SECRECY & THE SECURITY STATE - page 14

During a congressional hearing Tuesday, new leadership from Customs and Border Protection suggested the US ought to start turning away children fleeing violence in Central America. Testifying before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, CPB Chief Mark Morgan said the effort to help unaccompanied children and families (UAC) seeking safety in the US was too burdensome. At the prompting of Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) on Tuesday, Morgan specifically told Senators that current efforts–to apprehend, process, and then safeguard refuge-seeking minors–is putting a strain on traditional border enforcement…

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Senate Democrats swapped a civil libertarian for a national security hawk as head of the party’s Judiciary Committee contingent, amid a post-election leadership shuffle. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) will become the ranking Democrat of the Senate Appropriations Committee in the 115th Congress–a void left by the retiring Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.). The panel has significant influence over how federal taxpayer money is spent. “My ongoing efforts range from economic development in Vermont and rebuilding our country’s infrastructure, to protecting Lake Champlain, fighting efforts to roll back protections…

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President Obama is set to handover his targeted assassinations program to the administration of Donald Trump, without altering its controversial rules. The White House has declined to change the guidelines to drone killings and airstrikes abroad ahead of January’s inauguration, according to a report published Tuesday by The Guardian. The newspaper noted that the current administration “considers its standards for drone strikes to be scrupulous.” The outline is known as the May 22, 2013 Presidential Policy Guidance (PPG). The White House claims it has killed…

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A global legal body is weighing whether to charge US solders and CIA personnel with war crimes related to acts of torture committed in Afghanistan, according to the AP. Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda with the International Criminal Court (ICC) released a report on Monday that detailed “torture and cruel treatment” against 61 detainees at the hands of members of the US armed forces. It also alleged that another 27 prisoners were tortured by the CIA at black sites in Europe, including Poland, Romania, and Lithuania. “The…

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In his first sit-down interview since being elected President of the United States, Donald Trump outlined how he will begin to address his top issue as a candidate: undocumented immigration. Speaking to CBS 60 Minutes in an interview that aired on Sunday, Trump said that as soon as he takes office, he plans to rapidly increase the pace of deportations in the US—surpassing even President Obama’s record number of immigration expulsions. “What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and…

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Released emails show that Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta acted as a middleman between advocates seeking to free former Gov. Don Siegelman, and the White House. The Democratic Governor of Alabama from 1999 until 2003, Siegelman was convicted in 2006 on bribery charges stemming from an appointment to a statewide hospital oversight board that he gave to a former hospital CEO who had donated to a state lottery campaign supported by the Governor. Advocates for Siegelman claim, however, that he was convicted of something that is…

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Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) has changed his tune about the integrity of the FBI investigation of the private email server that Hillary Clinton maintained while Secretary of State. After Bureau Director James Comey revealed late last week that emails uncovered in a separate inquiry have caused federal agents to revisit Clinton’s email system, Reid questioned Comey’s own compliance with the law. The top Democratic lawmaker told the FBI Director that his decision to announce further probing of the email issue “may violate the…

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Yahoo is calling on the intelligence community to make public a secret court order that required the internet giant to scan all incoming emails to their users’ inboxes. The surveillance program was first reported in August by Reuters. Yahoo claimed the report was misleading, but didn’t offer any details to refute it. Now, in a letter this week to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Yahoo General Counsel Ron Bell is calling on the secret surveillance order to be released to the public to allow the…

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The Department of Justice announced Monday that retired Gen. General James E. Cartwright pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI, while trying to obscure his role in passing along top secret information to journalists. As the former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Cartwright occupied an influential seat in the Obama administration until he stepped aside to join the private sector in 2011. “General Cartwright violated the trust that was placed in him by willfully providing information that could endanger national security to…

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Hillary Clinton’s top campaign advisors made the decision to accept money from lobbyists hired by foreign entities without first obtaining her approval or even informing her, newly released emails show. An email chain published by Wikileaks titled “Re: Foreign registered agents” shows her campaign staff debating to institute a policy barring those who have registered under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) from contributing to or fundraising for the campaign. Dennis Cheng, the campaign’s national finance director, wrote in an email dated April 13, 2015:…

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