Category: Headlines

Just In News | The Hill 

Former President Trump is suing the former British spy behind the controversial Steele Dossier that detailed intel on potential links between Trump and Russia, asserting the report contained “shocking and scandalous claims” that were false and harmful to the former president’s reputation.

Trump’s lawyers filed suit in Britain against Orbis Business Intelligence, the company founded by Christopher Steele, a former MI6 agent who published a 35-page dossier including uncorroborated claims that Trump’s campaign and Russian agents conspired to influence the 2016 U.S. election, according to The Associated Press.

Hugh Tomlinson, a lawyer for Trump who appeared before a judge at London’s High Court on Monday, alleged the company violated British data protection laws and has “suffered personal and reputational damage and distress” as a result.

The former president has repeatedly claimed the dossier was “fake news” and a political witch hunt following the 2016 presidential election.

Steele, who led the Russia desk for MI6 — formally known as the Secret Intelligence Service — is looking to have the lawsuit dismissed during two days of hearings at London’s High Court, per AP reports.

Steele’s dossier has since been largely discredited and determined to be funded by Democrats during the 2016 presidential election. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) settled a campaign finance inquiry last year, agreeing to pay $113,000 in fines stemming from the dossier.

While the dossier itself was not the basis for the FBI’s probe into Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, the report was heavily involved with the investigation led by former special counsel Robert Mueller.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to fight various legal battles in the United States, including an ongoing civil trial in New York over more than a decade of alleged fraud.

Trump also faces four separate criminal cases over accusations of his mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House, attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and hush money payments to cover up an affair.

A federal judge will hear from from Trump’s lawyers and the Justice Department on Monday over prosecutors’ request for a “narrow” gag order that would prohibit the former president from attacking witnesses and those involved in his Jan. 6 election interference case.

The Associated Press contributed.

​Court Battles, International, News, mueller report, special counsel investigation, Steele Dossier Read More 

Just In News | The Hill 

Four Ukrainian children are set to return to their families after mediation from Qatar between Ukraine and Russia, Qatari officials announced Monday.

Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement it has received the children at the embassy in Moscow in the first phase of an eventual reunification with their families in Ukraine.

Lolwah Al-Khater, a minister of state for international cooperation with Qatar’s Foreign Ministry, shared pictures of the children at the embassy on X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter.

Qatar, a small but influential Arab nation in the Middle East, said it would continue to play a “constructive” role in further peacekeeping processes.

“Qatar stands firmly in support of the efforts made by both the Ukrainian and Russian sides to safeguard the rights and well-being of the children affected by the ongoing crisis,” the foreign ministry wrote in the statement.

Thousands of Ukrainian children have been taken into Russia since the war began in February 2022, according to Ukrainian officials, who have accused Russia of carrying out a mass kidnapping of their youth.

The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant over the spring for Russian President Vladimir Putin, citing alleged war crimes for the unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine into Russia. An arrest warrant was also issued for Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, commissioner for children’s rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation, over her role in the deportations.

The release of the four children Monday appears to have come after months of talks and could be a sign of further agreements.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani traveled to Kyiv in July and was thanked publicly by Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal for efforts to help mediate on the repatriating of Ukrainian children.

The Qatari prime minister also traveled to Moscow in June to discuss the war in Ukraine with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

​International, denys shymal, lolwah alkhater, Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, sergei lavrov, Ukrainian children Read More 

Just In News | The Hill 

The Capitol is about to be plastered with postcards — some drawn by celebrities including Alyssa Milano, Olympic diver Greg Louganis and “Justice League” director Zack Snyder — as part of an art exhibit with a message.

The goal of the global art campaign, dubbed the Dear Dyslexia Project, is to “change perceptions of dyslexia and inspire lawmakers to champion policy changes that support students with dyslexia,” according to organizers.

The effort features the illustrations of more than 1,000 students, leaders and performers who were asked to put on a postcard one word that best describes their experience with dyslexia.

The most common words chosen by the participants include superpower, hard, different and creative.

In her rainbow-colored postcard, former “Charmed” star Milano wrote, “Dyslexia helps me see things that other people cannot see.”

Snyder described dyslexia as “a point of view,” drawing an image of a squid.

The project is poised to be unveiled on Tuesday morning in room 2044 at the Rayburn House Office Building at an event with Dear Dyslexia creator Gil Gershoni, Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-Ind.) and dyslexia advocates, hosted by Rep. Julia Brownley (D-Calif.), the co-chair of the Congressional Dyslexia Caucus.

Other postcards include the artwork of children’s authors Dav Pilkey, Sally Gardner and Carmen Agra Deedy, Nobel Prize winner Jacques Dubochet and comedian Liz Miele.

“Our goal is to get lawmakers to think about a more complex definition of dyslexia. Yes, dyslexia makes a few things — like reading and writing — more challenging,” Gershoni told ITK in a statement.

“But it also supercharges our abilities in other areas. In many ways, it’s a hyper-ability,” Gershoni said.

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Just In News | The Hill 

Hamas’s deadly and unprecedented attacks on Israeli military and civilian targets this month have been described by some as an intelligence failure on the part of Israeli intelligence services. 

From what we can glean from this far away, and without access to classified information, it would appear that such a characterization is accurate. Hamas’s attack required significant planning and coordination among multiple actors — at the border between Gaza and Israel, in paragliders, and at missile batteries in Gaza. It can be hard to believe that Hamas planned such an extensive attack without Israeli intelligence giving sufficient warning. 

That is, it is hard to believe if you are unfamiliar with the literature on intelligence failure. 

Intelligence analysts — those responsible for making sense of the raw intelligence collected by civilian and military intelligence agencies — are tasked with using incomplete and spotty information to answer complicated and consequential questions. When analysts have time to develop their expertise, gather evidence from all sources, and separate the reliable information (“signals”) from the false information (“noise”), they are valuable assets to policymakers, who desperately need their expertise to make informed decisions.  

Ultimately, intelligence agencies are better at providing this sort of information to lawmakers. Describing the capabilities of North Korean or Chinese intercontinental ballistic missiles, explaining the total collapse of the Venezuelan economy under President Nicolás Maduro and hunting down illicit finance that funds terrorism are all examples of where intelligence agencies excel.  

But, they often fail when it comes to predicting the future. 

CIA analyst training in the year 2000 included an intensive segment on causes and cases of intelligence failure. These included lack of communication between intelligence services (Pearl Harbor), overestimation of a rival’s capabilities (the fall of the Soviet Union) and over-reliance on liaison intelligence partners (the Iranian Revolution). As for 9/11, American intelligence agencies were fully aware of al Qaeda’s plans to attack a U.S. target but were unable to get specific information on the date, time and location of planned attacks due to lack of human intelligence assets in specific al Qaeda units. Lack of communication between intelligence services — in this case, barriers between the CIA and FBI intended to protect Americans’ civil liberties — was again one of the causes of the failure.  

In short, we know why intelligence failures happen, but preventing the next one is never guaranteed. Israeli intelligence services are no more infallible in this way than the American.  

From the standpoint of the public, the failures to warn are obvious, while the successes are invisible. A thwarted attack is a non-event that goes unnoticed by all except the people in the government and military members who were directly responsible for sounding the warning or preventing the attack. Israeli intelligence services have such a formidable reputation because they are often successful in blunting the effects of an attack, but this makes the failure to blunt the effects of this one all the more shocking.  

It is too soon to know the specific sources of this intelligence failure, but previous cases tell us that while the failure led to horrific consequences, the answers will be fairly mundane.  

Renee Buhr, M.A., Ph.D., is a professor of political science at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. She served as a nonproliferation analyst in the Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2000-2003. 

​National Security, Opinion Read More