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Government
- 
Spy
- Intelligence
- 
Imagery
- 
Technology
- 
Communications
- 
California
- "U.S.
Spy Satellite, Power Gone, May Hit Earth." ... "A
disabled American spy satellite is rapidly descending and is likely to
plunge to Earth by late February or early March, posing a potential danger
from its debris, officials said Saturday." ... "Officials said that they
had no control over the nonfunctioning satellite and that it was unknown
where the debris might land." ... "Specialists who follow spy satellite
operations suspect it is an experimental imagery satellite built by Lockheed
Martin and launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in December
2006 aboard a Delta II rocket. Shortly after the satellite reached orbit,
ground controllers lost the ability to control it and were never able to
regain communication." ... ""It's not necessarily dead, but deaf," said
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics and an analyst of various government space programs."
-NYTimes
Telecom
- 
Amnesty- 
Corporate
- Government
- Intelligence
- Surveillance
- 
Wisconsin
- 
Nevada
- 
Connecticut
- "Feingold:
"I Really Do Disagree" With Reid On FISA." ... "A
long-debated provision over whether or not telephone companies would get
a free pass for aiding the U.S. [United States] government in warrentless
surveillance hits the Senate floor today. And it threatens to open up fissures
within the Democratic Party." ... "In an interview with the Huffington
Post on Thursday morning, [Wisconsin Democratic Senator] Sen. Russ Feingold,
who opposes granting immunity to those companies, expressed disappointment
that his party's leader, [Nevada Democratic Senator] Sen. Harry Reid, was
not doing more to help strike the provision from a newly considered version
of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act." ... ""Of course I have great
respect for the Majority Leader," said Feingold. "He is a good friend of
mine. But I really do disagree with his way of proceeding."" ... "At issue
is the likely passage of a version of FISA that contains retroactive immunity
over one that doesn't. Reid has said he supports the former, but legislatively,
the path has been paved for the passage of the latter. In addition, there
is debate over an amendment offered by [Connecticut Democratic Senator]
Sen. Chris Dodd, to strip immunity from any FISA bill. If that fails --
and it seems likely -- Dodd has threatened to filibuster the whole bill.
On Wednesday, Reid was interpreted as saying any such filibuster will be
the standing and talking variety as opposed to an agreed-upon 60-vote minimum
threshold. Feingold, who supports Dodd's stance, took slight issue with
that approach." ... ""We should have a normal process w[h]ere this is debated
based on a majority vote in the senate," said the Wisconsin Democrat. "That's
the way it should have been done and I regret that it's not being done
that way. Of course, I support Senator Dodd. He and I were principally
involved in making sure this didn't get jammed through before the holidays
and I will be supporting him again. But this decision does make it harder.""
-By Sam
Stein -HuffingtonPost.com
Dick
Cheney
- 
US
- 
Iraq
- 
Military
- Government
- Intelligence
- 
Politics
- Language
- Database
- 
History
- "Bush
Administration Lied 935 Times About Iraq Before Invasion:
Study: President [Republican President Bush] cited as most frequent liar,
with 259 false statements about weapons of mass destruction and more."
... "For years, the [Republican President] Bush administration has faced
charges that it bent the truth or flat-out misled the public about Iraq's
alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction in the lead-up to the
2003 invasion of the country. Now, a study by two nonprofit journalism
organizations claims that President Bush and top officials in his administration
issued nearly 1,000 false statements about the security threat posed by
Iraq in the wake of 9/11." ... "Relying on what it described as a "massive
database" of information that fed the results of the project, the authors
said their research was based on juxtaposing what President Bush and the
top officials in his administration said in public against what was known,
"or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis." The searchable database
includes public statements drawn from both primary sources like official
transcripts and secondary sources like the reporting of major news organizations
over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also used information
from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews."
... "An example given in the report is a portion of an address given at
the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars on August 26, 2002,
during which Cheney said, "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam
Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing
them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us." According
to the report, former CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] Director George
Tenet later said Cheney's assertions went well beyond his agency's assessments
at the time, and another CIA official, referring to the speech, told a
prominent journalist, "Our reaction was, 'Where is he getting this stuff
from?' "" ... "As for criticism that the report does not have any new information
but rather rehashes already-reported facts, [Center for Public Integrity
spokesman Steve] Carpinelli said, "The difference is that while there have
been many intelligence reports that came out that contradicted a lot of
statements from administration officials, there's been nothing that could
show you how it was a coordinated effort." The report is accompanied by
a bar graph that Carpinelli said shows how the false statements reached
their peak in the months prior to the March 2003 launch of the Iraq war
and how they tapered off soon after." -By Gil Kaufman
-MTV.com
Dick
Cheney
- US
- Iraq
- Military
- Intelligence
- 
Terrorism
- Politics
- Rhetoric
- History
- 
Journalists
- "Study:
Bush, aides made 935 false statements in run-up to war."
... "[Republican] President Bush and his top aides publicly made 935 false
statements about the security risk posed by Iraq in the two years following
September 11, 2001, according to a study released Tuesday by two nonprofit
journalism groups." ... "According to the study, Bush and seven top officials
-- including [Republicans] Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary
of State Colin Powell and then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice
-- made 935 false statements about Iraq during those two years." ... "The
overview of the study also calls the media to task, saying most media outlets
didn't do enough to investigate the claims." ... ""Some journalists --
indeed, even some entire news organizations -- have since acknowledged
that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential
and uncritical," the report reads. "These mea culpas notwithstanding, much
of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation
of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq.""
-CNN
Mitch
McConnell - Noteworthy
- Government
- Intelligence
- Surveillance
- Corporate
- Telecom
- Amnesty
- Politics
- Nevada
- 
Kentucky
- 
Vermont
- Connecticut
- Wisconsin
- "Your
Harry Reid-led Senate in action." ... "[Nevada Democratic
Senator] Harry Reid -- who has (a) done more than any other individual
to ensure that Bush's demands for telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping
powers will be met in full and (b) allowed the Republicans all year to
block virtually every bill without having to bother to actually filibuster
-- went to the Senate floor yesterday and, with the scripted assistance
of [Kentucky Republican Senator] Mitch McConnell and [Vermont Democratic
Senator] Pat Leahy, warned [Connecticut Democratic Senator] Chris Dodd,
[Wisconsin Democratic Senator] Russ Feingold and others that they would
be selfishly wreaking havoc on the schedules of their fellow Senators (making
them work over the weekend, ruining their planned "retreat," and even preventing
them from going to Davos!) if they bothered everyone with their annoying,
pointless little filibuster." ... "To do so, Reid announced that, unlike
for the multiple filibusters from Republican colleagues, he would actually
force Dodd and company to engage in a real filibuster. This is what Reid
said:"
US
- Iraq
- Military
- Intelligence
- Terrorism
- Politics
- Journalism
- "Study:
False statements preceded war." ... "A study by two
nonprofit journalism organizations found that [Republican] President Bush
and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about
the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001
terrorist attacks." ... "The study concluded that the statements "were
part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion
and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.""
... "The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public
Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism."
... "The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It
found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and
administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions
that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain
them or had links to al-Qaida or both." ... ""It is now beyond dispute
that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful
ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of
the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview
of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war
on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and
that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."" -By
Douglas K. Daniel -AP
via -Yahoo
Dick
Cheney
- US
- Iraq
- Military
- Intelligence
- Terrorism
- Politics
- Rhetoric
- History
- Noteworthy
- "The
War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path
to War." ... "False Pretenses: Following 9/11,
[Republican] President Bush and seven top officials of his administration
waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat
posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq." ... "President
George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including
[Republicans] Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements
in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security
threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S.
invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the
statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized
public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly
false pretenses." ... "On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches,
briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key
officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott
McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction
(or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both.
This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's
case for war." ... "It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess
any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This
was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including
those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the
9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose "Duelfer
Report" established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq's nuclear program
in 1991 and made little effort to restart it." ... "In short, the Bush
administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information
that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action
against Iraq on March 19, 2003. Not surprisingly, the officials with the
most opportunities to make speeches, grant media interviews, and otherwise
frame the public debate also made the most false statements, according
to this first-ever analysis of the entire body of prewar rhetoric." ...
"President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq's links
to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in
the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq and 10 about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each
made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with
56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14)." -By
Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith -PublicIntegrity.org
Government
- 
Computer
- 
E-Mail
- Archives
- Law
- Politics
- US
- Iraq
- Military
- Intelligence
- 
Videotapes
- Presidential
Records Act - "White
House Tape Recycling May Have Erased Controversial E-Mails."
... "The [Republican President Bush] White House has acknowledged in a
new court filing that it routinely recycled computer backup tapes containing
its e-mail records until October 2003, a practice that could mean that
many electronic messages from the first two years of the [Republican President]
Bush administration are lost forever." ... "The disclosure raises the possibility
that the White House effectively erased e-mail related to some of the biggest
controversies of the Bush administration, including the leak of a CIA [Central
Intelligence Agency] officer's name, the start of the Iraq war and the
CIA's destruction of interrogation videotapes." ... "The backups are meant
to preserve records in case of a disaster. They also serve a role in ensuring
that federal record-keeping laws are met, according to administration officials
and records management experts. Two separate statutes require the White
House to preserve federal or presidential records." ... "In their lawsuit,
the two advocacy groups, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
and the National Security Archive, allege that millions of e-mail messages
are missing from White House servers between 2003 and 2005." -By
Dan Eggen -WashingtonPost
Water
- Torture
- War
Crimes - Politics
- Military
- Intelligence
- Law
- "Waterboarding
would be torture to me: U.S. spy chief." ... "U.S.
[United States] intelligence chief Mike McConnell said in a magazine interview
that waterboarding would be torture if it was used against him personally,
but stopped short of condemning the controversial interrogation technique."
... "McConnell, Director of National Intelligence [DNI], was quoted in
the New Yorker edition released on Sunday as defining torture as "something
that would cause excruciating pain."" ... "Asked if waterboarding -- the
practice of covering a person's face with a cloth and then dripping water
on it to bring on a feeling of drowning -- fit that definition, McConnell
said that for him personally, it would." ... ""If I had water draining
into my nose, oh God, I just can't imagine how painful!" McConnell said
in the article. "Whether it's torture by anybody else's definition, for
me it would be torture."" ... "[Republican] President Bush last year issued
an executive order to allow the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] to use
"enhanced interrogation techniques" that go beyond the rules adopted by
the U.S. Army." (1, 2)
-By Deborah Zabarenko with contributions Eric Walsh
-Reuters
Secretive
- 
Criminal
- Government
- Telephone
- Surveillance
- Intelligence
- Law
- 
Accounting
- US
- 
Foreign
- Terrorism
- Politics
- "FBI
Wiretaps Dropped Due to Unpaid Bills." ... "Telephone
companies have cut off FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] wiretaps used
to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated failures
to pay phone bills on time." ... "A Justice Department audit released Thursday
blamed the lost connections on the FBI's lax oversight of money used in
undercover investigations. Poor supervision of the program also allowed
one agent to steal $25,000, the audit said." ... "In at least one case,
a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation
"was halted due to untimely payment," the audit found. FISA [Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act] wiretaps are used in the government's most sensitive
and secretive criminal investigations, and allow eavesdropping on suspected
terrorists or spies." ... ""We also found that late payments have resulted
in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established
to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence,"
according to the audit by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine." -By
Lara Jakes Jordan -SFGate.com
US
- 
Iran
- Military
- 
Radio
- Intelligence
- Video
- "U.S.:
Voices on Recording May Not Have Been From Iranian Speedboats:
Chilling Threat Could Have Come From the Shore or Another Ship, Navy Says."
... "Just two days after the U.S. [United States] Navy released the eerie
video of Iranian speedboats swarming around American warships, which featured
a chilling threat in English, the Navy is saying that the voice on the
tape could have come from the shore or from another ship." ... "The near-clash
occurred over the weekend in the Strait of Hormuz. On the U.S.-released
recording, a voice can be heard saying to the Americans, "I am coming to
you. You will explode after a few minutes."" ... "The Navy never said specifically
where the voices came from, but many were left with the impression they
had come from the speedboats because of the way the Navy footage was edited."
... "The Iranians have denied using the threatening language and are saying
U.S.-released video is fabricated." (1, 2)
-By Martha Raddatz and Jonathan Karl
-ABCNEWS.com
Declassified
- US
- Government
- 
Vietnam
- Military
- Intelligence
- Wireless
- Radio
- Electronic
- Communications
- "Declassified
study puts Vietnam events in new light: US [United
States] signals intelligence [SIGINT] during the war came up short in major
turning points, according to an NSA [National Security Agency] history."
... "US signals intelligence – the much-vaunted ability of American military
and spy units to eavesdrop on the radio calls and other electronic communications
of an adversary – failed at crucial moments during the Vietnam War, according
to a just-declassified National Security Agency history of the effort."
... "The 10,000 cryptographers and other signals personnel in Southeast
Asia at the time did not predict the start of the Tet offensive on Jan.
31, 1968. Prior to that, signals intelligence may have actually misled
[Democratic] President Johnson and other top policymakers about the nature
of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which a supposed North Vietnamese
attack on US forces triggered a major escalation in the war." ... "US eavesdroppers
had many successes during the war, according to the lengthy document, particularly
in picking up the tactical communications of North Vietnamese and Viet
Cong fighters in the field." ... "But when it comes to major events, signals
intelligence is not magic, as the history makes clear. That is a point
current policymakers would do well to remember as they struggle to interpret
intelligence dealing with the complex modern problems of nuclear proliferation
and Islamist extremism." ... "In both the Tet and Gulf of Tonkin cases,
"critical information was mishandled, misinterpreted, lost, or ignored,"
writes NSA historian Robert Hanyok in the agency history. " -By
Peter Grier -CSMonitor
Mitt
Romney
- Bain
Capital - US
- 
China
- Military
- Intelligence
- Telecommunications
- Manufacturing
- Computer
- 
Networking
- Hackers
- Technology
- Corporation
- Government
- Lawmakers
- Politics
- 
Mass
- California
- 
India
- 2008
Election - "Telecom
Firm in China Sets Sights on U.S. Market: Ownership,
Tactics Raise Security Issues." ... "From a fortress-like corporate campus
in this southern city [of Shenzen, China], retired army officer Ren Zhengfei
is building one of China's most successful experiments in capitalism. A
mammoth operation with 70,000 employees and strong backing from the state,
Huawei Technologies brags that its goal is to dominate telecommunications
equipment markets all over the world." ... "Its current focus: America."
... "Three months ago, Huawei teamed up with Bain Capital Partners [2008
Election Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney's venture capital
firm] in a $2.2 billion takeover bid for U.S. [United States] networking
pioneer 3Com Corp. [Corporation], a Marlborough, Mass. [Massachusetts],
company that makes systems to protect against computer hackers." ... "Fueling
[American] lawmakers' unease about the Huawei deal is that no one knows
exactly who owns it. Technically, Huawei is a private venture, not state-owned.
But the company won't reveal information about its shareholders except
to say it's "100 percent employee-owned," with its chief executive owning
1 percent." ... "Research organization Rand Corp. said that Huawei has
"deep ties" with the Chinese military. It is not only a customer of Huawei's,
Rand said in an analysis prepared for the U.S. government, but also was
a "political patron and research and development partner."" ... "The United
States is not the only place where Huawei's operations have triggered national
security concerns. In India, where Huawei operates its largest research
and development facility outside of China, the company's efforts to build
a manufacturing base have raised concerns among the country's intelligence
agencies." ... "In a note circulated at a meeting of India's joint intelligence
committee on Nov. [November] 8, Huawei is listed as a "sectoral threat.""
... "Huawei's approach to leadership and innovation is in some ways the
antithesis of its Silicon Valley competitors. While California's high-tech
giants pride themselves on their flat management structure, in which chief
executives sit down next to engineers to brainstorm and allow their scientists
and engineers the freedom to think big thoughts, Huawei is known for its
military-style approach." (1, 2)
-By Ariana Eunjung Cha with contributions by Wu Meng
and Rama Lakshmi -WashingtonPost
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