Banned In Bahrain!

Well, that's a relief.

On TDY this week, I was unable to connect to a particular FS blog, one whose author recently had a session with official critics of her employment of social media. I was afraid that meant she had decided to take her blog down.

But it turns out she is merely Banned In Bahrain. The reason for that ban is unknown to me. Quite possibly, there is no reason. But it's no big deal, and much better than what I feared had happened.

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Update:

Looks like I posted too soon. While it appeared to me that the blog was merely being blocked, I'm informed it has indeed been taken down.

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Where Were You On 9/11/01?

I've added a new Blog Roll entry for The OpSec Blog, which is written by a DOS Security Engineering Officer. This week, OSB is asking where were you on 9/11/01?

Many of us can relate how we learned of the attack while at work, and how it almost instantly changed the nature of that work. However, since many current members of the Foreign Service blogosphere were, I believe, not yet employed by the State Department on 9/11, I'd be interested to learn whether the attack was a personal turning point for them, leading them into a career that otherwise they might not have entered.

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Briefly Noted

If many USG employees are perceiving a recent increase in the level of security-related concerns about blogging, today's news reports about the 2009 espionage case of Shamai K. Leibowitz might go some way toward explaining that uptick.

From the New York Times, Leak Offers Look at Efforts by U.S. to Spy on Israel:

Mr. Silverstein, 59, [who received classified information from Leibowitz] writes a blog called Tikun Olam, named after a Hebrew phrase that he said means “repairing the world.” The blog gives a liberal perspective on Israel and Israeli-American relations. He said he had decided to speak out to make clear that Mr. Leibowitz, though charged under the Espionage Act, was acting out of noble motives. The Espionage Act has been used by the Justice Department in nearly all prosecutions of government employees for disclosing classified information to the news media, including the record-setting five such cases under President Obama.

Mr. Silverstein said he got to know Mr. Leibowitz, a lawyer with a history of political activism, after noticing that he, too, had a liberal-minded blog, called Pursuing Justice. The men shared a concern about repercussions from a possible Israeli airstrike on nuclear facilities in Iran. From his F.B.I. work from January to August of 2009, Mr. Leibowitz also believed that Israeli diplomats’ efforts to influence Congress and shape American public opinion were excessive and improper, Mr. Silverstein said.

After Leibowitz shared his concerns with Silverstein, he then went too far and began to share classified information as well. Leibowitz was subsequently convicted of espionage, and he now resides in a Federal Bureau of Prisons halfway house.

The fact that an espionage case began with a connection made in the blogosphere, while it is not directly pertinent to the administration of routine restrictions on social networking, is just the sort of thing that can work its way down the counterintelligence food chain until it morphs into a knee jerk reaction against employee blogging in general.

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Labor Day - Bing Versus Google

For my money, Bing wins.

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Dear Colonel Qaddafi ... Your Friends, Gordon and Tony

Well, this is embarrassing for someone. The UK Daily Mail has the story, with photos, of a "devastating stash of documents" that was left behind when the British Ambassador's residence in Tripoli was evacuated four months ago.

The revelations come in documents – some marked ‘UK secret: UK/Libya Eyes Only’ – found strewn on the floor of the British Ambassador’s abandoned residence in Tripoli.



Many of the papers demonstrate the warmth of the relationship between Britain and Libya and, in particular, the extraordinarily close links between the Blair Government and the Gaddafi regime.



The notes show how:



• Tony Blair helped Colonel Gaddafi’s playboy son Saif with his ‘dodgy’ PhD thesis while he was Prime Minister.



• British Special Forces were offered to train the Khamis Brigade, Gaddafi’s most vicious military unit.



• MI6 was apparently willing to trace phone numbers for Libyan intelligence.



• Gordon Brown wrote warmly to Gaddafi in 2007 expressing the hope that the dictator would be able to meet Prince Andrew when he visited Tripoli.



• MI6’s budget (£150 million in 2002) was readily disclosed to Libyan officials, along with details of how Britain’s Downing Street emergency committee Cobra operates.



• Britain’s intelligence services forged close links with Gaddafi’s brutal security units.

Those sensitive documents had been lying there in the vacated Ambassador's residence all this time. Evidently, no one tidied them up when the UK reopened its Tripoli embassy a week or so ago, and visiting journalists were allowed to make off with them.

The incriminating documents were found in the wreckage of the British ambassador’s home in Tripoli, a three-storey house vandalised in April by Gaddafi loyalists.



There were several booklets filled with the faces of suspected terrorists, scores of personally signed letters sent from Downing Street and detailed intelligence data on the Gaddafi regime.



Incredibly, all this had lain amid the debris for four months, with no attempt made to secure the papers even in the week after the rebels ousted the dictator from the city.



Mountains of shredded paper showed British diplomats tried to destroy many documents before fleeing.

The U.S. counterparts of those British diplomats can surely empathize, because they've been there before. Like in Tehran, 1979. It's not so easy to ensure you've destroyed everything that needs to be destroyed when you're under attack and have only a skeleton staff to bag n' drag all those files to the shredder. And then you never know when the paper shredder will jam.



Here's a tip for the UK Foreign Ministry, from the bottom of my governmental heart. Next time, spend the money to get really fast, durable, crosscut paper shredders. Here's a list. When you need to evacuate in a hurry, accept no substitutes.

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U.S. Embassy Tripoli, The Sequel

ABC News knows a guy who knows a guy who told them that we are beginning to re-establish a diplomatic presence in Tripoli:

US officials tell ABC News the United States plans to begin re-establishing its diplomatic presence in Tripoli over the coming weeks now that rebel forces have taken control of much of the Libyan capital.



The first step comes this weekend when the State Department will send a small team of technical staff to Tripoli to assess the security situation on the ground and to assess the condition of the US embassy, which sustained significant damage since being shuttered in February.



Depending on the team’s findings, American diplomats could return to Tripoli as early as next week, officials said, though they suggested that perhaps that timeline was too optimistic given security concerns and what is believed to be extensive damage to the embassy compound. The United States is under diplomatic pressure to show support for the rebel leadership by re-establishing its embassy in Tripoli, especially since several European countries already have, or are preparing to do so.



[TSB note: Those countries include France and Britain.]



It’s unclear whether the Obama administration would send its ambassador to Libya, Gene Cretz, with the first group to re-open the embassy, though the State Department has said Cretz will eventually return to Tripoli. One official suggested that Chris Stevens, who has been the U.S. liaison to the Transitional National Council in Benghazi for the past several months, could go first with a small team of diplomats.



The State Department is also weighing whether to send Jeffrey Feltman, it’s top diplomat for the region, to Tripoli. He would be the highest-ranking American official to visit the capital since the uprising began earlier this year. Officials considered sending him there on Friday, after a big international conference on Libya in Paris, but decided to postpone the visit, in part for security reasons.



A video posted on YouTube in early June, which officials say appears to have been shot inside the American embassy, shows evidence of significant damage and looting.



ABC News’ Jeffrey Kofman in Tripoli tried to visit the embassy Thursday, but was turned away by rebels who were guarding the compound. He saw evidence of damage, including windows blackened by fire. Kofman also obtained exclusive cell phone footage shot from a nearby rooftop on May 1 showing huge plumes of black smoke rising from the embassy after it was ransacked and looted. Neighbors told him Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s soldiers were the ones who stormed the embassy grounds, not a spontaneous mob like the regime claimed at the time.



According to the Washington Post [here], which also interviewed Libyans who live near the embassy, it appears the regime encouraged busloads of people to storm the empty embassy on May 1 after reports that one of Gadhafi’s sons had been killed in a NATO strike. Witnesses told the newspaper they saw massive looting and that parts of the building were eventually set on fire.



The Obama administration pulled all of its diplomats out of Tripoli in late February just hours before the Gadhafi regime was hit with strong sanctions that froze billions of dollars of the longtime dictator’s assets.



Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Paris for the Friends of Libya conference, where she announced that the U.S. has already released about $700 million of Gadhafi’s frozen assets for the rebels to pay fuel bills, operational costs, and salaries. That is part of roughly $1.5 billion the UN authorized the US to release last week to pay for fuel, UN humanitarian relief efforts, and other emergency needs.



The U.S. government hopes to hear from the rebel leadership about their plans for a post-Gadhafi Libya and to see what their needs are. The Obama administration has expressed its hope the United Nations will play a large role in the rebuilding effort.

Our vacated embassy compound was described by the former DCM as having "not the best security." And that was before it was looted and burned. Let's hope we don't stay there any longer than it takes to find a more secure place for our diplomats to live and work.

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CNN Traces A "Complicated And Fascinating Family Tree"

Kudos to CNN for presenting this handy guide to the POTUS's family tree - not the entire tree, which would take more time than is available in a segment of The Situation Room, but just the central portion of the paternal side - and sorting out the connection between him and the Uncle Omar who is now locked up in Massachusetts on a federal immigration warrant.



We also learn that Onyango "Uncle Omar" Obama obtained a Social Security number and a Mass drivers license at least nineteen years ago. That was presumably illegal, but who knows?



CNN legal analyst Jeffery Tobin seemed pretty sure that a drunk driving conviction would be enough to get Uncle Omar deported if he is here illegally, but "usually" not if he is here legally. And Tobin was unwilling to speculate about Omar's immigration status.



I'm not a lawyer like Tobin, but ... if Uncle Omar is here legally, wouldn't he be able to produce some documentation, like a Green Card, to prove that status? And if he is here legally, wouldn't the immigration authorities already know that? Evidently, these immigration matters are trickier than they appear.



The disposition of Uncle Omar's case promises to be entertaining on so many levels.

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