(Jul 14, 2020)
In the meantime, a 2016 analysis found that the Pentagon funneled some 1.45 million firearms to various security forces in Afghanistan and Iraq since the start of the Global War on Terror. It is not known how many of those ended up in local weapons armories — and how many have simply gone missing since.
(28. August 2016)
Wie im Bericht des Generalinspekteurs dokumentiert ist, stellte bereits im Jahre 1991 der Rechnungshof des Kongresses (damals: „General Accounting Office“) „nicht unterstützte Anpassungen“ („unsupported adjustments“) in der Buchhaltung der U.S.-Armee fest. Es geschah nichts.
Ab 1996 verpflichteten die „Single Audit Act Amendments“ alle Ministerien der Regierung – also auch das Verteidigungsministerium und das ihm unterstellte Militär – gesetzlich dazu ihre Ausgaben auch zu belegen. Das passierte nicht.
In einem Bericht zum Finanzjahr 2008 versicherte dann die Army, „dass diese materielle Schwäche bis Ende des Finanzjahres 2011 korrigiert“ werde, durch ein angeblich bereits seit 1996 entwickeltes Buchhaltungssystem („General Fund Enterprise Business System“). Auch das passierte nicht.
In dem am 28. Oktober 2009 vom Kongress abgenickten Militärbudget für 2010 („National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010)“ wurde das Pentagon (abgekürzt DoD, „Department of Defense“) schließlich dazu verpflichtet,
„einen Plan zu entwickeln um zu verifizieren, dass die finanziellen Statements des DoD `bereit für die Überprüfung bereinigt wurden, bis spätestens zum 30. September 2017`“.
Das Auslaufen dieser in 2009 vom Kongress dem Militär abermals bis 2017 erstellten Vollmacht ein seit 1996 existierendes Gesetz zu brechen, dürfte dazu beigetragen haben, dass dieser Bericht des Generalinspekteurs vom Pentagon über die billionenschwere Veruntreuung allein in der U.S.-Army überhaupt erstellt werden konnte.
Als der Bericht schließlich am 26. Juli 2016 veröffentlicht wird, passiert nichts.
Kein populärer Abgeordneter, Journalist oder irgendeine Bürgerrechtsorganisation erwähnt diesen auch nur, geschweige denn eine der beiden Parteien („Demokraten“, „Republikaner“), oder gar deren Präsidentschaftskandidaten.
Am 11. August schließlich entdeckt „Counterpunch“ den Bericht und schlägt die Hände über dem Kopf zusammen. Nach und nach sickern die Informationen der Regierungsbehörde durch unabhängige Medien in die Öffentlichkeit, trotz hartnäckiger Ignoranz aller Verantwortlichen, Konzernmedien und jedweder etablierten „Opposition“.
Am 19. August schließlich „entdeckt“ die Nachrichtenagentur „Reuters“ den Bericht des Pentagon-Generalinspekteurs. Am 23. August heisst es bei „CNN“ und dessen „Experten“ für Nationale Sicherheit, „Reuters“ habe den seit fast einem Monat für alle auf der Webseite des Generalinspekteurs öffentlich zugänglichen Bericht „zuerst enthüllt“.
(…)
Im deutschsprachigen Raum erschienen zum aktuellen Bericht des Pentagon-Generalinspekteurs bislang ganze zwei Artikel, auf rechtsgerichteten bzw bedenklichen Webseiten. Informationsindustrie und Staatsmedien, „Opposition“, Bürgerrechtlicher, Linke / Scheinlinke, „Friedensbewegung“, etc, pp, ignorieren das Thema weiterhin.
(August 23, 2016)
The audit, conducted by the Defense Department‘s Office of Inspector General, found that the Army erroneously made $2.8 trillion in adjustments in the third quarter of 2015 to its Army general fund – one of the main accounts used to fund the service. The error amount skyrocketed to $6.5 trillion for all of last year, the report said.
The June report, first disclosed by Reuters on Friday, found „unreliable“ data was used to prepare the financial statements, leading to the possibility that the Army‘s finances were „materially misstated.“
(July 31, 2016)
The Defense Finance and Accounting Service, the behemoth Indianapolis-based agency that provides finance and accounting services for the Pentagon’s civilian and military members, could not provide adequate documentation for $6.5 trillion worth of year-end adjustments to Army general fund transactions and data.
(…)
A further mystery is what happened to thousands of documents that should be on file but aren’t. The IG study found that DFAS “did not document or support why the Defense Departmental Reporting System . . . removed at least 16,513 of 1.3 million records during Q3 FY 2015.
(4. November 2009)
Denn so lange die Warlords, Gebietsfürsten und Distriktgouverneure mit jährlichen Millionenbeträgen auf der Gehaltsliste der CIA und der NATO stehen, haben sie noch weniger Interesse an friedlichen Verhältnissen in der Region. Je mehr Krieg und Terror, umso besser – ansonsten würden diese hohen Einnahmen für sie wegfallen. Das Geld bekommen diese Führer dafür, dass sie private Sicherheitstruppen mieten, um die jeweiligen Basen der westlichen Allierten sowie die Transportwege vor terroristischen Überfällen zu schützen. Diese Kuh gilt es mit allen Mitteln zu melken.
Somit ist durchaus der Beweis erbracht, dass die NATO den Krieg in Afghanistan doppelt finanziert – nicht nur die eigenen Truppen sondern auch die der Gegenseite gleich mit.
(Sept 9, 2009)
The private security industry in Afghanistan has grown apace with demand. As of August 2009, the total number of private security personnel employed by the US Department of Defense – the largest employer of private security in the country – increased 19 percent (from 4,373 to 5,198) in response to the deployment of additional military forces. Since 2001, a range of private security providers (PSPs) has emerged, including international and national PSCs operating with or without the required Afghan licensing permits, as well as militias hired as “armed support groups” (ASG) by international military forces. Many PSPs are controlled by prominent Afghan families, including Hashmat and Ahmed Wali Karzai, brothers of President Hamid Karzai; Hamid Wardak, the son of Defense Minister Rahim Wardak; Gul Agha Shirzai, the governor of Nangarhar province; and Hajji Jan Mohammad Khan, the former governor of Uruzgan.
The use of unregistered PSCs and militia groups by the NATO International Security Assistance Force and US military contingents is widespread. Many of these PSPs serve as ready-made militias that compete with state authority and are frequently run by former military com-manders responsible for human rights abuses or involved in the illegal narcotics and black market economies. Financing armed, alternative power structures fulfills security needs in the short-term at the cost of consolidating government authority in the long-term.
(…)
Drug trafficking and other criminal activities in which commanders may be involved – and for which their militias provide security – is a lucrative source of illegal revenue that can then be used to bribe government officials and strengthen shadow structures of authority. Illicit taxation of PSPs escorting convoys and other scams on private transport and security are also an important source of funding for corrupt police and insurgents. The Kandak Amnianti Uruzgan, for example, secures protection “by paying a hefty toll to the policeman in charge of the road.” Although it is transportation and construction companies, both international and national, who are the main source of “protection” revenue, private security escorts also pay Taliban not to be attacked. According to an Afghan intelligence official, there are examples of PSPs paying as much as 60 percent of their gross profits for convoy security to the Taliban and other insurgent-cum-criminal groups for “protection.”
(12. Februar 2009)
Unsere Bundestagsabgeordneten sollten ihren Beschluss zum Afghanistaneinsatz auch unter diesen Aspekt noch einmal überprüfen und diesen endlich beenden, wenn sie ein Gewissen besitzen.
(February 12, 2009)
The U.S. military failed to „maintain complete inventory records for an estimated 87,000 weapons — or about 36 percent — of the 242,000 weapons that the United States procured and shipped to Afghanistan from December 2004 through June 2008,“ a U.S. Government Accountability Office report states. (…)
The military also failed to properly account for an additional 135,000 weapons it obtained for the Afghan forces from 21 other countries. (…)
The military is unable to provide serial numbers for 46,000 of the missing 87,000 weapons, the report concludes. No records have been maintained for the location or disposition for the other 41,000 weapons.
The IG‘s conclusion could not be clearer: the media narrative was false from start to finish. Namely, he said, “the evidence did not support a finding that the [U.S. Park Police] cleared the park on June 1, 2020, so that then President Trump could enter the park.” Instead — exactly as Hemingway‘s widely-mocked-by-liberal-outlets article reported — “the evidence we reviewed showed that the USPP cleared the park to allow a contractor to safely install anti-scale fencing in response to destruction of Federal property and injury to officers that occurred on May 30 and May 31.” Crucially, “the evidence established that relevant USPP officials had made those decisions and had begun implementing the operational plan several hours before they knew of a potential Presidential visit to the park, which occurred later that day.“
Mr. Trump selected Sean O‘Donnell, the Environmental Protection Agency‘s new inspector general, to replace Fine as acting inspector general at the Pentagon, and nominated Jason Abend to permanently serve as the department‘s watchdog.
The State Department inspector general fired by President Trump on Friday was investigating whether the administration had unlawfully declared an “emergency” last year to allow the resumption of weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for their war in Yemen, according to a Democratic member of Congress who asked for the inquiry.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Judiciary Committee with oversight of the FBI, noted that “we’ve got a problem at the FBI.”
“Clearly, we had some people, and maybe still have some people, that don’t understand the rule of law, and nothing’s been done,“ Kennedy said.
WASHINGTON – The “central and essential” evidence used to justify invasive surveillance of an American citizen in the FBI’s probe into Russian interference was, itself, an example of Russian interference, according to once-secret footnotes declassified at the urging of two U.S. Senators. The footnotes, part of the Justice Department Inspector General’s postmortem of the FBI’s flawed operation to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page, were released just hours after Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) renewed their push for transparency. The senators expect a fuller declassification in the coming days.
(…)
“It’s ironic that the Russian collusion narrative was fatally flawed because of Russian disinformation. These footnotes confirm that there was a direct Russian disinformation campaign in 2016, and there were ties between Russian intelligence and a presidential campaign – the Clinton campaign, not Trump’s.”
The IG report detailed how the FBI’s application for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Page relied heavily on an unverified dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of Fusion GPS, which was conducting opposition research for the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee. According to Footnote 302, in October 2016, FBI investigators learned that one of Steele’s main sources was linked to the Russian Intelligence Service (RIS), and was rumored to be a former KGB/SVR officer. However, the FBI neglected to include this information in its application, which the FISA court approved that same month. Two months later, investigators learned that Glenn Simpson, the head of Fusion GPS, told a Justice Department attorney that he assessed the same source “was a RIS officer who was central in connecting Trump to Russia.” In January, the FISA warrant was renewed.
(10.04.2020)
Declassified footnotes to a Justice Department inspector general report show that the Federal Bureau of Investigation team investigating members of the Trump campaign received classified reports in 2017 identifying key pieces of the Steele dossier as products of a Russian disinformation campaign. This might be only the tip of the iceberg because other recently declassified information demonstrates that even more disinformation may have been planted in Christopher Steele’s reporting.
(July 2, 2019)
Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska said he previously employed Christopher Steele, the author of the Trump dossier.
Deripaska said he hired Steele through his attorneys in London to work on an unspecific legal proceeding.
Steele investigated the Trump campaign on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC.
(10.04.2020)
Footnote 350 in the IG report addresses the FBI‘s knowledge of Russian contacts with Steele and the potential for disinformation. Steele had „frequent contacts with representatives for multiple Russian oligarchs, we identified reporting the Crossfire Hurricane team received from (redacted) indicating the potential for Russian disinformation influencing Steele‘s election reporting.“
The footnote also indicates that warnings to the FBI‘s Russia probe became more pronounced over time.
(31.03.2020)
The FBI’s surveillance of Americans including former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page isn’t exactly the issue du jour amid a global pandemic. But on Tuesday, a brutal inspector general’s report suggested that this will be something that the bureau and Congress will have to reckon with in the near future.
Trump has gone on the offensive over the past few days, suddenly removing or publicly berating three inspectors general.
Glenn Fine, the acting Department of Defense inspector general, was set to lead the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, the group of government watchdogs tasked with rooting out fraud and waste in coronavirus spending programs.
Nach dem Ende des Amtsenthebungsverfahrens gegen Donald Trump hat der US-Präsident die Entlassung eines weiteren ranghohen Vertreters des Sicherheitsapparats angekündigt: Diesmal traf es den Generalinspekteur der Geheimdienste, Michael Atkinson.
A group of Senate Democrats want a federal watchdog to investigate the decision to change an online description of the country‘s Strategic National Stockpile following a press briefing with White House adviser Jared Kushner.
Although Edwards had left DHS-OIG in December 2013, he continued to leverage his relationship with Venkata and other DHS-OIG employees to steal the software and the sensitive government databases.
(15.12.2019)
California Congressman Devin Nunes, Republican ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee demands Schiff to call on IG Horowitz to testify before House Intelligence Committee.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has dealt with some of the most sensitive matters of national security: terror threats and espionage. Its work, for the most part, cannot be examined by the American public, by order of Congress and the president. Its work has been mostly secret, its structure largely one-sided.
„The most unusual thing is that there is a body of law that the court has created, but as a practitioner that is part of that law, we have between zero and some very limited knowledge of what that law is,“ Michael Sussmann, a former Justice Department prosecutor and current private attorney in the consumer and computer-privacy field, told Fox News. „But, it‘s the fact that there is a secret law and a secret body of law that makes it the most vexing.“
(today)
….They want to Impeach me (I’m not worried!), and yet they were all breaking the law in so many ways. How can they do that and yet impeach a very successful (Economy Plus) President of the United States, who has done nothing wrong? These people are Crazy!
10,120 replies 12,033 retweets 44,359 likes
(11.01.2017)
So etwas ist noch nie passiert. Die gesamte Situation ist präzedenzlos.
Das angeblich belastende Material, wie beschrieben angeblich von irgendeinem britischen Agenten, etc, ist bereits gestern auf Buzzfeed veröffentlicht worden. Es ist dermaßen ekelhaft, dass es einem die Schuhe auszieht. Und es wird mir schlecht, wenn ich sehe wie die Leute auf Twitter darauf reagieren. Offensichtlich wurde diese Fälschung, die als solche u.a. von Gateway Pundit und Wikileaks identifiziert wurde, nur mit einem Ziel entworfen: Trump anzuschießen und zwar so, dass er nie wieder aufsteht.
Trumps Reaktion ist, nun ja, fast etwas verwirrt. Im Laufe des heutigen Tages hielt er seine Pressekonferenz als gewählter Präsident ab. Allen Anwesenden war, nach meinem Eindruck, eine Art Schock über die Situation ins Gesicht geschrieben. Selbst der bemühte, ab und an aufbrandende Beifall änderte nichts an der gespenstischen Situation.
Während der Pressekonferenz übernahm Trump einerseits zum ersten Mal die Position der C.I.A. und äußerte hastig zwischen zwei Sätzen zur Frage, wer verantwortlich sei für den angeblichen Hack gegen die Parteizentrale der „Demokraten“ („Democratic National Committee“, D.N.C.),
„Ich glaube, es war Russland“ („I believe, it was Russia“)
Gegen Mittag hatte Trump andererseits zu dem veröffentlichten „belastenden Material“ getwittert:
„(Die) Geheimdienste hätten niemals erlauben sollen, dass diese Fake News an die Öffentlichkeit ´geleaked´ werden. Ein letzter Schuss gegen mich. Leben wir in Nazi-Deutschland?“
(today)
The inspector general concluded that central to the FBI’s court applications for surveillance of Page were a set of allegations provided by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. The Steele dossier, as it came to be known, contained allegations against Trump, Page and other Trump associates, and those allegations have been the subject of intense political fighting since they became public in early 2017.
(20.11.2019)
The FBI is seeking an interview with a CIA whistleblower whose complaint led to an impeachment inquiry into whether President Trump abused his office in his dealings with the Ukrainian president, according to three people familiar with the matter.
“The Inspector General report showed the FBI was willing to do anything in order to spy on Carter Page, including making 17 significant inaccuracies and omissions. The American public deserves to know everything the FBI did,” Kennedy said in a statement Friday.
“I’m asking President Trump to declassify the entire record so that Attorney General Barr and FBI Director Wray can release it to the American people. If the FBI wants to continue the employment of rogue, politically-motivated agents, then let the public read the entire record.”
At more than 400 pages, the study amounted to the most searching look ever at the government’s secretive system for carrying out national-security surveillance on American soil. And what the report showed was not pretty.
The Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, and his team uncovered a staggeringly dysfunctional and error-ridden process in how the F.B.I. went about obtaining and renewing court permission under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser.
„As we noted publicly last year in our report, we were very concerned about that,“ Horowitz said at Wednesday‘s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
„We are investigating those contacts. We‘ve issued a couple of public summaries so far about people we‘ve found violated FBI policy. We have other investigations ongoing,“ Horowitz continued.
He added that, while it has been hard to prove the substance of conversations between FBI and reporters or outside individuals, “we can prove the contacts.“
„Under FBI policy you need authorization if you‘re going to disclose information and have certain contacts,“ he said.
Following Monday‘s release of the long-awaited FISA report on FBI abuses while investigating the Trump campaign, during the 2016 US election, Inspector General Michael Horowitz is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
Horowitz‘s report found „significant inaccuracies and omissions,“ yet despite the fact that the FBI‘s elite made numerous errors and harbored extreme animus against Donald Trump, none of that affected their investigation.
The New York Times reported Tuesday afternoon that Trump has discussed firing Atkinson because the intelligence official found a whistleblower’s complaint about Trump‘s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky credible and took action to advance it.
(07.06.2019)
The Department of Homeland Security inspector general found expired food and dilapidated bathrooms during unannounced visits to four immigrant detention facilities in 2018, according to a report released Thursday.
The kitchen at one facility was in such poor shape — with open packages of raw chicken leaking blood over refrigeration units — that the kitchen manager was replaced while the IG inspection was ongoing.
The report describes conditions at facilities last year,
The Pentagon quietly ended a program to train Afghan Air Force pilots in the United States after nearly half of the course attendees disappeared, according to a Defense Department watchdog report released this week.
More than 40 percent of the Afghan pilots sent to train on the AC-208 Combat Caravan lightweight reconnaissance aircraft went absent without leave while in the United States, according to a quarterly report of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR. The report, which was released Tuesday, did not detail precisely how many Afghan pilots deserted the training program, which has been conducted at the Fort Worth Meacham Airport in Texas.
Andererseits ist es einer der – nach meiner begrenzten Kenntnis – sehr selten Fälle, in denen militärische Führung erklärt, dass sie bestimmte grundlegende Informationen aus ihrem Verantwortungsbereich schlicht nicht braucht. Es scheint also auch mit weniger zu gehen. Das wäre mal eine interessante Frage an den Stabschef von Resolute Support, der müsste das ja erklären können. Und ist übrigens von der Bundeswehr, derzeit Generalleutnant Andreas Marlow.
In its report, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) quoted the U.S. military as saying in January there was „uncertainty“ in the way the data were produced and that „the assessments that underlie them are to a degree subjective.“
„Then-Director Comey … engaged in his own subjective, ad hoc decision making,“ the report written by the inspector general of the Justice Department reads. „In so doing, we found that Comey largely based his decisions on what he believed was in the FBI’s institutional interests and would enable him to continue to effectively lead the FBI as its Director.