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The Obama administration quietly shipped $400 million stacked on wooden pallets in an unmarked plane to Iran in January — just as Tehran was releasing four Americans who had been detained there, according to a report. The huge cash load represented the first payment of a $1.7 € billion debt that Iran, at an international tribunal in The Hague, claimed it was owed over a failed 1979 arms deal signed before the fall of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal Tuesday night.

The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward.

Problematic, in a very big way even if the offer was made.Qatar’s ties to Al Qaeda and ISIS aren’t news. They’ve effectively served as intermediaries in everything from ransom exchanges for hostages to Taliban negotiations. But actually trying to secure terrorist swaps for prisoners on their own behalf would have been a new frontier. Before he was released from a U.S. maximum-security prison last week, a confessed al Qaeda sleeper agent was offered up in a potential prisoner swap that would have freed two Americans held abroad.According to two individuals with direct knowledge of the case, the proposition was...

The District of Columbia (D.C.) City Council has passed a measure that would pay people $9,000 a year to NOT commit crimes. The mafia has a word for this: extortion. Except in this case, the mafia are the potential criminals, and the neighborhood business owners are the D.C. government. Under the measure, which still has to be approved by the mayor, city officials would choose 200 people a year that they consider to be at high risk for committing or becoming a victim of a crime. ...

The head of the Iranian regime's notorious Basij militia claimed Wednesday that Iran had received $1.7 billion from the U.S. in exchange for the release of imprisoned Americans, contradicting the Obama administration's denial that the settling of a decades-old legal claim amounted to a ransom. Tehran's semi-official Fars news agency quoted Basij commander Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi as saying in an address to militia members that the U.S. agreed to pay the money to buy freedom for what the news agency called "its spies held by Iran." ...

The White House denied Tuesday that the U.S. paid Iran $1.7 billion as ransom to gain the release of American prisoners, saying the payment settled a long-running claim by Tehran over military equipment. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the payment last weekend was “a very good deal for taxpayers” because Iran was actually seeking interest payments of up to $8 billion for the decades-old claim. “Our exposure when it came to paying interest could have been much higher,” Mr. Earnest said. A spokeswoman for Speaker Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, criticized the administration for paying “ransom” to gain the...

... Fabian Wosar of Emisoft has created a tool capable of decoding files encrypted by the DecryptorMax ransomware, also known as CryptInfinite. The ransomware gets its name from the fact that the "DecryptorMax" string is found in multiple places inside its source code. Additionally, the CryptInfinite moniker is also used by some researchers because the ransomware adds the CryptInfinite key to the Windows registry, using it to store a list of all encrypted files and their location on disk. According to Bleeping Computer's Lawrence Abrams, the ransomware is spread via Word documents attached to spam email. These files pose as...

McALLEN, Texas — Two illegal aliens from Mexico joined forces with human smugglers to kidnap and torture unsuspecting illegal immigrants being held at a stash house. Instead of charging the group with hostage taking or kidnapping charges, prosecutors charged them with human smuggling. Federal authorities this week raided a house in the border city of Mission, where they arrested a group of illegal immigrants as well as Arthur Flores, a U.S citizen, and two illegal aliens from Mexico described as his henchmen. The two henchmen had been tasked with holding the immigrants under threats of violence, court records obtained by...

The second of three convicts in the infamous Chowchilla kidnapping is a free man and believed to be in the Bay Area. James Schoenfeld, 63, who was among three convicted in the 1976 kidnapping of 26 children and their school bus driver, was released on parole Friday after nearly 40 years in prison. Schoenfeld was freed from the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo after Gov. Jerry Brown allowed the parole to go ahead a week ago, Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman Terry Thornton said. He is expected to join his brother, Richard, who was paroled last year....

ransom Published June 23, 2015Associated Press Facebook237 Twitter105 Email Print Now Playing Report: US hostage policy to allow families to pay ransoms In a softening of longstanding policy, the Obama administration will tell families of Americans held by terror groups that they can communicate with captors and even pay ransom without fear of prosecution -- part of a broad review of U.S. hostage guidelines that will be released Wednesday. President Obama ordered the review last fall after the deaths of Americans held hostage by Islamic State militants. The families of some of those killed complained about their dealings with the...

The families of American hostages held by foreign kidnappers could soon be allowed to pay ransoms or raise money to free their loved ones without fear of federal prosecution. That's according to a recommendation by a White House-ordered advisory group. "There will be absolutely zero chance of any family member of an American held hostage overseas ever facing jail themselves, or even the threat of prosecution, for trying to free their loved ones," said one of three senior officials familiar with the hostage policy team's ongoing review. The advisory group interviewed many who have experienced this first hand, including the...

An advisory group reviewing U.S. hostage policy for the White House is expected to recommend that families of Americans held overseas not face the fear of prosecution if they pay ransoms, according to a report Sunday. "There will be absolutely zero chance of any family member of an American held hostage overseas ever facing jail themselves, or even the threat of prosecution, for trying to free their loved ones," one of three senior officials familiar with the review said in a report on ABC's "This Week." The family of slain American journalist James Foley, who become the first American executed...

Jordan has agreed to demands from ISIS that it release a female jihadist held since 2006, in a move that could free a Jordanian pilot captured in Syria last month and possibly a Japanese journalist who pleaded for his life in a video released by the terror group on Tuesday. Jordanian government spokesman Mohammed al-Momani said in a statement the nation was prepared to free Sajida al-Rishawi, who was convicted of taking part in a deadly hotel bombing, if the Jordanian pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, is released unharmed. His comments were carried by Jordan's official Petra news agency. Although he...

The Islamic State (ISIS) group threatened to kill two Japanese hostages unless Tokyo pays a $200 million ransom within 72 hours, in a video posted on jihadist websites on Tuesday. In the video, a black-clad terrorist brandishing a knife addresses the camera in English standing between two hostages wearing orange jumpsuits. “You now have 72 hours to pressure your government into making a wise decision by paying the $200 million to save the lives of your citizens,” he says. The terrorist says that the ransom demand was to compensate for non-military aid that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged to support...

An online video released Tuesday purported to show the Islamic State group threatening to kill two Japanese hostages unless they receive a $200 million ransom in the next 72 hours. The video, identified as being made by the Islamic State group's al-Furqan media arm and posted on militant websites associated with the extremist group, mirrored other hostage threats made the group. The man speaking also resembled and sounded like a British militant involved in other beheadings by the Islamic State group, which now holds a third of Iraq and Syria under its self-declared caliphate.

Oversight: A House Armed Services Committee member asks for a probe into reports that money was paid in a failed attempt to ransom alleged deserter Bowe Bergdahl. And where's that Bergdahl investigation report, anyway? Back on Oct. 16 we noted that the Pentagon had completed its investigation into Sgt. Bergdahl's abandonment of his Afghan post. But the report by Brig. Gen. Kenneth Dahl would not be released, according to an Army spokesman, until the end of a review process that was likely to be conveniently lengthy, lasting at least until after the midterm elections. It has now been over six...

The Pentagon is under fire for making a ransom payment to an Afghan earlier this year as part of a failed bid to win the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, according to U.S. officials. Sgt. Bergdahl was released in May after nearly five years in captivity as part of a controversial exchange for five terrorists held at the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The ransom payment was first disclosed by Rep. Duncan Hunter in a Nov. 5 letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. Mr. Hunter stated in the letter that Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) made...

The Pentagon is under fire for making a ransom payment to an Afghan earlier this year as part of a failed bid to win the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, according to U.S. officials. Sgt. Bergdahl was released in May after nearly five years in captivity as part of a controversial exchange for five terrorists held at the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The ransom payment was first disclosed by Rep. Duncan Hunter in a Nov. 5 letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. Mr. Hunter stated in the letter that Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) made...

President Obama has ordered a review of how the U.S. handles the taking of hostages by overseas terrorist groups, according to letter by Christine Wormuth, the Pentagon's undersecretary of defense for policy. "As a result of the increased frequency of hostage-taking of Americans overseas, and the recognition of the dynamic threat posed by specific terrorist groups, the President recently directed a comprehensive review of the U.S. government policy on overseas terrorist-related hostage cases, with specific emphasis on examining family engagement, intelligence collection, and diplomatic engagement policies," Wormuth wrote on Nov. 11 in a letter to Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.). Hunter...

Vali Reza Nasr, a senior Obama administration advisor on Iran, has come to Iran. Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani and former parliament speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel may be behind the visit. "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was informed well after Nasr entered the country," Tabnak reported on Wednesday. Nasr was appointed senior advisor to Richard Holbrooke -- the special US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Tabnak and Fararu claim the unannounced trip by the US official to be linked to the recent release of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi.