OBO Remakes Mexico

 

Or at least, our diplomatic premises there. See the current State Magazine for an article about how my good friends have done a clean sweep of our old and decrepit embassy and consulates there and replaced them with the new stuff. 

 

Pistols, Patches, and Pelican Cases = All It Takes To Cosplay as a Cop

The latest Secret Service scandal rolls on, along with conspiracy theories fueled by the Pakistan national identity card and the two passports with Iranian visas and entry/exit stamps that were found in the several apartments occupied by those two curious characters. 

But here's my favorite part of Washington's fake DHS agents scandal, the freebies those two got just for pretending to be cops:

A former representative of Crossing DC who worked at the building since the start of Taherzadeh's lease confirmed that none of the units were being paid for at any time. When asked why they were not paying rent on the units, the individual responded with one word: 'Government'.

Government?! Has that ever worked for you? I know it hasn't worked for me, but then, I admit I've never tried asking my mortgage holder if I could skip making payments because "Government."

Read the criminal complaint here and take note of the remarkably thin window dressing that was all it took to convince at least five Secret Service agents plus local Metro Police officers that those two wild and crazy guys were actually federal law enforcement officers. They carried the correct pistols for Secret Service agents, first a SIG 229 and then a Glock 19, even exchanging insider tidbits about the Glock transition course which the real Secret Service agents - AKA dupes - were taking. Sprinkle around a few shoulder patches and pose for a photo in front of a closet shelf stacked with Pelican gun cases and, why, anyone would be fooled. I mean, they would, wouldn't they?

Maybe it was giving the credulous cops free use of apartments and vehicles that overcame any doubts they may have secretly harbored. Anyway, the scam worked fine until it encountered a Postal Inspector, i.e., a law enforcement officer from one of the humbler and less romanticized federal agencies, who saw through the costumes.   

As an aside, I am kind of pleased to learn that DC city cops never questioned either the open or concealed carry of pistols by those two fraudulent feds. Despite all the gun bans in DC, it seems you may walk around armed so long as you add a little police paraphernalia to your daily wear. Hey, I have gun belts and other pieces of equipment with which to accessorize my office garb, why haven't I ever tried just adding a pistol and a couple magazines? It seems that might work.

As yet a further aside, I recall reading in G. Gordon Liddy's autobiography that when he first came to Washington as a political appointee in the Treasury Department he phonied-up a badge and credentials for himself as an excuse to - illegally - carry a pistol. Since Treasury was known to have lots of obscure law enforcement functions, he reasoned, he would be able to brazen it out should a local cop ever question his gun. Today, it's DHS that is know to have myriad obscure law enforcement functions, so its the clear choice for today's fraudsters.

In Today's News, Phony DHS Cops Dupe Real Secret Service Agents

A very weird news item that explains why a DC apartment building was raided yesterday. https://t.co/Sz2MEFV36m

— TSB (@TweetingTSB) April 7, 2022

The Secret Service has had its fair share of scandals, and more, but a new one is shaping up today that might be particularly damning because it is the rare one that involves professional misjudgment rather than personal misbehavior.

According to the Daily Mail:

[Arian] Taherzadeh and [Haider] Ali are accused of posing as members of a fake Department of Homeland Security taskforce investigating gang violence and the January 6 Capitol riots. The pair, whose nationalities have not been revealed, are said to have driven around in an official-looking SUV equipped with flashing lights.

They are said to have successfully ingratiated themselves with Secret Service agents, who they supplied with rent-free luxury apartments, high-end electronics and policing equipment. Four members of the agency - including the first lady's bodyguard - have been placed on leave, with their identities not revealed.

In one instance, Taherzadeh allegedly offered a member of First Lady Jill Biden's security detail with a $2,000 assault rifle. He and Ali also reportedly supplied a USSS agent with a penthouse apartment valued at more than $40,000 a year.

It is unclear what they had hoped to gain from the ruse, and prosecutors say the investigation is ongoing, even as four members of the Secret Service - including the one from the first lady's security detail - have been placed on leave.

According to the WaPo (here) this genius scheme to do who-knows-what was foiled when the phony DHS agents voluntarily assisted a Postal Inspector who was investigating an assault on a mailman which they, eagled-eyed and on high alert as always for signs of terrorist activity, claimed to have witnessed.

The [Postal] inspector learned the men were in contact with several members of the Secret Service and had provided gifts to them or their families and use of the SUV, the affidavit states. The document did not explain how the inspector learned about the gifts.

The inspector informed [the real] DHS, which then informed the FBI.

Wow. Assuming the details being reported are true and even close to complete, there ought to be a lot of egg on a lot of federal law enforcement faces today.

Miss Dismal Says Unapproved Information Is Dangerous, Read Her Comic Book To Learn More

It was a bright cold day in February and the clocks were striking thirteen when Homeland Security's latest Summary of the Terrorism Threat to the United States popped up on my telescreen.

(Forget I said that. I should cut out the 1984 references for fear that DHS will suspect me of thoughtcrime.)

So the latest threat to America's homeland comes from MDM, or Mis-Dis-and-Mal Information, and it will take trained info-cops from Homeland Security to police the marketplace of ideas for anything that might mislead, harm, or manipulate you and me.

I say, first of all, Mis-Dis-Mal needs an acronym you can pronounce, something like "Miss Dismal." Second, it needs a good judicial review because, hard as it may be to believe, there are some people who would not want federal agents and their contractors policing our public and private media for signs of MDM.

What would Thomas Jefferson say about this initiative? Or about Homeland Security itself, I wonder? But before I get on a watchlist for wondering about that, I'll stay on the safe side and let the trained info-cops of DHS explain:

Misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation make up what CISA [Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency] defines as “information activities”. When this type of content is released by foreign actors, it can be referred to as foreign influence. Definitions for each are below.

• Misinformation is false, but not created or shared with the intention of causing harm.

• Disinformation is deliberately created to mislead, harm, or manipulate a person, social group, organization, or country.

• Malinformation is based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.

What should our corps of trained professional info-cops do about the threat posed by Miss Dismal? Naturally, it should deploy comic books – yes, comic books – to counter the influence spread by any malign 'threat actor.'

Foreign and domestic threat actors use MDM campaigns to cause chaos, confusion, and division. These malign actors are seeking to interfere with and undermine our democratic institutions and national cohesiveness. The resources provided at the bottom of this page provide examples and more information about MDM activities.

First in the series, Real Fake demonstrates how threat actors capitalize on political and social issues (especially around election cycles) to stealthily plant doubt in the minds of targeted audiences and steer their opinion.

Readers follow protagonists Rachel and Andre as they discover that a command center in Russia is using a network of troll farms to spread false narratives about elections to American voters. With the elections coming up, Rachel and Andre follow the trail of synthetic media and stop the cyber assailants from causing chaos, confusion, and division.

They're calling this comic book "Real Fake?” Really? I wonder who it was in DHS who greenlighted that term because it makes me recall the “fake but accurate” excuse that Dan Rather came up with after he was fired from CBS News for using forged documents to – come to think of it – influence an election.

Rathergate was big news once, but that was back in 2004, when most of today’s DHS employees were in grade school. See the CBS News' final word on it here: CBS Ousts Four For Bush Guard Story.

This is where things get funny, because Rathergate had a simply hilarious aspect in that Rather and his producers exposed George W. Bush’s purported misdeeds by producing four old Texas Air National Guard memos. The perfect smoking gun, right?

But, as some TV viewers noticed the very night the story was broadcast, those memos, which were dated in 1972 and ‘73, had been typed in Microsoft Word with default settings. They had proportionally spaced font, and even superscripts (as in Rathergate), things that did not become available to office workers until Steve Jobs invented the MacIntosh computer

Although Rather still keeps on defending himself all these many years later, game over, man. Those documents weren’t fake but accurate, they were just plain fake.

I don’t think DHS intended for Americans to associate their Mis-Dis-and-Mal-fighting comic books with that failed attempt to influence the 2004 election. Although, I would be totally open to a comic book series based on Rathergate.

New Threat Warning, Same As the Old Threat Warning

It's a holiday weekend, and that means the bureaucrats of Homeland Security are at it again, issuing another vague but dire terrorism threat warning:

WASHINGTON, July 3 (UPI) -- Parades, fireworks and barbecues are annual July 4 traditions. So are reports of terrorist threats. And that makes Americans less likely to take them seriously even though this year's situation is new, experts say.

-- snip --

This week, the Department of Homeland Security, FBI and National Counterterrorism Center issued a joint intelligence bulletin to law enforcement across the U.S. warning of threats from extremists tied to Independence Day.

"They can't not put out a warning, even if they have no indication of increased threat," said former FBI senior official Christopher Voss. "If an attack occurs, they would have no defense for not putting out a warning."

Voss, Clarke [an associate political scientist who researches counterterrorism and the Middle East at RAND Corporation] and other homeland security experts said these raised alerts could be less about safeguarding the public than making certain that the government is on the record about the seriousness of the threat should something happen.

"What's the alternative? Not take these things seriously then have something happen? If it ends up being overblown, I'll take that 10 times out of 10 over the alternative," said Clarke.

Thank You, noted Homeland Security Experts Voss and Clarke, for adding a moment of honesty amidst the panic-mongering of this latest baseless threat warning.

Indeed, what is the alternative to DHS, the National Counterterrorism Center, and the FBI all covering their collective asses by issuing vague warnings about non-specific threats? I guess the only alternative would be to say nothing when they have nothing to say. And then where would they be?

I could make some snarky remarks at this point about how nothing ever changes with these cynical threat warnings, but instead I'll just re-run what I said on the subject way back in 2008:

The FBI and Homeland Security have issued another of their vague terrorism warnings ("analytical notes") to local law enforcement agencies. See the Washington Post article Feds Warn About Possible Terrorist Plot Targeting NYC. As usual, they have no specific threat information and, consequently, no security countermeasures to recommend. They just want to drop their warning and let you make of it what you will.

Here are some quotes from the story:

We have no specific details to confirm that this plot has developed beyond aspirational planning, but we are issuing this warning out of concern that such an attack could possibly be conducted during the forthcoming holiday season," states the warning, which is dated Tuesday.

While federal agencies regularly issue all sorts of advisory warnings, the language of this one is particularly blunt.

Intelligence and homeland security officials are working with local authorities to try to corroborate the information "and will continue to investigate every possible lead," the memo says.

Knocke, the DHS spokesman, said the warning was issued "out of an abundance of caution going into this holiday season."

No changes are being made to the nation's threat level, or for transit systems at this time.

Here are news reports of two previous warnings, from November, 2007, and October, 2008.

The warnings always follow the same script. Timing is critical, since you want the threat to sound like it is imminent, but under no circumstances do you want it to be specific or linked to a certain date, like, 'next Monday,' otherwise people will start keeping track of how often these warnings are duds. The latest warning covers "the forthcoming holiday season," which is a nicely broad time frame. By the time the holiday season is over, we'll have new things to worry about and will have forgotten that something or other was supposed to have happened in New York.

I think of these FBI / DHS warnings as the Hallmark cards of the security industry, since they are sent out before all anniversaries and major occasions, religious holidays, national day celebrations, Presidential inaugurations, summit conferences, and so on. And that leads me to try my hand at some Hallmark-ish doggerel.

Roses are red, violets are blue,
here's a new analytical note for you.
You might be attacked this holiday season
or maybe not, who can tell? (there's no reason)

Our warnings we can't substantiate,
and against them there's no way to mitigate.
But take it from us and start to panic,
one day you'll go down just like the Titanic

We've been wrong in the past, but that's OK,
al Qaeda will strike again one of these days.
Maybe not now but someday, and soon,
we'll be right if we keep predicting your doom

Read us and worry, you never can tell,
it will do you no good, but then, what the hell?
It keeps us employed and no one minds,
So believe all our notes and our portents and signs!

I think that bit of bad poetry still holds up! BTW, nothing happened after that old threat warning, just as nothing will happen after this new threat warning. That's a bold statement, I know, given that anything can happen in this crazy world. But I do not live my life in a constant state of fear, and I hope you won't, either.

Notice how that "analytical note" of a threat warning from November 2008 could be substituted word for word for today's July Fourth warning. That kind of language - no specific details ... an attack could possibly be conducted ... while federal agencies regularly issue all sorts of advisory warnings, the language of this one is particularly blunt ... the warning was issued out of an abundance of caution going into this holiday season - is meaningless and therefore endlessly repeatable for occasions of every sort.

Have a Happy Independence Day weekend, my fellow Americans. I'll see you all on Monday.

The Department of Homeland Security - What's It Good for?

Tonight's vote in the House to extend full DHS funding for another three weeks failed, and failed by a good margin - 224 to 203. There is time for another vote before DHS funding runs out at midnight, but I would not bet that Speaker Boehner can turn enough of his rebellious members to pass an unamended bill tonight.

Would it really be such a great big deal if DHS went into a 'shutdown' mode while Congress, the courts, and the President duke it out over the latter's refusal to deport millions of illegal aliens?

Maybe DHS is the only thing that stands between us and a terrorist invasion of the Mall of America, like Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson says. Or, maybe we wouldn't miss it much if it were gone for a while.

As Foreign Policy magazine asks, Who Needs the Department of Homeland Security Anyway?

With two days left until funding for the Department of Homeland Security dries up, Jeh Johnson has been pleading with Republicans to save his department from a partial shutdown.

That job might be easier if the 12-year-old department weren’t so widely derided on Capitol Hill and beyond for its size and clumsiness.

-- snip --

[E]ven the entreaties of the two Republican heavyweights weren’t enough to stop a letter campaign by 30 House conservatives urging House Speaker John Boehner to “stand firm against these unlawful executive actions” and reject an emerging funding deal brokered by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

-- snip --

[That deal] may be a tough sell, in large part because Johnson’s dire warnings about the impact of a budget cutoff ring hollow. One reason is practical: 80 percent of DHS employees are deemed “essential” to national security and would still show up to work in a shutdown — albeit without pay. All core functions of agencies such as Customs and Border Protection, the Transportation Security Administration, and the Secret Service would remain intact; the only people from the department’s 240,000-person workforce who would be furloughed would be 30,000 nonessential employees, mostly office workers.

-- snip --

But another reason for the lack of urgency boils down to one word: respect.

-- snip --

The fact that the FBI, the agency tasked to “protect and defend” against “terrorist and foreign intelligence threats” is housed outside DHS indicates the department’s awkward and uncertain place in America’s national security bureaucracy.

“DHS’s biggest problem is that it is still less than the sum of its parts,” said Daniel Byman, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University and a contributor to Foreign Policy. “The whole point of it was integration of homeland security functions, but it is still a divided organization with few synergies — so it has the problems of a big organization without the benefits.”

-- snip --

“The irony in that complaint [referring to blame-shifting by DHS's defenders] is that the very reason DHS was founded was to deal with the problem of insufficient coordination within the government,” said Jeremy Shapiro, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. “If DHS failed to solve that problem, it’s unclear why it exists.”

-- snip --

Another concern is that the department, forged in a fearful post-9/11 environment, owes its existence to a wildly exaggerated understanding of the terrorist threat to the United States. As Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, has pointed out, Americans are substantially more endangered by threats such as infectious disease, gun violence, and drunk driving than terrorism. In fact, the odds of being killed in a terrorist attack in the United States or abroad are 1 in 20 million.

“This low risk isn’t evidence that homeland security spending has worked: It’s evidence that the terror threat was never as great as we thought,” wrote Kenny.

-- snip --

Although a shutdown still looms, most observers expect House Republicans to cave in to political pressure and pass a “clean” funding bill by the end of the week. Either way, at a time when U.S. media attention on terrorist threats is at an all-time high, it’s ironic that a department dedicated to homeland security has such a hard time justifying its existence. And until it finds more solid footing within the national security bureaucracy, that problem isn’t likely to go away soon.

It turns out that "most observers" were wrong about the House Republicans caving by the end of the week. What happens next is anybody's guess, but, regardless of whether DHS get full or only partial funding, it would be nice if we finally figured out why it exists at all.

Egypt's Homeland Security - The Sincerest Form Of Flattery?

H/T to gwb for sending me a link that led to this tidbit in a Financial Times article about ongoing political repression in Egypt - Egypt state security feelers still active (registration required by FT):

After some initial moves to purge the security forces, attempts at systemic reform were halted, say analysts and political observers. Under the auspices of the Ministry of Interior, the 100,000-strong state security service has been renamed homeland security and personnel moved around.

I can't believe the Egyptian secret police are actually copying the infelicitous name we gave to DHS. Maybe something got lost in translation.

Does the phrase "homeland security" sound innocuous in Arabic? Or does it have the same unfortunate association with European fascism that it has in English, where "homeland" is a second cousin to "Fatherland?" I'm afraid I'll find out it's the latter.

On second thought, the old name was perfect: the Egyptian State Security Investigations Service. If they need to rebrand, the name "Stasi" is available, and would really suit the situation perfectly.