Scott Edward Markowitz, a Fullerton City Council candidate in Orange County, California, has been charged with felony perjury after allegedly falsifying his nomination paperwork.
According to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, the candidate had said he personally gathered all of the signatures needed in order to qualify him for the Fullerton City Council election, which takes place on Nov. 5.
Although ballots have been printed with Markowitz as a candidate for Fullerton’s Ward 4, which sits in the city’s southwest, the allegedly falsified nomination paperwork disqualifies Markowitz from serving on the Fullerton City Council if he is elected. In the event Markowitz wins the election, the city would shoulder the cost of a special election to elect one of the other three candidates in the race for the seat.
Markowitz, like all city council candidates, had to turn in a signed attestation under penalty of perjury that whoever signed was also the one who collected signatures to qualify as a candidate for elected office. Markowitz signed the attestation, but allegedly did not collect the signatures.
Orange County investigators arrested Markowitz on Monday night. The candidate was booked into the Santa Ana city jail with one felony count of perjury by declaration and one felony count of record of forged or false instrument. If convicted on both counts, Markowitz faces a maximum of three years and eight months in state prison.
Markowitz signed on Aug. 9, 2024, that he collected 30 nomination signatures on his candidate nomination paperwork. However, the person who signed the paperwork must have also witnessed the signatures, and numerous people who signed said that Markowitz did not handle the paperwork, although he attested to doing so. The signatures therefore are considered invalid.
“American democracy relies on the absolute integrity of the electoral process,” said Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer. “Voters must have total confidence that every election is being carried out in a fair and unbiased manner. Interference in the electoral process in any manner and at any stage jeopardizes the will of the people being carried out while eroding the trust of voters that their vote counts.”
Spitzer said he did not take the decision to file charges lightly, “but given the risk to the electoral process as well as the potential of the City of Fullerton needing to pay for a special election should Markowitz be elected, there was no choice but to file criminal charges prior to the election and alert voters of his ineligibility to run for City Council.”
Linda Whitaker, Jamie Valencia, and Vivian Jaramillo remain the three candidates in the Ward 4 election. They would face off if Markowitz were to be elected despite his arrest.
Markowitz and the District Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ requests for comment.
Iraq’s leaders have a lot on their minds, stuck between Israel and Iran as the two countries veer closer to open conflict.
Washington generally has a permissive attitude to whatever Israel wants to do, so if the attackers cross Iraq the assumption will be that the Americans approved, or did not disapprove, of the attack on Iran.
Iraq is balancing between Russia and China to avoid becoming a client state, and American investment would increase Baghdad’s autonomy.
Iraq’s leaders have a lot on their minds, stuck between Israel and Iran as the two countries veer closer to open conflict.
Iraq is still recovering from the reign of Saddam Hussein, the 1980-1988 war with Iraq, decades of sanctions that followed the 1991 invasion of Kuwait, liberation by the U.S.-led “coalition of the willing” in 2003, a post-invasion reconstruction that wasted much of the $60 billion spent, and the Islamic State insurgency of 2014-2019.
The U.S.-led sanctions campaign against the Saddam Hussein regime disrupted the Iraqi economy, causing inflation to skyrocket, unemployment numbers to hit record levels, a dramatic fall in living standards, the collapse of the infrastructure, and a serious decline in the availability of public services. But it was OK, as Madeleine Albright (then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations) informed Americans, “we think the price is worth it.” All that, plus Saddam’s crimes against his own people for almost 25 years, weigh on Iraq’s as they navigate to a peaceful, prosperous future.
And there are other issues to vex Baghdad.
There are about 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq and most Iraqis want them to leave. (In 2020, Iraq’s parliament passed a resolution demanding the expulsion of U.S. troops after the U.S. killed Iran’s Quds Force commander, Qasem Soleimani, and Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.) The governments recently announced an agreement on the Americans’ departure, though the U.S. refuses to explain how many troops will remain in Iraq and what they will be doing. The story put out for public consumption is that the goal is the “enduring defeat” of the Islamic State (IS), so will the U.S. try to declare the Islamic State is still a threat to delay withdrawing in order to support Israel against Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iraqi militias, and bolster Washington’s clients, the Iraqi Kurds?
And the Americans aren’t the only uninvited guests: Iraq hosts around 300,000 refugees and asylum seekers, mostly Syrian Kurds, and over 1 million Iraqis remain internally displaced by Islamic State insurgency.
The U.S. still influences Iraq by requiring a sanctions waiver for Iraqi purchases of electricity from Iraq, and it recently banned all foreign transactions in Chinese Yuan. Washington still controls the disbursement of Iraq’s dollar-denominated oil revenues from an account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In a final gesture of disrespect, the U.S. made a monthly disbursement of dollars to Iraq and at one point rationed dollars, claiming it was necessary to prevent smuggling and money laundering, though the move immediately devalued the Iraqi Riyal.
The Iran-influenced militia, the PMF, is now part of Iraq’s government, but that hasn’t stayed America’s hand when it decides to kill a PMF leader. Washington damaged itself in Iraq by killing PMF leaders Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in 2020, and Mushtaq Talib al-Saidi and Mushtaq Jawad Kazim al-Jawari in 2024. Baghdad had moved the PMF, once a private militia, into the government in 2016 (no doubt with American encouragement), so the killing of PMF leaders, who were government officials, likely increased local support the PMF and weakened Iraqi leaders, the same leaders the U.S. then expects to stand up to Iran and purge the militias. This is about as realistic as the White House eradicating every trace of the Sinaloa Cartel from the U.S. In both countries, those groups survive, and thrive, because they have some popular support, but also because government agencies and powerful people in both countries benefit from their activities.
The Pentagon produced no “ticking bomb” rationale for the “self-defense” attacks that it always describes as “appropriate and proportionate,” and would have shouted it from the rooftops if there was. The Pentagon killed the PMF leaders because it could, and as a way to eliminate potential future problems in the future, ignoring the here-and-now problems it caused for Baghdad.
A recent drone attack on Israel launched from Iraq killed two Israeli troops and injured 24. Iraqis are concerned about Israeli retaliation, but this is a good opportunity for the U.S. to tell Israel to stand down, and to pass information on the attackers to Baghdad so it can demonstrably clean house. Allowing Israel to strike Iraq will weaken Iraqi leaders when Washington should be doing what it can to strengthen them; standing idly by when its Israeli client attacks another country with impunity will only hurt U.S. interests.
Israel is planning to attack Iran in retaliation for Iran’s retaliation to Israel’s killing its allies in Hamas and Hezbollah and Iranian military officers, the attack on its consulate in Damascus, Syria. And, hopefully, to slow Iran’s nuclear program. The most direct routes are through Iraq and Saudi Arabia but Iraq’s foreign minister said the expansion of war to Iran via Iraq’s airspace is “unacceptable.”
Washington generally has a permissive attitude to whatever Israel wants to do, so if the attackers cross Iraq the assumption will be that the Americans approved, or did not disapprove, of the attack on Iran. This will dilute support for the U.S., weaken U.S.-friendly politicians, and strengthen the hands of Moscow and Beijing, who won’t mind seeing the Americans entangled in the expansion of the Israel-Palestine civil war into a regional conflict (and Russian and Chinese oil investors in Iraq won’t mind the price spike.)
Iraq’s prime minister, Mohammed Shia’ Al Sudani, visited the White House in April 2024 and his focus was the economic relationship between the U.S. and Iraq, especially because about 60 per cent of Iraq’s population is under the age of 25, and high youth unemployment (or under-employment) is a drag on the economy and a recruiting opportunity for Iran and the Islamists.
When Americans think of Iraq in economic terms it’s all about the oil, but in November 2023 ExxonMobil, America’s biggest oil company, exited Iraq with nothing to show for a decade-long effort. (PetroChina took over ExxonMobil’s role and now owns the biggest share in the West Qurna 1 oilfield, one of the world’s biggest with estimated recoverable reserves of over 20 billion barrels.) The departure will lower the expectations of other U.S. companies, but Sudani wants to revitalize economic ties with America.
Russia has invested over $19 billion in the Iraq energy sector with LUKOIL, Gazprom Neft and Rosneft the top investors. In early 2024, Gazprom, the Russian natural gas giant, was awarded the development contract for the Nasiriyah oil field, which holds an estimated 4.36 billion barrels.
Iraq is balancing between Russia and China to avoid becoming a client state, and American investment would increase Baghdad’s autonomy, but that’s assuming Washington doesn’t intend to do the same as Moscow and Beijing. In the absence of U.S. investment, Iraq may still be able to fund a diversified economy with oil income and that be less efficient than non-energy foreign direct investment, but Iraq has to make up for lost time since 1980, when Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion of Iran, and can’t afford to delay.
U.S.-Iraq trade has room for growth. In 2022, the U.S. exported $897 million in goods, the top product being automobiles. Iraq, in turn, exported $10.3 billion in goods, most of it crude oil.
A key economic objective of Iraq is the $17 billion Development Road, an overland road and rail link from the al-Faw port on the Persian Gulf to Europe via Turkey, that will host free-trade zones along its length. This initiative is designed to shorten travel time between Asia and Europe, potentially competing with Egypt’s Suez Canal.
The project is expected to enhance Iraq’s geopolitical position, promote regional stability, and reduce the country’s reliance on hydrocarbons by providing financial returns through increased trade. However, it faces challenges such as financing, implementation, corruption, and potential insecurity.
The Development Road may benefit from connecting to other transport projects in the area: the International North–South Transport Corridor, the ship, rail, and road route for moving freight between India, Russia, Iran, Europe, and Central Asia; and the Middle Corridor, an alternative to the Northern Corridor through Russia, which connects Southeast Asia and China to Europe via Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey.
Though the projects may be complementary, they may also compete for funding so no project is fully realized and each sees only minor improvements in the host country’s infrastructure.
The U.S. president and the Iraqi prime minister should consider the shape of the future U.S.-Iraq relationship, which has to now been securitized, first by the Cold War, then the invasion of Kuwait and the resulting sanctions campaign, the U.S.-led invasion, and finally the Islamic State insurgency. The 2003 invasion weakened the Iraqi state and invited greater Iranian influence which the U.S. should help Baghdad dilute, though the two countries share a common religion and some tribal areas straddle the Iraq-Iran border, so Baghdad and Tehran will probably always be too close for Washington’s liking.
Where Iran is concerned, in Washington, DC it’s always 1979.
America’s leaders’ challenge is to understand the concept of “sunk cost,” which means the approximately 4,500 U.S. military deaths, and the $2.1 trillion spent (mostly borrowed) in a war of choice is no reason to linger in Iraq, though the “enduring defeat” of the IS may give the project a new lease on life.
Iraq is the best modern example of The Meddler’s Trap, “a situation of self-entanglement, whereby a leader inadvertently creates a problem through military intervention, feels they can solve it, and values solving the new problem more because of the initial intervention. …A military intervention causes a feeling of ownership of the foreign territory, triggering the endowment effect.”
The U.S. and Iraq need to move from a security relationship to an economic relationship, and for Iraq to be a full partner the Americans may have to surrender their stranglehold on Iraq’s oil revenues, which gives the U.S. outsized influence with a key member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. If Washington is reluctant to do business, Iraq can always explore joining BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), though it will have to present the organization with a rationale other than “We have hydrocarbons,” which the current members, that include Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, have in abundance.
Iraq is a member of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank which may be a source of assistance to diversify its economy and infrastructure to make it more attractive to BRICS, or it may get more attention from China if Beijing senses Washington is bedeviled by a lack of imagination. Iraq joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative in 2015 and has received approximately $10.5 billion as of 2021, with investments focusing on energy projects, infrastructure development, and construction.
The U.S. can help Iraq navigate its way to a prosperous future for Iraqi youth, but both countries will have to distance themselves from Jerusalem and Tehran because indulging those two often promotes self-harm instead of cooperation and opportunity.
As a record number of Americans turn 65 this year, retiring abroad is becoming an increasingly attractive option for many. Former U.S. residents—or “expats”—say it offers a solution to soaring costs of living and health care in the United States. This dream, however, comes with a disclaimer: There are still plenty of challenges to navigate in other countries.
For some retirement-age expats, finding a slower pace of life, a sense of community, and a temperate climate were reasons enough to pull up stakes.
Near the sun-drenched shores of Playa del Carmen in Mexico, Jeff Natale is living his best life at age 68.
“I wanted a warm spot year-round,” he told The Epoch Times in an email.
Natale, the author of An Expats Guide to Living in Playa del Carmen, runs JMN Consulting LLC. After spending years in New York and New Jersey, he decided he’d had enough of brutal winters and urban sprawl.
The inspiration to live a different kind of life came after a high school trip to Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula in 1982. Natale fell in love with the culture, traditions, and slow-paced lifestyle of the locals and dreamed of returning one day to live there.
More than 30 years later, after marriage and raising a family in the United States, that’s exactly what he did. After what he referred to as a “series of life-changing events,” Natale turned his attention back to Mexico. He contacted a realtor and closed on a condo in Playa del Carmen in 2014, which kicked off a five-year retirement plan countdown that came to fruition in 2019.
“I said goodbye to the United States and arrived in Cancun with five suitcases and my African Grey Parrot,” Natale said.
Latin American countries such as Mexico, Panama, Colombia, and Brazil are top choices for living, according to the expat resource InterNations. In Europe, Spain ranks in the top 10 for best expat destinations, alongside the Philippines and Thailand in Southeast Asia.
The number of Americans collecting Social Security income abroad in recent years has risen sharply. In December 2008, the number of retired workers collecting benefits abroad was 306,906, according to the Social Security Administration. That number reached 443,546 by December 2021.
As of this year, more than 760,000 total Social Security beneficiaries living abroad receive a total of $7.5 billion in payments. That’s represents an almost 40 percent increase of total beneficiaries collecting from another country since 2008.
In the Philippines, Mike Jansen said he’d be spending his golden years abroad due, in part, to “unhappiness with American lying politicians” and how the government has treated former military service members like himself.
“Decided on the Philippines due to the culture, and they have more [spoken] English here than any other Asian country,” Jansen told The Epoch Times in a text.
Having lived in the country for 15 years, Jansen married a Filipina and is raising a family. He’s been working on an addition to his house for the past 10 months, putting in a formal dining room downstairs and a bedroom, bathroom, and balcony upstairs.
Jansen said the lower cost of living is definitely a bonus of living in the Philippines.
“So far, it’s cheaper than America,” Jansen said. “As long as the exchange rate does not dive.”
Health Is Wealth
When asked why he chose Playa del Carmen, Natale said the seaside town is a colorful “melting pot” of people, food, and lifestyles from all over Mexico.
“Considering Cancun is only 53 years old, and the state of Quintana Roo just celebrated its 50th anniversary, the vast majority of ‘older’ locals are representative of all parts of Mexico.”
Natale also said medical services are good and can be affordable. “I have found health care to be reasonably priced as a resident. Of course, there are two tiers of pricing—one for non-residents and one for residents. I do not have health insurance here as prices for care are much less than in my home states.”
Pricing varies in Mexico’s health care system. Public health care is cheap by U.S. standards, with an emergency room consultation costing as little as $6 in some places. However, services can be limited in the public sector, especially in rural areas. There can also be longer wait times for doctors in the public sector compared to the private sector.
Private health care is considered the gold standard in Mexico. It offers access to a wider network of hospitals and specialists, better infrastructure, and a higher number of English-speaking staff, according to the insurance provider Allianz Care.
As in most countries, private health care is more expensive in Mexico. Insurance options are available for expats who want the highest quality of care, and coverage plans are customized. On average, private health insurance can cost $1,700 per year or more. Insurance through Mexico’s public or national health care program is considerably less, costing $500 per year for eligible residents.
Natale acknowledged that despite the overall affordability of health care in Mexico, private insurance prices are steep. “If I need world-class health care, I can always go to Cancun, Merida, or Mexico City. Age and pre-existing conditions dictate the costs for insurance [in Mexico], and at my age of 68, it does not fit into my budget.”
Mexico has been a popular medical tourism destination for years. Thanks to the rising number of U.S. residents seeking health care abroad, retirees now enjoy well-established infrastructure and English-speaking care providers. In 2007, roughly 750,000 Americans traveled to other nations for health care. That number surpassed 1.4 million by 2017, according to a study published in The American Journal of Medicine.
In the medical tourism world, Prathyusha Itikarlapalli said she’s encountered many reasons why U.S. residents are looking to retire in another country.
“Health care is the number one priority for most people considering moving abroad for retirement,” Itikarlapalli told The Epoch Times by email.
In her work with Envoy Health, a company that partners with dental clinics in Mexico, she has found that many Americans seek treatment like implants and full mouth restorations across the border.
“These patients are often drawn by the flexibility of appointments and the convenience of transportation amenities that clinics offer, making the experience much easier for those traveling from the U.S.,” Itikarlapalli said.
“Whether it’s the final medical bill that drives home the unsustainable costs or the realization that their retirement savings won’t be enough, this financial pressure is what frequently tips the balance.”
At face value, dental work in Mexico can offer significant savings, depending on a patient’s circumstances. Costs can vary from $35 for a simple cleaning to $650 for a dental implant. By comparison, a dental implant in the United States starts around $1,000 and can go up to $5,000.
Another important value add for American expats is proximity. “Mexico, for some of us, never really seems that foreign. Plus, we can go back and forth so easy!” Mike Wall, an expat in Playa del Carmen, told The Epoch Times via text.
Careful Planning
An estimated 80 percent of households with older adults—around 47 million—are either financially struggling or not far from it, according to a National Council on Aging study.
Being able to afford retirement in the United States is a growing concern. This is reflected in a recent CNBC survey where one in every five retirees said they have no retirement savings. Another 15 percent said they have less than $50,000 saved. More than half of respondents feel they don’t have enough money to last for the duration of their retirement, and 86 percent said inflation has impacted their savings.
In the same poll, one in every three surveyed retirees chose to relocate. Among the reasons cited are finding a lower cost of living, a better lifestyle, and better weather.
The results aren’t surprising, considering the number of Americans collecting Social Security income outside the United States. It’s a trend that transcends generations—with interest in living abroad tripling since 1974, according to a Monmouth University poll.
However, despite the perks of finding cheaper, sunnier shores abroad, there are still hurdles to navigate.
“Challenges for retirees often involve understanding and integrating into local legal systems,” attorney Michael Hurckes, managing partner at MAH Advising, told The Epoch Times by email.
As a legal professional specializing in succession planning and transition services, Hurckes helps clients navigate the challenging landscape of international financial and legal decisions. In many cases, he said clients need help with retirement planning abroad.
“Many U.S. residents I’ve worked with choose to retire outside the U.S. primarily due to favorable tax implications and robust estate planning opportunities, which often reduce financial burdens considerably while protecting their legacy. One client cited the advantage of a reduced estate tax burden in their selected country as a decisive factor,” Hurckes said.
“My role frequently involves ensuring compliance with foreign property and inheritance laws, which can differ vastly from U.S. systems and impact tax liabilities.”
There’s no getting around the fact that retiring abroad requires a lot of leg work. According to U.S. Bank’s wealth management division, retirees should consider residency requirements, tax obligations, banking, and real estate before moving overseas.
“There’s a big difference between visiting a country on vacation and moving there,” Rachelle Tubongbanua, senior vice president and managing director of U.S. Bank Private Wealth Management, said in a company article.
According to Natale, some of the barriers American retirees encounter in other countries involve language, distance from family, and political and economic turmoil. However, not all obstacles are straightforward.
Americans can move to Mexico with their pets, but Natale said this was no easy feat for him. It took nearly a year to obtain the proper permits for his parrot to enter the country, but only “30 minutes to almost be deported upon our arrival.”
He called the incident a “classic lesson” in bureaucracy and corruption. But for Natale, it was just a bump on the road toward finding a new community and a better quality of life.
“Mexico is now my home,” he said. “My lifestyle is local. I live among locals, shop like a local, and have fully assimilated into Mexican culture. My acceptance by Mexican society has been overwhelming.”
On the other side of the world, Jansen feels the same way and is glad to call the Philippines home. “God willing, I’ll never have to leave here.”
Fethullah Gulen, the Turkish religious leader who founded the Gulen Movement, has died in the US state of Pennsylvania on Sunday night aged 83. Gulen and his movement were accused by the Turkish government of masterminding a failed military coup in July 2016, which left hundreds of Turks dead.
The movement itself denied involvement in the attempt to depose the Turkish government but its role in the coup attempt is accepted across Turkish society and even amongst opponents of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Herkul, an official website that releases announcements on Gulen’s activities, reported that the religious leader passed away at a hospital where he was undergoing treatment for chronic illnesses. A detailed report on his health condition and information about his funeral would be released later, it added.
Gulen’s death symbolizes the end of an era in Turkish politics. Born in 1941, Gulen established himself as an imam in Turkey in the 1970s and eventually set up a well-organized religious movement to disseminate his beliefs. The movement spread globally through a network of Turkish schools in more than 100 countries.
Functioning as an organization built around the figure of Gulen, the movement claimed to follow the teachings of late Islamic cleric and Sufi, Said Nursi.
Gulen transformed the group into a fully fledged political movement, whose followers practiced a form of entryism, in which they actively recruited individuals and placed them into key state institutes such as the police, judiciary and military.
Initial alliance
Early on in this endeavor, the Gulen movement’s policies dovetailed with the mainstream religious conservative movement, led by current Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Conservatives welcomed attempts to make the military and judiciary less hostile to religious groups, as those institutions were pivotal in suppressing the role of Islam in politics throughout Turkey’s modern history.
Within this climate of repression, Gulen moved to the US 1999, citing health reasons, and never returned to Turkey. From his base in the US, Gulen’s movement established schools, a media conglomerate with magazines, newspapers, and TV stations, as well business unions.
Networks of dormitories and student houses operating under the Gulen banner were used as a recruiting ground for the movement. Well-educated or bright potential members were chosen and had their identities masked or downplayed in order to easily enter government service.
When Erdogan entered office as prime minister in 2003, Gulen already had a large network of followers within the state, which was previously dominated by Turkish nationalists, secularists and others.
Erdogan allied himself with Gulen over the years to strengthen his own influence over the police and judiciary, as well as to undercut the military’s influence over politics. The alliance succeeded in bringing about constitutional changes in 2010 and Gulen-linked individuals dominated top judicial positions.
What followed were indictments against top generals and other powerful figures in the state who were accused of plotting to overthrow Erdogan, further dampening the role of the military in Turkish politics.
Break with Erdogan
Erdogan’s first crack with Gulen occurred during the Israeli attack on a Gaza flotilla in 2010 when nine Turkish citizens were killed by Israeli soldiers on board the Mavi Marmara, a ship attempting to break the siege on the people of Gaza.
Gulen criticized the flotilla as being too risky and slammed the government for permitting the boat to sail. Another sore point was the 2013 peace process between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which Gulen opposed.
Tensions simmered through the 2013 Gezi Park protests, as Gulen decided on a position of neutrality as anti-government protesters staged the most serious civil unrest against AKP rule since it took power in 2002.
The final break was a December 2013 corruption inquiry into three ministers within the Erodgan government. Erdogan accused Gulen and his movement of trying to use his people in the judiciary and police to topple his government through trumped-up charges.
After Erdogan won local elections a few months after the inquiry, he began his move against the Gulen movement, removing individuals associated with the group from state service, as well as declaring them terrorists.
The government also went after Gulen-linked companies, media outlets, and schools. This crackdown intensified after the 2016 coup attempt, after which widescale purges resulted in the dismissal and arrest of tens of thousands of civil servants and other state employees through emergency powers.
The Turkish state officially references the Gulen organization as a terror group…
Gulen’s presence in the US also became a point of tension with Washington, which did not immediately condemn the coup attempt. Ankara’s official demand for the US to return the cleric to Turkey were repeatedly ignored by the Americans, with Washington insisting there was not enough evidence implicating Gulen in the plot.
For its part, the Gulen Movement, which operates more than 100 charter schools in the US, has established lobbying groups to pressure Congress on alleged human rights abuses taking place in Turkey.
The group is, however, itself marred with division. Gulen’s nephew, Ebuseleme Gulen, earlier this year accused the movement’s leadership of knowing and approving the 2016 coup attempt by empowering people close to Gulen to participate in the insurrection while misleading Gulen about their involvement.
Turkish sources familiar with the issue told media on Monday that there would be a leadership crisis within the movement following Gulen’s death. The sources said Cevdet Turkyolu, one of Gulen’s lieutenants in Pennslyvania, and Abdullah Aymaz, the current leader of the group in Europe, are expected to compete for the top position in the coming days.
Vicki Umipeg was prematurely born at 22 weeks, weighing 3 pounds. Her optic nerve was damaged due to high oxygen in the incubator, resulting in complete blindness. She had no visual experiences, no awareness of light whatsoever.
At the age of 22, she was thrown out of a car in Seattle, resulting in severe injuries—skull fractures, concussion, and injuries to her neck, back, and leg. While being rescued in the hospital, she found herself floating to the ceiling.
She had panoramic vision and saw a woman’s body lying on a metal operating table, with a male and a female medical staff working to save her. When she noticed the distinct wedding ring on the woman’s hand, she realized it was her ring, and the woman lying there was her.
As she had been blind all her life, she had never seen that ring or her body. Only in that near-death experience (NDE) did she see her ring.
Vicki was the research subject of Dr. Jeffrey Long, a practicing radiation oncologist in Kentucky. Long has dedicated more than 25 years to studying near-death experiences. He has researched and reviewed more than 4,000 cases of unique NDEs and published them on his website, the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation.
Long summarized the most common experiences of NDE based on his research, which is similar to what Dr. Raymond Moody, known as the father of NDE, has found:
Out-of-body experience
Absence of pain
Passage through a tunnel towards a bright light
Encountering deceased loved ones in a heavenly realm
Undergoing a profound life review
Feeling overwhelming love and peace
Vicki’s case falls under the typical type of “out-of-body experience.” Her experience, especially the panoramic vision, is shared by all with NDEs.
360-Degree Vision
In a recent conversation with The Epoch Times, Long recalled his conversation with the blind woman.
“She had a 360-degree vision, where she could simultaneously be aware of and process vision during her near-death experience, in front of her, behind her, right, left, up, down.”
“In fact, I told Vicki that the rest of us in our earthly lives have these pie-shaped visual fields because of the location of our eyes, in our eye sockets. She literally laughed at me because her entire life experience with vision [during her NDE] was at 360 or spherical vision.”
Furthermore, initially unfamiliar with math and science, Vicki intuitively grasped calculus and understood how planets are formed after her NDE. She gained answers to questions about science, math, life, planets, and God, experiencing a flood of knowledge and understanding languages she didn’t know before.
From Delusional to Real
People who reported near-death experiences were often dismissed by the scientific community as delusional or religiously influenced until a significant shift in perspective over the past few decades.
In 1978, five independent medical doctors and scientists—John Audette, who has a master of science degree; Dr. Bruce Greyson; Dr. Raymond Moody; Ken Ring, who has a doctorate in social psychology; and Dr. Michael Sabom—co-established the International Association for Near-Death Studies, paving the way for exploring these extraordinary experiences through scientific lenses.
“I first heard about near-death experience decades ago when I was in my residency training,” Long said, “and in one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals, the Journal of the American Medical Association.”
“I was flipping through the journal looking for a cancer-related article, and totally by accident, found the phrase near death experience in the title of an article. I was puzzled because nothing I’d learned in medical school explained that. You’re either alive or dead.”
The article was written by Sabom, a cardiologist who studied people who have survived cardiac arrest and coma. Some patients reported their consciousness came out of their bodies and observed what was happening while their bodies were unconscious, he wrote. What they described seeing was accurate down to the finest details.
Several years later, the wife of one of Long’s college friends shared her detailed and remarkable near-death experience with him.
“During a surgery under general anesthesia, she went into cardiac arrest due to an allergic reaction, meaning her heart stopped,” Long said.
“At that point, she had an out-of-body experience, witnessing the chaos in the operating room and hearing the loud alarm from the EKG monitoring her heart. She briefly passed through a tunnel and found herself in a non-earthly realm where she encountered other beings. There, she was given a choice about returning to her life. She asked the beings for guidance, and after some conversation, she decided to return to her body. She was successfully resuscitated.”
Long wondered why more people weren’t researching this fascinating phenomenon, so he began his journey to collect NDE cases. He built a database of 4,000 cases. “By far the largest publicly accessible collection of near-death experiences in the world,” he told The Epoch Times.
In a survey, he asked people directly about the reality of their experience, and nearly 95 percent of respondents said their experience was “definitely real.”
The 30 Failed Hypotheses
According to Long, people who are skeptical about NDEs have proposed more than 30 different explanations for these experiences.
“The reason that there are so many of these skeptical explanations—over 30 floating around—is very simple,” Long told The Epoch Times, “Because none of the skeptical explanations explain anything during the near-death experience, let alone everything that occurs.”
Hypotheses of hallucinations induced by hypoxia (decreased oxygen levels) and hypercarbia (increased carbon dioxide) were raised to explain why NDEs don’t fly. The reason is simple, “Medically, that results in confusion and diminished consciousness, not increased.” Long said.
The Lancet study studied hundreds of patients who were successfully resuscitated after cardiac arrest or clinically dead. Eighteen percent of those patients reported NDE. If cerebral hypoxia is the reason for causing near-death experiences—and everyone clinically dead has hypoxia—then most patients should have experienced NDE, said the researcher. However, this was not the case.
Others have argued that endorphins—the brain’s naturally produced narcotic-like substance—might explain NDEs. However, endorphins continue to exert their post-event pain-relieving effect on the brain for over an hour, which is not aligned with NDE, Long said.
“With near-death experiences, the moment they return to their physical body—boom—there’s no relief of pain or anything; they’re instantly having pain.” Long said.
Others have talked about seizures. Long said, “Seizures generally cause reduced or substantially altered consciousness, not the lucid, consistent experiences.”
Ernst Rodin, the former president of the American Clinical Neurophysiology Society, commented, “In spite of having seen hundreds of patients with temporal lobe seizures during three decades of professional life, I have never come across that symptomatology [NDE] as part of a seizure.”
The Lancet study also concluded that patients’ medication treatments or fear of death were found to be not associated with NDEs.
‘Doubly Impossible’
Additionally, NDEs have even been documented under general anesthesia.
“Under general anesthesia, you should have no possible lucid, organized, conscious experience.” Long said.
Some people were under general anesthesia—and then their heart stopped—in this case, Long said, it should be “doubly impossible to have any conscious experience.” And yet, they’re still having the same typically hyper-lucid, hyper-alert, hyper-conscious experience that all other near-death experiences have, he added.
“That, almost single-handedly, refutes any possibility that NDEs are due to physical brain function.”
Beyond Cultures, Religion, and Age
Other hypotheses include the psychological model, which proposes that NDEs are caused by imaginations based on personal, religious, or cultural background. However, individuals often report NDEs that are inconsistent with their life experiences or beliefs regarding death.
Some people say NDEs are culturally determined. However, Long found that the experiences are “remarkably similar wherever in the world they occur.”
“No matter where on earth they happen, it doesn’t make any difference. Whether you’re, say, a Muslim in Egypt or a Hindu in India, a Christian in the United States, or even an atheist everywhere in the world, that near-death experiences occur, and whatever their prior belief system was or wasn’t, the content what happens during a near-death experience is strikingly similar.”
After the 1976 Tangshan earthquake in China, Chinese scientists observed a similar pattern of NDEs as the Western record.
Among the 81 survivors, 65 percent had heightened clarity of thought, 43 percent felt separation from their physical bodies, and 40 percent felt weightlessness. The experience was similar regardless of age, gender, occupation, or health status before the earthquake.
Long studied a group of children 5 and younger, with an average age of 3.5—“practically a culturally blank slate,” he said. “The content of these very young children is strikingly similar to the content of near-death experiences of older children and adults.”
Meeting God
Moody, who started studying NDE more than half a century ago, has pointed out that many near-death experiencers describe encountering a radiant being of light known as “The Being of Light,” as Moody describes in his book, “Life After Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon – Survival of Bodily Death.”
This light is often described as a brilliant and indescribable radiance that doesn’t harm the eyes. Most individuals perceive this light as an advanced being imbued with love and warmth, or God.
Vicki also reported that in her NDE, she saw a figure with extraordinary radiance; she recognized this being to be Jesus.
To further investigate the truthfulness of “God” in near-death experiences, Long conducted research about God between 2011 and 2014, based on 420 cases of NDEs from people of various professions and walks of life.
Before experiencing a near-death event, 39 percent of people believed in the “absolute existence of God.” After their NDE, this belief increased to 72.6 percent. The number of individuals who believed in the absolute existence of God increased by 86 percent, and their faith in God greatly intensified, he wrote in his book, “God and the Afterlife: The Groundbreaking New Evidence for God and Near-Death Experience.”
Long carefully examined 277 descriptions of encounters with God and found a significant consistency in their descriptions—an all-loving and all-gracious supreme being radiating love and grace.
Other common features of encounters with God described in near-death experiences include nonjudgment, acceptance of who they are and a sense of unity or oneness with God. Communication is essentially always nonphysical or telepathic.
Positive Message
Before delving into NDE research, Long was puzzled by questions such as “who we are,” he felt that we are much more than just how our physical brain operates.
Near-death experiences provide overwhelming evidence for the existence of a consciousness apart from the body—a more eternal existence, said Long.
We are not just constrained operating machines but lives with numerous possibilities beyond our current recognition.
This is “the most powerfully positive message” for all humanity, he added.
A recent war simulation reported by the German newspaper Bild has modeled the potential fallout from a Russian attack on NATO’s eastern flank, specifically targeting the Baltic states.
The simulation, which explores the implications of such a conflict, highlights a worst-case scenario where NATO’s response could be delayed, leaving Lithuania and its neighbors vulnerable to a Russian advance.
The computer-simulated wargame, developed with input from former U.S. Army Europe commander Ben Hodges and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Philip Breedlove, envisions an attack taking place in 2027, with Russian forces launching assaults from Belarus and the Kaliningrad region, swiftly moving to occupy parts of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
The focus of the attack would be the strategically significant Suwałki Corridor, a 100-kilometer stretch of land connecting Kaliningrad to Belarus.
Often dubbed “the most dangerous place on the planet,” this corridor could be used to cut off the Baltic states from the rest of NATO.
The simulation suggests that NATO’s Article 5 – the alliance’s collective defense clause – could take several days to activate, causing delays in mobilizing support.
As a result, Lithuania and the other Baltic states would need to face Russian forces alone for up to 10 days before NATO could deliver significant reinforcements to the region.
During this period, NATO’s German brigade stationed in Lithuania, expected to number 5,000 troops and 44 Leopard 2 tanks by 2027, would play a crucial role.
In the simulation, German tanks eventually halted the Russian advance within three days of deployment.
“We need to buy as much time as possible,” explained General Breedlove.
“First there will be air support, then the fleet, and then heavy ground troops. It would be necessary to hold positions until the arrival of large NATO forces,” he noted.
Despite successful resistance, the damage to Lithuania would be severe, with the country left partially occupied and devastated by the end of the conflict.
Thousands of fatalities on both sides would also be recorded in a ferocious few days of fighting.
On an Oct. 13 MSNBC broadcast with anchor Jen Psaki, Democratic strategist – and former political advisor to President Bill Clinton – James Carville denounced Donald Trump for putting “the entire Constitution in jeopardy.” Carville offered a concrete example of the right’s subversion of American freedom and democracy: “The Supreme Court and Clarence Thomas have totally greenlighted the idea that you could round up, use the military to round up your political enemies.” A former political advisor to Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Psaki replied with a smile, “We love the truth telling.”
Carville and Psaki are typical. The left often portrays itself as the rigorous defender of truth against relentless right-wing disinformation while resolutely promoting progressive disinformation, including the falsehood that disinformation is a distinctively right-wing phenomenon.
Small wonder that Carville did not elaborate on his extraordinary accusation, and that Psaki did not ask why he singled out Justice Thomas or how the Supreme Court authorized the rounding up of political enemies. Perhaps Carville had in mind the court’s holding last July in Trump v. United States “that the President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for conduct within his exclusive sphere of constitutional authority.” But the Constitution does not give the president authority to round up political enemies.
Did Carville glibly attack Trump and did Psaki politely play along? Did partisan rage distort Carville’s judgment as well as Psaki’s? Did Carville resolve to assert – and Psaki to endorse – whatever it takes, including nightmare scenarios, to protect democracy from Trump?
It is hard to read hearts and minds. But one can confidently affirm that deceiving about politics is as old as politics.
Circumstances change. Regimes come and go. Empires rise and fall. Parties win and lose. Yet even as modernization and technology revolutionize human affairs by generating material abundance, destabilizing settled expectations, and eroding inherited understandings, human beings remain social and political animals. Individuals need one another’s company and cooperation while – given diverse backgrounds, disposition, abilities, and interests – differing over what is useful, just, and good. Some strive to exercise power over others while most try to minimize the power that others exercise over them. Through it all, passion and prejudice constantly buffet everyone’s reasoning, and auspicious opportunities and dire predicaments tempt even the virtuous to portray the facts as other than they are.
No doubt novel opportunities abound today for promulgating lies and disseminating the family of departures from the truth that human beings routinely produce, distribute, consume, and rail against. In particular, the Internet, digital communications, and social media have facilitated the acquisition and transmission of immense amounts of information. This has greatly increased the quantity and accelerated the velocity of casual errors, self-deceptions, well-meaning half-truths, fraudulently marketed opinions and ideas, and outright lies that swirl through political culture.
Both right and left in America partake of the free-for-all of duplicity – often crude, occasionally artful – that plagues American politics. There is, however, an asymmetry.
Both sides insist that the other is exclusively at fault for the decay of public discourse. But the left controls the commanding heights of education, mainstream and social media, and government bureaucracy.
The left’s false contention that the right exercises a monopoly on manipulation, deceit, and falsehood is particularly damaging because the left amplifies its accusation through domination of the nation’s communication, elite opinion formation, and rule-making and law-enforcement institutions. This substantial advantage in the struggle to shape public opinion encourages the left’s sense of superiority while blinding progressives to their own intellectual subterfuges and ideological swindles. It also foments outrage on the right. Conservatives justify their extreme statements and outrageous claims as playing by progressives’ rules.
Atlantic staff writer Charlie Warzel recently illustrated the left’s propensity to wrongly present disinformation as a specifically right-wing pathology. Author of “Galaxy Brain,” The Atlantic’s newsletter “about technology, media, and big ideas,” Warzel argues in “I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is” that an unprecedented assault on truth has “been building for more than a decade.” The crisis stems, he maintains, from a calamitous combination of right-wing extremism and digital technology that breaks reality into two – a world of truth inhabited by the left and a world of “dark” falsehoods that the right creates, outfits, and calls home.
“This reality-fracturing is the result of an information ecosystem that is dominated by platforms that offer financial and attentional incentives to lie and enrage, and to turn every tragedy and large event into a shameless content-creation opportunity,” writes Warzel. “This collides with a swath of people who would rather live in an alternate reality built on distrust and grievance than change their fundamental beliefs about the world.”
Warzel would have placed his analysis of just how badly political discourse in America has deteriorated on much sounder footing if he had recognized that the left also employs digital technology to fabricate and maintain a separate world. In the left’s alternative reality, the remorseless siege of systemic racism, sexism, and other sinister forms of oppression obliges progressives to abandon basic requirements of evidence and argument to rally the faithful and save the nation and the world.
Responses to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, maintains Warzel, have set a new low. “Even in a decade marred by online grifters, shameless politicians, and an alternative right-wing-media complex pushing anti-science fringe theories,” he writes, “the events of the past few weeks stand out for their depravity and nihilism.” He gives chilling examples careening around the Internet of harebrained conspiracy theories about government malfeasance and implausible stories of official neglect, or deliberate disregard, of storm victims that have delayed the delivery of essential government services. These remind that people can easily dupe others and be duped, especially when hurricane season coincides with election season, and individuals are armed with smart phones and social media accounts, and distrust elite institutions.
Warzel is rightly alarmed that “Americans are divided not just by political beliefs but by whether they believe in a shared reality – or desire one at all.” But his one-sided analysis inadvertently underscores that fault for the splintering of America does not lie solely with Trump and his backers.
Or even primarily.
Yes, Jan. 6, 2021, was a disgrace. Yes, right-wing rhetoric can be ridiculous, ominous, and vile. And yes, right-wing activists also exploit the Internet to stoke grievance and stir up resentment and rage.
Still, progressives tend to neglect that Trump and his voters have reasons, accumulating for decades, for distrusting institutions fundamental to the nation’s security, prosperity, and freedom and dominated by progressives: universities, the mainstream media and social media, and the federal bureaucracy.
Contrary to the common view on the left that Trump inaugurated a war on truth, our universities have for at least two generations sought to emancipate students from the traditional understanding that higher education’s purpose is to pursue knowledge and cultivate independent minds. Instead, through a succession of intellectual fashions and fads – including positivism, relativism, postmodernism, deconstruction, multiculturalism, identity politics, and intersectionality – universities have fostered the incoherent and partisan belief that since moral values are socially constructed, progressive policies must prevail.
Meanwhile, our progressive media – mainstream and social – and our progressive federal bureaucracy have collaborated to promote progressive national narratives by censoring opinions that challenge the progressive perspective and weaponizing the law against those who oppose progressivism’s hegemony.
The most egregious such collaboration revolved around the charge – widely presented as established fact by the press, defeated candidate Hillary Clinton, and elected Democratic officials and progressive intellectuals – that Donald Trump conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 election. This weighed down President Trump and hampered his administration. Yet after a two-year investigation, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose team contained several experienced and high-powered Democratic lawyers, issued a lengthy report stating that the investigation “did not establish that the Trump campaign coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
Another disreputable collaboration to advance progressive ends sought to push Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden over the finish line in November 2020. A few weeks before the election, the New York Post accurately reported that a laptop containing incriminating evidence belonged to Joe Biden’s son Hunter. The mainstream media, social media, and the FBI censored the Post’s reporting while disseminating the falsehood that the computer was a product of Russian disinformation.
A third major collaboration occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. The New York Times and the Washington Post derided the notion that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab, which it likely did, and government officials, led by Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins, suppressed the lab-leak hypothesis. In addition, the mainstream media, social media, and federal government teamed up to discredit and silence those who raised questions about the efficacy of masks, lockdowns, and vaccines.
To do their share to arrest the splintering of America, progressives must do more than profess their love of the truth. They must act like they mean it.
Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. From 2019 to 2021, he served as director of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department. His writings are posted at PeterBerkowitz.com and he can be followed on X @BerkowitzPeter.
Hurricane Helene devastated large swaths of western North Carolina, with entire towns wiped away or forever altered. The human disaster will be felt for decades. But there’s another impending disaster no one is talking about – a political one.
North Carolina is a perennial swing state with a penchant for split-ticket voting. In 2020, Donald Trump won the state by less than 1.5 percentage points. In 2008, Barack Obama clinched the state for the Democrats by a mere 14,000 votes out of 4.3 million votes. This year, North Carolina is once again a battleground state, with both political parties spending hundreds of millions of dollars, and both presidential nominees are spending significant time here. In the Tar Heel State, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are literally fighting for every single vote.
But Hurricane Helene didn’t just wipe out towns. It may also wipe out people’s right to vote. Tens of thousands of voters are homeless or temporarily camped out far from their homes. While the North Carolina Board of Elections is tweaking rules to make it easier to vote, residents in the most severely damaged areas probably have other, bigger problems on their minds – like missing relatives, lost livelihoods, children who can’t go to school, filing insurance claims, just to name a few. The last thing on their to-do lists is remembering to reregister to vote at their new address before Oct. 6, which has since come and gone.
There is an unspoken question that needs to be voiced: What happens if hundreds of thousands of voters in western North Carolina can’t vote in the 2024 election?
The disaster declaration in western North Carolina encompasses 25 counties, comprising 1.3 million registered voters, of which 974,514 voted for president in 2020.
Currently, registered Republicans make up 37.9% of western North Carolina voters compared to 28.2% in the rest of the state. Registered Democrats make up only 22.8% of western North Carolina voters compared to 33.2% in the rest of the state. In 2020, Trump won 604,119 votes to Joe Biden’s 356,902 votes in those 25 counties.
In other words, western North Carolina is Republican country, even with deep blue Asheville sitting in the heart of the mountains. In the closest election in recent history, Republicans don’t have 600,000 votes to spare.
In order for a Republican candidate to have a fighting chance of winning statewide in North Carolina, they have to drive up their margin of victory in the western part of the state. Since 2016, Republican presidential and Senate candidates have won by a margin of 23.4% to 27.9% in western North Carolina. In those same elections, all Republicans (Trump, Tillis, Budd), except former Sen. Richard Burr, also lost the rest of the state.
Compare those margins to losing Republican candidates. In 2016, the incumbent governor, Pat McCrory, won western North Carolina by 19.3%. Four years later, Republican Dan Forest only eked out an 18.7% margin in the west. McCrory lost the rest of the state by 4.4%, and Forest lost it by 9.5%.
In other words, statewide Republicans can’t win North Carolina without soaking up every red vote to the west.
As of Oct. 7, absentee ballot requests in western North Carolina totaled 46,094, accounting for 15.7% of statewide requests. Some of those ballots will never reach their intended recipients. That is concerning, but the bigger impact will come from in-person early voting, slated to begin October 17. In 2020, 70% of Trump’s vote in western North Carolina came from in-person early voting sites. It is not yet clear how many early voting sites are damaged, but the wide expanse of Helene’s damage suggests it will be significant. According to Axios, “infrastructure, accessibility to voting sites, and postal services remain severely disrupted” in 13 counties, accounting for 552,514 registered voters.
With North Carolina growing increasingly close, hundreds of thousands of Tar Heel voters who are unable to vote could doom Republicans chances here – and nationwide – over the next 27 days. While it is possible for Trump to win 270 electoral votes while losing North Carolina, it makes a narrow path to the White House that much narrower.
Playing around with the electoral map produces a number of scenarios in which Trump comes short of 270 electoral votes without North Carolina. One scenario gives Trump Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania while losing Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina. He loses that election 265 to 273.
Getting western North Carolina back on its feet has to be the priority for the federal and state governments. However, with such an important election at our doorstep, it would be irresponsible to ignore the political implications of this historic disaster. It’s not just about disenfranchising voters – which is important enough.
Imagine for a moment that this election comes down to a razor-thin margin in storm-torn North Carolina. Allegations start flying – about lost ballots, late ballots, ballots sent to the wrong precincts, etc. It will be Florida circa 2000 on steroids, and nobody wants to go through that again. Our country is already fraying at the seams with little trust in our democratic institutions. Talk about throwing a match into a powder keg.
To prevent this election outcome from being dictated by a 100-year storm, it is incumbent on the Board of Elections to do absolutely everything in its power to make sure western North Carolinians, especially those in rural and most isolated parts of the impacted area, have every opportunity to cast their ballots. It’s also incumbent on Republicans to start tackling this problem now. Don’t wait until Nov. 6 to sound the alarm.
No one wants to politicize a storm that has destroyed so many lives, but that’s exactly what will happen if we don’t get this right.
Ryan Bonifay is the director of data & analytics at ColdSpark and lives in Lexington, North Carolina. Bonifay has worked and served as data director for several campaigns and organizations across the southeast, including the Republican National Committee, Engage Texas, Texans for Greg Abbott, and former U.S. Senator David Perdue.
FBI Believes US Intel Leak On Israel Was Likely A Government Insider, Not Hacking
The FBI and the Department of Defense are scrambling to uncover how it was that two highly classified intelligence documents related to Israel’s preparation for a potential retaliatory attack on Iran appeared on a Middle East news-related Telegram channel days ago.
The White House has described President Biden as “deeply concerned” over the serious breach, and has confirmed there is an intense investigation ongoing to ascertain how it happened and who had access.
At this point it’s not even confirmed whether the documents were made public via a hack or a leak by an individual who had access to them.
The documents were produced by the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, and were marked “Top Secret” and restricted from distribution from most foreign allies, with the exception of countries belonging to the “Five Eyes”.
The White House also said Monday that at this point officials do not believe that more documents were breached beyond the two which were made public.
CNN meanwhile reports that investigators currently believe the intel docs were leaked by someone within the US intelligence community:
The FBI is leading the investigation, working with Pentagon investigators and the intelligence community, according to US officials briefed on the matter.
In recent days, investigators have worked to authenticate the documents and determine who could have had access to them, the officials said.
That focus is one indication that, for now, the FBI and other investigators are working off the theory that the breach most likely came from a government insider and not from a cyber intrusion.
Statements attributed to the FBI further suggest authorities are getting close to tracking down the culprit. While both documents were available among a relatively large pool of US intelligence analysts and officials, CNN has noted that one of them appears to have been scanned from a printed briefing book.
“That could provide investigators with a critical jumping-off point: The Defense Department, like other federal agencies, tracks when employees print classified documents. The pool of people who printed these pages would be relatively small, these sources said,” CNN details.
Another statement by the Telegram channel rejects claims made by Axios and Jerusalem Post that the group is “Iran-affiliated”. And more info on how the leak originated: pic.twitter.com/EJdiLBGyx7
This is precisely how US Air Force veteran and former NSA translator Reality Winner got caught. She printed a single classified document from her work computer, and then anonymously mailed it to The Intercept. It was an NSA document related to alleged ‘Russian interference’ in the 2016 United States elections, which involved some phishing scams and efforts at breaching voting software. The document itself was relatively vague. Government investigators were able to very quickly determine which printer was used, and which NSA employee viewed it.
The House task force investigating the July 13 assassination attempt targeting former President Donald Trump concluded that the incident was “preventable,” releasing new testimony from local law enforcement officials who provided accounts of communications and operational failures at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Released on Monday, the report concluded that there was a “lack of planning and coordination” between the U.S. Secret Service and its local law enforcement partners during the Trump rally.
The Secret Service, it found, “did not give clear guidance to the relevant state and local agencies about managing areas outside the secure event perimeter, and there was no joint meeting on the day of the rally between [the Secret Service] and all state and local law enforcement agencies assisting” the federal agency.
Monday’s House task force report mostly echoes findings made by the Senate Homeland Security panel report and an internal Secret Service report, both of which were released in September.
The report included findings that were already publicly released. But the report contained new interviews with local law enforcement officials in Butler County on how the Secret Service failed to perform on July 13.
Unnamed officials in Butler provided more details on how the gunman was first spotted by law enforcement and that nothing was done until he opened fire upon the rally, clipping Trump’s right ear with a bullet while killing a rally-goer and severely injuring two others.
As one example, one emergency services official told the panel that he sent a text message to his colleague that the shooter was seen with a rangefinder at around 5:17 p.m. However, the colleague did not see the message until more than 20 minutes later, at around 5:40 p.m.
The report also included new testimony from the officer who attempted to climb on the roof of the building where the gunman had perched before he opened fire. Days after the shooting, local officials confirmed that an officer tried to get on the roof but that the shooter pointed his weapon at him, forcing the officer to back down.
Police body-camera footage was also released of the incident, showing the officer getting a boost from another law enforcement official in a bid to climb on the roof. The shooter could not be seen in that clip.
That unnamed official told the panel that as he attempted to move his way onto the roof, the gunman “slowly turned on his waist” and “slowly turned around.”
“And as I came up, that’s when he pointed his firearm in my face,” the official said. “And at that time, I could see, you know, he had a bookbag with him, I could see mags (gun magazines).
“I knew he had a long gun, like an AR-platform. And as I’m coming up and he’s got the gun pointed at me, I don’t know if I reach for my gun, if I slip, but all I know from that point is I’m looking at him, and all my weight is on my, like, arms, my hands, and I don’t have a grip.”
The officer added, “The next thing I know, I smack against the ground and fall.”
“I just start yelling out to the guys that are there, I yell on the radio right away,” the official added. “I start saying, you know, South end, He’s got a long gun. Male on the roof. I just kept repeating, He’s got a gun. He’s got a long gun. I’m telling the guys that are around, like, he’s right up there, guns up, eyes up, still screaming on the radio.”
Overall, local and state law enforcement officials who spoke to the House panel were largely critical of the lack of a unified command and communications post to oversee security at the Trump event.
They also said that there was no unified briefing between the federal and local partners that could “have led to gaps in awareness among state and local law enforcement partners as to who was stationed where, spheres of responsibility, and expectations regarding communications during the day,” according to the report.
The Secret Service has not issued a comment on the House panel’s report. The Epoch Times contacted the agency but received no response by publication time.
The acting director of the Secret Service in August conceded that the agency failed in its mission to protect Trump during the rally, did not properly secure the rally site, and that several agency staffers would face punishment over the incident.
Two months later, federal law enforcement officials said that Trump was the target of a second assassination attempt, this time at his Florida golf course while he was golfing. The Secret Service said that an agent who was protecting Trump saw the barrel of a rifle sticking out of a perimeter fence on Sept. 15 before he engaged with the suspect and opened fire, prompting him to flee.
Ryan Wesley Routh was later arrested and charged with multiple felony counts in connection to the incident and has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors say that Routh had authored a note that indicated he wanted to assassinate the former president.
