Government Executive - Authors - J. Weston Phippen

U.S. Fears Dispute Over Qatar Will Intensify

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Fri, 07 Jul 2017 16:06:54 -0400

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will fly Monday to Kuwait in an attempt to resolve the impasse over Qatar’s dispute with its Arab neighbors.

The proposed visit comes just days after the expiration of a deadline Saudi Arabia and its allies set for Qatar to meet 13 demands, including severing links with the Muslim Brotherhood and shutting Al Jazeera, the Qatari-owned, Arabic-language TV station. Qatar has so far refused to meet the demands, and the U.S. State Department said late Thursday it fears the dispute could last weeks, even months.

In June six Arab countries—Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, The United Arab Emirates, Libya, and Yemen—severed relations with Qatar, cutting off travel over its land border, as well as all air and sea links. They accused Qatar of working too closely with Iran, and most seriously of funding terrorism, a claim Qatar denies. They gave Qatar 10 days to meet their demands, warning failure to do so would result in “all necessary political, economic and legal measures.” But in a handwritten note from the country’s leader earlier this week, emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, Qatar refused to meet the demands.

The dispute is of particular importance to the U.S. because Qatar is home to the largest U.S. military base in the region. The two countries have been allies for decades, and in May President Trump signed a $110 billion arms deal with Qatar. Tillerson and the State Department have called for a quick resolution, and have tried to get Saudi Arabia to ease its demands. On Thursday, a State Department spokeswoman said, “We've become increasingly concerned that dispute is at an impasse at this point. We believe that this could potentially drag on for weeks. It could drag on for months. It could possibly even intensify.”

But Tillerson’s message has sometimes been at odds with Trump’s. After the Arab states announced they’d cut ties in last month, Trump criticized Qatar for funding terrorism “at a very high level” and added, “I decided, along with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, our great generals and military people, the time had come to call on Qatar to end its funding—they have to end that funding, and its extremist ideology in terms of funding.”

The competing messages—sometimes made only hours apart from one another—have caused confusion over where the U.S. stands, or how it plans to defuse the dispute.

In his visit next week to Kuwait, Tillerson’s will meet with the emir and others who are mediating the dispute.

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An Appeals Court Blocks the EPA's Delay on Methane Regulations

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Wed, 05 Jul 2017 09:59:00 -0400

A federal appeals court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did not have the authority to delay an Obama-era rule that placed regulations on methane emissions leaking from oil and gas wells. Scott Pruitt, head of the EPA, had placed a 90-day delay on the regulation as part of his effort to rescind many of the environmental protections made during the previous administration.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled 2-to-1 to let the regulations, which were scheduled to take effect in June, proceed. Pruitt announced in April that he’d push back the deadline so the agency could reconsider the measure, which the American Petroleum Institute, the Texas Oil and Gas Association, and other industry groups want gone. Pruitt had argued that his actions was not subject to court review, but the court called his decision“capricious” and vacated the delay. It did, however, say the EPA has the right to reconsider the regulation.

In its ruling, the court said these delays are “essentially an order delaying the rule’s effective date, and this court has held that such orders are tantamount to amending or revoking a rule.”

The regulation’s intent is aimed at limiting methane emissions, which are a byproduct of natural-gas wells. Without the regulation, environmental groups say there are few rules that force companies to measure and control the methane that escapes. Pruitt’s skepticism over the regulation is that it, and many other Obama-era regulations like it, hinder business. The natural gas and oil industry also say they’re working to reduce methane emissions and that the rules will make low-productions wells unprofitable.

“This ruling declares EPA’s action illegal—and slams the brakes on Trump Administration’s brazen efforts to put the interests of corporate polluters ahead of protecting the public and the environment,” David Doniger, director of the climate and clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told theAssociated Press.

The ruling is a slight setback for the EPA, which under Pruitt is reversing much of former-President Obama’s climate change and environmental policies. So far the EPA has taken steps to allow farmers to use a pesticide that some recent studies found can cause brain damage in children, and reversed regulations placed on chemical plants to prevent explosions and spills. Pruitt is also expected to release shortly his plan to reverse the Clean Power Act, which regulates carbon emission from power plants.

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A 'Serious Political and Military Provocation' in the South China Sea

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 09:34:36 -0400

A U.S. Navy ship sailed near disputed islands in the South China Sea on Sunday to deliberately challenge claims made by China, Taiwan, and Vietnam. This is the second "freedom-of-navigation operation" conducted by the Trump administration, and this one saw the USS Stethem, a Navy destroyer, sail within 12 nautical miles of Triton Island, which is part of the Paracel Islands.

China responded by saying the U.S. ship made unauthorized entry into its territorial waters, calling it a "serious political and military provocation," Reuters reported. "China strongly urges the U.S. side to immediately stop this kind of provocative action which seriously violates China's sovereignty and puts at risk China's security," China’s ministry spokesman, Lu Kang, said. Kang added that China would take measures to defend itself, and that it had sent ships and fighter jets to the area. The operation took place just hours before Trump was scheduled to place a pre-arranged phone call to China’s President Xi Jinping.

China claims much of the South China Sea, and the operation is meant to challenge those claims and push it to adhere to the United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea. China says its rights to the waters date back centuries, and in 1947 it issued a map that claims nearly all the area, despite much of it brushing up against several other nations. The sea has abundant fish, and is also believed to hold oil and gas reserves. According to UN law, countries’ get an exclusive economic zone of up to 200 miles from their coast.

The Paracel Islands are uninhabited, although China has controlled them since 1974. However, according to UN law, they would fall into the territory of the Philippines or Malaysia.

Trump has previously me with Xi, and their meeting was friendly. But Trump has also pressured the Chinese President to do more to persuade North Korea to drop its nuclear and missile programs. The Trump administration also recently put economic sanctions on two Chinese citizens accused of helping North Korea’s missile program.

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U.S. Navy Calls Off Its Search for Missing Sailors

J. Weston Phippen, National Journal — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 09:48:28 -0400

The search for seven missing U.S. Navy sailors who went missing after their destroyer collided with a container ship near Japan was called off Sunday. Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin, commander of the Navy’s 7th Fleet, said divers found a “number of” bodies in a flooded compartment in the USS Fitzgerald, although he did not specify how many.

The day before, while near its home base port in Yokosuka, Japan, the destroyer crashed into a Philippine container ship about four times its size. Much of the crew was asleep during the collision, which struck the ship on its side and destroyed a machinery room and two berthing areas. Aucoin described the damage as “significant” and the destroyer had to be dragged back to the port by several tug boats. It was not clear if the sailors died because of the force of the crash, or if they drowned as the compartments flooded. Speaking to reporters in the port of Yokosuka, Aucoin praised the crew for saving the ship, which likely saved more lives.

“They prevented the ship from foundering, or even sinking, last night,” he said. “As to how much warning they had, I don’t know. That’s going to be found out during the investigation, but it was a significant impact that the crew had to fight very hard to keep the ship afloat.”

The reason for the crash is still being investigated. But the damage suggests that the destroyer may have hit at high speed, and there’s questions about why the two ships weren’t in better communication. The area is dangerous, with strong currents and crowds of ships hauling cargo, especially early in the morning as they rush to make it to port for daily deliveries. The container ship, the ACX Crystal, weighs nearly 30,000 tons and is more than 700 feet long. The destroyer is just over 8,000 tons. Local media said ship trackers showed the container ship was making a U-turn before the crash, a dangerous maneuver to make in the area. But the ship’s skipper later said they were sailing in the same direction.

Since the collision happened in Japanese waters, its coast guard is allowed to investigate, but an agreement with the U.S. gives it the primary role when a crash includes its own ships. Since the investigation was just beginning, he Navy and Japanese coast guards would only say that they planned to interview the container ship’s crew, and that the incident could be treated as professional negligence.

President Trump has been briefed on the incident, and in a tweet he said: “Thoughts and prayers with the sailors of USS Fitzgerald and their families. Thank you to our Japanese allies for their assistance.”

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Turkey Summons U.S. Ambassador Over Embassy Brawl

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Mon, 22 May 2017 16:00:50 -0400

Turkey summoned the U.S. ambassador to Ankara on Monday to lodge a formal complaint with the U.S. for how it handled a brawl outside the Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C., last week. Protesters who were demonstrating against the visit of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan were beaten by members of his security detail, though it’s still unclear how the fight started. Nearly a dozen people were injured, and the incident has threatened an already tense diplomatic relationship.

Turkey’s complaint comes days after the U.S. summoned the country’s ambassador to Washington, and after several prominent U.S. lawmakers, including Arizona Senator John McCain, called on the U.S. to kick out the Turkish envoy. “We should throw the Turkish ambassador out of the country, we should identify those people that performed these unlawful acts of beating people up and they should be charged,” McCain said.

Summoning the U.S. ambassador John Bass is a way for Turkey to lodge a formal complaint, but it also threatens to make an already-tense situation worse. Last week, Erdogan visited Trump with little official controversy, despite Trump’s decision earlier this month to arm Syrian Kurds, whom the Turkish government sees as terrorists. But protesters had gathered outside the embassy during Erdogan’s visit to denounce his growing authoritarianism. The president has cracked down on dissenters since the failed coup to oust him last year, and reports say about 50,000 have been arrested.

The protest was peaceful until Erdogan returned from his visit to the White House. Then, several Turkish guards in suits rush the crowd and kicked, punched, and choked several demonstrators. The fight was recorded by journalists, and some videos show Erdogan watching as his guards beat the protesters. Local police struggled to control the fight, and arrested two protesters, as well as two Turkish security guards. The two guards were briefly detained, but they had diplomatic immunity, and were released, according to The New York Times. They later left the country. After the fight, D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham released a statement saying, “We intend to assure that there is accountability for anyone involved in this assault. Yesterday we witnessed what appeared to be a brutal attack on peaceful protests.”

Turkey, however, has its own version of events. In its summons, the Turkish Foreign Ministry criticized “the inability of U.S. authorities to take sufficient precautions at every stage of the official program.” Turkey also claimed the protesters were affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which Ankara views as a terrorist organization. The state-run Anadolu news agency also released an edited video that framed the fight as one between protesters and pro-government counter-protesters. It blames protesters for starting the fight by throwing water bottles at security guards.

A statement from the Turkish embassy in Washington called for a full investigation into the violence.

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Who Is Rod Rosenstein?

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Thu, 11 May 2017 09:58:56 -0400

If the firing of former FBI director James Comey is part of a Trump administration plot to foil the investigation into Russian election meddling—as many of the president’s opponents have alleged—Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is an odd conspirator. In a three-page memo reportedly pivotal to President Trump’s decision, Rosenstein wrote that the director had to go if the agency hoped to “regain public and congressional trust.” Those are damning words from a man whose integrity has been compared to that of Jimmy Stewart, the actor who portrayed egoless small-town heroes driven by bygone ideals: of right and wrong, and black and white in a world gone increasing gray.

Just last week, Rosenstein was relatively unknown to the American public. And only the week before that had he been appointed to the position of deputy attorney general, a role that put him at the head of the investigation into alleged connections between the Trump administration and Russia. His confirmation late last month, although part of a contentious transition, came with wide bipartisan support. He has served under five presidents, and he was one of only three U.S. attorneys—out of 93 nationwide—asked to stay on when the White House switched hands from George W. Bush to Barack Obama. He is meek in appearance and mild in tone. In his prior office as U.S. attorney for Maryland, beside a photo of his family, he kept a plaque on the wall that read: “Don’t tell me what I want to hear. Just tell me what I need to know.”

No frills. Apolitical. The “poster child for the professional, competent, ethical, and fair-minded prosecutor” is one way Rosenstein has been described. Now he finds himself in an unfamiliar position, and in an administration lavished in controversy.

Before he left his position in Maryland, Rosenstein reflected on his 12 years as the most powerful prosecutor in the state in an interview with The Baltimore Sun. He had just been voted into office, and as he readied to move to Washington, D.C., he said he hoped to continue doing his “job without regard to partisan political consideration.”And for decades that seemed his primary task. He grew up in Philadelphia and graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania (where Trump also studied). He earned a law degree from Harvard in 1989, then took a job in the DOJ’s public-integrity section.

In the mid-1990s Rosenstein was recruited to a team of prosecutors that handled the Whitewater Development Corporation investigation, the case that looked into Bill and Hillary Clinton’s business dealings with an associate. In what was a highly politicized, highly partisan investigation, Rosenstein came out in exemplary form. “I would have trusted him with anything,” Philip B. Heymann, who was deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration told The Washington Post in 2011. “If there was a case where I was worried there was a perception we were being unfair, I would trust him to do the right thing and to do the job.”

In 2005 Rosenstein became the top federal prosecutor in Maryland, and one of his most memorable cases was that of Jack B. Johnson, county executive for Prince George’s County. Johnson was accused of taking more than a million in bribes, extorting witnesses, and evidence tampering. The case against him was credited with being so tight that Johnson and 14 others pleaded guilty before it went to trial. Soon, the Bush administration transitioned to the Obama administration, and Rosenstein was kept on.

When Trump came to the White House, he was the only remaining holdover from the Bush era. In the interview with the Sun, Rosenstein said that as Trump took office he got calls from attorneys all over the country asking how they might keep their jobs. “Here’s what I did,” Rosenstein told the Sun about his advice, “I sat in my office and did my job, and I’m grateful someone made the decision to keep me here.”

Unlike his boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Rosenstein did not campaign with Trump or offer any kind of high-profile support. But his straight-arrow reputation may have been a useful tool for the administration.

In one alternative theory to that proffered by some Democrats—in which Trump’s decision to fire Comey grew out of a fear that the FBI was increasingly prying into his office’s links with Russia—there’s a different sort of timeline. Byron York wrote in the Washington Examiner that perhaps Trump had always planned to fire Comey, but was just waiting for Rosenstein to make it happen.

York wrote that some in the Trump camp wanted Comey gone immediately—as in, January 20. But those who wanted to maintain the appearance of protocol needed to wait: first for the confirmation of Jeff Sessions, which was being held up, and later for Rosenstein’s. After that, the administration could potentially count on Rosenstein to give Comey’s dismissal more legitimacy.

But opposition to Sessions was fouling this plan up, York writes:

First, it took a long time to get an attorney general in office. Facing Democratic opposition, Jeff Sessions, one of the president’s first nominees, was not confirmed by the Senate until Feb. 8. Then, it took a long time to get a deputy attorney general in place. Rod Rosenstein, the deputy—and the man who wrote the rationale for axing Comey—faced similar Democratic delays and was not sworn in until April 26.

This theory seems like it could account for some of the dissonance between Trump’s posture and Rosenstein’s memo. In his account, Rosenstein found fault in the way Comey acted during the Clinton email investigation, not because the FBI didn’t bring charges against her, but because Comey had irreparably politicized his agency. Yet Trump had previously expressed support for Comey’s actions with regard to Clinton.

“Over the past year,” Rosenstein wrote, “the FBI’s reputation and credibility have suffered substantial damage, and it has affected the entire Department of Justice. … I cannot defend the director’s handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton’s emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken. Almost everyone agrees that the director made serious mistakes; it is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives.”

Rosenstein has only been in office for two weeks—about as long, some reports say, that Trump had been asking his staff to look for reasons to fire Comey. So when squeaky-clean Rosenstein filed his report, York says, it offered the perfect excuse. It didn’t matter that Rosenstein’s case against Comey didn’t match the president’s own alleged reasons for wanting to fire him. To support his theory of the alternate timeline, York references an interview Trump gave with Fox Business in April.

“Was it a mistake not to ask Jim Comey to step down from the FBI at the outset of your presidency?” Maria Bartiromo asked. “Is it too late now to ask him to step down?"

“No, it’s not too late,” Trump said. Then he added, “it’s going to be interesting.”

Rosenstein has probably barely had time to put the plaques on the wall from his past office, and already he’s found himself in a position he spent decades trying to avoid. That he’d long been widely respected by both Democrats and Republicans seems unquestionable. But in this hyperpartisan atmosphere, and in an administration that relishes controversy, how long can that reputation last?

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U.S. Confirms the Death of ISIS Leader in Afghanistan

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Mon, 08 May 2017 16:19:16 -0400

The leader of the ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan, Abdul Hasib, was killed last month in a special-operations forces raid that used 40 Afghan troops and 50 U.S. Army Rangers, U.S. and Afghanistan officials said Sunday.

Not much is known about Hasib, except that he was a former Taliban commander who switched to fight for ISIS. He became leader of the Afghan affiliate after the death of his predecessor, Hafiz Saeed Khan, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in July. Hasib has overseen numerous deadly attacks in that time, including that of an Afghan Army hospital in March in Kabul that killed more than 50 people.

Helicopters deployed the special-operations troops in Nangarhar Province, within a mile of where the U.S. dropped the MOAB, or “mother of all bombs,” just two weeks earlier on a network of ISIS tunnels and underground bunkers. The Rangers and Afghan troops were quickly surrounded by heavy fire, and called in support from Apache helicopters, drones, and F-16s. This led to a three-hour firefight. Two U.S. Army Rangers, Sergeant Joshua Rodgers, and Sergeant Cameron Thomas, died in the battle, possibly the result of friendly fire. U.S. military commanders decided to send in ground troops rather than drop a bomb because women and children shared the Hasib’s compound, The New York Timesreported, citing an unnamed military official.

ISIS in Afghanistan expanded rapidly a few years ago, but its forces have been greatly reduced, down from about 3,000 to fewer than 700 fighters, according to the U.S. military. The group has carried out several massacres, the most deadly of which came last July when suicide bombers attacked a demonstration in Kabul and killed 80 people.

It was widely reported that Hasib was the target of the April attack, but U.S. officials wanted to wait until his death was confirmed; they did not say how they confirmed Hasib’s death.

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The First U.S. Casualty in Somalia Since 'Black Hawk Down'

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Fri, 05 May 2017 15:34:34 -0400

A U.S. Navy SEAL was killed in Somalia during a fight with al-Shabaab militants, and is likely the first combat death in the country since the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” incident. The SEAL was part of a U.S. special-operations advise-and-assist team in the country working with the Somali National Army to fight terrorism, an arrangement that has become increasingly common for the U.S., and that Raymond Thomas III, the head of the Special Operations Command, earlier this week called unsustainable.

In the past several years, the U.S. has expanded its campaign in Somalia to fight the al-Qaeda-affiliated militant group. In return, al-Shabaab has waged an increasingly deadly war, and though it has lost ground it still controls much of the border regions of Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia. The SEAL was reportedly killed by small-arms fire Thursday in an operation near Barii, about 40 miles west of Mogadishu. Reuters reported that U.S. troops were assisting in a mission to capture an al-Shabaab commander, possibly Abdirahman Mohamed Warsame, for whom there is a $5 million reward. Warsame was instrumental in planning an attack in 2015 on the Garissa University College in Kenya that led to 150 deaths, most of them students.

U.S. African Command released a short statement, with few details, saying the SEAL was part of a team assisting Somali troops to “degrade the al-Qaeda affiliate’s ability to recruit, train and plot external terror attacks throughout the region and in America.”

A spokesman for al-Shabaab told Reuters that U.S. forces attacked one of its bases in the Darusalam village. Speaking of the U.S.-backed Somali troops, he said, “They left ammunition and weapons on the scene and blood stains. First they had a helicopter which landed some kilometers away from our base, to which they walked. We inflicted heavy casualties—some forces died and others were wounded but we do not have the exact figure.”

The last U.S. military casualty in Somalia came about 25 years ago, during the Battle of Mogadishu—an episode detailed by The Atlantic contributor Mark Bowden in his book Black Hawk Down, which was turned into a film of the same name. That, too, was a U.S. special-operations forces mission, and came during the country’s civil war. The war began after the overthrow of the country’s dictator in 1991. Somalia then spiraled into a fractious battle between competing warlords. One of these warlords was Mohamed Farrah Aidid, who attacked UN troops trying to restore stability. In October 1993, the U.S. deployed a special-operations task force to capture two of Aidid’s lieutenants while they met in Mogadishu, and what was supposed to be a one-hour mission turned into an overnight gun battle, with 18 U.S. casualties. Aidid was later killed years later in a battle, but Somalia has remained in a state of conflict since.

African Union peacekeeping troops have been stationed in the country for 10 years, and in that time have pushed al-Shabaab from city centers to rural parts of the country’s west. The U.S. has aided in this fight, largely in covert missions run by special-operations forces groups.

At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this week, Army General Thomas, who oversees Special Operations Command, said there are about 8,000 special-forces members in more than 80 countries. They are tasked with everything from fighting terrorist groups, as in Somalia, to countering Russian aggression. In recent years, the U.S. has leaned too heavily on its special-operations forces, Thomas said. “We are not a panacea. We are not the ultimate solution to every problem, and you will not hear that coming from us.”

Under the Obama administration, and now under President Trump, these advise-and-assist missions are being widely used in place of large deployments of U.S. troops on the ground—particularly in northern Iraq, where U.S. soldiers are backing Iraqi government troops to defeat ISIS. In January, a SEAL was killed in Yemen during a similar mission against al-Qaeda. That was the first counterterrorism operation authorized by the Trump administration, and its first military casualty. In Somalia, the Trump administration has granted broader permission for the U.S. forces to carry out strikes, a sign the president is willing to increase engagement in the region.

At the hearing, Thomas cautioned that reliance on special operations alone is not a long-term solution.

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Actually, the U.S. Will Pay for the THAAD Anti-Missile System

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Mon, 01 May 2017 10:38:24 -0400

South Korea said Sunday the U.S. would cover the cost of deploying the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system, a contradiction of President Trump’s remarks just days earlier. Trump did not respond, but it seems he may have misspoken, or, as South Korea was told by Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, the White House national security adviser, the president was speaking “in a general context.”

South Korea said McMaster requested a conversation with his counterpart, Kim Kwan-jin, in order to clear up the confusion Trump created when he told Reuters that South Korea should pay for the $1 billion defense system. The statement ran counter to a previous agreement, according to South Korea, in which the allies decided the U.S. would cover the cost for the system, its operation, and maintenance. In return, Seoul would provide the land and support infrastructure. In the call Sunday, South Korea said McMaster “reconfirmed what has already been agreed.” Trump’s earlier comments, the statement said, were made in the context that the U.S. expects allies to share the burden of defense costs. But apparently not in this case.

The confusion came as tensions have dramatically escalated with North Korea, which test-launched another ballistic missile Saturday. The test reportedly failed, but its success had little impact on what has been an increasingly aggressive tone from the Trump administration. In the interview with Reuters Thursday, Trump even suggested there was a high possibility of military involvement. “There is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea,” Trump said. “Absolutely.” He did say, however, he would prefer a diplomatic resolution of the issue—but that one would be difficult.

The Trump team has been quickly reaching out to allies in Asia over concerns with North Korea. On Saturday, Trump spoke with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, even inviting the controversial leader to meet with him at the White House. He did the same with the leaders of Singapore and Thailand on Sunday. The focus now seems to be on diplomacy and making a show of a strong, united front. But U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday all options remain on the table—a longstanding U.S. position.

The THAAD system was moved this week to a site in Seonjgu, a county in the country’s south. Its arrival was met by local protesters, who worry the area will become a target for North Korea’s missiles. China has also complained about the deployment, and worries THAAD’s radar can penetrate its territory and undermine regional security. The THAAD deployment follows the dispatch of the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier and a nuclear submarine to the area, meant as a show of force.

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The Future of Deportations Under Trump

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 09:26:04 -0500

The deportation of Guadalupe García de Rayos in Phoenix, Arizona, may be giving the undocumented population in the U.S. its first sense of what the next four years will feel like. Rayos is a 35-year-old mother of two who has lived in the U.S. for 21 years. In 2008, local deputies caught her using a fake social security number after they raided her work, and since then she has been required by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to show up at regular interviews. Every year she’s talked to an agent, then been released back to her family in the U.S. But Wednesday Rayos was arrested, and on Thursday agents put her in a van to be deported back to Mexico.

In January, President Trump signed an executive order that vastly expands who the U.S. considers a deportation priority. The order received little immediate media attention at the time of signing, likely because of the many other controversial orders the president released simultaneously. The order is full of vague language, and interpreting it has left a lot of questions as to what’s in store for the country’s 11 million undocumented immigrants. Trump’s administration has said the changes were done to make the U.S. safer, ridding communities of criminals. This may, in part, be true, but it will be so because Trump’s order greatly increased the number of people considered criminals worthy of deportation. An estimate from the Los Angeles Times says Trump’s order could include as many as 8 million undocumented immigrants, all of whom would be eligible for deportation at any moment.

“This is designed so Kellyanne Conway and [Sean] Spicer can stand up and say, ‘Well, we’re prioritizing criminals,” said David Leopold, an attorney and past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, referring to the counselor to the president and the White House press secretary, respectively. “But in reality they’re going after anyone they can get their hands on—period. It’s a ruse.”

Rayos was 14 when she crossed the border in Nogales, Arizona. In Phoenix, she married, raised two children, and for a while she worked at Golfland Sunsplash, a water park in a city suburb. This was in 2008, when Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s deputies carried out regular immigration raids, and Rayos was one of those arrested. To get the job she used a fake social security number. So, when she was arrested, she was charged with a felony and spent six months in an immigration jail. After this she had an open deportation order, meaning ICE could her back to Mexico at any time. It chose Thursday to act on that order, and as she left the ICE facility in a van a group of protesters blocked its path. One man even tied himself to its tire.

People like Rayos were seen as the reason why, in 2014, Obama developed levels of deportation priorities. Obama deported more people than any other president—2.5 million—which earned him the nickname “deporter-in-chief” from immigration advocates. But Obama also prioritized who he deported, focusing on the “Bad Hombres,” to use a Trump reference. His plan created three strata of deportable offenses: at the top were violent felony offenders and people apprehended at the border; next were those with multiple misdemeanors, offenses like DUIs and domestic abuse charges, and also recent arrivals; lastly were people who’d come to the U.S. prior to 2014 and who’d been charged nonviolent crimes. The policy left enforcement up to ICE’s discretion, and it seemed for eight years Rayos fell in that lowest priority.

Immigration attorneys are still trying to make sense of the Trump’s order, mostly because of its vague language—probably done intentionally. The order, as Leopold pointed out after Trump signed the order, will follow through on Trump’s campaign-promise of mass deportations.

There is no priority anymore. The language in the order says that any unauthorized immigrant convicted of any crime can be deported. It makes no distinction between what type of crime this will be, which Leopold said has the potential to put murder on par with rolling through a stop sign.

One of the most controversial terms in the order is a line that makes acts that might “constitute a chargeable criminal offense” deportable. This has been interpreted as meaning an immigrant doesn’t have to be convicted of a crime, doesn’t even have to be charged with a crime, they just need to have probably committed one. Lawyers say this will likely be used to deport anyone who crossed the border outside of an immigration checkpoint. The distinction lies in whether someone overstayed a visa, or if the person crossed the border through the desert.

Migrants who come to the U.S. on a visa, then overstay their visa, pass through immigration checks. And because overstaying a visa is a civil offense, this would not be a deportable crime, Leopold said. But migrants who crossed the border through the deserts of any border state, avoiding customs checkpoints, would have committed a criminal offense by entering the U.S. illegally. If ICE agents can get an immigrant to admit they crossed this way, it could be taken as a “chargeable criminal offense,” and therefore a deportable offense. Leopold called it a “tool to criminalize the undocumented population.”

Trump’s order could also return the U.S. to a policy not in national use since 2007, when the Bush administration raided worksites and paraded handcuffed migrants in front of national media. These raids were used to reinforce the concept of self-deportation, an immigration philosophy that many Trump officials support. Its weapon is intimidation—creating the fear in undocumented communities that at their homes, their jobs, and in their cars on the road, looms the specter of ICE, and with it deportation.

Another tool implemented by George W. Bush, and that Trump will likely use, is giving back 287 (g) authority to local law enforcement. Trump’s order said explicitly that he wanted “to empower State and local law enforcement agencies across the country to perform the functions of an immigration officer.” The 287 (g) authority enabled any local jurisdiction with the right to question a person on their immigration status. If they couldn’t prove citizenship, local authorities handed them over to ICE. This was used most pervasively, and attracted the most attention nationally, in Phoenix.

There the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, led by Arpaio, descended upon mostly-Latino neighborhoods and stopped people for trivial traffic violations, emptied out restaurant kitchens, even arrested workers at local water parks, like in the case of Rayos. This authority was used as a way to question anyone who looked like they might be in the country illegally, and Arpaio’s office was later found by the Justice Department to be in violation of racial profiling laws.

Rayos has been called the first display of Trump’s new executive order. If that holds, then the rest of the nation may look a lot like Phoenix did this past decade, a time where undocumented communities lived in constant fear of deportation from local law enforcement, regardless of their crime, or if they were a mother who’d spent their entire adult life in the U.S.

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Trump Blames his Rift With the CIA on the Media

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 09:38:02 -0500

On his first full day in office, President Donald Trump spoke at the Central Intelligence Agency’s headquarters, standing in front of the Agency’s memorial to its fallen officers, and sought to mend his tumultuous relationship with Langley. Yet he never said the word “sorry,” to federal intelligence agencies for the many times he’s berated them.

Trump has castigated both the CIA, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, over everything from their investigation into Hillary Clinton’s role in Benghazi and her private email server, to their inquiries into hacks on the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) emails. But in his speech, he sought to blame his rift with the intelligence community on the press, implying the conflict was simply the invention of a hostile media.

The speech started a little before 3:20 p.m., lasted about 20 minutes, and veered from topic to topic. Trump opened by saying he thought the intelligence community were “special, amazing people,” then lamented how the U.S. never won wars anymore (“When I was young we were always winning things in this country”); he brought up ISIS (“It has to be eradicated—off the face of the earth!”); he mentioned the numerous occasions on which he’s appeared on the cover of Time magazine (“I have been on that cover 14 or 15 times”). He seemed to spiral around why he had come, making political jabs at the media to mixed success.

CNN reported that the crowd of intelligence officials were broken into two sections, with the main area full of agency staff, and a separate section in front of the lectern full of senior agency leadership, including agents. There was some applause at times from the all-agency section, CNN reported, but the leadership stood, looking stoic, and did not applaud.

"I am so behind you,” Trump said at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

"There is nobody that feels stronger about the Intelligence Community and the CIA than Donald Trump," he said.

They would “get so much backing” from his administration that they might beg him to stop backing them so much. They might even say, he suggested, “Please, don’t give us so much backing.”

Since winning the election Trump has chosen only to receive intelligence briefings once a week instead of each day, calling them repetitive, and leading some to question whether he held the agencies in much regard. At times, he has praised the intelligence community when they do something he approves of—like reopening their investigation into Clinton’s emails—and scolded them in statements or via Twitter when they do something that might harm his image.

For example, after reports that the intelligence community had concluded that Russia was behind the DNC hacks, which were intended to influence the election in Trump’s favor, Trump denied it. He seemed to take the news personally, as if it meant he’d not won the presidency on his own. In a statement, his transition team said, “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.”

What Trumped seemed to be implying was what he’s said many times before, which is that the agencies responsible for collecting intelligence across the world and keeping the country safe from threat are inept. Earlier this month, after numerous reports that intelligence agencies had linked Russia to hacking the DNC, Trump implied that Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, had better intel than they did.

Julian Assange said "a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta" - why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2017

As early as last week, in fact, Trump seemed to be picking a Twitter fight with the intelligence community.

Upset over the leak and publication of a private dossier compiled by a former British intelligence official filled with unsubstantiated claims about his connections to Russia, Trump scolded the intelligence community, comparing them to Nazi Germany: "I think it was disgraceful, disgraceful that the intelligence agencies allowed any information that turned out to be so false and fake out. I think it's a disgrace, and I say that ... that's something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do."

It was at that same conference in New York when he acknowledged for the first time that Russia might, possibly, have been behind the DNC hacks.

A few days later and Trump was criticizing the outgoing CIA director John Brennan, who resigned Friday, for comments he made that questioned Trump’s comprehension of Russia’s capabilities and intentions.

.@FoxNews "Outgoing CIA Chief, John Brennan, blasts Pres-Elect Trump on Russia threat. Does not fully understand." Oh really, couldn't do...
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2017

much worse - just look at Syria (red line), Crimea, Ukraine and the build-up of Russian nukes. Not good! Was this the leaker of Fake News?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2017

All of this had led some to believe there might be a four-year war brewing between Trump and the intelligence community, something that could lead to an unprecedented amount of leaks, departmental fighting, mass flight from intelligence jobs, or weakened intelligence gathering on threats to the country.

Indeed, earlier this month The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s transition team planned to hack the CIA’s budget, rearrange its personnel, and leave it a shell of itself.

It seems the press conference Saturday—though at times rambling—was meant to salve the the wounds Trump has himself created with intelligence agencies. He spoke casually at CIA headquarters, in his typical fashion, winking and joking. Besides, he said, he’s never had anything against the CIA. The entire thing was made up by the press.

“They sort of made it like I had a feud with the intelligence community,” he said, shrugging, as if it were ridiculous to think he’d ever done anything to disparage such “special, amazing people.”

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Trump Offers CIA Director Position to Kansas Representative Mike Pompeo

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Fri, 18 Nov 2016 10:34:23 -0500

Trump has offered the position of CIA director to Kansas Republican Representative Mike Pompeo, several news organizations have reported.

Pompeo was elected to Congress in 2010 on a wave of tea party support, and had never previously served in elected office. Pompeo initially supported Florida Senator Marco Rubio for president, but later backed Trump once it became clear he’d become the frontrunner.

Pompeo graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and Harvard Law School. He is a conservative who has pushed for limited government, is a leading critic on the nuclear deal with Iran, and is a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He was also a leading figure on the House Select Benghazi Committee, a panel created in 2014 to investigate the attacks on the American consulate in Libya.

After the committee released its official report, Pompeo and Ohio Representative Jim Jordan released their own separate report that strongly criticized then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s role in the attack, veering nearly into conspiracy. The independent report claimed Clinton knew terrorists were committing the attack “almost in real time,” but purposefully misled the American people to protect President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection bid.

Pompeo has also made controversial statements about Muslims following the 2013 Boston marathon bombing. In a speech on the House floor, he said all American Muslim leaders were “potentially complicit” in the attacks, and those that may follow, because they had not done enough to condemned radicalization.

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Trump Selects Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions as Attorney General

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Fri, 18 Nov 2016 10:15:45 -0500

President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly chosen Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions as attorney general.

Sessions, a conservative elected to the Senate in 1996, also serves on the Judiciary Committee. He has opposed immigration reform and the bipartisan move to cut mandatory minimum sentences. Sessions had been nominated by Ronald Reagan for a federal judgeship in 1986 but was rejected by the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee at the time—only one of two judicial nominees blocked by the panel in 50 years—after his colleagues brought up a long history of racist remarks he’d made.

In the testimony, colleagues said he’d referred to the NAACP as an “un-American” group inspired by Communists; he’d referred to a black federal prosecutor as “boy,” and he reportedly said he thought the Klu Klux Klan “was O.K. until I found out they smoked pot.” Sessions was one of the earliest supporters of the Trump campaign.

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The Suspension of U.S.-Russian Cooperation in Syria

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Tue, 04 Oct 2016 09:47:34 -0400

The U.S. State Department said Monday the U.S. was suspending bilateral talks with Russia over the situation in Aleppo, Syria.

Here’s more from its statement:

This is not a decision that was taken lightly. The United States spared no effort in negotiating and attempting to implement an arrangement with Russia aimed at reducing violence, providing unhindered humanitarian access, and degrading terrorist organizations operating in Syria, including Daesh and al Qaeda in Syria.

Unfortunately, Russia failed to live up to its own commitments - including its obligations under international humanitarian law and UNSCR 2254 - and was also either unwilling or unable to ensure Syrian regime adherence to the arrangements to which Moscow agreed.

Indeed, the statement said, Russia and Syria had intensified their attacks on rebel-held parts of Aleppo, were preventing aid from reaching civilians, and had targeted a humanitarian convoy last month, soon after the weeklong cease-fire—brought about following U.S.-Russian negotiations—broke down. The development comes just a week after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry threatened to cut off talks with Russia after it was accused of bombing the convoy.

Since the cease-fire ended September 19, things have drastically devolved. The U.S. had bombed Syrian government forces, which it called an accident, having mistaken them for Islamic State militants. The U.S. then accused Syrian and Russian forces of bombing the convoy, and last week it accused both countries of using bunker-buster bombs to blow up civilian shelters dug beneath the ground. Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, said the bombings destroyed three out of four centers used by the White Helmets, a volunteer emergency-services groups that pulls injured citizens from bombed buildings.

Aleppo is the largest city in Syria, and the last significant stronghold of rebel forces. It has become the focus of intense fighting in the five-year civil war, because while President Bashar al-Assad’s forces control the city’s western portion, rebels still hold much of the city’s eastern side.

With the suspension in talks, the U.S. will withdraw personnel it had sent to create a joint U.S-Russia center, which would have coordinated military operations and intelligence, the State Department said in its statement.

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A Mustard Gas Attack on U.S. Troops

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Fri, 23 Sep 2016 16:12:38 -0400

A top U.S. military official confirmed to a Senate committee late Thursday that the Islamic State used a rocket containing mustard gas against U.S. troops in Iraq.

The news came as members of the Senate Armed Services Committee questioned Marine General Joseph Dunford about an attack Tuesday on a military base near Mosul, in the country’s north. The general was addressing leaked news reports that investigators had found a black oily substance on a rocket that landed near the perimeter of the base. Dunford told the committee that investigators had assessed the liquid and found “it to be a sulfur-mustard blister agent.”

The news is concerning because this is the first time a chemical weapon has been used against U.S. forces in Iraq; though this is not the first time ISIS has used chemical weapons. As The Associated Press reported, Dunford told the committee that while it’s relatively limited, ISIS does have a “chemical warfare network.”

From the AP:

He noted that last week the U.S. military attacked a former pharmaceutical plant near Mosul in northern Iraq that U.S. officials said the Islamic State was using to produce mustard agent and other chemicals for military use.

No soldiers were injured in the attack, nor have any shown symptoms of exposure to mustard gas, a weapon banned by the 1925 Geneva protocol after the horrors of World War I. The gas is produced by burning sulfur and makes corrosive gas that blisters skin and lungs and can cause severe burns.

In Syria’s five-year civil war, both ISIS and President Bashar al-Assad are accused of using forms of chemical weapons. Assad kept a chemical weapons stockpile, and he turned it over to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in 2014. But it’s believed ISIS may have gotten its hands on some of these before the agency took full control. ISIS has fired mustard gas at soldiers and civilians before, as it did last year when it blasted dozens of mortar shells at the Syrian village of Marea.

The fighting around Mosul is expected to intensify, as Iraqi forces, backed by U.S. soldiers, push north into the city, which ISIS has controlled since 2014.

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A First Look Inside Border Patrol's 'Iceboxes'

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Fri, 19 Aug 2016 16:20:00 -0400

For years human- and immigrants-rights advocacy groups have accused U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) of holding people who illegally crossed the Southwest border in processing-facility cells that are too small, dirty, and kept so cold the cells have earned the nickname hieleras, or iceboxes.

The problem has always been that few people besides those held inside and CBP officers have seen the cells. But this week, for the first time, CBP released still images taken from video monitors in the cells. The images, unsealed in a lawsuit brought by the American Immigration Council, The National Immigration Law Center, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, show concrete rooms with no mats or beds, cramped, often with the migrants wrapped in survival blankets that look like sheets of tinfoil, huddled side-by-side as if for warmth. It’s impossible to tell the temperature in the cells, but the images seem to back complaints made for years against the CBP.

Here are a couple of photos, taken from a CBP facility in Tucson:

American Immigration Council

These CBP holdings cells are meant to house migrants for short periods, no more than 12 hours, according to a CBP memo cited in the lawsuit, which was filed July 2015 in a Federal District Court in Tucson, Arizona. But a report by the American Immigration Council, which was published Thursday, claims migrants are held for much, much longer. Here’s a graphic from the report, which shows the average stay ranged from 65 hours to 104 hours.

American Immigration Council

The CBP’s parent agency, the Department of Homelands Security (DHS), fought the release of the images, because it said the pictures could help criminals or smugglers track surveillance patterns, or learn how crowded cells were at certain times. The agency also said the pictures, which are snapshots from videos, don’t provide proper context to the situation. CBP has also said agents keep the cells at temperatures between 68 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

The legal fight over how long, and in what conditions, CBP detains migrants is part of a larger battle that involves detentions centers, the places where migrants caught on the Southwest border will stay for weeks, months, in some cases more than a year. It is there the migrant who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally will be processed by DHS, then given an immigration court date. Activists and advocacy groups complain that at almost every stage of an immigrant’s interaction with DHS, or the private contractors they hire to run some of their detention facilities, migrants are treated in ways that violate their human rights, and are kept for periods longer than DHS allows for, and longer than it discloses. DHS maintains that it treats all those detained at the border fairly.

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The Navajo, the EPA, and the Accident That Turned a River Orange

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 08:30:43 -0400

Leaders with the Navajo Nation said they will file a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency for its role in a large mine spill in 2015, which contaminated a major river with 3 million gallons of toxic acid and metals.

The Navajo Nation joins the state of New Mexico, which filed a suit against the EPA for allegedly causing the spill, known as the Gold King Mine Spill, and against the state of Colorado for not doing more to prevent it. The spill is still under criminal investigation, but a federal report released in April found the EPA at fault. The agency had drilled in the area to install drainage pipes below the Gold King Mine because small amounts of toxic water were flowing into the Animas River.

In August 2015, while workers contracted by the EPA tried to drain some of the toxic water, a massive blowout sent a mix of arsenic, zinc, lead, and mercury into the river, which turned the waters orange and flowed downstream, depositing more than 888,000 pounds of toxic metals in the water.

This is what the river looked like a day after the spill:

PHOTOS: A look back at the Gold King Mine Spill https://t.co/nIpRuSTPac via @denverphotos pic.twitter.com/ubB89Fef5U
— The Denver Post (@denverpost) August 5, 2016

The contaminated water flowed down the river and into New Mexico, Utah, and the Navajo Nation, ruining water supplies for towns and killing fish and wildlife.

The Denver Post reported attorneys with New Mexico estimated the damage resulting from the spill to be at least $7 million, and possibly $140 million more in economic harm, like reduced tourism. Leaders with the Navajo Nation have not said how much damage the spill caused to their communities. But in April, in his testimony to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye said the spill killed crops and eliminated farming jobs in the region that depended on the water.

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What the TSA Found in Carry-On Luggage Last Week

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Fri, 12 Aug 2016 15:39:05 -0400

If the Instagram account for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) tells us anything about the psyche of the United Sates, it is this: The country has asurprising interest in owning Batman-replica boomerangs; and Americans are locked and loaded, and they often forget this fact when flying.

Last week TSA caught a near-record 68 firearms in people’s carry-on luggage—including a 3D-printed pistol. That pistol was about five-inches long, plastic, and nearly made it onboard a plane in Reno, Nevada. Luckily, it was loaded.

#TSAGoodCatch - This inert rocket propelled grenade (RPG) was discovered last week in a carry-on bag at the Raleigh–Durham International Airport (RDU). If an item looks like a real bomb, grenade, mine, etc., it is prohibited. When these items are found at a checkpoint or in checked baggage, they can cause significant delays because the explosives detection professionals must respond to resolve the alarm. Even if they are novelty items, you are prohibited from bringing them on board the aircraft.

A photo posted by TSA (@tsa) on Jan 4, 2016 at 3:30pm PST

I say luckily because the metal ammunition likely made it easier to detect.

People flying in the U.S. try to pack some unconventional things in their carry-on luggage. At the Raleigh-Durham International Airport this year, officers caught one passenger with an inert rocket-propelled grenade in a carry-on bag. In 2014, someone in Northern California tried to smuggle a knife wrapped in an enchilada(an act TSA described as delicious not malicious). And each day TSA stops about seven guns from making it onto airplanes. This April, the agency caught a record-number: 73 in one week. This is a common occurrence in the U.S., as the cover story in The Atlantic this month points out. Even after 15 years of pat-downs, beeping metal-detector wands, full-body scanners, and shoe removals, TSA found more than 2,500 guns in carry-on luggage in 2015, more than 80 percent of them loaded. A 3D-printed gun, however, is new.

It’s not illegal to fly with a firearm. Legally, when those 2,500 gun owners arrived at the airport last year, they should have declared their firearm to airport attendants during check-in—a process that involves holding the gun, unboxed, in the airport to show the attendant it’s not loaded. The gun then flies with the other checked-luggage, safely in the plane’s cargo hold.

But carrying a firearm on a plane is a no-no. More than that, it’s illegal to take anything that even looks like a gun or weapon on a plane. This includes any type of replica firearm, ammunition, or explosive. No Batman boomerangs. No bath salts (not the drug) shaped like bottles of TNT, even if they were wedding mementos for a bride and groom whose names both began with “T.” And certainly no plastic guns.

Absentmindedness, the TSA points out in its blog, is often to blame for why officers catch so many firearms at security checkpoints. In many gun-friendly states, carrying firearms is simply a way of life. A Guns & Ammo article about how to properly fly with a firearm even began with the words, “If you’re like many of us, carrying a firearm doesn’t cease when traveling away from home.”

But gun owners are either growing more forgetful, or despite its 95 percent fail rate in detecting weapons, TSA is actually catching more guns at security checkpoints. From 2014 to 2015, TSA saw a 20 percent increase in firearms in carry-on luggage. That figure, seemingly, does not include replica guns, which is how the TSA categorized the 3D-printed pistol.

One of the 68 firearms discovered in carry-on bags this week was a printed firearm. It was assembled with parts made from a 3D printer. While this was a realistic replica, it was loaded with live ammunition. This was a good catch by the TSA team at Reno (RNO). While firearms are prohibited in carry-on bags, you can pack them in your checked baggage, as long as you meet the packing guidelines: bit.ly/travelingwithfirearms. With that said, we strongly suggest making yourself familiar with local laws prior to flying with a printed firearm. #TSAGoodCatch

A photo posted by TSA (@tsa) on Aug 5, 2016 at 7:26pm PDT

The gun TSA caught last week was smaller than the palm of a hand. It held five .22-caliber bullets, ammo typically used to shoot small game, like rabbits. It also looked identical to a derringer, a weapon that became synonymous with Western card sharks because it could easily be concealed, and was famously used by John Wilkes Booth to shoot Abraham Lincoln.

The TSA called the 3D-printed gun a replica. It’s unclear if that’s because the gun is made of plastic or because it lacked a firing pin, which would make it unable to shoot (though, in most cases, a firing pin can easily be added). Either way, some people in the 3D-printed gun movement are unhappy.

Three years ago, Cody Wilson, 25, a law student at the University of Texas, told the world he would print a gun. Then he did it. He called it the Liberator and he shared the design online, essentially making it available to anyone with a 3D-printer. The 3D-printing industry has tried to self-regulate by seizing machinesthat landed in the hands of companies devoted to printing guns, like Defense Distributed, a company that has 3D-printed high-capacity magazines for assault rifles like the AR-15s and AK47s.

Wilson’s design, the Liberator, is widely recognizable. As are many of the designs passed around in forums, and between gun-printing enthusiasts. But the design found by TSA is relatively unknown, according to an article in 3D Printing Industry.

Unfortunately, the TSA hasn’t released too much information about the gun that was found. It could be an ambitious plan by an amateur that was destined to blow up in their hand the first time they fitted a pin. It could also be a prototype for a company that intended to produce the gun legally. We cannot tell for sure.

All we really know is that 3D printed guns are in the news again and that is not good for any of us.

The Undetectable Firearms Modernization Act outlaws the creation of a firearm that a walk-through metal detector can’t spot. This is why, in order to stay within the law, 3D-printed gun designers add a metal component to their weapons, typically the firing pin. It wasn’t clear if the gun TSA caught had that required metal component, aside from the five bullets in the cylinder, which likely made it a lot easier to detect because ammo is metal (brass casings and lead bullets).

Since the 9/11 attacks, the government has invested billions in the TSA. Last year, when the department’s budget was $7.2 billion, the agency’s head lost his job after the department failed to catch undercover Homeland Security agents smuggling weapons or explosives 67 out 70 times.

Each week, TSA posts photos to its Instagram of the weapons it confiscates. Luckily, agents caught the knife inside the enchilada, and they caught the loaded 3D-printed pistol. But if TSA’s track record is correct, it means that of the 68 guns it caught this week, there might be many, many more it didn’t catch—metal, or plastic.

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That Wasn't An Earthquake

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Tue, 19 Jul 2016 16:28:52 -0400

Florida is home to several disasters: the hurricanes, the sinkholes that swallow homes, and the #Floridaman hashtag. It is not known for earthquakes. So when a magnitude-3.7 temblor struck 100 miles off the coast of Daytona Beach over the weekend, news outlets reported the phenomenon with headlines like this one from FOX4: Earthquakes in Florida?

But not so fast.

The U.S. Geological Survey picked up the rumbling around 4 p.m. Saturday. The shaking didn’t cause any damage––no earthquake has in Florida since 1879––and the Associated Press , local outlets , and Weather.com all quickly noted how peculiar it was. Some outlets even referenced another earthquake that hit in June , with the exact same magnitude, in almost the same spot. Was this the work of a dormant fault shaking to life?

On Monday, The Daytona Beach News-Journal cleared the mystery up:

It appears the “earthquake” detected on Saturday by seismographs as far away as Venezuela and across the United States and Caribbean was triggered by a man-made explosion designed to test the seaworthiness of a new U.S. Navy vessel.

It was called a shock trial, and this is the second in a series of tests like it since 2008. The first was in June, which explains the other rare “earthquake” reported off the coast of St. Augustine, just north of Daytona. The ship being tested is the USS Jackson, an anti-submarine boat that was commissioned last December. Essentially what happens during the shock trial is the Navy detonates a massive explosion––a magnitude-3.7 earthquake-sized explosion––right next to the ship in order to test the hull. In May, Rear Admiral Brian Antonio described what happens during a shock trial to the United Naval Institute News :

“This is no kidding, things moving, stuff falling off of bulkheads. Some things are going to break.”

The Navy informed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but apparently not any news outlets, or the U.S. Geological Survey, which recorded the explosion as an earthquake as far away as Minnesota and Texas.

Here’s a video of another shock trial on the USS Winston S. Churchill.

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The Missing 28 Pages

Matt Vasilogambros and J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Fri, 15 Jul 2016 16:16:17 -0400

Some 9/11 hijackers had links to officials in the Saudi government, according to 28 formerly classified pages released Friday from the joint congressional investigation into the attack.

NOTE 1 (p. 6)

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In 2002 a joint congressional investigation looked into possible intelligence failures that led to the attacks, but these 28 pages were kept classified, leading to speculation that they possessed details about Saudi links to the hijackers.

U.S. lawmakers had wanted to release the documents, but the FBI wanted the pages to remain classified—and indeed many details in the pages are redacted. As our colleague David Graham reported, former Senator Bob Graham of Florida, who chaired the Senate side of the congressional investigation, has tried to get the pages released for years. He has said there is no security reason for the U.S. government to keep them secret. And while he hasn’t been able to discuss what is in the pages because they were classified, he had promised “a real smoking gun.”

The pages that were released Friday appear to fall short of that promise—though they do raise questions about senior Saudi officials and their connections, sometimes tenuous, to some of the hijackers. The pages allege that while some of the hijackers were in the U.S., they were in contact with, and at times received assistance from, people in the Saudi government, including two Saudi intelligence officers. Officials in the Saudi government, including members of the royal family and embassy staff, at times provided large sums of money, fake passports, and information to people assisting the hijackers while they were in the U.S., the pages allege.

Here’s an example:

BANDAR (p. 18)

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Bandar, a close family friend of the Bushes, was Saudi ambassador to U.S. from 1983 to 2005.

The pages also criticize the intelligence shortfalls on the Saudi issue, saying:

In the view of the Joint Inquiry, this gap in U.S. intelligence coverage is unacceptable, given the magnitude and immediacy of the potential risk to U.S. national security.

Here’s more:

NOTE 3 (p. 11)

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One reason for this, the report explains, may relate to Saudi Arabia’s status as a U.S. ally. Indeed, Josh Earnest, the White House spokesman, said Friday the Obama administration does not think the release of the 28 pages “change conclusions about the 9/11 attacks.”

In a statement, the Saudi Embassy in Washington, said:

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia welcomes the release of the redacted pages from the 2002 Congressional Joint Inquiry. Since 2002, the 9/11 Commission and several government agencies, including the CIA and the FBI, have investigated the contents of the ‘28 Pages’ and have confirmed that neither the Saudi government, nor senior Saudi officials, nor any person acting on behalf of the Saudi government provided any support or encouragement for these attacks.

But the 9/11 Families in response said: “The Saudis are exerting extreme pressure on the Administration to protect themselves and to cajole Congress in hopes of avoiding the restoration of the long-held understanding of our law and setting good policy. And this very exercise of unacceptable leverage by the Saudis over our Government is precisely what the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act was meant to prevent.”

The 9/11 Families also called for Congress to pass the Justice Against Sponsor of Terrorism Act, which would allow families of terrorist victims to sue foreign governments for damages in U.S. courts. The Saudis are opposed to the legislation and the White House has said the president will veto any attempt to pass it.

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The Civilians Killed in U.S. Airstrikes

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Fri, 01 Jul 2016 16:30:36 -0400

The U.S. killed 64 to 116 civilian in drone strikes in areas outside those of active hostilities between January 20, 2009, and December 31, 2015, the White House said Friday. Between 2,372 and 2,581 combatants also were killed by the strikes in that period, it added.

The figures, released before the Fourth of July holiday weekend, are the first time the Obama administration has provided an accounting of those killed by the drone strikes carried out around the world. The figures are much lower than some non-governmental organizations had independently estimated.

In a statement, the Obama administration said:

… in releasing these figures, the U.S. Government also acknowledges that there are differences between U.S. Government assessments and reporting from non-governmental organizations on non-combatant deaths resulting from U.S. operations. Although the U.S. Government has access to a wide range of information, the figures we are releasing today should be considered in light of the inherent limitations on the ability to determine the precise number of combatant and non-combatant deaths outside areas of active hostilities, including the non-permissive environments in which these strikes often occur.

The government took its numbers from a report by the Director of National Intelligence that looked at 473 airstrikes made “outside areas of active hostilities.”

Governmental watchdog groups have put the civilian casualties at much higher rates. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, based in London, examined 424 strikes since 2004, and found between 424 and 966 civilian were killed. The New America Foundation, a security-policy organization based in Washington, D.C., estimates that since 2004, anywhere from 255 and 315 civilians died in U.S. airstrikes.

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Is Long-Term Immigration Detention Illegal?

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Tue, 21 Jun 2016 11:31:42 -0400

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider whether detained immigrants facing deportation must be allowed a bail hearing if they are held for at least six months, a decision that could have significant implications for immigrant-rights groups.

The case the court will hear dates back to 2010, when the American Civil Liberties Union brought a class-action suit against Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, a department of the federal government. The case includes about 1,000 immigrants in California who have been detained longer than six months, either for crossing the border illegally or because they were legal residents who committed deportable crimes. The ACLU argued that immigrants in detention centers who demonstrate that they will show up for court hearings and who pose no public threat deserve a right to a bail hearing. A California court ruled in favor of the ACLU, and on appeal, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld the lower court’s ruling in 2015. The Obama administration appealed the Ninth Circuit’s ruling, which set it up for review on the Supreme Court docket.

Reuters reported that in its appeal of the ruling, the U.S. Department of Justice said:

… the appeals court decision was “fundamentally wrong” because it dramatically expanded the number of people eligible for hearings and set a high bar for the government to argue that a detainee should not be released.

The ACLU responded in its court papers that the government had exaggerated the impact of the court injunction, which has been in place since 2012 and applies only to immigrants in the Los Angeles area.

The lead plaintiff in the case, Alejandro Rodriguez, was brought to the U.S. as an infant and became a legal permanent resident. In 2003, Rodriguez was convicted of drug possession and ordered to be deported. He spent three years in detention. Once an immigrant is held for at least six months, the average stay in a detention center in the Central District of California is 404 days. The ACLU argues that it is unconstitutional to hold someone for that long without a bail hearing.

The Court will hear the case in its next term, which begins in October and ends June 2017.

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No Alcohol for U.S. Sailors in Japan

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 15:39:37 -0400

U.S. Navy members serving in Japan have been banned Monday from drinking alcohol after a sailor with six times the legal limit of alcohol in her blood crashed into two people on the island of Okinawa, causing national outrage.

Here’s the statement from the commander of the U.S. 7th Fleet and commander of the U.S. Naval Forces in Japan:

Effective immediately, Sailors are prohibited from drinking alcohol, on and off base. Additionally, all off-base liberty will be curtailed. Sailors who live off base will be permitted to travel to and from work and engage in official actions such as childcare drop-off and pickup, trips to the grocery store, gas stations or the gym. The liberty curtailment will remain in effect until face-to-face training has been conducted by unit commanding officers, executive officers and command master chiefs with all personnel.

The alcohol restriction will remain in effect until C7F and CNFJ are comfortable that all personnel understand the impact of responsible behavior on the U.S.-Japan Alliance and the United States’ ability to provide security and stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific.

The move follows the arrest Sunday by Japanese police of Petty Officer 2nd Class Aimee Mejia, who is assigned to the Kadena Air Base, on suspicion of drunken driving. Police say she crossed into oncoming traffic and hit two cars head on, injuring two people. The crash itself came amid a monthlong curfew imposed on service members after an American contractor, a former Marine, was charged with the murder of a 20-year-old Japanese woman whose body was found last month in a forest.

Stars and Stripes reported that:

The order is the most wide-ranging restriction in several years for sailors in Japan, where the Navy has periodically ordered alcohol bans and curfews for all ranks, but particularly for younger, enlisted sailors.

Military officials said privately Monday that misconduct is taking up considerable time among senior leaders, stealing focus from the region’s myriad security challenges.

The restrictions covering off-base liberty will remain active until unit commanders, executive officers and enlisted leaders conduct face-to-face training with all personnel.

Okinawa is home to several U.S. bases, and more than half the country’s 50,000 troops in Japan are stationed there. The recent murder charges, as well as the crash and other U.S.-linked incidents, threaten to reignite the kind of protests against U.S. bases on the island that were seen after three soldiers were convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl in 1995.

(Image via Flickr user toomore)

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An Investigation Into Wisconsin's VA 'Candy Land'

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Tue, 31 May 2016 15:31:14 -0400

A yearlong investigation into painkiller abuse at Wisconsin’s Tomah Veterans Affairs Medical Center is scheduled to be released Tuesday.

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has headed the investigation on the facility, which has been called “Candy Land” by some veterans because doctors there were said to easily prescribe painkillers. This report is a follow up to one conducted in 2014 by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, which found that over-prescribing painkillers may have led to three deaths.

The Military Times reported:

The VA probe also determined there was an atmosphere of fear among staff members, which affected patient care, and that those who spoke out were subject to intimidation.

Several Tomah VA officials — including former director Mario Desanctis and former chief of staff David Houlihan — have since been fired. Houlihan was nicknamed "candy man" by some patients for allegedly handing out excess narcotics.

The facility has been at the center of political attack ads during the U.S. Senate race between Republican Ron Johnson and Democrat Russ Feingold, who have blamed each other for ignoring the issue during their terms in the U.S. Senate. In 2011 Feingold lost his seat to Johnson, who now heads the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, the committee leading the investigation.

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American Eagle, Meet the American Bison

J. Weston Phippen, The Atlantic — Tue, 10 May 2016 11:00:00 -0400

President Obama signed the National Bison Legacy Act on Monday, making the country’s official national mammal the American bison, also known colloquially as the buffalo.

The bison joins the ranks of the bald eagle, which serves as the country’s national bird. Congress approved the bipartisan bison legislation last month. The U.S. Department of the Interior recalled Monday the bison’s tumultuous experience once the Europeans arrived on the continent:

In prehistoric times, millions of bison roamed North America—from the forests of Alaska and the grasslands of Mexico to Nevada’s Great Basin and the eastern Appalachian Mountains. But by the late 1800s, there were only a few hundred bison left in the United States after European settlers pushed west, reducing the animal’s habitat and hunting the bison to near extinction. Had it not been for a few private individuals working with tribes, states and the Interior Department, the bison would be extinct today.

Native Americans had long traveled beside the herds, using their meat, hide, and horns to survive. When European and American trappers started to travel west, they killed the animal for its fur. Bison hunting intensified in the 1860s, as railroads tied east to west and allowed people to reach once-desolate lands more easily. It brought people like William Cody, a U.S. Cavalry scout who earned the nickname “Buffalo Bill” for killing 5,000 bison in just 18 months. At one point, the U.S. military killed any bison it encountered, assuming that if the animals were eradicated, so too would be the Native Americans.

Today, there are 500,000 bison in the U.S., and about 10,000 of those live on public land and are overseen by the Department of the Interior. They roam in 17 herds in 12 states. Yellowstone National Park, the only place in the country where bison have lived continually, is home to the largest herd.

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