HavenWorks.com/intelligence/archive/2007

A-Z

!Search

News by Date

NewsStand

_Global_

_US_

A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P-Q-R-S-T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z

/

/ Archive / 2007 Intelligence News

Intelligence News, Intelligence Archive

2007 Intelligence News History Archive, History-Archives

Intelligence Archive < 2007 Intelligence News > 2006 Intelligence News

Use "Ctrl F" [control F] to FIND what you're looking for.
"Right Click" - "Open in New Window." to avoid reloading this page.

2007 Intelligence News:

Secret - Torture - Terrorism - Government - Detainee - Intelligence - Law - Virginia - Christmas - "Senate meets briefly to block Bush." ... "The House was quiet as a mouse the day after Christmas. But across the Capitol, the [Democratic controlled] Senate was operating in an unusually efficient manner in its ongoing power struggle with [Republican] President Bush." ... "A nine-second session gaveled in and out by [Virginia Democratic Senator] Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va.[Democratic-Virginia], prevented Bush from appointing as an assistant attorney general a nominee roundly rejected by majority Democrats. Without the pro forma session, the Senate would be technically adjourned, allowing the president to install officials without Senate confirmation." ... "Democrats wanted to block one such recess appointment in particular: Steven Bradbury, acting chief of the Justice Department's Office of Legislative Counsel. Bush nominated Bradbury for the job and asked the Senate to remove the "acting" in his title." ... "Democrats would have none of it, complaining Bradbury had signed two secret memos in 2005 saying it was OK for the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] to use harsh interrogation techniques — some call it torture — on terrorism detainees." -By Laurie Kellman -AP via -Yahoo

Secret - Intelligence - War - Criminal - Videotapes - Censorship - Politics - Military - Terrorism - Texas - "Subpoena of CIA officials threatened: Justice Dept. [department] action in tape destruction probe angers House panel chairman, who expects testimony from two top intelligence agency officials." ... "The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, chafing at the Justice Department's handling of a probe into missing CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] interrogation tapes, threatened Wednesday to subpoena two top CIA officials to jump-start the panel's own investigation." ... "The department, which is conducting a criminal inquiry with the CIA inspector general into revelations that a CIA official destroyed videotapes of two terrorism suspects being interrogated in 2005, asked the panel last week to defer its inquiry." ... "Committee Chairman [Texas Democratic Representative] Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) has called a hearing for Jan. 16. He said he expected testimony from both acting CIA general counsel John Rizzo and Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., the former head of the agency's operations branch, who authorized destroying the tapes." -By Richard B. Schmitt -LAtimes

Secret - Alberto R Gonzales - David S Addington - Dick Cheney - Harriet E Miers - Torture - War - Crimes - Tapes - Censorship - Law - Politics - Military - Government - Intelligence - Terrorism - History - US - Iraq - "Bush Lawyers Discussed Fate of C.I.A.Tapes." ... "At least four top [Republican President Bush] White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials." ... "The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than [Republican President] Bush administration officials have acknowledged." ... "Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to [Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel." ... "It was previously reported that some administration officials had advised against destroying the tapes, but the emerging picture of White House involvement is more complex. In interviews, several administration and intelligence officials provided conflicting accounts as to whether anyone at the White House expressed support for the idea that the tapes should be destroyed." ... "One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that some believed in 2005 that any disclosure of the tapes could have been particularly damaging after revelations a year earlier of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq." ... "The current and former officials also provided new details about the role played in November 2005 by Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the chief of the agency’s clandestine branch, who ultimately ordered the destruction of the tapes." ... "The officials said that before he issued a secret cable directing that the tapes be destroyed, Mr. Rodriguez received legal guidance from two C.I.A. [Central Intelligence Agency] lawyers, Steven Hermes and Robert Eatinger. The officials said that those lawyers gave written guidance to Mr. Rodriguez that he had the authority to destroy the tapes and that the destruction would violate no laws." ... "Current and former officials said the two lawyers informed the C.I.A.’s top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, about the legal advice they had provided." (1, 2) -By Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane with contributions by David Johnston -NYTimes

Chris Dodd - Corporate - Government - Spy - Law - Intelligence - Politics - Telephone - Internet - E-Mails - Electronic - Civil Liberties - 2008 Election - Foreign - American - Nevada - Conn - Wisc - VT - Mass - "Spy law showdown postponed until next year." ... "Congress won't decide until next year whether to pass a complex law that would let telephone and Internet companies off the hook from lawsuits alleging illicit cooperation with federal government spies." ... "In something of an unexpected move, U.S. Senate Majority Leader [Nevada Democratic Senator] Harry Reid took to the Senate floor on Monday evening and announced he would postpone debate on the so-called FISA Amendments Act [FISA: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act]. That bill, which has already been approved in a closed-door meeting of the Senate Intelligence Committee, would grant such corporate immunity and make it easier for the feds to snoop on phone calls and e-mails involving foreigners and Americans without a warrant, drawing rampant criticism from civil liberties groups." ... "Earlier in the day, however, it appeared more certain that the Senate would move ahead with a vote to approve the controversial Senate measure, which would provide legal immunity to electronic communications providers that have allegedly opened up their networks to the National Security Agency and other federal spies since the September 11, 2001 attacks. Above vocal objections from some Democrats, the senators nevertheless voted 76-10 to limit debate and other stalling tactics related to the bill." ... "But in the end, last-minute rallying from Democrats opposed to the telecommunications immunity provisions applied the necessary pressure." ... "Perhaps most notably, [2008 Election Democratic Presidential Candidate and Connecticut Senator] Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), a presidential hopeful, devoted nearly the entire day to delivering one impassioned speech after another about his opposition to granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies accused of providing illegal assistance to government spying programs. Other influential Democratic senators, including [Wisconsin Democratic Senator] Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.), [Vermont Democratic Senator] Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and [Massachusetts Democratic Senator] Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) echoed his concerns at various points during the day." -By Anne Broache -CNET

Secret - Surveillance - Terrorism - Crime - Telecommunications - Companies - Government - Legislation - Politics- Intelligence - Drug - Consumer - Wireless - Technology - United States - Global - Space - Colorado - New Jersey - "Wider Spying Fuels Aid Plan for Telecom Industry." ... "For months, the [Republican President] Bush administration has waged a high-profile campaign, including personal lobbying by President Bush and closed-door briefings by top officials, to persuade Congress to pass legislation protecting companies from lawsuits for aiding the National Security Agency’s warrantless eavesdropping program." ... "But the battle is really about something much bigger. At stake is the federal government’s extensive but uneasy partnership with industry to conduct a wide range of secret surveillance operations in fighting terrorism and crime." ... "The N.S.A.’s reliance on telecommunications companies is broader and deeper than ever before, according to government and industry officials, yet that alliance is strained by legal worries and the fear of public exposure." ... "To detect narcotics trafficking, for example, the government has been collecting the phone records of thousands of Americans and others inside the United States who call people in Latin America, according to several government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the program remains classified. But in 2004, one major phone carrier balked at turning over its customers’ records. Worried about possible privacy violations or public relations problems, company executives declined to help the operation, which has not been previously disclosed." ... "In a separate N.S.A. [National Security Agency] project, executives at a Denver [Colorado] phone carrier, Qwest, refused in early 2001 to give the agency access to their most localized communications switches, which primarily carry domestic calls, according to people aware of the request, which has not been previously reported. They say the arrangement could have permitted neighborhood-by-neighborhood surveillance of phone traffic without a court order, which alarmed them." ... "The federal government’s reliance on private industry has been driven by changes in technology. Two decades ago, telephone calls and other communications traveled mostly through the air, relayed along microwave towers or bounced off satellites. The N.S.A. could vacuum up phone, fax and data traffic merely by erecting its own satellite dishes. But the fiber optics revolution has sent more and more international communications by land and undersea cable, forcing the agency to seek company cooperation to get access." ... "[An ATT engineer is claiming in a lawsuit that as early as February 2001,] “What he saw,” said Bruce Afran, a New Jersey lawyer representing the plaintiffs along with Carl Mayer, “was decisive evidence that within two weeks of taking office, the [Republican] Bush administration was planning a comprehensive effort of spying on Americans’ phone usage.”" (1, 2) -By Eric Lichtblau, James Risen, and Scott Shane -NYTimes

I Lewis "Scooter" Libby - Dick Cheney - Criminal - Government - Intelligence - Politics - "Libby drops appeal in CIA leak case." ... "Former [Republican President Bush] White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is no longer appealing his conviction in the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] leak case, a tacit recognition that continuing his legal fight might only make things worse." ... "Libby, the former chief of staff to [Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of perjury and obstruction but [Republican] President Bush commuted his 30-month prison sentence in July. As a convicted felon, Libby will lose his law license and, in some states, cannot vote." ... "He might have had a chance to avoid those consequences had he won on appeal, but at a new trial his commutation would be meaningless and Libby would again face potential prison time." ... "Libby, 57, was convicted of lying and obstructing an investigation into the 2003 leak of [American Undercover] CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. He was the only person to face criminal charges in the case." ... "The decision to withdraw his appeal means Libby will remain a convicted felon. President Bush could wipe away the conviction with a full pardon, something he has refused to rule out." -By Matt Apuzzo with contributions by Deb Riechmann -AP via -Yahoo

Joe Biden - Investigate - Military - Government - Intelligence - Terrorism - Videotapes - Censorship - Politics - Delaware - 2008 Election - "Biden calls for Special Counsel to investigate CIA." ... "[2008 Election Democratic Presidential Candidate and Delaware Senator] Sen. Joe Biden, D-Delaware, says the Justice Department needs to go further than it has, by calling for the appointment of Special Counsel to investigate the CIA's destruction of videotapes that included the interrogation of terrorism suspects." ... "“Under federal law, the Attorney General may appoint a Special Counsel to prosecute matters when he or she determines that an investigation by the Department itself would present a conflict of interest, or there are other extraordinary circumstances and it would be in the public interest to do so. I believe these conditions are met," the Democratic presidential hopeful said in a news release Sunday." ... "“This is a White House that has sanctioned and pushed for the kind of interrogation techniques captured on those video tapes," Biden said. "This is a White House that was informed of the CIA’s desire to destroy those tapes. Thus, it is possible this investigation could lead to the [Republican President Bush] White House."" -By Jamie Crawford -CNN

Secret - Porter J Goss - Michael V Hayden - Military - Government - Terrorism - Intelligence - Videotapes - Censorship - Officers - Safety - Prisoner - Torture - War Crimes - Law - Politics - "C.I.A. Destroyed Tapes of Interrogations." ... "The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Al Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about the C.I.A’s [Central Intelligence Agency] secret detention program, according to current and former government officials." ... "The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terror suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. They were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy, several officials said." ... "The C.I.A. said today that the decision to destroy the tapes had been made “within the C.I.A. itself,” and they were destroyed to protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value. The agency was headed at the time by Porter J. Goss. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Goss declined this afternoon to comment on the destruction of the tapes." ... "The existence and subsequent destruction of the tapes are likely to reignite the debate over the use of severe interrogation techniques on terror suspects, and their destruction raises questions about whether C.I.A. officials withheld information about aspects of the program from the courts and from the Sept. 11 commission appointed by [Republican] President Bush and Congress. It was not clear who within the C.I.A. authorized the destruction of the tapes, but current and former government officials said it had been approved at the highest levels of the agency." ... "General [CIA Director, General Michael V Hayden] Hayden said in a statement that leaders of Congressional oversight committees were fully briefed on the matter, but some Congressional officials said notification to Congress had not been adequate." (1, 2) -By Mark Mazzetti with contributions by Eric Lichtblau and Scott Shane -NYTimes

US - Iran - Nuclear - Military - Intelligence - Politics - "Bush told in August that Iran nuke program 'may be suspended'." ... "[Republican] President Bush was told in August that Iran's nuclear weapons program "may be suspended," the White House said Wednesday, which seemingly contradicts the account of the meeting given by Bush Tuesday." ... "[Admiral] Adm. Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, told Bush the new information might cause intelligence officials to change their assessment of the Iranian program, but said analysts needed to review the new data before making a final judgment, White House press secretary Dana Perino said late Wednesday." ... ""Director McConnell said that the new information might cause the intelligence community to change its assessment of Iran's covert nuclear program, but the intelligence community was not prepared to draw any conclusions at that point in time, and it wouldn't be right to speculate until they had time to examine and analyze the new data," Perino said in a statement issued by the White House." ... "The new account from Perino seems to contradict the president's version of his August conversation with McConnell and raised new questions about why Bush continued to warn the American public about a threat from Iran two months after being told a new assessment was in the works." -By Ed Henry -CNN

Joe Biden - US - Iran - Military - Nuclear - Intelligence - History - Delaware - 2008 Election - "Democrats incredulous over Bush's account of Iran report." ... "[2008 Election] Democratic presidential candidate [Delaware Senator] Sen. Joe Biden on Tuesday said he can't believe [Republican] President Bush hasn't known for months about a recent intelligence estimate that downplays the nuclear threat from Iran." ... "On Tuesday the president acknowledged he had given a speech warning that Iran's nuclear development risked "World War III" about two months after his intelligence chief told him a reassessment of Tehran's nuclear ambitions was under way." ... "Bush told reporters during a White House news conference that he was not told the details of the new assessment until last week and he said the new report, which found that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons work in 2003, will not change U.S. policy toward Iran." ... "The Democratic presidential candidates were incredulous that Bush did not know about the assessment's new finding." ... "Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called that explanation "unbelievable."" ... ""Are you telling me a president that's briefed every single morning, who's fixated on Iran, is not told back in August that the tentative conclusion of 16 intelligence agencies in the U.S. government said they had abandoned their effort for a nuclear weapon in '03?" Biden asked in a conference call with reporters." ... ""I refuse to believe that," he added. "If that's true, he has the most incompetent staff in modern American history, and he's one of the most incompetent presidents in modern American history."" -CNN
US - Iran - Nuclear - Military - Intelligence - Politics - Secret - History - "U.S. Finds Iran Halted Its Nuclear Arms Effort in 2003." ... "A new assessment by American intelligence agencies released Monday concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting a judgment two years ago that Tehran [Iran's capital] was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb." ... "The conclusions of the new assessment are likely to reshape the final year of the [Republican President] Bush administration, which has made halting Iran’s nuclear program a cornerstone of its foreign policy." ... "The assessment, a National Intelligence Estimate that represents the consensus view of all 16 American spy agencies, states that Tehran is likely to keep its options open with respect to building a weapon, but that intelligence agencies “do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.”" ... "Iran is continuing to produce enriched uranium, a program that the Tehran government has said is intended for civilian purposes. The new estimate says that the enrichment program could still provide Iran with enough raw material to produce a nuclear weapon sometime by the middle of next decade, a timetable essentially unchanged from previous estimates." ... "But the new report essentially disavows a judgment that the intelligence agencies issued in 2005, which concluded that Iran had an active secret arms program intended to transform the raw material into a nuclear weapon. The new estimate declares instead with “high confidence” that the military-run program was shut in 2003, and it concludes with “moderate confidence” that the program remains frozen. The report judges that the halt was imposed by Iran “primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure.”" (1, 2) -By Mark Mazzetti -NYTimes

Americans' - Communications - Freedom - Government - Intelligence - Surveillance - Law - Politics - "Protecting privacy." ... "Contrary to [TIME Magazine Columnist Joel] Klein's claims, Democrats want to require individualized warrants only when the government targets Americans, not foreigners overseas. Klein is also flat out wrong to suggest there is "broad, bipartisan agreement" on new surveillance powers. In fact, the [Republican President Bush] administration and its allies adamantly oppose even modest proposals to protect law-abiding Americans who are swept up in this new, essentially warrantless surveillance. Only after the president's illegal wiretapping program was publicly revealed was the administration forced to comply with the law. Now the administration is demanding broad new powers that could allow it to collect countless communications. Congress must make sure that the new law requires independent court oversight and protects innocent Americans' privacy. That's not "stupid"; that's our sworn and solemn duty." -By United States Senator Russ Feingold -ChicagoTribune

Rudy Giuliani - Terrorism - Money - Politics - US - Qatar - Military - Intelligence - Osama bin Laden - Law - Enforcement - 2008 Election - "Giuliani's Ties to Qatar Raise Questions for Mr. 9/ll." ... "Contracts awarded to [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate] Rudy Giuliani's private security firm in the Gulf state of Qatar were overseen by a government minister suspected of harboring the al Qaeda terrorist who planned the 9/ll attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, according to security consultants in the region." ... "Since 2005, Giuliani Partners and its Giuliani Security & Safety (GS&S) unit has provided security consulting and advice in Qatar through contracts overseen by the country's Interior Ministry, which is currently run by a member of the royal family who has long been accused of supporting al Qaeda, according to security consultants familiar with the area." ... "The current interior minister, Sheik Abdullah Bin Khalid al-Thani, was suspected of sheltering Mohammed at his farm and tipping him off to the arrival of CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] and FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] teams coming to arrest the al Qaeda strategist back in 1996, according to the National Security Council's former chief counterterrorism adviser and ABC News consultant Richard A. Clarke, former CIA agent Robert Baer and a 2004 Congressional Research Service report." ... "Khalid al-Thani is also believed to have welcomed Osama bin Laden on two visits to the farm, according to an Oct. 10, 2007 CRS study." ... "The firm's work in Qatar was too close for comfort to former law enforcement agents familiar with the country." ... ""We have a guy who could be president who's taking money from the same accounts that harbored terrorists," said Baer, the former CIA agent." -By Marcus Baram -ABCNEWS.com

Telecommunications - Money - Politics - Government - Surveillance - Intelligence - Electronic - Network - "Judge: Feds must release telecom records." ... "An electronic privacy group challenging [Republican] President Bush's domestic spying program scored a minor victory after a judge ordered the federal government to release information about lobbying efforts by telecommunications companies to protect them from prosecution." ... "The Electronic Frontier Foundation in January 2006 filed a class-action suit against AT&T Inc., accusing the company of illegally making communications on its networks available to the National Security Agency without warrants." ... "Congress is now considering changing the law to grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that would protect them from such court challenges." ... ""Any attempt for immunity is aimed at getting these very important cases swept back under the rug," EFF spokeswoman Rebecca Jeschke said Wednesday." -By Kim Curtis -AP via -Yahoo
Noteworthy- Scott Bloch - Karl Rove - Military - Government - Computer - Intelligence - Company - Hacking - 2006 Election - Politics - Employee - Justice - Investigation - Kan - "Head of Rove Inquiry in Hot Seat Himself: Bloch Used Private Company, Geeks on Call, to Delete Files On His Office Computer." ... "The head of the federal agency investigating [Republican President Bush's former aide] Karl Rove's White House political operation is facing allegations that he improperly deleted computer files during another probe, using a private computer-help company, Geeks on Call." ... "TScott Bloch runs the Office of Special Counsel, an agency charged with protecting government whistleblowers and enforcing a ban on federal employees engaging in partisan political activity. Mr. Bloch's agency is looking into whether Mr. Rove and other White House officials used government agencies to help re-elect Republicans in 2006." ... "TAt the same time, Mr. Bloch has himself been under investigation since 2005. At the direction of the White House, the federal Office of Personnel Management's inspector general is looking into claims that Mr. Bloch improperly retaliated against employees and dismissed whistleblower cases without adequate examination." ... "TRecently, investigators learned that Mr. Bloch erased all the files on his office personal computer late last year. They are now trying to determine whether the deletions were improper or part of a cover-up, lawyers close to the case said." ... "In an interview, the 49-year-old former labor-law litigator from Lawrence, Kan., confirmed that he contacted Geeks on Call but said he was trying to eradicate a virus that had seized control of his computer." ... "Mr. Bloch believes the White House may have a conflict of interest in pressing the inquiry into his conduct while his office investigates the White House political operation." ... "Depending on circumstances, erasing files or destroying evidence in a federal investigation can be considered obstruction of justice." ... "Mr. Bloch had his computer's hard disk completely cleansed using a "seven-level" wipe: a thorough scrubbing that conforms to Defense Department data-security standards. The process makes it nearly impossible for forensics experts to restore the data later. He also directed Geeks on Call to erase laptop computers that had been used by his two top political deputies, who had recently left the agency." -By John R. Wilke -WSJ.com

Iraq - United States - Saudi Arabia - Libya - Syria - Military - Terrorism - Computer - Intelligence - Religious - Politics - "Foreign Fighters in Iraq Are Tied to Allies of U.S.." ... "Saudi Arabia and Libya, both considered allies by the United States in its fight against terrorism, were the source of about 60 percent of the foreign fighters who came to Iraq in the past year to serve as suicide bombers or to facilitate other attacks, according to senior American military officials." ... "The data come largely from a trove of documents and computers discovered in September, when American forces raided a tent camp in the desert near Sinjar, close to the Syrian border. The raid’s target was an insurgent cell believed to be responsible for smuggling the vast majority of foreign fighters into Iraq." ... "The most significant discovery was a collection of biographical sketches that listed hometowns and other details for more than 700 fighters brought into Iraq since August 2006." ... "The records also underscore how the insurgency in Iraq remains both overwhelmingly Iraqi and Sunni. American officials now estimate that the flow of foreign fighters was 80 to 110 per month during the first half of this year and about 60 per month during the summer. The numbers fell sharply in October to no more than 40, partly as a result of the Sinjar raid, the American officials say." ... "In contrast to the comparatively small number of foreigners, more than 25,000 inmates are in American detention centers in Iraq. Of those, only about 290, or some 1.2 percent, are foreigners, military officials say." ... "About four out of every five detainees in American detention centers are Sunni Arab, even though Sunni Arabs make up just one-fifth of Iraq’s population." (1, 2) -By Richard A. Oppel Jr. -NYTimes

Dick Cheney- Karl Rove - I Lewis "Scooter" Libby - Intelligence - Law - Politics - Book - "McClellan blames Bush for CIA leak deceit: Former spokesman says both president and vice president involved." ... "Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan blames [Republican] President Bush and [Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney for efforts to mislead the public about the role of White House aides in leaking the identity of a CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] operative." ... "In an excerpt from his forthcoming book ["What Happened"], McClellan recount the 2003 news conference in which he told reporters that aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were "not involved" in the leak involving operative Valerie Plame." ... ""There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes, according to a brief excerpt released Monday. "I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself."" ... "Bush's chief of staff at the time was Andrew Card." -AP via -MSNBC

Government - Surveillance - Telephone - Companies - Intelligence - Politics - Civil Liberties - "Panel Drops Immunity From Eavesdropping Bill." ... "Reflecting the deep divisions within Congress over granting legal immunity to telephone companies for cooperating with the [Republican President] Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a new domestic surveillance law on Thursday that sidestepped the issue." ... "By a 10 to 9 vote, the committee approved an overhaul of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that dropped a key provision for immunity for telecommunications companies that another committee had already approved. The Senate leadership will have to decide how to deal with the immunity question on the Senate floor." ... "On Thursday night, the House voted 227 to 189, generally along party lines, to approve its own version of the FISA bill, which also does not include immunity." ... "But the administration has made clear that President Bush will veto any bill that does not include what it considers necessary tools for government eavesdropping, including the retroactive immunity for phone carriers that took part in the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program after the Sept. 11 attacks." ... "Since the N.S.A. program was disclosed nearly two years ago, the major telephone companies have been sued by civil liberties groups and others, who argue that the companies violated the privacy rights of millions of Americans." -By James Risen -NYTimes

Michael Mukasey - Alberto Gonzales - Government - Spying - Intelligence - Politics - "Domestic Spying Inquiry Restarted at DoJ." ... "The Justice Department has reopened a long-dormant inquiry into the government's warrantless wiretapping program, a major policy shift only days into the tenure of Attorney General Michael Mukasey." ... "The investigation by the department's Office of Professional Responsibility was shut down last year, after the investigators were denied security clearances. Gonzales told Congress that [Republican] President Bush, not he, denied the clearances." ... "The OPR investigation was begun in February 2006 but was shut down a few months later when the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the security clearances to ask questions about the program. Justice Department officials said Gonzales recommended Bush approve the clearances, but the president said no." ... "Bush's decision to authorize the spy agency to monitor people inside the United States, without warrants, generated a host of questions about the program's legal justification." -By Devlin Barrett with contributions by Lara Jakes Jordan -AP via -SFGate.com

Los Angeles - California - Police - Government - Mapping - Religious - Peoples - Race - Civil Libertarians - Scientific - Terrorism - Intelligence - Law - "LAPD defends Muslim mapping effort: Police call program an effort to improve relations with Islamic community. Civil libertarians criticize profiling while other skeptics note that population is dispersed and defies easy classification." ... "The [Los Angeles, California] LAPD's plan to map Muslim communities in an effort to identify potential hotbeds of extremism departs from the way law enforcement has dealt with local anti-terrorism since 9/11 and prompted widespread skepticism Friday." ... "In a document reviewed Friday by The Times, the LAPD's Los Angeles Police Department's counter-terrorism bureau proposed using U.S. census data and other demographic information to pinpoint various Muslim communities and then reach out to them through social service agencies." ... "LAPD officials said that it is crucial for them to gain a better understanding of isolated parts of the Muslim community. Those groups can potentially breed violent extremism, the LAPD said in its plan." ... ""This is not . . . targeting or profiling," Police Chief William J. Bratton said Friday in defending the program. "It is an effort to understand communities," he said." ... "But the effort sparked an outcry from civil libertarians and some Muslim activists, who compared the program to religious profiling." ... "Others noted that the effort faces enormous practical difficulties. The U.S. Census Bureau is barred by law from asking people for their religious affiliation. As a result, there is no scientific data on the size of the nation's Muslim population, let alone its location, with estimates of the population nationwide ranging from about 1.4 million adults in a Pew Research Center study this year to the 7 million or more claimed by some community organizations." ... "Census data on ancestry also would not yield accurate Muslim estimates, because significant numbers of ethnic Iranians are Jewish and many ethnic Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians are Christians." (1, 2) -By Richard Winton, Teresa Watanabe, and Greg Krikorian with contributions by Jean-Paul Renaud -LAtimes

Photo - Media - Intelligence - Politics - California - Wildfire - Emergency - "Just Who Was At That Fake FEMA Briefing? CBS News Obtains A Photo Of The "Press" Gallery Full Of FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] Staffers." ... "CBS News has obtained this photo of the now infamous fake FEMA press conference held during the California wildfires. The photo, taken by a FEMA employee, is one of the only known photos of the press gallery of that event." ... "The gallery is not filled with members of the press but with high-level agency employees." ... "At the podium on the left is Vice Admiral Harvey Johnson, the second in command at FEMA." ... "It was announced Thursday that an internal investigation had found that FEMA's press secretary encouraged, and in some cases instructed, employees to pose as reporters and ask questions at the fake news conference." ... "Since the briefing [former director of public affairs at FEMA, John "Pat"] Philbin - who, at the time of the news conference, already had accepted a job at the office of the director of national intelligence - lost his new post before he even started because of the incident." -CBSNews

Dick Cheney - Dennis Kucinich - US - Iraq - Military - Intelligence - Law - Ohio - 2008 Election - "Debate on Cheney impeachment averted." ... "House Democrats on Tuesday narrowly managed to avert a bruising debate on a proposal to impeach [Republican Vice President] Dick Cheney after Republicans, in a surprise maneuver, voted in favor of taking up the measure." ... "Republicans, changing course midway through a vote, tried to force Democrats into a debate on the resolution sponsored by longshot [2008 Election Democratic] presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich." ... "The anti-war Ohio Democrat, in his resolution, accused Cheney of purposely leading the country into war against Iraq and manipulating intelligence about Iraq's ties with al-Qaida." ... "The resolution said that Cheney, "in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of vice president," had "purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States by fabricating a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the use of the U.S. Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security interests."" -By Jim Abrams -AP via -Yahoo

John McCain - Rudy Giuliani - Michael B Mukasey - Torture - Military - Intelligence - Law - New York - 2008 Election - "Torture debate between McCain, Giuliani, gets personal." ... "The Republican debate over torture has become a debate over resumes, as [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate] John McCain warns from personal experience about the dangers of harsh questioning and [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate] Rudy Giuliani takes credit for his skill with it as a prosecutor." ... "“When someone says waterboarding is similar to harsh interrogation techniques used against the mafia in New York City, they do not have enough experience to lead our military,” McCain said Sunday night at a town-hall meeting here." ... "McCain, a leading critic of attorney-general nominee Michael B. Mukasey’s refusal to define waterboarding as illegal, was responding to comments made Friday by Giuliani in which the former U.S. attorney – in broad, unspecific terms – appeared to defend the practice. " -By Sasha Issenberg -Boston/Globe

Michael B Mukasey - Water - Torture - Law - Politics - Military - Government - Intelligence - "Bush Administration Blocked Waterboarding Critic: Former DOJ Official Tested the Method Himself, in Effort to Form Torture Policy." ... "A senior Justice Department official, charged with reworking the administration's legal position on torture in 2004 became so concerned about the controversial interrogation technique of waterboarding that he decided to experience it firsthand, sources told ABC News." ... "Daniel Levin, then acting assistant attorney general, went to a military base near Washington [DC] and underwent the procedure to inform his analysis of different interrogation techniques." ... "After the experience, Levin told [Republican President] White House officials that even though he knew he wouldn't die, he found the experience terrifying and thought that it clearly simulated drowning." ... "Levin, who refused to comment for this story, concluded waterboarding could be illegal torture unless performed in a highly limited way and with close supervision. And, sources told ABC News, he believed the [Republican President] Bush Administration had failed to offer clear guidelines for its use." ... "According to retired Rear [Admiral] Adm. John Hutson, "There is no question this is torture -- this is a technique by which an individual is strapped to a board, elevated by his feet and either dunked into water or water poured over his face over a towel or a blanket."" ... "The legal justification of waterboarding has come to the forefront in the debate swirling around Michael B. Mukasey's nomination for attorney general. " (1, 2) -By Jan Crawford Greenburg and Ariane de Vogue -ABCNEWS.com

Michael B Mukasey- Rudolph W Giuliani - John McCain - Prisoner - Torture - Law - Opinion - Classified - Government - Politics - Intelligence - History - New York - Arizona - "Mukasey Unsure About Legality of Waterboarding." ... "In an effort to quell growing doubts in the Senate about his nomination as [Republican President Bush's] attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey on Tuesday declared that waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques “seem over the line or, on a personal basis, repugnant to me” and promised to review the legality of all such techniques if confirmed." ... "But Mr. Mukasey told Senate Democrats he could not offer an opinion on whether waterboarding, which simulates drowning, is illegal torture because he has not been briefed on the details of the classified technique and does not want to suggest that Central Intelligence Agency officers who have used such techniques may be in “personal legal jeopardy.”" ... "Mr. Mukasey noted that Congress had not explicitly banned the use of waterboarding by the Central Intelligence Agency, though the method was outlawed for use by the military in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. That left room for interpretation as to whether waterboarding or any other technique is prohibited as “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatment, he wrote." ... "All 10 Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote to Mr. Mukasey last week asking that he clarify his position on waterboarding. “Your unwillingness to state that waterboarding is illegal may place Americans at risk of being subject to this abusive technique,” the senators wrote." ... "Last week, after [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate] Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, said he wasn’t sure about waterboarding because he thought “the liberal media” might not have described it properly, [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate] Senator John McCain of Arizona, who was tortured himself as a prisoner in North Vietnam, shot back." ... "“All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today,” Mr. McCain said." -By Scott Shane -NYTimes

Randy "Duke" Cunningham - Brent Wilkes - Jerry Lewis - Duncan Hunter - Tom DeLay - Roy Blunt - Dennis Hastert - Money - Politics - Lawmakers - Travel - Flying - Government - Military - Intelligence- San Diego - California - Texas - Missouri - Hawaii - Florida - Nevada - Idaho - Illinois - "Witness: Contractor Gave Lawmaker Perks." ... "[Former California Republican Representative Randy "Duke"] Cunningham, a San Diego Republican who held seats on the powerful House intelligence and defense appropriations committees, was elected to eight terms before resigning in 2005. He pleaded guilty that year to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from [Brent] Wilkes and others and is serving an eight-year prison sentence." ... "[Wilkes nephew and employee Joel] Combs testified Wednesday that his uncle communicated with other prominent lawmakers, including California Republicans Jerry Lewis and Duncan Hunter, former House Majority Leader [Republican] Tom DeLay of Texas, Republican Whip [Missouri Representative] Roy Blunt, and Sen. Daniel Inouye, a Hawaii Democrat." ... "But the relationship with Cunningham was at the center of Wilkes' success in Washington, and Combs said his uncle worked to keep the lawmaker happy - efforts that included staking his nephew money to purposely lose in poker games with the lawmaker." ... "Combs recalled dinners at Washington's fancy Capital Grille restaurant, shooting lessons, and trips to Florida, Las Vegas [Nevada] and Idaho provided by Wilkes for the congressman from 1998 until 2002. During that period, Cunningham made calls to Pentagon officials on Wilkes' behalf and helped secure about $90 million in federal contracts for Wilkes' company." ... "The perks included a $20,000 stay in a private villa at a resort in Hawaii, where Wilkes, Combs and the congressman went diving - an expedition captured in an underwater video that was played for jurors. Combs said he also hired women from an escort service for his uncle and the congressman." ... "Wilkes also paid to fly Cunningham and former House Speaker [Illinois Republican Representative] Dennis Hastert from a golf outing in Palm Springs [California] to San Diego [California] for a reception and then back to Washington on private jets, Combs testified." -By Allison Hoffman -AP via -Guardian.co.uk

Mitch McConnell - Media- Surveillance - Intelligence - Politics - Children - Health - E-Mails - Kentucky - "McConnell knew staff encouraged media to look at boy's background." ... "Senate Minority Leader [Kentucky Republican Senator] Mitch McConnell knew his staff had sent e-mails encouraging reporters to look into the background of a boy recruited by Democrats to support expansion of a children's health-care program - even as he denied involvement by his aides, a newspaper reported Wednesday." ... "The Kentucky Republican told a WHAS-TV reporter last Friday that his staff had not been involved in trying to push reporters to look into the financial situation of the 12-year-old boy's family." ... "But McConnell spokesman Don Stewart told The Courier-Journal of Louisville [Kentucky] that he informed McConnell about the Oct. 8 e-mails sometime around Thursday, the day before the interview with the television reporter." -AP via -Kentucky.com

Government - Surveillance - Phone - Company - Terrorism - Intelligence - Law - Politics - Colorado - New York - "Former CEO Says U.S. Punished Phone Firm: Qwest Feared NSA Plan Was Illegal, Filing Says." ... "A former Qwest Communications International executive, appealing a conviction for insider trading, has alleged that the government withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars after Qwest refused to participate in an unidentified National Security Agency program that the company thought might be illegal." ... "Former chief executive Joseph P. Nacchio, convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading, said the NSA approached Qwest more than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to court documents unsealed in Denver [Colorado] this week." ... "Details about the alleged NSA program have been redacted from the documents, but Nacchio's lawyer said last year that the NSA had approached the company about participating in a warrantless surveillance program to gather information about Americans' phone records." ... "Nacchio's account, which places the NSA proposal at a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, suggests that the [Republican President] Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 attacks have been cited by the government as the main impetus for its warrantless surveillance efforts." ... "Kurt Opsahl, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said: "It's inappropriate for the government to be awarding a contract conditioned upon an agreement to an illegal program. That truly is what's going on here."" (1, 2) -By Ellen Nakashima and Dan Eggen with contributions by Richard Drezen -WashingtonPost

Secret - Government - Phone - Network - Spying - Intelligence - Law - Terrorism - Money - Politics - "Documents: Qwest was targeted: 'Classified info' was not allowed at ex-CEO's trial." ... "The National Security Agency and other government agencies retaliated against Qwest because the Denver telco refused to go along with a phone spying program, documents released Wednesday suggest." ... "The documents indicate that likely would have been at the heart of former CEO Joe Nacchio's so-called "classified information" defense at his insider trading trial, had he been allowed to present it." ... "The secret contracts - worth hundreds of millions of dollars - made Nacchio optimistic about Qwest's future, even as his staff was warning him the company might not make its numbers, Nacchio's defense attorneys have maintained. But Nacchio didn't present that argument at trial." ... "The documents suggest U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham refused to allow Nacchio to present the argument about retaliation. Nottingham also said Nacchio would have to take the stand to raise the classified defense." ... "Nacchio was convicted last spring on 19 counts of insider trading for $52 million of stock sales in April and May 2001, and sentenced to six years in prison. He's free pending appeal." ... "The topic itself is redacted each time it appears in the hundreds of pages of documents, but there is mention of Nacchio believing the request was both inappropriate and illegal, and repeatedly refusing to go along with it." ... "The NSA contract was awarded in July 2001 to companies other than Qwest." ... "USA Today reported in May 2006 that Qwest, unlike AT&T and Verizon, balked at helping the NSA track phone calling patterns that may have indicated terrorist organizational activities. Nacchio's attorney, Herbert Stern, confirmed that Nacchio refused to turn over customer telephone records because he didn't think the NSA program had legal standing." ... "The documents maintain that Nacchio met with top government officials, including [Republican] President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and then-National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice in 2000 and early 2001 to discuss how to protect the government's communications network." -By Sara Burnett And Jeff Smith -RockyMountainNews.com

Secret- Osama bin Laden - TV - Web - Communications - Terrorist - Surveillance - Company - Military - Intelligence - Politics - "Leak Severed a Link to Al-Qaeda's Secrets: Firm Says [Republican President Bush's] Administration's Handling of Video Ruined Its Spying Efforts." ... "A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release." ... "Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company's Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide." ... "The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group [Search for International Terrorist Entities], says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications network." ... ""Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless," said Rita Katz, the firm's 44-year-old founder, who has garnered wide attention by publicizing statements and videos from extremist chat rooms and Web sites, while attracting controversy over the secrecy of SITE's methodology. Her firm provides intelligence about terrorist groups to a wide range of paying clients, including private firms and military and intelligence agencies from the United States and several other countries." ... "She spoke first with White House counsel Fred F. Fielding, whom she had previously met, and then with Joel Bagnal, deputy assistant to the president for homeland security. Both expressed interest in obtaining a copy, and Bagnal suggested that she send a copy to Michael Leiter, who holds the No. 2 job at the National Counterterrorism Center." (1, 2) -By Joby Warrick -WashingtonPost

Alberto R Gonzales - David S Addington - Dick Cheney - John Yoo - Secret - Torture - War Crimes - Law - Politics - Terrorism - Government - Intelligence - Prison - Psychological - Health- Human Rights - US - World - History - "Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations." ... "When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the [Republican President] Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations." ... "But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency." ... "The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures." ... "Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it." ... "Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard." ... "The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hidden legacy of [Republican] President Bush’s second term and Mr. Gonzales’s tenure at the Justice Department, where he moved quickly to align it with the White House after a 2004 rebellion by staff lawyers that had thrown policies on surveillance and detention into turmoil." ... "Associates at the Justice Department said Mr. Gonzales seldom resisted pressure from [Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney and David S. Addington, Mr. Cheney’s counsel, to endorse policies that they saw as effective in safeguarding Americans, even though the practices brought the condemnation of other governments, human rights groups and Democrats in Congress. Critics say Mr. Gonzales turned his agency into an arm of the Bush White House, undermining the department’s independence." ... "The interrogation opinions were signed by Steven G. Bradbury, who since 2005 has headed the elite Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. He has become a frequent public defender of the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program and detention policies at Congressional hearings and press briefings, a role that some legal scholars say is at odds with the office’s tradition of avoiding political advocacy." ... "The Bush administration had entered uncharted legal territory beginning in 2002, holding prisoners outside the scrutiny of the International Red Cross and subjecting them to harrowing pressure tactics. They included slaps to the head; hours held naked in a frigid cell; days and nights without sleep while battered by thundering rock music; long periods manacled in stress positions; or the ultimate, waterboarding." ... "Never in history had the United States authorized such tactics. While President Bush and C.I.A. officials would later insist that the harsh measures produced crucial intelligence, many veteran interrogators, psychologists and other experts say that less coercive methods are equally or more effective." ... "With virtually no experience in interrogations, the C.I.A. had constructed its program in a few harried months by consulting Egyptian and Saudi intelligence officials and copying Soviet interrogation methods long used in training American servicemen to withstand capture. The agency officers questioning prisoners constantly sought advice from lawyers thousands of miles away." ... "“We were getting asked about combinations — ‘Can we do this and this at the same time?’” recalled Paul C. Kelbaugh, a veteran intelligence lawyer who was deputy legal counsel at the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorist Center from 2001 to 2003." ... "Mr. Kelbaugh said the questions were sometimes close calls that required consultation with the Justice Department. But in August 2002, the department provided a sweeping legal justification for even the harshest tactics." ... "That opinion, which would become infamous as “the torture memo” after it was leaked, was written largely by John Yoo, a young Berkeley law professor serving in the Office of Legal Counsel." ... "Mr. Yoo’s memorandum said no interrogation practices were illegal unless they produced pain equivalent to organ failure or “even death.”" (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) -By Scott Shane, David Johnston, and James Risen -NYTimes

US - Iraq - Military - Intelligence - Accounting - Politics - Terrorism - Crime - Database - "What Defines a Killing as Sectarian? U.S. Military Teams Analyze and Tally Each Civilian Death." ... "On Sept. 1, the bullet-riddled bodies of four Iraqi men were found on a Baghdad [Iraq's capital] street. Two days later, a single dead man, with one bullet in his head, was found on a different street. According to the U.S. military in Iraq, the solitary man was a victim of sectarian violence. The first four were not." ... "Such determinations are the building blocks for what the [Republican President] Bush administration has declared a downward trend in sectarian deaths and a sign that its war strategy is working. They are made by a specialized team of soldiers who spend their nights at computer terminals, sifting through data on the day's civilian victims for clues to the motivations of killers." ... "Apparent contradictions are relatively easy to find in the flood of bar charts and trend lines the military produces. Civilian casualty numbers in the Pentagon's latest quarterly report on Iraq last week, for example, differ significantly from those presented by the top commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, in his recent congressional testimony. Petraeus's chart was limited to numbers of dead, while the Pentagon combined the numbers of dead and wounded -- a figure that should be greater. Yet Petraeus's numbers were higher than the Pentagon's for the months preceding this year's increase of U.S. troops to Iraq, and lower since U.S. operations escalated this summer." ... "The charts are difficult to compare: Petraeus used monthly figures on a line graph, while the Pentagon computed "Average Daily Casualties" on a bar chart, and neither included actual numbers." ... "In an Iraq assessment released this month, the Government Accountability Office said it "could not determine if sectarian violence had declined" since the U.S. troop buildup began in the spring and saw no decrease in overall attacks against civilians as of the end of July." ... "The U.S. intelligence community considers more than numbers in making its war assessments. "What the Iraqis perceive" about their country and their daily lives "may be more important than what the numbers are," said a senior intelligence official, who discussed the subject on the condition of anonymity. Even so, he said, intelligence officials found contradictions in the available statistics as they wrote last month's National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, whose conclusions were somewhat less optimistic than the military's." (1, 2) -By Karen DeYoung -WashingtonPost

Government - Electronic - Surveillance - Data - Travelers - Flying - Driving - Reading - People - Civil Liberties - US - International- San Francisco - California - Alaska - Terrorism - Intelligence - Politics - Law - "Collecting of Details on Travelers Documented: U.S. Effort More Extensive Than Previously Known." ... "The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials." ... "The personal travel records are meant to be stored for as long as 15 years, as part of the Department of Homeland Security's effort to assess the security threat posed by all travelers entering the country. Officials say the records, which are analyzed by the department's Automated Targeting System, help border officials distinguish potential terrorists from innocent people entering the country." ... "Officials yesterday defended the retention of highly personal data on travelers not involved in or linked to any violations of the law. But civil liberties advocates have alleged that the type of information preserved by the department raises alarms about the government's ability to intrude into the lives of ordinary people. The millions of travelers whose records are kept by the government are generally unaware of what their records say, and the government has not created an effective mechanism for reviewing the data and correcting any errors, activists said." ... "The activists alleged that the data collection effort, as carried out now, violates the Privacy Act, which bars the gathering of data related to Americans' exercise of their First Amendment rights, such as their choice of reading material or persons with whom to associate. They also expressed concern that such personal data could one day be used to impede their right to travel." ... ""The federal government is trying to build a surveillance society," said John Gilmore, a civil liberties activist in San Francisco whose records were requested by the Identity Project, an ad-hoc group of privacy advocates in California and Alaska. The government, he said, "may be doing it with the best or worst of intentions. . . . But the job of building a surveillance database and populating it with information about us is happening largely without our awareness and without our consent."" (1, 2) -By Ellen Nakashima with contributions by Julie Tate -WashingtonPost

Secret - Phone- E-Mail - Surveillance - Company - Consumer - Lawsuit - Politics - Terrorism - Government - Intelligence - San Francisco - California- "Case Dismissed? The secret lobbying campaign your phone company doesn't want you to know about." ... "The nation’s biggest telecommunications companies, working closely with the [Republican President Bush] White House, have mounted a secretive lobbying campaign to get Congress to quickly approve a measure wiping out all private lawsuits against them for assisting the U.S. intelligence community’s warrantless surveillance programs." ... "The campaign—which involves some of Washington's most prominent lobbying and law firms—has taken on new urgency in recent weeks because of fears that a U.S. appellate court in San Francisco [California] is poised to rule that the lawsuits should be allowed to proceed." ... "If that happens, the telecom companies say, they may be forced to terminate their cooperation with the U.S. intelligence community—or risk potentially crippling damage awards for allegedly turning over personal information about their customers to the government without a judicial warrant." ... "But critics say the language proposed by the White House—drafted in close cooperation with the industry officials—is so extraordinarily broad that it would provide retroactive immunity for all past telecom actions related to the surveillance program. Its practical effect, they argue, would be to shut down any independent judicial or state inquires into how the companies have assisted the government in eavesdropping on the telephone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents in the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks." ... "Among those coordinating the industry’s effort are two well-connected capital players who both worked for President George H.W. Bush: Verizon general counsel William Barr, who served as attorney general under 41, and AT&T senior executive vice president James Cicconi, who was the elder Bush's deputy chief of staff." ... "Working with them are a battery of major D.C. lobbyists and lawyers who are providing "strategic advice" to the companies on the issue, according to sources familiar with the campaign who asked not to be identified talking about it. Among the players, these sources said: powerhouse Republican lobbyists Charlie Black and Wayne Berman (who represent AT&T and Verizon, respectively), former GOP senator and U.S. ambassador to Germany Dan Coats (a lawyer at King & Spaulding who is representing Sprint), former Democratic Party strategist and one-time assistant secretary of State Tom Donilon (who represents Verizon), former deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick (whose law firm also represents Verizon) and Brad Berenson, a former assistant White House counsel under President George W. Bush who now represents AT&T." (1, 2, 3) -By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball -MSNBC /Newsweek

University - Free Speech - Terrorism - Intelligence - Law - Los Angeles - California - "GOP politician sent email asking how to stop naming of dean." ... "A conservative [Republican] Los Angeles County politician asked about two dozen people in an e-mail last month how to prevent the University of California, Irvine from hiring renowned liberal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky as its founding law school dean, a spokesman for the politician said Friday." ... "Making Chemerinsky the head of the law school "would be like appointing al-Qaida in charge of homeland security," Michael Antonovich, a longtime Republican member of the county Board of Supervisors, said in a voicemail left with The Associated Press." ... "He was not available for further comment on why he was getting involved in the situation at a campus located outside his jurisdiction in Orange County [California]." ... "Chemerinsky, a frequent legal commentator who represented exposed CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] agent Valerie Plame, has repeatedly said Drake told him he was out because he was "too politically controversial" due to his liberal activism." -By Gillian Flaccus -APvia -SFGate.com

Intelligence - Terrorism - Torture - Human Rights - Law - "Senate Intelligence Panel Seeks CIA Nominee's Withdrawal." ... "Members of the Senate intelligence committee have requested the withdrawal of the [Republican President] Bush administration's choice for CIA general counsel, acknowledging that John Rizzo's nomination has stalled because of concerns about his views on the treatment of terrorism suspects." ... "Rizzo, a career CIA lawyer, has drawn fire from Democrats and human rights groups because of his support for Bush administration legal doctrines permitting "enhanced interrogation" of terrorism detainees in CIA custody." ... "During his confirmation hearing in June, Rizzo testified that he did not object to an [Republican President Bush] administration memo in 2002 that deemed legal some extremely harsh interrogation techniques for CIA detainees. According to the memo, a technique was not considered to be torture unless it inflicted pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of body function, or even death." Rizzo testified that the legal opinion "on the whole was a reasonable one."" -By Joby Warrick with contributions by Julie Tate -WashingtonPost

US - Intelligence - Politics - Terrorism - Germany - Overseas - Telephone - E-Mail - Secret - Electronic - Surveillance - Law - Connecticut - "Spy Master Admits Error: Intel czar Mike McConnell told Congress a new law helped bring down a terror plot. The facts say otherwise." ... "In a new embarrassment for the [Republican President] Bush administration's top spymaster, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell is withdrawing an assertion he made to Congress this week that a recently passed electronic-surveillance law helped U.S. authorities foil a major terror plot in Germany." ... "The temporary measure, signed into law by President Bush on Aug. 5, gave the U.S. intelligence community broad new powers to eavesdrop on telephone and e-mail communications overseas without seeking warrants from the surveillance court. The law expires in six months and is expected to be the subject of intense debate in the months ahead. On Monday, McConnell—questioned by [Connecticut Independent Democratic Senator] Sen. Joe Lieberman—claimed the law, intended to remedy what the White House said was an intelligence gap, had helped to “facilitate” the arrest of three suspects believed to be planning massive car bombings against American targets in Germany. Other U.S. intelligence-community officials questioned the accuracy of McConnell's testimony and urged his office to correct it. Four intelligence-community officials, who asked for anonymity discussing sensitive material, said the new law, dubbed the "Protect America Act,” played little if any role in the unraveling of the German plot." ... "Late Wednesday afternoon, McConnell issued a statement acknowledging that "information contributing to the recent arrests [in Germany] was not collected under authorities provided by the 'Protect America Act'."" ... "The developments were cited by Democratic critics on Capitol Hill as the latest example of the Bush administration's exaggerated claims—and contradictory statements—about ultrasecret surveillance activities." (1, 2, 3) -By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball -MSNBC /Newsweek

US - Iraq - Military - Intelligence - Accounting - Politics - "Numbers cast doubt on U.S. claims: Analysts questioning military counts of civilian casualties." ... "Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker emphasized signs of progress in Iraq during their presentation to Congress on Monday and frequently interpreted events in the most optimistic light while downplaying more troubling signs." ... "A review of war statistics provides a number of examples in which the officials' analysis seemed incomplete." ... "For example, Petraeus placed a heavy emphasis on U.S. military figures showing a 45 percent drop in civilian deaths in Iraq since the peak of sectarian violence in December 2006 and a 55 percent drop in killings that the military judged "ethno-sectarian." But the December 2006 time frame that Petraeus used for the comparison was a high point in sectarian violence that predated the U.S. troop "surge."" ... "[Republican] President Bush announced the surge in January and the first U.S. troops under the strategy arrived in Iraq in late February. By then, violence already had subsided somewhat from the unprecedented levels of sectarian strife that racked Baghdad in 2006. Also, in previous years, there has been a surge of violence in Iraq during Ramadan, the monthlong Islamic holiday that begins later this week." ... "Analysts inside and outside the government, including the General Accountability Office in a recent report, also have questioned the military's counting of civilian casualties." ... "The Associated Press counted 1,809 civilian deaths in August, its second-highest monthly total this year." -By Mike Dorning with contributions by Aamer Madhani -ChicagoTribune

United States - Afghanistan - Pakistan - Osama bin Laden - Terrorism - Intelligence - Law - Enforcement - Politics - "Intelligence officials contradict White House on bin Laden." ... "Contradicting [Republican] President Bush's counter-terrorism adviser, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement chiefs and a Cabinet member said Monday that Osama bin Laden remained the most dangerous terrorist threat to the United States six years after the 9-11 attacks." ... "Eliminating the threat that the al Qaida leader and his inner circle pose from their sanctuary in Pakistan's remote tribal region bordering Afghanistan "is our number one priority," Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell told a Senate committee." ... "The assessments by McConnell, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and FBI Director Robert Mueller came a day after White House homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend called bin Laden "a man on the run from a cave who is virtually impotent other than these tapes."" ... "Townsend was commenting on the release of the first bin Laden video in nearly three years, which surfaced Friday on the Internet." ... "McConnell recalled that a comprehensive U.S. intelligence assessment issued in July warned that the gravest terrorist threat to the United States for the next three years is bin Laden and the plots to attack American targets that he and his lieutenants are hatching in their sanctuary in Pakistan." -By Jonathan S. Landay -McClatchyDC.com

US - Iraq - Military - Accounting - Politics - "Iraq debate is sea of statistics." ... "In vertical bars of blue, green, gray and red, a briefing chart prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency says what Gen. David Petraeus won't." ... "Insurgent attacks against Iraqi civilians, their security forces and U.S. troops remain high, according to the document obtained by The Associated Press. It is a conclusion that the well-regarded Army officer who is the top U.S. commander in Iraq is expected to try to counter when he and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad [Iraq's capital], testify before Congress on Monday and Tuesday." ... "More than four years into a conflict initially thought to be a cakewalk, the war has become a battle of statistics, graphs and conflicting assessments of progress in a country of more than 27 million people." ... "The defense intelligence chart makes the point, with figures from Petraeus' command in Baghdad, the Multinational Force-Iraq. Congressional auditors used the same numbers to conclude that Iraqis are as unsafe now as they were six months ago; the [Republican President] Bush administration and military officials also using those figures say that finding is flawed." -By Richard Lardner -AP via -Yahoo
US - Iraq - Afghanistan - Iran - Military - Media - Marketing - Intelligence - Politics - Ill - "Among Top Officials, 'Surge' Has Sparked Dissent, Infighting." ... "For two hours, [Republican] President Bush listened to contrasting visions of the U.S. future in Iraq. Gen. David H. Petraeus dominated the conversation by video link from Baghdad [Iraq's capital], making the case to keep as many troops as long as possible to cement any security progress. Adm. William J. Fallon, his superior, argued instead for accepting more risks in Iraq, officials said, in order to have enough forces available to confront other potential threats in the region." ... "The polite discussion in the White House Situation Room a week ago masked a sharper clash over the U.S. venture in Iraq, one that has been building since Fallon, chief of the U.S. Central Command, which oversees Middle East operations, sent a rear admiral to Baghdad this summer to gather information. Soon afterward, officials said, Fallon began developing plans to redefine the U.S. mission and radically draw down troops." ... "One of those plans, according to a Centcom officer, involved slashing U.S. combat forces in Iraq by three-quarters by 2010. In an interview, Fallon disputed that description but declined to offer details. Nonetheless, his efforts offended Petraeus's team, which saw them as unwelcome intrusion on their own long-term planning. The profoundly different views of the U.S. role in Iraq only exacerbated the schism between the two men." ... "Fallon, who took command of Centcom in March, worried that Iraq was undermining the military's ability to confront other threats, such as Iran. "When he took over, the reality hit him that he had to deal with Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and a whole bunch of other stuff besides Iraq," said a top military officer." ... "Fallon was also derisive of Iraqi leaders' intentions and competence, and dubious about the surge. "He's been saying from Day One, 'This isn't working,' " said a senior administration official. And Fallon signaled his departure from Bush by ordering subordinates to avoid the term "long war" -- a phrase the president used to describe the fight against terrorism." ... "To Bush aides, [defense secretary Robert] Gates did not seem fully on board with the president's strategy, either. As a member of the congressionally chartered Iraq Study Group before his selection to head the Pentagon, Gates embraced proposals to scale back the U.S. presence in Iraq. Now that he was in the Cabinet, he kept his own counsel." ... "Another new arrival in the [Republican President Bush's] West Wing set up a rapid-response PR unit hard-wired into Petraeus's shop. Ed Gillespie, the new presidential counselor, organized daily conference calls at 7:45 a.m. and again late in the afternoon between the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the U.S. Embassy and military in Baghdad to map out ways of selling the surge." ... "From the start of the Bush plan, the White House communications office had been blitzing an e-mail list of as many as 5,000 journalists, lawmakers, lobbyists, conservative bloggers, military groups and others with talking points or rebuttals of criticism. Between Jan. 10 and last week, the office put out 94 such documents in various categories -- "Myths/Facts" or "Setting the Record Straight" to take issue with negative news articles, and "In Case You Missed It" to distribute positive articles or speeches." ... "Petraeus was doing his part in Baghdad, hosting dozens of lawmakers and military scholars for PowerPoint presentations on why the Bush strategy had made gains." ... "Some visitors suspected a skewed picture. "We only saw things that reinforced their message that the surge was working," said [Illinois Democratic Representative] Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.)." (1, 2, 3, 4) -By Peter Baker, Karen DeYoung, Thomas E. Ricks, Ann Scott Tyson, Joby Warrick and Robin Wright with contributions by Julie Tate -WashingtonPost

John Edwards - US - International - Terrorism - Intelligence - Police - New York - History - Financial- Immigration - Secret - Torture - Prisons - Spying - Civil Liberties - Law - Safe - 2008 Election - "Edwards proposes international anti-terrorism body." ... "[2008 election] Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards proposed a new international body to fight terrorism on Friday, rejecting the tactics of U.S. [Republican] President George W. Bush as an unnecessary assault on civil liberties." ... "Edwards chose New York City [New York] four days ahead of the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks to unveil his anti-terrorism strategy, starting with a Counterterrorism and Intelligence Treaty Organization, or CITO." ... ""CITO will allow members to voluntarily share financial, police, customs and immigration intelligence. Together, nations will be able to track the way terrorists travel, communicate, recruit, train and finance their operations," Edwards said in a speech at New York's Pace University." ... "In an interview with Reuters, he also vowed to rescind many Bush policies, including the use of secret prisons, warrantless domestic spying and the extraordinary rendition of suspects to third countries, where critics say they may be tortured." ... ""I wouldn't do any of those things," Edwards said. "It's not necessary to violate every basis on which America exists to keep the American people safe. You can protect the rights of Americans and effectively fight terrorism."" -By Daniel Trotta -Reuters

US - Iraq - Military - Intelligence - Politics - "Experts Doubt Drop In Violence in Iraq: Military Statistics Called Into Question." ... "The U.S. military's claim that violence has decreased sharply in Iraq in recent months has come under scrutiny from many experts within and outside the government, who contend that some of the underlying statistics are questionable and selectively ignore negative trends." ... "Reductions in violence form the centerpiece of the Bush administration's claim that its war strategy is working. In congressional testimony Monday, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is expected to cite a 75 percent decrease in sectarian attacks. According to senior U.S. military officials in Baghdad, overall attacks in Iraq were down to 960 a week in August, compared with 1,700 a week in June, and civilian casualties had fallen 17 percent between December 2006 and last month. Unofficial Iraqi figures show a similar decrease." ... "Others who have looked at the full range of U.S. government statistics on violence, however, accuse the military of cherry-picking positive indicators and caution that the numbers -- most of which are classified -- are often confusing and contradictory. "Let's just say that there are several different sources within the administration on violence, and those sources do not agree," Comptroller General David Walker told Congress on Tuesday in releasing a new Government Accountability Office report on Iraq." ... "Senior U.S. officers in Baghdad disputed the accuracy and conclusions of the largely negative GAO report, which they said had adopted a flawed counting methodology used by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Many of those conclusions were also reflected in last month's pessimistic National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq." ... "The intelligence community has its own problems with military calculations. Intelligence analysts computing aggregate levels of violence against civilians for the NIE puzzled over how the military designated attacks as combat, sectarian or criminal, according to one senior intelligence official in Washington. "If a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian," the official said. "If it went through the front, it's criminal."" (1, 2) -By Karen DeYoung -WashingtonPost
US - Iraq - Military - Intelligence - Politics- [PDF] - "THE REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT COMMISSION ON THE SECURITY FORCES OF IRAQ. [PDF Part 1a]" (PDFs: Part 1b, 2a, 2b) -General James L. Jones, USMC (Ret.), Chairman -via -CNN

US - Iraq - Military - Intelligence - Douglas Feith - "Envoy’s Letters Counter Bush on Plan for Iraq." ... "A previously undisclosed exchange of letters shows that [Republican] President Bush was told in advance by his top Iraq envoy in May 2003 of a plan to “dissolve Saddam’s military and intelligence structures,” a plan that the envoy, L. Paul Bremer, said referred to dismantling the Iraqi Army." ... "Mr. Bremer provided the letters to The New York Times on Monday after reading that Mr. Bush was quoted in a new book as saying that American policy had been “to keep the army intact” but that it “didn’t happen.”" ... "The dismantling of the Iraqi Army in the aftermath of the American invasion is now widely regarded as a mistake that stoked rebellion among hundreds of thousands of former Iraqi soldiers and made it more difficult to reduce sectarian bloodshed and attacks by insurgents. In releasing the letters, Mr. Bremer said he wanted to refute the suggestion in Mr. Bush’s comment that Mr. Bremer had acted to disband the army without the knowledge and concurrence of the White House." ... "“We must make it clear to everyone that we mean business: that Saddam and the Baathists are finished,” Mr. Bremer wrote in a letter that was drafted on May 20, 2003, and sent to the president on May 22 through Donald H. Rumsfeld, then secretary of defense." ... "Mr. Bremer said he sent a draft of the proposed order on May 9, shortly before he departed for his new post in Baghdad [Iraq's capital], to Mr. Rumsfeld and other top Pentagon officials." ... "Among others who received the draft order, he said, were Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense; Douglas J. Feith, then under secretary of defense for policy; Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, then head of the American-led coalition forces in Iraq; and the Joint Chiefs of Staff." -By Edmund L. Andrews with contributions by Michael R. Gordon -NYTimes

US - Iraq - Military- Intelligence - Political - Marketing - Lawmakers - Va - Calif - Nev - "Lawmakers Describe 'Being Slimed in the Green Zone'." ... "The sheets of paper seemed to be everywhere the lawmakers went in the Green Zone, distributed to Iraqi officials, U.S. officials and uniformed military of no particular rank. So when [Virginia Democratic Representative] Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) asked a soldier last weekend just what he was holding, the congressman was taken aback to find out." ... "In the soldier's hand was a thumbnail biography, distributed before each of the congressmen's meetings in Baghdad, which let meeting participants such as that soldier know where each of the lawmakers stands on the war. "Moran on Iraq policy," read one section, going on to cite some the congressman's most incendiary statements, such as, "This has been the worst foreign policy fiasco in American history."" ... "The bio of [California Democratic Representative] Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.) -- "TAU (rhymes with 'now')-sher," the bio helpfully relates -- was no less pointed, even if she once supported the war and has taken heat from liberal Bay Area constituents who remain wary of her position. "Our forces are caught in the middle of an escalating sectarian conflict in Iraq, with no end in sight," the bio quotes." ... ""This is beyond parsing. This is being slimed in the Green Zone," Tauscher said of her bio." ... "Brief, choreographed and carefully controlled, the codels (short for congressional delegations) often have showed only what the Pentagon and the [Republican President] Bush administration have wanted the lawmakers to see. At one point, as Moran, Tauscher and [Nevada Republican Representative] Rep. Jon Porter (R-Nev.) were heading to lunch in the fortified Green Zone, an American urgently tried to get their attention, apparently to voice concerns about the war effort, the participants said. Security whisked the man away before he could make his point." ... "Tauscher called it "the Green Zone fog."" ... ""Spin City," Moran grumbled. "The Iraqis and the Americans were all singing from the same song sheet, and it was deliberately manipulated."" -By Jonathan Weisman -WashingtonPost

Alberto R Gonzales - Political - US Attorneys - Government - Jobs - Surveillance - Intelligence - Enforcement - Vermont - "Justice Department Investigating Whether Gonzales Misled Congress." ... "The Justice Department’s inspector general is examining the veracity of congressional testimony by embattled Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales." ... "[Vermont Democratic Senator Patrick] Leahy and other lawmakers are not convinced that Gonzales did not lie to them about several matters, including: the U.S. attorney dismissals; a 2004 hospital room encounter involving Gonzales and former Attorney General John Ashcroft; and the Justice Department’s misuse of its investigative tools. Four other Senate Judiciary Democrats have asked Solicitor General Paul D. Clement to appoint a special counsel to explore whether Gonzales has perjured himself." -By Keith Perine -CQ.com
Federal - Electronic - Surveillance - Intelligence - Telecom - Internet - Terrorism - Law - "Point, Click ... Eavesdrop: How the FBI Wiretap Net Operates." ... "The FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device, according to nearly a thousand pages of restricted documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act." ... "The surveillance system, called DCSNet, for Digital Collection System Network, connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies. It is far more intricately woven into the nation's telecom infrastructure than observers suspected." ... "DCSNet is a suite of software that collects, sifts and stores phone numbers, phone calls and text messages. The system directly connects FBI wiretapping outposts around the country to a far-reaching private communications network." ... "Many of the details of the system and its full capabilities were redacted from the documents acquired by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but they show that DCSNet includes at least three collection components, each running on Windows-based computers." ... "The $10 million DCS-3000 client, also known as Red Hook, handles pen-registers and trap-and-traces, a type of surveillance that collects signaling information -- primarily the numbers dialed from a telephone -- but no communications content. (Pen registers record outgoing calls; trap-and-traces record incoming calls.)" ... "DCS-6000, known as Digital Storm, captures and collects the content of phone calls and text messages for full wiretap orders." ... "A third, classified system, called DCS-5000, is used for wiretaps targeting spies or terrorists." (1, 2, 3) -By Ryan Singel -Wired
US - Iraq - Military - Intelligence - Accounting - Legislation - Reconstruction - Money - "Report Finds Little Progress On Iraq Goals: GAO Draft at Odds With [Republican President Bush] White House." ... "Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report. The document questions whether some aspects of a more positive assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range of views the GAO found within the administration." ... "The strikingly negative GAO draft, which will be delivered to Congress in final form on Tuesday, comes as the White House prepares to deliver its own new benchmark report in the second week of September, along with congressional testimony from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. They are expected to describe significant security improvements and offer at least some promise for political reconciliation in Iraq." ... "The draft provides a stark assessment of the tactical effects of the current U.S.-led counteroffensive to secure Baghdad. "While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced," it states. While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of attacks against Iraqi civilians remains unchanged. It also finds that "the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not improved."" ... ""Overall," the report concludes, "key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds," as promised. While it makes no policy" ... "The person who provided the draft report to The Post said it was being conveyed from a government official who feared that its pessimistic conclusions would be watered down in the final version -- as some officials have said happened with security judgments in this month's National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq." -By Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks -WashingtonPost

Germany - China - Military - Computer - Hacking - Science - Economy - Politics - "Computer-hacking charges mar German leader's visit to China." ... "Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday that he viewed with "grave concern" a news report that hackers linked to the Chinese army had broken into the computer system in Merkel's office." ... "Over the weekend, Germany's Der Spiegel magazine reported that Chinese hackers — reportedly connected with the People's Liberation Army — had penetrated computer networks in Merkel's office and several ministries." ... ""When the Chinese government ascertained there were reports saying hackers were breaking into German government networks, we took it as a matter of grave concern," Wen said after a meeting with Merkel. "Hackers breaking into and sabotaging computers are a problem faced by the entire world."" ... "Der Spiegel said in its Monday edition that Germany's domestic intelligence agency had discovered the hacking attempts against Merkel's office and the foreign, economy and research ministries in May." -By Tim Johnson -McClatchyDC.com

American - Liberty- Government - Terrorism - Military - Surveillance - Intelligence - Law - Library - Foreign - "Ex-Surveillance Judge Criticizes Warrantless Taps." ... "A federal judge who used to authorize wiretaps in terrorism and espionage cases criticized yesterday President Bush's decision to order warrantless surveillance after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks." ... ""We have to understand you can fight the war [on terrorism] and lose everything if you have no civil liberties left when you get through fighting the war," said Royce C. Lamberth, a U.S. District Court judge in Washington and a former presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, speaking at the American Library Association's annual convention." ... "Lamberth, who was appointed to the federal bench by [Republican] President Ronald Reagan, expressed his opposition to letting the executive branch decide on its own which people to spy on in national security cases." ... "The judge said it is proper for executive branch agencies to conduct such surveillance. "But what we have found in the history of our country is that you can't trust the executive," he said." -By Michael J. Sniffen -WashingtonPost

Government - Surveillance - Intelligence - Law - Freedom - Politics - History - "I Know What You Did Last Summer." ... "I hate to sound melodramatic about it, but while everyone was at the beach or "The Simpsons Movie" on the first weekend in August, the U.S. government shredded the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, the one requiring court-approved "probable cause" before Americans can be searched or spied upon. This is not the feverish imagination of left-wing bloggers and the ACLU. It's the plain truth of where we've come as a country, at the behest of a president [Republican President Bush] who has betrayed his oath to defend the Constitution and with the acquiescence of Democratic congressional leaders who know better. Historians will likely see this episode as a classic case of fear—both physical and political—trumping principle amid the ancient tension between personal freedom and national security." (1, 2) -By Jonathan Alter -Newsweek via -MSNBC

US - Foreign - Government - Military - Intelligence - Money - Politics - Law - "Defense Agency Proposes Outsourcing More Spying: Contracts Worth $1 Billion Would Set Record." ... "The Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA] is preparing to pay private contractors up to $1 billion to conduct core intelligence tasks of analysis and collection over the next five years, an amount that would set a record in the outsourcing of such functions by the Pentagon's top spying agency." ... "The proposed contracts, outlined in a recent early notice of the DIA's plans, reflect a continuing expansion of the Defense Department's intelligence-related work and fit a well-established pattern of [Republican President] Bush administration transfers of government work to private contractors." ... "The DIA did not specify exactly what it wants the contractors to do but said it is seeking teams to fulfill "operational and mission requirements" that include intelligence "Gathering and Collection, Analysis, Utilization, and Strategy and Support."" ... "The DIA's action comes a few months after CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] Director Michael V. Hayden, acting under pressure from Congress, announced a program to cut the agency's hiring of outside contractors by at least 10 percent. The CIA's effort was partly provoked by managers' frustration that officials with security clearances were frequently resigning to earn higher pay with government contractors while performing the same work -- a phenomenon that led lawmakers to complain that intelligence contract work was wasting money." ... "The DIA is the country's major manager and producer of foreign military intelligence, with more than 11,000 military and civilian employees worldwide and a budget of nearly $1 billion. It has its own analysts from the various services as well as collectors of human intelligence in the Defense HUMINT Service. DIA also manages the Defense attaches stationed in embassies all over the world." ... "Unlike the CIA, the DIA outsources the major analytical products known as all-source intelligence reports, a senior intelligence official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity." (1, 2) -By Walter Pincus -WashingtonPost
American - Liberty - Law - Politics - Government - Electronic - Surveillance - Business - Communications - Foreign - Intelligence - "Concern Over Wider Spying Under New Law." ... "Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the [Republican President] Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include — without court approval — certain types of physical searches on American soil and the collection of Americans' business records, Democratic Congressional officials and other experts said." ... "Several legal experts said that by redefining the meaning of “electronic surveillance,” the new law narrows the types of communications covered in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, by indirectly giving the government the power to use intelligence collection methods far beyond wiretapping that previously required court approval if conducted inside the United States." ... "These new powers include the collection of business records, physical searches and so-called “trap and trace” operations, analyzing specific calling patterns." ... "Yet Bush administration officials have already signaled that, in their view, the president retains his constitutional authority to do whatever it takes to protect the country, regardless of any action Congress takes. At a tense meeting last week with lawyers from a range of private groups active in the wiretapping issue, senior Justice Department officials refused to commit the administration to adhering to the limits laid out in the new legislation and left open the possibility that the president could once again use what they have said in other instances is his constitutional authority to act outside the regulations set by Congress." ... "At the meeting, Bruce Fein, a Justice Department lawyer in the [Republican President] Reagan administration, along with other critics of the legislation, pressed Justice Department officials repeatedly for an assurance that the [Republican President Bush] administration considered itself bound by the restrictions imposed by Congress. The Justice Department, led by Ken Wainstein, the assistant attorney general for national security, refused to do so, according to three participants in the meeting. That stance angered Mr. Fein and others. It sent the message, Mr. Fein said in an interview, that the new legislation, though it is already broadly worded, “is just advisory. The president can still do whatever he wants to do. They have not changed their position that the president’s Article II powers trump any ability by Congress to regulate the collection of foreign intelligence.”" (1, 2) -By James Risen and Eric Lichtblau -NYTimes

Secret - Government - Wiretapping - Intelligence - Law - Civil Liberties - Politics - "Secret Court Asks For White House View on Inquiry: ACLU Seeking Rulings Issued On Warrantless Wiretapping." ... "A secret U.S. intelligence court has ordered the [Republican President] Bush administration to register its views about a records request by the American Civil Liberties Union, which wants the court to release a series of pivotal orders issued earlier this year about the National Security Agency's wiretapping program." ... "The ACLU has asked the court for copies of orders it issued in January related to the NSA's warrantless surveillance program, which had been operated without court oversight since late 2001 and which has been the focus of fierce congressional debate." ... "The group is also seeking a copy of one or more court orders issued in the spring that, according to administration officials and congressional Republicans, concluded that parts of the program are illegal." -By Dan Eggen -WashingtonPost

US - Iraq - Internet - Media - Intelligence - "Army Reports Brass, Not Bloggers, Breach Security." ... "For years, the military has been warning that soldiers' blogs could pose a security threat by leaking sensitive wartime information. But a series of online audits, conducted by the Army, suggests that official Defense Department websites post material far more potentially harmful than anything found on a individual's blog." ... "The audits, performed by the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell [Wired.com article] between January 2006 and January 2007, found at least 1,813 violations of operational security policy on 878 official military websites. In contrast, the 10-man, Manassas, Virginia, unit discovered 28 breaches, at most, on 594 individual blogs during the same period." ... "The findings stand in stark contrast to Army statements about the risks that blogs pose." ... ""Some soldiers continue to post sensitive information to internet websites and blogs," then-Army Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker wrote in a 2005 memo. "Such OPSEC (operational security) violations needlessly place lives at risk." That same year, commanders in Iraq ordered (.pdf [at Wired.com]) troops to register their blogs "with the unit chain of command."" -By Noah Shachtman -Wired

Secret - Military - Government - Space - Aircraft - Surveillance - Imagery - Technology - Law - Enforcement - Intelligence - Liberty- Politics - "Domestic Use of Spy Satellites To Widen: Law Enforcement Getting New Access To Secret Imagery." ... "The Bush administration has approved a plan to expand domestic access to some of the most powerful tools of 21st-century spycraft, giving law enforcement officials and others the ability to view data obtained from satellite and aircraft sensors that can see through cloud cover and even penetrate buildings and underground bunkers." ... "A program approved by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security will allow broader domestic use of secret overhead imagery beginning as early as this fall, with the expectation that state and local law enforcement officials will eventually be able to tap into technology once largely restricted to foreign surveillance." ... "But the program, described yesterday by the Wall Street Journal, quickly provoked opposition from civil liberties advocates, who said the government is crossing a well-established line against the use of military assets in domestic law enforcement." ... ""They want to turn these enormous spy capabilities, built to be used against overseas enemies, onto Americans," [Center for National Security Studies director Kate] Martin said. "They are laying the bricks one at a time for a police state."" -By Joby Warrick -WashingtonPost
Federal - Military - Surveillance - Intelligence - Secrets - Law - Politics - "U.S. Defends Surveillance to 3 Skeptical Judges." ... "Three federal appeals court judges hearing challenges to the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs appeared skeptical of and sometimes hostile to the Bush administration’s central argument Wednesday: that national security concerns require that the lawsuits be dismissed." ... "“Is it the government’s position that when our country is engaged in a war that the power of the executive when it comes to wiretapping is unchecked?” Judge Harry Pregerson asked a government lawyer. His tone was one of incredulity and frustration." ... "Gregory G. Garre, a deputy solicitor general representing the administration, replied that the courts had a role, though a limited one, in assessing the government’s assertion of the so-called state secrets privilege, which can require the dismissal of suits that could endanger national security. Judges, he said, must give executive branch determinations “utmost deference.”" ... "“Litigating this action could result in exceptionally grave harm to the national security of the United States,” Mr. Garre said, referring to the assessment of intelligence officials." ... "The appeals concern two related questions that must be answered before the merits of the challenges can be considered: whether the plaintiffs can clearly establish that they have been injured by the programs, giving them standing to sue; and whether the state secrets privilege requires dismissal of the suits on national security grounds." -By Adam Liptak -NYTimes
Government - Intelligence - Wiretap - Secrets - Phone - E-Mail - Internet - Messages - Technology - Companies - Politics - San Francisco - California - "Classified evidence debated: Court likely to allow suit against AT&T, reject wiretap case." ... "A federal appeals court holding a high-stakes hearing Wednesday in San Francisco [California] on President Bush's clandestine eavesdropping program appeared inclined to keep alive a lawsuit accusing AT&T of illegally letting the government intercept millions of Americans' phone calls and e-mails." ... "At the same hearing, however, the panel appeared skeptical about a suit by a defunct Islamic charity that said it had evidence that it and two of its lawyers had been wiretapped - the only such case in the nation filed by an alleged target of the surveillance program. The snag is that the evidence, a document that the government inadvertently released to the plaintiffs in 2004, is classified top secret and thus can't be used in court to prove that the calls were overheard." ... "The two-hour hearing by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals involved two different cases with a common theme: the Bush administration's argument that the details of the program were so sensitive that a lawsuit challenging any aspect of it would pose an unacceptable risk of exposing state secrets." ... "The AT&T suit, like several cases pending against other telecommunications companies, accuses the firm of giving the National Security Agency unlimited access to customers' phone calls, e-mails and message records. Plaintiffs in the AT&T case have submitted a declaration by a former company engineer who said he helped install equipment at the company's San Francisco office that would divert Internet messages to a room reserved for government-cleared employees." -By Bob Egelko -SFGate.com

US - Iran - Iraq - Dick Cheney - Media - Politics - Intelligence - "Cheney urging strikes on Iran." ... "[Republican] President Bush charged Thursday that Iran continues to arm and train insurgents who are killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and he threatened action if that continues." ... "[Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy." ... "The debate has been accompanied by a growing drumbeat of allegations about Iranian meddling in Iraq from U.S. military officers, administration officials and administration allies outside government and in the news media. It isn't clear whether the media campaign is intended to build support for limited military action against Iran, to pressure the Iranians to curb their support for Shiite groups in Iraq or both." ... "Nor is it clear from the evidence the administration has presented whether Iran, which has long-standing ties to several Iraqi Shiite groups, including the Mahdi Army of radical cleric Muqtada al Sadr and the Badr Organization, which is allied with the U.S.-backed government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, is a major cause of the anti-American and sectarian violence in Iraq or merely one of many. At other times, administration officials have blamed the Sunni Muslim group al Qaida in Iraq for much of the violence." ... "Maliki is on a three-day visit to Tehran [Iran's capital], during which he was photographed Wednesday hand in hand with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad." -By Warren P. Strobel, John Walcott and Nancy A. Youssef -McClatchyDC.com
US - Iran - Intelligence - Electronic - Voting Machines - Company - Election - Politics - "Wikipedia 'shows CIA page edits': An online tool that claims to reveal the identity of organisations that edit Wikipedia pages has revealed that the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] was involved in editing entries." ... "Wikipedia Scanner allegedly shows that workers on the agency's computers made edits to the page of Iran's president." ... "It also purportedly shows that the Vatican has edited entries about [Ireland's] Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams." ... "The tool, developed by US researchers, trawls a list of 5.3m edits and matches them to the net address of the editor." ... "Wikipedia is a free online encyclopaedia that can be created and edited by anyone." ... "The site also indicates that a computer owned by the US Democratic Party was used to make changes to the site of right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh." ... "The changes brand Mr Limbaugh as "idiotic," a "racist", and a "bigot". An entry about his audience now reads: "Most of them are legally retarded."" ... "Wikipedia Scanner also points the finger at commercial organisations that have modified entries about the pages." ... "One in particular is Diebold, the company that supplied electronic voting machines for the controversial US election in 2000." ... "In October 2005, a person using a Diebold computer removed paragraphs about Walden O'Dell, chief executive of the company, which revealed that he had been "a top fund-raiser" for [Republican President] George Bush." ... "A month later, other paragraphs and links to stories about the alleged rigging of the 2000 election were also removed." ... "" -By Jonathan Fildes -BBC/News
US - International - Secret - Government - Phone - Wiretapping - Internet - Intelligence - Database - Technology - Law - San Francisco - California - "NSA Judge: 'I feel like I'm in Alice and Wonderland'." ... "Spectators lined up outside the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco [California] starting at noon to guarantee a seat at a much-anticipated legal showdown over the government's secret wiretapping program." ... "The hearing involves two cases: one aimed at AT&T for allegedly helping the government with a widespread datamining program allegedly involving domestic and international phone calls and internet use; the other a direct challenge to the government's admitted warrantless wiretapping of overseas phone calls." ... "Jon Eisenberg, (right [photo at Wired.com]) an Oakland-based [California] attorney, is arguing on behalf of a now-defunct Islamic charity Al-Haramain and its lawyers, who claim to have been accidentally given a Top Secret log of their own phone conversations, which they say proves the government illegally eavesdropped on them without warrants." ... "The courtroom filled quickly with more than 20 attorneys in the courtroom well, and 80 spectators seated and standing. Another 40 filed into an overflow courtroom, including Mark Klein, the former AT&T engineer who provided internal company documents to the EFF. Those documents allegedly show that AT&T built a secret spying room for the NSA in its San Francisco internet switching center. " ... "The government says the purported log of calls between one of the Islamic charity directors and two American lawyers is classified Top Secret and has the SCI level, meaning that it is "secure compartmented information." That designation usually applies to surveillance information" -By Kevin Poulsen -Wired

Government - Military - Intelligence - Terrorism - Psychological - Torture- Prison - Political - History - Criminal - Justice - Human - Rights - War Crimes - Health - Science - New York - SC - "US Gov't broke Padilla through intense isolation, say experts: Despite warnings, officials used 43 months of severe isolation to force Jose Padilla to tell all he knew about Al Qaeda." ... "When suspected Al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla was whisked from the criminal justice system to military custody in June 2002, it was done for a key purpose – to break his will to remain silent." ... "As a US citizen, Mr. Padilla enjoyed a right against forced self-incrimination. But this constitutional guarantee vanished the instant [Republican] President Bush declared him an enemy combatant." ... "For a month, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been questioning Padilla in New York City [New York] under the rules of the criminal justice system. They wanted to know about his alleged involvement in a plot to detonate a radiological "dirty bomb" in the US. Padilla had nothing to say. Now, military interrogators were about to turn up the heat." ... "Padilla was delivered to the US Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C. [South Carolina], where he was held not only in solitary confinement but as the sole detainee in a high-security wing of the prison. Fifteen other cells sat empty around him." ... "The purpose of the extraordinary privacy, according to experts familiar with the technique, was to eliminate the possibility of human contact. No voices in the hallway. No conversations with other prisoners. No tapping out messages on the walls. No ability to maintain a sense of human connection, a sense of place or time." ... "In essence, experts say, the US government was trying to break Padilla's silence by plunging him into a mental twilight zone." ... "Those who haven't experienced solitary confinement can imagine that life locked in a small space would be inconvenient and boring. But according to a broad range of experts who have studied the issue, isolation can be psychologically devastating. Extreme isolation, in concert with other coercive techniques, can literally drive a person insane, these experts say. And that makes it a potential instrument of torture, they add." ... "The new Army Field Manual bars the use of isolation to achieve psychological disorientation through sensory deprivation. "Sensory deprivation is defined as an arranged situation causing significant psychological distress due to a prolonged absence, or significant reduction, of the usual external stimuli and perceptual opportunities," the manual states. "Sensory deprivation may result in extreme anxiety, hallucinations, bizarre thoughts, depression, and anti-social behavior. Detainees will not be subject to sensory deprivation."" ... "Despite the tough words, the field manual offers only a general prohibition. So-called coercive interrogation methods – including isolation – have been specially authorized for certain units in the military and the Central Intelligence Agency." ... "The technique is not new. The Soviets used isolation and sensory deprivation to identify and discredit political dissidents. US prisoners of war confessed to nonexistent war crimes in the Korean War after similar treatment. " (1, 2, 3, 4) -By Warren Richey -CSMonitor

Americans - Global - Communications - Liberty - Politics - Law - Secret - Government - Intelligence - Electronic - Surveillance - Tech - E-Mail - Terrorism - History - "How the Fight for Vast New Spying Powers Was Won." ... "For three days, Mike McConnell, the [Republican President Bush's] director of national intelligence, had haggled with congressional leaders over amendments to a federal surveillance law, but now he was putting his foot down. "This is the issue," said the plain-spoken retired vice admiral and Vietnam veteran, "that makes my blood pressure rise."" ... "McConnell viscerally objected to a Democratic proposal to limit warrantless surveillance of foreigners' communications with Americans to instances in which one party was a terrorism suspect. McConnell wanted no such limits. "All foreign intelligence" targets in touch with Americans on any topic of interest should be fair game for U.S. spying, he said, according to two participants in the Aug. 2 conversation." ... "McConnell won the fight, extracting a key concession despite the misgivings of Democratic negotiators. Shortly after that exchange, the [Republican President] Bush administration leveraged Democratic acquiescence into a broader victory: congressional approval of a Republican bill that would expand surveillance powers far beyond what Democratic leaders had initially been willing to accept." ... "Until September -- and possibly for much longer -- the new law will enable the high-tech collection of foreign communications without judicial scrutiny on a vastly larger scale than previously possible, allowing billions of phone calls and e-mails inside as well as outside the United States to be routinely screened for possible links to terrorism and other security threats." ... "What McConnell wanted most from Congress was to be able to intercept, without a warrant, purely foreign-to-foreign communications that pass through fiber-optic cables and switching stations on U.S. soil. That provision was meant to restore a U.S. capability that existed three decades ago, when a 1978 law allowed warrantless surveillance of foreign calls that were overwhelmingly relayed wirelessly." ... "Since then, advances in technology have caused 90 percent of global communications to pass through wires -- mostly optic fibers capable of carrying 6,000 calls in a strand. That development has been a boon to the National Security Agency, which has worked hard to monitor the traffic with U.S.-based taps and concluded it was doing so legally." ... "But in a secret ruling in March, a judge on a special court empowered to review the government's electronic snooping challenged for the first time the government's ability to collect data from such wires even when they came from foreign terrorist targets. In May, a judge on the same court went further, telling the administration flatly that the law's wording required the government to get a warrant whenever a fixed wire is involved." (1, 2, 3) -By Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus -WashingtonPost
Italy - Iraq - US - Russia - Secretive - Military - Money - Intelligence - Politics - "Italy probe unearths huge Iraq arms deal." ... "In a hidden corner of [Italy's capital] Rome's busy Fiumicino Airport, police dug quietly through a traveler's checked baggage, looking for smuggled drugs. What they found instead was a catalog of weapons, a clue to something bigger." ... "Their discovery led anti-Mafia investigators down a monthslong trail of telephone and e-mail intercepts, into the midst of a huge black-market transaction, as Iraqi and Italian partners haggled over shipping more than 100,000 Russian-made automatic weapons into the bloodbath of Iraq." ... "As the secretive, $40 million deal neared completion, Italian authorities moved in, making arrests and breaking it up. But key questions remain unanswered." ... "For one thing, The Associated Press has learned that Iraqi government officials were involved in the deal, apparently without the knowledge of the U.S. Baghdad command — a departure from the usual pattern of U.S.-overseen arms purchases." ... "Why these officials resorted to "black" channels and where the weapons were headed is unclear." ... "The purchase would merely have been the most spectacular example of how Iraq has become a magnet for arms traffickers and a place of vanishing weapons stockpiles and uncontrolled gun markets since the 2003 U.S. invasion and the onset of civil war." -By Charles J. Hanley and Ariel David -AP via -Yahoo

US - Political - Terrorism - Government - Foreign - Intelligence - Communications - Surveillance - Law - Wisconsin - California - "Reported Drop in Surveillance Spurred a Law." ... "At a closed-door briefing in mid-July, senior intelligence officials startled lawmakers with some troubling news. American eavesdroppers were collecting just 25 percent of the foreign-based communications they had been receiving a few months earlier." ... "Congress needed to act quickly, intelligence officials said, to repair a dangerous situation." ... "Some lawmakers were alarmed. Others, jaded by past intelligence warnings, were skeptical." ... "The report helped set off a furious legislative rush last week that, improbably, broadened the [Republican President Bush] administration’s authority to wiretap terrorism suspects without court oversight." ... "To many Democrats who opposed the action, it was a reflection of fear mongering by the White House, and political capitulation by some fellow Democrats." ... "“There was an intentional manipulation of the facts to get this legislation through,” said Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, a Democrat on the Intelligence Committee who voted against the plan." ... "Representative [California Democratic Representative] Jane Harman, Democrat of California, said the White House “very skillfully played the fear card.”" (1, 2) -By Eric Lichtblau, James Risen, and Mark Mazzetti -NYTimes

US - Pakistan - Military - Intelligence - Politics - "Sources: U.S. assessing Pakistan nukes if Musharraf falls." ... "U.S. military intelligence officials are urgently assessing how secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons would be in the event President Gen. Pervez Musharraf were replaced as the nation's leader, CNN has learned." ... "Key questions in the assessment include who would control Pakistan's nuclear weapons after a shift in power." ... "Three U.S. sources have independently confirmed details of the intelligence review to CNN but would not allow their names to be used because of the sensitivity of the matter." ... "The sources include military officers and intelligence community analysts." ... "The assessment is part of a broader review of the military and security situation in Pakistan." ... "Officials say that Pakistan and its nuclear weapons are always a high intelligence priority for the United States." -CNN
Pete Hoekstra - John Boehner - United States - World - Intelligence - Secrets - Politics - Media - Mich - Ohio - "Are GOP Leaders Leaking State Secrets?" ... "For the second time in as many weeks, a senior House Republican may have divulged classified information in the media." ... "In an opinion article published in the New York Post Thursday, [Michigan Republican Representative] Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., reported the top-secret budget for human spying had decreased -- the type of detail normally kept under wraps for national security reasons." ... ""The 2008 Intelligence Authorization bill cut human-intelligence programs," Hoekstra wrote in the piece, in which he also criticized "leaks to the news media."" ... "Formerly the chairman of the intelligence committee, Hoekstra is now its highest ranking Republican." ... "Secrets are apparently hard to keep these days. On July 31, House Minority Leader [Ohio Republiacan Representative] John Boehner, R-Ohio, allegedly disclosed a secret court ruling during a television interview with Fox News' Neil Cavuto." ... ""There's been a ruling, over the last four or five months, that prohibits the ability of our intelligence services and our counterintelligence people from listening in to two terrorists in other parts of the world where the communication could come through the United States," Boehner said." ... "Government officials have since confirmed to reporters that Boehner was discussing classified information, although the GOP leader denies it." -By Justin Rood -ABCNEWS.com
Secret - Canadian - Syrian - Kuwaiti - United States - Terrorism - Prison - Torture- Politics - Immigration - New York - "Deported Canadian Was No Threat, Report Shows." ... "Canadian intelligence officials anticipated that the United States would ship Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian who was detained in New York in 2002 on suspicion of terrorism, to a third country to be tortured, declassified information released on Thursday shows." ... "Mr. Arar was sent by American intelligence officials in October 2002 to Syria, where he was tortured and jailed for a almost a year. Last September, an extensive Canadian inquiry concluded that the terrorism accusations against him were groundless." ... "Portions of the inquiry's report were originally removed for security and diplomatic reasons. But a court ruled last month that much of the editing was not justified." ... "The newly released sections indicate that neither the Syrian government nor the Federal Bureau of Investigation were convinced that Mr. Arar was a significant security threat. They also suggest that the investigation of Mr. Arar was prompted by the coerced confession of Ahmad Abou el-Maati, a Kuwaiti-born Canadian who was also imprisoned and tortured in Syria. And despite claims by the United States government that Mr. Arar s removal to Syria was mainly an immigration matter, the new material suggests that the Central Intelligence Agency led the action." -By Ian Austen -NYTimes
Pakistan - Afghanistan- Military - Intelligence - Terrorism - Politics - "PM admits Taliban uses territory." ... "Pakistan's prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, acknowledged that the Taliban uses Pakistan as a base from which to mount attacks inside Afghanistan but denied the state was secretly supporting them." ... "Mr Aziz was addressing more than 600 tribal elders from Pakistan and Afghanistan at the start of a four-day jirga, or tribal council, that hopes to help end the bloody insurgency. The jirga is the brainchild of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai." ... "But critics say its effectiveness is stunted by the absence of elders from Waziristan, a major Taliban hub in northern Pakistan, and of President General Pervez Musharraf, who dropped out at the last minute." -By Declan Walsh -Guardian.co.uk

Clandestine - Government - "Top clandestine official comes out of the shadows _ to retire." ... "One of the CIA's top spooks has come out of the shadows." ... "With little fanfare, Jose Rodriguez, who heads the National Clandestine Service, had his cover lifted about a month ago." ... "Rodriguez became head of the CIA's clandestine service in November 2004. With the creation of the National Clandestine Service the following year as part of an intelligence reorganization, Rodriguez rose to be chief of "human intelligence" operations, overseeing the classic spycraft that takes place at a variety of U.S. spy agencies." ... "In national security circles, however, Rodriguez's identity wasn't a well-kept secret. Wikipedia users even created an entry about him last year, although the page contains inaccuracies." -By Katherine Shrader -AP via -Chron

Alberto R Gonzales - US - Government - Foreign - Intelligence - Surveillance - Law - Politics - E-Mail - Communications- Secrecy - "Same Agencies to Run, Oversee Surveillance Program." ... "The [Republican President] Bush administration plans to leave oversight of its expanded foreign eavesdropping program to the same government officials who supervise the surveillance activities and to the intelligence personnel who carry them out, senior government officials said yesterday." ... "The law, which permits intercepting Americans' calls and e-mails without a warrant if the communications involve overseas transmission, gives Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales responsibility for creating the broad procedures determining whose telephone calls and e-mails are collected. It also gives McConnell and Gonzales the role of assessing compliance with those procedures." ... "The law, signed Sunday by President Bush after being pushed through the Senate and House over the weekend, does not contain provisions for outside oversight -- unlike an earlier House measure that called for audits every 60 days by the Justice Department's inspector general." ... "Central to the new program is the collection of foreign intelligence from "communication service providers," which the officials declined to identify, citing secrecy concerns." -By Walter Pincus with contributions by Joby Warrick -WashingtonPost
British - Iraq - Iran - US - Military - Political - Oil - Terrorism - Intelligence - "As British Leave, Basra Deteriorates: Violence Rises in [Iraq] Shiite City Once Called a Success Story." ... "As British forces pull back from Basra in southern Iraq, Shiite militias there have escalated a violent battle against each other for political supremacy and control over oil resources, deepening concerns among some U.S. officials in Baghdad [Iraq's capital] that elements of Iraq's Shiite-dominated national government will turn on one another once U.S. troops begin to draw down." ... "Three major Shiite political groups are locked in a bloody conflict that has left the city in the hands of militias and criminal gangs, whose control extends to municipal offices and neighborhood streets. The city is plagued by "the systematic misuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighborhood vigilantism and enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminal mafias that increasingly intermingle with political actors," a recent report by the International Crisis Group said." ... "After Saddam Hussein was overthrown in April 2003, British forces took control of the region, and the cosmopolitan port city of Basra thrived with trade, arts and universities. As recently as February, [Republican] Vice President Cheney hailed Basra as a part of Iraq "where things are going pretty well."" ... "But "it's hard now to paint Basra as a success story," said a senior U.S. official in Baghdad with long experience in the south. Instead, it has become a different model, one that U.S. officials with experience in the region are concerned will be replicated throughout the Iraqi Shiite homeland from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf. A recent series of war games commissioned by the Pentagon also warned of civil war among Shiites after a reduction in U.S. forces." ... "For the past four years, the administration's narrative of the Iraq war has centered on al-Qaeda, Iran and the sectarian violence they have promoted. But in the homogenous south --where there are virtually no U.S. troops or al-Qaeda fighters, few Sunnis, and by most accounts limited influence by Iran --Shiite militias fight one another as well as British troops. A British strategy launched last fall to reclaim Basra neighborhoods from violent actors -- similar to the current U.S. strategy in Baghdad -- brought no lasting success." ... ""The British have basically been defeated in the south," a senior U.S. intelligence official said recently in Baghdad." (1, 2) -By Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks -WashingtonPost
New York - Police - Covert - Intelligence - Surveillance - Politics - 2004 Election - Free Speech - Civil Liberties - "City Is Rebuffed on the Release of ’04 Records." ... "A federal judge yesterday rejected New York City’s [New York] efforts to prevent the release of nearly 2,000 pages of raw intelligence reports and other documents detailing the Police Department’s covert surveillance of protest groups and individual activists before the Republican National Convention in 2004 [election]." ... "In a 20-page ruling, Magistrate Judge James C. Francis IV ordered the disclosure of hundreds of field intelligence reports by undercover investigators who infiltrated and compiled dossiers on protest groups in a huge operation that the police said was needed to head off violence and disruptions at the convention." ... "But at the behest of the city and with the concurrence of civil liberties lawyers representing plaintiffs swept up in mass arrests during the convention, the judge agreed to the deletion of sensitive information in the documents to protect the identities of undercover officers and confidential informants and to safeguard police investigative methods and the privacy of individuals caught up in investigations." ... "The order was the latest development in the long-running case, which posed thorny questions about the free speech rights of protesters and the means used by law enforcement officials to maintain public order." (1, 2) -By Robert D. McFadden -NYTimes

Secret - New York - Police - Intelligence - Surveillance - Politics - 2004 Election - "NYPD Surveillance Files Ordered Released." ... "The city [New York City, New York] must release hundreds of pages of documents related to police surveillance of protesters prior to the 2004 Republican National Convention, but they will be allowed to black out some information, a judge ruled Monday." ... "The city had sought to keep secret field intelligence reports prepared by undercover police officers, but U.S. Magistrate Judge James C. Francis IV called for the city to turn over those and other documents to lawyers representing hundreds of protesters challenging their arrests." ... "For the most part, Francis rejected city arguments that the documents were not relevant and were protected by law enforcement privilege. He did, however, say some documents and information were not pertinent and could be withheld or redacted." ... "Francis said they could be released in redacted form to hide the identities of undercover officers and confidential police tactics and strategies." -By Larry Neumeister -AP via -WashingtonPost
Secret - United States - Government - Foreign - Intelligence - Surveillance - History - Electronic - E-Mail - Telephone - Law - Language - Politics - Terrorism - "Bush Signs Law to Widen Legal Reach for Wiretapping." ... "[Republican] President Bush signed into law on Sunday legislation that broadly expanded the government’s authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants." ... "Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States." ... "They also said that the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens." ... "“This more or less legalizes the N.S.A. program,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, who has studied the new legislation." ... "Previously, the government needed search warrants approved by a special intelligence court to eavesdrop on telephone conversations, e-mail messages and other electronic communications between individuals inside the United States and people overseas, if the government conducted the surveillance inside the United States." -By James Risen -NYTimes

Secret- US - World - Intelligence - E-Mail - Communications - Spying - Government - Law - Politics - John A Boehner - Ohio - Illinois - California - New York - "Ruling Limited Spying Efforts: Move to Amend FISA Sparked by Judge's Decision." ... "A federal intelligence court judge earlier this year secretly declared a key element of the [Republican President] Bush administration's wiretapping efforts illegal, according to a lawmaker and government sources, providing a previously unstated rationale for fevered efforts by congressional lawmakers this week to expand the president's spying powers." ... "House Minority Leader [Ohio Republican Representative] John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) disclosed elements of the court's decision in remarks Tuesday to Fox News as he was promoting the administration-backed wiretapping legislation. Boehner has denied revealing classified information, but two government officials privy to the details confirmed that his remarks concerned classified information." ... "The judge, whose name could not be learned, concluded early this year that the government had overstepped its authority in attempting to broadly surveil communications between two locations overseas that are passed through routing stations in the United States, according to two other government sources familiar with the decision." ... "The practical effect has been to block the NSA's [National Security Agency's] efforts to collect information from a large volume of foreign calls and e-mails that passes through U.S. communications nodes clustered around New York and California." ... ""There's been a ruling, over the last four or five months, that prohibits the ability of our intelligence services and our counterintelligence people from listening in to two terrorists in other parts of the world where the communication could come through the United States," Boehner told Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto in a Tuesday interview." ... "Commenting on Boehner's remarks, [Illinois Democratic Representative] Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), the House Democratic Caucus chairman, said yesterday that "John should remember the old adage: Loose lips very much sink ships."" (1, 2) -By Carol D. Leonnig and Ellen Nakashima with contributions by Dan Eggen, Barton Gellman, and Paul Kane -WashingtonPost

Alberto Gonzales - US - Foreign - Intelligence - Surveillance - Government - Terrorism - Communications - US Attorneys - Politics - "Gonzales an issue in surveillance law upgrade." ... "White House officials and Democratic congressional leaders are still trying to work out differences to modernize the law on monitoring communications between suspected terrorists." ... "But beyond technical and legal issues, embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is one of the sticking points." ... "One of the sticking points involves intercepted communications where one end turns out to be in the United States." ... "The DNI [Director of National Intelligence] proposal gives the attorney general the authority to approve and monitor the surveillance. However, the Democrats want the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court -- the special panel that has to approve any wiretaps involving U.S. persons -- to oversee the eavesdropping and authorize warrants when there is a pattern of calls from a foreign target to the United States." ... "Democrats -- and at least one leading Republican -- don't want to extend that power to Gonzales, who is embroiled in disputes with Congress over his testimony over government surveillance and the firings of U.S. attorneys last year that critics say were politically motivated." -CNN
US - Foreign - Intelligence - Surveillance - Government - Terrorism - E-Mail - Telephone - Politics - "Court puts limits on surveillance abroad: The ruling raises concerns that U.S. anti-terrorism efforts might be impaired at a time of heightened risk." ... "A special court that has routinely approved eavesdropping operations has put new restrictions on the ability of U.S. spy agencies to intercept e-mails and telephone calls of suspected terrorists overseas, U.S. officials said Wednesday." ... "The previously undisclosed ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has prompted concern among senior intelligence officials and lawmakers that the efforts of U.S. spy agencies to track terrorism suspects might be impaired at a time when analysts have warned that the United States is under heightened risk of attack." ... "One official said the issue centered on a ruling in which a FISA court judge rejected a government application for a "basket warrant" — a term that refers to court approval for surveillance activity encompassing multiple targets, rather than warrants issued on a case-by-case basis for surveillance of specific terrorism suspects." ... "The recent FISA court ruling was a blow to the [Republican] Bush administration, which had bypassed the court when it launched the NSA program in 2001. The White House moved it back under the FISA court's supervision last year after Democrats won control of Congress and appeared poised to challenge the constitutionality of a program that monitored U.S. residents' communications without warrants." ... "The issue has become the center of a fierce new debate on Capitol Hill over how to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the government to get a special court's approval before monitoring communications of people in the U.S. Public records show that the court rejects few of the government's requests: In 2005, for example, it approved 2,072 applications and denied none; in 2006 it approved 2,176 and denied, in part, one." -By Greg Miller with contributions by Richard B. Schmitt -LAtimes

US - Pakistan - Afghanistan - Military - Terrorism - Intelligence - 2008 Election - Illinois - "Obama says he would target Pakistan." ... "[2008 election Democratic Presidential Candidate and Illinois Senator] Barack Obama on Wednesday said he would not hesitate to order military strikes against al-Qaeda targets on Pakistani soil with or without the permission of General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military ruler." ... "His remarks follow a US national intelligence estimate that says al-Qaeda has reconstituted itself in havens along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. "Let me make this clear," said Mr Obama. "There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."" ... "The 45-year-old senator criticised the Bush administration's support for Gen Musharraf, who faces general elections later this year. "We must not turn a blind eye to elections that are neither free nor fair – our goal is not simply an ally in Pakistan, it is a democratic ally," he said. "Pakistan needs more than F16s to combat extremism."" -FT.com via -MSN

Alberto R Gonzales - Secret - Government - Wiretapping - Torture - Intelligence - Law - Politics - Civil Liberties - Wis - Texas - Maine- "Gonzales's Truthfulness Long Disputed: Claims of Misstatements to Shield [Republican President] Bush Stretch Back a Decade." ... "When Alberto R. Gonzales was asked during his January 2005 confirmation hearing whether the Bush administration would ever allow wiretapping of U.S. citizens without warrants, he initially dismissed the query as a "hypothetical situation."" ... "But when [Wisconsin Democratic Senator] Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) pressed him further, Gonzales declared: "It is not the policy or the agenda of this president to authorize actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes."" ... "By then, however, the government had been conducting a secret wiretapping program for more than three years without court oversight, possibly in conflict with federal intelligence laws. Gonzales had personally defended the effort in fierce internal debates. Feingold later called his testimony that day "misleading and deeply troubling."" ... "Over the past 2 1/2 years, lawmakers have accused Gonzales of dissembling on many topics, including civil liberties abuses under the USA Patriot Act and his role in reviewing aggressive interrogation tactics. After a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in February 2006, Gonzales sent the panel a six-page, single-spaced letter to "clarify" six major points of testimony, including his erroneous claim that the Justice Department had never undertaken a legal analysis of domestic wiretapping." ... "Questions about Gonzales's willingness to shade the truth on Bush's behalf came to prominence in the 1996 episode in which Bush was excused from Texas jury duty in a drunken-driving case. Bush was then the state's governor, and Gonzales was his general counsel. If Bush had served, he probably would have had to disclose his own drunken-driving conviction in Maine two decades earlier." ... "The judge, prosecutor and defense attorney involved in the case have said that Gonzales met with the judge and argued that jury service would pose a potential conflict of interest for Bush, who could be asked to pardon the defendant. Gonzales has disputed that account. He made no mention of meeting with the judge in a written statement submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee." (1, 2) -By Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein with contributions by Alice Crites -WashingtonPost

US - Saudi Arabia - Iraq - Iran - Military - Financial - Intelligence - "U.S. Officials Voice Frustrations With Saudis’ Role in Iraq." ... "During a high-level meeting in Riyadh [Saudi Arabia's capital] in January, Saudi officials confronted a top American envoy with documents that seemed to suggest that Iraq’s prime minister could not be trusted." ... "One purported to be an early alert from the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr warning him to lie low during the coming American troop increase, which was aimed in part at Mr. Sadr’s militia. Another document purported to offer proof that Mr. Maliki was an agent of Iran." ... "The American envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, immediately protested to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, contending that the documents were forged. But, said administration officials who provided an account of the exchange, the Saudis remained skeptical, adding to the deep rift between America’s most powerful Sunni Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, and its Shiite-run neighbor, Iraq." ... "Now, [Republican] Bush administration officials are voicing increasing anger at what they say has been Saudi Arabia’s counterproductive role in the Iraq war. They say that beyond regarding Mr. Maliki as an Iranian agent, the Saudis have offered financial support to Sunni groups in Iraq. Of an estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters who enter Iraq each month, American military and intelligence officials say that nearly half are coming from Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis have not done enough to stem the flow." ... "The American officials in Iraq also say that the majority of suicide bombers in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia and that about 40 percent of all foreign fighters are Saudi. Officials said that while most of the foreign fighters came to Iraq to become suicide bombers, others arrived as bomb makers, snipers, logisticians and financiers." (1, 2) -By Helene Cooper with contributions by Mark Mazzetti, Jim Rutenberg, and Richard A. Oppel Jr. -NYTimes

Alberto R Gonzales - Secret - Eavesdropping - Intelligence - Law - Politics - "F.B.I. Chief Challenges Gonzales’s Testimony." ... "The dispute over the truthfulness of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales reached a new intensity today as the F.B.I. [Federal Bureau of Investigation ] Director, Robert S. Mueller 3rd, contradicted Mr. Gonzales’s sworn testimony before a Senate committee." ... "Mr. Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee that the [Republican President] Bush administration’s secret eavesdropping program was the main topic at an encounter in the hospital room of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft on March 10, 2004, contrary to what Mr. Gonzales told a Senate panel on Tuesday." ... "At the time, Mr. Gonzales was the White House counsel, and Mr. Ashcroft was recovering from gall bladder surgery. That March night, Mr. Gonzales went to the hospital room with Andrew H. Card Jr., then White House chief of staff." ... "In his testimony before the Senate panel on Tuesday, Mr. Gonzales said the subject in the hospital room was “intelligence activities” under debate in the administration, but not the secret eavesdropping program." ... "But Mr. Mueller contradicted that version of events today, several hours after four Senate Democrats called for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate whether Mr. Gonzales perjured himself before Congress." ... "The conflict in accounts could be significant, because Mr. Gonzales’s critics have accused him of trying to convey the false impression that the N.S.A. [National Security Agency] program had spawned no serious dissension within the Bush administration." ... "But former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey has testified that Justice Department lawyers were balking at recertifying the program early in 2004 and that he thought Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card rushed to the hospital to persuade Mr. Ashcroft, who was not at full capacity, to overlook his own objections to the program." ... "Mr. Mueller said that after receiving a call from Mr. Comey he went to the hospital, arriving shortly after Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card left, and that after he spoke with Mr. Ashcroft he understood that the N.S.A. program was indeed the focus of the dramatic bedside encounter." (1, 2) -By David Stout -NYTimes
Alberto R Gonzales - Secret - Emergency - Terrorism - Intelligence - Eavesdropping - Law - Enforcement - Politics - "F.B.I. Chief Gives Account at Odds With Gonzales’s." ... "The director of the F.B.I. offered testimony Thursday that sharply conflicted with Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales’s sworn statements about a 2004 confrontation in which top Justice Department officials threatened to resign over a secret intelligence operation." ... "The director, Robert S. Mueller III, told the House Judiciary Committee that the confrontation was about the National Security Agency’s counterterrorist eavesdropping program, describing it as “an N.S.A. program that has been much discussed.” His testimony was a serious blow to Mr. Gonzales, who insisted at a Senate hearing on Tuesday that there were no disagreements inside the [Republican President] Bush administration about the program at the time of those discussions or at any other time." ... "The director’s remarks were especially significant because Mr. Mueller is the Justice Department’s chief law enforcement official. He also played a crucial role in the 2004 dispute over the program, intervening with President Bush to help deal with the threat of mass resignations that grew out of a day of emergency meetings at the White House and at the hospital bedside of John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general." ... "Doubts about Mr. Gonzales’s version of events in March 2004 grew after James B. Comey, the former deputy attorney general, testified in May that he and other Justice Department officials were prepared to resign over legal objections to an intelligence program that appeared to be the N.S.A. program." ... "In addition, in testimony last year, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who was the N.S.A. director when the program started and now heads the Central Intelligence Agency, said the March 2004 meeting involved the Terrorist Surveillance Program." -By David Johnston and Scott Shane -NYTimes
Alberto Gonzales - Karl Rove - Monica Goodling - US Attorneys - Terrorism - Phone - E-Mail - Surveillance - Intelligence - Law - Politics - New York - "Rove Summoned as Democrats Escalate Fight With Bush (Update2)." ... "Senate Democrats sought a special prosecutor to investigate whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales lied to lawmakers and they subpoenaed [Republican] President George W. Bush's top political aide, Karl Rove, to testify about the firing of U.S. attorneys." ... "Charges by four Democratic senators that Gonzales repeatedly lied under oath, plus the latest subpoena, raised the stakes in the congressional fight with Bush over his refusal to allow aides to testify about the firing of nine prosecutors last year." ... "``The attorney general took an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,'' New York [Democratic Senator] Democrat Charles Schumer told reporters today. ``Instead, he tells the half-truth, the partial truth and everything but the truth. And he does it not once, and not twice, but over and over and over again.''" ... "The lawmakers said Gonzales's testimony that he never talked to other colleagues about the prosecutor firings after the controversy erupted was contradicted by former aide Monica Goodling. She told Congress in May that she felt ``uncomfortable'' when Gonzales raised the subject." ... "The Democrats also said they found ``deeply troubling'' Gonzales's assertions in 2006 Senate testimony that ``there has not been any serious disagreement'' in the administration over the interception of suspected terrorists' international phone calls and e-mails without court warrants." ... "The attorney general's statement was contradicted in congressional testimony earlier this year by former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey, who said there had been dissent at the highest levels of the Justice Department in March 2004." -By James Rowley -Bloomberg
Alberto Gonzales - Karl Rove - Political - Government - Law - Enforcement - Intelligence - Surveillance- History - Vermont - "Democrats seek perjury probe of Gonzales." ... "Democratic U.S. senators on Thursday urged that U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales be investigated for possible perjury and issued a subpoena to senior [Republican] White House political adviser Karl Rove." ... ""Not since the darkest days of the Nixon Administration have we seen efforts to corrupt federal law enforcement for partisan political gain and such efforts to avoid accountability," [Vermont Democratic Senator] Patrick Leahy said." ... "Gonzales testified earlier this year that "there has not been any serious disagreement" within the [Republican President Bush] administration about its surveillance program, which critics denounced as illegal. Bush has contended wartime powers allowed him to conduct it." ... "Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey told Congress in May, however, that concerns about the program were voiced at a 2004 meeting and a number officials had threatened to resign." ... "Testifying at a hearing by the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Thursday, FBI Director Robert Mueller backed up Comey's version of the meeting." ... ""The discussion was on a national -- an NSA (National Security Agency) program that has been much discussed, yes," Mueller said. Asked if he had had serious reservations about it, Mueller said, "Yes."" (1, 2, 3)) -By Thomas Ferraro with contributions by Jim Vicini, Matt Spetalnick, and Jeremy Pelofsky -Reuters

Alberto Gonzales - Government - Terrorism - Surveillance - Intelligence - Law - Politics - NY - "Documents contradict Gonzales' testimony." ... "Documents indicate eight congressional leaders were briefed about the Bush administration's terrorist surveillance program on the eve of its expiration in 2004, contradicting sworn Senate testimony this week by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales." ... "At a heated Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, Gonzales repeatedly testified that the issue at hand was not about the terrorist surveillance program, which allowed the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on suspects in the United States without receiving court approval." ... "Instead, Gonzales said, the emergency meetings on March 10, 2004, focused on an intelligence program that he would not describe." ... "Gonzales, who was then serving as counsel to Bush, testified that the White House Situation Room briefing sought to inform congressional leaders about the pending expiration of the unidentified program and Justice Department objections to renew it. Those objections were led by then-Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey, who questioned the program's legality." ... ""The dissent related to other intelligence activities," Gonzales testified at Tuesday's hearing. "The dissent was not about the terrorist surveillance program."" ... ""Not the TSP?" responded [New York Democratic Senator] Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y. "Come on. If you say it's about other, that implies not. Now say it or not."" ... ""It was not," Gonzales answered. "It was about other intelligence activities."" ... "A four-page memo from the national intelligence director's office says the White House briefing with the eight lawmakers on March 10, 2004, was about the terror surveillance program, or TSP." -Contributed to by Katherine Shrader -AP via -USATODAY
Alberto Gonzales - Surveillance - Intelligence - Politics - Calif - WVa - SD - "Gonzales, Senators Spar on Credibility: Account of Meeting In '04 Is Challenged." ... "[Republican President Bush's] Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales testified yesterday that top congressional leaders from both parties agreed in March 2004 to continue a classified surveillance activity that Justice Department officials had deemed illegal, a contention immediately disputed by key Democratic lawmakers." ... "[California Democratic Representative] Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and [West Virginia Democratic Senator] Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), who were briefed on the program at the time, said there was no consensus that it should proceed. Three others who were at the meeting also said the legal underpinnings of the program were never discussed." ... ""He once again is making something up to protect himself," Rockefeller said of the embattled attorney general." ... "Pelosi, Rockefeller and former [South Dakota Democratic] senator Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), who were members of the Gang of Eight at the time, also sharply disputed Gonzales's description of the White House meeting. Daschle said in a statement that he could not recall the meeting and is "quite certain that at no time did we encourage the AG or anyone else to take such actions." He added: "This appears to be another attempt to rewrite history."" ... "Rockefeller said that lawmakers were never asked to give the program their approval and that administration officials' infrequent briefings about it were short and involved "virtually no questions."" -By Dan Eggen and Paul Kane with contributions by Walter Pincus -WashingtonPost
Alberto R Gonzales - Government - Intelligence - Surveillance - Law - Politics - Health - West Virginia - "Gonzales Denies Improper Pressure on Ashcroft." ... "[Republican President Bush's] Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales denied on Tuesday that he had improperly pressured John Ashcroft to sign an authorization for the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program in 2004 when Mr. Ashcroft, his predecessor, lay in a hospital bed, in pain and on sedatives after surgery." ... "Mr. Gonzales, in an acrimonious hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that hours before the hospital confrontation, the [Republican President Bush] White House had summoned Congressional leaders to an emergency meeting to discuss ways to head off a revolt at the Justice Department against the security agency program." ... "[West Virginia Democratic] Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, who attended the 2004 meeting as the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, called Mr. Gonzales’s account “untruthful.” Mr. Rockefeller said he believed Mr. Gonzales was deliberately misleading Congress about the showdown over the N.S.A. program inside the Bush administration." ... "Mr. Gonzales’s account added fresh detail to what was previously known about the hospital confrontation in which Mr. Ashcroft, who had had gallbladder surgery, and other senior Justice Department officials had threatened to resign until [Republican] President Bush agreed to modify the [domestic surveillance] program." ... "His account also contrasted sharply with the recollection of James B. Comey, a former deputy attorney general who worked under both Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Gonzales. Mr. Comey testified before the committee in May that he had been “very angry” during the hospital encounter because “I thought I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man.”" -By David Johnston and Scott Shane -NYTimes

US - Global - Secret - Military - Intelligence - Terrorism - Torture - Prisons - Human Rights - Politics - "Bush bars CIA from using torture, but details remain cloudy." ... "[Republican] President Bush signed an executive order Friday barring the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] from using torture, acts of violence and degrading treatment in the interrogation and detention of terrorism suspects, but human rights experts questioned its scope." ... "While Bush's order broadly outlines what the CIA can and cannot do to prisoners, and sets standards for what the agency must provide in terms of food and shelter for detainees, it says nothing about specific controversial interrogation techniques." ... "Some experts in human-rights law said Bush's order contains "loopholes" that would allow the CIA to continue using aggressive interrogation techniques that others would consider torture." ... "The Bush administration received heavy criticism globally over CIA interrogators using "water-boarding," which simulates drowning, and for allowing the CIA to operate secret prisons in Europe." ... "Some military and intelligence officials dispute that harsh interrogations have produced useful intelligence, contending that detainees will say whatever interrogators want to hear to stop their suffering. Moreover, they worry that U.S. military and intelligence officers will be subject to the same procedures if captured." -By William Douglas and Jonathan S. Landay -McClatchyDC.com

Alberto Gonzales - Wiretapping - Intelligence - Politics - Texas - "Attorney General Faces New Questions." ... "Attorney General Alberto Gonzales came under new questioning Thursday about [Republican] President Bush's wiretapping program and the administration response to congressional subpoenas." ... "In a closed-door session, House Intelligence Committee Chairman [Texas Democratic Representative] Silvestre Reyes said members were especially interested in the reasons behind Gonzales' controversial 2004 visit to the hospital bedside of John Ashcroft, reportedly to pressure the ailing attorney general to endorse Bush's surveillance program. Ashcroft, said to have been barely conscious at the time, refused." ... "Gonzales did not express any regret, Reyes said after the hearing ended." ... "According to Comey, he and Ashcroft had refused to recertify the legality of the surveillance program before the attorney general fell ill with pancreatitis. On the eve of a deadline, Gonzales and then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card sought to go over Comey's head to Ashcroft, then in intensive care recovering from surgery. What followed was the dramatic scene at Ashcroft's bedside, Comey said." -By Laurie Kellman -AP via -SFGate.com

US - Pakistan - Afghan - Terrorism - Intelligence - Politics - "U.S. threatens action in Pakistan." ... "An ambush of a military convoy that killed 17 troops near the Afghan border Wednesday pushed the death toll in a series of attacks to at least 101 Pakistanis in the past five days — and brought President Pervez Musharraf, according to a local newspaper headline, to a "Moment of Truth."" ... "The [Republican President] Bush administration, after publicly demanding that Musharraf rein in militants linked to al Qaida, on Wednesday threatened to launch attacks into Pakistani territory if it sees fit." ... "Facing domestic political pressure for staying in power while in uniform — he is also the nation's top general — Musharraf has relied heavily on the Bush administration as a source of political support. But with Washington now demanding that Musharraf use force in tribal areas, he is struggling to appear decisive while avoiding a civilian bloodbath or more military carnage." ... "Musharraf recently moved thousands of Pakistani troops to volatile tribal strongholds like North Waziristan, where a Taliban council said earlier this week it was abandoning a peace deal with the government." ... "The latest U.S. intelligence reports say the border regions have become a sanctuary for al Qaida and Taliban leadership planning future attacks against the United States and its allies." -By Tom Lasseter -McClatchyDC.com
US - Iraq - Military - Intelligence - Terrorism - Politics - "Bush made them stronger: New intel report ignores 3 inconvenient truths about terror." ... "The U.S. Intelligence Community, which is reported to cost taxpayers more than $40 billion a year, yesterday produced its flagship report, the National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE. Many in Washington first heard about NIEs in 2003, when one said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction." ... "The new NIE says something more credible, and more obvious: that Al Qaeda "is and will remain the most serious terrorist threat to the homeland, as its central leadership continues to plan high-impact plots, while pushing others in extremist Sunni communities to mimic its efforts and to supplement its capabilities."" ... "But what the NIE does not say is more interesting than this anemic wording about indisputable facts." ... "First, it fails to note that the intelligence community's judgment has changed significantly since its last report in 2006. Back then, they were saying that Al Qaeda was suffering. Not any more. "[W]e judge that Al Qaeda will intensify its efforts to put operatives here," says the report." ... "In other words, Al Qaeda has been recovering on [Republican] President Bush's watch, particularly these last two years." ... ""Al Qaeda in Iraq" did not even exist until after we invaded Iraq." -By Richard A. Clarke -NYDailyNews.com
Secret - US - Philippines - Dick Cheney - Leandro Aragoncillo - Government - Military - Intelligence - Politics - "Ex-Cheney aide gets 10 years in prison in spy case." ... "A former White House official who took top secret documents from U.S. [Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney's office and gave them to opposition figures in the Philippines was sentenced on Wednesday to 10 years in prison." ... "Philippine-born Leandro Aragoncillo, a U.S. citizen and former Marine, pleaded guilty last year to taking the documents that included details on threats against U.S. government interests and military personnel in the Philippines." ... "Prosecutors told the court Aragoncillo used a fax machine in Cheney's office to send documents to the Philippines. They said up to 800 classified documents had been compromised by Aragoncillo, as well as the name of a U.S. government source." (1, 2) -By Edith Honan -Reuters
US - Iraq - Afghanistan - Pakistan - Osama bin Laden - Military - Terrorism - Intelligence - Political - Analysis - "Intelligence Puts Rationale For War on Shakier Ground." ... "The White House faced fresh political peril yesterday in the form of a new intelligence assessment that raised sharp questions about the success of its counterterrorism strategy and judgment in making Iraq the focus of that effort." ... "Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush has been able to deflect criticism of his counterterrorism policy by repeatedly noting the absence of any new domestic attacks and by citing the continuing threat that terrorists in Iraq pose to U.S. interests." ... "But this line of defense seemed to unravel a bit yesterday with the release of a new National Intelligence Estimate that concludes that al-Qaeda "has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability" by reestablishing a haven in Pakistan and reconstituting its top leadership. The report also notes that al-Qaeda has been able "to recruit and indoctrinate operatives, including for Homeland attacks," by associating itself with an Iraqi subsidiary." ... "These disclosures triggered a new round of criticism from Democrats and others who say that the administration took its eye off the ball by invading Iraq without first destroying Osama bin Laden's organization in Afghanistan." ... "Some terrorism analysts say Bush has used inflated rhetoric to depict al-Qaeda in Iraq as part of the same group of extremists that attacked the United States on Sept. 11 -- noting that the group did not exist until after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. These analysts say Bush also has overlooked the contribution that U.S. actions have made to the growth of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has been described as kind of a franchise of the main al-Qaeda network headed by bin Laden." -By Michael Abramowitz -WashingtonPost

Randy "Duke" Cunningham - Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo - Porter J Goss - Mitchell Wade - Brent Wilkes - Lawmakers - Government - Intelligence - Money - Politicians - San Diego - California - Fla - "Cunningham report portrays entangled panel: The still-unreleased findings say intelligence committee aides were used by the California congressman, now in prison for bribery." ... "An internal investigation that the House Intelligence Committee has refused to make public portrays the panel as embarrassingly entangled in the [California Republican Representative] Randy "Duke" Cunningham bribery scandal." ... "The document describes breakdowns in leadership and controls that it says allowed Cunningham — the former congressman (R-Rancho Santa Fe) who began an eight-year prison term last year for taking bribes and evading taxes — to use his House position to steer millions of dollars to corrupt contractors." ... "The report provides the most detailed account to date of how former CIA Executive Director Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo, whose indictment on charges of defrauding the government was recently expanded, allegedly used committee connections to advance his career at the agency." ... "For all its finger-pointing at staffers, the document fails to address whether other committee members were aware of Cunningham's abuses or were culpable. For instance, the report avoids any scrutiny of former [Florida Republican Representative] Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), who was chairman of the panel when Cunningham's most egregious abuses occurred." ... "The report's principal author said in an interview that the terms under which he was hired to conduct the investigation prevented him from examining lawmakers' roles." ... "The document says that Cunningham began pressing to fund special projects from the moment he joined the House Intelligence Committee in 2001, and that his demands intensified." ... "One project, a Pentagon counterintelligence program known as Project Fortress, was being handled by contractor Mitchell Wade, who has since pleaded guilty to paying bribes to Cunningham." ... "The report suggests that Cunningham began working more closely with Wade, leading to a rift with Brent Wilkes, another contractor accused of bribing the congressman." ... "An indictment filed May 10 in U.S. District Court in San Diego accuses Foggo of accepting lavish meals and vacation trips while using his position at the CIA to try to steer more than $100 million in agency funds to [contractor Brent] Wilkes." (1, 2, 3, 4) -By Greg Miller -LAtimes

Saudi Arabia - Iraq - US - Syria - Iran - Lebanon - Afghan -