RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
April 17 to April 23, 2022

Featured Investigation:
“Al Qaeda Is on Our Side”:
How Obama/Biden Team Empowered
Terrorist Networks in Syria

President Biden hailed the Feb. 2022 killing of ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi as a testament to America’s unyielding commitment to combat global terror. But, as Aaron Maté reports for RealClearInvestigations, the president omitted that ISIS’ emir had been operating from an Al Qaeda safe haven in Syria secured with the help of policies advanced by some of his senior-most officials then-serving under President Obama. Jake Sullivan, who now serves as Biden’s national security advisor, provided a concise articulation of this effort in a 2012 email to his then-State Department boss Hillary Clinton: "AQ [Al Qaeda] is on our side in Syria."

Maté reports:

• Buoyed by the relative ease with which Muammar Gaddafi was ousted in Libya in 2011, the Obama administration eyed regime change in Damascus, supporting the transfer of weapons from Libya’s military stockpiles located in Benghazi to Syria.
• U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens appears to have been involved in this effort, which was allegedly run in part out of the Benghazi complex where he and three other Americans were killed in 2012.
• With the Libyan channel shut down, the U.S. worked with various allies, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia, to funnel arms to antigovernment forces in Syria.
• Although the Obama administration’s official stance was that the weapons funneled to Syria were intended for "moderate rebels," then-Vice President Biden admitted "there was no moderate middle" in Syria and that U.S. allies were supplying weapons to "Al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis.”
• In addition to fighting pro-Syrian government forces, these militias engaged in various acts of sectarian mass murder, including the systematic killing of entire families and the forced conversion of non-Muslims.
• While officially opposed to ISIS, the U.S. allowed the terror group to advance in some areas in hopes it would weaken Assad. Former Secretary of State John Kerry later admitted that the U.S. strategy of "watching" ISIS's advance in Syria spurred Russia's 2015 entry into the conflict.
• Pulverizing Russian airstrikes also dealt a fatal blow to the Al Qaeda-dominated insurgency that the Obama team had spent billions of dollars to support.
• Nevertheless, Al Qaeda retained controlled of the Idlib province, where al-Qurayshi found sanctuary until he was killed by U.S. forces.

Featured Investigation:
Money Maze: Retirees Turn Detective
to Find “Lost” Pensions

In an era when employees bounce from job to job and companies frequently change hands, merge or fold altogether, many pensioners are having a hard time figuring how to collect the money from the defined benefit plans that they are owed. John Wasik reports for RealClearInvestigations:

• More than 61,000 defined benefit plans have been terminated by employers over the past 30 years, impacting millions of people.
• While business owners are required to inform participants when a defined benefit plan shuts down or “terminates,” it is often supremely challenging to know where to look or whom to ask, even when pensioners have all their records.
• Jane Smith, a policy analyst with the nonprofit Pension Rights Center said, “Unless you get lucky in an internet search, a pension plan can be extremely hard to locate.”
• Frustrated pensioners like 71-year-old Sam Semilia, who spent four years trying to track down the pension he earned working for the Diamond Crystal salt company during the 1970s, turn to professional experts for help.
• The federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation – which backstops plans – has a spreadsheet list of terminated ones online, but it’s more than 5,000 lines long and unalphabetized.
• The “Securing a Strong Retirement Act” passed by the House last May and now in the Senate would create a registry of retirement plans “that would enable persons to find a current contact for their plans so that they may claim their benefits.”

Biden, Trump and the Beltway

How U.S.-Saudi Ties Reached the Breaking Point Wall Street Journal
McCarthy Post-1/6: I'll Ask Trump to Quit New York Times
Congress Bars Hunter Laptop From Record Daily Caller
Files: Trump Foes' 'Russian Phone' Spy Pitch to CIA Federalist
New Emails Suggest Pentagon Role in Russiagate Federalist
Inside the New Right: Peter Thiel's Placing Big Bets Vanity Fair

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

With Biden, Fentanyl Crossing Mexican Border Quadruples
Breitbart

It’s not just migrants seeking safety or a better life pouring across the southern border. This article reports that fentanyl too is flowing across the U.S.-Mexico border – and seemingly at a significantly increased rate since President Biden took office, if the growing volume of drug seizures is any indication.

In Fiscal Year 2019, about 2,800 pounds of fentanyl was seized at the border. The following year, that figure capped out at 4,800 pounds of fentanyl seized. By Fiscal Year 2021, which represents most of Biden’s first year in office, fentanyl seizures skyrocketed to about 11,200 pounds.

Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that more than 100,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in the prior 12 months. Nearly two-thirds of those deaths were linked to fentanyl. (See RCI’s earlier report on the link between immigration and drug smuggling.)

In a separate article, Fox News reports that Customs and Border Protection apprehended at least 23 people coming across the southern border in 2021 whose names were on the terror watch list. Experts believe the number of such apprehensions – like the amount of drugs seized – is almost certainly a small fraction of the actual flow.

ICE Blew $17M on Unused Hotel Rooms for Migrants
New York Post

Drugs and terror aren’t the only problems facilitated by the surge in illegal immigration – it has also sparked government waste. This article reports that immigration officials wasted $17 million dollars on unused hotels for migrants last year, after hiring a politically connected contractor that failed to meet COVID-19 protocols, a government watchdog found. This article reports that ICE should have sought multiple bids for the work, instead of signing onto the “sole source” deal with Endeavors, a nonprofit which required the agency to pay for a block of more than 1,200 hotel rooms, no matter how many were used.

The alleged mismanagement came around the same time Endeavors entered into another, more lucrative no-bid contract with the US Department of Health and Human Services. The deal raised eyebrows because it was secured after the organization hired Biden administration transition team member Andrew Lorenzen-Strait as its senior director for migrant services and federal affairs.

Desperate Afghans Selling Kidneys to Survive
Wall Street Journal

The Taliban takeover was already a disaster for the people of Afghanistan, even before war broke out in one of its main suppliers of foodstuffs, Ukraine. Now, this article reports, more than half of the country’s 39 million people are facing acute hunger and 95% don’t get enough to eat. Much of the economy has ground to a halt, while the international community has frozen Afghanistan’s foreign assets, imposed sanctions and stopped most aid. In response, some people are resorting to a desperate measure: they are selling their kidneys.

For those willing, an illegal but barely hidden business in the western city of Herat offers a reprieve from the downward spiral. Two hospitals in town offer kidney transplants that attract Afghans from across the country, performing 15-20 surgeries a month. Officials turn a blind eye. Buying and selling organs is illegal, as in most other countries. But scores of Afghans have come here to make the trade. … Finding a seller of a kidney isn’t hard. Notes advertising private organ sales are plastered on walls and lampposts in Herat and other cities. Kidney brokers distribute business cards offering to put buyers in touch with sellers.

How Private Equity Took Over Air Ambulances
New York

After seriously injuring her back while skiing, Kathleen Hoechlin was loaded onto a small plane and flown 300 miles south over the Sierra Nevada mountain range to a hospital where she underwent 12 hours of surgery to replace her vertebra with a metal implant. Less than a day after the operation, Guardian Flight called with her bill – $97,269. Because the flight was out of network, her policy would cover only $17,569, leaving her and her husband on the hook for the remaining $79,700 (which they eventually managed to negotiate down to $20,000). This article asks why air ambulance service – which an estimated 550,000 Americans use each year – is so expensive. The answer: private equity firms, which have bought up providers.

As private equity tightened its stranglehold on the industry, it jacked up the already-high prices. Between 2008 and 2017, the median price charged by providers for helicopter air ambulances nearly tripled, jumping from $12,500 to $35,900 per flight, according to a study by the Health Care Cost Institute. As the Hoechlins and I experienced, air-ambulance providers are often out of network with private insurance companies. That’s not by accident: Private-equity-backed and publicly traded air-ambulance providers in particular tend to remain out of network to charge higher rates than what may be allowed under an in-network contract. Since patients don’t decide when or where they have a medical emergency that requires them to be airlifted to a hospital, they don’t have a choice in which air-ambulance provider they use.

Coronavirus Investigations

How China May Be Manipulating Covid Death Data
New York Times

Amid a new Covid surge, and with dozens of Chinese cities locked down – led by Shanghai – the Middle Kingdom’s exceedingly low official death figures are again coming under scrutiny. This article reports that despite its more than 400,000 Covid infections, just 17 people have died in Shanghai according to officials, statistics they have touted as proof that their strategy of strict lockdowns and mass quarantines works.

But those numbers may not give a complete picture of the outbreak’s toll. China typically classifies Covid-related deaths more narrowly than many other countries, labeling some chronically ill patients who die while infected as victims of those other conditions.

… mainland China generally counts only those who die directly from Covid-related pneumonia, said Zhengming Chen, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Oxford. (It has long done the same for other illnesses.)

…“If you apply international criteria,” Professor Chen said, “the number of deaths would be somewhat high.”

The article also reports that China faces other negative pandemic impacts not reflected in its headline Covid numbers, including deaths caused by patients suffering from other conditions left untreated, and overworked healthcare professionals pushed to their limits. China does not release information on excess deaths, making it even more difficult to assess how well it has weathered the pandemic.

Other Coronavirus Investigations

She Has Long Covid but Doctors Don't Know Why Washington Post
Why McDonald’s Was Lovin' COVID Relief Intercept