Terror-Rama....
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/terrorists-turn-online-chat-rooms-evade-us
( From Conference call with Al Qaeda Big wigs on the call.... to posts on a online jihadi forum ? )
The code words convinced US spies that the attack was likely imminent, but gave no information about where the attack was liable to actually take place, leading to the global travel warning from the State Department.
Today, the Egyptian junta removed the last of the appointees of the ousted civilian government, and appointed 25 new provincial governors, 19 of them former generals, mostly Mubarak loyalists. Some of the appointees were even leaders in the bloody crackdown against protesters during the 2011 Egyptian revolution.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/terrorists-turn-online-chat-rooms-evade-us
( From Conference call with Al Qaeda Big wigs on the call.... to posts on a online jihadi forum ? )
WASHINGTON (AP) — Al-Qaida fighters have been using secretive chat rooms and encrypted Internet message boards for planning and coordinating attacks — including the threatened if vague plot that U.S. officials say closed 19 diplomatic posts across Africa and the Middle East for more than a week.
It's highly unlikely that al-Qaida's top leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, or his chief lieutenant in Yemen, Nasser al-Wahishi, were personally part of the Internet chatter or, given the intense manhunt for both by U.S. spy agencies, that they ever go online or pick up the phone to discuss terror plots, experts say.
But the unspecified call to arms by the al-Qaida leaders, using a multi-layered subterfuge to pass messages from couriers to tech-savvy underlings to attackers, provoked a quick reaction by the U.S. to protect Americans in far-flung corners of the world where the terror network is evolving into regional hubs.
For years, extremists have used online forums to share information and drum up support, and over the past decade they have developed systems that blend encryption programs with anonymity software to hide their tracks. Jihadist technology may now be so sophisticated and secretive, experts say, that many communications avoid detection by National Security Agency programs that were specifically designed to uncover terror plots.
A U.S. intelligence official said the unspecified threat was discussed in an online forum joined by so many jihadist groups that it included a representative from Boko Haram, the Nigerian insurgency that has loose and informal ties to al-Qaida. Two other intelligence officials characterized the threat as more of an alert to get ready to launch potential attacks than a discussion of specific targets.
One of the officials said the threat began with a message from al-Wahishi, head of the Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, to al-Zawahri, who replaced Osama bin Laden as the core al-Qaida leader. The message essentially sought out al-Zawahri's blessing to launch attacks. Al-Zawahri, in turn, sent out a response that was shared on the secretive online jihadi forum.
All three intelligence officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the threat.
Rita Katz, director of the Washington-based SITE Intelligence Group that monitors jihadist websites, said it's all but certain that neither al-Zawahri nor al-Wahishi would communicate directly online or on the phone.
Al-Zawahri's location is unknown, but he was last believed to be in Pakistan, and al-Wahishi is said to be in Yemen. Given the nearly 2,000 miles between the two men, Katz said it's most likely they separately composed encrypted messages, saved them on thumb drives, and handed them off to couriers who disseminated them on secure websites.
Bin Laden, who was killed in May 2011, issued his messages in much the same way.
"These guys are not living in a bubble," said Katz, who has been watching al-Qaida and other jihadi communications for years. "They live in a reality that is facing the American intelligence interception with the best, most advanced technology that can be created. So they always try to find ways to get away from these interceptions to be able to deliver messages."
She added: "I am sure they are delivering messages, through the message boards or by sending emails that are encrypted. But there is no way in my mind that Zawahri or Wahishi have access to the Internet, and I think Wahishi, at this stage of his life, is even afraid of going outside."
Tracking and eliminating al-Qaida operatives in Yemen hasn't been easy for the U.S. It took years for the CIA finally to kill the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in a drone strike after an intense manhunt. By staying off the grid, al-Wahishi and other senior al-Qaida leaders in Yemen such as Qassim al-Rimi and top bomb-maker Ibrahim Al-Asiri have managed to remain alive. So frustrated was the CIA at one point, the spy agency considered killing the couriers passing messages in an attempt to disrupt the terrorist group's plans, said a former senior U.S. official.
The idea was dropped because the couriers were not involved in lethal operations.
Exactly how U.S. spy systems picked up the latest threat is classified, and Shawn Turner, spokesman for U.S. National Intelligence Director James Clapper, refused to confirm or deny Katz's analysis on how it might have happened. Intelligence officials have suggested that the plot was detected, in part at least, through NSA surveillance programs that have been under harsh worldwide criticism for privacy intrusions in the name of national security.
It's not clear, however, that even the powerful U.S. spy systems would be able to crack jihadists' encrypted messages without help from the inside.
Earlier this year, an al-Qaida-linked extremist propaganda organization known as the Global Islamic Media Front released an encrypted instant-messaging system known as "Asrar al-Dardashah," or "Secrets of the Chat." It was a texting version of the organization's end-to-end encryption program that followers had been using for years. End-to-end encryption means messages are put into code so that only senders and receivers can access the content with secure "keys."
After the NSA programs were revealed in June, jihadi websites began urging followers to also use software that would hide their Internet protocol addresses and, essentially, prevent them from being tracked online. That aimed to add another layer of security to the online traffic.
An Aug. 5 discussion about the U.S. embassy closings on a jihadi forum that is directly linked to al-Qaida underscored the need for "complete secrecy" in plotting attacks even while jeering the American response to the message between al-Zawahri and al-Wahishi.
In a post on the Shumukh al-Islam online forum, a writer who identified himself as Sayyed al-Mawqif noted American news reports that said the terror threat possibly was intercepted though phone calls or surveillance of jihadist chat rooms or message boards. Shumukh al-Islam is not an encrypted site, but it requires a password to access and does not frequently accept new visitors.
"Even if there will not be a jihadi operation, it is sufficient that the mujahideen brothers succeeded in putting fear in the hearts of the disbelievers and the human devils," al-Mawqif wrote, according to a SITE translation of the transcript. "We hope to hear more about psychological wars like this one if there are no actual jihadi operations on the ground."
Encryption technology was once regulated by the U.S. for national security purposes, but it has been available to the public and used globally since the 1990s, including by human rights and free speech advocates.
"You can encrypt things in such a way that you can assume that even the NSA can't undo them — there's no back door," said Dan Auerbach, a technology expert at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is challenging NSA eavesdropping in federal lawsuits.
"We think it is very important to have tools for privacy," Auerbach said. But "when you develop a strong privacy-enhancing tool, it will help everyone -- and this may include people considered by many to be 'bad guys.'"
Other technology experts believe the government could access encrypted messages — with the help of Internet providers.
Depending on what software is used, Internet providers theoretically could be compelled to send the coded messages and their decryption keys to the government instead of to the intended recipient. Unknown vulnerabilities in software may also make it possible for hackers to break into computers and obtain messages.
It's also possible that U.S. intelligence officials used a decidedly low-tech method to intercept the message between al-Zawahri and al-Wahishi — by planting a spy in the online forum. That has happened in the past, according to intelligence experts, most recently in a case now in federal court in Miami in which prosecutors say an undercover FBI agent snared two alleged terrorist recruiters in an online chat room by posing as a financial middleman.
Either way, and given al-Qaida's global sprawl and attempts to fly under the radar, it's certain that encrypted chat rooms and online sites are a mainstay for jihadi messages.
"This creates a bit of a cat-and-mouse game between terrorist groups that can buy commercial technology and intelligence agencies that are trying to find ways to continue to monitor," said Seth Jones, a former adviser to U.S. special operations forces and counterterrorism expert at Rand Corp., a Washington-based think tank that receives U.S. funding. "Some of the technology you can buy is pretty good, and it evolves, and it is a game that is constantly evolving."
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US al-Qaeda Panic Focused on Intercepted ‘Code Words’
Words Led US Spies to Believe Attack Was Imminent
by Jason Ditz, August 13, 2013
The scrambling around a potential al-Qaeda plot that led to the closure of dozens of US embassies worldwide came from the use of certain “code words” in intercepted al-Qaeda communication, according to officials familiar with the situation.
The code words convinced US spies that the attack was likely imminent, but gave no information about where the attack was liable to actually take place, leading to the global travel warning from the State Department.
No major attack ever happened, but since officials never really knew what was going to be attacked its impossible to say if it was actually “foiled,” as claimed by the Yemeni government, or if the US assumptions were simply incorrect.
Either way, the intelligence, such as it was, appears to have been extremely limited, which would probably explain why the administration’s go-to reaction was a series of seemingly random drone strikes against Yemen that blew up a school, a medical clinic, and a lot of other civilian targets.
Syria.....
Obama’s Confused Syria Policy: Pro/Anti-Assad & Pro/Anti-Rebel
John Glaser, August 13, 2013
Obama’s Syria policy is fundamentally one of contradictions. Back in 2011, the president called for Bashar al-Assad to step down and proceeded to gradually support the armed rebellion. As Joshua Landis, professor at the University of Oklahoma and an expert on Syria, wrote back at the time, “Let’s be clear: Washington is pursuing regime change by civil war in Syria.”
At the same time, the Obama administration did not welcome the fall of the regime in Damascus. As the State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said back in January, even as the U.S. supports the Syrian opposition on the margins, it is of utmost importance to “maintain the functions of the state,” so as to avoid a power vacuum that the al-Qaeda-linked jihadists that make up the majority of the rebels could take advantage of. As Phil Giraldi, former CIA intelligence officer and Antiwar.com columnist, told me back in March, “Obama has come around to the view that regime change is more fraught with dangers than letting Assad remain.”
Instead of moving initially to directly arm the rebels, the Obama administration stalled for two years and made policy moves like designating the al-Qaeda in Iraq offshoot in Syria a terrorist organization and pressuring Saudi Arabia not to send heavier arms like anti-aircraft weapons. Back in March, the White House directed the CIA to increase its cooperation and backing of Iraqi state militias to fight al-Qaeda affiliates there and cut off the flow of fighters pouring into Syria. As The Nation‘s Robert Dreyfuss put it, “We’re backing the same guys in Syria that we’re fighting in Iraq.” Then in May it was revealed that U.S. operatives in Jordan advised small groups of moderate rebels with the explicit requirement that their trainees fight the al-Qaeda-linked rebels.
So while Obama’s policy, at least as stated, was the fall of the Assad regime, he also tried to prevent its collapse. And even as U.S. policy was to support – and, indeed,now to arm – the rebels, it was also to divide and conquer the opposition and fight al-Qaeda’s rise in Syria.
The Wall Street Journal reported this month that the CIA’s second-in-command, Michael Morrell, said in an interview that the top threat to U.S. security is “the risk is that the Syrian government, which possesses chemical and other advanced weapons, collapses and the country becomes al Qaeda’s new haven.” Former CIA analyst Paul Pillar echoed the sentiment: “In the short term probably the best outcome in that respect would be prompt re-establishment of control by the Assad regime.”
Mind you, that doesn’t mean Washington should start directly supporting Assad. I don’t think that, and neither, presumably, do these CIA guys. The Obama administration has shown, in its words and its reluctance to fully commit to a proxy war against Assad, that it understands the concern associated with Assad’s fall. But the president has still bowed to pressure from the most superficially informed that we “do something” to stop the caricatured formulation of this civil war that it is a ruthless dictator slaughtering his own people and nothing more.
But he hasn’t bowed too much. Obama has repeatedly sent out his officials, most notably Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to outline the dangers of direct military action. “We have learned from the past 10 years,” Dempsey said last month, “that it is not enough to simply alter the balance of military power without careful consideration of what is necessary in order to preserve a functioning state. We must anticipate and be prepared for the unintended consequences of our action. Should the regime’s institutions collapse in the absence of a viable opposition, we could inadvertently empower extremists or unleash the very chemical weapons we seek to control.”
It seems a confused, panicky approach. The administration is terrified of appearing to not interfere, but it knows too strong a policy for or against either side would make things immeasurably worse.
| Russia Says Syria Peace Talks Unlikely Before October |
Iran......
US Needs More Forthcoming Approach to Iran: Report
by Jim Lobe, August 14, 2013
With the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, the United States should take a more flexible approach toward Tehran to increase the chances of a successful resolution of the latter’s nuclear programme, according to a new report by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) released Tuesday.
The report, “Great Expectations: Iran’s New President and the Nuclear Talks,” urged the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama to take a series of measures to enhance the prospects for progress in a likely new round of negotiations between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany) next month.
Specifically, the report called for Washington to engage in direct bilateral talks with Iran alongside the P5+1 and to be more forthcoming in the negotiations – by offering greater sanctions relief in exchange for Iranian concessions and describing an “end-state” that would include de facto recognition of Tehran’s “right” to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.
It should also widen the scope of discussions between the West and Iran to include regional security issues, according to the report, which called on Washington to end its opposition to Tehran’s participation in any future international conference on Syria.
Finally, the report stressed that imposing new economic sanctions against Iran at such a delicate time is likely to prove counter-productive.
“(N)ow is not the time to ramp up sanctions,” the report stated. “That could well backfire, playing into the hands of those in Tehran wishing to prove that Iran’s policies have no impact on the West’s attitude, and thus that a more flexible position is both unwarranted and unwise.”
It also noted that “heightened sanctions”, such as those recently approved by a 400-20 vote in the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives, “could undermine Rouhani’s domestic position even before he has a chance to test his approach.”
The new report comes amidst considerable speculation here whether Rouhani, who was inaugurated just last week after pulling off a surprise first-round victory in the June elections, will prove more flexible in nuclear negotiations and, critically, could persuade Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to back him up in Iran’s highly factionalised political environment.
While most U.S. officials, including Obama himself, have indicated “cautious optimism” that they can do business with Rouhani, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced him as “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” even before his inauguration.
The latter theme has been echoed repeatedly since Rouhani’s election by lawmakers and think tanks closely associated with the Israel lobby and its most prominent flagship, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
The latter has also urged Congress to quickly approve tougher sanctions – as early as next month even before the next P5+1 meeting – to increase pressure on Tehran to suspend, if not abandon its nuclear programme.
“American resolve is critical, especially in the next few months,” wrote Republican Sen. Mark Kirk and Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Tuesday. “By bringing the regime to the verge of economic collapse, the U.S. can …[force] Iran to comply with all international obligations, including suspending all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities.”
The two men, both of whom enjoy especially close relations with AIPAC, urged the Senate to swiftly approve the sanctions bill passed last month by the House.
Among other measures, it would impose sanctions against any foreign country or company that buys Iran’s oil or that conducts business with key sectors of Iran’s economy, such as its auto and petrochemical industries. It would also cut off access to most of Iran’s overseas financial reserves and reduce or eliminate the president’s authority to waive such sanctions.
Whether the Democrat-led Senate will do so remains unclear. The administration has indicated that it opposes new sanctions pending a new round of negotiations, but it is uncertain whether it can keep key Democrats in line in the face of a major AIPAC campaign when Congress returns from its August recess in the first days of September.
Seventy-six of the 100 senators signed an AIPAC-inspired letter to Obama initiated by the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Robert Menendez, which called for enhanced sanctions and “a convincing threat of the use of force that Iran will believe”, although it did not explicitly endorse the House bill, and some key senators who normally go along with AIPAC’s initiatives apparently declined to sign it.
And, in a rare departure from his usual staunchly pro-Israel stance, the number two Democrat in the House, Rep. Steny Hoyer, told officials in Israel this week that Rouhani should be given an opportunity to be heard, according to a report by the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA) Tuesday.
Hoyer, who is leading a delegation of 36 Democratic lawmakers, was not one of 131 House members, including 18 Republicans, who signed a letter last month calling for enhanced diplomatic engagement with Iran to resolve the nuclear issue.
The ICG report stressed that expectations of significant progress in negotiations on the nuclear file should be restrained and that “Iran’s bottom line demands – recognition of its right to enrich and meaningful sanctions relief – will not budge” due not only to Khamenei’s retention of the “final say” on the issue, but also because of Rouhani’s long-standing involvement and investment in the nuclear programme.
Indeed, his failure in the early 2000s, when he served as Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, to obtain anything in return for an agreement with the EU-3 (Britain, France, and Germany) to suspend enrichment for a year and a half will likely make him “highly reluctant to take any step that is tantamount to suspending enrichment.
“…Instead, he will likely be far more inclined to focus on measures to increase transparency of the nuclear program,” according to the report.
It added that whether greater transparency by itself will satisfy Washington and its allies is “highly questionable” as Tehran draws closer to the capability to build a bomb within a matter of weeks if it chooses to do so, thus becoming a “virtual nuclear weapons state”.
Moreover, “Western doubts about Rouhani’s ability to deliver are matched by Tehran’s scepticism that the U.S. in particular can accept a modus Vivendi with the Islamic Republic or that President Barack Obama has the political muscle to lift sanctions,” the report said.
That said, Rouhani, whose election was made possible by a coalition of moderate and reformist leaders, has made clear that he believes Iran’s recent strategy in dealing with the issue has come at an exorbitant cost to the Iranian economy. Moreover, his unexpected victory “gives him a relatively potent mandate for change”.
To facilitate such a change, Washington and its Western allies should not maintain their “wait-and-see posture” but instead put “more ambitious proposals on the table,” such as offering greater sanctions relief for a period of time in exchange for Iran’s suspension of its 20-percent enrichment of its uranium and conversion of its existing to fuel rods and a freeze on the installation of advanced centrifuges in its bunkered enrichment facility at Fordow.
Launching bilateral talks with Tehran – something Obama has repeatedly proposed – would also enhance the chances for progress, according to the report, which noted that Rouhani has several times since his election indicated his support for such a dialogue despite Khamenei’s frequently voiced skepticism that it would bear fruit.
Egypt.....
Egypt Junta Ousts Last of Civilian Govt, Appoints Generals as ‘Governors’
by Jason Ditz, August 13, 2013
During the reign of Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian generals could be contented that leaving the military leadership meant almost immediately being installed as a top official elsewhere. That trend is back in a big way.
Today, the Egyptian junta removed the last of the appointees of the ousted civilian government, and appointed 25 new provincial governors, 19 of them former generals, mostly Mubarak loyalists. Some of the appointees were even leaders in the bloody crackdown against protesters during the 2011 Egyptian revolution.
The move was immediately criticized, of course, by spokesmen for anti-coup factions, but was also condemned by many of the pro-coup groups as well, saying they were concerned by the step toward “militarization.”
Since the ouster of the elected government, the military has had de facto rule over the country to begin with, but had previously appointed figurehead civilians to “interim” posts to at least maintain the appearance that they were installing a new civilian government. The governors suggest that this sort of pretense is falling by the wayside.
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