POLITICS

thelivyjr
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Re: POLITICS

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Yahoo News

"Exclusive: Jan. 6 select committee will include former CIA inspector general found to have retaliated against whistleblower"


Jenna McLaughlin · National Security and Investigations Reporter

Fri, July 23, 2021

WASHINGTON — As the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot prepares to get underway next week, it will include former CIA Inspector General David Buckley in the role of staff director.

The selection of Buckley to serve in that capacity, however, could come back to haunt the Democrats on the committee who selected him.

Yahoo News has obtained a previously unpublished 2019 report compiled by the Department of Homeland Security’s watchdog office showing that investigators urged the CIA to take action against Buckley for his alleged retaliation against a whistleblower, a conclusion that would likely be troubling to potential witnesses who might testify in the Jan. 6 inquiry.


The authors of the report recommended that “at minimum” the CIA determine “whether [their] findings affect the security clearances” of Buckley and several fellow senior officials — a serious rebuke that would have affected his future government contract work as well as his tenure with the highly sensitive Capitol riot investigation.

The future of Buckley’s security clearance remains uncertain, and it is unclear whether the CIA heeded the report’s recommendations or took any action against him or his former colleagues.

The CIA declined to comment.

Buckley did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The target of Buckley’s retaliation, former CIA IG official Andrew Bakaj, has yet to receive any remedy for a series of adverse actions that affected his career, including being put on administrative leave and having his security clearance suspended after cooperating with an external investigation into potential evidence manipulation at the CIA inspector general’s office.

While intelligence community whistleblowers do not always have substantial protections for disclosing evidence of government fraud, waste, abuse or wrongdoing, several developments including a policy directive issued by President Barack Obama in 2012, referred to as PPD19, were designed to fix that gap.


Bakaj was, in fact, in charge of implementing Obama’s directive at the CIA, making him extremely familiar with the protections afforded under the law.

Bakaj’s superiors became frustrated, however, when he did not inform them he had responded to requests for information from the intelligence community inspector general, who was tasked with independent reviews affecting agencies within the intelligence community.

Bakaj ultimately chose to retire rather than continue to suffer professional consequences, later becoming the lead counsel for the still anonymous whistleblower who raised concerns about then-President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.


He waited over five years for the Department of Homeland Security inspector general to conclude an impartial review of his retaliation complaints, which vindicated him, as Yahoo News reported in September 2019.

According to a spokesperson for the Jan. 6 select committee, the subject of the investigation into Buckley’s actions as CIA watchdog did surface during his interviews for the position.

During that questioning, Buckley denied he had retaliated against Bakaj for his “claimed whistleblowing,” despite the fact that an independent government agency substantiated those allegations.


When asked whether the DHS report was considered by the committee during its hiring process, the spokesperson told Yahoo News that Buckley “worked tirelessly for over four years to conduct rigorous oversight of the CIA and to transform his Office into a respected and competent organization.”

Part of that work involved “more trainings and oversight of his staff,” the spokesperson continued, changes that “some people rejected.”

But in their report, DHS investigators concluded that Buckley’s decision to launch an investigation into Bakaj’s record in the first place, regardless of what it found, was “tainted” and motivated by retaliation.

The Report of Investigation viewed by Yahoo News was sent to Christine Ruppert, then the acting CIA inspector general, on June 10, 2019.


While a previously published executive summary revealed that CIA IG leadership opened a “retaliatory investigation” into an employee whistleblower, the newly obtained, 36-page report goes into further detail about the conclusions of the investigation and the specific people involved.

The report names Bakaj as the whistleblower who raised the complaints, as well as Buckley as one of the perpetrators.

According to the report’s timeline, Bakaj met with intelligence community inspector general deputy counsel Paul Wogaman in April 2014 to help with an inquiry into the CIA IG’s office.

When his superiors learned of the disclosure they became angry, telling Bakaj that he should have “confirmed that the request was authorized” before speaking to Wogaman, though Bakaj had no responsibility to do so.

In response, the CIA launched a review of his computer searches and other professional activity.

The investigation into Bakaj turned up one instance in which he accessed and copied a sensitive CIA file on his computer.

However, the CIA couldn’t find any evidence that Bakaj had done anything with the files, and he told interviewers the search was benign.

During the investigation, Buckley placed Bakaj on administrative leave.

Ultimately, the CIA concluded the files were not leaked, and the FBI declined to investigate Bakaj’s computer searches.

By then, however, he had retired from the agency.

In 2015, after Bakaj had retired, he filed a complaint of retaliation against the CIA.

The DHS inspector general got involved after determining that the CIA had failed to properly review it.

“Upon reviewing the case file, the DHS-OIG determined that the CIA-OIG did not complete a full local agency review under PPD19,” the investigators wrote.

DHS investigators determined that the evidence revealed in Bakaj’s complaint was protected under the law.

Additionally, the investigators concluded that the CIA OIG’s investigation into his record “was a pretext for gathering evidence to use to retaliate against” him.


In addition, Bakaj’s disclosures were a “contributing factor” that led to his administrative leave and clearance suspension, the investigators continued.

There is “significant evidence” that the CIA OIG “had a motive to retaliate” against Bakaj, wrote the investigators.

Despite the fact that Buckley retired in 2015 to work at the U.S. audit, tax and advisory firm KPMG, the DHS-OIG forwarded the report to the CIA “to determine appropriate corrective action.”

While it’s unclear whether the CIA responded to those recommendations, Christopher Sharpley, Buckley’s former deputy who served as the acting CIA IG in 2018, withdrew his nomination for the full-time IG job after his involvement in retaliating against Bakaj and others was covered by the media.

The Democratic leadership’s decision to hire Buckley despite the DHS’s conclusions has enraged former CIA IG officials familiar with Buckley’s tenure as well as experts on whistleblower protections who, as a result, are casting doubt on the legitimacy of the select committee’s investigation.

Dan Meyer, who previously led the whistleblowing and source protection program at the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General, told Yahoo News he was unable to comment on the specific case, due to a nondisclosure agreement.

However, Meyer, currently a managing partner at the law firm Tully Rinckey, wrote in an email that “reprising [creates] a corrupting management culture,” a pattern of behavior that “will give congressional sources pause.”

“The IC whistleblowing program, from 2013 to 2018, received a number of allegations, some substantiated, that inspectors general themselves were engaging in retaliation against their own intelligence officers charged by President Obama and Director [James] Clapper with, ironically, protecting whistleblowers,” Meyer, speaking in his personal capacity, continued.

“It was an unanticipated challenge, and one that ultimately ended the program.”

"No whistleblower is likely to trust someone with a record of opening a retaliatory investigation,” wrote Jason Foster, the former chief investigative counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“The chaos and partisanship infecting the process undermines the committee's credibility, which has developed into a full-blown dumpster fire at this point.”


While Foster has plenty of Democratic critics, his former boss Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has made whistleblower protections a top priority.

One former CIA IG employee told Yahoo News that he “came out of his seat” when he heard Buckley had been selected for the Jan. 6 select committee.

“There’s an objective, impartial government agency that substantiated the allegations against him … and now he’s going to be the chief of staff to a high-visibility committee [that is] going to have whistleblowers providing testimony before the committee,” he said.

“This makes absolutely no sense."

"It taints the entire process.”

Irvin McCullough, deputy director of legislation at the whistleblower protection nonprofit the Government Accountability Project, agreed.

“The free flow of information through whistleblower testimony is the lifeblood of any congressional investigation,” McCullough wrote in an email to Yahoo News.

“How can whistleblowers safely step forward to the Select Committee when a federal watchdog found its staff director reprised against a whistleblower?”
____

https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-jan-6- ... 38170.html
thelivyjr
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Re: POLITICS

Post by thelivyjr »

POLITICO

"Psaki excoriates criticism of Biden administration work on vaccine misinformation"


Nick Niedzwiadek

July 16, 2021·4 min read

White House press secretary Jen Psaki forcefully defended the Biden administration’s growing offensive on vaccine-related misinformation spreading on Facebook and other social media platforms.

“Our biggest concern, and frankly I think it should be your biggest concern, is the number of people who are dying around the country because they are getting misinformation that is leading them to not take a vaccine,” Psaki said during Friday's daily press briefing.

“Young people, old people, kids, children … a lot of them are being impacted by misinformation.”


Psaki’s defense was in response to a question from Fox News’ Peter Doocy, who framed the Biden administration’s concern about bad actors online as “spying” on Americans’ social media usage.

“For how long has the administration been spying on people’s Facebook profiles looking for vaccine misinformation?” Doocy asked, referencing Psaki’s comments a day prior that roughly a dozen people on Facebook were responsible for the bulk of vaccine misinformation on the social network.

Psaki called the characterization “a loaded and inaccurate question.”

She said the White House flagging concerning posts to platforms like Facebook is similar to outreach to news outlets when they take issue with particular coverage.

“This is publicly open information, people sharing information online, just as you are all reporting information on your news stations,” she said during a testy exchange in which the pair talked over one another at times.

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Thursday declared falsehoods and conspiracy theories proliferating online as an “urgent threat to public health” because of their effect on people’s willingness to get a Covid vaccine.

Murthy’s advisory set off a firestorm in some conservative-leaning circles where such misinformation has circulated and contributed to stubbornly low vaccination rates in certain regions.

Top Republican lawmakers accused the Biden administration of being in cahoots with social media companies to censor speech.


Public health officials have sounded the alarm in recent weeks because the overwhelming number of people hospitalized and dying from Covid-19 now are unvaccinated.

The White House decided to more aggressively respond to those who are discouraging vaccinations and create more pro-vaccine content, including spots featuring Gen Z pop star Olivia Rodrigo.

President Joe Biden took a shot at platforms including Facebook while leaving the White House on Friday afternoon.

"They’re killing people," he told reporters in response to a question about Facebook.

"The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and they’re killing people.”


Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), when asked if he agrees with the president's remarks, said social media companies must take more action to combat misinformation.

"I agree that the platforms are going to have to do a much better job pushing out good information and making sure they're not pushing misinformation that gets people killed," Schiff said on CNN.

"You know, I raised this issue with Facebook and other social media companies years ago with respect to flu vaccines, and they did take action and they're going to need to take stronger action here."

"This pandemic is killing people."

Facebook this week said it has taken down more than 18 million pieces of Covid-related misinformation, removed numerous accounts and promoted trustworthy information about vaccinations.

On Friday, the platform fired back against the president's claim that it's killing people.

"We will not be distracted by accusations which aren't supported by the facts," Dani Lever, a Facebook spokesperson, said in a statement.

The company also said more people have seen authoritative information about Covid-19 and vaccines on Facebook than any other place on the internet, and noted that over 3.3 million Americans used its vaccine finder tool.

"The facts show that Facebook is helping save lives."

"Period," the spokesperson added.

But social media companies have struggled with how much to crack down as information evolves.

For instance, Facebook in May walked back a ban on posts claiming that Covid-19 originated in a lab after there was renewed debate about the theory.

Psaki dismissed a follow-up question of Doocy’s about whether it was appropriate for government officials to monitor social media activity.

“The big concern though, I think, from a lot of people on Facebook is that now this is ‘Big Brother’ watching you,” he said.

“They’re more worried about this than people dying across the country because of a pandemic where misinformation is traveling on social media platforms?” Psaki asked.

“That feels unlikely to me."

"If you have the data to back that up, I’m happy to discuss it.”

Psaki said it’s up to the individual companies to police their platforms as they see fit, noting at another point during the briefing that efforts to date in combating misinformation were “clearly not” sufficient.

She also stated that the White House has not tried to contact users directly about their posts.

“That is not the federal government doing that," she said.

https://news.yahoo.com/psaki-excoriates ... 01635.html
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Re: POLITICS

Post by thelivyjr »

THE NEW YORK TIMES

"U.S. to Announce Troop Drawdown From Iraq"


Jane Arraf and Eric Schmitt

24 JULY 2021

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s prime minister is heading to Washington this weekend to demand that President Biden withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq, announcing to Iraqi media that the visit would “put an end to the presence of combat forces.”

American officials say the United States is likely to oblige the request from Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, setting a deadline to be announced on Monday for the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces by the end of the year.


Pentagon and other administration officials say they will achieve this by removing a small but unspecified number of the 2,500 American forces currently stationed in Iraq, and by reclassifying on paper the roles of other forces.

Mr. al-Kadhimi will have a political trophy to take home to satisfy anti-American factions in Iraq and the U.S. military presence will remain.

“There will be no U.S. military forces in a combat role by the end of the year,” said a senior U.S. official familiar with ongoing discussions.

“We anticipate some force adjustments in line with that commitment.”

What appears to be a set piece of diplomatic theater is the latest effort by Mr. al-Kadhimi to tread between the needs and demands of Iraq’s two closest allies, the United States and Iran.

Pro-Iranian factions have been clamoring for a U.S. departure, while Iraqi officials acknowledge they still need the help of American forces.

The Biden administration in turn is grappling with how to operate in a country that since the U.S. invasion 18 years ago has fallen increasingly under the grip of Iranian-backed militias and a corrupt political system that has brought Iraq’s government institutions to the brink of collapse.

Mr. al-Kadhimi’s government, along with many senior Iraqi military officials, quietly favor the roughly 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq staying in their current form.

But the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran’s top security and intelligence commander, along with a senior Iraqi security official and eight others in an American drone strike in 2020, has made the United States’ current presence politically impossible, and politically undesirable in the United States.

After the U.S. drone strike, Iraq’s Parliament demanded the government expel U.S. forces — a motion that was nonbinding but sent a strong message to any politician who wanted to stay in power, including the prime minister.


Grappling with the coronavirus pandemic, a budget crisis and powerful Iranian-backed militias largely beyond his control, Mr. al-Kadhimi has accomplished little since taking office two years ago.

His advisers argue that if only he were given more time, he could rein in the militias, cut corruption and arrest more killers of hundreds of unarmed protesters and activists.

Most of Iraq’s paramilitary units were formed in 2014 in response to a call by the country’s most revered Shiite cleric for Iraqis to mobilize against the Islamic State.

Those militias were later absorbed into Iraq’s official security forces but the most powerful are tied to Iran and only nominally under control of the Iraqi state.

The United States has repeatedly blamed Iranian-backed militias for the persistent attacks on U.S. targets in Iraq.

The U.S. and many Iraqi officials believe the militias are also responsible for most of the assassinations of activists and for a wide range of illegal moneymaking schemes.

Monday’s announcement comes as the Pentagon nears the end of its withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, ending a 20-year presence there, even as the Taliban have captured dozens of districts around the country in a military offensive.

After President Barack Obama withdrew troops from Iraq in 2011, some remained, under the authority of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Three years later, with Islamic State fighters capturing territory across much of Iraq and Syria, the Iraqi government requested U.S. military support to help fight the terrorist group.

Since ISIS was driven from its last Iraqi stronghold in 2017, U.S. officials have consistently maintained that since there are currently no combat operations authorized in Iraq, there are no combat troops in the country.

But they acknowledge a small number of U.S. Special Operations Forces serving as advisers and trainers occasionally accompany Iraqi counterterrorism forces on combat missions against Islamic State fighters.


In Washington on Friday, Pentagon officials said they expected the troop levels in Iraq to remain at their current level of about 2,500, and that the role of some U.S. forces would be redefined.

But while giving Mr. al-Kadhimi temporary political cover, a reclassification of U.S. forces rather than a drawdown likely won’t satisfy the militias and political parties calling for a withdrawal of all troops, Iraqi officials say.

“Changing their name from combat forces to trainers and advisers — we consider it as an attempt at deception,” said Mohammad al-Rubai’e, political spokesman for Asaib Ahl al-Haq, one of the biggest Iranian-backed militias, which maintains 16 seats in the Iraqi parliament.

Those militias and many Iraqi politicians linked to them contend that the real purpose of U.S. forces in Iraq is to counter Iran, not threats from the Islamic State.


Iran this year has carried out increasingly sophisticated attacks, including drone strikes, on U.S. targets in Iraq, and the United States has launched calibrated retaliatory strikes.

“The dialogue with the United States is how can we think about maintaining a presence that is useful without incurring a high political cost,” Thanassis Cambanis, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, an American think tank, said during a visit to Iraq this week.

“The interests of the two sides don’t really align because the United States isn’t going to see it in its interests to continue to be attacked by these militias that the government of Iraq can’t curtail.”


Iran denies responsibility for the attacks, according to Iraqi officials, but its leaders have also made clear that they intend to retaliate against the United States for killing General Suleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the Iraqi deputy commander overseeing militias.

The United States over the past year has increasingly focused on force protection, withdrawing from vulnerable bases in Iraq to consolidate its presence on three Iraqi military installations.

While the Islamic State is no longer able to capture territory, the group continues to launch destabilizing attacks such as bombings in markets that point out weaknesses in Iraqi security forces.

“Within Iraq, ISIS is defeated as a significant military threat but its radical ideology lives on,” said Mark Kimmitt, a retired U.S. Army brigadier general and former State Department official who now consults for American firms doing business in Iraq.

“Deradicalization, however, is not part of the U.S. mission.”

The American occupation of Iraq convulsed the country, not only toppling its dictator in 2003, but disbanding the army, hollowing out its government institutions and helping returned Iraqi exiles create a political system along sectarian and ethnic lines that haunts the nation to this day.

For years that system has awarded government ministries to political parties that siphon off money meant for public services has contributed to barely functioning hospitals, ongoing electricity cuts, millions of jobless Iraqis and a government that cannot pay its bills.

Infrastructure such as electricity that barely functioned after more than a decade of U.S.-led sanctions before the war has never been fully repaired.


Battles against Al Qaeda, Iraq’s civil war and the fight against the Islamic State further damaged infrastructure.

With falling oil prices last year, Iraq found itself having trouble meeting its huge government payroll, which has tripled since 2004 as political parties in charge of ministries create jobs for loyalists.

“We are now talking about repairing damage from the ex-regime, Al Qaeda, ISIS and the damage induced by the ruling political class,” said Luay al-Khatteeb, a technocrat former electricity minister.

“If this chaos continues it will lead to the destruction of the country.”


Jane Arraf reported from Baghdad, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Falih Hassan contributed reporting from Baghdad.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/u- ... hp&pc=U531
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Re: POLITICS

Post by thelivyjr »

THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR JULY 24, 2021 AT 5:19 PM

Paul Plante says:

Think about this, people!

And think seriously, because this is hardly a frivolous question: since they have existed as a political party or faction in American politics, have the Democrats ever told us, we, the real American people who are not Democrat KOOL-AID drinkers, the ones who DEMOCRAT Bennie Thompson, the head of the Pelosi-ite KANGAROO COURT, wants to make sure democracy does not fall prey to, as people who don’t really identify with the democracy of the Democrats, as if the democracy of the Democrats were now our state religion, the truth about anything?

Did they tell us the truth about Korea?

How about Viet Nam?

And how about lying about an insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January 2021, when there is no credible evidence that an insurrection ever occurred, and credible evidence of an insurrection would only come out after the Department of Justice convened a federal grand jury, and based on evidence presented to it, the grand jury returned an indictment, which to date has not happened.

So back to the question of whether a Democrat would ever tell the truth about anything, with their long and well-known history of deceit, dishonesty and outright political violence as a political party, does anyone who is not a KOOL-AID drinking Democrat seriously believe that the Democrats are even capable of telling the truth, about anything, including the time of day and whether the sun is shining, or not?

Consider a recent Politico article entitled “Pelosi mulls adding more anti-Trump Republicans to Jan. 6 investigation” by Heather Caygle, Olivia Beavers and Nicholas Wu on 22 July 2021, where we had as follows:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is considering adding another anti-Trump House Republican to the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, with Rep. Adam Kinzinger as a leading contender.

end quotes

What Nancy is doing of course, is known in the gutter politics hack politicians like Nancy Pelosi practice as “stacking the deck,” which is “to arrange a situation unfairly against someone, or in your own favour,” as in “The Speaker of the House of Representatives is doing everything in her power to stack the deck in her favour and guarantee her regime’s lock on power," which takes us back to the article, as follows:

“We’ll see,” Pelosi told reporters when asked if she’d appoint more Republicans to serve alongside Cheney.

“It’s not even bipartisan; it’s nonpartisan.”

“It’s about seeking the truth and that’s what we owe the American people.”

end quotes

Seeking the truth?

Nancy Pelosi?

Seriously, people, is there anyone out there who actually believes that BULL****?

Going back to that article, we have this in response to my question above, to wit:

Rep. Jaime Herrera Butler (R-Wash.), who joined Cheney and Kinzinger in voting to impeach Trump in February told reporters that she would not participate.

“Unless this is made up of people who are not members of Congress, the American people cannot trust the results,” she said.

end quotes

And how very true that statement is, given the long history of the Democrats lying to us and feeding us copious amounts of BULL****, because they have nothing else to offer, which takes us to a Yahoo News story entitled “Exclusive: Jan. 6 select committee will include former CIA inspector general found to have retaliated against whistleblower” by Jenna McLaughlin · National Security and Investigations Reporter, on July 23, 2021, where we learned as follows about this Pelosi-ite KANGAROO COURT that is rapidly taking on the characteristics of a STAR CHAMBER PROCEEDING, to wit.

WASHINGTON — As the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot prepares to get underway next week, it will include former CIA Inspector General David Buckley in the role of staff director.

The selection of Buckley to serve in that capacity, however, could come back to haunt the Democrats on the committee who selected him.

Yahoo News has obtained a previously unpublished 2019 report compiled by the Department of Homeland Security’s watchdog office showing that investigators urged the CIA to take action against Buckley for his alleged retaliation against a whistleblower, a conclusion that would likely be troubling to potential witnesses who might testify in the Jan. 6 inquiry.

end quotes

Now, keep in mind that the head of the KANGAROO COURT is Bennie Thompson, who also happens to be the head of the House Homeland Security Committee, so it is hardly credible that Bennie Thompson would be ignorant of this history, which takes us back to that story, as follows:

The authors of the report recommended that “at minimum” the CIA determine “whether [their] findings affect the security clearances” of Buckley and several fellow senior officials — a serious rebuke that would have affected his future government contract work as well as his tenure with the highly sensitive Capitol riot investigation.

The future of Buckley’s security clearance remains uncertain, and it is unclear whether the CIA heeded the report’s recommendations or took any action against him or his former colleagues.

The CIA declined to comment.

Buckley did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The target of Buckley’s retaliation, former CIA IG official Andrew Bakaj, has yet to receive any remedy for a series of adverse actions that affected his career, including being put on administrative leave and having his security clearance suspended after cooperating with an external investigation into potential evidence manipulation at the CIA inspector general’s office.

While intelligence community whistleblowers do not always have substantial protections for disclosing evidence of government fraud, waste, abuse or wrongdoing, several developments including a policy directive issued by President Barack Obama in 2012, referred to as PPD19, were designed to fix that gap.

Bakaj was, in fact, in charge of implementing Obama’s directive at the CIA, making him extremely familiar with the protections afforded under the law.

Bakaj’s superiors became frustrated, however, when he did not inform them he had responded to requests for information from the intelligence community inspector general, who was tasked with independent reviews affecting agencies within the intelligence community.

Bakaj ultimately chose to retire rather than continue to suffer professional consequences, later becoming the lead counsel for the still anonymous whistleblower who raised concerns about then-President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.

He waited over five years for the Department of Homeland Security inspector general to conclude an impartial review of his retaliation complaints, which vindicated him, as Yahoo News reported in September 2019.

According to a spokesperson for the Jan. 6 select committee, the subject of the investigation into Buckley’s actions as CIA watchdog did surface during his interviews for the position.

During that questioning, Buckley denied he had retaliated against Bakaj for his “claimed whistleblowing,” despite the fact that an independent government agency substantiated those allegations.

end quotes

Isn’t this simply incredible, people – the dude appears to have been lying through his teeth to the committee that hired him, a totally transparent lie, and still they hired him on, which takes us back to that story, as follows:

But in their report, DHS investigators concluded that Buckley’s decision to launch an investigation into Bakaj’s record in the first place, regardless of what it found, was “tainted” and motivated by retaliation.

The Report of Investigation viewed by Yahoo News was sent to Christine Ruppert, then the acting CIA inspector general, on June 10, 2019.

While a previously published executive summary revealed that CIA IG leadership opened a “retaliatory investigation” into an employee whistleblower, the newly obtained, 36-page report goes into further detail about the conclusions of the investigation and the specific people involved.

The report names Bakaj as the whistleblower who raised the complaints, as well as Buckley as one of the perpetrators.

According to the report’s timeline, Bakaj met with intelligence community inspector general deputy counsel Paul Wogaman in April 2014 to help with an inquiry into the CIA IG’s office.

When his superiors learned of the disclosure they became angry, telling Bakaj that he should have “confirmed that the request was authorized” before speaking to Wogaman, though Bakaj had no responsibility to do so.

In response, the CIA launched a review of his computer searches and other professional activity.

The investigation into Bakaj turned up one instance in which he accessed and copied a sensitive CIA file on his computer.

However, the CIA couldn’t find any evidence that Bakaj had done anything with the files, and he told interviewers the search was benign.

During the investigation, Buckley placed Bakaj on administrative leave.

Ultimately, the CIA concluded the files were not leaked, and the FBI declined to investigate Bakaj’s computer searches.

By then, however, he had retired from the agency.

In 2015, after Bakaj had retired, he filed a complaint of retaliation against the CIA.

The DHS inspector general got involved after determining that the CIA had failed to properly review it.

“Upon reviewing the case file, the DHS-OIG determined that the CIA-OIG did not complete a full local agency review under PPD19,” the investigators wrote.

DHS investigators determined that the evidence revealed in Bakaj’s complaint was protected under the law.

Additionally, the investigators concluded that the CIA OIG’s investigation into his record “was a pretext for gathering evidence to use to retaliate against” him.

In addition, Bakaj’s disclosures were a “contributing factor” that led to his administrative leave and clearance suspension, the investigators continued.

There is “significant evidence” that the CIA OIG “had a motive to retaliate” against Bakaj, wrote the investigators.

Despite the fact that Buckley retired in 2015 to work at the U.S. audit, tax and advisory firm KPMG, the DHS-OIG forwarded the report to the CIA “to determine appropriate corrective action.”

While it’s unclear whether the CIA responded to those recommendations, Christopher Sharpley, Buckley’s former deputy who served as the acting CIA IG in 2018, withdrew his nomination for the full-time IG job after his involvement in retaliating against Bakaj and others was covered by the media.

The Democratic leadership’s decision to hire Buckley despite the DHS’s conclusions has enraged former CIA IG officials familiar with Buckley’s tenure as well as experts on whistleblower protections who, as a result, are casting doubt on the legitimacy of the select committee’s investigation.

Dan Meyer, who previously led the whistleblowing and source protection program at the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General, told Yahoo News he was unable to comment on the specific case, due to a nondisclosure agreement.

However, Meyer, currently a managing partner at the law firm Tully Rinckey, wrote in an email that “reprising [creates] a corrupting management culture,” a pattern of behavior that “will give congressional sources pause.”

“The IC whistleblowing program, from 2013 to 2018, received a number of allegations, some substantiated, that inspectors general themselves were engaging in retaliation against their own intelligence officers charged by President Obama and Director [James] Clapper with, ironically, protecting whistleblowers,” Meyer, speaking in his personal capacity, continued.

“It was an unanticipated challenge, and one that ultimately ended the program.”

“No whistleblower is likely to trust someone with a record of opening a retaliatory investigation,” wrote Jason Foster, the former chief investigative counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“The chaos and partisanship infecting the process undermines the committee’s credibility, which has developed into a full-blown dumpster fire at this point.”

One former CIA IG employee told Yahoo News that he “came out of his seat” when he heard Buckley had been selected for the Jan. 6 select committee.

“There’s an objective, impartial government agency that substantiated the allegations against him … and now he’s going to be the chief of staff to a high-visibility committee [that is] going to have whistleblowers providing testimony before the committee,” he said.

“This makes absolutely no sense.”

“It taints the entire process.”

Irvin McCullough, deputy director of legislation at the whistleblower protection nonprofit the Government Accountability Project, agreed.

“The free flow of information through whistleblower testimony is the lifeblood of any congressional investigation,” McCullough wrote in an email to Yahoo News.

“How can whistleblowers safely step forward to the Select Committee when a federal watchdog found its staff director reprised against a whistleblower?”

end quotes

So, people, ask yourselves this question: WHAT POLITICAL PURPOSE OF NANCY PELOSI’S IS THIS KANGAROO COURT OF HERS INTENDED TO SERVE?

And who will it benefit?

http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/r ... ent-388978
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Re: POLITICS

Post by thelivyjr »

THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR JULY 24, 2021 AT 6:32 PM

Paul Plante says:

According to a Politico article entitled “Psaki excoriates criticism of Biden administration work on vaccine misinformation” by Nick Niedzwiadek on July 16, 2021, it is posts like this one above here that cause Biden press mouthpiece and former “Obama Scold” Jen Psaki to become so filled with rage that it is a wonder that all of a sudden, gouts of foam don’t come pouring out of her mouth while she spins around on the floor chewing off her own leg!

Going to that article, we have as follows:

White House press secretary Jen Psaki forcefully defended the Biden administration’s growing offensive on vaccine-related misinformation spreading on Facebook and other social media platforms.

“Our biggest concern, and frankly I think it should be your biggest concern, is the number of people who are dying around the country because they are getting misinformation that is leading them to not take a vaccine,” Psaki said during Friday’s daily press briefing.

“Young people, old people, kids, children … a lot of them are being impacted by misinformation.”

end quotes

Thus, it seems only a matter of time before the Biden-istas get the Cape Charles Mirror in their crosshairs for this post above here for posting a joke on Facebook that said “Apparently, walking around Walmart with an Alka-Seltzer in my mouth and yelling ‘THE VACCINE HAS SIDE EFFECTS’ isn’t funny.”

Getting back to the article:

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Thursday declared falsehoods and conspiracy theories proliferating online as an “urgent threat to public health” because of their effect on people’s willingness to get a Covid vaccine.

Murthy’s advisory set off a firestorm in some conservative-leaning circles where such misinformation has circulated and contributed to stubbornly low vaccination rates in certain regions.

Top Republican lawmakers accused the Biden administration of being in cahoots with social media companies to censor speech.

Public health officials have sounded the alarm in recent weeks because the overwhelming number of people hospitalized and dying from Covid-19 now are unvaccinated.

The White House decided to more aggressively respond to those who are discouraging vaccinations and create more pro-vaccine content, including spots featuring Gen Z pop star Olivia Rodrigo.

President Joe Biden took a shot at platforms including Facebook while leaving the White House on Friday afternoon.

“They’re killing people,” he told reporters in response to a question about Facebook.

“The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and they’re killing people.”

end quotes

Which statement by goofy old Joe Biden takes us to a Reuters story entitled “Vaccinated people make up 75% of recent COVID-19 cases in Singapore, but few fall ill” by Aradhana Aravindan and Chen Lin on July 23, 2021, where we have as follows concerning the fate of those who are vaccinated, to wit:

SINGAPORE (Reuters) -Vaccinated individuals accounted for three-quarters of Singapore’s COVID-19 infections in the last four weeks, but they were not falling seriously ill, government data showed, as a rapid ramp-up in inoculations leaves fewer people unvaccinated.

end quotes

I don’t know about anybody else, but when I read that, and this is keeping in mind that there have been break-through COVID infections among the vaccinated right in the white house, where there shouldn’t be any COVID, at all, I wonder at what protection these vaccines really give us, which takes us back to the story, as follows:

While the data shows that vaccines are highly effective in preventing severe cases, it also underscores the risk that even those inoculated could be contagious, so that inoculation alone may not suffice to halt transmission.

Of Singapore’s 1,096 locally transmitted infections in the last 28 days, 484, or about 44%, were in fully vaccinated people, while 30% were partially vaccinated and just over 25% were unvaccinated, Thursday’s data showed.

Infections in vaccinated people do not mean vaccines are ineffective, experts said.

“As more and more people are vaccinated in Singapore, we will see more infections happening among vaccinated people,” Teo Yik Ying, dean of the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

“It is important to always compare it against the proportion of people who remain unvaccinated…Suppose Singapore achieves a rate of 100% fully vaccinated…then all infections will stem from the vaccinated people and none from the unvaccinated.”

“We’ve got to accept that all of us will have to have some restrictions, vaccinated or not vaccinated,” said Peter Collignon, an infectious diseases physician and microbiologist at Canberra Hospital in the Australian capital.

“It’s just the restrictions are likely to be higher for those unvaccinated than vaccinated people, but that may still mean they have mask mandates indoors, for instance.”

The Singapore data also showed that infections in the last 14 days among vaccinated people older than 61 stood at about 88%, higher than the figure of just over 70% for the younger group.

Linfa Wang, a professor at Duke-NUS Medical School, said elderly people had been shown to have weaker immune responses upon vaccination.

In Israel, which also has a high vaccination rate, about half of the 46 patients hospitalised in severe condition by early July had been vaccinated, and the majority were from risk groups, authorities said.

It was not immediately clear if the Singapore data reflected reduced protection offered by vaccines against the Delta variant, the most common form in the wealthy city state in recent months.

Singapore uses the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in its national vaccination programme.

end quotes

So can we believe goofy old Joe Biden when he says “The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated?”

Or is that just some more “Joe Biden” we are being fed there?

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THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR JULY 25, 2021 AT 11:58 AM

Paul Plante says:

And as we try to make a lick of sense out of all this Jingoism (extreme patriotism, especially in the form of aggressive or warlike foreign policy) and bellicosity (warlike or hostile attitude or nature) by the Biden-istas and CULT OF JOE to include Democrat Elaine Luria pounding the drums of war for Joe in the House of Representatives and Tony Blinken, a retread from the days of the Hussein Obama administration who has managed to amass a net worth of $8 MILLION doing “public service” since then, let’s drop back in time to an article in Daily Finance entitled “China, Not U.S., Likely to Benefit from Afghanistan’s Mineral Riches” by Charles Wallace on 06/14/10, when Hussein Obama was the COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF of the American people, Joseph “Corn Pop” Biden was his vice president and Tony Blinken was National Security Advisor to Joe, at which time, according to his published bio, Tony helped to build a crafted policy in two countries Pakistan and Afghanistan, to see what that “crafted policy” looked like in real life, to wit:

Although the U.S. government has spent more than $940 billion on the conflict in Afghanistan since 2001, a treasure trove of mineral deposits, including vast quantities of industrial metals such as lithium, gold, cobalt, copper and iron, are likely to wind up going to Russia and China instead of American firms.

end quotes

2010, people!

And Hussein Obama, “Corn Pop” Biden and Tony Blinken were handing a financial windfall to the Chinese and Russians, while having our American troops fight and die to keep them safe and protect their investments for them, which investments served to put us as a nation at a disadvantage.

So where was Joe Biden’s and Tony Blinken’s bellicosity towards China back then?

Before they were against China, they were for China?

Getting back to that story, we have:

The New York Times reported Monday that U.S. officials and American geologists have found an estimated $1 trillion worth of mineral deposits that have yet to be exploited in the country.

The paper said a Pentagon report called Afghanistan potentially “the Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key component in batteries for cellphones, laptop computers and eventually, a plug-in fleet of electric cars.

But while the United States and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries are providing the bulk of the security for Afghanistan — U.S. troop levels are set to rise to 100,000 by year’s end — the firms that are profiting from the resource boom are primarily Chinese, and to a lesser extent, Russian.

“China has an absolute advantage in Afghanistan as far as resource development goes,” says James R. Yeager, a Tucson, Ariz., consultant who worked as an adviser to the Afghan Ministry of Mines.

In December, 2007, China’s state-owned China Metallurgical Group Corp. (MCC) signed a $2.9 billion agreement with the Kabul government to extract copper from the Aynak deposit, one of the world’s largest unexploited copper deposits with an estimated 240 million tons of ore.

The Washington Post, quoting a U.S. intelligence official, reported that the Afghan minister of mines was accused of taking approximately $30 million in bribes from the Chinese company in exchange for the contract.

The minister denied the charge and said the Chinese firm had offered the best deal.

Yeager produced a 78-page investigation into the Aynak deal, which he described as a “murky and insufficient tender process.”

He said a number of sources have come forward since the report was written to confirm that bribes were paid to Afghan officials at clandestine meetings in Dubai in the Aynak tender process.

Now the problem is the way the Kabul government interprets the mining laws.

“The law says that if you buy land and acquire exploration rights, then you can go right into a mining license,” Yeager says.

“But the government of Afghanistan says if you go out and explore and find something, you can give it back to us and we’ll tender it.”

“No one will put up their risk capital just to turn the deposit over to the Chinese.”

Yeager also said the cozy relationship between the Russian and Chinese governments and Russian and Chinese mining firms gave them a major advantage over Western firms in winning mining licenses.

MCC, for example, is 44% owned by the Chinese government.

When MCC entered into negotiations with the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, it offered substantial aid for resource development as part of the package, Yeager says.

The United States, on the other hand, has no program to support U.S. mining companies with development assistance or other aid.

The irony is that it is U.S. government geologists and Western companies that are locating the vast mineral deposits that the Chinese and Russians are exploiting in Afghanistan.

end quotes

Isn’t history fascinating?

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Re: POLITICS

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ASSOCIATED PRESS

"'We have to get it right,' Dem vows as Jan. 6 probe begins"


By MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press

26 JULY 2021

WASHINGTON (AP) — The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Bennie Thompson, didn’t realize the severity of the Jan. 6 insurrection until his wife called him.

He was inside the Capitol, sitting in the upper gallery of the House, hoping for what he called a “birds-eye view of the process” and to be able to tell his grandchildren that he was there when Congress certified Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential victory.

People are breaking into the building, London Thompson told him, and it was on television.

“I’m watching people climbing over the wall right now,” she said.

“It doesn’t register,” the Mississippi Democrat recalled in an interview with The Associated Press.

“I said, ‘You can’t break in.'"

"'There’s police and barricades and a lot of things out there.’”


But it was not long before the House chamber was under siege.

Police rushed Thompson and several dozen other members of Congress to another side of the gallery and told them to duck under their seats as supporters of then-President Donald Trump tried to break down the doors to the chamber below.

“It was a horrible day,” said Thompson, "still almost surreal that it even occurred."

Like Thompson, many who serve and work in the Capitol are trying to make sense of the chaos that unfolded on Jan. 6.

And he now has a guiding role in the process, appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as the chairman of a select committee that will investigate the attack.

The panel will hold its first hearing Tuesday with police officers who battled the rioters.

As the longtime chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, Thompson is accustomed to dealing with grave matters of national security.

But his stewardship of the Jan. 6 panel will be a test unlike any other, as he tries to untangle the events of a violent insurrection that many House Republicans increasingly play down and deny.


“We have to get it right,” Thompson said.

If the committee can find ways to prevent anything like it from happening again, “then I would have made what I think is the most valuable contribution to this great democracy."

Thompson, 73, is a liberal fixture in Congress and longtime champion of civil rights, the only Democrat in the Mississippi delegation, hailing from a majority-black district in the state’s western half.

He has avoided the limelight during his more than 15 years on the Homeland Security Committee, notching achievements with careful bipartisan outreach.

Several Democrats and Republicans said Thompson was the right choice to lead an investigation that is certain to be partisan and fraught.

“I’ve dealt with Bennie for 15 years, and we disagreed on a lot, but I don’t think there was ever a harsh word between us,” says former Republican Rep. Pete King of New York, who was the chairman and top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee for years opposite Thompson.

“Bennie is low key, he manages his side well."

"He was a good guy to work with."

"He was strong and knew what he wanted, but there was very little drama.”

New York Rep. John Katko, who is now the top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, gave a similar assessment.

Thompson is “a good man, a patriotic American” and a “productive partner,” Katko said in statement.

Pelosi chose Thompson as chairman after he crafted legislation with Katko that would have created an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack.

That bill won almost three dozen Republican votes in the House only to flame out in the Senate, where the opposition of Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell was decisive.

Far fewer House Republicans supported creating the House select committee, dismissing the effort as partisan.

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said the GOP won't participate after Pelosi rejected two of his appointments, Republican Reps. Jim Banks of Indiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio.

Only two Republicans voted to create the panel — Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney and Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger.

Pelosi first appointed Cheney to the committee and then added Kinzinger as well on Sunday after McCarthy withdrew his picks.

“I’m looking forward in the long run, to try to have as many of the 13 members that I can,” Thompson said last week.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who was appointed to the Jan. 6 committee, said Thompson’s history of working with Republicans and his popularity among members will make it harder to malign the panel’s work.

Reaching the bipartisan deal with Katko was not an easy task, he said.

“I think he has a very even keel that will help him get through this,” Schiff said.

Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, another Democrat appointed to the select committee, says both parties have “partisan brawlers” — and Thompson is not one of them.

“He’s a workhorse, so he likes getting stuff done,” Raskin said.

“And I think that’s the right spirit for this.”

Still, Thompson has taken sharply partisan stances.

He joined with about 30 Democrats in a 2005 vote to invalidate President George W. Bush’s victory — not unlike the dozens of Republicans who voted to invalidate Biden’s in January.

In that challenge, the dissenting Democrats claimed irregularities if not fraud in Ohio’s vote.


The effort did not end in violence and John Kerry, the defeated Democratic presidential candidate, did not lead or join the effort to deny Bush his victory.

A frequent critic of Trump, Thompson joined other Democrats in filing a lawsuit against the former president after the insurrection, charging that he incited the attack and conspired to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.

Last week, Thompson withdrew his participation in that lawsuit, which he joined soon after the Senate acquitted Trump, at his second impeachment trial, of inciting the insurrection.

Thompson's withdrawal petition said he “wishes to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest between his role on the Select Committee and his role as a Plaintiff in this litigation.”


The lawsuit, which is still active, names as defendants Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, and the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.

The Justice Department has filed charges against members of those groups in connection to the attack, and the panel is expected to investigate them as part of its probe.

Domestic extremism and its links to white supremacy are a familiar subject for Thompson not only from his time on the Homeland Security Committee but also from his early involvement in the civil rights movement in Mississippi.

He was active with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in college and organized voter registration drives before he was elected mayor of his small hometown of Bolton.

The FBI’s assessments about the growing dangers of domestic extremism, he said, show that “the significance of this committee’s work is as important as it can ever get.”
___

Associated Press video producer Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.

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REUTERS

"Biden nominates top prosecutors, including one to oversee Jan. 6 riot cases"


By Sarah N. Lynch, Nate Raymond

JULY 26, 2021

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday nominated a slate of eight people to serve as U.S. attorneys, including the top federal prosecutor who will oversee the Jan. 6 Capitol riots cases if he is confirmed, and a progressive prosecutor in Massachusetts.

Matthew Graves, a former federal prosecutor now with the corporate law firm DLA Piper, is Biden’s choice to run the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, which has been overwhelmed with a flood of cases stemming from the riots.

Federal prosecutors have arrested more than 535 people on charges of taking part in the violence, in which followers of then-President Donald Trump fought police, smashed windows and sent members of Congress and then-Vice President Mike Pence running for safety.

Graves earlier in his career served as a prosecutor in the same U.S. Attorney’s Office he would lead, securing a guilty plea from former U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr for misusing campaign funds and investigating banks for sanctions violations.

Biden also nominated Rachael Rollins, a local prosecutor in Boston who is part of a growing national movement of “progressive prosecutors” who support efforts to eliminate racial disparities by rejecting the traditional “tough on crime” culture that has led to the disproportionate incarceration of Black men.

The nominations must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Rollins, who earlier in her career worked as a federal prosecutor, was elected in 2018 as the first Black woman to serve as the district attorney in Suffolk County, which covers Boston.

She would be the first Black woman to serve as the top federal prosecutor in Massachusetts.

Rollins campaigned on a promise to decline prosecution for some low-level crimes, and she had been vocal about the need for police reform even before the nationwide protests following the May killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

Some other progressive district attorneys have also been under consideration to serve as U.S. attorneys.


Other nominees to serve as U.S. attorneys include Erek Barron for the District of Maryland, Nicholas Brown for the Western District of Washington, Clifford Johnson for the Northern District of Indiana, Zachary Myers for the Southern District of Indiana, Trini Ross for the Western District of New York and Vanessa Waldref for the Eastern District of Washington.

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REUTERS

"Fed now facing twin inflation, growth risks as virus jumps and supply chains falter"


Howard Schneider Ann Saphir

WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO, July 26 (Reuters) - A U.S. Federal Reserve divided over how to respond to fast-rising prices meets this week with the fresh complication of increased coronavirus infections and a global supply chain that, far from sorting out its problems, may be headed for more inflation-inducing trouble.

Fed officials are likely to affirm after their two-day meeting that a strong U.S. recovery and their planning for an eventual policy shift both remain underway.

But the new risks, threatening the twin ills of slowed growth and higher prices, mean the rosy future seen in June seems less assured.

Debate over how to shape post-pandemic monetary policy has just begun, and decisions were not expected before the fall.

But since the Fed met just six weeks ago, what had seemed a blue-sky setting for that debate has become clouded by a quadrupling of daily infections led by the more-contagious Delta variant to levels approaching those seen in last summer's virus surge.

Even if the worst of the new outbreak is concentrated among less-vaccinated communities, economists see it potentially changing consumers' willingness to spend and travel, and say it will likely require the Fed to strike a balance between keeping faith in the recovery while taking explicit stock of what could go wrong.

So far, the risks to growth remain just that: Data on air travel and restaurant visits show consumers are still in recovery mode, not hunkering down.

A new policy statement is to be issued Wednesday at 2 p.m. (1800 GMT) followed by a press conference by Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

"Again and again we’ve seen over the last 18 months that the No. 1 determinant of economic activity is the virus," said Karen Dynan, a Harvard University economics professor and former assistant U.S. Treasury Secretary.

"I think that we will continue to make forward progress, but that progress will be slower than otherwise.”

Developments since the last meeting "strengthened the case against pulling back on accommodation prematurely," given the new uncertainty about the recovery and despite higher-than- expected June inflation, Goldman Sachs economist David Mericle wrote.

The Fed continues to buy $120 billion in government bonds each month and hold its policy interest rate near zero, measures rolled out in the spring of 2020 to buttress the economy from the pandemic.

Some Fed officials already feel it is time to pivot from those policies because of the unexpected pace of recent price increases, and trading in bond markets in recent weeks showed investors betting the Fed may have to accelerate its exit from the crisis programs.

SUPPLY ISSUES 'NOT GOING ANYWHERE'

Yet it is, indeed, a long list of new problems that have arisen since June 16, when the Fed expressed confidence the pandemic was fading and that "progress on vaccinations will likely continue to reduce the effects of the public health crisis on the economy."

The rise of infections could, if it continues, weigh on the recovery, and would do so at a particularly tenuous moment.

The Fed is still hoping the economy can regain all of the 6.8 million jobs missing since the start of the pandemic, but that depends on other aspects of the recovery continuing apace - particularly a full reopening of public schools in the fall.

That's anticipated to help free parents to return to jobs, but the process could be set back if the health crisis intensifies again.

Any slowdown in the recovery or hiring, meanwhile, would occur amid the expiry of the federal spending and benefits that sustained personal incomes last year, a "fiscal cliff" already expected to slow annual economic growth from its current high-octane pace of around 7%.

Rising inflation had been the immediate focus of Federal Reserve officials in recent weeks, cleaving the central bank between those worried prices may be increasing too fast and those arguing that the economy needed much more time to grow and regain lost jobs before any change in monetary policy.

Powell was peppered with questions about that politically sensitive subject during recent hearings on Capitol Hill.

The issue is being watched carefully at the White House as well, with both the core of Fed officials and the Biden administration saying they remain convinced current price increases are mostly the result of a complicated economic reopening and will ease on their own.


There may be new reason to doubt.

A collision of events, including floods in Germany and China, are again clogging the flow of parts and materials around the world, prolonging the supply bottlenecks that Fed officials and the White House have counted on getting resolved to help ease price pressures.

"Supply-side issues are clearly not going anywhere," Citi economists wrote on Friday.

"Costs from inputs and supplier wait times are likely to continue appearing in consumer inflation for months to come."


From a relatively straight-forward and even somewhat old-fashioned dilemma in June - was inflation too high or not? - the Fed now "has risks in two directions," said former Fed monetary policy director and Yale School of Management professor William English, with the likelihood of more embedded inflation now running alongside risks to growth and the waning of federal fiscal support.

"Things could play out in a way they didn't expect," English said.

Reporting by Howard Schneider and Ann Saphir; Editing by Dan Burns and Andrea Ricci

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

"U.S. Combat Role in Iraq to Conclude This Year, Biden Says"


Ken Thomas, Michael R. Gordon

26 JULY 2021

WASHINGTON—President Biden said that the U.S. combat mission in Iraq would conclude by the end of 2021, but the U.S. military would continue to work with Iraqi forces in their fight against the Islamic State militant group.

“We are not going to be, by the end of the year, in a combat mission,” Mr. Biden said Monday at the start of a White House meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi.


The president said U.S. military forces would “be available to continue to train, to assist, to help and to deal with ISIS.”

The announcement is intended to help Mr. Kadhimi blunt criticism from hard-line Shiite politicians at home, who have been demanding that the approximately 2,500-strong American force leave Iraq.

U.S. officials, however, say it won’t lead to a significant reduction in the number of American troops in the country nor fundamentally alter their mission.

The focus of the American deployment has long been on advising and training Iraqi troops, which mainly takes place within the confines of large bases.


The Iraqi military has been supported by American air power in carrying out their fight against cells of Islamic State militants and Iraqi officials have signaled they expect this to continue.

“We don’t need any more fighters because we have those,” Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein told The Wall Street Journal last week.

“What do we need?"

"We need cooperation in the field of intelligence."

"We need help with training."

"We need troops to help us in the air.”

A U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraqi 2003 to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but then had to contend with Sunni insurgents and Iranian-backed militias.

The U.S. regained the initiative on the battlefield after President George W. Bush sent a surge of reinforcements to the country in 2007 and U.S. troops forged an alliance with Sunni tribes, and the level of violence gradually subsided.


However, talks between the Obama administration and then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on maintaining a modest, several-thousand-strong U.S. military presence to continue the training of Iraq’s forces faltered.

American troops left the country in 2011.

Following the departure of the American troops, the training and performance of Iraqi forces began to deteriorate and Washington’s ability to encourage the appointment of qualified and nonsectarian Iraqi commanders waned.

The Islamic State group seized Mosul in June 2014, and President Barack Obama sent U.S. forces back to Iraq to advise the Iraqi military.

A small number of American and European special-operations troops were also deployed to carry out raids in Iraq and Syria, and the U.S. and allied powers carried out punishing airstrikes against Islamic State militants.

With the collapse of the Islamic State caliphate in March 2019, the U.S. stopped accompanying Iraqi forces on the battlefield, concentrated on mentoring Iraqi forces and encouraged North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations to expand their training efforts in the country.

But the American presence has been a political target for Shia groups, including militias backed by Iran who have fired rockets and carried out drone attacks at Iraqi bases where American troops are located.

Mr. Biden has carried out two retaliatory attacks against militia facilities in Iraq and Syria.

Shiite hard-liners say that nothing short of the departure of all U.S. troops will satisfy their demands.


On Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that Mr. Biden would discuss “a change of mission” during the meeting and said the number of U.S. troops would be “driven by what is needed for the mission over time.”

Ms. Psaki said it was a natural next step that would allow the U.S. to coordinate with the Iraqi leadership in fighting ISIS and threats from Iranian proxies.

“This is a shift in mission, it is not a removal of our partnership or our presence or our close engagement with Iraqi leaders,” she said.

While the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq divides the Shiite community, Sunni and Kurdish politicians generally welcome their presence, a senior Iraqi national security official told American officials in closed door meetings last week, according to an Iraqi official who was present.

An April report by the Pentagon’s inspector general, which drew on classified information, estimated that 10,000 Islamic State fighters operate in Syria and Iraq.

“ISIS remains entrenched in rural areas throughout Iraq and retains freedom of movement,” the report noted, adding that the group has carried out suicide bombings in Baghdad.

The struggle against Islamic State isn’t entirely military, the report noted.

It found that the slow pace of economic reform and reconstruction by the Iraqi government helped Islamic State’s effort to recruit more fighters.

Parliamentary elections are scheduled in Iraq in October, adding to the sensitivity of the issue of American troops.


Write to Ken Thomas at ken.thomas@wsj.com and Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com

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