November 19, 2015


News Clips For The Day


http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/do-the-kochs-have-their-own-spy-network

NEWS DESK

Do the Kochs Have Their Own Spy Network?
BY JANE MAYER
NOVEMBER 18, 2015


Five years ago, when The New Yorker published my piece “Covert Operations,” about the ambitious and secretive political network underwritten by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, the Koch brothers complained mightily about the story’s title, protesting that there was nothing at all covert about their political activities. Since then, the two have embarked on an impressive public-relations campaign meant to demonstrate their transparency and openness. But today, the Politico reporter Kenneth Vogel came out with a blockbuster scoop suggesting that the brothers, whose organization has vowed to spend an unprecedented eight hundred and eighty-nine million dollars in the 2016 election cycle, are more involved in covert operations than even their own partners have known.

After culling through the latest legally required disclosures, Vogel unearthed a new front group within the Kochs’ expanding network of affiliated nonprofit organizations—a high-tech surveillance and intelligence-gathering outfit devoted to stealthily tracking liberal and Democratic groups which Politico calls the “Koch Intelligence Agency.” The sleuthing operation reportedly includes twenty-five employees, one of whom formerly worked as an analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, and follows opponents by harvesting high-tech geodata from their social-media posts.

According to Vogel, the effort is so secretive that very few people know of it even within the Kochs’ own sprawling political operation. Housed with other Koch nonprofit organizations in a bland office building in Arlington, Virginia, the outfit is managed by a limited-liability partnership called American Strategies Group, LLC. The company is part of the Kochs’ main political group: a circle of ultra-conservative donors called Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, which describes itself as a “business league” and so claims that it can legally hide the identities of its members.

Reached for comment, James Davis, the spokesman for Freedom Partners, described news accounts comparing the organization’s operation to espionage as “inaccurate.” Davis said, “Like most other organizations, Freedom Partners has a research department that benchmarks our efforts against other organizations.”

While it’s big news that the Kochs are now running their own private intelligence-gathering operation in order to track political opponents, including labor unions, environmental groups, and liberal big-donor groups, it actually isn’t surprising, given their history.

For decades, there have been reports suggesting that Charles and David Koch and Koch Industries have employed private investigators to gather inside information on their perceived enemies, including their own brother, Bill Koch, with whom they fought over control of the family business and fortune. My forthcoming book, “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right,” which will come out in January, builds on earlier reporting about this, including my 2010 New Yorker piece. In fact, again and again, those who have challenged the Kochs and Koch Industries—whether they are federal officers, private citizens, or members of the press—have suspected that they have been under surveillance.

In Daniel Schulman’s deeply researched biography of the Kochs, “Sons of Wichita,” for instance, he describes how Angela O’Connell, the lead federal prosecutor in a huge environmental-pollution case brought against Koch Industries in 1995, “began to suspect that Koch had placed her under surveillance. ‘I thought that my trash can was taken outside my house several days,’ she recalled. ‘I was upset enough about it at the time to report what I thought was a bugging and what I thought was the trash being taken—a number of incidents,’ ” Schulman writes that “the Justice Department was never able to prove that Koch had targeted one of its prosecutors, but for the first time in her career, O’Connell operated as if everything she said and did was being monitored.”

Schulman also quotes a lawyer for the plaintiff in a massive fatal personal-injury case, brought against Koch Industries in 1999, as saying that he hired a security firm to sweep his office after suspecting that his phones were bugged. The firm, he said, discovered electronic transmitters had been planted there. “I’m not saying that the Kochs did it,” the lawyer, Ted Lyon, told Schulman. “I just thought it was very interesting that it happened during the time we were litigating the case.”

Similarly, as I reported in my New Yorker piece, when a Senate committee investigated Koch Industries, in 1989, for what its final report called a “widespread and sophisticated scheme to steal crude oil from Indians and others through fraudulent mismeasuring,” the report noted that in the course of the probe Koch operatives had delved into the personal lives of the committee’s staffers, even questioning one’s ex-wife.

Vogel, the Politico reporter who broke today’s story, has had his own run-ins with the Kochs’ hyper-vigilance. In his 2014 book, “Big Money: 2.5 Billion Dollars, One Suspicious Vehicle, and a Pimp—on the Trail of the Ultra-Rich Hijacking American Politics,” he recounts a strange episode. After Vogel told a Koch official where he was staying while covering one of the billionaires’ secretive semi-annual fund-raising events, he received an odd hang-up phone call, although no one else but his wife knew the name of the hotel. Spooked, he decided to leave early, but as he was driving to the airport the rental-car agency notified him that someone had reported the car he was driving as “suspicious or abandoned.” When he asked Koch Industries officials if they were behind any of this, they assured him they were not. “That’s the thing about the Kochs’ style,” he wrote. They always “keep you wondering.”

Jane Mayer has been a New Yorker staff writer since 1995.




“Schulman also quotes a lawyer for the plaintiff in a massive fatal personal-injury case, brought against Koch Industries in 1999, as saying that he hired a security firm to sweep his office after suspecting that his phones were bugged. The firm, he said, discovered electronic transmitters had been planted there. “I’m not saying that the Kochs did it,” the lawyer, Ted Lyon, told Schulman. “I just thought it was very interesting that it happened during the time we were litigating the case.” Similarly, as I reported in my New Yorker piece, when a Senate committee investigated Koch Industries, in 1989, for what its final report called a “widespread and sophisticated scheme to steal crude oil from Indians and others through fraudulent mismeasuring,” the report noted that in the course of the probe Koch operatives had delved into the personal lives of the committee’s staffers, even questioning one’s ex-wife.”


I think, after reading this article, two things stand out – that anyone who investigates or speaks against the Kochs on Facebook, etc. should install hidden infrared cameras in all important areas of their business office and home; and that there’s no money like dirty money. It goes along with Richard Nixon’s philosophy that “dirty tricks” are the only intelligent way to go. To me this means that all Democratic organizations should do likewise and build a strong case against the Kochs, then take them to court on criminal charges if possible, or in a lawsuit if not.

See the Politico article referenced above, and appearing next in today’s blog. The Internet hacker group called Anonymous has declared cyber warfare against ISIS within the last week. I would like to see them go after Koch Industries also.



http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/the-koch-brothers-intelligence-agency-215943

The Koch intelligence agency
As the billionaires’ network works to reshape U.S. politics, it keeps a close eye on the left.
By Kenneth P. Vogel
11/18/15

Photograph -- david_koch_gty_1160.jpg


The political network helmed by Charles and David Koch has quietly built a secretive operation that conducts surveillance and intelligence gathering on its liberal opponents, viewing it as a key strategic tool in its efforts to reshape American public life.

The operation, which is little-known even within the Koch network, gathers what Koch insiders refer to as “competitive intelligence” that is used to try to thwart liberal groups and activists, and to identify potential threats to the expansive network.
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The competitive intelligence team has a staff of 25, including one former CIA analyst, and operates from one of the non-descript Koch network offices clustered near the Courthouse metro stop in suburban Arlington, Va. It has provided network officials with documents detailing confidential voter-mobilization plans by major Democrat-aligned groups. It also sends regular “intelligence briefing” emails tracking the canvassing, phone-banking and voter-registration efforts of labor unions, environmental groups and their allies, according to documents reviewed by POLITICO and interviews with a half-dozen sources with knowledge of the group.

The competitive intelligence team has gathered on-the-ground intelligence from liberal groups’ canvassing events in an effort to assess the technology and techniques of field efforts to boost Democrats, according to the sources. And they say the team utilizes high-tech tactics to track the movements of liberal organizers, including culling geo-data embedded in their social media posts.

Such stealth activities are the kind that campaigns and party operatives often fantasize about but mostly shy away from ― both because of cost and potential political backlash if exposed.

Marc Short, president of Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the network’s central group, declined to discuss its efforts to track the left, generally, or to comment on the competitive intelligence team, which operates as a unit within his group. But he did not dispute that the effort is a focus for the Koch network as it tries to rebound from the disappointment of the 2012 elections and gears up to spend a jaw-dropping $889 million on policy and political battles headed into November 2016.

“We were caught off guard by what the left was doing in 2012, and we'd be foolish to be caught in that position again,” he told POLITICO.

The increasingly robust Koch network has seized on significant tactical advantages afforded to big-money independent organizations ― but not party committees ― in modern politics. Unlike party committees, which are mostly subject to five-figure donation limits, donor disclosure and all manner of campaign finance laws and party rules, the Koch network of non-profit groups and for-profit companies can accept unlimited cash without disclosing donors and faces few spending restrictions.



The Koch ATM
By Kenneth P. Vogel


The competitive intelligence effort, reported here for the first time, also hints at the audaciousness of the Koch network’s mission. While the Republican Party focuses on winning elections, the Kochs want to realign American politics, government and society around free enterprise philosophies that they hope to spread more broadly.

A key to accomplishing the mission, from the Kochs' perspective, is countering super PACs and other big-money groups funded by rich liberals, as well as allied public sector unions and academic and media elites. The Kochs’ allies feel that those forces have worked together for decades with Democratic politicians and government bureaucrats to institutionalize the philosophy that heavy regulation and taxation of business is the only way to ensure an equitable society.

The Kochs concluded that defeating this well-funded left-wing infrastructure requires tracking the professional left in real time ― a capability they realized they lacked after the 2012 election. In the run-up to that election, the Koch network spent $400-million-plus attacking Democratic politicians and policies, only to see President Barack Obama win re-election and his party maintain control of the Senate. A forensic audit of the network’s efforts concluded the Kochs had been out-maneuvered by the left on the airwaves, in the data war and on the ground. Vowing not to let that happen again, the network began investing in the competitive intelligence team and other efforts to keep tabs on the left.

To be sure, the Kochs’ operation isn’t the only one focused on pulling back the curtain on its opponents. In fact, liberal activists and groups have frequently worked to expose the activities of the Koch brothers and their network. But the competitive intelligence team, like so many other Koch-backed programs, appears to be unique in its scale and its thoroughly methodological approach.

‘The Opposition: Understanding Their Strategy and Infrastructure’

The Koch network’s interest in intelligence on the inner workings of the left was revealed by a secret audio recording of a panel at a June 2014 closed-door donor gathering at the tony St. Regis hotel in Dana Point, Calif. The session, called “The Opposition: Understanding Their Strategy and Infrastructure,” focused on the group that the Kochs’ inner circle regards as the Rosetta stone for figuring out, and ultimately neutralizing, the big-money left ― the Democracy Alliance.

The group, which is meeting this week in Washington, D.C., is a club of wealthy liberal donors and influential operatives. Since its creation in 2005, the DA, as the club is known, has steered more than $500 million to endorsed groups supporting Democratic politicians and liberal causes like fighting carbon emissions, income inequality and the role of money in politics, while expanding voter access, abortion rights and gay rights.

As a fundraising vehicle, it's the closest thing on the left to a mirror image of the Kochs’ operation, though the cash raised by the Koch network in recent years has far eclipsed the amount credited to the DA. Donors to both networks write huge and mostly untraceable checks to a collection of endorsed for-profit companies and non-profit groups registered under sections of the tax code ― 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 ― that do not require the disclosure of donors’ identities.

During the session at the St. Regis, Mark Holden, a key Koch legal and policy advisor, pointed out the irony in liberal attacks on the Kochs’ secretive spending, calling the DA “a shadowy network of c(3)s, c(4)s ― who don’t disclose their donors, remember — who attack us as a shadowy network of c(3)s, c(4)s) … Whatever they may say about us goes the same for them.”


2016

Bobby Jindal drops out of White House race
By Alex Isenstadt


But Holden told the donors, according to the audio recording, which was obtained and posted by a liberal blogger, “We’ve been able to learn a lot more details about them in the last couple of months from documents that someone in the group, Democracy Alliance, left behind at their last seminar. And it’s very interesting stuff. And, at the end of the sessions here, we’re going to have some handouts, and you’ll be able to see some of the documents that we were able to get a hold of.” He adds quickly ― and to some laughter ― “I’m general counsel and I just want to say it was all legit, legal, appropriate.”

As Holden discussed the Democracy Alliance's efforts, internal DA documents were projected onto a screen at the front of the bronze-chandelier-lit St. Regis ballroom, including a “portfolio snapshot” featuring descriptions of 21 groups that the DA recommended for funding and a breakdown of the “core functions of the progressive movement.”

‘Like the CIA’

It is unclear precisely which documents Holden presented to donors (though similar documents appear to have been published in the weeks before and after his presentation by a handful of media outlets, including POLITICO) or precisely how the documents were obtained.

Holden ― who sits on the board of Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, which organized the St. Regis gathering and which oversees the competitive intelligence team ― declined to comment.

The competitive intelligence team is run by a veteran Republican researcher named Mike Roman, who is listed as Freedom Partners' vice president of research on the tax filing that group publicly released on Tuesday. That filing cites Roman's salary and benefits at $286,000 last year.

His team is part of Freedom Partners, but is managed through a limited liability company called American Strategies Group LLC, or ASG for short. ASG is set up as a type of corporate structure known as a “disregarded entity”, which exists only as a part of its parent group ― in this case Freedom Partners ― for the purposes of mitigating legal risk and separating revenue streams for accounting and tax compliance purposes.

ASG was the conduit for $13.3 million of Freedom Partners' cash between late 2012 and the end of last year, according to tax filings submitted to the Internal Revenue Service by Freedom Partners, including the filing publicly released on Tuesday covering 2014. It shows that ASG controls a holding company called CAVHOCO, Inc., which received a capital contribution of $17.5 million from Freedom Partners last year. CAVHOCO sits at the center of a confusing web of disregarded entities and holding companies, including one called Demeter Analytics Services, Inc. That entity, which is the holding company for the Freedom Partners-owned data firm i360, was paid $11 million by Freedom Partners in 2014 for professional services, according to the tax return. Separate tax returns also listed Roman as trustee of a mysterious non-profit group called Public Engagement Group Trust, which appears to be dormant.

Roman, who did not respond to requests for comment, has worked to keep himself and his activity low-profile even within the discreet Koch operation.

One former network official said that when people were summoned to meetings at ASG’s offices, they sometimes had trouble finding the suite. “They told people that’s the way they liked it,” the official recalled. “They act all cloak and dagger – like the CIA. There was a joke about how hardly anyone ever met Mike Roman. It was like, if you wanted to find him, he’d be in a trench coat on the National Mall,” said the former official.

The regular intelligence briefings from Roman's team, which are sent from an address ending in “amersg.org” to high-ranking network employees, begin with a warning that “This briefing contains information that is confidential and may be legally privileged. If you are not an authorized recipient, you are hereby notified that you are forbidden to read, disseminate, distribute or copy any of the material contained within. Authorized recipients are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this briefing is strictly prohibited.”

One such briefing sent in the weeks before the 2014 midterm elections and obtained by POLITICO contained highly detailed race-by-race breakdowns of the activities of liberal campaigns and their big-money supporters ― as well as conservative big-money groups ostensibly allied with the Kochs. It’s the sort of granular briefing that could be used to help the Koch network decide the most impactful ways to direct its own election spending. And it bears the hallmarks of research that combines close tracking of public information with original analysis of source documents, and possibly a dash of on-the-ground intel like that which could be gleaned by having an operative attend campaign events.


151117_mitch_mcconnell_paul_ryan_1160_gty.jpg

Congress
Ryan and McConnell confront their first big test
By Jake Sherman and Seung Min Kim


The briefing notes that in Arkansas, where there was a hotly contested Senate race between Koch network favorite Tom Cotton and Democratic incumbent Sen. Mark Pryor, Democrats were holding a statewide get-out-the-vote training in Little Rock, as well as a college organizing conference, while an immigrant rights group was “phone banking regularly with the intent of registering voters.” But the briefing also contains big-picture analysis flagging that union-affiliate Working America “has 400 paid canvassers knocking on 5,000 doors daily across 13 states through Election Day, especially focusing on Senate races in AK, IA, KY, MI, and NC. NRSC Vice Chair for Finance Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) said the NRSC isn’t planning to devote any more significant resources to shore up key candidates in the red states of Kansas, Kentucky and Georgia.”

‘Scared to death of moles’

In addition to delving into the left, the competitive intelligence team also monitors potential Koch network threats, according to sources familiar with it. It tracks people deemed suspicious outside the offices of Koch network groups, circulating be-on-the-lookout photos to internal network email lists, while keeping an eye on the network's own ranks for possible leakers or disloyal employees.

One former network executive remembers an email containing a photo of a man identified as an operative with the environmental group Greenpeace who allegedly had been spotted taking his own photos outside the network’s cluster of offices in the Courthouse neighborhood of Arlington.

Connor Gibson, a Greenpeace researcher who focuses on the Koch network, said he visits its component groups’ offices once a year to pick up their tax filings, and he speculated he could have been the operative photographed by the competitive intelligence unit. While he said he’s never sought to conceal his identity during such visits, he added “If the Kochs consider me an opponent, I’m flattered.”

In another instance, sources say, Roman's team set out to identify an IT contractor who was working for one of the network's groups and was posting anonymous messages to Reddit, proclaiming that he worked for the Koch brothers but despised their stances. Within 48 hours, the team had sleuthed out the offender and his contract was terminated.

“They were scared to death of moles,” said the former executive.

A separate source ― an organizer who’s worked with the unit ― described it as “a full opposition research operation, only at about 10-times the level of any political campaign.” The organizer added “my guess is that most people inside the network don’t even know about it.”

Koch allies emphasize that the brothers and their network have been targets of regular sleuthing by the left. A nonprofit group called American Bridge 21st Century ― which is aligned with Hillary Clinton and the Democracy Alliance ― this year launched a $3-million project dedicated to researching, tracking and attacking the Kochs. Its staffers have been spotted recording the proceedings at Koch network events and appearances by the brothers, and it took credit for unearthing a trove of documents featured in a New York Times story about David Koch’s 1980 Libertarian vice presidential campaign. The group does not appear to be behind the untraceable recordings made from inside closed-door Koch donor gatherings over the years ― like the one of Holden’s dissection of the Democracy Alliance at the St. Regis.

Holden told the donors at the St. Regis that the big-money liberal groups in the Democracy Alliance were pursuing a two-pronged strategy that bears some similarities to the tactics of the Koch network. “What they do is they try to build a permanent infrastructure to win elections, and they obsess about us ― all of you,” Holden said. “And it’s the old quote ― first they ignore you, then they mock you, then they attack you, and then we win. We’re close to winning. I don’t know how close, but we should be, because they can’t attack the ideas. They don’t have the real path. All they do is target and they just try to silence people. You know, they’re afraid of us. They really are. They’re afraid of this room.”

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http://info.legalzoom.com/disregarded-entity-llc-3551.html

What Is a Disregarded Entity LLC?
by Joseph Nicholson, Demand Media

The type of business entity called a limited liability company, or LLC, is a creation of state law. Though LLCs have become commonplace, the IRS has not created a new category for these businesses, but has rather adapted existing tax categories for this new type of company. One of the primary benefits LLCs are intended to provide is the ability for business owners to report the company's profit or loss on their individual returns.

Disregarded Entity

A disregarded entity, also called a pass-through entity, is one that is distinct from its owner for some purposes, but not when it comes to taxes. Sole proprietorships and partnerships, for example, are disregarded entities because the owners of these corporations report the business's income on their personal tax returns. Corporations are generally an example of a business entity that is not disregarded -- except for S corps and REITs, a corporation generally pays taxes on its profits before distribution to shareholders.

LLC Classification

Under the IRS rules, an LLC is classified by default as either a sole proprietorship, if it has only one member, or a partnership, if has more than one member. This means that most LLCs are disregarded entities for federal tax purposes. Nevertheless, an LLC can elect to be taxed as a corporation by filing Form 8832. Upon the effective date of the election, the company loses its status as a disregarded entity. An LLC that is taxed as a corporation, however, may qualify as an S corp, in which case it would again be a disregarded entity.

Employment Taxes

Effective 2009, the IRS has made some changes to the disregarded entity status of single member LLCs. While those being taxed as sole proprietorships continue to be disregarded entities for income tax purposes, the LLC is now the taxpayer for employment taxes and certain federal excise taxes such as alcohol, tobacco and firearms. This means the LLC will have to have an EIN and bank account in its own name if it is subject to these taxes.

Self-Employment

One consequence of owning a disregarded entity LLC is that it most likely makes you liable for self-employment tax. In essence, however, this is only a shifting of what would ordinarily be the employer's share of Medicare and Social Security tax to the owner of the business. If you receive more than $400 from your disregarded entity LLC, you will have to pay self-employment tax on your personal Form 1040.


http://www.investinganswers.com/financial-dictionary/businesses-corporations/pass-through-entity-1119

Pass-Through Entity

A pass-through entity is a special business structure that is used to reduce the effects of double taxation. Pass-through entities don't pay income taxes at the corporate level. Instead, corporate income is allocated among the owners, and income taxes are only levied at the individual owners' level.

How it works/Example:

Company XYZ is a pass-through entity. It files a tax return that looks like this:

Revenues $1,000,000
Expenses (500,000)
Earnings Before Interest & Taxes (EBIT) 500,000
Interest Paid (100,000)
Earnings Before Taxes (EBT) 400,000
Taxes ------
Net Income Available to Owners 400,000

Why it Matters:

This special tax status eliminates the double taxation issues that affect most corporations and their shareholders since only the owners are taxed.

While eliminating double taxation may be advantageous, pass-through entities may not be the best way to organize your business. There are often restrictions placed on some types of fringe benefits, and there can be rules about how many owners are allowed. It is always best to talk to an experienced tax advisor before deciding how to organize your business.

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When I read the above article the terms “disregarded entity” and “pass-through entity” were totally unfamiliar to me. To those of you who have been involved in business enough to understand the matter without any explanation I apologize for putting the definitions in, but to me it was really interesting. While I tend to think that these legal gymnastics are unfair, for an individual to be taxed at the corporate level as well as the individual level on the same money also seems unfair. What would the world do without lawyers??



ISIS MATTERS



http://www.investinganswers.com/node/1138

Ex-Defense Sec. Gates: U.S. should reevaluate intel ops on ISIS
By REBECCA SHABAD CBS NEWS
November 19, 2015


Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Thursday said the U.S. should evaluate whether its intelligence operations monitoring the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are aggressive enough.

"I think we need to assess whether our intelligence operations there are as aggressive there as they might be - in terms of getting inside ISIS or in terms of sabotage and other covert operations," Gates said on "CBS This Morning."

Following the Paris terrorist attacks last Friday and the killing of the mastermind behind them, Gates laid out options the U.S. should consider in the fight against ISIS.

Special forces should be more active, Gates said, and the U.S. should embed advisers and trainers with Iraqi forces, with Sunni tribes and with the Kurds. The airstrikes should also be more effective and more precise, he added.

"That may require some modest increase in forces, but not a large one I think," said Gates, who served as Defense secretary from 2006 through 2011.

As far as ramping up intelligence operations, Gates said National Security Agency (NSA) Director Gen. Keith Alexander should inform the president and Congress what sort of capabilities the U.S. needs to track terrorists to make it easier to track potential terror plots at home and abroad.

"If he says there are capabilities that can be helpful, we ought to take advantage of that," said Gates, who also spent much of his career at the CIA.

Gates should it's also time for President Obama to engage in a "heart-to-heart talk" with leaders of tech companies so that they help the government access encrypted devices and applications.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, a GOP presidential candidate, has said there should be a Sunni ground force, but Gates said the likelihood of that happening "is very remote."

"The odds are low," said Gates, who explained that the U.S. is already working with some Sunni ground forces that are tribes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Asked to react to the debate among GOP presidential candidates who want to deploy U.S. troops to fight ISIS, Gates said he has spent a lot of time listening to politicians who want to send young men and women into conflict.

"The trouble is when the going gets rough, the politicians are nowhere to be seen."




"I think we need to assess whether our intelligence operations there are as aggressive there as they might be - in terms of getting inside ISIS or in terms of sabotage and other covert operations," Gates said on "CBS This Morning." Following the Paris terrorist attacks last Friday and the killing of the mastermind behind them, Gates laid out options the U.S. should consider in the fight against ISIS. Special forces should be more active, Gates said, and the U.S. should embed advisers and trainers with Iraqi forces, with Sunni tribes and with the Kurds. The airstrikes should also be more effective and more precise, he added. …. As far as ramping up intelligence operations, Gates said National Security Agency (NSA) Director Gen. Keith Alexander should inform the president and Congress what sort of capabilities the U.S. needs to track terrorists to make it easier to track potential terror plots at home and abroad. …. Gates should it's also time for President Obama to engage in a "heart-to-heart talk" with leaders of tech companies so that they help the government access encrypted devices and applications. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, a GOP presidential candidate, has said there should be a Sunni ground force, but Gates said the likelihood of that happening "is very remote."

“Asked to react to the debate among GOP presidential candidates who want to deploy U.S. troops to fight ISIS, Gates said he has spent a lot of time listening to politicians who want to send young men and women into conflict. "The trouble is when the going gets rough, the politicians are nowhere to be seen." This is a very true statement. I feel that politicians and statesmen are different critters. Statesmen stick to principles, have high standards, are courageous in their Congressional activities and show the willingness to do or say something UNPOPULAR when that is needed. They have to be willing to give up a lucrative annual salary in order to champion good goals. They also need to be above board in their techniques and virtually irreproachable. We don’t have enough men and women of this stamp at any time, as the intense power struggle, the constant potential for illegal financial gain, and sometimes the lack of sufficient education and intelligence to be able to write good laws are a perennial problem. Some of the right wing Republicans, especially the Tea Party candidates, show a lack of “smarts,” and a twisted view of how our republic/democracy should work after all.





https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2-attack-suspects-in-dead-after-french-police-raid-north-of-paris/2015/11/18/a2b6d52e-8d6a-11e5-934c-a369c80822c2_story.html

Suspected architect of Paris attacks is dead, according to two senior European officials
By Souad Mekhennet, Anthony Faiola and Missy Ryan November 18 at 3:56 PM

Photograph -- Gunfire broke out in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis early on Nov. 18 as police pursued suspects from the terror attacks on Nov. 13. Witnesses documented the flood of police into the historic suburb as the raid grew. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
Read more -- The Paris attacks could mark the end of Europe’s open borders, if the far right has its way …. 5 stories you should read to really understand the Islamic State …. The politics and hypocrisy of word-policing ‘radical Islam’ …. The long war against Islamist extremism has become more complicated than ever


PARIS — The suspected ringleader of the Paris attacks was killed Wednesday in a massive predawn raid by French police commandos, two senior European officials said, after investigators followed leads that the fugitive militant was holed up north of the French capital and could be plotting another wave of violence.

More than 100 police officers and soldiers stormed an apartment building in the suburb of Saint-Denis during a seven-hour siege that left at least two dead, including the suspected overseer of the Paris bloodshed, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, officials said. Abaaoud, a Belgian extremist, had once boasted that he could slip easily between Europe and strongholds of the Islamic State militant group in Syria.

Paris prosecutor François Molins, speaking to reporters hours after the siege, said he could not provide the identities of the people killed at the scene. A French security official declined to confirm or deny that Abaaoud had died.

But two senior European officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said they received confirmation from the French that Abaaoud was slain in the raid.

It was not immediately clear how Abaaoud died — whether in police gunfire, by his own hand or in a suicide blast triggered by a woman in the apartment.

After the raid, forsenics experts combed through the aftermath — blown-out windows, floors collapsed by explosions — presumably seeking DNA and other evidence.

Molins said a discarded cellphone helped identify safe houses used by attackers to plan Friday’s coordinated assaults, which killed 129 people and wounded more than 350 across Paris.

Molins said police launched the raid because they believed that Abaaoud was “entrenched” on the third floor of the apartment building. He said that neither Abaaoud nor another wanted suspect, Salah Abdeslam, was among eight people who were arrested at the apartment and other locations on Wednesday. Three people were arrested in the raid on the apartment, he said, one of whom had a gunshot wound in the arm.

Molins said the safe houses indicated “a huge logistics plan, meticulously carried out.”

The death of Abaaoud closes one major dragnet in the international search for suspects from Friday’s carnage.

But it raised other worrisome questions, including the apparent ability of Abaaoud to evade intelligence agencies while traveling through Europe and whether other possible Islamic State cells could be seeking to strike again.


It also left no doubt that other potential threats remained.

The raid on the apartment building appeared to be linked in part to plans to stage a follow-up terrorist attack in the La Defense business district, about 10 miles away, two police officials and an investigator close to the investigation said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief media.

As security forces closed in, a woman set off a suicide blast — possibly an explosive-rigged vest or belt — after opening fire. The eight people who were arrested Wednesday in Saint-Denis, a teeming district with a large immigrant population, included seven men and one woman, Molins said.

French media identified the suicide bomber as Hasna Aitboulahcen, a cousin of Abaaoud’s. The 26-year-old French citizen is a former manager of Beko Construction, a company in Epinay-sur-Seine, a town north of Saint-Denis. The company was closed in 2014.

Five days after the worst violence on French soil since World War II, European nations remained on edge, enhancing vigilance against possible attacks by Islamist militants who have promised to bring the brutal tactics employed in Iraq and Syria to the West.

[Why French airstrikes on ISIS’s ‘capital’ probably haven’t done much ]

President François Hollande, seeking to reassure French citizens unnerved by the bloodshed on the streets of Paris, said the attacks would not alter the French way of life.

“We are at war against terrorism, terrorism which declared war on us,” Hollande said at a meeting of French mayors. “It is the [Islamic State] jihadist organization. It has an army. It has financial resources. It has oil. It has a territory.


“It has allies in Europe, including in our country,” he continued, “with young, radicalized Islamist people. It committed atrocities there and wants to kill here. It has killed here.”

He renewed his case for an extension to a state of emergency decreed after the attacks and for changes to the constitution that he said would make France safer.

When Wednesday’s raid began, heavily armed police clad in military gear — some with their faces covered by balaclavas — moved quickly through the dark streets, while helicopters scanned from the skies. For hours, traffic and public transportation were halted, and schools were shuttered.

Play Video1:26What we know about the Paris terror suspects

Authorities say as many as 20 people may have been involved in the plot to attack Paris. Here's what we know about them so far. (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)
Uthayaseelan Sanmugan, a 38-year-old cook who lives near the targeted apartment, said he woke up at 4:30 a.m. to the sound of gunfire, went to his window and saw the lights of weapon lasers outside.

“When I got to the street, I saw a lot of blood on the sidewalk. The blood of the terrorists.”

Residents were instructed to stay inside their homes.

“I heard gunshots, and, sometime around 7 a.m., a huge blast, an explosion,” said Kelly Ovo, a 45-year-old day laborer who lives close to the apartment under siege.

French police reported that Diesel, a 7-year-old police dog, was “killed by the terrorists” in the raid.

Molins, the Paris prosecutor, told reporters that the operation was launched after authorities received information — potentially tips or intelligence information — that Abaaoud was in the area.

Abaaoud, an ardent Islamic State supporter linked to several other terrorist attempts, was believed to be in Syria earlier this year. But some officials speculate that he could have returned to Europe, perhaps passing undetected among the flood of asylum seekers pouring into Greek islands from Turkey.

The siege appeared to have been aided by another potential breakthrough in the probe: the discovery of a mobile phone in a garbage can near the Bataclan concert hall, the site of one of Friday’s assaults.

The phone’s data contained a map of the music venue, French media reported, along with a chilling text message sent shortly after the first gunmen entered: “Let’s go, we’re starting.”

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[The mystery surrounding the Paris bomber with a fake Syrian passport ]

The information on the phone opened fresh leads, including to an apartment southeast of Paris in Alfortville, according to Mediapart, a French news outlet.

French officials have cast a wide net in the hunt for suspects in Friday’s attacks, which took place at Bataclan, several bars and restaurants, and a soccer match. Across France, 118 additional raids were conducted overnight on Tuesday, yielding at least 25 arrests. That brought to 414 the number of raids launched throughout France since Friday, the Interior Ministry said.

After Friday’s assaults, which laid bare the shortcomings of European intelligence agencies’ ability to prevent militant attacks, officials across the continent have remained on high alert.

In Copenhagen, a terminal at the Danish capital’s international airport was briefly evacuated after “an overheard conversation about a bomb,” police said in a Twitter post. The terminal was later reopened.

Countries, including Sweden and Italy, raised terror alerts. Extra security was posted in St. Peter’s Square, where Pope Francis addressed pilgrims.

French authorities, meanwhile, issued a pan-European bulletin asking people to watch for a Citroen Xsara car that could be carrying Salah Abdeslam, a French militant also accused of having a direct role in the attacks, the Spanish news site El Español reported Wednesday.

On Tuesday, authorities in Hanover, Germany, abruptly called off a friendly soccer match between Germany and the Netherlands that Chancellor Angela Merkel had planned to attend. One target of Friday’s attacks was a friendly soccer match between France and Germany at a crowded stadium north of Paris — not far from the Saint-Denis raids. No explosives were found at the German site.

Remembering the victims of Friday’s attacks in Paris VIEW GRAPHIC
In Brussels, a soccer match between Belgium and Spain also was canceled Tuesday.

But France’s secretary of sport, Thierry Braillard, said soccer matches throughout the country will go ahead as planned. “Life must go on,” he told the sports newspaper L’Equipe. German officials said soccer matches would be played as scheduled as well.

In a measure of French concerns, the country on Tuesday invoked for the first time a European Union mutual aid pact that calls for members of the bloc to assist other member states if they are attacked.

[The bombs exploded, and France’s president called it ‘war’. It was 1986. ]

France continued airstrikes Tuesday night against Islamic State targets in Syria, a significant escalation of its military participation in the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State. Also on Wednesday, France’s only aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, embarked from Toulon port en route to the eastern Mediterranean, where its fighter jets will take part in operations against the militant group.

Also Tuesday, Russia conducted a “significant” number of strikes on Raqqa, possibly using sea-launched cruise missiles and long-range bombers, a U.S. defense official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the Russian operation. Those strikes follow the Russian government’s assessment that explosives brought down an airliner full of Russian tourists over Egypt last month. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for that attack.

Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who spent 30 years serving in the CIA, said raids in Paris are also likely focusing on hunting down the group’s bombmaker. Suicide belts worn by the assailants were likely assembled in Europe, rather being smuggled in, he said.

“That means that there’s somebody somewhere close to Paris that knows how to make suicide belts,” he said. “I suspect that whoever had those skills wasn’t wanted in the operation. A bombmaker is very important in a terrorist group.”

Daniela Deane in London, Virgile Demoustier, Emily Badger and Karla Adam in Paris, and Loveday Morris in Baghdad contributed to this report.

Souad Mekhennet, co-author of “The Eternal Nazi,” is a correspondent on the national security desk.

Anthony Faiola is The Post's Berlin bureau chief. Faiola joined the Post in 1994, since then reporting for the paper from six continents and serving as bureau chief in Tokyo, Buenos Aires, New York and London.
Missy Ryan writes about the Pentagon, military issues, and national security for The Washington Post.




“Abaaoud, a Belgian extremist, had once boasted that he could slip easily between Europe and strongholds of the Islamic State militant group in Syria. …. Abaaoud, an ardent Islamic State supporter linked to several other terrorist attempts, was believed to be in Syria earlier this year. But some officials speculate that he could have returned to Europe, perhaps passing undetected among the flood of asylum seekers pouring into Greek islands from Turkey. The siege appeared to have been aided by another potential breakthrough in the probe: the discovery of a mobile phone in a garbage can near the Bataclan concert hall, the site of one of Friday’s assaults. …. French media identified the suicide bomber as Hasna Aitboulahcen, a cousin of Abaaoud’s. The 26-year-old French citizen is a former manager of Beko Construction, a company in Epinay-sur-Seine, a town north of Saint-Denis. The company was closed in 2014. …. The death of Abaaoud closes one major dragnet in the international search for suspects from Friday’s carnage. But it raised other worrisome questions, including the apparent ability of Abaaoud to evade intelligence agencies while traveling through Europe and whether other possible Islamic State cells could be seeking to strike again. …. French authorities, meanwhile, issued a pan-European bulletin asking people to watch for a Citroen Xsara car that could be carrying Salah Abdeslam, a French militant also accused of having a direct role in the attacks, the Spanish news site El Español reported Wednesday.”


Many of these stories are repetitive, so I have tried to collect here the newest pieces of information. The raid on the apartment was very bloody, but it showed that safe-houses do exist which need to be raided all over Europe where Islamic communities exist. Most of the people didn’t come into the country with the most recent massive group of refugees, but had been in residence for some while as in the case of the business which was also most likely involved with the assaults. European governments need to examine the Islamic residents for more “sleeper cells,” which are relatively free making them able to make more ornate plots like this one. The same is true in the US. Fighting an “asymmetrical” war is very different from the old days when two armies marched into a field and faced each other off like two prize fighters. We need to change the way we think.