| Refractive Reflections |
01-29-2018 04:52 AM |
"Trump's fault!"
Why else should I expect anything less, when the mainstream media didn't report about Obama's role in contributing to the Iran and North Korean situation earlier?
Quote:
In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.
The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.
Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.
They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.
They followed cocaine shipments, tracked a river of dirty cash, and traced what they believed to be the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.
But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way, according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected their requests.
The Justice Department declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal charges against major players such as Hezbollah’s high-profile envoy to Iran, a Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds force. And the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries where they could be arrested.
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http://archive.is/Nx5JI#selection-457.2-457.133
Quote:
The Obama administration secretly derailed Drug Enforcement Administration efforts targeting the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah as it worked to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, according to a new report.
In 2008, the DEA launched “Project Cassandra” to track Hezbollah’s trafficking of drug and weapons, money laundering and other criminal activities, some of which were happening in the U.S.
As Project Cassandra carried on, the Obama administration threw a series of roadblocks in its way, Politico reported Sunday.
When investigators sought approval for prosecutions, arrests, and financial sanctions, the Justice Department and Treasury Department officials delayed, hindered, or denied their requests, the report said.
“This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,” Defense Department illicit finance analyst David Asher said. “They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.”
Project Cassandra members said Obama officials blocked or undermined their efforts to chase down top Hezbollah operatives, including one of the world’s biggest cocaine traffickers who was also a top supplier of conventional and chemical weapons used by Syrian President Bashar Assad against his own citizens.
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http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/ob...rticle/2643790
Quote:
Iran may have received an additional $33.6 billion in secret cash and gold payments facilitated by the Obama administration between 2014 and 2016, according to testimony provided before Congress by an expert on last summer’s nuclear agreement with Iran.
Between January 2014 and July 2015, when the Obama administration was hammering out the final details of the nuclear accord, Iran was paid $700 million every month from funds that had previously been frozen by U.S. sanctions.
A total of $11.9 billion was ultimately paid to Iran, but the details surrounding these payments remain shrouded in mystery, according to Mark Dubowitz, executive director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
In total, "Iran may have received as much as $33.6 billion in cash or in gold and other precious metals," Dubowitz disclosed.
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http://freebeacon.com/national-secur...-payments-u-s/
Quote:
The Obama administration concept of 'strategic patience' emerged early on in the administration after the scathing experience of North Korea’s 2009 nuclear test. The strategy essentially demanded that North Koreans recommit to concrete steps towards denuclearization—such as allowing inspectors and freezing fissile material production—as a precondition of any future talks.
"It meant that the administration didn’t want to be driven by a DPRK-orchestrated sense of crisis, and would respond in its own time to North Korean initiatives," said Scott Synder, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
"The Obama administration came into office with a healthy skepticism of North Korea's ability to follow through on its commitments.,” explains Daryl Kimball, publisher of Arms Control Today. Given the breakdown of the denuclearization agreement reached under Bush, the Obama administration “came in with the view that before talks began again North Korea should recommit to taking steps to show that they were committed to meeting that pledge."
It is a strategy that has proven to be a failure, given the most recent nuclear test. North Korea has simply accepted sanctions and international isolation as the cost of a slow and steady expansion of its nuclear weapons program.
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/expert...reas-new-nukes |
