Special Operations

The Latest Cyber War Developments Have a New, Worrisome Twist

United States national security officials looking into Russian cyber-meddling of the recent elections are seeing that the recent “ransomware” cyber-attacks are part of an increasing problem. Hackers are now not just in the business of ransom but in chaos and disruption of the internet.

The goals are to disrupt signaling capabilities, disruption of normal systems and demonstrate the instability of the Western democracies. And some say it IS time to worry.

A number of analysts described the Petya/NotPetya incident of June and the WannaCry event in May as ransom attacks, aimed at gaining as much bitcoin as possible. But our analysis of cyber-coercion highlights how ransomware events such as the Petya are often strategically motivated and less about gaining funds than they are about sending a signal. The primary goal instead appears to be limited destruction through malware wiping systems.
North Korea and Russia are the likely originators of these attacks. What’s the motivation, beyond simply the chaos factor? For Russia, the Petya attack could be a means of encouraging the perception of Ukraine as a failed state — a view that aligns with Russian interests.
Cyber-operations amplify larger psychological warfare efforts. North Korea’s goal, most likely, could be to cause general chaos in Western systems, as a means of signaling strength — and its capacity to escalate in any future crisis.
In addition to propaganda, states use cyber-operations to influence elections and conduct disruption operations. Russian interference in the elections of Western states has become so common it is now expected. But instead of just disrupting elections, Russia now seems to be leveraging cyberespionage and propaganda to generate larger crises.
Russia now appears to be using Ukraine as more than a testing ground for cyberwar — it is demonstrating its ability to disrupt faith in public institutions. While the resulting crises after a cyber-event risk inadvertent escalation, the real danger is the erosion of cyber norms. With each new cyber-disruption, the shock decreases, and we grow to expect disorder. The resulting uncertainty and chaos undermines our trust in the open Internet architecture and risks upsetting stability inherent in cyber-exchanges to date.

To read the entire article from The Washington Post, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Clint Eastwood Casting Real Heroes in Paris Train Attack Film

Clint Eastwood’s next film about a terror attack on a train in Paris that was thwarted by three American men on vacation, will star the actual heroes of the 2015 incident.

Eastwood’s film, “The 15:17 to Paris” is based on the book the trio, Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos, and Spencer Stone co-wrote with Jeffrey E Stern. The three men will play themselves in the film despite having no acting experience.

Actors will play younger versions of the trio in the film, which is thought to focus on the three men’s friendship.
The men were awarded Legion d’honneur medals for their actions.
They also received a hero award from Eastwood himself at an awards ceremony last year.
Sadler, Skarlatos and Stone were among a number of passengers who overpowered a heavily armed man who had opened fire on the train.
Stone and Skarlatos were both off-duty servicemen, while Sadler was a student at California State University.
The man they apprehended was later named as Ayoub El-Khazzani, a Moroccan believed to have had links to radical Islam.
The film is the latest in a series of movies Eastwood has made based on real-life people in extraordinary situations.
His last film, Sully, told of pilot Chesley Sullenberger, who landed his damaged plane on the Hudson River in 2009.
If made, The 15:17 to Paris will not be the first fact-inspired film to feature non-actors in leading roles.
In 2012 release Act of Valour, real-life Navy Seals were shown embarking on a fictional covert mission.

The film will also star Jenna Fisher (“The Office”) and Judy Greer (“War for the Planet of the Apes”). The men, who have been friends since meeting as young boys in California, were hailed as heroes after the thwarted attack, as were two other passengers.

To read the entire article from the BBC click here:

Photo courtesy White House

Trump Arrives in Paris for Bastille Day, CT Talks

U.S. President Donald Trump will attempt to mend some fences with the French as he arrived in Paris today. Trump a year ago characterized Paris as an unsafe city due to terrorism will mark the French national holiday, Bastille Day, hold counter-terrorism talks with French President Emmanuel Macron and mark the US’ 100^th anniversary of entering World War I.

The president left Washington on Wednesday evening and arrived in Paris at 9 a.m. local time. He’s scheduled to meet with Macron and French military leaders later today before issuing a statement to the press.

Before departing the U.S., the president gave several interviews at the White House, including an extended conversation with Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network, a prominent figure in conservative political and religious circles.
A year ago Trump described Paris as “so, so, so out of control, so dangerous,” because of terrorists operating there. More recently he suggested that Islamic State attacks in Paris had diminished its standing as a world-class destination.
As he pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 international Paris accord to control greenhouse gas emissions, Trump said he was elected to represent “Pittsburgh, not Paris.” Nevertheless, he subsequently accepted President Macron’s invitation to attend the country’s annual mid-July celebrations.
During his two-day visit, Trump will meet with Macron, whose political fortunes have soared this year. The U.S. president also will lunch with military officials, tour the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte and join in Bastille Day celebrations Friday.
The two leaders are scheduled to meet Thursday before speaking to reporters.
On Friday, Trump and his wife, Melania, will attend the annual Bastille Day parade, which will include both French and U.S. military personnel.

There is hope in some circles that the Trump visit will mend some fences between the allies who fought two world wars together after the president’s criticism of the city and the government during the 2016 election.

To read the entire article from Voice of America click here:

Photo courtesy White House

Former CIA Agent Arrested for Selling Secrets to China

A former CIA officer has been arrested in Virginia and is accused of spying for China. Federal prosecutors said in court in Alexandria that Kevin Mallory had notes in his home that could have gotten clandestine sources killed.

While Mallory is not accused of handing those documents over to Chinese intelligence agents, he was also accused of being paid $25,000 by the Chinese and lied about the amount when returning back to the United States. Prosecutors also mentioned his access to sensitive material to underscore the seriousness of potential damages to US interests and to argue that he should remain jailed pending trial on espionage charges. A federal judge agreed and reversed an earlier ruling granting him a bond for just $10,000.

On a phone that Mallory admitted was given to him by someone he thought worked for Chinese intelligence, eight documents were found, authorities said. Six were classified CIA documents and one was a classified Defense Intelligence Agency document, FBI agent Stephen Green testified Friday. The last is a mix of typed and handwritten pages that are still being reviewed.
At least two of the documents were transmitted to the Chinese earlier this year, according to prosecutors.
A magistrate judge last week ordered Mallory’s release on a $10,000 bond. But U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis overturned that decision Friday, in part based on the new details revealed regarding Mallory’s CIA career and the documents found in his possession.
Prosecutors confirmed in court Friday that Mallory worked for both the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA’s counterpart in the Defense Department.
According to court documents, Mallory was a covert CIA case officer from 1990 to 1996 and a CIA contractor from 2010 to 2012. It was not clear when he worked for the DIA.
Antoinette Shiner, an information review officer for the CIA, confirmed in a declaration filed in court Friday that Mallory’s documents contained sensitive CIA intelligence, analysis of that intelligence and, in some instances, the actual human or technical sources of the intelligence.
One of the documents he is alleged to have passed on to the Chinese “reveals the breadth and depth” of the CIA’s understanding of “a specific hostile foreign intelligence service,” according to Shiner, including details on that foreign service’s approach to counterintelligence.
Handwritten notes found in Mallory’s house, she said, concern sensitive human sources and “could reasonably be expected to cause the loss of critical intelligence and possibly result in the lengthy incarceration or death of clandestine human sources.”

Mallory is considered a flight risk and prosecutors worried that the Chinese will attempt to take and glean any other information that he may have and also to keep him from talking about the link to their government.

To read the entire article from The Washington Post, click here:

Photo courtesy CIA

Deforestation Running Rampant in Colombia After FARC Demobilization

Colombia has seen an alarming surge in deforestation since the peace deal with the terrorist organization FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) was signed in 2016.

The amount of deforestation in the country jumped 44% in 2016 to 178,597 hectares (690 square miles) compared to 2015 according to official figures released this month – and most of the destruction was in remote rainforest areas once controlled by the FARC guerrillas.

The guerrillas placed severe limits on the amount of logging that was allowed in areas under their control. It was mainly a self-serving move as the heavy forest protected and shielded the guerrillas from air attacks by the Colombian Air Force.

But last year, as the FARC began to move toward demobilization, criminal groups moved in, taking advantage of the vacuum left behind to promote illegal logging and mining and cattle ranching. Civilians who had been ordered by the FARC to maintain 20% of their land with forest cover began expanding their farms.
“The FARC would limit logging to two hectares a year in the municipality,” said Jaime Pacheco, mayor of the town of Uribe, in eastern Meta province. “In one week [last year], 100 hectares were cleared and there is little we can do about it.”
Over their 53-year existence, the FARC were far from environmental angels. While in some areas the guerrilla presence helped maintain the forests, in others the rebels promoted clear-cuts to make way for the planning of coca, the raw material used in cocaine, or illegal gold mining, both a source of income for the group.
Bombings of oil pipelines dumped millions of gallons of oil in waterways and jungles. Between 1991 and 2013, 58% of the deforestation in Colombia was seen in conflict areas, according to a 2016 report by Colombia’s planning ministry.
“They weren’t environmentalists but they did regulate activity, and – since they had the guns – people complied,” says Susana Muhamad, an environmental activist who conducted a diagnostic study of the environmental risks of the rebel retreat.
“We told the government that it would need to establish control in these areas quickly, but it hasn’t,” she said. “It’s like the wild west now, a land rush.”
Colombia, which has the world’s eighth-largest forest cover, committed under the Paris climate accords to reaching zero net deforestation by 2020 and halting the loss of all natural forest by 2030.
Norway is donating about $3.5m over two years to a pilot project that hopes to stem deforestation by offering paid jobs to former FARC fighters and communities to safeguard forests by tracking and reporting illegal logging, adopting sustainable farming methods and undertaking eco-tourism projects.
“We hope this project can be the way for more activities whereby peace comes with green dividends,” said Vidar Helgesen, Norway’s environment minister, on a recent visit to Colombia.
That is the kind of incentive farmers in the town of Uribe, once a FARC stronghold, say they need to keep the forest on their land intact. “We are willing to leave the forests if we get some sort of subsidy to do it,” one farmer, Noel Segura, said in a phone interview.

With the civil war now a thing of the past, logging companies are rushing to claim areas once held by the FARC and some citizens are worried that the area will suffer irreparable damage.

To read the entire article from The Guardian, click here:

Photo courtesy Colombia Edu.

Former Green Beret Medic Still Making a Difference

As a former Special Forces soldier, sometimes you never see the final results of the hard work and sacrifice that you put into a mission. For Phil Melcher, a former medic in the 7^th Special Forces Group, he met the results of a life-saving operation face-to-face.

Melcher had served all over Latin America but found himself in a very difficult dilemma while serving in Colombia. But as SF medics have done for the past 65 years, he found a way to save two lives and got a nice surprise much later.

Melcher, an Army Green Beret, was serving in the South American country when he was woken up at 2 a.m. to deliver a baby. When he got to the mother, the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck. With no hospitals or modern technology available, Melcher had to perform the high-risk delivery without any help.
“When I delivered the child he wasn’t breathing,” Melcher said. “I had to resuscitate the baby and start CPR. After 45 seconds of CPR, the baby started coughing and screaming and spitting in my face. I was more excited about getting baby spit on me than at any other time in my life.”
Eight years later, Melcher was coming out of a commissary when a young boy ran into him. The boy’s mother yelled at the boy in Spanish, “Phillip, what are you doing?”
“And I looked and it was the mom and it was the kid,” Melcher said. “And I looked at her and she looked at me and we both started to cry and I’m like, ‘you named him after me?’ And she said yes, that she’s always told him about the man that helped him.”
He delivered 32 kids in some pretty extreme conditions. One of the other deliveries came to an indigenous tribe in Bolivia, where the baby was literally born on the jungle floor.
“I was a medic in the Special Forces before I became an operations and intel guy,” Melcher said. “In Special Forces you’re always a shooter first and you’re specialty is kind of a secondary thing, but you do whatever you need to do. Whenever a team goes into deployment, there are no doctors there. You’re the doctor.”
“The Special Forces medical course is unlike any other kind of medical training. It’s basically a cut down version of medical and physician’s assistant. You receive dentistry and animal husbandry training. It’s literally everything rolled up into one because you have to operate in any environment.”
Green Berets have to be as intelligent as they are physical. Melcher speaks three languages, helping him to fit into many cultures to operate seamlessly.
Melcher’s unit was assigned to Central and South America. His unit performed various peacekeeping operations, especially between Ecuador and Peru over Amazon River access. It also performed counter-narcotics operations, working against Pablo Escobar’s cartel.

Today he’s the Director of Security for the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team. “I have to make sure I’ve got everything scheduled right, making sure staffing and secondary support from city police is adequate at each game,” he said. “I make sure there are security checks around the stadium.”

And Melcher teaches Cyber Security as an Adjunct Professor at Webster University.

To read the entire article from St. Louis Today, click here:

Photo courtesy Phil Melcher

US Soldier in Hawaii Caught Passing Classified Data, Drone to ISIS

A senior NCO stationed in the US Army’s Schofield Barracks in Hawaii was arrested this weekend after allegedly attempting to provide military documents and a drone to the ISIS terrorist group.

The soldier, an Air Traffic Controller, Sgt. 1st Class Ikaika Kang, 34, was arrested late Saturday night by an FBI SWAT team at the Schofield Barracks in Honolulu, in a statement released by the FBI.

FBI Special Agent Jimmy Chen alleged in an affidavit that Kang tried to give classified and unclassified military documents and a drone to undercover agents and informants whom he believed would pass the information on to ISIS. Kang is also accused of attempting to teach the group combat techniques.
Most notably, Chen alleged that Kang swore an oath of loyalty — known as bayat — to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Saturday, shortly before his arrest. After doing so, Kang allegedly told an undercover agent that he wanted to use his rifle to “kill a bunch of people.”
The FBI said it believes that Kang, a member of the 25th Infantry Division and a trained air traffic controller, was a lone actor and is not associated with others who may present a threat to Hawaii.
Chen’s affidavit says that Kang admitted trying to transfer classified documents to ISIS, but claimed the information was “old and no longer posed any harm to the United States.”
Kang has been under investigation by the U.S. Army and the FBI for over a year, according to Delacourt. The affidavit says the Army reported Kang to the FBI in August 2016 after “it appeared that Kang was becoming radicalized.”
The affidavit alleges that Kang had a history of “threatening statements.” At one point in 2012, Kang’s security clearance was suspended after he was reprimanded repeatedly for “threatening to hurt or kill other service members, and for arguing pro-ISIS views while at work and on-post.” The document claims Kang’s clearance was reinstated the following year after he complied with “military requirements stemming from the investigation.”
Kang also allegedly told the informant that Omar Mateen, the gunman who killed nearly 50 people at an Orlando gay bar in June 2016 “did what he had to do.” He also allegedly said “America is the only terrorist organization” and that he “believed in the mass killing of Jews.”
Kang, a Hawaii native, enlisted in the Army in December 2001, months after the 9/11 terror attacks. He served in Iraq from March 2010 to February 2011 and Afghanistan from July 2013 to April 2014.
Kang’s father, Clifford, said that his son may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from his tours overseas.
“He’s a great kid. He’s not real outgoing, he’s never been, but neither was I,” Kang told Hawaii News Now. “But other than that he’s a great kid, a normal kid who grew up in Waimanalo.”

While no classified documents ever made it into the hands of ISIS, this is a serious incident and the military and FBI will handle it as such. It is possible that Kang is suffering from PTSD or some other related mental illness but that may not stop his prosecution.

He was erroneously credited with having “extensive combat training” by several news outlets. What they failed to mention that it was “Level IV Tactical Combat Instructor” status, which gives Kang the ability to serve as an instructor in combatives to other soldiers. At the time of the events in this case, skill level IV was the highest level of training available and required the completion of a 160-hour, four-week course.

To read the entire article from Fox News, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Pakistan Courting China and Russia as US Ties Weaken

The governments of China and Russia have used the precarious position of Pakistan and its weakening ties to Washington to make serious inroads in their influence. The government of Pakistan, once a considered a key ally in the U.S. war on terrorism, has had to face allegations that it harbors more than a dozen terrorist groups.

But with China and Russia behind the scenes playing upon the Pakistani worries about their neighbor India, Washington and the Trump administration may soon find themselves on the outs with the government of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
Pakistan’s relations with three of its four neighbors — Afghanistan, India, and Iran — are at a low point. And instead of trying to rein in extremism, the government appears to be feeding the growing conservative movement with no sign of backing off a controversial blasphemy law that has led to repeated mob violence.
Experts say 13 of the approximately 60 U.S.-designated global terrorist organizations are based in Pakistan, mostly in the tribal region that borders Afghanistan.
Major militant groups include the Pakistani Taliban and the Haqqani Network, along with Laskar-e-Jhangvi, Jaish-e-Muhammad and Jundullah. And despite denials that Islamic State has a presence in the country, the terror group has claimed responsibility for recent attacks there.
Two U.S. lawmakers introduced legislation last September to designate Pakistan a terror state over its inability to curb homegrown militancy and the threat it poses to its neighbors. Republicans Ted Poe and Dana Rohrabacher accused Pakistan of harboring global terrorist leaders and supporting terror groups, including the Haqqani Network, which targets Afghan and U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The Pakistanis claim that allegations of harboring terror groups are nothing more than Washington blaming its failures on them. But the Pakistani’s real fears center around India. The two countries have fought three wars, and another is always a threat. Both sides have nuclear arsenals capable of destroying the subcontinent several times over.

To read the entire article from the Voice of America News click here:

Photo the Kremlin

Iraqi Forces ‘Plant Flag’ On Tigris in Mosul, Face Long Road

The brutal fighting for the Iraqi city of Mosul, once the “caliphate” for the Islamic State is almost at an end. Iraqi forces have broken thru the ISIS lines to reach the Tigris River and have symbolically planted the Iraqi flag there. But the battle is far from done.

Even while Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, dressed in military uniform, appeared in Mosul to declare the city secure, much still needs to be done. There are a few more blocks of the city that will have to be cleared, and it is a dangerous and bloody business.

Iraqi and US officials expect for ISIS to carry out suicide attacks and terrorist incidents inside the city which has been razed to the ground in most areas. With the majority of the population displaced, finding ways to care for the people and restoring basic services will be no easy feat.

An on-screen headline on Iraqiya news on Sunday said Iraqi special forces have “raised the Iraqi flag on the Tigris riverbank in the Old City of Mosul”.
About 100 ISIL fighters had earlier been reported to be trapped in a sliver of the Old City along the Tigris.
Many of them threw themselves into the river as they faced imminent defeat on Sunday, according to Reuters news agency.
The agency also reported plumes of smoke over the Old City and decaying corpses of ISIL fighters lying on its streets. Scattered bursts of gunfire could be heard and several air strikes were carried out, it said.
The fall of Mosul would be the biggest defeat yet for ISIL three years after it seized the city in a lightning offensive.
With air support by the US-led coalition, Iraqi forces launched the battle for Mosul in October, retaking the eastern part of the city in January and starting the operation for its western part the next month.
The eight-month battle for Mosul has ruined parts of the city, killed thousands of civilians and displaced nearly one million people.
On Saturday, jubilant police forces were seen flashing V-for-victory signs in Mosul and posing for selfies in front of each other holding up ISIL’s black flag upside down.
Distraught women and children were seen clutching what few belongings they could carry. Hungry and haggard, they told AFP they had spent months being held as human shields by ISIL fighters.
As the Iraq forces makes their final push, approximately half of the population of the city is still displaced, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said.
Tens of thousands of people are likely to return to the city in the near future, placing pressure on the Iraqi government and the international community to begin rebuilding immediately.
“People from every ethnic, religious and socio-economic group in Iraq have suffered as a result of this conflict,” said Heidi Diedrich, the NRC’s country director.
“It is the responsibility of the international community now to help them rebuild their country and repair the divisions that helped to create the conflict in the first place.”
The UN predicts it will cost more than $1bn to repair basic infrastructure in Mosul.

The Iraqis have their symbolic and costly victory, routing the remnants of the Islamic State from the largest city they’ve held. But there are still many towns to be cleared and then there are the Islamic State fighters. Many residents in Mosul have been quoted as stating that the fighters faced with certain death have shaved their beards, jettisoned their military clothing, and blended in with the refugees…free to fight another day.

To read the entire article from Al-Jazeera click here:

Photo Courtesy DOD

Poland to Buy Patriot Missiles From the US, On Eve of Trump Visit

Poland’s Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said on Wednesday evening that they’ve struck a deal with the United States to purchase Patriot Missile Systems.

“A memorandum was signed tonight that the U.S. government has agreed to sell Poland Patriot missiles in the most modern configuration,” Macierewicz said in a news conference broadcast on public television on Thursday morning.
“I am glad that I can pass on this information on the day of President’s Trump visit to Warsaw,” Macierewicz also said.
U.S. President Donald Trump arrived on Wednesday in Warsaw where the White House said he would showcase his commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in a speech and in meetings with a group of nations closest to Russia on his way to the G20 summit in Germany on Friday and Saturday.
In March Poland said it expected to sign a deal worth up to $7.6 billion with U.S. firm Raytheon to buy eight Patriot missile defense systems by the end of the year.
Warsaw sees the deal as central to a thorough modernization of its armed forces by 2023.

Poland, the former communist nation that shares a border with Russia, is one of the few NATO members that meet the alliance’s defense spending target of 2 percent of economic output.

The MIM-104 Patriot is a surface-to-air missile (SAM) system, the primary of its kind used by the United States Army and several allied nations. Manufactured by the U.S. defense contractor Raytheon, it derives its name from the radar component of the weapon system. The AN/MPQ-53 at the heart of the system is known as the “Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept on Target” which is a where the “PATRIOT” name is derived.

It was used against SCUDs during the Gulf War and the Israelis used it to shoot down an SU-24 from the Syrian Air Force when it penetrated Israel’s airspace.

The first deliveries of the missile interceptors, which have been a source of tension between NATO and Russia, may take place within two years.

To read the entire article from Reuters click here:

Photo courtesy US Army