Whistleblower alleges corruption inside Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. "I have a hard time telling families you can`t have an autopsy report if you don`t have $40 when I know we just got paid $6,250 for a brain"

RICHMOND, Va. -- State medical examiners have a lot of power, influence, and responsibility. They are responsible for investigating suspicious and unnatural deaths that occur in the state, and their testimony is often the most important part of a murder trial.

But one of them is making shocking allegations of corruption inside the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Assistant Chief Medical Examiner Kevin Whaley posted serious allegations online on March 31, 2016 of problems inside the Virginia Medical Examiner's Office.

Dr. Whaley sat down with CBS 6 reporter Melissa Hipolit for an exclusive interview to discuss the concerns he raised in the video.

"We`re physicians and we`re supposed to be in the best interest of our patients, who for us are the decedents and their families, and we`re not acting in that fashion," Whaley said.

Assistant Chief Medical Examiner Kevin Whaley

Among Whaley's concerns are the way he said his office sells brains to the National Institutes of Health.

That happens if a victim's family agrees to donate the brain for research.

"The thing is for each brain we supply to NIH the office gets $6,250. Now, the family is never made aware of that, so we`re getting paid per brain," Whaley said.

Whaley provided us with what he claims to be an amended contract that shows NIH agreed to pay the state a total of $150,000 in exchange for two dozen brains.

He said that is an excessively high amount given the short time it takes to extract a brain and send it to the NIH. Whaley said it makes him question the fees his office charges others.

"I have a hard time telling families you can`t have an autopsy report if you don`t have $40 when I know we just got paid $6,250 for a brain," Whaley said.

Whaley also alleges that under the Chief Medical Examiner, Doctor William Gormley, examiners are subtly being urged to show bias toward law enforcement.

"In fact, we`ve had cases in the back with law enforcement involved shootings where the chief has actually come back and joked with law enforcement, 'Well, they would have died if you`d tasered them anyways....' So it sort of sends a subtle message to us that, yeah... if you`re going to err on the side, you need to err on the side of law enforcement," Whaley said. "We have to be completely unbiased. I mean our sole job is to be an advocate for the deceased."

Office of the Chief Medical Examiner

Finally, Whaley alleges that after one of his colleagues recently retired, leaving the Richmond office with two assistant chief medical examiners instead of three, the pair was instructed to finish autopsy reports as quickly as possible, and told that any mistakes they made would be caught in court.

"Is it possible that mistakes made in your office had an impact on the outcome of a case?" Hipolit asked Whaley.

"I know there are people that have been falsely convicted because of things that have happened in the office... and people that have walked that are guilty," Whaley responded.

Two-and-a-half weeks ago we asked the Chief Medical Examiner's Office for an on-camera interview to respond to Whaley's accusations, but we only received an email.

Dr. Marissa Levine, the State Health Commissioner for the Virginia Department of Health, sits down for an interview with reporter Melissa Hipolit.

However, on the day the story was scheduled to be broadcast, Dr. Marissa Levine, the State Health Commissioner for the Virginia Department of Health, said she wanted to respond to Whaley's allegations on camera.

"I was aware that a statement had been provided, but I wasn't aware that nobody had been on the camera as part of that process," Levine said.

In an interview at the Virginia Department of Health conducted just hours before airtime, Dr. Levine said the state is now conducting an internal investigation into Whaley's allegations.

"As state health commissioner, I take any allegation very seriously," Levine said.

Regarding the sale of brains, Levine said the $6,250 payment is per month, not per brain.

"There is a cost to provide service to do that. The contract is with NIH, and it's a per month contract. There is no volume related to that. I think it serves a very important purpose and these are families that have been counseled and informed by NIH. The OCME is not involved in those conversations and is providing a service to NIH for this research project," Levine said.

When asked about the alleged bias toward law enforcement, Levine defended the OCME, but said she is taking Whaley's claim seriously.

"We specifically have the OCME in the Health Department not in a justice or a law enforcement department for that purpose. Obviously they have to work closely together with law enforcement, but it is a separation of duties and it's appropriate separation of duties to carry that out. I think we have significant professionals in that office who are committed to identifying what the facts tell them and to provide that information," Levine said.

And, in response to Whaley's allegation about rushed autopsy reports, Levine said "I am not aware that any of that has come to light, and in the past if there were situations like that they would have been fully investigated. So if there are specifics, if we find any specifics in our investigation, we will look at that further, but to date there had not been such allegations."

Since we started asking questions, Dr. Whaley said he received a letter from the Chief Medical Examiner saying he had been placed on pre-disciplinary leave with pay pending an agency investigation into whether disciplinary action may be appropriate.

Whaley, who has been with the office for 10 years, said he plans on retiring this summer.

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Michael Bloomberg calls out "demagogues", "safe spaces", "microaggressions", and more at University of Michigan commencement address

The following is an adaptation of an address to the University of Michigan's class of 2016.

The most useful knowledge that you leave here with today has nothing to do with your major. It's about how to study, cooperate, listen carefully, think critically and resolve conflicts through reason. Those are the most important skills in the working world, and it's why colleges have always exposed students to challenging and uncomfortable ideas.

The fact that some university boards and administrations now bow to pressure and shield students from these ideas through "safe spaces," "code words" and "trigger warnings" is, in my view, a terrible mistake.

The whole purpose of college is to learn how to deal with difficult situations -- not run away from them. A microaggression is exactly that: micro. And one of the most dangerous places on a college campus is a safe space, because it creates the false impression that we can insulate ourselves from those who hold different views.

We can't do this, and we shouldn't try -- not in politics or in the workplace. In the global economy, and in a democratic society, an open mind is the most valuable asset you can possess.

Think about the global economy. For the first time in human history, the majority of people in the developed world are being asked to make a living with their minds, rather than their muscles. For 3,000 years, humankind had an economy based on farming: Till the soil, plant the seed, harvest the crop. It was hard to do, but fairly easy to learn. Then, for 300 years, we had an economy based on industry: Mold the parts, turn the crank, assemble the product. This was hard to do, but also fairly easy to learn.

Now, we have an economy based on information: Acquire the knowledge, apply the analytics and use your creativity. This is hard to do and hard to learn, and even once you've mastered it, you have to start learning all over again, pretty much every day.

Keeping an open mind to new ideas is essential to your professional success -- just as it's crucial to our collective future as a democratic society.

We are witnessing a disturbing change in the nature of American politics: a rise in extreme partisanship and intolerance for other views.

I'm a political independent, but over the course of my life, for nonideological reasons, I've been a Republican and a Democrat. So I can tell you: Neither party has a monopoly on good ideas, and each demonizes the other unfairly and dishonestly.

This is not a new phenomenon, but it has reached a dangerous new level. George Washington warned against the dangers of parties, but we have survived more than 200 years of political parties largely because the Founding Fathers created checks and balances to temper the fires of partisanship. Of course, they also excluded most Americans from their vision of democracy because they feared what democracy might produce. But over the past two centuries, through the sacrifices of so many civil rights leaders and soldiers, the promise of equal rights has spread across income, religion, race, gender and sexual orientation.

We still have a long way to go, and it would be a mistake to think that our progress is irreversible. Democracy and citizenship will always require constant vigilance against those who fan the flames of partisanship in ways that consume us and lead to, in Washington's words, "the ruins of public liberty."

We have certainly seen such figures before, in both parties. In the 1930s, there was the despotic Huey Long in Louisiana and Father Coughlin in Michigan, who blamed "Jewish conspirators" for America's troubles. Then came Charles Lindbergh in the '40s, Joe McCarthy in the '50s, George Wallace in the '60s and Pat Buchanan in the '90s. Every generation has had to confront its own demagogues. And every generation has stood up and kept them away from the White House. At least so far.

In this year's presidential election, we've seen more demagoguery from both parties than I can remember in my lifetime. Our country is facing serious and difficult challenges. But rather than offering realistic solutions, candidates in both parties are blaming our problems on easy targets who breed resentment. For Republicans, it's Mexicans here illegally and Muslims. And for Democrats, it's the wealthy and Wall Street. The truth is: We cannot solve the problems we face by blaming anyone.

So why has it become so hard to find leaders who will lead from the front, rather than following from behind?

Here's one reason, based on my experience: Today, elected officials who decide to support a controversial policy don't just get angry letters, phone calls and faxes. They also get millions of angry tweets and Facebook posts denouncing them in the harshest possible terms. This is democracy in action. But this kind of instant condemnation also makes elected officials afraid to do things that, in their heart of hearts, they know are right.

Democracy in action can actually produce a lot of inaction, which we see every day in Washington and other levels of government, too. When governments fail to address the needs of the people, voters in both parties get angry and some politicians exploit that anger by offering scapegoats instead of solutions.

If we want to stop demagogues, we have to start governing again, and that requires us to be more civil, to support politicians who have the courage to take risks, and to reward those who reach across the aisle in search of compromise.

Doing this won't be easy, and that's partly because it's not just social media that has changed the civic dialogue. The constant bombardment of news that we see on our phones, computers and TVs gives us the impression we are acquiring knowledge. Yet many of the sources, facts and interpretations are either dubious or colored by partisanship, or outright lies.

I say that as the owner of a media company who has seen how the marketplace has shifted. Today, people choose cable TV channels and websites that affirm their own political beliefs rather than ones that inform and challenge their beliefs. As a result, we have grown more politically cloistered and more intolerant of those who hold different opinions.

Think about this: In 1960, only 4 to 5 percent of Democrats and Republicans said they would be upset if a member of their family married someone from the opposing party. In 2010, one in three Democrats and one in two Republicans said they would disapprove of such a marriage. In 1960, most people would never have believed that interparty marriage would attract such resistance, while interracial and same-sex marriage would gain such acceptance.

For all the progress we have made on cultural tolerance, when it comes to political tolerance, we are moving in the wrong direction -- at campaign rallies that turn violent, on social media threads that turn vitriolic, and on college campuses, where students and faculty have attempted to censor political opponents.

As durable as the American system of government has been, democracy is fragile -- and demagogues are always lurking. Stopping them starts with placing a premium on open minds, voting, and demanding that politicians offer practical solutions, not scapegoats or pie-in-the-sky promises.

In 1928, Republicans promised a "chicken in every pot and a car in every backyard." They won control of Congress and the White House, and a year later, instead of a chicken and a car, we got the Great Depression.

Today, when a populist candidate promises free college, free health care and a pony, or another candidate promises to make other countries pay for our needs, remember: Those who promise you a free lunch will invariably eat you for breakfast.

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
David Shipley at davidshipley@bloomberg.net

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Scientists say fracking wastewater spills are releasing toxins into soil and waterways: high levels of lead, ammonium, selenium, and even radium detected

Brine spills from oil development in western North Dakota are releasing toxins into soils and waterways, sometimes at levels exceeding federal water quality standards, scientists reported Wednesday.

Samples taken from surface waters affected by waste spills in recent years in the state's Bakken oilfield region turned up high levels of lead, ammonium, selenium and other contaminants, Duke University researchers said. Additionally, they found that some spills had tainted land with radium, a radioactive element.

Long-term monitoring of waters downstream from spill sites is needed to determine what risks the pollution might pose for human health and the environment, geochemistry professor Avner Vengosh said. But the study revealed "clear evidence of direct water contamination" from oil development using the method known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, he said, describing the problem as "widespread and persistent."

Wastewater spills are a longstanding yet largely overlooked side effect of oil and gas production that worsened during the nation's recent drilling boom, when advances in fracking technology enabled North Dakota's daily output to soar from 4.2 million gallons in 2007 to 42 million gallons in 2014.

The Associated Press reported last year that data from leading oil- and gas-producing states showed more than 175 million gallons of wastewater spilled from 2009 to 2014 in incidents involving ruptured pipes, overflowing storage tanks and other mishaps or even deliberate dumping. There were some 21,651 individual spills. The numbers were incomplete because many releases go unreported.

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The wastewater is often much saltier than the oceans and kills nearly all vegetation it touches, rendering sections of crop and ranch lands unusable. It also contains toxic chemicals, some of which are injected during fracking to release oil and gas from rock deposits and others that exist naturally underground.

In their report, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, Vengosh and other Duke researchers said their findings were based on an analysis of water samples from four areas affected by spills, two of which - in July 2014 and January 2015 - were the largest on record in North Dakota.

They identified unique chemical "fingerprints" that showed the contaminants came from brine spills and not some other source, Vengosh said.

In most samples, toxic selenium was measured in concentrations up to 35 times the level that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers safe for freshwater aquatic life, the report said. And other elements were found in concentrations above the EPA limit for drinking water.

"The results of this study indicate that the water contamination from brine spills is remarkably persistent in the environment, resulting in elevated levels of salts and trace elements that can be preserved in spill sites for at least months to years," the report said.

Dave Glatt, chief of North Dakota's environmental health section, said it was well known that oilfield wastewater is laced with toxic substances. But most spills don't endanger the public because they are quickly cleaned up and don't reach waterways, he said. Work continues on three of the sites from which the Duke researchers drew samples and drinking water has not been contaminated, he said.

Kerry Sublette, a University of Tulsa chemical engineering professor and expert on oilfield wastewater spills who wasn't involved with the Duke study, said the team's methods could help other researchers establish clear links between the spills and changes in stream chemistry.

Sublette recently completed a study that found toxins from spills in streams flowing through Oklahoma's Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, which will disrupt food chains by killing insects, worms and other small animals, he said.

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Sikh man detained on Greyhound bus after being falsely accused of terror bomb threat | 'The only crime I committed was wearing a turban, having a beard, and speaking in a different language'

A Sikh man who was pulled off a bus and detained for 30 hours after being heard speaking in Punjabi, is demanding officials bring charges against the fellow passengers who falsely accused him of making a terror bomb threat.

Daljeet Singh, who is originally from India and was recently granted asylum in the US, was taking a Greyhound bus from Phoenix, Arizona, to Indianapolis, Indiana.

On the bus, Mr Singh, who, as an observant member of the Sikh religion was wearing a beard and a turban, began talking with another passenger who also spoke Punjabi. It later transpired the man, Mohammed Chotri, was was an immigrant from eastern Pakistan, where Punjabi is commonly spoken.

Mr Singh said he was detained by police for almost 30 hours (Sikh Coalition)

According to a complaint filed by Mr Singh and the Sikh Coalition, a woman on the bus reported to police that the two men were "acting weird," speaking Arabic, and discussing a bomb. In Amarillo, Texas, two other passengers detained Mr Singh and Mr Chotri in their seats until police came and arrested them at gunpoint.

Police also removed Ms Singh's turban and distributed mug shots of him without his turban to local media. He was detained for around 30 hours. After being interviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation through a Punjabi language interpreter, both men were cleared of all allegations of wrongdoing, and no charges were filed.

"The only crime I committed was wearing a turban, having a beard, and speaking in a different language to another brown man on a bus," Mr Singh, who speaks little English, said in a statement. "I still cannot believe that this happened to me in America."

The Sikh Coalition, an activist group, has helped Mr Singh file a lawsuit demanding charges be brought against the woman who alerted police, and the two men who detained him in his seat.

"Whether it's a Sikh man on a Greyhound bus, or an Arabic speaker on a Southwest airplane, the xenophobic fear and bigotry in our country is out of control," said Gurjot Kaur, a senior lawyer at the Sikh Coalition.

Inderjit Singh Mukker was attacked while driving to the shops (Sikh coalition)

"By filing this complaint, we hope to bring attention to the crisis facing minority communities today. The list of things brown people can't do on public transportation is growing — we cant get a can of Diet Coke, we can't switch seats on a bus or a plane, we can't speak in a language other than English, really we can't be human beings."

Potter county attorney Scott Brumley told local media he had received a copy of the complaint from the Sikh coalition and the investigation into the passenger who made the complaint was ongoing.

He said it was a difficult case to prosecute because of the need to show proof the passenger knowingly filed a false police report.

Sikh campaigners have pointed to an apparent increase in attacks on members of the Sikh faith.

Last September, a Sikh taxi driver in Chicago was beaten to a pulp by a teenager who accused him of being "Osama bin Laden".

In January, three Muslim men and a Sikh man, filed a lawsuit alleging they were removed from a plane bound for New York from Toronto because of their appearance.

In February, an American Sikh actor said he was not allowed to board a flight from Mexico City to New York because he was wearing a turban.

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Self-Appointed Bathroom Cop Catches Dallas Woman Using Women's Restroom

Friday, April 29, 2016 at 12:21 p.m.

A man walked into the women's restroom at Baylor Medical Center in Frisco to confront a woman he mistook for a man. Jessica Rush

The way things are headed, with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick setting the state's legislative agenda, Texas may very well have its own crack squad of bathroom police. In the meantime, it's up to self-appointed enforcers of traditional gender norms to adjudicate which bathrooms strangers should use.

Case in point: the man who, um, heroically barged into a women's restroom at Baylor Medical Center in Frisco on Thursday to make sure that Jessica Rush, who manages a local health-food takeout place, was peeing in the proper place.

She was, for the record, and her situation isn't particularly complicated. Rush was born and identifies as female and has no plans to change that. "I look very much like a girl," she says. "I'm not trying to  transition, nothing like that."

But Rush wears her hair in a bleached blond fauxhawk and dresses androgynously. On Thursday, she was wearing a T-shirt from her alma mater, Texas Tech, with basketball shorts. As the man at Baylor explained after walking into the restroom behind her, it's all very confusing.

Rush caught the latter end of the exchange on video:

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"When I saw you enter I thought you was..." the man says.

"A boy?" Rush offers.

"Yeah, it was kind of confusing." Certainly she can see why. "You dress like a man," he says several times as he walks away.

Later, in the doctor's office lobby where Rush was waiting to have a pair of broken fingers looked at, the man elaborated that he was concerned that a man had entered the same bathroom his mother was going to use.

"The point is I was helping my mom. I was confused when I see someone entering the woman's bathroom looking like a man," he said. "Each one of us is man or woman so ... I wanted to make sure she was going to the right place." Because in times like these, you can never be too careful. 

The guy at Baylor isn't the first person who's found 

Jessica Rush Courtesy Jessica Rush

himself confused by Rush's self-presentation. Once, when Rush was at Hobby Lobby, a woman accosted her for trying to enter the restroom her granddaughter was using. Another women berated Rush for brazenly waltzing into the 24 Hour Fitness locker room before recognizing that Rush was, in fact, a woman and muttering an apology. And pretty much whenever she goes into the restroom at the mall, she'll hear kids murmur "Mom, there's a boy in the girls' bathroom!"

The confusion isn't universal, however. Once, because the women's restroom was full and figuring that  everyone mistook her for a dude anyways, she tried using the men's bathroom at a bar. Its occupants were immediately panic stricken. "Whoa, there's a chick in the bathroom!" they yelled. "Get out, get out!"

"It makes me feel suuuper insecure," Rush says of the bathroom confrontations. Sometimes, like with the grandmother at Hobby Lobby, it's merely embarrassing. At other times, like when a man twice her size follows her into a hospital bathroom, it's scary. "Welcome to my world," Rush wrote when she posted the Baylor videos on Facebook. "Do you actually think I would choose this life?"

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Oklahoma governor signs law to allow recovery of attorney fees by those who have unjustly had their assets seized through the civil asset forfeiture process

Gov. Mary Fallin has signed Senate Bill 1113, which would allow the recovery of attorney fees by those who have unjustly had their assets seized through the civil asset forfeiture process. The measure was authored by Sen. David Holt, R-Oklahoma City, and Rep. Randy Grau, R-Edmond.

"This is a positive step in reforming civil asset forfeiture, as it will encourage those who have had their assets unjustly taken to fight back," Holt said.

Holt noted that some individuals who felt their assets were unjustly seized may not have fought to have them returned because they could not afford to hire a lawyer. With the passage of this reform enabling the recovery of attorney fees, some lawyers may look at the merits of a particular case and be more willing to take such individuals on as clients.

Grau applauded the governor for signing SB 1113 into law.

"I want to thank Governor Fallin for supporting this important legislation, which helps protect the civil and private property rights of Oklahomans," Grau said.

Civil asset forfeiture has been a topic of much conversation over the past year following the introduction of reform proposals by Senator Kyle Loveless, R-Oklahoma City. 

The new law will go into effect on Nov. 1.

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Prince's vault is opened and there's enough music to release a new album per year for the next century.

A vault purportedly containing unreleased Prince songs was drilled open, according to ABC News affiliate KSTP-TV.

The singer, who released 39 studio albums and dozens of other musical projects, died April 21 at his Paisley Park home in Chanhassen, Minnesota. He was 57.

Bremer Trust, the St. Cloud, Minnesota, company given temporary authority over Prince's estate, opened the vault to which only Prince had the code, KSTP-TV added.

Previously, Prince spoke openly about his treasure trove of music on "The View."

"One day, someone will release them. I don't know that I'll get to release them," he said back in 2012. "There's just so many."

The seven-time Grammy Award winner reportedly left behind a vault containing so much music his estate could put out an album a year for the next century.

"We could put out more work in a month than most people could do in a year or more," Susan Rogers, Prince's former recording engineer, told ABC's "Good Morning America."

Rogers added that the vault in Prince's Paisley Park home was a giant room with shelves that filled up quickly. The door to the vault was sealed with a large spinning wheel.

The news of Prince's vault being opened comes as his sister, Tyka Nelson, claimed earlier this week that the singer had no will or trust, according to paperwork she filed in Minneapolis.

The documents obtained by ABC News, signed by Nelson, state, "I do not know of the existence of a will and have no reason to believe that the decedent executed testamentary documents in any form."

State law says that if Prince didn't have a will or trust, his estate is set to be divided between Nelson and his five half-siblings.

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Colorodo May Replace Obamacare with Single Payer

Bernie Sanders may not win the Democratic nomination for president, but his political revolution could succeed after all.

The first salvo in this this war may very well be launched by the state of Colorado, where voters will soon decide by referendum whether or not to replace Obamacare in their state with a statewide single-payer plan that would offer comprehensive health coverage, from preventative check ups to end-of-life care, according to ColoradoCare, the organization responsible for getting the referendum on the ballot.

The single-payer plan would be funded by a payroll tax of 10%, of which employers would pay 6.7% and workers 3.3%. An additional 10% tax on investment income, income from the self-employed, and some small business income would be pay for the program as well.

According to a recent New York Times article, the insurance industry and conservative groups are already lining up to oppose the plan. Even some Democratic officials, like Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper are against it. But supporters have reason for optimism as well. Democratic voters in Colorado supported Bernie Sanders—who is purposing a similar Medicare for All plan on the national level—by nearly 20% over Hillary Clinton. For fans of single payer health care, the result is proof that there is enough progressive energy in the state to get such a radical reform passed.

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Fox News terrorism pundit pleads guilty to faking CIA ties. He pleaded guilty on Friday to U.S. charges that he fraudulently claimed to have been a CIA agent for decades.

A Fox News guest terrorism analyst pleaded guilty on Friday to U.S. charges that he fraudulently claimed to have been a CIA agent for decades, federal prosecutors said.

Wayne Simmons, 62, of Annapolis, Maryland, entered the plea in U.S. district court in Alexandria, Virginia, a Washington suburb, the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a statement.

The plea came in a hearing in which Simmons changed the not-guilty plea he had made in October.

"His fraud cost the government money, could have put American lives at risk, and was an insult to the real men and women of the intelligence community who provide tireless service to this country," said Dana Boente, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Simmons had appeared on Fox News, the top-ranked U.S. cable television news network, as an unpaid guest analyst on terrorism since 2002.

A grand jury indicted him in October for portraying himself as an "Outside Paramilitary Special Operations Officer" for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1973 to 2000.

Simmons pleaded guilty to charges of major fraud against the U.S. government, wire fraud and a firearms offense. He faces up to 40 years in prison. Sentencing is set for July 15.

Simmons admitted that he defrauded the government in 2008 when he got work as a team leader in an Army program, and again in 2010 when he was deployed to Afghanistan as an intelligence adviser, the statement said.

He said he made similar false statements in a 2009 bid to get work with the State Department's Worldwide Protective Service.

Simmons also admitted to defrauding an unidentified woman out of $125,000 in a bogus real estate investment. When he was arrested, Simmons illegally possessed two firearms, which he was barred from having because of prior felonies, including a state conviction and two federal firearms violations.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Steve Orlosky)

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FBI bought $1m iPhone 5C hack, but doesn't know how it works

They need to read the .nfo

unpack, install, and enjoy. Remember to support the developers of software you enjoy.

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U.S. Special Ops Kill 40 ISIS Operatives Responsible for Attacks From Paris to Egypt

Delta Force and Navy SEALs have crippled the group's ability to recruit foreign fighters and put pressure on the network responsible for striking Europe and Africa.

As the self-proclaimed Islamic State trumpets its global terrorist campaign, U.S. special operations forces have quietly killed more than three dozen key ISIS operatives blamed for plotting deadly attacks in Europe and beyond.

Defense officials tell The Daily Beast that U.S. special operators have killed 40 "external operations leaders, planners, and facilitators" blamed for instigating, plotting, or funding ISIS's attacks from Brussels and Paris to Egypt and Africa.

That's less than half the overall number of ISIS targets that special operators have taken off the battlefield, one official explained, including top leaders like purported ISIS second-in-command Haji Imam, killed in March.

The previously unpublished number provides a rare glimpse into the U.S. counterterrorist mission that is woven into overall coalition efforts to defeat ISIS, and which is credited with crippling ISIS efforts to recruit foreign fighters and carry out more plots like the deadly assault on Paris that killed 130 last fall.

As proof of the campaign's overall success, Pentagon officials this week said the overall size of ISIS from a high estimate of 33,000 a year ago to between 19,000 to 25,000 fighters, and that the influx of foreign fighters into Iraq and Syria had dropped from up to 2,000 a month last year to just 200. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter was more cautious about that figure in testimony Thursday morning, saying it is "hard to be accurate" estimating foreign fighter flow, but that the numbers generally are falling. That's set against the warning by Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper this week that ISIS cells are likely already in place across Europe.   

That's set against the warning by Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper this week that ISIS cells are likely already in place across Europe.

The U.S. strikes have picked up pace since Defense Secretary Carter announced the deployment of special operations forces to northern Iraq last December, under the unwieldy moniker of "Expeditionary Targeting Force," the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to describe the special operations mission publicly.

The officials expect that tempo to rise as the newly expanded special operations advising team inside Syria also grows from 50 to up to 300, as President Obama announced in Germany on Monday.

Officials say the Syria-based U.S. special operators help stitch together the disparate members of the Syrian Defense Force and vet others who want to join the mission, while also gathering intelligence on the ground that leads to strikes.

The CIA, NSA, and other elements of the U.S. intelligence community are also driving the effort, finding and feeding the intelligence to the coalition strike force.

At the top of the special operations target list is the network of ISIS operatives blamed for "external operations": 60 attacks in 21 countries that have killed 1,000 people since January 2015, the officials said. Most of the ISIS targets were killed in Syria, by special operations combat aircraft, but also by troops who attempted to capture a handful of high-value ISIS targets in raids. All of those targets resisted arrest and were killed, the officials said.

That grim tally includes the previously announced December killing of Syrian-based ISIS member Charaffe al-Mouadan, who officials have concluded had direct ties to Abdel Hamid Abaoud, the leader of the ISIS cell that attacked Paris last November. Mouadan was among an estimated 10 militants taken out in a spec-ops airstrike.

Another was Abdul Kader Hakim, killed in Mosul in December. The Pentagon called Hakim an "external operations facilitator" and a forgery specialist with links to the Paris attack network.

It's not clear how many civilians may have been caught in the special operations-related strikes. The U.S. has admitted to accidentally killing 41 civilians in the 20 months since coalition strikes began.

Sometimes the kills or attempted captures are not announced, in order to see how ISIS responds, one of the senior officials explained. "What are they doing, what are they saying, who are they communicating to? How do they backfill the missing operator?" he said. Those reactions can reveal weakness the U.S. task force can exploit.

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"The point of such operations is to keep ISIS guessing," he said.

Defense officials acknowledge the downside of the secrecy of the operations is that humanitarian and human-rights organizations that try to serve as neutral arbiters in war zones don't always know who to call when civilians report allegations of casualties or damage in the aftermath of a military strike—or when someone goes missing, possibly taken in a raid. Two senior defense officials said they were actively working to establish and maintain relationships with such agencies in areas where their troops operate, including sharing with the International Committee of the Red Cross details of any detainees taken within a short time of their capture, as per Pentagon policy on detainees.

"Defense regulations… stipulate that information concerning detainees in U.S. military custody should be provided to the ICRC normally within 14 days," ICRC spokesman Anna Nelson said. "In practice, as soon as we are made aware of a new detainee in U.S. custody, we will get in contact with the U.S. authorities to organize a visit."

The special operations counterterrorist mission is spearheaded by troops from the Joint Special Operations Command, the U.S. military's premier counterterrorist unit.

But unlike previous conflicts, where JSOC raiders worked in secret, usually apart from other types of special operators, the Iraq and Syria teams blend specialists from multiple disciplines. "Door kickers" from units like the U.S. Army's Delta Force and the Navy SEALs' Naval Special Warfare Development Group who train for hostage rescue missions or kill-capture raids are paired with operators like Green Berets who specialize in learning foreign languages and cultures, and training local forces.

"The teams are integrated in just about everything we do," one defense official said.

The mixing of troops may have something to with the background of those in charge of the ISIS fight. Current JSOC commander Lt. Gen. Austin S. Miller and his predecessor, Gen. Tony Thomas, both ran the overall special operations task force in Afghanistan, which blended the different skills of very different, sometimes competing spec-ops tribes.

Thomas now runs the U.S. Special Operations Command. Miller most recently commanded Fort Benning, Georgia, where he oversaw the U.S. Army Ranger School that produced the first successful women candidates ahead of the Pentagon's decision to open all combat roles to women.

And Gen. Joseph Votel, who previously led both USSOCOM and JSOC, now runs the ISIS campaign as head of Central Command. While rooted in the counterterrorism realm earlier in his career, he has a broader perspective on what the different special operations tribes bring to the fight.

Updated 4/28/16 10:30 a.m. to add the director of National Intelligence's warnings that ISIS cells are likely already deployed to Europe, coalition airstrike casualty figures, and comment from the ICRC.

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