EPA Was Warned of Fraudster’s Illegal Bonuses

EPA Was Warned of Fraudster’s Illegal Bonuses

IG finds ‘management inaction’ allowed EPA employee to collect illegal salary

John Beale / C-Span screenshot

BY: CJ Ciaramella
December 12, 2013 9:00 am
The Environmental Protection Agency waited three years to act on warnings that a senior official who pretended to be a CIA spy was collecting illegal and excessive salary bonuses, the agency’s Office of Inspector General said in a report to be released Thursday.
The OIG said “ineffective internal controls” and “management inaction” enabled John C. Beale to collect unauthorized retention bonuses that boosted his salary above the legal limit.
The EPA’s human resources department flagged the salary of Beale, a deputy assistant administrator in the agency’s Office of Air and Radiation, as early as July 2010 according to a copy of the report obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Auditors warned that Beale’s salary exceeded the “Executive level I” statutory pay limit—a federal salary schedule reserved for cabinet members—in 2008 and 2009.
The EPA Office of General Counsel recommended in January 2011 that retention bonuses be canceled and requested the then-Assistant Administrator Gina McCarthy hold an “information exchange” with Beale.
However, in April 2012 McCarthy confirmed that there were “no actions taken” on retention bonuses at the advice of the human resources department.
Beale’s retention bonus would not be cancelled until February 2013, more than a year after he announced his retirement.
Beale pled guilty in September to time card and travel fraud spanning two decades and amounting to nearly $900,000 in taxpayer dollars. Beale also spent a total of two and half years absent from work, claiming he was away on CIA business.
The latest Inspector General report appears to contradict the EPA’s earlier narrative that McCarthy, who is now the EPA administrator, stopped Beale’s fraud when she first discovered it.
Republican investigators in Congress said the new report raises more questions about McCarthy’s knowledge of Beale.
“We now know that all three senior officials directly supervised by Gina McCarthy in her previous role with the EPA have been implicated in this egregious fraud,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) said in a statement to the Free Beacon. “This raises serious questions about her capabilities as a manager and leader, which the Committee will investigate along with other systemic problems at the EPA.”
Sen. David Vitter (R., La.), who requested the Inspector General report, said, “I don’t care how manipulative the individual was, somebody at the agency had to approve and sign off on leave, travel, salary, and bonuses.”
“This clearly shows some severe mismanagement problems at the EPA and my guess is that it’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Vitter continued.
The EPA maintains that McCarthy was key to discovering Beale’s fraud and said it has reformed its practices.
“This is a convicted felon who went to great lengths to deceive and defraud the U.S. government over the span of more than a decade,” the EPA said in a statement. “Since learning of the fraud, which was uncovered by Administrator McCarthy during her time as head of the Office of Air and Radiation, EPA has worked in coordination with its Inspector General and the U.S. Attorney’s office.”
“The agency has also put in place additional safeguards to help protect against fraud and abuse related to employee time and attendance, including strengthening supervisory controls of time and attendance, improved review of employee travel and a tightened retention incentive processes,” the EPA continued.
The EPA did not answer questions of whether McCarthy saw the reports warning of Beale’s illicit retention bonuses.
During an October hearing held by the House Oversight Committee, investigators from the Office of Inspector General painted a different timeline of how Beale was discovered.
“To our knowledge, prior to [current EPA Administrator] Gina McCarthy expressing her concerns, no one at EPA ever checked to see if Mr. Beale worked for the CIA,” said Assistant Inspector General Patrick Sullivan, who led the investigation into Beale.
Beale had been telling his coworkers he was CIA spy since 1994, and the air of mystery surrounding him led many of his supervisors to accept his long absences.
Witnesses said McCarthy first became suspicious of Beale in March 2012.
“I think that Administrator McCarthy was suspicious” for a while, EPA Deputy Administrator Bob Perciasepe said during October’s hearing. According to him, McCarthy was the first person since 2001 to seriously question Beale’s absences.
“John—was just filling out paperwork … and came across your file,” McCarthy wrote in a November 2012 email to Beale. “How are you? Maybe we should reconnect so you can catch me up on your plans.”
Investigators said it was around this time that another staffer brought Beale’s continuing paycheck to McCarthy’s attention.
Beale had announced his retirement In May 2011 and even had a going-away dinner cruise on the Potomac River that September, which McCarthy attended.
According to the Inspector General’s report, Beale’s “supposed retirement delayed agency action by the EPA” because it was assumed this would solve his pay problems.
However, staff at the Office of Air and Radiation “mass approved” time cards, including Beale’s, without any supervisory review.
Beale had a special code on his timecard that allowed his salary to exceed legal limits, according to the Inspector General report.
After McCarthy realized Beale was still on the payroll, she relayed her concerns to the EPA’s general counsel, rather than notifying the Office of Inspector General, which is equipped to handle criminal investigations.
According to latest Inspector General report, a staff attorney at the general counsel office declined to be interviewed for the investigation, despite being required to do so under the Inspector General Act.
As a result, the Office of Inspector General was “limited in our ability to determine OGC’s involvement in, knowledge of ,and actions related to the Beale matter,” the report says.
The general counsel then referred the matter to the EPA’s Office of Homeland Security, due to its contacts with the intelligence community.
McCarthy wrote again to Beale on Feb. 5, notifying him that she had discovered he was still receiving retention bonuses and had canceled them.
McCarthy and the EPA finally passed on their suspicions to the Office of Inspector General on Feb. 11. By that time, three months had passed, and Beale had been interviewed twice.
Sullivan testified that the delay and the probe by the agency’s office of homeland security, which has no criminal investigative authority, harmed their own investigation.
“That’s basic law enforcement 101,” Sullivan said. “You never interview the suspect until you have all your facts lined up.”
The hearing also revealed that Robert Brenner, a longtime colleague and friend of Beale’s at the EPA, was previously investigated for accepting an $8,000 discount on a Mercedes-Benz allegedly arranged by a lobbyist who did business with the EPA.
The Office of Inspector General believed it could prove that a crime was committed, but the Justice Department declined to pursue the case. Brenner retired before the office could interview him, Sullivan said.
Brenner was Beale’s supervisor in the early ‘90s and first recommended him for the retention bonus.
Beale retired for real on April 30 this year, entitling him to a full federal pension. Overall, he received roughly $500,000 in retention bonuses that should have been subject to annual reviews.
Democrats and liberal news outlets praised McCarthy for her allegedly swift action in stopping Beale.
“How EPA Head Gina McCarthy Uncovered A Million-Dollar Fraudster,” the liberal blog ThinkProgress declared in a headline.
“According to a source that spoke with E&E News, McCarthy uncovered Beale’s fraud earlier this year while she was still head of the Air and Radiation office,” ThinkProgress wrote. “After spotting discrepancies on time sheets and internal reports, McCarthy brought the matter to authorities and eventually pushed Beale to resign this past Spring.”
A separate OIG report on Beale’s travel fraud, also obtained by the Free Beacon, found that lax oversight and poor controls allowed Beale to rack up travel expenses without consequence.
As previously reported by the Free Beacon, Beale spent thousands of dollars on five-star hotels and airfare.
Travel vouchers reviewed by the Free Beacon, which covered 2008 through 2011, all lacked certification signatures and dates.
Additionally, the EPA redacted the names of the supervisors who approved Beale’s travel expenses in the vouchers obtained by the Free Beacon through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Overall, Beale took 33 trips between 2003 and 2011 that cost taxpayers $266,190. He flew first class on 70 percent of those trips, even though he was required to use business class if available.
Beale also secured a parking spot for the disabled at EPA headquarters, claiming he had contracted malaria while serving in Vietnam.
Beale is scheduled to be sentenced in federal court on Dec. 18. As part of his plea deal, he has agreed to pay more than $1 million in restitution and civil forfeitures.

This entry was posted in Issues and tagged EPA. Bookmark the permalink.

New York Satanists Plan Opposing Statue to Ten Commandments in Oklahoma

Home » 1st Amendment » New York Satanists Plan Opposing Statue to Ten Commandments in Oklahoma

New York Satanists Plan Opposing Statue to Ten Commandments in Oklahoma

Posted By Richard Anthony on Dec 12, 2013 in 1st Amendment, Articles, Christianity, News, US News | 0 comments

Something as simple as placing a statue of the Ten Commandments in the grass by a sidewalk shouldn’t be that big of a deal right? Well, apparently it is in Oklahoma, particularly if it is near the state capitol building. No, nobody wants to tear it down, but a New York based group wants to erect a statue right next to it of their religious figure – Satan. The New York based Satanic temple wants “equal religious representation” right next to the Ten Commandments. They will submit designs for something “tasteful,” of course.
Is this a joke, nope I’m afraid it isn’t boys and girls. The American Civil Liberties Union has taken up the case and is pursuing the Satanists’ rights with a religious zeal.

Fox News reports:

The Republican-controlled Legislature in this state known as the buckle of the Bible Belt authorized the privately funded Ten Commandments monument in 2009, and it was placed on the Capitol grounds last year despite criticism from legal experts who questioned its constitutionality. The Oklahoma chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit seeking its removal.

But the New York-based Satanic Temple saw an opportunity. It notified the state’s Capitol Preservation Commission that it wants to donate a monument and plans to submit one of several possible designs this month, said Lucien Greaves, a spokesman for the temple.

“We believe that all monuments should be in good taste and consistent with community standards,” Greaves wrote in letter to state officials. “Our proposed monument, as an homage to the historic/literary Satan, will certainly abide by these guidelines.”

Greaves said one potential design involves a pentagram, a satanic symbol, while another is meant to be an interactive display for children. He said he expects the monument, if approved by Oklahoma officials, would cost about $20,000.

The circumstances surrounding this case are simply ludicrous. A stone monument of the Ten Commandments sits across the street from the U.S. Supreme Court, so what’s the big deal?  The term “Separation of Church and State” is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. However, there is this:

“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.”

To me, I simply read that congress will not make any law respecting a religion or prohibiting someone from worshiping however they want. I do not see anything that says there cannot be a religious symbol on Government or public property. The Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue, are a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship, which play a fundamental role in Judaism and Christianity. Principles on which this nation was founded. They include instructions to worship only God and to keep the Sabbath, and prohibitions against idolatry, blasphemy, murder, theft, dishonesty, and adultery. Different groups follow slightly different traditions for interpreting and numbering them.
Satanism is not a world-wide major religion, but a cult. As we all know, Satan is the father of evil and lies (just like the occupant in the White House). In this “Politically Correct” charged world, where the few hold sway over the many by a number of means under the guise of “equality,” when are we going to simply say “Enough is enough”? To me, this entire episode playing-out in Oklahoma is nothing short of complete ridiculousness. Like I said in my previous article, it’s bad enough that I’m supposed to give radical Islam a pass when they rape and murder with impunity. It’s bad enough that I am forced to accept homosexuality as “normal healthy behavior.”  It’s also bad enough that I’m supposed to walk around saddled with “white guilt” for something none of my ancestors did to black people. But now because of some scumbag lawyer from the ACLU, I’m supposed to recognize and tolerate Satan? I don’t think so.
Barack Hussein Obama was lying when he said we are not a Christian nation- we are and always have been that. We tolerate others, but the very basis of our founding was on Judeo-Christian principles, not those of Islam, not Buddhist and certainly not those of Satan.
Christianity is under attack worldwide and because we “turn the other cheek” and under the guise of political correctness we are systematically being wiped-out. If you do not believe me, just take a look at what is happening in Europe. The enemies of Christ have all but conquered Europe and not a single sword has been raised, or a single shot has been fired there. Make no mistake, it will happen here if we do not act and act quickly.  Obama is purging our military of Christian heterosexual males and has all but outlawed the open worship of the Christian faith in our armed forces, but to be fair, he called the Islamic terrorist attack at Ft. Hood “workplace violence.”
Do you see now why we have to shake this yoke of evil from around our necks? If we fail to re-take the Senate and hold on to the majority in the House of Representatives, then there will not be “One nation under God” left to save by the time Obama is done with his second term.
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Treasury Department Tightens Iran Sanctions

Treasury Department Tightens Iran Sanctions

Treasury targets companies involved in Iran's weapons programs

Iranian gas refinery, Qom, Iran / AP

BY: Adam Kredo
December 12, 2013 10:55 am
The Treasury Department on Thursday tightened the economic screws on Iran by sanctioning a range of companies and individuals for their efforts to bolster Iran’s nuclear and WMD programs.
The crackdown comes as the Obama administration pushes Congress to hold off on passing a new round of economic sanctions on Iran that it argues could destroy a recently reached nuclear accord meant to temporarily freeze Tehran’s uranium enrichment program.
The additional sanctions will “target entities and individuals involved in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)-related materiel and attempts to evade international sanctions against Iran,” the Treasury Department announced in a statement.
“The conduct of these entities and individuals demonstrates Iran’s extensive efforts to conceal its evasive activities by using front companies in foreign countries to deceive foreign suppliers to support its illicit proliferation and evasion activities.”
Senior Treasury Department officials say that they will not hold off on sanctioning Iran.
“The Joint Plan of Action reached in Geneva does not, and will not, interfere with our continued efforts to expose and disrupt those supporting Iran’s nuclear program or seeking to evade our sanctions,” David S. Cohen, the department’s under secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said in a statement.
“Today’s actions should be a stark reminder to businesses, banks, and brokers everywhere that we will continue relentlessly to enforce our sanctions, even as we explore the possibility of a long-term, comprehensive resolution of our concerns with Iran’s nuclear program,” Cohen said.
“These sanctions have isolated Iran from the international financial system, imposed enormous pressure on the Iranian economy, and motivated the Iranian leadership to make the first meaningful concessions on its nuclear program in over a decade,” he added.
The latest round of designations target oil tanker companies that have been illegally carrying Iranian crude oil in a bid to help the regime skirt current sanctions.
Several Iranian front companies and officials working for “designated nuclear and weapons proliferation companies” also were targeted in the latest round of sanctions.
The new designations were issued at a critical juncture in the Iranian-U.S. relationship.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been fighting for months to pass a new Iran sanctions measure aimed at crippling Tehran’s economy and forcing it to make nuclear concessions.
The White House has fought against the measure and enlisted its Democratic allies to stall, through at least the end of 2013.
Iran has said on multiple occasions that any new sanctions would kill the interim nuclear deal that was reached several weeks ago in Geneva.
The move by Treasury is being viewed by some as a way for the Obama administration to appease lawmakers anxious for more sanctions.
“This appears to be an olive branch by the executive to Congress, demonstrating their seriousness in enforcing existing sanctions while asking members to hold off on a new tranche of sanctions against Iran while the Geneva deal plays out,” said Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the Treasury Department.
“These kinds of decisions are approved at the highest levels of the executive, through an inter-agency process,” Schanzer said. “This is, in other words, green lit by the president.”
While the latest designations by the Treasury Department will pressure Iran, they are not as powerful as a new round of sanctions, said Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).
“The problem here is that we are merely plugging leaks in our existing sanctions regime,” he said. “We are not, however, able to deal with systemic shortcomings that could be addressed by a new round of sanctions from the legislative branch.”
At least five of those entities targeted by the Treasury Department’s latest sanctions have been found to be aiding Iran’s rogue weapons programs.
Each has been “engaged in providing the Iranian government goods, technology, and services that materially contribute to or pose a risk of materially contributing to Iran’s ability to enrich uranium, construct a heavy water-moderated research reactor, and develop its ballistic missile capabilities, all of which are prohibited by United Nations Security Council Resolutions,” Treasury said in its statement.

This entry was posted in National Security and tagged Hassan Rouhani, Iran, nuclear weapons, Sanctions. Bookmark the permalink.

Russia Strengthens Ties With Vietnam

Analysis

December 12, 2013 | 0405 Print Text Size

Summary

Editor's Note: This is the first of a three-part series about Russia's intensifying focus on East Asia. Part 1 examines Russia's traditional interests in the region and its closer relationship with Vietnam.
Recent challenges in exporting energy to Europe have made an orientation toward Asia more desirable for Moscow. Russia's economy depends on hydrocarbon exports, and while Western Europe is attempting to become less dependent on Russia by seeking new energy sources, Asian markets have large and indiscriminate appetites for energy.
Although Russia's focus in Asia traditionally has been on China, Japan and South Korea, it also has ties to Southeast Asia, which remains a strategically significant -- though not absolutely essential -- area for Moscow's efforts to extend its influence and energy exports eastward. Notably, Moscow recently struck a spate of energy and defense deals with Hanoi in an effort to strengthen their relationship, open up new markets for Russian energy and balance against China's moves in Central Asia. Moscow's moves into Asia through Vietnam are proceeding piecemeal, paralleling Russian moves elsewhere in the region.

Analysis

More than 70 percent of Russian territory lies in Asia. Siberia and the Russian Far East -- sparsely populated regions holding significant mineral and hydrocarbon resources -- border China, North Korea, Mongolia and Kazakhstan and have a 4,500-kilometer (2,800-mile) Pacific coastline. Russia's Asian interests also lie to the south, in the former Soviet republics in Central Asia. Russia remains influential within these states and, under Vladimir Putin's leadership as president and prime minister, has made efforts to secure its southeastern flank anchored by the Tien Shan mountains. However, Russia's influence in Central Asia faces challenges from China, which naturally looks westward to extend its influence.

Russia's Geographic Challenge

Central Asia is not the only area where Russian and Chinese interests collide. The Asian giants' relationship has long been tense, with Sino-Soviet border disputes erupting into violence several times during the Cold War. Russia and China clearly defined their borders in 1991 but have remained in competition abroad. Russia also has a history of conflict with Japan. The countries have been longtime rivals in the northwestern Pacific, and Japan defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. In the final years of the Soviet Union, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev began orienting his foreign policy toward Asia in response to a rising Japan. Putin has also piloted a much-touted pivot to Asia, coinciding with renewed U.S. interest in the area, and hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in 2012 in Vladivostok, near Russia's borders with China and North Korea. Russia's efforts in Asia have been limited by the country's more direct interests in its periphery and in Europe, but Moscow recently has been able to look more to the east.

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Part of this renewed interest involves finding new export markets for Russian hydrocarbons. Russia's economy relies on energy exports, particularly crude oil and natural gas exported via pipeline to the West. However, Western Europe is diversifying its energy sources as new supplies come online out of a desire to reduce its dependence on Russian energy supplies. This has forced Russia to look for new export markets. Because Asia is hungry for energy supplies and is less fearful than Western Europe of a reliance on Russia, Moscow is attempting to shift its energy exports eastward, first with oil and then with natural gas.
With Northeast Asian economies experiencing robust growth, Russia's push into Asia has concentrated on Japan and South Korea, with a strong interest in securing deals with China. But such markets make up only part of the potential Moscow sees in Asia. There are a number of growing energy consumers to the south as well.

Russia's Historical Ties to Vietnam

Vietnam is the pivot point of Southeast Asia, occupying a key position along the major corridors that connect the Strait of Malacca with the Northeast Asian economies, as well as those connecting the northeast to the smaller, dynamic economies to the south. The country is directly accessible by sea from ports in the Russian Far East.
Vietnam has long been Russia's closest partner in Southeast Asia, especially during periods in which both countries were seeking to balance against China. Historically, the country has been a major area of focus for China -- either as a potential client state extending the Chinese coastline south or as a potential thorn in Beijing's side. This is the essence of Russia's interest in Vietnam.
Russo-Vietnamese relations stretch back to Moscow's recognition of the Viet Minh government in 1950. Ho Chi Minh, the father of modern Vietnam, worked for the Comintern in Russia in 1923 before traveling to China to orchestrate his revolution at home. Many of the early regime's senior members were educated or trained in the Soviet Union, and members of Vietnam's current technocratic class were educated in Russian universities, which still accept large numbers of Vietnamese students. Energy cooperation between Russia and Vietnam began in 1959, when the Soviets conducted the first geological surveys of North Vietnam. This cooperation became stronger in 1981, when a joint venture, Vietsovpetro, became Vietnam's first oil company, extracting crude from the Bach Ho offshore fields starting in 1987.
Russian defense assistance to Vietnam also has a long history. The Soviet Union became North Vietnam's primary benefactor in 1965 amid Hanoi's widening split with Beijing, culminating in China's full withdrawal of assistance to Vietnam in 1968. In 1979, the Soviets established a naval base at Cam Ranh Bay in response to China's invasion of Vietnam and its proxy war in Cambodia.

Moscow's Renewed Interest

In 2001, Putin made his first visit to Vietnam, ending a post-Soviet lapse in Russo-Vietnamese relations. During the visit, the countries established a strategic partnership, and Putin's 2006 visit further strengthened the two countries' relationship. In 2012, the countries upgraded their ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership, and Russia invited Vietnam to join its Customs Union. Most recently, on Nov. 12, Putin signed 27 bilateral agreements on energy and defense cooperation during another visit to Hanoi.
In addition to helping establish a Southeast Asian market for Russian energy exports, Moscow's recent moves will also strengthen Vietnam as a counter against China's growing influence to Russia's south. This is why Moscow's deals with Hanoi over the past several years have focused on energy and defense. In 2009, Russia sold Vietnam six Kilo-class submarines, with two to be delivered in 2012 and four more by 2016. In 2011, Russia delivered two Gepard-class frigates to Vietnam, which then ordered two more in September. During his recent visit, Putin suggested that Russia would begin manufacturing military technology in Vietnam and would sign an accord on training and weapons deals.
Meanwhile, Vietnam's appetite for energy is indeed increasing. The country's annual gross domestic product has grown by an average of 6.95 percent since 2000, while oil consumption grew from 176,000 barrels per day in 2000 to 388,000 barrels per day in 2012, with annual growth expected to continue at a rate exceeding 6 percent through 2020. Natural gas consumption is also outpacing gross domestic product growth and production levels. It is expected to reach 3 billion cubic meters per year by 2015, 6 bcm by 2020 and 15 bcm by 2025.
During Putin's visit and the flurry of business meetings beforehand, Russian and Vietnamese firms struck deals on liquefied natural gas, oil sales and energy exploration. Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom acquired a 49 percent stake in Vietnam's sole oil refinery at Dong Quat and contracted to expand its capacity by 50 percent to some 200,000 barrels per day by 2015. More important, Gazprom contracted to begin to supply oil to the refinery through Russia's Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline -- around 60,000 barrels per day initially, with the goal of ramping up to 120,000 barrels per day by 2018. Previously, all of Vietnam's crude imports had come from the Middle East.
Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft also became a strategic partner in Vietnam's Nhon Hoi mega-refinery project, which is set to produce an estimated 600,000 barrels per day, though it has been plagued with delays and questions about its viability. Rosneft also plans to acquire a minority stake in an offshore oil block and has expressed interested in another block in the disputed South China Sea. Meanwhile, PetroVietnam, Vietnam's state-owned petrochemical company, acquired the right to explore in Russia's Pechora Sea in Siberia. Gazprom -- which began exploring for natural gas in the South China Sea in 2009 and began pumping from two blocks in October -- plans to supply Vietnam with liquefied natural gas from its planned Vladivostok project. This could supply Vietnam's two planned regasification terminals at Thi Vai (which will have a capacity of 1.38 bcm by 2014) and Son My (4.14 bcm by 2018).

Vietnam's Appeal

Vietnamese energy growth could help Russia expand its export portfolio elsewhere in Asia. Incidentally, with more options in Southeast Asia, Russia will become more capable of leveraging its options to secure deals with major Northeast Asian consumers. At the moment, no single market rivals China, but a combination of countries -- including Japan, South Korea and those in Southeast Asia -- could provide a comparable alternative.

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Vietnamese domestic energy demand is only part of the story. Russian assistance with energy and defense will also bolster Vietnam's ability to resist Chinese influence and protect vital sea routes. Russian defense assistance has come in the form of naval technology, and its energy assistance has pushed into blocks in the South China Sea, where Vietnam (along with the Philippines) has been arguing with China about sovereignty. Disputed hydrocarbon blocks in the Nam Con Son basin have been an issue in the disagreements. China National Petroleum Corp. attempted to auction these blocks in September 2012, but Gazprom's recent exploration and drilling operations, which Rosneft could join, have supported Vietnam's claims. The dispute presents an opportunity for Moscow, which could use its relationship with Vietnam as a negotiating tool to slow China's advance into Russia's periphery in Central Asia.
Next: Part 2 of this series will examine the role of South Korea in Russia's plans to strengthen its partnerships in East Asia.

Russia, Hamas Leaders Hold Rare Phone Conversation

Russia, Hamas Leaders Hold Rare Phone Conversation

Sergei Lavrov / AP

BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
December 12, 2013 9:23 am
Gaza Strip Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held a rare phone conversation on Wednesday, Israel Hayom reports.

Hamas government spokesman Taher Nunu said Haniyeh spoke with Lavrov for 35 minutes. He said the men discussed Israel’s peace talks with the rival Palestinian government in the West Bank, the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip and “common relations.”

The discussion was the first high-level conversation in months.

In a statement issued by Russia’s Foreign Ministry, Lavrov called for a “quick lifting” of the blockade on Gaza to “help relieve a difficult humanitarian situation of the Palestinian population.” He also voiced his support for an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement.
According to the Russian statement, Haniyeh told Lavrov about the social and economic situation in Gaza and discussed overcoming differences between Hamas and its rival government in the West Bank.

The Washington Free Beacon reported Wednesday that Russia is also boosting ties with Iran. Lavrov met with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to discuss issues ranging from Tehran’s nuclear ambitions to Moscow’s goal of promoting “eye-catching growth” in Iran.

This entry was posted in National Security and tagged Hamas, Iran, Russia. Bookmark the permalink.

Sources: White House Has Killed Iran Sanctions

Sources: White House Has Killed Iran Sanctions

No new sanctions will pass Congress in 2013, insiders say

Harry Reid / AP

BY: Adam Kredo
December 12, 2013 5:00 am
House lawmakers are lashing out at their Senate counterparts over the upper chamber’s failure to pass tighter Iran sanctions before Congress recesses.
With only two weeks left on the legislative calendar, congressional insiders say that a new Iran sanctions measure currently under consideration by the Senate is all but dead in the water.
Senate Democratic leaders appear poised to give in to White House demands that no new sanctions be imposed on Iran for the rest of the year and likely through most of 2014.
The two key avenues that senators could use to push through new sanctions—the Senate Banking Committee and the annual defense authorization bill—appear to have been shut down by the White House’s Democratic allies.
The situation has proved frustrating to House lawmakers who overwhelmingly voted months ago to approve a new Iran sanctions measure only to see it stall in the Senate under White House pressure.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.) described the congressional tug of war as “reprehensible” and a “tragedy.” She urged her Senate colleagues to stop taking marching orders from the White House when it comes to the Iranian nuclear situation.
Bachmann went on to praise Sens. Mark Krik (R., Ill.) and Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) for authoring an Iran sanctions measure that could be offered as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a yearly defense-spending bill that must be approved before lawmakers leave town.
However, it remains unlikely that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) will allow the amendment to come to a vote.
Bachmann said that lawmakers should insist that new sanctions are approved before they leave for the holidays.
“It’s very important we send a very strong signal in the Middle East that the U.S. will not stand for Iran undercutting our words on not obtaining a nuclear weapon,” she told the Free Beacon. “The president, unfortunately, has already sent the signal that he would willingly abide by Iran enriching uranium.”
“This is our first president who has truly made a decision to be truly anti-Israel,” Bachmann said, referring to the Israeli government’s opposition to the nuclear accord.
Rep. Peter Roskam (R., Ill,), the GOP chief deputy whip and co-chair of the Republican Israel Caucus, slammed Senate Democrats for following the White House as Iran continues to enrich uranium.
“The Senate Democratic leadership’s capitulation to White House demands to ease pressure on Iran is deeply disappointing,” Roskam told the Washington Free Beacon. “This has long been a unifying issue for Congress, and even today, prominent voices in both parties in the House and the Senate agree that action must be taken to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions at all costs.”
“The Senate’s refusal to consider House-passed sanctions legislation significantly weakens U.S. negotiation leverage with Iran,” he said. “Unfortunately, some Senate leaders are choosing not to follow through on their long-held commitment to take every necessary step to prevent a nuclear Iran.”
Congressional insiders with knowledge of the sanctions debate blamed the White House and Senate Democratic leadership for ignoring the will of the majority of Congress.
“The American people deserve an up-or-down vote before senators go home for recess; the majority leader shouldn’t let the White House bully the Senate into silence,” said one senior Senate aide who is closely tracking the sanctions amendment. “If Democrats wanted this to become law, it would be on its way to the president’s desk—we deserve action, not illusory deals that go nowhere.”
A senior House GOP aide involved in the sanctions debate said that “every House effort to ratchet up pressure on Iran is met with a big middle finger from the White House and Senate leadership.”
“They continue to block sanctions legislation at every turn in an attempt to appease the Iranian regime,” the aide told the Free Beacon, echoing frustration felt by many in the House. “The fact that the Senate won’t even consider a bill that passed the House 400-20 means the Obama administration is, sadly, successfully driving a partisan stake in the heart of one of the few bipartisan issues in Washington.”
Even if the Senate approves the sanctions measure as an amendment to the NDAA, it would require that the House remain in Washington, D.C., to reconcile the two measures before being finalized.
However, this scenario is unlikely, as most House members will leave town at the end of this week when their legislative year comes to an end.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) lashed out at Reid late Tuesday for jamming up the Senate with needless votes.
The Senate should be discussing “the defense bill and open it up to amendments, as we always have in the past,” McConnell was quoted as saying by Politico. “I question the way the Senate is being run.”
“We’re spending weeks on nominations, none of which is an emergency,” he reportedly said.
The Senate Banking Committee, which was seen as an alternate route for a sanctions bill, also will avoid taking up the issue, according to Politico.
“The president and Secretary Kerry have made a strong case for a pause in congressional action on new Iran sanctions, so I am inclined to support their request and hold off on committee action for now,” Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson (D., S.D.) told Politico Tuesday.

This entry was posted in National Security and tagged Harry Reid, Iran, John Kerry, Michelle Bachman, Obama administration, Peter Roskam, White House. Bookmark the permalink.

Washington’s Al Qaeda doesn’t exist and never did

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Wednesday, December 11, 2013 - Reawakening Liberty by Thomas Mullen

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TAMPA, December 11, 2013 — For twelve years, the Bush and Obama Administrations have promoted a narrative about the War on Terror. It has changed slightly in superficial ways, as when President Obama gave it a new name, but the crux of the narrative has not changed. The United States is fighting a war against a worldwide terrorist organization called al-Qaeda, formerly headed by über-terrorist Osama bin Laden.
Americans are led to believe that this organization has a single mission against the United States and is directed by a hierarchy of terrorist leaders, all reporting up to a senior command located somewhere in Afghanistan. Many of the lawmakers and cabinet personnel who promote this narrative likely believe it themselves, at least to some degree.
Washington sees al-Qaeda the way it sees itself, a centralized, top-down hierarchy with a chain of command reporting up from every corner of the earth. It makes for a good story, but it’s not even remotely true. Virtually every incident involving this fictional organization refutes the narrative.
Veteran reporter Eric Margolis never believed it. He’s been reporting on the true nature of the Islamic militant groups from the very beginning. He should know what he’s talking about. He was embedded in Afghanistan in the 1980’s when bin Laden and what is now al-Qaeda and the Taliban were U.S. allies, fighting the Soviet Union.
For what it’s worth, bin Laden and other Islamic militants apparently regarded Margolis’ reporting as accurate. He was named as one of a small group of reporters who “fairly and accurately reported on the region” in alleged al-Qaeda letters released last year.
Commenting on that release in “Osama’s Almost Letter to Me,” Margolis wrote, “Al-Qaida was not founded by Osama bin Laden, as many wrongly believe, but in the mid-1980’s in Peshawar, Pakistan, by a revolutionary scholar, Sheik Abdullah Azzam. I know this because I interviewed Azzam numerous times at al-Qaida HQ in Peshawar while covering the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan. Azzam set up al-Qaida, which means ‘the base’ in Arabic, to help CIA and Saudi-financed Arab volunteers going to fight in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. In those days, the west hailed them as ‘freedom fighters.’”
Margolis goes on to report that neither Al Qaeda in Afghanistan nor the Taliban had anything to do with 9/11. Their raison d’etre is fighting foreign troops within their borders. When the invaders were Soviet, they fought the Soviets, using similar but updated tactics to those previously used against the British. When the invaders were American, they fought the Americans. Thus Afghanistan’s ominous nickname, “Graveyard of Empires.”
According to this alternate narrative, the “extremists” in Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11 nor any tangible connection to the group that perpetrated the attacks. Those were mostly Saudi Arabian nationals who planned the attack in Hamburg, Germany and Madrid. The only thing the attackers had in common with al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan was hatred of the United States. But they hated the United States for different reasons.
The 9/11 attackers, being Saudi, most likely hated America for precisely the reason Osama bin Laden stated: U.S. bases in the Muslim holy land and (secondarily) its support for Israel. Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan hated America because the United States invaded, ignoring the Taliban’s quite reasonable request for the U.S. to produce evidence of bin Laden’s guilt before demanding his extradition.
What Washington is calling “al-Qaeda in Syria” is also a completely different group. They exist to overthrow the Assad regime. Since that regime is a longtime ally of Russia’s, the U.S. has actually supported these rebels, amidst heavy criticism from within Washington’s ranks that the Obama administration is supporting al-Qaeda. This was apparently confirmed when Syrian Jabhat al Nusra Front chief Abou Mohamad al-Joulani pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda leader Sheik Ayman al-Zawahri.
However, the pledge of allegiance actually supports the alternative narrative, not Washington’s. It is apparent from the reports on the pledge that the Syrian group had no previous connection to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. It came immediately following an announcement by the Islamic State of Iraq that al Nusra was part of its network.
The ISI is one of many militant groups that filled the vacuum left after the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and which had no active presence before Saddam Hussein’s regime was toppled. ISI similarly pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda in 2004 while fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.
According to The Telegraph’s April 10, 2013 report, Syria’s al-Nusra pledges allegiance to al-Qaeda,” al-Joulani (al Jawlani) was quick to clarify the relationship with ISI:
“’We inform you that neither the al-Nusra command nor its consultative council, nor its general manager were aware of this announcement [the announcement by ISI]. It reached them via the media and if the speech is authentic, we were not consulted,’” Jawlani said. ‘We reassure our brothers in Syria that al-Nusra Front’s behaviour will remain faithful to the image you have come to know, and that our allegiance (to al-Qaeda) will not affect our politics in any way,’ he added.”
In other words, the Syrian rebel group al Nusra was a group organized around toppling the Assad regime in Syria. It pledged allegiance to what Washington calls “al-Qaeda in Iraq,” but which is really the ISI. The ISI in turn was a group organized to fight U.S. forces in Iraq, with the long term goal of establishing an Islamic state there after U.S. forces withdrew.
None of these groups were part of a worldwide, centralized organization to fight the “Great Satan.” Instead, they are all disparate groups which formed for different, localized reasons and discovered after the fact that they all had a common enemy, the United States. The one exception to this is the group in Syria, whose western, industrialized enemy is Russia. That is why “al-Qaeda in Syria” has sought to work with the United States instead of fight against it. The United States is useful in its goal of toppling the Assad regime and establishing an Islamic state in Syria.
All of this leads to one, inescapable conclusion. The United States has accomplished nothing in twelve years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Iraq War actually expanded the presence of Islamic militant groups and led to a fundamentalist Islamic state there, with strong ties to Iran.
Rather than waging a war against a centralized, top-down organization with divisions in several Middle Eastern countries and agents embedded all over the world, Washington is actually playing a deadly game of “whack a mole,” with new moles popping up out of new holes every time Washington swings its mallet.
That means that triumphant announcements about killing “the number three man in al-Qaeda” mean absolutely nothing. That al-Qaeda hierarchy doesn’t exist. Instead, independent groups all over the world discover a kinship with each other all centered around one phenomenon: U.S. intervention in their nations. Intervention could be military, covert or merely aid to a local dictator.
Iranian militants hate America because the CIA helped overthrow their democratically-elected government in 1953 and then maintained the hated Shah as dictator there for almost three decades afterwards.
Militant groups in Saudi Arabia hate America for maintaining the Kingdom of Saud and for the additional insult of previously garrisoning troops in their holy land.
Militant groups in Iraq hate America for first supporting Saddam Hussein over the wishes of the Shiite majority and then destroying their country when Hussein became troublesome for the United States.
Militant groups in Afghanistan hate America merely because they are the latest western empire to invade their homeland. It will soon be apparent that they have expelled the United States the same way they did the Soviet and British empires.
The Tsarnaev brothers took direction from no one overseas. They just dreamed up their horrible crime and executed it. Their stated reason? U.S. military interventions in the Middle East.
That doesn’t mean the terrorists are justified. If a wife catches her husband with another woman and shoots him, no reasonable person would conclude that she “hated her husband for his freedom.” Acknowledging that cheating on her was the reason she shot him is not the same as condoning the murder. If she confesses to the murder and states her motive, nobody questions it.
Given the complete failure to accomplish anything in twelve years of war, the true, decentralized nature of the various Islamist groups and the likelihood that new ones will emerge wherever Washington intervenes, nonintervention seems to be the only effective way for Washington to reduce the risk of terrorism in the United States.
Washington should have learned this from the Cold War. Wherever nations succeeded in establishing communism, including in Viet Nam after the U.S. withdrawal, communism eventually died of natural causes. The only places it still exists is Cuba and North Korea, both still under siege by the U.S. military. The U.S. military presence in and sanctions on both countries have kept communist regimes in power long after their shelf life, solely because the people rally around their leaders in the face of a foreign threat.
History is repeating itself. Islamic fundamentalism is the new communism. The difference is that the U.S. is no longer capable of squandering its resources for decades whacking moles. It’s time to start playing the game smart, before America loses it for good.

Tom Mullen is the author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.