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Probe of Silencers Leads to Web of Pentagon Secrets

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Photo Credit: WNDThe mysterious workings of a Pentagon office that oversees clandestine operations are unraveling in federal court, where a criminal investigation has exposed a secret weapons program entwined with allegations of a sweetheart contract, fake badges and trails of destroyed evidence.

Capping an investigation that began almost two years ago, separate trials are scheduled this month in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., for a civilian Navy intelligence official and a hot-rod auto mechanic from California who prosecutors allege conspired to manufacture an untraceable batch of automatic-rifle silencers.

The exact purpose of the silencers remains hazy, but court filings and pretrial testimony suggest they were part of a top-secret operation that would help arm guerrillas or commandos overseas.

The silencers — 349 of them — were ordered by a little-known Navy intelligence office at the Pentagon known as the Directorate for Plans, Policy, Oversight and Integration, according to charging documents. The directorate is composed of fewer than 10 civilian employees, most of them retired military personnel.

Court records filed by prosecutors allege that the Navy paid the auto mechanic — the brother of the directorate’s boss — $1.6 million for the silencers, even though they cost only $10,000 in parts and labor to manufacture.

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Pentagon: Islamic State Threat 'Beyond Anything We've Seen'

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / YURI GRIPAS

Photo Credit: REUTERS / YURI GRIPAS

By Missy Ryan.

The sophistication, wealth and military might of Islamic State militants represent a major threat to the United States that may surpass that once posed by al Qaeda, U.S. military leaders said on Thursday.

“They are an imminent threat to every interest we have, whether it’s in Iraq or anywhere else,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters at the Pentagon.

Hagel’s assessment of Islamic State, which gained strength during Syria’s civil war and swept into northern Iraq earlier this summer, sounded a note of alarm several days after the group posted a video on social media showing one of its fighters beheading an American hostage kidnapped in Syria.

Asked if the hardline Sunni Muslim organization posed a threat to the United States comparable to that of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Hagel said it was “as sophisticated and well-funded as any group we have seen.”

“They are beyond just a terrorist group. They marry ideology, a sophistication of … military prowess. They are tremendously well-funded. This is beyond anything we’ve seen.”

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Report: Two times as many British Muslims fighting for ISIS as with U.K. armed forces

By Noah Rothman.

Americans were made acutely aware of the threat posed by Western jihadist fighters joining the ranks of ISIS in Syria and Iraq when a man with a London accent beheaded James Wright Foley as part of a taped ultimatum to President Barack Obama.

Inexplicably, President Barack Obama chose not to even abstractly address the nature of that threat, even though he plans to personally chair a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on precisely this subject next month.

A July intelligence estimate suggested that up to 3,000 ISIS militants were of European origin and 1,500 of those are young British Muslims, according to Birmingham MP Perry Barr. Framing the problem of Europe’s failure to assimilate its Muslim minorities perfectly, a new report indicates that there are more British Muslims fighting with Islamist militants in the Middle East than there are in the British armed forces.

According to the Ministry of Defense, there are only around 600 British Muslims currently serving in the Armed Forces, making up approximately around 0.4% of total personnel. 4.3% of the British population are Muslim.

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Pentagon Official: America’s Failure Is Hillary Inc’s 2016 Politics

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Photo Credit: Kevin Lamarque / Getty

Photo Credit: Kevin Lamarque / Getty

On Saturday, an embarrassed United States witnessed the full realization of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s failure in Libya. Remembering her husband’s failure to halt a 1990s Rwandan genocide — and informed by her coming presidential aspirations — Clinton advised President Barack Obama to enter the United States into an untenable situation. He listened; she left; and he failed.

On Saturday, July 26, the Department of Defense facilitated the evacuation and abandonment of the United States Embassy in Tripoli, Libya amid a rapidly deteriorating security situation in that country — some two and a half years after the United States helped to overthrow that country’s government.

U.S. Marine Embassy guards, along with Marine infantry reinforcements deployed over the last month under the banner of Task Force Tripoli, drove approximately the 100 remaining U.S. Department of State personnel in an armored convoy 70 miles across the border into neighboring Tunisia under the cover of U.S. fighter aircraft.

The effects of the U.S. departure from Libya are both tangible and symbolic, and are indicative of a failed U.S. policy toward that country and the Arab Spring movement on a whole.

From the onset of the Libyan civil war, both the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency determined that there was no discernible U.S. national security interest in Libya. Accordingly, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and then-Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta advised against U.S. military intervention in Libya.

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Joseph Miller is the pen name for a ranking Department of Defense official with a background in U.S. special operations and combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has worked in strategic planning.

Pentagon Press Conference Turns Into Heated Debate Between Top Generals From US And China

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Photo Credit: DoD

Photo Credit: DoD

A top Chinese general Thursday strongly defended Beijing’s territorial claims over disputed islands in the South and East China Seas and charged that the U.S. rebalance of forces to the Pacific was encouraging unrest in the region.

Gen. Fang Fenghui, chief of the general staff of the People’s Liberation Army, said “the rebalancing strategy of the U.S. has stirred up some of the problems which make the South China Sea and the East China Sea not so calm as before.”

Fang warned that China would respond to any attempts by Vietnam, Japan or other neighbors to assert their own claims over the disputed islands and reefs.

“We do not create trouble but we are not afraid of trouble,” Fang said at a Pentagon news conference after meetings with Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Dempsey appeared to be slightly irritated as he waited to comment while listening to a long-winded response by Fang on the current dispute with Vietnam over offshore oil drilling rights.

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N.Korea Poses ‘Growing’ Threat to US: Pentagon

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Photo Credit: AFP Photo/Jung Yeon-JeNorth Korea poses a mounting threat to the United States due to its pursuit of long-range missiles and nuclear weapons, the Pentagon said Tuesday in its latest strategy document.

Describing the regime in Pyongyang as “closed and authoritarian,” the Defense Department said the US military would maintain a major presence in the region and keep up investments in missile defense.

The North represents “a significant threat to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia and is a growing, direct threat to the United States,” said the Quadrennial Defense Review, an update of the military’s global strategic outlook.

US forces would continue to collaborate closely with South Korea’s military “to deter and defend against North Korean provocations,” it said.

The release of the Pentagon’s strategic review came as North Korea flexed its military might three times over the past week, firing short-range Scud missiles and rockets into the sea. The test launches were timed to coincide with joint US-South Korean drills that Pyongyang opposes.

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Pentagon Fumes as Afghanistan Frees Taliban Fighters with ‘Blood On Their Hands’

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Photo Credit: UNITED STATES FORCES AFGHANISTAN

Photo Credit: UNITED STATES FORCES AFGHANISTAN

Afghani officials freed 37 insurgents and Taliban fighters with “blood on their hands” in what the Pentagon called a “major step backward” for the rule of law in the war torn nation.

The hardened fighters were among 88 prisoners who were being held by the U.S. and being transferred to the emerging Afghan criminal justice system. U.S. authorities said many had directly participated in attacks that wounded or killed scores of U.S. military personnel and Afghan citizens, yet were freed by the Afghan Review Board.

“The ARB is releasing back to society dangerous insurgents who have Afghan blood on their hands,” the United States Forces-Afghanistan said in a statement. “This extra-judicial release of detainees is a major step backward in further developing the rule of law in Afghanistan.”

Many of those freed were Taliban fighters who were connected by forensic evidence to specific IED attacks. Several were captured in possession of bomb materials and some even admitted taking part in attacks on coalition forces. At least two had been captured, freed and recaptured.

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Pentagon to Relax Rules On Personal Religious Wear — Including Beards, Turbans

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Photo Credit: Brett Flashnick / AP file

Photo Credit: Brett Flashnick / AP file

The Pentagon on Wednesday is expected to announce widespread changes to rules governing religious items and religion-based physical attributes that service members can maintain while in uniform — including beards, some religious tattoos, and turbans.

NBC News obtained an early draft of the new Department of Defense instruction which states that the military will make every effort to accommodate “individual expressions of sincerely held beliefs” (conscience, moral principles, or religious beliefs) of service members.

It goes on to say that unless doing so could have an adverse impact on military readiness, unit cohesion, good order and discipline, health and safety, or any other military requirement, commanders can grant service members special permission to display their religious articles while in uniform.

Requests for religious accommodation can be denied when the “needs of mission accomplishment outweigh the needs of the service member,” the directive will explain.

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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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China Scrambles Two Fighter Jets; Pentagon Continues Defiance of PRC’s Claimed Air Defense Zone

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Photo Credit: Master Sgt. Kevin GruenwaldThe Pentagon said Friday it will continue to operate in an air zone over the East China Sea that China recently declared as under its control.

“We have flights routinely transiting international airspace throughout the Pacific, including the area China is including in their [air defense identification zone],” said Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Steve Warren.

“These flights are consistent with long standing and well known U.S. freedom of navigation policies that are applied in many areas of operation around the world. I can confirm that the U.S. has and will continue to operate in the area as normal.”

The statement comes after China sent two fighter jets to tail U.S. and Japanese warplanes that were flying in the airspace in defiance of China’s Nov. 23 announcement that all planes flying through the area would have to submit flight plans and other information to Beijing authorities.

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Department of Defense Reports False Data to Conceal Billions in Waste and Fraud

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/TIM SHAFFERLinda Woodford spent the last 15 years of her career inserting phony numbers in the U.S. Department of Defense’s accounts.

Every month until she retired in 2011, she says, the day came when the Navy would start dumping numbers on the Cleveland, Ohio, office of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, the Pentagon’s main accounting agency. Using the data they received, Woodford and her fellow DFAS accountants there set about preparing monthly reports to square the Navy’s books with the U.S. Treasury’s – a balancing-the-checkbook maneuver required of all the military services and other Pentagon agencies.

And every month, they encountered the same problem. Numbers were missing. Numbers were clearly wrong. Numbers came with no explanation of how the money had been spent or which congressional appropriation it came from. “A lot of times there were issues of numbers being inaccurate,” Woodford says. “We didn’t have the detail … for a lot of it.”

The data flooded in just two days before deadline. As the clock ticked down, Woodford says, staff were able to resolve a lot of the false entries through hurried calls and emails to Navy personnel, but many mystery numbers remained. For those, Woodford and her colleagues were told by superiors to take “unsubstantiated change actions” – in other words, enter false numbers, commonly called “plugs,” to make the Navy’s totals match the Treasury’s.

Jeff Yokel, who spent 17 years in senior positions in DFAS’s Cleveland office before retiring in 2009, says supervisors were required to approve every “plug” – thousands a month. “If the amounts didn’t balance, Treasury would hit it back to you,” he says.

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