Irony came back to the shores of the United States in the month of September as the CIA was forced to recall a number of undercover agents working in China. The agents’ names and identities were part of the millions of records exposed by the hack of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management earlier in 2015.

The OPM hack was called, “the gift that keeps on giving for years” by the Director of National Intelligences, James Clapper.

A subsequent audit of the OPM’s security practices and posture demonstrated that the infrastructure was in shambles, lacking logging and monitoring, systems updates and patches, with some systems not having been reviewed in several years. Also, some of the most critical databases and back-end systems lacked multi-factor authentication and many of them were not even authorized to be on the network!

The breach affected tens of millions of past and current government employees, exposing medical history and background investigations forms and details about the individuals, including CIA agents and embassy staffers.

As CIA agents do not usually show up on diplomatic manifests and lists of staffers, Chinese intelligence could deduce that missing names would be strong indicators of CIA operatives or other secret activities performed by the individuals in question.

According to the Washington Post, Clapper told a congressional panel that the OPM breach was not so much an attack as a form of espionage, and that both nations engage in this behavior. What happened in OPM case, “as egregious as it was,” Clapper said, was not an attack: “Rather, it would be a form of theft or espionage.”

Clapper said that the OPM hack “has very serious implications . . . from the standpoint of the intelligence community and the potential for identifying people” who may be undercover.

An international news agency has protested to the Israeli military after two of its journalists were attacked and had their equipment smashed by soldiers in the occupied West Bank.

Footage of the incident showed the two men, who work for AFP, being accosted by a group of soldiers while covering clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian protesters at Beit Furik, near Nablus.

One of the journalists, Andrea Bernardi, an Italian, was thrown to the ground and jabbed in the side with a weapon, according to AFP.

He suffered bruised ribs and an injury beneath his eye and is understood to have received hospital treatment.

Bernardi and his Palestinian colleague, Abbas Momani, a photographer, said they had been covering confrontations when soldiers took them aside and ordered them to stop filming. They said they were sworn at in English.

Both men were wearing protective helmets and body army clearly emblazoned with the word “press”. The Italian journalist said a soldier forced him to the ground and pressed his knee to his chest until he showed his press card.

Footage posted online by PalMedia, a Palestinian news agency, clearly shows a soldier smashing a black object violently onto the asphalt road, before picking it up again and throwing it away. Voices in Arabic in the background can be heard muttering “camera”.

A group of soldiers, some emerging from an armoured vehicle, then pursue the two journalists as they are walking away. One of the soldiers takes a piece of equipment from one of the men and aggressively throws it to the ground.

A soldier then appears to grab one of the journalists.

AFP said a video camera and a stills camera had been smashed and another camera and a mobile phone seized

Lt Col Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israel army, promised “disciplinary measures”.

“The highest levels of command are aware of the incident,” he told AFP.

The journalists had been covering clashes that broke out following the funeral of Ahmed Khatatbeh, 26, a Palestinian man who died of his wounds on Thursday after being shot near Nablus by Israeli forces.

Israeli authorities said he and another Palestinian had thrown a petrol bomb at a vehicle on a road near the Jewish settlement of Itamar.

Retired Lt. Col and Former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) (Associated Press)

By Deric Lostutter

On the heels of the Charleston attacks by Dylann Roof which sparked a great racial divide and debate over a piece of trivial cloth known as the confederate flag, retired Lt. Col. Allen West made headlines speaking at Times Square in opposition to the Iran Nuclear Deal.

Calling Iranians “black robed, crazed clerics” and spreading Islamaphobia, West shared numerous war stories in an attempt to validate and claim military superiority of the United States.

Quoting Alexander The Great, Allen West went on to say:

“I would not fear an army of lions if they were lead by sheep, but I would fear an army of sheep if it were lead by a lion.”

Wait, did he just refer to the population of the United States as sheep?

In 2003, West was spared a court martial, and instead subjected to an Article 32 hearing for relentlessly beating and simulating an execution of an Iraqi police officer who was working with West’s regiment because West received a vague rumor that his troops would be ambushed.

The war crime interrogation proved fruitless after the officer was found not guilty after saying exactly what West wanted to hear: that he was in fear for his life. West was slapped on the wrist with a $5000 fine for the crime, and allowed to retire with rank and full benefits.

According to Al Jazeera, the Nuclear Deal seems to provide a way to finally end the war in the Middle East, bringing a stop to the search for imaginary weapons of mass destruction.

With the nuclear agreement, Tehran and Washington should be able to transform their cold peace into active cooperation on the stabilisation and development of Afghanistan. It will be a mutually beneficial trilateral cooperation.

Kabul could combine the US and Iran’s complementary powers and assets. And the US would finally find a reliable regional partner for its Afghan mission and thus reduce dependency on its dubious alley, Pakistan.

For Iran, a secure Afghanistan is key to the security of its eastern provinces and the gateway to Afghanistan’s abundant natural resources. Geostrategic proximity to China and Central Asia also plays a crucial role in the regional security.

Ending the war in the Middle East is not only insulting to war-crazed congressmen, it’s not profitable for them either.

West went on to close the speech, asking for God to bless the United States of America and Israel — the two nations responsible for the death of more than 2,061 Palestinian children at the hand of allied weapons, rockets, and drones.

So I ask you this Mr. West: who are the terrorists?

You can watch West’s hate-filled, war driven speech below:

By Brett Sanders

LINDEN, N.J. – Former Marine, Adam Kokesh got his start as an activist shortly after returning from Iraq, where he joined Iraq Veterans Against War. He spoke in rallies, protests, self-produced videos, and even made national headlines for interrupting John McCains’s acceptance speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention. Needless to say, Kokesh is well versed on the societal damages of war and has plenty of practice communicating such a touchy subject. So, when a fellow veteran angrily confronts him in the basement of a New Jersey bar for as much as criticizing the military, he handles the situation like very few could.

As part of The American Campfire Freedom Tour, Kokesh was wrapping a stop in Linden, New Jersey when “a posse of angry young men came down the stairs, blocking [his] way out.” According to the video, one of the servers at the bar upstairs overheard a line in his speech, which prompted him to send his “big Iraq veteran” buddy downstairs to challenge Kokesh to a fight.

The video begins by showing a group of men surrounding Kokesh, the largest of which wants to fight.

“If you have something bad to say about the year and a half that I spent there (Iraq), by all means we can discuss it outside.”

Kokesh, surprised that a large, angry, former cop is threatening violence over some words in a speech, simply asks the guy if that would make him feel good–to beat someone up over some intellectual conversation, mostly based moral principles.

The angry veteran, clearly still fired up about words that he didn’t actually hear, gives Kokesh an ultimatum.

“If you have something bad to say, as you did earlier, then you can say it now as a fucking man, and go ahead.”

Kokesh responds very calmly by explaining that the military is funded by taxation, which by definition is theft and that as a people we could achieve greater things with voluntary actions opposed to violence. You could almost hear the wind deflating out of the bully’s sail as he realizes that Kokesh is well armed with truth and communication skills.

“Well how else do you expect governments to pay for everything that goes on?” the now calmer bully asked.

“I don’t.” Kokesh reponded.

The conversation then transitioned to both men’s service. Obviously, the angry vet wanted to prove how tough he was by proving that his military service was somehow more valuable then that of Kokesh’s. However, Kokesh quickly brought the conversation back to it’s original intent. “This isn’t really a contest of who has the bigger dick, dude. This is a conversation that you brought up about the of the military.”

The angry vet still threatens that if anyone disrespects the military, he was going to have a problem. However, Kokesh clarifies that he didn’t believe it was disrespect, rather an important intellectual criticism to realize that most recruits are lied to in order to join the military. This was the turning point in the conversation, as Kokesh must have hit chord with the man, as he agreed. He “agreed 100%” with that. Kokesh then took over the conversation and out powered the man with pure intellectual honesty.

“We’re taken advantage of. It’s always poor men dying in rich men’s wars. Why is that? Because they take advantage of us.”

Kokesh literally flipped the script on this man, to remove the emotional aspects and the ego that go along with the collective mentality of the military and found common ground to where they could both agree, they were lied to.

After a few minutes of civil conversation, and a quick education on what liberty actually is, and is not, the man conceded, “then I have no problem with you.”

A situation that started out as a confrontational mess, ended with a handshake and good feelings all around. When Kokesh asked if he wanted a sticker, the man initially refused. However, the video states that Kokesh later sought out the man and shook his hand again, and offered his book and sticker.

“I can’t fault you for being lied to, but I can say that it’s cowardly to avoid the truth now that it’s in front of you.”

He accepted.

This story appeared originally on the liberty-oriented news publication BrettSanders.me

Israeli border police arresting Ahmad Abu Sbitan, 11, in front of his school in East Jerusalem. The police accused him of throwing a stone at them. © Majd Gaith

JERUSALEM – Israeli security forces have used unnecessary force to arrest or detain Palestinian children as young as 11. Security forces have choked children, thrown stun grenades at them, beaten them in custody, threatened and interrogated them without the presence of parents or lawyers, and failed to let their parents know their whereabouts.

Human Rights Watch interviewed four boys, ages 11, 12, and 15, from different neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, and a 14-year-old girl and 15-year-old boy from elsewhere in the West Bank, whom Israeli forces arrested or detained in separate incidents for allegedly throwing rocks from March to December 2014. They and their parents gave accounts of abuses during arrest and interrogation that caused the children pain, fear, and ongoing anxiety. Human Rights Watch has seen photos and marks on the body of one of the children, consistent with the accounts he and his parents had given; the children’s accounts were also consistent with each other.

“Israeli forces’ mistreatment of Palestinian children is at odds with its claim to respect children’s rights,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director. “As Israel’s largest military donor, the US should press hard for an end to these abusive practices and for reforms.”

In every case Human Rights Watch documented, the children and their parents told Human Rights Watch that Israeli authorities did not inform parents of their child’s arrest and interrogated the children without permitting them to speak to a parent or lawyer prior to the interrogation. In five of the cases, the children said that interrogators either did not permit their parent to attend their interrogation or allowed them entry only as it ended. Two 15-year-old boys and the 14-year-old girl said they signed confessions written in Hebrew, a language they do not understand, after interrogators threatened them. One boy said police “punched and kicked” him, then presented him with the Hebrew confession to sign.

Rashid S., 11, said that Israeli border police forces officers threw a stun grenade (a non-lethal explosive device that produces a blinding light and intensely loud noise causing loss of balance) at him and put him in a chokehold when they arrested him for throwing stones in November. He said that officers put a black bag over his head, threatened him with beatings, and kicked him in the shin while taking him for interrogation. The border police forces pulled his coat and shirt off during arrest, but kept him outside for about an hour despite cold temperatures, he said. Human Rights Watch observed photographs of police arresting him and marks on the boy’s leg consistent with his account. Rashid’s full name and the full names of another person interviewed are not being used for their protection.

Two of the boys Human Rights Watch interviewed said they had urinated on themselves in fear at the time of their arrests, and three said they had experienced nightmares and difficulty in sleeping afterward. The families of the 14-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy said they were not allowed to visit or even call during their detention – 64 days for the girl and 110 for the boy.

Another 15-year-old boy from East Jerusalem, Fares Shyukhi, said Israeli border police officers strip-searched, slapped and kicked him, threatened him, and jailed him from March 6 to April 2, 2014, on suspicion of throwing rocks and a Molotov cocktail at a settlement in his neighborhood. He was later released to indefinite house arrest, but jailed again from late October to January 6, 2015, after failing to appear at a court hearing, his family said.

On January 6, Fares was returned to house arrest and his conditions were eased slightly the same month, after his lawyer informed the Jerusalem magistrates’ court that the boy had threatened suicide, allowing him to leave the house for six hours a week if accompanied by his mother. On March 29, the judge lifted his house arrest, but Israeli border police have detained him twice since then, he told Human Rights Watch, once violently, claiming wrongly that he was violating his house arrest.

Israeli border police forces put another 11-year-old boy, Ahmad Abu Sbitan, in a chokehold while arresting him outside the gates of his school in another East Jerusalem neighborhood, according to the boy and photographs of the incident, and arrested a 22-year-old man who sought to intervene non-violently, Ahmad and the man, Mohammed H., said. Police later strip-searched and beat the 22-year-old in the room where Ahmad was being detained, he told Human Rights Watch.

Police picked up the 12-year-old boy, Mohammed Khatib, while he was waiting to take a bus home from school outside the Old City of Jerusalem. A policeman “grabbed the back of my jacket and lifted me off the ground, I was choking,” the boy said. A police officer told the boy’s father that police were looking for a stone-throwing suspect “wearing a blue shirt,” the color of the boy’s school uniform, his father said. Police interrogated the boy without allowing his father to be present and released him without charge eight hours later.

Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Israel ratified in 1991, requires court procedures to take into account the age of child defendants and “the desirability of promoting their rehabilitation.” The Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Israel also ratified in 1991, elaborates on this requirement and directs states to ensure that children are “not compelled … to confess guilt.” The Committee charged with interpreting the convention has stated that this includes a right to request the presence of a parent during questioning and that judges must take into account the absence of a parent or lawyer during interrogation, as well as other factors, when considering the reliability of confessions.

Israel’s Youth Law and military orders applicable in the West Bank require police to notify a parent of their child’s arrest and to allow the child to consult with a lawyer prior to interrogation. The Youth Law also entitles a child to have a parent present during their interrogation, except in cases of alleged “security offenses,” such as throwing stones. Although the Youth Law applies only to Israel, according to the military in practice this requirement is also applied in the West Bank.

Human Rights Watch submitted its preliminary findings, including details of five of the individual cases it investigated, to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and to the Israeli police. The separate responses of the IDF and Justice Ministry, which responded on behalf of the police, failed to address the specific allegations of unnecessary force during arrest and subsequent ill-treatment, while asserting that security officials had adhered to the law in all cases, including by informing the children of their rights.

They stated that interrogations of Palestinian children are conducted in Arabic and frequently recorded, and that Hebrew language documents are translated into Arabic. The responses did not in all cases directly address the question of whether officials had notified parents of their children’s arrest. In its response, the IDF said that breaches of procedures are viewed seriously and may lead to a ruling that a confession is inadmissible as evidence against an accused. The IDF cited several cases in which children were released due to serious interrogation process violations.

Human Rights Watch investigations indicate that existing laws are insufficient to safeguard the rights of Palestinian children in the custody of the Israeli police and the IDF, and that officials often adhere to legal requirements and procedures in a manner that undermines the protections they aimed to guarantee. For example, they often record interrogations to prevent the use of violence and threats against children, but many of the children interviewed complained that they were beaten or threatened before their official interrogation as an inducement to “confess.” Furthermore, several children said they were informed of their right to consult a lawyer only immediately before their interrogation and the police or military refused to delay the interrogation until their lawyer arrived.

Israeli interrogators use Arabic when interrogating Palestinian children but frequently use Hebrew to document the interviews – only 138 of 440 interrogations they conducted in 2014 were documented in Arabic, according to the Israeli military – or fail to audio or audio-visually record the interrogation – 128 of 440 cases in 2014, according to the military. This means that in many cases alleged confessions or other incriminating statements by detained children are documented in a language they do not understand, and there is no way to ascertain whether the documents were accurately translated to the children before they signed them.

Confessions obtained from children in violation of their rights add to the pressure on them to cooperate in plea bargains that result in their imprisonment with reduced sentences, Human Rights Watch said.

“Israel has been on notice for years that its security forces are abusing Palestinian children’s rights in occupied territory, but the problems continue,” Whitson said. “These are not difficult abuses to end if the Israeli government were serious about doing so.”

Abusive Arrests of Children
Human Rights Watch decided to focus on the issue of abusive arrests of children because reports by local human rights organizations and news media indicated, and follow up research confirmed, that there appeared to be a pattern of such arrests. Human Rights Watch initially identified the cases for documentation based on these reports, where preliminary information indicated the likelihood of abuses. Human Rights Watch obtained the consent of the children and at least one parent before conducting interviews and informed them that the interviews were to be in a human rights report. In some cases the report withholds the full names of interviewees to protect their safety and privacy. Human Rights watch did not offer interview subjects any remuneration.

The abuses of children that Human Rights Watch documented are consistent with information from other organizations, especially in the West Bank. UNICEF reported in 2013 that “the ill-treatment of children who come in contact with the military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized.” Israel responded to the report by committing to “collaborate with UNICEF to implement [the] report’s recommendations.” Yet, according to a UNICEF update, reports of alleged ill-treatment of children by Israeli forces “have not significantly decreased in 2013 and 2014.” UNICEF reported that from September 2013 to September 2014, it received affidavits from 171 children stating that Israeli forces had subjected them to “physical violence during arrest, interrogation and/or detention.”

The Israeli military conducts nighttime arrest raids on children’s family homes. In 2013, it arrested 162 children during such raids, according to the military. In February 2014, the military introduced a “pilot project” of issuing summonses to the families of children wanted for questioning in two areas of the West Bank, but it cancelled the project in January 2015 due to an increase in violence during the summer, and said it did not keep statistics on the project.

The Israeli military had classified 163 Palestinian children from the West Bank as “security detainees” – including children convicted for offenses like throwing stones, but not including other “criminal detainees” – in Israeli detention at the end of January 2015, according to Israel’s prison service. Palestinian children from East Jerusalem, occupied territory that Israel has purported to annex to its territory, in violation of international law, are detained under Israeli domestic law rather than military orders. Figures for children from East Jerusalem in detention were not available.

Rashid S., 11
Israeli border police forces arrested Rashid S., 11, outside his school in the Ein al-Louz area of Silwan, an East Jerusalem neighborhood, on the afternoon of November 24, 2014. “A few kids were throwing rocks at the soldiers, who were all in black, and they came out of their car,” Rashid said. “I ran to the mosque, but they threw a sound bomb that hit my leg on the stairway, so I fell down the stairs and they caught me by my shirt. They got me in a headlock and pushed me face-down on the ground.”

The police forces tore off Rashid’s shirt and coat during the arrest, he said. Human Rights Watch viewed a photograph taken by a neighborhood resident that shows the boy, shirtless, being held by an Israeli border policeman. At some point during or after the arrest he urinated on himself in fright, he said. Rashid and his father, Kayed, said that the police did not give him anything to keep warm for several hours. Weather records show that it was about 12 degrees Celsius in Jerusalem that day. Rashid said that the police drove him to a settlement in the neighborhood, put him “in a storage room” for about 15 minutes, then drove him to a police office near the Hebron Gate in the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, put him “in and out of a car,” and otherwise held him outside for about an hour.

“When they drove me from the settlement to the office, they put a black cloth bag on my head, and were shouting, ‘We’re going to beat you, you’re going to tell us who was with you throwing stones,’” Rashid said. “Then they were pushing me around, and cursing me, in Arabic. They kicked me in the shin, and my leg turned different colors. I was freezing. They kept putting me into a car and taking me out.”

Rashid said the police then took him to the detention facility in the Russian Compound, referred to in Arabic as Moskobiyya, north of the Old City. “They took the bag off my head before the interrogation,” Rashid said. His father said that neighbors had called to tell him of Rashid’s arrest and that he drove to a police station on Salahadin Street in East Jerusalem. “Then I got a call from a police interrogator saying to come to the Moskobiyya,” he said. Rashid’s interrogation had yet to begin but police “had sat him facing a wall on an outside balcony, and it was freezing,” his father said. “I shouted that they were treating him like an animal, and they told me they were going to arrest me for ‘disturbing an interrogation’ if I didn’t quiet down.”

The interrogation lasted for about an hour, and was recorded, Rashid and his father said. Rashid did not confess to throwing stones, but said he had run from Israeli forces simply because the forces had thrown a stun grenade at the group of children he was standing with. He said that older boys in the group had thrown stones but he did not know their names.

“When he got home he had nightmares,” Rashid’s father said. “He woke up screaming for four or five nights in a row.” Rashid told Human Rights Watch that he dreamed of being arrested, “over and over again,” and was scared of going to school.

Article continued on Human Rights Watch…

Dylann Storm Roof

By Deric Lostutter

On the surface Dylann Storm Roof looks like your typical quiet child. Emotionless in his Facebook photos, his only “like” was that of his city, Eastover. Mainstream media pegs him as a High School dropout, just 21 years old, someone with a whole life ahead of him, yet no future. Curiously enough, his act of violence coincides with “Juneteenth,” the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. Its origins began in 1865.

This piqued my interest.

On June 18, at approximately 2:00 PM Eastern Standard time, Dylann Roof’s Facebook page was available to the public. A quick browse through his profile only made me more suspicious. Roof’s profile was made almost one month prior to the shooting, had 81 friends, most of whom where African-American, and his profile indicated zero online interaction — classic indicators of a “Catfish,” or fake online profile.

Roof’s Facebook photo was recently changed to show a somber looking young man standing in the snow, wearing flags of Apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia — known to have racist implications — on his jacket. This is odd, given that it is now in the middle of Summer, and the profile was created in the middle of May 2015. Roof’s wall also had no posts on it.

After public suspicion and Facebook posts suggesting that the Charleston attack may be a false flag operation to further gun control agenda, Roof’s profile suddenly vanished.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed — infamous conspiracy theorist and controversial talk show host Alex Jones also posted about it on his website, Infowars:

The reported Facebook profile for Dylann Roof, the suspect in the Charleston, S.C., church massacre, was barely used and apparently created earlier this year, strangely enough.

Unlike the vast majority of Facebook users, Roof only had around 80 friends who were all added in 2015 and he apparently didn’t bother to upload a banner image, meaning that Roof – or whoever ran the account – put the bare minimum of effort into the profile.

Why is his friend count interesting? According to Statista, Facebook users between the ages of 18-24 have on average about 650 friends.

Facebook may have deleted the profile, but I managed to salvage Roof’s entire profile and share it with TruthVoice, pictured below:

Facebook also took to censoring posts calling that suggested the shooting was a false flag, along with posts asking for unity, cautioning readers not to be blinded, divided, or otherwise lose focus on the big agenda at hand:

Shortly after the real Facebook profile was pulled offline, a “public figure” page appeared, blatantly pushing anti-gun agenda by associating organizations like the National Rifle Association with Dylann Storm, the 21 year old who had zero “liked” interests on his Facebook profile.

This wouldn’t be the first time that the government had attacked, or plotted to kill it’s own citizens for its personal agenda.

Operation Northwoods detailed the plans of the United States government to stage an attack on an American airliner as a pretext to invade Cuba in 1962. The proposal for the operation was rejected by the Kennedy administration, shortly before his assassination.

In the mid 1950’s chemical warfare was on the rise. The Army secretly sprayed radioactive particles into the air in the predominantly black housing projects of St. Louis, Missouri, causing the deaths of many, even children, who succumbed to cancer sometime later.

On May 13, 1985, Police dropped a bomb on the housing projects in West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, killing citizens and injuring others in an attempt to arrest members of MOVE, a revolutionary group. The explosion was blamed on various causes, including gasoline storage, until being declassified years later.

Could this really be a false flag to promote anti-gun ownership and disarmament agenda of the United States government before Operation Jade Helm takes place on American soil, a blatant violation of our Constitution and Posse Comitatus?

After all, the Pentagon just stated they are preparing for “Mass Civil Unrest.“

“Everything that starts with ‘Al’ in the Middle East is bad news,” said U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina at an AIPAC dinner in Boston on Monday. “Al-Qaida, Al-Nusra, Al-Qaida in the Arab Peninsula,” said the senator, who may be running for president.

Graham, who was the keynote speaker at the AIPAC New England Leadership Dinner in Boston, also told the approximately 1,000 pro-Israel attendees, “You will see me in New Hampshire,” former Haaretz investigative journalist Uri Blau has reported on his blog.

The problem – linguistically – with Graham’s comment is that “Al” is the definite article in Arabic (i.e. equivalent to English’s “the”), and usually appears before most Arabic proper nouns, especially place and personal names.

As for relations between the U.S., Israel, and Palestine, Graham said: “If the Palestinians will sue one Israeli soldier who risked his life securing Israel, the US will cut all aid to Palestine.” Reiterating a pledge he made to AIPAC a few months ago, he also threatened to cut off U.S funding to the UN if the UN Security Council pushes through action on behalf of the Palestinians. “I’m gonna put the United Nations on notice,” Graham, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee said in March, adding that he would go after its funding if the organization “marginalized” Israel. “All the money that goes in to support the State Department comes through my committee.”

Attending the dinner were Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, Governor Charlie Baker, and Israeli Consul General for New England Yehuda Yaakov, who posted pictures and comments about the event, according to the report.

The U.S. government may be considering military action in response to chemical strikes near Damascus. But a generation ago, America’s military and intelligence communities knew about and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks far more devastating than anything Syria has seen, Foreign Policy has learned.

In 1988, during the waning days of Iraq’s war with Iran, the United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein’s military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent.

The intelligence included imagery and maps about Iranian troop movements, as well as the locations of Iranian logistics facilities and details about Iranian air defenses. The Iraqis used mustard gas and sarin prior to four major offensives in early 1988 that relied on U.S. satellite imagery, maps, and other intelligence. These attacks helped to tilt the war in Iraq’s favor and bring Iran to the negotiating table, and they ensured that the Reagan administration’s long-standing policy of securing an Iraqi victory would succeed. But they were also the last in a series of chemical strikes stretching back several years that the Reagan administration knew about and didn’t disclose.

U.S. officials have long denied acquiescing to Iraqi chemical attacks, insisting that Hussein’s government never announced he was going to use the weapons. But retired Air Force Col. Rick Francona, who was a military attaché in Baghdad during the 1988 strikes, paints a different picture.

“The Iraqis never told us that they intended to use nerve gas. They didn’t have to. We already knew,” he told Foreign Policy.

According to recently declassified CIA documents and interviews with former intelligence officials like Francona, the U.S. had firm evidence of Iraqi chemical attacks beginning in 1983. At the time, Iran was publicly alleging that illegal chemical attacks were carried out on its forces, and was building a case to present to the United Nations. But it lacked the evidence implicating Iraq, much of which was contained in top secret reports and memoranda sent to the most senior intelligence officials in the U.S. government. The CIA declined to comment for this story.

In contrast to today’s wrenching debate over whether the United States should intervene to stop alleged chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian government, the United States applied a cold calculus three decades ago to Hussein’s widespread use of chemical weapons against his enemies and his own people. The Reagan administration decided that it was better to let the attacks continue if they might turn the tide of the war. And even if they were discovered, the CIA wagered that international outrage and condemnation would be muted.

In the documents, the CIA said that Iran might not discover persuasive evidence of the weapons’ use — even though the agency possessed it. Also, the agency noted that the Soviet Union had previously used chemical agents in Afghanistan and suffered few repercussions.

It has been previously reported that the United States provided tactical intelligence to Iraq at the same time that officials suspected Hussein would use chemical weapons. But the CIA documents, which sat almost entirely unnoticed in a trove of declassified material at the National Archives in College Park, Md., combined with exclusive interviews with former intelligence officials, reveal new details about the depth of the United States’ knowledge of how and when Iraq employed the deadly agents. They show that senior U.S. officials were being regularly informed about the scale of the nerve gas attacks. They are tantamount to an official American admission of complicity in some of the most gruesome chemical weapons attacks ever launched.

Top CIA officials, including the Director of Central Intelligence William J. Casey, a close friend of President Ronald Reagan, were told about the location of Iraqi chemical weapons assembly plants; that Iraq was desperately trying to make enough mustard agent to keep up with frontline demand from its forces; that Iraq was about to buy equipment from Italy to help speed up production of chemical-packed artillery rounds and bombs; and that Iraq could also use nerve agents on Iranian troops and possibly civilians.

Officials were also warned that Iran might launch retaliatory attacks against U.S. interests in the Middle East, including terrorist strikes, if it believed the United States was complicit in Iraq’s chemical warfare campaign.

“As Iraqi attacks continue and intensify the chances increase that Iranian forces will acquire a shell containing mustard agent with Iraqi markings,” the CIA reported in a top secret document in November 1983. “Tehran would take such evidence to the U.N. and charge U.S. complicity in violating international law.”

At the time, the military attaché’s office was following Iraqi preparations for the offensive using satellite reconnaissance imagery, Francona told Foreign Policy. According to a former CIA official, the images showed Iraqi movements of chemical materials to artillery batteries opposite Iranian positions prior to each offensive.

Francona, an experienced Middle East hand and Arabic linguist who served in the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency, said he first became aware of Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against Iran in 1984, while serving as air attaché in Amman, Jordan. The information he saw clearly showed that the Iraqis had used Tabun nerve agent (also known as “GA”) against Iranian forces in southern Iraq.

The declassified CIA documents show that Casey and other top officials were repeatedly informed about Iraq’s chemical attacks and its plans for launching more. “If the Iraqis produce or acquire large new supplies of mustard agent, they almost certainly would use it against Iranian troops and towns near the border,” the CIA said in a top secret document.

But it was the express policy of Reagan to ensure an Iraqi victory in the war, whatever the cost.

The CIA noted in one document that the use of nerve agent “could have a significant impact on Iran’s human wave tactics, forcing Iran to give up that strategy.” Those tactics, which involved Iranian forces swarming against conventionally armed Iraqi positions, had proved decisive in some battles. In March 1984, the CIA reported that Iraq had “begun using nerve agents on the Al Basrah front and likely will be able to employ it in militarily significant quantities by late this fall.”

The use of chemical weapons in war is banned under the Geneva Protocol of 1925, which states that parties “will exert every effort to induce other States to accede to the” agreement. Iraq never ratified the protocol; the United States did in 1975. The Chemical Weapons Convention, which bans the production and use of such arms, wasn’t passed until 1997, years after the incidents in question.

The initial wave of Iraqi attacks, in 1983, used mustard agent. While generally not fatal, mustard causes severe blistering of the skin and mucus membranes, which can lead to potentially fatal infections, and can cause blindness and upper respiratory disease, while increasing the risk of cancer. The United States wasn’t yet providing battlefield intelligence to Iraq when mustard was used. But it also did nothing to assist Iran in its attempts to bring proof of illegal Iraqi chemical attacks to light. Nor did the administration inform the United Nations. The CIA determined that Iran had the capability to bomb the weapons assembly facilities, if only it could find them. The CIA believed it knew the locations.

Hard evidence of the Iraqi chemical attacks came to light in 1984. But that did little to deter Hussein from using the lethal agents, including in strikes against his own people. For as much as the CIA knew about Hussein’s use of chemical weapons, officials resisted providing Iraq with intelligence throughout much of the war. The Defense Department had proposed an intelligence-sharing program with the Iraqis in 1986. But according to Francona, it was nixed because the CIA and the State Department viewed Saddam Hussein as “anathema” and his officials as “thugs.”

The situation changed in 1987. CIA reconnaissance satellites picked up clear indications that the Iranians were concentrating large numbers of troops and equipment east of the city of Basrah, according to Francona, who was then serving with the Defense Intelligence Agency. What concerned DIA analysts the most was that the satellite imagery showed that the Iranians had discovered a gaping hole in the Iraqi lines southeast of Basrah. The seam had opened up at the junction between the Iraqi III Corps, deployed east of the city, and the Iraqi VII Corps, which was deployed to the southeast of the city in and around the hotly contested Fao Peninsula.

The satellites detected Iranian engineering and bridging units being secretly moved to deployment areas opposite the gap in the Iraqi lines, indicating that this was going to be where the main force of the annual Iranian spring offensive was going to fall, Francona said.

In late 1987, the DIA analysts in Francona’s shop in Washington wrote a Top Secret Codeword report partially entitled “At The Gates of Basrah,” warning that the Iranian 1988 spring offensive was going to be bigger than all previous spring offensives, and this offensive stood a very good chance of breaking through the Iraqi lines and capturing Basrah. The report warned that if Basrah fell, the Iraqi military would collapse and Iran would win the war.

President Reagan read the report and, according to Francona, wrote a note in the margin addressed to Secretary of Defense Frank C. Carlucci: “An Iranian victory is unacceptable.”

Subsequently, a decision was made at the top level of the U.S. government (almost certainly requiring the approval of the National Security Council and the CIA). The DIA was authorized to give the Iraqi intelligence services as much detailed information as was available about the deployments and movements of all Iranian combat units. That included satellite imagery and perhaps some sanitized electronic intelligence. There was a particular focus on the area east of the city of Basrah where the DIA was convinced the next big Iranian offensive would come. The agency also provided data on the locations of key Iranian logistics facilities, and the strength and capabilities of the Iranian air force and air defense system. Francona described much of the information as “targeting packages” suitable for use by the Iraqi air force to destroy these targets.

The sarin attacks then followed.

The nerve agent causes dizziness, respiratory distress, and muscle convulsions, and can lead to death. CIA analysts could not precisely determine the Iranian casualty figures because they lacked access to Iranian officials and documents. But the agency gauged the number of dead as somewhere between “hundreds” and “thousands” in each of the four cases where chemical weapons were used prior to a military offensive. According to the CIA, two-thirds of all chemical weapons ever used by Iraq during its war with Iran were fired or dropped in the last 18 months of the war.

By 1988, U.S. intelligence was flowing freely to Hussein’s military. That March, Iraq launched a nerve gas attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja in northern Iraq.

A month later, the Iraqis used aerial bombs and artillery shells filled with sarin against Iranian troop concentrations on the Fao Peninsula southeast of Basrah, helping the Iraqi forces win a major victory and recapture the entire peninsula. The success of the Fao Peninsula offensive also prevented the Iranians from launching their much-anticipated offensive to capture Basrah. According to Francona, Washington was very pleased with the result because the Iranians never got a chance to launch their offensive.

The level of insight into Iraq’s chemical weapons program stands in marked contrast to the flawed assessments, provided by the CIA and other intelligence agencies about Iraq’s program prior to the United States’ invasion in 2003. Back then, American intelligence had better access to the region and could send officials out to assess the damage.

Francona visited the Fao Peninsula shortly after it had been captured by the Iraqis. He found the battlefield littered with hundreds of used injectors once filled with atropine, the drug commonly used to treat sarin’s lethal effects. Francona scooped up a few of the injectors and brought them back to Baghdad — proof that the Iraqis had used sarin on the Fao Peninsula.

In the ensuing months, Francona reported, the Iraqis used sarin in massive quantities three more times in conjunction with massed artillery fire and smoke to disguise the use of nerve agents. Each offensive was hugely successful, in large part because of the increasingly sophisticated use of mass quantities of nerve agents. The last of these attacks, called the Blessed Ramadan Offensive, was launched by the Iraqis in April 1988 and involved the largest use of sarin nerve agent employed by the Iraqis to date. For a quarter-century, no chemical attack came close to the scale of Saddam’s unconventional assaults. Until, perhaps, the strikes last week outside of Damascus.

A newly published surveillance video shows a female member of the terrorist Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C) firing at the İstanbul Police Department with a long-barrel gun before she was killed by police in response to the attack.

The attacker, identified as Elif Sultan Kalsen by authorities, was killed on Wednesday as she attacked the city’s main police headquarters while carrying a bomb. Another attacker fled the scene but was later captured.

The video that emerged on Thursday shows Kalsen firing at the building with a long-barrel gun.

Kalsen was earlier suspected of having carried out two terrorist attacks in İstanbul.

In the first she was suspected to have been behind an attack involving a female suicide bomber at a police station in İstanbul’s historic Sultanahmet district in early January, which led to the death of the suicide bomber and one police officer, wounding one other.

The far-left DHKP/C claimed responsibility for the Sultanahmet attack. However, Kalsen’s family, who went with their lawyers to the Council of Forensic Medicine (ATK) to identify the bomber on Jan. 7, reported that the bomber’s body did not belong to their daughter as alleged by authorities. The attacker turned out to be Diana Ramazowa, a Russian national.

A female assailant who fired a machine gun at riot police in Taksim Square in downtown İstanbul in February was also identified as Kalsen for whom an arrest warrant had already been issued in relation to several terrorist attacks in the past.