Senator Dianne Feinstein Responds to Jim Patterson

February 19, 2016 Mr. James Patterson San Francisco, California 94107 Dear Mr. Patterson: Thank you for contacting me to share your suggestions regarding the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the United States.  I welcome the opportunity to respond. According to the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees, there are currently more than 4 million registered Syrian refugees seeking assistance after fleeing five years of conflict in Syria.  Over 2,500 Syrians have lost their lives while taking dangerous journeys to European countries.  The Syrian conflict has led to the world's worst ongoing humanitarian crisis and the worst refugee crisis since World War II.  I understand you are concerned that the U.S. Department of State may initiate a new program to resettle Syrian refugees in the United States and that you believe this poses a threat to our national security.  The President has said, for fiscal year 2016, the U.S. would accept up to 85,000 refugees, 10,000 of which would be Syrians.  All U.S. refugee applicants, regardless of their nationality, ethnicity, or religion, are required to meet strict criteria, including security checks through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Intelligence community, and the U.S. Department of State, in order to qualify for admission to the United States.  Additionally, refugees from certain countries must meet additional clearance levels.  For example, biometric information, such as fingerprints and photographs, are collected from refugees coming from Syria and compared to the U.S. vast biometric holdings on foreign nationals.  Please know that protecting the safety of Americans is my top priority as a United States Senator.  I believe we must be very careful about Syrian refugee admissions and that we must ensure we balance our security with helping those most in need.  However, I believe the Visa Waiver Program is a national security concern.  I am currently working with my colleagues in the Senate to see what changes can be made to the Visa Waiver Program, which I believe is responsible for the largest gap in our national security and can be exploited by dangerous individuals to travel to the United States.  To this end I introduced the "Visa Waiver Program Security Enhancement Act" (S. 2337), which would require travelers from Visa Waiver countries to use the standard visa application process if they have travelled to either Iraq or Syria within the last five years.  This means that those wishing to travel to the U.S. would need to submit biometric information, such as fingerprints and photographs, and have an in person interview with a U.S. consular official.  Additionally, I have advocated for increased intelligence sharing—when possible—with our allies in Europe and across the globe.   Again, I appreciate hearing your views on these matters.  Please know that I will keep your concerns in mind should the Senate consider related legislation.  Should you have any additional comments or questions, please do not hesitate to contact my Washington, D.C. office at (202) 224-3841 or visit my website at http://feinstein.senate.gov.    Sincerely,                                                                   Dianne Feinstein        United States Senator DF:ar Sincerely yours,   Dianne Feinstein          United States Senator Further information about my position on issues of concern to California and the nation are available at my website, feinstein.senate.gov. And please visit my YouTube, Facebook and Twitter for more ways to communicate with me. Jim Note: I understand serious and security minded lawmakers want to respond to the concerns of citizens who are concerned for their safety, especially in California and especially and lawless San Francisco but the Visa Waiver and intelligence sharing did not stop San Bernardino where 14 Californians who were giving their ISIS inspired killers gifts for their new baby. Senator Feinstein needed to help enact a law that would have given Justice department agents access to the iPhone owned by the killers. We cannot depend on the patriotic goodwill of Tim Cook or his Board.

Jim Patterson on Marco Rubio's Foreign Affairs 2015 Article

US Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) writing in Foreign Affairs, S/O 2015, "Member of the Obama administration have signaled a disturbing willingness to ignore human rights violations in the hopes of appeasing the Chinese leadership. In the administration's early days in 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that human rights "can't interfere" with other ostensibly more important bilateral issues, and in the months before Xi Jinping ascended to China's top leadership post in 2012, Vice President Joe Biden told him that U.S. support for human rights was merely a matter of domestic political posturing."

Jim Note: I can understand from this passage why Senator Rubio has risen so rapidly in the GOP and why he has grown a national following on foreign policy.

Further, Senator  Rubio wrote: ""[T]he manner in which governments treat their own citizens is indicative of the manner in which they will treat other nations."

Rubio was writing about China's human rights abuses in Hong Kong, Tibet, the Falun Gong practitioners, and the prolonged and unchallenged Chinese cyber attacks against the US and the Chinese multiple violations of multiple international treaties in the South China Seas.

The  senator could have also easily have been writing about Russian President Vladimir Putin's persecution of his LGBT citizens and Russian aggression in the Ukraine and "peace" efforts against ISIS in Syria. Perhaps the Senator if elected will evolve on human rights like Obama and the Clintons did on same-sex marriage.

Of course, the United States is not innocent when it comes to human rights abuses. Native Americans. Japanese Americans. African Americans. Disabled Americans. LGBT Americans. Women. This history, many historians argue, led to colonization, Vietnam, global exploitation by the US government and corporations and by negotiation of "terrible trade deals" GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump argues are made by "political hacks" presumably administration political hacks but also likely "hacks" at State, USTR, Commerce and other agencies.

US history of human rights abuses combined with "political hacks" and traditional government arrogance may have been other contributing factors in decisions made by Pfc,.Chelsea Manning and NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Manning, many supporters believe "had" to "free information" on US war crimes though she allowed her attorneys to tell the military tribunal she was so naive she did not understand what she was doing when she emailed classified government documents to WiKiLieaks.   Criminal Snowden, however, remains defiant he did the right thing by exposing Obama's spying on allies including German PM Angela Merkle, various Japanese government trade minsters, and French President Hollande.

Japanese diplomats in Washington told me both nations learned a lesson from the Snowden disclosures. It was a diplomatic response to an awkward US policy of illegal international spying on the personal handhelds of allied heads of state and other allied government officials  "Yes," I told my Japanese host, "President Obama learned the lesson not to illegally spy on Japanese officials?"  My host smiled, before saying yes.

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Jim Patterson
Member California State Society
JEPDiplomat@gmail.com

Dismal State of Affairs Politically & Diplomatically

Jim Note at End.

Declassified

Hillary's security clearance is under scrutiny

By Eli Lake & Josh Rogin Bloomberg View

Published Feb. 6, 2016

Now that several emails on Hillary Clinton's private server have been classified, there is a more immediate question than the outcome of the investigation: Should the former secretary of state retain her security clearance during the inquiry? Congressional Republicans and Democrats offer predictably different answers.

The State Department announced Friday that it would not release 22 emails from Clinton's private server after a review found they contained information designated as top secret. U.S. officials who reviewed the emails tell us they contain the names of U.S. intelligence officers overseas, but not the identities of undercover spies; summaries of sensitive meetings with foreign officials; and information on classified programs like drone strikes and intelligence-collection efforts in North Korea.

The FBI is investigating the use of Clinton's home server when she was secretary of state, which the bureau now has. The New York Times reported in August that Clinton is not a target of that investigation. We reported in September that one goal is to discover whether a foreign intelligence service hacked in.

Representative Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Clinton should not lose her security clearance for receiving information that was not marked classified at the time. "I'm sure she does hold a clearance, and she should," he told us.

Representative Mike Pompeo, a Republican member of that committee who also has read the emails, told us, "It's important, given all the information we now know, that the House of Representatives work alongside the executive branch to determine whether it's appropriate for Secretary Clinton to continue to hold her security clearances."

Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr told us the decision lies with the White House. "I think that's up to what the National Security Council is comfortable with," he said.

Burr, who has also read all 22 emails, said Clinton should have known to better protect the information they contain. "They are definitely sensitive," he said. "Anybody in the intelligence world would know that the content was sensitive."

His Democratic counterpart, Senator Dianne Feinstein, who also read them, told us that Clinton didn't originally send any of the emails and that they were largely from her staff, although she did sometimes reply. Feinstein said the intelligence community is being overly cautious by designating the emails as top secret.

"There's no question that they are over-classifying this stuff," she said.

Clinton's discussion of classified programs on an unclassified e-mail system is hardly rare. The issue, called "spillage," has plagued the government for years. It can apply to anything from a spoken conversation about intelligence programs outside of a secure facility, to printing out a document with classified information on an insecure printer.

Still, it is forbidden. The State Department's Foreign Affairs Manual says "transmitting classified information over a communication channel that is unauthorized for the level of information being transmitted" is a "security violation." Such violations must be investigated by the State Department's own bureaus of human resources and diplomatic security. Punishment can vary from a letter of reprimand to loss of security clearance, according to the manual.

When asked about the status of Clinton's security clearance, State Department spokesman John Kirby said: "The State Department does not comment on individuals' security clearance status. We will say, however, that generally speaking there is a long tradition of secretaries of state making themselves available to future secretaries and presidents. Secretaries are typically allowed to maintain their security clearance and access to their own records for use in writing their memoirs and the like."

The Clinton campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

During the Obama administration, it has not been automatic for officials to lose their security clearance while an investigation is underway. Just last week, the Washington Post reported that the chief of naval intelligence, Vice Adm. Ted Branch, had his security clearance suspended because he is wrapped up in a Justice Department investigation into contracting corruption. He has not been able to read, see, or hear classified information since November 2013. Branch has not been charged with any crime and continues to serve in that post.

But when then-CIA director David Petraeus came under FBI investigation at the end of 2012, his security clearance was not formally revoked. After he resigned, his access to classified information was suspended, according to U.S. officials. In that case, Petraeus had provided notebooks with highly classified information to his biographer and mistress Paula Broadwell, whose security clearances did not permit her to receive it.

Unlike Broadwell, officials familiar with the emails tell us that Clinton and her e-mail correspondents were cleared to receive the information that has been classified after the fact. Steven Aftergood, who heads the project on government secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists, told us, "It's entirely possible for information to start out as unclassified and to be classified only when the question of public disclosure arises."

William Leonard, who oversaw the government's security classification process between 2002 and 2008 as the director of the Information Security Oversight Office, told us this kind of "spillage" was common. "The bottom line is this, if you have the opportunity to pore through any cleared individual's unclassified e-mail account, it's almost inevitable you would find material that someone, some way would point out should be classified." He also said that in Clinton's case, "there is no indication that she deliberately disregarded the rules for handling classified information so I see no reason why she should not remain eligible for a security clearance."

Nonetheless, Leonard added that Clinton's decision to use the private e-mail server as secretary of state "reflected exceedingly poor judgment, and those that advised her on this did not serve her well."
The FBI investigation may determine that neither Clinton nor her aides broke the law, but Clinton herself has said she used poor judgment. It's an open question how that poor judgment will affect her access to state secrets, during and after the FBI's investigation.

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg View columnist who writes about politics and foreign affairs. He was previously the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast. Lake also covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI, and was a contributing editor at the New Republic.

Jim Note: Diplomacy, and politics, are all about judgment. Bill Clinton used poor judgment and was impeached for it. And Hillary admits poor judgment in having a server at her home. Hillary, with all her political and foreign policy resume, is struggling for the Democratic presidential nomination against Socialist US Senator Bernie Sanders who has lunatic ideas, if any, on foreign policy. He is intent on solving climate change and terrorism will go with it. 

According to the NYT Saturday Feb. 6, Washington is debating what constitutes a "secret" with regard to Hillary's emails. Really! State seems to be in the process of interpreting policies and regs to justify Hillary's poor judgment. She used poor judgment but she did nothing wrong, is an incredible argument for America in 2016. Akin to Bill used poor judgment with Monica but did nothing wrong because they were both consenting adults. 

It is my observation that diplomacy is not as highly and thoroughly politicized in other highly developed nations. But there is no Arkansas in any other country but the US. And people with the background and track records of poor judgement like Bill and Hillary would not be elevated to positions of president, secretary of state and, maybe, president in any country but the US, So many qualified people have been crowded out  of these high posts so Bill and Hillary could embarrass the country in the 1990s, since and ,maybe for 8 more years. 

Hillary is in a fight with Sanders she will probably win but the Democratic Party has to be concerned about her presidential run against, say Jeb Bush and Chris Christie/Ted Cruz/ Carly Fiorina/Marco Rubio/John Kasich or Donald Trump. In Trump's solo Iowa debate, early on he called State negotiators "political hacks" and suggested business negotiators to political negotiators. This is a view with appeal to voters of both parties. Democrats and unions oppose the Trans Pacific Partnership because they don't trust the negotiators. They suspect shady NAFTA like side letters and side agreements so that TPP is not transparent and sells out the few remaining unionized working Americans. 

Future administrations may find it more expeditious to appoint a 2 member negotiator panel, past SecStates, to work such deals as Iran, TPP, China negotiations, so partisan politics is kept at bay and voters can have some confidence better judgment will prevail than we've seen thus far from Foggy Bottom. 

Can Obama's administration end without an international confrontation? North Korea? China? Russia? ISIS? In sum, voters realize a dismal state of affairs awaits a new president. Can it wait as tensions mount? 

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