5:32 AM 4/11/2019: One dead after masked gunmen with AK-47s raid Austrian Airlines plane in Tirana | Donald Trump’s Day of the Long Knives | Is the FBI capable of handling the counterintelligence matters? – by Michael Novakhov
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5:32 AM 4/11/2019:
Tirana Airport
At least two members of an armed gang remain at large after raiding an Austrian Airlines plane on the runway of the Tirana International Airport in Albania, and managing to get away with an estimated $11 million in cash. To defend against bank robberies —a regular occurrence in crime-ridden Albania— the Bank of Albania does not accept large cash deposits. Consequently, branches of foreign-owned banks that operate in Albania export their hard-currency deposits abroad via regular flights to Vienna, Austria.
On Tuesday, as the Austrian Airlines airplane was preparing to take off from the Tirana International Airport, a white van bearing the logo of the General Directorate of Taxation —the revenue collection agency of the Albanian Government— smashed through the gate used by the airport’s emergency services and drove up to the airplane. Three masked men dressed in military fatigues exited the van and reportedly threatened the luggage handlers with AK-47 rifles. They then forced open the cargo doors of the plane and removed several bags full of hard currency. In less than four minutes, they started to drive back toward the emergency gate, when they were confronted by a police patrol that opened fire on them. One of the robbers was reportedly shot in the head and died instantly.
On Wednesday, police identified the dead robber as Admir Murataj and said that he had been the mastermind of the operation. By the end of Wednesday, police had arrested four men and questioned at least 40 other people in connection with the robbery. Initial reports said that the robbers had left the scene of the crime with about $2.8 million in cash, but subsequent reports said that as much as $11 million had been stolen. Investigators said that the robbers must have had inside knowledge about the Austrian Airlines plane and its cargo. A spokesperson for Austrian Airlines said that there would be no further transfers of cash from Albania to Austria following the robbery.
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In what was at the time justified as a preemptive strike against a possible coup, in the summer of 1934, Adolf Hitler ordered the murder of Ernst Röhm and several of his “brownshirt” lieutenants. The net effect of this purge was to rein in the more thuggish elements of Hitler’s regime and consolidate his power. It largely worked and the evening of 30 June, 1934 became known as the “Night of the Long Knives,” in commemoration of those brutal murders.
With Donald Trump ordering the termination of Kirstjen Nielsen and Service Director Randolph Alles, and with other DHS and ICE personnel also on their way out, it’s ironic in light of reflected history that Trump was motivated to take these actions because the personnel he’s purging, though thuggish in their own right, have not, by his lights, been sufficiently thuggish enough. Even so it might not be out of line to call Monday, the eighth of April, and events immediately following, the “Day of the Long Knives,” as a memorialization.
With John Kelly gone, Josef Goebbels lookalike and White House cockroach in residence Stephen Miller is the Svengali currently holding the lion’s share of Trump’s strings. Miller’s well-known toxic views on immigration (it was he who made sport of the “New Colossus,” poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty) are quickly becoming Trump’s too. These days it may even turn out to be dangerous in Trumpland to despise, with substandard zeal, immigrants and asylum seekers. Look for Insufficient Hate to become a fireable offense in the Trump White House soon.
I do not believe that history repeats itself, per se. I do believe, however, that certain identifiable patterns do recur. So apart from yet another tired Hitler dig on Donald Trump, and obvious comparisons of Trump sycophant and lapdog Stephen Miller with Josef Goebbels, what can be achieved by rechristening the eighth of April, 2019, the “Day of the Long Knives”? Only this. During Adolf Hitler’s second year of his rise to power, Hitler never once held in his mortal hands the power to destroy all life on Earth. In fact, he never did. Donald Trump holds two weapons of clear and present danger to the future survival of the human race: the largest nuclear arsenal ever assembled, and a complete disregard for the science of global climate change.
So let’s never lose sight of this chilling reality. Adolf Hitler, with far fewer weapons of far lesser power, and wielding the same simple, inimical bigotry that Donald Trump wields every day, still managed to massacre millions of innocent people, and very nearly destroyed the world. If christening Trump’s latest act of hate-inspired xenophobia the “Day of the Long Knives” reminds you of Trump’s potential to destroy us all, then I see it as a good thing. We need to stay scared.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.
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Is the FBI capable of handling the counterintelligence matters? – by Michael Novakhov
Is the FBI capable of handling the counterintelligence matters? – by Michael Novakhov
Is the FBI capable of handling the counterintelligence matters? – by Michael Novakhov
Is the FBI capable of handling the counterintelligence matters, in its present structure, and as a matter of personnel selection, their education, training, and the FBI’s institutional culture? The record does not look impressive.
Is there something structurally wrong? Would the new forms of the workforce organization be helpful? Should the Counterintelligence Services and Forces be grouped directly under the ODNI, and it’s central apparatus, and in greater collaboration with other related services? What should be the strategic directions? Rethinking, reconceptualization and the reorganization might be the more healthy alternatives to the present structure, which appears to be largely dysfunctional, for a number of reasons, still not formulated, analyzed, and comprehended properly.
“Critics claim that the FBI’s law-enforcement structure is inadequate for twenty first century counterintelligence realities and should be replaced by a separate service staffed by counterintelligence officers, presumably with no law-enforcement powers.”
“The need for proactive and preventive approach, combined with a lesser visibility and a lesser emphasis on the formal law enforcement functions as compared with the counterintelligence functions proper, was advocated by the researchers:
“The third quality essential to counterintelligence operation is a preventive disposition. As Christopher Andrew has noted, a counterintelligence organization may be better evaluated by preventing spies from gaining any foothold than by the number of spies caught.(343) MI5 has always aimed to prevent threats from materializing. This is most evident in the Service’s
penchant for running double agents in general and in the Double Cross System in specific. Having double agents in place within target organizations can prevent any success on the part of
that organization and the strategic deception on D-Day obviated the bulk of Nazi forces and prevented countless allied casualties. The FBI’s most notable cases of preventive counterintelligence or counter-terrorism operation are more recent, particularly after Director Mueller’s concerted drive to push the Bureau in this direction.(344) The Bureau’s rise to the
challenge posed by terrorism will absolutely require it to become more preventive because the FBI cannot wait for terrorists to be successful before they apprehend them.
penchant for running double agents in general and in the Double Cross System in specific. Having double agents in place within target organizations can prevent any success on the part of
that organization and the strategic deception on D-Day obviated the bulk of Nazi forces and prevented countless allied casualties. The FBI’s most notable cases of preventive counterintelligence or counter-terrorism operation are more recent, particularly after Director Mueller’s concerted drive to push the Bureau in this direction.(344) The Bureau’s rise to the
challenge posed by terrorism will absolutely require it to become more preventive because the FBI cannot wait for terrorists to be successful before they apprehend them.
…
Finally, and most crucially, the Bureau must become more preventive and proactive in contrast to its established preference for reactive law enforcement.(345) This quality is at the heart of counterintelligence and counter-terrorism and will absolutely be the most difficult change for the
Bureau. If the FBI can make this cultural shift, it will be able to prevent and counter intelligence and terrorist threats just as well as any other organization, including MI5.”
Bureau. If the FBI can make this cultural shift, it will be able to prevent and counter intelligence and terrorist threats just as well as any other organization, including MI5.”
And this is not to say that the MI5 is any more successful in its counterintelligence efforts (recently) than the FBI.
By the way, and interestingly enough, the Russian Counterintelligence Services, starting from their very inception in 1920-s and the “Operation Trust“, emphasized and practiced the sophisticated and aggressive proactive and preventive approach, it was the matter of the very survival for them. It looks that their counterintelligence operations outgrew and expanded into the intelligence operations proper. The recent events might be the confirmation of this thesis, just like the recent expansion of the FSB mandate into the foreign activities and operations.
How far will this approach take them eventually, and how successful it will be in the present circumstances, is very much the open question, projected into the future. This approach is the result and function of their deep historical insecurity. But it is quite effective apparently, and it should be studied, understood and comprehended, and reciprocated with the comprehensive multiplications. The resources are there, the resolve and will are needed, the qualities that apparently are lacking lately, after the ill-conceived and the counterproductive euphoria of 1990-s.
Do catch their arrows and send them back to them, with the overwhelming force and the well thought out strategic determination.
Michael Novakhov
11.13.17
Links
FBI and Counterintelligence – 11.14.17
- 1:12 PM 11/13/2017 – Is the FBI capable of handling the counterintelligence matters? | FBI News Review
- Is the FBI capable of handling the counterintelligence matters? – Google Search
- The Future of FBI Counterintelligence Through the Lens of the Past Hundred Years | FBI Studies
- The FBI probe into Trump and Russia is huge news. Our political system isn’t ready for it. – Vox
- counterintelligence fbi – Google Search
- fbi counterintelligence program – Google Search
- fbi counterintelligence investigation – Google Search
- fbi counterintelligence – Google Search
- problems with fbi counterintelligence – Google Search
- For America’s Top Spy Catcher, A World Of Problems To Fix — And Prevent : Parallels : NPR
- William Evanina – Google Search
- five functions of counterintelligence – Google Search
- Operation Trust – Google Search
- Russian Counterintelligence Services – Google Search
Election – 2016 Meddling:
FBI, Russia, and other players
4:33 PM 5/7/2017 - Recent Posts: WATCH: Comey admits FBI investigating leaks to Giuliani and Trump team
To add some comments to this very good and straightforward article, in my humble opinion. This situation is further complicated by the strong suspicions that a certain, pro-Trump faction of the FBI‘s upper echelons, possibly represented by Kallstrom (reportedly, Trump’s old childhood friend), and the Giuliani circles, reportedly very close to the New York branch of the FBI, might have been a prominent part of this conspiracy against the U.S., or the so called FBI NY branch cabal, or according to Sidney Blumenthal: “Cabal Of Right-Wing FBI Agents” who “Took Down Hillary In A “Coup D’Etat”. Both of them, Kallstrom and Giuliani, apparently, and again, reportedly, and assumingly, aspired to lead the FBI after Trump’s win.
The statistical effects of the October 28 Letter | Federal Bureau of Investigation - NYT
It is also my suspicion that the FBI engineered the Abedin – Weiner email affair as their sexual-political “sting operation”, which is an old, familiar and the favorite trick in both their own and Mr. Putin’s political toolboxes. In these circumstances, the question that logically and inevitably arises, is: What was the degree of cooperation between them and the Russians? This is the big and the important question, and it has to be addressed and answered. This affair led to the October 28, 2016 Letter, which in the opinion of the pollsters, now broadly accepted, did decide the outcome of the elections.
The question about how the hundreds of thousands of emails (650,000) ended up on Abedin – Weiner laptop, remain essentially unanswered. Who planted them there and with whose help? If you get the wind that there might have been a covert or overt collusion between the Russians and the FBI, it would be hard to accuse you of the lack of logic in your thinking. Naturally, the next set of questions that inevitably arise, is the degree of infiltration and penetration of the FBI by the Russians and the others, who worked hard on this for many years. They do have a sad history in this regard, illustrated recently by this account.
Mr. Mueller’s Investigation proceeds at its pace and seems to be rather deep and comprehensive, and I think and hope that he and his team will address these issues in their customary and expected depth, and will not cover up the FBI’s possible wrongdoings if any are discovered, and/or confirmed; although some observers expressed their strongly worded doubts on this account.
The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. That what we need if we really want to recover and to understand what happened, starting from 1990-s, and encompassing both the 9/11, 2001 and The Elections 2016. These two epochal events do seem to be the connecting links of the same mysterious chain, as the author suggests, and as was noted by many others, of the writing and thinking public, on this subject.
Michael Novakhov
11.13.17
Quote:
“After weeks/months of the Hillary campaign bashing Trump for “irresponsibly” questioning the legitimacy of the election process, Clinton-insider, Sid Blumenthal, is apparently making the media rounds in Europe attributing her loss to a “coup d’etat” organized by “a cabal of right-wing agents of the FBI in the New York office attached to Rudy Giuliani.”
“It was the result of a cabal of right-wing agents of the FBI in the New York office attached to Rudy Giuliani, who was a member of Trump’s campaign.”
“I think it’s not unfair to call it a coup. Yeah, a coup d’etat.”
Of course, Blumenthal is well known within Clinton world for his wild conspiracy theories as John Podesta pointed out he is “lost in his own web of conspiracies.”
Links
11.13.17
- Russia’s Election Meddling Was Another U.S. Intelligence Failure | The New Yorker
- Dana Priest | The New Yorker
- Dana Priest – Google Search
- FBI and elections 2016 – Google Search
- Trump and conspiracy against the U.S. – Google Search
- cabal – Google Search
- FBI NY branch cabal – Google Search
- The Cabal against Clinton: Giuliani, Bannon and the FBI New York bureau (part 2 of 2) – YouTube
- 9/11, 2001 and The Elections 2016 – Google Search
- Sidney Blumenthal: “Cabal Of Right-Wing FBI Agents” Took Down Hillary In A “Coup D’Etat” | Zero Hedge
- News Reviews and Opinions: The Autumn Of Our Discontent – by Michael Novakhov
- Mueller’s Investigation – Google Search
- News – Mueller’s Investigation – Google Search
- New York branch of the FBI and Trump – Google Search
- Kallstrom and Trump – Google Search
- James B. Comey, called a ‘liar’ and ‘leaker’ by Trump, tweets a quote about truth and justice – The Washington Post
- Trump voters were motivated by racism, not economic anxiety : The Massachusetts Daily Collegian
- Trump suggests softening the US’ stance towards Russia, easing sanctions – Business Insider
- Former DNI James Clapper says he didn’t know about Papadopoulos meetings – Business Insider
- James Clapper says Watergate ‘pales’ in comparison to Trump-Russia – Business Insider
- Authorities investigating stairwell collapse at San Diego gym that injured nearly two dozen children – LA Times
- 21 children injured after platform collapses at San Diego parkour gym for kids – The Washington Post
- children staircase – Google Search
- low gun definition – Google Search
- Police: 2 dead, 2 wounded in Atlanta concert shooting – ABC News
- How Spain’s Fight Against Gangsters Revealed Russian Power Networks
- Bulgaria’s Richest Man or Mafia Kingpin? Possibly Both | Provocateurs | OZY
- pro-Trump faction of the FBI – Google Search
- Rudy Giuliani – Google Search
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TEL AVIV — It was a referendum on him and he nailed it. Nobody can take that away from Benjamin Netanyahu. This summer, in his fifth term, he will surpass David Ben-Gurion as the longest-serving Israeli prime minister. Enough said.
His victory contains a warning for any Democrat still imagining that the 2020 election will bring an easy victory over Donald Trump. The Netanyahu playbook will be President Trump’s next year. Gather nationalist and religious voters in your camp, add in a strong economy, dose with fear, sprinkle with strongman appeal, inject a dash of racism and victory is yours — whatever indictments are looming.
It’s not that this could happen. It will happen, absent some decisive factor to upend the logic of it. Netanyahu is savvier than Trump, but they share a shrewd assessment of how to control and manipulate the politics of spectacle, as well as a fierce determination to stay out of jail. They campaign ugly.
Exactly a century ago, Ben-Gurion said, “Everyone sees the difficulty of relations between Jews and Arabs, but not everyone sees there is no solution to that question.” Netanyahu’s solution is by now clear. He is a true believer in Greater Israel and will not give up one inch of the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. There will be no Palestinian state on his watch. Period.
Many Israelis, weary of the chimera of a two-state peace, thank him for that — as they thank him for a strong economy, Trump’s support and a sense of stability. Netanyahu is a formidable politician adept in using hate and fear, the strongest currency in contemporary politics.
His victory was personal but it was also structural. Israel now has a structural majority of the right. This will almost certainly enable Netanyahu to form a right-wing government, even though his Likud party appeared tied with the Blue and White party of his upstart challenger, Benny Gantz, each winning 35 seats.
The Gantz performance was remarkable. It demonstrated the deep disquiet of liberal Israel over Netanyahu the King. But in the end Gantz took more votes from the left — the Labor Party and Meretz — than from the right. As Avi Scharf, editor of the English edition of the liberal daily Haaretz, put it to me, “Israel’s founding left is totally obliterated.”
The structural majority of the right is composed of the ultra-Orthodox, the settler movement, Mizrahi Jews of North African and Middle Eastern descent, nationalists of various stripes and Russian immigrants like the one who recently told my friend Shlomo Avineri, a political scientist, “I don’t want to live under Putin, but I want my leader to be like Putin.”
Netanyahu never passes up a photo-op with Vladimir Putin, any more than he does with Trump. “A different league,” one of his campaign ads said. Netanyahu was able to project presence among the superpowers. His base loved it. Trump’s base loves him, unswervingly. The president is not structurally assured of victory in 2020, but he is structurally within sight of it.
That Netanyahu is facing indictment on bribery and other charges proved no obstacle to Likud increasing its seats to 35 from 30 in 2015. In the near term, Israeli politics — and its democracy — will hinge on Netanyahu’s attempts to secure immunity from prosecution while in office. He may make acquiescence to such legislation a condition for coalition partners joining the government. It will not be pretty.
“We could see a coup d’état against democracy, something very dangerous,” Tom Segev, a prominent historian, told me.
For now, Israelis seem prepared to shrug. The not-with-a-bang-but-a-whimper conclusion to the Mueller report reinforced a feeling that the cloud of corruption that has hung around Netanyahu for years should not be taken as proof of it.
In the longer term, Israeli politics will turn to the question of annexation. At the last minute, to shore up the right, Netanyahu promised to start annexing the West Bank if he won another term. The United Right and other extreme parties will not let him forget it.
Still, there is no reason to take Netanyahu at his word. He made himself kosher with the Obama administration through his Bar Ilan speech of a decade ago supporting a Palestinian state, only to do nothing to favor one and everything to block one.
Annexation could see the same fate because it’s problematic. Netanyahu is happiest in the gray zone where Israel controls millions of Palestinians without having to confront the question of whether they vote or are granted Israeli citizenship. He does not want to jeopardize good relations with Egypt and the Saudis. He’s quite happy with a Palestinian Authority in the West Bank that once saw itself in the role of leading the way to a Palestinian state but has become the feeble enabler of Israel’s gray-zone domination.
Netanyahu’s annexation decision may hinge in the end on the long-incubated Trump plan for Israel-Palestine. It’s said to exist. Maybe it really does. God knows. The fact that strong pushback from the United States on partial annexation is no longer assured says it all: The rightist nationalist wave has yet to crest.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
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