first leader captures the entire essence of the Left’s strategy. No matter what the issue, no matter what the facts, the Left advances a relentless, hate-filled narrative that America is irredeemably evil and must be destroyed as soon as possible. The BLM movement is only the latest but perhaps most dangerous variant on this divisive theme.
Communists use language and psychology as weapons. Their constant vilification is a form of psychological terror. It puts America and Americans on trial. The verdict is always guilty. Facts don’t matter because the Left does not want to resolve the problems they complain about. They use those problems to agitate and provoke, hoping conflict becomes unavoidable – thereby creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Their hatred is tactical.
Obama’s favorite Harvard professor Derrick Bell devised Critical Race Theory, which exemplifies Lenin’s strategy as applied to race. According to Discover the Networks:
Bell’s theory is in turn an innovation of Critical Theory – developed by philosophers of the communist Frankfurt School. The school was founded in Frankfurt, Germany in 1923. Its Jewish communist scholars fled Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s, relocating to Columbia Teachers College in New York. Critical Theory – which discredits all aspects of Western society – rapidly infected the minds of newly-minted college professors, who then spread its poison throughout the university system. We know it today as political correctness.
White privilege
The “racist” narrative was turbocharged with the concept of “White Privilege,” the notion that whites – the dominant group in capitalist America – are irretrievably racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, fill-in-the-blank-ophobic, imperialistic oppressors who exploit everyone. Whites are the only true evil in the world and should be exterminated.
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/01/BLM15.jpg
The “White Skin Privilege” idea was created in 1967 by Noel Ignatiev, an acolyte of Bell and professor at Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute (Du Bois was a Communist black leader who helped found the NAACP). Ignatiev was a member of CPUSA’s most radical wing, the Maoist/Stalinist Provisional Organizing Committee to Reconstitute the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (POC). POC was the intellectual forerunner to FRSO.
Writing under the alias Noel Ignatin, Ignatiev co-authored an SDS pamphlet with fellow radical Ted Allen, titled “White Blindspot.” In 1992 he co-founded “Race Traitor: Journal of the New Abolitionism.” Its first issue coined the slogan, “Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.” Its stated objective was to “abolish the white race.” More specifically, the New Abolitionist newsletter stated:
But do not be confused; “White” does not mean white. “White” in radical construction means anyone of any race, creed, nationality, color, sex, or sexual preference who embraces capitalism, free markets, limited government and American traditional culture and values. By definition, these beliefs are irredeemably evil and anyone who aligns with them is “white” in spirit and thus equally guilty of “white crimes.” Ignatiev still teaches, now at the Massachusetts College of Art.
The Black Lives Matter movement carries this narrative to unprecedented heights, claiming that only whites can be racists. And while justifying violence to achieve “social justice,” the movement’s goal is to overthrow our society to replace it with a Marxist one. Many members of the black community would be shocked to learn that the intellectual godfathers of this movement are mostly white Communists, “queers” and leftist Democrats, intent on making blacks into cannon fodder for the revolution.
James Simpson is an economist, former White House budget analyst, businessman and investigative journalist. Follow Jim on Twitter & Facebook. Veteran researcher Trevor Loudon and Matthew Vadum (Senior Editor, Capital Research Center) contributed materially to this report.
http://www.wnd.com/2016/01/the-roots-of-black-lives-matter-unveiled/#D1DZi6TVEDpfQLRh.99
Black Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter die-in protest atMetro Green Line against allegations of police brutality in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Black Lives Matter (BLM) is an international activist movement, originating in the African-American community, that campaigns against violence toward black people. BLM regularly organizes protests around the deaths of black people in killings by law enforcement officers, and broader issues of racial profiling, police brutality, andracial inequality in the United States criminal justice system.
In 2013, the movement began with the use of the hashtag#BlackLivesMatter on social media, after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African-American teen Trayvon Martin. Black Lives Matter became nationally recognized for its street demonstrations following the 2014 deaths of two African Americans: Michael Brown, resulting in protests and unrest in Ferguson, and Eric Garner in New York City.[1][2]
Since the Ferguson protests, participants in the movement have demonstrated against the deaths of numerous other African Americans by police actions or while in police custody, including those of Tamir Rice, Eric Harris, Walter Scott, Jonathan Ferrell, Sandra Bland, Samuel DuBose, and Freddie Gray, which led to protests and rioting in Baltimore. In the summer of 2015, Black Lives Matter began to publicly challenge politicians—including politicians in the 2016 United States presidential election—to state their positions on BLM issues. The overall Black Lives Matter movement, however, is a decentralized network and has no formal hierarchy or structure.[3]
Founding
Nekima Levy-Pounds speaks during a Black Lives Matter demonstration inMinneapolis.
In the summer of 2013, after George Zimmerman‘s acquittal for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, the movement began with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter.[4] The movement was co-founded by three black community organizers: Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi.[5][6]
BLM claims inspiration from the African-American Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power movement, the 1980s Black feminist movement, Pan-Africanism, Anti-Apartheid Movement, Hip hop, LGBTQ social movements and Occupy Wall Street.[7]
Garza, Cullors and Tometi met through “Black Organizing for Leadership & Dignity” (BOLD), a national organization that trains community organizers.[7] They began to question how they were going to respond to the devaluation of black lives after Zimmerman’s acquittal. Garza wrote a Facebook post titled “A Love Note to Black People” in which she wrote: “Our Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter”. Cullors replied: “#BlackLivesMatter”. Tometi then added her support, and Black Lives Matter was born as an online campaign.[7]
In August 2014, BLM members organized their first in-person national protest in the form of a “Black Lives Matter Freedom Ride” to Ferguson, Missouri after the shooting of Michael Brown.[7] More than five hundred members descended upon Ferguson to participate in non-violent demonstrations. Of the many groups that descended on Ferguson, Black Lives Matter emerged from Ferguson as one of the best organized and most visible groups, becoming nationally recognized as symbolic of the emerging movement.[7]Since August 2014, Black Lives Matter has organized more than one thousand protest demonstrations. On Black Friday in November, Black Lives Matter staged demonstrations at stores and malls across the United States.[7]
In 2015, after the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland, black activists around the world modeled efforts for reform on Black Lives Matter and the Arab Spring.[7] This international movement has been referred to as the “Black Spring”.[8][9] Connections have also been forged with parallel international efforts such as the Dalit rights movement.[10] Expanding beyond street protests, BLM has expanded to activism, such as the 2015 University of Missouri protests, on American college campuses.[11]
Currently, there are at least twenty-three Black Lives Matter chapters in the U.S., Canada, and Ghana.[12] Other Black Lives Matter leaders include: DeRay Mckesson, Shaun King, Marissa Johnson, Nekima Levy-Pounds, and Johnetta Elzie.
Tactics
Black Lives Matter protest against police brutality in St. Paul, Minnesota
Black Lives Matter originally used social media—including hashtag activism—to reach thousands of people rapidly.[7] Since then, Black Lives Matters has embraced a diversity of tactics.[13] BLM generally engages in direct action tactics that make people uncomfortable enough that they must address the issue.[14]
BLM has been known to build power through protest.[15] BLM has held rallies and marches, including one for the death of Corey Jones in Palm Beach, Florida.[16] BLM has also staged die-ins and held one during the 2015 Twin Cities Marathon.[17]
Political slogans used during demonstrations include the eponymous “Black Lives Matter”, “Hands up, don’t shoot” (a later discredited reference attributed to Michael Brown[18]), “I can’t breathe”[19][20] (referring to Eric Garner), “White silence is violence”,[21] “No justice, no peace”,[22][23] and “Is my son next?”,[citation needed] among others.
Most of the protesters actively distinguish themselves from the older generation of black leadership, such as Al Sharpton, by their aversion to middle-class traditions such aschurch involvement, Democratic Party loyalty, and respectability politics.[24][25]
It is important to note that music is an important repertoire of contention for the black lives matter movement. Rappers such as Kendrick Lamar have used music to promote structural conduciveness necessary for a social movement to maintain momentum according to value added theory.[26] Songs such as “Alright” have been used as a rallying call.[27]Beyoncé‘s most recent production lemonade featured Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin’s mothers crying while holding the last images they have of their sons, in effect propelling the issue of police brutality to a national stage.[28] The video for her single “Formation” (2016) celebrates southern black culture and features a line of policemen holding up their hands while a hooded black boy dances in front of them. The video also features a shot of graffiti on a wall reading “stop shooting us”.[29]
Memes are also important in garnering support for and against the Black Lives Matter new social movement. Information communication technologies such as Facebook and Twitter spread memes and are important tools for garnering web support in hopes of producing a spillover effect into the offline world.[30] The use of ICTs facilitate the spread of the message “All Lives Matter” as a response to the Black Lives Matter hashtag as well as the “Blue Lives Matter” hashtag as a response to Beyonce’s halftime performance speaking out against police brutality.[31][32]
Philosophy
Black Lives Matter protest at Union Square, Manhattan
Black Lives Matter incorporates those traditionally on the margins of black freedom movements.[7] The organization’s website, for instance, states that Black Lives Matter is “a unique contribution that goes beyond extrajudicial killings of black people by police and vigilantes” and, embracing intersectionality, that “Black Lives Matter affirms the lives ofblack queer and trans folks, disabled folks, black undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all black lives along the gender spectrum.”[33]
Founder Alicia Garza summed up the philosophy behind Black Lives Matter as follows: “When we say Black Lives Matter, we are talking about the ways in which Black people are deprived of our basic human rights and dignity. It is an acknowledgement Black poverty and genocide is state violence. It is an acknowledgment that 1 million Black people are locked in cages in this country–one half of all people in prisons or jails–is an act of state violence. It is an acknowledgment that Black women continue to bear the burden of a relentless assault on our children and our families and that assault is an act of state violence.”
Garza went on: “Black queer and trans folks bearing a unique burden in a hetero-patriarchal society that disposes of us like garbage and simultaneously fetishizes us and profits off of us is state violence; the fact that 500,000 Black people in the US are undocumented immigrants and relegated to the shadows is state violence; the fact that Black girls are used as negotiating chips during times of conflict and war is state violence; Black folks living with disabilities and different abilities bear the burden of state-sponsored Darwinian experiments that attempt to squeeze us into boxes of normality defined by White supremacy is state violence. And the fact is that the lives of Black people—not ALL people—exist within these conditions is consequence of state violence.”[34]
Influence
Black Lives Matter protest at Herald Square, Manhattan
In 2014, the American Dialect Society chose #BlackLivesMatter as their word of the year.[35][36] Over eleven hundred black professors expressed support for BLM.[37] Several media organizations have referred to BLM as “a new civil rights movement”.[1][38][39] #BlackLivesMatter was voted as one of the twelve hashtags that changed the world in 2014.[40]
In 2015, Serena Williams expressed her support for Black Lives Matter, writing to BLM: “Keep it up. Don’t let those trolls stop you. We’ve been through so much for so many centuries, and we shall overcome this too.”[41]
As a part of a general assembly, the Unitarian Universalist Church passed a resolution in support of BLM and staged a die-in in Portland, Oregon.[42]Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza—as “The Women of #BlackLivesMatter” — were listed as one of the nine runners-up for The Advocate‘s Person of the Year.[43]
The February 2015 issue of Essence Magazine and the cover was devoted to Black Lives Matter.[44] In December 2015, BLM was a contender for the Time MagazinePerson of the Year award. Angela Merkel won the award while BLM came in fourth of the eight candidates.[45]
On May 9, 2016 Delrish Moss was sworn in as the first permanent African-American police chief in Ferguson, where he acknowledges he faces such challenges as diversifying the police force, creating dramatic improvements in community relations, and addressing issues that catalyzed the Black Lives Matter movement.[46]
Notable protests and demonstrations
2014
Black Lives Matter protester atMacy’s Herald Square.
In August 2014, during Labor Day weekend, Black Lives Matter organized a “Freedom Ride”, that brought more than 500 African-Americans from across the United States intoFerguson, Missouri, to support the work being done on the ground by local organizations.[47]
Black Lives Matter members and supporters rode in from New York City, Newark, Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Miami, Detroit, Houston, Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Nashville, Portland, Tucson, Washington, D.C., and more, in a similar way to that of the Freedom Riders in the 1960s.[48] The movement has been generally involved in theFerguson unrest, following the death of Michael Brown.[49]
In November in Oakland, California, fourteen Black Lives Matter activists were arrested after they stopped a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train for more than an hour onBlack Friday, one of the biggest shopping days of the year. The protest, which was led by Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, was organized in response to the grand jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson for the death of Mike Brown. [50][51]
A Black Lives Matter protest of police brutality in the rotunda of the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota
In December, 2,000–3,000 people gathered at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, to protest the killings of unarmed black men by police.[52] At least twenty members of a protest that had been using the slogan were arrested.[53] In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, BLM protested the Shooting of Dontre Hamilton, who died in April.[54] Black Lives Matter protested the Shooting of John Crawford III.[55] The Shooting of Renisha McBride was protested by Black Lives Matter.[56]
Also in December, in response to the decision by the grand jury not to indict Darren Wilson on any charges related to the death of Michael Brown, a protest march was held inBerkeley, California. Later, in 2015, protesters and journalists who participated in that rally filed a lawsuit alleging “unconstitutional police attacks” on attendees.[57]
2015
In March, BLM protested at Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel‘s office, demanding reforms within the Chicago Police Department.[58] In Cobb County, Georgia, the movement protested the death of Nicholas Thomas who was shot and killed by the police.[59]
In April, Black Lives Matter across the United States protested over the death of Freddie Gray which included the 2015 Baltimore protests.[60][61] Black Lives Matter organizers supported the fast food strike in solidarity with fast food workers, and to oppose racial income inequality.[62] On April 14, BLM protested across U.S. cities.[63] In Zion, Illinois, several hundred protested over the fatal shooting of Justus Howell.[64] After the shooting of Walter Scott, Black Lives Matter called for citizen oversight of police.[65]
In May, a protest by BLM in San Francisco was part of a nationwide protest decrying the police killing of black women and girls, which included the deaths of Meagan Hockaday, Aiyana Jones, Rekia Boyd and others.[66] In Cleveland, Ohio, after an officer was acquitted at trial in the Shooting of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, BLM protested.[67] In Madison, Wisconsin, BLM protested after the officer was not charged in the Shooting of Tony Robinson.[68]
In June, after a shooting in a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, BLM issued a statement and condemned the shooting as an act of terror.[69] BLM across the country marched, protested and held vigil for several days after the shooting.[70][71] BLM was part of a march for peace on the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge in South Carolina.[72] After the Charleston shooting, a number of memorials to the Confederate States of America were graffitied with “Black Lives Matter” or otherwise vandalized.[73][74]Around 800 people protested in McKinney, Texas after a video was released showing an officer pinning a girl—at a pool party in McKinney, Texas—to the ground with his knees.[75]
In July, BLM protesters shut down Allen Road in Toronto, Ontario, protesting the shooting deaths of two black men in the metropolitan area—Andrew Loku and Jermaine Carby—at the hands of police.[76] BLM activists across the United States began protests over the death of Sandra Bland, an African-American woman, who was allegedly found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas.[77][78] In Cincinnati, Ohio, BLM rallied and protested the Death of Samuel DuBose after he was shot and killed by a University of Cincinnati police officer.[79] In Newark, New Jersey, over a thousand BLM activists marched against police brutality, racial injustice, and economic inequality.[80]
In August, BLM organizers held a rally in Washington, D.C., calling for a stop to violence against transgender women.[81] In St. Louis, Missouri, BLM activists protested the death of Mansur Ball-Bey who was shot and killed by police.[82] In Charlotte, North Carolina, after a judge declared a mistrial in the trial of a white Charlotte police officer who killed an unarmed black man, Jonathan Ferrell, BLM protested and staged die-ins.[83] In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Janelle Monae, Jidenna and other BLM activists marched through North Philadelphia to bring awareness to police brutality and Black Lives Matter.[84]
Around August 9, the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s death, BLM rallied, held vigil and marched in St. Louis and across the country.[85][86]
Black Lives Matter protest against St. Paul police brutality at Metro Green Line
In October, Black Lives Matters activists were arrested during a protest of a police chiefs conference in Chicago.[92] Activists in Los Angeles Black Lives Matter activists were among several organizations that disrupted a community meeting with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti at a church in South L.A. [93] The protesters said that Garcetti had broken a promise to work with their organization to plan a meeting. The pastor of the church that hosted the meeting denied that Black Lives Matter organizers had been excluded. [94]
“Rise Up October” straddled the Black Lives Matter Campaign, and brought several protests.[95]Quentin Tarantino and Cornel West, participating in “Rise Up October”, decried police violence.[96] A Dunkin Donuts employee in Providence, Rhode Island wrote “black lives matter” on a police officer’s cup of coffee which resulted in protests.[clarification needed][97] At UCLA, students protested “Black Bruins Matter” after some students wore blackface to a Kanye West-themed fraternity party.[98]
In November, BLM activists protested after Jamar Clark was shot by Minneapolis Police Department.[99] Later that month, after continuous protest at the Minneapolis 4th Precinct Police Station, a march was organized to honor Jamar Clark, from the 4th Precinct to downtown Minneapolis. After the march, masked men carrying firearms appeared and began calling the protesters racial slurs. After protesters asked the armed men to leave, the men opened fire, shooting five protesters.[100] All injuries required hospitalization, but were not life-threatening. The men fled the scene only to later be found and arrested. The men arrested were young, one white, one Hispanic, both believed to be white supremacists.[101]
In November 2015, students at Dartmouth College held a peaceful meeting and march after a Black Lives Matter art installation on the campus was vandalized. After the march, a smaller group of students entered the university library and conducted a protest there.[102]The Dartmouth Review, a conservative campus publication, reported that the protesters had shoved other students and used profanity. Campus police and college officials claimed they had not observed any incidents of shoving or other physical violence.[103]
2016
In late May, BLM activists[disputed – discuss] disrupted a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos at DePaul University. Security did not intervene to stop the protests, despite the university requiring organizers to cover the cost of additional security.[104][105]
2016 presidential election
In the summer of 2015, Black Lives Matter began to publicly challenge politicians—including 2016 United States presidential candidates—to state their positions on BLM issues.[106]
Influence
Bernie Sanders and Black Lives Matter activists in Westlake Park, Seattle
In August 2015, the Democratic National Committee passed a resolution supporting Black Lives Matter.[107]
In the first Democratic debate, the presidential candidates were asked whether black lives matter or all lives matter.[108] In reply, Bernie Sanders stated “black lives matter.”[108]Martin O’Malley said, “Black lives matter,” and that the “movement is making is a very, very legitimate and serious point, and that is that as a nation we have undervalued the lives of black lives, people of color.”[109]Jim Webb, on the other hand, replied: “as the president of the United States, every life in this country matters.”[108]Hillary Clinton was not directly asked the same question, but was instead asked: “What would you do for African Americans in this country that President Obama couldn’t?”[110]
In response to what she would do differently from President Obama for African-Americans, Hillary Clinton pushed for criminal justice reform, and said, “We need a new New Deal for communities of color.”[111] Clinton had already met with Black Lives Matter representatives in August 2015, and expressed skepticism in the movement’s practical application.[clarification needed][112] In June 2015, Clinton was reported to have said “All lives matter.”[113]
Republican candidates have been mostly critical of BLM. In August 2015, Ben Carson, the only African American vying for the presidency, called the movement “silly”.[114]Carson also said that BLM should care for all black lives, not just a few.[115] In the first Republican presidential debate, which took place in Cleveland, only one question referenced Black Lives Matter.[116] In response to the question, Scott Walker did not acknowledge Black Lives Matter and advocated for the proper training of law enforcement.[116]
Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker blamed the movement for rising anti-police sentiment,[117] while Marco Rubio was the first candidate to publicly sympathize with the movement’s point of view.[118]
Several conservative pundits have labeled the movement a “hate group”.[119] Candidate Chris Christie, the New Jersey Governor, criticized President Obama for supporting BLM, claiming the movement calls for the murder of police officers,[120] which was condemned by New Jersey chapters of the NAACP and ACLU.[121]
BLM activists called on the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee to have a presidential debate focused on issues of racial justice.[122] Both parties, however, declined to alter their debate schedule, and instead the parties support a townhall or forum.[123]
Protests
Black Lives Matter on Black Friday2014 at Times Square
At the Netroots Nation Conference in July 2015, dozens of Black Lives Matter activists took over the stage at an event featuring Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders. Activists, including Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors, asked both candidates for specific policy proposals to address deaths in police custody.[124] The protesters chanted several slogans, including “if I die in police custody, burn everything down”. After conference organizers pleaded with the protesters for several minutes, O’Malley responded by pledging to release a wide-ranging plan for criminal justice reform. Protesters later booed O’Malley when he stated “Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter.”[125]O’Malley later apologized for his remarks, saying that he didn’t mean to disrespect the black community.[125]
On August 8, 2015, a speech by Democratic presidential candidate and civil rights activist Bernie Sanders was disrupted by a group from the Seattle Chapter of Black Lives Matter including chapter co-founder Marissa Johnson[126] who walked onstage, seized the microphone from him and called his supporters racists and white supremacists.[127][128][129] Sanders issued a platform in response.[130]
Nikki Stephens, the operator of a Facebook page called “Black Lives Matter: Seattle” issued an apology to Sanders’ supporters, claiming these actions did not represent her understanding of BLM. She was then sent messages by members of the Seattle Chapter which she described as threatening, and was forced to change the name of her group to “Black in Seattle”. The founders of Black Lives Matter stated that they had not issued an apology.[131]
In August, activists chanting “Black Lives Matter” interrupted the Las Vegas rally of Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush.[132] As Bush exited early, some of his supporters started responding to the protesters by chanting “white lives matter” or “all lives matter”.[133]
In October, a speech by Hillary Clinton on criminal justice reform and race at Atlanta University Center was interrupted by BLM activists.[134]
In November, a BLM protester was physically assaulted at a Donald Trump rally in Birmingham, Alabama. In response, Trump said, “maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.”[135] Trump had previously threatened to fight any Black Lives Matter protesters if they attempted to speak at one of his events.[136]
In March 2016, Black Lives Matter helped organize the 2016 Donald Trump Chicago rally protest that forced Trump to cancel the event.[137][138] Four individuals were arrested and charged in the incident. Two were “charged with felony aggravated battery to a police officer and resisting arrest”, one was “charged with two misdemeanor counts of resisting and obstructing a peace officer”, and the fourth “was charged with one misdemeanor count of resisting and obstructing a peace officer”.[139] A CBS reporter was one of those arrested outside the rally. He was charged with resisting arrest.[140]
“All Lives Matter”
Some[who?] have responded to the Black Lives Matter movement by countering that the phrase “All Lives Matter” would be a more proper title. Tim Scott has defended the usage of the “All Lives Matter” term.[141]
On Real Time with Bill MaherBill Maher expressed support of the “Black Lives Matter” phrase, stating that “‘All Lives Matter’ implies that all lives are equally at risk, and they’re not”.[142] Founders have responded to criticism of the movement’s exclusivity, saying, “#BlackLivesMatter doesn’t mean your life isn’t important – it means that Black lives, which are seen without value within White supremacy, are important to your liberation.”[143]
In a video interview with Laura Flanders, Garza discussed how “changing Black Lives Matter to All Lives Matter is a demonstration of how we don’t actually understand structural racism in this country”. She went on to discuss how other lives are valued more than black lives, which she strongly feels is wrong, and that to take blackness out of this equation is inappropriate.[144]
The movement challenges the “universalizing politics” implied in the notion of a Post-racial America, and the phrase ‘All Lives Matter’ reflects a view of “racial dismissal, ignoring, and denial”, according to critical race theory scholar David Theo Goldberg.[145]
President Barack Obama spoke to the debate between Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter.[146] Obama said, “I think that the reason that the organizers used the phrase Black Lives Matter was not because they were suggesting that no one else’s lives matter … rather what they were suggesting was there is a specific problem that is happening in the African American community that’s not happening in other communities.” He also said “that is a legitimate issue that we’ve got to address.”[14]
On February 24, 2016, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, sent out a company-wide internal memo to employees formally rebuking employees who had crossed out handwritten “Black Lives Matter” phrases on the company walls and had written “All Lives Matter” in their place. Facebook allows employees to free-write thoughts and phrases on company walls. The memo was then leaked by several employees. As Zuckerberg had previously condemned this practice at previous company meetings, and other similar requests had been issued by other leaders at Facebook, Zuckerberg wrote in the memo that he would now consider this overwriting practice not only disrespectful, but “malicious as well”.[147]
According to Zuckerberg’s memo, “Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean other lives don’t – it’s simply asking that the black community also achieves the justice they deserve.” The memo noted that the act of crossing something out in itself, “means silencing speech, or that one person’s speech is more important than another’s”.[148][149][150]
Criticism
Issues protested
African-American critics of the movement include neurosurgeon and former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, minister Johnathan Gentry of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ, and author and minister Barbara Ann Reynolds.[151][152]
Deroy Murdock questioned the number of black people killed by police that is reported by BLM. He wrote, “But the notion that America’s cops simply are gunning down innocent black people is one of today’s biggest and deadliest lies.”[153] The hashtag #BlueLivesMatter was created by supporters who stood up for police officers’ lives.[154] Some critics also accuse Black Lives Matter of “anti-white and anti-police radicalism”.[155]
Many individuals in law enforcement have been critical of BLM. Sheriff David A. Clarke, Jr of Milwaukee County has been critical of Black Lives Matter, stating that there is no police brutality problem in America and that “there is no racism in the hearts of police officers”.[156] John McWhorter said that the Black Lives Matter movement should take on black-on-black crime.[157]
Seattle SeahawksRichard Sherman said about the “Black Lives Matter” movement, “I dealt with a best friend getting killed, and it was [by] two 35-year-old black men. There was no police officer involved, there wasn’t anybody else involved, and I didn’t hear anybody shouting ‘black lives matter’ then.”[158]
Breitbart journalist Milo Yiannopoulos has criticized the structure and main goals of the BLM movement.[159]
Tactics
Some black civil rights leaders, such as Rev. Cecil “Chip” Murray, Najee Ali, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, have criticized the tactics of BLM.[160] Marchers using a BLM banner were recorded in a video chanting, “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon” at the Minnesota State Fair. Law enforcement groups said that the chant promotes death to police. The protest organizer disputed that interpretation.[161]
A North Carolina police chief retired after calling BLM a terrorist group.[162] A police officer in Oregon was removed from street duty following a social media post in which he said he would have to “babysit these fools”, in reference to planned BLM event.[163]
Some commentators and law enforcement have said that BLM has made it hard for police to do their job, leading to a rise in crime rates.[153] Commentators have referred to this as the “Ferguson effect.”[153]FBI DirectorJames Comey, for example, suggested that the movement is partly leading to a national rise in crime rates because police officers have pulled back from doing their jobs.[164] However, there had been even larger crime spikes prior to the events in Ferguson.[165]
White groups
In response to BLM, Facebook pages purporting to represent “White Student Unions” with the slogan “White Lives Matter” have been linked to college campuses in the United States.[166] The pages often promise a “safe space” for white students and condemn alleged anti-white racism on campus.[167] However, many of the groups were not verified as legitimate student organizations registered with their respective universities.[166]
Media depictions
See also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter
Hillary Clinton Blames Whites, Cops for Deaths of Young Black Men
Hillary Clinton used a CNN interview on Friday to completely embrace the Democrats’ claim that white people and cops must change to help reduce the number of African-Americans killed in tense exchanges with cops.
by NEIL MUNRO
“I will call for white people, like myself, to put ourselves in the shoes of those African-American families who fear every time their children go somewhere, who have to have ‘The Talk,’ about, you now, how to really protect themselves [from police], when they’re the ones who should be expecting protection from encounters with police,” Clinton told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
“I’m going to be talking to white people, we’re the ones who have to start listening to the legitimate cries coming from our African-American fellow citizens,” she said.
“We’ve got to figure out what is happening when routine traffic stops, when routine arrests, escalate into killings … Clearly, there seems to be a terrible disconnect between many police departments and officers and the people they have sworn to protect,” she said.
Federal policing guidelines are needed because “we have 18,000 police departments… [some of which need more training to] go after systemic racism, which is a reality, and to go after systemic bias,” she said.
“We’ve got to start once again respecting and treating each other with the dignity that every person deserves,” she said.
The statement echoed a tweet from Friday morning.
To win in November, Clinton need a high turnout of African-American voters.
Neither Blitzer nor Clinton suggested that African-American communities have a role in reducing police-encounter deaths, which usually occur in tense engagements between a few cops and a few suspects with extensive criminal histories.
In general, young African-American men are far more likely to commit crimes than young white men, young Asian men or young Latino men. A November 2011 report by the Justice Department showed that young African-American men are just 1 percent of the population, yet are responsible for a disproportionate percentage of murders in the nation.
Clinton suggested that people who disagree with her agenda are racists. “There is so much more to be done… we can’t be engaging in hateful rhetoric or incitement of violence, we need to be bringing people together … we need more love and kindness.”
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/07/08/hillary-clinton-blame-whites-cops-shooting-deaths-young-black-men/
Black Lives Matter protesters sprayed with tear gas in Phoenix as rally spirals out of control and thousands demonstrate against police brutality, with cops on high alert following Dallas massacre
By OLLIE GILLMAN and KHALEDA RAHMAN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and ASSOCIATED PRESS
PUBLISHED: 12:41 EST, 8 July 2016 | UPDATED: 08:13 EST, 9 July 2016
Black Lives Matter protesters have been sprayed with tear gas in Phoenix after a march against police brutality spiraled out of control.
Police also fired bean bag rounds and pepper spray at the protesters, who were seen running away and shielding their eyes.
One image showed a white man holding a Donald Trump ‘Make America Great Again’ placard interrupting the protest on Friday night.
Less than three hours after the demonstration began at 8pm, police declared the protest an ‘unlawful assembly’ and ordered people to leave after objects were thrown at officers, the Arizona Republic reported.
In Rochester, New York, the SWAT team arrived and police arrested 74 protesters who were blocking the streets. One organizer, Ashley Gantt, said they sat down because they did not want any movement to be misinterpreted as violence after the shootings in Dallas.
Other protests were calmer, with an estimated 5,000 people marching peacefully along a highway in Atlanta as they demanded justice for black men killed by police officers in recent days.
There was a heavy police presence at the Atlanta rally as protesters halted traffic, with officers on high alert following Thursday’s massacre in Dallas.
Gunman Micah Xavier Johnson, 25, shot 12 officers and two civilians on a rampage that killed five Dallas cops.
Friday evening’s protest came as police forces across the country braced for any fall-out from the horrific shooting in Texas.
Black Lives Matter protesters have been sprayed with tear gas in Phoenix after a march against police brutality spiraled out of control. Pictured, a white man holding a Donald Trump ‘Make America Great Again’ placard interrupting the protest on Friday night
A protester gets help after being knocked to the ground after being pepper sprayed by police as marchers numbering nearly 1,000 take to the streets to protest against the recent fatal shootings of black men by police
Demonstrators try to ease the burning with several jugs of milk, which is commonly used as an antidote against capsicum, the same chemical found in hot chili peppers. Experts advise using water or saline instead, before washing the area with non-oil based soap
A protester raises him arms in front of a police blockade as marchers take to the streets to demonstrate against the recent fatal shootings of black men by police
Police in riot gear move in to break up a group of marchers as hundreds take to the streets to protest against the fatal shootings
Police declared the protest an ‘unlawful assembly’ by 11pm and ordered people to leave after objects were thrown at officers, the Arizona Republic reported (pictured, two protesters in downtown Phoenix last night)
Peaceful protests erupted around the country to protest the recent deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, but tensions were high in Phoenix
Three people were arrested, according to Phoenix police. Crowds had thinned out considerably by 11pm as police repeatedly asked people to return home
People began gathering outside Phoenix City Hall for the march scheduled at 8pm on Friday. By 10pm, police had begun using pepper spray to control the crowds
Civil rights leader Reverend Jarrett Maupin led the march and tried to shut down the freeway at one point before diverting the crowds. Police had blocked off the ramps to Interstate 10 as a precaution (pictured, one man kneeling with his arms up before police in riot gear)
Police shot bean bags into the crowd after rocks were reportedly thrown at them. While bean bags are meant to deliver a blow without penetrating the body like a bullet would, they can cause internal bleeding or break bones
Police departments around the country have taken extra precautions following the shooting at a protest in Dallas. Gunman Micah Xavier Johnson shot dead five police officers and injured seven more (pictured, demonstrators at the rally in Phoenix)
In Rochester, New York, the SWAT team arrived and police arrested 74 protesters who were blocking the streets (pictured, one demonstrator in Phoenix holding the flag upside down, a signal for dire distress)
Thousands more people took part in smaller protests across America, with demonstrations in Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Utah and Washington, DC
Thousands more people took part in smaller protests across America, with demonstrations in Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Utah and Washington, DC.
Also, in Los Angeles, rappers Snoop Dogg and The Game led a peaceful march to the LAPD’s headquarters, where they met with the mayor and police chief and urged improved relations between authorities and minority communities. Protests were also planned in Oakland and San Francisco on Friday night.
In Atlanta, demonstrators flooded the streets and brought traffic to a standstill Friday after gathering at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights near Centennial Olympic Park.
Police break up a group outside a store as nearly 1,000 protesters march in the streets to protest against the recent fatal shootings of two black men by police
Police send out tear gas to break up marchers numbering nearly 1,000 as they take to the streets to protest
Thousands of protesters have blocked a highway in Atlanta as they march through the city to demonstrate against police brutality
‘Who do you call when the murderer wears a badge?’ An estimated 5,000 people halted traffic as they demanded justice for black men killed at the hands of police officers
There was a heavy police presence during the peaceful protest (pictured), with officers on high alert following Thursday’s massacre of cops in Dallas
Friday evening’s protest came as police forces across the country braced for any fall-out from the horrific shooting in Texas
Killer: Dallas gunman Micah Johnson (pictured) told officers he was upset about recent shootings and wanted to kill whites, ‘especially white officers’
Protesters chanted: ‘Hands up, don’t shoot.’
People protesting police brutality in Dallas on Thursday evening were belting out the same chant when Johnson first opened fire.
Tonight’s protests have been peaceful and no arrests have been made.
The marches are in response to the recent shootings of black men Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, who were shot by white police officers in Louisiana and Minnesota respectively.
‘Hands up don’t shoot’: Demonstrators march through downtown Atlanta to protest the shootings of two black men by police officers
The marches are in response to the recent shootings of black men Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, who were shot by white police officers in Louisiana and Minnesota respectively
Sterling (left) was killed following a confrontation outside a Baton Rouge convenience store early Tuesday morning. Castile (right), 32, was shot dead by a cop during a traffic stop in Minnesota
Police chiefs in New York, Washington, D.C, Boston, Las Vegas, St. Louis, and Nassau County have ordered officers to partner up for assignments.
The NYPD’s chief of department James O’Neill said until further notice, officers are banned from responding to calls alone.
‘Effective immediately and until further notice, all uniform members of service are to be assigned in pairs,’ an internal memo from O’Neill says, according to WPIX reporter Myles Miller.
Demonstrators march through downtown Atlanta
O’Neill added: ‘There will be no solo assignments citywide.’
Washington’s police chief Cathy Lanier ordered officers and supervisors in the capital to also pair up while on duty.
‘Looking at the type of attack that happened in Dallas, a two-man car, a four-man car, a 10-man car, isn’t going to make much of a difference,’ Lanier said, according to the Washington Post.
‘But it makes the officers feel much safer.’
Meanwhile, Cincinnati police spokeswoman Tiffaney Hardy says police will use two-officer patrols throughout the weekend, ‘then we will re-evaluate.’
A police union official says some officers had expressed desire to be in two-officer cars for increased safety.
Boston Police Department tweeted: ‘In light of the tragedy in Dallas and in the best interests of officer safety, all #BPD patrols will be conducted by two-officer units.’
The Las Vegas Police Department said officers will be operating in pairs because of reports of planned protests in cities across the country.
‘Based on reports of protests in several major cities across the US, on-duty #LVMPD officers will be working in pairs until further notice,’ the department tweeted.
In St Louis, Missouri, police chief Sam Dotson said all officers will also be required to wear bulletproof vests.
In a statement, Dotson said late on Thursday night: ‘Due to events unfolding in Dallas, Texas, effective immediately, all on-duty officers will work in pairs until further notice.
‘No police officers, park rangers or mashals will be sent or handle any assignments without a partner.
‘In addition to this, all personnel leaving any of the stations for enforcement activities will be required to wear their ballistic vest.’
He added: ‘Although locally we are not experiencing any civil unrest, this decision is precautionary and is to maximize the safety of officers and our community.’
The Nassau County Police Department officials said that all necessary steps were being taken to ensure the safety of police officers and the public.
In a statement on Friday, the department said: ‘Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of this heinous act of violence and their families.
‘The NCPD is taking all necessary steps to ensure the safety of the public and our police officers.
‘We will intensify patrols in areas of public gatherings and near critical infrastructure.
‘Social media outlets will be intensely monitored and we request the public’s assistance in any way possible to stop threats to public safety.’
Five Dallas police officers were fatally shot and seven others wounded during a protest over the deaths of black men killed by police this week in Louisiana and Minnesota – the deadliest day for U.S. law enforcement since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Police officers are on alert across the country in the wake of deadly sniper attacks in Dallas on Thursday that left five cops dead. Above, Dallas police chief David Brown (left) and Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings
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Police chiefs in New York, Washington, D.C, Boston, Las Vegas, St. Louis, and Nassau County have ordered officers to partner up for assignment
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3681287/Police-officers-alert-nationwide-wake-Dallas-shooting.html#ixzz4Dw2QrUBo
BLACK LIVES MATTER: PROGRESSIVE FINANCED VANGUARD OF SOCIALIST CONTROL
CIA sponsored Cloward–Piven strategy bankrolled by liberal dupes aims for race war and order out of chaos
Kurt Nimmo – JULY 10, 2016
Black Lives Matter: Progressive Financed Vanguard of Socialist Control
Is it possible liberal billionaires would support a racist group that markets white guilt for political gain and embraces activists calling for the lynching of white people and cops?
In November, members of Black Lives Matter (BLM) met behind closed doors with Democracy Alliance, a coterie of wealthy liberals who have pledged to fund leftist organizations.
The donor club was founded by former Clinton Treasury official Rob Stein. Members include the billionaire “philanthropist” George Soros, Taco Bell silver spoon baby Rob McKay, uber liberal Norman Lear, “meathead” Rob Reiner, co-founder of Tides Network Drummond Pike, SEIU boss Anna Burger (members of the union like to beat up opponents), and former Rockefeller Family Fund president Anne Bartley.
“The DA, as the club is known in Democratic circles, is recommending its donors step up check writing to a handful of endorsed groups that have supported the Black Lives Matter movement. And the club and some of its members also are considering ways to funnel support directly to scrappier local groups that have utilized confrontational tactics to inject their grievances into the political debate,” Politico reported.
Investigative journalist James Simpson has exposed connections between BLM and a constellation of leftist and Marxist groups, a number of them established as fronts by the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO).
“BLM is one of many projects undertaken by the FRSO,” writes Simpson. He points out that FRSO and BLM receive funding through the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA). “FRSO/BLM organizations are generously supported by a universe of wealthy foundations. Some, like those employing BLM founders [Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi] receive money directly.”
Many FRSO connected leftist and Marxist groups are also funded by other wealthy individuals, foundations, and corporations, including Kellogg, Ben & Jerry’s, Soros Funds, Hewlett, Rockefeller, Heinz, and others.
The Ford Foundation tops the list of NDWA financial contributors. It has funded CIA cultural fronts since the 1950s.
“At times it seemed as if the Ford Foundation was simply an extension of Government in the area of international cultural propaganda. The Ford Foundation had a record of close involvement in covert actions in Europe, working closely with Marshall Plan and CIA officials on specific projects,” writes the author of The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, Frances Stonor Saunders.
It may seem contradictory for the state and wealthy liberals—many undoubtedly brainwashed dupes—to support organizations and individuals calling for abolishing capitalism and advocating the most severe form of Marxist ideology.
As the late Gary Allen so eloquently pointed out (None Dare Call It Conspiracy), socialism is a perfect mechanism for controlling humanity.
“If one understands that socialism is not a share-the-wealth program, but is in reality a method to consolidate and control the wealth, then the seeming paradox of superrich men promoting socialism becomes no paradox at all. Instead it becomes the logical, even the perfect tool of power-seeking megalomaniacs. Communism, or more accurately, socialism, is not a movement of the downtrodden masses, but of the economic elite.”
http://www.infowars.com/black-lives-matter-progressive-financed-vanguard-of-socialist-control/
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