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Waller, JM strat vis

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caputo strategic vision guo

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/07/guo-wengui-chinese-billionaire-1356594

POLITICO

LEGAL

How a renegade Chinese billionaire became a center of D.C. intrigue

Guo Wengui allegedly offered a pair of conservative operatives $9 million for dirt on his enemies’ porn habits and out-of-wedlock children. Now he’s suing.

By BEN SCHRECKINGER 06/07/2019

A billionaire at the center of U.S.-China tensions is waging a mysterious legal battle against two D.C. conservatives over a private espionage deal gone bad. The fight touches on a pair of think tanks, a senator’s widow and the capital’s tight-knit group of China hardliners, adding a new chapter to an international saga that has divided the Trump administration and the president’s external allies.

It began when a firm tied to the billionaire, real estate magnate Guo Wengui, allegedly hired a private intelligence firm [strat vis?] to dig up dirt on Chinese nationals — including their bank records, porn habits and any illegitimate children — then sued, saying the firm failed to deliver. In turn, the intelligence firm has claimed Guo’s side gave it a thumb drive loaded with sophisticated malware and that he sought information on people whose records were deemed sensitive by the U.S. government.

The ongoing suit, the details of which are reported here for the first time, deepens the already considerable mystique surrounding the billionaire businessman. An ally of Steve Bannon’s and a fugitive from Chinese authorities,Guo now lives in New York. His presence in the U.S. has exacerbated tensions between China’s ruling Communist Party and the administration of President Donald Trump.

The case also offers a rare behind-the-curtain glimpse at the tactics of 21st century geopolitical intrigue, where it is increasingly common for deep-pocketed clients with political agendas to pay firms with government contacts and cyber know-how to obtain people’s sensitive private information — and then use it to destroy them.

***

The details of the suit, which is being waged in federal court in the Southern District of New York, read more like a spy novel than a dry legal document.

Guo, who goes by Miles Kwok in the U.S., built a sizable fortune in real estate in China before apparently running afoul of the country’s government and fleeing in 2014. A year later, he came to the U.S., where he is seeking asylum while he lives in an opulent Manhattan apartment and publicizes claims of corruption against Chinese government officials. Since Guo fled to the U.S., the Chinese government has accused him of a raft of crimes, and a former assistant has accused him of rape. Guo has denied the allegations against him, calling them politically motivated.

In early 2018, the Guo-linked firm hired Strategic Vision, an obscure company led by Washington-area executive French Wallop,[3rd divorced wife of rep, sleeping around?] to dig up information on several targets, whom the suit does not name.

According to a court filing by Wallop’s firm, Guo enlisted it, "To perform research and analytics on numerous Chinese Nationals whom Mr. Guo and his undisclosed Chinese associates suspected to beengaged in activities in the United States and elsewhere that are inconsistent with their standing in the Chinese Communist Party and/or the laws of the United States."

Wallop was the third wife of Malcolm Wallop, the late Republican senator from Wyoming. In recent years, she has maintained a low profile in Washington, though in the midst of her divorce from the senator in 2000, the Washington Post’s gossip columnist obtained a sharply worded change-of-address note she sent around to friends stating, “French Wallop regrets to inform you that due to a significant indiscretion on the part of her husband of 16 years, he may now be reached at the following address.” On her LinkedIn profile, Wallop refers to Strategic Vision as a “strategic consulting firm.”

In addition to Wallop, J. Michael Waller acted as a representative of Strategic Vision, according to a letter the firm submitted to the court. Waller is a vice president at the far-right Center for Security Policy, a think tank founded by Frank Gaffney, a national security activist known for his conspiratorial hostility to Islam. Waller also served as the ghostwriter for the memoirs of Blackwater founder Erik Prince, according to his website.

By late 2017, when Guo was allegedly arranging for the contract, he also became something of a political football as Beijing sought his return to China. Earlier that year, China issued an Interpol red notice for his arrest. Then Chinese officials traveling to the U.S. on transit visas, which did not permit them to conduct government business, visited Guo at his apartment. This prompted a standoff, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, between the Justice Department, which wanted to arrest the Chinese officials, and the State Department, which successfully held the DOJ at bay.

Casino magnate Steve Wynn, a longtime Trump confidant with business interests in China, reportedly hand-delivered the president a letter from the Chinese government requesting Guo’s handover, though Wynn’s firm has denied it. Guo’s fate became a subject of heated internal debate within the administration, and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions reportedly threatened to resign if the renegade mogul was turned over to China.

According to one person who knows the people involved, it was in the context of this battle over his fate that Guo sought dirt on Chinese nationals: He wanted, this person said, to ingratiate himself with U.S. authorities by offering them intelligence, financed from his own fortune, in a bid to show he could be useful.

In January 2018, a Hong Kong firm tied to Guo, Eastern Profit,inked a contract with Strategic Vision US. It is rare for the details of private espionage agreements to see the light of day, but Strategic Vision attached its five-page agreement as an exhibit to a counterclaim it lodged in response to the suit. The contract promises $9 million in exchange for a year’s worth of snooping on 10 unnamed individuals — referred to in the document as “fish” — calling for details on everything from their movements to financial records to sensitive personal information. That includes details on a “subject's family, extramarital affairs, children born out of wedlock” as well as their “pornography” and their use of “‘dating’ or sexual services apps.”

According to the Guo-linked firm’s complaint, Strategic Vision said it had a former NSA agent on staff and said it had worked “for Republican politicians, a Middle Eastern prince and a politician belonging to the opposition party in Russia.” Guo’s side also alleged that Strategic Vision provided a “sample report, which appeared to show that Strategic Vision could enter into banking systems and find evidence of money laundering.” But, the complaint alleges, after Guo advanced Strategic Vision an initial $1 million payment, it discovered the firm did not have the capabilities it claimed.

Not long after, Eastern Profit sued Strategic Vision. The case remained under seal for several months, keeping it from public view. Though much of the court record has now been unsealed, parts of the case remain under a protective order that prevents sensitive details from being revealed.

Watch President Trump call trade war with China a 'little squabble']

In a countersuit, Strategic Vision accused Guo and his representatives of a variety of troubling actions. The firm, which denied most of Eastern Profit’s allegations, claimed that when a representative of Guo’s provided a thumb drive with information on his chosen surveillance targets — Chinese officials whom Guo allegedly suspected of wrongdoing — the thumb drive turned out to be loaded with sophisticated malware. After the firm complained, it says it received three new thumb drives from Guo’s side, one of which also contained malware.

According to the counter-claim, which has been dismissed without prejudice, Guo was introduced to Strategic Vision by Lianchao Han, a dissident activist and visiting fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute.But, it alleges, Guo later told the firm that Han could not be trusted. Instead, Guo allegedly told the firm to communicate with his assistant, whom Guo “oddly advised was a member of the Chinese Communist Party who also could not be trusted.” Han did not respond to requests for comment.

The firm also alleged that, when it began researching its targets, it discovered they “had been designated by the U.S. Department of State under the Obama administration as ‘Records Protected’ persons, meaning that information concerning their status and activities was not subject to disclosure under any circumstances. Strategic Vision learned that attempting to research subjects known to be 'Records Protected' could be a criminal activity."

It is not clear to what exactly the “Records Protected” designation refers. The State Department did not respond to questions about the term, and several former top legal advisers at State said they were not familiar with it.

“I have never heard of a State Department ‘records protected’ designation per se,” wrote Brian Egan, a partner at the law firm Steptoe who served as the department’s top legal adviser at the end of Barack Obama’s administration. “I am also having a hard time imagining a circumstance in which a private person or company could be prosecuted for merely attempting to research information about a particular individual.”

A lawyer for Eastern Profit, Zachary Grendi, forwarded a request for comment to Daniel Podhaskie, a lawyer for Guo’s family office, who declined to comment. A lawyer for Strategic Vision, Mark Berube, did not respond to requests for comment. Waller declined to comment on the record.

***

The circumstances of the lawsuit are just one of the many mysteries swirling around Guo. Many basic details of his biography, including his exact age, remain hazy.

He was born roughly 50 years ago, reportedly in the coastal Shandong Province in Eastern China — or, he has claimed, in Jilin Province in the country’s north — and made a fortune in real estate, benefiting from the construction boom around the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. There, he developed a reputation for playing hardball. After clashing with a deputy mayor of Beijing, Guo gave the police a video of the official having sex with his mistress, prompting the man’s arrest and political downfall.

Guo appears to owe his rise in part to his relationship with a top official at China’s Ministry of State Security. The official, former vice minister Ma Jian, fell out of favor and was arrested in early 2015 on corruption charges. Two months later, the Chinese outlet Caixin published an expose of Guo, highlighting his ties to the toppled intelligence official.

By that point, Guo had already fled China.

Since arriving in the U.S., Guo has constantly irritated the ruling party, spouting a steady stream of salacious allegations about corruption and other official wrongdoing.

Ensconced in New York, the renegade businessman set up Guo Media to amplify his campaign against the Communist Party and often dispenses his accusations via video livestream while going about his billionaire lifestyle — including from the deck of his $20 million yacht.

Guo accused China’s top anti-corruption official, Wang Qishan, of corruption and of having an affair with a famous actress, Fan Bingbing, whose temporary disappearance became an international mystery of its own last year. He also offered his own theory on the 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, claiming the CCP brought down the Beijing-bound plane to get rid of people who could have blown the whistle on an organ-harvesting scheme in Nanjing.

Guo’s bombastic style and real estate background have prompted comparisons to Trump.

He is even a member of Mar-a-Lago, prompting concerns that he might attempt to show up at the club during Xi’s first summit with Trump in the spring of 2017 and cause some sort of international incident.

Donald Trump

LAW AND ORDER

How Trump Could Be Prosecuted After the White House

By RENATO MARIOTTI

“I like because Donald Trump the president talks [about] fake news. This idea is really good,” Guo, whose English is rudimentary, told Vice News. “Everything [said] about me is fake.”

One thing about Guo is clear: Since arriving in the U.S., he has embraced the country’s litigious culture. In addition to the private spying case, he is embroiled in several ongoing legal fights, including a dispute with his former attorneys at Boies Schiller Flexner, the firm founded by politically connected super lawyer David Boies. Guo also sued Republican dirty trickster Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime political adviser, last year for $100 million after Stone claimed the billionaire had illegally donated to Hillary Clinton and was funding a presidential run by Bannon. In December, Stone retracted his statements and apologized.

***

Guo’s lawsuit against Strategic Vision could prove awkward for Washington’s small community of China hardliners.

In March, several prominent China hawks launched Committee on the Present Danger, a new conservative advocacy group aimed at encouraging U.S. confrontation with China. The group, which includes former CIA director Jim Woolsey, has held events in New York and Washington, including an April roundtable on Capitol Hill that featured Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

While members of the committee are united on China, they are divided on Guo.

Both Waller, who is fighting Guo, and Bannon, the billionaire’s closest ally in the U.S., are members of the committee. The group also includes Gaffney, whose think tank employs Waller, and Han, who introduced Guo to Strategic Vision, only to have Guo allegedly turn around and badmouth Han as untrustworthy.

But as the dispute winds its way through court, the committee is presenting a united front. Gaffney said he was not aware of any internal strife the suit had caused within the group.

Bannon declined to comment on the record. He maintains warm relations with Guo, whom he calls “Miles” and has met with dozens of times. The lawsuit has done nothing to slow the pair’s crusade against Beijing.

In recent days, what appears to be the Twitter account for Guo Media has repeatedly posted a photo of Bannon and Guo hugging each other as well as a photo of Bannon photoshopped to show him aiming a double-barreled pistol with flames behind him in the background.

View image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on Twitter

GUO.MEDIA(GUOWENGUI)

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5:28 PM - Jun 4, 2019

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On Sunday, Guo Media’s YouTube page posted a video of a three-hour political discussion between Bannon and Guo, who sat together at a desk in front of a Chinese landscape painting.

"The Chinese people are being suppressed and enslaved,” Bannon, dressed all in black, declared.

Guo, in a tailored blue suit, smiled and gestured expressively. On an iPad, Guo showed Bannon messages he said came from Chinese citizens.

"All of these messages are to express love to Mr. Bannon,” Guo said. “They all tell you that they love you, Mr. Bannon.”

Despite his aggressive campaign against Beijing, Guo remains a puzzle to China-watchers, with some supporting his asylum hopes and others remaining suspicious of his motives.

A Times Magazine profile of Guo last year reported that some Chinese dissidents in New York suspect him of actually being a spy for Beijing.

Others say he has already proven useful to the U.S. “I’ve interviewed him, and he has sensitive knowledge of high-level Chinese Communist politics,” said Michael Pillsbury, a fluent Mandarin speaker who spent decades as a China analyst in the federal government and now serves as a top outside adviser to Trump on the country. “I also don’t think he should be returned to China.”

As Trump and Xi head into an expected meeting later this month at the G-20 summit in Japan to hash out differences over trade policy, Guo remains in the background as a lingering wrinkle in U.S.-China relations — and a lingering mystery.

This article tagged under:

China State Department NSA New York Donald Trump Donald Trump 2020 Stephen Bannon Mar-a-Lago U.S.-China Relations

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==

From Red Menace to the Pink, Green, and Lavender Subversives

Campus Counter-subversion

At the 1989 Conservative Political Action Conference counter- subversion starJ. Michael Waller spoke at a student workshop on conducting "Opposition Research." At the workshop a pamphlet published by the Young Americans for Freedom was distributed. Titled "List of Un-American Organizations on Our College Campuses" the 15-page booklet is dedicated to "Uncle Joe (1908-1957)" and fulfills its McCarthyist heritage by its blacklist-style smears of CISPES, United Campuses Against Nuclear War, Communist Party USA, Oxfam America, Trans Africa, Washington Office on Africa, United States Student Association, and a "Sandinista Support Network" including Witness for Peace, Nicaragua Network and TecNica.

According to the pamphlet:

=== "With Congress and the FBI no longer able to investigate anti-American activities on the college campuses, it has increasingly become the responsibility of the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) to keep watch over those groups who desire to undermine America. === "While YAF was able to secretly monitor Leftist groups for the last several years, a recent string of newspaper articles and a television documentary have appeared, blowing YAF's cover.

The pamphlet also archly warns that it hopes to provide:

=== "a basic idea of the terrible threat these Hard- Left groups pose to our way of life. Many of these groups take their orders directly from a hostile foreign power and all of them are entrenched on at least one of the college campuses in your community.

Corporate Security==omg

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/:{2013}:/05/19/what-guilt-does-the-us-bear-in-guatemala/blaming-the-us-for-guatemalan-deaths-is-easy-propaganda

Rios Montt prosecution was less about justice and more about using the courts to wage political propaganda campaigns to settle old scores. Rios Montt’s real crime was not genocide, according to prevailing logic, but his political beliefs. His polar opposite contemporaries in Central America will never be prosecuted because they were fighting for “progressive ideals.”

For the same reason, the United States does not bear responsibility for any excesses in the Guatemalan civil war.

Few had clean hands in the battle over Central America in the 1980s. Why say only one side was villainous?

Let’s take away the political labels and look objectively at the crimes. If Rios Montt is to be found guilty in 2013, for murders committed in the 1980s, then the current Nicaraguan president, Daniel Ortega, who led the dictatorial Sandinista junta during the bloody Nicaraguan civil war, and a contemporary of Rios Montt, should be tried on similar charges.

And if the United States is considered complicit in any crimes in Central America, that same justice should extend to the former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and his brother and successor, Raul, who for decades ran the Cuban military. It was the Castro brothers, after all, who provided training and weapons for Ortega’s murderous rule, and helped spread the leftist insurgency throughout Central America, which Rios Montt used to legitimize his actions.

Likewise, shouldn’t former insurgents who committed war crimes in the 1980s also face justice?

Guerrilla leaders in El Salvador ordered assassination and urban terrorism in the 1980s, but now participate in its government. Should they not be tried for war crimes, too?

Ideally, yes. But what purpose would that serve, a generation after the fact? The success of El Salvador as a market economy and multiparty democracy rests on the very uncomfortable fact that, in exchange for peace and national reconciliation, a lot of bad guys had to go free.

As imperfect as the U.S.-backed amnesty-for-peace deals in Nicaragua and El Salvador were, they worked. As rewarding as it would be to see Ortega or Sanchez Ceren or Fidel Castro or U.S. officials, share the fate of Rios Montt, it would not be in the interests of justice.

==

Please note: IPS Right Web neither represents nor endorses any of the individuals or groups profiled on this site.

J. Michael Waller is a neoconservative academic and political commentator based at the Center for Security Policy, where he serves as vice president of information operations, and the Institute of World Politics (IWP), a rightist graduate school in Washington, D.C. Waller also blogs at PoliticalWarfare.org and the Andrew Breitbart-founded BigPeace.com.

Waller frequently writes on the purported threat of radical Islam in the United States, hyping issues such as the "ground-zero mosque." He also focuses on Iranian issues, often highlighting the repression of opposition groups in the country.

In a typical entry on his Politicalwarfare.org blog, Waller attacked a demonstration in London organized by Islamic groups opposing the September 2010 visit of Pope Benedict XVI. Highlighting the demonstrators' chant that "justice is on its way," Waller wrote that the word justice "under sharia law requires Christians either to convert to Islam, be killed, or submit to Islamic rule as dhimmis." Promoting the widely criticized Center for Security Policy 2010 report "Sharia – Threat to America," Waller wrote that "even though [the demonstrators] were not criminally violent, the code language they were using as understood by adherents to sharia law show that they should be considered a terrorist threat."[[1]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/rwadmin.php?S=80010bd57270d1946b732f7b4539d169ff1ae851&D=cp&C=content_publish&M=entry_form&channel_id=5&entry_id=6594#_edn1)

In another blog entry, Waller argued that the "United States government should issue an arrest warrant for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the Australian who published tens of thousands of classified U.S. military documents on his website, and try him on espionage charges." Waller quotes Kenneth deGraffenreid, an IWP colleague and ex-counterintelligence official in the George W. Bush administration, who said: "Assange was doing intelligence tradecraft. He appeared in different cities, using secret 'paroles' or recognition signals so that he and his sources can identify one another, and went to a variety of news outlets to make sure that, once started, the dissemination of the classified information could not be stopped. The conspirators went to different editions so that if publication got stopped in one place it wouldn't be stopped in another. … Illegally giving or receiving 100,000 secret files about our counterterrorism efforts, and making them available to the terrorists to read, is clearly aiding and abetting terrorism."[[2]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/rwadmin.php?S=80010bd57270d1946b732f7b4539d169ff1ae851&D=cp&C=content_publish&M=entry_form&channel_id=5&entry_id=6594#_edn2)

Other, less ideological observers have criticized WikiLeaks for failing to carefully vet its material and not developing clear cut standards on what should be released and how.[[3]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/rwadmin.php?S=80010bd57270d1946b732f7b4539d169ff1ae851&D=cp&C=content_publish&M=entry_form&channel_id=5&entry_id=6594#_edn3) For his part, Defense Secretary Robert Gates limited himself to saying that WikiLeaks was "morally culpable" for releasing classified documents that could put soldiers at risk.[[4]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/rwadmin.php?S=80010bd57270d1946b732f7b4539d169ff1ae851&D=cp&C=content_publish&M=entry_form&channel_id=5&entry_id=6594#_edn4)

At the Institute of World Politics, Waller is the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Chair in International Communication. His courses include "Foreign Propaganda, Perceptions and Policy", "Political Warfare: Past, Present and Future" and "Public Diplomacy and Political Warfare." According to Waller, his course on political warfare is a survey of the history, philosophies and techniques of political warfare from antiquity to the present. "We study the classics - ancient Greece, Rome, India and China and the Hebrews, among others - and move on through the Crusades and then to Machiavelli, the American Revolution (particularly Samuel Adams), 19th century Europe, World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution, Antonio Gramsci, Saul Alinsky, and present-day Islamic political warfare."[[5]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/rwadmin.php?S=80010bd57270d1946b732f7b4539d169ff1ae851&D=cp&C=content_publish&M=entry_form&channel_id=5&entry_id=6594#_edn5)

Waller is the author or editor of several books, including Dismantling Tyranny: Transitioning Beyond Totalitarian Regimes, a 2005 book coauthored with Ilan Berman; the 1994 book Secret Empire: The KGB in Russia Today; and the 2007 edited volume Strategic Influence: Public Diplomacy, Counterpropaganda and Political Warfare.

Waller describes Strategic Influence as "the work of 13 scholars and practitioners in the fields of public diplomacy, counterpropaganda and political warfare. The book surveys the subjects from the American Revolution, through the Cold War, to present-day wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."[[6]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/rwadmin.php?S=80010bd57270d1946b732f7b4539d169ff1ae851&D=cp&C=content_publish&M=entry_form&channel_id=5&entry_id=6594#_edn6) Among the contributors are the Leo Strauss scholar Carnes Lord, Jennifer Marshall of the Heritage Foundation, and several of Waller's colleagues at the Institute of World Politics.[[7]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/rwadmin.php?S=80010bd57270d1946b732f7b4539d169ff1ae851&D=cp&C=content_publish&M=entry_form&channel_id=5&entry_id=6594#_edn7)

Waller's IWP bio describes him as "a scholar-practitioner in public diplomacy, political warfare, psychological operations and information operations in support of US foreign and military policy for 25 years." The bio states that he was "a member of the staff of the US House of Representatives and the US Senate, served on the White House Task Force on Central America, and has been a consultant to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the US Information Agency, the US Agency for International Development, the Office of the Secretary of Defense in support of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the US Army." Additionally, he "is a member of the faculty of the Leader Development and Education for Sustained Peace (LDESP) program at the Naval Postgraduate School; and is an Honorary Fellow at the Proteus Futures Group at the Center for Strategic Leadership of the US Army War College, sponsored by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Intelligence University. In 2010 he was named a member of the Psychological Operations Capabilities-Based Assessment team for the US Special Operations Command."[[8]](http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/rwadmin.php?S=80010bd57270d1946b732f7b4539d169ff1ae851&D=cp&C=content_publish&M=entry_form&channel_id=5&entry_id=6594#_edn8)

==bs

Biography

Professor J. Michael Waller has been a scholar-practitioner in public diplomacy, political warfare, psychological operations and information operations in support of US foreign and military policy for more than 25 years. He was a member of the staff of the US House of Representatives and the US Senate, served on the White House Task Force on Central America, was an operative for members of the White House Active Measures Working Group, and has been aconsultant to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the US Information Agency, the US Agency for International Development, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the US Army, and the US Special Operations Command. In 2006 he received a citation from the Director of the FBI for “exceptional service in the public interest.” He has designed and conducted specialized training courses for the US military and civilian agencies.

Prof. Waller can think like an insurgent, having received military training as an insurgent with the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan Resistance in the 1980s. He successfully trained scores of U.S.-backed insurgent commanders (Nicaraguan) in political warfare and psychological operations and aided their demobilization and transition into a democratic society. He worked with Afghan resistance fighters against Soviet Army. He also successfully trained U.S.-backed foreign military counterinsurgency forces to defeat guerrillas and terrorists through non-kinetic means; and designed and implemented ideological warfare operations to infiltrate and disrupt adversary political front organizations and hostile foreign security and intelligence services.

Currently he is the director of the only graduate studies program in the United States on the integration of public diplomacy and political warfare as low-cost/high-impact solutions to leverage, avoid or prevent lethal kinetic force. He is also the Founder and President of Strategic Information Services, LLC, an education, training, publishing and information strategy company.

Prof. Waller holds the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Chair in International Communication at the Institute on World Politics, and directs the Institute’s graduate programs on public diplomacy and political warfare.

==bs eg

wt

en. Jon Kyl's recent hearing on the radical Islamists' infiltration of the chaplaincy of the U.S. military and prisons provided disturbing insights in two areas in particular: 1) the successes that Islamic radicals have had in assuming control over the selection of military chaplains; and 2) the different levels of decorum and seriousness with which Democratic senators approach a hearing on critical national security matters.

At the hearing, the Defense Department acknowledged that it had been lax in carrying out security checks for military chaplains and Arabic translators. In the wake of reports that the two groups which have been responsible for endorsing Muslim chaplains for the military themselves have links to terrorist organizations, the Pentagon said it will search for new groups to endorse chaplains.

During the very period when Mr. al-Amoudi and his organizations were involved in the chaplain program, Mr. Waller said, Mr. al-Amoudi "was a senior figure in Northern Virginia-based entities that were either raided or shut down for alleged terrorist financing; he openly spoke out in support of Hamas and Hezbollah, he campaigned for the release of a Hamas leader, and he attempted to secure the release of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader convicted for his role in plotting to bring down civilian airliners and bomb bridges, tunnels and skyscrapers in New York City."

While Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein worked in a constructive, bipartisan fashion with Mr. Kyl in examining witnesses, Sen. Richard Durbin, Illinois Democrat, clearly did not. When Mr. Waller criticized the FBI for depicting the American Muslim Council (the organization Mr. al-Amoudi headed for many years) as "mainstream," Mr. Durbin falsely suggested that Mr. Waller was attempting to impugn FBI Director Robert Mueller's patriotism. For good measure, Mr. Durbin repeatedly interrupted Mr. Waller's testimony and denounced his carefully documented Insight stories about Mr. al-Amoudi's activities as going "over that line."

Mr. Waller has not gone "over that line." Neither have Mr. Durbin's Senate colleagues in asking those questions. These are serious problems that require urgent, honest investigation and resolution. There are few more serious dangers than betrayal in the ranks at a time of war

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2003/oct/26/20031026-105102-4786r/#ixzz38cfccwlF 

Some of the most disturbing testimony was presented by J. Michael Waller, a senior editor for Insight magazine and a professor at the Institute of World Politics. Mr. Waller provided a detailed chronology of how Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi came to be a chief architect of the Pentagon's Muslim cleric training and selection program. Mr. al-Amoudi was stopped at London's Heathrow Airport Aug. 16 while preparing to board a flight to Syria. A federal affidavit filed in U.S. District Court alleges that Mr. al-Amoudi, who was carrying $340,000 in cash, was attempting to smuggle the money to one or more terrorist organizations operating on Syrian soil -- including al Qaeda, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

==

Dismantling Tyranny: Transitioning Beyond Totalitarian Regimes (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005) - co-edited with J. Michael Waller---

CISPES j michael waller ~  ; sequent and freedom fighter 61

Washington Times Lands Abe Lincoln Scoop

... appeared in the pages of Insight magazine. J. Michael Waller opened his 12/23/03 article, “Democrats Usher in An Age of ... Factcheck.org concluded that, quote marks or not, Waller’s assertion about Lincoln was false. Insight is now defunct as ...

RWW Blog - Josh Glasstetter - 02/16/2007 - 6:16pm - 0 attachments

Washington Times Lands Abe Lincoln Scoop

... appeared in the pages of Insight magazine. J. Michael Waller opened his 12/23/03 article, “Democrats Usher in An Age of ... Factcheck.org concluded that, quote marks or not, Waller’s assertion about Lincoln was false. Insight is now defunct as ...

RWW Blog - Josh Glasstetter - 02/16/2007 - 6:16pm - 0 attachments

Get Your Facts Straight Before You Threaten Revolution

... justices — Donald Beatty, John Kittredge and John Waller — said a state law passed last month requires Sanford to apply for ...

So Frank Gaffney pens a piece calling for treason charges against those in Congress who disagree with the decider, using a fabricated quote from Abraham Lincoln as the cornerstone of his argument:

Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged. — President Abraham Lincoln

The usual suspects, and read their daily Washington Times while drinking their morning coffee, and a flurry of posting about the merits of this idea begins:

Of course, the left would howl and scream if a modern person said this. They would whine that we were questioning their patriotism.

You’re damn right we are!

And another:

This is a wonderful quote from “honest Abe Lincoln” that should be on every conservative website as a reminder to America why the Dems are not to be trusted with our national security:

Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged. — President Abraham Lincoln

Now who is going to argue with Abraham Lincoln? If you oppose the Democrat plans to surrender Iraq, post this quote someplace.

The joy is palpable, as their noble cause of smearing anyone who disagrees with them now has the apparent backing of the man most like the decider- good old Honest Abe, himself. Except, of course, the quote is fabricated:

But this quote is completely invented. Lincoln never said it. This “quote” was first attributed to Lincoln by J. Michael Waller in Insight Magazine, in a 2003 article revealingly entitled: Democrats Usher in an Age of Treason. But as Waller himself now admits, the quote attributed to Lincoln is completely fraudulent. Waller wrote in an e-mail to FactCheck.org (h/t William Wolfrum):

The supposed quote in question is not a quote at all, and I never intended it to be construed as one. It was my lead sentence in the article that a copy editor mistakenly turned into a quote by incorrectly inserting quotation marks.

It was Waller, in The Washington Times’ Insight Magazine, urging that anti-war Congressmen be hanged — not Abraham Lincoln. But to justify their plainly un-American assault on our most basic constitutional liberties, neoconservatives like Gaffney simply invent quotes, attribute them to Abraham Lincoln, and continue to use them long after they have been debunked.

So the Washington Times features a story from a columnist that features a bogus quote that found its origin in another Washington Times publication. How delicious. But that isn’t the real punchline. The real joke is who the conservatives who ran with this story are blaming. I will give you three guesses.

If you guessed Frank Gaffney, you would be wrong.

If you guess J. Michael Waller, you would be wrong.

If you guessed the Washington Times, you would be wrong.

Nope, our intrepid conservative stalwarts are blaming… the media.

I shit you not:

Apparently even our vaunted journalists can be taken in by an internet fraud. Turns out this quote is not from Lincoln. Great. Now we can’t even trust the media to get quotes right.

You are right, MEDIA LIES. The “Media” can’t get quotes that DO NOT FUCKING EXIST right. The “Media” can not correct every wingnut idea pubvlished by some wingnut columnist in the Washington Times. Clearly, this is David fucking Broder’s fault. Damned liberal media.

Then there is my favorite:

I was linked by some foul mouthed childish liberal nut, who had a good point – this Lincoln quote I saw in a Washington Times article is an internet fake. Of course I cannot fact check the news media, and if the emotionally stunted blogger would have simply emailed me with the fact this was one of those urban legends I would do what I am doing now, alertiing folks that the quote is a fraud.

Damn liberal media.

LI

Summary

Managing director of a niche competitive advisory company for private sector clients and writer/editor on defense, diplomatic, intelligence, and national security strategy. PhD in international security affairs with 13 years' experience as a graduate school Annenberg Professor. Seeking teaching position at a research university or corporate position. More than 30 years experience in international communication, ranging from journalism, public policy, education, public diplomacy, political warfare, and defense and national security affairs. Author or editor of eight books and hundreds of articles. 

Specialties: High-impact, low-cost solutions to business, security, military and intelligence challenges. Innovation in the use of information, persuasion and psychological strategy as instruments of national security, military and trade policy. This experience is directly applicable to private sector business strategy. Interagency experience on national security issues concerning intelligence analysis, intelligence support, intelligence operations, security policy, doctrine, and military operations, often in close cooperation with elected and appointed policymakers.

Experience

NATO Defence Strategic Communications Journal

June 2015 – Present (1 year 7 months)

Member of founding editorial board of “Defence Strategic Communications,” a bi-annual, open access, peer-reviewed and refereed journal published by the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (NATO StratCom COE), Riga, Latvia.

Senior Analyst
Wikistrat

2011 – Present (5 years)

Serves as a member of globally crowdsourced intelligence analytical teams.

Oceanic Advisors

April 2005 – Present (11 years 9 months)

Oceanic Advisors is a boutique advisory firm that specializes in low-cost, high-impact solutions for client challenges worldwide.

Center for Security Policy

2000 – Present (16 years)

Non-profit defense and national security think tank devoted to peace through strength.

Publications

Kyiv Post (Kyiv, Ukraine)

April 2015

Ukraine has a secret weapon to defend itself against the Russian invaders. The embattled nation is uniquely gifted with the knowledge and means to exploit Russia's countless internal divisions to force the Kremlin to cease its external aggression.

Authors:

Investor's Business Daily

April 2015

Hostile foreign intelligence services are certain to have exploited Hillary Clinton's private email server while she was US secretary of state, intelligence and counterintelligence experts say.

Authors:

Forbes

September 2014

A former KGB general, now in Austrian custody on murder charges, and his criminal associates create forgeries to defame people and confuse the public through litigation in US and European courts.

Authors:

Daily Caller

May 2014

Asking why the US Air Force and NASA have created a monopoly that gives Vladimir Putin effective control over US space launch programs, while freezing out private American competitors.

Authors:

Investor's Business Daily

December 2013

Russia continues to celebrate the founding of the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police that became the Soviet KGB - and the West sees nothing wrong with it.

Authors:

By Erik Prince, a New York Times bestseller published by Portfolio/Penguin

December 2013

Author Erik Prince credits me in the acknowledgements for having "recorded and researched many of the events recounted in this book."

Authors:

Investor's Business Daily

September 2013

This article predicted that Russia would become aggressive thanks to "provocative weakness" from the White House, and pre-dated Russia's invasion and dismemberment of Ukraine and its increased nuclear aircraft and submarine provocations against Western countries.

Authors:

New York Times

May 2013

Prosecutions of former Guatemalan military officers for crimes committed in the 1980s isn't about justice. It's a continuation of the communist insurgents' warfare by other means.

Authors:

Committee on Foreign Affairs, US House of Representatives

March 2010

Testimony to Congress about how to leverage public opinion abroad to the benefit of the United States.

Authors:

Crossbow Books

2009

An edited volume containing formative political warfare documents from the American Revolution period, including works by Samuel Adams, John Hancock, George Washington, Thomas Paine and the Continental Congress. Designed for my Political Warfare: Past, Present and Future graduate course.

Authors:

Institute of World Politics Press

2009

In this vital book, thirteen experts in public diplomacy, counterpropaganda and political warfare lay out the components of what the U.S. and its allies need to win the war of ideas around the world. Strategic influence is much more than strategic communication. Communicating with others has somehow become a goal in itself, when the real issue is influence - to modify the perceptions, attitudes, and most of all, the behavior of people, movements and governments around the world. This book is designed for the diplomat, intelligence officer, warfighter and policymaker.

Authors:

Institute of World Politics Press

2007

An edited 500 page compendium of some of the most formative and influential documents, essays, quotations and other primary source materials on U.S. public diplomacy. Used as a textbook for diplomats, intelligence officers and military officers.

Authors:

Institute of World Politics Press

2007

"Unique and outstanding." - Carnes Lord, US Naval War College.

An innovative approach toward weaponizing the "war of ideas" to destroy the enemy. According to the Armed Forces Journal, "this guide offers ways that could discredit, divide and ultimately squelch the enemy into a blob of irrelevance."

Authors:

Rowman & Littlefield

2005

When a totalitarian group seizes power, one of the first institutions it creates is a secret political police. Since the birth of modern totalitarianism, in country after country, secret political police have been the predominant instruments of power, used to consolidate power, neutralize the opposition, and erect a one-party state. Yet, when these same totalitarian regimes have liberalized or collapsed, the secret political police have often managed to survive and even remain relevant. Dismantling Tyranny: Transitioning Beyond Totalitarian Regimes provides a groundbreaking exploration of this survival tendency in seven formerly communist regimes in the former Soviet Union and Latin America - and the lessons these transformations hold for future democratic revolutions. But Dismantling Tyranny is also much more: it is a guidebook designed to empower, inform, and guide future transitions toward democracy for those political leaders with the initiative, and courage, to embark upon such a visionary path. Published in cooperation with the American Foreign Policy Council.

Authors:

Westview

1994

"Waller's volume highlights both the change and the continuity in the role of Russia's secret police" - Zbigniew Brzezinski. 

The first academic work to chronicle and analyze the Soviet KGB security services during the final years of the USSR, and their re-emergence as a reorganized political power center of the new Russian Federation. The author saw the changes firsthand, and was in the Kremlin on the day the Soviet Union was declared abolished.

Authors:

University Press of America

1991

"Michael Waller's book is an outstanding contribution to understanding politics." - Michael Radu, Foreign Policy Research Institute.

[1991 description]: A new aspect of low-intensity conflict can be seen today in El Salvador, where the decade-long insurgency appears able to continue without aid from traditional sources in Cuba and East Europe. The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) made its debut in 1980, but not before a private support network was established in the U.S. and other western countries to provide funds and political support for its struggle to overthrow the Salvadoran government. The FMLN is the most sophisticated guerrilla force in Latin American history. The FMLN's private international support network has stymied policymakers in Washington. This book illuminates this new dimension of low-intensity conflict that will confound the U.S. and its allies in the decade to come.

Authors:

El Tiempo Latino

November 2015

Spanish-language report, breaking news about secret emails that show how the Ecuadoran president and his inner circle orchestrated a propaganda campaign in the United States to support a lawsuit against the Chevron Corporation. English translation here: http://theamazonpost.com/emails-reveal-ecuadorian-propaganda-campaign-in-the-united-states-el-tiempo-latino/

Authors:

Education

Boston University
PhD, International Security Affairs

1989 – 1993

Was the first John M. Olin Fellow at the Center for Defense Journalism, and, as a doctoral student, was an Earhart Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology and Policy under Professor Uri Ra'anan.

Activities and Societies: University Professors Program. Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology and Policy.

MA, International Relations and Communication

1987 – 1989

Activities and Societies: John M. Olin Fellow, Center for Defense Journalism

BA, International Affairs

1980 – 1985

Activities and Societies: Phi Beta Kappa, Alpha Chapter; Chairman, District of Columbia Young Americans for Freedom

Honors & Awards

Niccolo Machiavelli Institute, Rome, Italy

2011

Influence Advisory Panel, London

2010

Young America's Foundation

May 2010

Charter member of Young America's Foundation Alumni Board. Reappointed in 2014.

Boston University

2007

Distinguished alumni award from the University Professors Program (UNI) at Boston University, under which I earned my PhD in 1993.

Federal Bureau of Investigation

2006

Received a written citation from FBI Director Robert Mueller in recognition of counterterrorism work.

Colombian Anti-Narcotics Police

1999

Medal awarded by Antinarcóticos Police General Rosso José Serrano, for participation in Operación Milenio in San José de Guaviare, Colombia.

Courses

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