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NYT Exec: Obama Administration ‘Most Secretive’ White House She’s Ever Seen

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

In an interview with Al-Jazeera America Tuesday, the executive editor of The New York Times described the Obama Administration “the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering” and said it’s inconceivable to think President Obama himself isn’t directly responsible for the cloak-and-dagger policies that have made it difficult for even hoary publications like The Times to get a straight answer.

Al Jazeera’s John Seigenthaler asked Jill Abramson, who’s served as NYT’s executive editor since 2011, to grade the Obama Administration’s transparency with traditional media outlets, and Abramson gave him more than an earful:

Seigenthaler: Let me move on to another topic in the Obama administration. How would you grade this administration, compared to others, when it comes to its relationship with the media?

Abramson: Well, I would slightly like to interpret the question as “How secretive is this White House?” which I think is the most important question. I would say it is the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering, and that includes — I spent 22 years of my career in Washington and covered presidents from President Reagan on up through now, and I was Washington bureau chief of the Times during George W. Bush’s first term.

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How the IRS Scandal Goes Beyond the Agency

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Photo Credit: Win McNamee, Getty Images

Photo Credit: Win McNamee, Getty Images

At a tax symposium at Pepperdine Law School last week, former IRS chief counsel Donald Korb was asked, “On a scale of 1-10 … how damaging is the current IRS scandal?”

His answer: 9.5. Other tax experts on the panel called it “awful,” and said that it has done “tremendous damage.”

I think that’s right. And I think that the damage extends well beyond the Internal Revenue Service. In fact, I think that the government agency suffering the most damage isn’t the IRS, but the National Security Agency. Because the NSA, even more than the IRS, depends on public trust. And now that the IRS has been revealed to be a political weapon, it’s much harder for people to have faith in the NSA.

As I warned President Obama back in 2009 after he “joked” about having his enemies audited, the IRS depends on trust:

Should the IRS come to be seen as just a bunch of enforcers for whoever is in political power, the result would be an enormous loss of legitimacy for the tax system. Our income-tax system is based on voluntary compliance and honest reporting by citizens. It couldn’t possibly function if most people decided to cheat. Sure, the system is backed up by the dreaded IRS audit. But the threat is, while not exactly hollow, limited: The IRS can’t audit more than a tiny fraction of taxpayers. If Americans started acting like Italians, who famously see tax evasion as a national pastime, the system would collapse.

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Darrell Issa: Obama Administration Waging ‘a War on Guns’ with ‘Rogue’ ATF Sting Operations

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Darrell-Issa-2853California Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, accused the Obama administration of waging “a war on guns” after new reports of “rogue” sting operations by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) conducted during 2013.

Issa spoke to Fox News’ Shannon Bream Sunday about a report by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, which claimed that ATF agents operating firearm stings in 6 separate cities “took advantage of the mentally ill, set up stings near churches and schools and made decisions which some claim actually increased crime in their neighborhoods.” Issa and Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley sent a letter to ATF Director Todd Jones this week to demand answers on the tactics and how often they’ve been used.

But Issa believes he already knows what’s going on.

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Obama Administration Prohibited Veterans from Hearing Christmas Carols, Receiving Gifts

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

The Obama administration’s Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) prohibited veterans from hearing Christmas carols or receiving gifts wrapped in Christmas-themed wrapping paper, prompting outrage from a congressional committee.

VA officials in Iowa City, Iowa told representatives of the American Legion that they could not hand out gifts to veterans wrapped in wrapping paper that featured the term “Merry Christmas.”

Additionally, the VA Medical Center in Augusta, Georgia — which treats veterans — banned Christmas carolers from singing Christmas songs with religious references in public areas.

Read more from this story HERE.

‘Troubling’: Federal Judge Orders Obama Admin. to Disclose Document it’s Been Trying to Keep Hidden

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

A federal judge Tuesday ordered the disclosure of a government-wide foreign aid directive President Barack Obama signed in 2010 but wanted to keep hidden from the public, Politico reports. The judge called the scope of the government’s argument for “presidential communications privilege” rather “troubling.”

The Department of Justice has argued that the Presidential Policy Directive on Global Development was covered by executive privilege, even though the information is “non-classified” and sends directives to agencies not to the president of the United States.

“Acting on a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the Center for Effective Government, U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle concluded that the presidential order is not properly within the bounds of the so-called ‘presidential communications privilege,’” Politico’s Josh Gerstein reports.

In her opinion, Huvelle wrote there is “no evidence that the [directive] was intended to be, or has been treated as, a confidential presidential communication.”

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Stats: Obama Administration Paused Iran Sanctions for Rouhani

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

New statistics indicate that the Obama administration intentionally refrained from sanctioning Iran following the June election of President Hassan Rouhani, lending credence to multiple reports that the White House began secretly courting Tehran from the first moments of Rouhani’s presidency.

Prior to Rouhani’s June 14 election, the U.S. Treasury Department issued 10 sanction announcements targeting a total of 183 entities that were aiding and abetting Iran’s rogue oil trade and its nuclear weapons program, according to statistics compiled from publicly available releases on the Treasury’s website.

New designations were issued each month from February to June 4, including six in the month of May alone.

However, just two announcements targeting a total of 29 rogue entities were issued following Rouhani’s election, which was accompanied by a three-month silence from the Treasury Department.

Treasury did not issue a new designation until Sept. 6, and it targeted some 10 rogue entities.

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No Change: White House says Plans No Split of NSA, Cyber Command

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/JASON REED

Photo Credit: REUTERS/JASON REED

By Warren Strobel.

The Obama administration on Friday said it will keep one person in charge of both the National Security Agency spy agency and the military’s Cyber Command, despite growing calls for splitting the roles in the wake of revelations about the vast U.S. electronic surveillance operations.

The White House had considered splitting up the two agencies, possibly giving the NSA a civilian leader for the first time in its 61-year history to dampen controversy over its programs revealed by former contractor Edward Snowden.

Both the NSA and Cyber Command, which conducts cyber warfare, are now headed by the same man, Army General Keith Alexander, who is retiring in March. Given that the head of Cyber Command must be a military officer, the White House decision means that Alexander’s successor will be from the military as well.

“Following a thorough interagency review, the Administration has decided that keeping the positions of NSA Director and Cyber Command Commander together as one, dual-hatted position is the most effective approach to accomplishing both agencies’ missions,” said Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the White House’s National Security Council.

“Without the dual-hat arrangement, elaborate procedures would have to be put in place to ensure that effective coordination continued and avoid creating duplicative capabilities in each organization.”

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Photo Credit: Gary Cameron/Reuters

Photo Credit: Gary Cameron/Reuters

White House to preserve controversial policy on NSA, Cyber Command leadership

By Ellen Nakashima.

The Obama administration has decided to preserve a controversial arrangement by which a single military official is permitted to direct both the National Security Agency and the military’s cyberwarfare command, U.S. officials said.

The decision by President Obama comes amid signs that the White House is not inclined to impose significant new restraints on the NSA’s activities and favors maintaining an agency program that collects data on virtually every phone call that Americans make, although it is likely to impose additional privacy protection measures.

Some officials, including top U.S. intelligence officials, had argued that the NSA and Cyber Command should be placed under separate leadership to ensure greater accountability and avoid an undue concentration of power. An external review panel appointed by Obama was also inclined to recommend that a civilian head be installed at the NSA, effectively splitting the roles, according to an official familiar with some of the early recommendations.

“Following a thorough interagency review, the administration has decided that keeping the positions of NSA Director and Cyber Command commander together as one, dual-hatted position is the most effective approach to accomplishing both agencies’ missions,” White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in an e-mail to The Washington Post.

The announcement comes as the external panel readies a report on NSA surveillance and the White House nears completion of its own internal review. The White House will take the five-member panel’s recommendations under consideration but is free to reject or modify them.

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Report: Obama Administration Knew Syrian Rebels Had Access to Chemical Weapons

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Photo Credit: Stringer / Reuters

Photo Credit: Stringer / Reuters

The Obama administration knew that a Syrian rebel faction had the ability to make chemical weapons but omitted that knowledge when building their case for a strike on Syria, an explosive new report alleges.

Seymour Hersh reports in the London Review of Books on Sunday that President Obama, while pitching the administration’s case for war, “failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack.”

The report, the thrust of which the Obama Administration denies, calls into question the narrative that the administration has outlined since an August 21 chemical attack on a Damascus suburb that almost led the United States into an air war with Syria. The march toward war was based on what Obama and his top aides have characterized as conclusive evidence that Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian government had carried out the attack.

The Hersh article is based in part on a four-page secret cable given to a top official at the Defense Intelligence Agency on June 20, one of a group of intelligence community documents allegedly stating that jihadi rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra has the ability to make sarin gas. Sarin is the chemical believed to have been used in the Aug 21 chemical attack in Ghouta that crossed Obama’s “red line” and prompted the administration to push for a strike on Assad’s regime. The story is sourced mainly to intelligence and military officers and consultants.

“When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad,” Hersh writes.

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Surrender: Obama Admin. Accepts China’s New Controversial Air Zone

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Photo Credit: Foreign PolicyTop Obama administration and Pentagon officials signaled a willingness to temporarily accept China’s new, controversial air defense identification zone on Wednesday. Those officials expressed disapproval for the way in which the Asian power has flexed its muscles, and cautioned China not to implement the zone. But they also carved out wiggle room in which the United States and China ultimately could find common ground on the issue, indicating that they may be willing to live with the zone for now — as long as China backs off its demand that all aircraft traveling through it check in first.

“It wasn’t the declaration of the ADIZ that actually was destabilizing,” said Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, America’s highest-ranking military officer. “It was their assertion that they would cause all aircraft entering the ADIZ to report regardless of whether they were intending to enter into the sovereign airspace of China. And that is destabilizing.”

That’s a change from just a few days ago, when U.S. Vice President Joe Biden demanded that China take back its declaration of the zone. And it’s another demonstration that China’s recent decisions have forced the United States to tread carefully. On Wednesday, Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing for more than five hours, according to a senior administration official. In brief public remarks midway through the marathon session, Biden didn’t mention the air defense zone at all.

Japan, a vital American ally, has expressed fury over the Chinese move and ordered its commercial airliners not to provide information about their flight paths to the Chinese military. By contrast, the United States made a point of flying a pair of B-52s through it last week, but seems to have accepted that China will keep the zone in place indefinitely. U.S. officials have shifted their focus instead on preventing a potential military clash between Japan and China.

In meetings in Beijing on Wednesday, Biden laid out the U.S. position in detail, reiterating that the United States does not recognize the new zone and has deep concerns about it, a senior administration official said. Biden told Xi that the United States wants China to take steps to lower tensions in the region, avoid enforcement actions that could lead to crisis, and to establish communication with Japan and other countries in the region to avoid altercations, the administration official added. Privately, Biden did not call for the air defense identification zone it to be rolled back — something administration officials had done Monday while Biden was visiting Japan. Instead, the vice president asked the Chinese leader to be careful about how his country operated the zone going forward.

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Obama Wants the Volcker Rule on Wall St. Oversight Completed by End of Year – Part of Dodd-Frank

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Photo Credit: Mark Wilson/GettyThe Obama administration, currently stumbling through the health care overhaul, has reached a critical stage in its other signature effort: reining in Wall Street.

The push to reshape financial oversight hinges on negotiations in the coming weeks over the so-called Volcker Rule, a regulation that strikes at the heart of Wall Street risk-taking. The rule, which bans banks from trading for their own gain, has become synonymous with the Dodd-Frank overhaul law that Congress adopted after the financial crisis.

Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew has strongly urged federal agencies to finish writing the Volcker Rule by the end of the year — more than a year after they had been expected to do so — and President Obama recently stressed the importance of the deadline.

While regulators are optimistic they will complete the rule soon, even after facing a lobbying onslaught from Wall Street, they have little time to overcome the internal wrangling that has stymied them for years.

The tension among regulators — five agencies are writing the rule — has centered on just how stringent to make it.

Read more from this story HERE.