Article:
When Barack Obama and John Kerry announced the public terms of the deal with Iran to pause their drive for nuclear weapons for a decade, Americans objected to it as a hostage swap for cash. Politico’s Josh Meyer now reports that this aspect of the deal turned out to be worse than we imagined. Not only did Obama and Kerry agree to release or stop pursuing more Iranians than the number of Americans released in return, they turned out to be much more dangerous than how the Obama administration painted them for public consumption:

 In his Sunday morning address to the American people, Obama portrayed the seven men he freed as “civilians.” The senior official described them as businessmen convicted of or awaiting trial for mere “sanctions-related offenses, violations of the trade embargo.” In reality, some of them were accused by Obama’s own Justice Department of posing threats to national security. Three allegedly were part of an illegal procurement network supplying Iran with U.S.-made microelectronics with applications in surface-to-air and cruise missiles like the kind Tehran test-fired recently, prompting a still-escalating exchange of threats with the Trump administration. Another was serving an eight-year sentence for conspiring to supply Iran with satellite technology and hardware. As part of the deal, U.S. officials even dropped their demand for $10 million that a jury said the aerospace engineer illegally received from Tehran. And in a series of unpublicized court filings, the Justice Department dropped charges and international arrest warrants against 14 other men, all of them fugitives. The administration didn’t disclose their names or what they were accused of doing, noting only in an unattributed, 152-word statement about the swap that the U.S. “also removed any Interpol red notices and dismissed any charges against 14 Iranians for whom it was assessed that extradition requests were unlikely to be successful.”

 One of the prisoners released was central to Iran’s pursuit of Western nuclear technology. Seyed Abolfazl Shahab Jamili operated for seven years in the US until the Department of Justice finally caught up with him, during which time he helped advance Iranian nuclear-centrifuge development dramatically. Thanks to his efforts, Iran’s ten-year pause will likely mean nothing even if Iran sticks to the terms of the deal — or at least those parts of the deal that have been made public. Another fugitive that got his Interpol red card revoked spent several years procuring US military antennas — used in IEDs that killed US military personnel in Iraq.

 Meyer describes DoJ prosecutors as “shocked and angry” over the deal, and even more so over the public accounting of the prisoners swapped as part of it. However, it may not have come as a surprise to them. As far back as 2014, the Obama White House began to pressure federal prosecutors to slow-walk investigations into Iranian procurement efforts and sanctions violations. One supervisor described it to Meyer as an “embargo” on any Iran cases that long preceded the deal. It seems Obama and Kerry were already giving away the store even before coming to the bargaining table.

 Why is this coming out now? Why didn’t people talk about this last year? It seems that the election of Donald Trump and the retention of Republican majorities in Congress might have something to do with that. Trump and Kerry’s successor Rex Tillerson just pledged to do a full review of the Iran deal and the Iranians’ compliance with it, and that would have eventually included a review of the swap. That would reveal the extent to which the Obama administration undermined its own non-proliferation efforts to get this deal, and how it undermined American national security too:

 Former Obama administration officials deny that, saying the men could still be prosecuted if they continue their illegal activity. But with their cases dropped, international arrest warrants dismissed and investigative assets redirected, the men — especially the 14 fugitives — can now continue activities the U.S. considers to be serious threats to its national security, [non-proliferation expert Valerie] Lincy said. “This is a scandal,” she said. “The cases bear all the hallmarks of exactly the kinds of national security threats we’re still going after. It’s stunning and hard to understand why we would do this.”

 It’s not hard to understand at all. Barack Obama and John Kerry desperately needed a win on foreign policy in 2015-6 after seeing its “smart power” approach turn the Middle East and Caucasus into flames. They didn’t care if it was a short-term win that sacrificed long-term national security; they just wanted to claim some sort of win, and they figured they could lay the blame on its implosion on their successors.

 This deal is getting worse all the time … and not because Iran is altering the terms, either. ||||| When President Barack Obama announced the “one-time gesture” of releasing Iranian-born prisoners who “were not charged with terrorism or any violent offenses” last year, his administration presented the move as a modest trade-off for the greater good of the Iran nuclear agreement and Tehran’s pledge to free five Americans.

 “Iran had a significantly higher number of individuals, of course, at the beginning of this negotiation that they would have liked to have seen released,” one senior Obama administration official told reporters in a background briefing arranged by the White House, adding that “we were able to winnow that down to these seven individuals, six of whom are Iranian-Americans.”

 Story Continued Below

 But Obama, the senior official and other administration representatives weren’t telling the whole story on Jan. 17, 2016, in their highly choreographed rollout of the prisoner swap and simultaneous implementation of the six-party nuclear deal, according to a POLITICO investigation.

 In his Sunday morning address to the American people, Obama portrayed the seven men he freed as “civilians.” The senior official described them as businessmen convicted of or awaiting trial for mere “sanctions-related offenses, violations of the trade embargo.”

 In reality, some of them were accused by Obama’s own Justice Department of posing threats to national security. Three allegedly were part of an illegal procurement network supplying Iran with U.S.-made microelectronics with applications in surface-to-air and cruise missiles like the kind Tehran test-fired recently, prompting a still-escalating exchange of threats with the Trump administration. Another was serving an eight-year sentence for conspiring to supply Iran with satellite technology and hardware. As part of the deal, U.S. officials even dropped their demand for $10 million that a jury said the aerospace engineer illegally received from Tehran.

 And in a series of unpublicized court filings, the Justice Department dropped charges and international arrest warrants against 14 other men, all of them fugitives. The administration didn’t disclose their names or what they were accused of doing, noting only in an unattributed, 152-word statement about the swap that the U.S. “also removed any Interpol red notices and dismissed any charges against 14 Iranians for whom it was assessed that extradition requests were unlikely to be successful.”

 Three of the fugitives allegedly sought to lease Boeing aircraft for an Iranian airline that authorities say had supported Hezbollah, the U.S.-designated terrorist organization. A fourth, Behrouz Dolatzadeh, was charged with conspiring to buy thousands of U.S.-made assault rifles and illegally import them into Iran.

 A fifth, Amin Ravan, was charged with smuggling U.S. military antennas to Hong Kong and Singapore for use in Iran. U.S. authorities also believe he was part of a procurement network providing Iran with high-tech components for an especially deadly type of IED used by Shiite militias to kill hundreds of American troops in Iraq.

 The biggest fish, though, was Seyed Abolfazl Shahab Jamili, who had been charged with being part of a conspiracy that from 2005 to 2012 procured thousands of parts with nuclear applications for Iran via China. That included hundreds of U.S.-made sensors for the uranium enrichment centrifuges in Iran whose progress had prompted the nuclear deal talks in the first place.

 When federal prosecutors and agents learned the true extent of the releases, many were shocked and angry. Some had spent years, if not decades, working to penetrate the global proliferation networks that allowed Iranian arms traders both to obtain crucial materials for Tehran’s illicit nuclear and ballistic missile programs and, in some cases, to provide dangerous materials to other countries.

 “They didn’t just dismiss a bunch of innocent business guys,” said one former federal law enforcement supervisor centrally involved in the hunt for Iranian arms traffickers and nuclear smugglers. “And then they didn’t give a full story of it.”

 In its determination to win support for the nuclear deal and prisoner swap from Tehran — and from Congress and the American people — the Obama administration did a lot more than just downplay the threats posed by the men it let off the hook, according to POLITICO’s findings.

 Through action in some cases and inaction in others, the White House derailed its own much-touted National Counterproliferation Initiative at a time when it was making unprecedented headway in thwarting Iran’s proliferation networks. In addition, the POLITICO investigation found that Justice and State Department officials denied or delayed requests from prosecutors and agents to lure some key Iranian fugitives to friendly countries so they could be arrested. Similarly, Justice and State, at times in consultation with the White House, slowed down efforts to extradite some suspects already in custody overseas, according to current and former officials and others involved in the counterproliferation effort.

 And as far back as the fall of 2014, Obama administration officials began slow-walking some significant investigations and prosecutions of Iranian procurement networks operating in the U.S. These previously undisclosed findings are based on interviews with key participants at all levels of government and an extensive review of court records and other documents.

 “Clearly, there was an embargo on any Iranian cases,” according to the former federal supervisor.

 “Of course it pissed people off, but it’s more significant that these guys were freed, and that people were killed because of the actions of one of them,” the supervisor added, in reference to Ravan and the IED network.

 The supervisor noted that in agreeing to lift crippling sanctions against Tehran, the Obama administration had insisted on retaining the right to go after Iran for its efforts to develop ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads and cruise missiles that could penetrate U.S. defenses, and to illegally procure components for its nuclear, military and weapons systems.

 “Then why would you be dismissing the people that you know about who are involved in that?” the former official asked.

 A SHREWD CALCULATION

 The saga of how the Obama administration threw a monkey wrench into its own Justice Department-led counterproliferation effort continues to play out almost entirely out of public view, largely because of the highly secretive nature of the cases and the negotiations that affected them.

 That may be about to change, as the Trump administration and both chambers of Congress have pledged to crack down on Tehran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Last Wednesday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced a government-wide review of U.S. policy toward Iran in the face of “alarming and ongoing provocations that export terror and violence, destabilizing more than one country at a time.”

 On Thursday, President Donald Trump declared that even if Iran is meeting the terms of its deal with the Obama administration and other world powers, “they are not living up to the spirit of it, I can tell you that. And we’re analyzing it very, very carefully, and we’ll have something to say about that in the not-too-distant future.”

 At left, President Barack Obama delivers a statement Jan. 17, 2016, on the relations between the U.S. and Iran. At right, Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov meet July 7, 2015, in Vienna, Austria, during the nuclear talks between the E3+3 and Iran. | AP and Getty Photos

 Such reviews are likely to train a spotlight on an aspect of the nuclear deal and prisoner swap that has infuriated the federal law enforcement community most — the hidden damage it has caused to investigations and prosecutions into a wide array of Iranian smuggling networks with U.S. connections.

 Valerie Lincy, executive director of the nonpartisan Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, said Obama administration officials made a shrewd political calculation in focusing public attention on just those seven men it was freeing in the United States, and portraying them as mere sanctions violators.

 That way, she said, “They just didn’t think it was going to make too many waves. And I think they were right.”

 But Lincy, who closely tracks the U.S. counterproliferation effort against Iran, said that by letting so many men off the hook, and for such a wide range of offenses, Washington has effectively given its blessing to Iran’s continuing defiance of international laws.

 Former Obama administration officials deny that, saying the men could still be prosecuted if they continue their illegal activity. But with their cases dropped, international arrest warrants dismissed and investigative assets redirected, the men — especially the 14 fugitives — can now continue activities the U.S. considers to be serious threats to its national security, Lincy said.

 “This is a scandal,” she said. “The cases bear all the hallmarks of exactly the kinds of national security threats we’re still going after. It’s stunning and hard to understand why we would do this.”

 Even some initial supporters of negotiating with Iran said the disclosures are troubling.

 “There was always a broader conceptual problem with the administration not wanting to upset the balance of the deal or the perceived rapprochement with the Iranian regime,” said former Bush administration deputy national security adviser Juan Zarate, who later turned against the accord. “The deal was sacrosanct, and the Iranians knew it from the start and took full advantage when we had — and continue to maintain — enormous leverage.”

 Most, if not all, of the Justice Department lawyers and prosecutors involved in the Counterproliferation Initiative were kept in the dark about how their cases were being used as bargaining chips, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former officials.

 So were the federal agents from the FBI and departments of Homeland Security and Commerce who for years had been operating internationally, often undercover, on the front lines of the hunt for Iranian arms and weapons smugglers.

 It wasn’t just that prosecutors and agents with years of detailed knowledge about the cases were left out of the consultations about the significance of the 21 men let go in the swap. The lack of input also meant that negotiators were making decisions without fully understanding how the releases would impact the broader and interconnected matrix of U.S. investigations.

 At the time, those investigations were providing U.S. officials with a roadmap of how, exactly, Tehran was clandestinely building its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and maintaining its military with the unwitting assistance of so many U.S. weapons parts and technology companies. The cases were also providing key operational details of how the Iranian procurement networks operate, and who in Tehran was calling the shots.

 “So when they downplayed it, it really infuriated people,” said Kenneth MacDonald, a former senior Homeland Security official who helped establish the multi-agency coordination center at the heart of the National Counterproliferation Initiative.

 “They’d spent months or years on these cases and the decisions were made with no review of what the implications were,” said MacDonald, who retired in 2013 but keeps in contact with agents as co-principal investigator at the DHS-affiliated Institute for Security Policy at Northeastern University. “There was absolutely no consultation.”

 A SYSTEM IN LIMBO

 Key Players The Obama administration’s decision to grant clemency to seven men in the U.S. and drop criminal charges and arrest warrants against 14 others overseas undermined strategic enforcement efforts against a broad array of Iranian procurement networks operating in the U.S. that have provided Tehran with a steady stream of critically important parts and technologies for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and to maintain and expand its military and weapons systems. Here are some of the key players let go in the prisoner swap. For more details on the key players, click here. The Nuclear Network Seyed Abolfazl Shahab Jamili, a Tehran-based import-export businessman, was charged under seal in Boston in 2013 with conspiring with Chinese associate Sihai Cheng (above) and two Iranian companies to procure thousands of parts with nuclear applications for Iran in a conspiracy dating back to 2005. Beginning in February 2009, the two allegedly conspired with others to illegally obtain hundreds of specially manufactured pressure transducers — believed critical to running Tehran’s clandestine nuclear program — from an Andover, Massachusetts, company that was not suspected of wrongdoing. Although Jamili was the suspected mastermind, Cheng pleaded guilty a month before the swap and is serving a nine-year prison sentence. The Missile Parts Pipeline Bahram Mechanic (above) was charged in Houston in April 2015, along with alleged U.S.-based associates Khosrow Afghahi and Tooraj Faridi and Matin Sadeghi of Turkey, with supplying Iran with U.S.-origin microelectronics and other commodities “frequently used in a wide range of military systems, including surface-air and cruise missiles.” The men, and four U.S. and Iranian companies, allegedly sent $24 million worth of commodities to Iran between 2010 and 2015 alone, in a conspiracy one Justice Department official described as “a clear threat to U.S. national security.” Mechanic has led a broader Houston-based Iranian procurement network since at least 1985, authorities say. The Improvised Explosives Network Amin Ravan, known by U.S. officials as a longtime globe-trotting procurement agent for Tehran, was charged in Washington, D.C., in 2011 along with his Tehran firm and others with smuggling U.S.-made military antennae to Hong Kong and Singapore for use in Iran. Authorities also say he is an unindicted co-conspirator in a sprawling procurement network that sent to Tehran thousands of U.S.-made radio frequency modules, some of which ended up in a particularly deadly form of IED responsible for killing American troops in Iraq. Ravan was arrested in Malaysia in 2012, but released before U.S. authorities could have him extradited. The Military and Weapons Pipeline Arash Ghahreman (above), a naturalized U.S. citizen from Staten Island, N.Y., was convicted in April 2015 and is serving 78 months for his role in a scheme to illegally procure marine navigation and military electronic equipment for Iran. Also charged in the San Diego case was Iranian national Koorush Taherkhani and his Dubai firm, described as a front established to obtain American goods and technologies for Iran. Ghahreman promised undercover agents posing as suppliers that his network needed “trusted and reliable” partners, prosecutors said. A top Justice Department official said the network had “the potential to harm U.S. national security objectives.” The Military Logistics Network Hamid Arabnejad (above), Gholamreza Mahmoudi and Ali Moattar, Iranian citizens and Mahan Air executives, were indicted in 2014 in connection with a conspiracy to illegally obtain six Boeing airplanes for the private Iranian airline. U.S. authorities also sanctioned Mahan Air and the men for a variety of alleged crimes, including using the airline to provide financial and logistical support to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and its paramilitary Quds Force, which the U.S. designated as a supporter of terrorism in 2007. Arabnejad was individually designated for allegedly overseeing Mahan Air’s sanctions evasion efforts and provision of support and services to Quds Force.

 In a series of interviews, senior officials from the Obama White House and Justice and State Departments said the prisoner swap was a bargain for the U.S., given the release of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, former Marine Amir Hekmati and three others. Iran also promised cooperation on the case of former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who had disappeared in Iran nearly a decade earlier and was believed to be either imprisoned or dead.

 Those senior officials acknowledged that all but a handful of people were kept in the dark, but said top representatives of the Justice Department and FBI helped vet the 21 Iranian proliferators and that then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch herself participated in blocking some other individuals demanded by Tehran from inclusion in potential prisoner trades.

 “The condition was that they not be engaged in anything remotely attached to violence or proliferation activities,” said one senior Obama administration official familiar with the swap negotiations. “And none of them were in any stage where they were providing assistance to the [Tehran] government.”

 That may be true for the seven men granted clemency in the United States, but it certainly wasn’t the case for the 14 fugitives.

 “These were people under active investigation, who we wanted very badly because they were operating at such a high level that they could help us begin to find out what was happening inside the black box of how Iran’s procurement networks really operate,” said Aaron Arnold, a former intelligence analyst at CPC2, the FBI’s special Counterproliferation Center unit dedicated to thwarting Iranian nuclear and weapons smuggling. “Without that kind of strategic insight, it leaves our analysts, but more importantly, our policy-makers just guessing at what Iran is up to and how to stop it.”

 Fifteen months later, the fallout from the nuclear deal and prisoner swap — and questions about the events leading up to them — continue to reverberate through the Justice Department and the specialized units at the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and Commerce Department created to neutralize the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear and military ambitions.

 The National Counterproliferation Initiative, created with much fanfare a decade ago, has suffered greatly, many participants said, even as they acknowledged that metrics are hard to come by. Much of the work is done in secret, and in long-range efforts that can’t be publicly disclosed, much less measured in annual arrest or conviction statistics.

 But key enforcement efforts are in limbo as the result of stalled or stymied investigations and prosecutions, and the trail of some high-value targets has gone cold, numerous participants said.

 At least six times in the run-up to the nuclear deal, federal investigators scrambled to get Justice and State Department approval to lure top Iranian targets into traveling internationally in order to arrest them, according to one top Obama administration Justice Department official and other participants. But the requests weren’t approved and the targets vanished, depriving the U.S. of some of its best opportunities to gain insight into the workings of Tehran’s nuclear, missile and military programs, the sources said.

 “We would say, ‘We have this opportunity and if we don’t do it now, we’ll never have the opportunity ever again,” the recently departed Justice Department official recalls. But, he added, “There were periods of time where State Department cooperation was necessary but not forthcoming.”

 Obama Secretary of State John Kerry declined to comment through a former senior State Department official, who said certain requests might have been delayed temporarily because they came at particularly sensitive times in the negotiations, but only with the concurrence of the White House and Justice Department.

 But even now, many experienced agents and prosecutors say they are reluctant to pursue counterproliferation cases for fear that they won’t go anywhere. They say they have also received no helpful guidance on what they can — and cannot — investigate going forward given the complicated parameters of the Iran deal and lifting of nuclear sanctions. Some said they are biding their time to see how hard-liners in the new administration, including Trump himself, deal with Iran.

 The Iran deal: The full picture Many of the 21 men were considered national security threats by the Justice Department before the Obama administration dropped the charges against them. Here are the details.

 But others have grown so frustrated that they have moved on from the counterproliferation effort, taking with them decades of investigative experience and relationships cultivated with other government agencies and cooperating U.S. companies, a number of current and former officials said.

 And critical momentum has been lost, many say, as the 10-year anniversary of the initiative in October approaches.

 “This has erased literally years — many years — of hard work, and important cases that can be used to build toward other cases and even bigger players in Iran’s nuclear and conventional weapons programs,” said former Justice Department counterproliferation prosecutor David Locke Hall, adding that the swap demolished the deterrent effect that the arrests and convictions may have had. “Even though these men’s crimes posed a direct threat to U.S. national security, the [Obama] administration has essentially told them their efforts have produced nothing more than political capital that can be traded away when politically expedient.”

 One senior Obama administration official who served at the White House and DHS disagreed, saying much of the intelligence about Iranian networks remains usable even though the 21 cases were vacated, and that counterproliferation agents are a resilient bunch who will continue to do their jobs.

 When asked whether the counterproliferation effort has struggled, one current Justice Department spokesman said no and quipped, “We are still in the export violation prosecuting business.”

 That may be the case, said David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, a physicist and former weapons inspector whose decades of scientific research into Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program brings him into regular close contact with federal authorities.

 But like others involved in ongoing U.S. counterproliferation efforts, Albright said he witnessed many instances since late 2014 in which important investigations and prosecutions were hindered. Albright, who serves as an expert witness in Justice Department Iran trafficking prosecutions, added that federal agents have told him of numerous cases of “lure memos” and other requests never approved by the State Department.

 “You can’t keep turning these down and expecting them to want to keep doing this,” said Albright, who added that efforts to lure suspects to countries where they can be arrested are essential in getting beyond the lower rungs of middlemen for Iran. He said he could not disclose specific details, but said, “The amount of rejections has risen to the level where people were worried that it would kill the counterproliferation effort.”

 “They had wanted all of these things prosecuted, they were on a roll, they were freaking out the Iranians and then they were told, boom, stop,” Albright said of the Obama administration’s counterproliferation efforts. “And it’s hard to get them back again. We are shooting ourselves in the foot, destroying the infrastructure that we created to enforce the laws against the Iranians.”

 The repercussions from the prisoner swap are especially strong in Boston, where authorities had worked for years to build the case against Jamili, the suspected Iranian nuclear procurement agent, and his China-based associate Sihai Cheng.

 The two were secretly indicted in 2013 along with two Iranian companies, and Cheng pleaded guilty in mid-December 2015 to four criminal counts. He acknowledged conspiring with Jamili to knowingly provide more than 1,000 high-tech components known as pressure transducers to Iran, which authorities say advanced its nuclear weapons capabilities.

 Less than a month later, though, as the prisoner swap unfolded, Boston prosecutors got orders from Washington to file court papers vacating the charges against Jamili and dropping the Interpol arrest warrant for him.

 It wasn’t until later that the case agents and prosecutors learned that the Iranian negotiators had specifically demanded that Jamili be included in the swap, said Arnold, the former analyst at the FBI’s Counterproliferation Center Iran unit, where he headed a financial intelligence team tracking the money flows of the Iranian networks.

 A GLOBAL CAT AND MOUSE GAME

 By the time of the nuclear deal and prisoner swap, the U.S. government had spent 35 years in pursuit of Iran’s ever more sophisticated web of smugglers, traffickers, transport operatives and procurement agents.

 In 1979, President Jimmy Carter declared that Iran constituted an unusual and extraordinary threat to U.S. security after Islamic revolutionaries overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took hostage 52 Americans. Tehran began calling the United States “the Great Satan” and vowed its destruction, in part by using proxy forces like Hezbollah.

 A raft of economic sanctions against Iran and Iranian entities were put in place, followed by other restrictions on U.S. parts and technology that Tehran needed for military or other restricted applications, including its squadrons of F-class fighter jets that Washington sold it during friendlier times. Its ambitious ballistic missile program became a grave concern over the years, especially when it became apparent that Tehran was using U.S. commodities to engineer inter-continental versions that could reach the United States, and to top them with nuclear, conventional or even chemical and biological weapons.

 And as Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program ramped up, so did the U.S. effort to stop it.

 Overseas, U.S. intelligence operatives shadowed Iranian procurement agents, cultivated informants and used cyberweapons to sabotage Iran’s clandestine program. The U.S. military tried to interdict illicit shipments headed for Tehran. The Treasury Department issued endless rounds of targeted sanctions, but each time it restricted access to global markets for suspect individuals and companies, Tehran would simply create new ones. And successive administrations tried the diplomatic route to slow or stop Iranian proliferation, including Tehran’s efforts to share weapons and research with other enemies of the United States, without success.

 In response, federal law enforcement agents and prosecutors were deployed to shut down the Iranian procurement networks and dam the rivers of U.S. parts and technology illicitly flowing to Iran in violation of export control laws.

 That proved virtually impossible, given the hundreds of trading, shipping and transport companies Iran employed, and the complex payment schemes and often unwitting procurement agents it used to get the products via other countries with lax export controls.

 Meanwhile, since at least 1982, the Government Accountability Office began issuing stinging reports about how the lack of coordination and information-sharing among U.S. agencies severely hampered efforts to bring criminal cases against traffickers.

 After the 9/11 attacks, those turf battles intensified. The cases often took years to investigate, and federal agents from two or even three agencies would sometimes discover they were conducting international undercover operations against the same target, a top former Homeland Security official recalls.

 Securing convictions from American juries was also a huge challenge given the complex nature of the cases, especially when the procurement networks were buying so-called dual-use components that also could be used for less nefarious purposes.

 Two post-9/11 cases exposed gaping holes in the global counterproliferation safety net. In the United States, Israeli-born trafficker Asher Karni was arrested for illegally shipping suspected U.S. nuclear components to Pakistan for its atomic bomb arsenal. And in Pakistan, metallurgist Abdul Qadeer Khan was caught selling his country's nuclear capability to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

 At left, an Iranian security employee walks in a part of the uranium conversion facility just outside the city of Isfahan, Iran, in 2005. At right, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visits the Natanz uranium enrichment facilities on April 8, 2008. Ahmadinejad announced on Iranian state television during the visit that Iran had begun the installation of some 6,000 new centrifuges, adding to to the 3,000 centrifuges already at the facility. | Getty

 Both cases ratcheted up Washington’s fears that the vast underground of WMD trafficking rings could sell their wares to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

 In 2007, the Bush administration responded by establishing the National Counterproliferation Initiative, charging the Justice Department with coordinating and expanding U.S. efforts to dismantle the procurement networks.

 Task forces were established around the country, with special training for prosecutors and agents in how to collectively build cases that would not only put front-line traffickers in prison, but also map the illicit networks and target their leadership.

 From the outset, Iran cases were front and center, especially in cities like San Diego, Houston and New York with large military, industrial or technology sectors. Boston, in particular, seemed a favorite of the Iranian networks.

 Soon, the multi-agency teams were homing in on key players in Iran’s nuclear and missile programs and another network procuring the IED components that Tehran’s fearsome Revolutionary Guard used to assist Iraqi insurgents killing American troops in Iraq.

 An early high-value target was Amin Ravan, who by 2008 was working with a Singapore firm on behalf of the Aerospace Industries Organization, described by a secret State Department cable that year as “the umbrella organization and key procurement center for all Iranian industries responsible for developing and manufacturing missiles.”

 Another was Behrouz Dolatzadeh, the suspected assault weapons buyer for Tehran. Authorities say he had been active as far back as 1995 in illegal arms smuggling and other illegal activities in connection with a sprawling business empire linked to Iran’s hard-line leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

 By 2011, the Justice-led task forces had developed so many promising leads that the FBI, Commerce and Homeland Security Department had created special units to better coordinate efforts. Together, they also improved liaisons with overseas law enforcement agencies instrumental in interdicting shipments headed for Iran.

 And working with U.S. intelligence agencies and the State Department, the task forces successfully lured several key Iranian operatives out of Tehran and China for capture elsewhere, including two who would end up on Obama’s prisoner swap list.

 Dolatzadeh was indicted under seal in Arizona in February 2012, lured to the Czech Republic to inspect weapons en route to Iran, and arrested. And Ravan, already linked to the IED network, was secretly indicted in Washington in November 2012 and captured soon after in Malaysia.

 And after a three-year undercover investigation, U.S. authorities lured a major Iranian proliferator named Parviz Khaki to the Philippines in May 2012 and arrested him on charges of conspiring to smuggle nuclear-related U.S. equipment to Iran.

 “By dismantling this complex conspiracy … we have disrupted a significant threat to national security,” John Morton, then-director of DHS Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said at the time.

 All three investigations provided U.S. officials with unprecedented insight into Iran’s secret procurement efforts, current and former task force members said. But Dolatzadeh and Ravan were released by courts overseas, and Khaki died in custody, before the U.S. could extradite them.

 The counterproliferation teams also enlisted the help of American companies, providing them with Iran’s massive shopping list of needed items and hotlines to call when they got a nibble.

 “It took a long time to mature, but by 2013 to 2014, it became very evident that we were getting a lot of great leads,” recalls Randall Coleman, who as assistant FBI director oversaw the bureau’s fledgling Counterproliferation Center and special coordinators in all 56 field offices.

 “We were very aggressive, and as a result of that, our caseload went up about 500 percent,” Coleman said. “It really exploded. We were rocking and rolling.”

 One of the most promising cases was in Boston, where federal agents were deep into their investigation of the illicit flow of parts to Iran from a Massachusetts firm, MKS Instruments, and its Shanghai subsidiary.

 With help from MKS, which was not suspected of wrongdoing, agents initially focused on Cheng and gathered evidence that he had been indirectly supplying Iran with components with nuclear applications for years. The trail led to Eyvaz Technic Manufacturing, an Iranian company designated by European authorities as an entity involved in developing and procuring parts for Iran's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.

 “Time is important, not only for you, for me, for your end user, but also for your nation,” Cheng wrote in a 2010 instant message to a suspected Iranian accomplice. “I personally believe the war will break out in 2 years and that will be the start of World War Three.”

 But the agents’ curiosity was also piqued by another message from back in 2007, in which the Iranian accomplice, Seyed Jamili, asked Cheng for thousands of pressure transducers, for “a very big project and secret one.”

 The project, authorities determined, was Iran’s clandestine uranium nuclear enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow, where the transducers helped run thousands of gas centrifuge cascades to reach weapons-grade capability. There was even a photo of then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad touring Natanz, with the centrifuges — and MKS transducers clearly visible — in the background.

 International U.S. arrest warrants were secretly issued for the two men, and authorities nabbed Cheng when he traveled to London to watch a soccer match in February 2014. After he was extradited and brought to Boston that December, authorities began to realize that Jamili was a far more important cog in Iran’s proliferation network than they had suspected.

 It was Jamili who had recruited Cheng with the promise of big and easy money, they determined, and who had been using his Iranian import-export firm as cover for personally recruiting other procurement agents on trips to China and possibly other countries.

 Around that same time, negotiations over a comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran were heating up, and so were the top-secret prisoner swap talks on the sidelines of them.

 AN OPERATIONAL SLOWDOWN

 By the winter of 2014, federal agents and prosecutors began to detect waning support at the higher rungs of the Obama administration for their counterproliferation efforts against Iran, according to numerous officials involved. Also, they said, Justice Department management — and an interagency Iran working group — suddenly were scrutinizing Iran cases more closely, asking a lot more questions and holding up requests and approvals that in the past had been routine.

 No specific guidance or order was given, some said, but the message was clear.

 “They didn’t want to have cases just popping up in the workup to the agreement or shortly after the agreement. The administration would not look good if there were [cases documenting] these acquisition attempts. And the Iranians kept doing it,” MacDonald, the former senior Homeland Security official, said of Tehran’s illegal procurement efforts.

 “They were never told no, just to wait,” MacDonald said of the agents. “It was a common theme among the people working these cases. The official response was that nothing had changed, that if you brought the case forward, it would be worked. But unofficially, that was just not the case.”

 Some of the cases involved significant investigations into nuclear and missile proliferation that required State Department approval, including visas to lure suspects to the U.S. for arrest, said MacDonald, who had also served on the White House Task Force on Export Control Reform. “I’ve been told that the highest levels of the State Department weren’t processing those, and the cases couldn’t move forward.”

 A former senior State Department official said that in most cases, State Department and White House could only provide nonbinding guidance on how ongoing law enforcement operations might affect the sensitive negotiations. Ultimately, he said, the Justice Department was responsible for pushing back and protecting the integrity of its investigations and prosecutions.

 And while it’s possible that federal law enforcement officials missed opportunities as a result of State Department delays, “I am not aware of a single case where they lost out on some key arrest or information, or some proliferation activity was allowed to continue,” the former senior State Department official said, adding that some lures and extraditions were approved “until the very end of our tenure.”

 Clockwise from upper left: A U.S. plane sits on the tarmac of Geneva’s airport Jan. 17, 2016, awaiting the arrival of some of the Americans freed by Iran in a prisoner swap with the United States. Those held by Iran included former Marine Amir Hekmati, Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, Idaho pastor Saeed Abedini, private investigator and retired FBI and DEA agent Robert Levinson, Massachusetts student Matthew Trevithick and Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari (not pictured). | AP and Getty Photos

 Richard Nephew, a former top Iran sanctions official at the State Department and National Security Council, said any delays were “much more a case of managing the diplomatic initiative than letting the bad guys get away with stuff. If we found out in the NSC that something involved active law enforcement activity, then we were advised to stay the hell away from it.”

 A top Obama Justice Department official rejected the notion that the State Department didn’t undermine important cases. He said prosecutors and investigators sometimes acceded to requests for delays they believed to be reasonable. But they became infuriated at times, he said, especially when opportunities to lure and arrest key Iranian proliferators were lost due to delay or outright rejection by State.

 “The impediment was not the leadership of DOJ but the other agencies that DOJ has to work with to bring these cases successfully,” the Obama Justice official said. “They can kibosh it, they can pocket veto it, they can tell us no, they can punt it down a couple of steps.”

 Justice Department officials demanded “high-level conversations” with the State Department and White House, but “not a whole lot” changed, the Obama Justice official said. “Did it fix the issue? I don’t think it did. I remember people up and down at DOJ being frustrated with the inability to move things.”

 Fact Check

 Statements by the Obama administration officials about the prisoner swap: “In a reciprocal humanitarian gesture, six Iranian-Americans and one Iranian serving sentences or awaiting trial in the United States are being granted clemency. These individuals were not charged with terrorism or any violent offenses. They’re civilians, and their release is a one-time gesture to Iran given the unique opportunity offered by this moment and the larger circumstances at play.” — President Barack Obama, Jan. 17, 2016 “We made a reciprocal humanitarian gesture by releasing seven individuals, six of whom were U.S. nationals, who had either been tried and convicted of nonviolent crimes — essentially sanctions violations or violations of the trade embargo the United States has in place against Iran.” — Press Secretary Josh Earnest, White House press briefing, Jan. 19, 2016 “We ... did not have to release any Iranians involved in terrorism or convicted of violent crimes. Iran had a significantly higher number of individuals, of course, at the beginning of this negotiation that they would have liked to have seen released. But we were able to winnow that down to these seven individuals, six of whom are Iranian-Americans.” — Senior Obama administration official, Jan. 17, 2016, background briefing for reporters arranged by the White House “These are people with sanctions violations. So we feel very comfortable that the United States of America held onto its principles, got its people home, kept faith with them. … There was going to be a lifting of sanctions there and it made sense for us to link sanctions-related offenses, which were about to expire anyway and be released, to the release of our people who had years ahead of them in jail.”

 — Secretary of State John Kerry on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends,” Jan. 18, 2016 Fact check

 The Obama administration actually granted clemency to seven Iranian-born men convicted or awaiting trial in the United States, including some that Justice Department officials said posed threats to national security, and dropped U.S. charges and international arrest warrants against 14 others. All fugitives, the 14 included some of the most wanted Iranian agents suspected of procuring parts and technology for Tehran’s nuclear, ballistics missile and weapons programs.

 A senior former federal law enforcement official involved in counterproliferation efforts agreed, saying the FBI was especially impacted. “Did some of these other agencies’ actions … undermine what we were trying to accomplish in terms of the Iran network in the U.S.? Yes. But you are treading into waters where people don’t like what you are doing because it affects other things they are trying to do, diplomatically and politically.”

 Ultimately, the dysfunction created by the slowdown spread far beyond the enforcement agencies and damaged relationships with partners in private industry and foreign governments, former DHS official MacDonald and others said.

 By early 2015, the Obama administration’s oft-publicized desire for securing an Iran deal “was politicizing all of the ongoing investigations,” Arnold said. He visited his former CPC Iran Unit colleagues that August while briefing Treasury and FBI officials on the Iran deal, reached a month earlier, as a counterproliferation expert at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

 “There was a fear that as negotiations went on, the White House wouldn’t want to get caught in a flap” created by a high-profile arrest or criminal case, Arnold said.

 For agents and prosecutors, the headlines such an incident would create would antagonize not only their superiors but also a White House intent on proving to Tehran that it was committed to reaching an accord. On the flip side, it could also provide ammunition to the proposed deal’s many critics in Congress and elsewhere, who were claiming that Iran was aggressively continuing its clandestine procurement efforts even as it pledged good behavior.

 But agents and prosecutors had an even more powerful reason to throttle back on Iran proliferation cases, according to Arnold and others.

 Despite repeated requests, many were not given guidance or reassurances that the nuclear deal being negotiated in secret wouldn’t render unprosecutable new and ongoing cases, especially high-priority ones against nuclear traffickers, Arnold said. So agents had no confidence that their work would bear fruit.

 “It was absolutely insane,” Arnold said. “People didn’t know what to do.”

 “From the summer of 2015 on, there was a serious slowdown” as many counterproliferation officials shut down prosecutions and investigations voluntarily, Arnold said. “During that time, CPC wasn’t as aggressive as it should have been.”

 The senior Obama administration official acknowledged that the twin sets of negotiations influenced the overall U.S. counterproliferation effort against Iran, especially the timing of individual investigations, prosecutions and international efforts to bring suspects to justice.

 Such competing equities are unavoidable when high-level matters of diplomacy and geopolitics are under consideration, the official said. At those times, the White House must be guided by broader policy objectives, in this case de-escalating conflict with Iran, curbing its nuclear weapons program and freeing at least four American prisoners.

 “The White House wouldn’t be getting involved in saying yea or nay to particular arrests or cases or the like” that are the purview of the Justice Department, the administration official said. “It was not uncommon, though, that before we were going to undertake a law enforcement action that we thought would have foreign policy implications, we would alert folks at the White House so that there could be appropriate notice given to a foreign government. That happens.”

 The former official also acknowledged the complaints by agents and prosecutors about cases being derailed but said they were unavoidable, and for the greater good.

 “It’s entirely possible that during the pendency of the negotiations, that folks who were doing their jobs, doing the investigations and bringing cases, having no understanding of and insight into the other process, were frustrated because they don’t feel like their stuff is moving forward,” said the Obama official. “Or they were not getting answers, because there are these entirely appropriate discussions happening on the policy side.

 “That doesn’t strike me as being, a, unusual or, b, wrong,” the official added. “But I completely understand why it’s frustrating.”

 The Justice Department refused repeated requests to make available for interviews anyone related to the counterproliferation effort since the Iran deal, or to provide information about its role in the negotiations.

 But in a statement to POLITICO, the Justice Department said the negotiations “did not affect the Department’s determination to investigate and charge worthy cases” and that it continued to “investigate, charge, and prosecute viable criminal cases … throughout negotiations of the JCPOA,” the formal term for the Iran deal. The Justice Department said it filed federal charges against 90 individuals and entities for violations of export controls and sanctions implicating Iran between 2014 and 2016, many under seal. It did not provide information about cases under seal for those or other years, making it impossible to place those numbers in the proper context.

 Also, some of those cases involve the 21 Iranians let go in the swap. And because numerous individuals and entities often are charged in a single case, the statistics suggest a slowdown in counterproliferation efforts, according to current and former investigators and a POLITICO review of DOJ cases.

 The timing of arrests, prosecutions and other investigative activities “may be informed by a variety of factors, including, especially in the national security context, collateral foreign policy consequences and impacts on American lives,” the Justice Department said. “Once an individual is charged, the Department works to ensure that the defendant, whether located in the U.S. or abroad, is held accountable. In seeking to apprehend defendants located abroad, however, we need assistance from other departments, agencies, and countries, and sometimes we cannot accomplish an arrest without it.”

 Senior Obama administration officials also said the negotiations over the nuclear deal and, even more so the prisoner swap, required such extraordinary secrecy that only a tiny number of people were involved.

 But as the nation’s top law enforcement official — and as a participant in the negotiations —Lynch failed in her responsibility as attorney general to protect the integrity of the Justice Department’s investigations and prosecutions from any political interference, some current and former officials believe.

 Lynch, through an aide, declined to comment.

 Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, raised the issue of Justice Department independence in 2015, when as a senator he asked incoming Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates about whether she knew that she had “the responsibility to say no to the president if he asks for something that's improper?”

 Earlier this year, this issue arose again when Trump fired then-Acting Attorney General Yates for doing just that and refusing to defend his executive order on immigration. By doing so, Trump had “placed the independence of the Justice Department at stake,” said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.). “The attorney general is the people’s attorney, not the president’s attorney.”

 Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis also emphasized the importance of such a firewall recently when addressing Trump’s claim that Obama had ordered wiretaps of him or his campaign. "A cardinal rule of the Obama administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice," Lewis said.

 Many front-line current and former authorities disagree, and say the Iran deal and prisoner swap is a glaring example of that.

 “A lot of people were furious; they had cases in the pipeline for months, in some cases years, and then, all of a sudden, they were gone — all because they were trying to sell the nuke deal,” a former Department of Commerce counterproliferation agent said. “Things fell apart after that. There are some really good cases out there and they are not going forward. They just let them die on the vine.”

 A MASTERMIND EMERGES

 Top Obama administration officials insist that the nuclear deal does not impede any of the broader U.S. efforts to go after Iran’s vast nuclear, missile and conventional weapons procurement efforts. Even so, many participants said the way forward is still sufficiently unclear that they can’t, or won’t, proceed.

 Over the past year, the system has kicked back into gear, with some new cases filed and movement in existing ones. Some, however, involve activity dating to 2008, including the prosecution of some of Ravan’s suspected associates in the Iraq IED case. Privately, some prosecutors and investigators are hopeful that the Trump administration’s more hard-line approach to Tehran will mean more support for their efforts.

 Like many others, though, Albright said he is concerned that the counterproliferation effort has suffered significant and lasting damage, even if much of it involves classified efforts that may never become public.

 “How much damage was done to the law enforcement side of this from us pulling back from these prosecutions?” he asked. “We have to pick up the pieces.”

 Albright said that is especially the case in Boston, where he testified for the government against Cheng.

 A few weeks after the prisoner swap, a judge sentenced Cheng to nine years in federal prison, even more than the prosecutors asked for, for his role in the conspiracy.

 Cheng’s lawyer, Stephen Weymouth, accused federal prosecutors of unfair treatment, saying they threw the book at his client, a relatively small fish, while dropping all charges against the “mastermind,” Jamili.

 Since the swap, federal authorities have learned more about Jamili, including intelligence tying him directly to Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, a top Iranian nuclear official who supervised a key “commercial affairs” initiative at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, according to officials familiar with the case. Authorities believe Jamili was on the phone with Ahmadi-Roshan on Jan. 11, 2012, when unknown assailants on a motorbike killed him by attaching a bomb to his car. Tehran accused Israel’s Mossad in the attack.

 But the federal agents’ efforts to pursue such leads, even in the U.S., have been complicated by the general uncertainty hanging over the broader counterproliferation effort, according to Arnold, the former FBI analyst.

 At left, young supporters of Lebanon's militant Shiite Hezbollah movement carry portraits March 18, 2017, of the founder of Iran's Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as they march in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Hatta during the funeral of a Hezbollah fighter. At right, an S-200 surface-to-air missile is driven past Iranian military commanders Sept. 22, 2015, during the annual military parade in Tehran marking the anniversary of the start of Iran's 1980-1988 war with Iraq. | Getty

 “Part of the frustration is that there is strong evidence Iran is still conducting illegal procurement operations and the FBI can’t really go forward with these cases,” said Arnold, who has been closely following the Jamili-Cheng case as part of a Harvard research project into nuclear proliferation networks.

 That frustration is especially acute when it comes to Jamili and the 13 other fugitives. When dropping the charges, the Justice Department said it was doing so in large part because it was unlikely that the U.S. would ever be successful in capturing or extraditing them anyway.

 Some federal officials familiar with the cases scoffed at that, noting that they have lured many Iranians to places where they could be arrested, and that others were tripped up by sealed Interpol warrants while traveling. In Jamili’s case, said one, “he has traveled so we know there’s a chance we could get him.”

 Despite decades of intensive investigations, Arnold said, U.S. officials still have a “major air gap” when it comes to understanding the intermediaries like Jamili involved in the Iranian networks — who are between foot soldiers like Cheng and government officials running the nuclear and weapons programs.

 “All of a sudden, we’re no longer playing whack-a-mole, and we suddenly have this key player who is directly involved and has insider knowledge as to how this whole process works,” he said. “So to see him being traded away is frustrating.” |||||Summary:

– Politico is out with a damning report about the Obama administration's dealings with Iran last year in the lead-up to a nuclear arms accord. The story by Josh Meyer alleges that former President Obama gave up more than he acknowledged publicly, particularly in regard to a prisoner swap ahead of the deal. The Obama White House released seven prisoners it characterized as non-dangerous businessmen, neglecting to mention that three of them had been deemed a threat to national security by the president's own Justice Department. (They'd been accused of illegally shipping US macroelectronics to Tehran for use in surface-to-air and cruise missiles.) What's more, Politico found that the US also quietly dropped criminal cases against 14 fugitives, including Seyed Abolfazl Shahab Jamili, who allegedly procured thousands of parts with nuclear applications for Iran by way of China. "They didn’t just dismiss a bunch of innocent business guys," one former federal law enforcement supervisor tells Politico. "And then they didn’t give a full story of it." In fact, Meyer writes, the White House actions "derailed" its own successful investigations into Iran's proliferation network, angering Justice Department prosecutors. A senior Obama official acknowledges that anger but says such compromises are necessary and pale in comparison to the greater good of a nuclear deal. Here's one sample of early reaction, from the conservative Hot Air site: "Barack Obama and John Kerry desperately needed a win on foreign policy in 2015-6 after seeing its 'smart power' approach turn the Middle East and Caucasus into flames," writes Ed Morrissey. "They didn’t care if it was a short-term win that sacrificed long-term national security." Read the full Politico piece here.


WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Portrait Gallery is unveiling portraits of former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama.

 Barack Obama's portrait was painted by Kehinde Wiley — an artist best known for his vibrant, large-scale paintings of African-Americans. For Michelle Obama's portrait, the gallery commissioned Baltimore-based artist Amy Sherald, first-prize winner of the Portrait Gallery's 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition.

 The paintings were being unveiled Monday at the gallery, which is part of the Smithsonian group of museums. The gallery has a complete collection of presidential portraits. ||||| Washington (CNN) Barack and Michelle Obama re-emerged on the public stage Monday in Washington, only this time for an event that has nothing to do with politics.

 The former first couple's official portraits were unveiled at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, a rite of passage for most former presidents, all of whom have their portraits hanging in the museum.

 These are perhaps the most anticipated presidential portrait unveilings to date, due in large part to the artists the Obamas selected. The former president chose Kehinde Wiley, a Yale University-trained painter famous for his depiction of African-Americans posed in the style of Old Master paintings, regal, formal and filled with pops of color.

 Barack Obama's portrait

 "How about that? That's pretty sharp," the 44th president said as he took the podium. The portrait depicts him sitting against a backdrop of green foliage. Obama said he tried to negotiate with Wiley about his look for the painting.

 "I tried to negotiate less gray hair, and Kehinde's artistic integrity would not allow him to do what I asked. I tried to negotiate smaller ears, struck out on that as well," joked Obama from the podium during his remarks.

 Obama also asked Wiley, who often depicts his subjects as regal and god-like, if the could ease up on those flourishes.

 "I had to explain that I've got enough political problems without you making me look like Napoleon. We've got to bring it down just a touch. And that's what he did," the former president said.

 Barack Obama's choice of Wiley makes him the first African-American artist to execute an official presidential portrait for the National Portrait Gallery.

 "What I was always struck by when I saw his portraits was the degree to which they challenged our ideas of power and privilege," Obama said.

 The juxtaposition of contemporary urban culture with centuries-old postures and wallpaper-like backgrounds make for bold paintings, of which Obama's is Wiley's most famous to date.

 Wiley apparently took thousands of photographs of Obama in order to create the portrait, a process different than the typical "sittings" required for most portraits.

 Wiley's background choice was also indicative of Obama's background. Wiley said he was "charting his path on Earth."

 The different flowers woven into the greenery include the chyrsanthemum, the official flower of Chicago, and jasmine for Hawaii, there's even some African blue lilies, symbolic of Obama's heritage.

 Obama also pointed out his personal connection to Wiley -- both men shared similar familial experiences that shaped their futures.

 "What we did find was that we had certain things in common. Both of us had American mothers who raised us with extraordinary love and support. Both of us had African fathers who had been absent from our lives, and in some ways our journeys involved searching for them, and what that meant. I ended up writing about that journey and channeling it into the work that I did because I cannot paint," he said.

 Michelle Obama's portrait

 Michelle Obama said she "was a little overwhelmed, to say the least," after her portrait was unveiled. "Let's just start by saying, 'Wow,' again," she said. Pointing to her mother, seated in the audience, she added: "Hi Mom. Whatcha' think? Pretty nice, isn't it?"

 For her portrait, Michelle Obama chose Baltimore-based artist Amy Sherald. Sherald is another African-American artist known for her unique style, and her portraits also tend to underscore themes of social justice. She often paints black skin tones in gray as a way to take away the assigned "color" of her subjects. Sherald's work is less about realism in composition and more about shape and color; like Wiley, the choice of Sherald ushers in a new era of presidential portrait.

 "Amy, I want to thank you for so spectacularly capturing the grace and beauty and intelligence and charm and hotness of the woman I love," the former President said of his wife.

 Sherald's painting of Michelle Obama shows her in a flowing, patterned dress with a halter neckline; her expression is thoughtful, her chin resting on her hand.

 The former first lady said she was thinking about the impact Sherald's work will have on "girls and girls of color."

 "They will see an image of someone who looks like them hanging on the walls of this great American institution ... And I know the kind of impact that will have on their lives because I was one of those girls," she said.

 The Obamas looked at the portfolios of more than two dozen artists before deciding on Wiley and Sherald. Obama's portrait will hang in the hall of presidents and the former first lady's will be placed in another gallery. Both will be open to public viewing on Tuesday. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– The National Portrait Gallery has unveiled portraits of former President Obama and Michelle Obama. Barack Obama's portrait was painted by Kehinde Wiley, an artist best known for his vibrant, large-scale paintings of African-Americans. For Michelle Obama's portrait, the gallery commissioned Baltimore-based artist Amy Sherald, first-prize winner of the gallery's 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, the AP notes. The paintings were unveiled Monday at the gallery, which is part of the Smithsonian group of museums. The gallery has a complete collection of presidential portraits. "How about that? That's pretty sharp," the former president said as he caught a first glimpse of the Yale-trained Wiley's portrait, per CNN. Obama also joked he tried to "negotiate" with Wiley to give him smaller ears and not too much gray hair. As for Michelle Obama, she said she was "a little overwhelmed" at seeing Sherald's likeness of her and thought about the impact it would have on "girls and girls of color." "They will see an image of someone who looks like them hanging on the walls of this great American institution," she said. "And I know the kind of impact that will have on their lives because I was one of those girls." No. 44 was even more effusive. "Amy, I want to thank you for so spectacularly capturing the grace and beauty and intelligence and charm and hotness of the woman I love," he said.


Here is a news article: New York (CNN) Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she hopes to stay on the Supreme Court until the age of 90.

 "I'm now 85," Ginsburg said on Sunday. "My senior colleague, Justice John Paul Stevens, he stepped down when he was 90, so think I have about at least five more years."

 She has already hired law clerks for at least two more terms.

 Ginsburg spoke in New York following a production of "The Originalist," a play about the late Justice Antonin Scalia, at the 59E59 Theater.

 "If I had my choice of dissenters when I was writing for the court, it would be Justice Scalia," Ginsburg said, saying that the back and forth would help her form her arguments. "Sometimes it was like a ping-pong game."

 Read More ||||| The supreme court justice, a hero to liberals as Trump’s second nominee threatens a right turn, spoke in New York on Sunday

 'Flaming feminist' Ruth Bader Ginsburg wants five more years – at least

 Supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called herself a “flaming feminist” on Sunday, and said she plans to spend “at least another five years” on the bench.

 Her comments followed a performance in New York of The Originalist, a play about her former colleague and friend Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016. Scalia’s seat on the nine-member panel is now filled by Neil Gorsuch, another conservative who was nominated by Donald Trump.

 Ginsburg, 85, was speaking a little more than a month after the announcement of the retirement of another conservative justice, Anthony Kennedy. Trump has nominated Brett Kavanaugh to replace him, aiming to push the court right for decades.

 Sign up to receive the top US stories every morning

 “My dear spouse used to say the true symbol of the US is not a bald eagle,” Ginsburg said on Sunday. “It is the pendulum.”

 She was responding to a question about how Americans have questioned the country’s institutions this summer.

 “And when it goes very far in one direction,” she continued, “you can count on it coming back”.

 With Congress mired in partisanship and dominated by money, the justices of the supreme court have gained a kind of celebrity. Ginsburg especially has gained notoriety for vehement dissenting opinions in which she criticizes bigotry or unfairness as she sees it.

 She is the subject of a new documentary, RBG, and has even had her daily fitness routine scrutinized. Twice weekly, according to The RBG Workout, she conditions with planks, push-ups, chest presses and and leg curls.

 When Ginsburg entered the 59E59 Theater, New Yorkers outside applauded. Even her accessories betrayed her celebrity. She carried a black canvas tote printed with a message: “I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg makes her mark”. That is the title of a picture book published after the success of “Notorious RBG”, a biography.

 Ginsburg is a seasoned theatergoer and opera lover, interests she shared with Scalia, a Catholic arch-conservative. When Ginsburg sat down in the theater, a woman behind her remarked: “Ginsburg is sitting two rows in front of us. See her little head?” She was escorted by at least three secret service agents.

 After the play, Ginsburg said: “One change in my life is I am now recognized.” When people approach her, she said, to pile on praise – “Justice Ginsburg, you’re my idol!” – she often responds: “Yes, so many people have told me I look just like her.”

 The audience was polite throughout the play, which explores a fictionalized relationship between Scalia and a liberal clerk. During Ginsburg’s talk, it was rapt. People clapped, laughed or, with an occasional outburst, affirmed her stories. “Yes!” shouted one audience member, when Ginsburg described roadblocks she had faced as a Jewish woman.

 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Edward Gero plays Antonin Scalia in The Originalist. Photograph: Joan Marcus

 The Originalist, by John Strand, was first produced in 2015 but it seemed apt in 2018. An early line sees Scalia say Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision which guaranteed the right to abortion, is “on its deathbed”. That elicited groans. Kavanaugh’s nomination is seen as a direct threat to Roe.

 Giuliani: 180 tapes seized from Cohen but Trump only speaks on one Read more

 In the discussion that followed the play, most questions focused on Ginburg’s relationship with Scalia, her “sparring partner”. Others asked what she thought was the most important case of the last 20 years: it is Obergefell v Hodges, the 2015 ruling that legalized same-sex marriage.

 The audience’s favorite question may have been about Dean Dixon, a conductor who introduced Ginsburg to opera in 1944, when she was 11. Dixon, who was African American, said he was never called “maestro” until he went to Europe, a history chronicled in the book “Negro at Home, Maestro Abroad”.

 Ginsburg said she looked at Dixon’s story as one example of America’s 20th-century fight with discrimination, from a time when when segregated troops fought “odious racism” in Europe during the second world war. For the court, that fight culminated in Brown v Board of Education, the 1954 ruling that stopped segregation in schools.

 “Having been a woman and being a Jew, I know what it’s like to be the object of unfair discrimination,” she said.

 America’s demons, in Ginsburg’s estimation, reared their heads again in 2013. She dissented a decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act, one of the most enduring achievements of the civil rights era. It turned Ginsburg into a liberal icon.

 “The genius of the constitution is it has become more and more inclusive,” she said on Sunday. “Now, ‘we the people’, embraces all the people.”

 She added: “Courts never lead a social change. They only catch up to a change.” |||||
A summary of this is?

– If there's a third vacancy on the Supreme Court during President Trump's first term, it won't be the result of Ruth Bader Ginsburg stepping down. The 85-year-old justice said Sunday that her senior colleague, John Paul Stevens, stepped down when he was 90, so she thinks she has at least five more years, CNN reports. Ginsburg, speaking after a New York City production of The Originalist, a play about Antonin Scalia, said the dissenting opinions of her conservative colleague helped her form her own arguments. "Sometimes it was like a ping-pong game," she said. Ginsburg said there was no chance of term limits being introduced for Supreme Court justices because that would require amending the Constitution. "Article 3 says ... we hold our offices during good behavior," she said. "And most judges are very well behaved." Ginsburg, who was appointed to the court by Bill Clinton in 1993, described herself as a "flaming feminist" and said the most important case of the last 20 years was the ruling that legalized gay marriage in 2015, the Guardian reports. Asked what keeps her hopeful, Ginsburg spoke of her late husband. "My dear spouse would say that the true symbol of the United States is not the bald eagle—it is the pendulum," she said. "And when it goes very far in one direction you can count on its swinging back."


News article:

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney leads President Obama by 3 points nationally, according to the closely watched Gallup daily tracking poll.

 Romney takes 50 percent to Obama's 47 in the poll of likely voters, released Thursday. That’s unchanged from Wednesday’s daily tracking poll.

 ADVERTISEMENT

 Obama, meanwhile, retained his 1-point advantage over Romney among registered voters in the survey, 48-47.

 The survey is a rolling seven-day average through Oct. 24, so it completely encapsulates polling data since the second presidential debate last Tuesday night, Oct. 16, in Hempstead, N.Y., but includes only two days of reaction to Monday night’s foreign-policy debate in Boca Raton, Fla.

 Gallup has received a lot of attention, as Romney’s lead among likely voters had been outsized in comparison to other polls. For most of the last week, Romney led Obama by between 5 and 7 points in the poll.

 According to the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, Romney leads Obama by less than 1 percentage point, 47.7 to 47.1

 An Associated Press-GfK poll released Thursday shows Romney edging Obama, 47-45.

 But battleground polls show many states remain a toss-up.

 In Ohio, a key state for both campaigns, a Time poll released Wednesday showed Obama up 5, with a 49-44 advantage, while a SurveyUSA poll showed the president topping Romney by 3.

 A poll from conservative outlet Rasmussen put the two candidates tied in the Buckeye State, with 48 percent support apiece among likely voters.

 The Gallup daily tracking poll has a margin of error of 2 percentage points. ||||| Our Services

 We empower you to use data for real transformation. Through analytics and advice, we provide leaders with a road map for understanding and unlocking the full potential of individuals, teams and organizations. ||||| The term “momentum” is used very often in political coverage — but reporters and analysts seldom pause to consider what it means.

 Let me tell you what I think it ought to mean: that a body in motion tends to stay in motion. That is, it ought to imply that a candidate is gaining ground in the race — and, furthermore, that he is likely to continue to gain ground.

 As a thesis or prediction about how polls behave, this notion is a bit dubious, especially in general elections. In races for the United States Senate, for instance, my research suggests that a candidate who gains ground in the polls in one month (say, from August to September) is no more likely to do so during the next one (from September to October). If anything, the candidate who gains ground in the polls in one month may be more likely to lose ground the next time around.

 (Where might there be clearer evidence for momentum, as I’ve defined it? In primaries, especially when there are multiple candidates in the race and voters are behaving tactically in choosing among them. But there is little evidence of it in general elections.)

 The way the term “momentum” is applied in practice by the news media, however, it usually refers only to the first part of the clause — meaning simply that a candidate has been gaining ground in the polls, whether or not he might continue to do so. (I’ve used this phrasing plenty of times myself, so I have no real basis to complain about it.)

 But there are other times when the notion of momentum is behind the curve — as it probably now is if applied to Mitt Romney’s polling.

 Mr. Romney clearly gained ground in the polls in the week or two after the Denver debate, putting himself in a much stronger overall position in the race. However, it seems that he is no longer doing so.

 Take Wednesday’s national tracking polls, for instance. (There are now eight of them published each day.) Mr. Romney gained ground in just one of the polls, an online poll conducted for Reuters by the polling organization Ipsos. He lost ground in five others, with President Obama improving his standing instead in those surveys. On average, Mr. Obama gained about one point between the eight polls.

 Photo

 This is the closest that we’ve come in a week or so to one candidate clearly having “won” the day in the tracking polls — and it was Mr. Obama.

 The trend could also be spurious. If the race is steady, it’s not that hard for one candidate to gain ground in five of six polls (excluding the two that showed no movement on Wednesday) just based on chance alone.

 What isn’t very likely, however, is for one candidate to lose ground in five of six polls if the race is still moving toward him. In other words, we can debate whether Mr. Obama has a pinch of momentum or whether the race is instead flat, but it’s improbable that Mr. Romney would have a day like this if he still had momentum.

 The FiveThirtyEight model looks at a broader array of polls — including state polls — in order to gauge the overall trend in the race.

 Our “now-cast” also finds a slightly favorable trend for Mr. Obama over the course of the past 10 days or so. Mr. Romney’s position peaked in the “now-cast” on Friday, Oct. 12, at which point it estimated a virtual tie in the popular vote (Mr. Obama was the projected “winner” by 0.3 percentage points). As of Wednesday, however, Mr. Obama was 1.4 percentage points ahead in the “now-cast,” meaning that he may have regained about 1 percentage point of the 4 points or so that he lost after Denver. Mr. Obama’s chances of winning the Electoral College were up in the FiveThirtyEight forecast to 71 percent on Wednesday from 68.1 percent on Tuesday.

 It’s not yet clear how much of this, if any, has to do with the final presidential debate in Florida this Monday, which instant polls regarded Mr. Obama as having won. Instead, it’s been more of a slow and unsteady trajectory for him, with Mr. Obama often taking two steps forward but then one step back. It’s also not out of the question that the apparent trend just represents statistical noise.

 At the same time, there is more reason to take a potential change in the polls seriously if it is precipitated by a news event like the debate. The tracking polls that were released on Wednesday contained only one full day of interviews that postdated the Florida debate. If the debate moved the needle toward Mr. Obama, it should become more apparent in the coming days.

 The battleground state polls that came in on Wednesday were generally very close to our model’s current projections. For instance, there were three Ohio polls published on Wednesday; one showed a tied race there, while the other two showed Mr. Obama ahead by margins of two and five points.That’s pretty much what you’d expect to see out of a trio of Ohio polls if Mr. Obama’s lead there were about two points, which is where our model now has it.

 Some of the polls, especially the Time magazine poll which had Mr. Obama five points ahead in Ohio, seemed to set off a lot of discussion on Twitter, as though people were surprised that Mr. Obama still held the lead there.

 But these polls are really nothing new. Since the Denver debate, Mr. Obama has held the lead in 16 Ohio polls against 6 for Mr. Romney. In Nevada, Mr. Obama has had the lead in 11 polls, to Mr. Romney’s 1. Mr. Obama has led in all polls of Wisconsin since the Denver debate, and he has had five poll leads in Iowa to one for Mr. Romney.

 Part of the confusion (and part of the reason behind the perception that Mr. Romney is still gaining ground in the race) may be because of the headlines that accompany polls.

 We’re still getting some polls trickling in where the most recent comparison is to a poll conducted before the Denver debate. We should expect Mr. Romney to gain ground relative to a poll conducted before Denver. (Mr. Romney may have lost a point or so off his bounce, but he has clearly not lost all of it). But it isn’t news when he does; Mr. Romney’s Denver gains had long ago become apparent, and priced into the various polling averages and forecast models.

 The question, rather, is whether Mr. Romney is gaining ground relative to the post-Denver polls — or if, as Wednesday’s polls seemed to imply, the race instead may have ticked back slightly toward Mr. Obama. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Mitt Romney's lead over President Obama stands at 3 points in today's Gallup tracking poll, and among registered voters Obama actually leads 48-47. The poll is noteworthy, the Hill explains, because Gallup has lately been much higher on Romney than all the other polls; he was ahead by 3 yesterday, too, but for most of last week, he was up between 5 and 7 points. The results back up a trend Nate Silver has been seeing: It appears Romney's rise has stalled. Yesterday he lost ground in five out of six daily polls. "This is the closest we've come in a week or so to one candidate clearly having 'won' the day … and it was Mr. Obama," Silver writes. "It's improbable that Mr. Romney would have a day like this if he still had momentum." Romney still has a slight edge in RealClearPolitics' polling average, but Silver's prediction model still has Obama as a 71% favorite to win.


Article:
People with these conditions should speak with their doctors about how to safely interact with cats and dogs.

 The Capnocytophaga germs that are common in dogs and cats can be spread to people through a bite or after close contact with dogs or cats. Infections are more often linked to dog bites or dog contact.

 See the Preventing Dog Bites page for information on how to prevent dog bites and what to do if you are bitten, regardless of your health status.

 Other Capnocytophaga germs can also be found in human mouths and can cause illness in some people who have the bacteria in their own mouth. People who have weak immune systems get this type of infection more often than healthy people.

 Most reported infections occur in tissues connected to the mouth and throat, including:

 Periodontal (gum) disease

 Respiratory tract infections (infections of the mouth, nose, throat, and lungs)

 Eye infections

 In both types of infections—those that spread from animals or from oneself—the bacteria can enter the blood stream, which can lead to infection in various parts of the body. Infection can also cause the following:

 Septicemia (blood infection)

 Endocarditis (inflammation of the lining of the heart)

 Abscesses (collections of pus in the tissue that cause redness and swelling) in various body tissues

 Inflammation of the eyes, face, lymph nodes, or brain membranes

 Most contact with dogs and cats does not lead to a Capnocytophaga infection or any illness, even after a bite. But, you should take precautions if you have contact with animals, especially if you have a condition that puts you at higher risk of infection. ||||| On June 27th 2018 the Manteufel family experienced a medical emergency when Greg started feeling ill, within hours of the onset of symptoms, Greg's body started to go into septic shock. Once Greg was admitted to the hospital, they were able to confirm the reason Greg was septic. He had somehow contracted the bacteria Capnocytophaga Canimorsus.This bacteria caused the sepsis in Greg's body that has completely changed not only Greg's life but his entire family's as well. Within days of being admitted to the hospital while still fighting for his life, Greg first lost both feet, after a second surgery to remove more damage on legs, they amputated thru both Knee caps. Surgery is scheduled to remove a portion of both hands as the damage from the sepsis is to extensive.Furthermore all areas of Greg's body and tissue was affected by the bacteria and the sepsis, the Drs say his nose will need extensive repairs, which means he will need plastic surgery to rebuild a new healthy nose. Greg is going to need several more surgeries, lots of healing time and his family by his side to get thru this life changing event.During this process while his family and friends are in panic and chaos Greg has held his head high and is taking all the news like a beast. He is so thankful to be alive today and is taking one day at a time.Capnocytophaga Canimorsus is a normal bacteria that grows in the mouth of up to 60% of dogs and 17% of cats. There have only been about 500 cases logged in the US and Canada since 1976 of this bacterial causing sepsis when no dog bite was found.Any help you can give the family will be greatly appreciated. Greg's recovery will be a very long process and he will need his family by his side, they will need help financially to be able to be with him during the coming months with surgeries as well as waiting to be fitted for leg and hand prosthesis which will allow him to become independent again. ||||| WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGES BELOW

 A Wisconsin man has lost his hands and legs after he contracted a life-threatening bacterial infection from a dog.

 Greg Manteufel loved riding his Harley motorcycle but might not be able to ride it again after his limbs had to be amputated after he got a blood infection which doctors believe he contracted after a dog licked him.

 A friend of Manteufel’s created a GoFundMe account for him in which it described the motorcycle lover feeling ill on June 27.

 “Within hours of the onset of symptoms, Greg’s body started to go into septic shock,” the fundraiser post read. “Once Greg was admitted to the hospital, they were able to confirm the reason Greg was septic.”

 Manteufel had contracted a bacteria known as Capnocytophaga Canimorsus — a bacteria found in healthy dogs and cats that causes “severe sepsis and fatal septic shock, gangrene of the digits or extremities, high-grade bacteremia, meningitis, endocarditis, and eye infections” when a dog bite occurs, according to a study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

 Greg Manteufel Courtesy Dawn Manteufel

 The bacteria “hit him with a vengeance,” his wife, Dawn, told Fox 6 Now.

 “Just bruising all over him,” she said, referring to the blood spots that began appearing all over his body. “Looked like somebody beat him up with a baseball bat.”

 Days after he was admitted to the hospital, doctors amputated Manteufel’s feet. When more damage was sustained, he underwent a second surgery that amputated his legs through both of his kneecaps, according to his GoFundMe.

 His hands — all of his fingers down to mid-palm — were also removed, with doctors telling his family his nose would need “extensive repairs” to rebuild it.

 Greg Manteufel is a dog and Harley lover GoFundMe

 Dawn told the Washington Post she was not sure which dog transmitted the bacteria to her husband was a dog lover and had been around eight dogs around the time he became ill.

 “He loves dogs,” she told the newspaper. “He would touch any dog; he doesn’t care.”

 While he may have lost his limbs, Dawn said Manteufel was determined to remain positive.

 RELATED ARTICLE: Man Who Smelled So Bad a Plane Had to Make Emergency Landing Dies a Month Later of Necrosis

 “He told the doctors, ‘Do what you have to do to keep me alive,'” Dawn said. “There’s no negativity from him so far… He said, ‘It is what it is, so we have to move forward.'”

 “There’s no choice. We have no choice but to be positive and make the best of it,” she added. ||||| The full text of all Editor's Choice articles and summaries of every article are free without registration

 The full text of Images in ... articles are free to registered users

 Only fellows can access the full text of case reports (apart from Editor's Choice) - become a fellow today, or encourage your institution to, so that together we can grow and develop this resource ||||| A 48-year-old man from Wisconsin recently contracted a rare blood infection that led to the amputation of his legs and parts of his arms, according to news reports. And the most likely source of the devastating infection was his own dog.

 Greg Manteufel went to the hospital with what he thought was the flu, local news outlet Fox 6 Now reported yesterday (July 30). But within a week, the doctors had to amputate both of his legs and, later, portions of his hands and forearms. The amputations were necessary after the infection caused Manteufel's blood pressure to drop drastically, which severely reduced blood flow to his limbs and led to tissue death.

 Blood tests revealed that Manteufel's infection was caused by a bacterium called Capnocytophaga, according to Fox 6 Now. [11 Ways Your Beloved Pet May Make You Sick]

 These bacteria are found in the mouths of cats and dogs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Up to 74 percent of dogs and 57 percent of cats have Capnocytophaga, but the bacteria don't cause illness in dogs and cats, the CDC says.

 In humans, however, it's a different story. In very rare cases, the bacteria can spread to humans through bites, scratches or close contact with cats and dogs. The people most at risk for this infection are those with weakened immune systems, according to the CDC. (It's unclear if Manteufel had a weakened immune system).

 If a person becomes infected with Capnocytophaga, the bacteria can spread to the bloodstream and cause infections in various parts of the body, including a blood infection known as sepsis. Sepsis occurs when the immune system responds overwhelmingly to an infection, triggering body-wide inflammation and, potentially, organ failure.

 Most people who get sick with the bacteria typically start experiencing symptoms within three to five days of becoming infected, but symptoms may occur anywhere from one to 14 days after infection, according to the CDC. Symptoms include blisters, redness, swelling, pus or pain around the animal bite location (if a bite was involved), fever, diarrhea, headache, vomiting and muscle or joint pain.

 As in Manteufel's case, the infection can sometimes lead to gangrene, or tissue death, and require amputations to save the rest of the body.

 Dr. Silvia Munoz-Price, an infectious-disease specialist with Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin told Fox 6 Now that the case is extremely rare. "More than 99 percent of the people that have dogs will never have this issue. It's just chance," she said.

 Originally published on Live Science. ||||| Please enable Javascript to watch this video

 WEST BEND -- A West Bend man contracted a blood infection after he was licked by a dog, and in an unusual set of circumstances, he needed multiple amputations.

 One month ago, Greg Manteufel was a long way from a hospital bed.

 "He loves riding his Harley," said Dawn Manteufel, Greg's wife.

 Dawn Manteufel said her husband was perfectly healthy, but what they initially thought was the flu landed Greg in the emergency room.

 "It hit him with a vengeance. Just bruising all over him. Looked like somebody beat him up with a baseball bat," said Dawn Manteufel.

 She said life as they knew it changed forever. In late June, blood tests revealed an infection caused by the bacteria capnocytophaga.

 "It took a week and they were taking his legs," said Dawn Manteufel.

 The infection very likely entered Greg's system by something common -- getting licked by a dog, probably his own.

 "This type of bacteria comes from the saliva of dogs. This infection in his blood triggered a very severe response on his body," said Dr. Silvia Munoz-Price, infectious disease specialist with Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin.

 That response caused Greg's blood pressure to drop and the circulation in his limbs to decrease rapidly.

 "Sometimes it decreases so much that the arms and legs just die," said Dr. Munoz-Price.

 Doctors were forced to amputate his limbs.

 "We can't wrap our heads around it that all of the sudden, he's 48 years old and been around dogs all of his life... and this happens," said Dawn Manteufel.

 Still, Dawn and Greg Manteufel are focusing on what wasn't taken away.

 "That's all he kept saying to the doctors -- 'take what you need but keep me alive.' And they did it. Surprisingly enough, they did do it," said Dawn Manteufel.

 Doctors say Greg's case is simply a fluke.

 "More than 99 percent of the people that have dogs will never have this issue. It's just chance," said Dr. Munoz-Price.

 The Manteufel family has created a GoFundMe.com account to raise money for prosthetic limbs for Greg. CLICK HERE to access that account. |||||Summary:

– A Wisconsin man has lost his hands and legs after he likely received "the lick of death" from a dog, People reports. Per a GoFundMe created for Greg Manteufel, the 48-year-old house painter from West Bend started feeling sick on June 27; he and his family initially thought he had the flu, FOX6 notes. His symptoms soon worsened, however, and his wife, Dawn, rushed him to the ER, where they noticed his body was covered in bruises, "like somebody beat him up with a baseball bat," she says. Blood tests soon revealed the cause: Manteufel had gone into septic shock from the Capnocytophaga canimorsus bacteria, which Live Science notes is found in the mouths of nearly three-quarters of dogs and 57% of cats, though the animals themselves don't get sick from it. In humans, however, the bacteria can cause a blood infection, or sepsis, which can lead to organ failure and even death. Doctors had to amputate Manteufel's legs at the knees; he also lost his hands, and his nose has to be reconstructed. "He told the doctors, 'Do what you have to do to keep me alive,'" Dawn Manteufel tells the Washington Post. She adds they don't know which dog infected her husband: They counted eight dogs he'd been around at the time he fell sick, including his own. The Manteufels will have to sell their house and look for a one-story home now, and Greg Manteufel will no longer be able to work as a house painter or cruise on his Harley. Still, Dawn Manteufel says, "There's no negativity from him so far." A Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin doctor tells FOX6 what happened to Manteufel was a fluke and that "more than 99% of the people [who] have dogs will never have this issue." The GoFundMe for Manteufel has raised more than $28,000. (Snoozing with your pet can be risky.)