Years Ago, the Border Patrol’s Discipline System Was Denounced as “Broken.” It’s Still Not Fixed.

20190531-homeland-security-discipline-3x

by A.C. Thompson

Perhaps the most far-reaching idea was to reclassify the more than 40,000 Border Patrol agents and customs officers as “national security employees,” just as all FBI agents and employees at a number of other Homeland Security agencies currently are. Taking away their status as civil servants, the thinking went, would make it easier to fire corrupt and abusive employees.

It was, to be sure, an extreme measure. But the panel, a subcommittee of a larger Homeland Security advisory council, had been created late in President Barack Obama’s second term because U.S. Customs and Border Protection seemed in crisis, and the panel subsequently determined that the agency was plagued by a system that allowed bad actors to stay on the payroll for years after they’d engaged in egregious, even criminal, misconduct. Because of civil service protections, a Border Patrol agent who’d been disciplined for bad behavior could challenge his or her punishment through four rounds of escalating appeals before taking the case to an arbitrator or a federal hearing board.

And the panel — headed by William Bratton, who had run police departments in Boston, New York City and Los Angeles — was deeply concerned about the persistent strain of lawlessness among CBP employees. In a preliminary 2015 report, the panel had noted that “arrests for corruption of CBP personnel far exceed, on a per capita basis, such arrests at other federal law enforcement agencies.” CBP, the panel’s members concluded, was “vulnerable to corruption that threatens its effectiveness and national security.”

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The civil service idea, it turned out, was dead on arrival, one of any number of the panel’s recommendations that have failed to materialize. At least nine of the panel’s suggested reforms, first put forward more than three years ago, have been dropped or haven’t yet been fully put into practice, according to a CBP spokesperson. CBP officials rejected taking away civil service protections in part because it would anger the union representing Border Patrol agents.

“That was going to be a difficult one,” recalled R. Gil Kerlikowske, who served as CBP commissioner at the time of the panel’s reports on corruption and misconduct in 2015 and 2016.

The union did not respond to requests for comment.

CBP, and chiefly the Border Patrol, is again front and center as the nation confronts the volatile issue of illegal immigration. The administration of President Donald Trump has pledged to take the “handcuffs off” law enforcement agents as part of an aggressive push to stem the flow of migrants across the country’s southern border. The performance of Border Patrol agents was one element of the widespread outrage provoked by the administration’s decision to separate children from their parents at the border.

The agency, at least publicly, agreed with many of the advisory council’s recommendations when they were issued in 2016. And last year, Kevin McAleenan — then head of CBP and recently named by Trump to be the acting secretary for Homeland Security — told Congress that the agency had implemented 42 of the panel’s 53 recommendations.

A closer look, however, indicates that CBP has moved slowly on several central reform proposals. To cite one: The panel encouraged CBP to create a discipline czar, a high-level official who could track all the misconduct and corruption cases and keep the agency’s commissioner informed about them.

In a statement to ProPublica, CBP said the agency, more than three years later, was still “working on the best options to meet this recommendation.”

Perhaps most significant: The panel recommended that CBP hire 350 internal affairs investigators over a three-year period and task them with looking into misconduct and corruption. So far, the agency has brought on only about 50 investigators.

Some experts on immigration and border protection fear that the prospects for lengthy and lasting reforms of CBP have dimmed under the current administration.

“They’re dragging their feet,” said Vicki Gaubeca, director of the Southern Border Communities Coalition, an advocacy group focused on holding CBP accountable. “What’s the motivation behind this taking so long?”

Looking at his former agency, Kerlikowske said he was more optimistic about the progress CBP has made, noting that some key reform proposals had been enacted and are still in effect. “I think it’s trending in the right direction.”


CBP is a relatively new creation. It was formed in the aftermath of 9/11, in 2003, when federal officials took two distinct organizations — the U.S. Customs Service and the Border Patrol — and fused them into a single agency operating beneath the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security. (Several smaller agencies were also part of this reorganization.) It is now the nation’s largest law enforcement agency, a behemoth far larger, in both budgetary terms and personnel numbers, than either the FBI or the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Over the past 16 years, CBP employees have earned a reputation for both heroism and misconduct. Working under challenging conditions, they have disrupted dangerous smuggling rings and saved the lives of desperate migrants stranded in the scorching deserts of the American Southwest. But customs officers and Border Patrol agents have also run afoul of the law, often in extreme fashion. Every year, approximately 250 CBP employees are arrested, many on suspicion of serious felonies; dozens have been jailed in recent years on corruption charges, including weapons trafficking and collaborating with Mexican drug cartels.

During the Obama years, critics decried a series of incidents in which Border Patrol agents shot civilians, many of them Mexican nationals, often under questionable circumstances.

“It was a critical issue,” said Kerlikowske, who headed the agency at the time. “The Border Patrol was under a huge amount of scrutiny from the advocacy groups and the press.”

Kerlikowske and his deputies dramatically changed the agency’s policies around using firearms, bringing them in line with those of other law enforcement organizations. Shootings dropped precipitously.

But complaints of physical and verbal abuse by migrants taken into custody have not. According to a CBP document, each year the agency “receives and reviews hundreds of allegations” of excessive force. This year, CBP paid $125,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging that a Border Patrol agent groped the breasts and genitals of two teenage Guatemalan girls detained in Presidio, Texas. It’s unclear whether the agent at the center of the allegations has been disciplined or ousted from the patrol.

It was this sort of toxic behavior that Bratton and the other members of the advisory panel named by Obama were looking to address. Their assessment of CBP was stinging — the agency’s “discipline system is broken,” they wrote — and their recommendations were extensive, covering everything from the use of real-time GPS tracking to the deployment of body cameras.

Investigations into misconduct and criminality within the agency are handled by a host of different units with overlapping jurisdiction: local CBP supervisors; CBP’s nationwide internal affairs unit; the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general; the civil rights office at Homeland Security; and, in certain cases, the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice. The situation has led to bureaucratic turf battles and a general inefficiency, experts said.

The panel encouraged the two key players, CBP and the inspector general, to draft a formal memorandum of understanding laying out which cases would be investigated by the inspector general’s staff and which would be examined by CBP’s internal affairs investigators.

Three years later, the two sides have been unable to come to an agreement.

A CBP spokesperson blamed the impasse on the inspector general, who gets first crack at most misconduct investigations, saying the office “does not want to relinquish its first right of refusal.”

The inspector general’s office said it has a “productive working relationship” with CBP and its internal affairs unit. But the office believes that it, not CBP, should “investigate the most egregious allegations” of misconduct and that the inspector general’s staff should get the first look at those cases.

This week, the office issued a withering 69-page audit on disciplinary practices across the Department of Homeland Security, including CBP. According to the report, the department “does not have sufficient policies and procedures to address employee misconduct.”

CBP came in for particular scrutiny. Auditors surveyed more than 4,000 supervisors with the agency. Of those surveyed, 58% said they needed more training in responding to bad behavior by employees and taking disciplinary action. Thousands of lower-ranking employees who were surveyed expressed little faith in their bosses, with nearly a quarter saying that they feared retaliation for reporting misconduct by their colleagues, and more than 32% stating that they didn’t trust their supervisors to “take appropriate action to correct misconduct in the workplace.” Nearly 47% said they’d personally witnessed four or more acts of misconduct at CBP over the past three years.

The inspector general’s office has had its own embarrassments of late. This month, Acting Inspector General John V. Kelly resigned after the publication of damning media stories suggesting that he had improperly edited and revised the office’s reports on disaster relief efforts. Kelly insisted at the time that he had merely retired, although he said he had failed to set a tone of objectivity for his staff.

Few experts and advocates interviewed by ProPublica expressed faith in the CBP’s fragmented oversight system. They described it as a black hole, a vortex in which serious complaints are ignored or lost, simple investigations drag on for years, and victims are barred from learning whether the government employees who’ve harmed them have been sanctioned in any way.

“A multibillion-dollar federal agency shouldn’t work that way,” said Jeremy Slack, an assistant geography professor at the University of Texas at El Paso who studies migration patterns and law enforcement. The agency, he argued, has become secretive to a fault. “They’re not exactly open. A lot of the insight that I have comes from people who work at CBP and are afraid to go on the record.”

CBP said it is barred by federal privacy laws from disclosing the names of officers and agents sanctioned for misconduct. “However, to promote accountability and transparency, CBP does publish an annual discipline report containing aggregate discipline data,” said a spokesperson. The report tallies the number and types of misconduct investigations across the agency, but it does not detail the outcomes of individual cases.

Based in Nogales, Arizona, a small, dusty town in the Sonoran Desert, Joanna Williams works for the Kino Border Initiative, a Catholic group that aides migrants. She has frequent contact with federal officials.

In her experience, allegations of misconduct are frequently dealt with at the local level by supervisors, rather than professional investigators at any of the bodies tasked with overseeing CBP. In Williams’ estimation, the number of cases handled by local Border Patrol supervisors “far exceeds the number that are getting sent to the official investigators.”


Some of CBP’s reforms have clearly stalled, said Chris Rickerd, a senior policy counsel at the ACLU who tracks border issues, and Trump’s recurring rhetoric about getting tough at the border, Rickerd said, “sets precisely the wrong tone.”

Rickerd would like to see the agency get body cameras out into the field. While CBP has tested out cameras in two pilot programs, it still has not adopted the technology, which is common in many big city police departments. The cameras could help cut down on abusive behavior, Rickerd said.

In Kerlikowske’s view, Border Patrol agents would welcome body cameras. “The difficulty we had was finding a camera that could withstand the terrain,” he said of the harsh climate along the southern border. “The cameras we tested back then were pretty much gummed up by the dust or the dirt within about two months.” He also noted that at an agency the size of CBP, the costs of storing the vast amounts of footage accrued could be massive.

Bratton and his panel also encouraged CBP to revamp the penalties for employees who flout agency rules — and to create “mandatory consequences for the most serious offenses.” Today, the new penalty guidelines are still a work in progress. CBP said they are “currently under final review” but are not yet in effect.

Perhaps the most important recommendation made by Bratton and the other members of the advisory panel regarded staffing. In the view of the panel, CBP needed to add some 350 internal affairs investigators to keep up with the number of complaints streaming into the agency. The panel said CBP should hire them over the next three years.

Since then, the agency has added about 50 new investigators and said it has received funds to hire 30 more.

“They staffing component continues to be a concern. I’m glad they’re working on it. But they’re not there,” Williams said. “And, of course, I think there’s a role for Congress to make it a funding priority.”

Some wonder whether the union representing Border Patrol agents, the National Border Patrol Council, is working to stifle changes that would impact its members. The union has achieved a new level of prominence in the Trump era, with union head Brandon Judd appearing frequently on Fox News to champion the president’s hardline approach to immigration policy; Trump has often spoken and tweeted his support for Judd, a tough-talking veteran who has spent more than two decades with the Border Patrol.

The union did not respond to questions about its stance on various reform proposals.

“I think there’s a lot of resistance from the union,” said Slack, who is the author of “Deported to Death: How Drug Violence is Changing Migration on the U.S.-Mexico Border.” “The union is a very powerful voice for a much more radical vision of what border enforcement can be. They have a vision of the Border Patrol as a paramilitary force.”

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Opinion | Black People’s Land Was Stolen – The New York Times

the reparations movement today should be talking about the approximately 11 million acres black people had but lost, in many cases through fraud, deception and outright theft, much of it taken in the past 50 years. These property holdings could have provided a foundation for black wealth-building in post-Jim Crow America. Instead, they became a source of riches for others. Rather than helping to close the racial wealth gap, blacks’ landholdings became a key force in widening it. Black land-taking has been as instrumental as the denial of opportunities to acquire property in creating today’s racial wealth inequality and offers a more telling indicator of the barriers to upward mobility black people faced — and continue to face — in America.

Google: Security Keys Neutralized Employee Phishing

via aleksey godin

Google has not had any of its 85,000+ employees successfully phished on their work-related accounts since early 2017, when it began requiring all employees to use physical Security Keys in place of passwords and one-time codes, the company told KrebsOnSecurity.

A YubiKey Security Key made by Yubico. The basic model featured here retails for $20.

Security Keys are inexpensive USB-based devices that offer an alternative approach to two-factor authentication (2FA), which requires the user to log in to a Web site using something they know (the password) and something they have (e.g., a mobile device).

A Google spokesperson said Security Keys now form the basis of all account access at Google.

“We have had no reported or confirmed account takeovers since implementing security keys at Google,” the spokesperson said. “Users might be asked to authenticate using their security key for many different apps/reasons. It all depends on the sensitivity of the app and the risk of the user at that point in time.”

The basic idea behind two-factor authentication is that even if thieves manage to phish or steal your password, they still cannot log in to your account unless they also hack or possess that second factor.

The most common forms of 2FA require the user to supplement a password with a one-time code sent to their mobile device via text message or an app. Indeed, prior to 2017 Google employees also relied on one-time codes generated by a mobile app — Google Authenticator.

In contrast, a Security Key implements a form of multi-factor authentication known as Universal 2nd Factor (U2F), which allows the user to complete the login process simply by inserting the USB device and pressing a button on the device. The key works without the need for any special software drivers.

Once a device is enrolled for a specific Web site that supports Security Keys, the user no longer needs to enter their password at that site (unless they try to access the same account from a different device, in which case it will ask the user to insert their key).

U2F is an emerging open source authentication standard, and as such only a handful of high-profile sites currently support it, including Dropbox, Facebook, Github (and of course Google’s various services). Most major password managers also now support U2F, including Dashlane, and Keepass. Duo Security [full disclosure: an advertiser on this site] also can be set up to work with U2F.

With any luck, more sites soon will begin incorporating the Web Authentication API — also known as “WebAuthn” — a standard put forth by the World Wide Web Consortium in collaboration with the FIDO Alliance. The beauty of WebAuthn is that it eliminates the need for users to constantly type in their passwords, which negates the threat from common password-stealing methods like phishing and man-in-the-middle attacks.

Currently, U2F is supported by Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera. In both Firefox and Quantum (the newer, faster version of Firefox), U2F is not enabled by default. To turn it on, type “about:config” in the browser bar, type or paste “security.webauth.u2f” and double-click the resulting entry to change the preference’s value from “false” to “true.”

Microsoft says it expects to roll out updates to its flagship Edge browser to support U2F later this year. According to a recent article at 9to5Mac.com, Apple has not yet said when or if it will support the standard in its Safari browser.

Probably the most popular maker of Security Keys is Yubico, which sells a basic U2F key for $20 (it offers regular USB versions as well as those made for devices that require USB-C connections, such as Apple’s newer Mac OS systems). Yubikey also sells more expensive U2F keys designed to work with mobile devices.

If a site you frequent does not yet support WebAuthn, please consider hardening your login with another form of 2FA. Hundreds of sites now support multi-factor authentication. Twofactorauth.org maintains probably the most comprehensive list of which sites support 2FA, indexing each by type of site (email, gaming, finance, etc) and the type of 2FA offered (SMS, phone call, software token, etc.).

In general, using SMS and automated phone calls to receive a one-time token is less secure than relying on a software token app like Google Authenticator or Authy. That’s because thieves can intercept that one-time code by tricking your mobile provider into either swapping your mobile device’s SIM card or “porting” your mobile number to a different device. However, if the only 2FA options offered by a site you frequent are SMS and/or phone calls, it is still better than simply relying on a password.

While we’re on the subject of multi-factor authentication, I should note that Google now offers an extra set of security measures for all of its properties called Advanced Protection. Exactly how Google’s Advanced Protection works (and the trade-offs involved in turning it on) will likely be the subject of another story here, but Wired.com recently published a decent rundown about it. Incidentally, this article includes a step-by-step guide on how to incorporate Security Keys into Advanced Protection.

I have been using Advanced Protection for several months now without any major issues, although it did take me a few tries to get it set up correctly. One frustrating aspect of having it turned on is that it does not allow one to use third-party email applications like Mozilla’s Thunderbird or Outlook. I found this frustrating because as far as I can tell there is no integrated solution in Gmail for PGP/OpenGPG email message encryption, and some readers prefer to share news tips this way. Previously, I had used Thunderbird along with a plugin called Enigmail to do that.

Update, 4:09 p.m. ET: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that password manager LastPass supports U2F with Yubikeys. Several readers commented that LastPass in fact does not support U2F, despite literature on the company’s site that seems to suggest otherwise. I checked with the company, and they confirmed that only Yubikey plus a one-time password (OTP) will work with LastPass for now. From their statement:

“Although supported by some large organizations, including Google and Github, U2F still doesn’t have widespread support among web sites. Although we have been following its progress since it was first announced, LastPass does not support U2F at this time. Only Yubikey with OTP will work with LastPass right now. However, since Yubikey added U2F to their keys, they have a dual OTP+U2F mode, which is the default. The chip on the key can tell whether the computer is asking for the OTP or U2F, and to send the right response.”

Why Is Lying About Vaccines Not Criminal?

We are in the middle of the largest measles outbreaks in over 25 years.

Measles cases and deaths are on the rise all over the world.

Much of that rise, especially in the developed world, is because parents believe the misinformation that the vocal anti-vax folks are pushing.

Why Is Lying About Vaccines Not Criminal?

Which has to make you wonder – why is lying about vaccines and scarring parents into skipping or delaying vaccines not criminal?

A sociopath wrote this... Is that the one true statement in Kennedy's rant?A sociopath wrote this… Is that the one true statement in Kennedy’s rant?

For example, take the above Instagram post by Robert F Kennedy, Jr.

His claim that the “guidelines stipulate that a child would need to experience anaphylactic shock — a life threatening reaction — to EVERY vaccine-requiring eight near death experiences — to qualify for an exemption” simply isn’t true.

A severe allergic reaction is a contraindication to getting vaccinated.

If a child had a severe allergic reaction, anaphylaxis, to a previous dose of any vaccine or to a vaccine component, then they would get an medical exemption to that vaccine. They could also easily get a medical exemption to all other vaccines that used those same components, such as gelatin, eggs, or yeast, etc.

It is silly to think that you would have to have an anaphylactic reaction to each and every vaccine, as Kennedy claims, to get a medical exemption to getting vaccinated.

Did the CDC publish new guidelines in 2019 changing what is considered to be a contraindication, another Kennedy claim?

Mild to moderate local reactions and low-grade or moderate fever were removed as a condition commonly mispercieved as a contraindication or precaution, but that was done last January. There were no big changes recently!Mild to moderate local reactions and low-grade or moderate fever were removed as a condition commonly mispercieved as a contraindication or precaution, but that was done last January. There were no big changes recently!

Nope.

And the thing is, these things are incorrectly perceived as contraindications or precautions to vaccination because they are not a problem with vaccination!

You would have to be a sociopath to put kids at risk for a vaccine-preventable disease for no good reason!

For example, why skip the HPV vaccine just because a child is already infection with HPV? Are they infected with all of the strains of HPV that the vaccine protects against? There is no extra risk of cervical cancer from the vaccine if you are already infected, just the fact that you might get cervical cancer because you were already infected before you got protected from the vaccine!

Why is it not homicide to scare someone away from getting vaccinated and protected with a vaccine that prevents cancer by spreading this type of misinformation?

Why is lying about vaccines not criminal?

More on Why Is Lying About Vaccines Not Criminal?

The post Why Is Lying About Vaccines Not Criminal? appeared first on VAXOPEDIA.

Identifying the Separatists Linked to the Downing of MH17

The full report can be viewed here (mirror)

The Bellingcat Investigation Team has previously published a number of reports demonstrating that the deployment of the Buk missile launcher used to shoot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) over Ukraine on 17 July 2014 involved senior officers of the Russian Ministry of Defense and its military intelligence agency, the GRU. However, questions still linger over the involvement in the downing of other previously unidentified individuals. Who were the people heard on the intercepted phone calls published by the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) and the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) in the aftermath of the downing? What role did infamous separatist leaders such as Igor Bezler, Aleksandr Khodakovsky, and Igor Strelkov play in the operation?

Today’s new report from Bellingcat seeks to resolve these questions and to determine the identity of most of the individuals, hitherto unknown to the public, who were heard and/or referred to on the SBU intercepts. With this, the report provides further context around the intercepted phone conversations and reveals new potential suspects in the downing of MH17.

The first batch of phone intercepts allegedly linked to the downing of MH17 were released by the SBU on their YouTube channel in an attempt to convince the international community that the airliner was shot down from separatist- held territory. The published calls were just a small selection of the total inventory of intercepts captured in the period surrounding incident, and the JIT is known to have received from Ukrainian authorities data on about 150,000 intercepted phone conversations. An unknown portion of these calls contain evidence relevant to the MH17 case, and some were later published by the JIT both on their YouTube channel and during their press conferences as part of a call for witnesses, and as further evidence supporting their assertions regarding the events that led to and followed the tragedy.

Images of several recorded intercepted phone calls that were published by the SBU.

Intercepted phone conversations published by a government intelligence service, in this case the SBU, should not be trusted without verification, but there has already been a plethora of evidence from open sources corroborating the authenticity of the published calls. Several of these calls are intercepted phone conversations between separatists and Sergey “KhmuryDubinsky, the (ex-)GRU officer and former head of the intelligence of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (“DNR”) who oversaw the transport of the Buk-M1 missile launcher that downed MH17 over Ukraine. The transport route of the Buk-M1 discussed in these recorded conversations exactly matches the route along which the missile launcher was filmed and photographed in in eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014. Furthermore, separatist leaders Igor Bezler and Nikolay Kozitsyn have admitted that it was indeed their voices that are heard on the intercepts, and voice comparisons carried out by forensic analysts in two research institutions have confirmed the identity of Russian officers Nikolai “Delfin” Tkachev and Oleg  “Orion” Ivannikov, as described in previous Bellingcat publications.

The report released today provides further evidence that the publicly released phone intercepts are unlikely to have been tampered with, as critics have continued to allege.

Screenshots of videos of SBU recorded intercepted phone calls, released by the JIT.

In this publication, Bellingcat releases the actual names of several militants who featured on the SBU intercepts along with a preliminary assessment on their respective level of involvement in the Buk transport and/or the downing of MH17. Some of these identities have not been published before by Bellingcat or other media organizations. Below, an organizational chart shows most of the individuals heard or mentioned on the intercepted conversations within the hierarchical structure of the DNR in July 2014 (click here to see the image in full resolution)

The following overview shows the key individuals, who had a role in organizing or facilitating the transport of the Buk missile launcher that downed MH17 on 17 July 2014 is eastern Ukraine.

The Ministry of Defense of the DNR

Igor Girkin/Strelkov, call sign “Strelok”

Date of birth: 17 December 1970
Place of birth: Moscow, Moscow oblast, Soviet Russia
Nationality: Russian
Function in the summer of 2014: Minister of Defense of the DNR.

Link to MH17: We have identified former FSB colonel Igor Strelkov on one of the intercepts with Sergey Dubinsky from the morning of 18 July related to the removal of the Buk missile launcher from separatist-held territory in Ukraine to Russia. Since most of the separatists who can be linked to the downing of MH17 were his subordinates, it is likely that he was also fully aware of the procurement and import of the Buk from Russia. The full report describes his close cooperation in mid-July 2014 with Pulatov and Kharchenko, both of whom are believed to have provided security to the Buk near the launch site.

 

The GRU DNR

The “GRU DNR” (not to be confused with Russia’s military intelligence agency — the GRU) was the military intelligence agency of the Donetsk People’s Republic in 2014. It was headed by Sergey “Khmury” Dubinsky. The group coordinated the transport of the Buk through separatist-held territory on 17 and 18 July, and also provided security to the Buk at the launch site south of Snizhne.  This group may have also been involved in the decision to shoot down MH17. Although the GRU DNR was formally independent from Russia, allegations have lingered that it was actually controlled in whole or in part by the Russian GRU. Given Bellingcat’s previous reporting on the role of GRU’s Oleg Ivannikov in coordinating the delivery of the Buk to separatist-held territory, there is little doubt that the GRU and the GRU DNR closely coordinated at least some of their efforts in the summer of 2014.

 

Sergey Nikolaevich Dubinsky, call sign “Khmury”

Date of birth: 9 August 1962
Place of birth: Neskuchnoe, Donetsk oblast, Soviet Ukraine
Hometown: Rostov-on-Don, Russia
Nationality: Russian
Function in the summer of 2014: Head of the GRU DNR, subordinate to Strelkov. According to Ukraine’s official position, allegedly also a member of Russia’s GRU.

Link to MH17: Several intercepted phone calls indicate that it was Dubinsky who requested the delivery of a battle-ready Buk missile launcher to aid his forces at the frontline south of Snizhne, and that he personally coordinated the transport of the arriving Buk missile launcher to the launch site on 17 July. He was also involved in the removal of the Buk back to Russia after the downing of MH17. Furthermore, the full report demonstrates that Dubinsky also ordered some of his subordinates to secure the Buk near the launch site south of Snizhne, and that it was his group that may have played a key role in the decision to shoot down MH17 under the presumption that it was an enemy aircraft.

 

Oleg Yuldashevich Pulatov, call signs “Gyurza” and “Khalif”

Date of birth: 24 July 1966
Hometown: Ulyanovsk, Russia
Nationality: Russian
Function in the summer of 2014: Head of the 2nd Department of the GRU DNR, subordinate to Sergey Dubinsky.

Link to MH17: Oleg Pulatov is a (former) Lieutenant colonel in the Russian Armed Forces who has previously been identified as the man behind the call sign “Gyurza” who is mentioned on one of the intercepts. In the full report we provide new evidence confirming that Pulatov is indeed the man behind the call sign “Gyurza” and that he was likely involved in securing the Buk missile launcher at the launch site south of Snizhne.

 

Leonid Vladimirovich Kharchenko, call sign “Krot”

Date of birth: 10 January 1972
Place of birth: Kostyantynivka, Soviet Ukraine
Nationality: Ukrainian
Function in the summer of 2014: Head of the Krot Reconnaissance Battalion of the 2nd Department of the GRU DNR since 6 July. Before then, he was the garrison commander in his hometown Kostyantynivka.

Link to MH17: Kharchenko is found to be involved in the securing of the Buk missile launcher near the launch site south of Snizhne. He may have also coordinated the transport of the Buk from Donetsk to the launch site, and the subsequent removal of the Buk from the launch site to Russia.

 

Eduard Mashutovich Gilazov, call sign “Ryazan”

Date of birth: 27 March 1984 (missing and presumed dead since 27 July 2015)
Place of birth: Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk oblast, Soviet Russia
Hometown: Ryazan, Russia
Nationality: Russian
Function in the summer of 2014: Commander of the 1st Reconnaissance Company of the Krot Reconnaissance Battalion, subordinate to Kharchenko.

Link to MH17: Gilazov has been identified as the separatist commander who, in the aftermath of the downing, brought a member of the Buk crew who had lost the rest of the crew to his commander Leonid Kharchenko in Snizhne. He may also have been involved in securing the Buk near the launch site south of Snizhne.

Oleg Anatolevich Sharpov, call sign “Zmey”

Oleg "Zmey" Sharpov

Date of birth: 30 May 1972 (died on 3 November 2014)
Hometown: Kostyantynivka, Ukraine
Nationality: Ukrainian
Function in the summer of 2014: Platoon commander within a Reconnaissance Company

Link to MH17: Sharpov has been identified as the separatist named Oleg in an intercepted phone call with Leonid “Krot” Karchenko from 17 July 2014 at 1:09 pm. In this conversation, Sharpov asks Kharchenko about directions to the location south of Snizhne from which the Buk system launched the missile that downed MH17. As this conversation took place more than two hours before the downing, Sharpov was very likely present at the launch site.

 

The Bezler Group

The Bezler Group is named after “Igor Bezler“ (nickname “Bes”), a former officer in the Russian Armed Forces who, according to the SBU, was in service of the GRU during the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The Bezler Group controlled the area around Horlivka in the summer of 2014. Two telephone intercepts featuring Bezler have linked the Bezler Group to the downing of MH17.

 

Igor Nikolaevich Bezler, call sign “Bes”

Date of birth: 30 December 1965
Place of birth: Simferopol, Crimean oblast, Soviet Ukraine
Nationality: Russian
Function in the summer of 2014: Commander of the Bezler Group, alleged by Ukraine to be a member of GRU.

Link to MH17: Bezler is heard on the phone intercept with his subordinate Stelmakh who informs him that a “birdie” is flying towards him. Bezler instructs his subordinate to report this message “upwards”, and as such may have facilitated the spotting of MH17 as an enemy aircraft. Bezler is also heard on an intercept in which he reports the shootdown of an airplane to a person whom the SBU identified as a GRU agent named Vasily Geranin. Bezler has claimed that this recording was actually from 16 July 2014 — one day before the downing of MH17 — but in the full report it is explained that it is more likely that the message was recorded on 17 July concerning the downing MH17.

 

Sergey Sergeyevich Povalyaev, call sign “Botsman”

Sergey "Botsman" Povalyaev

Date of birth: 10 November 1976 (died of pneumonia in Russia on 6 January 2016)
Place of birth: Kaliningrad, Soviet Russia
Nationality: Russian
Function in the summer of 2014: Deputy commander of the Bezler Group, possibly a Russian GRU Spetsnaz officer

Link to MH17: In an intercepted phone call between Sergey Dubinsky and “Botsman” that took place shortly after MH17 was downed, Dubinsky tells “Botsman” that he received a Buk-M in the morning and that they just shot down a ‘Sushka’ (a Sukhoi aircraft). Aside from how “Botsman” was Bezler’s deputy, there is no direct link between “Botsman” and the downing of MH17.

 

Valery Aleksandrovich Stelmakh, call signs “Naemnik” (“Naimanets” in Ukrainian) and “Batya”

Date of birth: 1 August 1955
Place of birth: Dzerzhynsk, Donetsk oblast, Soviet Ukraine
Function in July 2014: Militia commandant of Dzerzhynsk until 21 July 2014, subordinate to Bezler.

Link to MH17: Stelmakh has been identified as the person with the call sign “Naemnik” (“Naimanets” in Ukrainian) who reported the spotting of MH17 as an enemy aircraft to Bezler a few minutes before the downing. Bezler also instructed him to report this message to “higher up”, which might indicate that Stelmakh relayed this message to the GRU DNR or another authority that was in contact with the Buk crew. The full report features a reconstruction showing that it is indeed possible that it was this message that had reached the Buk crew shortly before the downing of MH17.

 

Igor Ivanovich Ukrainets, call sign “Minyor”

Date of birth: 24 December 1971
Place of birth: Verbky, Dnipropetrovsk oblast, Soviet Ukraine
Nationality: Ukrainian
Function in the summer of 2014: Subordinate of Bezler and commander of an infantry unit known as the “Minyor Unit”.

Link to MH17: Ukrainets has been identified as the commander of the Minyor Unit, which was mentioned by Bezler in one of the intercepts in relation to the downing of MH17. Although it has been possible to confirm that Ukrainets was at the time a subordinate to Bezler, we found no evidence that suggests Ukrainets was involved in the downing of MH17. In the full report we discuss the possible explanations why Bezler had mentioned him in relation to the shootdown of the aircraft.

 

The Vostok Battalion

The Vostok Battalion was one of the largest separatist groups in the summer of 2014 and was based in Donetsk. It was headed by Aleksandr Khodakovsky, a defector from the SBU’s Alpha special forces unit. The phone intercepts indicate that the Vostok Battalion helped facilitate the transport of the arriving Buk missile launcher in Donetsk. Additional evidence suggests that its leadership also knew about the arrival of the Buk from Russia in advance.

 

Aleksandr Sergeyevich Khodakovsky, call sign “Skif”

Date of birth: 18 December 1972
Place of birth: Donetsk, Donetsk oblast, Soviet Ukraine
Nationality: Ukrainian
Function: Head of the Vostok Battalion and until 16 July 2014 the Minister of State Security of the DNR.

Link to MH17: As the head of the Vostok Battalion, it is likely that Khodakovsky helped facilitate the arrival of the Buk system in Donetsk, since the intercepts indicate that his deputy Aleksandr Semyonov helped coordinate the transport of the Buk in Donetsk. After the shootdown of MH17, he admitted in an interview with Reuters that he knew beforehand that pro-Russian separatists were going to receive a Buk missile launcher that would be transported from Luhansk to Snizhne, but he later retracted these statements saying that they were taken out of context by Reuters. The SBU intercepts also reveal that he had briefly attempted to hide MH17’s black boxes from the OSCE and other parties on behalf of Moscow, which he later also denied. In the full report we will provide further information that suggests Khodakovsy’s statements to Reuters were not taken out of context, and that he was indeed willing to hide the black boxes, most likely on behalf of officials in Moscow.

 

Alexander Aleksandrovich Semyonov, nickname “(San) Sanych”

Date of birth: 21 December 1967
Place of birth: Yenakieve, Soviet Ukraine
Function: Deputy commander of the Vostok Battalion and the DNR’s Deputy Prime Minister of Economy, subordinate to Khodakovsky.

Link to MH17: The phone intercepts indicate that Semyonov helped facilitate the arrival of the Buk in Donetsk in coordination with Sergey Dubinsky. One day before the downing, Semyonov was also informed by Dubinsky that the latter wished to receive a missile launcher for operations at the Marynivka front.

The post Identifying the Separatists Linked to the Downing of MH17 appeared first on bellingcat.

A US war with Iran looms. Don’t for one second think that it is justified | Owen Jones

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Trump’s allies will try to paint Iran as a threat, as they did with Iraq. We must not fall into step with their prefab bloodlust

We know how the story goes. The decision for war is made long in advance. That becomes the end point, and the evidence must be marshalled to achieve that goal. A long-lasting regime suddenly becomes an imminent threat. Exiles with minimal connections to their country of origin, but with fat bank balances, extensive links with rightwing thinktanks, multinational companies and western security services are wheeled out to solemnly declare that war must be waged on their homeland. A litany of never-ending human rights abuses is endlessly detailed: the sort ignored by our elites if they are committed by our allies, like the Saudi dictatorship, which has plunged Yemen into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Critics of war are demonised as stooges or useful idiots of an enemy that imperils national security and menaces its own people, and as haters of their own country.

While our Tory overlords committing to another military escapade is predictable, Trump’s ‘coalition’ will extend further

Continue reading…

Uighur author dies following detention in Chinese ‘re-education’ camp

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PEN America condemns death of Nurmuhammad Tohti, who had been held in a Xinjiang internment camp, as a grave example of China’s violations of free expression

The death of the prominent Uighur writer Nurmuhammad Tohti after being held in one of Xinjiang’s internment camps has been condemned as a tragic loss by human rights organisations.

Radio Free Asia reported that Tohti, who was 70, had been detained in one of the controversial “re-education” camps from November 2018 to March 2019. His granddaughter, Zorigul, who is based in Canada, said he had been denied treatment for diabetes and heart disease, and was only released once his medical condition meant he had become incapacitated. She wrote on a Facebook page for the Uighur exile community that she had only learned of his death 11 days after it happened because her family in Xinjiang had been frightened that making the information public would make them a target for detention.

Continue reading…

Reparations Hearing | The Anointed Opening Statement of Ta-Nehisi Coates

God Is In This

Ta-Nehisi Coates words were like King David’s slingshot against Goliath…

Author Ta-Nehisi Coates told lawmakers at a House committee hearing that the debate over reparations is “a dilemma of inheritance.” Coates called out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for saying a day earlier that reparations were not “a good idea” because no one who is currently living is responsible. Coates told lawmakers that many of the inequalities created by slavery persist today, including in the form of economic and health disparities.

Second Look Behind the Headlines – News you can use…

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