theintercept--2020-12-17--Russian Hackers Have Been Inside Austin City Network for Months

believed to be from Russia have breached the city network of Austin , Texas , The Intercept has learned .
The breach , which appears to date from at least mid-October , adds to the stunning array of intrusions attributed to Russia over the past few months .
The list of reported victims includes the departments of Commerce , Homeland Security , State , and the Treasury ; the Pentagon ; cybersecurity firm FireEye ; IT software company SolarWinds ; and assorted airports and local government networks across the United States , among others .
The breach in Austin is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hackers .
By compromising the network of America ’ s 11th-most populous city , they could theoretically access sensitive information on policing , city governance , and elections , and , with additional effort , burrow inside water , energy , and airport networks .
The hacking outfit believed to be behind the Austin breach , Berserk Bear , also appears to have used Austin ’ s network as infrastructure to stage additional attacks .
While the attacks on SolarWinds , FireEye , and U.S. government agencies have been linked to a second @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as Cozy Bear — the Austin breach represents another battlefront in a high-stakes cyber standoff between the United States and Russia .
Both Berserk Bear and Cozy Bear are known for quietly lurking in networks , often for months , while they spy on their targets .
Berserk Bear — which is also known as Energetic Bear , Dragonfly , TEMP.Isotope , Crouching Yeti , and BROMINE , among other names — is believed to be responsible for a series of breaches of critical U.S. infrastructure over the past year .
The Austin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reported , was revealed in documents prepared by the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center , or MSTIC , and obtained by The Intercept , as well as in publicly available malware activity compiled by the site VirusTotal .
“ While we are aware of this hacking group , we can not provide information about ongoing law enforcement investigations into criminal activity , ” a spokesperson for the city of Austin wrote in response to a list of emailed questions .
On Sunday , Reuters reported that a state-sponsored hacking group had breached the Treasury @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weekend meeting of the National Security Council .
The Washington Post later attributed the attacks to Cozy Bear , citing anonymous sources , and reported that the group breached the agencies by infecting a software update to Orion , a popular network management product made by SolarWinds , a firm based in Austin .
“ Fewer than 18,000 ” users downloaded the malicious software update , which has been available since March , SolarWinds said in a federal securities filing on Monday .
The Intercept has seen no evidence that the Austin breach @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Russia ’ s dramatic intrusions into U.S. networks come at an awkward moment for Washington .
In November , President Donald Trump fired Christopher Krebs , the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency , or CISA , for refusing to go along with attempts to overturn the presidential election results , and Trump has generally shied away from criticizing Russian hacking operations .
Berserk Bear is suspected to be a unit of Russia ’ s Federal Security Service , or FSB .
Cozy Bear , the group behind the attacks on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service , or SVR .
Both the SVR and the FSB are considered successors to the Soviet-era KGB .
CISA and the FBI singled out Berserk Bear in an October 22 advisory warning that the hacking group had targeted airports , energy companies , and state , local , and tribal governments around the country , and had “ exfiltrated data from at least two victim servers.
” The New York Times later reported that FSB hackers had “ bored into local networks ” in California and Indiana , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It is now clear that a group of highly sophisticated hackers , likely Berserk Bear , also hit Austin .
An IP address belonging to the city appears on a list of indicators of compromise , or technical evidence that organizations can use to determine if they ’ ve been hacked by this threat actor , compiled by MSTIC .
When employees of the city of Austin visit websites from their work computers , this is the IP address that those websites see them coming from .
VirusTotal , a service owned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ submit files to be analyzed and scanned by dozens of anti-virus programs , has cataloged 97 malware samples that were observed communicating with the Austin IP address , and 88 of them were submitted to the site since January .
When malware runs on a computer , often the first thing it does is receive instructions from the hackers who control it .
In these cases , the instructions appear to be coming from Austin ’ s compromised network .
The list of indicators of compromise accompanied an alert about Berserk Bear that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in mid-November .
That document warned that BROMINE , Microsoft ’ s name for Berserk Bear , had also targeted the telecommunications , aerospace , and defense sectors , hitting entities in the United Kingdom and Turkey as well as the United States .
Austin ’ s internet address was the only government IP on the MSTIC list .
The other IPs belonged to cloud hosting providers like Amazon , DigitalOcean , Microsoft Azure , and the German company Hetzner , as well as Turkish cellular carrier Turkcell .
The next day , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ alert without Austin ’ s IP address included .
It ’ s possible that Microsoft initially included Austin ’ s IP address as an indicator of compromise by mistake , but the malware activity from VirusTotal makes that scenario unlikely .
And VirusTotal cataloged six malware samples that communicated with this IP and were submitted in November and December , suggesting that Austin ’ s network remains compromised .
“ It ’ s not surprising that hackers , when they find an unsecured server that is in the country that they ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ off point for lots of other things , ” said John Scott-Railton , a senior researcher at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto ’ s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy , in an interview .
“ It makes things a lot easier.
” The Austin City Council appears to have been aware of the breach since October .
CISA and FBI published an initial advisory on October 9 warning of “ advanced persistent threat actors , ” or APTs , targeting state and local governments , before publishing a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the agencies attributed the campaign to Berserk Bear .
Four days after the initial advisory , on October 13 , the City Council went into a closed meeting to discuss “ confidential network security information , ” according to the posted agenda .
The council discussed the topic again two days later during an executive session of its regular meeting , according to that agenda .
The portions of the meetings in which the council discussed network security were closed to the public , and the agendas cited an exemption in the state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to “ the vulnerability of a network to criminal activity.
” An assistant to Mayor Steve Adler declined to comment , as did three other council members .
“ Any info council would have received on this would have been in executive session , and as such , any council member would not be able to comment , ” a staffer for a fourth council member wrote in an email .
The remaining six members did not respond to The Intercept ’ s questions .
On December 8 , according to a transcript @ @ @ @ @ @ @ city authorized a $ 2.4 million contract for cyber liability insurance — a product that typically covers losses from data breaches and hacks .
Berserk Bear ’ s campaign targeted hundreds of organizations across the United States in addition to the city of Austin .
A heat map published by CISA , last updated on November 17 , lists types of organizations that were compromised , scanned , or targeted with other reconnaissance activity from Berserk Bear ’ s hacking infrastructure .
It includes 75 airports , four airlines , 13 cities , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dozens of other targets in aviation , defense , information technology , health care , transportation , and other industries .
CISA did not name any of the targets in the heat map .
Berserk Bear ’ s reputation for lurking fits a pattern that is common for espionage-related attacks , where “ adversaries have already been sitting in the network for three months or so before someone realizes that they are there , ” said Sami Ruohonen , a researcher with the Finnish cybersecurity firm F-Secure .
“ This is a technique @ @ @ @ @ @ @ groups , just for the fact that the longer you go unnoticed , the longer you have a foothold in the network.
” In a report published last year , F-Secure compared Berserk Bear and similar groups to the IT equivalent of a sleeper agent .
Yet cybersecurity experts warned that while the Berserk Bear hackers are not known for sabotage , they could rear up at any moment and wreak havoc in the United States , for example , by making cities go dark .
“ We should be cognizant of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” said Vikram Thakur , a technical director at Symantec who has tracked the group for years .
“ Turning on valves or closing valves , things of that sort — they have the expertise to do it.
” In 2010 , Stuxnet , a digital weapon developed by the United States and Israel , temporarily took out as many as one-fifth of Iran ’ s centrifuges and infected systems around the world ; in 2015 , the Russian hacking group Sandworm triggered an extensive power blackout in Ukraine .
Like their counterparts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Berserk Bear hackers are highly skilled and often narrowly focused on their targets .
In 2013 , Symantec found that Berserk Bear hit targets throughout the United States and Europe by using so-called watering hole attacks , which involves identifying websites frequented by members of an organization and infecting the sites with malware .
The Russian hackers separately compromised software that is used by a small group of businesses in the energy sector .
“ This was very specific software for people who work in the industrial space , ” says Thakur .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Berserk Bear ’ s breach of Austin ’ s network may have been extensive .
CISA ’ s October 22 alert said that the hackers exploited a critical vulnerability in Netlogon , Microsoft ’ s authentication protocol , allowing them access to valid usernames and passwords of all users of the network .
In at least one instance , the alert said , they used those credentials to steal information , including documents , related to “ sensitive network configurations and passwords ” and “ printing access badges.
” And in at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ valid credentials to compromise Microsoft Office 365 email accounts .
While it is not clear from the CISA alert whether those two instances described Austin , full network access would have allowed the hackers to assume “ the privileges of anyone in the network , ” said Ruohonen , of F-Secure .
“ If you think about data that is only available to the CEO , or data that is only available to IT services , they would have all of this data.
” The breaches tracked by CISA and the FBI were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ measures .
The only way an organization can be sure that it has removed the threat , they advised in the October 22 alert , is by systematically rebuilding the network from the ground up , noting that it ’ s “ critical to perform a full password reset on all user and computer accounts , ” an incredibly daunting and expensive task .
“ The City follows the measures that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency ( CISA ) and the FBI recommend for local governments , ” the Austin spokesperson said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reset all its accounts .
One employee was asked to enable multifactor authentication on internal services , but they have not been asked to change any passwords or reset and reconfigure their computer .
Malware still appears to be communicating with Austin ’ s network .
The most recent malware sample found on VirusTotal that was observed communicating with Austin ’ s IP address was submitted to the site for analysis on December 15 , two days ago .

State-sponsored hackers believed to be from Russia have breached the city network of Austin, Texas, The Intercept has learned. The breach, which appears to date from at least mid-October, adds to the stunning array of intrusions attributed to Russia over the past few months.
The list of reported victims includes the departments of Commerce, Homeland Security, State, and the Treasury; the Pentagon; cybersecurity firm FireEye; IT software company SolarWinds; and assorted airports and local government networks across the United States, among others. The breach in Austin is another apparent victory for Russia’s hackers. By compromising the network of America’s 11th-most populous city, they could theoretically access sensitive information on policing, city governance, and elections, and, with additional effort, burrow inside water, energy, and airport networks. The hacking outfit believed to be behind the Austin breach, Berserk Bear, also appears to have used Austin’s network as infrastructure to stage additional attacks.
While the attacks on SolarWinds, FireEye, and U.S. government agencies have been linked to a second Russian group — APT29, also known as Cozy Bear — the Austin breach represents another battlefront in a high-stakes cyber standoff between the United States and Russia. Both Berserk Bear and Cozy Bear are known for quietly lurking in networks, often for months, while they spy on their targets. Berserk Bear — which is also known as Energetic Bear, Dragonfly, TEMP.Isotope, Crouching Yeti, and BROMINE, among other names — is believed to be responsible for a series of breaches of critical U.S. infrastructure over the past year.
The Austin breach, which has not been previously reported, was revealed in documents prepared by the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center, or MSTIC, and obtained by The Intercept, as well as in publicly available malware activity compiled by the site VirusTotal. “While we are aware of this hacking group, we cannot provide information about ongoing law enforcement investigations into criminal activity,” a spokesperson for the city of Austin wrote in response to a list of emailed questions.
On Sunday, Reuters reported that a state-sponsored hacking group had breached the Treasury and Commerce departments, sparking an emergency weekend meeting of the National Security Council. The Washington Post later attributed the attacks to Cozy Bear, citing anonymous sources, and reported that the group breached the agencies by infecting a software update to Orion, a popular network management product made by SolarWinds, a firm based in Austin. “Fewer than 18,000” users downloaded the malicious software update, which has been available since March, SolarWinds said in a federal securities filing on Monday. The Intercept has seen no evidence that the Austin breach and the SolarWinds hack are related.
Russia’s dramatic intrusions into U.S. networks come at an awkward moment for Washington. In November, President Donald Trump fired Christopher Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, for refusing to go along with attempts to overturn the presidential election results, and Trump has generally shied away from criticizing Russian hacking operations.
Berserk Bear is suspected to be a unit of Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB. Cozy Bear, the group behind the attacks on federal government agencies, is affiliated with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR. Both the SVR and the FSB are considered successors to the Soviet-era KGB.
CISA and the FBI singled out Berserk Bear in an October 22 advisory warning that the hacking group had targeted airports, energy companies, and state, local, and tribal governments around the country, and had “exfiltrated data from at least two victim servers.” The New York Times later reported that FSB hackers had “bored into local networks” in California and Indiana, without specifying which networks had been breached.
It is now clear that a group of highly sophisticated hackers, likely Berserk Bear, also hit Austin. An IP address belonging to the city appears on a list of indicators of compromise, or technical evidence that organizations can use to determine if they’ve been hacked by this threat actor, compiled by MSTIC. When employees of the city of Austin visit websites from their work computers, this is the IP address that those websites see them coming from.
VirusTotal, a service owned by Google that allows the public to submit files to be analyzed and scanned by dozens of anti-virus programs, has cataloged 97 malware samples that were observed communicating with the Austin IP address, and 88 of them were submitted to the site since January. When malware runs on a computer, often the first thing it does is receive instructions from the hackers who control it. In these cases, the instructions appear to be coming from Austin’s compromised network.
The list of indicators of compromise accompanied an alert about Berserk Bear that MSTIC shared with public sector Microsoft customers in mid-November. That document warned that BROMINE, Microsoft’s name for Berserk Bear, had also targeted the telecommunications, aerospace, and defense sectors, hitting entities in the United Kingdom and Turkey as well as the United States.
Austin’s internet address was the only government IP on the MSTIC list. The other IPs belonged to cloud hosting providers like Amazon, DigitalOcean, Microsoft Azure, and the German company Hetzner, as well as Turkish cellular carrier Turkcell. The next day, MSTIC distributed a copy of the same alert without Austin’s IP address included. It’s possible that Microsoft initially included Austin’s IP address as an indicator of compromise by mistake, but the malware activity from VirusTotal makes that scenario unlikely. And VirusTotal cataloged six malware samples that communicated with this IP and were submitted in November and December, suggesting that Austin’s network remains compromised.
“It’s not surprising that hackers, when they find an unsecured server that is in the country that they’re targeting, use that as a jumping off point for lots of other things,” said John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, in an interview. “It makes things a lot easier.”
Voters enter and exit Austin City Hall during the presidential primary in Austin on March 3, 2020. Photo: Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP via Getty Images
The Austin City Council appears to have been aware of the breach since October. CISA and FBI published an initial advisory on October 9 warning of “advanced persistent threat actors,” or APTs, targeting state and local governments, before publishing a follow-up advisory on October 22 in which the agencies attributed the campaign to Berserk Bear. Four days after the initial advisory, on October 13, the City Council went into a closed meeting to discuss “confidential network security information,” according to the posted agenda. The council discussed the topic again two days later during an executive session of its regular meeting, according to that agenda. The portions of the meetings in which the council discussed network security were closed to the public, and the agendas cited an exemption in the state’s rules governing open meetings related to “the vulnerability of a network to criminal activity.” An assistant to Mayor Steve Adler declined to comment, as did three other council members. “Any info council would have received on this would have been in executive session, and as such, any council member would not be able to comment,” a staffer for a fourth council member wrote in an email. The remaining six members did not respond to The Intercept’s questions.
On December 8, according to a transcript of the City Council meeting, the city authorized a $2.4 million contract for cyber liability insurance — a product that typically covers losses from data breaches and hacks.
Berserk Bear’s campaign targeted hundreds of organizations across the United States in addition to the city of Austin. A heat map published by CISA, last updated on November 17, lists types of organizations that were compromised, scanned, or targeted with other reconnaissance activity from Berserk Bear’s hacking infrastructure. It includes 75 airports, four airlines, 13 cities, four counties, three states, and dozens of other targets in aviation, defense, information technology, health care, transportation, and other industries. CISA did not name any of the targets in the heat map.
Berserk Bear’s reputation for lurking fits a pattern that is common for espionage-related attacks, where “adversaries have already been sitting in the network for three months or so before someone realizes that they are there,” said Sami Ruohonen, a researcher with the Finnish cybersecurity firm F-Secure. “This is a technique that is specifically favored by these APT groups, just for the fact that the longer you go unnoticed, the longer you have a foothold in the network.” In a report published last year, F-Secure compared Berserk Bear and similar groups to the IT equivalent of a sleeper agent.
Yet cybersecurity experts warned that while the Berserk Bear hackers are not known for sabotage, they could rear up at any moment and wreak havoc in the United States, for example, by making cities go dark. “We should be cognizant of the level of information that they have,” said Vikram Thakur, a technical director at Symantec who has tracked the group for years. “Turning on valves or closing valves, things of that sort — they have the expertise to do it.” In 2010, Stuxnet, a digital weapon developed by the United States and Israel, temporarily took out as many as one-fifth of Iran’s centrifuges and infected systems around the world; in 2015, the Russian hacking group Sandworm triggered an extensive power blackout in Ukraine.
Malware still appears to be communicating with Austin’s network.
Like their counterparts in the National Security Agency, the Berserk Bear hackers are highly skilled and often narrowly focused on their targets. In 2013, Symantec found that Berserk Bear hit targets throughout the United States and Europe by using so-called watering hole attacks, which involves identifying websites frequented by members of an organization and infecting the sites with malware. The Russian hackers separately compromised software that is used by a small group of businesses in the energy sector. “This was very specific software for people who work in the industrial space,” says Thakur. “They knew who their targets were.”
Berserk Bear’s breach of Austin’s network may have been extensive. CISA’s October 22 alert said that the hackers exploited a critical vulnerability in Netlogon, Microsoft’s authentication protocol, allowing them access to valid usernames and passwords of all users of the network. In at least one instance, the alert said, they used those credentials to steal information, including documents, related to “sensitive network configurations and passwords” and “printing access badges.” And in at least one case, the hackers used valid credentials to compromise Microsoft Office 365 email accounts. While it is not clear from the CISA alert whether those two instances described Austin, full network access would have allowed the hackers to assume “the privileges of anyone in the network,” said Ruohonen, of F-Secure. “If you think about data that is only available to the CEO, or data that is only available to IT services, they would have all of this data.”
The breaches tracked by CISA and the FBI were so severe that the agencies recommended drastic measures. The only way an organization can be sure that it has removed the threat, they advised in the October 22 alert, is by systematically rebuilding the network from the ground up, noting that it’s “critical to perform a full password reset on all user and computer accounts,” an incredibly daunting and expensive task.
“The City follows the measures that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the FBI recommend for local governments,” the Austin spokesperson said. But the city has apparently not reset all its accounts. One employee was asked to enable multifactor authentication on internal services, but they have not been asked to change any passwords or reset and reconfigure their computer.
Malware still appears to be communicating with Austin’s network. The most recent malware sample found on VirusTotal that was observed communicating with Austin’s IP address was submitted to the site for analysis on December 15, two days ago.


theintercept--2020-12-17--Pentagon Training Equates Whistleblower Chelsea Manning With Terrorists

Both civilian contractors and enlisted personnel are commonly required to complete JS-US007 , a Pentagon course designed to “ increase your awareness of terrorism and to improve your ability to apply personal protective measures , ” according to Joint Knowledge Online , a Department of Defense education portal .
JS-US007 covers a variety of grimly serious topics , from detecting roadside bombs to surviving active shooter scenarios and skyjackings .
The training also covers so-called insider threat attacks , acts of terroristic violence in which members of a group strike the group itself , like the 2009 Fort Hood , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nidal Malik Hasan shot and killed 13 individuals on the base , wounding 30 more .
The Department of Homeland Security defines insider threat terrorism as “ an unlawful use of force and violence by employees or others closely associated with organizations , against those organizations to promote a political or social objective.
” Other definitions may differ on technicalities , but like other acts of terrorism , the unifying theme is the violence of the acts .
In the decade since her historic transfer of secret military and diplomatic materials to WikiLeaks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ party lines been condemned as a traitor .
Less common , and absent entirely from the government ’ s efforts to imprison her , are allegations that her leak was an act of terrorism .
But anti-terrorism training materials obtained by The Intercept show that the Pentagon is teaching defense workers exactly that .
But unclassified JS-US007 materials obtained by The Intercept show that the Pentagon ’ s anti-terrorism trainees are learning a far broader definition of terrorism , one that includes the entirely nonviolent acts of Manning .
On a slide listing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be loyal to the US , ” Manning ’ s “ 2010 leaking of over 500,000 documents concerning operations in Iraq and Afghanistan ” is listed first , followed by three examples of murder : the “ 2009 active shooter attack at Fort Hood , ” the “ 2003 active shooter attack at Camp Pennsylvania , ” and the “ 2001 anthrax attacks against Government facilities ” that closely followed the attacks of September 11 .
The JS-US007 training is reminiscent of a 2017 “ insider threat ” seminar presented by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s National Insider Threat Task Force and reported by the Daily Beast , which listed National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Drake in a gallery of “ Those that have done us harm , ” including Hasan and Aaron Alexis , who fatally shot 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard in 2013 .
But while that ODNI presentation framed whistleblowing and leaking only in vague terms of doing “ harm ” to the intelligence establishment — itself an uncontroversial claim — the JS-US007 slides go further , drawing an explicit parallel between @ @ @ @ @ @ @ murder .
Following the 2010 disclosures , Manning was widely condemned for the act by both military and civilian leadership in the United States , accused of not only betraying her country , but also substantially damaging the national security interests and strategic positions of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan by “ aiding the enemy ” in the war on terror , a criminal charge for which she could have received the death penalty or life in prison without parole .
Though government prosecutors never accused Manning of committing a terrorist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they maintained that she ought to have known the leaks would have benefited such groups .
Some did go so far as to equate Manning ’ s leak to terrorism , including then-Sen. Joe Biden , who during a December 2010 appearance on “ Meet The Press ” said , “ I would argue it is closer to being a high-tech terrorist than the Pentagon Papers.
” But in 2013 , a military judge found Manning not guilty of aiding the enemy , the gravest charge she faced .
In 2017 , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Manning ’ s leaks obtained by BuzzFeed News through a Freedom of Information Act request demolished the government ’ s prior claims that the disclosures had caused irreparable harm to U.S. interests .
The report determined that “ there is not any significant ‘ strategic impact ’ to the release of this information ” pertaining to Afghanistan , and “ with high confidence that disclosure of the Iraq data set will have no direct personal impact on current and former U.S. leadership in Iraq.
” Manning ’ s disclosures provided evidence of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strike by U.S. attack helicopters in Iraq , documentation of civilian deaths in the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq , cables on U.S. diplomatic support for dictatorships , and revelations about people held for years without charges at Guantánamo Bay .
Much of the material was published in outlets like the New York Times and The Guardian .
Both Manning and her attorney , Moira Meltzer-Cohen , declined to comment for this story .
“ If the Pentagon truly views leaking information outside proper channels as an act of terrorism on par @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ m surprised they have been so resistant to enhancing whistleblower protections , ” Project On Government Oversight Public Policy Director Liz Hempowicz told The Intercept .
“ Until those who want to report wrongdoing or illegality in the Department of Defense have confidence that those concerns will be addressed and that they have a chance at prevailing if they suffer retaliation , insiders have an incentive to release information outside the chain of command and hope for the best.
” Despite the Defense Department training ’ s message that Manning was motivated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she has been adamant that her disclosure of classified materials was motivated by the opposite .
In a 2017 interview with ABC News , Manning explained that her decision came from the belief that the American public deserved to know disturbing details of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were being kept secret .
“ I have a responsibility to the public , you know , ” Manning told ABC ’ s Juju Chang .
“ We all have a responsibility.
” The Department of Defense ’ s Joint Knowledge Online office @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , did not return a request for comment .

In the decade since her historic transfer of secret military and diplomatic materials to WikiLeaks, Chelsea Manning has consistently and across party lines been condemned as a traitor. Less common, and absent entirely from the government’s efforts to imprison her, are allegations that her leak was an act of terrorism. But anti-terrorism training materials obtained by The Intercept show that the Pentagon is teaching defense workers exactly that.
Both civilian contractors and enlisted personnel are commonly required to complete JS-US007, a Pentagon course designed to “increase your awareness of terrorism and to improve your ability to apply personal protective measures,” according to Joint Knowledge Online, a Department of Defense education portal. JS-US007 covers a variety of grimly serious topics, from detecting roadside bombs to surviving active shooter scenarios and skyjackings. The training also covers so-called insider threat attacks, acts of terroristic violence in which members of a group strike the group itself, like the 2009 Fort Hood, Texas, shooting in which Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan shot and killed 13 individuals on the base, wounding 30 more. The Department of Homeland Security defines insider threat terrorism as “an unlawful use of force and violence by employees or others closely associated with organizations, against those organizations to promote a political or social objective.” Other definitions may differ on technicalities, but like other acts of terrorism, the unifying theme is the violence of the acts.
Screenshot: The Intercept
But unclassified JS-US007 materials obtained by The Intercept show that the Pentagon’s anti-terrorism trainees are learning a far broader definition of terrorism, one that includes the entirely nonviolent acts of Manning. On a slide listing “Examples of attacks by individuals thought to be loyal to the US,” Manning’s “2010 leaking of over 500,000 documents concerning operations in Iraq and Afghanistan” is listed first, followed by three examples of murder: the “2009 active shooter attack at Fort Hood,” the “2003 active shooter attack at Camp Pennsylvania,” and the “2001 anthrax attacks against Government facilities” that closely followed the attacks of September 11.
Another slide in the presentation lists Manning’s alleged “anti-American statements” as a “pre-attack indicator.”
The JS-US007 training is reminiscent of a 2017 “insider threat” seminar presented by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s National Insider Threat Task Force and reported by the Daily Beast, which listed National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Drake in a gallery of “Those that have done us harm,” including Hasan and Aaron Alexis, who fatally shot 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard in 2013. But while that ODNI presentation framed whistleblowing and leaking only in vague terms of doing “harm” to the intelligence establishment — itself an uncontroversial claim — the JS-US007 slides go further, drawing an explicit parallel between the unauthorized disclosure of state secrets and murder.
“Insiders have an incentive to release information outside the chain of command.”
Following the 2010 disclosures, Manning was widely condemned for the act by both military and civilian leadership in the United States, accused of not only betraying her country, but also substantially damaging the national security interests and strategic positions of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan by “aiding the enemy” in the war on terror, a criminal charge for which she could have received the death penalty or life in prison without parole. Though government prosecutors never accused Manning of committing a terrorist act or plotting with actual terrorists, they maintained that she ought to have known the leaks would have benefited such groups. Some did go so far as to equate Manning’s leak to terrorism, including then-Vice President Joe Biden, who during a December 2010 appearance on “Meet The Press” said, “I would argue it is closer to being a high-tech terrorist than the Pentagon Papers.”
But in 2013, a military judge found Manning not guilty of aiding the enemy, the gravest charge she faced. In 2017, a secret Department of Defense post-mortem report on Manning’s leaks obtained by BuzzFeed News through a Freedom of Information Act request demolished the government’s prior claims that the disclosures had caused irreparable harm to U.S. interests. The report determined that “there is not any significant ‘strategic impact’ to the release of this information” pertaining to Afghanistan, and “with high confidence that disclosure of the Iraq data set will have no direct personal impact on current and former U.S. leadership in Iraq.”
Manning’s disclosures provided evidence of the killing of two Reuters journalists in a strike by U.S. attack helicopters in Iraq, documentation of civilian deaths in the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, cables on U.S. diplomatic support for dictatorships, and revelations about people held for years without charges at Guantánamo Bay. Much of the material was published in outlets like the New York Times and The Guardian.
Both Manning and her attorney, Moira Meltzer-Cohen, declined to comment for this story.
“If the Pentagon truly views leaking information outside proper channels as an act of terrorism on par with the anthrax attacks, then I’m surprised they have been so resistant to enhancing whistleblower protections,” Project On Government Oversight Public Policy Director Liz Hempowicz told The Intercept. “Until those who want to report wrongdoing or illegality in the Department of Defense have confidence that those concerns will be addressed and that they have a chance at prevailing if they suffer retaliation, insiders have an incentive to release information outside the chain of command and hope for the best.”
Despite the Defense Department training’s message that Manning was motivated by a disloyalty to her country, she has been adamant that her disclosure of classified materials was motivated by the opposite. In a 2017 interview with ABC News, Manning explained that her decision came from the belief that the American public deserved to know disturbing details of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were being kept secret. “I have a responsibility to the public, you know,” Manning told ABC’s Juju Chang. “We all have a responsibility.”
The Department of Defense’s Joint Knowledge Online office, which administers JS-US007 and other trainings, did not return a request for comment.
Correction: December 26, 2020
An earlier version of this story referenced Joe Biden as a senator in 2010; it now correctly refers to him as then-vice president.


theintercept--2020-12-17--A New Bill Aims to End Police Raids Like the One That Killed Breonna Taylor

of Breonna Taylor , who was fatally shot in Kentucky in March when plainclothes officers barged into her apartment in the middle of the night , has set off a series of state and local efforts to ban “ no-knock ” raids — the police practice of breaking into someone ’ s home unannounced to execute a search warrant .
A bill introduced by New York state legislators on Thursday goes further than most of those efforts , seeking to not only ban the vast majority of no-knock raids , but also strictly limit other avenues for forcible entry by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ co-sponsored by Sens .
Brian Benjamin and James Sanders Jr. and Assembly Member Daniel J. O ’ Donnell , seeks to limit the use of unannounced , no-knock raids to the most severe circumstances , like the pursuit of a murder suspect or incidents involving active shooters , hostage-taking , terrorism , or human trafficking .
It would ban the issuance of no-knock warrants aimed exclusively at searching for drugs , currently the most common use of these heavily militarized raids .
But unlike other current and draft state and local legislation , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the New York bill would also impose a host of restrictions on what are known as “ knock-and-announce ” search warrants , a more common type of forcible entry that has led to dozens of deadly encounters in recent years .
“ We must stop the over militarization of our communities , ” Sanders said in a statement .
“ Today , we are putting forth the most comprehensive , groundbreaking legislation in the nation when it comes to these police raids , which should only be used under extreme circumstances and with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ data on these raids , a New York Times investigation found that at least 94 people , including 13 officers , were killed during forcible police entries between 2010 and 2016 nationwide .
Officers executing warrants have killed children and elderly people .
Many people have been injured as a result of police firing flashbang devices into a home before entering , once severely burning a baby in his playpen .
Oftentimes police have conducted these raids based on flawed or old intelligence , breaking into the wrong home and killing people who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , as in Taylor ’ s case .
Researchers have estimated that at least 20,000 no-knock warrants are authorized by courts every year , the vast majority of them against Black and brown people and aimed at finding illegal drugs .
But as many as 60,000 warrants a year end up playing out like no-knock warrants , even if not authorized as such .
That is because the line between court-approved unannounced raids and raids in which police are legally required to knock and announce themselves is often blurry in practice , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as “ quick-knocks , ” during which police announce themselves and break in almost simultaneously .
“ For years , I was on a drug unit that would , even if there wasn ’ t a no-knock , get out of the car and go up to the door and whisper ‘ police search warrant ’ and then smash the door in , ” Jim Nolan , a former Delaware police lieutenant and FBI unit chief turned sociologist , told The Intercept .
“ That ’ s just bad behavior .
The no-knock @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that ’ s very dangerous.
” Brian Dolan , a criminal defense attorney who has studied the practice , warned of the “ gray area ” between no-knock and knock-and-announce warrants .
“ A lot of times you ’ ll see that the police will sort of knock on the door very quickly while simultaneously saying ‘ police , ’ but not saying it loud enough for anyone to hear , ” he told The Intercept .
“ And then they are waiting just a few seconds before breaking the door down , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ respond.
” The officers who broke into Taylor ’ s home in Louisville shortly after midnight on March 13 had received initial court approval — based on months-old intelligence — to execute a no-knock raid to search for illegal drugs and to arrest someone who did not live there .
Before the raid was carried out , the court changed its order to require the officers to knock and announce themselves , which they claim they did .
That claim was disputed by Taylor ’ s boyfriend , Kenneth Walker , who shot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
While some details of the shooting remain contested , the incident exposed the dangers of most forcible warrant executions and the difficulty of proving that police did knock and announce themselves as required before breaking down a door and barging into someone ’ s home with their weapons drawn .
In fact , while after Taylor ’ s death activists and legislators focused on calling for bans on no-knock raids , it ’ s unlikely that such a ban would have prevented her killing .
What might have is a sweeping overhaul @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are conducted .
So far , the New York bill is the most ambitious attempt to do that .
After the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May brought belated nationwide awareness to the killing of Taylor in Kentucky earlier this year , calls for banning no-knocks echoed from the streets to city and state legislative chambers across the country .
In June , the Louisville Metro Council voted unanimously in favor of an ordinance , known as “ Breonna ’ s Law , ” banning no-knock raids and imposing some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like a requirement that police wear body cameras throughout them .
At least eight states and 14 cities have partial no-knock bans in place , and legislation imposing a range of restrictions on search warrants is underway in 18 cities and 21 states , according to a tracker by Campaign Zero , a group focused on law enforcement policy .
But both existing and proposed bills vary widely in the discretion they allow police , and most fall far short of what advocates say is necessary to meaningfully curb the harm caused when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ What a lot of cities and states are doing is banning the issuance of no-knocks and full stop , ” Katie Ryan , who works with Campaign Zero , told The Intercept .
“ It ’ s a nice hashtag but actually , in practice , it does not prevent this practice of no-knock raids.
” Earlier this month , Virginia Gov .
Ralph Northam signed the state ’ s own “ Breonna ’ s Law , ” after a special legislative session focused on criminal justice reform called in response @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protests .
Virginia became the third state to ban no-knock raids , after Oregon and Florida .
The Virginia bill also imposed restrictions on other search warrant executions , most notably by limiting searches to daylight hours .
But the version of the bill that was signed into law does not require officers to record the raid nor to wait a set amount of time after having announced themselves and before breaking into a home .
Lashrecse Aird , a Virginia House delegate and the bill ’ s sponsor , had strongly advocated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 30-second pause ensures that you really give people on the other side of that door or that you are coming in contact with the opportunity to deliberately decide how they are about to engage with you , and to just take note that someone ’ s at the door , and to orient themselves and decide how they ’ re going to respond , ” Aird told The Intercept .
Discussion of the 30-second requirement threatened to derail the entire bill , with critics arguing that the rule would put officers ’ lives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it would actually make them , and everyone else in the home , safer .
“ It was framed as trying to tell police officers how to do their job , ” said Aird .
“ But I would say , any other state that is considering this type of policy , they should push for that.
” The New York bill introduced this week does include a 30-second wait time provision , as well as a host of other restrictions on all warrant executions .
In addition to banning most no-knock warrants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ application process for police seeking authorization for all other warrants , including requiring officers to list the age and gender of all occupants of a home they seek to raid and asking them to detail their planned course of action should nobody respond when they knock .
Officers seeking a warrant would need to provide evidence obtained within the last 24 hours showing that the person they are looking for was present at the residence to be searched , and the warrant would only be valid for a week .
The bill would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ uniform , limit the execution of raids to daytime , and ban the use of flashbang devices to enter a home .
It would require officers to record the entirety of the raid and mandate a process to review a raid after completion , including independent oversight and mechanisms to hold individual officers accountable over their failure to comply with regulations .
Finally , the bill would make any evidence acquired in violation of these regulations inadmissible in court , require police to pay restitution for property damaged during the raid , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the raid in the absence of a criminal conviction .
During a Thursday press conference introducing the bill , Benjamin , the state senator , said “ there are too many citizens who live in fear.
” “ If you showed up in plainclothes at my house in the middle of the night , and banged on my door and break my door down , I don ’ t know who you are .
And just because you say that you ’ re the police , that doesn ’ t tell me anything @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mine .
I have no idea who ’ s in my house , ” Benjamin said .
“ New York can be the leading voice for how we get this done across the country.
” No-knock warrants were first enacted at the federal level in 1970 , as part of President Richard Nixon ’ s war on drugs .
Congress repealed the provision authorizing them a few years later , as evidence mounted about the danger they posed and questions swirled about their constitutionality .
But as the drug war ramped up in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ frequent , and a series of Supreme Court decisions over the years effectively enabled states to continue to authorize them .
Since then , the number of raids conducted every year has only ballooned , increasing by nearly 2,000 percent , from 1,500 annually in the early 1980s to about 45,000 in 2010 .
“ At one point in time we accepted that this was a bad idea , and then over time our attitude about it changed , and we started doing it again , and we never looked back , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country that ’ s obsessed with the war on drugs , and we decided we ’ re pretty much going to let police do whatever they want to try to get drugs off the street.
” In fact , no-knock raids have been criticized even by some within law enforcement , who argue that they unnecessarily put officers ’ lives at risk .
“ My son is in law enforcement , and I do not want him to get hurt , shot , killed while serving a warrant when it wasn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ former executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association , told HuffPost .
The police chief in Chesterfield County , Virginia , said that his department hadn ’ t executed no-knock warrants in decades , according to Aird , because “ as a law enforcement agency , we should respect people enough to allow them to decide how they are going to engage with law enforcement , ” she said .
But despite the enormous risks , forcible raids have remained a widespread police tactic because of a broader culture of militarization and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be reformed with stricter policies alone .
“ They thrive on this adrenaline rush , and this thin blue line mentality , and this paramilitary perspective ; they ’ re at war , ” said Nolan , the former Delaware cop .
“ And there are rewards for it .
You ’ re running and gunning , you ’ re doing search warrants , you ’ re making lockups , and all these types of things are extremely valued in the profession.
” By making the bureaucratic process to obtain a warrant more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ incentives — like police ’ s ability to keep property seized during raids to subsidize their departments ’ budgets — those pushing for a rewriting of the rulebook on police raids hope to tackle the broader war-like culture with which these raids have become so entangled .
But as banning no-knock warrants alone is not enough , some argue that imposing restrictions on all warrants , while certain to have a greater impact , is also only a first step .
Aird , the Virginia delegate , noted that prior to Breonna ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ regulation for how police should conduct warrant searches at all .
“ In many states , like in Virginia , their code is just absolutely silent on no-knocks and how search warrants are executed generally , ” she said .
“ And while no-knocks in my opinion really needed to be banned , it really is just the start of the conversation that we need to have .
”

The police killing of Breonna Taylor, who was fatally shot in Kentucky in March when plainclothes officers barged into her apartment in the middle of the night, has set off a series of state and local efforts to ban “no-knock” raids — the police practice of breaking into someone’s home unannounced to execute a search warrant. A bill introduced by New York state legislators on Thursday goes further than most of those efforts, seeking to not only ban the vast majority of no-knock raids, but also strictly limit other avenues for forcible entry by police.
The New York bill, co-sponsored by Sens. Brian Benjamin and James Sanders Jr. and Assembly Member Daniel J. O’Donnell, seeks to limit the use of unannounced, no-knock raids to the most severe circumstances, like the pursuit of a murder suspect or incidents involving active shooters, hostage-taking, terrorism, or human trafficking. It would ban the issuance of no-knock warrants aimed exclusively at searching for drugs, currently the most common use of these heavily militarized raids. But unlike other current and draft state and local legislation, as well as three federal proposals, the New York bill would also impose a host of restrictions on what are known as “knock-and-announce” search warrants, a more common type of forcible entry that has led to dozens of deadly encounters in recent years.
“We must stop the over militarization of our communities,” Sanders said in a statement. “Today, we are putting forth the most comprehensive, groundbreaking legislation in the nation when it comes to these police raids, which should only be used under extreme circumstances and with accountability.”
While there is no comprehensive data on these raids, a New York Times investigation found that at least 94 people, including 13 officers, were killed during forcible police entries between 2010 and 2016 nationwide. Officers executing warrants have killed children and elderly people. Many people have been injured as a result of police firing flashbang devices into a home before entering, once severely burning a baby in his playpen. Oftentimes police have conducted these raids based on flawed or old intelligence, breaking into the wrong home and killing people who were not their intended target for arrest, as in Taylor’s case.
Researchers have estimated that at least 20,000 no-knock warrants are authorized by courts every year, the vast majority of them against Black and brown people and aimed at finding illegal drugs. But as many as 60,000 warrants a year end up playing out like no-knock warrants, even if not authorized as such. That is because the line between court-approved unannounced raids and raids in which police are legally required to knock and announce themselves is often blurry in practice, and most raids turn into what are known as “quick-knocks,” during which police announce themselves and break in almost simultaneously.
“The no-knock warrant is a way to legitimize something that’s very dangerous.”
“For years, I was on a drug unit that would, even if there wasn’t a no-knock, get out of the car and go up to the door and whisper ‘police search warrant’ and then smash the door in,” Jim Nolan, a former Delaware police lieutenant and FBI unit chief turned sociologist, told The Intercept. “That’s just bad behavior. The no-knock warrant is a way to legitimize something that’s very dangerous.”
Brian Dolan, a criminal defense attorney who has studied the practice, warned of the “gray area” between no-knock and knock-and-announce warrants.
“A lot of times you’ll see that the police will sort of knock on the door very quickly while simultaneously saying ‘police,’ but not saying it loud enough for anyone to hear,” he told The Intercept. “And then they are waiting just a few seconds before breaking the door down, without giving anyone inside enough time to respond.”
The officers who broke into Taylor’s home in Louisville shortly after midnight on March 13 had received initial court approval — based on months-old intelligence — to execute a no-knock raid to search for illegal drugs and to arrest someone who did not live there. Before the raid was carried out, the court changed its order to require the officers to knock and announce themselves, which they claim they did. That claim was disputed by Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who shot at the officers believing they were intruders.
While some details of the shooting remain contested, the incident exposed the dangers of most forcible warrant executions and the difficulty of proving that police did knock and announce themselves as required before breaking down a door and barging into someone’s home with their weapons drawn.
In fact, while after Taylor’s death activists and legislators focused on calling for bans on no-knock raids, it’s unlikely that such a ban would have prevented her killing. What might have is a sweeping overhaul of the way that all police search warrants are conducted. So far, the New York bill is the most ambitious attempt to do that.
LaTosha Brown, from Black Voters Matter, speaks in favor of “Breonna’s Law,” a statewide ban on no-knock warrants, at a press conference in Louisville, K.Y., on Aug. 24, 2020. Photo: Chris Tuite/ImageSPACE/MediaPunch/AP
Breonna’s Law
After the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May brought belated nationwide awareness to the killing of Taylor in Kentucky earlier this year, calls for banning no-knocks echoed from the streets to city and state legislative chambers across the country.
In June, the Louisville Metro Council voted unanimously in favor of an ordinance, known as “Breonna’s Law,” banning no-knock raids and imposing some restrictions on other search warrant executions, like a requirement that police wear body cameras throughout them. At least eight states and 14 cities have partial no-knock bans in place, and legislation imposing a range of restrictions on search warrants is underway in 18 cities and 21 states, according to a tracker by Campaign Zero, a group focused on law enforcement policy. But both existing and proposed bills vary widely in the discretion they allow police, and most fall far short of what advocates say is necessary to meaningfully curb the harm caused when a SWAT team breaks into a home.
“What a lot of cities and states are doing is banning the issuance of no-knocks and full stop,” Katie Ryan, who works with Campaign Zero, told The Intercept. “It’s a nice hashtag, but actually, in practice, it does not prevent this practice of no-knock raids.”
Earlier this month, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam signed the state’s own “Breonna’s Law,” after a special legislative session focused on criminal justice reform called in response to this summer’s racial justice protests. Virginia became the third state to ban no-knock raids, after Oregon and Florida.
Most bills fall far short of what advocates say is necessary to meaningfully curb the harm caused when a SWAT team breaks into a home.
The Virginia bill also imposed restrictions on other search warrant executions, most notably by limiting searches to daylight hours. But the version of the bill that was signed into law does not require officers to record the raid nor to wait a set amount of time after having announced themselves and before breaking into a home. Lashrecse Aird, a Virginia House delegate and the bill’s sponsor, had strongly advocated for the latter provision. “The 30-second pause ensures that you really give people on the other side of that door or that you are coming in contact with the opportunity to deliberately decide how they are about to engage with you, and to just take note that someone’s at the door, and to orient themselves and decide how they’re going to respond,” Aird told The Intercept.
Discussion of the 30-second requirement threatened to derail the entire bill, with critics arguing that the rule would put officers’ lives in danger — and proponents countering that it would actually make them, and everyone else in the home, safer. “It was framed as trying to tell police officers how to do their job,” said Aird. “But I would say, any other state that is considering this type of policy, they should push for that.”
The New York bill introduced this week does include a 30-second wait time provision, as well as a host of other restrictions on all warrant executions.
In addition to banning most no-knock warrants, the bill would create a tougher application process for police seeking authorization for all other warrants, including requiring officers to list the age and gender of all occupants of a home they seek to raid and asking them to detail their planned course of action should nobody respond when they knock. Officers seeking a warrant would need to provide evidence obtained within the last 24 hours showing that the person they are looking for was present at the residence to be searched, and the warrant would only be valid for a week. The bill would also require the officers to be in uniform, limit the execution of raids to daytime, and ban the use of flashbang devices to enter a home. It would require officers to record the entirety of the raid and mandate a process to review a raid after completion, including independent oversight and mechanisms to hold individual officers accountable over their failure to comply with regulations. Finally, the bill would make any evidence acquired in violation of these regulations inadmissible in court, require police to pay restitution for property damaged during the raid, and prohibit police from keeping assets seized during the raid in the absence of a criminal conviction.
During a Thursday press conference introducing the bill, Benjamin, the state senator, said,“There are too many citizens who live in fear.”
“If you showed up in plainclothes at my house in the middle of the night, and banged on my door and break my door down, I don’t know who you are. And just because you say that you’re the police, that doesn’t tell me anything; that’s your word against mine. I have no idea who’s in my house,” Benjamin said.“New York can be the leading voice for how we get this done across the country.”
A Buffalo Police SWAT Team and Narcotics unit raided a series of homes in Buffalo, N.Y., on April 20, 2006. Photo: Bill Wippert/Buffalo News/Rapport/Newscom
Warrior Cops
No-knock warrants were first enacted at the federal level in 1970, as part of President Richard Nixon’s war on drugs. Congress repealed the provision authorizing them a few years later, as evidence mounted about the danger they posed and questions swirled about their constitutionality. But as the drug war ramped up in the following decades, no-knocks became increasingly frequent, and a series of Supreme Court decisions over the years effectively enabled states to continue to authorize them. Since then, the number of raids conducted every year has only ballooned, increasing by nearly 2,000 percent, from 1,500 annually in the early 1980s to about 45,000 in 2010.
“At one point in time we accepted that this was a bad idea, and then over time our attitude about it changed, and we started doing it again, and we never looked back,” said Dolan. “We became a country that’s obsessed with the war on drugs, and we decided we’re pretty much going to let police do whatever they want to try to get drugs off the street.”
In fact, no-knock raids have been criticized even by some within law enforcement, who argue that they unnecessarily put officers’ lives at risk. “My son is in law enforcement, and I do not want him to get hurt, shot, killed while serving a warrant when it wasn’t necessary,” Mark Lomax, the former executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association, told HuffPost. The police chief in Chesterfield County, Virginia, said that his department hadn’t executed no-knock warrants in decades, according to Aird, because “as a law enforcement agency, we should respect people enough to allow them to decide how they are going to engage with law enforcement,” she said.
Forcible raids have remained a widespread police tactic because of a broader culture of militarization and violence.
But despite the enormous risks, forcible raids have remained a widespread police tactic because of a broader culture of militarization and violence that critics say can’t be reformed with stricter policies alone.
“They thrive on this adrenaline rush, and this thin blue line mentality, and this paramilitary perspective; they’re at war,” said Nolan, the former Delaware cop. “And there are rewards for it. You’re running and gunning, you’re doing search warrants, you’re making lockups, and all these types of things are extremely valued in the profession.”
By making the bureaucratic process to obtain a warrant more burdensome on officers, and by eliminating incentives — like police’s ability to keep property seized during raids to subsidize their departments’ budgets — those pushing for a rewriting of the rulebook on police raids hope to tackle the broader war-like culture with which these raids have become so entangled.
But as banning no-knock warrants alone is not enough, some argue that imposing restrictions on all warrants, while certain to have a greater impact, is also only a first step. Aird, the Virginia delegate, noted that prior to Breonna’s Law, there was no statewide regulation for how police should conduct warrant searches at all. “In many states, like in Virginia, their code is just absolutely silent on no-knocks and how search warrants are executed generally,” she said. “And while no-knocks in my opinion really needed to be banned, it really is just the start of the conversation that we need to have.”


theintercept--2020-12-18--The Trump Administration Has Planted a Land Mine in Federal Agencies

The question , then , is how much damage the Trump appointees can do quickly , and how much of that can be undone .
If Biden doesn ’ t make reversing the order an immediate priority , it ’ s easy to envision it getting lost amidst the chaotic first few months , and then forgotten , as Trump ’ s burrowed employees slash through the ranks of federal employees , replacing them with cronies .
Beginning in 2017 , the Trump administration began to discuss creating a new federal worker classification , called Schedule F. It was finally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 21 .
The new classification would allow Trump ’ s deputies to effectively hire and fire at will .
At the end of every administration , some appointees attempt to “ burrow in ” — government-speak for converting their appointed roles into a career category , allowing them to stay despite the new regime .
The changes under Schedule F could make that process much easier , by removing requirements that individuals applying for federal government jobs be qualified .
And once those officials have successfully burrowed in , they ’ d have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ changes that the Trump administration has already sought under Schedule F would , for instance , remove protections for 88 percent of the employees in the critical Office of Management and Budget , and potentially many more agencies .
The OMB , which crafts policy and budgeting across the federal government , is critical to Biden being able to implement much of his executive agenda .
A race is on between those Trump die-hards and the incoming administration , as the Trump team looks to execute on powers they ’ ve aggregated before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them .
The outgoing administration has set a ticking time bomb for the incoming one , and planted it into every federal agency the president-elect is about to take over .
Through executive action , President Donald Trump has gutted civil service protections , a four-year process that was undertaken to allow him to sweep out federal workers in his second term .
Now that such a term isn ’ t in the cards for Trump , his lieutenants are busy making big changes in federal agencies , potentially upending the work lives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and sowing chaos in Joe Biden ’ s first 100 days .
The order was crafted by James Sherk , a longtime former employee at the Heritage Foundation , who currently works for Trump ’ s Domestic Policy Council .
It ’ s being implemented by Michael Rigas , a top official at the Office of Management and Budget and another Heritage alumni .
An Intercept review of news stories shows that Heritage is one of the only organizations going on the record supporting Schedule F. The Trump administration has partnered closely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moves , which could benefit government contractors associated with Heritage .
Per Trump ’ s order , Schedule F is a new schedule in the civil service that does not have protection from civil service rules that mandate cause in terminations and ensure due process for federal employees .
The executive order authorizing Schedule F underscores the role that think tanks , with their contributor lists shielded from the public , play in crafting policy in Washington , where a single think tank with expertise in a particular area can dominate an administration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even if it cuts against 130-year-old laws guaranteeing a civil service independent of graft , bribery , patronage , or corporate influence .
The Heritage Foundation , founded in 1973 with funds from the Coors family , has long been an integral part of the right in Washington , distinguishing it from the rival American Enterprise Institute by closely adhering to the GOP line on social issues .
Civil service rules are a domain of expertise for Heritage Foundation President Kay Cole James , who led George W. Bush ’ s Office of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the civil service , from 2001 to 2004 .
James helped to lead the Trump transition for both the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management , agencies that are now implementing Schedule F. Heritage has published reports going back 20 years urging dramatic reforms to the civil service , effectively making federal employees at-will at the discretion of the president .
In their public statements , Heritage officials have stated that they do not believe that the civil service should be a bulwark against executive overreach .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a company and they ’ re told , look you can not do anything to discipline or dismiss managers who refuse to carry out your directives , or who actively try to thwart your initiatives , ” Rachel Greszler , a research fellow at Heritage , told the Federal News Network in October .
“ And that ’ s often the case right now within the federal government.
” The change in administrations is unlikely to change the influence think tanks have , with former Center for American Progress head Neera Tanden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Budget .
( Although , in contrast to Heritage , CAP does release the identity of some of its donors . )
The Obama administration oversaw an unprecedented weakening of civil service rules at the Department of Veterans Affairs .
The executive order could be a beachhead for a longer-term undermining of the civil service , whereby presidents will be able to exert much more authority over the 2.8 million-strong federal workforce , effectively reviving the patronage system banned by the Pendleton Act in 1883 .
For most of the first century @ @ @ @ @ @ @ considered spoils to dole out to the powerful backers of the victorious administration .
Schedule F is a “ huge , broad new exception , ” said John Hatton , the legislative director of the National Association of Active and Retired Federal Employees , a professional organization that has over 300,000 members .
“ It creates a whole new class of employees .
The language of it is such that it could be interpreted very broadly , possibly as many as hundreds of thousands of federal employees .
It goes against the idea @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a career workforce with merit-based hiring and some due process.
” the executive order came from a 19-page memo authored by Sherk in 2017 , soon after he had joined the Trump administration from Heritage as a “ Labor Policy Adviser.
” The memo urged wide restrictions on the rights of unions , both within the federal government and without .
“ His memorandum was a blueprint for an absolute destruction of any kinds of protections any American workers could have from their union or from the government .
It was extremely insidious @ @ @ @ @ @ @ public policy director at the American Federation of Government Employees , a labor union with 300,000 members .
Of particular concern to some experts is the way that the proposed executive order could lead to the politicization of the government contracting process , by making it easier both to hire underqualified employees and remove government employees charged with procuring government services or in crafting procurement policy .
Nearly all government contracting must be done by career civil servants , and some of the contracting requires significant subjective determination by those civil servants .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ have to prove your loyalty , then you don ’ t have fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers you ’ re sworn only to adhere or show loyalty to whoever hired you , ” said Simon .
Without civil service protections , a company that was looking for federal money could exert its influence to fire an employee who was unwilling to give the firm the contract , and replace them with a crony eager to let out the business .
Civil service protections are designed to block that sort of arrangement .
Those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who fund the Heritage Foundation .
Nick Schwellenbach , a senior investigator at the Project on Government Oversight , connected Heritage ’ s work on Schedule F to its connections to defense contractors .
In 2015 , The Intercept reported on emails that showed Heritage officials working closely with Lockheed Martin executives to save a weapons program facing cuts , and the think tank has frequently advocated not only for higher spending at the Pentagon , but specifically higher spending on individual weapons programs , including on Lockheed ’ s F-35 jet program @ @ @ @ @ @ @ balloon from $ 200 billion in 2001 to $ 1.5 trillion in 2017 .
( By contrast , the annual cost of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families welfare program is $ 17 billion annually . )
“ We wrote a report a decade ago called ‘ Bad Business ’ and we found that when we fully loaded out the cost of contracting out positions they often far exceeded the cost of a government employee .
James Sherk specifically attacked our report and defended outsourcing , ” said Schwellenbach .
“ When contracting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Should we even outsource this function , are we getting value for this contract ?
’ they could really piss off their superiors .
Civil service protections are there to protect those employees.
” While the Trump administration has not moved , as of now , to reclassify under Schedule F any employees of the Department of Defense , the Sherk memo urged exempting the entire Department of Defense from collective bargaining .
But OMB , which includes the Office of Federal Procurement Policy , sets rules for the federal government ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the contracting process as well ; she briefly worked for Mitchell Wade in 2005 , who was later convicted and sent to prison for bribing then-Congressman Duke Cunningham , R-Calif. , for his help acquiring federal contracts .
“ Lockheed Martin would prefer it if the procurement officers it dealt with were chastened and felt fear of asking the hard questions , ” said Schwellenbach .

The outgoing administration has set a ticking time bomb for the incoming one, and planted it into every federal agency the president-elect is about to take over. Through executive action, President Donald Trump has gutted civil service protections, a four-year process that was undertaken to allow him to sweep out federal workers in his second term. Now that such a term isn’t in the cards for Trump, his lieutenants are busy making big changes in federal agencies, potentially upending the work lives of hundreds of thousands of federal employees and sowing chaos in Joe Biden’s first 100 days.
A race is on between those Trump die-hards and the incoming administration, as the Trump team looks to execute on powers they’ve aggregated before the Biden administration can act to stop them.
Beginning in 2017, the Trump administration began to discuss creating a new federal worker classification, called Schedule F. It was finally implemented by executive order on October 21. The new classification would allow Trump’s deputies to effectively hire and fire at will. At the end of every administration, some appointees attempt to “burrow in”: government-speak for converting their appointed roles into a career category, allowing them to stay despite the new regime. The changes under Schedule F could make that process much easier by removing requirements for individuals applying for federal government jobs. And once those officials have successfully burrowed in, they’d have new powers at their disposal. The changes that the Trump administration has already sought under Schedule F would, for instance, remove protections for 88 percent of the employees in the critical Office of Management and Budget, and potentially many more agencies. The OMB, which crafts policy and budgeting across the federal government, is critical to Biden being able to implement much of his executive agenda.
The question, then, is how much damage the Trump appointees can do quickly — and how much of that can be undone. If Biden doesn’t make reversing the order an immediate priority, it’s easy to envision it getting lost amid the chaotic first few months and then forgotten, as Trump’s burrowed employees slash through the ranks of federal employees, replacing them with cronies.
The order was crafted by James Sherk, a longtime former employee at the Heritage Foundation who currently works for Trump’s Domestic Policy Council. It’s being implemented by Michael Rigas, a top official at the Office of Management and Budget and another Heritage alumni. An Intercept review of news stories shows that Heritage is one of the only organizations going on the record supporting Schedule F.
The Trump administration has partnered closely with the conservative think tank in the moves, which could benefit government contractors associated with Heritage.
Per Trump’s order, Schedule F is a new schedule in the civil service that does not have protection from civil service rules that mandate cause in terminations and ensure due process for federal employees. The executive order authorizing Schedule F underscores the role that think tanks, with their contributor lists shielded from the public, play in crafting policy in Washington; a single think tank with expertise in a particular area can dominate an administration’s approach to the issue, even if it cuts against 130-year-old laws guaranteeing a civil service independent of graft, bribery, patronage, or corporate influence.
The Heritage Foundation, founded in 1973 with funds from the Coors family, has long been an integral part of the right in Washington, distinguishing it from the rival American Enterprise Institute by closely adhering to the GOP line on social issues. Civil service rules are a domain of expertise for Heritage Foundation President Kay Cole James, who led George W. Bush’s Office of Personnel Management, which oversees the administration of the civil service, from 2001 to 2004. James helped lead the Trump transition for both the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management, agencies that are now implementing Schedule F. Heritage has published reports going back 20 years urging dramatic reforms to the civil service, effectively making federal employees at-will at the discretion of the president.
In their public statements, Heritage officials have stated that they do not believe that the civil service should be a bulwark against executive overreach. “Imagine if you have a CEO of a company and they’re told, look you cannot do anything to discipline or dismiss managers who refuse to carry out your directives, or who actively try to thwart your initiatives,” Rachel Greszler, a research fellow at Heritage, told Federal News Network in October. “And that’s often the case right now within the federal government.”
The change in administrations is unlikely to change the influence think tanks have, with former Center for American Progress head Neera Tanden set to lead the Office of Management and Budget. (Although, in contrast to Heritage, CAP does release the identities of some of its donors.) The Obama administration oversaw an unprecedented weakening of civil service rules at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The executive order could be a beachhead for a longer-term undermining of the civil service, whereby presidents will be able to exert much more authority over the 2.8-million-strong federal workforce, effectively reviving the patronage system banned by the Pendleton Act in 1883. For most of the first century of American government, federal jobs were considered spoils to dole out to the powerful backers of the victorious administration.
Schedule F is a “huge, broad new exception,” said John Hatton, the legislative director of the National Association of Active and Retired Federal Employees, a professional organization that has over 300,000 members. “It creates a whole new class of employees. The language of it is such that it could be interpreted very broadly, possibly as many as hundreds of thousands of federal employees. It goes against the idea of federal civil service, which is a career workforce with merit-based hiring and some due process.”
The impetus for the executive order came from a 19-page memo authored by Sherk in 2017, soon after he had joined the Trump administration from Heritage as a “labor policy adviser.” The memo urged wide restrictions on the rights of unions, both within the federal government and without.
“His memorandum was a blueprint for an absolute destruction of any kinds of protections any American workers could have from their union or from the government. It was extremely insidious,” said Jacqueline Simon, the public policy director at the American Federation of Government Employees, a labor union with 300,000 members.
Of particular concern to some experts is the way that the proposed executive order could lead to the politicization of the government contracting process, by making it easier both to hire underqualified employees and remove government employees charged with procuring government services or in crafting procurement policy. Nearly all government contracting must be done by career civil servants, and some of the contracting requires significant subjective determination by those civil servants. “If you’re hired and have to prove your loyalty, then you don’t have fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers you’re sworn only to adhere or show loyalty to whoever hired you,” said Simon.
Without civil service protections, a company that was looking for federal money could exert its influence to fire an employee who was unwilling to give the firm the contract, and replace them with a crony eager to let out the business. Civil service protections are designed to block that sort of arrangement.
Those types of companies are precisely the kind who fund the Heritage Foundation. Nick Schwellenbach, a senior investigator at the Project on Government Oversight, connected Heritage’s work on Schedule F to its relationship with defense contractors. In 2015, The Intercept reported on emails that showed Heritage officials working closely with Lockheed Martin executives to save a weapons program facing cuts, and the think tank has frequently advocated not only for higher spending at the Pentagon, but specifically higher spending on individual weapons programs, including on Lockheed’s F-35 jet program, which has seen its projected costs balloon from $200 billion in 2001 to $1.5 trillion in 2017. (By contrast, the annual cost of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families welfare program is $17 billion annually.)
“We wrote a report a decade ago called ‘Bad Business’ and we found that when we fully loaded out the cost of contracting out positions they often far exceeded the cost of a government employee. James Sherk specifically attacked our report and defended outsourcing,” said Schwellenbach. “When contracting officers raise questions, asking, ‘Should we even outsource this function, are we getting value for this contract?’ they could really piss off their superiors. Civil service protections are there to protect those employees.”
While the Trump administration has not moved, as of now, to reclassify any Department of Defense employees under Schedule F, the Sherk memo urged exempting the entire Department of Defense from collective bargaining. But the OMB, which includes the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, sets rules for the federal government’s purchasing operation.
James, Heritage Foundation’s president, has experience with the contracting process as well; she briefly worked for defense contractor Mitchell Wade in 2005, who was later convicted and sent to prison for bribing then-Rep. Duke Cunningham, R-Calif., for his help acquiring federal contracts.
“Lockheed Martin would prefer it if the procurement officers it dealt with were chastened and felt fear of asking the hard questions,” said Schwellenbach.