ЦІКАВЕ

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The White House — National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby warned that Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed group based in Iraq, should take “seriously” the Biden administration’s determination to respond to Sunday’s drone attack by Iran-backed militants that killed three American soldiers on a U.S. base in Jordan.

VOA White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara spoke with Kirby following Kataib Hezbollah’s Tuesday announcement that it is suspending all military operations against American troops in the region. Kirby also discussed the war in Gaza and other challenges the U.S. is facing around the world.

The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

VOA: Do you attribute Kataib Hezbollah’s announcement to stop attacking U.S. troops in the region to the president firmly signaling that he is ready for a response?

JOHN KIRBY, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: It’s hard to know exactly why Kataib Hezbollah put that statement out. They should take seriously the determination of the United States and President [Joe] Biden to do what we have to do to protect our troops, our facilities, our interests in the region. They should take that very seriously.

VOA: You’re not attributing the attack to them. You’re attributing it to their umbrella group, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq?

KIRBY: The Intelligence community’s comfortable with an assessment that it was the umbrella group, Islamic Resistance in Iraq, that was responsible for this attack. And as you know, there’s several groups that are participants under that moniker.

VOA: And combining that answer with your statement that the U.S. response will be multitiered over a period of time, can we assume that what the president intends to do is striking different Iran-backed proxies in the region over time?

KIRBY: I won’t get into the specific actions we’re going to take and what the response looks like. The first thing that you see will not be the last thing that you see.

VOA: You also said that striking these Iran-backed proxies won’t jeopardize any kind of hostage negotiations with Hamas, but don’t these groups have the same ideology?

KIRBY: What I said was, there’s no reason for what we’re doing to protect our troops and our facilities to impact the negotiations that we’re having to try to get another hostage deal in place, and we believe both are important to do. And we’re pressing forward with both.

VOA: Are you saying one goal wouldn’t complicate the other?

KIRBY: I’m saying there’s no reason for there to be an effect on the hostage negotiations that we’re in, by a response to this terrible attack which killed three American soldiers.

VOA: U.S. funding for UNRWA won’t start until there are fundamental changes in the agency. Those fundamental changes could take a while to implement. What is the U.S. prepared to do in the meantime? Stand by and allow war orphans to starve?

KIRBY: Of course not, and we are the world’s leading nation when it comes to getting humanitarian assistance [to] the people of Gaza. And UNRWA does essential work on the ground in Gaza. Make no mistake about it, they’re helping save thousands of lives. They are the prime distributor of aid and assistance inside Gaza, and we recognize that.

We want them to take this seriously. Unacceptable that any employee of UNRWA could be involved in the attacks on October 7, but we’re going to wait and see how the investigation goes. We’re going to wait and see what kind of accountability measures the U.N. and UNRWA, specifically, are willing to put in place. But we’re going to continue to do everything we can to get the security assistance into Gaza. And we certainly want the vast majority of UNRWA employees, who have no connection to Hamas, to be able to continue to do their job.

VOA: But you are admitting that stopping U.S. funding is impacting their work, no?

KIRBY: It’s only affecting the work that we were doing in Jordan. The suspension has nothing to do with Gaza. The money that we have left to spend — that we suspended — has been already pre-earmarked by UNRWA for use in Jordan, not for use in Gaza.

VOA: I’m going to move on to Ukraine funding. It appears that House Republicans are rejecting any kind of border compromise, because they don’t really want to give the president a win in an election year.

KIRBY: I certainly can’t talk about election politics or what may be behind the motivations here. It’s critical that we get this funding for Ukraine, for Israel, for the Indo-Pacific, and certainly for border security.

The president is negotiating in good faith on the Senate side. We believe those discussions are going well, and we hope to get a resolution here relatively soon. Now, what happens in the House is going to be up to Speaker [Mike] Johnson, and Speaker Johnson has not been consistent in what he says he wants to see at the border. So, I would point people to him. He has to speak for the inconsistencies in his messaging. But we are negotiating in good faith. We believe those negotiations are making progress, and that’s what we’re focused on.

VOA: Are you still sticking to that approach? Would you consider sending a new stand-alone bill just for Ukraine?

KIRBY: I don’t want to get ahead of where we are. I mean, we are in the midst of negotiations right now that are not over. So, I wouldn’t want to get into speculating about what hypotheticals might happen as a result.

VOA: Can you confirm reporting that Chinese President Xi Jinping promised President Biden that China will not meddle in U.S. elections?

KIRBY: We gave a full summary of that meeting. The president talked to you all after he met with President Xi. I don’t have any additional context to share. All I can tell you is that we take the soundness of our election system here in the United States very, very seriously. And we’ve been clear publicly, and we’ve been clear privately with interlocutors all around the world that we will do what we have to do to make sure that our elections are free and fair. And they have been, and they will continue to be.

VOA: But just today, Christopher Ray, the FBI director, gave testimony in Congress that Chinese hackers might be targeting U.S. infrastructure, targeting all sorts of things that may disrupt even the election. How do you square that?

KIRBY: I won’t speak to specific threats. All I can tell you is we take them seriously. We do everything we can to preserve critical infrastructure, and in the president’s mind, our election system is critical infrastructure.

VOA: A new report released by the U.N. sanctions monitoring team today says that al-Qaida has established eight new training camps and a new base to stockpile weaponry in Afghanistan. Are you aware, and are you countering?

KIRBY: I think we’re just aware of this report. We haven’t worked our way all the way through it. But I think it’s important to remember that al-Qaida is a vastly diminished organization in Afghanistan and elsewhere. In fact, the real threat from al-Qaida is the way it’s metastasized into other groups elsewhere in the region, like al-Shabab in Somalia.

VOA: Are you downplaying the threat?

KIRBY: Of course not. We’re not downplaying any terrorist threat anywhere in the world. Those three American soldiers that were killed were involved in helping our counter ISIS coalition, which is still active in Iraq and Syria. I don’t think the record bears out that we’ve been light on terrorist networks at all, killing [al-Qaida chief Ayman] al-Zawahiri and other leaders in ISIS in just recent weeks and months. What I’m saying is, this is a report we haven’t worked our way through right now, and the intelligence community, their assessment is that al-Qaida does not pose an immediate threat to U.S. soil.

VOA: Tomorrow, the president will participate in the dignified transfer of the three American soldiers who died in Jordan. How do you think that will impact Americans’ thinking about the conflict in the Middle East?

KIRBY: I hope it underscores Americans’ gratitude for the service, and in many cases, the sacrifice that American men and women in uniform are demonstrating on their behalf, to keep them safe. And that’s certainly the case with these three brave individuals who aren’t going to make it back home alive to their families.

And I hope it’s also a reminder of how diligently President Biden is working to keep the conflict between Israel and Hamas from escalating and widening into a broader regional conflict. We don’t seek a war with Iran. We don’t want to see a broader conflict, and almost everything the president has done since the seventh of October has been designed to prevent that from happening. 
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Turkish warplanes continue to pound U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in Syria that are fighting Islamic State militants. As Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul, Turkey’s assault is fueling speculation among observers that Washington could be preparing to pull out and cut back its support for Kurdish forces in Syria.
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The Biden administration’s push for clean energy solutions has turned a rural Washington state town into a hub for electric vehicle battery production. VOA’s Natasha Mozgovaya reports from Moses Lake.
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Washington — China’s efforts to target U.S. critical infrastructure pose an urgent threat that needs to be addressed now, according to a new warning from one of Washington’s top law enforcement officials.

FBI Director Christopher Wray tells U.S. lawmakers that Chinese government hackers are actively targeting America’s electrical grid, wastewater treatment plants, gas pipelines and transportation systems.

“The risk that poses to every American requires our attention — now,” Wray said in prepared testimony, released ahead of a congressional hearing Wednesday on competition with China.

“China’s hackers are positioning on American infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities, if or when China decides the time has come to strike,” Wray said.

The FBI director also alleged Beijing is running cyber campaigns to limit U.S. freedoms, “reaching inside our borders, across America, to silence, coerce, and threaten our citizens and residents.”

The Chinese Embassy in Washington has yet to respond to a request for comment.

Wednesday’s warning about China’s cyber efforts against U.S. critical infrastructure is not the first from top level U.S. officials.

Earlier this month, the FBI along with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, and the Environmental Protection Agency, or RPA, cautioned cyberattacks were posing “a real and urgent risk to safe drinking water.”

CISA has also warned about threats from Chinese-manufactured drones, warning they could access or steal sensitive information that could put the U.S. security and health and safety at risk. 

This past September, the commander of U.S. Cyber Command, said he expected China to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to impact the upcoming U.S. presidential elections.

“Russia, China, others are going to try to use this technology,” General Paul Nakasone told an audience in Washington.   

CISA Director Jen Easterly also warned this past June that in the event of a conflict with China, Beijing “will almost certainly use aggressive cyber operations to go after our critical infrastructure, to include pipelines and rail lines to delay military deployment and to induce societal panic.” 
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NEW YORK — Anticorruption activists around the world have high hopes for a new U.S. law that for the first time allows Washington to prosecute foreign officials who receive bribes.

The law broadens the enforcement profile of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which has long been used to punish companies that pay bribes and their shadowy agents.

Such players come from the “supply” side of the illicit payment equation — those paying the bribes. The new Foreign Extortion Prevention Act (FEPA) targets the “demand” side: foreign government officials who seek or accept payouts.

President Joe Biden signed the measure into law in December as part of a National Defense bill.

Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, a longtime anti-corruption and human rights advocate in Nigeria, hopes the change instills “some level of fear” in public officials who now feel “impunity,” he said.

“Public officials will engage in all sorts of corrupt practices and they will never be punished for anything,” said Rafsanjani.

“Every employee for every foreign government is now going to be on notice that the weight of the U.S. government could come after them,” said Scott Greytak, a director of advocacy at Transparency International. “That is going to change behavior.”

But Mike Koehler, a professor at Southern Illinois University School of Law, said the deterrent benefit of the FCPA has long been overstated.

Koehler considers the new measure “tokenism” and instead favors greater transparency and encouragement of other countries to enforce their own laws to reduce bribery.

Cold War statute

The FCPA was drafted in response to mid-1970s revelations of payments by large U.S. companies to foreign officials that surfaced through the Watergate investigations.

While barring U.S. companies from making such payments, the 1977 FCPA statute, enacted during the Cold War, barred prosecution of officials with foreign governments because of concerns it could hinder U.S. diplomatic priorities.

Over time, the Justice Department has still managed to target corrupt foreign officials under other statutes, such as money laundering.

Among the biggest FCPA cases in recent years, Goldman Sachs in October 2020 paid $2.9 billion in a U.S. deferred prosecution agreement over bribes to Malaysian and Abu Dhabi officials to win business.

Rafsanjani has pointed to a sprawling prosecution by the DOJ and other countries of a four-company consortium that won some $6 billion in contracts to build liquefied natural gas facilities in Bonny Island, Nigeria.

The case included a $402 million criminal file on Halliburton unit KBR in 2009. But Nigerian officials were not jailed in the case.

“What needs to be done is for countries like the U.S. to be in alliance with other countries,” said Rafsanjani, who is working to publicize FEPA within Nigerian agencies.

No quick fix

Research by Transparency International suggests the challenge in countering corruption.

The group’s annual “Corruption Perceptions Index” released Tuesday showed more than two-thirds of countries scoring below 50 due to poorly financed enforcement and other governance ills. Nigeria scored 25 on the scale, with 100 the best.

Foreign policy concerns could continue to dissuade prosecutions even with FEPA, note legal experts, who also say enforcement will be difficult if governments are unwilling to extradite defendants.

Supporters of FEPA see it as a way to make fighting corruption a priority. The law requires the Justice Department to report annually on the frequency of bribes and its enforcement record.

FEPA puts fighting corruption “front and center,” said Patrick Stokes, who prosecuted the Bonny Island case while at DOJ and now is a partner at Gibson Dunn.

“As a practical matter the new statute only marginally expands DOJ’s tools for going after corruption,” he said, noting that money laundering laws can be used to prosecute foreign officials.

“The statue may have real deterrence value by making clearer to foreign officials that they can be prosecuted for soliciting and accepting bribes,” Stokes said.

Jason Linder, a former U.S. prosecutor who now works at Mayer Brown, said the demand side “has remained robust because corruption is endemic in some countries,” and existing enforcement in developed countries only reaches a “very small percentage of corrupt conduct.”

While FEPA is a “very constructive step,” Linder said, “it remains to be seen how DOJ will enforce it.”

Success, he said, will have to be measured “over the coming decades, not just the next few years.”
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