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Tag: U.S. National Security Council

  • ‘Chaos agent’: Suspected Trump hack comes as Iran flexes digital muscles ahead of US election

    ‘Chaos agent’: Suspected Trump hack comes as Iran flexes digital muscles ahead of US election

    WASHINGTON (AP) — With less than three months before the U.S. election, Iran is intensifying its efforts to meddle in American politics, U.S. officials and private cybersecurity firms say, with the suspected hack of Donald Trump’s campaign being only the latest and most brazen example.

    Iran has long been described as a “chaos agent” when it comes to cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns and in recent months groups linked to the government in Tehran have covertly encouraged protests over Israel’s war in Gaza, impersonated American activists and created networks of fake news websites and social media accounts primed to spread false and misleading information to audiences in the U.S.

    While Russia and China remain bigger cyber threats against the U.S., experts and intelligence officials say Iran’s increasingly aggressive stance marks a significant escalation of efforts to confuse, deceive and frighten American voters ahead of the election.

    The pace will likely continue to increase as the election nears and America’s adversaries exploit the internet and advancements in artificial intelligence to sow discord and confusion.

    “We’re starting to really see that uptick and it makes sense, 90 days out from the election,” said Sean Minor, a former information warfare expert for the U.S. Army who now analyzes online threats for the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, which has seen a sharp increase in cyber operations from Iran and other nations. “As we get closer, we suspect that these networks will get more aggressive.”

    The FBI is investigating the suspected hack of the Trump campaign as well as efforts to infiltrate the campaign of President Joe Biden, which became Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign when Biden dropped out. Trump’s campaign announced Saturday that someone illegally accessed and retrieved internal documents, later distributed to three news outlets. The campaign blamed Iran, noting a recent Microsoft report revealing an attempt by Iranian military intelligence to hack into the systems of one of the presidential campaigns.

    “A lot of people think it was Iran. Probably was,” Trump said Tuesday on Univision before shrugging off the value of the leaked material. “I think it’s pretty boring information.”

    Iran has denied any involvement in the hack and said it has no interest in meddling with U.S. politics.

    That denial is disputed by U.S. intelligence officials and private cybersecurity firms who have linked Iran’s government and military to several recent campaigns targeting the U.S., saying they reflect Iran’s growing capabilities and its increasing willingness to use them.

    On Wednesday Google announced it had uncovered a group linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard that it said had tried to infiltrate the personal email accounts of roughly a dozen people linked to Biden and Trump since May.

    The company, which contacted law enforcement with its suspicions, said the group is still targeting people associated with Biden, Trump and Harris. It wasn’t clear whether the network identified by Google was connected to the attempt that Trump and Microsoft reported, or were part of a second attempt to infiltrate the campaign’s systems.

    Iran has a few different motives in seeking to influence U.S. elections, intelligence officials and cybersecurity analysts say. The country seeks to spread confusion and increase polarization in the U.S. while undermining support for Israel. Iran also aims to hurt candidates that it believes would increase tension between Washington and Tehran.

    What to know about the 2024 Election

    That’s a description that fits Trump, whose administration ended a nuclear deal with Iran, reimposed sanctions and ordered the killing of an Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, an act that prompted Iran’s leaders to vow revenge.

    The two leaders of the Senate intelligence committee issued a joint letter on Wednesday warning Tehran and other governments hostile to the U.S. that attempts to deceive Americans or disrupt the election will not be tolerated.

    “There will be consequences to interfering in the American democratic process,” wrote the committee’s chairman, Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, along with Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the vice chairman.

    In 2021, federal authorities charged two Iranian nationals with attempting to interfere with the election the year before. As part of the plot, the men wrote emails claiming to be members of the far-right Proud Boys in which they threatened Democratic voters with violence.

    Last month, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said the Iranian government had covertly supported American protests against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. Groups linked to Iran’s government also posed as online activists, encouraged campus protests and provided financial support to some protest groups, Haines said.

    Recent reports from Microsoft and Recorded Future have also linked Iran’s government to networks of fake news websites and social media accounts posing as Americans. The networks were discovered before they gained much influence and analysts say they may have been created ahead of time, to be activated in the weeks immediately before the election.

    The final weeks before an election may be the most dangerous when it comes to foreign efforts to impact voting. That’s when voters pay the most attention to politics and when false claims about candidates or voting can do the most damage.

    So-called ‘hack-and-leak’ attacks like the one reported by Trump’s campaign involve a hacker obtaining sensitive information from a private network and then releasing it, either to select individuals, the news media or to the public. Such attacks not only expose confidential information but can also raise questions about cybersecurity and the vulnerability of critical networks and systems.

    Especially concerning for elections, authorities say, would be an attack targeting a state or local election office that reveals sensitive information or disables election operations. Such an incursion could undermine trust in voting, even if the information exposed is worthless. Experts refer to this last possibility as a “perception hack,” when hackers steal information not because of its value, but because they want to flaunt their capabilities while spreading fear and confusion among their adversaries.

    “That can actually be more of a threat — the spectacle, the marketing this gives foreign adversaries — than the actual hack,” said Gavin Wilde, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former National Security Council analyst who specializes in cyber threats.

    In 2016, Russian hackers infiltrated Hillary Clinton’s campaign emails, ultimately obtaining and releasing some of the campaign’s most protected information in a hack-and-leak that upended the campaign in its final weeks.

    Recent advances in artificial intelligence have made it easier than ever to create and spread disinformation, including lifelike video and audio allowing hackers to impersonate someone and gain access to their organization’s systems. Nevertheless, the alleged hack of the Trump campaign reportedly involved much simpler techniques: someone gained access to an email account that lacked sufficient security protections.

    While people and organizations can take steps to minimize their vulnerability to hacks, nothing can eliminate the risk entirely, Wilde said, or completely reduce the likelihood that foreign adversaries will mount attacks on campaigns.

    “The tax we pay for being a digital society is that these hacks and leaks are unavoidable,” he said. “Whether you’re a business, a campaign or a government.”

    __

    Associated Press writer Ali Swenson contributed to this report from New York.

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  • U.S. retaliates in Iraq after three U.S. troops wounded in attack

    U.S. retaliates in Iraq after three U.S. troops wounded in attack

    U.S. Army soldiers watch as fellow Coalition soldiers pass by near the entrance to the International Zone on May 30, 2021 in Baghdad, Iraq.

    John Moore | Getty Images News | Getty Images

    The U.S. military carried out retaliatory air strikes on Monday in Iraq after a one-way drone attack earlier in the day by Iran-aligned militants that left one U.S. service member in critical condition and wounded two other U.S. personnel, officials said.

    The back-and-forth clash was the latest demonstration of how the Israel-Hamas war is rippling across the Middle East, creating turmoil that has turned U.S. troops at bases in Iraq and Syria into targets.

    Iran-aligned groups in Iraq and Syria oppose Israel’s campaign in Gaza and hold the United States partly responsible.

    At President Joe Biden’s direction, the U.S. military carried out the strikes in Iraq at 1:45 GMT, likely killing “a number of Kataib Hezbollah militants” and destroying multiple facilities used by the group, the U.S. military said.

    “These strikes are intended to hold accountable those elements directly responsible for attacks on coalition forces in Iraq and Syria and degrade their ability to continue attacks. We will always protect our forces,” said General Michael Erik Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command, in a statement.

    A U.S. base in Iraq’s Erbil that houses U.S. forces came under attack from a one-way drone earlier on Monday, leading to the latest U.S. casualties.

    The base has been repeatedly targeted. Reuters reported on another significant drone attack in October on the barracks at the Erbil base on Oct. 26, which penetrated U.S. air defenses but failed to detonate.

    The Pentagon did not disclose details about the identity of the service member who was critically wounded or offer more details on the injuries sustained in the attack. It also did not offer details on how this drone appeared to penetrate the base’s air defenses.

    “My prayers are with the brave Americans who were injured,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement.

    The White House National Security Council said Biden was briefed on the attack on Monday and ordered the Pentagon to prepare response options against those responsible.

    “The President places no higher priority than the protection of American personnel serving in harm’s way. The United States will act at a time and in a manner of our choosing should these attacks continue,” NSC spokesperson Adrienne Watson said.

    Still, it is unclear if the latest U.S. retaliation will deter future action against U.S. forces, who are deployed in Iraq and Syria to prevent a resurgence of Islamic State militants.

    The U.S. military has already come under attack at least 100 times in Iraq and Syria since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, usually with a mix of rockets and one-way attack drones.

    The U.S. embassy compound in Baghdad also came under mortar fire earlier in December, the first time it had been attacked in more than a year, in a major escalation.

    The latest unrest came less than a week after Austin returned from a trip to the Middle East focused on containing efforts by Iran-aligned groups to broaden of the Israel-Hamas war.

    That includes setting up a U.S.-led maritime coalition to safeguard Red Sea commerce following a series of drone and missile attacks against commercial vessels by Houthi militants in Yemen.

    The Pentagon said on Thursday that more than 20 countries have agreed to participate in the new U.S.-led coalition, known as Operation Prosperity Guardian.

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  • Biden’s shift on F-16s for Ukraine came after months of internal debate

    Biden’s shift on F-16s for Ukraine came after months of internal debate

    WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s decision to allow allies to train Ukrainian forces on how to operate F-16 fighter jets — and eventually to provide the aircraft themselves — seemed like an abrupt change in position but was in fact one that came after months of internal debate and quiet talks with allies.

    Biden announced during last week’s Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima, Japan, that the U.S. would join the F-16 coalition. His green light came after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spent months pressing the West to provide his forces with American-made jets as he tries to repel Russia’s now 15-month-old grinding invasion.

    Long shadowing the administration’s calculation were worries that such a move could escalate tensions with Russia. U.S. officials also argued that learning to fly and logistically support the advanced F-16 would be difficult and time consuming.

    But over the past three months, administration officials shifted toward the view that it was time to provide Ukraine’s pilots with the training and aircraft needed for the country’s long-term security needs, according to three officials familiar with the deliberations who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

    Still, the change in Biden’s position seemed rather sudden.

    In February, Biden was insistent in an interview with ABC’s David Muir that Ukraine “doesn’t need F-16s now” and that “I am ruling it out for now.” And in March, a top Pentagon policy official, Colin Kahl, told U.S. lawmakers that even if the president approved F-16s for Ukraine, it could take as long as two years to get Ukrainian pilots trained and equipped.

    But as the administration was publicly playing down the prospect of F-16s for Ukraine in the near term, an internal debate was heating up.

    Quiet White House discussions stepped up in February, around the time that Biden visited Ukraine and Poland, according to the U.S. officials.

    Following the trip, discussions that included senior White House National Security Council, Pentagon and State Department officials began on the pros and cons and the details of how such a transfer might work, officials said. Administration officials also got deeper into consultations with allies.

    In April, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin heard from defense leaders from allied countries during a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group who were looking for U.S. permission to train the Ukrainians on F-16s, according to a Defense Department official who was not authorized to comment publicly. Austin raised the matter during the NSC policy discussions and there was agreement that it was time to start training.

    Austin also raised the issue with Biden before the G7 summit with a recommendation “to proceed with approving allies” to train the Ukrainians and transfer the aircraft, the department official said. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also was a strong advocate for pushing forward with the plan during the U.S. policy talks and conveying to Biden increasing European urgency on the issue, officials said.

    U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan traveled to London on May 8 for talks with British, French and German allies on Ukraine, and F-16s were high on the agenda. They got into the nitty gritty on how to go about provide training and which countries might be willing to transfer jets to Ukraine. It was agreed that the focus would be on training first, according to one of the officials.

    Sullivan, before leaving London, spoke by phone with his counterparts from the Netherlands and Poland, both countries that have F-16s and “would be essential to any efforts to provide Ukraine jets for any future use.” Denmark also could potentially provide the jets, the official added.

    Biden and Sullivan discussed how the upcoming G7 summit in Hiroshima could provide a good opportunity for him to make the case to key allies on the administration’s shifting stance on fighter jets.

    They also discussed Biden backing allies providing jets to Ukraine — a line he had previously appeared not to want to cross out of concern that it could draw the West into what could be seen as direct confrontation with Moscow.

    Biden, in private talks with fellow G7 leaders on Friday, confirmed that the U.S. would get behind a joint effort to train Ukrainian pilots on the F-16 and that as things went on, they would work together on who would provide them and how many would be sent.

    State, Pentagon and NSC officials are now developing the training plan and “when, where and how to deliver F-16s” to Ukraine as part of the long-term security effort, the official said.

    U.S. officials say it will take several months to iron out details, but the U.S. Air Force has quietly determined that the actual training could realistically be done in about four months. The Air Force based the far shorter estimate on a visit by two Ukrainian pilots to a U.S. air base in March, where they got to learn about the F-16 and fly simulators. The training, officials say, would take place in Europe.

    White House officials have bristled at the notion that Biden’s decision amounted to a sea change.

    The administration had been focused on providing Ukraine with weapons — including air defense systems, armored vehicles, bridging equipment and artillery — that were needed for a coming counteroffensive. There also were concerns that sending F-16s would eat up a significant portion of the money allocated for Ukraine.

    What changed, the official added, is that other allies got to a point where they were willing to provide their own jets as part of a U.S.-based coalition.

    The Biden administration is still examining whether it will directly provide its own F-16s to Ukraine. Regardless, it needed buy-in from other allies because the U.S. wouldn’t be able to provide the full fleet of jets Zelenskyy says is needed.

    Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said the F-16 will give Ukraine a key capability for the long term but it won’t be a “game changer.”

    Kendall told a gathering of reporters on Monday there has been an awareness that “we needed to go there at some point, but we didn’t have a sense of urgency about this. I think we’re at a reasonable place to make that decision now.”

    Another potential wrinkle in the F-16 conversation involves Turkey.

    Turkey wants to buy 40 new F-16s from the U.S., but some in Congress oppose the sale until Turkey approves NATO membership for Sweden, which applied to join the alliance in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has objected to Sweden’s perceived support of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, the leftist extremist group DHKP-C and followers of the U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara claims was behind a failed military coup attempt in 2016.

    Erdogan is facing opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu in a runoff election on Sunday. If Erdogan wins, as expected, White House officials are increasingly hopeful that the Turkish leader will withdraw his opposition to Sweden’s membership, according to the U.S. official.

    If Erdogan drops opposition to Sweden joining NATO, it could lead to Turkey getting its long desired F-16s and may eventually add to the number of older F-16s in circulation, which could benefit Ukraine.

    —

    Associated Press White House correspondent Zeke Miller contributed reporting.

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  • Biden says there’s ‘work to do’ on global stage as he heads to Japan; US debt limit standoff looms

    Biden says there’s ‘work to do’ on global stage as he heads to Japan; US debt limit standoff looms

    WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said there’s “work to do” on the global stage as he headed to Japan on Wednesday to consult with allies on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s assertiveness in the Pacific at the same time that a debt limit standoff looms at home.

    With high-stakes talks to head off a federal default underway in Washington, Biden pledged to remain in “constant contact” with negotiators in the capital city while he conducts international diplomacy.

    The president departed Washington aboard Air Force One a day after scrapping plans for a historic stop in Papua New Guinea and a key visit to Australia amid the showdown with House Republicans over raising the federal debt limit. The three-nation trip had been meant as a triumphant global leadership showcase, and instead threatened to become a truncated reminder of how partisan disagreements have undercut U.S. standing on the global stage.

    “I’ve cut my trip short in order to be here for the final negotiations and sign the deal with the majority leader,” Biden said in remarks before departing the White House. “I’ve made clear America is not a deadbeat nation, we pay our bills.”

    For Biden, the intertwined dynamics of the debt standoff and his foray abroad put a spotlight on two key aspects of his presidency — his efforts to assert U.S. prowess on the international stage and to address economic concerns at home. They also are playing out as Biden is in the early weeks of his candidacy for reelection, adding political overtones to the situation.

    Aboard Air Force One en route to Japan, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy put Biden in the bad position of canceling part of the trip.

    “He is taking the American economy hostage,” she said.

    The president was still set to attend the annual Group of Seven summit of advanced democracies in Hiroshima, where sustaining support for Ukraine’s expected counteroffensive against Russia is set to take center stage, alongside economic, climate and global development issues. More than a year after Moscow’s invasion, Biden and allies have armed Kyiv with ever-more-advanced weaponry and maintained deep sanctions on Russia’s economy, though maintaining resolve has grown more challenging in Washington and other global capitals.

    While in Hiroshima, Biden also plans to sit down with the so-called Quad leaders of Japan, Australia and India, a partnership meant to serve as a counterweight to China in the Indo-Pacific, a region that he bills as a top priority in U.S. national security strategy. That meeting had originally been scheduled to occur next week on what would have been his inaugural visit to Canberra and Sydney as president.

    Off the agenda entirely is a stop in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, where Pacific Island leaders were to gather for a first-of-its-kind meeting with a U.S. president. It was meant to be a rejoinder to China’s increasing military and economic pressures in the region. The U.S. has recently opened embassies in the Solomon Islands and Tonga and has expressed a desire to reverse a decades-long pullback in the region.

    No U.S. president has ever visited the island nation, and high hopes for the visit were dashed by Biden’s announcement that he wouldn’t make the stop.

    When asked whether he thought his shortened trip was a win for China, he said: “No.”

    “Because we still work with allies,” he said.

    White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan dismissed the idea that jettisoning the Australia trip would do any diplomatic damage or give China leverage, arguing Biden’s reputation as a strong ally would help soften the blow while acknowledging the disappointment, particularly in Papua New Guinea, the cancellation has caused.

    “The work that we need to do bilaterally with Australia and with the Pacific Islands is work that can be done at a later date, whereas the final stretch of negotiations over the debt limit or the budget cannot be done at a later date,” Sullivan said.

    During a roughly hour-long meeting in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Biden and McCarthy designated chief negotiators to try to draft an agreement to allow more government borrowing in conjunction with GOP-demanded spending cuts. The Treasury Department has warned that action is likely needed by June 1 to assure the U.S. can continue to meet its financial obligations.

    U.S. officials have warned in increasingly urgent tones that a default would not only spark a deep recession, but also weaken its standing on the world stage.

    “Countries like Russia and China that would love nothing more than for us to default so they could point the finger and say, ‘You see, the United States is not a stable, reliable partner,’” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday. “So, that is a high priority, as it should be, for the president.”

    For weeks, White House officials have said Biden could manage both the Capitol Hill negotiations and foreign commitments while on the trip. But in recent days aides have fretted as McCarthy has repeatedly called for Biden to scrap his trip, worried that while abroad, the president would appear to the public as disengaged from the swelling crisis.

    The instability of the cancellation could have the opposite effect of the initial purpose of Biden’s trip — reinforcing American commitments to the region, warned Charles Edel, a senior adviser and the Australia chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

    “It would underscore for partners that despite welcome U.S. focus on the region and the focus on allies and partners at the heart of U.S. foreign policy, domestic politics is still a constraint on U.S. engagement and perhaps on budgetary commitments as well,” he said last week. “And I think that’s something that will be talked about widely.”

    ___

    Boak reported from Hiroshima, Japan.

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  • Biden to unveil new efforts to protect S. Korea from nukes

    Biden to unveil new efforts to protect S. Korea from nukes

    WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will use this week’s celebratory state visit by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to underscore that the U.S. is ready to step up its efforts to deter a North Korean attack on South Korea, according to the White House.

    Biden will announce specific new nuclear deterrence efforts as well as a new cyber security initiative, economic investments and an educational partnership, part of an effort to highlight the breadth and depth of the two countries’ relationship as they mark the 70th anniversary of their alliance, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.

    White House officials say Biden hopes to put a particular emphasis on the United States’ “iron clad” commitment to deterring nuclear action by North Korea as Pyongyang has stepped up ballistic missile tests, including flight-testing a solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time earlier this month. The recent test is seen as a possible breakthrough in the North’s efforts to acquire a more powerful, harder-to-detect weapon targeting the continental United States.

    Sullivan didn’t offer details on the new deterrence efforts ahead of the leaders’ announcement, but said that the U.S. is looking to send a clear message to Pyongyang about its increasingly aggressive rhetoric.

    “What I will say is that we believe that the statement will send a very clear and demonstrable signal of the United States’ credibility when it comes to its extended deterrence commitments to the Republic of Korea and to the people of Korea,” Sullivan said, using the formal name for South Korea.

    Biden also hopes to use the visit, which begins Tuesday, to underscore the importance of South Korea and Japan building on their security ties.

    Biden has sought opportunities to help the historic rivals improve their long, fraught relationship as the Indo-Pacific region becomes increasingly complicated. He held trilateral meetings with Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida that largely focused on the North Korea threat on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Cambodia last November and at the NATO summit in Madrid in June.

    Last month, South Korea announced a plan to compensate Koreans who performed forced labor during Tokyo’s colonial rule that doesn’t require Japanese companies to contribute to the reparations.

    Biden hailed the step as a “groundbreaking new chapter” in cooperation between the countries. Yoon followed up by visiting Tokyo later in March for talks with Kishida. It was the first summit between the two nations’ leaders in Japan since 2011.

    Sullivan said Biden also plans to highlight Yoon’s “determination and courage” in rapprochement with Japan during the visit.

    Ahead of the Yoon visit, the United States, South Korea and Japan conducted a joint missile defense exercise last week aimed at countering North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal.

    Experts say North Korean leader Kim Jong-un wants to pressure the United States into accepting North Korea as a legitimate nuclear power and hopes to negotiate an easing of sanctions from a position of strength.

    The United States and South Korea conducted their biggest field exercises in years in March and have also held separate naval and aerial drills involving a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group and nuclear-capable B-52 bombers.

    South Korean officials said that the two leaders would discuss human rights concerns in North Korea. Experts believe the food situation in North Korea is the worst it has been under Kim Jong Un’s 11-year rule, but they still say they see no signs of imminent famine or mass deaths. Kim vowed to strengthen state control over agriculture and take a spate of other steps to increase grain production, according to North Korean state media.

    Meanwhile, the White House recently declassified and released intelligence findings that show that Russia is looking again to North Korea for weapons to fuel the war in Ukraine in a deal that would provide Pyongyang with needed food and other commodities in return. The White House previously said North Korea had provided the Wagner Group, a private Russian military company, with arms to help bolster its forces as they fight side-by-side with Russian troops in Ukraine.

    South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin in a virtual speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington said there is a “dire human rights situation on the ground” and urged the international community to work together “to ease the anguish of ordinary North Korean people.”

    As part of his visit to Washington, Yoon is scheduled on Tuesday to tour NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center with Vice President Kamala Harris. The South Korean president will visit the Korean War Memorial with Biden and First Lady Jill Biden on Tuesday evening. The two leaders and aides will hold formal talks and a joint news conference on Wednesday before Yoon is honored with the state dinner.

    Yoon is to deliver a speech to the U.S. Congress on Thursday before traveling to Massachusetts where he is scheduled to speak at the Harvard Kennedy School.

    Biden has spent considerable time getting to know and consulting with Yoon since he took office.

    The Democratic administration has also been full of praise for Yoon’s leadership in the IndoPacific and beyond. South Korea has provided Ukraine with about $230 million in non lethal assistance since Russia’s invasion more than 14 months ago.

    The visit also follows just weeks after scores of highly classified documents were leaked which have complicated relations with allies, including South Korea. The papers viewed by The Associated Press indicate that South Korea’s National Security Council “grappled” with the U.S. in early March over an American request to provide artillery ammunition to Ukraine.

    The documents, which cited a signals intelligence report, said then-NSC Director Kim Sung-han suggested the possibility of selling the 330,000 rounds of 155 mm munitions to Poland, since getting the ammunition to Ukraine quickly was the United States’ ultimate goal.

    Seoul has also been supportive on U.S.-led sanctions and export controls targeting Russia since the start of the war. And South Korea has announced plans to invest more than $100 billion in the U.S. since the start of Biden administration, including a new Samsung advanced semiconductor factory in Texas and a Hyundai electrical vehicle plant in Georgia.

    Yoon in an interview with Reuters last week said that Seoul could potentially extend its support for Ukraine beyond humanitarian and economic aid if that eastern European nation were to face large-scale civilian attack by Russia.

    “The summit will also celebrate what we’ve been able to do under President Yoon’s leadership since he took over,” Sullivan said. “The ROK is stepping up around the world.”

    Yoon is the second ally to be honored by Biden with a state visit. French President Emmanuel Macron was honored with a state visit in December.

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  • Lawmakers war-game conflict with China, hoping to deter one

    Lawmakers war-game conflict with China, hoping to deter one

    WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s April 22, 2027, and 72 hours into a first-strike Chinese attack on Taiwan and the U.S. military response. Already, the toll on all sides is staggering.

    It was a war game, but one with a serious purpose and high-profile players: members of the House select committee on China. The conflict unfolded on Risk board game-style tabletop maps and markers under a giant gold chandelier in the House Ways and Means Committee room.

    The exercise explored American diplomatic, economic and military options if the United States and China were to reach the brink of war over Taiwan, a self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own. The exercise played out one night last week and was observed by The Associated Press. It was part of the committee’s in-depth review of U.S. policies toward China as lawmakers, especially in the Republican-led House, focus on tensions with President Xi Jinping’s government.

    In the war game, Beijing’s missiles and rockets cascade down on Taiwan and on U.S. forces as far away as Japan and Guam. Initial casualties include hundreds, possibly thousands, of U.S. troops. Taiwan’s and China’s losses are even higher.

    Discouragingly for Washington, alarmed and alienated allies in the war game leave Americans to fight almost entirely alone in support of Taiwan.

    And forget about a U.S. hotline call to Xi or one of his top generals to calm things down — not happening, at least not under this role-playing scenario.

    The war game wasn’t about planning a war, lawmakers said. It was about figuring out how to strengthen U.S. deterrence, to keep a war involving the U.S., China and Taiwan from ever starting.

    Ideally, the members of Congress would walk out of the war game with two convictions, the committee chairman, Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., told colleagues at the outset: “One is a sense of urgency.”

    The second: “A sense … that there are meaningful things we can do in this Congress through legislative action to improve the prospect of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” Gallagher said.

    In reality, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the committee’s top Democrat, told lawmakers, “we cannot have a situation where we are faced with what we are going to be facing tonight.”

    The “only way to do that is to deter aggression and to prevent a conflict from arising,” said Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill.

    The U.S. doesn’t formally recognize the Taiwan government but is Taipei’s most vital provider of weapons and other security assistance. Xi has directed his military to be ready to reclaim Taiwan in 2027, by force if necessary.

    Asked about lawmakers’ war game, Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy, said China wants peaceful reunification with Taiwan but reserves “the option of taking all necessary measures.”

    “The U.S. side’s so-called ‘war game’ is meant to support and embolden ‘Taiwan independence’ separatists and further fuel tensions in the Taiwan Strait, which we firmly oppose,” Liu said.

    In the war game, lawmakers played the blue team, in the role of National Security Council advisers. Their directive from their (imaginary) president: Deter a Chinese takeover of Taiwan if possible, defeat it if not.

    Experts for the Center for a New American Security think tank, whose research includes war-gaming possible conflicts using realistic scenarios and unclassified information, played the red team.

    In the exercise, it all kicks off with opposition lawmakers in Taiwan talking about independence.

    With the think tank’s defense program director Stacie Pettyjohn narrating, angry Chinese officials respond by heaping unacceptable demands on Taiwan. Meanwhile, China’s military moves invasion-capable forces into position. Steps such as bringing in blood supplies for treating troops suggest this is no ordinary military exercise.

    Ultimately, China imposes a de facto blockade on Taiwan, intolerable for an island that produces more than 60 percent of the world’s semiconductors, as well as other high-tech gear.

    While the U.S. military readies for a possible fight, U.S. presidential advisers — House committee members who are surrounding and studying the wooden tables with the map and troop markers spread out — assemble.

    They lob questions at a retired general, Mike Holmes, playing the role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, before deciding courses of action.

    What are the economic consequences if the U.S. goes maximalist on financial punishments, one lawmaker asks.

    “Catastrophic” is the response, for both the United States and China. China will hit back at the U.S. economy as well.

    “Who’s going to tell the president that he has to say to the American people, ‘Say goodbye to your iPhones?”’ Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, asks.

    Do American leaders have any way to communicate with their Chinese counterparts, lawmakers ask. No, China’s leaders have a history of shunning U.S. hotline calls, and that’s a problem, the exercise leaders tell them.

    In the war game, U.S. officials are left trying to pass messages to their Chinese counterparts through China-based American business leaders, whose Dell, Apple, HP and other product operations China all subsequently seizes as one of its first moves in the attack.

    Are potential military targets in China “near major metropolitan areas that are going to include millions and millions of people?” asks Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J.

    Has Taiwan done all it can to try to calm the situation? All it can and will, lawmakers are told.

    “It’s not clear to me we’ve exhausted all our diplomatic options,” Gallagher notes.

    Then, on paper, U.S. and Chinese satellites, space weapons, drones, submarines, ground forces, warships, fighter squadrons, cyber warriors, communications experts, bankers, Treasury officials and diplomats all go to war.

    At the end, before the lessons-learned part, the war-game operators reveal the toll of the first wave of fighting. Lawmakers study the tabletop map, wincing as they hear of particularly hard setbacks among U.S. successes.

    U.S. stockpiles of very long-range missiles? Gone.

    Global financial markets? Shaking.

    U.S. allies? As it turns out, China’s diplomats did their advance work to keep American allies on the sidelines. And anyway, it seems the all-out U.S. economic measures against China’s economy have put allies off. They’re sitting this one out.

    In the “hot-wash” debrief at the end, lawmakers point to a few key military weaknesses that the war game highlighted.

    “Running out of long-missiles is bad,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D.

    But the most glaring shortfalls appeared in diplomacy and in nonmilitary planning.

    Becca Wasser, a think tank senior fellow who role-played a convincingly menacing Chinese official, pointed to lawmakers’ recurring frustration in the war game at the lack of direct, immediate leader-to-leader crisis communication. It’s something Beijing and Washington in the real world have never managed to consistently make happen.

    “In peacetime, we should have those lines of communication,” Wasser said.

    The exercise also underscored the risks of neglecting to put together a package of well-thought out economic penalties, and of failing to build consensus among allies, lawmakers said.

    “As we get closer to 2027, they’re going to be trying to isolate us,” Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., said of Xi’s government.

    Holmes, in the role of Joint Chiefs chairman, reassured lawmakers, after the first three days of fighting.

    “We survived,” he said.

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  • Leaked US intel: Russia operatives claimed new ties with UAE

    Leaked US intel: Russia operatives claimed new ties with UAE

    WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. spies caught Russian intelligence officers boasting that they had convinced the oil-rich United Arab Emirates “to work together against US and UK intelligence agencies,” according to a purported American document posted online as part of a major U.S. intelligence breach.

    U.S. officials declined to comment on the document, which bore known top-secret markings and was viewed by The Associated Press. The Emirati government on Monday dismissed any accusation that the UAE had deepened ties with Russian intelligence as “categorically false.”

    But the U.S. has had growing concerns that the UAE was allowing Russia and Russians to thwart sanctions imposed over the invasion of Ukraine.

    The document viewed by the AP includes an item citing research from March 9 with the title: “Russia/UAE: Intelligence Relationship Deepening.” U.S. officials declined to confirm the document’s authenticity, which the AP could not independently do. However, it resembled other documents released as part of the recent leak.

    The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the possible release of Pentagon documents that were posted on several social media sites. They appear to detail U.S. and NATO aid to Ukraine and U.S. intelligence assessments regarding U.S. allies that could strain ties with those nations.

    Some of the documents may have been altered or used as part of a misinformation campaign, U.S. officials said. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Monday urged caution, “since we know at least in some cases that information was doctored.”

    Referring to the main successor agency of the Soviet-era KGB, the document seen by the AP says: “In mid-January, FSB officials claimed UAE security service officials and Russia had agreed to work together against US and UK Intelligence agencies, according to newly acquired signals intelligence.” Signals intelligence refers to intercepted communications, whether telephone calls or electronic messages.

    “The UAE probably views engagement with Russian intelligence as an opportunity to strengthen growing ties between Abu Dhabi and Moscow and diversify intelligence partnerships amid concerns of US disengagement from the region,” the assessment concluded, referring to the UAE capital.

    It’s not clear if there was any such agreement as described in the UAE-Russia document, or whether the alleged FSB claims were intentionally or unintentionally misleading.

    But American officials are speaking out increasingly about a surge in dealings between the UAE and Russia.

    A U.S. Treasury official, Assistant Secretary Elizabeth Rosenberg, in March singled out the UAE as a “country of focus.” She said businesses there were helping Russia evade international sanctions to obtain more than $5 million in U.S. semiconductors and other export-controlled parts, including components with battlefield uses.

    U.S. intelligence officials in recent years have pointed to possible links between the UAE and the Wagner Group, a Russian paramilitary group closely associated with the Kremlin and active in Ukraine and several African countries. In 2020, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency assessed “that the United Arab Emirates may provide some financing for the group’s operations.”

    Andreas Krieg, an associate professor at King’s College in London, on Monday called the UAE “the most important strategic partner for Russia in both the Middle East and Africa.” The head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergey Naryshkin, held extensive meetings with UAE leaders in Dubai in 2020.

    Russia and the UAE share similar outlooks in some key conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, and the influx of Russians into the UAE since Russia launched its war in Ukraine also has strengthened ties between the two, said Kristian Ulrichsen, a Middle East expert at Rice University’s Baker Institute. But the reference to teaming up against U.S. and British intelligence agencies is surprising, said Ulrichsen.

    Russian intelligence officials “probably have an interest in describing something in those terms,” he said. “If that was the way the UAE was describing it, I’d certainly take it … quite differently.”

    A U.S. official separately has told the AP that the United States also was worried about Russian money coming into Dubai’s red-hot real estate market.

    And in October, federal prosecutors in New York announced charges against two Dubai-based Russian men and others accused of stealing military technology from U.S. companies, smuggling millions of barrels of oil and laundering tens of millions of dollars for the oligarchs surrounding Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    Prosecutors in that case quoted one of the Dubai-based Russians as assuring his partners “there were no worries” about using a UAE financial institution for the transactions. “This is the (worst) bank in the Emirates,” he was quoted as saying, using an expletive. “They pay to everything.”

    In a statement Monday to the AP about the apparent intelligence document, the United Arab Emirates said UAE officials had not seen the document and claims regarding the FSB were “categorically false.”

    “We refute any allegation regarding an agreement to deepen cooperation between the UAE and other countries’ security services against another country,” the statement said. “The UAE has deep and distinguished relations with all countries, reflecting its principles of openness, partnership, building bridges, and working to serve the common interests of countries and peoples to achieve international peace and security.”

    The leak of the purported document comes as Emirati officials have recalibrated their foreign policy in the Middle East after a series of attacks attributed to Iran. Attacks claimed by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels hit Abu Dhabi in 2022, killing three people and leading locally stationed American forces to respond with Patriot missile fire.

    In the time since, and as Emiratis perceived America’s presence waning in the region after its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the UAE reached a détente with Iran. That’s even as the United States maintains multiple military bases and stations thousands of troops and weaponry in the region, including at Abu Dhabi’s Al Dhafra Air Base. Dubai’s Jebel Ali Port remains the busiest U.S. Navy port of call outside of the continental U.S.

    The UAE also remains one of the few places still running daily, direct flights to Moscow after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. That has seen money, megayachts and Russian citizens come into the UAE, an autocratic federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula. However, it hasn’t been a full embrace.

    Relations between the U.S. and the UAE have seesawed over the past decade, as Abu Dhabi ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan cemented his power. Under the Trump administration, the UAE diplomatically recognized Israel.

    In the deal’s wake, the UAE sought but has yet to receive advanced American F-35 fighter jets under President Joe Biden. Meanwhile, the Emirates has criticized Israel over the escalating violence between Israel’s hard-right government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinians.

    ___

    Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

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  • Leaked documents may have origin in chatroom for gamers

    Leaked documents may have origin in chatroom for gamers

    WASHINGTON (AP) — A major leak of classified U.S. documents that’s shaken Washington and exposed new details of its intelligence gathering may have started in a chatroom on a social media platform popular with gamers.

    Held on the Discord platform, which hosts real-time voice, video and text chats, a discussion originally created to talk about a range of topics turned to the war in Ukraine. As part of debates about Ukraine, according to one member of the chat, an unidentified poster shared documents that were allegedly classified, first typing them out with the poster’s own thoughts, then, as of a few months ago, beginning to post images of papers with folds in them.

    The posts appear to have gone unnoticed outside of the chat until a few weeks ago, when they began to circulate more widely on social media and get picked up by major news outlets. The leaks have alarmed U.S. officials and sparked a Justice Department investigation.

    The records have provided startling and surprisingly timely details of U.S. and NATO assistance to Ukraine. They also provided clues about efforts to assist Ukraine in its war with Russia, including an anticipated spring offensive.

    The scale of the exposure has yet to be determined. Also unclear is whether any government worked to share the documents or manipulate them.

    Asked Monday if the U.S. government was effectively waiting for more intelligence documents to show up online, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby replied: “The truth and the honest answer to your question is: We don’t know. And is that a matter of concern to us? You’re darn right it is.”

    Chris Meagher, top spokesman for the Pentagon, urged caution in “promoting or amplifying any of these documents,” adding that “it does appear that slides have been doctored.”

    But the breach underscores the difficulties the U.S. and other governments face in securing classified information. Congressional reviews and experts have long warned of weaknesses in U.S. counterintelligence, of the challenges of monitoring an estimated 3 million people with security clearances, and of agencies producing and over-classifying so much information that the U.S. cannot reliably control it.

    “I think that the intelligence agencies have adjusted and gotten better at preventing all sorts of mass electronic leaks,” said Kellen Dwyer, a former Justice Department prosecutor who was part of the team that brought a federal case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. “But clearly, they haven’t gotten good enough.”

    The Associated Press interviewed a person who said he was a member of the Discord chat group in which documents appeared for several months. The person, who said he was 18 years old, refused to give his name, citing concerns for his personal safety.

    The AP could not independently confirm many details shared by the person, and the original chatroom has been deleted.

    The AP reviewed images of documents that appeared in recent weeks in the discussion forums. They include a top-secret analysis of deepening intelligence service ties between Russia’s FSB and agencies in the United Arab Emirates, the oil-rich Persian Gulf nation that hosts a U.S. air base and cooperates on many security matters with Washington.

    Citing signals intelligence, the March analysis says officers from the FSB were caught claiming that the UAE had agreed with Russia “to work together against US and UK intelligence agencies.”

    A spokesman for the Emirati government said the allegations “are categorically false.” U.S. officials at several agencies declined to comment on the document.

    The AP also saw an analysis of what might happen in the Russia-Ukraine war in certain “wild card” scenarios, including if Russian President Vladimir Putin or Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy were to die. The analysis is marked secret, a lower level of classification than top-secret.

    Were Putin to fire his top military advisers and the war to escalate, the document speculates he might authorize the use of tactical nuclear weapons if “elites question Putin’s decision-making and Russian forces are unable to overcome manning and equipment shortfalls.”

    The death of Zelenskyy, in a worst-case scenario, might prompt Europe to restrict weapons shipments, the document says. But a “high-profile Ukrainian leader” might also retain domestic and foreign support as well, it says.

    The investigative journalism organization Bellingcat, which specializes in digging through social media and open-source records, interviewed the same person and two others in the Discord chatroom, called “Thug Shaker Central.”

    Bellingcat reported Saturday that documents from Thug Shaker Central appear to have been shared in another chatroom, “WowMao.” From WowMao, the documents appear to have spread more widely — and eventually became the subject of a story in The New York Times on Thursday, which first reported that the Pentagon was investigating a breach.

    The Discord user who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity says he was on a call with others — including the person who for months had been posting documents he or she said were classified — when the Times story broke.

    “We all just kind of lost it,” the Discord user said. “We couldn’t believe what was happening.”

    The person said his primary motivation for speaking to the media was to clear the reputation of a third person, who uses the screenname “Lucca.” Posts from Lucca featuring many of the documents were widely shared on Twitter and other social media. Those documents were reported on by The New York Times, The Washington Post and other media outlets.

    Lucca “is just a kid,” said the poster who spoke to the AP. “He was just consistently posting it to mess with people.”

    The poster declined to identify the person who originally uploaded the documents to Thug Shaker Central or confirm whether that person worked for the U.S. government. He referred to the original uploader with a nickname, “the O.G.”

    But the poster said the person who first posted the documents did not appear to be driven by ideology or to expose government secrets broadly, but rather to impress people in their group.

    Were that person to be arrested, the poster said he had copies of “way past hundreds” of pages of files.

    He wanted to protect fellow posters in the now-defunct chat but also believed the documents contained secrets that Americans should know.

    “On the off chance that the O.G. gets arrested, I’m leaking them all,” the poster said.

    ___ Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor and Eric Tucker in Washington, and Michelle R. Smith in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report

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  • Watchdog pledges ‘demanding’ oversight of nuclear sub deal

    Watchdog pledges ‘demanding’ oversight of nuclear sub deal

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the global nuclear regulatory agency pledged Wednesday to be “very demanding” in overseeing the United States’ planned transfer of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, amid complaints that the U.S. move could clear the way for bad actors to escape nuclear oversight in the future.

    Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, spoke to reporters during a Washington visit. Grossi was also meeting with senior National Security Council officials to discuss matters including the newly announced deal among the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom on nuclear-powered submarines.

    President Joe Biden and the leaders of Australia and the United Kingdom announced Monday in San Diego that Australia would purchase nuclear-powered attack submarines from the U.S. to modernize its fleet amid growing concern about China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific. It would be the first transfer by a nuclear-weapon state of nuclear-powered submarines to a non-nuclear state.

    Nuclear-powered submarines move more quietly and for longer than conventionally powered ones. While strengthening the military position of the U.S. and its allies in that region, the deal has raised concern as the first in the decades-long span of nuclear non-proliferation accords to take advantage of a loophole that allows narrow use of nuclear material outside of set safeguards. Critics express concern that bad actors could use the loophole as cover, pointing to the U.S.-Australia deal as precedent, to divert nuclear material into a weapons program.

    China renewed its objections to the deal on Wednesday, accusing the three countries of “coercing” the IAEA into endorsing the arrangement. All member states of the IAEA should work to find a solution to the “safeguards issues” and “maintain international peace and security,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a daily briefing.

    Grossi rejected China’s accusation. “Nobody coerces me. Nobody coerces the IAEA,” he told reporters. AUKUS — the name used by the three-country grouping of the U.S., Australian and the United Kingdom — had “committed to the highest standard of transparency” in the deal, he said.

    “We are going to be very demanding on what they are planning to do,” Grossi said. “So the process starts now.”

    The architects of nuclear nonproliferation accords left open a loophole for use of nuclear material for some non-explosive military purposes, with nuclear naval propulsion in mind. Prior to withdrawing nuclear material from safeguards for that loophole, states are required to strike a separate agreement with the IAEA.

    Biden said Monday, “we have set the highest standards with the IAEA for verification and transparency, and we will honor each of our countries’ international obligations.”

    James Acton, co-director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said he had no doubt that Australia would be scrupulous in its management of the nuclear material transferred to it in the deal with the United States. But there was no guarantee other states would be as transparent, he said.

    “I do worry that a future state, a nefarious state, may announce that it’s removing nuclear materials and safeguards for naval reactors and then use it to develop nuclear weapons,” Acton said.

    U.S. objections in the past helped dissuade Canada when it considered nuclear-powered submarines.

    Iran has repeatedly expressed interest to the IAEA in developing nuclear naval propulsion.

    Iran’s claims that its fast-accelerating nuclear program is for civilian purposes are widely discounted. U.N. experts say Iran has enriched uranium to 84% purity, just short of weapons grade, though they say Iran is still months away from the ability to build a weapon.

    Separately, the IAEA says Iran pledged this month to restore cameras and other monitoring equipment at its nuclear sites and to allow more inspections at a facility where particles of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade were recently detected.

    Grossi said Wednesday he was sending a technical team for the work and that the process of stepping up monitoring and inspections would start within days.

    Meanwhile, in Australia on Wednesday, former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating launched a blistering attack on his nation’s plan to buy nuclear-powered submarines from the United States, saying “it must be the worst deal in all history.”

    Speaking at a National Press Club event in Australia, Keating said the submarines wouldn’t serve a useful military purpose.

    “The only way the Chinese could threaten Australia or attack it is on land. That is, they bring an armada of troop ships with a massive army to occupy us,” Keating said. “This is not possible for the Chinese to do.”

    He added that Australia would sink any such Chinese armada with planes and missiles.

    “The idea that we need American submarines to protect us,” Keating said. “If we buy eight, three are at sea. Three are going to protect us from the might of China. Really? I mean, the rubbish of it. The rubbish.”

    ___

    Associated Press writer Chris Megerian contributed to this report.

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  • US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

    US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

    WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. military fighter jet shot down an unknown object flying off the remote northern coast of Alaska on Friday on orders from President Joe Biden, White House officials said.

    White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the object was downed because it was flying at about 40,000 feet (13,000 meters) and posed a “reasonable threat” to the safety of civilian flights, not because of any knowledge that it was engaged in surveillance. Asked about the object’s downing, Biden on Friday said only that “It was a success.”

    Commercial airliners and private jets can fly as high as 45,000 feet (13,700 meters).

    Kirby described the object as roughly the size of a small car, much smaller than the massive suspected Chinese spy balloon downed by Air Force fighter jets Saturday off the coast of South Carolina after it transited over sensitive military sites across the continental U.S.

    The twin downings in such close succession are extraordinary, and reflect heightened concerns over China’s surveillance program and public pressure on Biden to take a tough stand against it. Still, there were few answers about the unknown object downed Friday and the White House drew distinctions between the two episodes. Officials couldn’t say if the latest object contained any surveillance equipment, where it came from or what purpose it had.

    The Pentagon on Friday declined to provide a more precise description of the object, only saying that U.S. pilots who flew up to observe it determined it didn’t appear to be manned. Officials said the object was far smaller than last week’s balloon, did not appear to be maneuverable and was traveling at a much lower altitude.

    Kirby maintained that Biden, based on the advice of the Pentagon, believed it posed enough of a concern to shoot it out of the sky — primarily because of the potential risk to civilian aircraft.

    “We’re going to remain vigilant about our airspace,” Kirby said. “The president takes his obligations to protect our national security interests as paramount.”

    The president was briefed on the presence of the object Thursday evening after two fighter jets surveilled it.

    Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, told reporters Friday that an F-22 fighter aircraft based at Alaska’s Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson shot down the object using an AIM-9X short-range air-to-air missile, the same type used to take down the balloon nearly a week ago.

    The object flew over one of the most desolate places on the nation. Few towns dot Alaska’s North Slope, with the two apparently closest communities — Deadhorse and Kaktovik — combining for about 300 people. The Prudhoe Bay oil field on the North Slope is the largest such field in the United States.

    Unlike the suspected spy balloon, which was downed to live feeds and got U.S. residents looking up to the skies, it’s likely few people saw this object given the blistering frigid conditions of northern Alaska this time of the year, since there are few people outside for a prolonged period of time.

    Ahead of the the shoot-down, the Federal Aviation Administration restricted flights over a roughly 10-square mile (26-square kilometer) area within U.S. airspace off Alaska’s Bullen Point, the site of a disused U.S. Air Force radar station on the Beaufort Sea about 130 miles (210 kilometers) from the Canadian border, inside the Arctic Circle.

    Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a tweet Friday that he had been briefed and supported the decision. “Our military and intelligence services will always work together,” he said.

    The object fell onto frozen waters and officials expected they could recover debris faster than from last week’s massive balloon. Ryder said the object was traveling northeast when it was shot down. He said several U.S. military helicopters have gone out to begin the recovery effort.

    Later Friday, the Pentagon said: “Recovery is happening in a mix of ice and snow. Units located in Alaska under the direction of U.S. Northern Command, along with the Alaska National Guard, are involved in the response.”

    The unknown object was shot down in an area with harsh weather conditions and about six and a half hours of daylight at this time of year. Daytime temperatures Friday were about minus 17 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius).

    After the object was detected Thursday, NORAD — North American Aerospace Defense Command —sent F-35s to observe it, a U.S. official said, adding that the military queried U.S. government agencies to make sure it did not belong to any of them, and had confidence it was not a U.S. government or military asset. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about sensitive national security matters and spoke on condition of anonymity.

    Because it was much smaller than the suspected Chinese spy balloon, there were fewer safety concerns about downing it over land, so the decision was made to shoot it down when it was possible. That happened over water.

    The mystery around what exactly the flying object was lingered late into Friday night. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a statement saying it was “not a National Weather Service balloon.”

    “They do not hover,” said NOAA spokesperson Scott Smullen.

    The development came almost a week after the U.S. shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the Carolina coast after it traversed sensitive military sites across North America. China insisted the flyover was an accident involving a civilian craft and threatened repercussions.

    Biden issued the order but had wanted the balloon downed even earlier. He was advised that the best time for the operation would be when it was over water. Military officials determined that bringing it down over land from an altitude of 60,000 feet would pose an undue risk to people on the ground.

    The balloon was part of a large surveillance program that China has been conducting for “several years,” the Pentagon has said. The U.S. has said Chinese balloons have flown over dozens of countries across five continents in recent years, and it learned more about the balloon program after closely monitoring the one shot down near South Carolina.

    China responded that it reserved the right to “take further actions” and criticized the U.S. for “an obvious overreaction and a serious violation of international practice.”

    ___

    Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani in Washington, Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, and Mark Thiessen in Anchorage contributed to this report.

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  • In Washington, ‘classified’ is synonymous with ‘controversy’

    In Washington, ‘classified’ is synonymous with ‘controversy’

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Clinton’s presidential dreams were undermined by her use of a private email server that included classified information.

    Donald Trump has risked criminal charges by refusing to return top-secret records to the government after leaving the White House.

    And now misplaced files with classified markings has led to another investigation that’s causing a political and legal headache for President Joe Biden.

    The three situations are far from equivalent. But taken together, they represent a remarkable stretch in which document management has been a recurring source of controversy at the highest levels of American politics.

    For some, it’s a warning about clumsiness or hubris when it comes to handling official secrets. For others, it’s a reminder that the federal government has built an unwieldy — and perhaps unmanageable — system for storing and protecting classified information.

    “Mistakes happen, and it’s so easy to grab a stack of documents from your desk as you’re leaving your office, and you don’t realize there’s a classified document among those files,” said Mark Zaid, a lawyer who works on national security issues. “You just didn’t hear about it, for whatever reason.”

    Now Americans are hearing about it all the time. Political talk shows have been clogged with conversations about which papers were stashed in which box in which closet. Voters are getting schooled in intelligence jargon like TS/SCI, HUMINT and damage assessments.

    Clinton’s email server was a dominant storyline of her presidential campaign, and the criminal investigation into Trump has clouded his hopes of returning to the White House.

    Biden is facing scrutiny of his own after documents with classified markings were found at a former office in Washington and his home in Wilmington, Delaware. Republicans who recently took control of the House are preparing to investigate, and Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to in the Biden case, following a similar step he took with Trump in November.

    “Investigations can quickly spiral,” said Alex Conant, a Republican political consultant. “For the Biden administration, having a prosecutor digging into these documents, you never know where that might lead.”

    With overlapping investigations underway, there may be no end in sight for daily discussions of filing cabinets, storage rules and concerns about national security risks.

    “The American people are very well aware of issues involving classified documents in part because we’ve been talking about them for almost eight years,” said Alex Conant, a Republican political consultant.

    That’s when a House Republican committee investigating the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, discovered that Clinton had used a private email account while serving as secretary of state. The revelation led to a federal investigation that didn’t result in any charges, but 110 emails out of 30,000 that were turned over to the government were determined to have had classified information.

    Trump, who pummeled Clinton over her handling of the emails, won the election and swiftly demonstrated carelessness with secrets. He memorably discussed sensitive intelligence with the Russian ambassador to the United States, leading to concerns that he may have jeopardized a source who helped foil terrorist plots.

    After disputing the results of his election defeat, Trump left office in haphazard fashion, and he brought boxes of government documents with him to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort. Some of them were turned over to the National Archives, which is responsible for presidential records, but he refused to provide others.

    Eventually the Justice Department, fearing that national security secrets were at risk, obtained a search warrant and found more top secret documents at the resort.

    A special counsel was appointed to determine whether any criminal charges should be filed in the case or a separate investigation into Trump’s attempts to cling to power on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol.

    Larry Pfeiffer, a former intelligence official, said the situation with Trump’s documents is far different than ones he encountered while working in government.

    During the time that Pfeiffer was CIA chief of staff, classified files turned up in the wrong place in presidential libraries a handful of times, he said.

    “It just happens,” said Pfeiffer, now director of the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy and International Security at George Mason University. “Mistakes get made, and stuff gets found.”

    He said that seems more likely to be the case regarding the documents with classified markings that were found at an office used by Biden at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement after his term as vice president ended.

    Biden’s personal lawyers discovered the documents and contacted the White House counsel’s office, and the National Archives picked up the records the next day.

    The situation appears like “an average, run-of-the-mill mistake” that’s “being handled in a by-the-book, textbook fashion,” Pfeiffer said.

    However, he said it would be wise for the government to review its practices for managing documents during transitions between administrations. It’s been six years since Biden left the vice president’s office, meaning classified records have been in the wrong place for a long time.

    “That’s not a good thing, no matter how anyone is playing it,” he said.

    The files were found at the Penn Biden Center in November, but their existence only became public this week. After the discovery, Biden’s lawyers conducted a search of other properties as well. The search was finished on Wednesday evening, and more documents with classified markings were located in his Wilmington home, according to Richard Sauber, a lawyer for the president.

    Garland asked a U.S. attorney to review the matter after the initial discovery, and he named a special counsel on Thursday.

    Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the new chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, sent a letter to the White House on Tuesday saying that his panel will be investigating Biden’s “failure to return vice-presidential records — including highly classified documents.”

    “The Committee is concerned that President Biden has compromised sources and methods with his own mishandling of classified documents,” Comer wrote.

    Biden said Thursday that he is “cooperating fully and completely” with the Justice Department. He previously said he was “surprised” to learn that documents were in his old office. Biden said he he didn’t know what kind of information they contained, and he said his team “did what they should have done” when they were found.

    Matt Miller, a former Justice Department spokesman who worked for Biden’s National Security Council last year, said it’s unlikely that such an episode would have made the news if it wasn’t for the concurrent Trump investigation.

    “The Penn Biden Center would have turned this stuff in, it would have gone to the Archives, and that would have been the end of it,” he said.

    Miller said the situation is a reminder that “the government classifies way too many documents.”

    “There’s not a good process for declassifying them,” he said. “And when you create this structure, you’ve unnecessarily widened the universe of classified documents that could unintentionally be mishandled.”

    It’s not a new problem, and it’s a concern that’s even shared by Biden’s top intelligence adviser, Avril Haines. In a letter to senators last year, Haines said there are “deficiencies in the current classification system,” calling it “a fundamentally important issue that we must address.”

    Said Miller: “No one has figured out a good answer to this problem.”

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  • Guest lineups for the Sunday news shows

    Guest lineups for the Sunday news shows

    WASHINGTON — ABC’s “This Week” — White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby; Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.; NASA Johnson Space Center Director Vanessa Wyche.

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    NBC’s “Meet the Press” — Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont.; Preet Bharara, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

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    CBS’ “Face the Nation” — Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co.; Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.; Fiona Hill, a former Russia adviser in the Trump White House; Chris Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

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    CNN’s “State of the Union” — Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; Roger Carstens, special presidential envoy for hostage affairs.

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    “Fox News Sunday” — Kirby; former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

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  • CIA director Burns to meet Russian counterpart in Turkey

    CIA director Burns to meet Russian counterpart in Turkey

    WASHINGTON — CIA Director Bill Burns will meet in Ankara, Turkey, on Monday with his Russian intelligence counterpart to underscore the consequences if Russia were to deploy a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, according to a White House National Security Council official.

    The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Burns and Sergey Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s SVR spy agency, would not discuss settlement of the war in Ukraine. Burns is also expected to raise the cases of WNBA star Brittney Griner and Michigan corporate security executive Paul Whelan, two Americans detained in Russia whom the Biden administration has been pressing to release in a prisoner exchange.

    The official said that Ukrainian officials were briefed ahead of Burns’ travel to Turkey.

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday he could neither confirm nor deny reports of U.S.-Russia talks in Turkey.

    Two Turkish officials said they had no knowledge about a meeting between U.S. and Russian delegations. A Turkish Foreign Ministry Spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.

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