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An ordered departure for the U.S. embassy in Niger is in the works, our own NAHAL TOOSI and LARA SELIGMAN scoop, even though it’s unclear when — or even if — such a directive will be given.
The Biden administration insists the situation in the capital, Niamey, is relatively stable, and the threat to U.S. personnel at the mission is low. But it’s normal for the Pentagon and State Department to plan for these types of scenarios and, when the moment comes, take a series of steps to whisk Americans to safety.
That moment may come sooner rather than later.
France already has evacuated its citizens and other Europeans following the military-led ouster of the country’s democratically-elected president. Spain, Italy and Germany also are engaged in efforts to extract their people from the West African nation. A leaked intelligence document details concerns that the junta will take foreigners hostage to serve as human shields in case of a military intervention, according to a former U.S. official.
ROBERT STRYK, who runs a firm that extracts Americans in danger overseas, told NatSec Daily he and his team were “contacted by senior members of the United States government to inquire about our ability to move U.S. citizens out of Niger due to escalating concerns of violence.”
He added that he’s “liaised” with the French, British and Italian governments and plans to move U.S. officials to a “nearby safe location.” It’s unclear if serving American diplomats and other staffers can leave Niger via private means without the government’s permission.
Meanwhile, the State Department now has a site for Americans to let the administration know they’re in Niger and in need of assistance. However, the listed help on offer is mainly passport or consular services. It’s likely State took this step to get a general head count of how many U.S. citizens and legal residents are in Niger right now.
MATTHEW MILLER, State’s top spokesperson, said Tuesday that “we do not have indications of threats to U.S. citizens or facilities, but we are continually reevaluating our posture to ensure the safety of our citizens.”
The situation may soon get worse. Reports also have emerged of Gen. SALIFOU MODY, the deputy head of the military junta currently in power, traveling to Mali to seek support from the Russian-backed mercenary Wagner Group.
Read the full story with an assist from Alex.
TAIWAN-T MORE MONEY: The Biden administration is going to request funds for Taiwan arms purchases in its supplemental budget for continued Ukraine support, the Financial Times’ DEMETRI SEVASTOPULO and FELICIA SCHWARTZ report.
“The Office of Management and Budget will include funding for Taiwan in the supplemental request as part of an effort to accelerate the provision of weapons, according to two people familiar with the plan,” they wrote. “If passed by Congress, Taiwan would get arms through a US taxpayer-funded system known as ‘foreign military financing’ for the first time. The White House is expected to submit the request this month.”
The move comes days after the U.S. announced a $345 million weapons package for Taiwan under presidential drawdown authority.
Adding Taiwan weapons funds to the Ukraine supplemental does two things: Shores up U.S. support for the democratic island amid pressure from China and complicates the calculation for Kyiv-skeptical lawmakers who might otherwise vote down the request.
TORTURE ALLEGED IN KHERSON: A new report from Global Rights Compliance and Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General alleges that nearly half of all Ukrainians held in Russian detention centers during the occupation of Kherson were subjected to torture, the latest evidence of Russian atrocities against civilians and prisoners of war amid the invasion of Ukraine.
Reviewing the cases of 320 detainees at more than 35 detention centers in the city, the report found that Russian guards regularly used electrocution and severe beatings in interrogations. Sexual violence in the form of rape, genital mutilation and threats of rape and sexual aggression were used against both male and female prisoners. Members of the Ukrainian military and their families were also targeted by Russian authorities for detention and torture, the report says.
“The torture and sexual violence tactics the Office of the Prosecution is uncovering from the Kherson detention centres suggests that Putin’s plan to extinguish Ukrainian identity includes a range of crimes evocative of genocide,” WAYNE JORDASH, managing partner and co-founder of Global Rights Compliance, said in a press release accompanying the report.
Russia’s actions in Ukraine continue to face scrutiny from international observers. Last week, the U.S. announced it would provide evidence of Russian war crimes to the International Criminal Court, breaking with longstanding policy against collaborating with prosecutors in The Hague.
ERDOĞAN’S GRAIN DEAL PLEA: Turkish President RECEP TAYYIP ERDOĞAN spoke with Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN today, urging Moscow and Kyiv to avoid escalating conflict and resume the grain deal that Russia pulled out of last month.
During the call, Putin reiterated his stance that the Black Sea Grain Initiative’s “further extension was meaningless” until its conditions for the deal are met, according to a Kremlin statement. Meanwhile, Ankara, which brokered the initiative with the United Nations, “will keep up with its intense efforts” to reinstate the deal, Turkish officials said in a statement, per the New York Times’ SAFAK TIMUR, IVAN NECHEPURENKO and MATTHEW MPOKE BIGG.
Since Moscow pulled out of the deal, Russian forces have targeted Ukrainian ports and destroyed massive amounts of grain. The latest attack came overnight along the Danube River, with drones decimating some 44,000 tons of grain that had been earmarked for Africa, China and the Middle East.
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FRONTRUNNER INDICTED THRICE: Former President DONALD TRUMP was indicted again on Tuesday, this time on charges that he conspired to seize a second term after losing the 2020 election. As the 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner, Trump made an easy target for his competition, while some defended him:
MIKE PENCE: “Today’s indictment serves as an important reminder: anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States.”
RON DeSANTIS: “Washington, DC is a ‘swamp’ and it is unfair to have to stand trial before a jury that is reflective of the swamp mentality.”
TIM SCOTT: “What we see today are two different tracks of justice. One for political opponents and another for the son of the current president,” he said, referencing HUNTER BIDEN’s legal woes.
VIVEK RAMASWAMY: “Donald Trump isn’t the cause of what happened on Jan 6. The real cause was systematic & pervasive censorship of citizens in the year leading up to it.”
NIKKI HALEY, who has previously suggested she’d be open to pardoning Trump, has not yet issued a statement. Her campaign didn’t respond to NatSec Daily’s request for comment.
Check out more reactions in Playbook.
STATE AT RISK: The State Department found more than 500 vulnerabilities in its computer networks in 2022 that hackers could exploit, almost 100 of which were high risk, our friends at Morning Cybersecurity (for Pros!) report.
A previously unreported disclosure to Congress, sent to lawmakers in early June and obtained by our own BETSY WOODRUFF SWAN, shows that State’s Vulnerability Disclosure Program received 527 reports between March 2021 and January 2023. Of these, 32 reports were critical, and almost 100 were high risk. The report states that 480 of the vulnerabilities have been dealt with, while 47 are in the process of being resolved.
CHRISTOPHER PAINTER, the former State Department cybersecurity coordinator under both the Obama and Trump administrations, told our own MAGGIE MILLER that he was “not surprised” by the number of vulnerabilities, and stressed that the State Department is “a favorite nation-state target.”
Meanwhile, Maggie also reports (for Pros!) that the Republican leaders of the House Oversight Committee are investigating the recent Chinese-linked hack of email accounts at the Commerce and State departments, according to letters she obtained.
House Oversight Chair JAMES COMER (R-Ky.), Rep. NANCY MACE (R-S.C.), chair of the panel’s cyber subcommittee, and Rep. GLENN GROTHMAN (R-Wis.), chair of the committee’s national security subcommittee, sent letters to Commerce Secretary GINA RAIMONDO and Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN today noting they were “investigating” the intrusion.
BETTER MISSILES: U.S. officials are looking to experiment with different chemical mixtures in an effort to increase the range of missiles and rockets and gain a technological edge in the Pacific against China, according to Reuters’ MIKE STONE.
The Senate version of the defense budget bill has earmarked approximately $13 million for the effort to retrofit the arsenal with more powerful propellants and lighter warheads, which could increase the ranges of some existing weapons by as much as 20 percent. The House version has also provided for a pilot program that would use China Lake Compound #20, a propellant manufactured at industrial scale by China’s military, in three existing weapons.
BIDEN-COACH FEUD GROWS: Biden’s rocky relationship with Sen. TOMMY TUBERVILLE (R-Ala.), whose hold on military promotions has frustrated the White House and Pentagon, is even more fraught than he lets the public know.
“Some close to Biden say his negative feelings about Tuberville are even more pronounced than with others, since the Republican is actively blocking military operations,” New York Magazine’s GABRIEL DEBENEDETTI writes. “(One word I heard on multiple occasions from those in the know describing Biden’s take on the maneuver: ‘outrageous.’)”
Speculation has surrounded the president’s decision to keep Space Command HQ in Colorado instead of moving it to Alabama, with many wondering if Tuberville’s hold played into the move.
“There are a good amount of people in the business community and center-right who essentially feel whether or not the Space Command decision is related to Coach’s holds, it certainly has given the Biden administration political cover,” an Alabama Republican told The Hill’s ALEX GANGITANO and AL WEAVER.
Lara reported yesterday that Biden was the tiebreaker between Gen. JAMES DICKINSON, the Space Command chief who recommended keeping the headquarters at its temporary Colorado location, and Air Force Secretary FRANK KENDALL, who wanted to move the facility to Alabama in line with an 11th-hour Trump administration decision.
SECRETS, SECRETS ARE NO FUN: Taiwanese authorities detained an army officer and several collaborators today on suspicions of providing military secrets to China, the Associated Press’ SIMINA MISTREANU reports.
A lieutenant colonel, identified by the surname HSIEH, is also accused of developing a spy organization composed of current and former military personnel with the purpose of collecting military information to share with Beijing, the Taipei Times newspaper reported.
Taiwan’s defense ministry is “saddened and severely condemns the small number of unscrupulous people who violated the duty of defending the country and committed such crimes as betraying the people of the country,” it said in a statement.
— JONATHAN KATZ has been tapped to become the senior director for the Anti-Corruption, Democracy and Security Project at Brookings Institution. He most recently worked as a national security fellow in Sen. AMY KLOBUCHAR’s (D-Minn.) office.
— RONNIE CHATTERJI is leaving the National Economic Council, where he has served as the White House coordinator implementing major chips legislation passed last year, and returning to his pre-administration post as a business professor at Duke University, our own STEVEN OVERLY reports.
— JULIE MARTIN is joining the Afghanistan War Commission as general counsel. She most recently was a deputy general counsel with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and is a State Department alum.
— MIKE MADSEN has joined strategic intelligence company Strider as vice president of national security solutions. He recently left his post as deputy director of the Defense Innovation Unit at DOD.
— VERA BERGENGRUEN, TIME: Despite Rift With Putin, the Wagner Group’s Global Reach is Growing
— SHINICHI HIRAO, War On The Rocks: Japan’s counterstrike: learn from South Korea
— JAMES STAVRIDIS, Bloomberg: Putin and Wagner are still gunning for Africa
— The Air and Space Forces Association, 8:30 a.m.: Full-spectrum readiness at Air Mobility Command.
— The Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, 11 a.m.: Acquiring and developing the Army’s cyber and electromagnetic warfare professionals.
— The Intelligence and National Security Alliance, 5:30 p.m.: Discussion on AI and emerging tech, intelligence community data strategy, the future of Open Source and collaboration with industry partners.
Thanks to our editor, Emma Anderson, who we would order to depart immediately.
We also thank our producer, Gregory Svirnovskiy, who we always want around.
