Marines forward deployed to support Obama's possible strike at Syria

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Marines in the Middle East, Africa and Europe are poised to reach Syria within hours should President Obama order a strike on the country as officials work to determine whether the government there was involved in a chemical weapons attack against its own people.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told BBC television Tuesday that the Defense Department has “moved assets in place to be able to fulfill and comply with whatever option the president wishes to take.”

NAVY TIMES: The Marine Corps has units forward-deployed to the region to deal specifically with crisis response missions, said Capt. Eric Flanagan, a Marine spokesman at the Pentagon. But so far, none have been directed to prepare for a specific mission or deployment, he said.

The various units are there for this type of reason, Flanagan added, and they include the following capabilities:

■ 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit. MEUs typically number about 2,200 Marines and sailors. They operate at sea from Navy amphibious ships and carry infantry, aviation and logistics capabilities. The 26th MEU is distributed among the amphibious assault ship Kearsarge, the amphibious transport dock San Antonio and the amphibious dock landing ship Carter Hall. The Kearsarge is in the United Arab Emirates, southeast of Syria. The Carter Hall was in the Seychelles, off the coast of Africa. And the San Antonio, is in the Gulf of Aden, just south of Syria.

■ Special-Purpose Marine air-ground task force Crisis Response. The Corps’ newest type of unit, the Special-Purpose MAGTF operates like a smaller-sized MEU, but is based on land and operates largely independent of the Navy. The Crisis Response Force deployed to the region is made up of about 550 Marines. Most of the Marines are at Morón Air Base in Spain. A small detachment is based at Naval Air Station Sigonella in Italy. The force is built around a reinforced rifle company and is supported by six MV-22B Ospreys and two KC-130J aerial refuelers.

■ Fleet Anti-terrorism Security Teams. The Marine Corps has four FAST teams deployed to the region — two in U.S. Africa Command and two in Europe Command, Flanagan said. Typically used to respond to threats to embassy security, FAST teams are made up of about 50 Marines who can be called up by combatant commanders in the region to protect vital naval and national assets.

■ 13th MEU. Marines and sailors with the 13th MEU departed from California on Friday. They are headed to the Middle East and North Africa for a six month deployment.

Also in the region are members of Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 234. Members of VMGR-234 deployed to Naval Air Station Sigonella, Italy, in June. The Marines have been tasked with refueling not only U.S. aircraft, but also aircraft from allied countries, according to a Marine Corps news release. The squadron recently took part in aerial refueling missions to provide fuel in the air for the Moroccan air force.

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Snowden leaks $53B Black Budget details

ABC: Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents providing the most detail yet about how the vast U.S. intelligence community uses its nearly $53 billion so-called "black budget," according to a report by The Washington Post.

Today the Post published several stories and statistics based on the U.S. intelligence agencies' 2013 Congressional Budget Justification, a classified document that breaks down how much money goes to which agency and, to a certain extent, what those agencies do with the funds. The newspaper reported Snowden was the source of the document. Prior to the leak, only the total budget was public knowledge.

Though the newspaper published graphs and pie charts tracking the spending of each of the intelligence community's 16 agencies, it said withheld "some information after consultation with U.S. officials who expressed concerns about the risk to intelligence sources and methods."

READ: U.S. Spy Network's Successes, Failures and Objectives Detailed in 'Black Budget' Summary (WaPo)

According to the Post, the budget document reveals that the CIA receives the most funding of any intelligence agency with a proposed $14.7 billion for 2013 -- $11.5 billion on data collection expenses, $1.8 billion on management, facilities and support, $1.1 billion on data analysis and $387.3 million on data processing and exploitation.

Next up is the National Security Agency, for whom Snowden worked as a contractor, which spends almost as much on management, facilities and support -- $5.2 billion -- as it does on collecting, processing and analyzing data -- $5.6 billion.

Together the documents reportedly reveal NSA and CIA have launched aggressive "offensive cyber operations" to steal information from foreign computer networks or disrupt enemy systems.

But of all the broad missions the intelligence community undertakes, the one that is the most costly -- more than counter-terrorism or combating weapons proliferation -- is that of providing strategic intelligence and warning for major world events including a region or state's "economic instability, state failure, societal unrest and emergence of regional powers."

Another highlight from the documents, according to the Post, is that the U.S. intelligence community considers Israel a "priority target" along with China, Russia, Iran and Cuba.

The documents also filled in some details about the May 2011 Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden. The Post reported the raid was assisted by a "fleet of satellites" which collected signals intelligence over Pakistan as the mission was ongoing. The documents also say the U.S. got a DNA confirmation that the man they had killed was bin Laden just eight hours after the raid concluded.

Snowden, the source behind the most massive intelligence leak in U.S. history, is in Russia three months after the 30-year-old fled Hawaii for Hong Kong with a trove of secrets he allegedly stole from the NSA and turned over to several journalists including one from The Washington Post.

Ever since there has been a steady stream of reporting on activities the U.S. government would prefer to keep secret, including details of its vast foreign and domestic surveillance programs, the role that major telecommunications companies play in the programs, the CIA's penchant for spying on government officials from foreign nations and, most recently, just how much this is all costing American taxpayers.

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MV-22 makes hard landing in Nevada

By KEITH ROGERS LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

A Marine Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft made a hard landing Monday near Creech Air Force Base during a routine training operation, Air Force and Marine officials said Monday.

No injuries were reported during the 3:38 p.m. incident involving the MV-22 Osprey assigned to the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar near San Diego.

“There were four crew members and all four walked away from the aircraft,” said Marine Capt. Anton Semelroth, a spokesman for the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing.

A map from Clark County fire officials indicates the Osprey landed on public land about 3 miles northwest of the base along U.S. Highway 95 near Indian Springs, about 48 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Base officials, however, had not confirmed the hard-landing location at 7:15 p.m.

MV-22 Ospreys can make vertical takeoffs and landings but their twin turboprops can be shifted into horizontal positions so the aircraft can fly like a fixed-wing plane.

Semelroth said no damage estimate was available for the Osprey involved in Monday’s hard landing. In 2008, the MV-22 was priced at $67 million per aircraft.

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Syrian airports - most likely first cruise missile targets

The idea for the surgical strikes was set out by Chris Harmer, an analyst at the US Institute for the Study of War, who argued it was possible to keep an attack against the Assad regime short and sharp and cost-efficient, while avoiding significant risk to US servicemen.

The Pentagon is considering a plan to fire cruise missiles at six Syrian airports, including a runway at Damascus International, to demonstrate the limits of President Bashar al-Assad's military power.

Since those were precisely the factors that had paralysed the US as the Syrian crisis has unfolded during the past 30 months, it has been eagerly seized on.

Senator John McCain, a critic of President Barack Obama's apparent inaction in Syria, said Mr Harmer's analysis "confirms what I and many others have long argued - that it is militarily feasible for the US and our friends and allies to significantly degrade Assad's air power at relatively low cost, low risk to our personnel, and in very short order".

The study indicates the Syrian Air Force regularly conducts three missions which give it a strategic advantage over rebel forces: it brings weapons and other supplies from Iran and Russia, it resupplies army units fighting the rebels, and it has been involved in the bombing of rebel-held districts.

"An initial strike would require just three US navy surface combatant vessels and 24 total US navy and USAF aircraft," Mr Harmer said.

"A limited strike resulting in the degradation of Syrian Air Force infrastructure could be accomplished with no US military personnel entering Syrian air space or territory, at relatively small cost."

Syria attack options

Six of Syria's 27 airbases would be primary targets: Damascus International (which also takes civilian traffic), Damascus Mezzeh military base, al-Qusayr, Bassel al-Assad International, Dumayr and Tiyas. The plan would be to damage runways, fuel storage plants, maintenance hangars and control towers and radars.

Cruise missiles were not designed for all-out destruction, he said, but could crater runways, thus putting them out of action. It would also hinder Russian cargo aircraft trying to land with weapons or ammunition, and Iranian transporters bringing in fighters.

A typical initial sortie, Mr Harmer calculated, would entail eight cruise missiles fired from each of three naval vessels, backed up by 24 strike fighters.

Mr Harmer was nervous yesterday that his analysis was being talked up by military planners who are anxious to give an Allied strike a modest flavour.

"Tactical action in the absence of strategic objectives is usually pointless and often counter-productive," he told the US foreign policy blog The Cable.

NY Times - Twitter hacked by Syria?

By Gerry Shih and Joseph Menn

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Media companies, including the New York Times, Twitter and the Huffington Post, lost control of some of their websites Tuesday after hackers supporting the Syrian government breached the Australian Internet company that manages many major site addresses.

The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), a hacker group that has attacked media organizations it considers hostile to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, claimed credit for the Twitter and Huffington Post hacks in a series of Twitter messages.

Security experts said electronic records showed that NYTimes.com, the only site with an hours-long outage, redirected visitors to a server controlled by the Syrian group before it went dark.

New York Times Co spokeswoman Eileen Murphy tweeted the "issue is most likely the result of a malicious external attack", based on an initial assessment.

The Huffington Post attack was limited to the blogging platform's British web address. Twitter said the hack led to availability issues for 90 minutes but that no user information was compromised.

The attacks came as the Obama administration considers taking military action against the Syrian government, engaged in a civil war against rebels for more than two years.

In August, hackers promoting the Syrian Electronic Army targeted websites belonging to CNN, Time and the Washington Post by breaching a third party service used by those sites.

The SEA managed to gain control of the sites by penetrating MelbourneIT, an Australian Internet service provider that sells and manages domain names including Twitter.com and NYTimes.

The New York Times, which identified MelbourneIT as its domain name registrar and the main hacking victim, told employees not to send sensitive emails from corporate accounts.

MelbourneIT tracked the breach to an Indian Internet service provider, saying two staff members from one of their resellers opened a fake email seeking login details.

"The SEA went after the company specifically to create a high-profile event," CEO Theo Hnarakis told Reuters. "This was quite a sophisticated attack."

One staff member was the direct manager of the NYTimes domain, along with other media companies and had the login and password information of the company in his email, which the hackers accessed.

Hnarakis confirmed that other media organizations were also attacked, but this proved unsuccessful as their customers used a secondary security measure known as a registry lock.

MelbourneIT said it restored the correct domain name settings, changed the password on the compromised account, and locked the records to prevent further alterations.

Twitter did not respond to requests for comment. In a blog post, the company said "it appears DNS (domain name system) records for various organizations were modified, including one of Twitter's domains used for image serving, Twimg.com. Viewing of images and photos was sporadically impacted.

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