As some have noted in the comments, a Quebec City mosque – the Quebec City Islamic Cultural Center – was attacked during evening prayers today. Five congregants have been killed. One of the local Quebec French language papers is now reporting that two suspected shooters are in custody, though there may be an additional one still at large. Additionally, one of the two shooters has “a Quebec name” and was wielding an AK-47 or AK pattern rifle. Canada has pretty tight restrictions on semi-automatic firearms, including rifles. Quebec name implies a francophone, Quebecer. The mosque has been targeted by vandals in the past. This is obviously a developing event and information is likely to change over the next 24 to 72 hours.
Adam L. Silverman is a consulting national security subject matter expert specializing in low intensity warfare (asymmetric, irregular, and unconventional warfare, revolution, insurgency, terrorism), civil affairs, psychological operations, and cultural considerations for strategy and policy.
He routinely provides operational support to a number of US Army, DOD, and other US Government elements. Dr. Silverman holds a doctorate in political science and criminology from the University of Florida, as well as masters' degrees in comparative religion and international security. Full professional bio available here: https://balloon-juice.com/adam-silverman-bio/
Adam Silverman has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2015.
When the Process Is Ignored We Get Chaos
senior DHS official tells @NBCNews that career professionals at State/DHS had no input on directives. now scrambling to interpret/implement
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) January 28, 2017
senior Justice official tells @NBCNews that Dept had no input. not sure who in WH is writing/reviewing. standard NSC process not functioning
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) January 28, 2017
I’ve written here several times that the US government is all about process. We have a process for doing everything. One of those things is called the Interagency Process. The Interagency Process can be defined as:
The National Security Council is responsible for the integration of domestic, foreign, and military interests around the globe, and it is the overseer of the interagency process. It is the president’s principal forum for considering and coordinating national security and foreign policy matters among various government agencies.
It is supposed to be overseen and administered by the National Security Council. What John Harwood is reporting in those tweets, and what former Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Juliette Kayyem is referring to here in response to Josh Barro:
Yes. That is why interagency review is needed. Operationally, they should have been given border manual guidance. None issued. https://t.co/L80bnzCTDM
— Juliette Kayyem (@juliettekayyem) January 28, 2017
Reminder: before EO, no guidance was sent to border officials or to airport/airline personnel. DHS scrambling now to put one together.
— Juliette Kayyem (@juliettekayyem) January 28, 2017
What we have here is either a complete breakdown of the Interagency Process or a complete ignoring of it. My guess is its the latter leading to the former. It has been reported that the Executive Orders are being written by Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller. Neither of them have any experience with the Interagency Process. Moreover, it has been reported that the National Security Council staff is itself not fully staffed in terms of the political appointees and the people that have been brought on board have little to no experience with the Interagency Process. While LTG (ret) Flynn does, as the former DIA Director, it is unclear from his biography if his Chief of Staff LTG (ret) Kellogg does. Additionally, we have no Secretary of State and we have temporary beachhead teams running things at State, as well as at DHS where we at least have a Secretary, and at other related agencies and departments.
The process has either been ignored, purposely or through sheer ignorance, or its been willfully broken. When that happens you get this type of chaos where US personnel that have to carry out orders aren’t even sure what the orders are. Remember, the Customs agents at the airports and the Border Patrol and Immigration agents at entry points – airports, seaports, and along both the US-Canadian and US-Mexican borders, are not lawyers. And while there are lawyers working for these agencies and departments, if they can’t get answers and clear guidance from higher, they can’t effectively interpret for the personnel on the ground that have to do the actual job. The reason we have a process is to prevent this type of mess. To ensure that every agency or department effected by an Executive Order, change in legislation, regulation, and/or policy has a chance to consider it, weigh in on it, and so that once the change happens everyone has clear guidance and can move out sharply. Aside from the damage to the US’s reputation, the fact that ISIL is already using this as a recruiting tool, this breakdown doesn’t inspire confidence in how the new Administration will respond when there’s a real crisis (that they haven’t created themselves). Finally, there draft that is circulating about how the Trump Administration will actually organize the Interagency is less than reassuring. A decision seems to have been made, and I suspect it was made by LTG (ret) Flynn, that neither the Director of National Intelligence nor the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are to be members of the Principals Committee on the National Security Council. This is a recipe for disaster.
DNI and Chairman of Joint Chiefs no longer automatic NSC Principals Committee members pic.twitter.com/AbaGVmiWFw
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) January 28, 2017
When the Process Is Ignored We Get ChaosPost + Comments (87)
What Has Been Will Be Again 2: The US Does Not and Has Never Really Lifted a Lamp Beside the Golden Door
While I covered some of this last September, in light of AL’s earlier post* I thought it was important to highlight some of this again. Specifically that the US has never cared about refugees it didn’t consider white and Christian.
When Allan Tarlish of the Jewish War Veterans of America wrote to Senator Robert Taft in 1939 asking for his assistance in getting European refugees fleeing the rise of NAZIism, including/specifically Jewish ones, into the US, he was politely and longwindedly told no.
Senator Taft’s attitudes and position mirrored that of US public opinion**:
US Jan 20 ’39: Should the US government permit 10,000 mostly Jewish refugee children to come in from Germany? pic.twitter.com/5cFs5RabQn
— Historical Opinion (@HistOpinion) November 17, 2015
US Jul ’38: What’s your attitude towards allowing German, Austrian & other political refugees to come into the US? pic.twitter.com/7hMfLbXWFE
— Historical Opinion (@HistOpinion) November 16, 2015
1938 poll: Should the US offer a haven for Jewish refugees from central Europe?https://t.co/NTYfrMSXo0 pic.twitter.com/GK3avawzc6
— Rabih Alameddine (@rabihalameddine) November 17, 2015
And some things seem to never change…
LITERALLY THE SAME WORDS pic.twitter.com/saTpAHfSP4
— Jack Mirkinson (@jackmirkinson) November 17, 2015
It was during this same time period as these polls were conducted, that the St. Louis sailed for Havana. The St. Louis carried almost a thousand Jewish refugees. The plan had been to make initial landfall in Cuba and then travel on to the US from there. The refugees had been issued Cuban entry documents that were invalidated a week before their arrival. When all but 29 were refused entry into Cuba, they turned North and headed up the coast of the US as some of the refugees had relatives living in and/or citizens of the United States and almost all had applied for US entry prior to sailing from Hamburg. Here too the St. Louis was turned away and with no port to make call turned east back across the Atlantic to Europe. The official problem was the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1924, which Senator Sessions has stated he’d like to see reinstated.
Quotas established in the US Immigration and Nationality Act of 1924 strictly limited the number of immigrants who could be admitted to the United States each year. In 1939, the annual combined German-Austrian immigration quota was 27,370 and was quickly filled. In fact, there was a waiting list of at least several years. US officials could only have granted visas to the St. Louis passengers by denying them to the thousands of German Jews placed further up on the waiting list. Public opinion in the United States, although ostensibly sympathetic to the plight of refugees and critical of Hitler’s policies, continued to favor immigration restrictions.
But there was another reason these refugees were turned away, US popular opinion and leadership, including FDR, were afraid these refugees might be NAZI spies or a fifth column. And this belief persisted well into WW II.
World War II prompted the largest displacement of human beings the world has ever seen—although today’s refugee crisis is starting to approach its unprecedented scale. But even with millions of European Jews displaced from their homes, the United States had a poor track record offering asylum. Most notoriously, in June 1939, the German ocean liner St. Louis and its 937 passengers, almost all Jewish, were turned away from the port of Miami, forcing the ship to return to Europe; more than a quarter died in the Holocaust.
Government officials from the State Department to the FBI to President Franklin Roosevelt himself argued that refugees posed a serious threat to national security. Yet today, historians believe that Bahr’s case was practically unique—and the concern about refugee spies was blown far out of proportion.
The US’s immigration policy for receiving the stateless, displaced victims of WW II and the Holocaust was much better. A lot of this seems to be a combination of Soldiers who had seen the camps and suffering in the European Theater combined with the impact that visiting the displaced persons camps had on congressional delegations. Unfortunately, the lessons regarding resisting and fighting authoritarianism and providing compassion and aid to its victims that the WW II generation learned in blood have less and less impact 72 years later. And, as is always the case in the US, hard learned and hard earned progress is immediately followed be a concerted attempt to return to the regressive attitudes, beliefs, and policies that existed before the progress occurred.
ETA: I just want to add that given the history of how the US failed to act in regard to Jewish and other refugees fleeing the NAZIs, any Jewish American organization that does not go to the mattresses in opposition over the attempt to close off access to the US for anyone fleeing ISIL should be shunned and should close up shop. Those Jewish Americans who fail to stand up for Syrians and Iraqis and others fleeing the horrors of ISIL, regardless of their religion, should be ashamed of themselves and are a shonda for the goyim.
* I don’t have much to say about the International Holocaust Day Proclamation as I have no idea who actually wrote it. I’m not even sure the first sentence is even a sentence. I have no idea, and unless there is a leak I doubt we’ll ever know, if any of the three prominent Jewish Americans that the President has surrounded himself with – his daughter and son in law and his chief policy advisor (Stephen Miller) – saw this or had input into its drafting.
**Hat tip to David Matthews at Fusion for collecting all of these in one place so I didn’t have to go tracking them all down again.
Operations Security Failure! Cyber Security Edition
Operations Security is defined as:
Operations Security, or OPSEC, is the process by which we protect unclassified information that can be used against us. OPSEC challenges us to look at ourselves through the eyes of an adversary (individuals, groups, countries, organizations). Essentially, anyone who can harm people, resources, or mission is an adversary.
OPSEC should be used to protect information, and thereby deny the adversary the ability to act. Nearly 90% of the information collected comes from “Open Sources”. Any information that can be obtained freely, without breaking the law, is Open Source. . It is social network sites, tweets, text messages, blogs, videos, photos, GPS mapping, newsletters, magazine or newspaper articles, your college thesis, or anything else that is publicly available.
Our OPSEC objective is to ensure a safe and secure environment. OPSEC is best employed daily when making choices about what communications to use, what is written in emails or said on the phone, postings on social networking sites and blogs. Any information you put in the public domain is also available to your adversaries.
The bottom line is that we can be are our own worst enemy. Google yourself or your organization and see how much you can find out.
Someone needs to do their annual training right quick!
Are you actually fucking kidding me
(and yes this is real, @POTUS is tied to a Gmail account) pic.twitter.com/LUdeNkEF1O
— Alex Zalben (@azalben) January 26, 2017
@_fl01 @20committee so does Press Sec but his email is WAY easier to guess. And there's last two digits of his phone no., too. pic.twitter.com/bFCtD5palc
— Ale (@aliasvaughn) January 26, 2017
Боже мой!
Operations Security Failure! Cyber Security EditionPost + Comments (92)
He Said What ? The Entire Transcript of the President’s Interview with ABC News
?
Trump was asked whether it was distasteful to give a boastful speech at the CIA. His response reads like a parody. pic.twitter.com/fEpvWZUMrx
— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) January 26, 2017
ETA: I will just briefly state that no one in a military or intelligence community setting (uniformed or civilian personnel) will sit down when being addressed by a senior leader until they are told to do so. The President never issued the sit down order of “you may be seated” during his address at Langley. I do not know if this is because no one told him he needed to do so or if he was told and forgot or he just decided not to.
Here’s the entire transcript, including parts of the interview that were not aired, of the President’s interview with ABC’s David Muir:
On Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2017, ABC News “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir interviewed President Donald Trump in the White House. The following is a transcript of the interview:
DAVID MUIR: Mr. President, it’s an honor to be here at the White House.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you very much, David.
DAVID MUIR: Let me ask you, has the magnitude of this job hit you yet?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: It has periodically hit me. And it is a tremendous magnitude. And where you really see it is when you’re talking to the generals about problems in the world. And we do have problems in the world. Big problems. The business also hits because the — the size of it. The size.
I was with the Ford yesterday. And with General Motors yesterday. The top representatives, great people. And they’re gonna do some tremendous work in the United States. They’re gonna build plants back in the United States. But when you see the size, even as a businessman, the size of the investment that these big companies are gonna make, it hits you even in that regard. But we’re gonna bring jobs back to America, like I promised on the campaign trail.
DAVID MUIR: And we’re gonna get to it all right here.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Good.
DAVID MUIR: Mr. President, I want to start — we’re five days in. And your campaign promises. I know today you plan on signing the order to build the wall.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Correct.
DAVID MUIR: Are you going to direct U.S. funds to pay for this wall? Will American taxpayers pay for the wall?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Ultimately it’ll come out of what’s happening with Mexico. We’re gonna be starting those negotiations relatively soon. And we will be in a form reimbursed by Mexico which I will say …
DAVID MUIR: So, they’ll pay us back?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah, absolutely, 100 percent.
DAVID MUIR: So, the American taxpayer will pay for the wall at first?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: All it is, is we’ll be reimbursed at a later date from whatever transaction we make from Mexico. Now, I could wait a year and I could hold off the wall. But I wanna build the wall. We have to build the wall. We have to stop drugs from pouring in. We have to stop people from just pouring into our country. We have no idea where they’re from. And I campaigned on the wall. And it’s very important. But that wall will cost us nothing.
DAVID MUIR: But you talked — often about Mexico paying for the wall. And you, again, say they’ll pay us back. Mexico’s president said in recent days that Mexico absolutely will not pay, adding that, “It goes against our dignity as a country and our dignity as Mexicans.” He says …
(OVERTALK)
PRESIDENT TRUMP: David, he has to say that. He has to say that. But I’m just telling you there will be a payment. It will be in a form, perhaps a complicated form. And you have to understand what I’m doing is good for the United States. It’s also going to be good for Mexico.
We wanna have a very stable, very solid Mexico. Even more solid than it is right now. And they need it also. Lots of things are coming across Mexico that they don’t want. I think it’s going to be a good thing for both countries. And I think the relationship will be better than ever before.
You know, when we had a prisoner in Mexico, as you know, two years ago, that we were trying to get out. And Mexico was not helping us, I will tell you, those days are over. I think we’re gonna end up with a much better relationship with Mexico. We will have the wall and in a very serious form Mexico will pay for the wall.
DAVID MUIR: What are you gonna say to some of your supporters who might say, “Wait a minute, I thought Mexico was going to pay for this right at the start.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I’d say very simply that they are going to pay for it. I never said they’re gonna pay from the start. I said Mexico will pay for the wall. But what I will tell my supporters is, “Would you like me to wait two years or three years before I make this deal?” Because we have to make a deal on NAFTA. We have to make a new trade deal with Mexico because we’re getting clobbered.
We have a $60-billion trade deficit. So, if you want, I can wait two years and then we can do it nice and easily. I wanna start the wall immediately. Every supporter I have — I have had so many people calling and tweeting and — and writing letters saying they’re so happy about it. I wanna start the wall. We will be reimbursed for the wall.
DAVID MUIR: When does construction begin?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: As soon as we can. As soon as we can physically do it. We’re …
DAVID MUIR: Within months?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: I would say in months. Yeah, I would say in months. Certainly planning is starting immediately.
DAVID MUIR: People feel …
He Said What ? The Entire Transcript of the President’s Interview with ABC NewsPost + Comments (249)
Take a Deep Breath and a Step Back
I want to briefly touch on an issue that seems to keep coming up in comments – regardless of the topic of the post. That issue is the ongoing freak out over what the President is doing. I’m not going to tell anyone not to be concerned. Nor am I going to tell everyone that everything is going to be okay or that it will all work out or that this is normal. As I’ve indicated a couple of times: things are going to be bad, people will be hurt psychologically/emotionally and, unfortunately, some will be hurt physically as well. But recognizing all of that panic and despair are not going to help. They’re not going to help anyone individually, nor are they going to help anyone societally.
Some of you have by now seen either summaries of the Executive Orders the President signed today or the teasers of the one’s he’s supposed to sign tomorrow. And, of course, there was last night’s tweet about Chicago. What is important to keep in mind is that a lot of the stuff in the Executive Orders actually requires Congressional action. For instance, it is against the law to reinstate torture, d/b/a enhanced interrogation techniques, within either the Intelligence Community or the military. It doesn’t matter what the EO states. It doesn’t matter that the President has stated he’ll have DCI Pompeo revisit the Army Doctrinal Publication (formerly Field Manual) for conducting interrogations, DCI Pompeo isn’t in charge of the US Army, isn’t in the US Army’s chain of command, and has no control over US Army doctrine and concepts. If the President wants to bring this back, which is a terrible idea on its face, he’ll have to get it through both the House and the Senate.
It also doesn’t matter that the President signed an EO today indicating a significant increase in the number of ICE personnel. There’s two reasons for this: 1) Congress will have to appropriate the money for those additional personnel and 2) he just signed a hiring freeze for all Federal positions with the exception of the military and the excepted services of Federal civil servants. ICE agents don’t fit into this category. Similarly for increasing deportations for those that have entered without documentation or overstayed their entry. We are pretty much maxed out on the numbers we can deport because those numbers are determined by capacity. And the capacity is determined by the budget. Unless Congress greatly increases the amount for the process, the numbers aren’t going to change much.
Its been teased that he’s going to sign EOs tomorrow limiting the US’s participation and role in the UN. Wonderful, that’s actually got to go through Congress too. Because the US’s participation in the UN is the result of a law passed decades ago. He can keep signing these things till his fingers fall off, but a lot of them are just intended to excite his supporters and demoralize everyone else. Don’t fall for it.
The point here is that if you freak out each and every time something strange, bizarre, provocative is said or done, you won’t be able to do the actual hard work of conserving and preserving the US. And it doesn’t have to be great, gigantic work. The small things are as important as the big ones right now. Looking out for each other. Ensuring that we don’t forget the ideals that are America. That we don’t loose sight of the norms of how American institutions are supposed to function even as they’re being discarded. That we hold our elected officials accountable and make it as difficult as possible for them to discard those norms and jettison those ideals. That we recognize that true patriots don’t need to capitalize the word and scream Liberty and Freedom from the rooftops at the tops of their lungs. Holding the line means not losing your mind. It is important that we keep some perspective and composure as we all wade into uncharted waters. We have a long way to go to preserve and protect the Union. We will get there not by leaps and bounds, but by squaring our shoulders, bracing ourselves, leaning into the headwinds, and putting one foot in front of the other.
Breaking News: Gag Order for US Department of Agriculture Lifted
Agriculture Department lifts gag order for scientists after public outcry: https://t.co/fk5XT3mUPk pic.twitter.com/df5Re4DIWm
— The Hill (@thehill) January 25, 2017
The Department of Agriculture has reportedly lifted an order that called for scientists and employees of its research arm not to release any of its work to the public.
After a report that the agency had told staff to stop releasing any “news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds, and social media content,” BuzzFeed reported that another memo was sent Tuesday night from a top official for the department’s Agricultural Research Service that the original order should not have been issued and “is hereby rescinded.”
Prior to the memo, the agency disavowed the gag order, calling it “flawed” and indicating that new guidance would be sent to its employees.
“This internal email was released without Departmental direction, and prior to Departmental guidance being issued,” the USDA said in a statement.
“ARS will be providing updated direction to its staff. ARS values and is committed to maintaining the free flow of information between our scientists and the American public.”
Phone lines are open. Operators are standing by…
Breaking News: Gag Order for US Department of Agriculture LiftedPost + Comments (56)