Last week the White House said sending the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson into the waters around Korea would let the North Korean regime know the U.S. was serious. "We are sending an armada," said President Trump.
Then reporters noticed the Vinson's strike force was sailing away from Korea instead, toward a preplanned joint exercise with the Royal Australian Navy, apparently garbling the intended message to the Kim Jong Un regime.
The confusion started with a minor slip by Defense Secretary James Mattis during an April 11 press briefing. Mattis was asked if the U.S. was sending a signal to North Korea by very publicly redirecting the ship north. Mattis said the ship's change in itinerary had been made public because "she was originally headed in one direction for an exercise, and we canceled our role in that exercise ... We had to explain why she wasn't in that exercise."
In fact, the planned exercise was never canceled, and went forward as scheduled. It was a trip down to Fremantle, Australia, where crew families would've met their loved ones onshore, that was cancelled.
On Wednesday, the Navy quietly slipped a correction into the eight-day-old briefing transcript, inserting a note right after the Secretary's statement about the exercise: "Sic:The ship's port visit to Fremantle, Australia, was cancelled; the exercise with the Royal Australian navy is proceeding as planned."
The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) transits the Pacific Ocean on Jan. 30, 2017. Tom Tonthat / U.S. Navy via Reuters
Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley of Chicago, an intelligence committee member, doesnt want to say much about his recent trip to Cyprus as part of the Congressional investigation into Russian interference in the election campaign.
All I can say is, its very important to understand how the Russians launder money, Quigley told NBC News. Just look at the public reports the key Russian and American figures all played in Cyprus.
NBC News Richard Engel reported from Cyprus last month that a ban there investigated accounts associated with President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, for possible money-laundering.
The trip, Quigley said, underscored for him the idea that the House investigation could use more resources. But, he said, he believes the investigation is back on track, now that Republican committee chairman Devin Nunes has stepped aside pending the resolution of ethics complaints.
Were going to keep at it, Quigley said.
Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., speaks at a news conference in Washington on Nov. 15, 2012. Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call file
On April 12, a spokesman for former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort said thatafter consulting with federal authorities about whether he should register as a foreign agent because of his past work in Ukraine,Manafort would be taking "appropriate steps."
Many took that to mean Manafort was about to register as an agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
However, when NBC News asked spokesman Jason Maloni directly whether Manafort was going to register, Maloni wouldn't say yes or no.
A week later, there is no record of any filing on the Justice Department's website. Maloni told NBC News, "I don't have an update."
The sad history of the Musudan, a missile once hyped as a game-changer for North Korea, shows why skepticism is always warranted when assessing Pyongyangs military might.
After being rolled out to great fanfare in July 2013, the Musudan wasnt even test-fired until April 2016, during Kim il Sungs 104th birthday celebration. The test failed. Two weeks later, another test, another failure. Later the same day, there was a third test. The Musudan, which is supposed to have a 2,500-mile range, flew 200 meters before crashing.
During a May 2016 test, the Musudan had an even shorter flight it exploded on the launch pad.The missile didn't have its first fully successful launch until June 2016.Andsince then, there have been more failures.Four years after its debut, the U.S. intelligence community estimates the Musudan has an 88 percent failure rate, crashing,toppling, failing to launch, or exploding.
"The Musudan,"said one senior U.S. intelligence official, "comes equipped with a fire extinguisher."
U.S. intelligence officials and private experts are trying to make sense of the missiles they saw displayed in Pyongyang Saturday during a parade to honor the 105th anniversary of the birth of the countrys founder.
The processions vast array of ballistic missiles included some models that hadnt been seen in public before, U.S. intelligence officials said.
"We are currently analyzing the equipment displayed at this year's parade," the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency said in a statement. "While some systems appear consistent with past public displays, others have not been previously observed."
What isnt clear is to what extent the new missiles are functional. In the past, North Korea has paraded fake missiles.
"I still dont know what I saw," said Jeffrey Lewis, a North Korea specialist at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, in California, who said he recognized "things that are familiar that have been subtly redesigned or in some cases, not so subtly."
Another U.S. intelligence official added, "Pyongyangs elaborate parade of weaponry was likely intended to telegraph to the world and its own people that North Korea maintains a viable deterrent. Unfortunately, behind the goose-stepping soldiers, parade of missiles and belligerent bluster, lies a country that at its core is only held together by its sheer brutality.As with many things with North Korea, the task is to discern the fact from the fiction. Were they displaying real missiles or just big green tubes?"
One of those tubes was the size of an intercontinental ballistic missile, experts said. But its unclear whether it was an actual weapon.Nor is it clear that North Korea has the technology to mount a nuclear warhead on such a missile.
Military experts say this appears to be a North Korean KN-08 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICMB). Wong Maye-E / AP
A lawyer who represents many of the alleged and convicted al Qaeda terrorists in U.S. custody says nearly all of them view ISIS as "a corruption of Islam" that hurts their religion.
One of Bernard Kleinmans clients a World Trade Center bomber feels so strongly that ISIS is "corrupting Islam" that hes written a 250-page essay repudiating the group, and Kleinman thinks the U.S. government ought to "somehow try to make use of it."
According to an interview with Kleinman in the Sentinel, published by the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point, Ramzi Yousef "has devoted his efforts to this project solely on the basis that he believes that ISIS does great harm to Islam throughout the world."
Yousef is serving a life sentence for his role in the first World Trade Center bombing, which killed six people in 1993 but failed to topple the Manhattan towers.
Kleinman said his clients at Guantanamo and the federal Supermax facility in Colorado disagree with ISIS attacks on Shiites and dont believe that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is really a descendant of the Prophet Mohammeds tribe.
Kleinman said he thinks the U.S. ought to use Yousefs massive essay as a force for good and make it publicly available. "If you can create doubt in just one wannabe ISIS recruit about the religious legitimacy of ISISs actions, and by doing that save lives, then I think it would be worth it."
Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, shown in these undated file photos, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center explosion and a plot to bomb a dozen U.S. passenger airliners. U.S. District Judge Kevin Duffy sentenced Yousef to 240 years in prison, with restrictions that amount to solitary confinement, and said that only proven family members could visit him.
Earlier today Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe warned Parliament that Pyongyang might be able to kill Japan's citizens with poison-tipped missiles.
"There is a possibility that North Korea already has a capability to deliver missiles with sarin as warheads," said Abe. His alarm was echoed by warnings in South Korean media.
Foreign militaries and intelligence agencies have long believed North Korea is deeply involved in chemical weapons research and production. In 2015, the Pentagon told Congress North Korea "likely possesses a CW stockpile" and likely had "the capability to produce nerve, blister, blood, and choking agents."
The Pentagon also said"North Korea probably could employ CW agents by modifying a variety of conventional munitions, including artillery and ballistic missiles."
Abe was going a step further, suggesting the North has now actually weaponized sarin, the same nerve agent used by Syria on civilians last week.
The Japanese are very aware of what nerve agents can do. In 1995, a Japanese cult killed 12 people and made thousands ill on rush-hour trains with sarin. And South Korea, China and Japan are all in range of North Korean non-nuclear missiles.
Without providing specifics, U.S. officials told NBC News that what Abe fears is within the realm of possibility the North is technically capable of delivering sarin by missile. But the same officials note the U.S. does not have "certainty" on what chemical weapons the North possesses, in what quantities, or whether their chemicals are weaponized, because the North continues to be a "difficult intelligence target."
How big is the GBU-43 bomb that the U.S.dropped today on an ISIS tunnel complex in Afganistan?
It's more than 10 times bigger than the next biggest bomb in the U.S. conventional arsenal, but not big at all compared to a nuclear weapon.
Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, said the explosive power of even the smallest U.S. nuke, the B-61 bomb, is "an order of magnitude" larger than the GBU-43.
"The smallest nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal has an explosive yield of 0.3 kilotons of TNT, meaning 300 tons. This bomb, at 21,000 pounds, is only 10 tons. It doesn't come close," said Kristensen. "Even the biggest conventional bomb we can load onto a plane is miniscule."
The B-61 bomb, only deployed in Europe, is a tactical weapon that can be used to destroy city centers or large-scale troop concentrations.
The GBU-43, also know as a MOAB (Massive Ordnance Air Blast) is also about half the size of the smallest U.S. nuke ever built, the Davy Crockett artillery shell, which was retired in the 1960's.
Ironically, Thursday's bombing occurs during a defense community debate on whether to build smaller nukes. "We have people arguing for new mini nukes," said Kristensen. "Here you have a case where the U.S. felt all it needed was a conventional whopper."
The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb in an image provided by Eglin Air Force Base. The Pentagon says U.S. forces in Afghanistan dropped the military's largest non-nuclear bomb on an Islamic State target in Afghanistan. A Pentagon spokesman said it was the first-ever combat use of the bomb, known as the GBU-43, which he said contains 11 tons of explosives. The Air Force calls it the Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb. Based on the acronym, it has been nicknamed the "Mother Of All Bombs." Eglin Air Force Base via AP
Two men from the Chicago suburb of Zion have been charged in federal court with conspiring to provide material support to ISIS.
Joseph D. Jones, AKA Yusuf Abdulhaqq, and Edward Schimenti, AKA Abdul Wali, both 35, are accused of pledging allegiance to ISIS, providing cellphones they believed would be used in explosives, and driving an undercover source to O'Hare airport with the belief the source was headed to Syria to fight for ISIS.
According to the criminal complaint, Schimenti told the source to "drench that land with ... blood."
Court papers say the pair befriended three individuals thinking they were fellow ISIS devotees, but two were undercover FBI employees and the third was cooperating with law enforcement.
The men face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
The story spread in bond markets in New York and Asia on Monday. China, according to a rumor that circulated largely via social media, was "massing" 150,000 troops on its border with North Korea. The timing of the alleged troop movements, coupled with reports of possible U.S.-China discussions of what to do about Pyongyangs nuclear arsenal, was cited by analysts as one reason interest rates on bonds were creeping up.
Was there any substance to the rumor? Not according to senior U.S. military and intelligence officials. There was no "massing." As many as 250,000 Chinese troops are always operating in northeastern China, and the U.S. did not see any sign Beijing had moved them closer to the Yalu River, which separates North Korea from China.
Financial analysts were not surprised. Fake financial news has a longer history that any other kind of false reporting. Some people repeat rumors because they believe them to be fact. Others, however, may be tempted by the knowledge that "news" of impending doom can move markets. There is money to be made before the news is proven true or false. The advent of social media and high-speed trading just adds to the possibilities.
One Pentagon official told NBC News, in language too profane to publish, that that's exactly what he thought happened with the China troop tale.
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