Pentagon: Shots Fired at Pentagon. Windows Blown Out?

Fox is just reporting that shots have been fired at the Pentagon (no shots inside the facility). Windows have been blown out on the third and fourth floors. Bullets were recovered outside. No injuries reported. The incident happened just prior to 5 a.m. today. Updates as details become available. See a video below.

The shots did not penetrate the building. Reuters is reporting that the gunfire came from "somewhere around the Pentagon's South parking lot.

This report from CNN says the windows were shattered, a bullet is lodged in one of them, but did not shatter.

The building was under temporary lockdown, with roads leading to the building closed, including parts of Highway 395 which may be included in the investigation.

This is interesting:

Lapan said there were no injuries. In response to a question, he said he did not know whether there was any connection between Tuesday's incident and Monday's discovery of bullet holes in windows at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Va., some 30 miles south of the Pentagon.

A cleaning crew at the museum associated with the Quantico Marine Base called police when they noticed the bullet holes in windows high up in a part of the building that faces Interstate 95. 

A press conference is scheduled for 1:30 a.m. EDT.

Remember that earlier this year, John Patrick Bedell was killed by police after he opened fire at a checkpoint inside the Pentagon and wounded two officers.

Shots Hit Pentagon

Posted by Maggie @ Maggie's Notebook

Noel Koch Wounded Warrior Program: Noel Koch Forced out of Top Spot

Noel Koch, the top Pentagon official in charge of the Wounded Warrior Program says Clifford Stanley, the undersecretary of defense for personnel asked him, via email, to step down from the position. He was appointed to the position by President Obama in May 2009, and was the first to hold the title.

From Military.com:

Koch said he believes the decision was unjust and that he resigned "under duress" after Stanley told him he had no confidence in him. The Pentagon had no comment.

"No explanation was given, although I pressed for one," he said. "No prior indication of dissatisfaction with the work of this office was cited."

Koch said the wounded warrior program has done good work during the past 11 months since his appointment to lead the new office.

Koch's official title was Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for the Office of Wounded Warrior Care and Transition Policy.  See his biography here.

In this role, he is responsible for policy and programs related to disability systems, Service member transitions to Veteran status, separations from the Armed Forces, and wounded warrior care coordination. He works closely with the Department of Veterans Affairs and other federal agencies to ensure medical and non-medical services are provided across the full continuum of care for wounded Service members, Veterans and families from recovery to rehabilitation through reintegration.

Mr. Koch recently served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of TranSecur, Inc., a global security corporation providing information and support services to foreign and domestic government agencies, corporations, families, and individuals at risk from crime, terrorism and related high-level threats in the multinational environment. Services include threat assessment; vulnerability analysis; security systems design, implementation, and management; crisis management systems design and assistance; and, security awareness training for high-risk personnel. TranSecur, Inc. has offices in the U.S., the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

Mr. Koch is an expert on terrorism and security-related issues, with over forty years experience in developing intelligence and advanced analytical procedures for identifying and assessing potential threats to individuals, and institutional or corporate assets; and, providing security and protective services, including personal security details, facilities security, security force management, personal security awareness training for executives and other high-risk personnel.

AlterNet published a piece titled There Must Be Someway Out of Here, about soldiers suffering PTSD, and often, suicidal tendencies, after returning to the U.S. The road is steep for these soldiers - and one put it: "it's just a very dark place:"

Several reports last year exposed military foot-dragging on medical discharge as well as committing to diagnoses of PTSD....

And then they mentioned Noel Koch:

Of Course, Heads Must Roll

Call it a coincidence but, on the heels of the New York Times piece came the news, on Sunday, that Noel Koch, the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Wounded Warrior Care and Transition policy had been relieved of that position.

And then a possible explanation for the need for new Wounded Warrior leadership:

Problem Not Responding to Appropriations

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is “just baffled” by the fact that millions of dollars and revamped veteran’s programs have not stemmed the ever-increasing tide of military suicides. Just this morning, this report ran in Army Times:

“Troubling new data show there are (sic) an average of 950 suicide attempts each month by veterans who are receiving some type of treatment from the Veterans Affairs Department. Seven percent of the attempts are successful, and 11 percent of those who don’t succeed on the first attempt try again within nine months. The numbers, which come at a time when VA is strengthening its suicide prevention programs, show about 18 veteran suicides a day, about five by veterans who are receiving VA care.”

Something is definitely NOT working here despite whatever tweaks to programs have been tried. There are now more veterans killing themselves than are killed in battle.

The military tend to dance around the obvious “suspects” of multiple deployments and abbreviated dwell time (time spent at home between deployments); basically, because they are strapped for volunteer troops and have to deploy and redeploy to keep “boots on the ground” in multiple war zones. And whereas the Pentagon has a virtual blank check for analyzing weapons systems and planning the Long War out to 2050 and fun stuff like that, it doesn’t seem to have the time, money or inclination to do a deep dive into the suicidal troops problem.

The remainder of the AlterNet article is a must-read. I can't verify all that it says, but it seems obvious that our warriors are serving multiple tours in war zones, and might need some extra help when they arrive home to assist them in moving on to living a healthy life, after seeing and doing things that most of us will never face.  I hope you will read it here.

Noel Koch is a veteran of the Vietnam war and served six years in the U.S. Army. A quick search of the Internet shows that Koch is a frequent contributor to many publications.

Bunker Buster Funding: Massive Ordnance Penetrator - MOP Ready Within Months

Reports are citing the Pentagon's accelerated request to Congress for funding of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) Bunker Buster - a mega-bunker-buster. Apparently, the request has been approved. I would have bet money against that request with our current Congress.

According to this ABC report, the request was a part of a 93-page "reprogramming" request.

The comptroller said the Pentagon planned to spend $19.1 million to procure our of the bombs, $28.3 million to accelerate the "bomb's development and testing," and $21 million to accelerate the integration of the bomb onto B-2 stealth bombers.

The MOP can hit targets 200 feet below ground. It is 20 feet long, holds 5,300 pounds of explosives, and it has a special mission:

...defeat hard and deeply buried targets where our adversary would have the support structure for WMD-type systems.

Hard and deeply buried targets like North Korea's and Iran's Natanz centrifuge facility (about 130 miles south of Tehran) and wherever the newest known plant inside the country might be.

The DEBKAfile reported this story on September 8th saying that acceleration of 10-12 MOPs had been requested, which "trebeled" the original request:

Gen. Shackelford said: "These are purchases beyond just those needed to test their capability. In other words (the military is seeking to) build a small inventory of, I believe, 10-12 bombs."

B-2 Stealth Bomber

McDonnell Douglas was awarded a $51.9 million contract to modify the B-2 stealth bomber to carry the mammoth MOP. The Pentagon said at least one "bunker buster" would be ready within months.


More military/war news:

Combat Outpost Keating Relief Fund

American Troops Depressed, Disillusioned

Dick Cheney Assassinations: CIA Targets Al Qaeda

Democrats in Congress are outraged that the Pentagon and CIA were developing a plan to "assassinate" al Qaeda in Iraq. The assassination teams would be CIA personnel, and not U.S. Military. Especially heinous to Congress is that the Pentagon did not brief appropriate Congressional members about the incomplete and unimplemented plan.

CIA

Americans are no longer shocked to hear that we have not always targeted all al Qaeda members, including leaders...especially leaders...since the war began after 9-11. We are no longer shocked at much we hear, because doing what makes no sense is exactly what Congress always does. Nevertheless, while not shocked, we are surprised, and along with our surprise comes puzzlement. Why would we need a secret program, even assuming Congress is briefed, to kill top al-Qaeda members?

Targeted killing of terrorists is prohibited by presidential orders banning assassinations that date back to the Ford administration. But the president can waive that order, said Vicki Divoll, a former CIA counsel, because there is no specific federal law that bans the practice.

There's also no legal difference, she said, between killing al Qaeda targets with a hit team or with an unmanned drone, because the "intent to kill a targeted person" defines an assassination.

The "air strikes" are what made this never-implemented plan different. According to officials, it was okay to target and kill al Qadea with air strikes, but not okay to target and kill al Qaeda "at close range," - what might include hand-to-hand combat. Killing "at close range" might risk "civilian casualties." For now, the CIA will have to be satisfied with Predator Drones - except that Congress can't keep it's mouth shut about them either. While Pakistan recently complained about Predator drones taking off and landing inside their borders, officials assured Pakistan that only surveillance drones are used inside the country, not the Predator which is capable of launching missiles.

Privately, though, Pakistani officials doubt that claim, especially after the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Diane Feinstein, (D-CA), suggested 10 days ago that the CIA Predator drones do indeed use Pakistani airfields and not necessarily Afghan airfields, as most assume.

According to an anonymous source at the CIA, Dick Cheney directed the agency not to inform Congress of the specifics of the secret program.

Panetta told the committees there was no indication that there was anything illegal or inappropriate about the effort itself, the official said. CIA directors since 2001 agreed with Cheney's decision not to inform Congress because the highly classified operation, described as "sporadic" and "embryonic," never managed to turn up the intelligence needed to carry out a kill and was not considered a covert operation, according to a former intelligence official. That official also was not authorized to discuss the program and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Congress has a right to know everything the CIA does, but the president can by law limit those told about covert operations to just the top four members of the House and Senate from the two parties and the senior members of the intelligence committees. Democrats on the House intelligence committee are pushing for a legal provision that would require the president to brief both committees in their entirety more often, but the White House has threatened to veto the move.

DefenseTech.org reminds us of Sandi Berger letting Osama bin Laden escape in Afghanistan, rather than chance civilian casualties: Doesn't this sort of smack of Sandi Berger-esque national security policy?

We know from the 9-11 commission report that Berger got cold feet when he had bin Laden in his sights for a proxy raid in Afghanistan because he was afraid of collateral damage and blowback. Now some of the same national security policy minds are back in the driver's seat so we can cancel a program to kill bad guys using CIA assets.

Here is the directive for how and when the CIA program would have been implemented:

Had it become fully developed, the CIA's aborted plan would have been a covert-action program. At the outset, the potential operation wouldn't have been limited to particular countries. The use of hit teams was in accordance with the authority granted by the 2001 order, said a former national-security official familiar with it.

In the most recent iteration of the project, top CIA leaders instructed officers involved to narrow its focus and report the plans to Congress if they reached a critical point where moving forward would involve activities that, if discovered, could embarrass the U.S., according to a former senior intelligence official.

Among all the punditry on this subject, we've heard little to nothing about the distinction between targeting for air strikes or targeting for "close contact," but surprisingly to me, there is a U.S policy prohibiting the "assassination" of anyone, not just heads of State!

Targeted killing of terrorists is prohibited by presidential orders banning assassinations that date back to the Ford administration. But the president can waive that order, said Vicki Divoll, a former CIA counsel, because there is no specific federal law that bans the practice.

There's also no legal difference, she said, between killing al Qaeda targets with a hit team or with an unmanned drone, because the "intent to kill a targeted person" defines an assassination.

However, that is not the end of the story. The rest of the story involves the Joint special Operations Command (JSOC). The JSOC is a somewhat secret branch of the U.S. Special Operations Command. The Special Operations Command is made-up of "special mission units." Among these units are the Delta Force and Seal Team Six. During the Iraq War other elite groups were known as "Grey Fox," "Capacity Gear" and "Titrant Ranger." Pulitzer Prize winning investigating "journalist," Sy Hersh has charged that during the Bush-Cheney years the JSOC reported directly to Dick Cheney and no one else. He termed it an "executive assassination ring." The New York Times columnist didn't make the accusations in the NYT, but from podiums on college campuses, at the ACLU and public radio. New York Magazine writer Chris Suellentrop calls Hersh "the runaway mouth of America's premier investigative journalist."

Bill Roggio writing for the Weekly Standard Blog says the Hersh claims that the JSOC reports to no one, or only to Cheney during the Bush-Cheney years, is false; they report to the Secretary of Defense and also falls under congressional oversight. From Marc Ambinder: JSOC units are very active in Iraq and Afghanistan; in those countries, since the U.S. is formally at war, their conduct can't really be analogized to an extra-legal hit squad....What's objectionable, in theory, is that the President can designate anyone as a terrorist and task JSOC with finding and executing them -- even if the person is not living in the war theatre and has never been charged with a crime. In practice, that's what presidents from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton have believed (the following from a 2001 report).

Senior intelligence officials confirm that a secret finding recently signed by President Bush, building on an earlier one by President Clinton, grant the CIA legal authority to conduct assassination operations against individuals designated as terrorists. As a result, the CIA is devising strategy and policy to that end, and is developing assets for assassinations within both the CIA and "uniformed military units," as well as foreign agents in Middle Eastern countries.

The outrage is likely a convenient smoke screen designed to take the focus off of Speaker Nancy Pelosi's accusation that the CIA "lies all the time." Target Dick Cheney's so-called assassination plots and the Dems might think they have a winner. Complain that the CIA targets al Qaeda and the Dems might think they have a winner...but maybe not. Just maybe we expect Congress to support every tactic possible to win these wars.