White House accuses Russia of Syria chemical attack 'cover up' - Reuters
Во время интервью межгосударственной телерадиокомпании «Мир».
С летчиками-космонавтами Валентиной Терешковой и Алексеем Леоновым перед началом просмотра фильма «Время первых».
M.N.: Кино уже начинается, а голова - иде? Как смотреть? Чем думать? Большая проблема...
Ella Fitzgerald-Air Mail Special https://t.co/1ELrsegM7Z via @YouTube— Mike Nova (@mikenov) April 11, 2017
M.N.: Только одна Еллочка знает все ответы, и объясняет всё ясно и доходчииво... Вот только бы правильно расшифровать...
M.N.: All in all, the Trump's Administration new muscular stance in Syria policies is a breath of fresh air, long needed and now universally approved, regardless of all the other issues.
The two men take a walk down a corridor prior to their talks in Moscow over the crisis in Syria
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M.N.: The moment of truth...
'Russia has really aligned itself with the Assad regime, the Iranians, and Hizballah. Is that a...long-term alliance that serves Russia's interest, or would Russia prefer to realign with the United States, with other Western countries and Middle East countries who are seeking to resolve the Syrian crisis?' Tillerson said.
Semper fi: A handout photo made available by the US Department of State shows US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson posing for a photo with members of the Marine Security Guard Detachment at the US Embassy in Moscow, Russia
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At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary James Mattis said he had personally reviewed the intelligence 'and there is no doubt the Syrian regime is responsible for the decision to attack and the attack itself'
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The Trump administration took the unusual step Tuesday of unveiling intelligence discrediting Russia’s attempts to shield its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, from blame in last week’s deadly chemical attack.
The newly released details of
a U.S. intelligence assessment, which officials said demonstrated Syrian culpability in the April 4 assault that killed at least 70 people, added to rapidly escalating tensions with the Kremlin and signaled a move away from hopes for U.S. rapprochement with Russia.
a U.S. intelligence assessment, which officials said demonstrated Syrian culpability in the April 4 assault that killed at least 70 people, added to rapidly escalating tensions with the Kremlin and signaled a move away from hopes for U.S. rapprochement with Russia.
Officials said their case against the Syrian government included signals and aerial intelligence — combined with local reporting and samples taken from victims of the attack — that showed a Russian-made, Syrian-piloted SU-22 aircraft dropped at least one munition carrying the nerve agent sarin.
The declassified findings formed part of a coordinated broadside against Russia from the White House, State Department and Pentagon. The choreographed critiques appeared to show a desire to impose order on what has been the administration’s chaotic, often contradictory public stance on national security matters.
The increasingly hostile stance toward Russia takes place less than a week after the administration, in a sign of its rapidly evolving foreign policy positions, launched a barrage of missile strikes on a Syrian air base in retaliation for the chemical attack in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the time had come for Russia to rethink its support for the Syrian government, which has been blamed for repeated atrocities in Syria’s ongoing civil war.
“In this particular case we’re going to be very forceful . . . to make sure that we let Russia know that they need to live up to the obligations it has made,” he said.
Spicer’s remarks came as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made his first official visit to Moscow, where he is expected to press Russia to choose between Syria and the West.
According to U.S. officials who spoke about intelligence findings on the condition of anonymity, U.S. surveillance tracked the aircraft as it took off from a base near the city of Homs, loitered over the strike area in Idlib province and delivered its deadly yield. U.S. intelligence also detected the presence of individuals associated with Syria’s chemical weapons program at the Shayrat air base in the days surrounding the attack.
Dozens of people died of exposure to sarin in Khan Sheikhoun, including numerous children, officials said. Many more were injured, among them first responders.
The officials said that nothing from an array of intelligence and publicly available material provided any credence to the alternative account put forward by Syria and Russia, which claimed that routine bombing struck an opposition chemical weapons depot.
(Reuters)
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters on April 11 at a meeting of Group of Seven foreign ministers that the U.S. hopes Russia will abandon its support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Moscow says the U.S. hopes Russia will abandon its support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. (Reuters)
“I have personally reviewed the intelligence, and there is no doubt the Syrian regime is responsible for the decision to attack and for the attack itself,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon later in the day.
He warned Syria that it would pay a “very, very, very stiff price” for further chemical attacks.
But Mattis and other officials said the U.S. government has not yet reached a consensus on whether Russia knew about the assault ahead of time.
U.S. officials suggested that it was unlikely that Russian troops, stationed at the air base that was singled out last week, would have been kept in the dark.
“We do think it is a question worth asking the Russians, about how is it possible that their forces were co-located with the forces that planned, prepared and carried out the chemical weapons attack at the same installation and did not have foreknowledge?” one senior official said.
Russia’s entry into the Syrian conflict in 2015 has proved to be a lifeline for Assad, who has relied on both Moscow and Tehran for financial and military support.
The officials slammed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government for a “clear pattern of deflecting blame” for its actions and those of Assad’s forces, and for trying to use disinformation to hide the Syrian government’s role in what occurred.
“I think it’s clear that the Russians are trying to cover up what happened there,” another official said.
Officials also provided their fullest accounting so far of what they believe was the Syrian government’s motivation in launching the Khan Sheikhoun attack.
They said that the Syrian military had used the weapons to prevent the loss of a key airfield that was threatened by a recent rebel advance on the strategic city of Hama.
“They were losing in a particularly important area, and that’s what drove them,” said one of the senior officials. Khan Sheikhoun was seen as a “rear” in that assault.
The Assad regime, after six years of war, is down to as few as 18,000 soldiers, according to some estimates. Officials said the reliance on chemical weapons was intended to help make up for those manpower deficiencies.
The orchestrated U.S. government message Tuesday was in sharp contrast to earlier weeks of the young administration. On key issues, such as China, North Korea and NATO, President Trump’s off-the-cuff tweets and improvised pronouncements have sometimes contradicted those of his key advisers and even his own earlier statements.
The mixed messages have been especially prevalent when it comes to Syria. Over the course of the past two weeks, administration officials have suggested that the White House was no longer focused on removing Assad from power, a position that held in the immediate aftermath of the attacks only to be abandoned by Tillerson on the eve of his trip to Moscow this week.
Signaling a step back from Trump’s earlier suggestions of warmer U.S.-Russia relations, Tillerson has had sharp words for the Kremlin in the lead-up to his Moscow visit, saying that Russia either failed to embrace its obligations as a guarantor for the Syrian regime or had been incompetent.
“This distinction doesn’t much matter to the dead,” Tillerson said.
Moscow played a central role in the international process to remove chemical weapons from Syria in 2013, in the wake of an earlier chemical attack. According to the U.S. government, last week’s attack showed that the Syrian government retained stockpiles of its most deadly chemicals.
Russian officials stepped up their own response to events in Syria on Tuesday, as Putin raised questions about the capabilities of U.S. intelligence agencies and asserted that rebels were planning to plant chemical materials elsewhere in Syria and blame the Assad government.
The Russian military also warned the United States against further missile strikes, which it said would be “unacceptable.”
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Despite the recriminations on both sides, Mattis expressed confidence that tensions between the United States and Russia will not spiral out of control. The two governments continue to communicate, he said, and Russia is likely to act in its own self-
interest to prevent a dangerous deterioration in relations.
interest to prevent a dangerous deterioration in relations.
Mattis described last week’s U.S. counterstrike as an isolated incident that would not affect the U.S. campaign against the Islamic State, which has been an American priority since 2014.
“This was a separate issue,” he said. “We addressed that militarily, but the rest of the campaign stays on track, exactly as it was before Assad’s violation.”
Carol Morello and David Filipov in Moscow and Jenna Johnson, Anne Gearan and Ashley Parker in Washington contributed to this report.
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 Rex Tillerson meets Sergey Lavrov for 'frank exchange'
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Washington Post - 55 minutes ago
MOSCOW — Tense comments and warnings from the Russian side marked the beginning of what is likely to be a tough day for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson as he attempts to persuade Moscow to abandon its support for Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
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The two top diplomats are sitting down together in Moscow on Wednesday for what are expected to be painstaking talks after a chemical attack in northwestern Syria plunged the old Cold War enemies to a new low.
The two countries have traded barbs over last week's chemical attack, which killed 89 people, and prompted the US to carry out its first air strikes against the Syrian regime in the six-year conflict, taking out aircraft and infrastructure at a Syrian military air base.
The White House said Tuesday
that Russia and Syria were trying to "confuse the world community about who is responsible" for the chemical attack.
The attack has been widely blamed on Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's regime, but Russia, Assad's most powerful ally, has denied the regime was responsible for the killings.
Lavrov said Wednesday that Russia "saw some very troubling actions regarding the attack on Syria."
"We believe it is fundamentally important not to let these actions happen again," Lavrov said, according to an official Russian interpreter.
He also complained about the mixed messages coming out of Washington on the Trump administration's policy on Syria, with the US envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley, making clear Assad should have no future in Syria as Tillerson took a softer line.
"I will be frank that we had a lot of questions regarding a lot of very ambiguous as well as contradictory ideas on a whole plethora of bilateral and international agenda coming from Washington," Lavrov said.
He also hit back at remarks Tillerson made a day earlier that Russia would have to decide whether it was with the US and the West in standing up against Assad, or against them.
Tillerson took a more diplomatic tone in his initial remarks, saying that he hoped to clarify "areas of common objectives, areas of common interests, even when our tactical approaches may be different."
"And to further clarify areas of sharp difference, so we can better understand why these differences exist and what the prospects for narrowing those differences may be."
US President Donald Trump ordered a Tomahawk missile strike against the Shayrat airfield in Syria, from where aircraft used in the chemical attack were launched.
The US claimed the strike destroyed 20% of Syria's operational aircraft, a figure disputed by Russia's Defense Ministry.
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The FBI obtained a secret court order last summer to monitor the communications of an adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign, law enforcement and other U.S. officials said.
The FBI and the Justice Department obtained the warrant targeting Carter Page’s communications after convincing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power, in this case Russia, according to the officials.
This is the clearest evidence so far that the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016 presidential campaign that a Trump campaign adviser was in touch with Russian agents. Such contacts are now at the center of an investigation into whether the campaign coordinated with the Russian government to swing the election in Trump’s favor.
Page has not been accused of any crimes, and it is unclear whether the Justice Department might later seek charges against him or others in connection with Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The counterintelligence investigation into Russian efforts to influence U.S. elections began in July, officials have said. Most such investigations don’t result in criminal charges.
The officials spoke about the court order on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of a counterintelligence probe.
Team Trump’s ties to Russian interests
During an interview with the Washington Post editorial page staff in March 2016, Trump identified Page, who had previously been an investment banker in Moscow, as a foreign policy adviser to his campaign. Campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks later described Page’s role as “informal.”
Page has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in his dealings with the Trump campaign or Russia.
“This confirms all of my suspicions about unjustified, politically motivated government surveillance,” Page said in an interview Tuesday. “I have nothing to hide.” He compared surveillance of him to the eavesdropping that the FBI and Justice Department conducted against civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
The White House, FBI and Justice Department declined to comment.
FBI Director James B. Comey disclosed in public testimony to the House Intelligence Committee last month that the bureau is investigating efforts by the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
Comey said this includes investigating the “nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.”
Comey declined to comment during the hearing about any individuals, including Page, who worked in Moscow for Merrill Lynch a decade ago and who has said he invested in Russian energy giant Gazprom. In a letter to Comey in September, Page had said he had sold his Gazprom investment.
During the hearing last month, Democratic lawmakers repeatedly singled out Page’s contacts in Russia as a cause for concern.
The judges who rule on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests oversee the nation’s most sensitive national security cases, and their warrants are some of the most closely guarded secrets in the world of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence gathering. Any FISA application has to be approved at the highest levels of the Justice Department and the FBI.
Applications for FISA warrants, Comey said, are often thicker than his wrists, and that thickness represents all the work Justice Department attorneys and FBI agents have to do to convince a judge that such surveillance is appropriate in an investigation.
The government’s application for the surveillance order targeting Page included a lengthy declaration that laid out investigators’ basis for believing that Page was an agent of the Russian government and knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of Moscow, officials said.
Among other things, the application cited contacts that he had with a Russian intelligence operative in New York City in 2013, officials said. Those contacts had earlier surfaced in a federal espionage case brought by the Justice Department against another Russian agent. In addition, the application said Page had other contacts with Russian operatives that have not been publicly disclosed, officials said.
An application for electronic surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act need not show evidence of a crime. But the information obtained through the intercepts can be used to open a criminal investigation and may be used in a prosecution.
The application also showed that the FBI and the Justice Department’s national security division have been seeking since July to determine how broad a network of accomplices Russia enlisted in attempting to influence the 2016 presidential election, the officials said.
Since the 90-day warrant was first issued, it has been renewed more than once by the FISA court, the officials said.
In February, Page told “PBS NewsHour” that he was a “junior member of the [Trump] campaign’s foreign policy advisory group.”
A former Trump campaign adviser said Page submitted policy memos to the campaign and several times asked to be given a meeting with Trump, though his request was never granted. “He was one of the more active ones, in terms of being in touch,” the adviser said.
The campaign adviser said Page participated in three dinners held for the campaign’s volunteer foreign policy advisers in the spring and summer of 2016, coming from New York to Washington to meet with the group. Although Trump did not attend, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a top Trump confidant who became his attorney general, attended one meeting of the group with Page in late summer, the campaign adviser said.
Page’s role as an adviser to the Trump campaign drew alarm last year from more-established foreign policy experts in part because of Page’s effusive praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his criticism of U.S. sanctions over Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine.
In July, Page traveled to Moscow, where he delivered a speech harshly critical of the United States’ policy toward Russia.
While there, Page allegedly met with Igor Sechin, a Putin confidant and chief executive of the energy company Rosneft, according to a dossier compiled by a former British intelligence officer and cited at a congressional hearing by Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Officials said some of the information in the dossier has been verified by U.S. intelligence agencies, and some of it hasn’t, while other parts are unlikely to ever be proved or disproved.
On Tuesday, Page dismissed what he called “the dodgy dossier” of false allegations.
Page has denied such a meeting occurred, saying he has never met Sechin in his life and that he wants to testify before Congress to clear his name. A spokesman for Rosneft told Politico in September that the notion that Page met with Sechin was “absurd.” Page said in September that he briefly met Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich during that trip.
Comey has declined to discuss the details of the Russia probe, but in an appearance last month, he cited the process for getting FISA warrants as proof that the government’s surveillance powers are very carefully used, with significant oversight.
“It is a pain in the neck to get permission to conduct electronic surveillance in the United States. And that’s good,’’ he told an audience at the University of Texas in Austin.
Officials have said the FBI and the Justice Department were particularly reluctant to seek FISA warrants of campaign figures during the 2016 presidential race because of concerns that agents would inadvertently eavesdrop on political talk. To obtain a FISA warrant, prosecutors must show that a significant purpose of the warrant is to obtain foreign intelligence information.
Page is the only American to have had his communications directly targeted with a FISA warrant in 2016 as part of the Russia probe, officials said.
The FBI routinely obtains FISA warrants to monitor the communications of foreign diplomats in the United States, including the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. The conversations between Kislyak and Michael Flynn, who became Trump’s first national security adviser, were recorded in December. In February, The Washington Post reported that Flynn misled Vice President-elect Mike Pence and others about his discussions with Kislyak, prompting Trump’s decision to fire him.
In March, Trump made unsubstantiated claims about U.S. surveillance of Trump Tower in New York. Later that month, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a Trump transition official, charged that details about people “associated with the incoming administration, details with little apparent foreign intelligence value” were “widely disseminated” in intelligence community reporting. He said none of the surveillance was related to Russia. The FISA order on Page is unrelated to either charge.
Last month, the former director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that U.S. law enforcement agencies did not have any FISA orders to monitor the communications of Trump, either as a candidate or as a president-elect, or his campaign. But Clapper did not address whether there were any FISA warrants targeting Trump associates.
Three years before Page became an adviser to the Trump campaign, he came to the attention of FBI counterintelligence agents, who learned that Russian spy suspects had sought to use Page as a source for information.
In that case, one of the Russian suspects, Victor Pobodnyy — who was posing as a diplomat and was later charged by federal prosecutors with acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government — was captured on tape in 2013 discussing an effort to get information and documents from Page. That discussion was detailed in a federal complaint filed against another Kremlin agent. The court documents in that spy case only identify Page as “Male 1.’’ Officials familiar with the case said that “Male 1’’ is Page.
In one secretly recorded conversation, detailed in the complaint, Pobodnyy said Page “wrote that he is sorry, he went to Moscow and forgot to check his inbox, but he wants to meet when he gets back. I think he is an idiot and forgot who I am. Plus he writes to me in Russian [to] practice the language. He flies to Moscow more often than I do. He got hooked on Gazprom thinking that if they have a project, he could rise up. Maybe he can. I don’t know, but it’s obvious that he wants to earn lots of money.’’
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The same court document says that in June 2013, Page told FBI agents that he met Pobodnyy at an energy symposium in New York, where they exchanged contact information. In subsequent meetings, Page shared with the Russian his outlook on the state of the energy industry, as well as documents about the energy business, according to the court papers.
In the secret tape, Pobodnyy said he liked the man’s “enthusiasm” but planned to use him to get information and give him little in return. “You promise a favor for a favor. You get the documents from him and tell him to go f--- himself,’’ Pobodnyy said on the tape, according to court papers.
Page has said the information he provided to the Russians in 2013 was innocuous, describing it as “basic immaterial information and publicly available research documents.” He said he had assisted the prosecutors in their case against Evgeny Buryakov, who was convicted of espionage.
Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.
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FBI obtained FISA warrant to monitor former Trump adviser Carter ...
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The FBI obtained a secret court order last summer to monitor the ... adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, part of an investigation into ...
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Express.co.uk |
Donald Trump has 'HUMILIATED' Russia - ex-ambassador says Putin 'miscalculated' President
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Trump and Putin Hit the First Bump in the Road—and It's Called Syria
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Fox News Insider |
Left's New Claim: Trump and Putin Orchestrated Syria Attacks as Distraction
Fox News Insider On "Fox & Friends" today, David Brody of CBN News said it's "interesting" to see the mainstream media ignoring the fact that the Trump administration is "talking very tough" on Russia. "Where is [that] narrative? It's not there because the narrative ... and more » |
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Chicago Tribune |
No need for conspiracy theories. The truth about Trump and Putin is damning enough.
Chicago Tribune MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell led off his show Friday night with an alarming report: Russian President Vladimir Putin may have told Syria's Bashar al-Assad to launch last week's chemical attack to let President Donald Trump respond militarily ... and more » |
Politico |
Trump's White House takes combative posture toward Putin
Politico “Trump had a kind of affinity for Putin based on partially seeing in him the kind of leader that he aspired to be and because of some of the things people in his circle were telling him,” said Jeffrey Mankoff, a Russia specialist with the Center for ... and more » |
Trump's White House takes combative posture toward Putin
Politico-1 hour ago
“Trump had a kind of affinity for Putin based on partially seeing in him the kind of leader that he aspired to be and because of some of the things ...
No need for conspiracy theories. The truth about Trump and Putin is ...
Opinion-Chicago Tribune-9 hours ago
Opinion-Chicago Tribune-9 hours ago
Syria Shows How Insane Liberal Conspiracy Theories About Russia ...
Blog-Slate Magazine (blog)-7 hours ago
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(The Washington Post)
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will meet with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, this week as relations between the U.S. and Russia are at the lowest point in decades. What you need to know about Rex Tillerson's trip to Russia (The Washington Post)
As Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived here Tuesday with a demand that Moscow back away from the Syrian government, Russian Foreign Ministry officials said relations with the United States had reached their lowest point since the Cold War.
Following a U.S. missile strike on Syria last week, the Foreign Ministry said it was concerned that the Trump administration might be considering a similar blow against North Korea.
And even before Tillerson exited his plane in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin told a news conference that the Kremlin has “information” that provocateurs are planning to plant chemical substances in suburban Damascus and blame it on Syrian authorities. He gave no further details on the claim.
He said the situation in Syria reminded him of events in Iraq before the United States invaded in 2003, an allusion to unfounded assertions of weapons of mass destruction that the George W. Bush administration used to justify the war. He also said Western countries divided over the election of President Trump were scapegoating Russia and Syria.
“We’ve seen all this before,” Putin said.
(Reuters)
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters on April 11 at a meeting of Group of Seven foreign ministers that the U.S. hopes Russia will abandon its support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Moscow says the U.S. hopes Russia will abandon its support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. (Reuters)
And the Russian general staff has put the United States on notice, saying that another missile strike would be “unacceptable.”
Russia and Iran back the government of President Bashar al-Assad, while rebel factions supported by the West and its partners have been largely driven back by withering attacks, including the use of a suspected nerve agent on a rebel stronghold last week that left at least 70 people dead.
Putin’s spokesman said it remained unclear whether the Russian leader would meet with Tillerson.
“I cannot confirm yet,” Dmitry Peskov told The Washington Post after the private Russian broadcaster RBC reported that they would meet Wednesday.
Before leaving Italy — where he met with “like-minded” allies in the Group of Seven major advanced economies and diplomats from largely Muslim nations — Tillerson told reporters that the United States is aiming for a negotiated end to six years of conflict in Syria and wants Russia’s help in ushering Assad out of office.
Claiming that Assad’s rule “is coming to an end,” Tillerson previewed his message to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
“We hope that the Russian government concludes that they have aligned themselves with an unreliable partner in Bashar al-Assad,” he said.
In what was in effect an ultimatum, he said Moscow must calculate the costs of remaining an ally of Assad, the Iranians and Lebanon’s Shiite militia Hezbollah.
“Is that a long-term alliance that serves Russia’s interests?” he told reporters. “Or would Russia prefer to realign with the United States, with other Western countries and Middle East countries that are seeking to resolve the Syrian crisis?”
Russia has maintained that a Syrian government airstrike last week hit a factory where Syrian rebels were manufacturing chemical weapons in the northern Idlib province. After the U.S. missile strike, Peskov asserted that the Syrian government “has no chemical arms stockpiles. ”
Moscow says it fulfilled its part of a 2013 agreement mandating that Russia oversee the destruction of Assad’s chemical-weapons arsenal. On Monday, Russia’s general staff said two sites where chemical weapons might remain are in territory controlled by Syrian rebels.
But Tillerson told reporters that last week’s attack with a suspected nerve agent shows that Moscow either did not take its obligations seriously or was incompetent. In either case, he added, the distinction “doesn’t much matter to the dead.”
“We want to relieve the suffering of the Syrian people,” he said, and issued an ultimatum: “Russia can be a part of that future and play an important role. Or Russia can maintain its alliance with this group, which we believe is not going to serve Russia’s interests longer term.”
Tillerson’s visit has the potential to be an opportunity or another marker in the escalation of tensions between the two great powers.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner rejected Russia’s suggestion that the poisonings were the result of a deliberate provocation or “false flag” operation intended to falsely incriminate the Assad government.
“It is crystal clear to us that this was carried out, and that this was carried out by the Syrian regime,” Toner said. “There was no false flag.”
Assad’s responsibility for the attack, Russia’s role in policing its ally and Assad’s political future will be discussed when Tillerson sees Lavrov on Wednesday, Toner said.
“If there is an invitation for him to meet with Putin, of course he’ll do so. I think that’s a decision for the Kremlin to make and to announce, and up until now, we’ve not seen such an offer extended,” Toner said.
Tillerson is uniquely qualified to deliver a stern warning to the Russians. When he was the chief executive of ExxonMobil, he negotiated a deal with the state-controlled gas company Rosneft, leading Putin to bestow the Order of Friendship on him. Tillerson gained a reputation as being willing to walk out on energy deals that did not meet his standards.
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Diplomats at the meeting in Italy did not agree on a British proposal to impose more sanctions on Russia over Syria, on top of sanctions already in place over Ukraine. Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano said ministers want Russia to pressure Assad but warned, “We must not push Russia into a corner.”
Anne Gearan in Washington contributed to this report.
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Published on Sep 26, 2012
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Newsmax |
Ed Klein: What Putin Tells His Shrink
Newsmax From time to time, the CIA's Russian analysts update their psychological profile of Vladimir Putin. Here is what they ... I'll tell you. Suddenly, President Trump and Secretary of State Tillerson and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley have grown a pair of big ... and more » |
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Thomson Reuters
The Trump administration has in recent days sent highly conflicting signals about whether it supports regime change in Syria and what its red line would be for taking further military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The mixed messaging comes after President Donald Trump ordered the US Navy to launch 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at an airfield believed to have been used by Assad's military to launch a deadly chemical-weapons attack last week.
The US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and national security adviser H.R. McMaster took to the Sunday talk shows to defend Trump's decision. But they could not seem to agree on whether Trump supported removing Assad from power — a policy the Obama administration touted but never acted upon.
In an interview on CNN's "State of the Union," Haley said "getting Assad out is not the only priority." But she added that "we don't see a peaceful Syria with Assad in there" and that "regime change is something that we think is going to happen."
McMaster, meanwhile, said on Fox News that while he supported removing Assad, the US was "not going to be the ones who effect that change."
Tillerson told ABC that that the administration opposed "violent change at the top," which would make it "very difficult to create the conditions for stability longer term."
But he appeared to reverse that comment on Monday, telling reporters that the US will "rededicate ourselves to holding to account any and all who commit crimes against the innocents anywhere in the world."
Also on Monday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer seemed to convey two separate policies in one briefing.
"We’re not just going to become the world’s policeman running around the country — running around the world," Spicer told reporters. "It’s our national security first and foremost." But he then signaled a potentially major shift in the US' "red line" for intervention in Syria: the use of barrel bombs.
"The sight of people being gassed and blown away by barrel bombs ensures that if we see this kind of action again, we hold open the possibility of future action," Spicer said.
He then quickly walked back that claim, telling Business Insider in a statement that "nothing has changed" in the administration's policy.
Further confusion ensued Tuesday, after the White House disputed the accuracy of an Associated Press report that said the US had concluded that Russia knew about the chemical-weapons attack in advance.
"There is no consensus within the American intelligence community that Russia had foreknowledge of the attack," a senior administration official said in a statement Tuesday.
Robert Ford, the former US ambassador to Syria who is now a fellow at the Middle East Institute, said that the Trump White House "is still new," and simply needs more practice coordinating its messaging. He added that the administration "still has many top foreign policy and defense jobs unfilled, and only in the past 10 days has had to focus time from the busy top-level officials on Syria."
"One thing new administrations have to learn to do is tightly coordinate talking points among top officials," Ford said. "It's not a surprise that the Trump administration also has to learn to do this. People like McMaster, Tillerson and Haley are pros, and they will learn how to do it too."
Fred Hof, a former special adviser on the Syria transition under President Barack Obama, argued that "the cacophony of views reflects the fact that the [Syria] policy itself — the objectives and the strategy for achieving them — is not yet set."
He echoed Ford's point, however, in saying the messaging would likely become more cohesive as the White House gets its footing.
"I'm confident that H.R. McMaster will get control of the interagency process and orchestrate a coherent approach for the president to examine, modify if necessary, and ultimately approve and implement," he said.
"This will take time," he added. "Meanwhile, it's important for the president, Gen. McMaster, and Secretaries Tillerson and Mattis to agree on basic talking points to be used publicly by the administration across the board. Discipline in this area is essential."
One voice has been conspicuously absent, however, from discussions of the administration's goals in Syria and broader foreign policy doctrine: Trump's.
Nearly three months into his presidency — and less than two weeks after both Tillerson and Haley said that removing Assad was no longer a priority for the US — Trump's decision to wade into an extraordinarily crowded and complex battlefield has shifted to the side the "America First" platform on which he campaigned.
Trump has not commented on Syria apart from a brief statement the night he ordered the cruise missile strike and a tweet defending the US military's decision not to crater the airfield's runways. He also congratulated the US military on Twitter for "representing the US — and the world — so well in the Syria attack."
Trump has remained quiet, however, even as the war of words between Tillerson and Russian President Vladimir Putin has heated up.
Tillerson said on Tuesday morning that Russia is either "incompetent" or has "failed" to hold up its end of the deal to destroy Assad's chemical weapons and needed to choose whether to abandon or "maintain its alliance" with Assad.
Putin, who has slammed the US' strike on Assad as an "aggressive" act," continued to deny that the Syrian army had chemical weapons and was responsible for the attack last week.
"This reminds me strongly of the events in 2003, when the US representatives demonstrated at the UN Security Council session the presumed chemical weapons found in Iraq," Putin told reporters during a joint press conference with Italian President Sergio Mattarella on Tuesday.
Tillerson is due to meet today with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Moscow. But Ford cautioned against expectations that the US will wade deeper into the war in an attempt to oust Assad.
"The Syrian opposition and its friends would be making a terrible mistake thinking that Trump's team is going to shift to regime-change mode," Ford said.
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The Trump administration has “clear and consistent” information leading it to believe that the Syrian government bombed its own people with sarin nerve gas last week, senior intelligence officials said in a background briefing at the White House.
The officials presented information April 11 that they said was based on declassified intelligence, NGO observations, laboratory samples from victims, and social media reports. They said they believe the information proves both Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and the Russian government are lying about the April 4 attack that killed dozens.
The scope of the presentation and its location at the White House briefing room indicates that the US is seeking further attacks against Assad, and hopes to involve the United Nations. “It is incredibly important that we speak with one voice at the UN,” one official told reporters, to send a “clear message that the use of chemical weapons” is unacceptable. In a public briefing an hour later, White House press secretary Sean Spicer compared Assad to Adolf Hitler.
Here are key reasons US officials say the April 4 incident was carried out by Assad forces, in an air attack thought to have started at 6:55am local time:
1. The plane the bomb was on. The attack was conducted by a Su-22 “fixed-wing aircraft” that took off from Shayrat Airfield, which is held by the regime, administration officials said. The Russian-made aircraft is used by the Syrian government. (This is the airfield that the US bombed last week, in retaliation for the attacks.)
2. The people who were at the airfield earlier. People who were “historically associated” with Syria’s chemical-weapons program were at the airfield in late March, preparing for another attack on northern Syria, and on the day of the sarin gas attack.
3. The victims’ symptoms. Reports from the World Health Organization and social media show victims frothing at the mouth and twitching, which is consistent with sarin attacks. Early responders also had symptoms consistent with nerve gas, and tissue samples from the victims tested positive for sarin.
4. What ISIS possesses. Russian and Syrian officials say the gas came from stockpiles held by rebel forces. There is no known pattern of terrorists in the area using or having sarin gas, an official said, “but we know the Syrian regime has sarin.” ISIS does, however, possess mustard gas.
5. Assad’s struggling military operation in the region. The attack was an “operational calculus” by Assad as his forces moved east from Aleppo, one senior US administration official said. Assad calculated that chemical weapons were necessary to make up for “manpower deficiencies,” and aimed them at civilian areas that he may have thought housed ISIS fighters.
The hospital where the victims were taken was bombed by a conventional bomb at about 1pm, intelligence officials said, citing news reports and social accounts. The area around the hospital showed impact craters on April 6, the officials said, which were consistent with a traditional bomb.
“It is clear the Russians are trying to cover up” the Syrian attack, one White House official said. It is worth asking the Russians how it is possible that their forces have worked with the Syrian forces for years and “didn’t have foreknowledge” of the gas attack, the official said.
US president Donald Trump has expressed skepticism about the quality of the US’s own intelligence, particularly when it comes to chemical weapons. The officials in the briefing were career civil servants and included some holdovers from the previous administration. But they have Trump’s full confidence, a national security official appointed by Trump told Quartz.
The officials distributed a four-page report afterward that concluded “The United States calls on the world community in the strongest possible terms to stand with us in making an unambiguous statement that this behavior will not be tolerated,” and denounced Russia for vetoing UN Security Council measures that could have helped to “rectify the situation.”
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The Guardian |
Trump's relationship with Russia was confusing enough. Then Syria happened
The Guardian Where any other presidential candidate would have carefully avoided any association withRussia, Trump was happy to praise Putin. He also worked closely with fringe figures such as Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn who a more professional campaign ... GOP and Trump scrambling to hold House seat in heavily Republican Kansas districtLos Angeles Times Trump's Confusing Strike on SyriaThe New Yorker Trump's Syria Folly Is Bad for EveryoneThe National Interest Online (blog) Chicago Tribune -CNN -National Review all 20,170 news articles » |
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USA TODAY |
Trump administration says Russia helping Syria cover up sarin attack
USA TODAY WASHINGTON — The White House said Tuesday there is overwhelming evidence that Syria used a sarin nerve agent to attack opponents of the government last week, and that Russia is trying to help Bashar Assad's government cover up the illegal use of ... Sean Spicer Contradicts Various Trump Cabinet Members by Referring to 'Allies, LikeRussia'Mediaite all 260 news articles » |
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Thinking About Vice President Pence, Bill O'Reilly
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MarketWatch |
Opinion: Only one winner will emerge from White House infighting: Donald Trump
MarketWatch The so-called New Yorker contingent is led by two Goldman Sachs alumni — National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and his sidekick, Dina Powell, who seems to float around in various positions — using Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka and her ... Donald Trump Doesn't Like It When You Make Fun of His Son-In-LawGQ Magazine If Donald Trump wants to get his war on with Syria, have him send his own kids firstSalon Jared Kushner: Breitbart editors told reporters to 'stop attacking Donald Trump's son-law'The Independent all 171 news articles » |
Hot Air |
Dem rep: What if Trump and Putin coordinated on the Syria strike to cover up their other collusion? An error occurred.
Hot Air In which the “wag the dog” crankery on the left escalates from MSNBC hosts to Democratic congressmen in less than a week. I wonder how far Moulton's prepared to stick with this possibility, though. If Assad gasses more civilians next week and Trump ... 'Where Is Trump Going With This?': Dem Rep Battles Tucker Over Syria StrikeFox News Insider all 8 news articles » |
NPR |
Russian Spies' Go-To Tactics For Entangling People: Bribery And Blackmail
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Media Matters for America |
Right-Wing Media Attempt To Absolve Trump Of Alleged Russia Ties After Strike On Syrian Regime Airbase
Media Matters for America Right-wing media are dismissing possible ties between President Donald Trump and his associates and Russian officials after he ordered U.S. warships to launch a cruise missile strike on a Syrian airbase after a chemical weapons attack killed dozens of ... and more » |
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on U.S. meetings with world leaders on the recent chemical weapons attack in Syria (all times local):
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is meeting with staffers who work at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. The meeting is taking place privately.
Tillerson is in Moscow for talks with Russian officials. He arrived earlier Tuesday to meet with Russian officials about the Syria civil war.
It's the first official trip to Russia by a member of President Donald Trump's Cabinet.
U.S. Senator John McCain says stopping Syrian President Bashar Assad's "murderous rampage" does not preclude America from fighting the Islamic State group.
At a press conference in Sarajevo, the Republican senator said the U.S. "is the most powerful nation on earth" and "can do both at the same time."
McCain said Assad is "a war criminal and must go." He said the "needless and senseless slaughter of innocent men, women and children is an obligation for all of us," including Russia, to stop.
McCain is on a tour of the western Balkans, the war-weary European region where Russia has been vying for increased military, political and economic influence.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin says Washington's accusations against the Syrian government over a chemical attack resemble the claims made before the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003.
Putin, speaking Tuesday after talks in Moscow with Italian President Sergio Mattarella, said the U.S. invaded Iraq based on false allegations that it had chemical weapons.
He says the U.S. missile strikes on a Syrian air base following accusations that Syria's government's used chemical weapons that killed dozens of people last week "strongly resembles the developments of 2003."
Putin added that some in the West are using Syria to cast Russia as a "common enemy."
Russia has argued that civilians in Khan Sheikhoun were exposed to toxic agents from a militants' arsenal hit by a Syrian air strike. Putin says militants are preparing more "provocations" to blame Damascus.
A grass fire that broke out next to the Moscow airport where U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was due to arrive has been extinguished.
The emergency situations ministry said on Tuesday about 100 square meters of grass caught fire just outside the Vnukovo airport before Tillerson's plane landed.
Live footage from the scene showed tall clouds of black smoke billowing just over the tarmac.
Tillerson is in Moscow to meet with Russian officials about the civil war in Syria.
The airport said in a separate statement that the fire was outside the airport and it didn't affect its operations.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has arrived in Moscow to meet with Russian officials about the Syria civil war.
It's the first official trip to Russia by a member of President Donald Trump's Cabinet.
Russia has been incensed by U.S. allegations of complicity in Syrian President Bashar Assad's use of chemical weapons. The U.S. increased the pressure Monday when a senior official said the U.S. has made a preliminary conclusion that Russia knew in advance of Syria's chemical weapons attack last week.
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The visit also comes amid an FBI investigation into whether Russia potentially colluded with Trump's campaign to influence the U.S. election.
Tillerson plans to meet Wednesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. It's unclear whether he will also meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russia's General Staff says the Syrian government is willing to let international experts to examine its military base for signs of chemical weapons.
The United States on Friday carry out an airstrike on the Shayrat air base which is believed to have been used for last week's chemical weapons attack in the Idlib province.
Col. Gen. Sergei Rudskoy of the Russian General Staff said in televised remarks on Tuesday that the Syrian government is ready to let international experts to examine the base and that Russia will provide security for them.
President Vladimir Putin says Russia will appeal to the United Nations to investigate last week's chemical attack in Syria.
Moscow has dismissed suggestions that the Syrian government that it backs could be behind the attack in Idlib province.
Putin told reporters on Tuesday that Russia would appeal to a U.N. agency in the Hague, urging it to hold an official probe.
Putin also said Russia has received intelligence about planned "provocations" using chemical weapons that would put the blame on the Syrian government.
Russia has defended Bashar Assad's government which has been accused of launching a chemical weapons attack on the Idlib province.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is to meet U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Wednesday.
Russia's foreign ministry says it hopes for "productive talks" with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, as Tillerson heads to Moscow in his first visit to Russia as the top U.S. diplomat.
The ministry said in a three-page statement issued ahead of Tillerson's arrival later on Tuesday that the outcome of the talks is important not only for the Russia-U.S. ties but "for the overall atmosphere on the world stage."
Tillerson is traveling to Russia several days after a chemical attack in Syria and a U.S. air strike on a Syrian government base that Moscow on Tuesday dismissed as "an act of aggression." Moscow is a staunch ally of President Bashar Assad whom the United States blamed for the chemical attack.
Tillerson said Tuesday that Russia must choose between aligning itself with the U.S. or with Assad and Iran.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says Russia must choose between aligning itself with the U.S. and likeminded countries or embracing Syrian President Bashar Assad, Iran and the militant group Hezbollah.
Tillerson says it's unclear whether Russia failed to take seriously its obligations in Syria or has been incompetent. But he says that distinction "doesn't much matter to the dead."
He says of the recent chemical attack: "We cannot let this happen again."
Tillerson says the U.S. sees no future role for Assad in Syria, but he says the U.S. isn't pre-supposing how Assad's departure will occur.
Tillerson traveled Tuesday to Moscow. He says Russia can play a role in Syria's future but that aligning with Assad won't serve Russia's long-term interests.
The entry timed 8:50 a.m. has been corrected to say that Tillerson is meeting Lavrov on Wednesday, not Putin.
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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As congressional and FBI investigators in Washington explore potential ties between President Trump's 2016 campaign and Russian intelligence services' meddling in the election, they're searching for one particular clue: money.
Loans, payments, sweetheart deals or other transactions are a tried and tested way that Russia's spy agencies get access to or control over people who interest them.
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, told NPR that evidence of such entanglements are one thing his panel is looking for.
"It may be that they work on energy deals or maybe they work on financial investments, but they try to get their financial hooks into parties of interest ... and so there's a question here whether those same tactics were used with respect to the Trump organization," he said.
William Browder, the CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, knows Russia's methods well. At one time, his company was one of the biggest foreign investors in Russia. Browder is one of the leading experts in fighting Russian corruption and is now blacklisted by Moscow; he says Russia is always on the lookout for people who can be compromised.
"The Russians are looking for people that they think are important in the West, important in political, business and economic circles. ...They target people they think are going to be useful to them one way or the other," he says.
And the flow of rubles into euros or dollars goes beyond the purchase of access, influence or information for spy agencies.
Stephen Blank, a Russian expert at the American Foreign Policy Council, says some people might be useful in providing a way for Russians to park their own money.
"Nobody really trusts the Russian banking system or the political system — for that, money gets laundered abroad," he says.
Russians who don't want to deposit cash in their home banks often make big investments in foreign countries that are safe, Blank says — a prime example of that, he says, is real estate in New York or Florida.
Because of the behind-the-scenes connections between Russia's organized crime, intelligence agencies and government leaders, it's sometimes not clear which one is acting.
Browder says Kremlin leaders often want to gain political influence outside of Russia. They'll cast a wide net and wait patiently until the time is right to exploit someone, he says.
"The two primary ways in which they recruit people is either through bribery or blackmail. ... They find ways of threatening people through compromising information," he says.
Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a leading specialist on economic policy in Russia, says there are any number of methods to compromise people. It could be sex. Or sweetheart deals — awarding huge contracts with the help of loans from state-run banks such as VneshEconomBank, a government-owned development bank that has been under U.S. sanctions for three years.
"It gives big loans. For example, $50 billion for the Sochi Olympics. ... And the chairman, the CEO of the bank is always a KGB general," he says.
The old KGB is gone, but the bank's current CEO, Sergey Gorkov, graduated from the training academy of a successor agency, the FSB. He was was appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, met with Gorkov in December during the presidential transition.
Although VneshEconomBank was subject to U.S. sanctions after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Gorkov himself was not and faced no restrictions about traveling to New York City.
Aslund believes the meeting sends out all the wrong signals.
"Sergey Gorkov could only have two issues to discuss with Jared Kushner: One is to end the sanctions against the VneshEconomBank. The other is financing of Jared Kushner," Aslund says.
The White House says Kushner was acting as a Trump adviser — not as a private real estate developer — during the meeting with Gorkov. But he has agreed to be questioned by the Senate intelligence committee as the investigations into possible collusion with Russia continues.
Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit <a href="http://www.npr.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.npr.org/</a>.
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The chilling admission comes as Vladimir Putin refused to meet US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson during his trip to Moscow this week.
Tensions have continued to boil over after the US launched a tomahawk strike on a Kremlin-backed Syrian Government airbase last week.
Evgeny Buzhinsky, a retired Lt General in the Russian military, believes the superstates are now “teetering on the brink of war”.
Speaking on Radio 4, he said: “The West can press Russia, but I don’t think the Russian Government or the Russian President will surrender under the pressure of the G7.
“The situation in Syria will deteriorate if the West continues to support radical Islamists the outcome will be sad - it will be much worse than in Iraq for example.”
A meeting of the G7 foreign ministers, including Boris Johnson, concludes in Italy today.
The British minister will ask the group to consider fresh sanctions against Russia and Syria in response to last week’s chemical attack.
However, Mr Buzhinsky warned any sanctions implemented by the G7 is only likely to intensify the situation further.
He continued: ”When we had the Cold War everything was much clearer and less dangerous - there were definite red lines, there were definite truths.
“Now, after 20 years of the so-called friendship between the Russia and West, the situation is much worse, no truths or no red lines.
Meanwhile, China has deployed 150,000 troops to the North Korean border amid fears they could be overrun with fleeing citizens if the US sends in an airstrike.
According to reports, the Chinese are readying medical and backup units from its PLA forces at the Yalu River to prepare for any possible influx.
President Trump’s tomahawk attack on a Syrian airbase on Friday is reported to have also been a warning to the reclusive state, amid rising tensions between the two countries.
Speaking on state television, a North Korean foreign military official said: “Some forces are loud-mouthed that the recent US military attack on Syria is an action of warning us but we are not frightened by it.”
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