#Department of Defense inspector general

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Under Donald Trump’s leadership, the West Wing operated more like a pill mill than the White House, at least according to a January report by the Department of Defense inspector general, which capped a six-year investigation into the administration’s medical practices.

But sources knowledgeable on the matter paint an even more dramatic image than that, describing the nation’s highest office as “awash in speed,” reported Rolling Stone.

Common pills included modafinil, Adderall, fentanyl, morphine, and ketamine, according to the Pentagon report. But other, unlisted drugs—like Xanax—were equally easy to come by from the White House Medical Unit, according to sources that spoke to the magazine.

At least two senior staffers would regularly mix the depressant with alcohol, a potentially life-threatening combo, to deal with the stress of working with a highly erratic boss.

“You try working for him and not chasing pills with alcohol,” one source told Rolling Stone.

While other presidents were known to take a mix of drug cocktails to fight off back pain (like JFK) or bad moods (like Nixon), no previous administrations matched the level of debauchery of Trump’s, whose in-office pharmacists unquestioningly handed out highly addictive substances to staffers who needed pick-me-ups or energy boosts—no doctor’s exam, referral, or prescription required.

“It was kind of like the Wild West. Things were pretty loose. Whatever someone needs, we were going to fill this,” another source said.

Ultimately, the unmitigated access to controlled substances fostered an environment that would have been considered highly illegal and problematic anywhere else in the nation—if it weren’t inside the very office that helps craft those regulations.

“Is it being done appropriately or legally all the time? No. But are they going to get to that end result that the bosses want? Yeah,” said another, referring to the high demands of the office.

Meanwhile, pharmacists described an atmosphere of fear within the West Wing, claiming they would be “fired” if they spoke out or would receive negative work assignments if they didn’t hand pills over to staffers.

[tomorrowusa]

Trump White House staffers were apparently big pill poppers. And we're not talking about generic ibuprofen or Vitamin C.

The White House has its own pharmacy. It's run by the military because the president happens to be commander-in-chief of the armed forces. But during the Trump administration things went awry – as you might expect.

For years, the White House Medical Unit, run by the White House Military Office, provided the full scope of pharmaceutical services to senior officials and staff—it stored, inventoried, prescribed, dispensed, and disposed of prescription medications, including opioids and sleep medications. However, it was not staffed by a licensed pharmacist or pharmacy support staff, nor was it credentialed by any outside agency. The operations of this pseudo-pharmacy went as well as one might expect, according to the DoD OIG's alarming investigation report. The investigation was prompted by complaints in May 2018 alleging that an unnamed "senior military medical officer" was engaged in "improper medical practices." [ ... ] Provigil is a drug that treats excessive tiredness and is typically used for patients with narcolepsy, sleep apnea, and other sleep disorders. Brand-name Provigil is 55 times more expensive than the generic equivalent. Between 2017 and 2019, the White House pharmacy spent an estimated $98,000 for Provigil. In that same timeframe, it also spent an estimated $46,500 for Ambien, a prescription sedative, which is 174 times more expensive than the generic equivalent. Even further, the White House Medical Unit spent an additional $100,000 above generic drug cost by having Walter Reed National Military Medical Center fill brand-name prescriptions.

While they were plotting to repeal Obamacare for millions of Americans, Trump staffers were getting brand name stimulants and sedatives cheap and sticking US taxpayers with the bill.

They were handing out baggies of drugs to staffers going on trips overseas.

The staffer told OIG investigators that ahead of overseas trips, the staff would prepare packets of controlled medications to be handed out to White House staff. "And those would typically be Ambien or Provigil and typically both, right. So we would normally make these packets of Ambien and Provigil, and a lot of times they’d be in like five tablets in a zip‑lock bag. And so traditionally, too, we would hand these out. ... But a lot of times the senior staff would come by or their staff representatives... would come by the residence clinic to pick it up. And it was very much a, 'hey, I’m here to pick this up for Ms. X.' And the expectation was we just go ahead and pass it out."

Trump wanted to send the US military into Mexico to go after drug kingpins. But he was running his own out of control drug dispensing operation financed by tax money.

The Department of Defense Inspector General's report detailed how Schedule II drugs were poorly inventoried and monitored. (emphasis added)

The Code of Federal Regulations requires that registered pharmacies maintain inventories and records of Schedule II controlled substances separately from all other pharmacy records.16 In our site visit to the EEOB Clinic, we concluded that the clinic maintained the controlled substance inventory records in a binder on hand‑written paper logs, stored in the EEOB clinic’s medication dispensing area. The inventory records showed that White House Medical Unit stocked four different types of Schedule II opioid pain medications (fentanyl, hydrocodone, morphine, and oxycodone), as well as medications from Schedules III through V, such as stimulants and sedatives. However, White House Medical Unit kept the records for its Schedule II medications in the EEOB’s inventory binder together with records for all other controlled medications and not maintained separately as required by the CFR.

So the Trump White House pharmacy also included opioids which were not properly kept track of. The Trump drug mill was a microcosm for his administration as a whole.

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

The Washington Post reported that administration officials informed Congress of the 100 foreign military sales to Israel in a classified briefing. Few details are known of the sales, because keeping each one small meant their contents remained secret, but they are reported to have included precision-guided munitions, small diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms and other lethal aid. The Arms Export Control Act makes significant exceptions for arms sales to close allies – a limit of $25m for ‘major defense equipment’, defined as big-ticket items that require a lot of research and development, but the limit rises to $100m for other “defense articles” like bombs. “This doesn’t just seem like an attempt to avoid technical compliance with US arms export law, it’s an extremely troubling way to avoid transparency and accountability on a high-profile issue,” Ari Tolany, director of the security assistance monitor at the Centre for International Policy thinktank, said. She added that, in exploiting the loophole, the Biden administration was following the steps of its predecessor. “They’re very much borrowing from the Trump playbook to dodge congressional oversight,” Tolany said. The state department office of the inspector general found that between 2017 and 2019, the Trump administration had made 4,221 below-threshold arms transfers to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, worth an estimated total of $11.2bn.

[socialjusticeinamerica]

Trump’s fascist MAGAt loyalists must be pulled up like the weeds they are before they can choke off democracy.

[the-empress-7]

I cannot wait for IRS to audit their asses.

I’m a fed and sometimes when it gets boring at work and we’re in one of Meghan’s ‘I’m going to make you love me’ PR smother moods, I think about transferring to the IRS just to be able to look at their tax info. (For the record, it is very illegal to access anyone’s tax records without specific purpose and there was a law passed recently cleaning up some of the loopholes for this.)

And if anyone was ever really truly bothered by some kind of fraudulent actions or behavior they think others might be doing, it should be reported to the appropriate agency’s Office of Inspector General. For instance, if someone was very concerned about an exiled prince receiving Secret Service protection (Department of Treasury) or utilizing diplomatic services (Department of State) or cozying up to US military (Department of Defense) or fraudulently reporting expenses and incomes (US Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration) or incorrectly representing their trademarks (Department of Commerce), the appropriate Inspector General agency would be able to hear any complaints or concerns via their hotlines. The individual could also submit FOIA requests to any particular agency for records related to federal decision making concerning the exiled prince, but just know it might end up in court (a FOIA request to Homeland Security over Harry’s visa application is why the Heritage Foundation is suing the government. They filed a FOIA request, and DHS said no, we can’t give you that info. Then Heritage sued.)

Thank you for sending this in. In regards to the second paragraph, I think there is no abuse of diplomatic privileges because the truth is hidden in plain sight. Harry and Meghan are still listed on the UK's Head of States as his representative for exactly this reason. At this point my beef is with Charles for enabling the subterfuge. Allegedly and in my opinion. No number of FOIA requests are going to cut it as long as Charles continues to protect them.

[empirearchives]

Changes to the Tax Collection System in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France

My (loose) translation from Le prix de la gloire: Napoléon et l’argent by Pierre Branda, about money and finance. This part is specifically about the reforms made to the tax collection system. Problems with taxation had been the source of many woes, so it went through major changes.

“The [tax] work of the Consulate mainly concerned the reorganization of tax collection. Until now, this essential element was not administered directly by the Ministry of Finance. The Constituent Assembly had wanted the tax rolls for direct contributions, that is to say the ‘tax slips’, to be established by municipal administrations. Their work was complex, because each year it was necessary to draw up a list of taxpayers, determine each person’s share of tax and send them the amount of the contribution to pay. Poorly motivated (or even corrupt), the municipalities had put little care in the execution of their mission since a large part of the taxpayers had not yet received anything for their taxes of year VIII, or even of year VII or year VI. Also, with two or three years of delay in preparing the rolls, it was not surprising that tax revenues were low (nearly 400 million francs were thus left outstanding). If the sending of tax matrices left something to be desired, the collection of direct contributions was hardly better. The tax collector was also not an agent of the administration: this function was assigned to any person who agreed to collect taxes with the lowest possible commission (otherwise called ‘collecte à la moins-dite’). With such a system, there were numerous inadequacies, often due to incompetence, but also due to the prevailing spirit of fraud. However, in their defense, the profits of the collectors were most of the time too low to provide such a service; also, to compensate for their losses, they were ‘forced’ to multiply small and big cheats. In any case, in such a troubled period, letting simple individuals carry out such a delicate mission could only be dangerous for the regularity of public accounts. In short, the mode of operation of taxation that Bonaparte and Gaudin inherited was failing on all sides and threatened to sink the State.”

“One month after Gaudin’s appointment, on December 13, 1799, the Directorate of Direct Contributions was created with the mission of establishing and sending tax matrices. This administration, dependent on the Ministry of Finance, was made up of a general director, 99 departmental directors and 840 inspectors and controllers. The organization of direct contributions became both centralized and pyramidal, the opposite of the previous system, decentralized and with a confused hierarchy. The work of preparing the rolls, for so long entrusted to local authorities, passed entirely ‘in the hands of the Minister of Finance’ and in this way the taxpayer found himself in direct contact with the administration. The tax system no longer having any obstacles, the beneficial effects of such a measure did not take long to be felt. With ardor, the agents of this new administration carried out considerable work: three series of rolls, that is to say more than one hundred thousand tax slips, were established in a single year. It must be said that the ministry had not skimped on their pay (6,000 francs per year for a director, 4,000 for an inspector and 1,800 for a controller), which was undoubtedly not unrelated to such success.”

“Tax reform was slower. It was not until 1804 that all tax collectors were civil servants. The consular system gradually replaced the collectors of the departments, then of the main cities and finally of all the municipalities whose tax rolls exceeded 15,000 francs. At the end of the Consulate, the entire tax administration was thus entirely dependent on the central government. Subsequently, the one in charge of indirect contributions (taxes on tobacco, alcohol or salt) created on February 25, 1804 and called the Régie des droits réunis was built on the same pyramidal and centralized model. It was the same later for customs.”

“According to Michel Bruguière, historian of public finances, ‘Napoleon and Gaudin can be considered the builders of the French tax administration. [...] They had also developed and codified the essential principles of our tax law, so profoundly derogatory from the rules of French law, since the taxpayer has nothing to do with it, while the administration has all the powers’. Basically, after having clearly understood the true cause of the ‘financial wound’, Bonaparte wanted an effective, almost ‘despotic’ instrument to avoid experiencing the unfortunate fate of his predecessors. As a good soldier, he created a fiscal ‘army’ responsible for providing the regime with the sinews of war. It was also necessary to definitively break the link between private interests and state service in everything that concerned public revenue. The time of the farmer generals of the Ancien Régime or the ‘second-hand’ collectors of the Directory was well and truly over. Napoleon Bonaparte, with his fierce desire to centralize power in this area as in many others, undoubtedly gave his regime the means to last.”

[odinsblog]

While Democrats are busy worrying about “decorum” and “maintaining norms” and “reaching across the aisle” to eagerly “compromise” with Christoafascists, Republicans are doing unprecedented damage and routinely shatter every norm they encounter.

A divided House voted on Thursday to restrict abortion access, bar transgender health services and limit diversity training for military personnel, potentially imperiling passage of the annual defense bill as Republicans, goaded by their right flank, loaded the measure with conservative policy dictates.

The House voted 221 to 213 to overturn a Pentagon policy guaranteeing abortion access to service members regardless of where they are stationed, with Republicans propelling it to passage over near-unanimous Democratic opposition.

By a vote of 222 to 211, the House also adopted a measure to bar the military’s health plan from covering gender-transition surgeries — which currently can be covered only with a waiver — and gender-affirming hormone therapy. And the chamber was on track on Thursday to vote on a Republican proposal to strip funding from the Pentagon for all diversity, equity and inclusion training.

Taken together, the series of changes — which hard-right lawmakers had demanded be put on the floor as a condition for allowing the legislation to move forward — threatened to sap critical Democratic support for the annual defense policy measure, an $886 billion bill that would grant a 5.2 percent pay raise to military personnel, counter aggressive moves by China and Russia, and establish a special inspector general to oversee U.S. aid to Ukraine.

“I don’t think I’ve ever not voted for an N.D.A.A,” said Representative Pete Aguilar, Democrat of California and the No. 3 Democrat, using the initials for the National Defense Authorization Act, one of the few pieces of legislation regarded as a must-pass item to come before Congress each year. “I’m a no.”

The action came during an extraordinarily bitter debate in the House over the annual defense policy measure, normally a bipartisan affair that draws broad support, which this week has instead become a battlefield in a political culture war stoked by the G.O.P.

In heated exchanges on the floor, Republicans accused Democrats and the Biden administration of trying to turn the Pentagon into a hotbed of radical progressivism, while Democrats said Republicans were trying to use the Defense Department to achieve an extreme agenda of rolling back the rights of women, people of color and transgender individuals.

(continue reading)

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

I think we knew that a federal indictment of former president Donald Trump would elicit a collective primal scream from the right-wing fever swamp — and they have not disappointed.

In true Trump-era fashion, the response from most elected Republicans has been a collective whine about "unfairness" and the "weaponization" of the "deep state." Some have even gone so far as to at least hint around that it's a nice little country we have here, be a shame if anything happened to it. I would expect nothing less. This is how they roll.

There are, notably, a few dissenters from that party line.

Utah Sen. Mitt Romney put out a statement saying that Trump "brought this on himself" and it's "consistent with his other actions offensive to the national interest," which is true. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a 2024 GOP hopeful, said "these facts are devastating," which is also true. But they, and a handful of others, are outliers among GOP elected officials.

One very significant former GOP official has come out swinging, however:

There are a number of Trump defenses out there. But the main talking point, which we can assume was coordinated, is that this is a political prosecution engineered by President Biden to take out his most threatening political rival. And their main proof of this is that the Department of Justice (DOJ) declined to prosecute Hillary Clinton. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina probably articulated this the best, including the deployment of some very emotional righteous indignation:

He's not saying it's ok, he's just saying that Hillary Clinton got off so that cancels out Trump's crimes. Or something.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wi. says that Trump refused to prosecute Clinton but Joe Biden sent in a SWAT Team to torment Trump:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sounded the same theme:

“Is there a different standard for a Democrat secretary of state versus a former Republican president? I think there needs to be one standard of justice in this country. Let's enforce it on everybody and make sure we all know the rules.”

It wasn't a perfect defense of Trump but as long as he makes sure to condemn Hillary Clinton is probably good enough for the moment.

As much as I loathe the idea of re-litigating "but her emails," I'm sorry to say that it's necessary. There was almost no pushback to this talking point from the media, probably because they didn't get the Clinton story right in the first place. A few have since stepped up to point out that Clinton didn't refuse to cooperate with the government, as Trump did, although Trump and his accomplices will no doubt cry inanely about her "bleaching the emails" and "smashing the phones" and that will be enough to sustain the argument. Trump may even say "Russia, if you're listening" again. But those allegations are just plain silly and always have been. And the fact that she didn't obstruct the investigation is only part of the story.

As it happened, Clinton copied all work emails to the State Department system so they had them. The Justice Department inspector general issued a report in 2018 about the FBI Investigation and determined that the people tasked with marking documents as classified had not done so clearly. Moreover, only three email chains "contained any classification markings of any kind," and they were low-priority "call sheets" marked with the lowest priority of classification, which had info and details for Clinton to refer to when talking to a foreign leader. There were no nuclear secrets or war plans among them, needless to say.

The State Department under Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo did two separate investigations and found in 2019 that there was "there was no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information" and that Clinton bore no "individual culpability."

And let's dispense with the "magnanimous" Trump defense. Trump tried desperately to get the DOJ to investigate Clinton (and many others he considered his political enemies.) His White House counsel told him that the DOJ operated independently and if he ordered it there would be tremendous unrest from career officials and massive political blowback. That didn't stop him. He conspired with Matthew Whittaker, then an assistant to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to get Sessions to assign a Special Counsel to investigate Clinton. In the end, they succeeded in getting Sessions to assign John Huber, a US Attorney in Utah to look into all the allegations against Clinton, including the bogus "Uranium One" scandal which had also already been dismissed. That investigation didn't turn up anything either.

Notably, when Bill Barr became Attorney General he looked into all of it and also came up with nothing. If anyone thinks that Barr wouldn't have prosecuted Clinton if he could have doesn't recall just how much he hates her guts. The evidence just wasn't there. So, the FBI, the DOJ Inspector General, two State Department probes, a Clinton-hating attorney general and a U.S. Attorney assigned to review all the evidence found that Clinton committed no crimes. (I'm not even counting the 10 Benghazi investigations which were the genesis of the email scandal —- and also came up empty.)

I know your eyes have glazed over by this point and you wonder why in the world anyone should care about this. And frankly, we shouldn't have to. It's long settled ancient history. But the right's "whatboutism" and the media's continued unwillingness to acknowledge that, once the FBI determined there was no crime, there was no crime, I fear that a lot of people who aren't already down the right wing rabbit hole will be persuaded that this is a partisan prosecution simply because of the words "classified documents."

When former FBI Director James Comey held that first notorious press conference in the summer of 2016, in which he larded with inappropriate personal judgments about Clinton, he laid out the criteria the Justice Department uses when it decides whether to prosecute classified documents cases. He said:

“In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.”

Assuming they have proof of the charges in the Trump indictment, there can be little doubt that they met three of those four criteria, (the fourth being disloyalty to the United States which I believe to be true as well.) So when you see these Republicans emitting their epic whines about how unfair all this is because Hillary didn't get indicted, keep in mind that it wasn't for lack of Trump trying to get it done. It was because, unlike him, she didn't break the law. And even Jeff Sessions, Rex Tillerson, Mike Pompeo and Bill Barr couldn't find a way to make it so.

In case you were wondering, yes the House Republicans are considering a new investigation into —- you guessed it —- her emails. Because of course they are.

[tomorrowusa]

Former White House doctor Ronny Jackson is now a House member. He takes reliably MAGA positions on issues before Congress. It looks like Jackson may have picked up an aversion to the truth from his former colleague George Santos.

On his congressional website, the Texas Republican describes himself as a “retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral with nearly three decades of military service.” But that leaves out one big omission—that Jackson was demoted from the senior naval flag rank to captain in July 2022. That move came after the Pentagon inspector general released a scathing report on Jackson’s behavior while serving in Donald Trump’s White House, including that the doctor—who had retired from the Navy in 2019—berated, drank with, and sexually harassed subordinates while serving as the director of the White House medical unit. Jackson was also accused of popping Ambien throughout the workday. Those revelations came with a $15,000 cut in annual pension payouts for a 24-year veteran like Jackson, as well as social stigma within the ranks. “The substantiated allegations in the [Department of Defense inspector general] investigation of Rear [Adm.] (lower half) Ronny Jackson are not in keeping with the standards the Navy requires of its leaders and, as such, the secretary of the Navy took administrative action in July 2022,” Lt. Cmdr. Joe Keiley, a Navy spokesman, told The Washington Post. Jackson casually dismissed the report in his July 2022 memoir, Holding the Line, conveniently skipping over the part where he was formally demoted.

In early 2018 Jackson's bizarrely bullish report about Trump's health made national news.

Dr. Ronny Jackson’s glowing bill of health for Trump

The press briefing he gave at the White House was widely mocked and inspired a sketch on Saturday Night Live.

Two months after that fabulist medical report, Trump tried to appoint Jackson as Secretary of Veterans Affairs to his revolving door cabinet. The move was widely viewed as a reward for services rendered. In April, Jackson was forced to withdraw from consideration. He was too corrupt even for a position in the Trump administration. 😱

Ronny Jackson withdraws as VA secretary nominee

The Jackson scandal is a reminder that we still lack direct credible information on Trump's physical or mental health. Considering that Trump apparently drinks 12 Diet Cokes® a day and is a notorious consumer of junk food, the true state of his health is probably far worse than what Dr. Jackson or Trump's self-reporting reveal.

[notjustanyannie]

The White House has its own pharmacy that, until recently, could perhaps best be described as a hot mess, according to a recent investigation report from the Department of Defense’s Office of the Inspector General.

For years, the White House Medical Unit, run by the White House Military Office, provided the full scope of pharmaceutical services to senior officials and staff—it stored, inventoried, prescribed, dispensed, and disposed of prescription medications, including opioids and sleep medications. However, it was not staffed by a licensed pharmacist or pharmacy support staff, nor was it credentialed by any outside agency.

The operations of this pseudo-pharmacy went as well as one might expect, according to the DoD OIG's alarming investigation report. The investigation was prompted by complaints in May 2018 alleging that an unnamed "senior military medical officer" was engaged in "improper medical practices." This resulted in the OIG's investigation, which included 70 interviews of Military Office officials who worked in the White House between 2009 and 2018 and covers the office's activity until early 2020. However, the investigation heavily focused on prescription drug records and care between 2017 and 2019 during the Trump administration.

During that time, staff at the White House pharmacy kept handwritten records of prescriptions, the OIG found. The records frequently contained errors in medication counts, illegible text, and crossed-out text and lacked medical provider and mandatory patient information. The pharmacy let White House staff pick up over-the-counter drugs from open bins, in violation of Navy medical regulations. It didn't dispose of controlled substances properly, increasing the risk of diversion. Staff provided prescriptions without verifying patients' identities and provided prescriptions to people who were ineligible for care. And it dispensed pricey brand-name products freely, rather than generic equivalents that are considerably cheaper—also a violation of regulations.

In one interview, a White House pharmacy staff member said an unnamed doctor asked "if I could hook up this person with some Provigil as a parting gift for leaving the White House."

Provigil is a drug that treats excessive tiredness and is typically used for patients with narcolepsy, sleep apnea, and other sleep disorders. Brand-name Provigil is 55 times more expensive than the generic equivalent. Between 2017 and 2019, the White House pharmacy spent an estimated $98,000 for Provigil. In that same timeframe, it also spent an estimated $46,500 for Ambien, a prescription sedative, which is 174 times more expensive than the generic equivalent. Even further, the White House Medical Unit spent an additional $100,000 above generic drug cost by having Walter Reed National Military Medical Center fill brand-name prescriptions.

White House baggies

Another White House pharmacy staff member gave clues as to what the staff was doing with those brand-name prescriptions. The staffer told OIG investigators that ahead of overseas trips, the staff would prepare packets of controlled medications to be handed out to White House staff. "And those would typically be Ambien or Provigil and typically both, right. So we would normally make these packets of Ambien and Provigil, and a lot of times they’d be in like five tablets in a zip‑lock bag. And so traditionally, too, we would hand these out. ... But a lot of times the senior staff would come by or their staff representatives... would come by the residence clinic to pick it up. And it was very much a, 'hey, I’m here to pick this up for Ms. X.' And the expectation was we just go ahead and pass it out."

In addition to the excessive costs of Ambien and Provigil, the White House Medical Office may have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on health care for ineligible staff members. White House Medical Unit senior officials estimated that its Executive Medicine clinic has 60 enrolled patients, but it provided care for 6,000 employees, potentially billing the DoD. Between 2017 and 2019, officials also offered senior government officials a patient category code for care at Walter Reed, such that the facility was unable to properly bill them. In the three years, Walter Reed waived over $496,000 in outpatient fees because of these patient categories.

Overall, the OIG concluded that "all phases of the White House Medical Unit’s pharmacy operations had severe and systemic problems due to the unit’s reliance on ineffective internal controls to ensure compliance with pharmacy safety standards."

The report does not mention Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, who served as the physician to the president from 2013 to 2018 under both Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Stat, which first reported on the OIG's new report, noted that Jackson had been accused of fostering a toxic work environment, engaging in alcohol-fueled misconduct, and misusing Ambien, specifically. OIG received those allegations during the first part of 2018, around the same time when the pharmacy complaints came in. And some of the allegations against Jackson were confirmed by a separate OIG investigation released in 2021.

Though a draft of the new report on the White House pharmacy was completed in 2020, it sat under review in the White House Military Office until July 2023.

The OIG laid out a series of recommendations, including establishing oversight of the White House pharmacy, creating a policy to determine staff eligibility, and implementing pharmaceutical oversight. DoD officials have agreed to the recommendations and are working to implement them, the OIG report noted.

[workersolidarity]

🇺🇲 🪖🏦 🚨

UNITED STATES SENATE APPROVES $886 BILLION DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION BILL

The United States Senate overwhelmingly approved the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a bill funding the U.S. Defense Department to the tune of $886 Billion after abandoning some of the more controversial, hot-button social policies pushed by some Republican lawmakers on Wednesday.

The annual Defense Bill passed with 87 votes in favor and 13 against. A vote in the United States House could come as soon as Thursday morning, with the hope the President could have it signed soon after.

The Bill is the result of many months of negotiations between Democratic and Republican leadership, along with the White House, and remained deadlocked for some time over funding for the war in Ukraine, with the final bill approving the funding.

Earlier this summer, hard-line Republican lawmakers passed their own version of the NDAA including policies blocking medical treatment for transgender troops, the Pentagon's travel abortion policies, and programs to promote "diversity and inclusion". Democrats apposed this version of the NDAA, and the negotiations have been going on until now.

The Senate Bill however does not include the more contentious provisions, and has garnered strong bipartisan support. Language limiting funding for abortion services, transgender medical treatment and drag shows were not included in the final draft.

The final bill did include a pay cap and hiring freeze for defense programs related to "diversity and inclusion". The approved version of the bill also includes provisions supported by Republicans prohibiting the promotion of Critical Race Theory and the display of "unapproved" flags at military instillations, with an eye towards targeting the gay pride and transgender flags.

Another provision pushed by Mississippi Republican Roger Wicker forces the Pentagon to formulate a plan for the use of unused border wall materials.

With some Republican lawmakers balking at the lack of oversight for Ukraine aid, negotiators finally agreed to create a new Special Inspector General for Operation Atlantic Resolve, the official name given to the operations responding to Russia's Special Military Operation in Ukraine.

Before the final vote, Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul attempted a last minute meneuver to strip out the four-month extension of the sweeping surveillance powers given through the highly controversial Section 702 affording Intelligence Agencies the power to spy on American citizens who get caught up in the dragnet of foreign surveillance, however that move was voted down 65 to 35.

The final bill also includes provisions to implement the AUKUS submarine sharing pact between the U.S., U.K. and Australia, including the delivery of Virginia-class subs.

Republican Senator Roger Wicker had initially blocked the sub deliveries, in order to secure an additional $3.4 Billion in Submarine Industrial base funding alongside Ukraine and Israel aid. The final deal delays the sub delivery until one year after the bill becomes Law.

The Bill also approves a 5.2% pay raise for troops.

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[auroraluciferi]

A former intelligence official turned whistleblower has given Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General extensive classified information about deeply covert programs that he says possess retrieved intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin.

The information, he says, has been illegally withheld from Congress, and he filed a complaint alleging that he suffered illegalretaliation for his confidential disclosures, reported here for the first time.

Other intelligence officials, both active and retired, with knowledge of these programs through their work in various agencies, have independently provided similar, corroborating information, both on and off the record.

The whistleblower, David Charles Grusch, 36, a decorated former combat officer in Afghanistan, is a veteran of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). He served as the reconnaissance office’s representative to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force from 2019-2021. From late 2021 to July 2022, he was the NGA’s co-lead for UAP analysis and its representative to the task force.

The task force was established to investigate what were once called “unidentified flying objects,” or UFOs, and are now officially called “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” or UAP. The task force was led by the Department of the Navy under the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. It has since been reorganized and expanded into the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office to include investigations of objects operating underwater.

Grusch said the recoveries of partial fragments through and up to intact vehicles have been made for decades through the present day by the government, its allies, and defense contractors. Analysis has determined that the objects retrieved are “of exotic origin (non-human intelligence, whether extraterrestrial or unknown origin) based on the vehicle morphologies and material science testing and the possession of unique atomic arrangements and radiological signatures,” he said.

In filing his complaint, Grusch is represented by a lawyer who served as the original Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG).

“We are not talking about prosaic origins or identities,” Grusch said, referencing information he provided Congress and the current ICIG.

“The material includes intact and partially intact vehicles.”

source

[ridenwithbiden]

Military.com "Dozens of Troops Suspected of Advocating Overthrow of US Government, New Pentagon Extremism Report Says. An annual Pentagon report on extremism within the ranks reveals that 78 service members were suspected of advocating for the overthrow of the U.S. government and another 44 were suspected of engaging or supporting terrorism.

The report released Thursday by the Defense Department inspector general revealed that in fiscal 2023 there were 183 allegations of extremism across all the branches of military, broken down not only into efforts to overthrow the government and terrorism but also advocating for widespread discrimination or violence to achieve political goals.

The statistics indicate the military continues to grapple with extremism following its public denunciations and a stand-down across the services ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in 2021. Furthermore, the numbers do not make it clear whether the military's approach is working. In 2021, the year the data was first released to Congress, there were 270 allegations of extremist activities. In 2022, that figure dropped to 146 before rebounding over the past year.

The Army had the most allegations in fiscal 2023 with 130 soldiers suspected of participation in extremist activity. The Air Force suspected 29 airmen; the Navy and Marine Corps reported 10 service members each. For the first time, the inspector general also reported numbers for the Space Force as a separate entity from the other services -- it suspected four Guardians of extremism.

The IG report also included instances of alleged criminal gang activity: There were 58 allegations of gang activity across the military.

However, the report did note that, out of all the suspected extremism and criminal gang activity, 68 of the total cases were investigated and cleared or deemed unsubstantiated.

In the U.S., extremist activity, including neo-Nazi, white supremacist and anti-government movements, has been growing, and numerous violent plots by veterans and even active-duty troops have been thwarted in recent years. Experts on extremist movements have warned about the growing potential of more violence and future attacks, similar to the Oklahoma City federal building bombing in 1995 that killed 168 and was carried out by an Army veteran.

In February, a former National Guardsman, Brandon Russell, who founded the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi hate group, was charged with plotting to blow up Baltimore's electrical grid and cause as much suffering as possible. Russell, who allegedly kept a framed photo of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, was sentenced to five years in prison in 2018 after an arrest in Florida for possessing explosives.

In the wake of the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol building, the Pentagon tried to make a show of dealing with the problem of extremism among troops after it became clear that veterans as well as some active-duty troops were among the mob that stormed the halls of Congress in an effort to halt the certification of the 2020 election.

Military.com has reported that many of those efforts -- including the military-wide extremism training stand-down ordered by Austin -- were largely symbolic and were widely considered as just another box for commanders to check.

One active-duty noncommissioned officer said that, aside from the fact that no one was paying attention at the stand-down briefing he attended, the commander giving the lecture was "talking about what he thought were radical groups like Black Lives Matter."

The idea that far-left groups are just as problematic as far-right ones is a popular talking point among conservatives and Republican lawmakers. However, law enforcement officials and experts who study the topic have consistently noted that far-right groups espousing anti-government and white supremacist views are the biggest threat to the U.S. today.

The report also revealed that other efforts such as screening prospective recruits before enlistment are not working as well as intended.

Some recruiters did not complete all of the screening steps and "as a result, military service recruiters may not have identified all applications with extremist or criminal gang associations," according to the inspector general report.

"Further, the audit found that one military service entered data indicating applicants disclosed extremist or gang associations even though the applicants had not made such disclosures," the IG said, but it did not reveal which of the services falsely accused some of its recruits of having extremist ties.

What the report does make clear, however, is that when allegations are made, they are being referred for investigation, and when allegations are substantiated, some action is taken.

Of all the extremist and gang activity allegations, 135 were reported to military or civilian law enforcement, and 109 of the allegations were reported to another DoD organization or official.

Furthermore, 69 of all the allegations were substantiated at the time the report was written and the vast majority of those -- 50 -- were handled through administrative actions. That included involuntary discharge for 19 and counseling in three instances, while 17 more were handled by nonjudicial punishment and two went to court-martial.

There were no substantiated cases of extremism or gang activity where no action was taken.

While these figures, compared with the overall size of the services, are small, research and experts say that military service members and veterans pose an outsized danger to communities when they go down the path of extremism, given their increased familiarity with firearms and ability to organize and plan effectively.

In 2020, an Air Force sergeant at Travis Air Force Base in California pulled up to a federal courthouse in Oakland, California, in a white van and opened fire on security guards, killing one before going on the run and murdering a county sheriff's deputy a week later as part of a larger plan to incite a civil war.

Also in 2020, members of a group that included two Marines and styled itself as a "modern day SS" were arrested on allegations that they were plotting to destroy the power grid in the northwest. U.S. court records in that case say members discussed recruiting other veterans, stole military equipment, asked others to buy explosives, and discussed plans to manufacture firearms."

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"If you ever looked at the actions of the Trump White House and wondered, ‘Are they on drugs?’ — the answer was, in some cases, yes. Absolutely, yes.

"In January, the Defense Department’s inspector general released a report detailing how the White House Medical Unit during the Trump administration distributed controlled substances with scant oversight and even sloppier record keeping. [...]

"As one of the former officials tells Rolling Stone, the White House at that time was 'awash in speed.'

"Adding to the climate of fear was the sense that even private therapy sessions would not be kept private in the Trump White House. The medical unit provided psychological counseling on request. But White House staffers were instructed to be on their guard.

"[...] 'The more I held to professional standards' — the more the source objected to the pressure to divulge details about therapy sessions, and to keep patient information private — the worse it got. White House staffers 'ostracized me,' the source says. 'Nobody would talk to me. The culture was toxic as fuck.'”