FBI Director James Comey confirmed Monday that the bureau is investigating possible links and coordination between Russia and associates of President Donald Trump as part of a probe of Russian interference in last year’s presidential election.
The extraordinary revelation came at the outset of Comey’s opening statement in a congressional hearing examining Russian meddling and possible connections between Moscow and Trump‘s campaign. He acknowledged that the FBI does not ordinarily discuss ongoing investigations, but said he’d been authorized to do so given the extreme public interest in this case.
“This work is very complex, and there is no way for me to give you a timetable for when it will be done,” Comey told the House Intelligence Committee.
Earlier in the hearing, the chairman of the committee contradicted an assertion from Trump by saying that there had been no wiretap of Trump Tower. But Rep. Devin Nunes, a California Republican whose committee is one of several investigating, said that other forms of surveillance of Trump and his associates have not been ruled out.
Comey was testifying at Monday’s hearing along with National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers.
Trump, who recently accused President Barack Obama of wiretapping his New York skyscraper during the campaign, took to Twitter before the hearing began, accusing Democrats of making up allegations about his campaign associates’ contact with Russia during the election. He said Congress and the FBI should be going after media leaks and maybe even Hillary Clinton instead.
“The real story that Congress, the FBI and others should be looking into is the leaking of Classified information. Must find leaker now!” Trump tweeted early Monday as news coverage on the Russia allegations dominated the morning’s cable news.
Trump also suggested, without evidence, that Clinton’s campaign was in contact with Russia and had possibly thwarted a federal investigation. U.S. intelligence officials have not publicly raised the possibility of contacts between the Clintons and Moscow. Officials investigating the matter have said they believe Moscow had hacked into Democrats’ computers in a bid to help Trump’s election bid.
Monday’s hearing, one of several by congressional panels probing allegations of Russian meddling, could allow for the greatest public accounting to date of investigations that have shadowed the Trump administration in its first two months.
The top two lawmakers on the committee said Sunday that documents the Justice Department and FBI delivered late last week offered no evidence that the Obama administration had wiretapped Trump Tower, the president’s New York City headquarters. But the panel’s ranking Democrat said the material offered circumstantial evidence that American citizens colluded with Russians in Moscow’s efforts to interfere in the presidential election.
“There was circumstantial evidence of collusion; there is direct evidence, I think, of deception,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” ”There’s certainly enough for us to conduct an investigation.”
Nunes said: “For the first time the American people, and all the political parties now, are paying attention to the threat that Russia poses.”
“We know that the Russians were trying to get involved in our campaign, like they have for many decades. They’re also trying to get involved in campaigns around the globe and over in Europe,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee has scheduled a similar hearing for later in the month.
It is not clear how much new information will emerge Monday, and the hearing’s open setting unquestionably puts Comey in a difficult situation if he’s asked to discuss an ongoing investigation tied to the campaign of the president.
At a hearing in January, Comey refused to confirm or deny the existence of any investigation exploring possible connections between Trump associates and Russia, consistent with the FBI’s longstanding policy of not publicly discussing its work. His appearances on Capitol Hill since then have occurred in classified settings, often with small groups of lawmakers, and he has made no public statements connected to the Trump campaign or Russia.
Any lack of detail from Comey on Monday would likely be contrasted with public comments he made last year when closing out an investigation into Clinton’s email practices and then, shortly before Election Day, announcing that the probe would be revived following the discovery of additional emails.
James Comey. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images (File Photo)
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By Ellen Nakashima, Karoun Demirjian and Devlin Barrett
The Washington Post
March 20 at 11:27 AM
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FBI Director James B. Comey acknowledged on Monday the existence of a counterintelligence investigation into the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, and said that probe extends to the nature of any links between Trump campaign associates and the Russian government..Testifying before the House Intelligence Committee, Comey said the investigation is also exploring whether there was any coordination between the campaign and the Kremlin, and “whether any crimes were committed.”.The acknowledgment was an unusual move, given that the FBI’s practice is not to confirm the existence of ongoing investigations. “But in unusual circumstances, where it is in the public interest,” Comey said, “it may be appropriate to do so.”
Comey said he had been authorized by the Justice Department to confirm the wide-ranging probe’s existence.
He spoke at the first intelligence committee public hearing on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, along with National Security Agency head Michael S. Rogers.
Comey: No information to support Trump’s wiretapping tweets
FBI Director James B. Comey said at a House Intelligence Committee hearing that he has no information that Trump Tower was wiretapped by former president Barack Obama. (Reuters)
The hearing comes amid the controversy fired up by President Trump two weeks ago when he tweeted, without providing evidence, that President Barack Obama ordered his phones tapped at Trump Tower.
Comey says there is “no information’’ that supports Trump’s claims that his predecessor Barack Obama ordered surveillance of Trump Tower during the election campaign.
“I have no information that supports those tweets,’’ said Comey. “We have looked carefully inside the FBI,’’ and agents found nothing to support those claims, he said. He added the Justice Department had asked him to also tell the committee that that agency has no such information, either.
Under questioning from the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif,), Comey said no president could order such surveillance.
Committee chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said in his opening statement, “The fact that Russia hacked U.S. election-related databases comes as no shock to this committee. We have been closely monitoring Russia’s aggressions for years…However, while the indications of Russian measures targeting the U.S. presidential election are deeply troubling, one benefit is already clear – it has focused wide attention on the pressing threats posed by the Russian autocrat. In recent years, Committee members have issued repeated and forceful pleas for stronger action against Russian belligerence. But the Obama administration was committed to the notion, against all evidence, that we could ‘reset’ relations with Putin, and it routinely ignored our warnings.”
Nunes said he hoped the hearing would focus on several key questions, including what actions Russia undertook against the United States during the 2016 election and did anyone from a political campaign conspire in these activities? He also wants to know if the communications of any campaign officials or associates were subject to any improper surveillance.
“Let me be clear,” he said. “We know there was not a wiretap on Trump Tower. However, it’s still possible that other surveillance activities were used against President Trump and his associates.”
Finally, Nunes said he is focused on leaks of classified information to the media. “We aim to determine who has leaked or facilitated leaks of classified information so these individuals can be brought to justice,” he said.
In his opening statement, Schiff said, “We will never know whether the Russian intervention was determinative in such a close election. Indeed it is unknowable in a campaign in which so many small changes could have dictated a different result. More importantly, and for the purposes of our investigation, it simply does not matter. What does matter is this: the Russians successfully meddled in our democracy, and our intelligence agencies have concluded that they will do so again.”
He added: “Most important, we do not yet know whether the Russians had the help of U.S. citizens, including people associated with the Trump campaign. Many of Trump’s campaign personnel, including the president himself, have ties to Russia and Russian interests. This is, of course, no crime. On the other hand, if the Trump campaign, or anybody associated with it, aided or abetted the Russians, it would not only be a serious crime, it would also represent one of the most shocking betrayals of our democracy in history.”
Just hours before the start of the hearing, Trump posted a series of tweets claiming Democrats “made up” the allegations of Russian contacts in an attempt to discredit the GOP during the presidential campaign. Trump also urged federal investigators to shift their focus to probe disclosures of classified material.
“The real story that Congress, the FBI and all others should be looking into is the leaking of Classified information,” Trump wrote early Monday. “Must find leaker now!”
Republican members pressed hard on the subject of leaks to the media that resulted in news stories about contacts between Russian officials and the Trump campaign or administration officials. Nunes sought an admission from the officials that the leaks were illegal under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court act, the law that governs foreign intelligence-gathering on U.S. soil or of U.S. persons overseas.
“Yes,” Comey answered. “In addition to being a breach of our trust with the FISA court.”
One story in particular that apparently upset the Republicans was a Feb. 9 story by The Washington Post reporting that Trump’s national security advisor, Michael Flynn, discussed the subject of sanctions with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, in the month before Trump took office. The Post reported that the discussions were monitored under routine, court-approved monitoring of Kislyak’s calls.
Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) pressed Rogers to clarify under what circumstances it would be legitimate for Americans caught on tape speaking with people under surveillance to have their identities disclosed publicly, and whether leaking those identities would “hurt or help” intelligence collection.
“Hurt,” Rogers noted.
Rogers stressed that the identities of U.S. persons picked up through “incidental collection” – that being the way intelligence officials picked up on Flynn’s phone calls with Kislyak – are disclosed only on a “valid, need to know” basis, and usually only when there is a criminal activity or potential threat to the United States at play.
Rogers added that there are a total of 20 people in the NSA he has delegated to make decisions about when someone’s identity can be unmasked.
The FBI probe combines an investigation into hacking operations by Russian spy agencies with efforts to understand how the Kremlin sought to manipulate public opinion and influence the election’s outcome.
In January, the intelligence community released a report concluding that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to not only undermine the legitimacy of the election process but also harm the campaign of Hillary Clinton and boost Trump’s chances of winning.
Hackers working for Russian spy agencies penetrated the computers of the Democratic National Committee in 2015 and 2016 as well as the email accounts of Democratic officials, intelligence official said in the report. The material was relayed to WikiLeaks, the officials said, and the anti-secrecy group began a series of damaging email releases just before the Democratic National Convention that continued through the fall.
On Friday, the Justice Department delivered documents to the committee in response to a request for copies of intelligence and criminal wiretap orders and applications. Nunes, speaking Sunday, said the material provided “no evidence of collusion” to sway the election toward Trump and repeated previous statements that there is no credible proof of any active coordination.
But Schiff, also speaking Sunday, said there was “circumstantial evidence of collusion” at the outset of the congressional investigations into purported Russian election meddling, as well as “direct evidence” that Trump campaign figures sought to deceive the public about their interactions with Russian figures.
The concerns about Moscow’s meddling are also being felt in Europe, where France and Germany hold elections this year. “Our allies,” Schiff said, “are facing the same Russian onslaught.”
WASHINGTON – FBI Director James Comey confirmed Monday that the bureau is investigating possible links and coordination between Russia and associates of President Donald Trump as part of a broader probe of Russian interference in last year’s presidential election.
The extraordinary revelation came at the outset of Comey’s opening statement in a congressional hearing examining Russian meddling and possible connections between Moscow and Trump’s campaign. He acknowledged that the FBI does not ordinarily discuss ongoing investigations, but said he’d been authorized to do so given the extreme public interest in this case.
“This work is very complex, and there is no way for me to give you a timetable for when it will be done,” Comey told the House Intelligence Committee.
Earlier in the hearing, the chairman of the committee contradicted an assertion from Trump by saying that there had been no wiretap of Trump Tower. But Rep. Devin Nunes, a California Republican whose committee is one of several investigating, said that other forms of surveillance of Trump and his associates have not been ruled out.
Comey was testifying at Monday’s hearing along with National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers.
Trump, who recently accused President Barack Obama of wiretapping his New York skyscraper during the campaign, took to Twitter before the hearing began, accusing Democrats of making up allegations about his campaign associates’ contact with Russia during the election. He said Congress and the FBI should be going after media leaks and maybe even Hillary Clinton instead.
“The real story that Congress, the FBI and others should be looking into is the leaking of Classified information. Must find leaker now!” Trump tweeted early Monday as news coverage on the Russia allegations dominated the morning’s cable news.
Trump also suggested, without evidence, that Clinton’s campaign was in contact with Russia and had possibly thwarted a federal investigation. U.S. intelligence officials have not publicly raised the possibility of contacts between the Clintons and Moscow. Officials investigating the matter have said they believe Moscow had hacked into Democrats’ computers in a bid to help Trump’s election bid.
Monday’s hearing, one of several by congressional panels probing allegations of Russian meddling, could allow for the greatest public accounting to date of investigations that have shadowed the Trump administration in its first two months.
The top two lawmakers on the committee said Sunday that documents the Justice Department and FBI delivered late last week offered no evidence that the Obama administration had wiretapped Trump Tower, the president’s New York City headquarters. But the panel’s ranking Democrat said the material offered circumstantial evidence that American citizens colluded with Russians in Moscow’s efforts to interfere in the presidential election.
“There was circumstantial evidence of collusion; there is direct evidence, I think, of deception,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” `’There’s certainly enough for us to conduct an investigation.”
Nunes said: “For the first time the American people, and all the political parties now, are paying attention to the threat that Russia poses.”
“We know that the Russians were trying to get involved in our campaign, like they have for many decades. They’re also trying to get involved in campaigns around the globe and over in Europe,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee has scheduled a similar hearing for later in the month.
It is not clear how much new information will emerge Monday, and the hearing’s open setting unquestionably puts Comey in a difficult situation if he’s asked to discuss an ongoing investigation tied to the campaign of the president.
At a hearing in January, Comey refused to confirm or deny the existence of any investigation exploring possible connections between Trump associates and Russia, consistent with the FBI’s longstanding policy of not publicly discussing its work. His appearances on Capitol Hill since then have occurred in classified settings, often with small groups of lawmakers, and he has made no public statements connected to the Trump campaign or Russia.
Any lack of detail from Comey on Monday would likely be contrasted with public comments he made last year when closing out an investigation into Clinton’s email practices and then, shortly before Election Day, announcing that the probe would be revived following the discovery of additional emails.
By Chris Cillizza The Washinton Post
October 17 at 12:22 PM
For the past few months, Hillary Clinton’s decision to exclusively use a private email server while at the State Department has receded as a campaign issue as Donald Trump’s comments about women have come to dominate the daily chatter about the 2016 race.On Monday, however, the various issues associated with Clinton’s email setup came roaring back. .According to emails released by the FBI, Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy asked the FBI to ease up on classification decisions in exchange for allowing more FBI agents in countries where they were not permitted to go. The words “quid pro quo” were used to describe the proposed exchange by the FBI official. (The State Department insists it was no such thing; “This allegation is inaccurate and does not align with the facts,” said State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner in a statement. “To be clear: the State Department did upgrade the document at the request of the FBI when we released it back in May 2015.”).State Department’s Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy wanted at least one Hillary Clinton email, “Archived … in the basement of the department of state never to be seen again.” A State department staffer that spoke to Peace and Freedom called Mr. Kennedy a “Slippery Dick.” Whatever that means.
The FBI responded that the classification specialist with whom Kennedy made this request was not part of the investigation into Clinton’s emails and is now retired.
The Clinton campaign will, as it has done every time there is any news about whether she sent or received classified material on her private server, chalk this up to an interagency dispute over classification. Typical bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo, they will say. This sort of stuff happens all the time!
FBI Director James Comey testifies before a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on July 7, 2016. Getty Images
Except, not really. First of all, we already know from FBI Director James B. Comey that Clinton sent and received emails and information that was classified at the time. (“110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received,”Comey said in his remarkable press conference on the FBI investigation.) Clinton’s explanation has now evolved to this: She didn’t know documents marked with a “c” meant they were confidential (and therefore classified) and, therefore, she never knowingly sent or received classified material — with the emphasis on “knowingly.”
That’s a tough position to hold in light of Kennedy’s attempted quid pro quo, which suggests that at least some people at State were actively trying to fiddle with classification determinations made by the FBI.
It’s hard to square the idea of Kennedy offering a quid pro quo to the FBI regarding a classification decision and Clinton not even knowing that “c” on documents stands for “classified.” One suggests deep understanding of how the classification process works. The other, um, doesn’t.
Now, simply because Kennedy asked for a quid pro quo regarding classification doesn’t mean that Clinton asked him to do so. There’s no evidence of that. There’s also no evidence that Clinton had a conversation of any sort with Kennedy about his classification request. And it’s important to remember that Kennedy is a career officer at State, having worked in the same administrative job for Condoleezza Rice prior to Clinton, so he’s not exactly a partisan.
That said, this latest revelation adds more evidence to the “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” argument that Republicans have long made about Clinton’s email setup. The idea of setting up a quid pro quo when it comes to classifications of information will, for many people, confirm their suspicions that the government bureaucracy is simply protecting Clinton. If a State Department official is offering a quid pro quo in this one exchange, can you imagine what they are doing off the books?
Speaker Paul Ryan’s statement speaks directly to that suspicion. “A senior State Department official’s attempt to pressure the FBI to hide the extent of this mishandling bears all the signs of a cover-up,” Ryan said. “This is why our aggressive oversight work in the House is so important, and it will continue.”
FBI confirms State Dept. offered ‘quid pro quo’ to cover up classified emails
Newly released documents from the FBI’s year-long investigation of Hillary Clinton’s server indicate a senior State Department official offered the FBI a quid pro quo in exchange for covering up…
washingtonexaminer.com
If the fire burning in Republicans over Clinton’s email server was threatening to flicker out — or at least lose some of its heat — this new information is the equivalent of taking a can’s worth of lighter fluid and dousing the conflagration. It’s going to start burning a lot hotter very soon.
Chris Cillizza writes “The Fix,” a politics blog for the Washington Post. He also covers the White House.
By Stephen Dinan – The Washington Times – Updated: 9:04 a.m. on Tuesday, August 16, 2016
Two top House Republicans say Hillary Clinton appears to have lied to Congress, laying out a case Monday that they said could sustain perjury charges against the Democratic presidential nominee for failing to give an honest accounting of her use of a secret email server while she was secretary of state.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia and Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz of Utah said evidence the FBI collected during its investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s email practices contradicts what she herself told Congress in testimony last year.
The two chairmen have officially referred the matter to the Justice Department for prosecution — though Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and her top aides have gone to great lengths this year to protect Mrs. Clinton from legal jeopardy, including matters involving her email and questions about the mixing of Clinton Foundation and State Department business.
Mr. Goodlatte and Mr. Chaffetz said FBI Director James B. Comey’s depiction of what he called Mrs. Clinton’s “extremely careless” email practices pokes holes in a number of statements Mrs. Clinton gave to Congress during her 2015 testimony to the House committee investigating the Benghazi terrorist attack.
Mrs. Clinton testified at that time that she never sent or received information marked classified, but Mr. Comey toldCongress last month that three such documents were in fact marked at the time she handled them via email.
Mrs. Clinton also testified that when she belatedly agreed to comply with open-records laws and return her work-related emails to the government, she had her attorneys go “through every single email.” But Mr. Comey said Mrs. Clinton’s attorneys used only search terms and subject lines to decide which emails to return and did not read each one.
The FBI director said his investigators discovered thousands of work-related messages Mrs. Clinton failed to turn over to the State Department, raising questions about yet another statement in Mrs. Clinton’s testimony last year. Mr. Comey also said Mrs. Clinton had multiple servers during her time using the secret account.
“Although there may be other aspects of Secretary Clinton’s sworn testimony that are at odds with the FBI’s findings, her testimony in those four areas bears specific scrutiny in light of the facts and evidence FBI Director James Comeydescribed,” the chairmen said in a letter Monday referring the case to U.S. Attorney Channing D. Phillips, the chief federal prosecutor for the District of Columbia.
Mr. Phillips’ office referred questions to the Justice Department, which didn’t respond to a request for comment Monday afternoon.
The Justice Department has repeatedly protected Mrs. Clinton during her presidential campaign, refusing to pursue charges that she mishandled classified information and fighting an effort to force her to testify under oath in a court case about her emails.
The department also reportedly refused an FBI recommendation to investigate the Clinton Foundation — a decision that is also coming under scrutiny on Capitol Hill.
“At this point, the American people and Congress are owed answers,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican who has been investigating the tangled relationships between Mrs. Clinton and her aides at the State Department, and the Clinton Foundation and other Clinton-related organizations.
Members of Congress were expecting to get a look Monday at the FBI’s notes of its interview with Mrs. Clinton during the email investigation.
The notes could provide more insight into whether Mrs. Clinton was truthful in her 2015 testimony, though one key Democrat said releasing the documents set a bad precedent for the FBI.
“Witnesses will be less likely to cooperate if they feel private statements to investigators may become political fodder for Congress,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. “These interview statements also come very close to pre-decisional work-product, and their release will have an impact on the nature of internal deliberations for years to come.”
He also predicted that someone would leak the notes to the press.
FBI Director James Comey testifies before a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on July 7, 2016. Getty Images
Another potential obstacle emerged Monday when the State Department said it wants to review the FBI’s notes and other materials on Mrs. Clinton’s emails before they are handed to Congress, The Associated Press reported.
State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told reporters that the department has asked the FBI to allow it to see any documents provided to Congress that contain sensitive information.
“The State Department respects the FBI’s desire to accommodate the request of its committees of oversight inCongress, just as we do with our oversight committees,” Ms. Trudeau said. “We have cooperated, and we will continue to cooperate with the FBI every step of the way.”
After a year of investigation, Mr. Comey recommended against pursuing criminal charges against Mrs. Clinton.
The director said dozens of email chains involving Mrs. Clinton contained information that was classified at the time and that three of the messages had the classified marking — a “(C)” designation next to paragraphs indicating they contained secret information.
However, the FBI chief said that while anyone at that level of government should have known what those markings were, Mrs. Clinton was not “sophisticated” enough to understand what she was handling.
FBI Director James Comey
Mr. Comey said he recommended against prosecuting Mrs. Clinton because even though she was “negligent,” he couldn’t show she was aware of the risks she was taking with national security.
Former President Bill Clinton last week said Mr. Comey was making too big of a deal out of the classified markings in his wife’s case.
“They saw two little notes with a ‘C’ on it — this is the biggest load of bull I’ve ever heard — that were about telephone calls that she needed to make,” he said. “The State Department typically puts a little ‘C’ on it to discourage people from discussing it in public in the event the secretary of state, whoever it is, doesn’t make a telephone call. Does that sound threatening to the national security to you?”
Bill Clinton talking the issues on the campaign trail….
The Obama legacy
The president seems determined to leave U.S. relations with Israel in ruins
President Barack Obama and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton arrive at a campaign at the Charlotte Convention Center in Charlotte, N.C., Tuesday, July 5, 2016. Obama is spending the afternoon campaigning for Clinton. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
President Obama is determined to leave American relations with Israel, the nation’s only reliable ally in the Middle East, in ruins as part of his legacy. He doesn’t seem to understand that a president doesn’t design his legacy. Reality takes care of that, and the legacy he will leave is well established already.
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Like presidents before him, he appointed a liberal of the Jewish persuasion to represent the United States in an increasingly conservative Israel. The result was predictable. In the midst of a campaign by largely young Palestinian fanatics to attack Israeli civilians and soldiers, Ambassador Daniel Shapiro accused the Israelis of a double standard in treating violence. The facts speak otherwise.
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Mr. Shapiro’s judgment was rendered only hours after a pregnant Jewish woman from a settlement in the Judean Hills was stabbed and seriously injured by a Palestinian teenager in a grocery store. The evening before, an Israeli mother of six, was stabbed to death in her home in front of her 17-year-old daughter.
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Over the past four months, 28 men and women have been killed by stabbings, car rammings and shootings. These include 25 Israelis, an Eritrean, an American and a Palestinian. The Palestinians put the number of Palestinians killed in that time by Israeli security forces at 149, with more than 15,000 injured in clashes with Israeli soldiers. Several European governments, some Israeli and American activists accused the Israelis of “overreaction.” It’s difficult to understand how someone resisting being murdered could be judicious in his defense.
No American President has ever done the amount of damage to the Israeli people as Barack Obama. Most Israelis believe Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry will burn in hell for their action during the last eight years.
There’s no evidence of central direction from the Palestinian leadership, such as it is, for these attacks, but they are clearly the result of a vicious campaign of hatred and pleas to spill Jewish blood. Among those encouraging violence is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA). UNWRA schools are notorious for fanaticism in the Palestinian cause. During fighting in Gaza the schools were often used as fortresses by Hamas terrorists. In onc incident a 16-year-old Arab boy was enlisted for an attack on Israeli soldiers.
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Secretary of State John Kerry continues to talk about Israeli-Palestinian cooperation to create two independent states living in peace. The behavior of the government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas mocks such an appeal. The Palestinians typically profess a desire to make peace in English while inciting violence in Arabic. Hundreds of millions of dollars of U.N., European, and American aid has disappeared in custody of corrupt Palestinian leadership. If Mr. Abbas were to permit long-postponed elections, terrorist candidates would likely win cooked elections on the West Bank, as they did in Gaza.
After negotiating a “cease fire” in Syria, John Kerry thought he could trust the word of his friend Sergey Lavrov, the Foreign Minister of Russia. After the agreement was made, Syrian air force jets and Russian air force jets increased their bombing of U.S. allies in Syria.
The Obama administration, in its schizophrenic strategy, has undermined the political process. Despite repeated professions of allegiance to the alliance, top Obama officials are regarded on the ground as inimitable to Israeli interests. Iran is suspected of assisting Palestinian armed forces on all of Israel’s borders.
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President Obama’s romance with the mullahs in Tehran, exposed in his deal meant to block Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons, has established a tacit alliance between Israel and Egypt. The perception of a common threat from Iran’s mullahs has even opened highly publicized conversations between the Israelis and their bitter enemies, the Saudis, and the Gulf states. In effect, there’s a new alliance excluding the Americans.
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The Obama administration has made Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria, the ancestral home of the Hebrew kingdoms of antiquity, its test for progress. The greatest part of this population of some 300,000 lies in bedroom communities of Jerusalem. Mr. Obama ignores the obvious, the question of how 1.5 million Arabs can be accommodated as Israeli citizens when Israelis are not permitted to live in the occupied areas. Many of the settlements represent security strongpoints in space much smaller than generally understood by foreigners.
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Ambassador Shapiro’s harangue suggests that President Obama may attempt to leave one more enormous muddle for the next president.
By Dave Boyer – The Washington Times – Wednesday, July 27, 2016
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President Obama said Wednesday that Republicans are being unfair with their “troubling” accusations that Hillary Clinton committed crimes by jeopardizing national security with her private email server.
“All this talk about her engaging in criminal activities, the sort of prosecutorial case that you heard in Cleveland that seems to just ignore what a Republican FBI appointee of spotless integrity said,” Mr. Obama said on the “Today” show on NBC. “That’s troubling.”
During the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last week, delegates punctuated their meeting frequently with chants of “Lock her up!”
The president said of the GOP’s treatment of Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic nominee, “I don’t think it’s fair.”
“I think it’s indicative of the degree to which folks are rough on Hillary Clinton in ways that, even as somebody who has had my share of getting whacked in the public eye, I’m surprised by sometimes,” the president said.
Mr. Obama noted that FBI Director James B. Comey determined that Mrs. Clinton was “extremely careless” but broke no laws.
On CBS News’ “60 Minutes” last Sunday, Hillary Clinton played the victim, saying she has always “held to a higher standard” than anyone else in the public arena.
Hillary Clinton has disqualified herself from the presidency.
No matter what your tribal politics may be, after FBI Director James Comey‘s withering testimony before Congress on Thursday over her email scandal, there really is no way around it, is there?
She disqualified herself by her own hand.
Mrs. Clinton, former secretary of state, has already proved she can’t be trusted with national secrets. She put those secrets at risk by using a private email server kept in her basement, against security protocol.
That server was likely hacked by foreign intelligence. She failed, miserably, in protecting the secrets of her nation.
So for all this she should be rewarded and promoted and handed the near absolute power of an imperial presidency?
And, she lied to the American people. That much is clear. She lied about what she did and how and why. There are tapes of it floating all about on the internet, lies to reporters, lies in those rare public appearances where she actually takes questions.
Comey also confirmed that she allowed her lawyers — who didn’t have security clearance — to view and assess her vast store of incriminating emails.
Clinton did all this not in the national interest, but in the Hillary interest.
It was all done to keep her presidential candidacy viable. History will tell our children what we already know, that it was always all about Hillary.
And so, it follows, logically, that Mrs. Clinton cannot be president.
The Republicans didn’t do this to her. The mad barbarian Donald Trump, ranting and shouting and mugging like some vulgar late-night TV pitchman, didn’t do it. Thoughtful Democrats who put their country above their ambitions didn’t do it.
Years from now, she may wander the corridors of whatever palace she finds herself in, wringing her hands and muttering nonsense, her hair disheveled in the night, and it won’t change things.
She’s disqualified herself. If she continues to campaign, she may win the election, but she’ll only have power to leverage support, and that isn’t good.
The worst thing in all of this is that any defense of her actions only reinforces a dangerous belief that keeps growing in America, that there are two standards of justice:
One for the citizen suckers like us. And another for the lords and the elites, like the Clintons.
That is extremely risky, especially now, with the country in a volatile, anti-establishment mood, after years in which a sizable portion of the electorate has remained unemployed or underemployed, and marginalized and ridiculed by the servants of the ruling elites.
A nation that values a commonly held belief in the obligations of leadership couldn’t ever elect someone like this. Advocating for someone like this would be seen as shameful.
Only a corrupt nation could do so, a nation that values a Chicago-style political payoff more than it values a belief that leaders should be held to ethical standards.
Once a nation acknowledges publicly that it is corrupt (as in national elections), that its people care only for what they can put in their pocket or stuff into their mouths, something terrible can happen.
There is a weakening. A listlessness, a nihilism, where personal appetites and longings for celebrity outweigh what was once understood as common virtue. And what comes next, inevitably, is a fall, and the frightened citizens rally around a strong and brutal personality who offers them muscular leadership. And what they once had is gone.
If you read histories about great empires and how they lost their way — slowly, inexorably, the illness growing along the dull spine of what they once had been — then you already know what happens.
And if you don’t read history, it really doesn’t matter. Just watch some more TV or tweet something, have a drink and enjoy yourselves.
I’m certain that many will clench their fists and denounce me as a Clinton-Hater. But hate by definition is irrational, and so I reject the hater diagnosis.
Instead, I’m probably something of a Clinton-Loather. Hate is about the loss of control, like the barking of a dog or someone who shrieks into the wind or at a crowd. Loathing takes time and consideration. And I’ve had years of watching the Clintons lie and dissemble and tell partial truths and get away with it, and take advantage of the principles of honorable men such as James Comey.
Whether you’re a Clinton loather or hater or some simple Clinton meat puppet or Clinton lover and Hillaryista, consider:
If Mrs. Clinton were a junior foreign service officer, or a young special agent of the FBI, she’d have been fired. She’d have immediately lost any security clearance she had. She’d have been prohibited from ever securing government employment again.
Yet after failing miserably to keep our secrets, some want her elected president, where the protection of secrets is vital.
How can she possibly lead when those under her command know what she did?
If Hillary Clinton were anyone but a candidate for president, she would have been drummed out of government service for her reckless and unethical behavior. You don’t promote such people. You send them away.
You don’t elect them president.
A new episode of “The Chicago Way” — radio-free Chicago in podcast form with John Kass and Jeff Carlin. Guests: former Illinois GOP chairman Pat Brady and political guru Thom Serafin. Listen here at www.chicagotribune.com/kasspodcast.
FBI Director Comey does say the presidential candidate was ‘extremely careless’ in handling highly sensitive information
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By KATE O’KEEFFE and BYRON TAU
The Wall Street Journal
Updated July 5, 2016 12:27 p.m. ET
FBI Director James Comey said Tuesday that Hillary Clinton was “extremely careless” in handling classified information while secretary of state and said scores of emails on her personal server contained highly classified information—but he added the FBI won’t recommend criminal charges against the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
In a 15-minute statement at FBI headquarters, Mr. Comey said that after an exhaustive, apolitical investigation, the FBI found that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”
The final decision on charges will be made by top Justice Department officials, but the FBI recommendation is likely to carry great weight in the case. Mr. Comey began his remarks by saying no one at the Justice Department or any other government agency knew what he was about to propose.
Hillary Clinton delivering a speech in Chicago on June 27.PHOTO: TANNEN MAURY/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
While the announcement is a major positive development for the Clinton camp, Mr. Comey’s comments were hardly uncritical of Mrs. Clinton, saying she and her State Department colleagues were irresponsible in their handling of national secrets.
“Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” Mr. Comey said.
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The FBI director also insisted that the recommendation was made without outside influence. Mrs. Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, met several days ago with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, leading to widespread criticism that such a meeting was inappropriate. Mrs. Lynch later said she regretted the meeting and intended to accept the recommendation of the FBI and professional prosecutors regarding any charges.
“Only facts matter, and the FBI found them here in an entirely apolitical and professional way,” Mr. Comey said.
The recommendation against charges could help bring to an end a political drama that has dogged Mrs. Clinton’s campaign for nearly a year and a half.
Still, Mrs. Clinton’s ratings on trustworthiness have been damaged by the email matter, and Republicans have made it clear they’ll make ethics a central part of the fall campaign. Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has taken to calling Mrs. Clinton “Crooked Hillary” on the campaign trail, saying her alleged lapses on the email issue make her unfit for the White House.
Within minutes of Mr. Comey’s announcement, Donald Trump said in tweet: “The system is rigged” adding, “FBI director said Crooked Hillary compromised our national security. No charges. Wow!”
Mr. Comey’s comments lambasting the handling of sensitive information by Mrs. Clinton and her colleagues—due to her decision to use a personal email server for her government work—could provide plenty of grist for such attacks.
A leading Republicans said Mrs. Clinton’s conduct was irresponsible even if she was not charged. “This is still very troubling,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) told reporters. Mr. McCarthy said Mr. Comey’s statement undermined Mrs. Clinton’s claims that she was not mishandling classified information. “We know now that was not true,” he said.
Several organizations have filed their own lawsuits in to obtain emails and other government documents from Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, and those could still yield new information.
Even so, the conclusion of the FBI investigation helps lift a cloud from the Clinton campaign. Coupled with the recent report of a House committee on the terrorist attacks on Benghazi, which provided few significant new details, it allows Mrs. Clinton to head into her party’s convention with the high-profile official probes into her record seemingly over.
Mrs. Clinton is expected to campaign with President Barack Obama in North Carolina on Tuesday, flying with the president on Air Force One in their first joint campaign appearance of the year.
Good morning. I’m here to give you an update on the FBI’s investigation of Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail system during her time as Secretary of State.
After a tremendous amount of work over the last year, the FBI is completing its investigation and referring the case to the Department of Justice for a prosecutive decision. What I would like to do today is tell you three things: what we did; what we found; and what we are recommending to the Department of Justice.
This will be an unusual statement in at least a couple ways. First, I am going to include more detail about our process than I ordinarily would, because I think the American people deserve those details in a case of intense public interest. Second, I have not coordinated or reviewed this statement in any way with the Department of Justice or any other part of the government. They do not know what I am about to say.
I want to start by thanking the FBI employees who did remarkable work in this case. Once you have a better sense of how much we have done, you will understand why I am so grateful and proud of their efforts.
So, first, what we have done:
The investigation began as a referral from the Intelligence Community Inspector General in connection with Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail server during her time as Secretary of State. The referral focused on whether classified information was transmitted on that personal system.
Our investigation looked at whether there is evidence classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on that personal system, in violation of a federal statute making it a felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way, or a second statute making it a misdemeanor to knowingly remove classified information from appropriate systems or storage facilities.
Consistent with our counterintelligence responsibilities, we have also investigated to determine whether there is evidence of computer intrusion in connection with the personal e-mail server by any foreign power, or other hostile actors.
I have so far used the singular term, “e-mail server,” in describing the referral that began our investigation. It turns out to have been more complicated than that. Secretary Clinton used several different servers and administrators of those servers during her four years at the State Department, and used numerous mobile devices to view and send e-mail on that personal domain. As new servers and equipment were employed, older servers were taken out of service, stored, and decommissioned in various ways. Piecing all of that back together—to gain as full an understanding as possible of the ways in which personal e-mail was used for government work—has been a painstaking undertaking, requiring thousands of hours of effort.
For example, when one of Secretary Clinton’s original personal servers was decommissioned in 2013, the e-mail software was removed. Doing that didn’t remove the e-mail content, but it was like removing the frame from a huge finished jigsaw puzzle and dumping the pieces on the floor. The effect was that millions of e-mail fragments end up unsorted in the server’s unused—or “slack”—space. We searched through all of it to see what was there, and what parts of the puzzle could be put back together.
FBI investigators have also read all of the approximately 30,000 e-mails provided by Secretary Clinton to the State Department in December 2014. Where an e-mail was assessed as possibly containing classified information, the FBI referred the e-mail to any U.S. government agency that was a likely “owner” of information in the e-mail, so that agency could make a determination as to whether the e-mail contained classified information at the time it was sent or received, or whether there was reason to classify the e-mail now, even if its content was not classified at the time it was sent (that is the process sometimes referred to as “up-classifying”).
From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.
The FBI also discovered several thousand work-related e-mails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014. We found those additional e-mails in a variety of ways. Some had been deleted over the years and we found traces of them on devices that supported or were connected to the private e-mail domain. Others we found by reviewing the archived government e-mail accounts of people who had been government employees at the same time as Secretary Clinton, including high-ranking officials at other agencies, people with whom a Secretary of State might naturally correspond.
This helped us recover work-related e-mails that were not among the 30,000 produced to State. Still others we recovered from the laborious review of the millions of e-mail fragments dumped into the slack space of the server decommissioned in 2013.
With respect to the thousands of e-mails we found that were not among those produced to State, agencies have concluded that three of those were classified at the time they were sent or received, one at the Secret level and two at the Confidential level. There were no additional Top Secret e-mails found. Finally, none of those we found have since been “up-classified.”
I should add here that we found no evidence that any of the additional work-related e-mails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them. Our assessment is that, like many e-mail users, Secretary Clinton periodically deleted e-mails or e-mails were purged from the system when devices were changed. Because she was not using a government account—or even a commercial account like Gmail—there was no archiving at all of her e-mails, so it is not surprising that we discovered e-mails that were not on Secretary Clinton’s system in 2014, when she produced the 30,000 e-mails to the State Department.
It could also be that some of the additional work-related e-mails we recovered were among those deleted as “personal” by Secretary Clinton’s lawyers when they reviewed and sorted her e-mails for production in 2014.
The lawyers doing the sorting for Secretary Clinton in 2014 did not individually read the content of all of her e-mails, as we did for those available to us; instead, they relied on header information and used search terms to try to find all work-related e-mails among the reportedly more than 60,000 total e-mails remaining on Secretary Clinton’s personal system in 2014. It is highly likely their search terms missed some work-related e-mails, and that we later found them, for example, in the mailboxes of other officials or in the slack space of a server.
It is also likely that there are other work-related e-mails that they did not produce to State and that we did not find elsewhere, and that are now gone because they deleted all e-mails they did not return to State, and the lawyers cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery.
We have conducted interviews and done technical examination to attempt to understand how that sorting was done by her attorneys. Although we do not have complete visibility because we are not able to fully reconstruct the electronic record of that sorting, we believe our investigation has been sufficient to give us reasonable confidence there was no intentional misconduct in connection with that sorting effort.
And, of course, in addition to our technical work, we interviewed many people, from those involved in setting up and maintaining the various iterations of Secretary Clinton’s personal server, to staff members with whom she corresponded on e-mail, to those involved in the e-mail production to State, and finally, Secretary Clinton herself.
Last, we have done extensive work to understand what indications there might be of compromise by hostile actors in connection with the personal e-mail operation.
That’s what we have done. Now let me tell you what we found:
Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
For example, seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation. In addition to this highly sensitive information, we also found information that was properly classified as Secret by the U.S. Intelligence Community at the time it was discussed on e-mail (that is, excluding the later “up-classified” e-mails).
None of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government—or even with a commercial service like Gmail.
Separately, it is important to say something about the marking of classified information. Only a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked “classified” in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.
While not the focus of our investigation, we also developed evidence that the security culture of the State Department in general, and with respect to use of unclassified e-mail systems in particular, was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government.
With respect to potential computer intrusion by hostile actors, we did not find direct evidence that Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail domain, in its various configurations since 2009, was successfully hacked. But, given the nature of the system and of the actors potentially involved, we assess that we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence. We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account. We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent. She also used her personal e-mail extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.
So that’s what we found. Finally, with respect to our recommendation to the Department of Justice:
In our system, the prosecutors make the decisions about whether charges are appropriate based on evidence the FBI has helped collect. Although we don’t normally make public our recommendations to the prosecutors, we frequently make recommendations and engage in productive conversations with prosecutors about what resolution may be appropriate, given the evidence. In this case, given the importance of the matter, I think unusual transparency is in order.
Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past.
In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.
To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.
As a result, although the Department of Justice makes final decisions on matters like this, we are expressing to Justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case.
I know there will be intense public debate in the wake of this recommendation, as there was throughout this investigation. What I can assure the American people is that this investigation was done competently, honestly, and independently. No outside influence of any kind was brought to bear.
I know there were many opinions expressed by people who were not part of the investigation—including people in government—but none of that mattered to us. Opinions are irrelevant, and they were all uninformed by insight into our investigation, because we did the investigation the right way. Only facts matter, and the FBI found them here in an entirely apolitical and professional way. I couldn’t be prouder to be part of this organization.
F.B.I. Recommends No Charges Against Hillary Clinton for Use of Personal Email
By Mark Landler
The New York Times
July 5, 2016
WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said on Tuesday that the bureau would not recommend criminal charges in Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information, lifting an enormous legal cloud from her presidential campaign, hours before her first joint campaign appearancewith President Obama.
But Mr. Comey rebuked Mrs. Clinton as being “extremely careless” in using a personal email address and server for sensitive information, declaring that an ordinary government official could have faced administrative sanction for such conduct.
FBI Director James B. Comey said Thursday that the bureau is dispatching several dozen agents to Russia to help tighten security at the Winter Olympics.
The FBI is working with Russian intelligence services, Comey said. About two dozen agents and other personnel are being sent to Moscow, while more than a dozen others will be assigned to Sochi, the host city of the Games.
“Securing any Olympics is an enormous task,” Comey said. “I think it’s particularly challenging in Sochi because of its proximity to areas of unrest and sources of a terrorist threat.”
The threat of violence at the Games has been a persistent concern of security officials. Russia has been engaged in a longtime struggle with extremists, many of whom have vowed to target the Olympics, which open Feb. 7.
Two bombings in the city of Volgograd killed 34 people and injured dozens late last month. On Wednesday, Russian security forces found six bodies in an area north of the Caucasus Mountains region, according to the Associated Press. Explosive devices had placed near some of them.
In a wide-ranging interview with reporters at FBI headquarters, Comey said the bureau remains concerned about security at large venues and events generally. Law enforcement officials across the United States, he said, are refocusing their efforts on securing shopping malls after gunmen attacked Nairobi’s Westgate mall in September, killing more than 70 people.
U.S. security experts say more needs to be done in Sochi to guard against a Nairobi’s Westgate mall type terror attack which killed more than 70 people in September
U.S. intelligence indicates that home-grown terrorists continue to be interested in striking “soft targets,” Comey said.
“We are taking a lot of steps with the Department of Homeland Security, state and local law enforcement, and the retail industry to train, to anticipate, to drill,” Comey said. “It was going on before Westgate, and that effort was given renewed energy by the Westgate tragedy.”
During his first three months on the job, Comey has spent much of his time traveling to meet with FBI officials overseas. A growing concern they share is the threat that extremists who have joined the fight in Syria will return to their home countries, including the United States, to carry out terrorist attacks.
“It is one of my greatest worries in the counterterrorism area,” Comey said. “The conflict in Syria has attracted so many people from so many places of so many motivations, including Americans, that it is an enormous challenge for all intelligence services, including the FBI, to identify the ones of bad intent, to figure out where they’re going, why they’re going and keep track of them.”
He added: “As long as people are flowing in, learning how to kill other people and meeting really bad people, it’s going to be a big worry.”
Comey defended the FBI’s controversial use of “national security letters,” a form of administrative subpoena that the bureau uses to obtain business records from companies and other institutions without a court warrant. The FBI issues more than 20,000 NSLs a year for phone subscriber information and telephone toll records, as well as banking and credit card records.
A White House panel recommended last month that Congress amend the law so that the letters can be issued only after a judge has found that the government has reasonable grounds for believing that the information is relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.
Comey said he disagrees with that recommendation because the NSLs are a critical investigative tool for fighting terrorism. A change in procedures would “introduce a delay” in terrorism investigations and require agents to take weeks to do something that now takes hours or days, he said.
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Lynn Barry, Associated Press
MOSCOW (AP) — Six men are dead in a series of unexplained killings involving booby-trapped bombs in southern Russia, further heightening security fears ahead of next month’s Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Investigators were scrambling Thursday to find those responsible for the six bodies found Wednesday in four abandoned cars just north of Russia’s volatile Caucasus Mountains region, where an Islamic insurgency is simmering.
Explosive devices had been placed near three of the cars, although only one of the bombs went off and no one was hurt. The victims had been shot, according to investigators.
Vladimir Markin, the spokesman for Russia’s main investigative agency, said in a statement that no motive had yet been found for the killings on the outskirts of Pyatigorsk, the center of a Russian administrative district created in 2010 to combat the insurgency. In late December, a car bomb exploded outside traffic police offices there, killing three people.
Pyatigorsk is less than 200 miles by air from Sochi, host site for the 2014 Olympics, although nearly twice as far by road.
In an indication of Russia’s unease over security ahead of the Olympics, Markin said Federal Security Service officers had joined the investigation and classified it as a counter-terrorist operation.
The shootings of local residents — at least a few of them taxi drivers — is more typical of criminal behavior, perhaps score-settling by organized gangs. But the use of explosives was suggestive of the kinds of terror attacks that take place nearly daily in the Caucasus.
Russia is still on edge following two suicide bombings in late December in Volgograd, also in southern Russia, which killed 34 people and wounded many more. No claim of responsibility has been made for those bombings, but they came several months after the leader of the Islamic insurgency called for attacks aimed at undermining the games, which run Feb. 7-23.
NTV television, a national channel loyal to the Kremlin, showed photographs of four suspects that it said had been distributed to police. The men were said to be from Kabardino-Balkaria, just south of Pyatigorsk and one of the predominantly Muslim republics in Russia’s Caucasus.
The NTV journalist on the scene said investigators believed the killings were of a criminal nature, but were not ruling out other motives.
Kommersant, a major Moscow-based newspaper, suggested the attacks were carried out by militants and the explosives were intended to harm police when they arrived to investigate. That tactic has been used before in Pyatigorsk, where a taxi driver was killed in 2010 and his car then used as a bomb, wounding more than 30 people.
Three of the men found Wednesday have been identified: Two were taxi drivers and the third assembled furniture but also worked as a freelance taxi driver, Russian state news agencies reported, citing law enforcement agencies. Their names have not been released.
The men drove inexpensive Soviet-model Lada cars. Homemade bombs were placed near two of their cars; one of them went off as police approached and the other was defused.
The three other victims were found in a fourth vehicle. An explosive device had been placed next to the car in a metal bucket, but was defused by investigators, Markin said. No information about their identities has been released.
