IMHO: I agree with not negotiating with terrorists because of all the stated reasons. This policy does put current hostages in danger, but to negotiate (reward) WILL lead to more terrorist organizations endangering even more American or other Western citizens.
SUMMARY: In “We Want to Negotiate: The Secret World of Kidnapping, Hostages and Ransom,” author Joel Simon analyzes hostage situations involving Westerners taken from Syria. One example: American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, who were executed. Judy Woodruff sits down with Foley's mother, Diane Foley, and author Simon to discuss why the U.S. might need to reconsider its negotiation policies.
State Department sanctions a former soldier in the French Foreign Legion as a senior plotter as French authorities roll up an ISIS network said to be planning new attacks.
U.S. and European counterterror officials are zeroing in on Islamic State masterminds of a terror campaign against Europe that continues despite military setbacks for ISIS in the Middle East.
On Tuesday, the U.S. State Department announced that it had put a suspected plotter of last November's attacks in Paris on a list of specially designated global terrorists. The announcement came the day after French authorities said they had arrested seven suspects and foiled a plot directed by senior ISIS figures in Syria to carry out major coordinated attacks in Paris and Marseilles during the Christmas holidays.
Separately, French and Belgian counter-terror officials said this week they have identified a second ISIS figure involved in directing operations against both countries.
The State Department sanction targeted a Moroccan-born suspect named Abdelilah Himich, who grew up in France and fought in the French Foreign Legion in Afghanistan before traveling to Syria and joining the Islamic State, according to court files and counterterror officials.
Last month, ProPublica and the PBS program Frontline reported that U.S. intelligence officials believe Himich, 27, was part of an ISIS unit in Syria that directed the terror attacks against Paris and Brussels. Composed largely of youthful European fighters, the external operations unit oversaw a campaign in which up to 200 operatives were deployed to Europe using forged documents, encrypted communications techniques and support networks supplying arms, transport and safe houses, Western intelligence officials say.
“Abdelilah Himich, also known as Abu Sulayman al-Faransi, is a senior foreign terrorist fighter and external operations figure,” the State Department said in a statement today. “Himich created the Tariq Ibn Ziyad Battalion in 2015, a European foreign terrorist fighter cell that has provided suicide operatives for ISIL attacks in Iraq, Syria, and abroad; at one time the battalion numbered as many as 300 members. Himich was also reportedly involved in the planning of ISIL's November 2015 Paris attacks and March 2016 Brussels attacks.”
U.S. intelligence believes Himich was a “conceiver” of the Paris attacks, according to U.S. counterterror officials. But details of his activities remain unclear, especially because several ISIS fighters use the same nickname as he does. While French and U.S. intelligence agencies agree that Himich is a senior foreign fighter, they differ about his degree of involvement in the Paris and Brussels attacks. Such discrepancies are not uncommon in intelligence circles, especially when it comes to murky underworld of the Islamic State.
“It's possible he was involved, but we don't have evidence that he played an important role in the Paris plot,” said a senior French counterterror official who requested anonymity. “We do know he led a battalion of foreign fighters in Syria. If the Americans have specific intelligence of his role in the Paris attacks, they haven't shared it with us.”
The U.S. government uses terrorist designations to put international pressure on top suspects, block their assets and bar U.S. persons from doing business with them.
In recent weeks, U.S.-backed Iraqi military forces have hammered the Islamic State in its bastion of Mosul and elsewhere, damaging the group's ability to deploy fighters to Europe and direct attacks in the West.
Nonetheless, the threat persists. French authorities are on heightened alert as the Christmas holidays approach. Over the weekend, French police arrested seven suspects in Strasbourg and Marseilles who had been under surveillance for months. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said authorities dismantled a network directed by ISIS from Syria that was about to unleash attacks.
The raids prevented “a long-planned terrorist attack on our territory,” Cazeneuve told reporters in France on Monday.
The DGSI counterterror agency arrested six suspects in Strasbourg and one in Marseilles. At least two suspects were trained by ISIS in Syria last year and were sent back to France to await further orders, according to French counterterror officials. Some of the suspects were associates of three Frenchmen who killed dozens of concert-goers at the Bataclan theater last November, officials said.
The lengthy investigation first identified a terrorist financing network in France that used fraudulent loans and other swindles to send up to $20,000 back to Syria. French intelligence then monitored a French-speaking ISIS leader in the Syrian city of Raqqah who used long-distance communications to oversee two separate terror cells trying to acquire arms for attacks, the senior counterterror official said.
When a suspected Moroccan operative who had lived in Portugal traveled to Marseilles recently to advance the plotting, French authorities decided to dismantle the network, the official said. The plotters intended to carry out coordinated holiday attacks on public places in Paris and Marseilles, officials believe.
“It was a sophisticated operation,” the senior French counterterror official said. “It was all controlled and coordinated by ISIS from Raqqa. The two cells were compartmentalized. They had no contact with each other, just with the leader in Syria. It would have been a major attack like the one in Paris last year.”
Investigations in Europe have shed light on the workings of ISIS plots against the West. In addition to Himich, French and Belgian police have identified another suspected ISIS leader – a shadowy figure in Syria who directed the Paris plotters last year using encrypted communications and the alias Abu Ahmad.
Officials said the suspect is a 32-year-old Belgian named Osama Atar, according to European and U.S. counterterror officials. (The identification of Atar as the mysterious Abu Ahmad was first reported by Le Monde newspaper of France.)
Atar has a remarkable history. In 2005, the U.S. military captured him in Iraq on suspicion of fighting for al Qaeda. He was held in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison and the U.S.-run Camp Bucca detention center, where his fellow inmates included future Iraqi leaders of the Islamic State such as Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, according to Western counterterror officials.
An Iraqi court sentenced Atar to ten years in prison. But he won early release in 2012 thanks to a campaign by Belgian politicians and human rights advocates, who claimed that he was ill with cancer and had been unfairly treated. Now critics say their efforts freed a committed fighter who quickly returned to the fray.
“It has never been confirmed that he had cancer,” said Eric Van der Sypt, a Belgian federal prosecutor, in a telephone interview. “He joined ISIS in Syria soon after he was released.”
Investigators believe Atar played a central role in training and directing the ten-man attack team who struck Paris and killed 130 people, according to Van der Sypt and other officials. He then spent four months communicating from Syria via encrypted messages with the surviving operatives who planned their next attack from hideouts in Brussels. The fugitives directed by Atar included his Belgian cousins, Ibrahim and Khalid Bakraoui, officials said.
Atar gave the fugitives bomb-making instructions and helped them plan the suicide attacks they carried out against the Brussels airport and a subway station in March, killing 32 people, according to investigators. He used the nickname Abu Ahmad during the online exchanges, investigators say.
Atar's photo has been identified by a captured ISIS operative in French custody, according to European counterterror officials. Atar remains a fugitive. Belgian police believe that he secretly returned to Belgium a few months after the Brussels bombings. Two more of his relatives were arrested in June on charges of plotting to attack an open-air “fan zone” set up in downtown Brussels for viewing of the European soccer championships.
“We are practically sure he was in Brussels in August of this year,” Van der Sypt said. Atar's whereabouts now are unknown, he said.
If Atar is in fact Abu Ahmad, he left a detailed trail of communications recovered from a laptop discarded by the Brussels bombers. It has been more difficult to determine the precise identities of the other masterminds, such as Himich. Investigators believe Himich's military experience helped him rise through the ranks of the Islamic State and join the external operations group.
Despite the differing analyses of French and U.S. intelligence agencies about his role, parts of Himich's story are well-documented in French court records obtained by ProPublica. Investigators used intercepts, credit card receipts, interrogations of accomplices and other evidence to build a picture of his journey to Syria and life in the combat zone.
French investigators first became aware of Himich in early 2014 during the surveillance of suspects in Lunel, a picturesque town near Montpellier that has been a hotbed for radicalized young people to join the jihad in Syria.
The son of Moroccan immigrants, Himich went to high school in Lunel. He joined the French Foreign Legion on November 13, 2008—seven years to the day before the Paris attacks, according to court documents. He served with that legendary fighting force in Afghanistan, earning two medals, but then deserted in 2010. He did prison time for drug trafficking in 2012, according to court documents.
In February of 2014, Himich and four others prepared to journey to the Syria by purchasing supplies: camping gear, night-vision goggles, medicine. Himich used a U.S. passport stolen in Paris to rent a luxury BMW sedan, which the group drove to Syria via Italy, Greece and Turkey, according to court documents.
By Feb. 13 of that year, Himich called his girlfriend in Lunel to tell her he was with militants doing a three-week training course, according to the documents.
“Right now, we all have to be at the same level,” Himich said, according to a transcript of a phone call intercepted by French police. “Afterward, if it's a question of who's going to be the chief or what, I'm going to be the chief.”
The girlfriend, a French convert to Islam, joined him that May in Syria, where they married and had children. Himich soon became the emir, or leader, of a 50-man fighting unit. He was wounded by an exploding mortar during a battle in which “fire rained from the sky,” according to intercepted conversations among other militants quoted in the documents.
Himich oversaw the crucifixion of two traitors by the Islamic State and enlisted a pilot to give flying lessons to his trainees, the documents say. Intercepted conversations describe combat, the births of children to militant families, and the deaths of French jihadis, often with photos of the corpses sent to families in France.
The court documents do not make explicit reference to Himich's role in plots against Europe. But a phone conversation intercepted in May, 2015, suggests that Himich may have lived in the same house in Syria as Fouad Aggad, one of the Paris attackers.
The transcript recounts a phone call between Aggad's mother and his brother, who was incarcerated in a French prison. The two discuss what they've heard from Fouad Aggad about his life in the Islamic State.
Six months after the conversation, Aggad died in a gun battle with police during the massacre at the Bataclan nightclub in Paris.
Himich, meanwhile, had disciplinary troubles with the Islamic State this spring, according to French officials. French intelligence has learned that ISIS removed him from his command post in April and temporarily jailed him for some type of misconduct, according to the French counterterror official.
But French and U.S. intelligence officials still consider him alive and dangerous.
SUMMARY: International officials are convinced that Bosnia's brand of Westernized, moderate Islam is the best possible bulwark against radicalization. The nation's official Islamic Community is cracking down on rural mosques that it says are too in line with Islamists — but some say the true extremist threat lies in the heart of the capital itself. Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports.
MALCOLM BRABANT (NewsHour): I'm in Central Bosnia, about 100 miles from the capital, Sarajevo.
I'm heading up to a remote mountain village called Osve, which is a place where, supposedly, there are some supporters of the so-called Islamic State. There have been people who've gone from this village to fight in Syria. Some have reportedly been killed. And we're going to meet somebody who used to play rock ‘n' roll, but is now labeled by the head of the Islamic community in Bosnia as someone who is a terrorist.
Izet Hadzic used to be lead guitarist in a band called Black Lady. After fighting in the Bosnian War, he abandoned what he thought was a decadent lifestyle and sought peace in religion. He leads one of these so-called radical mosques. While he's in dispute with the Islamic establishment, he insists he's no terrorist.
IZET HADZIC, Mosque Leader (through interpreter): Where does it come from to call us terrorists? It is because that people who look like us, have these beards, are doing such acts in the world, specifically ISIS and this cretin Baghdadi.
MALCOLM BRABANT: Two doors away from Hadzic's small holding is the father of a young man killed in Syria. Next door is a family Hadzic regards as extreme. Bosnian intelligence officers are frequent visitors.
Hadzic unequivocally condemns Islamic State.
IZET HADZIC (through interpreter): You can't call this jihad. To take a gun while someone is walking down the street with his family and begin to shoot? Can you imagine soldier doing this? These people are equal to cowards.
MALCOLM BRABANT:We had a polite, but frosty reception in Bocinje, a nearby village that was a stronghold of foreign mujahideen during the Bosnian War. We hoped to interview a man who returned from Syria in 2014, but he didn't want to be filmed because of an impending court case. His name is Ibrahim Delic.
Dozens of other Bosnians now in Syria are said to want to return because they are horrified by ISIS atrocities. Crippled and radicalized during the Bosnian War, Delic recently talked to the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network. Significantly, he criticized the Free Syrian Army, who are enemies of ISIS.
Here we go again. The paranoia over privacy that helps criminals and terrorists hide from the law, even with a legal warrant.
Excerpt
SUMMARY: In the wake of the FBI’s showdown with Apple last month, a new tech giant is taking up arms against government oversight. Microsoft sued the Department of Justice Thursday, arguing that it is unconstitutional for the government to request access to a customer’s data while banning Microsoft from informing the individual in question. Microsoft president Brad Smith joins Judy Woodruff for more.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): A high-profile showdown between a tech giant and the U.S. government over accessing private data.
This time, it’s Microsoft. Yesterday, the company filed a suit against the Department of Justice in federal court. Microsoft argues it’s unconstitutional for the government to ask for customers’ personal data or e-mails in most cases without the individuals’ knowledge. The company says it’s received more than 5,600 requests for such data from the government in the last year-and-a-half, often from the cloud or remote servers. And nearly half of those requests come with a ban from the government on alerting customers.
Brad Smith is the president of Microsoft. He joins me from company headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
And welcome to the program, Brad Smith.
I do want to point out we invited the Department of Justice to join the interview, but they declined.
So, let me begin by asking you, what is it that the federal government is doing that Microsoft doesn’t like?
BRAD SMITH, President, Microsoft: Well, what gives us concern is the fact we have received almost 2,600 — almost 2,600 of these so-called gag or secrecy orders over the last 18 months.
Over two-thirds of them have no end date at all. So it means that we are permanently prohibited from telling customers that the government has accessed, read and obtained copies of their e-mails. We feel that infringes on the constitutional rights of consumers and businesses to be secure from unreasonable government searches.
It infringes on our First Amendment right to speak, to share information with our customers.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, we know the Justice Department has not responded to the lawsuit. They have not said anything publicly, but we know that in the past they have said these are investigations that involve criminals, people who are breaking the law, that involve — that are perhaps involved in potential terrorist acts.
Why not work with the government when they’re trying to go after the bad guys?
BRAD SMITH: Well, this is an issue that we have discussed with various officials in government for some time.
And we readily recognize that there are many cases where there should be some kind of secrecy, that there is a real danger if information is disclosed. But we feel that these kinds of secrecy orders have been — become too routine. They’re being issued in cases that involve businesses, as well as consumers.
.....
...hence, the paranoia. Like businesses can't be criminals or help terrorists hide? Also, lets warn the criminals BEFORE they are brought to trial, think secret Grand Juries. Oh, wait, the Black-WEB sites used by drug lords and terrorists to hide. Humm.... could it be the big profits such companies make laundering hiding money?
IMO there is NO Constructional Right to allow hiding of criminal activity, especially when there is a warrant. Privacy should not used as an issue to hide criminals and terrorists.
Excerpt
SUMMARY: Since the San Bernardino attack, the FBI has been trying to read the contents of a cell phone used by attacker Syed Farook, made impossible by encryption. Now Apple CEO Tim Cook is rejecting a federal court order to create software to unlock the device. Gwen Ifill talks to Stewart Baker, former assistant secretary of Homeland Security, and Nate Cardozo of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): The battle over privacy vs. security is back front and center, as Apple digs in against the FBI and the courts over the issue of access to data on its phones.
December 2, 2015, that's the day Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, went on a murderous rampage in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people. Hours later, they were, in turn, killed by police. Ever since, the FBI has been trying to read the contents of a cell phone Farook used.
JAMES COMEY, FBI Director: We still have one of those killers' phones that we have not been able to open. And it's been over two months now. We're still working on it.
GWEN IFILL:Last week, FBI Director James Comey told a Senate hearing that the Apple iPhone's encryption has made it impossible for the agency to access its content.
Now a federal judge in California has ordered the company to create software that will do just that. But Apple CEO Tim Cook forcefully rejected that order early yesterday, writing in a letter addressed to Apple customers: “In the wrong hands, this software, which doesn't exist today, would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone's physical possession.”
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest disputed that, saying the government wants access only to the single device associated with Farook.
JOSH EARNEST, White House Press Secretary:We're not asking Apple to redesign its products or to create a new back door to its products. This is a much more specific request that the Department of Justice has put forward.
GWEN IFILL: Apple stepped up its protections after NSA leaker (aka traitor) Edward Snowden exposed government surveillance of phone traffic in 2013.
One feature can even erase the iPhone's contents after 10 failed attempts to unlock it. Prosecutors say they are worried that this feature could be on the phone Farook used. And unless Apple devises a way to unlock it, they could lose all its data. The company now has five days to make its formal response in court.
Note that Nate Cardozo could be making a prejudicial assumption, that the FBI is asking Apple to turn over a way to access this iPhone. That need not be the way it happens. Apple could create the way to disable the one feature, the FBI would take the iPhone in question TO APPLE and have them do it. The FBI would NOT get the software and Apple would not have to put the code on any iPhone.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein calls on Apple to obey court order
SUMMARY: How does the Islamic State militant group make money to fund its operations? A key source is oil extraction, which has helped make the group one of the richest terrorist armies in history. Economics correspondent Paul Solman takes a look at the Islamic State’s revenue sources, while William Brangham learns more from Cam Simpson of Bloomberg Businessweek.
PAUL SOLMAN (NewsHour): Since the Paris attacks this weekend, the forces arrayed against ISIS have been pounding the territory it holds, and, specifically, hitting oil it’s been extracting for sale, as oil is a key source of ISIS revenue, having made the group one of the richest terrorist armies in history.
Earlier today, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton insisted the U.S. should be targeting ISIS’ money.
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, Democratic Presidential Candidate: When it comes to terrorist financing, we have to go after the nodes that facilitate illicit trade and transactions. The U.N. Security Council should update its terrorism sanctions.
They have a resolution that does try to block terrorist financing and other enabling activities. But we have to place more obligations on countries to police their own banks.
PAUL SOLMAN: Republican candidate Donald Trump has been even more aggressive.
DONALD TRUMP, Republican Presidential Candidate: ISIS is making a tremendous amount of money because they have certain oil caps, right? They have certain areas of oil that they took away. There’s some in Syria, some in Iraq. I would bomb the (EXPLETIVE DELETED) out of them.
PAUL SOLMAN: Meanwhile, there’s been a debate over just how much money ISIS actually has.
Last year, David Cohen, then with the U.S. Treasury Department, said on the “NewsHour”:
DAVID COHEN, Former U.S. Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence: In the aftermath of some of the airstrikes that have been taken, as well as some of the efforts that have been undertaken to restrict ISIL’s ability to use these smuggling networks, our estimate is that ISIL is now earning something on the order of a couple million dollars a week.
PAUL SOLMAN: A report this week in Bloomberg Businessweek suggests Cohen was overly optimistic, citing new data from the Treasury that ISIS actually took in as much as half-a-billion dollars in the past year from oil.
But just yesterday, Army Colonel Steve Warren, spokesman for the joint task force, said the stepped-up offensive against ISIS’ main source of revenue is paying off. For the first time, the U.S. is attacking oil delivery trucks.
SUMMARY: How did the Paris terrorists communicate with each other and elude surveillance? Investigators are eyeing readily available cellphone technologies that defy cracking by intelligence agencies and even the companies that created them. Judy Woodruff takes a look at some of the encrypted apps and software being used to evade detection.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Since the Paris attacks, there’s been lots of concern in Washington and other world capitals over fears of how terrorists can communicate by going dark, namely, using an array of technologies to hide from law enforcement before and after attacks.
In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, investigators are still hunting for answers to how the terrorists communicated with each other and eluded surveillance. But their eyes are on the now ubiquitous cell phone, which can send coded information using free, readily available technologies that defy cracking by intelligence agencies and even the companies that created them.
In Washington yesterday, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican Richard Burr, said that very technology was probably at play in Paris.
SEN. RICHARD BURR (R), North Carolina: Globally, we need to begin the debate on what we do on encrypted networks, because it makes us blind to communications and to the actions of potential adversaries.
JUDY WOODRUFF: It’s called end-to-end encryption, meaning data gets encrypted or locked away with special codes on one device and is only decrypted when it reaches another.
Popular applications like WhatsApp, Apple’s iMessage, Threema and Telegram all operate this way. Some of the encrypted apps, like Dstrux, also employ technology that makes messages disappear after they’re delivered, leaving no trace.
Terrorists conceal their work using other sites like JustPaste.it. It is one place the Islamic State group posts messages and claims of responsibility without having to register. The TOR browser bounces communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers, hiding both the user’s activity and location.
Terrorist groups have even created their own encrypted software specifically to evade detection by the National Security Agency.
SUMMARY: Would greater government access to messages sent through secure communication technology help intelligence agencies fight terrorism? Judy Woodruff gets views from Stewart Baker, former assistant secretary of Homeland Security, and Kate Martin of the Center for American Progress.
SUMMARY: The attacks in Paris have raised concern about the threat posed by the Islamic State around the world, and how to counter it. Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff talk with William McCants, author of “The ISIS Apocalypse,” Juliette Kayyem, former assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Hassan Hassan of Chatham House and Richard Barrett, a former British intelligence official.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): We focus now on the changing nature of the threat from the Islamic State group and how to counter it.
For that, we turn to four people with deep expertise.
Juliette Kayyem was an assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security during the Obama administration. She now has her own security consulting firm. William McCants is director of the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic world at the Brookings Institution. His most recent book is “The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State.”
Richard Barrett is a former director of global counterterrorism operations for the British government. He’s a founder of the United Nations’ Counter-Terrorism Task Force. And Hassan Hassan is a Middle East analyst at Chatham House in London. He co-authored the book “ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror.”
And we welcome you all to the program.
Will McCants, I’m going to start here in Washington with you.
What have we learned from the Islamic State group from these attacks? What new do we know about them now?
WILLIAM MCCANTS, Brookings Institution:Well, they seem to have shifted and taken on a strategy of global jihad.
They have always had the rhetoric of global jihadism, similar to Al Qaeda. They have always talked about hitting the far enemy, the United States, France, and others. But for most of their history, they have focused on state-building. And for the past few years, they have been pretty successful at it.
But with the attacks over the past two weeks, taking down the Russian airliner, the attack in Beirut, and now in Paris, we believe that its attention has shifted abroad.
SUMMARY: From the campaign trail to the halls of Congress, leaders weighed in on the fallout of the Paris attacks. Gwen Ifill speaks to Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report and Tamara Keith of NPR about how responses to the tragedy are playing out in the presidential race, calls from some lawmakers to change U.S. policy toward Syrian immigrants, as well as takeaways from the Democratic debate.
SUMMARY: How would Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders handle terror threats at home and abroad, in light of the Paris attacks and the shifting threat of the Islamic State? Sanders joins Gwen Ifill to discuss his views on combating terrorism and the anti-refugee backlash in the U.S.
SUMMARY: What’s Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson’s views on bringing Syrian refugees to the U.S., in light of the Paris attacks and the shifting threat of the Islamic State? Carson joins Judy Woodruff to discuss his stance on fighting the militant group.
SUMMARY: What’s behind Sen. Bernie Sanders’ latest campaign tactics? Lisa Desjardins reports, then syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including a terror attack in Paris, Donald Trump’s remarks against Republican front-runner Ben Carson and the emerging division on immigration among the GOP contenders.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): So, gentlemen, this is a fast-moving story. Still very much that we — we know President Hollande has closed the borders of France. He has called an emergency.
And, Mark, it’s a reminder that even though foreign policy, defense policy has not been front and center, I think, in the minds of most Americans, something can change in an instant.
MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist: No question, Judy.
And there is a sense of shock, but an increasing awareness of vulnerability. And I think that’s what — the reaction and understandable reaction is of most people, beyond the obvious sympathy and sense of outrage that the people have done it and the sympathy for those who are suffering. But it does remind us of our vulnerability.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And it’s clear at this point that President Obama and administration officials have said, Michael, there is no indication of an immediate threat to the United States, but, of course, that’s where your thinking goes.
MICHAEL GERSON, Washington Post:Well, this is one of the strategies of al-Qaida-like organizations, spectacular attacks designed to demoralize countries.
This was true of the U.S., true in Britain in 2005 with the underground attack, and it’s true in France now. But it doesn’t work. It actually hardens resolve. And, you know, France is playing an important role in the Middle East. I think that they’re not going to be deterred from that.
SUMMARY: Terror has struck again in Paris, where multiple shootings and bombings across the city, leaving as many as 120 dead. Police say scores were killed at a concert hall, where attackers also took hostages. Judy Woodruff gets an update from Kate Moody of France 24.
SUMMARY: Who is capable of conducting the multiple-target attack that terrorized Paris on Friday night? Judy Woodruff talks to Lorenzo Vidino of George Washington University.
SUMMARY: Ever since (traitor) Edward Snowden released information about the extent of secret U.S. surveillance, a battle has been growing between tech companies and the government over access to data. New reports suggest the Obama administration may be backing down on its demands over encryption. William Brangham speaks to David Sanger of The New York Times.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Ever since (traitor) Edward Snowden released a mountain of information about the extent of U.S. government secret surveillance, the battle has been growing between tech companies and the government over access to data.
One of the major fronts in that battle has been the decision by Apple, Google, Microsoft and others to lock down, or encrypt, data on smartphones and digital devices.
But new reports say the Obama administration may be backing down from its demands.
William Brangham has the story.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): For months now, the Obama administration has said it’s essential to be able to occasionally access messages, texts and photos that are sent on today’s smartphones. But many of the latest devices give individual users the power to control their data and block others from seeing it.
Until recently, law enforcement has argued that this encryption is making it increasingly hard to track terrorists or criminals who are using these devices to communicate with each other.
For example, this is what Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates told a Senate hearing this summer:
SALLY YATES, Deputy Attorney General: ISIL currently communicates on Twitter, sending communications to thousands of would-be followers right here in our country. When someone responds and the conversations begin, they are then directed to encrypted platforms for further communication.
And even with a court order, we can’t see those communications. This is a serious threat, and our inability to access these communications with valid court orders is a real national security problem.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: This past week the Obama administration has apparently backed off on some of its demands to gaining access to our digital devices.
David Sanger has been reporting on this for The New York Times. And he joins me now.
David Sanger, welcome.
DAVID SANGER, The New York Times: Thanks. Good to be with you, William.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The term of art here is encryption. And for those who haven’t been following this debate very closely, could you just give us a quick primer? What is encryption?
DAVID SANGER: Well, encryption is a sophisticated version of what you did when you made codes when you were a kid.
It is taking the data that’s in your phone and wrapping it in a code so that if somebody got ahold of that phone, if they didn’t know the key, they couldn’t de-encrypt it. And sometimes conversations are encrypted or data is encrypted when it’s moving across a telephone wire as well.
Note the last high-lighted sentence, that means terrorists can hide.
SUMMARY: Officials are describing their case on the shooting rampage by Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez on members of the U.S. military as a terror investigation. Hari Sreenivasan speaks to Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, about what we know about the shooter and whether he may have been influenced by groups like the Islamic State, which has called for lone wolf attacks.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now we take a deeper look at what we know about the attack in Chattanooga and the current threats against Americans.
Hari Sreenivasan picks up the story.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Investigators are combing through clues to find out why Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez went on a shooting rampage yesterday in Chattanooga.
Officials describe the case that targeted members of the U.S. military, taking the lives of four Marines, as a terror investigation.
For more, we turn to Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
So, Michael, on the one hand, we have federal authorities saying we do not have a direct link yet to ISIS. On the other hand, this is exactly the type of attack that ISIS and al-Qaida are trying to inspire around the world.
MICHAEL LEITER, Former Director, National Counterterrorism Center: That’s exactly right.
And I think federal officials are being appropriately cautious. It is only 24 hours after the event and much evidence that will be uncovered is not yet open or public. All that being said, it’s quite clear, I think by all of the indications, that there was some inspiration from al-Qaida or ISIS ideology.
Exactly what those links are back to those organizations, that’s what we still have to figure out.
SUMMARY: Despite being ousted recently from Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, Iraq, the Islamic State made important new gains this weekend in Syria, taking control of an area near Damascus. Part of what is driving the extremist group's success is the growing role of former officials from Saddam Hussein's military who are now playing a key role within ISIS. Liz Sly, the Beirut bureau chief for The Washington Post, joins Hari Sreenivasan via Skype from Beirut, Lebanon, to discuss.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Iran, of course, is working alongside the United States in the fight against ISIS. Despite being ousted recently from Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, the extremist group made important new gains this weekend in Syria, taking control of an area near Damascus.
Part of what is driving ISIS’ success is the growing role of former officials from Saddam Hussein’s military, members of the once dominant Baathist Party. They are now playing a key role within ISIS.
Liz Sly of The Washington Post wrote about this, joins us now via Skype from Beirut, Lebanon.
So, first of all, how are they involved? Where are they involved? And what roles do they play?
LIZ SLY, The Washington Post: Well, really, they’re involved at every level of the senior leadership. Most of the senior leadership are former Baathists. They are officers in the army.
The senior leaders of ISIS served in Saddam Hussein’s army. They lost their jobs after the de-Baathification law in 2003. They went through various permutations of insurgency. Maybe they left the insurgency. Maybe they went back. But, in the past few years, we have seen an aggressive attempt by the current leader of ISIS to recruit them into the ranks of ISIS. And, really, the organization is run and controlled by Iraqis.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Now, the attack in Kenya that sparked a daylong siege and killed 147 people.
It began at daybreak and finally ended after dusk, when security forces killed four Somali gunmen and freed their remaining captives.
All day long, ambulances and military vehicles raced the wounded away from Garissa University College. It was the bloodiest terrorist attacks the country had ever seen, and the Somali group Al-Shabab, linked to al-Qaida, claimed responsibility.
Police said gunmen stormed the college at dawn, firing at students in their dormitories. Survivors said the attackers separated out Christians, taking some hostage and killing many others on the spot. Those who managed to escape recounted the horror.
MAN (through interpreter): I jumped out the window and fell down. I ran to the gate, and that’s when I met a biker, who helped me get to the hospital.
GWEN IFILL: Security forces quickly surrounded the college, about 120 miles from the Somali border. And an overnight curfew was imposed on the entire the region.
In a nationally televised address, President Uhuru Kenyatta urged his people to stay calm and alert.
PRESIDENT UHURU KENYATTA, Kenya: This is a moment for everyone throughout the country to be vigilant, as we confront and defeat our enemies.
GWEN IFILL: Kenyatta also announced expedited training of 10,000 police recruits. The government identified the suspected mastermind of the attack as Mohamed Mohamud, also known as Dulyadin, and officials posted a $220,000 bounty for him.
He’s alleged to be the leader of Al-Shabab’s cross-border strikes. They began after Kenya sent its military into Somalia four years ago. Until today, the worst of those came in 2013, when Al-Shabab attacked a Nairobi shopping mall, and 67 people were killed.
SUMMARY: Al-Shabab, a Somali-based terror group, claimed responsibility for today’s siege on a Kenyan university. The militants began cross-border strikes after Kenya sent its military into Somalia four years ago. Gwen Ifill talks to Kenneth Menkhaus of Davidson College about the group’s motivations for attacking Kenya.
SUMMARY: Even before last week's attack in Paris, attacks on the Jewish community in France have been on the rise, prompting many to flee the country. Gwen Ifill talks to the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg about the growing threats facing Jews in France.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): As we reported earlier, thousands of French police were dispatched today to secure Jewish sites throughout France.
Friday’s attack on the kosher grocery came as a shock to many around the world. But many French Jews were less surprised. Anti-Semitic attacks in the country, often violent, were on the rise in 2014. They included beatings, improvised grenade attacks and even rape.
The number of Jews fleeing France to make a new home in Israel more than doubled last year, growing from 3,400 in 2013 to 7,000.
“The Atlantic's” Jeffrey Goldberg is just back from a reporting trip to Paris, where he has been reporting on the growing threats to the country’s Jewish community.
Jeffrey, welcome.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG, “The Atlantic”: Thank you.
GWEN IFILL: Are these specific new threats or is this something that’s just been continuing?
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: No, the French-Jewish community has been living a certain reality for quite a long time already. Two years ago, there was a horrific attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse. Three children murdered by a returning Syrian jihadist.
So, there is nothing — this is in the category of shocking, but not surprising, to I think much of the French Jewish community. The rest of France is sort of coming on board to the realization of what’s going on.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss this week’s news, including the geopolitical and social consequences of the terrorist attacks in France, as well as what to expect from the new Republican-controlled Congress.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): For more about this we are joined once again tonight from Washington by Douglas Ollivant. He is a Senior and National Securities Studies Fellow at the New America Foundation and a partner at Mantid International.
So this might be a semantic question, we’ve referred to them as militants, as fighters, as jihadists, but considering some of the brutality that we are hearing reports of essentially burying people alive in mass graves and indiscriminately shooting them, it seems that these people are different.
DOUGLAS OLLIVANT: They are different. They are Islamist terrorists, they are Islamic fighters, but there is this core brutality to them, (that reminds us of Khmer Rouge like extermination), their tactics, their terror, the destruction of cultural heritage, the rape, the slave markets we hear, the burying alive.
We haven’t heard any stories of crucifixions in Iraq but certainly we’ve seen it in Syria by this group. The Islamic State of Iraq in Syria, or ISIL or the Islamic State, whatever you prefer to call them, they are something very different than what we’ve seen before.
HARI SREENIVASAN: And they’ve been very clear about exactly who they want to target and even the geographic area of what they want, I mean, this is the caliphate and empire that they want to resurrect.
DOUGLAS OLLIVANT: Right, well they declared the Islamic State a few weeks ago so now evidently they think they rule all Muslim areas from the west end of East Africa and Spain all the way to Indonesia.
But even before that they were the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and when you look at a map of the Levant, they’re very clear; they want Jordan, they want Lebanon, they want Israel, the northern part of Saudi Arabia, the southern part of Turkey. They’re very clear about their war aims.
HARI SREENIVASAN: And you know the French foreign minister had a quote that was in the press release he said “We’re not fighting a terrorist organization we’re fighting a terrorist state.” So does that change how the international community responds to this?
DOUGLAS OLLIVANT: I think it absolutely has to, that’s absolutely right. This is no longer a terrorist safe haven within a state, it’s a de facto state that is a terrorist safe haven.
And again, given the brutality of this group and their clear, long-term aims, we do need to take this seriously. Now right now they’re focused on what they call the near enemy–the Maliki and the Assad regimes but this turn up to the Kurds in the northeast demonstrates that that’s not all they’re focused on.
Today it was Kurdistan, if I were Jordan or Lebanon, I’d be very concerned.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): In Iraq today, government troops were poised to take the fight north to Sunni extremists, while the spiritual leader of the country’s Shiite majority called for a new working government.
Sectarian division has so far prevented the political party of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki from claiming its seats in parliament. But Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country’s most influential Shiite cleric, urged the newly elected body to convene quickly and choose a speaker and president.
A representative read Sistani’s sermon in Karbala.
AHMED AL-SAFI, Representative for Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani (through interpreter): It is also important that winning blocs open dialogue to help form an effective government largely acceptable to all, in order to surmount past mistakes and open new horizons for a better future to all Iraqis.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Back in the United States, the Pentagon said it expects Iraq to agree to legal protections for the incoming group of U.S. military advisers. American forces left the country in 2011 after the Iraqi government refused to grant U.S. service members legal immunity.
Hundreds of miles north of Baghdad in the ISIL-controlled city of Mosul, there are signs that once-fearful residents are beginning to return home to try life under the militant group’s rule.
We have a report from Jonathan Rugman of Independent Television News, who is just outside the city.
JONATHAN RUGMAN, Independent Television News: It is perched precariously and it is precarious in more ways than one, the Monastery of St. Matthew, 1,600 years old, its cloisters still echoing with Aramaic, the language of Christ himself, but a sanctuary for months now shelters 50 Christian families after their city, Mosul, was conquered by Islamic extremists last week.
“They tell us to trust us,” this woman told me. “They tell us they won’t hurt us, but we’re not going back because we don’t trust them.”
Her husband was killed by jihadists in Mosul two years ago. Now ISIS is in charge, they fear they will be branded as heretics and executed.
FATHER YOUSID BANNA, Mosul Priest: So what you hear that if you stay in Mosul, you will have a lot of problems, your churches will be destroyed, so they are afraid and they left Mosul. Most of the families, especially the Christian, left Mosul.
JONATHAN RUGMAN: This was as close to Iraq’s second city as we dared go, a checkpoint manned by Kurdish fighters patrolling the border of a vast new self-declared Islamic state.
And to our surprise, a queue to get in — Iraq’s government is apparently so hated by so many here that even some Christians are giving the ISIS alternative a chance.
MAN: We don’t think worse happened to the church, our homes. As a Christian, there is nothing, you know?
JONATHAN RUGMAN: So you as a Christian are not worried about these…
MAN: No.
JONATHAN RUGMAN: You’re not?
MAN: I think it’s OK.
“We’re not afraid. They’re doing nothing to civilians,” said this man.
“If you leave your car somewhere, it will be safe and nobody will steal it,” says another.
ISIS seems to be trying to win hearts and minds in Mosul, and here, we’re just a few hundred meters from the ISIS front line. But nobody knows how long the group’s restraint will last, given that it has boasted about executing prisoners south of here.
But these are the scarred remains of the army, which beat a rapid retreat from Mosul last week. Many soldiers deserted. This dejected handful didn’t, though one admitted to us there wasn’t much hope of getting the city back.
And that forces the two million people of Mosul to choose whether to stay or to go. Hundreds of thousands have fled from ISIS, those without money or relatives living in camps in unbearable heat, a dwindling number of Christians either clinging on in their ancient homeland or heading for the hills to pray.
SUMMARY: Pressure is mounting for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as ISIL advances toward that nation’s capital. Judy Woodruff talks to Rod Nordland of The New York Times from Baghdad about the future of Iraq’s government and reaction to President Obama’s announcement that he’s sending up to 300 military advisors to Iraq.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): In an unusually public exposure of an internal government debate, Obama administration officials confirmed they are deciding whether to target an American citizen living in Pakistan who is believed to be plotting terrorist attacks.
The disclosure comes as the administration considers the extent of the president’s powers amid new revelations about the technology behind unmanned drones, so often used to go after terrorists abroad.
For more, we turn to Mark Mazzetti of The New York Times, who wrote today’s story about the American citizen abroad. He’s also the author of “The Way of the Knife: The CIA, A Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth.”
IMHO a terrorist is a terrorist, and if you live outside of the U.S., you are fair game citizen or not.
A top U.S. counterterrorist official says there are “a number of specific threats” aimed at this week’s Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia — with the greatest danger coming from the Caucasus Emirate, which has threatened to attack the games.
Matthew Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, is telling Congress Tuesday that the U.S. and Russia are tracking threats of “varying degrees” of credibility. He said potential attacks seem more likely outside the venues for the games, and instead in the area or region around Sochi.
He described intelligence sharing with Russia as “good.”
FBI Director James Comey said U.S. cooperation with the Russian Security Service has improved.
Russia has mounted a massive security operation for the Olympics, deploying more than 50,000 police and soldiers amid threats from Muslim insurgents.
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
*Anti-First Amendment policies that attempt to turn America into a theocracy by enshrining ANY religious belief as law.
* Any attempt to suppress human or Constitutional rights.
* Any law or policy that supports discrimination based on religion, ethnicity, race/color, gender, sexual orientation, or any law that does NOT support Equal Treatment under the law.
*Any law or policy that attempts to suppress Freedom of the Press or Free Speech.
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