Feds warn of bogus batch of Syrian passports amid report ISIS can print them

Former FBI official: Fake Syrian passports a concern

 

 

Fake Syrian passports aren’t exactly a dime a dozen, but they can be had for as little as $200, according to a report from the Department of Homeland Security that could call into question the ability to screen Middle East refugees fleeing to the West.
The 18-page report, circulated to law enforcement agencies across the nation, warns that a certain batch of Syrian passports – those issued since June 2014 from two regions under the Islamic State control, Deir- ez-Zour and Raqqa – are likely to be phonies, based on the fact one was bought on the black market in Turkey.
“The person who was issued the passport did not have to travel to Deir- ez-Zour to obtain it,” the report states. “Therefore, it is believed that passport issuance code 014 pertains to Deir- ez-Zour.”

“The lack of ability to verify information with the Syrian government about how many passports may be vulnerable for exploitation in former provincial and regional government buildings will make attempts to analyze the scale of the problem difficult.”
- DHS report to law enforcement agencies

The report, developed with intelligence from Homeland Security Investigations and the State Department, also asserts ISIS is using its own passport printing machines to generate the bogus documents with covers printed in Russia, and then selling them for between $200 and $400.
Intelligence agencies have already flagged some 3,800 counterfeit Syrian passports, and will add data on another 10,000 fake Syrian passports recently intercepted in Bulgaria on the way to Germany. The sheer volume of fake passports flooding the market as refugees – or terrorists posing as refugees - pour into Europe has investigators on edge. The fake Syrian passports will add to an already challenging problem of vetting Syrian refugees, said Claude Arnold, a former DHS Investigations special agent in charge for Minneapolis and Los Angeles.
“In absence of specific intelligence that identifies the refugee as a member ISIS, we are not going to know they are a member of ISIS," Arnold said. "We don’t have those boots on the ground in Syria, no one is really gathering that information, it’s a no mans land. So their application is based solely on story that person tells. It is dangerous, it is idiotic."
Arnold said in the past, war criminals were able to get into the U.S. by telling convincing stories about being persecuted on religious or political grounds because they were actually involved as persecutors. Some war criminals became permanent residents and citizens of the U.S., before being caught, because there was a lag time to get information on what occurred.
“Now it’s much worse," he continued. "The war criminals were not coming here to wage jihad, they just wanted to hide out, but these terrorists are coming to do us harm. We have the same vulnerability, but the consequences are potentially much more dire.”
The report makes the same point, if in the language of bureaucrats.
“The lack of ability to verify information with the Syrian government about how many passports may be vulnerable for exploitation in former provincial and regional government buildings will make attempts to analyze the scale of the problem difficult,” the report said.
Adding to the problem, Homeland Security Investigations believes the police force in Deir ez-Zour, Syria, may be involved in issuing and distributing counterfeit passports, because a forged Syrian passport that turned up in Turkey in July displayed the signature of Zuhair Hamad saad Al deen, head of the Deir ez-Zour Police.

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The Homeland Security Investigations specifically has asked all U.S. government personnel to be on the lookout for former Syrian Ministry of Interior employees or former Syrian immigration officials applying for U.S. visas, refugee status, asylum, or green cards or who tries to enter the U.S. through Ports of Entry, noting “they should be thoroughly debriefed.”
They’ve also entered information on the 3,800 fake passports investigators have tracked into U.S. databases, although it wasn’t clear from the report if those 3,800 fake passports have turned up in the U.S.
Terrorists involved in the deadly Nov. 13 attack in Paris, which left 130 dead and 350 injured, used fake Syrian passports to enter France, the report notes.
The U.S. has already accepted 2,500 Syrian refugees into the country since 2011.
Hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees continue to flee the war torn country, crossing into Turkey, Greece and Europe.
The Obama administration plans to welcome some 10,000 Syrian refugees to the U.S. in the coming year.
Governors of more than half of U.S. states, as well as many members of Congress, have expressed concerns about the Obama administration’s plan, because they are concerned terrorists may enter the country through the refugee resettlement program. Critics of the plan note many Syrian refugees often have little documentation or documentation that cannot be verified when they apply for refugee status in the U.S.
"That's the challenge we are all talking about, is that we can only query against that which we have collected," FBI Director James Comey testified in Congress last month. "And so if someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database until the cows come home but ... there will be nothing show up because we have no record on that person."
However, the president has maintained his administration has a solid screening plan to accept the 10,000 refugees from Syria in addition to the 70,000 refugees fleeing war and religious persecution, the U.S. regularly accepts from around the world. Homeland Security Department, State Department and U.S. intelligence will head up vetting process.
Fox News is told through one such source that given this assessment, it is possible that individuals possessing these fake passports have travelled to the U.S. This source adds, however, that there is no evidence at this time to suggest that that is the case.
A Syrian looking to enter the United States would still be required to obtain a visa, since Syria is not one of the 38 “Visa Waiver” countries acknowledged by the U.S.
Through that visa process, that individual would be subject to screening procedures which would include background checks against U.S. terror databases, Fox News is told.

$1 billion weapons deal for Saudi Arabia

WASHINGTON -- Barring last minute opposition from Congress, Saudi Arabia is poised to receive a hefty $1.3 billion weapons package that includes 13,000 “smart bombs” from the United States by the end of the year. But don’t necessarily expect it to be used to fight ISIS.
Critics say the payload of sophisticated weapons will instead bolster the Saudis' continuing air war against the Houthi rebels in Yemen. That campaign is drawing fire from human rights groups, who say the kingdom has been targeting civilians with American-made weapons, and may be responsible for war crimes.
“President Obama is poised to sell thousands of bombs and warheads to a government that unlawfully targets civilians,” Amnesty International, which has been lobbying hard for Congress to kill the deal, said in a statement Thursday.
More than 5,700 people, including at least 2,577 civilians — 637 of them children — have been killed in the eight months Saudi Arabia has led a coalition of Gulf States in the bombing campaign, according to the United Nations. Another 2.3 million have been displaced. Meanwhile, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights found that "almost two-thirds of reported civilian deaths had allegedly been caused by coalition airstrikes.”
“By selling the Saudis the weapons included in the latest deal, the U.S. will be further implicated in possible war crimes committed in Yemen and it will be helping to fuel an unnecessary war,” charged Daniel Larison, senior editor at The American Conservative magazine.
“At the same time the Saudis are using U.S. weapons in Yemen, they and the other members of their coalition have withdrawn their small contributions to the campaign against ISIS and diverted their resources to the fight that they consider to be more important,” he added.
The coalition has denied the accusations in published reports. Saudi Arabia is determined to beat back the Houthis, who deposed President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, in February. The Houthis are said to be getting support from the Iranians, and the conflict is largely seen as part of a regional stuggle between the Sunni Gulf States and Shia Iran.
After strikes killed 70 people at a wedding in Yemen in September, Saudi officials warned not to jump to conclusions. They have since blocked an international inquiry into war crimes there.  “We need to be careful about facts and fiction,” Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir told reporters at the time.
The concerns, however, have not escaped members of Congress, which has had 30 days to review the deal before it goes through.
While Sen. Bob Corker, R-TN., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, supports the action in Yemen, he has requested “that the committee be notified of future weapons shipments to Saudi Arabia resulting from this proposed sale,” according to an email forwarded to Foxnews.com from the committee.
He is joined by ranking member Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., who has raised alarms about the human rights issue, along with other Democratic members.
They are not expected to stop the sale, however. It is the most recent in a long line of arms deals brokered with Riyadh -- $90 billion worth since 2010, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Reached for comment, the State Department, which engineered the sale, called Saudi Arabia “a key U.S. strategic partner within the region,” and that “the purchase of these munitions will rebuild Saudi Arabia’s inventory, helping them to meet their defense requirements over the long term.”
On the human rights issue, the State Department says it has “noted our concern several times regarding civilian casualties and deaths in Yemen,” and has encouraged the coalition to investigate “credible accounts of civilian casualties.”
“Ultimately, we want to see a diplomatic solution,” the agency said, and noted the start of peace talks in December, in concert with a seven-day ceasefire.
Saudi Arabia, a long time ally of the U.S. in the Middle East, has nonetheless been the subject of criticism on a number of fronts. In addition to its human rights record in Yemen, the kingdom has been cited for abuses at home, including beheadings over the last year for crimes such as “sorcery” and “apostasy” against Islam. The legal system is based on sharia law, and religious freedoms there are all but non-existent, say critics.
Saudi Arabia is also the birthplace of Wahhabism, the radical fundementalist strain of Islam practiced by global terror groups like ISIS today. While the kingdom has partnered in counterterrorism operations with the U.S. and its Gulf neighbors, it is also accused of turning a blind eye while the country’s elites pour billions into extremist mosques, madrassas, and terror-related organizations across the globe.
Tafheen Malik, one of the shooters in the recent San Bernardino attack, came to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia.
“At a minimum they have to stop aiding and abetting Wahhabism; I would hope that the administration would make that a condition,” said former Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., who is now the Jerry and Susie Wilson Chair in Religious Freedom at Baylor University, and lobbies often on Capitol Hill for protection of religious minorities in the Middle East conflict zones.
Saudi officials have long denied the complaints and have often pushed back against detractors. Early this year, they blocked an arms agreement with Sweden after its foreign minister Margot Wallstrom called the kingdom a dictatorship and criticized the sentence of 1,000 lashings it imposed on a blogger there. The kingdom called her remarks "offensive."
But the issue has become so pronounced in recent months due to the terror attacks in Europe, that world leaders are speaking out more. In a moment of candor this week, the German Vice Chancellor accused the kingdom of financing terror.
“We have to make clear to the Saudis that the time of looking away is over,” Vice Chancellor Gabriel Signar told Bild am Sonntag newspaper in an interview.
“Wahhabi mosques all over the world are financed by Saudi Arabia,” he added. “Many Islamists who are a threat to public safety come from these communities in Germany.”
Critics like Wolf say the U.S. has been trying to get Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states to step up their game in the fight against ISIS and maybe such a lucrative weapons package sends the wrong message.
“You need American intelligence, American special ops, but you need boots on the ground from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan,” he said. “They need to start participating. This is absolutely critical before giving them weapons and aid.”
Corker is not as willing to blame Saudi Arabia so quickly.
“(Corker) also believes the U.S. should encourage greater involvement of our coalition partners in the fight against ISIS, but he thinks the perception of U.S. disengagement resulting from the Obama administration’s approach to the region, especially after the Iran nuclear deal, is hindering that effort,” his office said Friday.
A breakdown of the munitions being sold to the kingdom can be found on the State Department website.

Harry Reid Cartoon

Senate Democratic leader Reid: Scalia used 'racist' rhetoric

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid on Thursday slammed controversial comments Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said a day earlier that suggested some black students would benefit from being at a “slower-track school.”
Reid blasted Scalia’s comments, which he called “racist ideas,” from the Senate floor.
Scalia on Wednesday suggested it's possible that some black students would be more comfortable at a "slower-track school" instead of the University of Texas' flagship campus in Austin, where Scalia said some of those students are "being pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them."
Scalia made the comment while the court heard arguments in an affirmative action case.
"The idea that African-American students are somehow inherently intellectually inferior from other students is despicable," Reid said. "It's a throwback ... to a time that America left behind a half a century ago."
He also said the idea that black students should be pushed out of top universities is “unacceptable.”
"That Justice Scalia could raise such an uninformed idea shows just how out of touch he is with the values of this nation," Reid said. "It goes without saying that an African-American student has the same potential to succeed in an academically challenging environment as any other student."

Rubio's provision to kill ObamaCare risk corridors stirs debate

The Affordable Care Act promised participating insurance companies and cooperatives payments in the first three years if they lost too much money.  Thanks to a provision successfully pushed last year by Senator Marco Rubio, insurers are only getting about 13 cents for every dollar they say they are owed.
“Insurance companies are willing to be a part of the exchanges, only if the federal government promised them that when they lost money they would get bailed out; bailed out with taxpayer money,” said Rubio, in an interview with Fox News.  “We've taken that away.  We should not be bailing out private insurance companies who hire great lobbyists.”
ObamaCare includes risk corridors. They require some profitable insurance companies to pay into a pool to subsidize those with deep losses.  If the amount insurers need surpasses the total that profitable companies have paid in, the federal government makes up the difference. This year, that amount is about $2.5 billion.
Rubio’s provision bans that government payment.  Because of it, health insurers will only receive about 13 cents for every dollar ObamaCare promised them.
"There is a growing recognition about the instability facing consumers in the market,” said Clare Krusing, the press secretary for America's Health Insurance Plans, an insurance industry group, in a statement.  “Nearly 800,000 Americans have faced coverage disruptions as a result of the significant and unexpected shortfall with the risk corridors program.  Congress and the Administration must act to make sure consumers are protected."
Rubio supporters claim the senator’s provision is the most significant legislative setback for the Affordable Care Act since President Obama signed it into law in March 2010.  Some failing health-care cooperatives blamed Rubio’s provision for their insolvency.  Health insurance analysts said insurance companies will likely raise premiums as a result.
One analyst said Rubio’s measure has disrupted the insurance market, though these missed government payments are unlikely to force large, private insurance companies from the ObamaCare exchanges.
“I don’t think you will have large sustainable companies drop out, for this reason,” said Gail R. Wilensky, an economist and senior fellow at Project HOPE who also led Medicare and Medicaid under President George H.W. Bush.  “What you will have companies drop out, if when they look in the future, they don’t see a way that this can be a self-sustaining business.”
Supporters of the risk corridor payments point out the government used a similar scheme previously, during the administration of President George W. Bush, when administering the Medicare prescription drug benefit in its formative years.
“The whole idea of risk corridors was that insurance companies were diving into a new market. By definition, they were reaching for people who hadn’t had insurance before under different rules, and they were taking a risk,” said Alice Rivlin, a former vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board and budget official in the administration of President Bill Clinton.
“There’s always an exploration process in a new market. People have to learn, both the buyers and the sellers have to learn what’s possible.  The Rubio provision is simply undermining the process of learning. It’s destabilizing the market.”
Rubio is pushing the ban on these federal payments for next year as well. 

Univ. of Texas panel OKs guns in classrooms ahead of 'mock shooting' protest

Days before a planned 'mock shooting' demonstration just outside the campus of the University of Texas in Austin, a panel on Thursday recommended policies that would allow concealed handguns in classrooms. 
UT President Greg Fenves will review the recommendations before a final vote of approval by university regents. Concealed weapons would be mostly barred from university dormitories.
Texas state lawmakers are requiring public universities to allow concealed handgun license holders to bring weapons on campus starting Aug. 1, 2016. Universities were told to draw campus gun-zone maps, with the provision they not try to ban weapons from most of campus.
Texas students and faculty have vigorously protested allowing guns in classrooms. The panel that developed the recommendations says its members don't want guns in classrooms, but a ban would violate Texas law.
The groups Come and Take It Texas and Dontcomply.com announced plans for the Saturday demonstration that would include cardboard guns and fake blood, in an effort to support gun rights.
The Austin campus is the site of one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history: sniper Charles Whitman killed 16 people in 1966, shooting dozens of victims from a perch atop the central clock tower.

Syria's Assad buying 'a great deal' of ISIS oil, US official says

The ISIS terror group and the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad have engaged in "millions and millions of dollars of trade" despite being at war with each other, a top U.S. Treasury official said Thursday. 
Adam Szubin, the Treasury's acting under secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said that while some of the oil produced in ISIS-held areas was able to make its way to Kurdish-held areas and Turkey, the "far greater amount" ended up in areas under Assad's control.
Szubin did not estimate the monetary value of the oil trade between ISIS and Assad. However, in remarks prepared for delivery at the Chatham House international affairs think tank in London, Szubin noted that ISIS was selling as much as $40 million in oil per month and had made more than $500 million in black market sales.
"Our sense is that ISIL is taking its profits basically at the wellhead," Szubin said, using another acronym for the terror group, "and so while you do have ISIL oil ending up in a variety of different places that's not really the pressure we want when it comes to stemming the flow of funding - it really comes down to taking down their infrastructure."
Szubin also said ISIS has seized between $500 million and $1 million from bank vaults captured during its spread across Iraq and Syria last year.
The official's remarks came days after Turkey and Russia had traded accusations over the acquisition of oil from the terror group after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane last month.
Earlier this month, Russia's deputy defense minister accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his family of personally profiting from the oil trade with ISIS militants. The allegations were rejected by Erdogan, who vowed to resign if Moscow could prove its accusations, and the U.S. government.
"We never said oil smuggling from ISIL is not a problem," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said at the time. "[But] there is no Turkish government complicity in some operation to buy illegal oil from ISIL. We just don't believe that to be true in any way, shape or form."
Russia has been carrying out its air campaign in Syria since Sept. 30, using warplanes at an air base in Syria's coastal province of Latakia, as well as navy ships and long-range bombers flying from their bases in Russia. While Moscow said its action has been focused on ISIS, the U.S. and its allies have criticized Moscow for also striking moderate rebel groups opposed to Assad, whom Russia staunchly supports.

Tom Brokaw Cartoon