Attorney General William Barr Meets with Minister of Justice of Japan

On Friday, May 3, 2019, Attorney General William Barr met with Japanese Minister of Justice Takashi Yamashita at the Justice Department in Washington, DC. The dialogue focused on the nations’ shared commitment to combatting cybercrime and transnational organized crime. The Attorney General and Minister also discussed other areas of law enforcement cooperation between the two countries. The Attorney General welcomed Japan’s recent accession to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC).

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-william-barr-meets-minister-justice-japan

The Pacific push: New rotation, thousands more soldiers heading to the region as the Army readies for a new kind of fight

The Army is growing its force in the Pacific region, keeping rotational forces there longer with plans to increase the number of soldiers they send, and soon beginning a new division-strength rotation with thousands of soldiers going for short-term deployments.

And they’re not going to Korea.

They are sweeping to the South China Sea and surrounding areas, all in an effort to expand the Army’s presence in containing a resurging China and multiply forces in a hard-to-reach area.

The soldiers in those units are reaching back into the Army’s recent past. They’re finding their way on missions that look much different than past deployments that involved vehicle patrols around remote bases and acting as police for tribal conflicts.

Instead, they’re manning and moving missile defense systems that scoot around and between small island strongholds, throwing wires to run communications across vast expanses of ocean or opening ports at waterfronts so that munitions, food and medicine can reach those in the direct fight should China’s moves escalate into violence.

And that role differs not only from the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and special operations forces-led counterterrorism missions of recent years. It will be a different role than the Army performs anywhere else, and it might be a model for the future of near-peer fights.

A new rotation called Defender Pacific will send a division headquarters with multiple brigades, Gen. Robert Brown, the top commander over the Army’s Pacific forces, announced recently.

About 5,000 to 10,000 soldiers will deploy for Defender Pacific, which will likely be once a year.

That exercise will focus on the South China Sea or East China Sea area and run between 30 to 45 days.

The soldiers will be deployed suddenly, in keeping with the dynamic flexing concept that is part of the National Defense Strategy, keeping U.S. forces and adversaries on their toes.

Existing rotations and forces stationed in the region would remain in their assigned missions and the new rotations would add to that force strength, Brown said.

https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/05/08/the-pacific-push-new-rotation-thousands-more-soldiers-heading-to-the-region-as-the-army-readies-for-a-new-kind-of-fight/

US ends search for Japanese F-35 that crashed in April

TOKYO — The U.S. Navy said Thursday it has suspended its search for a Japanese air force F-35A stealth fighter that crashed off Japan’s coast last month, after the allies scrambled to locate the aircraft to protect its military secrets.

The pilot is still missing, and Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya said Japan will continue its search.

The Navy said in a statement that it was withdrawing after a salvage vehicle, CURV 21, found debris from the aircraft. It crashed in the Pacific off the eastern coast of Aomori in northern Japan during a night training flight on April 9. It went missing about half an hour after taking off from Misawa Air Base with three other F-35As and about a minute after the pilot abruptly ordered an end to the training exercise.

The Navy was unusually quick in the salvage effort amid air and maritime activity in the region by China and Russia. It dispatched the guided-missile destroyer Stethem and P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft to join a Japanese search and rescue team. From April 9 to 17, the U.S. search covered more than 5,000 square nautical miles before deploying the CURV 21 remotely operated vehicle, which is capable of salvage operations at a depth of up to 20,000 feet.

Iwaya told the upper house Diplomatic and Defense Affairs Committee that the U.S. salvage vehicle recovered parts of a flight data recorder but the flight data were missing. A joint effort using sonar by the Japanese deep undersea vehicle Kaimei also located and recovered parts of a canopy and other equipment, he said.

Iwaya said Kaimei has also withdrawn, but the surface and underwater search is continuing with the participation of Japanese Self-Defense Force vessels as well as a private salvage boat.

“We will continue our search and recovery for the pilot and the aircraft that are still missing, while doing our utmost to determine the cause,” he said.

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2019/05/09/us-ends-search-for-japanese-f-35-that-crashed-in-april/

Former NSA/NGA Analyst Indicted For Leaking Classified Documents To Reporter

A 31-year-old Tennessee man was arrested on Thursday over allegations that he illegally obtained and then leaked classified national defense information to a reporter, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ)

Daniel Everette Hale of Nashville worked as a NSA intelligence analyst while deployed to Afghanistan, after which he worked for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) - where he worked as a political geography analyst between December 2013 and August 2014.

While assigned to the NSA during active duty for the Air Force, Hale allegedly began communicating with a reporter for an unknown news outlet - meeting with them "on multiple occasions," while also communicating via an encrypted messaging platform.

After his shift from the NSA to the NGA, Hale is accused of printing six classified documents unrelated to his work in February 2014, which were later published by the reporter's news outlet.

According to allegations in the indictment, while employed as a cleared defense contractor for NGA, Hale printed from his Top Secret computer 36 documents, including 23 documents unrelated to his work at NGA. Of the 23 documents unrelated to his work at NGA, Hale provided at least 17 to the reporter and/or the reporter’s online news outlet, which published the documents in whole or in part. Eleven of the published documents were classified as Top Secret or Secret and marked as such. -DOJ

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-09/former-nsanga-analyst-indicted-leaking-classified-info-reporter