A sua carteira de motorista está vencida? Saiba aqui onde fazer a Renovação de CNH (Carteira Nacional de Habilitação) em Local e região, consulte endereços, telefones, valores e parcelamentos.
Day: October 28, 2023
Categories
Intelligence Failures – Again
-
The failure of the U.S. intelligence community has three components: 1) It has become politically charged and lost focus on its mission protecting Americans, instead engaging in partisan politics. 2) It continues to focus on technological intelligence collection rather than the difficult and risky world of human intelligence collection. 3) It continues to suffer from a lack of creativity in anticipating and understanding the new threats being developed by our enemies.
-
There is little doubt that the Intelligence Community has become seriously politicized. In 2016-2017, its leaders and the FBI undermined the incoming President Donald Trump by raising the specter of Russian influence over Trump. The disproven Russia hoax would go on to shadow and undermine Trump’s entire time in office.
-
Despite warnings from the U.S. Intelligence Community, the Biden administration failed to anticipate or plan for the dramatic and quick collapse of Afghanistan’s government when U.S. troops were withdrawn.
-
A little more than a week prior to the Hamas attack, Biden’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, was talking-up successes in the Middle East… “the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”
-
He could not have been more wrong. Boiling just under the surface was a terrorist attack that would result in more than 1,400 Israelis killed, at least 31 Americans killed, atrocities against Israeli civilians that include beheaded babies and babies burned alive…
-
The Intelligence Community also shifted some of its focus from international threats to domestic threats — often spurious — while ignoring the real ticking time bomb of 5.6 million migrants flooding onto the United States through the southern border, in addition to at least 1.5 million known “gotaways” and an unknown number of unknown “gotaways.”
-
The biggest U.S. intelligence failure of all so far, unfortunately, has been strenuously pretending not to know that Iran, Qatar and Turkey are the kingpins behind the current attacks by Hamas on Israel. If Iran, Qatar and Turkey are to be discouraged from continuing their malign actions destabilizing the region, the price they pay needs to be steep. Hamas. Iran, Qatar and Turkey must not be let off the hook. In addition, the US must move its military assets from Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar to the United Arab Emirates as soon as it can.
-
To go just after Hamas is like targeting crime syndicate, but ignoring Al Capone. Hamas needs to be dealt with first – along with the realization that any humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza supplies Hamas, not the people for whom it was well-meaningly intended. As the journalist Caroline Glick points out, the trucks are not inspected. They might be bringing in food and water – or weapons. Sadly, even if the contents are food and water, Hamas keeps them, then sparingly doles them out to whomever they want.
-
Moving forward, we once again need to examine how we do intelligence across the West. Perhaps Congress or a special commission can be established to identify the exact strengths and weaknesses of our intelligence community… and to discard the biased and flawed analytical tradecraft standards that have led us to where we are today.
(Image source: iStock)
In light of the devastating and deadly terrorist attack executed by Hamas against Israel on October 7, many are correctly calling the failure to intercept and prevent the assault an “intelligence failure.” Many are especially surprised given the vaunted, basically legendary, status almost universally accorded Israel’s national security apparatus.
This, however, is not the only recent intelligence failure, or failure by political leaders to anticipate emerging threats. According to a Brookings report examining the U.S. intelligence failure and reorganization following the 9/11 terrorist attacks against America:
“In the aftermath of 9/11 everyone, from elected officials and national security experts to ordinary citizens had one question: how could this happen to a nation with such an enormous and expensive military and intelligence architecture?”
Despite warnings from the U.S. Intelligence Community, the Biden administration failed to anticipate or plan for the dramatic and quick collapse of Afghanistan’s government when U.S. troops were withdrawn. And while the Intelligence Community correctly and publicly warned of Russia’s impending invasion of Ukraine, it failed to predict the tenacity of Ukrainian fighters defending their homeland and instead forecast an almost Afghanistan-style collapse in a matter of days. General Mark Milley, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, even warned lawmakers that “a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine could result in the fall of Kyiv within 72-hours and could come at a cost of 15,000 Ukrainian troop deaths and 4,000 Russian troop deaths,” according to lawmakers he briefed behind closed-doors.
These misses once again have citizens asking if our intelligence agencies and political leaders are capable of keeping them safe. The short answer, unfortunately, is no. Terrorists and our enemies only have to be right once, while our intelligence services need to be correct 100% of the time. Just look at Pearl Harbor.
It is not unreasonable to expect that Israeli or US intelligence should have been able to detect the 10/7 attacks on Israel ahead of time, especially so close to the 50th anniversary of the surprise Yom Kippur War in 1973. What, then, led to the failure? While Israel will certainly review its intelligence posture to determine its shortcomings, we already know some of the challenges the Intelligence Community faces on the U.S. side.
The Middle East, Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah are all high on the Intelligence Community’s radar, given the volatility of the restive region. All the same, Washington’s leadership also was not expecting the 10/7 attacks. A little more than a week prior, Biden’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, was talking-up successes in the Middle East, allowing the U.S. to focus on other areas regions of the world. The bold conclusion made by Sullivan at the time was that “the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”
He could not have been more wrong. Boiling just under the surface was a terrorist attack that would result in more than 1,400 Israelis killed, at least 31 Americans killed, atrocities against Israeli civilians that include beheaded babies and babies burned alive, as well as scores of Israeli and international hostages whom Hamas terrorists forcibly abducted from Israel to Gaza, presumably being held in tunnels.
The failure of the U.S. intelligence community has three components:
- It has become politically charged and lost focus on its mission protecting Americans, instead engaging in partisan politics.
- It continues to focus on technological intelligence collection rather than the difficult and risky world of human intelligence collection.
- It continues to suffer from a lack of creativity in anticipating and understanding the new threats being developed by our enemies.
There is little doubt that the Intelligence Community has become seriously politicized. In 2016-2017, its leaders and the FBI undermined the incoming President Donald Trump by raising the specter of Russian influence over Trump. The disproven Russia hoax would go on to shadow and undermine Trump’s entire time in office.
When Hunter Biden’s now infamous laptop was revealed, it was the FBI and former Intelligence Community leaders who actively tried to cover it up and pass it off as a Russian disinformation campaign.
The Intelligence Community also shifted some of its focus from international threats to domestic threats — often spurious — while ignoring the real ticking time bomb of 5.6 million migrants flooding onto the United States through the southern border, in addition to at least 1.5 million known “gotaways” and an unknown number of unknown “gotaways.”
We have also witnessed information that was accurate but which the FBI worked with social media companies to suppress, and even outright fabrications about what they claimed was disinformation, such as the Russia hoax or the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop; that Catholics who attend mass in Latin are “extremists,” and that parents questioning what their children learn in public schools are “domestic terrorists.” What really happened on January 6, 2021 is still unknown.
These efforts by the Intelligence Community all seem to target Republicans or to benefit Democrats politically — a situation that has left many conservatives rightly worried about the political weaponization of the government.
Unfortunately, this political corruption shows no signs of abating, with the entire deep state apparently still determined to turn the Constitution on its head to “get Trump,” and with former officials such as Michael Hayden, who was head of the National Security Agency and the CIA, suggesting that Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville should be removed from the human race.
A second major shortcoming, that was identified after 9/11 was, as mentioned, a U.S. over-reliance on the technological collection of information, such as satellites, cyber, and wiretapping. The Intelligence Community knew how to do these things and knew how to do them well. It was difficult and sophisticated work but carried far fewer risks than human espionage or developing spy networks.
While the intelligence may have been there, our ability to fully understand it, and our analyses, missed having insights into the humans, and their way of thinking, who were behind those “zeros and ones.”
Hamas may have exploited the reliance Western security services have on technological collection. We already know that Osama bin Laden refused to use electronic communications and relied on human couriers to convey messages. They used our confidence in technological collection to their benefit. The after-action intelligence review to determine how Hamas hid its operation will undoubtedly look into this, but it appears that electronic communication on the plot was limited and coded, with the few people actually knowing the full details kept to a handful to further limit communications.
Just as the U.S. Intelligence Community did not imagine terrorists hijacking airplanes to use as missiles, it is likely the Israelis never contemplated Hamas pulling off a multipronged attack by sea, land, and air — including the use of paragliders. But that is exactly what they did. They used low-tech bulldozers and explosives to breach Israel’s border fence and then drive through the openings with trucks, motorcycles, and other equipment loaded with terrorists and weapons. Hamas fired thousands of rockets, in barrages of hundreds at a time, to overwhelm Israel’s highly touted Iron Dome counter-rocket system and, having learned lessons about the effective use of drones from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, used drone-dropped munitions to take out guard towers and surveillance cameras.
While many of these tactics are not new — Hamas had fired tens of thousands of missiles into Israel before, attacked civilians and soldiers on the streets, and crossed the border in multiple ways — the novelty of this approach was to do all of these things at once and on a massive scale.
The biggest U.S. intelligence failure of all so far, unfortunately, has been strenuously pretending not to know that Iran, Qatar and Turkey are the kingpins behind the current attacks by Hamas on Israel. If Iran, Qatar and Turkey are to be discouraged from continuing their malign actions destabilizing the region, the price they pay needs to be steep. Hamas. Iran, Qatar and Turkey must not be let off the hook. In addition, the US must move its military assets from Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar to the United Arab Emirates as soon as it can.
The Qataris, instead of being grateful that a state-of-the-art airbase is on its soil protecting it, instead might think that they are doing the US a favor letting the airbase be there.
To go just after Hamas is like targeting crime syndicate, but ignoring Al Capone. Hamas needs to be dealt with first – along with the realization that any humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza supplies Hamas, not the people for whom it was well-meaningly intended. As the journalist Caroline Glick points out, the trucks are not inspected. They might be bringing in food and water – or weapons. Sadly, even if the contents are food and water, Hamas keeps them, then sparingly doles them out to whomever they want.
Moving forward, we once again need to examine how we do intelligence across the West. Perhaps Congress or a special commission can be established to identify the exact strengths and weaknesses of our intelligence community. It will have the old rallying cry of “never again,” just as after Pearl Harbor, the 1973 Yom Kippur War, 9/11, and now the attacks of 10/7. The Intelligence Community needs to keep its eye on actual foreign threats, develop and use all forms of intelligence collection to build a robust intelligence capability, respect the ability and creativity of our adversaries, and to discard the biased and flawed analytical tradecraft standards that have led us to where we are today. Unless these changes take place, we will remain vulnerable, uncertain of our safety and security, and stuck with the knowledge the world is a much more dangerous place than we had thought.
Peter Hoekstra is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute. He was US Ambassador to the Netherlands during the Trump administration. He also served 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives representing the Second District of Michigan and served as Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee.
© 2023 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.
An ex-staffer to Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani and Councilwoman Tiffany Cabán served three months in jail for soliciting sex from a minor, public records show.
Matthew Thomas, a one-time official of the Queens branch of the Democrat Socialists of America, who remains a card-carrying member of the left-wing group, was busted in 2014 after soliciting a 16-year-old boy for a gay-sex threesome with Daniel Simmons, a former Deputy Attorney General in Delaware, according to local press reports at the time.
Simmons, 35, was a top deputy to Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, President Biden’s son and one-time political heir who died of brain cancer in 2015.
Simmons resigned his post after being hit with rape charges.
Thomas, 32, was charged with two counts of sexual solicitation of a child and conspiracy but managed to escape rape charges because Delaware law permits sex with 16-year-olds if you are under the age of 30, Delaware Online reported.
Simmons was sentenced to 18 months in prison, forced to register as a sex offender, and disbarred, local media reported.
Matthew Thomas (aka Matthew Coogan) was sentenced to three months behind bars for luring a minor into a gay sex threesome.Substack matthew thomas
Thomas (third from left) solicited sex from a 16-year-old.X @charliecbaker
Thomas pleaded guilty to second-degree conspiracy in 2015 and was sentenced to three months behind bars.
Mamdani hired Thomas as communications director for his successful 2020 Assembly race.
Cabán employed him as a researcher for her unsuccessful 2019 race for Queens District Attorney.
Matthew Thomas worked as a top aide to Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani.Zohran Kwame Mamdani/facebook
The progressive pair paid Thomas more than $22,000 for his services.
“I didn’t know about this before I hired him,” Mamdani told The Post.
Cabán did not respond to a request for comment.
Thomas has also been a vocal critic of the Jewish state.
“The deaths of hundreds of Israeli civilians today is a terrible crime, one that highlights the urgency of bringing an end to the conditions that generate this sort of brutality: the military occupation of Palestine and the zionist political project writ large,” Thomas said on the day Hamas terrorists killed 1,400 Israelis.
And in 2019 he declared: “Zionism is white supremacy.”
“How much more evidence do we need that the DSA is a cancer on our politics? Between the rampant antisemitism exposed over the last few weeks, and now this?” said Councilwoman Vickie Paladino (R-Queens) who called Thomas’ crime “the very definition of grooming.”
“That Democratic Socialists and the hard left have repeatedly pushed for highly sexualized content in our schools cannot be a coincidence. Their reaction to this will be very telling. And it’s incumbent upon the mainstream Democratic party to do something about their deep ties to this poisonous organization,” she added.
When Thomas committed his crime, he was known as Matthew Coogan.
He legally changed his name in 2017, court records show.
Matthew Thomas also worked on the failed campaign of Tiffany Caban for Queens District Attorney in 2019.Lev Radin/Pacific Press/Shutterstock
Thomas did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Post.
An ex-staffer to Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani and Councilwoman Tiffany Cabán served three months in jail for soliciting sex from a minor, public records show.
Matthew Thomas, a one-time official of the Queens branch of the Democrat Socialists of America, who remains a card-carrying member of the left-wing group, was busted in 2014 after soliciting a 16-year-old boy for a gay-sex threesome with Daniel Simmons, a former Deputy Attorney General in Delaware, according to local press reports at the time.
Simmons, 35, was a top deputy to Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, President Biden’s son and one-time political heir who died of brain cancer in 2015.
Simmons resigned his post after being hit with rape charges.
Thomas, 32, was charged with two counts of sexual solicitation of a child and conspiracy but managed to escape rape charges because Delaware law permits sex with 16-year-olds if you are under the age of 30, Delaware Online reported.
Simmons was sentenced to 18 months in prison, forced to register as a sex offender, and disbarred, local media reported.
Matthew Thomas (aka Matthew Coogan) was sentenced to three months behind bars for luring a minor into a gay sex threesome.Substack matthew thomas
Thomas (third from left) solicited sex from a 16-year-old.X @charliecbaker
Thomas pleaded guilty to second-degree conspiracy in 2015 and was sentenced to three months behind bars.
Mamdani hired Thomas as communications director for his successful 2020 Assembly race.
Cabán employed him as a researcher for her unsuccessful 2019 race for Queens District Attorney.
Matthew Thomas worked as a top aide to Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani.Zohran Kwame Mamdani/facebook
The progressive pair paid Thomas more than $22,000 for his services.
“I didn’t know about this before I hired him,” Mamdani told The Post.
Cabán did not respond to a request for comment.
Thomas has also been a vocal critic of the Jewish state.
“The deaths of hundreds of Israeli civilians today is a terrible crime, one that highlights the urgency of bringing an end to the conditions that generate this sort of brutality: the military occupation of Palestine and the zionist political project writ large,” Thomas said on the day Hamas terrorists killed 1,400 Israelis.
And in 2019 he declared: “Zionism is white supremacy.”
“How much more evidence do we need that the DSA is a cancer on our politics? Between the rampant antisemitism exposed over the last few weeks, and now this?” said Councilwoman Vickie Paladino (R-Queens) who called Thomas’ crime “the very definition of grooming.”
“That Democratic Socialists and the hard left have repeatedly pushed for highly sexualized content in our schools cannot be a coincidence. Their reaction to this will be very telling. And it’s incumbent upon the mainstream Democratic party to do something about their deep ties to this poisonous organization,” she added.
When Thomas committed his crime, he was known as Matthew Coogan.
He legally changed his name in 2017, court records show.
Matthew Thomas also worked on the failed campaign of Tiffany Caban for Queens District Attorney in 2019.Lev Radin/Pacific Press/Shutterstock
Thomas did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Post.
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/4KKKCXM3PFK25AD5OLS5QDEIIE.jpg)
LEWISTON, Maine, Oct 28 (Reuters) – A U.S. Army reservist accused of spraying a bowling alley and bar with gunfire in Lewiston, Maine, killing 18 people, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a recycling plant trailer after a 48-hour manhunt, police said on Saturday.
The body of Robert R. Card, 40, was discovered on Friday night at a recycling plant in Lisbon Falls where he worked at one point, less than a mile from where police had found his abandoned getaway vehicle shortly after his shooting spree on Wednesday night.
A Maine State Police tactical team discovered Card’s body in an unlocked trailer in an overflow parking lot of the recycling plant, Maine Public Safety Commissioner Mike Sauschuck told reporters on Saturday.
Officers had cleared the plant twice in the course of their search, Sauschuck said, as they believed Card had some “employment relation” to the business, but had missed the extra parking lot, where about 60 box trailers full of crushed plastic and metal were parked, he said.
The body was found in an unlocked trailer, dressed in what appeared to be the same brown sweatshirt the suspect was wearing the night of the attack. Investigators would not comment on how long they believed it had been there.
Officials said they recovered a long rifle in Card’s abandoned white Subaru and two guns on his body, without confirming the makes and models. All the weapons were apparently purchased by Card legally, a representative for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said.
A total of 18 people were killed and 13 others were wounded in Wednesday night’s carnage, which began when the gunman opened fire with a rifle inside the Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley, then launched another attack minutes later at Schemengees Bar & Grille Restaurant a few miles away.
Three people were still in critical condition, Sauschuck said on Saturday.
MOTIVE INVESTIGATION
Officials have not confirmed a possible motive for the violence, and were digging through cell phone records, following up on hundreds of tips and going through about a dozen search warrants this weekend to learn more, Sauschuck said.
Based on the investigation so far, Sauschuck said there was “a mental health component” to the tragedy. He said there was evidence Card was paranoid and “felt like people were talking about him,” which might have led him to target those specific venues.
A Maine law enforcement bulletin circulated earlier this week identified Card as a trained firearms instructor at the U.S. Army Reserve base in Saco, Maine. It said he had been hearing voices and had other mental health issues.
He threatened to shoot up the National Guard base in Saco and was “reported to have been committed to mental health facility for two weeks during summer 2023 and subsequently released,” according to the bulletin from the Maine Information & Analysis Center, a unit of Maine State Police.
However, Sauschuck said on Saturday that officials had no evidence so far that Card had been “forcibly committed” for mental illness treatment, and were still looking into any voluntary treatment Card might have received.
Sauschuck said police found a note left at Card’s house, addressed to a loved one, which listed the passcode to his phone and bank account information.
“I wouldn’t describe it as an explicit suicide note, but the tone and tenor was that the individual was not going to be around,” he said.
The shootings and prolonged manhunt terrorized the normally bustling but serene community of Lewiston, a former textile hub and the second-most populous city in Maine. It lies on the banks of the Androscoggin River, about 35 miles (56 km) north of the state’s largest city, Portland.
Many business owners in Lewiston and adjacent communities closed shop in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, while authorities shuttered schools and ordered some 40,000 area residents to shelter in place as a precaution.
Within hours of Wednesday night’s bloodshed, police circulated surveillance camera photos from one of the crime scenes of a bearded man wearing a brown, hooded sweatshirt and jeans and carrying what appeared to be a semi-automatic rifle.
The initial trail of clues led to Lisbon, about 7 miles (11 km) to the southeast of Lewiston, where Maine State Police found a white SUV they believed Card had abandoned at a boat launch on the river. Lisbon Falls, where Card was found dead, is the next town along the river.
As part of their search for Card, police trawled the waters of the Androscoggin River with divers and sonar on Friday, and sent teams of officers door-to-door in neighborhood canvasses seeking additional clues and possible eyewitnesses.
The slain victims included four deaf people who had been competing in a beanbag-tossing tournament at the bar and grill, a father-and-son pair of bowlers, a part-time bowling alley worker who tried to confront the shooter with a knife, and an elderly couple aged 76 and 73.
Reporting by Gabriella Borter in Lewiston, Maine; Additional reporting by Julia Harte and Jonathan Allen in New York, Rich McKay in Atlanta and Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, California; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Diane Craft
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Gabriella Borter is a reporter on the U.S. National Affairs team, covering cultural and political issues as well as breaking news. She has won two Front Page Awards from the Newswomen’s Club of New York – in 2020 for her beat reporting on healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in 2019 for her spot story on the firing of the police officer who killed Eric Garner. The latter was also a Deadline Club Awards finalist. She holds a B.A. in English from Yale University and joined Reuters in 2017.