Over 800 Western Officials Denounce Their Governments' Pro-Israel Policies

Nik Popli
Fri, February 2, 2024 

Israeli troops and tanks are stationed along the border with the Gaza Strip on February 2, 2024, as battles continue between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement.

 Credit - JACK GUEZ—AFP/Getty Images

More than 800 civil servants from the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union released a statement on Friday criticizing their governments' support of Israel in its war in Gaza, warning that such policies could be contributing to war crimes and violations of international law.

As Israel’s military continues its deadly offensive in Gaza, the officials emphasized that western governments risk being complicit in “one of the worst human catastrophes of this century” by failing to hold Israel to the same international humanitarian aid and human rights standards they apply to other countries. The officials say they privately expressed concerns about Israel’s military operations to leaders of their governments and institutions but have been ignored.


“Our governments’ current policies weaken their moral standing and undermine their ability to stand up for freedom, justice and human rights globally,” the statement says. “There is a plausible risk that our governments’ policies are contributing to grave violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and even ethnic cleansing or genocide.”

Read More: The Stakes of the Lawsuit Alleging Biden is Complicit in Palestinian Genocide

The statement marks the first display of coordinated transatlantic dissent since Israel’s war against Hamas began nearly four months ago, when the Israeli military launched an air and ground operation in Gaza after Hamas fighters killed 1,300 people in southern Israel and took more than 240 hostage. More than 27,000 people in Gaza have been killed and nearly 2 million have been displaced since the war began, according to the health ministry in Gaza and the United Nations.

The signatories called on their governments to “stop asserting to the public that there is a strategic and defensible rationale behind the Israeli operation and that supporting it is in our countries’ interests.” They also urged western governments to halt military support and secure a ceasefire that will increase aid for Palestinians and ensure the release of Israeli hostages captured by Hamas.

Read More: For Antony Blinken, the War in Gaza Is a Test of U.S. Power

The statement says that it was coordinated by civil servants in European Union institutions, the Netherlands, and the U.S. and was endorsed by civil servants in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The names of the civil servants are not listed, but the effort reveals that the current pro-Israel policies have generated dissent among some who work in government.

The statement comes a week after the International Court of Justice (ICJ)—the highest court of the United Nations—ordered Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza caused by its military campaign. Israel has denied accusations of genocide in Gaza.

The signatories to the new letter demanded that Israel comply with the ICJ order. “Our governments have provided the Israeli military operation with public, diplomatic and military support,” the statement reads. The officials said they are concerned “that this support has been given without real conditions or accountability" as western governments "have failed to call for an immediate ceasefire and an end to blockages of necessary food/water/medicine in Gaza" in light of the war's death toll.

Write to Nik Popli at nik.popli@time.com.


Western officials in protest over Israel Gaza policy

Tom Bateman - BBC State Department correspondent
Fri, February 2, 2024 

A destroyed building in Gaza


More than 800 serving officials in the US and Europe have signed a statement warning that their own governments' policies on the Israel-Gaza war could amount to "grave violations of international law".

The "transatlantic statement", a copy of which was passed to the BBC, says their administrations risk being complicit in "one of the worst human catastrophes of this century" but that their expert advice has been sidelined.

It is the latest sign of significant levels of dissent within the governments of some of Israel's key Western allies.

One signatory to the statement, a US government official with more than 25 years' national security experience, told the BBC of the "continued dismissal" of their concerns.

"The voices of those who understand the region and the dynamics were not listened to," said the official.

"What's really different here is we're not failing to prevent something, we're actively complicit. That is fundamentally different from any other situation I can recall," added the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The statement is signed by civil servants from the US, the EU and 11 European countries including the UK, France and Germany.

It says Israel has shown "no boundaries" in its military operations in Gaza, "which has resulted in tens of thousands of preventable civilian deaths; and… the deliberate blocking of aid… putting thousands of civilians at risk of starvation and slow death."

"There is a plausible risk that our governments' policies are contributing to grave violations of international law, war crimes and even ethnic cleansing or genocide," it said.

The identities of those who signed or endorsed the statement have not been made public and the BBC has not seen a list of names, but understands that nearly half are officials who each have at least a decade of experience in government.

One retired US ambassador told the BBC that the coordination by dissenting civil servants in multiple governments was unprecedented.

"It's unique in my experience watching foreign policy in the last 40 years," said Robert Ford, a former American ambassador to Algeria and Syria.

He likened it to concerns within the US administration in 2003 over faulty intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq, but said this time many officials with reservations did not want to remain silent.

"[Then there were] people who knew better, who knew that intelligence was being cherry-picked, who knew that there wasn't a plan for the day after, but nobody said anything publicly. And that turned out to be a serious problem," he said.

"The problems with the Gaza war are so serious and the implications are so serious that they feel compelled to go public," he said.

The officials argue the current nature of their governments' military, political or diplomatic support for Israel "without real conditions or accountability" not only risks further Palestinian deaths, but also endangers the lives of hostages held by Hamas, as well as Israel's own security and regional stability.

"Israel's military operations have disregarded all important counterterrorism expertise gained since 9/11… the [military] operation has not contributed to Israel's goal of defeating Hamas and has instead strengthened the appeal of Hamas, Hezbollah and other negative actors".

The officials say they have expressed their professional concerns internally but have been "overruled by political and ideological considerations".

One senior British official who has endorsed the statement told the BBC of "growing disquiet" among civil servants.

The official referred to the fallout from last week's preliminary ruling by the UN's International Court of Justice in a case brought by South Africa which required Israel to do all it can to prevent acts of genocide.

"The dismissal of South Africa's case as 'unhelpful' by our Foreign Secretary puts [the international rules-based] order in peril."

"We have heard ministers dismiss allegations against the Israeli Government seemingly without having received proper and well-evidenced legal advice. Our current approach does not appear to be in the best interests of the UK, the region or the global order," said the official who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

An effigy of Joe Biden with a sign saying 'Genocide Joe' at a protest

In response to the statement, the UK Foreign Office said it wanted to see an end to the fighting in Gaza as soon as possible.

"As the Foreign Secretary says, Israel has committed to act within international humanitarian law and has the ability to do so, but we are also deeply concerned about the impact on the civilian population in Gaza," said a spokesperson.

The European Union Commission said it was "looking into" the statement. The US State Department has been approached for comment.

The statement suggests that while Israel's military operation has caused unprecedented destruction of lives and property in Gaza, there appears to be no workable strategy to effectively remove Hamas as a threat, nor for a political solution to ensure Israel's security in the longer term.

It calls for the US and European governments to "stop asserting to the public that there is a strategic and defensible rationale behind the Israeli operation".

Israeli officials have consistently rejected such criticism. In response to the new statement, the Israeli embassy in London said it was bound by international law.

It added: "Israel continues to act against a genocidal terrorist organisation which commits war crimes as well as crimes against humanity."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that only full military pressure on Hamas will secure the further release of hostages, while the army says it has destroyed significant underground infrastructure used by the group, including command centres, weapons sites and facilities for holding hostages.

On Saturday, the Israeli military said: "Throughout [the city of] Khan Yunis, we have eliminated over 2,000 terrorists above and below ground."

Israel has repeatedly rejected claims it deliberately targets civilians, accusing Hamas of hiding in and around civilian infrastructure.

Since the start of the war, more than 26,750 Palestinians have been killed and at least 65,000 injured, according to health officials in the Gaza Strip, which has been governed by Hamas and blockaded by Israel and Egypt since 2007.

Israeli officials say that 9,000 of those killed were Hamas militants but have not provided evidence for the figure. More than 1,200 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas attacks of October 7th, and a further 100 died of their injuries according to Israeli officials. More than 250 people were taken as hostages into Gaza.

The US administration has repeatedly said that "far too many Palestinians have been killed" in Gaza, and that Israel has the right to ensure October 7th "can never happen again".


More than 800 Western officials sign scathing criticism of Gaza policy

Mick Krever, CNN
Fri, February 2, 2024 


More than 800 officials from the United States and Europe have signed a scathing criticism of Western policy towards Israel and Gaza, accusing their governments of possible complicity in war crimes.

In a statement obtained by CNN, the officials say there is a “plausible risk that our governments’ policies are contributing to grave violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and even ethnic cleansing or genocide.”

They accuse their governments of failing to hold Israel to the same standards they apply to other countries and weakening their own “moral standing” in the world.

Among them are around 80 United States officials and diplomats, a source told CNN.

In an unprecedented display of coordinated dissent since Israel’s war against Hamas began nearly four months ago, the signatories call on their governments to “use all leverage” to secure a ceasefire and to stop saying that there is a “a strategic and defensible rationale behind the Israeli operation.”

The public letter, released Friday, comes a week after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found South Africa’s claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza to be “plausible,” and ordered Israel to “take all measures” to limit the death and destruction caused by its military campaign, prevent and punish incitement to genocide, and ensure access to humanitarian aid.

The statement “shows the depths of concerns and outrage and just horror that all of us are witnessing,” a US official with more than 25 years’ experience, who signed the letter, told CNN on Friday.

“The talking points that keep being delivered day after day are not cutting it.”

The US official told CNN that the signatories were motivated by their shared experience of having their concerns be ignored by their governments and by “the appropriateness” of public dissent by civil servants when ignored internally.

The official added that the ICJ’s decision to hear a genocide case lodged against Israel was validation for the authors’ concerns. Israel has strenuously denied accusations of genocide in Gaza.

“What was really important for those of us on the US side was to link arms with the people in Europe who believe their governments are following the US lead, and feel constrained by that,” the official said. “So we thought it was important that US officials continue to make clear their concerns with government policy on this.”

People bury Palestinians, including those killed in Israeli strikes and fire, at a mass grave in Rafah, January 30, 2024. - Mohammed Salem/Reuters

The statement, which does not list its signatories, says that it was “coordinated” by civil servants in European Union institutions, The Netherlands, and the United States, and endorsed by civil servants in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

Despite the letter not listing its authors, the US official told CNN many colleagues feared losing their jobs, and that the lower number of US signatories reflected stronger protections for official dissents in Europe.

CNN has asked the U.S. State Department, the European Union, and the Dutch Foreign Ministry for a response to the statement. CNN has also reached out to the Israeli government for a response.

A senior British civil servant told CNN of the letter: “We feel that politicians have responded to the evolving situation, evinced by the Foreign Secretary’s words this week.”

The Dutch Foreign Ministry, in a statement to CNN, said that while civil servants are entitled to freedom of expression, they are subject to some limitations under Dutch law.

“It is only natural that the debate in society about the conflict between Israel and Hamas also exists within our ministry. We feel that there should be scope for this debate and we encourage staff to enter into dialogues internally. And these dialogues are taking place.”
‘We are obliged to do everything in our power’

In the letter, the officials say that they raised concerns internally within their governments and institutions, but their professional concerns have often been overruled “by political and ideological considerations.”

“We are obliged to do everything in our power on behalf of our countries and ourselves to not be complicit in one of the worst human catastrophes of this century,” they write.

Israel’s policies, they argue, are counterproductive to its own national security goals.

“Israel’s military operations have disregarded all important counterterrorism expertise gained since 9/11; and that the operation has not contributed to Israel’s goal of defeating Hamas and instead has strengthened the appeal of Hamas, Hezbollah and other negative actors.”

They say that Western support for Israel has come “without real conditions or accountability.”

“Our governments’ current policies weaken their moral standing and undermine their ability to stand up for freedom, justice, and human rights globally and weaken our efforts to rally international support for Ukraine and to counter malign actions by Russia, China and Iran,” they say.

Finally, they call on their governments to “develop a strategy for lasting peace that includes a secure Palestinian state and guarantees for Israel’s security, so that an attack like 7 October and an offensive on Gaza never happen again.”

CNN’s Luke McGee contributed reporting.


‘Overruled’: Over 800 U.S. And Allied Officials Issue Public Call For Shift In Gaza Policy

Akbar Shahid Ahmed
Updated Fri, February 2, 2024 

Scroll back up to restore default view.


A group of more than 800 government officials in the U.S., Britain and major European countries ― as well as European Union institutions ― has signed a letter urging Western countries to reconsider their policy of near-total support for Israel’s devastating offensive in Gaza.

The letter, released Friday, urges those governments to use all possible leverage, including potentially cutting off military support for Israel, to secure a cease-fire in Gaza that will increase aid for Palestinians and bring the release of Israeli hostages captured by Hamas and other militants on Oct. 7. It’s the latest sign of deep alarm among foreign policy professionals about the path President Joe Biden and other world leaders have chosen since the attack and Israel’s retaliation began.

“We are expected as civil servants to respect, serve and uphold the law while implementing policies, regardless of the political parties in power… we have done so for our entire careers,” says the letter, also signed by people working for the French, German and Swiss governments, among others. “We have internally expressed our concerns that the policies of our governments/institutions do not serve our interests and called for alternatives that would better serve national and international security, democracy and freedom; reflect the core principles of western foreign policy; and incorporate lessons learned. Our professional concerns were overruled by political and ideological considerations.”

Frustration among national security experts inside the governments that Israel counts as its key international supporters is at an all-time high.

Earlier this week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a town hall-style meeting with State Department employees, a significant group of whom have signed so-called dissent cables challenging Biden’s Gaza policy. At the meeting, one staffer told Blinken that State Department employees are receiving messages daily from people in Gaza who have previously been involved in U.S. government programs and are asking what more the U.S. could do to end the conflict ― winning huge applause from attendees of the session, a State Department official told HuffPost.

State Department spokespeople did not respond to a HuffPost request for comment on the incident.

Josh Paul, a veteran State Department official whose resignation over the U.S. Gaza policy was first reported by HuffPost, helped organize the Friday letter, whose signatories are anonymous for fear of professional retaliation. In a statement regarding the message, Paul argued: “One-sided support for Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, and a blindness to Palestinian humanity, is both a moral failure, and, for the harm it does to Western interests around the globe, a policy failure.”

“This is a remarkable statement from hundreds of individuals who have devoted their lives to building a better world, and, at a time where our politicians seem to have forgotten them, it is a much-needed reminder of the core values that bind the transatlantic relationship, and a proof that they endure,” he continued.

The letter is expected to continue to attract signatures in the coming days.

Government workers in the Netherlands take part in a silent sit-in outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Dec. 21 to show their dissatisfaction with the attitude of the outgoing cabinet toward Israeli's assault on Gaza.

The Netherlands, one of the wealthiest countries in Europe and the host of significant global institutions, such as the International Court of Justice (ICJ), has seen a significant uproar, with civil servants last month demonstrating outside the Foreign Ministry building.

“The Netherlands pretends to be the international rule-of-law and human-rights capital of the world, and look at us,” said Berber van der Woude, a former Dutch diplomat who was stationed in the occupied West Bank.

She argued that the message “shows that people who are experts, who have diplomatic experience… who have been serving the country for ages and have been doing that very loyally are so worried.”

“They would never choose to do this if it were not something very serious. It is a very exceptional situation, especially after the ICJ order,” said van der Woude, referring to the court’s ruling last week that there is a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza and that the Israeli offensive there must change course.

Angélique Eijpe, a 21-year veteran of the Dutch foreign ministry, resigned over her government’s approach in November. She said that signing the Friday letter was “an extraordinary thing for all involved to do.”

She told HuffPost that following the Oct. 7 attack, she tried to warn the foreign minister against Israel’s response, noting comments from Israeli ministers that demonstrated “genocidal intent.”

“I warned that I saw a parallel with our decision-making in the context of the Iraq War, where we also put all critical assessments of the situation aside because there was already a political decision made,” Eijpe said.

The government responded with “minimal expressions of concern for our well-being,” she said ― an echo of the listening sessions and town halls the Biden administration has offered to U.S. officials deeply disturbed by the moral and strategic implications of Washington’s choices.

“This type of concern is nice, but it also cast doubt on the professionalism of our concerns,” Eijpe said. American officials internally challenging the policy have cited national security arguments in doing so, and in November, HuffPost revealed that dozens of U.S. counterterrorism experts had privately written to the head of their agency saying Biden’s approach risked fueling blowback and undermining cooperation with other countries.

In her resignation note, Eijpe noted she is the breadwinner for her children and her decision to resign was difficult. But she compared it to the toll of the choices of her ancestors amid the Holocaust in the 1940s and Palestinians dying daily in Gaza today.

“Ultimately, I have the immense privilege of paying a relatively insignificant price to be on the right side of history,” Eijpe wrote.

Opinion

From Water to Uranium, the US Government Continues to Fail the Navajo Nation

Kianna Pete
Fri, February 2, 2024 

Guest Opinion. The Navajo Nation is the largest land reservation held by the Diné (Navajo People) in the United States–larger than ten states. Despite this, 30% of the families in the Navajo Nation live without running water, and the opening of a uranium mine poses more risks for Native communities surrounding the Grand Canyon area. The Navajo Nation, who experience the hardships of limited access to water and uranium contamination, are advocating for change. Yet, the US government is doing little to help. 

In 2023, the US Supreme Court ruled in Arizona v. Navajo Nation that according to the 1868 treaty establishing the Navajo Nation reservation, the United States is not obligated to provide access to water for the tribe. According to the opinion of the court delivered by Justice Kavanaugh, “In the Tribe’s view, the 1868 treaty imposed a duty on the United States to take affirmative steps to secure water for the Navajos. With respect, the Tribe is incorrect. The 1868 treaty “set apart” a reservation for the “use and occupation of the Navajo tribe.” But it contained no “rights-creating or duty-imposing” language that imposed a duty on the United States to take affirmative steps to secure water for the Tribe.”

This decision was anything but respectful. It reversed the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals which sided with the Navajo Nation’s claim to urge the Secretary of the US Department of Interior, Deb Haaland, to develop a plan meeting the water needs of the Navajo Nation and ensure shared tribal water rights in the Colorado River.

Moreover, the ruling based its decision on the 1868 treaty but failed to acknowledge the centuries of settler colonialism and scorched earth campaigns that destroyed the water resources of the Navajo people. Instead, the treaty history accounted for by the court omits the violent acts committed by the US government and utilizes language from the treaty that blames the Diné peoples for their condition.

Arizona v. Navajo Nation is not just a case about the affirmative duty to provide water but also includes other resources destroyed by the US government. Ironically, the court declares this themselves saying that “under the treaty, the United States has no duty to farm the land, mine the minerals, or harvest the timber on the reservation—or, for that matter, to build roads and bridges on the reservation.” Regardless, uranium mining and transport are still in effect on the Navajo Nation.

On December 21, 2023, Energy Fuels, a lead producer of US uranium mining, announced the production of the Pinyon Plain Mine located near the Grand Canyon and Sacred Red Butte, also known as the sacred lands of the Havasupai and cultural property of the 11 Associated Tribes of the Grand Canyon. The mine poses a threat to the main water sources of these tribes yet Energy Fuels claims to be “the highest-grade uranium mine, with “state-of-the-art groundwater protections.” Only a few weeks after this announcement, the Havasupai Tribal Council released a statement on January 12, 2024, declaring that Energy Fuels contaminated one of two aquifers and sprayed toxic water that spread to surrounding plants and animals.

The tribe also raised concerns about the dangers of uranium transport. Haul No!, an Indigenous-led community organizing group leading efforts to halt the production of the mine, confirmed that Energy Fuels plans to “haul up to 12 trucks per day, each carrying 30 tons of uranium from the mine to the mill. This violates Navajo Nation law which prohibits the transport of new uranium across Diné lands.” This law is a result of previous US mining extraction, in which over 1,000 abandoned mines remain in the Navajo Nation that contaminated water resources and even caused deaths.

The violation of tribal law and reinterpretation of treaty rights is a unilateral power only acceptable to the US government. On one hand, the Supreme Court claimed the US couldn’t break a treaty negotiation to provide water. On the other hand, the US mining industry disregards tribal law to transport uranium. What is the use of being the largest land reservation if two legal systems cannot protect you? From water to uranium, the US government ignores systems of governance that do not favor their interests. They fail to take accountability for destroying and extracting resources from the Navajo Nation. Unlike the Navajo Nation, the United States has the liberty to choose when it can or can’t be held liable for its intervention with tribal communities.

In an election year where Native voters are pivotal to key races in states like Arizona, how are voters supposed to trust a government that disregards water rights and tribal law? Additionally, who are Native voters going to vote for when the Biden Administration is not keeping their promises to tribal communities after just signing a proclamation designating a million acres of land near the Grand Canyon as a national monument to protect the sacred lands of the Navajo Nation and Havasupai Indian Reservation. Should these tribal communities continue to put their hopes in the ballot box?

As a Diné citizen working with her community from afar, this is a tricky question to answer as I think of my relatives who are unaware of these legal barriers and will be directly affected by the Pinyon Plain Mine. I do know, however, that my hope for a more sustainable future for the Navajo Nation is in the Diné organizing groups who continue to resist and advocate for the connected right to life and water. Although the US government may fail us time and time again, what has remained since the 1868 treaty is the love for our home, Diné Bikéyah. My Diné relatives and all Indigenous communities should be living in harmony with their homelands, not having to fight for their existence inside it.

Kianna Pete (Diné) is an Indigenous Education and Policy Research Associate at the American Institutes for Research and Political Education Specialist at Start Empowerment. She is a graduate student at Columbia University and part-time volunteer with NoHaul!  

About the Author: "Elyse Wild is senior editor for Native News Online and Tribal Business News. "

Contact: ewild@indiancountrymedia.com

Secret US spying program targeted top Venezuelan officials, flouting international law

JOSHUA GOODMAN and JIM MUSTIAN
Wed, January 31, 2024 

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro delivers his annual address at the National Assembly in Caracas, Venezuela, Monday, Jan. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)
ASSOCIATED PRESS

MIAMI (AP) — A secret memo obtained by The Associated Press details a yearslong covert operation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration that sent undercover operatives into Venezuela to surreptitiously record and build drug-trafficking cases against the country’s leadership – a plan the U.S. acknowledged from the start was arguably a violation of international law.

“It is necessary to conduct this operation unilaterally and without notifying Venezuelan officials,” reads the 15-page 2018 memo expanding “Operation Money Badger,” an investigation that authorities say targeted dozens of people, including Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

While there's no clear mechanism to hold the United States accountable legally, the revelation threatens to roil already fraught relations with Maduro’s socialist government and could deepen resentment of the U.S. across Latin America over perceived meddling. It also offers a rare window into the lengths the DEA was willing to go to fight the drug war in a country that banned U.S. drug agents nearly two decades ago.

Some of Maduro’s closest allies were ensnared in the investigation, including Alex Saab, the businessman recently freed in a prisoner swap for 10 Americans and a fugitive defense contractor. But until now, it was not clear that U.S. probes targeting Venezuela involved legally questionable tactics.

“We don’t like to say it publicly but we are, in fact, the police of the world,” said Wes Tabor, a former DEA official who served as the agency’s country attaché in Venezuela well before the investigation described in the memo was launched.

Tabor, who would not confirm the existence of any such operations, said unilateral, covert actions can be an effective tool when conducted with proper limits and accountability, particularly in a country like Venezuela, where the blurred lines between the state and criminal underworld have made it an ideal transit point for up to 15% of the world’s cocaine.

“We’re not in the business of abiding by other countries’ laws when these countries are rogue regimes and the lives of American children are at stake,” he said. “And in the case of Venezuela, where they’re flooding us with dope, it’s worth the risk.”

The DEA and Justice Department declined to answer questions from the AP about the memo, how frequently the U.S. conducts unilateral activities and the makeup of the panel that approves such operations.

Venezuela’s communications ministry did not respond to requests for comment. But in recent days Maduro accused the DEA and the CIA — a regular target he uses to rally supporters — of undertaking efforts to destabilize the country. The CIA declined to comment.

“I don’t think President Biden is involved,” Maduro said in a televised appearance this month. “But the CIA and the DEA operate independently as imperialist criminal organizations.”

TARGETING MADURO

The never-before-seen document was authored at the cusp of Republican President Donald Trump’s “ maximum pressure ” campaign to remove the Venezuelan president.

Maduro had just taken an authoritarian turn, prevailing in what the Trump administration decried as a sham re-election in 2018. Within weeks, senior DEA officials plotted to deploy at least three undercover informants to surreptitiously record top officials suspected of converting Venezuela into a narco state.

But because the plan appeared to run roughshod over Venezuelan and international law, it required the approval of what is known as the Sensitive Activity Review Committee, or SARC, a secretive panel of senior State and Justice Department officials that is reserved for the most sensitive DEA cases involving tricky ethical, legal or foreign policy considerations.

It marked an aggressive expansion of “Money Badger," which the DEA and prosecutors in Miami created in 2013 and would go on to investigate around 100 Venezuelan insiders, according to two people familiar with the operation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss law enforcement details.

By authorizing otherwise illicit wire transfers through U.S.-based front companies and bank accounts, the DEA aimed to unmask the Colombian drug traffickers and corrupt officials leveraging Venezuela’s tightly controlled foreign currency exchange system to launder ill-gotten gains. But it expanded over time, homing in on Maduro’s family and top allies, although the president would end up being indicted elsewhere, by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, on drug trafficking charges.

None of the indictments of Venezuelans either before or after the 2018 memo made any mention of U.S. spying. And “to limit or mitigate the exposure of the unilateral activities,” the document advised DEA officials to protect their informants and curtail in-person meetings with targets.

It is not clear if ”Money Badger" is still ongoing.

Since Democratic President Joe Biden took office in 2021, his administration has rolled back sanctions and brought few new prosecutions of Maduro insiders as the Justice Department’s attention has turned to Russia, China and the Middle East. The Biden administration has also sought to lure Maduro back into negotiations with the U.S.-backed opposition, threatening to re-impose crippling oil sanctions if the OPEC nation doesn't abide by an agreement to hold fair and free elections this year.

The operation targeting Maduro’s inner circle is not the first time the United States has conducted law enforcement operations overseas without notifying a host country.

In 1998, Mexico castigated the United States for keeping it in the dark about a three-year money laundering sting known as “Operation Casablanca” — partly conducted on Mexican soil — that implicated some 160 people, including several bank executives.

Notably, legal experts say no international court or tribunal has jurisdiction to hold the United States or its agents accountable for covert law enforcement actions in other countries, and the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld arrests and evidence collected on such missions.

Evan Criddle, a law professor at William & Mary in Virginia, said international law forbids undercover operations such as those described in the memo that take place in another country’s territory without consent. He expects the release of the memo to “cause some embarrassment to the United States, prompt Venezuelan diplomats to register their objections and potentially inhibit future cooperation."

Several current and former DEA officials who examined the memo told the AP they were surprised less by the brazenness of the plan than the agency’s acknowledgement of it in internal documents.

“It’s very rarely done simply because there’s always that potential of it blowing up in the U.S. government’s face,” said Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former chief of international operations. “But Venezuela had already become a rogue state. I think they figured they had nothing to lose.”

RELEASED BY ACCIDENT

The Operation Money Badger memo was never intended to be made public.

It was inadvertently uploaded among dozens of government exhibits to a file share website by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan during the bribery conspiracy trial late last year of two former DEA supervisors who helped spearhead the agency’s offensive against the Maduro government. It would be removed hours after an AP reporter started asking about it.

A few days later, over the AP’s objections, the federal judge presiding over the bribery trial took the highly unusual step of sealing the courtroom while the document was discussed, saying that doing so in open court would have “serious diplomatic repercussions.” Neither he nor prosecutors explained what those might be.

Former DEA supervisors Manny Recio and John Costanzo Jr. were eventually convicted of leaking sensitive law enforcement information to Miami defense attorneys as part of a bribery conspiracy. One case they discussed was that of Saab, a Colombian-born businessman who himself would be targeted by “Money Badger” for the alleged siphoning of $350 million from state contracts.

Recio, who later worked as a private investigator recruiting new clients for the defense attorneys, emailed the Venezuelan plans to his personal email account days before his 2018 retirement. He approved the plans as an assistant special agent in charge, while Costanzo, an expert on Venezuela, oversaw the covert sting. Both men are expected to serve federal prison time, joining a growing list of DEA agents behind bars.

“Information like this should never leave government servers,” Michael Nadler, a former federal prosecutor in Miami who also helped coordinate the overseas sting, testified behind closed doors, according to a redacted transcript. “It contains information that provides identifying information regarding people who have agreed to cooperate with the United States in pretty dangerous situations.”

The AP is not publishing the actual memo or identifying the informants to avoid putting them in danger.

‘A SPECIAL RISK’

The memo harkens back to an earlier era of rising hostilities between the U.S. and Venezuela when ambitious federal investigators in several districts – New York, Miami, Houston and Washington – were competing to see who could penetrate deepest into Venezuela’s criminal underworld.

As part of that undeclared race, the DEA Miami Field Division’s Group 10 recruited a dream informant: a professional money launderer accused of fleecing $800 million from Venezuela’s foreign currency system through a fraudulent import scheme.

The informant’s illicit activity in Venezuela positioned him to help the DEA collect evidence against the chief target of the unilateral operation: Jose Vielma, an early acolyte of the late Hugo Chávez who in two decades of service to the Bolivarian revolution cycled through a number of top jobs, including trade minister and the head of Venezuela’s IRS.

Vielma’s alleged partner in crime, according to the DEA document, was another former military officer: Luis Motta, then electricity minister. The DEA memo authorized three informants to secretly record undercover meetings with the targets.

“There is a special risk that the (confidential sources) would be in danger if their cooperation with the DEA is exposed to host country officials,” the memo states. “Potential penalties include imprisonment.”

Whether the risks were worth it remains an open question.

Vielma and Motta were indicted on money laundering charges tied to bribery — not drug trafficking. Both remain in Venezuela and loyal to Maduro, with Vielma serving as a senior lawmaker and Motta’s wife the governor of a major state. But like dozens of Maduro insiders wanted in the U.S., neither is likely to be brought to justice – despite a $5 million reward for Motta’s arrest — unless they travel outside Venezuela.

Zach Margulis-Ohnuma, an attorney for retired Gen. Hugo Carvajal, a former Venezuelan spy chief awaiting trial in the U.S. on narco-terrorism charges in a separate investigation, said “the DEA’s reputation for lawlessness is well-earned.”

“A program that institutionalizes lawbreaking by authorizing DEA agents and informants to violate foreign laws,” he said, “does little to stop drugs from coming into the U.S. while undermining the integrity of the DEA and the reputation of America abroad.”

___

News Researcher Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed.

___

Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/

A Texas Town's Misery Underscores the Impact of Bitcoin Mines Across the U.S.

Andrew R. Chow

TIME
Fri, February 2, 2024 

Cheryl Shadden, a resident of Granbury, hung a sign on her street to protest the noise from a nearby bitcoin facility. Credit - Cheryl Shadden

Every night, the nurse anesthetist Cheryl Shadden lies awake in her home in Granbury, Texas, listening to a nonstop roar. “It’s like sitting on the runway of an airport where jets are taking off, one after another,” she says. “You can't even walk out on your back patio and speak to somebody five feet away and have them hear you at all.”

The noise comes from a nearby bitcoin mining operation, which set up shop at a power plant in Granbury last year. Since then, residents in the surrounding area have complained to public officials about an incessant din that they say keeps them awake, gives them migraines, and seemingly has caused wildlife to flee the region. “My citizens are suffering,” says Hood County Constable John Shirley.

Granbury is one of many towns across the U.S. feeling the negative impacts of bitcoin mining, an energy-intensive process that powers and protects the cryptocurrency. Those impacts include carbon and noise pollution, and increased costs on consumers’ utility bills. According to the New York Times, there are 34 large scale bitcoin mines across the U.S. In 2022, the crypto market tumbled, in part due to high-profile collapses of crypto companies like Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX. But in 2023, prices rebounded once again, and mining companies decided to expand their operations in order to cash in, causing global energy consumption for mining to double, according to one study. Critics say that mining is causing both long-term environmental damage, due to its energy use, as well as local harm. “We’re at a loss here,” Granbury resident Shadden says. “We want our lives back.”

Bitcoin is so energy-intensive because it relies on a process known as proof-of-work. Rather than being overseen by a single watchdog, bitcoin is designed to disperse the responsibility of the network’s integrity to voluntary “miners” around the globe, who prevent tampering through a complex cryptographic process that consumes a vast amount of energy. Over the last few years, Texas has become a global leader in crypto mining because miners can access cheap energy and land there, as well as benefit from friendly tax laws and regulation. Bitcoin miners consume about 2,100 megawatts of the state's power supplies, and companies like Riot Platforms and Marathon Digital Holdings have recently expanded in the state. (Other states, conversely, have pushed back on the industry: In 2022, New York imposed a moratorium on bitcoin mining over concerns that miners were overusing renewable energy resources.)
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In December, Marathon paid $178 million to purchase bitcoin mines in Kearney, Nebraska and Granbury from Generate Capital. But with the Granbury purchase, Marathon also inherited a swath of angry nearby residents across Hood County whose lives have been upended by the mining facility. Generate Capital started operating the 300-megawatt facility, which sits about an hour southwest of Fort Worth, in 2023. Initially, many residents were unaware what, exactly, was causing the noise. Shannon Wolf, who lives about 8 miles from the plant, first assumed that the rumble was coming from a nearby train. “It has woken me from a dead sleep before,” she says.

The rumble, it turned out, comes from the massive cooling fans that the facility runs to keep their computers from overheating. Data centers, like bitcoin mines, also run massive cooling fans that have drawn the ire of nearby residents.

As residents learned what had caused the din, social media platforms like NextDoor and Facebook flooded with complaints. “This sound has been driving me to the point of insanity. I have continuous migraines, I can barely get out of my head, vomiting, nosebleeds, painful knots on my scalp,” wrote one commenter. “All the birds have left, only [buzzards],” wrote another poster.

As complaints swelled, local officials brought their concerns to the site’s operator, US Bitcoin Corp. Over the summer, the company agreed to construct a 24-foot sound barrier wall on one end of the property at the cost of $1 to $2 million. But while the wall reduced sound in some areas, it actually amplified it in others. “To be honest, the complaints have gotten louder for us since the mitigation efforts,” Constable John Shirley says.

Shirley says that he is monitoring the decibel levels of the facility. Texas state law stipulates that a noise is considered unreasonable if it exceeds 85 decibels. For comparison, vacuum cleaners often run at around 75 decibels—and a cardiologist told TIME in 2018 that chronic exposure to anything over 60 decibels had the potential to do harm to the cardiovascular system. Shadden took her own readings at her house near the Bitcoin mining facility that reached 103 decibels.

But the maximum penalty for breaking that Texas law is a $500 fine, Shirley says, adding: “The state law is inadequate.” He says that he has been talking to the county attorney’s office about options for recourse. “If we have a repeated violation problem, he will be looking into potential injunctive relief,” he says.

The community’s ire boiled over at a town hall on Jan. 29, hosted by Shirley and Hood County Commissioner Nannette Samuelson. About 75 people filled the room to complain about the facility. Complaints from attendees included migraines that required trips to the emergency room and a vertigo diagnosis. One attendee said she had been forced to put her chihuahua on seizure medication. Others claimed that their windows rattled from the vibrations, and that the noise made their homes unsellable.

“How does Hood County benefit from having such a ridiculous thing?” asked one woman. “What does this community gain from having them there?”

Charlie Schumacher, the vice president of corporate communications at Marathon Digital Holdings, wrote in an email to TIME that the company was unaware of the noise issues when it purchased the site. He said Marathon was commissioning a third party to conduct a sound study as early as next week. And on Feb. 1, three days after the town hall, Marathon announced that it planned to take over full day-to-day control of the Granbury mine from its previous operators.

“Marathon deeply values our relationships with the communities in which we live and work, and we appreciate the candid input our neighbors have shared with us in recent weeks,” he wrote. "Our team will now have more influence over the sight and can hopefully have a more positive impact for the community. We are in constant touch with local officials and working with community leaders to gain more information about the situation and to work on solutions.

US Bitcoin Corp did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

While the constant noise has become a major irritant in the county, residents also worry about the facility’s impact on their power supply and the surrounding environment. Texas has a notoriously fragile grid that becomes strained in cold weather: a 2021 deep freeze caused millions of people to lose power. Wolf Hollow II, the gas plant that supplies the Granbury bitcoin mine with energy, failed during that crisis.

This year, parts of Texas were hit with a frigid arctic front in mid-January, with temperatures dropping into the teens. The state’s grid operator, ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas), asked Texans to conserve electricity. The grid mostly held up under strain, and Wolf Hollow continued to operate at full capacity, as did the mining operation.

Nevertheless, some residents in rural Hood County lost power. That included Hunter Sims, who lives a mile and a half from the plant and lost power for 9 hours, relying on a backup generator for his well. Sims was angered that he was without power while the mining operation continued unabated. Overall, he says his quality of life has worsened due to the facility’s noise pollution. “When I’m sitting in my living room, I can hear a loud humming,” he says. “You can’t really relax.”

A representative for Constellation Energy, the company that runs Wolf Hollow, said that any power outages were not a result of any issues at the plant, but rather on the local level of transmission or distribution.

Read More: Fact-Checking 8 Claims About Crypto’s Climate Impact

Erik Kojola, a senior Climate Research Specialist for Greenpeace USA, says he’s monitored similar complaints from residents near new bitcoin mining centers across the country, in Iowa, Indiana, Nebraska, and upstate New York. He also contends that bitcoin mining poses a much larger threat to the environment. “Bitcoin mining is essentially a lifeline for fossil fuels,” he says. “It's ultimately creating a new industrial scale demand for energy at a time where we need to be reducing our energy use.”

Back in Granbury, the discomfort caused by the plant is causing some consternation for a region that largely prides itself on being pro-industry and anti-regulation. “I agree with people having the right to own a business if it’s not illegal or amoral,” says Granbury resident Wolf. “But when you’re harming a group of people, there needs to be some type of remedy.”

Correction, Feb. 2, 2024

A previous version of this story misstated when the Wolf Hollow II power plant failed. It failed in 2021; it did not fail during a 2011 storm, though a separate but nearby plant, Wolf Hollow I, did.

All American Families Have Stories of Illegal Immigration

César Cuauhtémoc, García Hernández

TIME
Thu, February 1, 2024 

Coast Guardsmen stand guard as illegal migrants arrested by police and FBI agents, and are escorted out of a police van at the barge office in New York City on Dec. 9, 1941. They were later transferred to the immigration detention center on Ellis Island. Credit - Bettmann Archive—Getty Images.

By the time I showed up on the scene, my wife’s grandmother was in her 90s. Her hearing was bad and her mobility worse. But her spirit was all there. The first of her Italian migrant family to be born in the United States, she enjoyed telling my wife and me about her parents. Unlike more recent migrants, they had done things the way they should be done, she insisted. Her father left Italy in 1912 only after his brother had a job lined up for him in Philadelphia. Then the rest of the family joined. Over the years, they worked hard, stayed out of trouble, and lived well.

In those moments, I often felt like I was shouting to be heard past the FOX News commentators that wouldn’t stop complaining about the Mexican migrants, some of whom resembled my own relatives. In my quiet frustration, I would tell grandmom that in the early 1900s, a century before I met her, it was illegal to come here with a job in hand. Her father, I pointed out, had lied to get into the U.S.—and her uncle had helped.

Watching endless stories of recent migrants' arrivals who violate immigration law, it’s easy to forget that the migrants who came to the U.S. generations ago often did, too. But reinventing the past doesn’t make migrants then any more fit for life in the U.S. than migrants today.

Read More: The Current Migrant Crisis Is a Collective Trauma

By the time grandmom died, I never convinced her that her family’s migration story was more complicated than she imagined it. That didn’t surprise me. This happens in most families. We remember the victories and celebrations, while forgetting the defeats and tragedies. Eventually the history we imagine becomes the only history anyone knows, creating pasts that are happier, less stained by stories of illegality, than the lives our ancestors lived.

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But the truth about migration, like the truth hidden in the family history that I was born into and the one I married into, is more complicated. In those years when my wife’s relatives were settling into a life in the U.S. that they weren’t legally entitled to, transitioning from maligned southern Europeans to the ranks of white Americans, Louis Loftus Repouille busied himself building a life in New York City. A white man from the Dutch West Indies, Repouille spent his working days operating elevators at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.

One afternoon in October 1939, Repouille’s wife and one child went shopping. He sent two other kids to a movie, leaving him alone with 13-year-old Raymond Repouille, the couple’s oldest child, a boy whose poor health prevented him from walking or talking. Quietly and deliberately, Repouille soaked a rag in chloroform and approached the bed where the boy laid. We don’t know whether Raymond understood what was happening or whether the father hesitated. But we do know that Repouille covered the boy’s mouth and nose with the rag and held it there until the boy stopped moving. Repouille had killed his son.

A jury eventually convicted Repouille of manslaughter but asked the judge to go easy on him. Raymond’s death was a “mercy killing,” newspapers declared. Evidently agreeing with the jury, the judge made sure he was home in time for Christmas.

Four years, 11 months, and one week after being convicted of killing Raymond, Repouille applied for U.S. citizenship. He met all the requirements, except for one: he hadn’t waited long enough since the conviction. Federal law required five years of good moral character before applying for citizenship. Had he just waited another three weeks, a federal court concluded, his crime would’ve been forgiven. “The pitiable event, now long passed, will not prevent Repouille from taking his place among us as a citizen,” Judge Learned Hand, a towering figure in 20th century U.S. law, wrote. And so it was: When Repouille later reapplied for citizenship, he succeeded.

There was never any worry that Repouille might be deported because, back then, immigration law could forgive even the vilest conduct.

Today, immigration law forgives little and forgets less. Since the 1980s, Republicans and Democrats have steadily made it easier to fall into immigration problems because of a run-in with the police. And they’ve made it harder for judges to let people out of the immigration prison and deportation pipeline. “The ‘drastic measure’ of deportation or removal is now virtually inevitable for a vast number of noncitizens convicted of crimes,” the Supreme Court wrote in 2010.

These days, immigration agents regularly target migrants for far less. In 2017, 12 years after racking up a drug possession conviction, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents knocked on Kamyar Samimi’s door near Denver, Colo. After four decades of living in the U.S. with the government’s permission, Samimi’s entire life was here, not in his native Iran. His daughter Neda, a Denver college student at the time, remembers the care he gave her as a young child and the laughter and happiness he brought to her life as she grew. “He was so sweet, gentle, understanding, and helpful,” she told me.

To ICE, none of that mattered. The only thing that was important was that conviction a dozen years earlier. Agents arrested him just before Thanksgiving. Neda and her family never again saw Samimi alive. Within days of arrest, his health worsened. Samimi told prison guards he felt sick and showed signs of physical distress, but the prison doctor never saw him, and nurses struggled even to reach the doctor by phone, according to ICE’s records. Fifteen days after being hauled into the immigration prison, Neda’s father was dead.

In a statement released after Samimi’s death, ICE listed his conviction, but didn’t mention his family. That didn’t come as a surprise to Neda. When ICE called with news of her father’s passing, the agent on the other end of the phone didn’t offer an explanation, much less sympathy. ICE merely wanted Neda’s address so someone could mail her father’s belongings. The only reason she knows what happened during the last two weeks of his life is because she sued ICE to get its internal review of his death.

Forgetting the "failures" that line our family stories mean we can imagine migrants like Samimi as different from—and worse than—the migrants who arrived generations ago. For my wife’s grandmother, overlooking her own family’s history of illegality meant she could more easily warn my wife about our families’ different “cultures”—too different to allow for a good match.

When politicians suggest that migrants today pose a greater threat to the nation than migrants in the past, they are living a public version of my personal experience. The memories lost are private, but the consequences change laws. Republicans like Donald Trump vilify migrants with abandon. Democrats use kinder words, but policies they support also assume that migrants today present an extraordinary danger against which extraordinary powers must be deployed—whether blocking migrants at the border or erecting steel and concrete barriers near the Río Grande.

Forgetting our family histories, ordinary people like my wife’s grandmother overlook that imperfect people dot all of our family trees. And by sanitizing history, politicians turn outsized fears of today’s newcomers into laws intended to keep out people who are flawed—much like migrants of earlier generations were. Eventually I won over my wife’s grandmother. Sadly, changing laws is much harder, but it begins by remembering that migrants of today have much more in common with migrants of the past than many of us like to admit.

Residents ask for a full examination of damage to a Japanese nuclear plant caused by a recent quake

MARI YAMAGUCHI
Fri, February 2, 2024 


This aerial photo shows Shika nuclear power plant, rear, in Shika, on the western coast of the quake-struck Noto peninsula, Ishikawa prefecture, Japan, on Jan. 28, 2024. A group of residents of towns near Japanese nuclear plants submitted a petition on Friday asking regulators to halt safety screening for the restart of idled reactors until damage to a plant that partially lost external power and spilled radioactive water during a recent powerful earthquake is fully examined. (Kyodo News via AP)

TOKYO (AP) — A group of residents of towns near Japanese nuclear plants submitted a petition on Friday asking regulators to halt safety screening for the restart of idled reactors until damage to a plant that partially lost external power and spilled radioactive water during a recent powerful earthquake is fully examined.

The magnitude 7.6 quake on New Year’s Day and dozens of strong aftershocks in north-central Ishikawa prefecture left 240 people dead and 15 unaccounted for and triggered a small tsunami.

Two idled reactors at Shika nuclear power plant on the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa suffered power outages because of damage to transformers. Radioactive water spilled from spent fuel cooling pools and cracks appeared on the ground, but no radiation leaked outside, operator Hokuriku Electric Power Co. said.

The damage rekindled safety concerns and residents are asking whether they could have evacuated safely if it had been more severe. The earthquake badly damaged roads and houses in the region.

All Japanese nuclear power plants were temporarily shut down after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster for safety checks under stricter standards. The government is pushing for them to be restarted but the process has been slow, in part because of lingering anti-nuclear sentiment among the public. Twelve of the 33 workable reactors have since restarted.

Residents of Ishikawa and other towns with nuclear plants gathered in Tokyo on Friday and handed their petition to officials at the Nuclear Regulation Authority. They are asking officials to freeze the screening process while damage at the Shika nuclear plant is fully examined and safety measures are implemented.

Susumu Kitano, a Noto Peninsula resident, said there would be no way to escape from his town in case of a major accident at the plant.

Nuclear safety officials have noted that the extensive damage suffered by houses and roads in the area of the Shika plant make current evacuation plans largely unworkable. The damage, including landslides, made many places inaccessible, trapping thousands of people on the narrow peninsula.

Experts say current nuclear emergency response plans often fail to consider the effects of damage from compounded disasters and need to be revised to take into account more possible scenarios.

Takako Nakagaki, a resident of Kanazawa, about 60 kilometers (35 miles) south of the Shika plant, said the current evacuation plan is “pie in the sky.” Under the plan, residents closer to the plant are advised to stay indoors in case of a radiation leak, but that would be impossible if houses are damaged in an earthquake.

The Noto quake also sparked fear in neighboring Fukui prefecture, where seven reactors at three plants have restarted, and in Niigata prefecture, where the operator of the tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear plant is preparing to restart its only workable nuclear plant, the world’s largest seven-reactor Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant.

Hundreds of other residents of towns hosting nuclear plants submitted similar requests to regulators and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida earlier this week.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority has requested a further investigation of the Shika plant, even though initial assessments showed no immediate risk to its cooling functions or outside radiation leaks. NRA officials said Shika’s operator should consider the possibility of additional damage to key equipment as aftershocks continue.

The Shika reactors, inaugurated in 1993 and 2006, have been offline since the 2011 Fukushima disaster. Hokuriku Electric Power has expressed hopes to restart the newer No. 2 reactor by 2026, but reviews of the recent quake damage could delay that plan.

Despite the Fukushima disaster, the government has pushed increasing use of nuclear energy as a source of stable and clean energy.