NAVAL BASE GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA — This isolated U.S. Navy base has many facilities and services to make life comfortable for the service members and their families stationed here.

That includes a radio and TV broadcast facility holding more than 22,000 reel-to-reel and vinyl records, valued at as much as $2 million.

But it’s not just any old music collection. This one, which includes a reel-to-reel of the Beatles anthology album and a recording of the “Good Morning, Vietnam” soundtrack, is rumored to house recordings that were never formally released.

“I believe this is one of the largest, if not the largest, collection in the Armed Services Network,” said Kelly Wirfel, base spokeswoman.

Alphabetized on wooden shelves, the records sit in square cutouts with their album track lists catalogued on index cards in nearby filing cabinets. Broken souvenirs, Radio GTMO apparel and other electronic equipment surround the treasure.

The Armed Forces Radio and Television Service reportedly last appraised the collection in 2007 and found that the only way to yield the maximum value of $2 million would be to auction the records and reels individually. But that’s impossible, since they’re government property, Wirfel said.

Radio GTMO, which has been on the island since the 1940s and in its present location since 1964, is the only source of American radio for American personnel on the base. It offers three stations — two play modern tunes and classic rock while the other is reserved for talk radio and news. The signal stops at the northeast gate, the entrance point to Castro’s Cuba.

The stations mainly play digitized songs, but the vinyl does come out for special events.

“We’ll play vinyl records during the radiothon (fundraiser) because we’ll get some really old requests,” said Petty Officer 3rd Class Kevin Outzen, a disc jockey for the station.

“I’ve heard that Armed Forces Network would like those records back to be archived and put into a museum,” he added.

Wirfel confirmed that the military is working hard to digitize the collection with the intent of turning it over to AFRTS.

Adrian Cronauer, the Air Force DJ portrayed by Robin Williams in the classic film “Good Morning,Vietnam,” said the collection is a “tremendous resource, and it should be put in a collection somewhere, a museum, a record company.”

Radio GTMO also broadcasts television programming from the U.S., and was reportedly the first Navy television outlet to have live studio color capabilities. Jarod Collins, a petty officer and engineer at Radio GTMO, said the television signal comes in from satellites positioned in Europe on a six-hour delay.

“So instead of Game of Thrones coming on at 9 a.m., it comes on later in the afternoon,” Collins said.

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Efforts to move forward with pre-trial hearings for an Iraqi accused of killing American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan were delayed due to a series of legal mix-ups.

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Terrorist suspect Abd al Hadi al-Iraqi’s pretrial hearing was postponed until September. He is charged with a number of war crimes.

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“Regrettably we’re in a little bit of a limbo,” the military judge, Navy Capt. J.K. Waits, said in declaring an indefinite recess.

Pretrial hearings for the alleged senior al-Qaida commander were scheduled to commence Monday, but were postponed because prosecutors introduced new evidence that showed a conflict of interest with one of the lawyers on Hadi’s defense team, Marine Lt. Col. Sean Gleason.

During the hearing, Hadi told Waits that he was fine with having Marine Lt. Col. Tom Jasper representing him.

Less than an hour later, things changed when Hadi objected to the makeup of his defense team after lengthy arguments regarding the possible conflict of interest.

Gleason, who was not present Wednesday, was reassigned in 2013 to represent another Guantanamo prisoner, Mustafa al Hawsawi, one of five 9/11 defendants.

The defense claimed that information provided by prosecutors shows that Gleason has some documents regarding 2007 conversations between Hadi and al Hawsawi at Guantanamo Bay that contained statements harmful to Hadi.

Jasper noted that Hadi never agreed to Gleason’s reassignment.

Speaking to the military judge in Arabic through an interpreter, Hadi, who was dressed in traditional white Muslim garb, said, “Gleason has lots of information concerning me, and I don’t know in the future whether he’ll use it for me or against me.”

The new evidence includes a 10-page document that was handed to defense lawyers Sunday. Jasper argued that having just two days to analyze and review the information was not enough time, especially considering that the prosecution has had those details in hand for a number of years.

In April 2012, the prosecution turned over a list of 25 people who could present possible conflicts of interest in Hadi’s trial. The defense claims Hawsawi was never on the list.

“The problem is that we are flying by the seat of our pants trying to figure out our ethical obligation regarding ethical representation,” Jasper, Hadi’s lead defense attorney, told Waits.

In September, Jasper replaced the lawyer who represented Hadi during his 2014 arraignment, Army Reserve Col. Chris Callen, who returned to civilian life. Air Force Maj. Ben Stirk, a deputy defense counsel, has been the only defense lawyer to appear at all five of Hadi’s hearings.

Waits directed the defense and prosecution to arrange a meeting with Gleason. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Vaughn Spencer told Waits that Gleason is an active-duty Marine and could be brought to Guantanamo “as quickly as you direct us.”

The commissions will remain on hold until those meetings take place.

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“Regrettably we’re in a little bit of a limbo,” said military judge, Navy Capt. J.K. Waits declaring an indefinite recess.

Pretrial hearings for the alleged senior al-Qaida commander were scheduled to commence Monday, but were postponed because prosecutors’ introduced new evidence that showed a conflict of interest with one of the lawyers, Marine Lt. Col. Sean Gleason, who is on Hadi’s defense team.

During the hearing, Hadi told the military judge, Navy Capt. J.K. Waits, that he was OK with Marine Lt. Col. Tom Jasper representing him.

Less than an hour later, things changed.

“I don’t want them to represent me at this time,” Hadi told Waits, after lengthy arguments regarding the possible conflict of interest.

Gleason, who was not present Wednesday, was reassigned in 2013 to represent another Guantanamo prisoner, Mustafa al Hawsawi, one of five September 11 defendants.

The defense claimed that information provided by prosecutors shows that Gleason has some documents regarding 2007 conversations between the two detainees in Guantanamo Bay that contained statements harmful to Hadi.

Jasper said Gleason was “not properly or legally released.”

Hadi who was dressed in traditional white garb, said to the military judge in Arabic, through an interpreter, “Gleason has lots of information concerning me, and I don’t know in the future whether he’ll use it for me or against me.”

The 10-page document outlining the potential conflict of interest was handed to defense lawyers Sunday. But Jasper argued that getting two days to analyze and review the information was not enough time, especially because the prosecution had those details for a number of years.

In April 2012, the prosecution turned over a list of 25 people who could present possible conflicts of interest. The defense claims Hawsawi was never on the list.

“The problem is that we are flying by the seat of our pants trying to figure out our ethical obligation regarding ethical representation,” lead Pentagon defense attorney
Jasper, told the military judge.

In September, Jasper replaced Hadi’s 2014 arraignment lawyer Army Reserve Col. Chris Callen, who returned to civilian life. Air Force Maj. Ben Stirk, a deputy defense counsel, has been the only defense lawyer to appear at all five of Hadi’s hearings.

Waits directed the defense and prosecution to arrange a meeting with Gleason. The hearing will remain on hold until those meetings take place.

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Lt. Col. Tom Crosson, a Defense Department  spokesman, said Monday the Pentagon will not comment on why the military commission judge, Navy Capt. J.K. Waits, has delayed the start time of the first session  this week.

Reasons  for delaying hearings run the gamut from natural disasters to last-minute legal disclosure of new evidence that could complicate the hearing, a Guantanamo defense attorney said.

Military commission personnel will  meet Tuesday to review scheduling for the pre-trial hearings, which are not expected to begin before Wednesday morning. The Guantanamo Review Task Force recommended Hadi for prosecution in January 2010.

Hadi, one of Guantanamo’s remaining high-level detainees, is charged with conspiring and leading a string of violent attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2001 to 2006.

The Mosul, Iraq native is accused of  attacking civilians and also medical helicopter  attempting to recover casualties from the battlefield; directing fighters to kill all coalition soldiers and take no prisoners; providing a reward to the Taliban for assassinating a civilian United Nations worker; acting on orders from Osama bin Laden; attempting to assassinate then-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf; and destroying historic Buddha statues in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Valley, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Hadi allegedly instructed fighters to dress in local attire in order to blend in with the civilian population , and instructed them to videotape attacks and victims’ deaths for use in al-Qaida propaganda films. He is accused of masterminding a series of attacks on American, Canadian, German, British, Estonian and Norwegian forces, including a 2003 attack on a U.S. military convoy at Shikin, Afghanistan, that killed two U.S. soldiers and injured numerous others. After another one of his attacks on Oct. 25 2003 killed two more U.S. soldiers, Hadi’s fighters shot at injured coalition soldiers, according to the charges against him.

The pre-trial hearings scheduled this week will hinge on defense motions related to Hadi’s status as an unlawful enemy combatant, a term used by the U.S. government to denote status of unlawful combatants without protections under the Geneva Conventions.  (Is that change OK?)

If the prosecution proves that Hadi is entitled to prisoner-of-war status, the jurisdiction of his case will be limited to the military commissions at Guantanamo, rather than federal court.

Three defense motions on the table this week relate to Hadi’s conspiracy charges, which have come under fresh scrutiny in the wake of a recent 2-to-1 panel opinion by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia against Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman Al Bahlul.

Bahlul’s 2008 “inchoate conspiracy” conviction was overturned because the commission at Guantanamo did not have authority to convict him of a conspiracy charge according to the law of war on Article III grounds, the panel wrote.

On Sunday, the chief prosecutor in the Hadi case, Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, said the military commission judge may defer judgment on the conspiracy charges in order to see if the D.C. circuit opinion will remain final, or be petitioned again by the government en banc by July 27. Martins also noted the two cases should not be conflated.

“There’s a strong doctrine of also considering individual cases. Bahlul’s not exactly the same as Hadi. They’re slightly differently situated before the law and before the court,” Martins said.

Martins addressed questions of whether the Bahlul decision may challenge the future of Guantanamo’s military commissions, calling these opinions “both overstated and myopic.”

“Regardless of the government’s decision, military commissions will continue moving toward trial in its seven ongoing cases,” he said Sunday. “We’re not even in the controversial area of law in how we’ve been charging.”

If Hadi is present should the hearings proceed Wednesday as planned, it will be the first time he has appeared in court since judge Navy Capt. J.K. Waits rescinded his “no-touch” order for female guards in March.

Previously, Guantanamo Bay obliged Hadi’s demand that female guards not be permitted to touch him, citing his adherence to Islam as justification on grounds of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Capt. Waits said the overturned appeal resulted from a need for a well-functioning facility and elimination of gender discrimination.

If Hadi is convicted, he faces life in prison, distinct from other active prosecutions at the Guantanamo war court in the Sept. 11 and USS Cole terror attacks which seek military execution.

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“I don’t want to comment on the record now,” one hardline Iranian politician told the New York Times Tuesday, “but it seems our negotiators have gone too far with some of their promises, especially on the level of inspections. And the system for the lifting of sanctions is also not clear.”

Reactions from around the Middle East, and further afield, were just as mixed.

The deal was welcomed by many international leaders, including Pope Francis, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and, surprisingly, even by some Sunni Muslim state officials.

Egypt “expressed hope that the deal between both sides is complete and prevents an arms race in the Middle East as well as ensuring the region is free of all weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons,” read a statement by the Egyptian foreign ministry.

For more than 36 years, Egypt and Iran have not had full diplomatic relations since President Anwar Sadat signed the peace treaty with Israel and after Iran went through the Islamic revolution.

The Saudi Gazette reported that an official source told the state-run Saudi Press Agency said, “Given that Iran is a neighbor, Saudi Arabia hopes to build with her better relations in all areas on the basis of good neighborliness and non-interference in internal affairs.”

Iran’s allies, of course, were elated with the nuclear agreement. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said the deal constitutes a “major turning point in the history of Iran, the region and the world.”

Iran has been the main backer of Assad in his fight against a rebellion that has challenged his rule since 2011. Many Syria analysts credit Iran with providing critical weapons, supplies and funding to Assad, without which his regime may not have survived.

“We are quite assured that the Islamic Republic of Iran will continue, with greater momentum, supporting the just issues of peoples and working for peace and stability to prevail in the region and the world,” read an article on the agreement by the Syrian Arab News Agency.

One of the groups Assad has been battling, with Iranian and Hezbollah’s help, is the Islamic State. At the same time, Sunni Arab countries around the world have been sympathetic to the largely Sunni insurgency battling Assad, including IS.

Hassan Hassan, an associate fellow with the London-based think tank Chatham House told the Wall Street Journal that the deal would complicate efforts by the United States to assemble a coalition of Sunni Muslim countries to battle IS.

“ISIS will benefit a lot from this deal; segments of the Sunni community in the region will see Iran as having won and brought in from the dark,” he said.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of Arms Control Association, told VICE News that although Congress has expressed doubts during the negotiations, there is “no better deal on the horizon.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it obvious that he thought a better deal was possible.

“What a stunning historic mistake,” he said at a news conference in Jerusalem. “Iran is going to receive a sure path to nuclear weapons.”

Since the start of the Iran talks, relations between the US and Israel have been “very contentious,” according to Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. “And that seems to be the recurring theme coming out of Jerusalem these days,” he said.

Tuesday’s deal aimed at reining Iran’s nuclear program in return for relief from sanctions that have been straining Iran’s economy for decades.

The Republican-led Congress has 60 days to review the agreement. If Congress rejects it, President Barack Obama vowed Tuesday that he would veto the resolution of disapproval.

In that event, the only way Congress could block the deal from taking effect would be by achieving a two-thirds majority in each chamber to override a White House veto.

VICE News spoke to Daryl Kimball, who in addition to serving as director of the Arms Control Association is also the former head of the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers and a Herbert R. Scoville Peace Fellow. He reviewed the “complex and consequential” agreement.

The agreement, he said in a phone interview, blocks Iran’s ability to produce enough highly enriched uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons for at least ten years.

The document also puts in place a layered inspection system that has some “novel, new and strong elements that will make it exceedingly difficult for Iran to cheat on the agreement and seek to build nuclear weapons.”

Iran agreed to these terms in return for easing punitive sanctions that have crippled the country’s economy.

“The deal specifically prohibits Iran from engaging in activities that they’re suspected of doing about a decade ago that have utility for building a nuclear bomb,” Kimball said. “Now they are strictly prohibited from doing that work.”

Under the agreement, the International Atomic Energy Agency will be able to conduct on-site inspections on short notice at any site, including military sites. If there is a dispute about an inspection or any other issue in the agreement, there’s a commission that includes each of the countries that are party to the agreement, and Iran.

If Iran does not comply, UN sanctions can be imposed.

“It will clearly be against Iran’s interest not to cooperate, and they cannot stonewall IAEA visits or questions about something that they’re doing,” Kimball told VICE News.

Related: Critics Say Nuclear Deal Will ‘Fuel Iran’s Terrorism’

However, Michael Makovsky, chief executive officer of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, who at a July 9 House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing urged Congress to reject the looming agreement, is still concerned.

“They are gonna get a lot of money for some limitations on their nuclear program, and in 15 years they will have international blessings for their nuclear program,” Makovsky told VICE News in a phone interview.

“The ballistic missile and arms embargo is also concerning,” he said. “This is really a historical blunder with really severe consequences.”

Christopher Bidwell, senior fellow at Federation of American Scientists, agreed with the Nuclear Information Project’s Hans Kristensen that implementation and monitoring of the agreement will be the next challenge.

“Proof is always in the pudding,” Kristensen told VICE News.

Kimball said that if the US were to walk away from the deal the “alternatives are not very bright.”

“Holding out for a better agreement would have led to deadlock and the end of limits on Iran’s nuclear program,” he added.

“Diplomacy,” Kristensen agreed “was the only way forward.”

But Republican leaders in Congress remain skeptical. At a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing last week, Chairman Ed Royce, a Republican from California, expressed concern that Iran could turn into another North Korea.

“That’s a bad deal for us: Permanent concessions in exchange for temporary benefits, and that’s only if Iran doesn’t cheat, like North Korea did,” he said.

Kimball told VICE News “such analogies are simplistic and they don’t apply because there are two very different agreements.”

The 1994 agreement with North Korea did not provide strong incentives, he told VICE News.

“It was in their interest to violate the agreement because the benefits were not strong enough,” Kimball said.

The agreement with Iran “has an extremely robust monitoring verification system” and Iran faces “severe penalties if they violate the agreement and for a very long period of time,” he added.

Criticism will likely increase in coming days as experts review the agreement in depth.

“End of day, the real question is whether or not this deal is a much better deal than the type of uncertain future that was there before, and I think in that sense, it’s definitely a win-win for the Obama administration,” Kristensen said.

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WASHINGTON – After 17 days of talks and two blown deadlines, the US and five other nations gave themselves until midnight on Monday in Vienna to reach the final terms of an agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for rolling back economic sanctions. Iranian media initially reported that an announcement was imminent on Monday evening, but asked later if the deal would indeed be unveiled, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said simply: “No.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry has cautioned that the administration’s patience is not unlimited. “We are not going to sit at the negotiating table forever,” he said.

“If tough decisions are not made, we are absolutely prepared to call an end to this process,” he added.

Zarif struck a more hopeful note in a video posted Friday on YouTube. “We are ready to strike a balanced and good deal and open new horizons to address important common challenges,” he said.

Since the deal passed Friday’s third deadline extension, the skeptical Republican-led Congress will have 60 days — rather than the expected 30 — to review the agreement, which may not bode well for the White House. As Republicans in the US House of Representatives geared up last week for their congressional review of the agreement, they lined up a series of witnesses that foreshadowed a tough struggle for the Obama administration to get any pact through Congress.

At a House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing on Thursday, Chairman Ed Royce, a Republican from California, was blunt in his disapproval of the administration’s plan.

“That’s a bad deal for us: Permanent concessions in exchange for temporary benefits, and that’s only if Iran doesn’t cheat, like North Korea did,” he said.

“Iran is left a few steps away from the bomb and more able to dominate the region,” Royce continued. “How does that make us and our allies more secure? Or conflict less likely?”

“The alternative to a deal would surely mean some kind of military strikes on Iran’s nuclear plant.”

The committee had lined up expert witnesses to speak against the negotiations, including Richard Nephew, a nonresident senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. “This is all a political showmanship,” Nephew told VICE News.

Stephen G. Rademaker, assistant secretary of state under George W. Bush and current advisor to the Foreign Policy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, warned that lifting sanctions would only result in more nuclear weapons down the road.

“If it is dangerous today for Iran to be able to produce a single nuclear weapon in just two or three months,” he said, “why won’t it be even more dangerous for them to be able to produce a much larger number of nuclear weapons in a much shorter period of time beginning just 10 years from now?”

Both Rademaker and Michael Makovsky, chief executive officer of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, said that the deal would spur and accelerate other regional countries’ pursuit of nuclear weapons, and that the US would also need to monitor what Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and other allies might do on the nuclear front.

“The emerging agreement will represent acceptance by the international community of Iran as a nuclear weapons threshold state,” Rademaker said.

Even before details of the agreement were announced, Makovsky urged members of Congress “to reject this deal and restore and reinvigorate American leverage to achieve an acceptable deal to prevent a nuclear Iran and reduce the chances of a nuclear contagion cascade and war.”

His concern is that it would give Iran “guns and butter,” meaning the sanctions relief would give Iran tens of billions of dollars from released funds that would “strengthen this radical and repressive regime and supercharge its support for Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorism.”

However, Kenneth M. Pollack, senior fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, had different advice for the committee. “I think the deal is disappointing, but certainly I would not advise you to override the veto, because the alternatives are far worse than this,” he said.

Another top House Democrat at the hearing went so far as to say that bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities is the only option.

“The alternative to a deal would surely mean some kind of military strikes on Iran’s nuclear plant,” New York’s Eliot Engel said.

But not everyone thinks military aggression is the best — or only — option.

“They might try to airstrike, but it won’t work, that’s the problem,” Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, told VICE News.

Striking the nuclear facilities will only buy Iran more time before the starts building a nuclear weapon, which would lead to a “terrible outcome,” he said.

“Bombing will not make [Iran’s nuclear program] go away,” Lewis said. “The sanction regime will collapse and Iran will build a nuclear weapon.

“I would be desperately open for a deal, because they don’t really have a lot of other options,” he added.

In April, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei demanded all sanctions be lifted when the deal is signed. In the same month, however, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he and his cabinet are united in “strongly opposing” an agreement restricting Iran’s nuclear program, instead suggesting that the program be completely dismantled. He also demanded that any final deal contain Iran’s recognition of Israel’s right to exist.

“Israeli security experts have suggested an Israeli military strike could push back Iran’s nuclear program three or so years,” Makovsky said in his testimony. “US military action, with our greater capability and easier access, would likely push it back further.”

But in June, President Barack Obama told Israeli newspaper Haaretz that a military strike wasn’t the answer. “A military solution will not fix it, even if the United States participates, it would temporarily slow down an Iranian nuclear program, but it will not eliminate it,” he said.

At Thursday’s hearing, Texas Representative Ted Poe suggested another scenario. “Iran is the number one terrorist state in the world and we are not dealing with good people,” Poe warned. “Regime change is the solution.”

Analysts have also expressed concerns about escalation from both Iran and the US if the deal falls apart.

“Iranians will increase and expand their nuclear program, and the US will increase and expand their sanctions program, and the risk of confrontation will grow,” Nephew told VICE News. “I think the idea that [the US] is just going to increase sanctions and eventually not go to a military conflict is probably a ridiculous idea.”

But the discussions of potential confrontation between the two countries come at a time when the US and Iran share a common enemy: The self-proclaimed Islamic State.

“Our common threat today is the growing menace of violent extremism and outright barbarism,” Zarif said in his video. “The menace we are facing… is embodied by the hooded men who are ravaging the cradle of civilization.”

But even if there’s a meeting of the minds on countering extremism, the drama surrounding the nuclear talks suggests that there won’t be a consensus any time soon on the sincerity and reliability of either Iranaian or Western pledges coming from any agreement.

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“I think after a while it becomes like the boy who cried wolf, because every year you keep making these announcements and we don’t see any attack,” said Colin Clarke, an associate political scientist who researches counterterrorism and the Middle East at RAND Corporation.

Clarke noted that the routine nature of the annual warnings is “not necessarily reassuring.”

This week, the Department of Homeland Security, FBI and National Counterterrorism Center issued a joint intelligence bulletin to law enforcement across the U.S. warning of threats from extremists tied to Independence Day.

“They can’t not put out a warning, even if they have no indication of increased threat,” said former FBI senior official Christopher Voss. “If an attack occurs, they would have no defense for not putting out a warning.”

Voss, Clarke and other homeland security experts said these raised alerts could be less about safeguarding the public than making certain that the government is on the record about the seriousness of the threat should something happen.

“What’s the alternative? Not take these things seriously then have something happen? If it ends up being overblown, I’ll take that 10 times out of 10 over the alternative,” said Clarke.

But the experts also agreed that Independence Day presents unique conditions ripe for an enhanced threat.

“Prominent occasions on which large crowds can be expected to gather, as is true of Independence Day–which, of course, also has prominence as the national day of the United States–are always inviting targets for terrorists,” said Paul Pillar, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

And a DHS official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said, “We have seen repeatedly calls for violence over the past year by leadership and supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant against members of the military and military installations, law enforcement, the U.S. government, and the American public. These threats are always taken seriously and we continue to work with state and local law enforcement to ensure their safety.”

Edward Clark, homeland security expert and principal consultant for Executive Interface, LLC, a security consulting group, said the psychological impact of a terrorist attack on Independence Day cannot be underestimated.

“When you kill five Americans on August 5 it’s a tragedy. When you kill five Americans on July 4, it’s a national travesty,” Clark said.
He also said increasing security may reduce the consequences should an attack occur.
“Our security system is the thing we have the most control over, so that’s where we direct our efforts,” said Clark.

But the added anticipation of threat could lead to false alarms. Thursday’s Washington Navy Yard incident highlighted the preparedness to respond to potential threat attacks — or even non-attacks.

Reports of possible gunshots triggered a massive law enforcement response at the U.S. Navy’s oldest shore establishment, where ultimately no evidence of a shooter or shooting were found according to the Washington Metropolitan Police Department.

“Pre-holiday nervousness about terrorism in the nation’s capital may have contributed to a false alarm and over-reaction in that incident,” said Pillar.

Clarke, the Rand official, added that the 2013 Navy Yard shooting incident, in which 13 were killed, and the Islamic State attacks across the world have created a “perfect storm” of pre-July 4 anticipatory edge.

The political scientist also noted that challenges with verifying threats made on social media distinguish this year’s July 4 terror risk from years past.

“How do we verify this person is who they say they are, or that they’re going to do what they say they’re going to do?” said Clarke.

“… You’ve heard the phrase ‘needle in a haystack,’ But with social media, we’re now looking for a needle in a needlestack.”

John McLaughlin, former CIA deputy director who is now a scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s strategic studies center, said the “ever-present potential for surprise” is likely a reason for the alerts but noted terrorists operate on their own timelines.

“They tend to strike when they are ready, when they have done the reconnaissance and prepared the work,” he said, “seldom on a schedule driven by particular dates.”

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WASHINGTON— After months of delay, Secretary of State John Kerry released a long-awaited report Thursday, raising concerns about human rights violations in Cuba and Iran, among other countries.

The 2014 Country Reports on Human Rights Practice was due to come out in February but was delayed amid speculation that the Obama administration was concerned about the impact on on-going negotiations with Iran over nuclear power.

However, State Department officials said the Iran talks had no effect on the timing of the release of the report. They said the delay was due to conflicts in Kerry’s schedule and his leg injury in a bike accident in France.

Improving relations with Cuba and Iran are among President Barack Obama’s priorities in his foreign affairs agenda.

Iran continues to severely restrict civil liberties, according to the report. The document drew heavily on non-U.S. government sources since the United States does not maintain an embassy in Tehran.

The State Department said the government of Iran officially announced 268 executions, though according to the Human Rights Watch World Report, the number is believed to be higher. In 2012, Iran carried out more than 544 executions, second in number only to China, according to Amnesty International, which said at least 63 people were executed in public.

The negotiations on conditions for Iran’s nuclear program have taken more than a year of talks between the U.S. and Iran. The talks face a diplomatic deadline Tuesday for settlement of a deal.

As for Cuba, the report said the island nation has continued human rights violations, barring its citizens’ access to uncensored information and severely restricting Internet availability. The report acknowledged that Cuba indicated “a willingness to consider expanding telecommunications investment on the island,” which would create more Internet access in the future.

The report also noted the release of 53 political prisoners in Havana as a consequence of the Dec. 17 agreement to re-establish diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the Cuban government. Cuba’s willingness to allow greater access by the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross is also cited.

Human rights have taken a turn for the worse in some regions of the world because of terrorist organizations such as the self-proclaimed Islamic State, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab and the Nusra Front. These groups, the State Department said, have “perpetrated human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law against innocent non-combatants.”

More than 3.2 million were forced to flee Syria and have been classified as refugees by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner due to the ongoing civil war. The State Department singled out Syrian President Bashar Al Assad for his part in the bloodshed. As a result, the so-called Islamic State was able to take advantage of this instability and gained territories and members.

Saudi Arabia, one of the U.S.’s major allies, was criticized for the prosecution of Internet activist Raif Badawi, and also for abusing detainees.

The delayed release of the report sparked outrage for some lawmakers, including, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who wrote in a Washington Times op-ed, “the issue of Iran’s abysmal human rights record is inextricably intertwined with its nuclear ambitions.”

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