"Not only are criminal networks expanding, but they also are diversifying their activities, resulting in the convergence of threats that were once distinct and today have explosive and destabilizing effects," the report said.
The report - entitled Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime: Addressing Converging Threats to National Security - named "The Mogilevich Organization" as one such organized crime syndicates.
Semion Mogilevich is wanted by the United States for fraud, racketeering, and money laundering and was recently added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted fugitives list."
Obama approves secret sale of ‘bunker buster’ bombs to Israel
Eli Lake has a scoop for Newsweek outlining President Obama's secret approval of bunker busting bombs to Israel, which could presumably be used in an attack on Iran. The deal was cut early in the Obama administration.
From Newsweek:
While publicly pressuring Israel to make deeper concessions to the Palestinians, President Obama has secretly authorized significant new aid to the Israeli military that includes the sale of 55 deep-penetrating bombs known as bunker busters, Newsweek has learned.
In an exclusive story to be published Monday on growing military cooperation between the two allies, U.S. and Israeli officials tell Newsweek that the GBU-28 Hard Target Penetrators—potentially useful in any future military strike against Iranian nuclear sites—were delivered to Israel in 2009, just several months after Obama took office.
The military sale was arranged behind the scenes as Obama’s demands for Israel to stop building settlements in disputed territories were fraying political relations between the two countries in public.
Commentary's Jonathan Tobin sees the leak of two-and-a-half-year-old news as part of the Obama administration's ongoing charm offensive to woo the Jewish community:
Yet, let us be in no doubt as to the reason why news about the bunker buster sale was leaked now, more than two years after the fact, according to Lake’s reporting. At a time when Obama’s support in the Jewish community is dropping in part because of his abusive treatment of Netanyahu, it is vital he try to prove he is as good a friend to Israel as any of his predecessors.
In a tease for the full article Newsweek insinuates the bombs might have been just the tip of the iceberg of covert US support to Israel:
While the Obama administration has touted some public cooperation with the Israeli military, Newsweek’s article Monday will reveal other covert efforts by the U.S. military to aid Israel in the volatile Middle East region, and the impact the improving military cooperation has had on the sometimes chilly relations between Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the president’s popularity in the American Jewish community.
