(The Blaze/AP)– A Lebanese national who U.S. authorities say is the ringleader of a vast international drug smuggling ring with links to the militant group Hezbollah has been indicted on drug and money laundering charges after allegedly reaping more than $850 million in illicit profits. The indictment was announced Tuesday in federal court in Alexandria against Ayman Joumaa, who is currently at large. It alleges he led a conspiracy that, among other activities, sold nearly 100 tons of Colombian cocaine to the Zetas drug cartel in Mexico between 2005 and 2007 that was ultimately smuggled into the United States. The conspiracy has run since at least 2004 and at times brought in as much as $200 million in a single month, according to court documents. Earlier this year, the Treasury Department designated Joumaa as a drug trafficker and said Hezbollah profited from his network. Specifically, Treasury accused a major Lebanese bank, the Lebanese Canadian Bank, of being complicit in Joumaa’s money laundering and turning a blind eye to massive cash transactions. One of the members of Joumaa’s network is a suspected Hezbollah supporter, and bank managers had links to Hezbollah officials, according to the Treasury Department’s findings. The criminal indictment itself makes no mention of links between Joumaa, 47, and Hezbollah, which the U.S. ¬government has designated as a terrorist group since 1997. The court documents show that Joumaa’s network has played a major role in the global drug trade for years, helping Colombian producers get their product into the hands of cartels in Central America and Mexico, and from there into the U.S. “Money fuels the drug trade, and Mr. Joumaa is alleged to be at the center of it all … working with those producing the vast majority of the world’s cocaine to get their drugs safely into the hands of Mexican cartels,” said Neil MacBride, U.S.Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, whose office is prosecuting the case. “Organized crime networks know no borders, and neither can U.S. law enforcement.” The Drug Enforcement Administration led the investigation. The Lebanese Canadian Bank was sold to an affiliate of France’s Societe Generale in March to restore confidence after those accusations triggered concerns in Lebanon that the U.S.-would begin targeting Lebanon’s banking sector as a way to exert pressure against Hezbollah. Attempts to contact the bank for comment were unsuccessful after working hours Tuesday. Lebanon is a major financial hub for the Middle East and its banks, like those in Switzerland, have a reputation for secrecy. The indictment seeks the forfeiture of at least $850 million, the amount that Joumaa allegedly obtained over the course of the conspiracy, according to the grand jury.
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Report: Hezbollah Operatives Running Vast Drug Ring With Mexican Cartels
WASHINGTON (AP) — The CIA’s operations in Lebanon have been badly damaged after Hezbollah identified and captured a number of U.S. spies recently, current and former U.S. officials told The Associated Press. The intelligence debacle is particularly troubling because the CIA saw it coming. Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, boasted on television in June that he had rooted out at least two CIA spies who had infiltrated the ranks of Hezbollah, which the U.S. considers a terrorist group closely allied with Iran. Though the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon officially denied the accusation, current and former officials concede that it happened and the damage has spread even further. In recent months, CIA officials have secretly been scrambling to protect their remaining spies – foreign assets or agents working for the agency – before Hezbollah can find them. To be sure, some deaths are to be expected in shadowy spy wars. It’s an extremely risky business and people get killed. But the damage to the agency’s spy network in Lebanon has been greater than usual, several former and current U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about security matters. The Lebanon crisis is the latest mishap involving CIA counterintelligence, the undermining or manipulating of the enemy’s ability to gather information. Former CIA officials have said that once-essential skill has been eroded as the agency shifted from outmaneuvering rival spy agencies to fighting terrorists. In the rush for immediate results, former officers say, tradecraft has suffered. The most recent high-profile example was the suicide bomber who posed as an informant and killed seven CIA employees and wounded six others in Khost, Afghanistan in December 2009. Last year, then-CIA director Leon Panetta said the agency had to maintain “a greater awareness of counterintelligence.” But eight months later, Nasrallah let the world know he had bested the CIA, demonstrating that the agency still struggles with this critical aspect of spying and sending a message to those who would betray Hezbollah. The CIA was well aware the spies were vulnerable in Lebanon. CIA officials were warned, including the chief of the unit that supervises Hezbollah operations from CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., and the head of counterintelligence. It remains unclear whether anyone has been or will be held accountable in the wake of this counterintelligence disaster or whether the incident will affect the CIA’s ability to recruit assets in Lebanon. In response to AP’s questions about what happened in Lebanon, a U.S. official said Hezbollah is recognized as a complicated enemy responsible for killing more Americans than any other terrorist group before September 2001. The agency does not underestimate the organization, the official said. The CIA’s toughest adversaries, like Hezbollah and Iran, have for years been improving their ability to hunt spies, relying on patience and guile to exploit counterintelligence holes. In 2007, for instance, when Ali-Reza Asgari, a brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran, disappeared in Turkey, it was assumed that he was either killed or defected. In response, the Iranian government began a painstaking review of foreign travel by its citizens, particularly to places like Turkey where Iranians don’t need a visa and could meet with foreign intelligence services. It didn’t take long, a Western intelligence official told the AP, before the U.S., Britain and Israel began losing contact with some of their Iranian spies. The State Department last year described Hezbollah as “the most technically capable terrorist group in the world,” and the Defense Department estimates it receives between $100 million and $200 million per year in funding from Iran. Backed by Iran, Hezbollah has built a professional counterintelligence apparatus that Nasrallah – whom the U.S. government designated an international terrorist a decade ago – proudly describes as the “spy combat unit.” U.S. intelligence officials believe the unit, which is considered formidable and ruthless, went operational in about 2004. Using the latest commercial software, Nasrallah’s spy-hunters unit began methodically searching for spies in Hezbollah’s midst. To find them, U.S. officials said, Hezbollah examined cellphone data looking for anomalies. The analysis identified cellphones that, for instance, were used rarely or always from specific locations and only for a short period of time. Then it came down to old-fashioned, shoe-leather detective work: Who in that area had information that might be worth selling to the enemy? The effort took years but eventually Hezbollah, and later the Lebanese government, began making arrests. By one estimate, 100 Israeli assets were apprehended as the news made headlines across the region in 2009. Some of those suspected Israeli spies worked for telecommunications companies and served in the military. Back at CIA headquarters, the arrests alarmed senior officials. The agency prepared a study on its own vulnerabilities, U.S. officials said, and the results proved to be prescient. The analysis concluded that the CIA was susceptible to the same analysis that had compromised the Israelis, the officials said. CIA managers were instructed to be extra careful about handling sources in Lebanon. A U.S. official said recommendations were issued to counter the potential problem. But it’s unclear what preventive measures were taken by the Hezbollah unit chief or the officer in charge of the Beirut station. Former officials say the Hezbollah unit chief is no stranger to the necessity of counterintelligence and knew the risks. The unit chief has worked overseas in hostile environments like Afghanistan and played an important role in the capture of a top terrorist while stationed in the Persian Gulf region after the attacks of 9/11. “We’ve lost a lot of people in Beirut over the years, so everyone should know the drill,” said a former Middle East case officer familiar with the situation. But whatever actions the CIA took, they were not enough. Like the Israelis, bad tradecraft doomed these CIA assets and the agency ultimately failed to protect them, an official said. In some instances, CIA officers fell into predictable patterns when meeting their sources, the official said. This allowed Hezbollah to identify assets and case officers and unravel at least part of the CIA’s spy network in Lebanon. There was also a reluctance to share cases and some files were put in “restricted handling.” The designation severely limits the number of people who know the identity of the source but also reduces the number of experts who could spot problems that might lead to their discovery, officials said. Nasrallah’s televised announcement in June was followed by finger-pointing among departments inside the CIA as the spy agency tried figure out what went wrong and contain the damage. The fate of these CIA assets is unknown. Hezbollah treats spies differently, said Matthew Levitt, a counterterrorism and intelligence expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies who’s writing a book about the terrorist organization “It all depends on who these guys were and what they have to say,” Levitt said. “Hezbollah has disappeared people before. Others they have kept around.” Who’s responsible for the mess in Lebanon? It’s not clear. The chief of Hezbollah operations at CIA headquarters continues to run the unit that also focuses on Iranians and Palestinians. The CIA’s top counterintelligence officer, who was one of the most senior women in the clandestine service, recently retired after approximately five years in the job. She is credited with some important cases, including the recent arrests of Russian spies who had been living in the U.S. for years. Officials said the woman was succeeded by a more experienced operations officer. That officer has held important posts in Moscow, Southeast Asia, Europe and the Balkans, important frontlines of the agency’s spy wars with foreign intelligence services and terrorist organizations.
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CIA Scrambling After Spies Reportedly Outed in Lebanon
(The Blaze/AP) A Syrian peace plan brokered by the Arab League unraveled Friday as security forces killed 15 people, opening fire on thousands of protesters who denounced President Bashar Assad and said he never intended to hold up his end of the deal to end the violence. The bloodshed, only two days after Syria agreed to the deal, suggests Damascus is unwilling — or unable — to put a swift end to a crackdown that already has killed 3,000 people since the uprising began in March. “This regime is not serious about ending its brutal crackdown,” said Mustafa Osso, a Syria-based human rights lawyer. “Today was a real test for the intentions of the regime and the answer is clear to everyone who wants to see.” The crisis in Syria has burned for nearly eight months despite widespread condemnation and international sanctions aimed at chipping away at the ailing economy and isolating Assad and his tight circle of relatives and advisers. The protesters have grown increasingly frustrated with the limits of their peaceful movement, and there are signs of a growing armed rebellion in some areas. Some protesters even are calling for the kind of foreign military action that helped topple Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. But NATO has ruled out any plans for Syria, a country of 22 million with a combustible mix of sectarian and religious identities, and Assad still has a firm grip on power. The iron loyalty of his security apparatus sets the stage for an increasingly destructive fight over the future of a nation ruled for more than four decades by the Assad dynasty. Tremors from the unrest in Syria could shake the region. Damascus’ web of allegiances extends to Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement and Iran’s Shiite theocracy. And although Syria sees Israel as the enemy, the countries have held up a fragile truce for years. Thousands of protesters braved cold and rainy weather Friday after opposition groups called for a large turnout to test whether the regime would in fact refrain from using deadly force, as agreed under the Arab League plan. But gunfire erupted shortly after the protests began, following the same pattern seen during previous Friday protests for months. Al Jazeera on “Great Friday,” the deadliest day of protests in Syria: Low-quality video from the protestests posted on YouTube by NewsOnABC, SOME VIOLENT IMAGES: “Arab League, beware of Bashar Assad!” read one banner carried by protesters in the central city of Homs, which has turned into one of the country’s most deadly areas due to the military crackdown and what appears to be growing sectarian bloodshed. Two main activist groups, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordinating Committees, said at least 15 people were killed Friday, most of them in Homs and suburbs of the Syrian capital. The violence was a blow to the 22-nation Arab League, which announced Wednesday that Damascus had agreed to a broad peace plan that also called for the Syrian government to pull tanks and armored vehicles out of cities, release political prisoners and allow journalists and rights groups into the country. Officials from the Cairo-based Arab League could not be reached for comment Friday, the start of a holiday weekend. In Washington, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the Assad regime has yet to live up to a single commitment it has made to the Arab League. She said the government’s “long, deep history of broken promises” appears to be continuing. The Arab League plan presented flaws at the outset, in part because it did not provide for any repercussions if the regime reneges on its commitments. There also was no mention of any on-the-ground monitoring to supervise the regime’s actions. The government has largely sealed off the country from foreign journalists and prevented independent reporting, making it difficult to confirm events on the ground. Key sources of information are amateur videos posted online, witness accounts and details gathered by activist groups. The structure of Syria’s security forces also could prevent any immediate end to the violence. Assad, and his father before him, stacked key military posts with members of their minority Alawite sect, ensuring the loyalty of the armed forces by melding their fate with that of the regime. If the regime falls, the argument goes, the country’s Sunni majority gains the upper hand and the Alawites lose their privileged status. Although there have been army defections, they appear to be mostly Sunni conscripts, not high-level commanders. Adding to the violence are the shabiha, the mafia-style network of young Alawite men who act as enforcers for the regime. The Syrian deadlock, in many ways, is rooted in the country’s sectarian divide. The Alawites rose from economic obscurity after the 1970 coup led by Bashar Assad’s father, Hafez, gaining power and financial muscle in exchange for loyalty to the Assads. It is their support that the younger Assad sees as the key to continued power. Alawites claim they would be oppressed as Muslim heretics if the Sunnis come to power, and Sunnis claim they are unable to get the government jobs essential to reach the lower rungs of the middle class. The now-privileged Alawites, along with other minority groups who feel protected under the Assad regime, would see majority rule as a risk at best, a nightmare at worst. Syria blames the bloodshed on “armed gangs” and extremists acting out a foreign agenda to destabilize the regime. Assad has played on some of the countries worst fears to rally support behind him, painting himself as the lone force who can ward off the kind of radicalism and sectarianism that have bedeviled neighbors in Iraq and Lebanon. On Friday, Syria’s Interior Ministry gave one week for anyone who was involved in carrying, selling, buying or distributing arms to turn themselves in and benefit from a pardon. Analysts say Assad’s support is waning, and his backers are often motivated by little more than fear. In a report this week, the International Crisis Group said the support “is almost entirely of a negative sort: fear of sectarian retribution, Islamism, foreign interference, social upheaval or, more simply, anxiety about the unknown.”
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Syrian Forces Kill 15: Arab League Predicts ‘Disaster’ if Peace Plan Fails
At New York Times , ” Israeli-Hamas Agreement to Trade Prisoners May Reshape Politics in Region “: JERUSALEM — The prisoner exchange between Hamas and Israel that is expected to begin next week could reshape regional relationships, strengthening Egypt, Hamas and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel while posing an acute challenge to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. One result might be a more confrontational — and Hamas-imbued — Palestinian movement that could, in the long run, increase Israel’s difficulties, drawing inspiration from and invigorating popular protests across the Middle East. It could also tighten the relationship between Hamas, Egypt and Turkey. “Hamas has been in the shadows, and this moves it into the Palestinian forefront for now,” said Zakaria al-Qaq, a political scientist at Al Quds University in East Jerusalem. Under the deal, announced on Tuesday, Israel will free more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier seized in a cross-border raid by Hamas in 2006 and held ever since in Gaza. President Shimon Peres of Israel announced that Turkey, which has angrily downgraded its relations with Israel in the last year, had played an unexpected role in helping broker the deal. Turkey is close to Hamas. Some of the details of the Hamas-Israel deal have not been disclosed, making it hard to determine why the two sides suddenly came to agreement after failing to in past years, on what seem to have been similar terms. But the growing turmoil in the region played an important role, as did domestic politics. More at the link . I had a bad feeling about this when I first heard of the deal on Tuesday, especially that Israel was releasing 1000 prisoner, some the most hardened terrorists. Melanie Phillips has more, ” A Deal With the Devil “: The dramatic news this evening that Israel and the Hamas have agreed a deal which will see the return to Israel of its kidnapped solider, Gilad Shalit, will provoke the most bitterly mixed reactions amongst Israelis and all who care about peace and justice. If Shalit is indeed returned alive and well, it will of course be a matter for rejoicing that he is unharmed after his appalling five-year ordeal and that the terrible suffering of his family is now at an end. But the price that Israel has reportedly agreed to pay for his release is itself a terrible one which will have untold consequences. For Israel will apparently release 1000 Palestinian prisoners, including 400 serving long sentences for some of the worst terrorist atrocities in the country’s history. For the Israel Defence Force, it is a moral imperative to bring home its fallen or captured soldiers. But the terrible thing is that by releasing 1000 terrorists back to Gaza and the West Bank, it makes it more likely that not just the Hamas but Hezbollah in Lebanon too will redouble their efforts to kidnap yet more Israeli soldiers in order to further this devilish barter. So while this deal – brokered by Egypt and Germany — redeems one Israeli soldier, it puts more Israeli soldiers at risk. Moreover, it strengthens Hamas in Gaza — they are already boasting that this is a great victory — makes it more likely that more Israelis will be murdered by terrorism in Israel, and demoralises those IDF soldiers who brought these 1000 terrorists to justice in the first place. More here .
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Gilad Shalit Deal Rattles Mideast Politics
AP – The Obama administration is considering a military trial in the United States for a Hezbollah commander now detained in Iraq, U.S. counterterrorism officials said, previewing a potential prosecution strategy that has failed before but may offer a solution to a difficult legal problem for the government.
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Hezbollah leader could get military tribunal in US
(AP)
Hey, remember back in 2009 when Obama signaled he was willing to talk with the Taliban? And how back in March he was thinking about how to talk with the Taliban (and Hezbollah)? And in May, we learned he was actually holding peace talks with the Taliban? Yeah, how’s that working? Suicide bomb and gun attacks
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Taliban Attacks US Embassy In Kabul – Does Obama Still Want To Talk With Them?
From Caroline Glick, at Jerusalem Post : Israeli military preparedness follows a depressing pattern. The IDF does not change its assessments of the strategic environment until Israeli blood runs in the streets. In Judea and Samaria, from 1994 through 2000, the army closed its eyes to the Palestinian security forces’ open, warm and mutually supportive ties to terror groups. The military only began to reconsider its assessment of the US- and European-trained and Israeli-armed Palestinian forces after Border Police Cpl. Mahdat Youssef bled to death at Joseph’s Tomb in October 2000. Youssef died because the Palestinian security chiefs on whom Israel had relied for cooperation refused to coordinate the evacuation of the wounded policeman. Youssef was wounded when a Palestinian mob, supported by Palestinian security forces, attacked the sacred Jewish shrine. They shot at worshipers and the IDF soldiers who were stationed at Joseph’s Tomb in accordance with the agreements Israel has signed with the Palestinians. In Lebanon, the IDF only reconsidered its policy of ignoring Hezbollah’s massive arms build-up in the south after the Shi’ite group launched its war against Israel in July 2006. In Gaza, the IDF only reconsidered its willingness to allow Hamas to massively arm itself with missiles and rockets after the terror group running the Strip massively escalated the scale of its missile war against Israel in December 2008. It is to be hoped that Thursday’s sophisticated, deadly, multi-pronged, combined arms assault by as yet unidentified enemy forces along the border with Egypt will suffice to force the IDF to alter its view of Egypt. By Thursday afternoon, seven Israelis had been killed and 26 had been wounded by unidentified attackers who entered Israel from Egyptian-ruled Sinai and staged a four-pronged attack. The attack included two assaults on civilian passenger buses and private cars. The assailants used automatic rifles in the first attack, and rifles as well as either anti-tank missiles or rocket-propelled grenades in the second attack. The assault also involved the use of missiles and roadside bombs against an IDF border patrol, and open combat between the attackers and police SWAT teams. There can be little doubt of the sophisticated planning and training required to carry out this attack. The competence of the assailants indicates that their organizations are highly professional, well-trained and in possession of accurate intelligence about Israeli civilian traffic and military operations along the border with Egypt. Without the benefit of surprise, Thursday’s attackers will be hard pressed to maintain their offensive in the coming days. But the possibility that the assault was just the opening round of a new irregular war emanating from Sinai cannot be ruled out. Unfortunately, due to the IDF’s institutional opposition to confronting emerging threats before they become deadly, Israel faces the prospect of escalated aggression from Sinai with no clear strategy for contending with the enemy actors operating in the peninsula. This enemy system includes Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, and al-Qaida-affiliated Islamic terror cells. It also includes the Egyptian military and security forces operating in the area, whose intentions towards Israel are at best unclear. Previously : ” Terror Attacks Near Eilat Mark New Phase in Arab-Israeli conflict. ”
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Israeli Blood Runs in the Streets
Unmanned Aerial vehicles may be moving from far-off battlefields to the home front sooner than you think. And considering one just unveiled, you might want to start worrying. Wired is reporting on the WASP — Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform — a spy drone created by two security consultants with about $6,000 and a military surplus FMQ-117B target drone. Mike Tassey and Rick Perkins demonstrated the WASP yesterday at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. The capabilities of the clandestine mini-plane are breathtaking, according to Wired, comprising a: “Personal remote-controlled spy plane, complete with WiFi and hacking tools, such as an IMSI catcher and antenna to spoof a GSM cell tower and intercept calls, as well as a network sniffing tool and a dictionary of 340 million words for brute-forcing network passwords.” You can watch a test flight from May below: At a weight of only 14 pounds and six feet in length, the drone is much smaller than most military counterparts, making it even more suitable for use in heavily populated areas. While FAA regulations mandate that the plane must fly below 400 feet and remain within line of site, the drone is quiet enough even at that restricted altitude to hover overhead and collect digital data. On the technical expertise required to build and operate the WASP, Perkins said, “You don’t need a PhD from MIT to do this.” Perkins and Tassey created the drone to show others that it could be done, and to promote the possible positive uses of the technology as well as prepare the public for nefarious use in the future as well. Search and rescue attempts, disaster relief, and, of course, law enforcement surveillance could utilize a drone like the WASP. However, it seems only a matter of time before criminals and terrorists turn to this technology to steal data, jam communications, or conduct reconnaissance for attacks. In a well-publicized example, the Terrorist group Hezbollah back in 2006 apparently rammed an explosives-laden drone into an Israeli warship. As this technology continues to evolve, the public learns more, and the parts become less expensive, there is a good chance you might see something like this flying over your house one day soon.
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Want to See the Homemade Spy Drone That Can Hack Phone Calls?
