While Iran Tries to Kill US Soldiers, Biden Regime Provides It With Intel

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2024/01/while-iran-tries-to-kill-us-soldiers-biden-regime-provides-it-with-intel#; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

“The U.S. government provided Iran with a private warning that there was a terrorist threat within Iranian borders”

Iran controls and finances multiple Islamic terror groups, but being a Shiite state, there are Sunni Islamist terror groups that target it. Some of these are aligned with ISIS. Others have nationalistic reasons linked to the Baloch movement. And some have both.

Recently, an ISIS bombing attack at a commemoration ceremony for IRGC terror leader Soleimani, who was responsible for the deaths of many Americans, made headlines.

The Biden administration is now announcing that it tried to help Iran head off the bombing.

The U.S. secretly warned Iran that Islamic State was preparing to carry out the terrorist attack early this month that killed more than 80 Iranians in a pair of coordinated suicide bombings, U.S. officials said.

The confidential alert came after the U.S. acquired intelligence that Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan, ISIS-Khorasan, known as ISIS-K, was plotting to attack Iran, they said.

American officials said the information passed to Iran was specific enough about the location and sufficiently timely that it might have proved useful to Tehran in thwarting the attack on Jan. 3 or at least mitigating the casualty toll.

And, out of gratitude, Iran went on trying to kill American soldiers and chanting, “Death to America”..

The obvious question is why do this?

Do we generally intervene when terrorist groups fight each other? Why are we helping Iran, which is actively trying to kill American soldiers in Iraq?

During the Trump admin, we kept hearing that even mentioning that we had certain kinds of intel would potentially expose sources and endanger them. So why are those sources being exposed to help one of our worst enemies.

“Prior to ISIS’s terrorist attack on January 3, 2024, in Kerman, Iran, the U.S. government provided Iran with a private warning that there was a terrorist threat within Iranian borders,” a U.S. official said, using an acronym for Islamic State. “The U.S. government followed a longstanding ‘duty to warn’  policy that has been implemented across administrations to warn governments against potential lethal threats. We provide these warnings in part because we do not want to see innocent lives lost in terror attacks.”

The target was a memorial ceremony for Qassem Soleimani: a terrorist leader. There were as many “innocent people” there as at a memorial for Osama bin Laden, Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin.

Maybe the Biden admin didn’t know the target? But the previous high-profile ISIS attacks in Iran targeted the Iranian parliament and the told of Khomeini.

ISIS tends to hit sites associated with Iran’s Islamist regime. Attack warnings protect the Iranian regime, not the oppressed people protesting in the streets.

This is another unfortunate example of our government’s collaboration with our worst enemies.

There is no reason for us to intervene in a fight between two Islamic terror groups. Yet the Biden admin chose to do that in Syria and now Obama is doing it in Iran.

Biden Admin Tried To Keep Chinese Spy Balloon Incident Hidden From Public

OAN’s Elizabeth Volberding
3:20 PM – Tuesday, December 26, 2023

SEE: https://www.oann.com/newsroom/biden-admin-tried-to-keep-chinese-spy-balloon-incident-hidden-from-public/; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

According to reports, the Biden Administration’s top authorities had planned to “conceal” China’s surveillance balloon from Congress and the public, until civilians in Montana saw the enormous white blimp.

In a January 27th phone call between President Joe Biden’s top military adviser General Mark Milley and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) Chief General Glen VanHerck, which was recently revealed to the public, new information on China’s spy balloon shows that the Biden Administration initially planned to keep the balloon’s presence a secret.

In a new report from the press, a former senior authority claimed that the administration originally surveilled the Chinese surveillance balloon in an attempt to keep the situation under wraps.

“Before it was spotted publicly, there was the intention to study it and let it pass over and not ever tell anyone about it,” the former senior U.S. official told the press.

The Chinese spy balloon entered U.S. airspace on January 28th and was later shot down on February 4th after already floating over several nuclear missile sites.

However, claims regarding how the incident was supposed to be concealed were denied by a senior Biden administration official, who said that quick decisions were taken to safeguard critical intelligence capabilities.

“To the extent any of this was kept quiet at all, that was in large part to protect intel equities related to finding and tracking them,” the official told the press. “There was no intention to keep this from Congress at any point.”

Milley called VanHerck during the January 27th phone call and said that the Pentagon initially planned to deliver F-22 jets and additional aircrafts to measure its size and characteristics.

Shortly after the call, targeting pods were utilized by U.S. military jets to identify and define the object as “a balloon the size of three school buses that had a large surveillance payload but no offensive capabilities.”

However, VanHerck maintained that the Chinese balloon program is still active and that the U.S. has no capability of being able to locate or track their efforts.

“It exposed significant gaps, long range gaps, for us to be able to see potential threats to the homeland.” VanHerck said. “I think that opened the eyes of a lot of people.”

VanHerck added that the U.S. is “not where it needs to be” in the progress of “deterrence options.”

“Time is the opportunity to create deterrence options or, if required, defeat options,” he said.

Officials asserted that the reputational damage that the spy balloon would cause to China and U.S. relations was a far greater threat than the balloon’s actual entry into U.S. airspace.

According to a senior administration official, “it caused so many problems.”

The balloon was shot down over open water off the coast of South Carolina.

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Nancy Pelosi’s Daughter Caught on Hidden Camera Admitting January 6 Was a Hoax

Janet Van Ham

Nancy Pelosi’s nepo-baby, Alexandra, was caught on camera admitting essentially that January 6 and the ensuing prosecutions were a marketing gimmick to propagandize the public for the benefit of the Democrat Party.

The video, apparently filmed surreptitiously in the style of Project Veritas and released by CitizenLens, reportedly between Pelosi and a January 6 defendant she was courting so as to appear in her documentary of the event, featured Pelosi discussing the political implications of the Jan 6 show trials and their effects on the upcoming 2022 mid-term elections.

After the Democrats lose the House and then they get rid of the committee, people may lose interest. The first trials are gonna get a lot of attention. It’s like [an] anniversary; the first one is a big deal… No one’s gonna care after the Democrats are out of power. And then take Biden out of office, then who cares?...

I know you’re not the bad guys [to the Jan 6 defendant]…

If it was an insurrection… you were supposed to have a plan…. You’re going to be able to laugh about this one day.

She then goes on to explain how she knows Gavin McInnes (the purported former leader of the Proud Boys) and used, in fact, to party with him. She knows that he’s a provocateur and doesn’t actually mean what he says.

It’s all bread and circuses, people.

          RelatedWATCH: Latest Brigade of Suspicious Nazis Appears in Madison

Notice the dispassionate tone of the clip above in which Pelosi is soberly analyzing the political strategy behind the Jan 6 propaganda and the acknowledgment that what happened was not an insurrection compared to the unhinged public utterances of Democrat partisans about how THE LITERAL FOUNDATIONS OF DEMOCRACY™ ARE CRUMBLING IN REAL TIME AND HITLER IS ON THE MARCH.

… And it becomes very clear that the pearl-clutching and the Capitol police officer crying on the stand and Liz Cheney posturing as if she has any principles whatsoever was all a cynical weaponization of a one-off riot — not an insurrection by any means (the rioters didn’t even bring guns to the “insurrection” for God’s sake; who believes they were really trying to “take the Capitol”?) — for political gain.

It was a cheap trick. Alas, the MSNBC viewers of the world on their 12th boosters love cheap tricks.

Meanwhile, Alexandra Pelosi made out like a bandit, on top of all the political capital they squeezed out of Jan 6, with her stupid documentary and the fawning media coverage she got for it.  

Chinese Nationals ‘Posing As Tourists’ Have Snuck Onto U.S. Military Sites Over 100 Times

Chinese Nationals ‘Posing As Tourists’ Have Snuck Onto U.S. Military Sites Over 100 Times

(Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)

OAN’s Elizabeth Volberding
1:50 PM – Tuesday, September 5, 2023

SEE: https://www.oann.com/newsroom/chinese-nationals-posing-as-tourists-have-snuck-onto-u-s-military-sites-over-100-times/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Chinese nationals posing as tourists have reportedly snuck onto United States military bases over 100 times in recent years with the intention of collecting sensitive information about the U.S., according to the FBI and Department of Defense (DOD).

The recent discovery has now sparked several federal investigations regarding accusations of spying.

American authorities believe that the Chinese government is forcing citizens into service so that they can report to Beijing and reveal certain security protocols at U.S. installations, according to a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) story.

Therefore, the growing habit of breaching into military bases poses a possible espionage concern. 

Espionage issues refer to the discovery of secrets, especially political or military information of another country or the industrial information of a business. 

The WSJ also stated that the Chinese nationals represented themselves as “lost tourists” who claimed they had reservations at on-base hotels. The report described how trespassers would often use rehearsed and scripted language when confronted by security officials.

These incidents allegedly took place in rural areas where tourism is scarce and far from a commercial airport, which intensified suspicions surrounding their true intentions.

An anonymous former Senate Intelligence Committee official explained to the WSJ that this type of low-level Chinese intelligence collection is likely a numbers game, meaning that the Chinese government is willing to send a large number of people to the U.S., assuming that if only a few are caught, it would be impossible for the U.S. authorities to establish any connected foreign wrongdoing beyond trespassing. 

The former official added that similar actions of “brushing off” incidents such as trespassing would not be tolerated by Chinese officials if Americans were caught doing the same in China.

Representative Jason Crow (D-Colo.) of the House Intelligence Committee also expressed to WSJ that Congress could begin contemplating new legislation regarding the issue. He maintained that Congress should strengthen security measures at these sensitive sites, due to the rising number of breaching incidents that have been overlooked.

The majority of current trespassing laws are state and local laws, not federal laws.

“We need to work closely with our state and local partners to train them and equip them,” Crow stated. “Right now, they don’t know how to deal with it.”

An FBI spokesperson also responded to the WSJ report.

“The greatest long-term counterintelligence threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property is from China. The Chinese government is engaged in a broad, diverse campaign of theft and malign influence without regard to laws or international norms that the FBI will not tolerate,” the FBI spokesperson told Fox News. “In coordination with our defense and intelligence community partners, along with state and local law enforcement, the FBI is committed to protecting our national security and defense information from the Chinese government’s actions and ultimately, their efforts to undermine our democracy and those who defend it.”

Several U.S. officials informed WSJ that those responsible referred to as “gate crashers,” included Chinese nationals who were captured a few years ago. They had entered a U.S. missile range in New Mexico and scuba divers were seen swimming in murky waters near a rocket launch site off Cape Canaveral in Florida.

Additionally, some Chinese nationals allegedly utilized drones in sensitive areas in order to get close, in-depth aerial images of key military facilities around the country. The Pentagon reported instances of individuals “speeding through security checkpoints.”

Other instances of trespassing include Chinese nationals at the White House leaving their visitor tours in order to take photos of the grounds, communications equipment, and positions of Secret Service and other guards, according to U.S. officials.

Very few of these incidents had resulted in espionage charges.

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Mother Of Sailor Accused Of Espionage Urged Him To Work For China

Mother Of Sailor Accused Of Espionage Urged Him To Work For China

A view from behind the witness stand looking towards the gallery in Courtroom #8 which will be full of prospective jury candidates. (Photo by Spencer Weiner-Pool/Getty Images)
(Photo by Spencer Weiner-Pool/Getty Images)

OAN’s Roy Francis
5:11 PM – Wednesday, August 9, 2023

SEE: https://www.oann.com/newsroom/mother-of-sailor-accused-of-espionage-urged-him-to-work-for-china/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

The mother of one of the United States Navy sailors that has been charged with providing sensitive information to the Chinese had urged him to work with the Chinese intelligence officer, the prosecution said in court on Tuesday.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Sheppard leveled the accusation against Jinchao Wei during the hearing on Tuesday in federal court in San Diego. Sheppard also urged the judge not to release the suspect, although he did not name the mother in court.

Wei is one of the sailors based out of California that is accused of providing the sensitive information to China which included details on wartime exercises, naval operations, and critical technical material. The two sailors were arrested last week, although prosecutors have not confirmed whether the two had worked with the same Chinese officer.

U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman said that Wei had provided China with specific information regarding military hardware and movements.

“Wei provided China with photographs of military hardware, including guns, vehicles and planes,” Grossman said. “He delivered information about U.S. Marines involved in an upcoming international maritime warfare exercise.”

Wei, who is 22 years old, was charged by the Justice Department under an Espionage Act statute which makes it a crime to deliver information to aid a foreign government. Prosecutors said that Wei was first approached by the Chinese officer in 2022 while he applying to become a naturalized U.S. citizen.

On Tuesday, when arguing against the release of Wei, Sheppard said that the sailor who was originally born in China, went home to Wisconsin for Christmas to visit his mother. He said that the mother of the sailor knew of her son’s arrangement and had encouraged him to keep aiding the Chinese officer.

He said that the reason she had urged him to continue was that it might help him gain a job with China’s Communist party after he leaves the Navy.

Sheppard went on to say that the Chinese officer had told Wei that the Chinese government would fly him and his mother to China in order to meet in person. The 22-year-old sailor had then searched for flights to China for the spring.

The prosecutor also said that the Chinese officer told Wei to buy a phone and a computer in order to pass on information easier and that he would be reimbursed if he provided the receipt.

The indictment against Wei includes around 50 manuals that contain technical and mechanical data regarding U.S. Navy ships as well as details regarding an upcoming Marine exercise. The prosecution said that Wei’s actions had put thousands of sailors and marines at risk.

Wei is said to have made anywhere between $10,000 and $15,000 in the past year from his arrangement with the Chinese officer.

The judge ruled to keep Wei in federal custody without bond. If convicted, Wei could face up to life in prison.

The other sailor accused of espionage was 26-year-old Wenheng Zhao, who was based out of Naval Base Ventura County. He is accused of providing information, photos, and videos that involved Navy exercises, operations, and facilities between August 2021 and May of this year.

The information that he had provided included the location and timing of naval force movements as part of a future large-scale U.S. military exercise in the Indo-Pacific region.  

In return, Zhao had received almost $15,000 in bribes. Similarly, if Zhao is convicted, he could also face up to life in prison.

Both sailors have pled not guilty to the charges.

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U.S. Warships Respond to Chinese and Russian Patrols Near Alaska

U.S. Warships Respond to Chinese and Russian Patrols Near Alaska

AT SEA - AUGUST 20: (FILE PHOTO) In this handout photo provided by the U.S. Navy, the guided-missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) is underway on August 20, 2013 in the Pacific Ocean. Fitzgerald is on patrol with the George Washington Carrier Strike Group in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of responsibility supporting security and stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. (Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Paul Kelly/U.S. Navy via Getty Images)
(Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Paul Kelly/U.S. Navy via Getty Images)

OAN’s Roy Francis
11:38 AM – Monday, August 7, 2023

SEE: https://www.oann.com/newsroom/u-s-warships-respond-to-chinese-and-russian-patrols-near-alaska/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

The United States Navy has sent four warships and a reconnaissance airplane since its discovery that the Russian and Chinese navies conducted a joint naval patrol near Alaska last week.

🚨Update: Pacific Theater – A joint Russian and Chinese naval force is conducting a patrol off the coast of Alaska, in international waters!!

Eleven Chinese and Russian warships came close to the Aleutian Islands, but just short of entering U.S. territorial waters according to… pic.twitter.com/oK7OcIdzBK

According to experts who spoke with The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the combined naval patrol by Russia and China is the largest patrol of its kind to ever approach American territory.

Brent Sadler, a retired Navy captain and senior researcher at the Heritage Foundation, said that the actions by the Russians and Chinese were a “historical first.”

He also explained that due to the war in Ukraine, and the high tensions between the U.S. and China, such actions are “highly provocative.”

The United States Northern Command released a statement in which they confirmed the naval patrol and that maritime assets “conducted operations” to maintain the security of the U.S. and Canada.

“Air and maritime assets under our commands conducted operations to assure the defense of the United States and Canada. The patrol remained in international waters and was not considered a threat.”

Even though the command did not specify the number of Chinese and Russian vessels that were in the area or the exact location of where the patrol happened, senators in Alaska confirmed that the patrol consisted of 11 total vessels. They also confirmed that the patrol had taken place near the Aleutian Islands.

However, the spokesperson for the Chinese embassy, Liu Pengyu, said that the Chinese and Russian navies had “conducted joint maritime patrols in relevant waters” and the patrols were not “targeted” at anyone in particular.

“According to the annual cooperation plan between the Chinese and Russian militaries, naval vessels of the two countries have recently conducted joint maritime patrols in relevant waters in the western and northern Pacific ocean,” Pengyu said. “This action is not targeted at any third party and has nothing to do with the current international and regional situation.”

Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said that the latest operation by the Chinese and Russians is “yet another reminder” of the new era of “authoritarian aggression” from the two nations.

“The incursion by 11 Chinese and Russian warships operating together – off the coast of Alaska – is yet another reminder that we have entered a new era of authoritarian aggression led by the dictators in Beijing and Moscow,” Sullivan said.

He also compared the recent patrol to an incident during the summer of 2022, when seven Chinese and Russian ships conducted similar patrols in the area.

“Last summer the Chinese and Russian navies conducted a similar operation off the coast of Alaska,” Sullivan said. “Given that our response was tepid, I strongly encouraged senior military leaders to be ready with a much more robust response should such another joint Chinese-Russian naval operation occur off our coast. For that reason, I was heartened to see that this latest incursion was met with four US Navy destroyers, which sends a strong message … that the United States will not hesitate to protect and defend our vital national interests in Alaska.”

According to U.S. intelligence reports, Russia and China’s camaraderie and allied relationship have grown significantly since the conflict in Ukraine began in 2022.

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Emails of U.S. Ambassador to China Breached By Chinese Hackers

BY Shawntel Smith-Hill

SEE: https://www.oann.com/newsroom/emails-of-u-s-ambassador-to-china-breached-by-chinese-hackers/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Chinese hackers linked to Beijing breached the email account of United States Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, as well as several other top U.S. officials including the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, Daniel Kritenbrink, and Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. 

The breach comes amid a series of trips to China by top Biden officials and is a part of a larger intelligence-gathering campaign. 

Allegedly hackers were able to gain access to hundreds of thousands of U.S. government emails although they were reportedly limited to unclassified mail, officials from the Biden administration believe hackers may have gained insight into internal communications regarding U.S. policy. This comes as U.S. secretary of State Antony Blinken is slated to travel to China. 

The breach appeared to be surgical in nature, particularly honing in on a certain senior official tasked with managing the U.S. China relationship.

The hackers were able to leverage a flaw in Microsoft’s cloud-computing environment that according to the company has since been fixed.  

Rob Joyce, the cybersecurity director at the National Security Agency, said at the Aspen Security Forum on Thursday. “It is China doing espionage.” 

“That is what nation-states do. We need to defend against it, we need to push back on it, but that is something that happens.”

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WHO Declares ‘Infodemic,’ Announces ‘Misinformation’ Surveillance Program

WHO Declares 'Infodemic,' Announces 'Misinformation' Surveillance Program

BY BEN BARTEE

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/benbartee/2023/06/24/who-declares-infodemic-announces-misinformation-surveillance-program-n1706070;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

The World Health Organization (WHO), funded primarily by the CCP and Bill Gates tag team, has been very busy getting its so-called “pandemic treaties” into place, which in effect hand over national control of a state’s public health response to unaccountable multinational bureaucrats — whose interests, not unimportantly, are not shared by the populations over which they exercise authority.

Relatedly, the WHO also succeeded recently in instituting “vaccine passports” across the European Union.

Dovetailing with both of those projects of social control is the organization’s declaration of war on something called an “infodemic.”

Via the Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats (PRET) document (emphasis added):

People have now access to an enormous amount of information (which increases during crisis) from many different sources, traditional or digital, including for instance online platform offering pre-print access to scientific articles. Health institutions are not anymore, the only provider of information. This new information ecosystem has generated a new “Health Threat” that accompanies epidemics and pandemics, called infodemic.

Infodemic is the overabundance of information -accurate or not- which makes it difficult for individuals to adopt behaviours that will protect their health and the health of their families and communities. The infodemic can directly impact health, hamper the implementation of public health countermeasures and undermine trust and social cohesiveness. Infodemic cannot be eliminated it can only be managed. This is why WHO and partners have developed the approach of infodemic management which encompasses Risk Communication and Community Engagement adding additional tools and approaches to manage it more efficiently in the 21st century.

The use of the term “infodemic” might seem like a silly rhetorical invention of the kind often used by large organizations and their PR departments. However, it signifies something deeper, which is the rolling of issues ostensibly unrelated to true public health under the Public Health™ umbrella.

I have written about this phenomenon elsewhere in the context of, for example, the Democrat governor of New York fashioning gun control into a Public Health™ issue.

By this method, the government grants for itself an entirely new justification for gun confiscation, or censorship in the case of the “infodemic,” or whatever fashionable social engineering project comes along next.

If the WHO has a truly abiding interest in combatting what it calls “misinformation,” it might consider starting with the Public Health™ bureaucrats who lied over and over and over with zero consequences for over three years at this point.

Or it might start with all the corporate state news actors who claimed, with zero actual knowledge of the ingredients or mechanism of action of the shots, that the COVID-19 vaccines are totally “safe and effective” when the evidence at the time didn’t support either claim, as more and more research now bears out.

Unfortunately, we know how the WHO’s “infodemic” regime will be applied — unfairly, arbitrarily, opaquely, and with no meaningful recourse for the censored.

Biden Suggests Chinese Spy Balloon Wasn’t ‘Intentional’

Biden Makes Excuses for Chinese Spy Balloon, Suggesting It Wasn't 'Intentional'

Biden Makes Excuses for Chinese Spy Balloon, Suggesting It Wasn't 'Intentional'

BY RICK MORAN

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/06/18/biden-makes-excuses-for-chinese-spy-balloon-suggesting-it-wasnt-intentional-n1704219;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in China today — a make-up trip that was supposed to take place last February except the Chinese rather rudely sent one of their spy balloons, bristling with antennae and communications dishes, across the entire breadth of the United States.

No one in the Biden administration got very upset about the spy balloon transversing over some of the most sensitive military bases in the U.S. After all, it had happened before — several times. In the interest of “good relations,” the Biden administration wasn’t going to say anything. And then a newspaper editor in flyover country caught a glimpse of the balloon flying over the Montana missile fields. At that point, the balloon became an international incident and Blinken was forced to cancel his China trip.

Relations between China and the United States have gotten progressively worse over the last five months. China has been ratcheting up tensions in the South China Sea and Taiwan while helping Russia prosecute its war in Ukraine. To say that Blinken received a frosty reception in Beijing would be an understatement. The Chinese performed the bare minimum of diplomatic courtesies in greeting the U.S. Secretary of State.

But our president didn’t let that cool reception deter him. He went out of his way to apologize for the balloon incident on behalf of China.

“China has some legitimate difficulties unrelated to the United States, and I think one of the things that balloon caused was not so much that it got shot down, but I don’t think the leadership knew where it was, knew what it was in it and what was going on,” he said.

“I think it was more embarrassing than it was intentional,” he said.

God save the queen, right Joe?

To pretend that the Communist leadership of China didn’t know their military was sending a balloon across the entire width of the United States doesn’t pass the smell test. Any provocation like that — and it was a “BFD,” as Biden would say — would require the authorization and support of the highest levels of China’s government.

Fox News:

This week, more than a dozen Republican senators wrote to President Biden, complaining that the administration has not yet given a public account of the spy balloon incident’s “flagrant violation of U.S. sovereignty.”

“While four months have passed since a Chinese surveillance balloon was allowed to fly across the United States, your administration has yet to provide the American people a full accounting of how this spy platform was allowed to traverse across sovereign U.S. territory, what the balloon carried, and what it collected during its mission,” the lawmakers said.

On Saturday, Biden said he hoped to meet with Xi and discuss areas of potential cooperation between the two countries.

“I’m hoping over the next several months, I’ll be meeting with Xi again and talking about legitimate differences we have but also how there are areas we can get along.

Needless to say, Republicans were outraged at Biden’s milquetoast attitude toward the spy balloon.

“I’m not sure how the President could say that with a straight face,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) told The New York Post. “Not only was it intentional, it was a direct threat to our national security. China is our greatest geopolitical foe.”

“Biden has been anything but tough on China,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.). “It seems he’s compromised, which is what the evidence reviewed by the House Oversight Committee suggests.”

Related: Thanks, Joe: Cuba to Host Secret Chinese Spy Base to Surveil U.S.

The Chinese don’t care what Biden thinks. That much is becoming clear, as their increasing aggressiveness toward Taiwan and unilateral moves in the South China Sea attest. President Xi Jiang can see what everyone else can see: the rapidly accelerating mental and physical decline of an American president.

Bank of America Turns Over Information on Gun Owners to the FBI

Bank of America Turns Over Information on Gun Owners to the FBI iStock-471503379

BY JOHN CRUMP

SEE: https://www.ammoland.com/2023/06/bank-of-america-turns-over-information-on-gun-owners-to-the-fbi/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — FBI whistleblowers have come forward with damning allegations against Bank of America (BoA). According to Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), the banking giant has been revealing information to the FBI about its customer’s gun purchases without a warrant. Now the pair has sent letters to other banks to see if they also violated the privacy rights of their customers.

After the protest at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Bank of America provided the FBI with a list of customers who made transactions in or around Washington, D.C., purchased a flight to the Nation’s Capital, or booked a hotel room in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Most of Bank of America’s customers that attended the large rally never entered the Capitol Building, and the FBI did not have probable cause to allow the law enforcement agency to get a court order for the bank to surrender the documents.

When the FBI approached BoA about turning over the records, the bank complied without requesting a court order.

The megabank would put anyone in or around D.C. and purchase a gun on the top of the list. By simply being in or around D.C. on January 6 and purchasing a firearm using a BoA product, the FBI would mark you for investigation. The FBI investigated many BoA customers without a court order and with the full cooperation of Bank of America.

“In a transcribed interview, retired FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst George Hill testified that BoA, ‘with no directive from the FBI, data-mined its customer base’ and compiled a list of BoA customers who used a BoA product during a specified date range. Mr. Hill further noted that ‘on top of that list, they put anyone who had purchased a firearm during any date.’ Mr. Hill also testified that the list that BoA provided targeted transactions in Washington D.C., and the surrounding area,” the letter reads.

The letter was sent to JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup, Trust Financial Corporation, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bancorp, and PNC Financial Services. The Congressmen are asking the banks to provide any documents or communications about the release of customer data from January 6, 2021, timeframe to the FBI or any other federal law enforcement agencies.

This request is to see if the other major banks of similar size leaked the same customer information to the federal authorities that Bank of America released.

“Congress has an important interest in ensuring that Americans’ private information is protected from collection by federal law enforcement agencies without proper due process. The Committee and Select Subcommittee must understand if, how, and to what extent financial institutions, including PNC Financial Services, worked with the FBI to collect Americans’ private data,” the letter reads.

Many are concerned that the FBI is becoming overtly political and weaponized against anyone the Biden regime considers enemies. We have seen the weaponization of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) against conservative non-profits. The FBI has also used documents like the discredited “Steele Dossier” to get FISA warrants to surveil political opponents. Some of those concerned about the weaponization of government agencies are serving in Congress.

It should concern all Americans (not only gun owners) that big business is working hand and hand with big government. Instead of protecting its customers’ data, it turns it over to the surveillance state without a fight. Gun owners now know that Bank of America is not protecting their data from an ever-encroaching government. The only question now is how far the rot goes.


About John Crump

John is an NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people from all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons and can be followed on Twitter at @crumpyss, or at www.crumpy.com.

John Crump

Muslims sue FBI for religious discrimination over surveillance, FBI claims it has secret reasons for its acts

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/06/297866;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

The FBI should be able to give some idea of what it has without compromising national security. Even just a few years ago I would have been completely supportive of their position, particularly in light of the participation of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on the other side, which makes this look like just another bogus claim of victimhood. But the FBI has so comprehensively betrayed the trust of the American people in the last few years, beginning with the little-noted fact that an FBI informant was encouraging the jihadis to attack our free speech event in Garland, Texas in 2015, that it cannot be trusted to be acting in the best interests of anyone but itself. It could be surveilling these people just to justify its counterterror budget. Obviously, it shouldn’t be made to reveal compromising information, but it has no right to call for trust when it has betrayed trust so frequently.

“FBI Claims Secret Evidence Trumps Religious Discrimination Charges in Domestic Spying Case,” by Sanya Mansoor, Time, June 8, 2023:

Before Irvine, Calif. had its own mosque, Muslims would gather at Ali Malik’s home for nightly prayers during Ramadan. But after an FBI informant pretended to be a convert and spied on Malik’s lay congregation—and more than half a dozen Southern California mosques, as well, in the mid-2000s—trust within the community eroded. Malik’s family pulled back. The communal prayers came to an end. “We became closed off and afraid of reaching out,” he says.

Shocked by the experience, Malik and two other plaintiffs sued the FBI, accusing the agency of religious discrimination and unlawful government surveillance. But more than a decade later, the U.S. justice system is still wrestling with whether government secrecy trumps such claims of religious discrimination in domestic national security cases.

Malik’s case, FBI v. Fazaga, came before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Thursday. The government argues that all the plaintiffs’ claims alleging religious discrimination need to be dismissed because it has secret evidence that would exonerate the FBI if made public. “Since the court cannot hear evidence as to who the FBI investigated or why, it cannot adjudicate whether the government targeted Plaintiffs based on their religion,” the FBI has said, in legal filings.

The plaintiffs argue that they don’t need secret evidence to win their argument and that the case should proceed without this information; the religious discrimination claims should not be entirely dismissed, they say. The government has so far not invoked the state secrets privilege for allegations of unlawful surveillance. The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys from the ACLU SoCal, the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law and the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Greater Los Angeles.

Mohammad Tajsar, senior staff attorney at ACLU SoCal, says that since 9/11, the government has repeatedly deployed the state secrets defense to kill cases. “It has basically prevented judicial oversight over a whole bunch of desperately abusive national security related policies—things like warrantless wiretapping and extrajudicial assassination,” he says.

Since 9/11, the government’s use of the state secrets privilege has increased dramatically. A 2008 congressional report found that the Bush administration raised the privilege in over 25% more cases per year than previous administrations had, and sought dismissal in over 90% more cases. “There are serious consequences for litigants and for the American public when the privilege is used to terminate litigation alleging serious Government misconduct,” the report stated. “For the aggrieved parties, it means that the courthouse doors are closed—forever—regardless of the severity of their injury.”…

A lot of evidence about the FBI’s surveillance of Malik and his co-plaintiffs is already publicly available. Much of it details the activities of the pretend convert, a longtime informant for the bureau named Craig Monteilh and is drawn from Monteilh’s own sworn declarations, media reports and statements from FBI agents in other cases. Monteilh, who had served time for fraud, left his key fob and mobile phone in places to record conversations when he was not around. He recorded hundreds of hours of video inside mosques, homes and businesses. He told two other Muslims that “we should bomb something.” He says he was told by his FBI handlers to date Muslim women and have sex with them to get more information. The FBI dubbed the surveillance program “Operation Flex”—a nod to Monteilh’s strategy of using workout tips to befriend young Muslim men….

“There are a number of intermediate options between ‘the case can’t go forward’ and ‘everyone gets to see everything,’” says David Pozen, a law professor at Columbia University and expert on government secrecy. The federal bill would have made it so only the judge could see evidence in some cases; in others, the plaintiffs’ counsel could see the evidence with a security clearance and the requirement that they could not take it home….

GOP senator warns China is now ‘encroaching’ upon US soil~China Paying Cuba $Billions For Spy Facility

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, weighs in on the GOP's 2024 presidential candidates and the rising economic and military threats from China.

Thanks, Joe: Cuba to Host Secret Chinese Spy Base to Surveil U.S.

Thanks, Joe: Cuba to Host Secret Chinese Spy Base to Surveil U.S.

BY MATT MARGOLIS

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/06/08/thanks-joe-cuba-to-host-secret-chinese-spy-base-to-surveil-u-s-n1701518;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

According to well-informed U.S. officials with access to highly classified intelligence, China and Cuba have reportedly reached a clandestine accord. Under this agreement, China plans to establish a covert electronic surveillance center on the island, posing a bold new geopolitical challenge to the United States.

This facility, which is approximately 100 miles off the coast of Florida, would grant Chinese intelligence agencies the capability to intercept electronic communications across the southeastern region of the United States, which houses numerous military installations, as well as monitor U.S. maritime traffic.

Sources familiar with the situation reveal that China has agreed to provide financial assistance amounting to several billion dollars to financially strained Cuba in exchange for permission to construct the eavesdropping facility. While the exact terms of the agreement are yet to be finalized, the two nations have reportedly reached an agreement in principle.

“The revelation about the planned site has sparked alarm within the Biden administration because of Cuba’s proximity to the U.S. mainland,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “Washington regards Beijing as its most significant economic and military rival. A Chinese base with advanced military and intelligence capabilities in the U.S.’s backyard could be an unprecedented new threat.”

Related: The CCP Is Already ‘Waging War on America’

The Biden Administration’s response gives us little comfort.

“While I cannot speak to this specific report, we are well aware of—and have spoken many times to—the People’s Republic of China’s efforts to invest in infrastructure around the world that may have military purposes, including in this hemisphere,” said John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council. “We monitor it closely, take steps to counter it, and remain confident that we are able to meet all our security commitments at home, in the region, and around the world.”

Does anyone expect the Biden Administration to take any meaningful “steps to counter” this move by China? This is the same administration, after all, that was far more concerned about not offending China than our national security during the spy balloon scandal in February. Three unidentified Biden administration officials revealed that the Chinese spy balloon was allowed to fly over the United States for an entire week and was able to acquire and send secret intelligence to Beijing regarding a number of military bases in “real-time.”

Joe Biden’s close ties with China have been a matter of concern for years. Despite the passage of three years since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, China has yet to face any substantial accountability for its role in the crisis. Nor has it faced any accountability for the spy balloon incident, and that lack of consequence may have emboldened it to take this egregious step toward establishing a surveillance facility just a short distance from the U.S. mainland. The Biden administration is far more concerned about improving relations with China, even at the expense of U.S. national security.

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