The U.S. Air Force is downplaying reports a U.S. military plane appeared to come unusually close to Air Force One moments before the jet carrying President Donald Trump landed at Joint Base Andrews on Sunday.

The sighting aboard Air Force One of a C-17 Globemaster occurred at 6:23 p.m. (2223 UTC) as the presidential aircraft was descending into its home base located in the state of Maryland, just outside Washington.

Air Force One took no evasive measures and there was no indication it was in any danger. The presidential flight landed without incident at Andrews six minutes later.

Air Force One officials on Monday confirmed pilots had visual and radar contact with the cargo aircraft as it approached the military base.

“There were no safety concerns at any time,” Air Force Spokesman Col. Pat Ryder told VOA. “In addition, both aircraft were being monitored by air traffic control. There was nothing out of the ordinary regarding Air Force One’s approach and landing at Joint Base Andrews.”

Several journalists, including a VOA correspondent aboard the flight witnessed the incident after being alerted by Associated Press staff photographer Alex Brandon who managed to snap a picture of the other plane after it approached at a slightly lower altitude from the north and veered off to the starboard (right) side of Air Force One.

Those from the media who saw the other plane, including a television audio technician who has been flying on Air Force One since the Carter administration, agreed they had never witnessed such a close encounter aboard the presidential aircraft.

“I would say beyond all doubt that this is a strange occurrence,” said a retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Colonel commenting on the incident, who was quoted by Strategic Sentinel, which specializes in geospatial intelligence.

Air Force One is often given more separation by air traffic controllers beyond the typical 300 meters vertically or 4.8 kilometers horizontally spacing.

Trump was returning from a four-day stay at his Mar-a-Lago resort where he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and ordered a missile strike against an airfield from where the Syrian air force had launched planes that allegedly dropped sarin nerve gas on civilians in rebel-held territory.
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The FBI has been reviewing the handling of thousands of terrorism-related tips and leads from the past three years to make sure they were properly investigated and no obvious red flags were missed, The Associated Press has learned.

The review follows attacks by people who were once on the FBI’s radar but who have been accused in the past 12 months of massacring innocents in an Orlando, Florida, nightclub, injuring people on the streets of New York City, and gunning down travelers in a Florida airport. In each case, the suspects had been determined not to warrant continued law enforcement scrutiny months and sometimes years before the attacks.

The internal audit, which has not been previously reported, began this year and is being conducted in FBI field offices across the country. A senior federal law enforcement official described the review as an effort to “err on the side of caution.”

The audit is essentially a review of records to ensure proper FBI procedures were followed. It’s an acknowledgment of the challenge the FBI has faced, particularly in recent years, in predicting which of the tens of thousands of tips the bureau receives annually might materialize one day into a viable threat.

Investigations that go dormant because of a lack of evidence can resurface instantly when a subject once under scrutiny commits violence or displays fresh signs of radicalization. FBI Director James Comey has likened the difficulty to finding not only a needle in a haystack but determining which piece of hay may become a needle.

Though there’s no indication of significant flaws in how terrorism inquiries are opened and closed, the review is a way for the FBI to “refine and adapt to the threat, and part of that is always making sure you cover your bases,” said the law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter by name and thus requested anonymity.

Rise of Islamic State

The pace of the FBI’s counterterrorism work accelerated with the rise of the Islamic State group, which in 2014 declared the creation of its so-called caliphate in Syria and Iraq and has used sophisticated propaganda to lure disaffected Westerners to its cause. By the summer of 2015, Comey has said, the FBI was “strapped” in keeping tabs on the group’s American sympathizers and identifying those most inclined to commit violence.

Social media outreach by IS has appealed to people not previously known to the FBI, and also enticed some who once had been under scrutiny to get “back in the game,” said Seamus Hughes, deputy director of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism.

“The fact that there was a physical location and a caliphate announced, it helped kind of drive folks back in when they might have drifted away,” Hughes said.

The review covers inquiries the FBI internally classifies as “assessments” — the lowest level, least intrusive and most elementary stage of a terror-related inquiry — and is examining ones from the past three years to make sure all appropriate investigative avenues were followed, according to a former federal law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the process.

Assessments are routinely opened upon a tip — whether from someone concerned about things such as activity in a neighbor’s garage, a co-worker’s comments or expressions of support for IS propaganda — and are cataloged by the FBI. The bureau receives tens of thousands of tips a year, and averages more than 10,000 assessments annually.

FBI guidelines meant to balance national security with civil liberties protections impose restrictions on the steps agents may take during the assessment phase.

Agents, for instance, may analyze information from government databases and open-source internet searches, and can conduct interviews. But they cannot turn to more intrusive techniques, such as requesting a wiretap or internet communications, without higher levels of approval and a more solid basis to suspect a crime or national security threat. The guidelines explicitly discourage open-ended inquiries and say assessments are designed to be “relatively short,” with a supervisor signing off on extension requests.

Many assessments are closed within days or weeks when the FBI concludes there’s no criminal or national security threat, or basis for continued scrutiny.

Three examples

The system is meant to ensure that a person who has not broken the law does not remain under perpetual scrutiny on a mere hunch that a crime could eventually be committed. But on occasion, and within the past year, it’s also meant that people the FBI once looked at but did not find reason to arrest later went on to commit violence.

In the case of Omar Mateen, that scrutiny was extensive, detailed and lengthy.

Mateen, who shot and killed 49 people at an Orlando nightclub in June, was investigated for 10 months in 2013 and interviewed twice after a co-worker reported that Mateen had claimed connections to al-Qaida.

As part of a preliminary investigation, agents recorded Mateen’s conversations and introduced him to confidential sources before closing the matter. That kind of investigation is more intensive than an assessment and permits a broader menu of tactics, but it also requires a stronger basis for suspicion. Mateen was questioned again in 2014 in a separate investigation into a suicide bomber acquaintance. Comey has said he has personally reviewed that inquiry’s handling and has concluded it was done well.

The FBI in 2014 also opened an assessment on Ahmad Khan Rahimi, who last September was charged in bombings in Manhattan and New Jersey, based on concerns expressed by his father. The FBI said it closed the review after checking databases and travel and finding nothing that tied him to terrorism.

Esteban Santiago, the man accused in the January shooting at the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, airport that killed five people, had also been looked at by the FBI. He had walked into the bureau’s office in Anchorage, Alaska, two months earlier and claimed his mind was being controlled by U.S. intelligence officials. In that case, too, the FBI closed its assessment after interviewing family members and checking databases.

Each act of violence has raised questions about whether the FBI missed signs or should have been more aggressive in its investigation. With thousands of assessments pouring in, those decisions aren’t easy.

“If you’re looking at all the cases, if everything’s blinking red, you have to make a judgment call every time,” Hughes said.
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U.S. President Donald Trump went to one of his golf courses on the Florida Atlantic coast Sunday for a second consecutive day, following an eventful week that included his much-scrutinized summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, during which he ordered cruise missiles launched at a Syrian airbase.

White House officials were tight-lipped about the president’s activities Saturday and Sunday, which were known to have included time on the golf course and a long phone call, the second in a span of four days, with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

In the most recent conversation, which lasted 45 minutes, Abe told reporters he and the U.S. president “frankly exchanged opinions about North Korea and Syria following Thursday’s U.S. Navy strike on a Syrian airfield that was believed to be the launch site for last week’s chemical attack on civilians in rebel-held territory that killed dozens, including children.

The two leaders “completely agreed on the importance of solidarity among the United States, Japan and South Korea regarding North Korea’s increasing ballistic missile and nuclear weapons development threats,” Abe said.

The White House, in its statement released Sunday about the previous day’s call, said Trump thanked Abe for his support of the U.S. missile strikes and they “also agreed to further cooperation on a range of regional issues, including the threat posed by North Korea.”

Dispatching navy forces to Korean peninsula

The U.S. Defense Department announced late Saturday the Pacific Command had ordered a U.S. Navy strike group (USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier) to head towards the Korean peninsula.

This is “a prudent measure to maintain readiness and presence in the Western Pacific,” a command spokesman, Navy Commander Dave Benham told VOA.  “The number-one threat in the region continues to be North Korea, due to its reckless, irresponsible and destabilizing program of missile tests and pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability.”  

The diversion of the naval strike force from a scheduled cruise to Australia, following a port call in Singapore, comes after several recent missile test firings into the eastern waters of the Korean peninsula by North Korea and amid preparations for what would be the isolated and impoverished nation’s sixth underground nuclear weapons test.

Trump, according to administration officials, informed President Xi during their meetings last week that if China was not successful in dissuading North Korea from further provocative actions, the United States is prepared to take action on its own.   

According to data compiled by The Washington Post, Trump, who repeatedly criticized his predecessor for golf outings, has been on the fairways once every 5.3 days, compared to Barack Obama’s pace of every 8.8 days.

Despite repeated inquiries from VOA and other news organizations traveling with the president, the White House issued no detailed information on Trump’s activities during his five hours both Saturday and Sunday at the Trump International Golf Club.  But a CNN videographer spotted the commander-in-chief on the links on Saturday.

A source told VOA that Trump played 18 holes Saturday.  On Sunday, Trump was seen leaving his Mar-a-Lago estate clad in a white polo shirt and a red cap with “USA” lettering.

While at the golf club, Trump, on his personal Twitter account, said he was “so sad” to learn of the lethal Palm Sunday bombings of two churches in Egypt, adding he had great confidence President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi “will handle the situation properly.”

The Egyptian president ordered military deployments to guard “vital and important infrastructure” following the attacks, for which the Islamic State group claimed responsibility.
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Washington is looking for further insight into the Trump administration’s thinking on Syria after U.S. airstrikes targeting a Syrian base from which chemical attacks had been launched. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, in a televised interview Sunday, America’s ambassador to the United Nations did not rule out further military action against forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, but other officials say destroying Islamic State is the foremost goal.
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Chuck Berry fans are getting their chance to pay their respects to the rock ’n’ roll visionary, roughly three weeks after his death at age 90 near his hometown of St. Louis.

Fans of the legend behind such classics as Johnny B. Goode, Sweet Little Sixteen and Roll Over Beethoven can file past his casket Sunday at The Pageant, a St. Louis club where he frequently performed. The public viewing will be followed by a private service for family and friends, including those in the music industry.

Charles Edward Anderson Berry, who died March 18, was the first artist in the inaugural 1986 class to go into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and he closed out its concert in 1995 to celebrate that Cleveland building’s opening. The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards said at Berry’s induction ceremony that Berry was the one who started it all.

Berry, whose core repertoire included about three dozen songs, had a profound influence on rock ’n’ roll, from garage bands all the way up to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

Well before the rise of Bob Dylan, Berry wedded social commentary to the beat and rush of popular music.

“He was singing good lyrics, and intelligent lyrics, in the ’50s when people were singing, ‘Oh, baby, I love you so,’” John Lennon once observed.

“Everything I wrote about wasn’t about me, but about the people listening,” Berry once said.
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