by tyler | Oct 13, 2023 | CNN, politics
The US intelligence community produced at least two assessments based in part on intelligence provided by Israel warning the Biden administration of an increased risk for Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the weeks ahead of Saturday’s seismic attack on southern Israel, according to sources familiar with the intelligence.
One update from September 28 warned, based on multiple streams of intelligence, that the terror group Hamas was poised to escalate rocket-attacks across the border. An October 5 wire from the CIA warned generally of the increasing possibility of violence by Hamas. Then, on October 6, the day before the attack, US officials circulated reporting from Israel indicating unusual activity by Hamas — indications that are now clear: an attack was imminent.
None of the American assessments offered any tactical details or indications of the overwhelming scope, scale and sheer brutality of the operation that Hamas carried out on October 7, sources say. It is unclear if any of these US assessments were shared with Israel, which provides much of the intelligence that the US bases its reports on.
Israel, Gaza and the West Bank are also on a “hot spots” list included in intelligence briefings for senior officials almost daily, a person who receives the briefings said.
Intelligence assessments are written by the intelligence community to inform policy makers and enable them to make decisions.
“The problem is that none of this is new,” said one of the sources familiar with the intelligence. “This is something that has historically been the norm between Hamas and Israel. I think what happened is everyone saw these reports and were like, ‘Yeah of course. But we know what this will look like.’”
But the assessments were among a wave of high-level warnings given to the Biden administration by both its own intelligence community and Middle Eastern allies over the past year, raising questions about whether the US and Israel were appropriately attuned to the risk.
A senior official from an Arab country in the region said their country repeatedly raised concerns with US and Israeli officials that Palestinian anger was reaching a dangerous pitch. “But they never listened every time we warned them,” the official said.
A Middle Eastern diplomat in Washington, DC, also told CNN that their government had repeatedly warned the White House and US intelligence officials of a buildup of Hamas weapons and anger among Palestinians that was set to explode.
“The arms that exist in Gaza is beyond the imagination of anybody’s thinking,” they warned, the diplomat said. “The arms that exist in the West Bank, via Hamas, are also becoming a real problem and Hamas control of the West Bank is a real issue.”
“This in every meeting, every meeting in the last year and a half,” the diplomat added.
And in February, CIA Director Bill Burns told an audience at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service that he was “quite concerned about the prospects for even greater fragility and even greater violence between Israelis and Palestinians.”
“I would not come to the conclusion that the intel community was not tracking this from a strategic level — in fact they were,” a US official told CNN.
Yet those strategic warnings did nothing to help US or Israeli officials predict the events of October 7, when more than 1,000 Hamas fighters poured across the border into Israel in an operation that would leave more than a thousand Israelis dead. For most US and Israeli officials who were tracking the intelligence, the expectation was that there would likely be just another round of small-scale violence by Hamas — perhaps some rocket fire that Israel’s Iron Dome would intercept, one source familiar with the intelligence explained.
“If we had known or if we know of a pending attack against an ally, we would clearly inform that ally,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on Friday.
Senior Biden administration officials — as well as current and former intelligence officials — continue to say they remain focused on the crisis at hand and insist that is too soon to review how the planning for such a massive attack was missed.
Multiple current and former intelligence officials, as well as some lawmakers briefed on US intelligence, pushed back on the notion that the failure to provide tactical warning of the attack was the US’s responsibility — because so much of US intelligence reporting on Gaza originated with Israel in the first place.
Another source familiar with the intelligence sumbumed up the US view: “Israel missed this, not us. We have a level of confidence in Shin Bet, the IDF, Mossad and others.”
The New York Times also reported on the existence of some of the reports and that they were not briefed up to President Joe Biden.
“There was no information warning about the terrorist attack in advance,” a Biden administration official told CNN.
The Office of Director of National Intelligence and the CIA declined to comment.
Based on conversations with dozens of current and former intelligence, military and congressional officials, the view is coalescing among US officials and lawmakers that Israel’s failure to predict the explosion of simmering rage from Gaza was primarily due to a lack of imagination.
Hamas likely hid the planning of the operation through old-fashioned counterintelligence measures such as conducting planning meetings in person and staying off digital communications whose signals the Israelis can track. But US officials also believe that Israel had become complacent about the threat Hamas posed and failed to recognize key indicators that the group was planning for a large-scale operation.
For example, Israeli officials failed to recognize routine Hamas training exercises as a sign that the group was preparing an imminent attack. The militants trained for the onslaught in at least six sites across Gaza, a CNN investigation found, including at one site less than a mile from Israel’s border.
“There were numerous indicators of a change in posture generally by Hamas and then pivoting both in public rhetoric and posture more towards violence and attacks generally,” said one source familiar with US intelligence.
In general, the Biden administration’s public posture in the lead up to the attack also did not reflect a heightened sense of alarm about the potential for violence. The intelligence community’s annual assessment of worldwide threats, released in February, does not mention Hamas.
“The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said at The Atlantic Festival on September 29.
“Challenges remain,” Sullivan said, citing “tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. “But the amount of time that I have to spend on crisis and conflict in the Middle East today compared to any of my predecessors going back to 9/11 is significantly reduced.”
Hamas had refrained from entering two smaller cross-border skirmishes within the last year between another Palestinian militant group and Israel. Israel believed that its policy of offering work permits to Gazans and allowed Qatari money into the country had given Hamas something to lose — and lulled the group into quiescence.
“Hamas is very, very restrained and understands the implications of further defiance,” Tzachi Hanegbi, Israel’s national security adviser, told an Israeli radio channel six days before the assault.
It’s also possible that the Hamas operation was more successful than the group anticipated, one former intelligence official and another source familiar with current intelligence said.
“I think that it’s very possible, if not probable, that Hamas vastly exceeded its own expectations,” the second person said. “They thought we would mount this assault and there would be a couple dozen killed but never did they think it would rise to the level it did.”
This story has been updated with a response from the Biden administration.
by tyler | Oct 13, 2023 | CNN, politics
Trump Organization executives considered tacking on “presidential premiums” to some of then-President Donald Trump’s properties in a way that would increase asset values and inflate his net worth in 2017, according to exhibits and testimony shown at Trump’s civil fraud trial on Friday.
Eric Haren of the attorney general’s office showed the court several versions of internal spreadsheets from 2017 financial documents prepared by Trump Org. employee Patrick Birney.
The various drafts of spreadsheets timestamped in October 2017 show calculations that include a “presidential” premium that marked up the valuations for certain assets 15 to 35 percent – significantly increasing the overall asset valuations.
Birney testified that his former boss, Trump Org. CFO Allen Weisselberg, was “probably” who told him to do it.
This idea came during the same year the valuation of Trump’s penthouse at Trump Tower took a hit after its square footage was corrected, reducing its size to 10,996 square feet from 30,000 square feet, something Trump incorrectly boasted about in previous years.
Birney and Weisselberg both confirmed during testimony this week that they changed the square footage of Trump’s penthouse apartment in his financial statements after a Forbes article published in 2017 accused Trump of lying about the size of his penthouse when the news outlet found the true measurements in records from the 1990s.
Ultimately the presidential premiums were never included on Trump’s financial statements.
Two weeks of testimony have now been completed at the ongoing civil trial brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James against Trump, his adult sons and their businesses.
Birney, who was a senior financial analyst in 2016 when he joined Trump Org., still works there, now as vice president of financial operations. He reiterated his previous testimony that Weisselberg or former controller Jeffrey McConney would determine what methods were used to value assets that were included on Trump’s financial statements.
Birney also testified that Weisselberg directed him to use low capitalization rates and top of the market comparable recent sales to value some of Trump’s assets. The use of a lower cap rate resulted in a higher valuation.
He also said he used a low cap rate to value a commercial property which they partnered with real estate investment company Vornado at 1290 6th Ave. in New York, despite expressing some concern to Weisselberg over the data.
by tyler | Oct 13, 2023 | CNN, politics
President Joe Biden on Friday spoke with the families of the Americans who remain unaccounted for in Israel after promising to speak with family members of those who are held hostage by Hamas.
During a speech in Philadelphia Friday afternoon, Biden recounted the conversation.
“They’re going through agony not knowing what the status of their sons, daughters, husbands, wives, children are,” he said. “You know, it’s gut wrenching. I assured them my personal commitment to do everything possible, everything possible” to ensure the Americans’ return.
National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby told reporters that Biden “conveyed directly to these families that they have been in his prayers and we affirmed for them that the United States government is doing everything possible to locate and bring home their loved ones.”
The call was led by special presidential envoy for hostage affairs Roger Carstens, Kirby said.
“Several of the family members shared information about their loved ones – personal stories and experiences that they have gone through as they endure this, quite frankly, unimaginable ordeal,” Kirby said.
In a clip of an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that aired Friday, Biden promised to speak with the families.
“I think they have to know that the president of the United States of America cares deeply about what’s happening. Deeply. We have to communicate to the world (that) this is critical. This is not even human behavior. It’s pure barbarism,” Biden told CBS’ Scott Pelley in a clip of a “60 Minutes” interview that was released Friday morning.
He added: “We’re going to do everything in our power to get them home if we can find them.”
Fourteen Americans remain unaccounted for, and the White House believes “less than a handful” are being held hostage by Hamas following this weekend’s attacks, Kirby has said.
The US is in “direct communication” with Israeli counterparts and the families, Kirby told CNN’s Poppy Harlow on Friday morning.
“The families have been a good source of information because some of them, you know, they saw their loved one being abducted or they know they’ve seen images of their loved one being abducted. So they have been a significant and an important source of information as well,” Kirby said Friday.
But, he added, “We just don’t have enough information to develop any specific policy options one way or the other.”
The US is offering Israel hostage recovery expertise, with FBI and Pentagon personnel on the ground providing support.
Diplomatic efforts to recover the hostages are also underway, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken currently traveling in Qatar, which CNN has reported is among the countries in talks with Hamas over hostages.
Kirby noted to CNN on Thursday that it is a “common tactic in the Hamas playbook to break up hostages and move them in rounds in sometimes small groups,” though the US has not confirmed whether that is the case.
Biden called Hamas “pure evil” but said the majority of Palestinians were suffering as a result of the militant group’s terror. In some of his most direct public comments about the suffering inside Gaza, the president said he was working “urgently to address the humanitarian crisis” in the coastal Palestinian enclave.
“We can’t lose sight of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with Hamas,” Biden said, adding, “They’re suffering as a result as well.”
FBI hostage negotiators and agents, some working in Israel and others in field offices around the US, have been assisting in the efforts, according to US law enforcement officials involved in the matter.
These include members of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group, which has extensive experience in helping to resolve hostage incidents, including in war zones from Afghanistan to Iraq and across the Middle East. Negotiators and agents are talking to family members, getting proof of life information that can be used in the investigation and for possible questions to be asked if hostage-takers reach out.
Earlier this week, Biden pledged the full force of his administration’s commitment to rescuing hostages, saying that while “we’re working on every aspect of the hostage crisis in Israel,” if he relayed in detail what steps the administration was taking, “I wouldn’t be able to get them home.”
“Folks, there’s a lot we’re doing – a lot we’re doing. I have not given up hope of bringing these folks home,” Biden said. “But the idea that I’m going to stand here before you and tell you what I’m doing is bizarre, so I hope you understand how bizarre I think it would be to try to answer that question.”
by tyler | Oct 13, 2023 | CNN, politics
The Biden administration underlined its public and fulsome show of support for Israel Friday as two of its most senior national security officials visited the Middle East ahead of an expected Israeli ground incursion into Gaza.
Behind the scenes, however, the US faces a difficult diplomatic challenge – providing support for Israel’s “legitimate security operations” while trying to mitigate the devastating impact on civilians and prevent the war from expanding out to further fronts.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin arrived in Israel for meetings with senior leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He pledged unwavering US solidarity, echoing a message delivered by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Tel Aviv a day prior.
Blinken, meanwhile, is engaged in extensive shuttle diplomacy to press “countries to help prevent the conflict from spreading, and to use their leverage with Hamas to immediately and unconditionally release the hostages,” he said Thursday. Following his departure from Israel Thursday, Blinken traveled to Jordan to meet with King Abdullah II and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and then on to Doha for meetings with senior Qatari officials. He also briefly stopped in Bahrain before landing Saudi Arabia on Friday evening. He will also visit the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt before returning to the United States Sunday.
In public remarks, Blinken and Austin both offered full-throated support for Israel’s actions in the wake of the brutal Hamas attack last weekend, which killed 1,300 people, including 27 Americans. The subsequent Israeli air strikes on Gaza have killed nearly 1,800 people, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
“No county can tolerate having a terrorist group come in, slaughter its people in the most unconscionable way, and live like that. What Israel’s doing is not retaliation. What Israel is doing is defending the lives of its people and, as I said, trying to make sure that this cannot happen again,” Blinken said at a press conference in Doha Friday.
“This is no time for neutrality, or for false equivalence or for excuses for the inexcusable,” Austin said at another press conference in Tel Aviv Friday.
US administration officials have not publicly urged de-escalation or called for a ceasefire.
They have discussed “with Israel the importance of taking every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians,” Blinken said Friday – a discussion that comes as Israel’s actions are likely to face immense scrutiny from nations in the region, human rights groups, and progressive lawmakers in Washington. On Friday, the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a letter to President Joe Biden and Blinken urging them to call on the Israel Defense Forces to show restraint in Gaza. to show restraint in Gaza.
In remarks Friday, Biden said the US was working “urgently to address the humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, noting that “we can’t lose sight of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with Hamas.”
In his meetings in Tel Aviv Thursday, Blinken pressed Israeli officials on the need to establish safe zones for civilians inside Gaza, a senior State Department official said Friday.
“We do want to find some way to establish some sort of safe area where the people who live in Gaza City can go to be saved from Israel security operations,” the official explained. “It’s work that’s still coming together.”
“I can tell you from the meetings we had with Prime Minister Netanyahu and the security cabinet yesterday, it is something that they are actively focused on and actively working on,” they added.
The US is also working with Egypt and Israel to try to establish a humanitarian corridor for supplies to come into Gaza and for American citizens and other civilians to evacuate to Egypt.
The specter of imminent military action is looming, though, and it is unclear if the mechanisms can be set up in time. The Israeli military warned the 1.1 million people living in northern Gaza to evacuate their homes – an order that the United Nations decried as impossible to undertake “without devastating humanitarian consequences.”
The US is also scrambling to try to stop adversaries like Hezbollah and Iran – who have threatened to join the war – from doing so.
“A big part of my own conversations here throughout this trip, including today, following up the next couple of days, is working with other countries to make sure that they’re using their own contacts, their own influence, their own relationship to make that case – that no one else should be taking this moment to choose to create more trouble in some other place,” Blinken said.
by tyler | Oct 13, 2023 | CNN, politics
House Republicans have picked Rep. Jim Jordan as their new speaker nominee, though it is unclear if the Ohio Republican can win enough support to secure the gavel in a full House vote as the conference faces a leadership crisis.
There are already signs Jordan will encounter resistance as several lawmakers have said they would not vote for him. Jordan may face the same math problem as Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who initially won the GOP speaker nomination but dropped out of the race abruptly after facing a hardened bloc of opposition.
Republicans have been mired down in in-fighting that has left the House paralyzed with no clear path to elect a new speaker after Kevin McCarthy’s historic ouster.
By failing to coalesce behind a candidate, the GOP conference has plunged the House into uncharted territory and effectively frozen the chamber at a time when major international and domestic crises loom, from Israel’s war against Hamas to a potential government shutdown in mid-November.
GOP Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia announced Friday that he also intends to run for speaker. Scott lost to Jordan in Friday’s internal vote but it wasn’t immediately unclear if he’ll continue to challenge Jordan.
On his way into an earlier House GOP conference meeting Friday morning, Jordan told CNN’s Manu Raju that he thinks he will be able to get the 217 votes needed to win the gavel, but refused to say if he would drop out if he can’t get there by the end of the day.
“I think we’ll get 217 votes,” Jordan said. “I think we’ll get 217 votes – that’s the quickest way to get unified and get to the floor.”
The problem for the House GOP is that it’s not clear anyone can lock down the 217 votes needed to win the gavel, raising questions over how and when the standoff over the speakership will last and at what cost.
California Republican Rep. Tom McClintock stood up in the earlier meeting of the GOP conference, and tried to nominate McCarthy for speaker, but McCarthy stood up and told McClintock that was not productive, GOP Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio told CNN. McClintock then withdrew his motion.
On Friday morning, McCarthy said he supports Jordan in the speaker’s race and said, “We’ve got to get this back on track.”
“I would support Jordan, yes,” McCarthy told Raju. “I think Jim Jordan could do an excellent job.”
Jordan has been meeting and having calls with holdouts as he attempts to lock down the 217 votes he will need to secure the gavel, according to a GOP aide.
Tensions are boiling over among House Republicans frustrated at the impasse and concerned over the path forward.
Republican Rep. Mark Alford of Missouri told reporters after Scalise’s exit from the race Thursday evening that one lawmaker had remarked: “‘You know, you could put Jesus Christ up for speaker of the House and he still wouldn’t get 217.’”
But Republicans are not unified behind Jordan and on the heels of Scalise withdrawing from the race several were already expressing concern over a potential Jordan run or outright opposition.
Rep. Don Bacon, when asked whether he is a “no” on Jordan, told CNN’s Manu Raju that he’s “chewing on it right now” and said many Republicans are reluctant to reward what they see as “bad behavior” by giving in to what a small group of holdouts have been pushing for, though he said that’s not Jordan’s fault.
“We had five individuals today who said they would only vote for Jim and not Steve. So many of us feel it’s rewarding bad behavior if we do that. The problem for me though is it’s not Jim’s fault so I’m just grappling with that,” he said. “There’s a great quote … if you give a 5-year-old who is misbehaving terribly more ice cream, they will be worse behaving, right? That’s what’s going to happen here if we reward that behavior. So a lot of us are resistant to that.”
Scalise’s exit from the race and McCarthy’s historic removal as speaker have put a spotlight on the power of a small faction of conservatives to sideline the agenda of a majority of the conference. House Republicans control just a razor-thin majority and a speaker candidate can only afford to lose four defections and still win.
On Thursday the night before he hopped into challenge Jordan, Scott told CNN the GOP’s inability to elect a new speaker driven by small group of holdouts “makes us look like a bunch of idiots.”
“We’ve got a very small group of people that they have to have everything their way. We had a group that sabotaged Speaker McCarthy and now we’ve had a group that sabotaged Steve Scalise, both of them great people,” he said.
McHenry remains interim speaker
Before Scalise withdrew, Republicans were already considering whether they should try to expand the powers of interim Speaker Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, so the House can pass legislation, like a resolution for Israel, multiple lawmakers told CNN.
“That is an option that we could pursue,” GOP Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas told reporters.
A group of more centrist Republicans are circulating a letter asserting that McHenry should have more temporary power, sources told CNN – a sign of desperation as the GOP scrambles to coalesce around a speaker.
Attempting to expand the powers of the interim speaker, a role that is extremely limited, would put House Republicans in untested legal territory though and could be complicated to pull off, and some in the party have already pushed back on the idea.
“I’m not willing to look at that at all,” said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican from Florida.
This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.
by tyler | Oct 13, 2023 | CNN, politics
President Joe Biden on Friday announced the locations of seven regional hubs to manufacture hydrogen – a fuel cleaner than fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal – but one which can be derived from renewable energy, nuclear power or planet-warming methane gas.
Biden made the announcement alongside Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm at the Tioga Marine Terminal in the Port of Philadelphia – which will eventually use hydrogen produced from renewable energy and nuclear power at a new Mid-Atlantic hydrogen hub comprising parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.
Speaking in front of port workers on Friday, Biden touted the hydrogen hubs as a major part of his “Bidenomics” plan to create new jobs and new industries. “It’s all part of my plan to make things in America,” Biden said.
He also said the hydrogen initiative would make progress on his ambitious climate goals.
“I made it a goal for our country to get to net-zero emissions from pollutants no later than 2050,” Biden said, adding that hydrogen is an important supplement for renewables like wind and solar, especially to power heavy industry, heavy duty trucks and shipping.
“That’s where hydrogen comes in,” Biden said. Using “hydrogen, you can power industries like the production of steel and aluminum. It’s going to end up changing our transportation system. That lets us get to this place without putting more carbon in the atmosphere.”
Seven regional hubs will be awarded funding from a pot of $7 billion that was passed last year as part of the bipartisan infrastructure law. In addition to the Mid-Atlantic, the new hubs will include:
Biden administration officials said they are still determining exact locations for the hubs in each region.
The Biden administration hopes these hubs will spark a new US industry that senior administration officials estimated could catalyze around $50 billion in public and private investments and create tens of thousands of jobs.
“I think of hydrogen as the ultimate energy carrier,” a senior administration official told reporters on a Thursday press call. “It’s earned the nickname as the Swiss Army knife of clean energy.”
Senior administration officials estimated that together, the seven hubs will eventually produce 3 million tons of hydrogen per year – a third of the total national goal DOE has set for 10 million tons of hydrogen produced by 2030.
In addition to economic impacts, the Biden administration is betting big on hydrogen for its climate goals. Senior administration officials said the fuel will be used to clean up sectors of the economy like heavy duty trucking and industry, both of which are hard to wean off fossil fuels.
Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency has also made hydrogen as an integral part of its proposed regulation to cut emissions from power plants – another huge fossil fuel emitter in the US economy.
A senior administration official estimated the hubs would reduce the country’s planet-warming carbon dioxide pollution by roughly 25 million metric tons per year from end use, adding that is roughly equivalent to taking 5.5 million gasoline-powered cars off the road.
The hubs that use methane gas to generate hydrogen will be outfitted with carbon capture technology to reduce their carbon dioxide pollution, a senior administration official said. The official did not provide estimates for possible emissions of methane – a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide in the first two decades it’s in the atmosphere.
Politicians across the aisle representing the new hubs praised the announcement.
“We’re big beneficiaries of it,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a press event. “Hundreds of thousands of jobs; we estimate over 200,000.”
West Virginia Sens. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, and Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican, also hailed the hubs, calling them a major economic boon for their state.
“Today is a major win for the ARCH2 team and for future economic development and energy production in West Virginia,” Capito said in a statement.
Manchin, who was a strong advocate for the hydrogen hubs in congressional negotiations, said West Virginia “will be the new epicenter of hydrogen in the United States of America.”
Still, some environmental groups criticized the announcement, saying it will lead to continued use of fossil fuels and extend the life of that industry.
So-called blue hydrogen, which is derived from methane gas, “is an invention of the oil and gas industry,” said Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology and faculty fellow at Cornell University. “It is extremely disappointing to see the Biden administration provide funds for hydrogen hubs which will be based on fossil fuels, even with the carbon capture.”
