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WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence has concluded that the document published recently by the Times of London, which purportedly describes an Iranian plan to do experiments on what the newspaper described as a "neutron initiator" for an atomic weapon, is a fabrication, according to a former Central Intelligence Agency official.
Philip Giraldi, who was a CIA counterterrorism official from 1976 to 1992, told IPS that intelligence sources say that the United States had nothing to do with forging the document, and that Israel is the primary suspect. The sources do not rule out a British role in the fabrication, however.
The Times of London story published Dec. 14 did not identify the source of the document. But it quoted "an Asian intelligence source" - a term some news media have used for Israeli intelligence officials - as confirming that his government believes Iran was working on a neutron initiator as recently as 2007.
The story of the purported Iranian document prompted a new round of expressions of U.S. and European support for tougher sanctions against Iran and reminders of Israel's threats to attack Iranian nuclear program targets if diplomacy fails.
U.S. news media reporting has left the impression that U.S. intelligence analysts have not made up their mind about the document's authenticity, although it has been widely reported that they have now had a full year to assess the issue.
Giraldi's intelligence sources did not reveal all the reasons that led analysts to conclude that the purported Iran document had been fabricated by a foreign intelligence agency. But their suspicions of fraud were prompted in part by the source of the story, according to Giraldi.
"The Rupert Murdoch chain has been used extensively to publish false intelligence from the Israelis and occasionally from the British government," Giraldi said.
The Times is part of a Murdoch publishing empire that includes the Sunday Times, Fox News and the New York Post. All Murdoch-owned news media report on Iran with an aggressively pro-Israeli slant.
The document itself also had a number of red flags suggesting possible or likely fraud.
The subject of the two-page document which the Times published in English translation would be highly classified under any state's security system. Yet there is no confidentiality marking on the document, as can be seen from the photograph of the Farsi-language original published by the Times.
The absence of security markings has been cited by the Iranian ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, as evidence that the "alleged studies" documents, which were supposedly purloined from an alleged Iranian nuclear weapons-related program early in this decade, are forgeries.
The document also lacks any information identifying either the issuing office or the intended recipients. The document refers cryptically to "the Center", "the Institute", "the Committee", and the "neutron group".
The document's extreme vagueness about the institutions does not appear to match the concreteness of the plans, which call for hiring eight individuals for different tasks for very specific numbers of hours for a four-year time frame.
Including security markings and such identifying information in a document increases the likelihood of errors that would give the fraud away.
The absence of any date on the document also conflicts with the specificity of much of the information. The Times reported that unidentified "foreign intelligence agencies" had dated the document to early 2007, but gave no reason for that judgment.
An obvious motive for suggesting the early 2007 date is that it would discredit the U.S. intelligence community's November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran had discontinued unidentified work on nuclear weapons and had not resumed it as of the time of the estimate.
Discrediting the NIE has been a major objective of the Israeli government for the past two years, and the British and French governments have supported the Israeli effort.
The biggest reason for suspecting that the document is a fraud is its obvious effort to suggest past Iranian experiments related to a neutron initiator. After proposing experiments on detecting pulsed neutrons, the document refers to "locations where such experiments used to be conducted".
That reference plays to the widespread assumption, which has been embraced by the International Atomic Energy Agency, that Iran had carried out experiments with Polonium-210 in the late 1980s, indicating an interest in neutron initiators. The IAEA referred in reports from 2004 through 2007 to its belief that the experiment with Polonium-210 had potential relevance to making "a neutron initiator in some designs of nuclear weapons".
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the political arm of the terrorist organization Mujahedeen-e Khalq, claimed in February 2005 that Iran's research with Polonium-210 was continuing and that it was now close to producing a neutron initiator for a nuclear weapon.
Sanger and Broad were so convinced that the Polonium-210 experiments proved Iran's interest in a neutron initiator that they referred in their story on the leaked document to both the IAEA reports on the experiments in the late 1980s and the claim by NCRI of continuing Iranian work on such a nuclear trigger.
What Sanger and Broad failed to report, however, is that the IAEA has acknowledged that it was mistaken in its earlier assessment that the Polonium-210 experiments were related to a neutron initiator.
After seeing the complete documentation on the original project, including complete copies of the reactor logbook for the entire period, the IAEA concluded in its Feb. 22, 2008 report that Iran's explanations that the Polonium-210 project was fundamental research with the eventual aim of possible application to radio isotope batteries was "consistent with the Agency's findings and with other information available to it".
The IAEA report said the issue of Polonium-210 - and thus the earlier suspicion of an Iranian interest in using it as a neutron initiator for a nuclear weapon - was now considered "no longer outstanding".
New York Times reporters David Sanger and William J. Broad reported U.S. intelligence officials as saying the intelligence analysts "have yet to authenticate the document". Sanger and Broad explained the failure to do so, however, as a result of excessive caution left over from the CIA's having failed to brand as a fabrication the document purporting to show an Iraqi effort to buy uranium in Niger.
The Washington Post's Joby Warrick dismissed the possibility that the document might be found to be fraudulent. "There is no way to establish the authenticity or original source of the document...," wrote Warrick.
But the line that the intelligence community had authenticated it evidently reflected the Barack Obama administration's desire to avoid undercutting a story that supports its efforts to get Russian and Chinese support for tougher sanctions against Iran.
This is not the first time that Giraldi has been tipped off by his intelligence sources on forged documents. Giraldi identified the individual or office responsible for creating the two most notorious forged documents in recent U.S. intelligence history.
In 2005, Giraldi identified Michael Ledeen, the extreme right-wing former consultant to the National Security Council and the Pentagon, as an author of the fabricated letter purporting to show Iraqi interest in purchasing uranium from Niger. That letter was used by the George W. Bush administration to bolster its false case that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons program.
Giraldi also identified officials in the "Office of Special Plans" who worked under Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith as having forged a letter purportedly written by Hussein's intelligence director, Tahir Jalail Habbush al-Tikriti, to Hussein himself referring to an Iraqi intelligence operation to arrange for an unidentified shipment from Niger.
Trump and Musk are on an unconstitutional rampage, aiming for virtually every corner of the federal government. These two right-wing billionaires are targeting nurses, scientists, teachers, daycare providers, judges, veterans, air traffic controllers, and nuclear safety inspectors. No one is safe. The food stamps program, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are next. It’s an unprecedented disaster and a five-alarm fire, but there will be a reckoning. The people did not vote for this. The American people do not want this dystopian hellscape that hides behind claims of “efficiency.” Still, in reality, it is all a giveaway to corporate interests and the libertarian dreams of far-right oligarchs like Musk. Common Dreams is playing a vital role by reporting day and night on this orgy of corruption and greed, as well as what everyday people can do to organize and fight back. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. |
WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence has concluded that the document published recently by the Times of London, which purportedly describes an Iranian plan to do experiments on what the newspaper described as a "neutron initiator" for an atomic weapon, is a fabrication, according to a former Central Intelligence Agency official.
Philip Giraldi, who was a CIA counterterrorism official from 1976 to 1992, told IPS that intelligence sources say that the United States had nothing to do with forging the document, and that Israel is the primary suspect. The sources do not rule out a British role in the fabrication, however.
The Times of London story published Dec. 14 did not identify the source of the document. But it quoted "an Asian intelligence source" - a term some news media have used for Israeli intelligence officials - as confirming that his government believes Iran was working on a neutron initiator as recently as 2007.
The story of the purported Iranian document prompted a new round of expressions of U.S. and European support for tougher sanctions against Iran and reminders of Israel's threats to attack Iranian nuclear program targets if diplomacy fails.
U.S. news media reporting has left the impression that U.S. intelligence analysts have not made up their mind about the document's authenticity, although it has been widely reported that they have now had a full year to assess the issue.
Giraldi's intelligence sources did not reveal all the reasons that led analysts to conclude that the purported Iran document had been fabricated by a foreign intelligence agency. But their suspicions of fraud were prompted in part by the source of the story, according to Giraldi.
"The Rupert Murdoch chain has been used extensively to publish false intelligence from the Israelis and occasionally from the British government," Giraldi said.
The Times is part of a Murdoch publishing empire that includes the Sunday Times, Fox News and the New York Post. All Murdoch-owned news media report on Iran with an aggressively pro-Israeli slant.
The document itself also had a number of red flags suggesting possible or likely fraud.
The subject of the two-page document which the Times published in English translation would be highly classified under any state's security system. Yet there is no confidentiality marking on the document, as can be seen from the photograph of the Farsi-language original published by the Times.
The absence of security markings has been cited by the Iranian ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, as evidence that the "alleged studies" documents, which were supposedly purloined from an alleged Iranian nuclear weapons-related program early in this decade, are forgeries.
The document also lacks any information identifying either the issuing office or the intended recipients. The document refers cryptically to "the Center", "the Institute", "the Committee", and the "neutron group".
The document's extreme vagueness about the institutions does not appear to match the concreteness of the plans, which call for hiring eight individuals for different tasks for very specific numbers of hours for a four-year time frame.
Including security markings and such identifying information in a document increases the likelihood of errors that would give the fraud away.
The absence of any date on the document also conflicts with the specificity of much of the information. The Times reported that unidentified "foreign intelligence agencies" had dated the document to early 2007, but gave no reason for that judgment.
An obvious motive for suggesting the early 2007 date is that it would discredit the U.S. intelligence community's November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran had discontinued unidentified work on nuclear weapons and had not resumed it as of the time of the estimate.
Discrediting the NIE has been a major objective of the Israeli government for the past two years, and the British and French governments have supported the Israeli effort.
The biggest reason for suspecting that the document is a fraud is its obvious effort to suggest past Iranian experiments related to a neutron initiator. After proposing experiments on detecting pulsed neutrons, the document refers to "locations where such experiments used to be conducted".
That reference plays to the widespread assumption, which has been embraced by the International Atomic Energy Agency, that Iran had carried out experiments with Polonium-210 in the late 1980s, indicating an interest in neutron initiators. The IAEA referred in reports from 2004 through 2007 to its belief that the experiment with Polonium-210 had potential relevance to making "a neutron initiator in some designs of nuclear weapons".
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the political arm of the terrorist organization Mujahedeen-e Khalq, claimed in February 2005 that Iran's research with Polonium-210 was continuing and that it was now close to producing a neutron initiator for a nuclear weapon.
Sanger and Broad were so convinced that the Polonium-210 experiments proved Iran's interest in a neutron initiator that they referred in their story on the leaked document to both the IAEA reports on the experiments in the late 1980s and the claim by NCRI of continuing Iranian work on such a nuclear trigger.
What Sanger and Broad failed to report, however, is that the IAEA has acknowledged that it was mistaken in its earlier assessment that the Polonium-210 experiments were related to a neutron initiator.
After seeing the complete documentation on the original project, including complete copies of the reactor logbook for the entire period, the IAEA concluded in its Feb. 22, 2008 report that Iran's explanations that the Polonium-210 project was fundamental research with the eventual aim of possible application to radio isotope batteries was "consistent with the Agency's findings and with other information available to it".
The IAEA report said the issue of Polonium-210 - and thus the earlier suspicion of an Iranian interest in using it as a neutron initiator for a nuclear weapon - was now considered "no longer outstanding".
New York Times reporters David Sanger and William J. Broad reported U.S. intelligence officials as saying the intelligence analysts "have yet to authenticate the document". Sanger and Broad explained the failure to do so, however, as a result of excessive caution left over from the CIA's having failed to brand as a fabrication the document purporting to show an Iraqi effort to buy uranium in Niger.
The Washington Post's Joby Warrick dismissed the possibility that the document might be found to be fraudulent. "There is no way to establish the authenticity or original source of the document...," wrote Warrick.
But the line that the intelligence community had authenticated it evidently reflected the Barack Obama administration's desire to avoid undercutting a story that supports its efforts to get Russian and Chinese support for tougher sanctions against Iran.
This is not the first time that Giraldi has been tipped off by his intelligence sources on forged documents. Giraldi identified the individual or office responsible for creating the two most notorious forged documents in recent U.S. intelligence history.
In 2005, Giraldi identified Michael Ledeen, the extreme right-wing former consultant to the National Security Council and the Pentagon, as an author of the fabricated letter purporting to show Iraqi interest in purchasing uranium from Niger. That letter was used by the George W. Bush administration to bolster its false case that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons program.
Giraldi also identified officials in the "Office of Special Plans" who worked under Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith as having forged a letter purportedly written by Hussein's intelligence director, Tahir Jalail Habbush al-Tikriti, to Hussein himself referring to an Iraqi intelligence operation to arrange for an unidentified shipment from Niger.
WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence has concluded that the document published recently by the Times of London, which purportedly describes an Iranian plan to do experiments on what the newspaper described as a "neutron initiator" for an atomic weapon, is a fabrication, according to a former Central Intelligence Agency official.
Philip Giraldi, who was a CIA counterterrorism official from 1976 to 1992, told IPS that intelligence sources say that the United States had nothing to do with forging the document, and that Israel is the primary suspect. The sources do not rule out a British role in the fabrication, however.
The Times of London story published Dec. 14 did not identify the source of the document. But it quoted "an Asian intelligence source" - a term some news media have used for Israeli intelligence officials - as confirming that his government believes Iran was working on a neutron initiator as recently as 2007.
The story of the purported Iranian document prompted a new round of expressions of U.S. and European support for tougher sanctions against Iran and reminders of Israel's threats to attack Iranian nuclear program targets if diplomacy fails.
U.S. news media reporting has left the impression that U.S. intelligence analysts have not made up their mind about the document's authenticity, although it has been widely reported that they have now had a full year to assess the issue.
Giraldi's intelligence sources did not reveal all the reasons that led analysts to conclude that the purported Iran document had been fabricated by a foreign intelligence agency. But their suspicions of fraud were prompted in part by the source of the story, according to Giraldi.
"The Rupert Murdoch chain has been used extensively to publish false intelligence from the Israelis and occasionally from the British government," Giraldi said.
The Times is part of a Murdoch publishing empire that includes the Sunday Times, Fox News and the New York Post. All Murdoch-owned news media report on Iran with an aggressively pro-Israeli slant.
The document itself also had a number of red flags suggesting possible or likely fraud.
The subject of the two-page document which the Times published in English translation would be highly classified under any state's security system. Yet there is no confidentiality marking on the document, as can be seen from the photograph of the Farsi-language original published by the Times.
The absence of security markings has been cited by the Iranian ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, as evidence that the "alleged studies" documents, which were supposedly purloined from an alleged Iranian nuclear weapons-related program early in this decade, are forgeries.
The document also lacks any information identifying either the issuing office or the intended recipients. The document refers cryptically to "the Center", "the Institute", "the Committee", and the "neutron group".
The document's extreme vagueness about the institutions does not appear to match the concreteness of the plans, which call for hiring eight individuals for different tasks for very specific numbers of hours for a four-year time frame.
Including security markings and such identifying information in a document increases the likelihood of errors that would give the fraud away.
The absence of any date on the document also conflicts with the specificity of much of the information. The Times reported that unidentified "foreign intelligence agencies" had dated the document to early 2007, but gave no reason for that judgment.
An obvious motive for suggesting the early 2007 date is that it would discredit the U.S. intelligence community's November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran had discontinued unidentified work on nuclear weapons and had not resumed it as of the time of the estimate.
Discrediting the NIE has been a major objective of the Israeli government for the past two years, and the British and French governments have supported the Israeli effort.
The biggest reason for suspecting that the document is a fraud is its obvious effort to suggest past Iranian experiments related to a neutron initiator. After proposing experiments on detecting pulsed neutrons, the document refers to "locations where such experiments used to be conducted".
That reference plays to the widespread assumption, which has been embraced by the International Atomic Energy Agency, that Iran had carried out experiments with Polonium-210 in the late 1980s, indicating an interest in neutron initiators. The IAEA referred in reports from 2004 through 2007 to its belief that the experiment with Polonium-210 had potential relevance to making "a neutron initiator in some designs of nuclear weapons".
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the political arm of the terrorist organization Mujahedeen-e Khalq, claimed in February 2005 that Iran's research with Polonium-210 was continuing and that it was now close to producing a neutron initiator for a nuclear weapon.
Sanger and Broad were so convinced that the Polonium-210 experiments proved Iran's interest in a neutron initiator that they referred in their story on the leaked document to both the IAEA reports on the experiments in the late 1980s and the claim by NCRI of continuing Iranian work on such a nuclear trigger.
What Sanger and Broad failed to report, however, is that the IAEA has acknowledged that it was mistaken in its earlier assessment that the Polonium-210 experiments were related to a neutron initiator.
After seeing the complete documentation on the original project, including complete copies of the reactor logbook for the entire period, the IAEA concluded in its Feb. 22, 2008 report that Iran's explanations that the Polonium-210 project was fundamental research with the eventual aim of possible application to radio isotope batteries was "consistent with the Agency's findings and with other information available to it".
The IAEA report said the issue of Polonium-210 - and thus the earlier suspicion of an Iranian interest in using it as a neutron initiator for a nuclear weapon - was now considered "no longer outstanding".
New York Times reporters David Sanger and William J. Broad reported U.S. intelligence officials as saying the intelligence analysts "have yet to authenticate the document". Sanger and Broad explained the failure to do so, however, as a result of excessive caution left over from the CIA's having failed to brand as a fabrication the document purporting to show an Iraqi effort to buy uranium in Niger.
The Washington Post's Joby Warrick dismissed the possibility that the document might be found to be fraudulent. "There is no way to establish the authenticity or original source of the document...," wrote Warrick.
But the line that the intelligence community had authenticated it evidently reflected the Barack Obama administration's desire to avoid undercutting a story that supports its efforts to get Russian and Chinese support for tougher sanctions against Iran.
This is not the first time that Giraldi has been tipped off by his intelligence sources on forged documents. Giraldi identified the individual or office responsible for creating the two most notorious forged documents in recent U.S. intelligence history.
In 2005, Giraldi identified Michael Ledeen, the extreme right-wing former consultant to the National Security Council and the Pentagon, as an author of the fabricated letter purporting to show Iraqi interest in purchasing uranium from Niger. That letter was used by the George W. Bush administration to bolster its false case that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons program.
Giraldi also identified officials in the "Office of Special Plans" who worked under Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith as having forged a letter purportedly written by Hussein's intelligence director, Tahir Jalail Habbush al-Tikriti, to Hussein himself referring to an Iraqi intelligence operation to arrange for an unidentified shipment from Niger.
"Trump is clearly comfortable weaponizing Social Security for political purposes, and we fear that this is only the beginning," said one critic.
The top Democrat on the U.S. House Oversight Committee on Wednesday led calls for the resignation of acting Social Security Administration Commissioner Leland Dudek following the revelation of internal emails confirming that the SSA canceled contracts with the state of Maine as political payback after Democratic Gov. Janet Mills publicly defied President Donald Trump in support of transgender student athletes.
The emails—which were obtained by House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Gerry Connolly (D-Va.)—show that Dudek ordered the cancellation of enumeration at birth and electronic death registration contracts with Maine, even though SSAd subordinates warned that such action "would result in improper payments and potential for identity theft."
"These emails confirm that the Trump administration is intentionally creating waste and the opportunity for fraud."
Dudek—who is leading the SSA while the Senate considers Trump's nomination of financial services executive Frank Bisignano—replied to the staffer: "Please cancel the contracts. While our improper payments will go up, and fraudsters may compromise identities, no money will go from the public trust to a petulant child."
He was referring to Mills, who stood up to Trump in February after the president threatened to suspend federal funding for Maine unless the state banned transgender girls and women from participating on female scholastic sports teams.
The termination of the enumeration at birth contract briefly forced Maine parents to register their newborns for a Social Security number at a Social Security office, rather than checking a box on a form at the hospital as is customary, before the SSA reversed its decision.
Connolly sent Dudek a letter demanding that he "resign immediately" and submit to a transcribed interview with House Oversight Committee Democrats. Connolly wrote that Dudek "ordered these contracts terminated" as "direct retaliation" for Mills' defiance, "even though you knew that doing so would increase improper payments and create opportunities for fraudsters."
Government accountability advocates also condemned Dudek's actions.
"These emails confirm that the Trump administration is intentionally creating waste and the opportunity for fraud—in this case, to punish Maine Gov. Janet Mills for not bowing down to Donald Trump," Social Security Works president Nancy Altman told Common Dreams.
"The people actually punished by these actions were exhausted new parents in Maine, forced to drag their newborns to overcrowded Social Security offices in the middle of a measles outbreak," she continued. "Thankfully, the Trump administration had to quickly reverse course after massive public outrage. But Trump is clearly comfortable weaponizing Social Security for political purposes, and we fear that this is only the beginning."
"Once again, we see Team Trump resorting to revenge to set domestic policy."
Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, told Common Dreams that "it does not surprise us at all that this administration would weaponize Social Security against anyone who disagrees with or challenges President Trump."
"It's one of the concerns that we have with Elon Musk and [the Department of Government Efficiency] having access to everyone's personal data without any defensible explanation for why they need it," he continued. "We and the American people have legitimate worries, not only that this information will be vulnerable to hackers, but also that it could intentionally be misused as a weapon against anyone who publicly disagrees with Trump."
"The fact that the acting commissioner himself publicly admitted that he didn't really understand the Maine contract, but canceled it anyway, proves that this administration is making reckless changes that affect real people for no legitimate reason," Richtman added. "Once again, we see Team Trump resorting to revenge to set domestic policy."
The revelation of Dudek's emails comes amid SSA turmoil caused by the termination of thousands of agency personnel in what Trump, Musk, and other Republicans claim is an effort to reduce waste and fraud. Musk—who recently referred to Social Security as the the "biggest Ponzi scheme of all time"—has proposed the elimination of up to 50% of SSA's workforce and has said that up to $700 billion could be cut from programs including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
"As Jewish students, we grew up learning about the rise of fascism, learning about how important it is to stand up when you see injustice in the world," said one protester.
Jewish Columbia University students had chained themselves to a fence on campus for 45 minutes on Wednesday, in protest of the school's cooperation with immigration agents to arrest a leader of last year's pro-Palestinian encampment, when New York City Police officers arrived to break up the nonviolent action.
One student identified as Shea, who was wearing a kippah with a watermelon design and a keffiyeh—symbols of Palestinian solidarity—told independent journalist Meghnad Bose that university trustees are "directly implicated" in Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) targeting of Mahmoud Khalil, a former student who helped lead negotiations demanding Columbia's divestment from Israel last year.
Shea said trustees handed over the names of Khalil and other pro-Palestinian students at Columbia to the government.
"We are here in protest of that to demand that the university tell us which trustees, which members of the university administration, are responsible for this so we can demand immediate consequences for them and hold them accountable for what they've done to our peer," said the undergraduate student.
Shea added that Jewish students were leading the protest because "the attacks on our international students, on students of color, have been so fierce, so dangerous, so disproportionate that we are the only students who can be here right now taking this risk."
Listen in to the student protesters themselves @DropSiteNews pic.twitter.com/R3LIWWQspI
— Meghnad Bose (@MeghnadBose93) April 2, 2025
Plainclothes ICE agents abducted Khalil last month as he was returning home to his apartment in a Columbia-owned building with his pregnant wife. The agents refused to identify themselves and ultimately Khalil was sent to an ICE detention facility in Louisiana. Khalil is an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent and had a green card, which has reportedly been revoked by the Trump administration, while his wife—who is pregnant with their first child—is a U.S. citizen.
A federal court in New Jersey ruled Tuesday that the challenge to ICE's unlawful detention of Khalil should continue in the state. His wife responded that "this is an important step towards securing Mahmoud's freedom, but there is still a lot more to be done. As the countdown to our son's birth begins and I inch closer and closer to my due date, I will continue to strongly advocate for Mahmoud’s freedom and for his safe return home so he can be by my side to welcome our first child."
Khalil was detained days after the Trump administration announced it was canceling $400 million in grants and contracts for Columbia in retaliation for what it claimed was a failure to address antisemitism on campus. The Trump administration has conflated expressions of support for Palestinian rights on college campuses with attacks on Jewish students, as did the Biden administration before it.
Columbia oversaw an aggressive response to the protests last year, allowing NYPD officers to drag students out of a building they occupied and unofficially renamed Hind's Hall after Hind Rajab, a six-year-old girl who was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza.
An analysis of last year's pro-Palestinian campus protests, many of which were led by Jewish students, found that 97% of them were nonviolent.
A Barnard College student identified as Tali said Wednesday that "as Jewish students, we grew up learning about the rise of fascism, learning about how important it is to stand up when you see injustice in the world."
Campus security quickly cordoned off the area where students had chained themselves to the fence. After the NYPD arrived, security officers used bolt cutters to remove the protesters from the fence.
Breaking: Columbia campus security bring giant bolt cutters to forcibly break the student protesters away from the Columbia gates they had chained themselves to.@DropSiteNews pic.twitter.com/pSROblLjjf
— Meghnad Bose (@MeghnadBose93) April 2, 2025
Bose reported that "in [a] sudden escalation, Columbia campus security aggressively [engaged] student protesters," and tried to take away a banner reading, "Free Mahmoud Khalil."
"Love and solidarity to these courageous Jewish students who have chained themselves to the gates of Columbia in protest of the university turning over their friend Mahmoud Khalil to a fascist administration," said Simone Zimmerman, co-founder of the Jewish-led group IfNotNow.
The students, said Zimmerman, "are taking risks today that they know most of their peers cannot."
The Trump administration is "plotting to sell off America's national public lands to their billionaire friends, and Kate MacGregor is the perfect henchwoman."
Watchdog groups are warning that U.S. President Donald Trump's pick for deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, Kate MacGregor—who they call a friend of the fossil fuel industry—will be an enthusiastic accomplice in the Trump administration's efforts to open up public land to oil and gas leasing.
Trump, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and Trump's billionaire adviser Elon Musk "are plotting to sell off America's national public lands to their billionaire friends, and Kate MacGregor is the perfect henchwoman," said Alan Zibel, a research director with the watchdog Public Citizen, in a statement on Wednesday.
MacGregor, an energy company executive who was deputy secretary of the Department of the Interior during the first Trump administration from early 2020 until January 2021 had her confirmation hearing Wednesday before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Oil Change International's U.S. campaign manager Collin Rees blasted MacGregor over her testimony, including support for legislation co-sponsored by Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) that would require the Interior Department to hold two offshore oil and gas lease sales per year for 10 years.
MacGregor's previous time in the Interior Department, showed she "prioritized fossil fuel interests over the good of the American people."
"Her support for a decade of at least two offshore oil and gas lease sales is completely incompatible with avoiding the worst impacts of the climate crisis, as well as the Department of Interior's mandate to protect public lands and waters," Rees said.
In 2017, as an aide to then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, MacGregor helped successfully fast track a permit for an oil firm to begin fracking on a patch of farmland in Oklahoma, according to 2019 reporting from the investigative outlet Reveal.
"While a senior staffer of the House Committee on Natural Resources, she developed strong ties to the energy industry and its lobbyists," according to Reveal. "In recent years, she has also built a public profile as an advocate of offshore oil drilling and a foe of any environmental rules that might limit energy production."
According to a record of her work calendar, which was obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request by the nonprofit publication Pacific Standard, MacGregor met over 100 times with extractive industry groups or representatives between January of 2017 and January of 2018, when she was at the Department of the Interior but not yet the deputy secretary.
Pointing to MacGregor's background, executive director of the watchdog Accountable.US Tony Carrk said that with MacGregor's nomination, Trump "continues to build a dream team of big oil and gas shills to ravage America's public lands, while taxpayers and our environment deal with all the fallout."
Zibel of Public Citizen also noted that "public lands belong to all Americans, not wealthy corporate executives."
Meanwhile, Public Citizen is also sounding the alarm on the expected appointment of Matt Giacona, a lobbyist for the National Ocean Industries Association—which represents oil, gas, and wind companies working offshore—to head the Department of Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). The current person leading BOEM is retiring, according to Politico Pro.
In response to the potential appointment of Giacona to BOEM, which oversees offshore energy production in deep waters, director of Public Citizen's energy program Tyson Slocum on Wednesday said: "Trump Appointing a Big Oil lobbyist to oversee deep water oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico shows that the administration's goal is to empower and enrich powerful corporations at the expense of everyone and everything else."
"This continues the clear trend of Trump turning federal agencies and the public good into profit opportunities for powerful corporate interests," he said.