http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/281554-clinton-email-headache-is-about-to-get-worse

By Julian Hattem - 05/28/16 06:09 AM EDT

Hillary Clinton’s email headache is about to get even worse.A scathing inspector general’s report this week was just the first in what is likely to be a series of official actions related to her private server stemming from the FBI, a federal courthouse and Capitol Hill.Clinton’s presidential campaign has failed to quiet the furor over the issue, which has dogged her for more than a year.In the next few weeks — just as the likely Democratic presidential nominee hopes to pivot towards a general election — it will face its toughest scrutiny yet.
“All of that feeds into this overarching problem of public distrust of her,” said Grant Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University.
“To put it in slang terms, she’s got a pretty deeply held street rep at this point. This fits the street rep,” he added.
The State Department’s watchdog report was especially damaging, given the official nature of its source. The report claimed that Clinton never sought approval for her “homebrew” email setup, that her use of the system violated the department’s record-keeping rules and that it would have been rejected had she brought it up to department officials.
Clinton’s allies attempted to paint the office as partisan in the weeks ahead of the report’s release, but the effort failed to leave a lasting impact.
For months, Clinton and her team have failed to offer a convincing explanation for the use of the private server, and she has steadfastly refused to apologize.
“I thought it was allowed,” she said in an interview on CNN’s “The Situation Room” this week, after the watchdog’s report became public. “I knew past secretaries of state used personal email.
“It was still a mistake. If I could go back, I'd do it differently,” she said.
Clinton and many of her top aides declined to take part in the inspector general’s probe. But they won’t have that option going forward.
On Friday, Clinton’s former chief of staff Cheryl Mills was interviewed behind closed doors as part of a court case launched by conservative watchdog Judicial Watch. In coming weeks, longtime aide Huma Abedin, former IT specialist Bryan Pagliano and other officials are scheduled to answer questions under oath for sessions that could last as long as seven hours.
A federal judge this week preemptively blocked Judicial Watch from releasing videotapes of the upcoming depositions.
But the group this week released the transcript from its first interview, with longtime State Department veteran Lewis Lukens. And it plans to do the same thing following each of the upcoming depositions, providing fodder for weeks to come from some of the closest rings of Clinton’s inner circle.
The court has said that Clinton herself may be forced to answer questions under oath, which would dramatically escalate the brouhaha surrounding the case.
At some point in the next month, the House Select Committee on Benghazi is also set to release its long-awaited report about the 2012 terror attack, which has been linked to Clinton.
The committee has pursued Clinton’s emails to the extent that they relate to the violence in Libya, and the report is likely to stoke new ire about the matter. However, its two-year investigation has been marred by partisan bickering, and the report will likely be shrugged off by Democrats.
What is potentially profoundly more damaging for Clinton is the looming FBI investigation, exploring the possibility that she or her aides mishandled classified information.
More than 2,000 emails that Clinton gave the State Department from her private server have been classified at some level, and 22 were marked as “top secret” — the highest level of classification — and deemed too dangerous to release publicly even in a highly redacted form. However, none of the emails were marked as classified at the time they were sent, complicating the investigation into whether her setup thwarted any laws.
Abedin, Mills and other Clinton aides have reportedly been interviewed as part of the FBI case. And Clinton herself is due up for questioning at some point.
Legal experts appear skeptical that the Justice Department would hand down a criminal charge against Clinton, due to both the high legal hurdles involved and the intense political scrutiny surrounding the likely presidential nominee.
But that won’t end the matter.
Republicans appear primed to cry foul if the FBI closes its investigation without handing down indictments or offering a public explanation. Senior lawmakers have already excoriated the Justice Department for failing to appoint a special prosecutor.
“It’s clear that the attorney general, who serves at the pleasure of President Obama, is going to have very little incentive or intention to pursue the appropriate investigation,” Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), the No. 2 Senate Republican, said on the chamber floor this week.
Other Senate Republicans, including Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) have launched their own investigations related to Clinton’s email. Some of their findings, Grassley said this week, were at odds with those of the State Department’s inspector general report.
“I will follow up to get to the bottom of these discrepancies because misrepresenting the facts to Congress is unacceptable,” Grassley pledged.
How much the email issue hurts Clinton’s electoral hopes remains an open question. Results of the June 7 primary contest in California, the nation’s largest state, could offer some clues about whether the email scrutiny hurts her polling.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), her primary opponent, has stubbornly refused to address the issue, memorably declaring in October that people “are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.”
Recent events have disproved that claim.
And as she gears up for a general election, Clinton has to expect that Donald Trump won’t be as kind.
Sanders “didn’t pick up on the emails, which I think was a big mistake,” the presumptive GOP nominee said on “Fox and Friends” last weekend.
“I’m going to pick up bigly.”

Intel Officials Urge Fast Report on Clinton’s Emails

Posted on May 23, 2016 by WashingtonsBlog

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/05/intel-vets-urge-fast-report-on-clintons-emails.html 

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: Those “Damn Emails” – “Really a Concern”
Introduction
Last Wednesday Robert Gates, CIA Director under President Bush-41 and Defense Secretary under President Bush-43, publicly commented that Secretary Hillary Clinton’s “whole email thing … is really a concern in terms of her judgment,” adding, “I don’t know what originally prompted her to think that was a good idea.”
What originally prompted her does not matter. As your Secretary of State and your subordinate, she willfully violated laws designed to protect classified information from unauthorized disclosure. It may be somewhat difficult for those not as immersed in national security matters as we have been to appreciate the seriousness of the offense, including the harm done in compromising some of the most sensitive U.S. programs and activities. This is why we write.
Pundits and others are playing down the harm. A charitable interpretation is that they have no way to gauge what it means to expose so much to so many. We do know, and our overriding concern is to protect the national security of our country from further harm. It would be a huge help toward this end, if you would order Attorney General Loretta Lynch to instruct the FBI to stop slow-walking the email investigation and release its findings promptly.

If you choose, instead, to give precedence to politics over national security, the American people will be deprived of timely appreciation of the gravity of the harm done; national security officials who do follow the rules will be scandalized; FBI investigators will conclude that that their job is more political than professional; and the noxious impression will grow that powerful people cannot be held accountable when they break the law. Worse: if the results of the FBI investigation remain under lock and key, dangerous pressures are likely to be exerted on the most senior U.S. officials by those who have the key – as we explain below.
* * *
We the undersigned Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have spent 400 years working with classified information – up to and including TOP SECRET, Codeword, and Special Access Programs (SAP). Given that experience, we believe that much of the commentary on the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton email controversy has been misplaced, focusing on extraneous issues having little or nothing to do with the overriding imperative to protect classified information.
As intelligence, military, and foreign service professionals, we are highly aware not only of that compelling need, but also of the accompanying necessity to hold accountable those whose actions compromise – whether for reasons of convenience or espionage – sensitive operations, programs and persons. In addition, we know that successful mutual cooperation with foreign intelligence services depends largely on what they see as our ability to keep secrets secret.
Background
Last August, Secretary Clinton handed over her private email server to the FBI, five months after she acknowledged she had used it for work-related emails as Secretary of State. She admitted to having deleted about 31,000 emails she described as personal. Media reports last fall, however, indicated that the FBI was able to recover the personal emails, and was reviewing them, as well as the 30,000 others she had described as work-related.
In January, the Department of State announced that, of the 30,000 work-related emails, at least 1,340 contained classified material. The Department retroactively classified 22 of those TOP SECRET and prevented their release. Among the 22 were some that, according to media reports, included information on highly sensitive Special Access Programs (SAP).
The White House has said it will do nothing to impede the FBI investigation and possible filing of charges against Clinton, if the facts should warrant that kind of action. Inasmuch as the outcome of the investigation is bound to have major political consequences, such White House assurances stretch credulity.
By all indications, the FBI is slow-walking the investigation and mainstream media are soft-pedaling the issue. As things now stand, most Americans remain unaware of the import of this industrial-scale compromise of very sensitive national security information in Secretary Clinton’s emails.
Our concern mounted in January when the Inspector General of the intelligence community wrote to the chairs of the congressional intelligence committees that he had received from one of the intelligence agencies two “sworn declarations” asserting that Secretary Clinton’s emails contained not only CONFIDENTIAL and SECRET information, but also information at the TOP SECRET/SAP level.
In 2009, you signed an Executive Order regarding SAP (Special Access Programs), so we assume you were briefed on their extremely high sensitivity and the consequent need to sharply limit the number of people allowed to be “read-in” on them. The mishandling of SAP information can neutralize intelligence programs costing billions of dollars, wreck liaison relationships assiduously cultivated for decades, and get a lot of people killed.
‘It Wasn’t That Bad’
All those directly or peripherally involved in the investigation of the Clinton email issue know very well that it could have a direct impact on who is likely to become the next President of the United States, and they will be making decisions with that reality in mind. They know that it is with you that “the buck stops,” and they are sensitive to signs of your preferences. Those were not difficult to discern in your commencement address at Howard University on May 7, in which you strongly advocated the same basic policy approaches as those espoused by one Democratic presidential candidate – Hillary Clinton.
Your White House has also made excuses for deliberate security violations by Secretary Clinton that would have gotten senior officials like us fired and probably indicted. We look with suspicion at what we see as contrasting and totally inappropriate attempts by the administration and media to play down the importance of Secretary Clinton’s deliberate disregard of basic security instructions and procedures.
It appears that the option chosen by the White House is using the declared need for “thoroughness” to soft-pedal and delay completion of the investigation for several more months, while the corporate media sleeps on. Four months have already gone by since the smoking-gun-type revelations in the intelligence community Inspector General’s letter to Congress, and it has been well over a year since Secretary Clinton first acknowledged using an insecure email server for official business.
Another claim emanating from your White House is that Clinton was careless in managing her emails and has admitted as much, but that she has not damaged American national security. She has called it a “mistake,” but security officials of the National Security Agency explicitly forewarned her against violating basic laws and regulations designed to prevent the compromise of classified information.
NSA, FBI Have Enough Evidence
Surely, enough time has passed, and enough material has been reviewed, to permit a preliminary damage assessment. The NSA has the necessary information and should, by now, have shared that information with the FBI. Secretary Clinton’s server in her house in Chappaqua, New York, was not a secured device. Her email address incorporated her initials, “hdr” (apparently for her maiden name, Hillary Diane Rodham). It also included the “clinton” server identity, so it was easy for a hacker to spot.
Anyone with the proper equipment, knowledge and motivation might have been able to obtain access. That is what hackers are able to do, with considerable success, against government servers that are far better protected than the private email server located in her New York State home.
In fact, there have been reports that Secretary Clinton’s emails were, indeed, hacked successfully by foreigners. The Romanian hacker who goes by the name Guccifer claimed earlier this month that he had repeatedly hacked her email server. He described the server as “like an open orchid on the Internet” and that “it was easy … easy for me, for everybody.” Guccifer has been extradited from Romania and is now in jail in Alexandria, Virginia, where the FBI is said to be questioning him on the emails. There have also been credible claims that Russian intelligence and other foreign services were able to hack the Secretary’s server.
Another argument being surfaced, in a transparent attempt to defend Secretary Clinton, has to do with intent. It is said that she did not intend to have classified information on her computer in New York and had no intention of handling secret material in a way that would be accessible to foreign intelligence or others lacking the proper security clearances and the need-to-know.
But while intent might be relevant in terms of punishment, it does not change the fact that as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, then Senator Clinton had clearances for classified information for years before becoming Secretary of State. She knew the rules and yet as Secretary she handled classified information carelessly after a deliberate decision to circumvent normal procedures for its safeguarding, thus making it vulnerable to foreign intelligence, as well as to criminal hackers.
Anyone who has ever handled classified material knows that there are a number of things that you do not do. You do not take it home with you, you do not copy it and share it with anyone who does not have a clearance and a need-to-know, you do not strip off the classification marks and treat it as unclassified, and you do not transfer it to another email account that is not protected by a government server.
If you have a secured government computer operating off of a secure server that means that what is on the computer stays on the computer. This is not a matter of debate or subject to interpretation. It is how one safeguards classified information, even if one believes that the material should not be classified, which is another argument that has been made in Clinton’s defense. Whether or not the classification is unnecessary is not your decision to make.
Apart from the guidelines for proper handling of classified information, outlined in Executive Order 13526 and 18 U.S.C Sec. 793(f) of the federal code, there is some evidence of a cover-up regarding what was compromised. This itself would be a violation of the 2009 Federal Records Act and the Freedom of Information Act.
Numerous messages both in New York and in Washington have reportedly been erased or simply cannot be found. In addition, the law cited above explicitly makes it a felony to cut and paste classified information removing its classification designation. Retaining such information on a private email system is also a felony. In one of Secretary Clinton’s emails, she instructed her staff simply to remove a classification and send the information to her on her server.
So the question is not whether Secretary Clinton broke the law. She did. If the laws are to be equally applied, she should face the same kind of consequences as others who have been found, often on the basis of much less convincing evidence, guilty of similar behavior.
Some More Equal Than Others
Secretary Clinton’ case invites comparison with what happened to former CIA case officer Jeffrey Sterling, now serving a three-and-a-half-year prison term for allegedly leaking information to New York Times journalist James Risen. Sterling first came to the media’s attention when in 2003 he blew the whistle on a botched CIA operation called Operation Merlin, telling the Senate Intelligence Committee staff that the operation had ended up revealing nuclear secrets to Iran. When in 2006 James Risen published a book that discussed, inter alia, this amateurish cowboy operation, the Department of Justice focused on Sterling as the suspected source.
In court, the federal prosecutors relied almost entirely on Risen’s phone and email logs, which reportedly demonstrated that the two men had been in contact up until 2005. But the prosecutors did not provide the content of those communications even though the FBI was listening in on some of them. Risen has claimed that he had multiple sources on Operation Merlin, and Sterling has always denied being involved.
Jeffrey Sterling was not permitted to testify in the trial on his own behalf because he would have had to discuss Operation Merlin, which was and is still classified. He could not mention any details about it even if they were already publicly known through the Risen book. No evidence was ever produced in court demonstrating that any classified information ever passed between the two men, but Sterling, an African American, was nevertheless convicted by an all-white jury in Virginia based on “suspicion” and the presumption that “it had to be him.”
The contrast between the copious evidence – some of it self-admitted – of Secretary Clinton’s demonstrable infractions, on the one hand, and the very sketchy, circumstantial evidence used to convict and imprison Jeffrey Sterling, on the other, lend weight to the suspicion that there is one law for the rich and powerful in the United States and another for the rest of us.
Failing to take steps against a politically powerful presidential candidate and letting her off unscathed for crimes of her own making, while an institutionally unprotected Jeffrey Sterling sits in prison would be a travesty of justice not dissimilar to the gentle wrist-slap given Gen. David Petraeus for giving his mistress extremely sensitive information and then lying to the FBI about it.
Your order to then-Attorney General Eric Holder to let Gen. David Petraeus off easy created a noxious – and demoralizing – precedent in the national security community indicating that, whatever the pains taken at lower levels to prevent compromise of duly classified information, top officials are almost never held accountable for disregarding well-established rules. These are some of the reasons we are so concerned that this is precisely the direction in which you seem to be leaning on the Clinton email issue.
In our view, the sole legitimate reason for disclosing classified information springs from the only “oath” we all took – “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.” When, for example, Edward Snowden saw the U.S. government grossly violating our Fourth Amendment right to be “secure” against warrantless “searches and seizures,” he gave more weight to that oath (ethicists call it a supervening value) than to the promise he had made not to disclose information that could harm U.S. national security.
Possibly Still Worse Ahead
You might give some thought, Mr. President, to a potentially messy side of this. What is already known about NSA’s collect-it-all electronic practices over the past several years strongly suggests that NSA, and perhaps the FBI, already know chapter and verse. It is virtually certain they know what was in Secretary Clinton’s emails – including the ones she thought she had deleted. It is likely that they have also been able to determine which foreign intelligence agencies and other hackers were able to access the emails.
One ignores this at one’s peril. Secretary Clinton’s security violations can have impact not only on whether she becomes your successor, but also on whether she would, in that case, be beholden to those who know what lies hidden from the rest of us – perhaps even from you.
Intelligence professionals (in contrast to the occasional political functionary) take the compromise of classified information with utmost seriousness. More important: this is for us a quintessentially nonpartisan issue. It has to do, first and foremost, with the national security of the United States.
We are all too familiar with what harm can come from blithe disregard of basic procedures designed to protect sensitive intelligence and other national security information. Yes, the lamentable unevenness in how such infractions are handled is also an important issue – but that is not our main focus in the present context.
The Truth Will Out
Not all workers at the NSA or the FBI are likely to keep their heads in the sand, as they watch very senior officials and politicians with their own agendas disregard laws to safeguard the nation’s security. We know what it is like to do the difficult, disciplined work of protecting information from being compromised by strictly abiding by what often seem to be cumbersome rules and regulations. We’ve been there; done that.
If you encourage the Department of Justice and the FBI to continue slow-walking the investigation, there is a good chance the truth will come out anyway. As you are aware, the Justice Department, the FBI, and NSA have all yielded recent patriots who, in such circumstances, decided that whistleblowing – rather than silence – was the only way to honor the oath we all swore – to support and defend the Constitution.
To sum up our concern regarding how all this plays out, if you order the Justice Department and FBI to pursue the investigation with “all deliberate speed,” so to speak, and Secretary Clinton becomes president, the juicy email secrets in the hidden hands of the NSA and FBI are likely to give those already powerful institutions a capacity for blackmail that would make J. Edgar Hoover’s mouth water. In addition, information hacked by foreign intelligence services or Guccifer-like hackers can also provide useful grist for leverage or blackmail.
Taking Care the Laws Are Faithfully Executed
We strongly urge you to order Attorney General Loretta Lynch to instruct FBI Director James Comey to wind up a preliminary investigation and tell the country now what they have learned. By now they – and U.S. intelligence agencies – have had enough time to do an early assessment of what classified data, programs and people have been compromised. Realistically speaking, a lengthier, comprehensive post-mortem-type evaluation – however interesting it might be, might never see the light of day under a new president.
We believe the American people are entitled to prompt and full disclosure, and respectfully suggest that you ensure that enforcement of laws protecting our national security does not play stepchild to political considerations on this key issue.
On April 10, you assured Chris Wallace, “I guarantee that there is no political influence in any investigation conducted by the Justice Department, or the FBI – not just in this [Clinton email] case, but in any case. Full stop. Period.”
We urge you to abide by that promise, and let the chips fall where they may. Full stop. Period.
For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
William Binney, Technical Director, NSA; co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.)
Thomas Drake, Senior Executive, NSA (former)
Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)
Sen. Mike Gravel, D, Alaska; earlier, Army Intelligence
Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan (associate VIPS)
Larry C. Johnson, CIA & State Department (ret.)
Michael S. Kearns, Captain, USAF Intelligence Agency (ret.), ex-Master SERE Instructor
John Kiriakou, Former CIA Counterterrorism Officer
Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.)
Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Middle East, CIA (ret.)
Todd Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)
Scott Ritter, former MAJ, USMC, former UN Weapon Inspector, Iraq
Diane Roark, DOE, DOD, NSC, & professional staff, House Intelligence Committee (ret.)
Robert David Steele, former CIA Operations Officer
Peter Van Buren, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (ret.) (associate VIPS)
Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA, (ret.)
Ann Wright, U.S. Army Reserve Colonel (ret) and former U.S. Diplomat

A Whistleblower Manifesto By Edward Snowden

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/03/2016 21:55 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-03/whistleblower-manifesto-edward-snowden

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

The only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the nation all the time, loyalty to the government when it deserves it.

– Quotes by Mark Twain

Every time I hear from Edward Snowden I’m immediately reminded of how thoughtful, courageous and patriotic he is, and how fortunate we are that he followed his conscience and spilled the beans on a multitude of unaccountable and unconstitutional actions routinely committed by America’s deep state government.
Earlier today, The Intercept posted a piece written by Edward Snowden pulled from the recently published book Inside the Assassination Complex. It’s a short piece, but extremely powerful and to the point. I saw it as a whistleblower’s manifesto in which Mr. Snowden explains why he felt he had no other choice but to come forward, and why others in similar positions should consider doing the same should they find themselves in a position to defend the U.S. Constitution and inform the general public. We all know that the deep state will never voluntarily work to protect “we the people,” as such, leaking on behalf of the public interest is now a matter of national survival.
So without further ado, here are excerpts from Snowden’s latest piece, Whistleblowing is Not Just Leaking — It’s an Act of Political Resistance:

I’ve been waiting 40 years for someone like you.” Those were the first words Daniel Ellsberg spoke to me when we met last year. Dan and I felt an immediate kinship; we both knew what it meant to risk so much — and to be irrevocably changed — by revealing secret truths.

One of the challenges of being a whistleblower is living with the knowledge that people continue to sit, just as you did, at those desks, in that unit, throughout the agency, who see what you saw and comply in silence, without resistance or complaint. They learn to live not just with untruths but with unnecessary untruths, dangerous untruths, corrosive untruths. It is a double tragedy: What begins as a survival strategy ends with the compromise of the human being it sought to preserve and the diminishing of the democracy meant to justify the sacrifice.

A single act of whistleblowing doesn’t change the reality that there are significant portions of the government that operate below the waterline, beneath the visibility of the public. Those secret activities will continue, despite reforms. But those who perform these actions now have to live with the fear that if they engage in activities contrary to the spirit of society — if even a single citizen is catalyzed to halt the machinery of that injustice — they might still be held to account. The thread by which good governance hangs is this equality before the law, for the only fear of the man who turns the gears is that he may find himself upon them.

Hope lies beyond, when we move from extraordinary acts of revelation to a collective culture of accountability within the intelligence community. Here we will have taken a meaningful step toward solving a problem that has existed for as long as our government.

Not all leaks are alike, nor are their makers. Gen. David Petraeus, for instance, provided his illicit lover and favorable biographer information so secret it defied classification, including the names of covert operatives and the president’s private thoughts on matters of strategic concern. Petraeus was not charged with a felony, as the Justice Department had initially recommended, but was instead permitted to plead guilty to a misdemeanor. Had an enlisted soldier of modest rank pulled out a stack of highly classified notebooks and handed them to his girlfriend to secure so much as a smile, he’d be looking at many decades in prison, not a pile of character references from a Who’s Who of the Deep State.

In the above paragraph, Snowden highlights the most corrosive aspect of modern American society, the institutionalization of a barbaric and un-American two-tierd justice system. For more on the Petraeus angle referenced, see: Some Leaks Are More Equal Than Others – Hypocritical D.C. Insiders Line up to Defend General Petraeus from Prosecution.

Now back to Snowden.

This dynamic can be seen quite clearly in the al Qaeda “conference call of doom” story, in which intelligence officials, likely seeking to inflate the threat of terrorism and deflect criticism of mass surveillance, revealed to a neoconservative website extraordinarily detailed accounts of specific communications they had intercepted, including locations of the participating parties and the precise contents of the discussions. If the officials’ claims were to be believed, they irrevocably burned an extraordinary means of learning the precise plans and intentions of terrorist leadership for the sake of a short-lived political advantage in a news cycle. Not a single person seems to have been so much as disciplined as a result of the story that cost us the ability to listen to the alleged al Qaeda hotline.

If harmfulness and authorization make no difference, what explains the distinction between the permissible and the impermissible disclosure?

The answer is control. A leak is acceptable if it’s not seen as a threat, as a challenge to the prerogatives of the institution. But if all of the disparate components of the institution — not just its head but its hands and feet, every part of its body — must be assumed to have the same power to discuss matters of concern, that is an existential threat to the modern political monopoly of information control, particularly if we’re talking about disclosures of serious wrongdoing, fraudulent activity, unlawful activities. If you can’t guarantee that you alone can exploit the flow of controlled information, then the aggregation of all the world’s unmentionables — including your own — begins to look more like a liability than an asset.

At the other end of the spectrum is Manning, a junior enlisted soldier, who was much nearer to the bottom of the hierarchy. I was midway in the professional career path. I sat down at the table with the chief information officer of the CIA, and I was briefing him and his chief technology officer when they were publicly making statements like “We try to collect everything and hang on to it forever,” and everybody still thought that was a cute business slogan. Meanwhile I was designing the systems they would use to do precisely that. I wasn’t briefing the policy side, the secretary of defense, but I was briefing the operations side, the National Security Agency’s director of technology. Official wrongdoing can catalyze all levels of insiders to reveal information, even at great risk to themselves, so long as they can be convinced that it is necessary to do so.

Reaching those individuals, helping them realize that their first allegiance as a public servant is to the public rather than to the government, is the challenge. That’s a significant shift in cultural thinking for a government worker today.

At the heart of this evolution is that whistleblowing is a radicalizing event — and by “radical” I don’t mean “extreme”; I mean it in the traditional sense of radix, the root of the issue. At some point you recognize that you can’t just move a few letters around on a page and hope for the best. You can’t simply report this problem to your supervisor, as I tried to do, because inevitably supervisors get nervous. They think about the structural risk to their career. They’re concerned about rocking the boat and “getting a reputation.” The incentives aren’t there to produce meaningful reform. Fundamentally, in an open society, change has to flow from the bottom to the top.

And when you’re confronted with evidence — not in an edge case, not in a peculiarity, but as a core consequence of the program — that the government is subverting the Constitution and violating the ideals you so fervently believe in, you have to make a decision. When you see that the program or policy is inconsistent with the oaths and obligations that you’ve sworn to your society and yourself, then that oath and that obligation cannot be reconciled with the program. To which do you owe a greater loyalty?

As a result we have arrived at this unmatched capability, unrestrained by policy. We have become reliant upon what was intended to be the limitation of last resort: the courts. Judges, realizing that their decisions are suddenly charged with much greater political importance and impact than was originally intended, have gone to great lengths in the post-9/11 period to avoid reviewing the laws or the operations of the executive in the national security context and setting restrictive precedents that, even if entirely proper, would impose limits on government for decades or more. That means the most powerful institution that humanity has ever witnessed has also become the least restrained. Yet that same institution was never designed to operate in such a manner, having instead been explicitly founded on the principle of checks and balances. Our founding impulse was to say, “Though we are mighty, we are voluntarily restrained.”

For more on the judicial system as the “limitation of last resort,” see: Can You Say ‘Rubber Stamp?’ FBI and NSA Requests Never Denied by Secret Court.

When you first go on duty at CIA headquarters, you raise your hand and swear an oath — not to government, not to the agency, not to secrecy. You swear an oath to the Constitution. So there’s this friction, this emerging contest between the obligations and values that the government asks you to uphold, and the actual activities that you’re asked to participate in.

By preying on the modern necessity to stay connected, governments can reduce our dignity to something like that of tagged animals, the primary difference being that we paid for the tags and they’re in our pockets. It sounds like fantasist paranoia, but on the technical level it’s so trivial to implement that I cannot imagine a future in which it won’t be attempted. It will be limited to the war zones at first, in accordance with our customs, but surveillance technology has a tendency to follow us home.

Unrestrained power may be many things, but it’s not American. It is in this sense that the act of whistleblowing increasingly has become an act of political resistance. The whistleblower raises the alarm and lifts the lamp, inheriting the legacy of a line of Americans that begins with Paul Revere.

The individuals who make these disclosures feel so strongly about what they have seen that they’re willing to risk their lives and their freedom. They know that we, the people, are ultimately the strongest and most reliable check on the power of government. The insiders at the highest levels of government have extraordinary capability, extraordinary resources, tremendous access to influence, and a monopoly on violence, but in the final calculus there is but one figure that matters: the individual citizen.

And there are more of us than there are of them.

Amen and perfectly said. We can only hope a handful of government employees and contractors with a conscience and a real dedication to the U.S. Constitution will read this and act accordingly.

Microsoft Sues Obama Administration "To Keep Secrecy The Exception, Not The Rule"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/14/2016 12:51 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-14/microsoft-sues-obama-administration-keep-secrecy-exception-not-rule
The "most transparent administration ever" appears to be making no friends in the tech industry. Following its debacle with Apple, the Obama administration now faces a suit from Microsoft that, in their words, stands up for "customers’ constitutional and fundamental rights – rights that help protect privacy and promote free expression." As Microsoft's Brad Smith notes, with rare exceptions consumers and businesses have a right to know when the government accesses their emails or records, and the suit centers around the fact that since cloud storage accelerated, it’s becoming routine for the U.S. government to issue orders that require email providers to keep these types of legal demands secret. Microsoft believe that this goes too far.
As Bloomberg reports, Microsoft Corp. sued the U.S. Justice Department in an attempt to stop the government from forcing it to turn its customers’ e-mails and other data over to law enforcement without their knowledge.

The lawsuit, which names the Justice Department and Attorney General Loretta Lynch, ratchets up the pressure by technology companies against the U.S. government and echoes a struggle by Apple Inc. to protect its customers’ privacy by refusing to undermine the encryption on its iPhones. Microsoft has been fighting the U.S. over customer privacy and its ability to disclose what it’s had to turn over to investigators for more than two years.

Microsoft called the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act unconstitutional, citing its own First Amendment free speech rights and its customers’ Fourth Amendment right to know if the government has searched or seized their property. The law essentially places the company under an unlimited gag order, according to the complaint filed Thursday in U.S. district court in Seattle. While it’s concerned with protecting civil liberties, Microsoft said it also wants to preserve its ability to sell Internet-based services that customers trust.

“It’s very important for businesses to know when the government is accessing their file room, whether the file room is down the hall or in the cloud," said Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith, noting that consumers and privacy groups have expressed concern about the issue. “People shouldn’t lose their rights simply because technology is moving to the cloud.”

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft argues that the statute violates the company’s First Amendment free-speech rights by placing it under an unlimited gag order and customers’ Fourth Amendment right to know if the government has searched or seized their property.

The rapid growth of cloud computing, in which customer data is stored by providers like Microsoft, Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Google Inc. in the technology companies’ own data centers, has increased both the frequency of warrants seeking data and government abuse of its search powers, Microsoft said in the filing. The law in question predates the invention of the World Wide Web by three years, and was enacted more than two decades before widespread use of cloud computing, Microsoft said. But, according to the complaint below...

The government, however, has exploited the transition to cloud computing as a means of expanding its power to conduct secret investigations. As individuals and business have moved their most sensitive information to the cloud, the government has increasingly adopted the tactic of obtaining the private digital documents of cloud customers not from the customers themselves, but through legal process directed at online cloud providers like  Microsoft. At the same time, the government seeks secrecy orders under 18 U.S.C. § 2705(b) to prevent Microsoft from telling its customers (or anyone else) of the government’s demands.

These secrecy orders generally assert that abiding by the centuries-old requirement of seeking evidence directly from its owner would jeopardize the government’s investigation. Most of the time, these secrecy orders prohibit notification for unreasonably long (or even unlimited) periods of time, which Section 2705(b) permits whenever a court has “reason to believe” any of several adverse consequences might otherwise ensue—including any time notice would “seriously jeopardiz[e] an investigation or unduly delay[] a trial.”

As Microsoft details on their blog, Keeping secrecy the exception, not the rule: An issue for both consumers and businesses...

This morning we filed a new lawsuit in federal court against the United States government to stand up for what we believe are our customers’ constitutional and fundamental rights – rights that help protect privacy and promote free expression. This is not a decision we made lightly, and hence we wanted to share information on this step and why we are taking it.

An issue of fundamental rights

We believe that with rare exceptions consumers and businesses have a right to know when the government accesses their emails or records. Yet it’s becoming routine for the U.S. government to issue orders that require email providers to keep these types of legal demands secret. We believe that this goes too far and we are asking the courts to address the situation.

To be clear, we appreciate that there are times when secrecy around a government warrant is needed. This is the case, for example, when disclosure of the government’s warrant would create a real risk of harm to another individual or when disclosure would allow people to destroy evidence and thwart an investigation. But based on the many secrecy orders we have received, we question whether these orders are grounded in specific facts that truly demand secrecy. To the contrary, it appears that the issuance of secrecy orders has become too routine.

The urgency for action is clear and growing. Over the past 18 months, the U.S. government has required that we maintain secrecy regarding 2,576 legal demands, effectively silencing Microsoft from speaking to customers about warrants or other legal process seeking their data. Notably and even surprisingly, 1,752 of these secrecy orders, or 68 percent of the total, contained no fixed end date at all. This means that we effectively are prohibited forever from telling our customers that the government has obtained their data.

We believe these actions violate two of the fundamental rights that have been part of this country since its founding. These lengthy and even permanent secrecy orders violate the Fourth Amendment, which gives people and businesses the right to know if the government searches or seizes their property. They also violate the First Amendment, which guarantees our right to talk to customers about how government action is affecting their data. The constitutional right to free speech is subject only to restraints narrowly tailored to serve compelling governmental interests, a standard that is neither required by the statute being applied nor met by the government in practice here.

An issue with important practical consequences

The issue also has practical implications, and it’s important to consider them.

First, the issue has vital practical ramifications given the evolution of technology. Before the digital age, individuals and businesses stored their most sensitive correspondence and other documents in file cabinets and desk drawers. As computers became prevalent, users moved their materials to local computers and on-premises servers, which continued to remain within a user’s physical possession and control. In both eras, the government had to give notice when it sought a warrant to seize private information and communications, except in the rarest of circumstances.

Cloud computing has spurred a profound change in the storage of private information. Today, individuals increasingly keep their emails and documents on remote servers in data centers – in short, in the cloud. But the transition to the cloud does not alter people’s expectations of privacy and should not alter the fundamental constitutional requirement that the government must – with few exceptions – give notice when it searches and seizes private information or communications.

The same is true for businesses large and small. In the past, when a business’ email server was housed in its own building, the government by definition had to give notice in order to enter the building or otherwise require the business to produce an employee’s emails. Now businesses actively are migrating their information technology infrastructure to servers hosted by cloud service providers. In this new context, the government’s secrecy orders forbid cloud service providers from letting businesses know that the government has obtained their data. Not surprisingly, business customers regularly convey to us their strong desire to know when the government is obtaining their data. And not surprisingly, they want the opportunity for their own lawyers to review the situation and help decide whether to turn over information or contest the issue in court.

In 2013 we committed publicly to challenging individual secrecy orders for legitimate business customers, given our belief that the government can often obtain the information it needs from the headquarters of a business without notifying a specific individual there who is under investigation. In some cases we’ve convinced the government to redirect its request to our business customers. In other cases we’ve litigated the issue, and, in one recent situation, the government argued that we should be held in contempt for refusing to turn over email until a court ruled on the secrecy issue. Fortunately, we prevailed on the contempt issue in that case. But as we’ve monitored requests over time, we’ve concluded that this issue is recurring and needs to be considered in the context of the broader constitutional rights that are at stake.

It’s also important to consider the issue in the practical context of government investigations. Even if there is a solid basis for secrecy at the beginning of an investigation, circumstances can change. The government may drop the investigation or may take some step that alerts an individual to its existence. Yet even then these lengthy or permanent secrecy orders prevent cloud service providers from discussing with the customer the fact that his or her emails were accessed.

An issue that calls for a principled solution

Whenever we raise concerns such as these, we try to couple our focus on the problem with some suggestions for possible solutions. We definitely appreciate that we do not have all the answers and that others may offer better ideas than we have thought about so far. But we believe it’s important to help think constructively about possible steps forward.

While today’s lawsuit is important, we believe there’s an opportunity for the Department of Justice to adopt a new policy that sets reasonable limitations on the use of these types of secrecy orders. Congress also has a role to play in finding and passing solutions that both protect people’s rights and meet law enforcement’s needs. If the DOJ doesn’t act, then we hope that Congress will amend the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to implement reasonable rules. In fact, secrecy provisions in ECPA today are out of step with other U.S. laws that contain clearer limitations on secrecy provisions and allow law enforcement flexibility for extensions.

If policymakers update the rules governing secrecy orders, we hope they will be guided by three principles that we think are important for our customers and for law enforcement. First, transparency: People have a right to know as soon as reasonably possible when the government serves a provider with a legal demand to access their records or emails. Providers like Microsoft have a right to inform customers and be transparent with the public. Second, digital neutrality: Customers generally shouldn’t be entitled to less notice just because they have moved their emails to the cloud. And finally, necessity:  Secrecy orders should be adapted to what’s necessary for the investigation, and no more. If there’s a good reason to justify a secrecy order initially and that reason continues, prosecutors should be able to extend the order based on necessity. If not, we should be able to tell our customer what happened.

As I noted at the beginning, we don’t take lightly this type of action – filing a lawsuit against any government. We only do so when we believe that critical principles and important practical consequences are at stake. Today’s lawsuit is the fourth public case we’ve filed against the U.S. government related to our customers’ right to privacy and transparency. The first lawsuit resulted in a good and appropriate settlement allowing us to disclose the number of legal requests we receive. The second resulted in the government withdrawing a National Security Letter after we challenged a non-disclosure order attached to the letter. The third, a challenge to a U.S. search warrant for customer email in Ireland belonging to a non-US citizen, is pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Today’s suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, can be found here.

Ultimately, we view this case as similar to the other three that we have filed. It involves the fundamental right of people and businesses to know when the government is accessing their content and our right to share this information with them.

Indictment Looms As FBI Declares 22 Clinton Home-Server Emails "Top Secret"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/29/2016 14:56 -0500

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-29/indictment-looms-fbi-declares-22-clinton-emails-top-secret

Just as we warned, and she must have known, it appears at least 22 of the emails found on Hillary Clinton's private email server have been declared "top secret" by The FBI (but will not be releasing the contents) according to AP.

Clinton has insisted she never sent or received information on her personal email account that was classified at the time. No emails released so far were stamped "CLASSIFIED" or "TOP SECRET," but reviewers previously had designated more than 1,000 messages at lower classification levels for public release. Friday's will be the first at the top secret level.

And because the administration believes strongly in transparency and accountability, you won't get any information about just what kind of state secrets were passed on a non-secure server:

• STATE DEPT WON'T SPEAK ON CONTENT OF TOP SECRET E-MAILS: KIRBY
• KIRBY: SOME CLINTON-OBAMA E-MAIL EXCHANGES ARE BEING WITHHELD

As AP reports,

The Obama administration is confirming for the first time that Hillary Clinton's unsecured home server contained some closely guarded secrets, including material requiring one of the highest levels of classification.

The revelation comes just three days before the Iowa presidential nominating caucuses in which Clinton is a candidate.

The State Department will release more emails from Clinton's time as secretary of state later Friday.

But The Associated Press has learned that 7 email chains are being withheld in full for containing "top secret" material.

The 37 pages include messages recently described by a key intelligence official as concerning so-called "special access programs" — a highly restricted subset of classified material that could point to confidential sources or clandestine programs like drone strikes or government eavesdropping.

Department officials wouldn't describe the substance of the emails, or say if Clinton had sent any herself.

Spokesman John Kirby tells the AP that no judgment on past classification was made. But the department is looking into that, too.

For those that Clinton only read, and didn't write or forward, she still would have been required to report classification slippages that she recognized.

Possible responses for classification infractions include counseling, warnings or other action,State Department officials said, though they declined to say if these applied to Clinton or senior aides who've since left the department. The officials weren't authorized to speak on the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.

However, as we previously noted, the implications are tough for The DoJ - if they indict they crush their own candidate's chances of the Presidency, if they do not - someone will leak the details and the FBI will revolt... The leaking of the Clinton emails has been compared to as the next “Watergate” by former U.S. Attorney Joe DiGenova this week, if current FBI investigations don’t proceed in an appropriate manner. The revelation comes after more emails from Hilary Clinton’s personal email have come to light.

“[The investigation has reached] a critical mass,” DiGenova told radio host Laura Ingraham when discussing the FBI’s still pending investigation. Though Clinton is still yet to be charged with any crime, DiGenova advised on Tuesday that changes may be on the horizon. The mishandling over the classified intelligence may lead to an imminent indictment, with DiGenova suggesting it may come to a head within 60 days.

“I believe that the evidence that the FBI is compiling will be so compelling that, unless [Lynch] agrees to the charges, there will be a massive revolt inside the FBI, which she will not be able to survive as an attorney general,” he said.

"The intelligence community will not stand for that. They will fight for indictment and they are already in the process of gearing themselves to basically revolt if she refuses to bring charges."

The FBI also is looking into Clinton's email setup, but has said nothing about the nature of its probe.Independent experts say it is highly unlikely that Clinton will be charged with wrongdoing, based on the limited details that have surfaced up to now and the lack of indications that she intended to break any laws.

"What I would hope comes out of all of this is a bit of humility" and an acknowledgement from Clinton that "I made some serious mistakes," said Bradley Moss, a Washington lawyer who regularly handles security clearance matters.

Legal questions aside, it's the potential political costs that are probably of more immediate concern for Clinton. She has struggled in surveys measuring her perceived trustworthiness and an active federal investigation, especially one buoyed by evidence that top secret material coursed through her account, could negate one of her main selling points for becoming commander in chief: Her national security resume.

Russia Bans Soros Foundation As A "Threat To National Security And Constitutional Order"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/30/2015 09:19 -0500
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-30/russia-bans-soros-foundation-threat-national-security-and-constitutional-order
Following Russia's official retaliation to the Turkish downing of its jet a week ago, in which Putin issued an executive order limiting employment for Turkish workers, restricting Turkish organizations, and reducing the amount of bilateral trade with Ankara, perhaps a far more notable development took place earlier today when the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office issued a statement in which it recognized George Soros’s Open Society Institute and another affiliated organization as "undesirable groups", banning Russian citizens and organizations from participation in any of their projects.
In a statement released on Monday, prosecutors said the activities of the Open Society Institute and the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation were a threat to the foundations of Russia’s Constitutional order and national security. They added that the Justice Ministry would be duly informed about these conclusions and would add the two groups to Russia’s list of undesirable foreign organizations.
Are the "globalization gloves" finally coming off?
According to RT, prosecutors launched a probe into the activities of the two organizations - both sponsored by the well-known US financier George Soros - in July this year, after Russian senators approved the so-called “patriotic stop-list” of 12 groups that required immediate attention over their supposed anti-Russian activities. Other groups on the list included the National Endowment for Democracy; the International Republican Institute; the National Democratic Institute; the MacArthur Foundation and Freedom House.
Open Society is not the first: in late July, the Russian Justice Ministry recognized the US National Endowment for Democracy as an undesirable group after prosecutors discovered the US NGO had spent millions on attempts to question the legitimacy of Russian elections and tarnish the prestige of national military service.
The Law on Undesirable Foreign Organizations came into force in early June this year. It requires the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Foreign Ministry to draw up an official list of undesirable foreign organizations and outlaw their activities. Once a group is recognized as undesirable, its assets in Russia must be frozen, its offices closed and the distribution of any of its materials must be banned. That said, it is doubtful that Soros still has any active assets in Russia - his foundation, which emerged in Russia in its early post-USSR years in the mid-1990s, wrapped up active operations in 2003 when Putin cemented his control on power.
If the ban is violated, the personnel of the outlawed group and any Russian citizens who cooperate with them could face heavy fines, or even prison terms in the case of repeated or aggravated offences.
And while it is doubtful that Soros will be making landfall in Moscow any time soon and thus be subject to an arrest warrant, it is notable that the first financial spillover effect from the year's most dramatic geopolitical event involves note other than the famed "globalizer" and the person who as recent hacked emails divulged was the puppet-master behind the Ukraine presidential coup.
Will the US retaliate in kind and expand its year-long sanctions against Russia as a result as the world continues to careen into fragmented, multi-polar chaos? Or will there be another provocation between NATO-member Turkey and Russia as a result, perhaps one involving Russian ship transit through the Boshporus? With events now moving fast, we should have an answer in the very near future.

Sorry, "Feel The Bern" Fans: President Sanders Won't Change Anything

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/21/2015 15:01 -0400

inShare1

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-21/sorry-feel-bern-fans-president-sanders-wont-change-anything 

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
Fans of Obama learned the hard way that
hope and change are quietly dumped the moment you enter the Imperial Presidency.

The appeal of Bernie Sanders is clear even to those who don't "feel the Bern":
maybe, just maybe something will actually change in Washington. Fans of
The Donald have the same hope.
A vote for Hillary is a vote for the status quo--for fake-sincerity speeches fine-tuned by
the latest polls, for simulacra reforms that leave Wall Street and the rest of the Empire
untouched, and for the astonishing hypocrisy of a visionless politico who amassed
a vast fortune on the coattails of her aging-Lothario hubby attempting to fan the flames
of class warfare.
As tempting as it is to hope that an outsider president such as Bernie or
the Donald might change the trajectory of the Empire, this is a vain and futile hope.
This is partly the result of the limited domestic powers of the Imperial President and
partly the result of the momentum of the Empire and the pressure that will be brought to bear
on anyone, insider or outsider, who attempts to change the course of the ship of state.
Get money out of politics? The president is powerless. Congress passes the laws,
and the Supreme Court shreds any attempt to limit political contributions. Any bill that
does pass has loopholes big enough for truckloads of cash to breeze through.
How about taxing the rich? Well, for starters, the wealthy already pay most of the federal
income taxes:
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the top 1% paid 39% of the
personal income taxes in 2010 while earning 15% of the before-tax income, and the
top 20% paid 93% of the federal income taxes in 2010 while earning 52% of before-tax income.
So the rich are already taxed heavily, and those that aren't bought a loophole from Congress
that no president can close.
Tax codes can't be changed at the whim of the President; Congress passes tax laws,
and yes, contribution-loving Congress is open for business when it comes to buying
tax breaks.
How about changing U.S. foreign policy? Long before he is sworn in, President-elect
Sanders will get the treatment: the lives saved by all those drone strikes,
the risks of upsetting our many allies, our many treaty commitments, the dangers of
appearing weak in these critical times, the enormous value of the intelligence gleaned
by the NSA and the rest of the National Security State, and of course the famous
nuclear launch capability that rests with the president.
Don't hold it against Bernie or anyone else when they cave under this pressure.
The president is a figurehead, a PR spectacle with limited powers to change the
course of the state or nation. Yes, Bernie could end various undeclared wars, but
the pressure to maintain drone strikes (and everything else we don't even know about)
will be unremitting.
Whatever the president proposes domestically is just that--a proposal. Congress has
to approve programs, budgets, tax codes and the rest of it, and what's left after
all the pork-barrel additions, lobbying and campaign contribution buy-ins?
Should anything untoward actually get passed (don't hold your breath), the Supreme Court
strikes down anything that threatens the status quo.
Other than glad-handing and managing whatever undeclared wars he's been let in on,
President Sanders won't change anything important because he can't change anything
important. Neither can any other president.
Political theater is just that--theater. Fans of Obama learned the hard way that
hope and change are quietly dumped the moment you enter the Imperial Presidency.

Obama Weighs "Syria Retreat" As White House Ends Training Of Moderate Rebels

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/09/2015 08:41 -0400

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-09/obama-folds-white-house-weighs-syria-retreat-it-ends-training-moderate-rebels

This past weekend we called Obama's latest failed attempt to replace Syria's president (after a comparable attempt in 2013 also ended in failure) for what it is: "Make no mistake, this is shaping up to be the most spectacular US foreign policy debacle since Vietnam - and we don't think that's an exaggeration."

Some of our high level observations:

The US, in conjunction with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, attempted to train and support Sunni extremists to overthrow the Assad regime. Some of those Sunni extremists ended up going crazy and declaring a Medeival caliphate putting the Pentagon and Langley in the hilarious position of being forced to classify al-Qaeda as "moderate." The situation spun out of control leading to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and when Washington finally decided to try and find real "moderates" to help contain the Frankenstein monster the CIA had created in ISIS (there were of course numerous other CIA efforts to arm and train anti-Assad fighters, see below for the fate of the most "successful" of those groups), the effort ended up being a complete embarrassment that culminated with the admission that only "four or five" remained and just days after that admission, those "four or five" were car jacked by al-Qaeda in what was perhaps the most under-reported piece of foreign policy comedy in history.

Meanwhile, Iran sensed an epic opportunity to capitalize on Washington's incompetence. Tehran then sent its most powerful general to Russia where a pitch was made to upend the Mid-East balance of power. The Kremlin loved the idea because after all, Moscow is stinging from Western economic sanctions and Vladimir Putin is keen on showing the West that, in the wake of the controversy surrounding the annexation of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Russia isn't set to back down. Thanks to the fact that the US chose extremists as its weapon of choice in Syria, Russia gets to frame its involvement as a "war on terror" and thanks to Russia's involvement, Iran gets to safely broadcast its military support for Assad just weeks after the nuclear deal was struck. Now, Russian airstrikes have debilitated the only group of CIA-backed fighters that had actually proven to be somewhat effective and Iran and Hezbollah are preparing a massive ground invasion under cover of Russian air support. Worse still, the entire on-the-ground effort is being coordinated by the Iranian general who is public enemy number one in Western intelligence circles and he's effectively operating at the behest of Putin, the man that Western media paints as the most dangerous person on the planet.

Today, less than a week later, we have confirmation that this assessment was accurate, following two major developments in the Syria global proxy war.

First, Bloomberg reports that a week into Russia's military intervention in Syria, some top White House advisers and National Security Council staffers are trying to persuade President Barack Obama to scale back U.S. engagement there, to focus on lessening the violence and, for now, to give up on toppling the Syrian regime.

It adds that "the administration came to this conclusion late. Despite warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies that Putin's military buildup was intended to keep Assad in power, the White House nonetheless decided to explore cooperating with Russia on the ground. Throughout the summer and into the fall, top Russian officials -- including Putin himself in a meeting last month with Obama at the U.N. -- said they were not committed to keeping Assad in power for the long term, and would only target Islamic State fighters in their military offensive, according to U.S. officials."

So U.S. intelligence is shocked that following a multi-year campaign which was launched in 2011, which escalated in 2013 to a near-naval war, and which culminated in 2014 with the "mysterious" emergence of ISIS whose stated purpose according to leaked CIA documents was a simple one: to depose Assad, that Obama's biggest antagonist on the global superpower stage, Russian president Putin would do everything in his power to prop up his own key pawn in the middle east.

Putin's intervention has had the U.S. flummoxed from day one. As the Russian military moved into Syria, U.S. intelligence officials tell us, the intelligence community was skeptical that it intended to focus its military campaign on the Islamic State. Even so, as the New York Times reported, the U.S. was surprised by the speed with which Russia built and then announced its new coalition with the governments of Syria, Iran and Iraq to support its military campaign.

Did we say "U.S. intelligence"? Scratch that.

In any event, after confirming virtually every word of our conclusion from past weekend, now that the administration realizes it is trapped without a credible way out absent de-escalation, it has no choice but to do just that:

Obama has ruled out engaging in a proxy war with Putin's military, leaving few good options. One path, however, would mean finding ways to tamp down the fighting by negotiating small, local ceasefires with the Assad regime. “The White House somehow thinks we can de-escalate the conflict while keeping Assad in power,” one senior administration official told us.

“The current policy of the United States and its partners, to increase pressure on Assad so that he ‘comes to the table’ and negotiates his own departure, must be rethought,” Malley’s predecessor at the National Security Council, Philip Gordon, wrote at Politico as Russia was amassing its forces in Syria.

The planted Bloomberg story, meant solely to lessen the blow from the latest foreign policy humiliation adds that "that view, being pushed by top White House National Security staffers, including senior coordinator for the Middle East Rob Malley, is not new. But it has received fresh emphasis given Russian intervention."

To be sure, there are neo-con war hawks, led by John Kerry and Samantha Power, who as a reminder was the puppet-masted behind the Ukraine coup, who want to escalate to the bitter end, even if it literally ends in a mushroom cloud: "The NSC view is opposed by top officials in other parts of the government, especially Secretary of State John Kerry and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power. They are trying to persuade Obama that the only way to solve Syria is to increase the pressure on Assad in the hopes he will enter negotiations."

However, just like in the 2013 Syria campaign, when Kerry huffed and puffed and ultimately folded, so two years later the man who married into the Heinz family fortune will have no choice but to fold again:

Yet Kerry and Power now find themselves without any hope that Putin might bring the Syrian regime to the table. Kerry, though always skeptical of Russia, has been the point man on engaging the Russian government through several conversations with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. But it’s now clear the Russians were leading the Obama administration down the primrose path.

Others in Congress have already understood the endgame: Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker said that by not doing more to confront Putin’s escalation, "the administration is tacitly admitting it will no longer be able to secure Assad’s ouster."

The implications are profound:

"If Assad is staying and there’s no political process in sight, this argument goes, the U.S. might as well focus on alleviating the suffering of the Syrian people and mitigate the growing refugee crisis.

Local ceasefires have been struck sporadically throughout the war, mostly in areas under siege by the Assad regime. The United Nations special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has been pushing this idea for over a year.

This means that the dramatic migrant exodus heading into Europe, which is now spun as positive for the economy, and would have been the catalyst form more deficit-funding QE as a result of debt-funded spending spree required by Germany to pay for the millions in refugees, may be coming to an end, with substantial implications for monetary policy.

Bloomberg's own conclusion shows a glimmer of hope that the end is not in sight just yet:

Caught between two camps in his administration, Obama may not end up shifting the U.S. approach to Syria at all, although the de-escalation side has the momentum. Either way, as Russia, Iran and the Syrian regime change facts on the ground, the relative position of America and the Syrians it has supported becomes graver by the day.

And then moments ago, the NYT confirmed that the de-escalation process has begun, when it reported that "the Obama administration has ended the Pentagon’s $500 million program to train and equip Syrian rebels, administration officials said on Friday, in an acknowledgment that the beleaguered program had failed to produce any kind of ground combat forces capable of taking on the Islamic State in Syria."

Pentagon officials were expected to officially announce the end of the program on Friday, as Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter leaves London after meetings with his British counterpart, Michael Fallon, about the continuing wars in Syria and Iraq.

A senior Defense Department official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that there would no longer be any more recruiting of so-called moderate Syrian rebels to go through training programs in Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. Instead, a much smaller training center would be set up in Turkey, where a small group of “enablers” — mostly leaders of opposition groups — would be taught operational maneuvers like how to call in airstrikes.

To be sure, the admin tried to soften the blow: moments ago Reuters added that "The U.S. military program to train and equip Syrian rebels is not "ending" but is instead being refocused, a senior U.S. defense official said on Friday, ahead of an announcement on overhauling the troubled U.S. effort." No matter how one diplomatically phrases it though, at this point the wheels are in motion.

Which brings us to our own conclusion from last week:

If Russia ends up bolstering Iran's position in Syria (by expanding Hezbollah's influence and capabilities) and if the Russian air force effectively takes control of Iraq thus allowing Iran to exert a greater influence over the government in Baghdad, the fragile balance of power that has existed in the region will be turned on its head and in the event this plays out, one should not expect Washington, Riyadh, Jerusalem, and London to simply go gentle into that good night.

It is precisely this scenario that U.S. "intelligence" just realized, and why Obama is now sounding the retreat. The only question is whether Putin, who is now on the offensive across the mid-east region, agrees to take Obama's olive branch, or whether he continues the "campaign to end ISIS", in the process creating the biggest shift in the mid-east balance of power with a Russia-Syria-Iran-Iraq axis, and with China waiting patiently in the wings.

Finally, this may be just the catalyst that ends the torrid surge in oil higher over the past week now that the biggest geopolitical factor pushing black gold above $50 is in the rear view mirror.