Secret Service in Cover-Up Mode on Obama Travel Costs

There may be legitimate reasons for the Secret Service to keep some documents from the public. But concealing taxpayer-funded security expenses for Barack Obama's luxury vacations sure isn't one of them. That's why your JW has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the U.S. Secret Service for failing to respond to 19 Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for security-related expenses related to travel by Barack Obama and other VIPs. The Secret Service has not responded to any of the 19 FOIA requests since July 21, 2014. The FOIA lawsuit, filed on November 10, asks the court to enjoin the Secret Service from continuing to withhold responsive documents from Judicial Watch. (The Secret Service is a component of the Department of Homeland Security.) The lawsuit was assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon. For years, Judicial Watch has regularly monitored expenditures of U.S. Government funds by the president, members of the first family, and other VIPs receiving Secret Service protection. FOIA requests to the U.S. Air Force and other agencies enabled Judicial Watch to determine that, to date, the total known travel expenses for various trips by the Obamas and Bidens are currently $70,563,336.75. But the extraordinary lack of cooperation by the Secret Service has prevented Judicial Watch from gathering complete records of taxpayer-funded, VIP travel. These Secret Service records typically include records of expenses incurred for ground transportation, lodging, meals, and other related costs, as well as the accompanying Secret Service details. The lawsuit details: Since July 21, 2014, Plaintiff has submitted 19 travel-related FOIA requests to the Secret Service as part of Plaintiffs on-going monitoring of federally-funded, VIP travel. All of the requests were identical or nearly identical but for the name of the VIP and the date and/or destination of the travel. Plaintiffs requests sought: "All records concerning use of U.S. Government funds to provide security and/or any other services to [name of VIP] and any other companions on their [date] trip to [location]." The Secret Service has not made a determination on a single, travel-related FOIA request served by Plaintiff since July 21, 2014. Judicial Watch previously sued the Secret Service five times between 2012 and 2014 for security related information on presidential and VIP travel. Prior litigation and other FOIA requests resulted in a number of details about security costs of trips to New York for a "date night" ($11,648.17), a 2013 trip to Africa ($2,189,727.60), a 2013 adventure to Ireland ($251,161.86), and 2014 fundraising trip to Denver ($200,383.70). Judicial Watch asserts that the Secret Service has "a policy and practice of violating FOIA" requirements, Judicial Watch attorneys are asking the court to enjoin the Secret Service from continuing to withhold the requested records and other information from Judicial Watch for 19 current requests. Prior examples of Judicial Watch FOIA requests that gathered travel cost information include: A February and March 2015 golf and fundraising trip which cost taxpayers $4,436,245.50 in travel expenses alone; A June 2015 trip by Michelle Obama to the UK and Italy which cost taxpayers $240,495.67 in travel expenses alone; A March 2014 trip by Michelle Obama to China which cost taxpayers $360,000 in travel expenses alone; An April 2015 single day trip to the Florida Everglades for Earth Day which cost taxpayers $866,615.40 in travel expenses alone; And a February 2015 weekend ski trip by Michelle Obama to Aspen, Colorado, which cost taxpayers $57,000 in travel expenses alone. Rarely does Judicial Watch seek an injunction under FOIA, but the Secret Service has ignored a record 19 Freedom of Information requests on Obama and other presidential-level travel. The FOIA requests seek access to records about taxpayer dollars expended on the extravagant and often unnecessary travel enjoyed by the President, his family members, and others receiving Secret Service protection. We have little doubt the Secret Service, which is already mired in controversy, is covering up embarrassing numbers about the costs of security for Barack Obama's vacation and political fundraising trips. State Department Rushed Approval for Hillary Clinton's Memoirs) We've been stonewalled for years on our Benghazi and Clinton cash Freedom of Information requests and lawsuits by the State Department. However, if you are Hillary Clinton, the State Department will rubber stamp your proposed, perhaps with sensitive information that should not see the light of day, in record time. That's the conclusion from reviewing the documents we just released revealing that State Department officials ordered rushed approval of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's manuscript for her memoir Hard Choices. The documents show a key State Department official had concerns about the disclosure of classified information in the book concerning Iran and an effort to destroy draft copies of Clinton's book in State Department files and from State Department computer systems. The documents were obtained from the State Department last month in response to a June 12, 2014, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking the following: Records regarding the review, vetting, and/or approval of the publication of the memoir Hard Choices by former Secretary of State Clinton. This request includes, but it not limited to records of communications between any official, employee, or representative of the Department of State and any other individual or entity related to the review and approval process. (It took over a year to respond to our request!) The documents show the first Clinton book chapters were delivered to Director of the Office of Information Programs and Services John Hackett in February 2014. Hackett began pressuring his staff for approval on March 7. On March 10, Senior Reviewer Charles Daris urged reviewers at the Near Eastern Affairs Bureau to "turn these around as quickly as possible to meet the hopes and expectations of the author." That same day, State Department official Neil Silver writes: "The FOIA office is under great pressure to turn this around quickly. If you are tardy in your response, you may get a high-level Department official call. On March 13, Daris emails show that the Near East staff was given three working days to respond to the book's chapter on Benghazi and that the State Department delayed sending the manuscript to the CIA for review at the request of former Clinton campaign staffer Ethan Gelber. Daris also documents that factual errors have been found in the Iran chapter and that the Maghreb desk has "comment" on the CIA in Benghazi. The documents also show an effort to destroy copies of draft copies of the Clinton book, evidently because "revisions were in the works." A March 20 exchange with State Department official Paul P. Blackburn reads: • Daris: New marching orders from our Front Office. Will you please suspend our request for clearance and find a way to get all/all of the copies back that you sent to EAP [East Asian and Pacific Affairs]. Please confirm to me when you have done so. • Blackburn: I have just retrieved the two copies of the chapter portions Neil passed to the China and Japan desks (i.e., pages 53-73 of "Back to Beijing" and 87-119 of "Green Light.") In each case, I was assured that no reproductions were made, so I think we now have "all/all of the copies." • Daris: Excellent, Paul. Please destroy them. Thank you. C The documents show a sudden decision to halt all work on the review of Clinton's chapter on Iran, followed by a request that all extant copies be found and destroyed, apparently prompted by the State Department's Iran Desk's concerns about the manuscript. State Department officials were cautioned to be careful in how they proffered editorial suggestions to the former Secretary's staff. In a March 12, 2014, email to Silver, Peter Hemsch suggests, "We may reach out informally to the former Secretary's staff re: the policy issues raised; just a low-key, friendly heads-up to double-check that they have considered a policy angle." Daris forwarded the email, adding that suggestions should be passed along "reiterating that it is not/not a formal Dept response." Hillary Clinton can get her book, despite disclosing classified material, approved in record time from the same State Department that is slow-walking and obstructing, over years, the release of the notorious Clinton emails about Benghazi and other scandals. The desperate effort to destroy copies of the Clinton draft shows that any remaining drafts need to be uncovered and reviewed. My guess is the American people, the courts, and law enforcement will be angry that yet more Clinton records, which included sensitive and potentially classified information, were destroyed. Washington corruption places our nation at risk and puts your God-given freedoms in jeopardy. You can be proud to be a supporter of a group that stands in the gap to expose and curtail this dangerous corruption.   Until next week... Tom Fitton President

The Worst US War Conspiracies That Were True

U.S. Officials Conclude IranDeal Violates Federal Law

Obama's nuclear deal with Iran is the worst deal possible because Iran probably already has the bomb.

SUMMARY:  Obama's nuclear deal with Iran is the worst deal possible because Iran probably already has the bomb.  All 10 nuclear weapon states developed A-Bombs in 3-12 years, while Iran has been crashing on the bomb for 30 years.  Nuclear testing to develop A-Bombs and even more sophisticated H-Bombs is unnecessary as component testing is sufficient.  After getting the A-Bomb, timeline for H-Bomb development is 3-8 years, so Iran has been working long enough for more sophisticated nuclear weapons.  Russia and North Korea are helping Iran, potentially accelerating Iran's developmental timeline for nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.  Although the IAEA is too timorous to say so, evidence in the IAEA's 2011 report is a "smoking gun" that Iran does have a nuclear weapon program--and probably nuclear weapons.  U.S. intelligence community leaders are too partisan to be trusted to give an objective assessment of Iran's nuclear weapons program to Congress and the American people.  If Iran already has the bomb--unless we or our allies have excellent intelligence on the location of all their weapons and very high confidence that they can be destroyed--then large-scale military operations to disarm Iran are too risky.  Iran and North Korea becoming nuclear weapon states requires the United States to invent a new national security strategy that relies less on blunt military force and more on the "black arts" of intelligence and the more subtle weapons of statecraft to achieve regime change.  But the Obama Administration is unlikely to pursue such a strategy or other necessary measures, except perhaps hardening the electric grid against nuclear EMP attack--which is the worst threat.  Obama's nuclear deal profoundly misunderstands Iran's ideology and nuclear capabilities, and therefore greatly increases the risk of a nuclear holocaust.           
President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran is not only a bad deal, but the worst deal possible--because Iran probably already has the bomb.
Consider the facts.

Iran A-Bomb Overdue

Historically, judging from open source estimates, the time required for all other nations to develop atomic weapons is 3-12 years.  Iran, which has had a nuclear program for over six decades and been crashing on the bomb for 25-30 years, should have developed atomic weapons by now.
For example:
The United States during the World War II Manhattan Project (1942-1945) built the first atomic bombs, two different designs, in just 3 years.  In just 3 years, when the atomic bomb was merely a theoretical possibility, the U.S. invented the two basic A-Bomb designs--the gun-type A-Bomb used on Hiroshima and the implosion-type A-Bomb used on Nagasaki--that are the basis for all atomic (fission) weapons and are the technological gateway to more sophisticated and powerful thermonuclear (fusion) weapons, including the H-Bomb.  In just 3 years, the U.S. invented and built the nuclear scientific and industrial infrastructure that mass produced thousands of A-Bombs and H-Bombs after 1945 during the Cold War.
Read Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1987) and consider whether it seems plausible that--where the U.S. invented the bomb and its nuclear weapons infrastructure in just 3 years using 1930s and 1940s era science and technology--supposedly (according to the Obama Administration) Iran has not yet duplicated the U.S. feat of World War II.  Yet Iran has access to copious unclassified materials on making and designing fission and fusion weapons.  Yet Iran is informed and equipped with 21st Century science and technology.  And Iran has been crashing on the bomb for 8-10 times longer than the U.S. WWII Manhattan Project--for 25-30 years.
Consider also that all other nuclear weapon states, some of them poorer and less sophisticated than Iran, have developed atomic weapons in 12 years or less:       
--The USSR's atomic bomb project (1943-1949) tested its first A-Bomb in 6 years.
--The United Kingdom's A-bomb (1940-1952), slowed by politics and a bad economy, took 12 years.  Mistakenly believing that their scientific and material contributions to the Manhattan Project would entitle the U.K. to share the A-Bomb with the U.S., when their hope was disappointed, the United Kingdom, economically shattered by World War II and politically divided by the peace, working on their own tested their first A-Bomb in 7 years.    
--France independently, unassisted by anybody, developed A-Bombs (1956-1960) in 4 years.
 --China's A-Bombs (1955-1964) took 9 years.
--Israel, at the time a nation less populous than Chicago, is variously estimated to have built A-Bombs (1956/59-1966) in 7-10 years.  (A declassified CIA report retrieved and reported by the Nuclear Threat Initiative on June 3, 2009, assesses that Israel built its first atomic weapons in December 1966).
--India built A-Bombs (1967-1972) in 5 years.
--South Africa built A-Bombs (1967-1977/79) in 10-12 years.  South Africa also designed a nuclear warhead for delivery by its medium-range missiles, before abandoning its nuclear weapons program.
--Pakistan tested for political reasons in 1998, but developed and deployed bombs much earlier (1972-1984) in 12 years.  (According to a letter from A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, to General Zia al Haq, Pakistan's President, they had a uranium bomb by 1984.)
--North Korea tested in 2006, but developed a nuclear arsenal of bombs and missiles much earlier (1984-1992/94) in 8-10 years.  (In an open hearing before Congress on January 25, 1994, then Director of Central Intelligence R. James Woolsey testified that North Korea had already built a small number of atomic weapons, and would continue to build more.)
Iran started a nuclear program under the Shah in the 1950s, some 65 years ago.  Revolutionary Iran began a crash program on atomic weapons, their version of the Manhattan Project, during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988).
President Obama claims the Mullahs still do not have atomic weapons, even though Iran has been working on the bomb for 65 years, crashing on the bomb for 25-30 years.  Yet  other nuclear weapon states, all ten of them, developed the bomb in 3-12 years.
Given everything we know about the history of nuclear weapons development and Iran's capabilities, the assessment that Iran does not yet have the bomb seems based more on wishful thinking than on prudence.

Nuclear Testing Unnecessary

Doesn't Iran need a full-yield explosive test to prove its nuclear weapon?
No.  Component testing is sufficient.
The U.S. never tested the Hiroshima gun-type uranium bomb--Hiroshima was the test.  The 1945 Trinity test at Alamogordo was of a more complicated implosion plutonium bomb used on Nagasaki, and it worked perfectly both times, at Trinity and Nagasaki.  Israel and South Africa clandestinely deployed nuclear weapons without testing.  Pakistan and North Korea deployed nuclear weapons years prior to testing.
The U.S. has not performed any nuclear test since 1992, 23 years ago, even though its aged  weapons are being patched together and maintained using different materials and makeshift components--becoming over the years essentially different nuclear weapons from those that were originally deployed brand new decades ago.  So the U.S. should know from its own experience that even highly sophisticated thermonuclear H-Bombs can be made and fielded for use without nuclear testing.

Iranian H-Bomb?

The A-Bomb is the technological gateway to more sophisticated nuclear weapons, including the H-Bomb.  H-Bombs can be hundreds of times more powerful than the A-Bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The historical record indicates that, once the A-Bomb is achieved, development of the H-Bomb can be achieved in 3-8 years:
The U.S., after developing the first A-Bombs in 1945, tested the first H-Bomb in 1952--7 years later.
The USSR tested its A-Bomb in 1949 and its H-Bomb in 1953--4 years later.
The United Kingdom tested its A-Bomb in 1952 and its H-Bomb in 1957--5 years later.
France, after testing its A-Bomb in 1960, tested its H-Bomb in 1968--8 years later.
China, after its first A-Bomb test in 1964, tested its H-Bomb in 1967--3 years later.
India claimed that it tested a low-yield fusion (H-Bomb) weapon among its virtually simultaneous 5 nuclear tests in 1998.  Pakistan allegedly tested a boosted-fission weapon (more sophisticated than an implosion A-Bomb) among its 6 near simultaneous tests competing with India in 1998.  Pakistan claimed it could build H-Bombs in 3-6 years.  So many tests conducted at once indicates both India and Pakistan were drawing from a stockpile of weapons developed and deployed long before the tests.  
In 1986, Israeli nuclear scientist Mordechai Vanunu defected to the United Kingdom and provided evidence, reported in the press, that Israel has a wide array of sophisticated atomic and thermonuclear weapons.  The respected Wisconsin Project estimates that Israel has the H-Bomb as well as small battlefield nuclear weapons, deliverable by artillery, including Enhanced Radiation Warheads (also called neutron warheads or the N-Bomb, designed to minimize explosive yield to reduce collateral damage to buildings, while maximizing output of neutrons and other radiation lethal to people.  The N-Bomb was originally intended to stop Soviet tanks invading Western Europe while minimizing damage to civilian infrastructure.)    In 1983, years before the Vanunu defection, Sam Cohen, the inventor of the U.S. N-Bomb who had very close ties to Israel, told me that he knew for a fact that Israel has the H-Bomb and neutron warheads.  

Source/Contributors 

Click for Newsletter

Argentinian President addresses UN with claims about the Obama Administration

The President of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, spoke for nearly forty minutes at the United Nation’s 70th General Assembly Monday, during which time she provided to attendees a shocking tidbit of information.
During her speech President Kirchner said that Gary Samore, former White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction under the Obama Administration until 2013, approached Argentinians in 2010 trying to convince them to provide Iranians with nuclear fuel — a claim that Samore didn’t bother to deny.
President Kirchner told the UN:

In 2010 we were visited in Argentina by Gary Samore, at that time the White House’s top advisor in nuclear issues. He came to see us in Argentina with a mission, with an objective: under the control of IAEA, the international organization in the field of weapons control and nuclear regulation, Argentina had supplied in the year 1987, during the first democratic government, the nuclear fuel for the reactor known as “Teheran”. Gary Samore had explained to our Minister of Foreign Affairs, Héctor Timerman, that negotiations were underway for the Islamic Republic of Iran to cease with its uranium enrichment activities or to do it to a lesser extent but Iran claimed that it needed to enrich this Teheran nuclear reactor and this was hindering negotiations. They came to ask us, Argentines, to provide the Islamic Republic of Iran with nuclear fuel. Rohani was not in office yet. It was Ahmadinejad’s administration and negotiations had already started.

You see according to the Belfer Center as a WMD Coordinator, Samore, “served as the principal advisor to the President on all matters relating to arms control and the prevention of weapons of mass destruction proliferation and WMD terrorism, and coordinated United States government activities, initiatives, and programs to prevent proliferation and WMD terrorism and promote international arms control efforts.” So you can clearly see how if the allegations President Kirchner made are true there is a definite conflict of interest here.
Let me reiterate this — a former Obama Admin. Official, Gary Samore, has been accused of trying to facilitate a secret deal for the Iranians to obtain nuclear fuel! Moreover when the Argentinians requested that the deal be put into writing Samore backed out later approaching agents of several other countries seeking a similar deal.
Ladies and gentlemen, if true, this can only mean one thing; that the Obama Admin was, and possibly still is, trying to actively arm Iran making them nuclear capable. And if that’s the case, which we may never know for sure, we can go even one step further and say that Samore’s actions may have been an attempt by the Obama Admin to conjure up another 9/11 on U.S. soil — this time in the form of a mushroom cloud.

Also see  World Leaders Ask America To Impeach Obama for THIS

Source/Contributor 

Amazon Trade-in: Get Top Dollar for Your Phone

Visit Our Daily Newsletter at TheRedPill.Website

Buy me!

White House Ignores New Iranian Drone Technology that Endangers U.S., Israel

White House Ignores New Iranian Drone Technology that Endangers U.S., Israel

September 30, 2015

Despite President Barack Obama and Secretary John Kerry's enthusiasm in pushing a nuclear weapons agreement with Iran -- an agreement a majority of lawmakers and Americans oppose -- the Deputy Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, Brigadier General Hossein Salami. boasted to the government-funded Fars News Agency that his military has created advanced unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology.
Gen. Salami claimed that the UAVs, commonly called "drones," are capable flying 3,000 kilometers -- or 1,864 miles -- to conduct stealth reconnaissance or to take part in combat missions, according to the Iranian news media on Wednesday.
The report quotes Gen. Salami as saying, "Any U.S. airbase whose airplanes can reach the Iranian airspace as well as their aircraft carriers can be targeted by Iran's unique high precision striking ballistic missiles and drones." The general's language is an indication that the Iranian government has intensified its threat against the United States and Israel, nations they refer to as "the big Satan and the little Satan."
"[In addition,] the IRGC... has a unique ballistic missile that no one else, [except] perhaps Russia and the US, has; and intercepting this missile is almost impossible," Salami said in an interview with the state-run TV news agency.
An Israeli report confirms that the Iranians are building a fleet of "suicide kamikaze drones," which they are likely to provide to terrorists in keeping with Iran's reputation as being the world's leading facilitator of terrorism. What concerns Israel -- and being kept quiet by U.S. officials and news media -- is the prospect of Iranian intelligence and military officers providing schematics and other documents for the assembling of these high-tech weapons to its terrorist allies especially Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both of which are a thorn in the side of Israel.
"While the drones are not a threat to the United States, unless the Hezbollah members in Latin America are given units, the Israelis are worried about both Hamas and Hezbollah being capable of surreptitiously entering Israel's airspace to conduct attacks on civilians," said former counterterrorism unit commander, Lt. James M. Kantros. "The Israeli first responders -- police, fire, emergency medical techs -- will need to upgrade their training for responding to drone attacks by Iran or its proxies," Kantros added.
The report, which liberally borrows from the U.S. Army's Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, claims that nothing produced by Iran's overt military weapons programs has experienced as much development as Iranian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
Ten-years ago Iran's UAVs were largely for showpieces for parades and photo opportunities. But today the Iranian government boasts widespread use of drones, employed not only by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps the country's elite troops, but also by their regular army, the regular and elite IRGC navy, and the regular and special IRGC air forces.
According to Israel's media, Hamas and Hezbollah have already been deploying drones that have flown over Israel. But those drones were spies-in-the-skies and failed to cause death or damage. In a February 2015 speech, the regular army's General Abdolrahim Moussavi outlined the army's growing use of drones, with emphasis on suicide or kamikaze drones, according to the U.S. Army report.
"While it is easy to dismiss the idea of a suicide drone as more symbolic than real in an age of cruise missiles and precise Predators, utilizing suicide drones is an asymmetric strategy which both allows Iran to compete on an uneven playing field and poses a risk by allowing operators to pick and choose targets of opportunity over a drone's multi-hour flight duration," the report noted.

Jim Kouri, CPP is currently vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and a staff writer for the New Media Alliance (thenma.org). He's former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed "Crack City" by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at a New Jersey university and director of security for several major organizations. He’s also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country. Kouri writes for many police and security magazines including Chief of Police, Police Times, The Narc Officer and others. He’s a news writer for TheConservativeVoice.Com and PHXnews.com, a columnist for AmericanDaily.Com, MensNewsDaily.Com, MichNews.Com, and he’s syndicated by AXcessNews.Com. He’s appeared as on-air commentator for over 100 TV and radio news and talk shows including Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline News, MTV, Fox News, and more. His book Assume The Position is available at Amazon.Com. Kouri’s own website is located at http://jimkouri.us

Read more: Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/white-house-ignores-new-iranian-drone-technology-that-endangers-us-israel?f=must_reads#ixzz3nDm69bNe
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

Amazon Trade-in: Get Top Dollar for Your Phone

Visit Our Daily Newsletter at TheRedPill.Website

Buy me!