DoD teams surveying US military sites for potential Gitmo transfers, lawmakers vow fight

The Department of Defense notified lawmakers Friday that teams will visit two military installations in the United States — Fort Leavenworth in Kansas and the Naval Brig in Charleston, S.C. — to conduct “site surveys” looking into transferring a “limited number” of Guantanamo detainees, Pentagon and Capitol Hill sources told Fox News.
The move, coming on the same day Secretary of State John Kerry marked the re-opening of the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, has already triggered a backlash on Capitol Hill. But, despite existing congressional restrictions on moving the detainees to U.S. soil, the notice itself suggests officials are wasting no time exploring transfer options for those at the controversial Cuba prison camp.
One Capitol Hill source, reading from the notification, said the first Defense Department survey team was due to visit Fort Leavenworth “starting today [Friday].”
The Naval Brig in Charleston will be visited in the “next several weeks,” said another source, reading from the same notification, which went out Friday morning.
Legally, the administration is still barred from transferring Guantanamo detainees to the United States, according to laws passed by Congress starting in 2010. Building or modifying facilities to house Gitmo inmates is also prohibited in the United States.
“Perhaps DoD does not think this is part of that ‘build or modify’ section,” one source told Fox News, questioning DoD’s funding of the site survey teams visiting the two military installations.
After learning of the survey teams, lawmakers representing Kansas vowed to fight any proposed transfers to their state. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said in a statement that the move "reflects another egregious overstep by this administration."
"Congress has consistently stopped Obama by law from moving a single detainee to the U.S.," he said. "Not on my watch will any terrorist be placed in Kansas."
"Terrorists should not be living down the road from Ft. Leavenworth – home to thousands of Army soldiers and their families, as well as military personnel from across the globe who study at the Intellectual Center of the Army," Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., said in a statement.
"This administration’s last-ditch effort to carry out President Obama’s reckless national security decision before he leaves office is disingenuous and flawed."
Kansas Rep. Lynn Jenkins also fired off a letter to Defense Secretary Ash Carter demanding he abandon any such plans.
"At a time when we face relentless threats from the Islamic State, and have yet to hear a strategy to defeat ISIL, it is absurd to hear that the Department of Defense has personnel on the ground at Fort Leavenworth conducting site surveys to advance the President's proposal that could ultimately result in the transfer of these terrorist to Kansas," she said in a statement.
She also said moving detainees stateside would violate federal law. "It is irresponsible, reckless, and to overstep the law to do so is a dangerous precedent," the congresswoman said.
Despite the congressional restrictions, President Obama still wants to fulfill his pledge to shutter the Cuba prison camp. He hasn’t yet provided a plan for achieving this to Congress. A total of 116 detainees remain at Guantanamo, 52 of whom have been approved for transfer.
The Pentagon confirmed to Fox News that DoD personnel will survey the two military sites, “as part of our broader and ongoing effort to identify locations within the United States that can [possibly] facilitate military commissions and can possibly hold detainees currently at Guantanamo Bay.”
Defense Department spokesman Cmdr. Gary Ross said in a statement that security and humane treatment are “primary concerns” but cost is also a factor. He said the costs of providing medical care at Guantanamo, for instance, are rising as the population ages.
He added: “Only those locations that can hold detainees at a maximum security level will be considered. DoD personnel will consider surveying a variety of military and civilian sites to determine their candidacy for holding law of war detainees in a humane and secure manner. There is a broad list of facilities that will be potentially considered. This list is informed by past assessment efforts."
Whether the administration can reach an agreement with Congress to approve transfers to the U.S. remains to be seen.
The notice sent out Friday -- first reported by Voice of America -- said the teams will look at logistical issues: “The assessment team will meet with facility staff to discuss engineering, force protection, troop housing, security, transportation, information security, contracting and other operational issues.”
“No facilities have been selected,” the notification added.

North Korea threatens strikes over South Korea propaganda broadcasts

North Korea threatened to attack South Korean loudspeakers that are broadcasting anti-Pyongyang propaganda messages across their shared border on Saturday.
The warning follows Pyongyang’s denial that it had planted land mines on the South Korean side of the Demilitarized Zone that maimed two South Korean soldiers last week. Seoul retaliated for those injuries by restarting its loudspeaker broadcasts for the first time in 11 years and suggested more actions could follow.
The North is extremely sensitive about insults of Kim Jong Un and his regime, and its tries to isolate its people from any criticism or suggestions that Kim is anything other than powerful and revered.
The broadcasts are equivalent to a declaration of war, North Korea’s army said in a statement. The failure to take down the loudspeakers would result in “an all-out military action of justice to blow up all means for ‘anti-north psychological warfare.’”
South Korea’s President Park Greun-hye said that her government will firmly respond to any provocation, and urged the North to “wake up” from the delusion that it could maintain its government with provocation and threats, which park claimed would only result in isolation and destruction.
Park said that if the North opts for dialogue and cooperation, it will find opportunities to improve the lives of its people. She also urged the North to accept the South's proposals for building a "peace park" at the DMZ and for reunions of families separated by the border.
Such bombast from the North isn't unusual and this is not the first time Pyongyang has threatened to attack its enemies. Seoul is often warned that it will be reduced to a "sea of fire" if it doesn't do as the North bids, and Washington and Seoul were both threatened with nuclear annihilation in the months after Kim Jong Un took power in late 2011.
Pyongyang’s threats are rarely ever backed up, although the North did launch an artillery attack in 2010 that killed four South Koreans. Earlier that year, a Seoul-led international investigation blamed a North Korean torpedo for a warship sinking that killed 46 South Koreans.
On Friday, responding to the allegations by Seoul and the U.S.-led U.N. Command that North Korean soldiers buried the land mines, Pyongyang's powerful National Defense Commission argued that Seoul fabricated the evidence and demanded video proof to support the argument that Pyongyang was responsible. The explosions resulted in one soldier losing both legs and another soldier one leg.
Officials said the mine planting violates the armistice that stopped fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War, which still technically continues because there has never been a formal peace treaty.

Clinton dismisses controversies surrounding Benghazi, emails at event

Hillary Clinton defended her handling of the 2012 Benghazi attacks and her use of a private email server as secretary of state, dismissing the controversies as “partisan games” in a speech in Iowa on Friday.
"They'll try to tell you it's about Benghazi, but it's not," Clinton said, pointing to Republican-led congressional inquiries that she said had "debunked all the conspiracy theories."
"It's not about emails or servers either. It's about politics," she said.
"I won't get down in the mud with them. I won't play politics with national security," Clinton said at the annual Wing Ding, a Democratic fundraiser in northern Iowa that attracted three other presidential candidates.
Clinton sought to take the scandals head on while presenting herself as combative, tough and prepared to fight Republicans in an effort to ultimately succeed President Barack Obama. Her appearance comes days after she agreed to turn over to the FBI the private serve she used a secretary of state. Republican lawmakers have said she was negligent in handling classified information.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders received loud cheers when he pointed to his opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, which has been reviled by environmentalists and his vote against Iraq War in the Senate. Sanders’ campaign has gained steam with the growing Clinton controversy.
Sanders, whose recent appearance at a Seattle event was disrupted by activists with the Black Lives Matter movement, also took steps to emphasize his civil rights record.
"No one will fight harder to end racism in America," he said.
Clinton’s forceful defense started when she noted that the Supreme Court case Citizens United, started with a “hit-job film” about her.
“Now I’m in the crosshairs,” she said of Republicans.
Clinton said she would "do my part to provide transparency to Americans — that's why I'm insisting 55,000 pages of my emails be published as soon as possible" and turned over the server.
"I won't pretend that this is anything other than what it is: the same old partisan games we've seen so many times before," she said. "So I don't care how many super PACs and Republicans pile on. I've been fighting for families and underdogs my entire life and I'm not going to stop now."
Clinton also made light of the email probe on her Snapchat social media account. "I love it," she said. "Those messages disappear all by themselves."
Her speech included critiques of potential Republican rivals Scott Walker, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. But she saved her most pointed barbs for Donald Trump, saying the attention in the GOP race had centered on a "certain flamboyant front-runner." The country, she said, shouldn't be distracted. "Most of the other candidates are just Trump with the pizazz or the hair."
The candidates spoke before about 2,000 Democrats at the Surf Ballroom, the site of the last concert by rock pioneers Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper before their fatal 1959 plane crash, later dubbed "The Day the Music Died."
Clinton and Sanders spoke first, prompting some activists to file out of the ballroom before former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and ex-Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee took the stage.
O'Malley pointed to a laundry list of progressive proposals he would pursue if elected president, saying his years as Baltimore mayor and Maryland's two-term governor were about "action, not words."
"In tougher times than these, Franklin Roosevelt told us not to be afraid. In changing times, John Kennedy told us to govern is to choose," O'Malley said. "I say to you, progress is a choice."
Chafee took aim at Bush's recent critique of Obama's handling of Iraq, telling activists, "What kind of neocon Kool-Aid is this man drinking?"
Clinton kicked off a weekend of campaigning in Dubuque on Friday by outlining proposals for more quality child care on college campuses and additional scholarships to help students who are parents. The Democratic front-runner also picked up two endorsements aimed at reinforcing her standing among liberals: former Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, a party luminary who served three decades in the Senate, and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, a union of nearly 600,000 members. Clinton was joining Harkin at the Iowa State Fair on Saturday morning.

Deflation Cartoon

Police chiefs, sheriffs blast ICE over policy they say frees violent illegal immigrants

A California toddler fighting for her life Thursday after a brutal beating at the hands of an illegal immigrant with a long criminal record is the latest case to rile California sheriffs and police against a U.S. immigration policy they say is forcing them to release dangerous criminals out on the street.
Francisco Javier Chavez, the live-in boyfriend of the unidentified two-year-old's mother, is out on bail after being charged in the late July attack, which left the San Luis Obispo County girl with two broken arms, a broken femur, a compressed spine, a urinary tract infection and a fever of 107 degrees. Chavez's criminal record includes assault and drug convictions and arrests for violent acts including kidnapping, car jacking and cruelty to a child.
A disgusted San Luis Obispo Sheriff Ian Parkinson told FoxNews.com Chavez should have been locked away or deported long before he had the chance to inflict "horrific injuries" on the little girl, but said conflicting federal policies leave his department handcuffed. Instead, Chavez is now free, awaiting a court date for which he may not even show up.

"The law actually does not give us the right to place an ICE hold, unless there is a warrant for them. That is why we are united in California and asking that this be fixed and changed, because at end of the day, we are the ones who have to let them out the door.”
- San Luis Obispo Sheriff Ian Parkinson

“The truth is, if we had any legal right to hold him, we would, because of the concern that, not being a U.S. citizen, he will bail out and flee the country and flee prosecution,” said Parkinson, who suspects Chavez may have already fled the county.
The issue, says Parkinson and dozens of other sheriffs and police chiefs across California and Arizona, is that, while Immigration and Customs Enforcement routinely asks departments to hold prisoners like Chavez until they can take custody of them for deportation, the local law enforcement officials believe doing so will expose them to lawsuits. They cite court cases including the March, 2014, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruling in Galrza v. Szalczyk that held states and localities are not required to imprison people based on ICE "detainer" requests, and that states and localities may be held liable if they participate in wrongful immigration detentions.
“I am not aware of any County in California that is honoring detainers, simply because we can’t,” Parkinson said. “We have to follow the law or the threat of violating the law ourselves,” Parkinson said, citing a Court decision issued approximately one year ago. “The law actually does not give us the right to place an ICE hold, unless there is a warrant for them. That is why we (local law enforcement) are united in California and asking that this be fixed and changed, because at end of the day, we are the ones who have to let them out the door.”
The Arizona Sheriffs’ Association agrees, noting every day ICE asks local sheriffs to ‘detain’ an inmate, yet don’t provide “rational, legal authority to do so,” putting sheriffs at enormous risk for legal liability. When the local authorities let an illegal immigrant criminal free on bail, they do so reluctantly - and they blame ICE.
ICE maintains there is no requirement that it obtain a judicial warrant to compel law enforcement agencies to hold suspects and that a detainer is sufficient. A spokesperson for ICE said the agency continues to work “cooperatively” with local law enforcement partners and is implementing a new plan, the Priority Enforcement Program – PEP, to place the focus on criminals and individuals who threaten the public safety and ensure they are not released from prisons or jails before they can be taken into ICE custody.
Martin Mayer, legal counsel to sheriffs and chiefs of police in 70 law enforcement agencies throughout California for the last 25 years, and general counsel to the California State Sheriffs’ Association, told FoxNews.com the U.S. Department of Justice, the California Office of the Attorney General, and ICE all take the position that the detainer is only a request and the law does not give sheriffs authorization to hold illegal immigrant suspects ordered released by a judge.
If ICE agents are present when suspects are ordered released, and if they have the legal basis to take custody of them, they can, but local law enforcement does not have the authority to hold them in the absence of ICE, the California Sheriffs Association recently said in letter to Congress.
The American Civil Liberties Union's California chapter has been vocal in pressuring city police chiefs to honor the court rulings that said ICE detainers are mere requests, not mandates, and that honoring them would violate suspects' Constitutional rights.
“This (ACLU) letter to the cities states that ‘Your police department should immediately cease complying with immigration detainers, or else risk legal liability for detaining individuals in violation of the Fourth Amendment,’” Mayer said.
The ACLU did not respond to Fox News’ request for comment.
A string of murders across the country by criminal aliens has spotlighted the conflict between ICE and local law enforcement, and in recent days, caught the attention of lawmakers on Capitol Hill. After one of the cases, the July 24 murder of Marilyn Pharis, a 64-year-old Air Force veteran, Santa Maria Police Chief Ralph Martin blamed the state and federal governments for a convoluted policy that leaves local law enforcement holding the bag.
“I am not remiss to say that from Washington D.C. to Sacramento, there is a blood trail to Marilyn Pharis’ bedroom,” Martin said.

Lerner, in newly released emails, calls GOP critics 'evil and dishonest'

Newly released emails from Lois Lerner show the former IRS official at the heart of the Tea Party targeting scandal calling Republican critics “evil and dishonest,” and even “hateful.”
The emails -- part of a report released Aug. 6 by the Senate Finance Committee -- offer a revealing look at Lerner, who used to head the division that processes applications for tax-exempt status and was at the center of the scandal over the alleged targeting of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
The bipartisan report found evidence that both the Obama administration’s political agenda, and the personal politics of IRS employees, including Lerner, impacted how the IRS did its job, according to Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Finance Committee.
A deeper look at the communications, first reported by Politico, shows Lerner taking aim at lawmakers for their tough questioning, particularly following a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing in 2014.
“Yesterday was a doozy. They called me back to testify on the IRS ‘scandal,’ and I tool (sic) the 5th again because they had been so evil and dishonest in my lawyer’s dealings with them,” Lerner told a friend in a March 6, 2014 email, adding “this is very bad behavior from our elected officials.”
She had tough words for the press as well, complaining in a June 26, 2014 email about pictures taken of her during an appearance in front of Congress: “I looked like crap. I don’t look like that anymore, but it serves their purposes of hate mongering to continue to use those images.”
OPINION: Gross mismanagement at the IRS: Time for a special counsel
Most of her complaints, however, are reserved for Republicans, whom in the same email she accuses of being motivated only by political gain and having a “hateful” message.
"I was never a political person—this whole fiasco has only made me lose all respect (sic) politics and politicians. I am merely a pawn in their game to take over the Senate,” Lerner wrote.
“Every time they get some email they see as incriminating, they roil up their base and get lots of contributions and spread their hateful message about how the government is out to get people,” she wrote.
On the subject of her lost emails, Lerner wrote that she begged IRS IT staff to retrieve the emails wiped from her server, and didn't know why they couldn't.
“As to the lost emails—there is a whole trail of emails from me begging IRS IT folks to try and recover the emails -- I’m guessing you haven’t seen those,” Lerner wrote. “Why the IRS was unable to retrieve them when my computer crashed, I have no clue -- I’m not an IT person.”
In the emails, Lerner also took a swipe at Texas, which she said “is just pathetic as far as political attitudes are concerned,” and faulted Abraham Lincoln for not letting the South secede.
"Look my view is that Lincoln is our worst president not out (sic) best. He should‘be (sic) let the south go.”

Veterans fight for Conn. city to replace tattered American flags

They fought for their flag and now they’re fighting City Hall.
Veterans in Derby, Conn. have convinced officials to replace tattered American flags on display in the town.
Robert L. Federico, a Vietnam veteran, was among the group that contacted City Hall earlier this week after someone found a ripped flag lying on a street and brought it to the local senior center.
Federico said the sight of the torn flag literally made him cry.
And the problem isn’t just one flag. It turns out many of the two-dozen flags that line Derby’s Main Street are shredded and filthy. Many of the poles from which they hang are held together with tape.
Federico called City Hall. The initial response was to pass the buck: Mayor Anita Dugatto’s secretary told Federico to call Derby’s department of public works.
“Why should I be doing their job when that should come from the mayor’s office?” Federico told the New Haven Register.
A city crew began to fix the problem Wednesday, taking down the damaged flags, but local station WFSB reports that it could be weeks before any new flags are installed along Main Street.

'Top secret' emails on Clinton server discussed drone program, may reference classified info

WASHINGTON –  The two emails on Hillary Rodham Clinton's private server that an auditor deemed "top secret" include a discussion of a news article detailing a U.S. drone operation and a separate conversation that could point back to highly classified material in an improper manner or merely reflect information collected independently, U.S. officials who have reviewed the correspondence told The Associated Press.
The sourcing of the information could have significant political implications as the 2016 presidential campaign heats up. Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, agreed this week to turn over to the FBI the private server she used as secretary of state, and Republicans in Congress have seized on the involvement of federal law enforcement as a sign that she was either negligent with the nation's secrets or worse.
On Monday, the inspector general for the 17 spy agencies that make up what is known as the intelligence community told Congress that two of 40 emails in a random sample of the 30,000 emails Clinton gave the State Department for review contained information deemed "Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information," one of the government's highest levels of classification.
The two emails were marked classified after consultations with the CIA, which is where the material originated, officials said.
The officials who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity work in intelligence and other agencies. They wouldn't detail the contents of the emails because of ongoing questions about classification level. Clinton did not transmit the sensitive information herself, they said, and nothing in the emails she received makes clear reference to communications intercepts, confidential intelligence methods or any other form of sensitive sourcing.
The drone exchange, the officials said, begins with a copy of a news article that discusses the CIA drone program that targets terrorists in Pakistan and elsewhere. While a secret program, it is well-known and often reported on. The copy makes reference to classified information, and a Clinton adviser follows up by dancing around a top secret in a way that could possibly be inferred as confirmation, they said. Several officials, however, described this claim as tenuous.

More on this...

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• Sen. Grassley discusses contents of Hillary Clinton's server

• Napolitano: Clinton's emails on home server against the law

But a second email reviewed by Charles McCullough, the intelligence community inspector general, appears more suspect. Nothing in the message is "lifted" from classified documents, the officials said, though they differed on where the information in it was sourced. Some said it improperly points back to highly classified material, while others countered that it was a classic case of what the government calls "parallel reporting" -- different people knowing the same thing through different means.
The emails came to light Tuesday after Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, reported that McCullough found four "highly classified" emails on the unusual homebrew server that Clinton used while she was secretary of State. Two were sent back to the State Department for review, but Grassley said the other two were, in fact, classified at the closely guarded "Top Secret/SCI level."
In a four-page fact sheet that accompanied a letter to Clinton supporters, Clinton spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri stressed that Clinton was permitted to use her own email account as a government employee and that the same process concerning classification reviews would still be taking place had she used the standard "state.gov" email account used by most department employees. The State Department, meanwhile, stressed that it wasn't clear if the material at issue ought to be considered classified at all.
Still, the developments suggested that the security of Clinton's email setup and how she guarded the nation's secrets will remain relevant campaign topics. Even if the emails highlighted by the intelligence community prove innocuous, she will still face questions about whether she set up the private server with the aim of avoiding scrutiny, whether emails she deleted because she said they were personal were actually work-related, and whether she appropriately shielded such emails from possible foreign spies and hackers.
Clinton says she exchanged about 60,000 emails in her four years as secretary of state. She turned over all but what she said were personal emails late last year. The department has been making those public as they are reviewed and scrubbed of any sensitive data.
The State Department advised employees not to use personal email accounts for work, but it wasn't prohibited. But Clinton's senior advisers at the State Department would have been briefed upon basic protocol for handling classified information and retaining government records. In Clinton's time, most officials saved their emails onto a separate file or printed them out when leaving office. Only recently has the department begun automatically archiving the records of dozens of senior officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry.
In the emails, Clinton's advisers appear cognizant of secrecy protections.
In a series of August 2009 emails, Clinton aide Huma Abedin told Clinton that the U.S. point-man for Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, and another official wanted "to do a secure" conversation to discuss Afghan elections. Clinton said she could talk after she received a fax of a classified Holbrooke memo, also on a secure line. Later, Abedin wrote: "He can talk now. We can send secure fax now. And then connect call."
But other times, the line was blurred. Among Clinton's exchanges now censored as classified by the State Department was a brief exchange in October 2009 with Jeffrey Feltman, then the top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East. Both Clinton and Feltman's emails about an "Egyptian proposal" for a reconciliation ceremony with Hamas are marked B-1.4, classified for national security reasons, and completely blacked out from the email release.
A longer email the same day from Clinton to former Sen. George Mitchell, then Mideast peace envoy, is also censored. Mitchell responds tersely and carefully that "the Egyptian document has been received and is being translated. We'll review it tonight and tomorrow morning, will consult with the Pals (Palestinians) through our Consul General, and then I'll talk with Gen. S again. We'll keep you advised."