Archives for September 2015

A new government report shows the computer networks of 24 federal agencies still do not have adequate security systems in place and are vulnerable to cyber attacks, and former CIA Director R. James Woolsey says it’s completely unacceptable

“It needs to improve a great deal and it needs to improve fast,” said Woolsey, who served as the nation’s top intelligence official from 1993-1995.  He is now chairman of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

At issue is a Government Accountability Office, or GAO, study showing the government is still playing catch-up when it comes to cyber security.

“The GAO found ‘persistent weaknesses’ at 24 federal agencies, including deficiencies in how organizations prevented inappropriate access to computer networks, identified intrusions and planned for a network disruption,” reported The Hill newspaper, which also quoted the report’s diagnosis of the problem.

“These deficiencies place critical information and information systems used to support the operations, assets, and personnel of federal agencies at risk, and can impair agencies’ efforts to fully implement effective information security programs,” according to the GAO.

Woolsey says the feds continue to drag their feet on an issue proven by recent hackings to be a national priority.

“It is frustrating to find these things, report after report after report.  Such and such a group is behind, such and such a group has not gotten started,” said Woolsey.  “As MacBeth said, ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.'”

In June, the Office of Personnel Management reported a major hack of personnel files, most likely by the Chinese.  Over the ensuing weeks, the government admitted nearly 20 million personnel files were compromised along with more than five million fingerprints.

So is the sluggish response by the federal government simply the result of the time needed to implement major changes?  Woolsey thinks there is still not enough urgency.

“I think there’s still a kick in the pants needed.  I think people have not really zeroed in on how serious it is,” he said.

And if the government networks have suspect security, Woolsey says it stands to reason the private server emails of officials such as Hillary Clinton make an especially inviting target that our adversaries almost certainly pursued.

“Whoever discovered that and began to exploit it would be the toast of the town within Moscow or Beijing or wherever they found out about it,” said Woolsey.

The urgency also takes on greater importance when considering Chinese ambitions in their sphere of influence and Russian aggression that now includes bombing the non-ISIS opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“We’re in a situation now that is stunning, with Russia ordering us to stay out of their way in the Middle East.  Try to imagine what the response of Teddy Roosevelt or Harry Truman or Andrew Jackson would have been if the Russians has said, ‘Stay out of X,'” said Woolsey.

The former CIA boss says it is imperative that President Obama personally and publicly demand better from our government right away..

“This is something people are only going to pay attention to if the president makes it a high priority.  The problem is now, because he’s been running a weak foreign policy, he’s got to have a lot of priorities.  He’s got to put his finger in a lot of different dikes,” said Woolsey.

“One that he’s got to plug the leakage on is this and he needs to make it a personal matter that he brings home to all the agency heads in homeland security and defense and elsewhere,” said Woolsey.

While Woolsey sees no good excuses for government inaction, there are obstacles to progress, both political and technical.

“Some of it is concern about civil liberties that I think is manageable.  Some of it is the nature of the web.  Some of it is government bureaucracy not responding well and quickly to serious dangers because it interferes with the normal path of business,” said Woolsey, who adds that officials in the public and private sectors are sometimes reluctant to spend additional money on cyber security because they consider other issues more pressing.

Aside from the bureaucratic nightmares, Woolsey says it’s hard to keep developing tools to fend off the ever-changing cyber threats.

“You’re starting from a position in which you’re walking uphill in trying to make transitions and so forth on the web secure.  But it’s not impossible.  There’s a lot we can do that we’ve been slow on, but it’s a frustrating undertaking for a lot of people and it’s easier to play offense than defense,” said Woolsey.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review enjoy watching liberals get a shock from reports that Pope Francis met with and supported embattled Kentucky clerk Kim Davis.  They also slam the Obama administration for outsourcing Middle East policy to the Russians.  And they have fun with the Trey Gowdy rumors, ranging from a movement to draft him into leadership to rumblings that he will retire.

ISIS brutality continues to intensify, the future of Christianity in the Middle East is at stake, and the refugee crisis could soon be exponentially worse, but President Obama refuses to do much of anything, according to one of the nation’s leading voices on human rights.

Former Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., is now a distinguished senior fellow at the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative.  He says despite all the talk at the United Nations this week and over the past couple of years, no one seems willing to label ISIS atrocities for what they really are.

“The first thing we have to do to focus attention on the region is to declare what is taking place to Christians, Yazidis, Shia and other religious minorities is genocide.  It meets the Rafael Lemkin definition of genocide,” said Wolf.

Lemkin was a Polish-born Jew who escaped after Nazi Germany invaded in 1939.  Five years later he coined the term “genocide” and defined it.

“It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group” wrote Lemkin in his 1944 book, “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.

Wolf is mystified and frustrated by the failure of the United States or other leading nations to use the term in connection to the barbarity of ISIS.

“For the world not to be calling it genocide is unbelievable.  For President Obama not to be calling it genocide, for (U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations) Samantha Power who wrote the classic book on genocide (is unbelievable).  It is genocide,” said Wolf.

Wolf believes without quick action, ISIS will join the list of Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia as genocidal horrors we look back on and wish we had done something about much sooner.  He says not doing what is takes to stop ISIS is even more inexcusable than the others on that list.

“All the other people that have done genocide have tried to hide it.  ISIS is not hiding it.  They are showing what’s going on,” said Wolf.

Beyond Obama’s failure to label ISIS horrors as genocide or mount a concerted effort to defeat it, Wolf says the president does the effort great harm by downplaying the motivations for ISIS murders, by referring to 21 beheaded Coptic Christians only as Egyptians or 148 slaughtered Kenyan Christians only as Kenyans.

But it goes even further.  Wolf points to the Obama administration stopping the truth from coming out about what’s happening in ISIS-controlled areas.

“There were some Catholic nuns who wanted to come into the country and the administration denied their visa.  We were with Sister Diana a couple of months ago.  We wanted to bring her here so she could (tell what was happening).  The administration initially denied her visa.  There are some Catholic nuns who want to come over here for different reasons.  The administration has denied their visas,” said Wolf, who says the administration lacks a coherent approach to defeat the group responsible for the murders of several Americans.

“The administration, quite frankly they’ve been silent.  They really do not have a policy,” said Wolf.

He says the difference between the Obama response to ISIS and the George W. Bush response to another humanitarian crisis is stark.

“When (former Sen.) Sam Brownback and I went to Darfur, we came back, we put in a resolution.  Congress got behind it.  Colin Powell called it genocide in Darfur.  President Bush called it genocide.  This administration is doing almost nothing and the people there feel fundamentally abandoned,” said Wolf.

However, Obama’s inaction is not the only frustration for persecuted believers.  Wolf says they also want to know where their fellow Christians are.

“Almost to a person, every person we met with, particularly the Christian community, felt abandoned by the West.  The Yazidi community felt abandoned by the West.  I had a couple people say, ‘Doesn’t the church in the West care about us?” said Wolf.

Wolf says the tide can be turned and he believes a declaration of genocide against ISIS is the trigger to a meaningful response.

“The administration and the Congress and the UN need to call what is taking place in that area genocide.  By doing that, we will honor the victims but we will also begin to put in place a policy that deals with what’s taking place out there,” said Wolf.

As for the details of stopping ISIS, Wolf favors a multi-layered approach.  He advocates an oil embargo to cut off the revenue stream for ISIS.  He then favors direct aid to the Kurdish Peshmerga, rather than sending assistance through Baghdad where the Shia-led government only passes along a tiny fraction of materials to the Kurds.  Wolf advocates for U.S. special forces to provide training to the Peshmerga and to the Ninevah Plains Protection Unit, a collaboration of Christians, Yazidis and others committed to protecting their homeland.

Wolf and others from the Wilberforce Initiative went to Iraq in January and weeks later issued a bleak report on the future of Iraqi believers.

He says things are only getting more desperate.

“It’s intensified.  It’s much, much worse,” said Wolf.

Without intervention, Wolf says, the human toll will only swell and that means the refugee crisis hitting Europe will look like nothing compared to what’s coming.  In addition, he says the human tide entering Europe presents a major national security challenge.

“There’s a real danger.  I must say it.  Some of the refugees that are going to come in are going to be ISIS people.  There have even been reports that some of the people going into Europe are actually connected to ISIS,” said Wolf.

“It isn’t just Syrians.  You’re getting people from Eritrea, from Afghanistan.  Did you see what took place in that town in Afghanistan?  The whole town was taken over by the Taliban.  Unless ISIS is stopped, this thing is going to get so bad that Europe will not be able to withstand all the refugees coming,” said Wolf.

In another troubling twist, Wolf says Christians are rarely part of the refugee masses because they don’t feel safe among them.

“They are part of it but they are not part of the refugee camps, mainly because the Christians and Yazidis are fearful even when they’re in the UN camps.  I won’t go into detail what they said but they are very, very fearful.  You’re finding Christians and Yazidis generally going into individual homes.  Many of the Christians are not going north.  Many are coming into Lebanon,” said Wolf.

Wolf says the bottom line is that ISIS must be stopped.

“Call it genocide so we can mobilize the world to fight what’s taking place in the region.  Otherwise, during out lifetime, we’re going to see the extinction of Christianity in the cradle of Christianity,” he said.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Ian Tuttle of National Review are encouraged by some of the conservative names being considered for House majority leader.  They also shudder as Vladimir Putin swoops in as leader on the world stage as Obama retreats.  And they shake their heads as Obama warns Iran that shouting “Death to America” doesn’t create jobs.

The congressman who first challenged House Speaker John Boehner for his job at the beginning of the year says he’s not surprised by Boehner’s resignation and implores House Republicans to worry less about the new leaders than to forge a commitment to solve the nation’s problems with a bold determination to pursue conservative principles.

Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., challenged Boehner for the speaker’s chair at the start of the 114th Congress in January.  Several other Republicans followed Yoho’s lead.  Boehner survived the insurgency but only after 25 House Republicans voted against Boehner.

While most of Washington was stunned by the timing of Boehner’s announcement on Friday, Yoho was not.

“It was anticipated.  We saw that coming.  There was just too much pressure on him to move on.  I’m not taking anything away from Mr. Boehner for what he has accomplished, but at this point in time in our country’s history, we need truly different leadership,” said Yoho.

On Friday, Boehner scoffed at suggestions he could lose a subsequent vote for speaker and that he simply didn’t want to put his members through another ugly, public fight.  Yoho says we’ll never know if Boehner critics would have won such a vote, but he says it would have been nowhere near the cakewalk that Boehner predicted.

“Yeah, it was going to be very contentious.  I say that because people were coming up to me that had talked to the rank and file and said if another vote came up for speaker, they couldn’t support him.  I think that was building up,” said Yoho.

Yoho and other conservatives have several frustrations with Boehner’s leadership, but he says the lack of principled planning to tackle critical issues was perhaps most aggravating and the new angst over the debt ceiling is a perfect example.

“We’ve had two years to deal with the impending debt and it’s not like it was going to go away.  It was going to have to be dealt with.  We started negotiating about five days ago,” said Yoho.

Yoho says House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers repeatedly asked Boehner for “conferences, strategy sessions, hearings to decide what we’re going to do about this” but he says Boehner never acted.

“There’s multiple examples like that.  We need to start solving the American citizens’ problems or the problems of our country,” said Yoho.

On debt, he says a long term solution wouldn’t be very difficult, especially after Congress kicks the can down the road to December.

“From this point forward, after we resolve it December 16.  It shouldn’t be an issue two years from now because we should have the funding mechanisms in place and reforms made to where we don’t have to have this discussion,” said Yoho.

The next chore for House Republicans is to choose new leadership.  As expected, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., announced Monday he would be running to replace Boehner.  Many reports suggest McCarthy already has enough GOP votes locked up to win the race.  Yoho isn’t ready to assume that’s the case.

“No, I think it’s open,” he said.  “Kevin’s well-liked but, leadership-style, what would be the difference between him and a John Boehner?”

Reports suggest that despite McCarthy’s closeness to Boehner, conservative members are warmer to him because he is more respectful and considers the opinions of all members.  Does that ring true for Yoho?

“No, I can’t say that,” said Yoho.  “Again, it’s not so much listening as the strategy.  It’s like why haven;t we been strategizing on the debt ceiling from two years ago?  Why are we not dealing with [Department of Homeland Security] funding that we fought at the beginning of the year.  The highway transportation fund bill is coming up real soon again.”

Yoho says Republicans need to get out of the habit of dealing with issues only while the clock ticks down to zero on various deadlines and then coming up with short-term responses that just set the stage for more dysfunction weeks or months later.

“These short term fixes waste our time because you’re always doing crisis management.  If you sit down in committees and you work through a problem and get membership buying into it, you do that by bringing members in and saying, ‘What are your thoughts on this?  How would you like to deal with this?’  If we did that, we wouldn’t have near the problems,” said Yoho.

However, the leadership gets sorted out, Yoho wants the GOP members to have a robust debate and get firm plans and promises from those vying for key positions of speaker, majority leader and beyond.

“I want to make sure we sit in front of conference, air our differences, and the people that want to run for speaker get vetted, kind of like a campaign.  You ask them where they’re going to be.  They have responses that are recorded so we do have accountability to people.  And we want an open process, where people come and they tell us what our agenda is and what we’re trying to accomplish for the next year and project into the next congress,” said Yoho.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review enjoy watching Hillary Clinton dig a deeper hole for herself over her email scandal as Democrats complain that the story is sucking all the oxygen out of the Democratic race.  They also shake their heads as CNBC still hasn’t set the criteria for GOP candidates to qualify for next month’s debate.  And they have fun with the news that Kanye West is very impressed by Ben Carson.

House Speaker John Boehner announced Friday he would resign from Congress October 30 and one of the core groups behind the tea party movement could not be happier.

“Great day for conservatives, great day for freedom,” said FreedomWorks President and CEO Adam Brandon, who organization led petition drives and encouraged Americans to demand the resignation of Boehner.

FreedomWorks was a key player in organizing the tea party, which fueled public resistance to ideas like the Wall Street bailout, the Obama stimulus and the Obama healthcare overhaul.  Passage of those items and others despite public revulsion led to a Republican House majority in 2010.  Boehner became speaker, but Brandon says he failed to live up to the promises that made him the most powerful man in Congress.

Brandon says this is the latest win for the tea party and follows on the heels of a stunning rejection of the House GOP leadership last year.

“This started when Dave Brat defeated (then-House Majority Leader) Eric Cantor in Virginia.  After every one of those victories, you always hear the same thing.  ‘Oh, the tea party movement has died out.  Oh, it doesn’t have that much of a political bite in Washington.’  Every single time that happens, this roars back to life,” said Brandon.

“Speaker Boehner was defeated by members of the House Freedom Caucus and the House Freedom Caucus has its direct lineage in this grassroots movement,” he added.

On Friday, Boehner said he wanted to avoid a contentious vote inside the GOP conference but insisted he made up his mind that morning and was leaving on his own terms.  Brandon strongly disagrees.

“He woke up and realized after some meetings yesterday that this House Freedom Caucus was going to stay together and he was out of options,” said Brandon.

While the timing of Boehner’s decision surprised a lot of people, conservative discontent was palpable for years.  Just prior to the summer recess, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., introduced a resolution to remove Boehner as speaker.  It was not acted upon, but Brandon believes that was the handwriting on the wall for Boehner’s time in the speaker’s chair.

“Mark Meadows’ resolution was kind of a sword of Damocles hanging over the speaker’s head.  Everyone laughed at it and laughed earlier in the year at a motion in which 25 people back in January said they didn’t want the speaker.  I think people went from laughing to smirking to getting nervous,” said Brandon, who says anywhere from 50-70 House Republicans were ready to reject Boehner.

So why was a growing number of House Republicans ready to cast Boehner aside?  Brandon says there were multiple reasons, starting with high-profile failures.

“From ‘cromnibus’ to the failure to stand up on Iran to a failure to do anything real big, that’s not why you have a Republican majority.  You have a Republican majority to do things and they weren’t really doing anything,” said Brandon.  “There were over 40 or 50 show votes on Obamacare but when it really came to defund Obamacare, nothing happened.”

Another point of frustration for many grassroots activists was their belief that Boehner constantly surrendered ground to the president.

“There was too much negotiating against himself and not enough standing up to President Obama.  President Obama has been relentless in pursuing his agenda.  He puts his lines in the sand down on ‘if you don’t fund Planned Parenthood, I’m going to veto everything.’ Then Boehner would quickly go back and say, ‘Oh okay, how about this?  How about this?'” said Brandon.

Brandon says that was a sure-fire prescription for failure.

“That’s not how you negotiate.  You negotiate from a position of strength.  ‘Here’s what we demand.  Here’s where we are.  You say where you are and then we’ll sit across the table,” added Brandon.

Boehner and his allies often made the case that tea party demands were unrealistic, noting there was only so much Republicans could so long as Obama was in the White House and Democrats ran the Senate until this year.

Brandon is having none of that.

“That is the lamest excuse in the world.  So basically when everything’s perfect and there’s sunshine, we can play baseball.  No, you have a Republican majority in the Senate.  You have a Republican majority in the House.  Do something with it,” said Brandon.

Most reports suggest House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is likely to succeed Boehner as speaker.  Brandon isn’t convinced that’s a slam dunk.

“I think there’s going to be a very robust battle for speaker.  I would love to see someone like Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) step up.  Jeb Hensarling is responsible for stopping the Import-Export Bank.  He’s always stood on principle.  Let’s get someone like that in office,” said Brandon.

Even if McCarthy does become speaker, Brandon is hopeful he will have learned from Boehner’s fate.

“Even if it is McCarthy, I think he knows the only reason he’s majority leader is the tea party with Dave Brat beat Eric Cantor.  Now I think he knows the only reason he would be speaker is because the House Freedom Caucus beat Boehner.  He should have a pretty good idea of how he got to the office he’s in,” said Brandon.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Ian Tuttle of National Review discuss the sudden resignation of House Speaker John Boehner and his successes and failures during his time as GOP House leader.  They also slam the eight Senate Republicans who refused to back a continuing resolution calling for an end to taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood.  And they unload on Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz for suggesting Marco Rubio was being insensitive to Jews by holding a fundraiser in the home of a Texas man who collects many historical artifacts, including some from Nazi Germany.

China’s aggressive military buildup, troubling alliances and territorial ambitions all require firm resistance when Chinese President Xi Jinping visits the White House, but retired U.S. Army Maj. General Paul Vallely has no confidence that President Obama will do that in their face-to-face meetings.

In recent years, most national security concerns in the U.S. have focused on Russia and the threat of Islamic terrorism, but Vallely, who served as Deputy Commanding General, U.S. Army Pacific, says China is giving us plenty of reasons for alarm.

“They are developing one of the largest armed forces in the world, a very modern navy in what what we call a blue water fleet, (and) a very rapidly-expanding and modern air force.  Their high-tech capability now has expanded enormously over the last ten years,” said Vallely.

He sees two aspects of Chinese progress that give him the most concern.

“I think the expansion of their blue water fleets and the takeover of many island, expanding their influence in the South China Sea, even toward the Philippines is a major threat,” said Vallely, who also cited China’s development of long-range missiles.

The most example of Chinese aggression against the U.S. is the recent cyber attack against multiple U.S. government systems, most notably the hacking of records at the office of personnel management.  Some 18 million current and former government employees had data stolen in the attack and this week the government said 5.6 million had their fingerprint data compromised.

Vallely says that is another area of great concern.

“Along with that would be the cyber security threat that they have been exercising by hitting a lot of our computers in the government and also in our corporations,” said Vallely.

As for China’s long-term goals, Vallely believes the most urgent priorities are fiscal.

“Their long-term goals are economic and financial.  From that standpoint, we’ve seen what happened to our stock market because of the currency situation in China.  And of course they’re holding a lot of our debt that’s been issued on paper from our federal reserve,” said Vallely.

However, he says there are other ambitions as well.

“Their goals are their expansion of their power, expansion of their military, their influence not only over there but also their great influence in Africa now as well as in the Middle East,” said Vallely.

That influence in the Middle East is particularly troubling to Vallely, who says China and it’s proxy are helping Iran hide its nuclear progress.

“[China’s] client state, which is North Korea, has been working with Iran on the development of their nuclear weapons program and it’s why we’ve stated now nuclear weapons are already capable inside Iran because Russia and North Korea have done all the testing,” said Vallely.

According to Vallely, That’s a group of nation’s that spells bad news for U.S. interests.

“By working with what I call a cabal with China, Russia, North Korea to assist in support of the nuclear program of Iran has been all too apparent for many years,” said Vallely. “We’re actually enemies of all those states when you look at Russia, Iran, North Korea and China.  They work together against us but they use us when they can.”

Vallely says Obama could push Xi hard on any of those issues and more.  But he’s not holding his breath.

“There are a number of subjects that Obama could approach and relate to the [president] but of course Obama won’t focus on the real needs of what the major threats are.  I’m sure that [Xi] looks at Obama the way other leaders in the world do with not a lot of credibility and not a lot of respect,” said Vallely.

The general says adversaries like Russia and China present challenges that Obama just isn’t prepared to meet.

“The problem is Obama’s not the kind of individual that conveys strength.  When you’re dealing with Russia and China, these are world class leaders and strategists.  They play hardball and Obama doesn’t know how to play hardball.  He’ll be at a disadvantage in any engagement or discussion,” said Vallely.

Vallely says the president should make it clear that the U.S. will not tolerate Chinese aggression.

“Certainly put forth that the U.S. is standing tall in the world.  We are updating our capability to meet all threats and we will meet those threats.  That’s what he should say but Lord knows what he’ll end up saying.  I’m sure it’ll be from a position of weakness, which is too bad,” said Vallely.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review react to reports that State Department employees are tired of Hillary Clinton blaming her email scandal on them.  They also scratch their heads as liberal columnist Frank Rich says Republicans are supporting Ben Carson’s comments in opposition to a Muslim president because they’re racist and bigoted.  And Donald Trump is now waging fights against Fox News, Club for Growth and National Review Editor Rich Lowry.

Content of third martini includes terminology some may find uncomfortable but is unavoidable in covering the story.