Hillary Clinton's Emails Considered

In March 2013, a hacker going by the name of Guccifer hacked Sid Blumenthal’s email account, whereby it was discovered Hillary Clinton conducted government business on a private email account.  The email address was “hdr22@clintonemail.com.”  Not only was the email account private, but the server handling this email account was located in her Chappaqua, NY home. The public didn’t find out about this until a few months ago.  When this story broke last March, Hillary Clinton said this - "I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email," Clinton said at a news conference in March. "I'm certainly well aware of the classified requirements and did not send classified material."  Last month, Mrs. Clinton denied any mishandling of classified emails - "I am confident that I never sent nor received any information that was classified at the time it was sent and received."  Inspectors General from the Intelligence Community and the State Department asked the Justice Department to launch an investigation into this matter.  In their report, they state the following:

“The IC IG found four emails containing classified IC-derived information in a limited sample of 40 emails of the 30,000 emails provided by former Secretary Clinton. The four emails, which have not been released through the State FOIA process, did not contain classification markings and/or dissemination controls. These emails were not retroactively classified by the State Department; rather these emails contained classified information when they were generated and, according to IC classification officials, that information remains classified today [Ed. Note – emphasis mine]. This classified information should never have been transmitted via an unclassified personal system.”

After taking a sample of 40 emails the Intelligence Community determined that Mrs. Clinton sent 4 emails that were classified at the time they were sent. Doing that once is a mistake, doing it more than once is negligence. She had over 30,000 emails can we expect to see 10% of those to be classified as well?  Professionals that I know are careful about such things. When in doubt about classification, they ask those with authority to review such things before transmission, not after. Mrs. Clinton claims whatever she sent was unclassified. Maybe she didn’t, but somebody working for her did [Huma Abedin?  Cheryl Mills?].  It strains credibility to the breaking point to think that the Secretary of State conducts business in an unclassified environment. To conduct classified business in an unclassified environment is reckless and negligent.  There is a reason we keep classified information within secure, closed networks.  John Kerry thinks the Chinese and the Russians are probably reading his emails. "Unfortunately, we're living in a world where a number of countries, China and Russia included, have consistently been engaged in cyberattacks against American interests, against American government."  Mr. Kerry is aware of the cyber threat and writes his own emails assuming our adversaries are reading them.  Apparently Mrs. Clinton has made no such assumption.

For those who don’t know how serious this breach of security can be, here is a primer of security classifications and what it means to illegally disclose information classified as such:

Top Secret - the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security

Secret - the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage to the national security

Confidential - the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause damage to the national security

To insure the protection of classified information, the government uses closed, secure networks.  For Secret information, information is transmitted via the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNET).  For Top Secret information, including emails, images, or information derived from “other” sources, that information is transmitted via Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS).  To transmit or receive anything via JWICS, one must have a JWICS “drop,” which can be located only in a SCIF.  I’m guessing Mrs. Clinton doesn’t have a SCIF in her house, so how did Top Secret information get on her unclassified server?  Thumb drives.  JWICS and SIPRNET are closed networks and can’t be accessed from just any unclassified system.  Information has to be “air gapped” from one network to another.  Does this scenario sound familiar?  Edward Snowden used thumb drives to store classified information that he downloaded from the networks to which he had access before he fled the country.  Mrs. Clinton’s lawyer has [or had – the FBI might have it now] a thumb drive in his possession that contains classified information.  How did he come to have this information?  I’m sure he doesn’t have a security clearance, and he definitely doesn’t have “need to know” for such things.  One needs to have both the appropriate security clearance and the need to know to have access to it.

Since before the revelations of Edward Snowden, DoD has banned the use of thumb drives on all DoD computers, including unclassified computers.  I am certain that the State Department’s guidelines are similar to those of DoD.  Use of such things (or connecting any sort of media) with computers is traceable.  If I as a contractor used such a thing with my government laptop without permission, I would be called on the carpet with the Operations Group Commander to have a one-way conversation and then probably fired.  That would just be the beginning of my problems.  And that is just if I do that on an unclassified laptop.  I shudder to think of the penalties for doing such a thing on a classified system.  Chelsea Manning is an expert on such matters.  She is currently serving a 35-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth for violating the Espionage Act.

There is another thing to consider.  It has been reported some of the classified information on Mrs. Clinton’s server originated from the CIA.   It has been my experience that though they may share information with others, they don’t release that information to others [not willingly anyway].  They use a handling term called ORCON, which means “originator controlled.”  Such material is very conspicuously marked with the ORCON label – it is hard to miss.  The CIA is very touchy about ORCON information.  ORCON means that they and only they can control what happens with said information.  It’s their way of protecting sources and methods.  You can read it, you can study it, but you can’t cite it as a source in intelligence reporting.  If you want to use said information, you need to find another source to corroborate it.  So if Mrs. Clinton or any of her staff possesses any ORCON material without the CIA’s knowledge, they get very annoyed with that sort of thing.  And when the CIA gets annoyed, prosecutions tend to be the next step. 

This is not the first time a Clinton or somebody connected with the Clintons have demonstrated a cavalier attitude toward handling classified information.  Cases in point are Sandy Berger and John Deutsch.  Both served Bill Clinton in sensitive positions.  John Deutsch was found to have some highly classified information on his unclassified, personal laptop computer.  He lost his security clearance as a result, and the only reason he isn’t in jail is because he received a pardon from Bill Clinton hours before George W. Bush became president.  Sandy Berger visited the National Archives and walked out with classified papers shoved down his pants.   He got probation and was fined $50,000.

This is an issue of trust.  When we receive security clearances, we are bestowed with a trust to protect information that our adversaries would find damaging to our security and to our interests.  When one willfully mishandles classified information that trust is violated.  Once that trust is violated, it’s very difficult to get it back.  Hillary Clinton is a security risk.

Who Is Ramzan Kadyrov?

When I first learned of the assassination of Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov, my immediate thought that Vladimir Putin had uttered something akin to what Henry II said about Thomas Becket – “who will rid me of this troublesome priest?”  I figured Putin wasn’t dumb enough to explicitly order a hit on Nemtsov, especially one carried out by the FSB.  Soon enough, Russian police arrested Chechen servicemen close to the government of Ramzan Kadyrov who were implicated in the killing.  Kadyrov’s name kept coming up in article after article.  What is it with this guy that makes him a topic of much conversation?  I started to peel back the onion layers, I found this about Kadyrov – in late December last year he told a meeting of 20,000 Chechen “volunteers” that he and they are ready to perform tasks “which can be solved only by volunteers” and not by “the regular army, air force, navy or nuclear forces.”  He also declared “We will gladly fulfill any order, in any spot of the world where our president tells us to go.”  Is Boris Nemtsov’s murder one such task?  What about providing “volunteers” to fight on Russia’s behalf in Ukraine?  So who is Ramzan Kadyrov?  To answer the question, one must go back to the Chechen Wars. 

In September 1991, an organization called the All-National Congress of the Chechen People [NCChP] (led by a former Soviet Air Force general named Dzokhar Dudayev) invaded a session of the local Supreme Soviet.  The Communist leader of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR died in the attack, and the local government of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR was effectively dissolved.  A referendum in October 1991 confirmed Dudayev as the new president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.  Russia didn’t recognize Chechen independence, and Boris Yeltsin sent Ministry of Interior troops to Grozny to reassert Russian control.  However, troops loyal to Dudayev kept the Russian troops bottled up at the airport.  Russia hesitated to use further force against the breakaway republic.  In June 1992, the Chechen-Ingush Republic split in two.  One part [Ingushetia] opted to return to Russia as the Republic of Ingushetia.  The remaining part of the Chechen-Ingush Republic [Chechnya] declared full independence in 1993.  In December 1994, the Russians attacked Chechnya.  The Russians thought it would be a quick war – it was not.  Estimates vary, but the Russians killed between 50,000-100,000 Chechen civilians and 17,000-18,000 Chechen militants/military.  Grozny was reduced to rubble.  Russia lost between 5,000-6,000 military during the 20-month war.  On paper, Russia won the war, but wars aren’t fought on paper.  The Russians didn’t have the stomach for large casualties.  The military proved to lack capability and its readiness for such a mission to suppress separatism, so the Chechen Republic gained de facto independence.

During the First Chechen War, Dudayev had made Akhmad Kadyrov the supreme mufti of Chechnya.  He also led a division of guerrillas in the war.  After the First Chechen War, Chechnya was teeming with jihadis, many of whom were from other countries.  The foreign fighters were there mainly because Kadyrov declared jihad against Russia.  After the war, the foreign fighters stayed in Chechnya.  Dudayev was assassinated in April 1996.  His successor, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, himself was assassinated nine months later in February 1997.  Yandarbiyev’s successor, Aslan Maskhadov, was unable to control the various warlords, including Shamil Basayev and Ibn al-Khattab.  They led the fundamentalist group Islamic International Brigade [IIB].  In August 1999, the IIB invaded the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan to support separatist rebels.  Their aim was to free their Muslim brothers from the “infidel” [Russian] occupiers.  The IIB inflicted casualties on Russian Ministry of Defense troops.  The Dagestan locals saw the IIB as religious fanatics [they were Wahhabis] and organized themselves as resistance against the IIB.  Yeltsin’s successor Vladimir Putin used this attack [and other cross-border attacks and assorted apartment bombings carried out between 1996-99] as a pretext for invading Chechnya, and so began the Second Chechen War.

The First Chechen War was about Chechen nationalism.  The second war was about Islamism dominated by external forces.  These fundamentalists [as outlined above] were motivated by the goal to establish an Islamic caliphate in the Caucasus.  Basayev and al-Khattab sought to incite a wider war against the Russians.  Vladimir Putin needed a loyal Chechen to do his bidding and undercut Maskhadov's status.  Putin found such a Chechen in Akhmad Kadyrov.  Early in the Second Chechen War, Kadyrov switched sides and threw his support [and that of his clan] to the Russians.  So here there was a conflict between the nationalists of Aslan Maskhadov vs. the Islamists of Basayev and al-Khattab, Basayev and al-Khattab vs. the Russians, and Kadyrov against Basayev, al-Khattab, and Maskhadov. 

After the elder Kadyrov switched sides, there was a one-sided air war that featured a massive Russian air campaign, two months after which began the ground campaign that included a three-month siege of Grozny.  When the Russians were through, Grozny’s landscape resembled that of the Moon.  While Putin appointed Akhmad Kadyrov President of Chechnya in June 2000, the Second Chechen War entered its guerrilla phase.  Once in the guerrilla phase, leaders began to die:

• -          Ibn al-Khattab – assassinated in 2002 by a double agent with a letter laced with a nerve agent;
• -          Akhmad Kadyrov – assassinated 2004 – blown up during Soviet Victory Day celebration [Basayev claimed credit];
• -          Aslan Maskhadov – KIA in 2005;
• -          Shamil Basayev – assassinated in 2006 – blown up by the FSB.

Kadyrov’s son Ramzan now came into the picture as he was made Deputy Prime Minister.  The younger Kadyrov ascended to power quickly.  He became acting Prime Minister after the incumbent barely survived an automobile accident in November 2005.  Kadyrov became Prime Minister after the incumbent resigned in March 2006.  When he reached presidential minimum age of 30 in February 2007, Vladimir Putin removed Alkhanov and installed Kadyrov as president.  He’s been ruling Chechnya ever since. 

Ramzan Kadyrov runs Chechnya like his own private fiefdom.  Human rights organizations and independent journalists have documented patterns of abduction, detention, disappearances, and the systematic use of torture by Kadyrov and his regime.   Among the alleged abuses:

-          Stripped and beat Muslim women accused of adultery with metal rods and hoses;

-          Killed insurgents, beheaded the corpses and displayed the heads in public;

-          Abduct and torture rebel supporters during police and military sweeps;

-          Illegal detention, rape, robbery and kidnapping;

-          Arson against families of insurgents;

-          Assassination of opponents

§  Ruslan B. Yamadayev – brother of Sulim Yamadayev [former militia leader, rival of Kadyrov], assassinated September 2008 in Moscow;

§  Sulim Yamadayev – former commander of Special Battalion Vostok, assassinated March 2009 in Dubai – accused by Kadyrov of complicity in assassination of the elder Kadyrov;

§  Natalya Estemirova – prominent human rights activist who documented kidnappings and killings in Chechnya, kidnapped in Grozny and murdered in Ingushetia in July 2009;

§  Anna Politkovskaya – investigative reporter for Novaya Gazeta, murdered October 2006 after documenting allegations of torture by security forces loyal to Kadyrov in Chechnya;

§  Umar Isralov – former Kadyrov bodyguard, murdered in Austria after filing allegations of torture to Russian prosecutors and the European Court of Human Rights in 2006 and 2007.

For now, Ramzan Kadyrov rules Chechnya with an iron fist.  But, there is an enmity between Kadyrov and the Russian Federal Security Service [FSB].  Shortly after he became Chechnya’s leader, the local FSB refused to allow a group of his armed men into their headquarters. Kadyrov responded by having all the building's entrances and exits welded shut. The standoff was only resolved when Nikolai Patrushev, then the FSB director, intervened personally.   After Boris Nemtsov’s assassination in February 2015, Russian police arrested five Chechen suspects, while another reportedly killed himself with a hand grenade at the time of his arrest in Chechnya.  All these men have ties to Kadyrov, and attempts to question other Chechens who may be involved have been blocked by Kadyrov.  In a separate incident in April 2015, Russian police from Stavropol entered Chechnya to arrest a Chechen wanted on a federal charge.  Kadyrov was so upset that he issued a “shoot to kill” order against any federal police who conduct operations in Chechnya without having first cleared it with Kadyrov.  Kadyrov has since backed off that stance, but there is no love lost between Kadyrov and the FSB.

Why does Russia tolerate Ramzan Kadyrov?  Right now, Kadyrov is useful, and Vladimir Putin has a Muslim problem, one that lies in the Caucasus.   Since 2009, part Kadyrov has kept Chechnya under control for the most.   The Caucasus Emirate is a decentralized organization [like al-Qaeda] with fighters in Dagestan, North Ossetia, Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Kabardino-Balkaria.  These Salafi jihadis want the Caucasus region to be governed by the “truest form” of Islam.  They respect Islam’s sacred texts in their most literal form.  Russia doesn’t really have a strategy to deal with the likes of the Caucasus Emirate, or ISIS [with whom the Caucasus Emirate competes for followers].  The Russians launch specific operations against specific militants, but their policy is more reactive than proactive.   ISIS has threatened to “liberate” Chechnya and the Caucasus [where support for ISIS is growing] from Russia.  Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has suggested that the Islamic State is Russia’s main enemy.  Who better to do Putin’s dirty work against these foes than Ramzan Kadyrov?  Kadyrov is trying to make himself as indispensable to Vladimir Putin as he can.  In December 2014, Kadyrov stated that he was prepared to go immediately to eastern Ukraine to fight against Ukrainian forces.  Then there is this quote from a YouTube video from last January that is quite chilling:

“If there are such indications [of terrorism and extremism] in Moscow or other regions of the country, we will be at the forefront to fight them because we have the experience… In all these years we have garnered so much experience and can fight so well that we will be in the first ranks for such a role. If Chechen terrorists can be eliminated or imprisoned, so can be a Russian or Tatar terrorist; there is no other way. We have the same attitude toward all citizens of Russia. If there are extremist indications, we will take steps, we will ask the leadership of the country to make use of Chechen law enforcement forces just as forces from other regions of Russia were used on the territory of Chechnya in the past.”

As long as Ramzan Kadyrov is useful, he will be protected by Vladimir Putin.  But Kadyrov is like Lavrenti Beria, Stalin’s secret police chief.  While Stalin was alive, Beria could act with impunity.  But once Stalin was dead and Beria wanted supreme power for himself, the rest of the Soviet collective leadership wasted little time in dispatching Beria.  Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.  And so it is with Ramzan Kadyrov.

Citizenfour - Synopsis

Laura Poitras is an American documentary filmmaker who lives in Berlin.  Her previous work includes My Country, My Country [2006] and The Oath [2010].  My Country, My Country shows life in Iraq for average Iraqis during the US occupation.  According to Poitras, this film earned her a place on Homeland Security’s watch list.  This film was the first of a trilogy about America post-9/11.  The second film, The Oath, is a family drama about Al Qaeda and Guantanamo Bay Prison.  It revolves around Abu Jandal, a Yemeni taxi driver and Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard for four years, and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, bin Laden’s driver who was the first person tried by a U.S. military tribunal post-9/11.  I haven’t seen either work, so I can’t say if they’re good, bad, sympathetic, or inflammatory [but I can guess…].  Citizenfour is the third film of the trilogy, the focus of which was intended to be on domestic surveillance.

In December 2012, journalist Glenn Greenwald was contacted by an anonymous source, but since they were unable to establish “secure communications” that is as far as the contact went.  A month later, Laura Poitras started receiving anonymous encrypted emails from that same source.  Edward Snowden, under the pseudonym Citizenfour, described himself to Laura Poitras as a “senior government employee in the intelligence community” [Editor’s note – he’s not a senior official – he was a slimy, dirtbag contractor.].  He offered to share information with her provided she take some computer security precautions.  Then she received this:

“You asked why I picked you.  I didn’t.  You did.  The surveillance you’ve experienced means you’ve been “selected” – a term which will mean more to you as you learn about how the modern SIGINT system works.  For now, know that every border you cross, every purchase you make, every call you dial, every cellphone tower you pass, friend you keep, article you write, site you visit, subject line you type – and packet you route is in the hands of a system whose reach is unlimited but whose safeguards are not.  Your victimization by the NSA system means that you are well aware of the threat that unrestricted secret police pose to democracies.  This is a story few but you can tell.”

Poitras subsequently moved to Berlin so she can avoid the possibility of having her film footage seized by the US government. 

The first interviewee in the film is William Binney, a former NSA employee [approximately 33 years].  He was a crypto-mathematician who analyzed nuclear threats during the Cold War.  After the Cold War he turned his attention to the Internet and began to develop methods of mass data analysis.  He claimed that just a few days after 9/11, NSA decided to “begin spying on everyone in this country.”  He says that AT&T provided NSA with over 300 million records every day.  This program was re-authorized every 45 days by what he called the “Yes Committee  - Hayden, Tenant, the Department of Justice.”  He told a staffer he knew on the House Intelligence Committee, who in turn told the chairman of the committee. Nancy Pelosi was the ranking Democrat on the committee.  Pelosi and all the others on the House Intelligence Committee were briefed into various and sundry programs like Stellar Wind [and including CIA programs].  Binney stated that he and four other NSA employees worked within the government to try to get those in charge to make sure that Stellar Wind passed Constitutional muster, to get it into federal judicial oversight.  Binney claims NSA raided him and his co-workers in order to scare them, to keep them quiet.

In another email from Citizenfour to Poitras –

“Disturbingly, the amount of US communication ingested by NSA is still increasing.  Publicly, we complain that things are ‘going dark,’ but in fact our accesses are improving.  The truth is the NSA has never in its history collected more than it does now.  I know the location of most domestic interception points, and that the largest telecommunication companies in the US are betraying the trust of their customers, which I can prove.  We are building the greatest weapon for oppression in the history of man, yet its directors exempt themselves from accountability.  NSA Director Keith Alexander lied to Congress, which I can prove.  Billions of US communications are being intercepted.  In gathering evidence of wrongdoing I focused on the wronging of the American people.  But believe when I say that the surveillance that we live under is the highest privilege compared to how we treat the rest of the world.  This I can also prove.  On cyber operations the government’s public position is that we still lack a policy framework.  This too is a lie – there is a detailed policy framework, a kind of ‘martial law’ for cyber operations created by the White House.  It’s called Presidential Policy Directive 20 and was re-authorized at the end of last year.  This I can also prove.  I appreciate your concern for my safety, but I already know how this will end for me, and I accept the risk.  If I have luck and you are careful you will have everything you need.  I ask only that you ensure his information makes it home to the American public.”

Excerpts from Congressional hearings are presented.  Here is what was said –

Congressional Hearing, 2012

Congressman Johnson:  Does the NSA routinely intercept American citizens’ email?

Gen Alexander:  No.

Congressman Johnson:  Does the NSA intercept Americans’ cellphone conversations?

Gen Alexander:  No.

Congressman Johnson:  Googled searches?

Gen Alexander:  No.

Congressman Johnson:  Text messages?

Gen Alexander:  No.

Congressman Johnson:  Amazon.com orders?

Gen Alexander:  No.

Congressman Johnson:  Bank records?

Gen Alexander:  No.

Congressman Johnson:  What judicial consent is required for NSA to intercept communications and information involving American citizens?

Gen Alexander:  Within the United States that would be the FBI lead.  If it was a foreign actor in the United States the FBI would still have to lead and could work with the NSA or other intelligence agencies as authorized.  But to conduct that kind of collection in the United States it would have to go through a court order, and the court would have to authorize it.  We are not authorized to do it, nor do we do it.

Senate hearing with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, 2013 -

Sen. Wyden:  This is for you Director Clapper, again on the surveillance front and I hope we can do this in a just “yes or no” answer because I know Senator Feinstein wants to move on.  So, does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?

Lt Gen Clapper:  No sir…

Sen. Wyden:    It does not? 

Lt Gen Clapper:  Not wittingly.  There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, uh…collect, but not wittingly.

[Editor's Note:  Why aren't these men in jail for lying to Congress?]

After months of encrypted communications with Citizenfour, Poitras traveled to New York to await further instructions.

April 2013 email- “The encrypted archives should be available to you within seven days.  The key will follow when everything else is done.  The material I provide and investigative effort required will be too much for any one person.  I recommend at a very minimum you involve Glenn Greenwald.  I believe you know him.  The plain text of the payload will include my true name details for the record.  Though it will be your decision as to whether or how declare my involvement.  My personal desire is that you paint the target directly on my back.  No one, not even my most trusted confidant, is aware of my intentions, and it would not be fair for them to fall under suspicion for my actions.  You may be the only one who can prevent that, and that is by immediately nailing me to the cross rather than trying to protect me as a source.  On timing, regarding meeting up in Hong Kong, the first rendezvous attempt will be at 10 AM local time on Monday.  We will meet in the hallway outside of a restaurant in the Mira Hotel.  I’ll be working on a Rubik’s Cube so you can identify me.  Approach me and ask if I know the hours of the restaurant.  I’ll respond by stating that I’m not sure, and suggest you try the lounge instead.  I’ll offer to show you where it is, and at that point we’re good.  You simply need to follow naturally.” 

On June 3, 2013 they finally get Edward Snowden on film.  As recommended, Glenn Greenwald joined Poitras in Hong Kong to meet Snowden.  What we see afterward is the leaking of secrets as it happens.  Greenwald asked Snowden why he’s doing what he is doing.  Snowden’s answer is about “state power” and the peoples’ ability to meaningfully oppose that power.  He had a bad feeling about getting paid well to amplify that state power.

His method was to leak information first, get the story out about the actions taken by the intelligence community against everybody in order to get people to talk about the issue.  When the first two stories hit the streets, nobody had a clue about who leaked them.  So after the stories hit the airwaves, we see Edward Snowden watching TV – people like Anderson Cooper, Piers Morgan, Wolf Blitzer – having the public discussion about the issue [government need for information to “connect dots” vs. personal privacy].  And who do we see Piers Morgan talking to?  Glenn Greenwald. Meanwhile, Snowden is in contact with his girlfriend who lives in Hawaii.  She was paid a visit by an HR person from NSA [not Booz Allen], and she was asked questions about Snowden’s “illness.”  Apparently he called in sick when he fled to Hong Kong.  His girlfriend has no idea where he is.  He told her that he went TDY for NSA [which he apparently did frequently, so it wasn’t a surprise to her].  She hasn’t a clue about what he’s doing or where he is, so she has plausible deniability [the way Snowden wanted it].  Apparently his rent checks mysteriously “stopped” going to his landlord [he had an automatic payment system set up], so evidently NSA was on to him - they just hadn't made anything public.

After MacAskill asks Snowden about when he’ll go public, he says “As soon as they try to make this about me, which should be any day now, I’ll come out just to go ‘hey, you know, this is, uh, this is not a question of somebody skulking around in the shadows.  These are public issues, these are not my issues you know. These are everybody’s issues, and I’m not afraid of you.  You know, you’re not going to bully me into silence like you’ve done to everybody else.  And if nobody else is gonna do it, I will.  And hopefully when I’m gone, whatever you do to me, there will be somebody else who’ll do the same thing.  It’ll be sort of the Internet principle of the hydra:  you know, you can stomp one person but there’s gonna be seven more of us…I don’t want to hide on this and skulk around.  I don’t think I should have to…I think it is powerful to come out and be like ‘look, I’m not afraid, you know, and I don’t think other people should, either.  You know, I was sitting in the office right next to you last week.  You know, we all have a stake in this this is our country, and the balance of power between the citizenry and the government is becoming that of the ruling and the ruled.  As opposed to actually, the elected and the electorate.”  Snowden believes that his detection was inevitable, but he wants to get the jump on NSA.  Here’s what I have a hard time reconciling – he’s saying he’s not afraid, he doesn’t care what happens to him, yet he’s saying this with the knowledge that he’s already safely out of the country where US law enforcement can’t touch him [not without an extradition effort, anyway].  It’s the “safety of being out of range.”      

On June 13, 2013, Snowden came in from the cold [virtually, anyway].  Everybody knows who he is.  That same day the Wall Street Journal tracked him down to his hotel.  They tried calling him, but he told whomever called him that they reached a wrong number.  Then he gets another call from the front desk – another party is looking for him.  He tells the front desk to hold all calls for him.  To escape the media, Snowden relocates to Poitras’ room.  There he meets with Jonathan Man, a human rights lawyer.  Man makes arrangements for Snowden to go to the UN High Commissioner of Refugees in Hong Kong for protection.  Snowden asks Man if there is any precedent for Hong Kong to extradite anyone for exercising political speech.  He seemed very worried for a man who professed to being ‘unafraid.’ Snowden then applied for refugee status through the UN and went underground.  Poitras stayed in Hong Kong with the intent to keep filming, but after six days she went back to Berlin.

Then the fallout began.  At the offices of O Globo in Rio de Janiero, the headline of a newspaper says “The US Spied on Millions of Brazilian Emails and Phone Calls.”  At those same offices, Glenn Greenwald [who lives in Brazil] shares some of the documents he got from Snowden to Brazilian journalists.  At the London offices of The Guardian, editors pour over the same documents and are discussing what to disclose and what to redact.  As the editors of The Guardian go to press about a specific GCHQ program, they’re nervous.  They fear an injuction from the British government.  Snowden contacts Poitras, who is in London filming this as it   happens.  Snowden tells Poitras that NSA loves the program under discussion because they can do things with that program that they’re not allowed to do in the US.   On June 21, 2013 the US government charged Edward Snowden with three felonies, two of them under the Espionage Act, and asks Hong Kong to extradite him.  Two days later, WikiLeaks made arrangements for Snowden to leave Hong Kong to seek political asylum elsewhere.  His destination was Moscow, where he was stuck in the transit lounge because the State Department canceled his passport.  Snowden became a ‘stateless person.’  After 40 days, Snowden was granted one year of political asylum in Russia.  He's still there...

In Brasilia, Brazil, Greenwald tells a Brazilian Senate investigation into NSA spying that the US uses terrorism and the 9/11 attacks as justification for everything they do.  Everything is in the name of national security to protect the American people.  Greenwald claims the opposite is true, that what NSA is doing has nothing to do with national security or terrorism.  He claims that intelligence collection on other countries is due to industrial, financial and economic issues.  He describes the gathering of metadata from the phone companies.  The data includes where you called from, who you called, the duration of your calls, and the same information about all the people you call.  In aggregate all of this metadata [not the content of the calls] can form a picture about you, which he characterizes as a major invasion of privacy.  He also goes into details about other information the US government is capable of collecting and to what extent to how much that government can keep tabs on you.

In Brussels, the European Union began hearings to investigate NSA surveillance of EU citizens and companies.  In March 2014, he German Bundestag began its own investigation into NSA spying.  William Binney was called as an expert witness.  He told the Germans that he sees the programs used by NSA and other spy agencies as the most major threat to democracies around the world. 

On July 20, 2013, the UK government ‘convinced’ The Guardian to destroy the GCHQ archive given to Ewen MacAskill by Edward Snowden, which they did.  On his return from the meeting in Berlin, Glenn Greenwald finds out that his partner was detained at Heathrow Airport for approximately nine hours under the UK’s Terrorism Act. 

In Berlin, an international group of lawyers representing Edward Snowden meet to discuss his legal status.   These lawyers, including one from the ACLU, are working pro bono.  They discuss the Espionage Act, a World War I-era law that does not distinguish between leaks to the press in the ‘public interest’ and selling secrets to foreign powers for personal profit.  The problem the lawyers have is that the government doesn’t have to defend why a certain piece of information is classified [whether anything was improperly classified], the government doesn’t have to demonstrate harm resulting from leakage of government secrets.

At the end of the film, it’s July 2014 and we see Edward Snowden and his girlfriend living comfortably in Moscow.  Glenn Greenwald has another meeting with Snowden.  Greenwald passes a note to Snowden that reveals approximately 1.2 million people are on the “watch list.”  

As a postscript, I saw a very interesting and compelling thing on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.  He interviewed Edward Snowden.  Not only did he interview Snowden, he made him squirm.  I think this is the first time that Edward Snowden has been challenged by anybody about what he’s done.  Up until this interview, nobody had dared to challenge Snowden’s assertions about NSA surveillance.  What a shame a real journalist wouldn’t do this…  Our own press is crap.

Oliver:  How many of those documents have you actually read?

Snowden:  I have evaluated all of the documents in the archive.

Oliver:  You've read every single one?

Snowden:  Well, I do understand what I turned over.

Oliver:  There's a difference between understanding what's in the documents and reading what's in the documents.  When you’re handing over thousands of NSA documents, the last thing you want to do is read them.

Remember where I said that Snowden places a great amount of faith in journalists to do the right thing?  Oliver hit Snowden with this rhetorical 2x4:

Oliver:  So The New York Times took a slide, didn’t redact it properly, and in the end it was possible for people to see that something was being used in Mosul on al Qaeda.

Snowden:  That is a problem.

Oliver:  Well, that’s a fuckup!

Snowden:  It is a fuckup, and those things do happen in reporting. In journalism, we have to accept that some mistakes will be made. This is a fundamental concept of liberty.

Oliver:  Right. But you have to own that then.  You’re giving documents with information you know could be harmful, which could get out there.

Oliver stunned Snowden into silence.  He knew Oliver had him by the cojones and there was nothing he could do, because deep down he knew that Oliver was right.  With this one segment, John Oliver just made it to the top of my “must-see TV” list.  Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert probably wish they could have this much impact.

ISIS and the National Interest

What is a “national interest”? The definition I found in Merriam-Webster says this [as attributed to one Hans J.Morgenthau]: the interest of a nation as a whole held to be an independent entity separate from the interests of subordinate areas or groups and also of other nations or supranational groups.

Practically speaking, an American “national interest” is whatever the occupant of the White House says it is. When I was a grad student at the Joint Military Intelligence College over 20 years ago, I took a course that was about strategic decision-making. Our textbook was written by a guy named Donald Nuechterlein. He’s a political scientist who developed a National Interest Matrix in 1979 that identifies four basic interests that could apply to any state:

1. Defense of homeland [the physical protection of sovereign territory];
2. Economic well-being [efforts to create favorable economic circumstance for a state];
3. Favorable world order [efforts by a state to establish abroad a world order favorable to its interests];
4. Promotion of values [the extension of national ideology into international politics as far as possible].

He further broke out the intensity of a nation’s interests:

1. Survival [Critical];
2. Vital [Dangerous];
3. Major [Serious];
4. Peripheral [Bothersome].

Last week the Obama Administration released its National Security Strategy for 2015. This strategy lists the following as our top national interests for the coming year:

1. The security of the United States, its citizens, and U.S. allies and partners;
2. A strong, innovative, and growing U.S. economy in an open international economic system that promotes opportunity and prosperity;
3. Respect for universal values at home and around the world; and
4. A rules-based international order advanced by U.S. leadership that promotes peace, security, and opportunity through stronger cooperation to meet global challenges.

Since I left DC in 1992, I hadn’t given Nuechterlein much thought. But when I heard that President Obama wants the US Congress to authorize the use of military force against ISIS, I wondered where, given the president’s priorities above, does the fight against ISIS fall on Nuechterlein’s matrix of national interests.

Basic Interest	Survival [Critical]	Vital [Dangerous]	Major [Serious]	Peripheral [Bothersome]
Defense of the homeland
Economic well-being
Favorable world order
Promotion of values

By asking Nuechterlein’s questions, here’s what I came up with:

1. Does survival of our homeland depend on whether we fight ISIS? No. ISIS is not an existential threat to us. It may be to Iraq, and probably is to those who aren’t Sunni Muslims, but not to our country.

2. Does ISIS threaten our economic well-being? In my view, no. Thanks to fracking, the US has become the world’s biggest oil producer. While we still import oil from Saudi Arabia, we don’t import as much as we once did. But we aren’t totally rid of Saudi oil. Our oil supply isn’t in danger – yet. ISIS doesn’t like Saudi Arabia. If ISIS threatens Saudi Arabia, the answer to this question could turn into a “yes.”

3. Is ISIS a threat to a world order favorable to us? Yes. One of the current administration’s priorities is to “seek stability and peace in the Middle East and North Africa.” Having an organization such as ISIS running amok in the Middle East is quite detrimental to stability. We tend to see “Middle East peace” through the prism of “Israel vs. the Arab World,” but oddly enough, Israel isn’t part of the calculus as far as ISIS is concerned. Sure, they want to get rid of the Israelis, but that isn’t their focus now. The way I see it, this is more of a product of the Sunni-Shi’ite schism in Islam. They’re fighting other Muslims who don’t agree with them, and if Christians get in the way [like the Yezidis], killing or converting them to Islam is a bonus. Perhaps this isn’t “ethnic cleansing” as we saw in the former Yugoslavia, but it is “religious cleansing.” To some this would be a distinction without a difference. You be the judge.

4. Does ISIS violate our sense of fairness, do they treat people who disagree with them disrespectfully? Yes. They are using Mao’s maxim that political power comes from the barrel of a gun, or in their case the point of a sword. And let’s face it, ISIS are probably the only guys who get off on images of decapitations and burning people alive. Such images offend Western sensibilities, but not these guys.

So in using Nuechterlein’s matrix, the interests at stake here fall into the “Major” and “Peripheral” category. Where does Nuechterlein draw the line over the question of whether to commit US forces to defeat these or any other bad guys? I don't know.

Joseph S. Nye, Jr. is an esteemed political scientist who used to be the Dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He often writes articles for Foreign Affairs, and currently serves on the Foreign Affairs Policy Board. His pet rock is “soft power,” which in his own words is “the ability to attract through cultural and ideological appeal.” As such, he advocates we should only use “hard power” [the military and economic ability to buy and coerce] when “our humanitarian interests are reinforced by the existence of other strong national interests.” In Nye’s eyes, is the ISIS problem more than just a “Major” or “peripheral” interest? Is the humanitarian interest reinforced by the interest to defend the homeland and/or the interest of our economic well-being? I would argue the answer to that question is “no.”

Is the ISIS problem a case for the use of “hard power” or “soft power?” The Obama Administration has “split the baby” in advocating the use of some “hard power” [military air power, supplying of small lethal arms to ISIS opponents] while leaving other “hard power” [namely ground troops] on the sidelines. I haven't seen any attempt to use any "soft power." But in fairness, is "soft power" useful against guys who burn people alive?

Tony’s take: I don't see this as an American problem to solve. This is a Middle East problem best solved by those who live there. Leave us out of it. Others may disagree, and they probably will.

Ivan’s War: Life & Death in the Red Army, 1939-45

Originally posted in Tony's Music and Screening Room, April 25, 2011...

Thousands of books have been written about World War II. I should know – a bunch of them reside in by bookshelves, much to Carol’s annoyance. But there haven’t been that many that have been written about life in the Soviet Red Army. What was it like for the Soviet soldier? We have been treated to what it was like for GI Joe, the British Tommies, or even the German Fritz. But what about the Soviet Ivan? Catherine Merridale writes an excellent piece of scholarship of the Soviet soldier, who it can be safely said had to endure much more than soldiers from other nations that fought in the Second World War.

Thirty million Ivans served in the Red Army during World War II. Eight million of these Ivans were killed, far more than American GIs or British Tommies. British historian Catherine Merridale applied to teach some history in Russian schools. She asked her students what it was they wanted to learn. She said that without hesitation, they all said they wanted to learn about the Second World War. During Soviet times there was the “official” version of The Great Patriotic War. At the center of the official version was the Soviet Hero myth. You can find it carved into stone on many a Soviet wartime memorial. It is described in countless wartime songs, in paintings and in epic poetry. The Soviet hero was an ideal everyman. He is simple, healthy, strong and kind, far-sighted, selfless, and unafraid of death. There was no hint of panic, failure, soldiers’ fear, self-mutilation, cowardice, or rape. Soviet accounts mention little of trauma, battle stress, or even depression. So rigid was the adherence to the official Soviet history of the Great Patriotic War that it was not a topic for scholarly research.

It is not surprising to me that tales of individual heroism in the Soviet Red Army are few and far between. Soviet society, and the dictatorship of the proletariat that ruled it, placed more emphasis on the success on the collective rather than the heroic exploits of the individual. If heroism was depicted, it was only in the guise of “this is what OUR state produced.” Genuine stories of death and struggle had been turned into patriotic myth. But in the 20 years since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, people are free to ask new questions. University students of today were not alive are too young to remember the state parades commemorating the victory over Germany. They haven’t had the myths of the Great Patriotic War continually crammed down their throats like their Soviet contemporaries. They’re free to ask new questions, and they’re asking them now.

By the time the war started for the Soviet Union in 1941, the generation that fought the Great Patriotic War had endured violence on an unimaginable scale. There was World War I between 1914-18. A three-year civil war that immediately followed the war brought shortages of everything from heating oil to bread and blankets, epidemic disease, and a new thing Lenin called “class war.” Famine followed in 1921, then Stalin, then an even more cruel famine that claimed seven million victims. Soviet society tore itself apart with many five-year plans for economic growth, peasants uprooted from lands and herded into collective farms. These folks endured a lot. Because of these events that preceded the Second World War, these are but some of the many things that contributed to the citizens’ antipathy toward the Soviet regime when the bombs started dropping on June 22, 1941.

For the first two summers of the war, the Wermacht looked invincible. Their tanks and horses raced eastward over sun-baked ground, encircling entire Soviet divisions at a time while instilling panic in the rest. There was a complete lack of preparedness by the Red Army. To what does Catherine Merridale attribute this lack of preparation? Politics, and the emphasis on it above all else, including the training of an army to do what it was meant to do. In a look at a typical training schedule, Merridale uncovers one of many hours of lecture on politics, followed by working in the fields in order to feed the troops. If there was time left over, recruits trained with wooden rifles and cardboard tanks. Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail Tukachevsky had a plan. His plan was a defense in depth of the Soviet Union. Stalin got rid of Tukachevsky and many who thought like him during the purges in 1937. Tukachevsky’s defense doctrine was replaced with one emphasizing the offensive. This emphasis on the offensive had the effect of feeding Soviet troops into a German meat grinder. In Stalin’s mind, the giving up even an inch of ground to be able to construct a decent defensive position was treasonous. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops would be captured, sometimes within hours. For instance, in the fight for Kiev, the Soviets lost 750,000 men killed, wounded, or captured. Two and a half million soldiers were captured by the Germans in the first five months of the war. The Germans captured so many prisoners they didn’t know what to do with them. By the end of the war, the Soviet Red Army was destroyed and completely rebuilt three times. We Americans have no concept of how such a thing could happen.

When war started for the Soviet Union in 1941, Soviet troops were poorly trained, poorly armed, and poorly fed. If one has ever seen the movie “The Enemy at the Gates” [about the Battle of Stalingrad], the scene where troops are being forced into battle without rifles is an accurate one. These men were told there was an arms shortage, and if they wanted a weapon, they would have to get one from a dead comrade who fell before them. The Soviet regime imagined how the general population would react to stories of official incompetence, of total disregard for human life, and for not giving their sons [and a lot of times their daughters too] the means to fight their invaders. They were hungry, subsisting on a diet of soup, kasha, bread and tea. Rampant pilfering of army warehouses and supply trucks diverted more desirable food, as well as other war material, to the black market. Soldiers, lacking spades, dug trenches with their helmets, the same helmets in which they boiled potatoes. It’s no wonder that they wanted to keep such stories from the public. Imagine if such things happened in this country – imagine the outrage that would take hold in a free society. It was in the Soviet regime’s best interests to keep such things secret and to build up the Stalin personality cult, with Stalin as the sole architect of victory in the Great Patriotic War.

After the collapse of Soviet communism, scholars were given access to millions of documents that the Soviets had kept classified. In these records the author found bundles of soldiers’ letters the reports of the military and secret police, the army’s own notes about troop morale. Soldiers had been forbidden to keep diaries, but many did anyway. The author traveled to battle sites, to Kursk, to Sevastopol, Kerch, Kiev, Smolensk and in each place, she tried to find out who had fought, what they did, what the local people saw. She interviewed over two hundred veterans. She was able to look at archives that until then were kept secret from the public. She looked at the forbidden diaries and field reports. Theses soldiers came to understand what happened to their loved ones at the hands of the Germans in occupied territory. Until 1944, most of the Great Patriotic War was fought on Soviet soil. She describes an army fueled by rage and vodka, whipped into a frenzy by its political officers. In practice, this meant rape, pillage and plunder on a scale that has yet to be recognized. The Red Army, Ms. Merridale writes, embarked "on an orgy of war crimes." Yet in none of the interviewers, none of the Soviet veterans cop to taking part in any such activity.

At war’s end, Ivan didn’t reap any of the benefits like a GI Bill, no postwar prosperity. To relive such memories [besides the ones the state created for them], the shock and distress they witnessed in combat, were too painful for them. Their wartime experiences manifested themselves in the postwar period in the forms of heart disease, hypertension, and gastric disorders. Ms. Merridale describes this as part of the hidden story of the Great Patriotic War. They came home to a country that needed rebuilding. They also came home to a county still controlled by a paranoid madman who imagined there were enemies everywhere. As Merridale writes, “the motherland was never conquered, but it enslaved itself.”

Ukraine Today

Things are going from bad to worse in what used to be the Soviet Union.  In July 2014, “separatist” forces shot down a Malaysian jumbo jet in the Donetsk Oblast.  The initial reaction was one of shock, horror, much finger-pointing between Russia and Ukraine, and much gnashing of teeth, but in the months since this event it has receded into the background noise of other events happening in the region.  The European Union and the United States have imposed several rounds of sanctions on Russia over its annexation of the Crimea and support for the separatists.  The ruble tanked, the bottom fell out of oil prices and the Russian economy contracted.  There are some in the West who believe that because of these events, Vladimir Putin would hesitate to take any action in Ukraine to further Russian interests.  What Western decision-makers don’t understand is that Vladimir Putin doesn’t care.  Those developments are mere speed bumps on the way to Vlad’s vision of the way things ought to be.  That vision is to keep Ukraine as a “non-aligned” nation.  That means no partnership with the EU, and definitely no NATO membership.  Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said “only a nonaligned Ukraine may escape further territorial disintegration.” Apparently, Ukraine didn’t get the memo. 

In June 2014, newly-elected Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko took office and began to implement promises he made during his presidential campaign, mainly those about getting closer to Western Europe.  Later that same month he signed free trade and association agreements with the European Union.  This allows Ukraine to sell their goods to the EU duty-free.  Mr. Poroshenko sees complete integration with the EU to be a ten-fifteen year process.  In December 2014, the Ukrainian parliament passed, and Poroshenko signed, a new law that abandons Ukraine’s non-aligned status.  Poroshenko indicated that when Ukraine is able to meet NATO standards [his estimation: five-six years from now], there will be a referendum to decide whether to join NATO.  It is not a coincidence that fighting between Ukrainian regulars and “separatists” in Donetsk has resumed since the new Ukrainian law took effect.  Not only has fighting resumed in Donetsk [it never really stopped, but it has escalated], but now the “separatists” are aiming for Mariupol.  Mariupol sits on the coast of the Sea of Azov.  Taking it would be one step toward establishing a “land bridge” between Russia and Crimea.  It would also deny another port to Ukraine, further strengthening Russia’s hand in the Black Sea.

In September 2014, Russia, Ukraine, the Russia-backed “separatists” and the OSCE signed the Minsk Protocol.  This agreement was supposed to stop the fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine [Donetsk and Luhansk], and create some kind of demilitarized zone from which both sides would withdraw their heavy weapons.   The cease fire really didn’t take – Ukraine didn’t withdraw its heavy weapons, and Russia continued to supply the “separatists” with munitions, heavy weapons and “volunteers.”  Russia is engaging in a “hybrid war,” were commandos without insignia are slipping across the border to engage Ukrainian troops, and Russian military equipment and material are appearing in eastern Ukraine where none had been there before.  The Ukrainian “separatists” are on the offensive, but Ukrainian defenders refuse to go away.  The front has stabilized, but the separatists are not content with controlling only 40 percent of the Donbas region.  And so the war of attrition continues.

For the foreseeable future, expect Vladimir Putin to continue to support the Ukrainian “separatists.”  In the “no brainer” category, the Russians will continue to give material support to the “people’s republics” either with arms and/or “volunteers.”   Russia will continue to deny any involvement, and the West will continue to think economic sanctions with alter Russian behavior.  The Ukrainians aren’t strong enough to kick these “separatists” out of Ukraine, and the “people’s republics” aren’t strong enough to defeat Ukraine without Russian help.  Ukraine will remain weak and divided.  For the longer term, I would expect Russia to act in Ukraine as they are now acting in Abkhazia.  Russia and Abkhazia have entered into a joint forces agreement, which integrates the foreign policy and the military command structure with Russia.  The Russians now consider an attack on Abkhazia as an attack on Russia.  This arrangement keeps Georgia divided and weak, and more importantly, out of NATO.  Since I don’t expect that Ukraine will be victorious over the “separatists,” I would expect the “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk to enter a similar arrangement with Russia that it now enjoys with Abkhazia.  

1 Feb 15 Update -
Here's an excellent depiction of the current situation in Donetsk and Luhansk that I found on Radio Free Europe's page:

This one is a little more detailed.  How many Ukrainian regulars are in that pocket?