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9-11
Meta Index September 11 2001
A-Z Subjects Topics Intelligence News Top |
INTELLIGENCE News:
Torture
-  Criminal
-  Dick
Cheney - War
Crimes - 
-  Military
-  Government
- Intelligence
-  Terrorism
- Detainee
- Secret
- Censored
-  Videotapes
-  Legal
-  Politics
-  History
-  Book
"Bush's Torture Rationale Debunked." ... "Abu Zubaida was the alpha and omega of the [Republican President] Bush administration's argument for torture." ... "That's why Sunday's front-page Washington Post story by Peter Finn and Joby Warrick is such a blow to the last remaining torture apologists." ... "Finn and Warrick reported that "not a single significant plot was foiled" as a result of Zubaida's brutal treatment -- and that, quite to the contrary, his false confessions "triggered a series of alerts and sent hundreds of CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] and FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] investigators scurrying in pursuit of phantoms."" ... "Zubaida was the first detainee to be tortured at the direct instruction of the [Republican President Bush] White House. Then he was President George W. Bush's Exhibit A in defense of the "enhanced interrogation" procedures that constituted torture. And he continues to be held up as a justification for torture by its most ardent defenders." ... "But as author Ron Suskind reported almost three years ago -- and as The Post now confirms -- almost all the key assertions the Bush administration made about Zubaida were wrong." ... "Zubaida wasn't a major al Qaeda figure. He wasn't holding back critical information. His torture didn't produce valuable intelligence -- and it certainly didn't save lives." ... "All the calculations the Bush White House claims to have made in its decision to abandon long-held moral and legal strictures against abusive interrogation turn out to have been profoundly flawed, not just on a moral basis but on a coldly practical one as well." ... "Indeed, the Post article raises the even further disquieting possibility that intentional cruelty was part of the White House's motive." ... "There's no doubt that Zubaida's capture in spring 2002 was what sent the administration down the path to state-sanctioned torture. Last April, ABC News reported that starting right after his capture, top Bush aides including [Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney micromanaged his interrogation from the White House basement. "The high-level discussions about these 'enhanced interrogation techniques' were so detailed," ABC's sources said, "some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic." Bush has acknowledged he was aware of those meetings at the time." ... "Techniques that created damage short of "the level of death, organ failure, or the permanent impairment of a significant body function" were later authorized in an August 2002 Justice Department memo, known as the Torture Memo." ... "Just two weeks ago, in a New York Review of Books article based on a confidential report from the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mark Danner described the techniques used on Zubaida in harrowing detail." ... "I've [Dan Froomkin] written extensively about Zubaida before, and about how the facts of his case as unearthed by [author of the book "The One Percent Doctrine" Ron] Suskind thoroughly undermine the Bush administration's arguments. See, for instance, my Dec. 18, 2007 column, Exhibit A for Torture, in which I suggested that "Bush's Exhibit A in defense of torture may in fact be an exhibit for the prosecution." We learned in December 2007 that the CIA had destroyed videotapes of its secret interrogations -- 92 in all, it turns out, 90 of them of Zubaida. In February 2008, I wrote about how the White House's torture argument had now officially become that the ends justify the means." ... "Over the years, I've made something of a point of debunkingthe Bush White House's unsupported assertions that any really useful information was gleaned from torture." -By Dan Froomkin -WashingtonPost
 China
- Hackers
-  International
-  Computer
-  Spying
-  Network
- Investigation
-
- Cams
- Political
-  Economic
-  Media
- Military
-  Tech
-  Canada
-  United
Kingdom -  US
"UPDATE: Deep computer-spying network touched 103 countries: Analysts find spyware installed on servers belonging to foreign ministries, embassies, and private companies." ... "A 10-month cyberespionage investigation has found that 1,295 computers in 103 countries and belonging to international institutions have been spied on, with some circumstantial evidence suggesting China may be to blame." ... "The 53-page report, released on Sunday, provides some of the most compelling evidence and detail of the efforts of politically motivated hackers while raising questions about their ties with government-sanctioned cyberspying operations." ... "[See also: Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog]" ... "It describes a network which researchers have called GhostNet, which primarily uses a malicious software program called gh0st RAT (Remote Access Tool) to steal sensitive documents, control Web cams and completely control infected computers." ... ""GhostNet represents a network of compromised computers resident in high-value political, economic and media locations spread across numerous countries worldwide," said the report, written by analysts with the Information Warfare Monitor, a research project of the SecDev Group, a think tank, and the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto [Canada]. "At the time of writing, these organizations are almost certainly oblivious to the compromised situation in which they find themselves."" ... ""Attributing all Chinese malware to deliberate or targeted intelligence gathering operations by the Chinese state is wrong and misleading," the report said." ... "However, China has made a concerted effort since the 1990s to use cyberspace for military advantage "The Chinese focus on cyber capabilities as part of its strategy of national asymmetric warfare involves deliberately developing capabilities that circumvent [United States] U.S. superiority in command-and-control warfare," it said." ... "A second report [PDF], written by University of Cambridge [United Kingdom] researchers and published in conjunction with the University of Toronto paper, was less circumspect, saying that the attacks against the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama (OHHDL) were launched by "agents of the Chinese government." The Cambridge team titled their report, "The Snooping Dragon."" (1, 2) -By Jeremy Kirk with contributions by Robert McMillan -IDG.net via -InfoWorld 
 Afghan
-  Pakistan
- US
- Military
- Intelligence
- Politics
- History
"Afghan Strikes by Taliban Get Pakistan Help, U.S. Aides Say." ... "The Taliban’s widening campaign in southern Afghanistan is made possible in part by direct support from operatives in Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, despite Pakistani government promises to sever ties to militant groups fighting in Afghanistan, according to American government officials." ... "The support consists of money, military supplies and strategic planning guidance to Taliban commanders who are gearing up to confront the international force in Afghanistan that will soon include some 17,000 American reinforcements." ... "Support for the Taliban, as well as other militant groups, is coordinated by operatives inside the shadowy S Wing of Pakistan’s spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, the officials said. There is even evidence that ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] operatives meet regularly with Taliban commanders to discuss whether to intensify or scale back violence before the Afghan elections." ... "American officials have complained for more than a year about the ISI’s support to groups like the Taliban. But the new details reveal that the spy agency is aiding a broader array of militant networks with more diverse types of support than was previously known — even months after Pakistani officials said that the days of the ISI’s playing a “double game” had ended." ... "Pakistan’s military and civilian leaders publicly deny any government ties to militant groups, and American officials say it is unlikely that top officials in Islamabad [Pakistan's capital] are directly coordinating the clandestine efforts. American officials have also said that midlevel ISI operatives occasionally cultivate relationships that are not approved by their bosses." ... "The ISI helped create and nurture the Taliban movement in the 1990s to bring stability to a nation that had been devastated by years of civil war between rival warlords, and one Pakistani official explained that Islamabad needed to use groups like the Taliban as “proxy forces to preserve our interests.”" ... "Little is publicly known about the ISI’s S Wing, which officials say directs intelligence operations outside of Pakistan. American officials said that the S Wing provided direct support to three major groups carrying out attacks in Afghanistan: the Taliban based in Quetta, Pakistan, commanded by Mullah Muhammad Omar; the militant network run by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar; and a different group run by the guerrilla leader Jalaluddin Haqqani." -By Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt -NYTimes
 Nuclear
- Science
- Secrets
- Investigation
- Military
- Intelligence
- History
- Legal
- Politics
- Pakistan
-  Iran
-  Libya
-  North
Korea - US
- British
-  Italian
-  Switzerland
- 
- International
"Nuclear Scientist A.Q. Khan Is Freed From House Arrest." ... "Early yesterday, the Pakistani scientist at the center of one of history's worst nuclear scandals walked out of his Islamabad [Pakistan's capital] villa to declare his vindication after five years of house arrest. "The judgment, by the grace of God, is good," a smiling Abdul Qadeer Khan told a throng of reporters and TV crews." ... "Moments earlier, a Pakistani court had ordered the release of the metallurgist who had famously admitted selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Through years of legal limbo, Khan, 72, had never been charged, and now he never will be. "The so-called A.Q. Khan affair is a closed chapter," a Pakistani government spokesman said." ... "Nearly five years after Khan's smuggling operation came to light, the international effort to prosecute its leaders is largely in shambles, yielding convictions of only a few minor participants and no significant prison time for any of them." ... "Khan's international network collapsed in 2003 after U.S. [United States], British and Italian officials halted a Libya-bound ship in the Mediterranean loaded with machine parts used to make enriched uranium." ... "That discovery was the culmination of more than a decade of secret investigation by the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] and other agencies of the business dealings of Khan, one of Pakistan's best-known scientists and the father of the country's nuclear weapons program." ... "U.S. and U.N. [United Nations] investigators ultimately accused Khan of heading a sophisticated network of businesses and front companies that manufactured and sold components needed to make nuclear bombs. But while the factories and shipping offices were dismantled, Khan proved to be beyond Washington's reach. Pakistan's then-President Pervez Musharraf, confronted with evidence of Khan's deeds, persuaded the scientist to make a public confession but then officially pardoned him. Khan would remain under house arrest, but Pakistani officials refused to allow him to be questioned by U.S. officials or investigators of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog." ... "Efforts to prosecute alleged members of the network in Switzerland touched off a series of squabbles between Swiss and U.S. officials. Swiss prosecutors accused the [Republican President] Bush administration of withholding critical evidence needed to put three Swiss businessmen -- a father and two brothers who worked with Khan in the 1980s and 1990s -- behind bars." ... "Last month, one of the brothers confirmed in a Swiss television interview that he had been working undercover for the CIA, prompting the Swiss parliament to ask why Switzerland had not been informed about covert action inside its territory. " -By Joby Warrick -WashingtonPost
 John
A Boehner
-  Peter
Hoekstra - Secret
-  Trip
- Lawmaker
- Electronic
-  Communications
- Military
-  Ohio
-  Mich
- US
-  Iraq
"Congressman Twitters an Iraq Security Breach." ... "A congressional trip to Iraq this weekend was supposed to be a secret." ... "But the cat’s out of the bag now, thanks to a member of the House Intelligence Committee who broke an embargo via Twitter." ... "A delegation led by [Ohio Republican Representative and] House Minority Leader John A. Boehner , R[Republican]-Ohio, arrived in Iraq earlier today, and because of [Michigan Republican Representative] Rep. Peter Hoekstra , R-Mich. [Republican-Michigan], the entire world — or at least Twitter.com readers—now know they’re there." ... "“Just landed in Baghdad [Iraq's capital],” messaged Hoekstra, a former chairman of the Intelligence panel and now the ranking member, who is routinely entrusted to keep some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets." ... "Before the delegation left Washington, they were advised to keep the trip to themselves for security reasons." ... "Not only did Hoekstra reveal the existence of the lawmakers’ trip, but included details about their itinerary in updates posted every few hours on his Twitter page, until he suddenly stopped, for some reason, on Friday morning. " -By John M. Donnelly -CQPolitics.com
Criminal
-  Home
- Financing
-  Accounting
- Law
- Intelligence
- History
- Terrorism
- Politics
"FBI saw mortgage fraud early." ... "The FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] was aware for years of "pervasive and growing" fraud in the mortgage industry that eventually contributed to America's financial meltdown, but did not take definitive action to stop it." ... ""It is clear that we had good intelligence on the mortgage-fraud schemes, the corrupt attorneys, the corrupt appraisers, the insider schemes," said a recently retired, high FBI official. Another retired top FBI official confirmed that such intelligence went back to 2002." ... "The problem, according to the two FBI retirees and several other current and former bureau colleagues, is that the bureau was stretched so thin that no one noticed when those lenders began packaging bad mortgages into bad securities." ... ""We knew that the mortgage-brokerage industry was corrupt," the first of the retired FBI officials told the Seattle P-I. "Where we would have gotten a sense of what was really going on was the point where the mortgage was sold knowing that it was a piece of dung and it would be turned into a security. But the agents with the expertise had been diverted to counterterrorism."" ... "Both retired FBI officials asserted that the [Republican President] Bush administration was thoroughly briefed on the mortgage fraud crisis and its potential to cascade out of control with devastating financial consequences, but made the decision not to give back to the FBI the agents it needed to address the problem. After the terrorist attacks of 2001, about 2,400 agents were reassigned to counterterrorism duties." ... "This mass reassignment was first chronicled by the Seattle P-I in the Terrorism Tradeoff, a series of investigative reports beginning in 2007 and stretching into 2008. That administration policy, the P-I reported, resulted in a dramatic plunge in FBI criminal investigations and referrals for prosecution. And recent data from Syracuse University researchers shows the problem has worsened." ... "Public statements by one high FBI executive shows that the bureau was well aware of the potentially devastating impact of rampant mortgage fraud at least five years ago. The executive ominously foretold the crisis in testimony before Congress." ... ""Based on various industry reports and FBI analysis, mortgage fraud is pervasive and growing," Chris Swecker, then assistant director of the criminal investigation division, said in October 2004 before the House subcommittee on housing and community opportunity." ... "Then Swecker made a chillingly accurate prediction of the coming mortgage meltdown and financial collapse:" ... ""The potential impact of mortgage fraud on financial institutions in the stock market is clear. If fraudulent practices become systemic within the mortgage industry and mortgage fraud is allowed to become unrestrained, it will ultimately place financial institutions at risk and have adverse effects on the stock market."" ... "Swecker went on to describe the scenario that ultimately wrecked financial havoc around the world: "Often mortgage loans sold in secondary markets are used by financial institutions as collateral for other investments. ... When loans sold in the secondary market default and have fraudulent or material misrepresentation ... these loans become a nonperforming asset, and in extreme fraud cases, the mortgage-backed security is worthless. Mortgage fraud losses adversely affect loan-loss reserves, profits, liquidity levels and capitalization ratios, ultimately affecting the soundness of the financial institution itself."" -By Paul Shukovsky with contributions by Daniel Lathrop -SeattlePI.NWsource
Secret
- Intelligence
- Databases
- Federal
- Military
- Spy
- Computer
-  Search
Engine - Technology
-  EMail
- Communications
-Terrorism
- Politics
"Intelligence Agencies' Databases Set to Be Linked: After Years of Bureaucratic Snags, System Aims to Ease Communications, Give Spies Access to More Data." ... "[United States] U.S. spy agencies' sensitive data should soon be linked by Google-like search systems, nearly five years after the intelligence community was rebuked by the 9/11 Commission for failing to "connect the dots" and detect the attack." ... "Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell has launched a sweeping technology program to knit together the thousands of databases across all 16 spy agencies. After years of bureaucratic snafus, intelligence analysts will be able to search through secret intelligence files the same way they can search public data on the Internet." ... "Mr. McConnell's new technology program is also addressing a more basic problem: Spies often have trouble emailing colleagues in other U.S. intelligence agencies, because email addresses aren't readily accessible, and messages sometimes get eaten by security filters. Mr. McConnell aims to solve that by uniting the agencies' email systems into a single system with a full directory that links names, expertise and addresses." ... "Mr. McConnell's team says this effort, called the Information Integration Program, has experienced officials working on it full-time and is designed to deliver tangible products every few months." ... "The first stage of the initiative is to merge the email systems of the six largest intelligence agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency and the NSA [National Security Agency]." -By Siobhan Gorman -WSJ.com
Torture
- War
Crimes - Government
- Military
- Terrorism
- Intelligence
- Detainees
-  Medical
-  Human
-Rights
- Law
- Inpector
- US
- Guantanamo
Bay -  Cuba
-  Saudi
"Detainee Tortured, Says U.S. Official: Trial Overseer Cites 'Abusive' Methods Against 9/11 Suspect." ... "The top [Republican President] Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay [Cuba] detainees to trial has concluded that the [United States] U.S. military tortured a Saudi [Arabia] national who allegedly planned to participate in the [September] Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a "life-threatening condition."" ... ""We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani," said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution." ... "Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the [Republican President] Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured." ... "Crawford, 61, said the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani's health led to her conclusion. "The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge" to call it torture, she said." ... ""I sympathize with the intelligence gatherers in those days after 9/11, not knowing what was coming next and trying to gain information to keep us safe," said Crawford, a lifelong Republican. "But there still has to be a line that we should not cross. And unfortunately what this has done, I think, has tainted everything going forward."" ... "Crawford said she believes that coerced testimony should not be allowed. "You don't allow it in a regular court," said Crawford, who served as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces from 1991 to 2006." ... "In May 2008, Crawford ordered the war-crimes charges against Qahtani dropped but did not state publicly that the harsh interrogations were the reason. "It did shock me," Crawford said. "I was upset by it. I was embarrassed by it. If we tolerate this and allow it, then how can we object when our servicemen and women, or others in foreign service, are captured and subjected to the same techniques? How can we complain? Where is our moral authority to complain? Well, we may have lost it."" ... "The harsh techniques used against Qahtani, she said, were approved by [Republican President Bush's] then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld." (1, 2, 3) -By Bob Woodward with contributions by Julie Tate and Evelyn Duffy -WashingtonPost
Corporate
- Government
- Accounting
- Politics
- History
- Military
-  Reconstruction
-  Gas
-  Alberto
Gonzales - Torture
- Law
- Intelligence
- Pat
Tillman - US
- Afghanistan
- Guantánamo
-Iraq
"Eight Years of Madoffs." ... "Three days after the world learned that $50 billion may have disappeared in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, The Times led its front page of [2008 December] Dec. 14 with the revelation of another $50 billion rip-off. This time the vanished loot belonged to American taxpayers. That was our collective contribution to the $117 billion spent (as of mid-2008) on Iraq reconstruction — a sinkhole of corruption, cronyism, incompetence and outright theft that epitomized [Republican President] Bush management at home and abroad." ... "The source for this news was a near-final draft of an as-yet-unpublished 513-page federal history of this nation-building fiasco. The document was assembled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction — led by a Bush appointee, no less. It pinpoints, among other transgressions, a governmental Ponzi scheme concocted to bamboozle Americans into believing they were accruing steady dividends on their investment in a “new” Iraq." ... "The report quotes no less an authority than Colin Powell on how the scam worked. Back in 2003, Powell said, the Defense Department just “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’ ” Those of us who questioned these astonishing numbers were dismissed as fools, much like those who begged in vain to get the Securities and Exchange Commission to challenge Madoff’s math." ... "What’s most remarkable about the Times article, however, is how little stir it caused. When, in 1971, The Times got its hands on the Pentagon Papers, the internal federal history of the Vietnam disaster, the revelations caused a national uproar. But after eight years of battering by Bush, the nation has been rendered half-catatonic. The Iraq Pentagon Papers sank with barely a trace." ... "After all, next to big-ticket administration horrors like Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and the politicized hiring and firing at Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department, the wreckage of Iraq reconstruction is what Ralph Kramden of “The Honeymooners” would dismiss as “a mere bag of shells.” The $50 billion also pales next to other sums that remain unaccounted for in the Bush era, from the $345 billion in lost tax revenue due to unpoliced offshore corporate tax havens to the far-from-transparent disposition of some $350 billion in Wall Street bailout money. In the old Pat Moynihan phrase, the Bush years have “defined deviancy down” in terms of how low a standard of ethical behavior we now tolerate as the norm from public officials." ... "Not even a good old-fashioned sex scandal could get our outrage going again. Indeed, a juicy one erupted last year in the Interior Department, where the inspector general found that officials “had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives." ... "Back in the day, an oil-fueled scandal in that one department alone could mesmerize a nation and earn [Republican President] Warren Harding a permanent ranking among our all-time worst presidents. But while the scandals at Bush’s Interior resemble Teapot Dome — and also encompass millions of dollars in lost federal oil and gas royalties — they barely registered beyond the Beltway. Even late-night comics yawned when The Washington Post administered a coup de grâce last week, reporting that Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne spent $235,000 from taxpayers to redo his office bathroom (monogrammed towels included)." ... "It took 110 pages for the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan research organization, to compile the CliffsNotes inventory of the Bush wreckage last month. It found “125 systematic failures across the breadth of the federal government.” That accounting is conservative. There are still too many unanswered questions. " ... "Just a short list is staggering. Who put that bogus “uranium from Africa” into the crucial prewar State of the Union address after the C.I.A. [Central Intelligence Agency] removed it from previous Bush speeches? How high up were the authorities who ordered and condoned torture and then let the “rotten apples” at the bottom of the military heap take the fall? Who orchestrated the Pentagon’s elaborate P.R. [Public Relations] efforts to cover up Pat Tillman’s death by “friendly fire” in Afghanistan? " -By Frank Rich -NYTimes
US
-  Israel
- Palestine
-  Syria
-  Egypt
- Military
- Intelligence
- Terrorism- Politics
- Poor
-  Families
-  Food
- Health
- Human
Rights
"An Unnecessary War." [by former Democratic President Jimmy Carter] ... "I know from personal involvement that the devastating invasion of Gaza [Palestine area] by Israel could easily have been avoided." ... "After visiting Sderot last April and seeing the serious psychological damage caused by the rockets that had fallen in that area, my wife, Rosalynn, and I declared their launching from Gaza to be inexcusable and an act of terrorism. Although casualties were rare (three deaths in seven years), the town was traumatized by the unpredictable explosions. About 3,000 residents had moved to other communities, and the streets, playgrounds and shopping centers were almost empty. Mayor Eli Moyal assembled a group of citizens in his office to meet us and complained that the government of Israel was not stopping the rockets, either through diplomacy or military action." ... "Knowing that we would soon be seeing Hamas leaders from Gaza and also in Damascus [Syria's capital], we promised to assess prospects for a cease-fire. From Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who was negotiating between the Israelis and Hamas, we learned that there was a fundamental difference between the two sides. Hamas wanted a comprehensive cease-fire in both the West Bank [Palestine area] and Gaza, and the Israelis refused to discuss anything other than Gaza." ... "We knew that the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza were being starved, as the U.N. [United Nations] special rapporteur on the right to food had found that acute malnutrition in Gaza was on the same scale as in the poorest nations in the southern Sahara, with more than half of all Palestinian families eating only one meal a day." ... "Palestinian leaders from Gaza were noncommittal on all issues, claiming that rockets were the only way to respond to their imprisonment and to dramatize their humanitarian plight. The top Hamas leaders in Damascus, however, agreed to consider a cease-fire in Gaza only, provided Israel would not attack Gaza and would permit normal humanitarian supplies to be delivered to Palestinian citizens." ... "After extended discussions with those from Gaza, these Hamas leaders also agreed to accept any peace agreement that might be negotiated between the Israelis and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who also heads the PLO, provided it was approved by a majority vote of Palestinians in a referendum or by an elected unity government. " -By Jimmy Carter -WashingtonPost
Dick
Cheney - Criminal
- Torture
- War
Crimes - Prisons
- Law
- Military
- Intelligence
- Politics
- Corporate
- Media
- US
- Iraq
"If Bush and Cheney Commit War Crimes and Everyone Knows It, But Does Nothing, Are They Still Crimes?" ... "As Jon Ponder noted here on Tuesday, a bi-partisan U.S. [United States] Senate panel has found [PDF] that [Republican President] George W. Bush was responsible for approving War Crimes (torture and abuse) at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, [Republican Vice President] Dick Cheney admitted in a recent interview to helping to approve War Crimes (torture and abuse) in interrogations, and the corporate media --- with the lone exception of MSNBC --- have been virtually as silent on what may be the most offensive crimes ever committed by an Executive Branch in the U.S. as they were during the lead-up to and follow-through on the War on Iraq, when those same officials sent our nation into war on the basis of demonstrable lies." ... "George Washington University's highly-respected constitutional law professor Jonathon Turley, noting the War Crimes now known and admitted to by Bush and Cheney, asked Keith Olbermann Tuesday night, "If someone commits a crime and everyone's around to see it and does nothing, is it still a crime?"" ... "During the discussion, Turley mentioned --- no less than three different times --- that it'll be up to the citizens whether or not any action is actually taken to prosecute those who committed these crimes." ... ""It will ultimately depend on citizens, and whether they will remain silent in the face of a crime that's been committed in plain view," Turley suggested. "It is equally immoral to stand silent in the face of a war crime and do nothing, and that is what the citizens are doing."" ... "He went on to argue: "There's this gigantic yawn as we hear about a war crime on national television being discussed matter-of-factly by the Vice President."" -By Brad Friedman -BradBlog.com  WATCH
"Countdown: Jonathan Turley and Bush Admin War Crimes."
-Keith Olbermann via -FireDogLake'sYouTube
Dick
Cheney - Torture
-War
Crimes - Criminal
- Terrorism
- Intelligence
- Politics
- Military
- Prison
- Law
- US
- Guantanamo_Bay
- Cuba
"Cheney was key in clearing CIA interrogation tactics: The vice president [Republican Dick Cheney] says that the use of waterboarding was appropriate and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should stay open until 'the end of the war on terror.'" ... "[Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he was directly involved in approving severe interrogation methods used by the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should remain open indefinitely." ... "Cheney's comments also mark the first time that he has acknowledged playing a central role in clearing the CIA's use of an array of controversial interrogation tactics, including a simulated drowning method known as waterboarding." ... ""I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared," Cheney said in an interview with ABC News." ... "Asked whether he still believes it was appropriate to use the waterboarding method on terrorism suspects, Cheney said: "I do."" ... "His comments come on the heels of disclosures by a Senate committee showing that high-level officials in the [Republican President] Bush administration were intimately involved in reviewing and approving interrogation methods that have since been explicitly outlawed and that have been condemned internationally as torture." -By Greg Miller -LAtimes
Torture
- Prisons
-War
Crimes - Secret
- Military
- Government
- Intelligence
- Law
- Investigation
- Human
Rights - Politics
- History
-  McCain
-  Ariz
- Mich
- US
- Guantanamo
- Cuba
- Iraq
- Afghanistan
- China
-  Korea
"Bipartisan Report: Rumsfeld Responsible for Detainee Abuse: Senate Committee Finds Officials Made Decisions That Led to Offenses Against Prisoners." ... "A bipartisan panel of senators has concluded that [Republican President Bush's] former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration officials bear direct responsibility for the harsh treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay [Cuba], and that their decisions led to more serious abuses in Iraq and elsewhere." ... "In the most comprehensive critique by Congress of the military's interrogation practices, the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a report yesterday that accuses Rumsfeld and his deputies of being the authors and chief promoters of harsh interrogation policies that disgraced the nation and undermined U.S. security. The report, released by Sens. [ Senators] Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.[ Democratic-Michigan]) and John McCain (R-Ariz.[ Republican Arizona]), contends that Pentagon officials later tried to create a false impression that the policies were unrelated to acts of detainee abuse committed by members of the military." ... ""The abuse of detainees in U.S. [United States] custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own," the report states. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees."" ... "The report is the most direct refutation to date of the administration's rationale for using aggressive interrogation tactics -- that inflicting humiliation and pain on detainees was legal and effective, and helped protect the country. The 25-member panel, without one dissent among the 12 Republican members, declared the opposite to be true." ... "The [Republican President Bush's] administration's policies and the resulting controversies, the panel concluded, "damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority."" ... "A Defense Department spokesman noted that the Pentagon cooperated extensively with the Senate investigation and has taken numerous steps in recent years to ensure the humane treatment of detainees." ... "The panel's investigation focused on the Defense Department's employment of controversial interrogation practices, including forced nudity, painful stress positions, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures and the use of dogs. The practices, some of which had already been adopted by the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] at its secret prisons, were adapted for interrogations at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and later migrated to U.S. detention camps in Afghanistan and Iraq, including the infamous Abu Ghraib prison." ... "The true genesis of the decision to use coercive techniques, the report said, was a memo signed by [Republican] President Bush on [February] Feb. 7, 2002, declaring that the Geneva Convention's standards for humane treatment did not apply to captured al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. As early as that spring, the panel said, top administration officials, including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, participated in meetings in which the use of coercive measures was discussed. The panel drew on a written statement by Rice, released earlier this year, to support that conclusion." ... "In July 2002, Rumseld's senior staff began compiling information about techniques used in military survival schools to simulate conditions that U.S. airmen might face if captured by an enemy that did not follow the Geneva conditions. Those techniques -- borrowed from a training program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE -- included waterboarding, or simulated drowning, and were loosely based on methods adopted by Chinese communists to coerce propaganda confessions from captured U.S. soldiers during the Korean war." ... "The SERE program became the template for interrogation methods that were ultimately approved by Rumsfeld himself, the report says." -By Joby Warrick and Karen DeYoung -WashingtonPost [PDF] "Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry Into The Treatment of Detainees In U.S. Custody." ... “What sets us apart from our enemies in this fight… is how we behave. In everything we do, we must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect. While we are warriors, we are also all human beings” -- General David Petraeus via -WashingtonPost
 Barack
Obama -  Michael
Mukasey - Secret
- Intelligence
- Politics
- Spying
- Torture
- Prisons
"Obama Transition Team Pushing for Secret Legal Memos." ... "A senior Justice Department official said Tuesday that "99.8 percent" of the department's work with [Democratic] President-elect Barack Obama's transition team has gone smoothly. The 0.2 percent snag: The department has reservations about granting the team's request to review classified legal opinions related to secret CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] and National Security Agency programs." ... "In a roundtable discussion with reporters last week, [Republican President Bush's] Attorney General Michael Mukasey declined to discuss specific requests made by transition staff regarding opinions issued by the Office of Legal Counsel, the arm of the Justice Department that provides legal advice to the president and all other executive branch agencies." ... "The Justice official said the dispute over access to the NSA [National Security Agency] and CIA opinions has made its way up to Williams & Connolly's Gregory Craig, who earlier this month was named to be Obama's White House counsel. Craig was expected to meet with current [Republican President Bush's] White House counsel Fred Fielding to discuss the issue, the official said." ... "The opinions, some of which have been released to Congress in redacted form, contain the legal rationale of the NSA's warrantless spying program and the CIA's detention and interrogation policies, among other intelligence initiatives." -By Joe Palazzolo -LegalTimes.com via -Law.com
Global
- Financial
- Crisis
- Terrorism
- Intelligence
- Nuclear
- US
- Pakistan
- China
- Afghanistan
-  Yemen
"Experts See Security Risks in Downturn: Global Financial Crisis May Fuel Instability and Weaken U.S. [United States] Defenses." ... "Intelligence officials are warning that the deepening global financial crisis could weaken fragile governments in the world's most dangerous areas and undermine the ability of the United States and its allies to respond to a new wave of security threats." ... "U.S. government officials and private analysts say the economic turmoil has heightened the short-term risk of a terrorist attack, as radical groups probe for weakening border protections and new gaps in defenses. A protracted financial crisis could threaten the survival of friendly regimes from Pakistan to the Middle East while forcing Western nations to cut spending on defense, intelligence and foreign aid, the sources said." ... "The crisis could also accelerate the shift to a more Asia-centric globe, as rising powers such as China gain more leverage over international financial institutions and greater influence in world capitals." ... "Some of the more troubling and immediate scenarios analysts are weighing involve nuclear-armed Pakistan, which already was being battered by inflation and unemployment before the global financial tsunami hit. Since September, Pakistan has seen its national currency devalued and its hard-currency reserves nearly wiped out." ... "Analysts also worry about the impact of plummeting crude prices on oil-dependent nations such as Yemen, which has a large population of unemployed youths and a history of support for militant Islamic groups." ... "Annual spending for U.S. intelligence operations currently totals $47.5 billion, a figure that does not include expensive satellites that fall under the Pentagon's budget." ... "U.S. officials are following developments with particular concern because of Pakistan's critical role in the campaign against terrorism, as well as the country's arsenal of dozens of nuclear weapons. Al-Qaeda has appealed directly to Pakistanis to overthrow their government, and its Taliban allies have launched multiple suicide bombings, some aimed at economic targets such as the posh Marriott hotel in Islamabad [Pakistan's capital], hit in September." ... "Economic and social unrest has helped drive recruiting for militant groups that cross into Afghanistan to attack U.S. troops." ... "China already was on track to surpass the United States as the world's largest economy, perhaps as early as 2030. Now, many experts believe the global recession could help it do so faster." (1, 2, 3) -By Joby Warrick -WashingtonPost
Secret
- Military
- Law
- Politics
- Terrorism
- Intelligence
-  Virginia
- US
- World
- Syria
- Pakistan
"Secret Order Lets U.S. Raid Al Qaeda." ... "The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, according to senior American officials." ... "These military raids, typically carried out by Special Operations forces, were authorized by a classified order that [Republican President Bush's] Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed in the spring of 2004 with the approval of President Bush, the officials said. The secret order gave the military new authority to attack the Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States." ... "In 2006, for example, a Navy Seal team raided a suspected militants’ compound in the Bajaur region of Pakistan, according to a former top official of the Central Intelligence Agency. Officials watched the entire mission — captured by the video camera of a remotely piloted Predator aircraft — in real time in the C.I.A.’s [Central Intelligence Agency] Counterterrorist Center at the agency’s headquarters in Virginia 7,000 miles away." ... "Some of the military missions have been conducted in close coordination with the C.I.A., according to senior American officials, who said that in others, like the Special Operations raid in Syria on Oct. 26 of this year, the military commandos acted in support of C.I.A.-directed operations." ... "According to a senior administration official, the new authority was spelled out in a classified document called “Al Qaeda Network Exord,” or execute order, that streamlined the approval process for the military to act outside officially declared war zones." ... "It was issued after the Bush administration had already granted America’s intelligence agencies sweeping power to secretly detain and interrogate terrorism suspects in overseas prisons and to conduct warrantless eavesdropping on telephone and electronic communications." (1, 2) -By Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti -NYTimes
 Sarah
Palin - Barack
Obama - 2008
Election - Rhetoric
- Politics
- Racist
- Federal
- Investigation
- Intelligence
"Sarah Palin blamed by the US Secret Service over death threats against Barack Obama: [2008 Election Republican Vice Presidential Candidate] Sarah Palin's attacks on [2008 Election Democratic President-Elect] Barack Obama's patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign." ... "The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists", citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers." ... "The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling "terrorist" and "kill him" until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric." ... "But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further." ... "The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks." ... "Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: "Why would they try to make people hate us?"" ... "Details of the spike in threats to Mr Obama come as a report last week by security and intelligence analysts Stratfor, warned that he is a high risk target for racist gunmen. It concluded: "Two plots to assassinate Obama were broken up during the campaign season, and several more remain under investigation. We would expect federal authorities to uncover many more plots to attack the president that have been hatched by white supremacist ideologues."" -By Tim Shipman -Telegraph.co.uk 
Chinese
- Hackers
- US
-Government
- E-Mail
- Network
- Military
- Technology
- Intelligence
- Politics
"Chinese hack into White House network." ... "Chinese hackers have penetrated the White House computer network on multiple occasions, and obtained e-mails between government officials, a senior US [United States] official told the Financial Times." ... "On each occasion, the cyber attackers accessed the [Republican President Bush] White House computer system for brief periods, allowing them enough time to steal information before US computer experts patched the system." ... "US government cyber intelligence experts suspect the attacks were sponsored by the Chinese government because of their targeted nature. But they concede that it is extremely difficult to trace the exact source of an attack beyond a server in a particular country." ... "The official said the Chinese cyber attacks had the hallmarks of the “grain of sands” approach taken by Chinese intelligence, which involves obtaining and pouring through lots of - often low-level - information to find a few nuggets." ... "Some US defence companies have privately warned about attacks on their systems, which they believe are attempts to learn about future weapons systems." ... "The National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, a new unit established in 2007 to tackle cyber security, detected the attacks on the White House. But the official stressed that the hackers had only accessed the unclassified computer network, not the more secure classified network." ... "The US has increased efforts to tackle cyber security, particularly since Chinese hackers believed to be associated with the Peoples’ Liberation Army last year perpetrated a major attack on the Pentagon." ... "US military computer experts battled for weeks against a sustained attack that eventually overcame the Pentagon’s defences. The cyber attackers managed to obtain information and emails traffic from the unclassified computer system that supports Robert Gates, the defence secretary. Pentagon IT technicians were forced to take the network down for days to conduct repairs." -By Demetri Sevastopulo -FT.com
Secret
- US
- Iraq
- Afghanistan
- Military
- Terrorism
- Politics
- McCain
- Obama
- 2008
Election
"New U.S. intelligence report warns 'victory' not certain in Iraq." ... "A nearly completed high-level U.S. [United States] intelligence analysis warns that unresolved ethnic and sectarian tensions in Iraq could unleash a new wave of violence, potentially reversing the major security and political gains achieved over the last year." ... "U.S. officials familiar with the new National Intelligence Estimate said they were unsure when the top-secret report would be completed and whether it would be published before the Nov. 4 presidential election." ... "More than a half-dozen officials spoke to McClatchy on condition of anonymity because NIE's, the most authoritative analyses produced by the U.S. intelligence community, are restricted to the president, his senior aides and members of Congress except in rare instances when just the key findings are made public." ... "The new NIE, which reflects the consensus of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, has significant implications for Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, whose differences over the Iraq war are a major issue in the presidential campaign." ... "The findings seem to cast doubts on McCain's frequent assertions that the United States is "on a path to victory" in Iraq by underscoring the deep uncertainties of the situation despite the 30,000-strong U.S. troop surge for which he was the leading congressional advocate." ... "But McCain could also use the findings to try to strengthen his argument for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq until conditions stabilize." ... "For Obama, the report raises questions about whether he could fulfill his pledge to withdraw most of the remaining 152,000 U.S. troops _ he would leave some there to deal with al Qaida and to protect U.S. diplomats and civilians _ within 16 months of taking office so that more U.S. forces could be sent to battle the growing Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan." ... "The findings of the intelligence estimate appear to be reflected in recent statements by Army [General] Gen. David Petraeus, the former top U.S. commander in Iraq, who has called the situation "fragile" and "reversible" and said he will never declare victory there." -By Jonathan S. Landay, Warren P. Strobel and Nancy A. Youssef with contributions by Leila Fadel -McClatchyDC.com
McCain
- Terrorism
-Finance
- History
- Secret
- Government
- Intelligence
- Military
- Politics
- Iran
-  Nicaragua
- Foreign
- Arizona
- US
-2008
Election
"McCain linked to private group in Iran-Contra case." ... "GOP [GOP=Grand Old Party=Republican] presidential nominee John McCain has past connections to a private group that supplied aid to guerrillas seeking to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua in the Iran-Contra affair." ... "The U.S. Council for World Freedom was part of an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America." ... "The council's founder, retired Army [Major General] Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, said McCain became associated with the organization in the early 1980s as McCain was launching his political career in Arizona." ... "Covert arms shipments to the rebels called Contras, financed in part by secret arms sales to Iran, became known as the Iran-Contra affair. They proved to be the undoing of Singlaub's council." ... "In 1987, the Internal Revenue Service withdrew the tax-exempt status of Singlaub's group because of its activities on behalf of the Contras." ... "Elected to the House in 1982 and at a time when he was on the board of Singlaub's council, McCain was among Republicans on Capitol Hill expressing support for the Contras, a CIA[Central Intelligence Agency]-organized guerrilla force in Central America. In 1984, Congress cut off CIA funds for the Contras." ... "Months before the cutoff, top [Republican President] Reagan administration officials ramped up a secret White House-directed supply network and put National Security Council aide Oliver North in charge of running it. The goal was to keep the Contras operational until Congress could be persuaded to resume CIA funding." ... "Singlaub's private group became the public cover for the White House operation." ... "Secretly, Singlaub worked with North in an effort to raise millions of dollars from foreign governments." -By Pete Yost -AP via -Yahoo
Secret
- Afghanistan
- US
- Military
- 2008
Election - Terrorism
- Politics
- Dutch
- Canadian
"'Grim' Afghanistan Report To Be Kept Secret by US." ... "US intelligence analysts are putting the final touches on a secret National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Afghanistan that reportedly describes the situation as "grim", but there are "no plans to declassify" any of it before the [2008] election, according to one US official familiar with the process." ... "According to people who have been briefed, the NIE will paint a "grim" picture of the situation in Afghanistan, seven years after the US invaded in an effort to dismantle the al Qaeda network and its Taliban protectors." ... "Seth Jones, an expert on Afghanistan at the Rand Corporation think tank, called the situation in Afghanistan "dire."" ... ""We are now at a tipping point, with about half of the country now penetrated by a range of Sunni militant groups including the Taliban and al Queida," Jones said. Jones said there is growing concern that Dutch and Canadian forces in Afghanistan would "call it quits."" ... ""The US military would then need six, eight, maybe ten brigades but we just don't have that many," Jones said." ... "Last week, Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress "we're running out of time" in Afghanistan. "I'm not convinced we're winning it in Afghanistan," Adm. Mullen testified." ... "Perhaps foreshadowing the NIE assessment on Afghanistan, Adm. Mullen told Congress, "absent a broader international and interagency approach to the problems there, it is my professional opinion that no amount of troops in no amount of time can ever achieve all the objectives we seek in Afghanistan."" (1, 2) -By Brian Ross -ABCNEWS.com
Sarah
Palin - Terrorism
- Politics
- US
- Iraq
- Military
- Intelligence
- 2008
Election
"Out of bounds! Palin confuses Iraq with al Qaida." ... "Throw the flag on: [2008 Election Republican Vice Presidential Candidate] Sarah Palin." ... "Call: Pass interference." ... "What Happened: On the 7th anniversary of the [September] Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Palin linked Iraq to those attacks. " ... "Why that's wrong: The bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States said it found "no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaida cooperated on attacks against the United States."" ... "The panel also said that contacts between al Qaida and Iraq before the attacks "do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."" ... "The group's conclusion confirmed similar findings by the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] and other U.S. intelligence agencies. [Republican] President Bush, who once claimed such a pre 9-11 connection to Iraq, has since backed off." -By Steven Thomma -McClatchyDC.com
Dick
Cheney - US
- Iraq
- Military
- Intelligence
- Terrorism
- Politics
- History
- Book
"Did White House fake link between Saddam and Al Qaeda?" ... "First, former CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] Director George Tenet told the president it was a "slam dunk" that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Then came efforts by the [Republican President] Bush White House to discredit critics, like ambassador Joe Wilson, who questioned the wisdom of going to war in Iraq." ... "Now comes a new book by author Ron Suskind claiming that the [Republican President Bush] White House ordered the CIA to forge and backdate a handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein to link the Iraq regime to Al Qaeda. The White House calls the assertion nonsense." ... "In “The Way of the World,” to be published today, Suskind writes:" "The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001. It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq –- thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the vice president’s office [Republican Dick Cheney] had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link.""Suskind says the order to forge such a letter was written on “creamy White House stationery” but gives no details about how it was created or how it was delivered to Iraq." -By Johanna Neuman -LAtimes 
Political
- Terrorism
- Intelligence
- Crime
- Noteworthy
- Government
- Law
- US
- Iraq
- Military
- History
- Journalist
"Author claims White House knew Iraq had no WMD: Journalist Ron Suskind says [Republican President] Bush ordered forgery linking Saddam, al-Qaeda." ... "President Bush committed an impeachable offense by ordering the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] to to manufacture a false pretense for the Iraq war in the form of a backdated, handwritten document linking Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, an explosive new book claims." ... "The charge is made in “The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism” by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind, released today." ... "Suskind says he spoke on the record with U.S. [United States] intelligence officials who stated that Bush was informed unequivocally in January 2003 that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. Nonetheless, his book relates, Bush decided to invade Iraq three months later — with the forged letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam bolstering the U.S. [United States] rationale to go into war." ... "“It was a dark day for the CIA,” Suskind told TODAY co-host Meredith Vieira on Tuesday. “It was the kind of thing where [the CIA] said, ‘Look, this is not our charge. We’re not here to carry forth a political mandate — which is clearly what this was — to solve a political problem in America.’ And it was a cause of great grievance inside of the agency.”" ... "The author writes that Bush’s action is “one of the greatest lies in modern American political history” and suggests it is a crime of greater impact than Watergate." ... "The letter" ... "On page 371 of “The Way of the World,” Suskind describes the [Republican President Bush's] White House’s concoction of a forged letter purportedly from the hand of [Iraqi intelligence chief Tahir Jalil] Habbush to Saddam Hussein to justify the United States’ decision to go to war." ... "CIA officers [Bob] Richer and John Maguire, who oversaw the Iraq Operations Group, are both on the record in Suskind’s book confirming the existence of the fake Habbush letter." -By Bob Considine -MSNBC WATCH:
Ron Suskind interview on TODAY show.
Government
- Intelligence
- Secretly
- Marketing
- Media
-  Opinion
- Noteworthy
- Military
- Terrorism
- Political
- History
- Book
- US
- Iraq
"Book says White House ordered forgery." ... "A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein." ... "Suskind writes in “The Way of the World,” to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed to portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war." ... "Suskind writes in his new book that the order to create the letter was written on “creamy White House stationery.” The book suggests that the letter was subsequently created by the CIA and delivered to Iraq, but does not say how." ... "The author claims that such an operation, part of “false pretenses” for war, would apparently constitute illegal White House use of the CIA to influence a domestic audience, an arguably impeachable offense." ... "Suskind writes that the White House had “ignored the Iraq intelligence chief’s accurate disclosure that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion." ... "“They secretly resettled him in Jordan, paid him $5 million – which one could argue was hush money – and then used his captive status to help deceive the world about one of the era’s most crushing truths: that America had gone to war under false pretenses,” the book says." ... "Suskind writes that the forgery “operation created by the White House and passed to the CIA seems inconsistent with” a statute saying the CIA may not conduct covert operations “intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, policies or media.”" ... "“It is not the sort of offense, such as assault or burglary, that carries specific penalties, for example, a fine or jail time,” Suskind writes. “It is much broader than that. It pertains to the White House’s knowingly misusing an arm of government, the sort of thing generally taken up in impeachment proceedings.”" -By Mike Allen -Politico.com
Barack
Obama - Military
- Police
- US
- Iraq
- Afghanistan
- Iran
- Pakistan
- Terrorism
- Intelligence
- Government
- Money
- Political
- McCain- Arizona
- 2008
Election
"My Plan for Iraq." [By 2008 Election Democratic Presidential Canidate Barack Obama] ... "The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States." ... "The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep. Unlike [2008 Election Republican Senator and Arizona] Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president. I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban [in Afghanistan] by invading a country [Iraq] that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Since then, more than 4,000 Americans have died and we have spent nearly $1 trillion. Our military is overstretched. Nearly every threat we face — from Afghanistan to Al Qaeda to Iran — has grown." ... "In the 18 months since [Republican] President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness." ... "But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge." ... "The good news is that Iraq’s leaders want to take responsibility for their country by negotiating a timetable for the removal of American troops. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. [Lieutenant General] James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009." ... "Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government." ... "Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Adm. [Admiral] Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won’t have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq." ... "As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq. " -By Barack Obama -NYTimes
Secret
- Torture
- War
Crimes - Prisons
- US
- Guantanamo
- Cuba
- Chinese
- Korean
- History
- Medical
-Science
-  Psychological
- Military
- Intelligence
- Politics
- Investigators
"China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo." ... "The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay [Cuba] in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”" ... "What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners." ... "The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency." ... "Some methods were used against a small number of prisoners at Guantánamo before 2005, when Congress banned the use of coercion by the military. The C.I.A. is still authorized by [Republican] President Bush to use a number of secret “alternative” interrogation methods." ... "Several Guantánamo documents, including the chart outlining coercive methods, were made public at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing June 17 that examined how such tactics came to be employed." ... "But committee investigators were not aware of the chart’s source in the half-century-old journal article, a connection pointed out to The New York Times by an independent expert on interrogation who spoke on condition of anonymity." ... "The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War” and written by Alfred D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities." ... "Those orchestrated confessions led to allegations that the American prisoners had been “brainwashed,” and provoked the military to revamp its training to give some military personnel a taste of the enemies’ harsh methods to inoculate them against quick capitulation if captured." ... "In 2002, the training program, known as SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, became a source of interrogation methods both for the C.I.A. and the military. In what critics describe as a remarkable case of historical amnesia, officials who drew on the SERE program appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners." ... "The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: “Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.”" (1, 2) -By Scott Shane -NYTimes PDF Documents via NYTimes: "Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From the Air Force Prisoners of War (pdf) [September 1957 article by A. D. Biderman, Bull, N.Y. Acad. Med, Vol. 33, No.9, pp 616-625. 10 pages. NB: p. 4 (619), Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance]." "Documents Released at Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on SERE Tactics (pdf)."
US
- Afghanistan
-Pakistan
- Military
- Terrorism
- Intelligence
- Illegal
-  Drug
- Money
- Human
Rights - Reconstruction
- Police
"Pentagon report: Taliban regroups, likely to up pace of attacks in Afghanistan." ... "The Taliban has regrouped after its initial fall from power in Afghanistan and the pace of its attacks is likely to increase this year, according to a Pentagon report that offers a dim view of progress in the nearly seven-year-old war." ... "Noting that insurgent violence has climbed, the report said that despite U.S. and coalition efforts to capture and kill key leaders, the Taliban is likely to "maintain or even increase the scope and pace of its terrorist attacks and bombings in 2008."" ... "The Taliban, it said, has "coalesced into a resilient insurgency."" ... "Vast problems — corruption, the illegal poppy trade, human rights abuses and slow progress in reconstruction — were detailed, as well as the struggle to train and equip the Afghan Army and police." ... "The report described a dual terror threat in Afghanistan that includes the Taliban in the south, and "a more complex, adaptive insurgency" in the east. That fragmented insurgency is made up of groups ranging from al-Qaida and Afghan warlords such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's radical Hezb-i-Islami group to Pakistani militants such as Jaish-e-Mohammed." ... "Insurgents will continue to challenge the government in southern and eastern Afghanistan, and the may also move to increase their power in the north and west, the report predicted." (1, 2, 3) -By Lolita C. Baldor with contributions by Robert Burns -AP via -StarTribune -Defenselink.mil Publications[PDFs]: "Report on Progress toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan." "United States Plan for Sustaining the Afghanistan National Security Forces." -Defenselink.mil/Pubs
China
- Hackers
-US
- GOV
- Lawmakers
- Human
Rights - Politics
- Military
-Intelligence
- Investigation
-Va
-  NJ
-  Ill
"More congressional computers hacked from China." ... "More Members of Congress have had their computers infiltrated by hackers within China than initially suspected, a lawmaker has revealed." ... "[Representatives] Reps. Frank Wolf (R-Va. [Republican-Virginia), Chris Smith (R-N.J. [Republican-New Jersey), and Mark Kirk (R-Ill. [Republican-Illinois]) admitted to having data removed from their Capitol Hill computers last week, but Wolf says there are more." ... "“I would suspect that the Foreign Affairs, Armed Services, Intelligence, (and) Appropriations committees would all be top targets,” Kirk said." ... "Wolf and Smith said they believe the hackers focused on them because of their continued objections to China’s human rights violations, and suspected that the hackers were looking for information on dissidents." ... "The FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] asked the lawmakers not to speak publicly, fearing that if they did, they would be unable to track the IP addresses of the hackers, Kirk said." ... "“When you’re in the middle of a criminal investigation, you try not to alert the criminal of what’s happened so you can track it down,” he said." -By Jordy Yager -TheHill.com
War
Crimes - Criminal
- Politicians
- US
- Iraq
- Afghanistan
- Guantanamo
Bay - Cuba
- Military
- Intelligence
- Prison
- Torture
- Human
- Human
Rights - Law
- Medical
- Psychological
- Science
"General who probed Abu Ghraib says [Republican President] Bush officials committed war crimes." ... "The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison accused the [Republican President] Bush administration Wednesday of committing "war crimes" and called for those responsible to be held to account." ... "The remarks by [Major General] Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who's now retired, came in a new report that found that [United States] U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices." ... ""After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes," Taguba wrote. "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."" ... "Taguba, whose 2004 investigation documented chilling abuses at Abu Ghraib, is thought to be the most senior official to have accused the administration of war crimes. "The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture," he wrote." ... "The group Physicians for Human Rights, which compiled the new report, described it as the most in-depth medical and psychological examination of former detainees to date." ... "Also this week, a probe by the Senate Armed Services Committee revealed how senior Pentagon officials pushed for harsher interrogation methods over the objections of top military lawyers. Those methods later surfaced in Afghanistan and Iraq." -By Warren P. Strobel -McClatchyDC.com
Special
Report - Noteworthy
- US
- Guantanamo
Bay - Cuba
- Military
- Intelligence
- Torture
- War
Crimes - Prison
- Investigation
- Legal
- Rights
- Religious
- Terrorism
-  School
- Politics
"Guantanamo Bay detainees investigation." ... "An eight-month McClatchy investigation of the detention system created after the [September] Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has found that the [United States] U.S. imprisoned innocent men, subjected them to abuse, stripped them of their legal rights and allowed Islamic militants to turn the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into a school for jihad."
Torture
- Crimes
- Unlawful
- US
- Iraq
- Afghanistan
- Guantanamo
Bay -Cuba
- Military
- Intelligence
- Prison
- Terrorism
- War
Crimes - Politics
- Human
- Rights
- Medical
- Psychological
- Science
"Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by the US." ... "About: Broken Laws, Broken Lives shows the human consequences of harsh and unlawful US interrogation practices. This landmark report reveals the excruciating pain and continued suffering of men who, never charged with any crime, endured torture at US detention facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay [Cuba]. Based on internationally accepted standards for clinical assessment of torture claims, the report documents practices used to bring about long-lasting pain, terror, humiliation, and shame for months on end." -Physicians for Human Rights -BrokenLives.info
John
McCain -  Rick
Davis -Foreign
- Money
- Politician
- Law
-  Ukraine
-  Russia
- US
- 2008
Election
"Alleged Russia Ties Entangle McCain Campaign Manager." ... "[2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate] John McCain's presidential campaign is blasting a New York Times report suggesting that the candidate may have known since 2005 that his campaign manager's [lobbying] firm worked for a Kremlin[citadel in Moscow, Russia's capital]-backed politician." ... "The McCain campaign is strongly denying the paper's reporting that in 2005, a White House National Security Council staffer called John McCain's Senate office to complain that Rick Davis' lobbying firm was "undercutting American policy on Ukraine" by representing a Kremlin-backed politician [Ukrainian politician Viktor Yanukovich]." ... "If the account of the NSC [National Security Council] staffer's call is true, it suggests McCain should have known about the work by Davis' business -- but installed him as campaign manager anyway." ... "The story also raises the possibility that Davis' firm may have violated the anti-espionage Foreign Agents Registration Act, by failing to register work for Yanukovich with the [United States] U.S. government." -By Justin Rood -ABCNEWS.com
John
McCain - Rick
Davis -  Paul
J Manafort Jr - Foreign
- Money
- Politicians
- Russia
- Ukraine
- Military
- Intelligence
- Legislation
- History
-  Germany
- US
-  New
York - 2008
Election
"Lawmakers Seek to Close Foreign Lobbyist Loopholes." ... "Loopholes that lobbyists for foreign clients sometimes use to keep their activities under wraps would be closed under legislation that two Democratic senators are expected to offer on Thursday." ... "“The idea you could lobby an American citizen and that it would not be disclosed is really very troubling,” [New York Democratic Senator Charles] Mr. Schumer said in a telephone interview." ... "The issue of foreign lobbying has flared up in the current presidential campaign because of past dealings abroad by several former lobbyists working for Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee." ... "For instance, a lobbying firm owned by Rick Davis, the McCain campaign manager, has worked in recent years for a Ukraine politician, Viktor Yanukovich. Both Mr. McCain and the [Republican President] Bush administration supported the opponent of Mr. Yanukovich, who had close ties to Vladimir V. Putin, then the president of Russia and now prime minister." ... "During this time, however, Mr. Davis’s firm, Davis Manafort, never registered as a lobbyist for Mr. Yanukovich even though Paul Manafort, Mr. Davis’s business partner, had met with the United States ambassador in Kiev [Ukraine's capital] on Mr. Yanukovich’s behalf." ... "In a related development, Mr. McCain may have first become aware of Davis Manafort’s activities in Ukraine as far back as 2005. At that time, a staff member at the National Security Council called Mr. McCain’s Senate office to complain that Mr. Davis’s lobbying firm was undercutting American foreign policy in Ukraine, said a person with direct knowledge of the phone call who spoke on condition of anonymity." ... "Such a call might mean that Mr. McCain has been long aware of Mr. Davis’s foreign clients." ... "The current law governing foreign lobbying, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, requires those representing a foreign government or foreign officials in the United States to inform the Department of Justice. The act does not cover meetings abroad with United States officials." ... "The law was enacted in the late 1930s in an effort to flush out Nazi propagandists working in the United States. As a result, several experts have said, the law is outdated and fails to reflect the current global nature of lobbying. " -By Barry Meier -NYTimes
Secret
- Surveillance
- Cellphone
-  Tracking
- Technology
- Internet- Financial
- Data
- Electronic
- Intelligence
- Counterterrorism
- Investigation
- Law
- Politics
"Secret Spy Court Repeatedly Questions FBI Wiretap Network." ... "Does the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] track cellphone users' physical movements without a warrant? Does the Bureau store recordings of innocent Americans caught up in wiretaps in a searchable database? Does the FBI's wiretap equipment store information like voicemail passwords and bank account numbers without legal authorization to do so?" ... "That's what the nation's Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court [FISC] wanted to know, in a series of secret inquiries in 2005 and 2006 into the bureau's counterterrorism electronic surveillance efforts, revealed for the first time in newly declassified documents." ... "The inquires are the first publicly known questioning of the FBI's post-9/11 surveillance activities by the secret court, which has historically approved nearly every wiretap application submitted to it. The court handles surveillance requests in counterterrorism and foreign espionage investigations. The inquiries add to questions surrounding how the FBI has used the broad powers handed to it by Congress in the 2001 USA Patriot Act, including the FBI's admitted abuse of so-called National Security Letters to get stored telephone and financial records." ... "Among other things, the declassified documents reveal that lawyers in the FBI's Office of General Counsel and the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy Review queried FBI technology officials in late July 2006 about cellphone tracking. The attorneys asked whether the FBI was obtaining and storing real-time cellphone-location data from carriers under a "pen register" court order that's normally limited to records of who a person called or was called by." ... "Separately, the secret court questioned if the FBI was using pen register orders to collect digits dialed after a call is made, potentially including voicemail passwords and account numbers entered into bank-by-phone applications." ... "EFF's Bankston says it's clear that FBI offices had configured their digit-recording software, [Digital Collection System] DCS 3000, to collect more than the law allows." ... "For more on the FBI's sophisticated wiretapping technology and how it links in with the nation's phone and internet infrastructure, see Point, Click, Eavesdrop." -By Ryan Singel -27B/6 -Wired
John
McCain - Surveillance
-Amnesty
- Politics
- Corporate
- Military
-Government
- Phone
- E-Mail
- Intelligence
- History
- Arizona
- American- International
- 2008
Election
"Adviser Says McCain Backs Bush Wiretaps." ... "A top adviser to [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate and Arizona] Senator John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that [Republican] President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team." ... "In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. McCain believed that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance." ... "Although a spokesman for Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, denied that the senator’s views on surveillance and executive power had shifted, legal specialists said the letter contrasted with statements Mr. McCain previously made about the limits of presidential power." ... "In an interview about his views on the limits of executive power with The Boston Globe six months ago, Mr. McCain strongly suggested that if he became the next commander in chief, he would consider himself obligated to obey a statute restricting what he did in national security matters." ... "Mr. McCain was asked whether he believed that the president had constitutional power to conduct surveillance on American soil for national security purposes without a warrant, regardless of federal statutes." ... "He replied: “There are some areas where the statutes don’t apply, such as in the surveillance of overseas communications. Where they do apply, however, I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is.”" ... "Following up, the interviewer asked whether Mr. McCain was saying a statute trumped a president’s powers as commander in chief when it came to a surveillance law. “I don’t think the president has the right to disobey any law,” Mr. McCain replied." ... "David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues, said that while the language used by Mr. McCain in his answers six months ago was imprecise, the recent statement by Mr. Holtz-Eakin “seems to contradict precisely what he said earlier.”" ... "[2008 Election Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama campaign adviser Greg Craig:] “American voters deserve to know which side of this flip-flop [McCain is] he’s on today, and what he would do as president,” Mr. Craig said in a phone interview." ... "And Glenn Greenwald, a Salon columnist and critic of the Bush administration's legal claims, wrote that the statement was a "complete reversal" by McCain, accusing the candidate of seeking "to shore up the support of right-wing extremists."" (1, 2) -By Charlie Savage -NYTimes
 Dick
Cheney -  Douglas
Feith - Terrorism
- Politicians- Government
-People
- Military
- Intelligence
- US
- Iraq
"Clarke On Iraq War Architects: ‘We Shouldn’t Let These People Back Into Polite Society’." ... "Noting that “prominent Democrats” had ruled out impeachment, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann asked former counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke on his show last night, what “remedy” there could be for the lies and misinformation highlighted in the new Senate Intelligence Committee reports on the Bush administration’s misuse of pre-war Iraq intelligence." ... "“Someone should have to pay in some way for the decisions that they made to mislead the American people,” said Clarke. He suggested that “some sort of truth and reconciliation commission” might be appropriate because, he said, we can’t “let these people back into polite society”:" "CLARKE: Well, there may be some other kind of remedy. There may be some sort of truth and reconciliation commission process that’s been tried in other countries, South Africa, Salvador and what not, where if you come forward and admit that you were in error or admit that you lied, admit that you did something, then you’re forgiven. Otherwise, you are censured in some way.""Unfortunately, as Clarke hints, most of the architects of the Iraq war are still fully embraced by “polite society.”" ... "Some, like [Republicans] President Bush and Vice President Cheney, are still working in the White House. But for many of those who left, “the neocon welfare system” has been generous:" "- Last fall, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was named a “distinguished visiting fellow” at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he focuses on “issues pertaining to ideology and terror.”""Despite their re-emergence into “polite society,” these war architects have largely refused to admit that they lied. In fact, some, like former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, insist that the American people only feel misled about Iraq because “they misremember a lot."" -ThinkProgress.org
Dick
Cheney - Secret
- Government
- Military
- Terrorism
- Intelligence
- Politics
- Investigation
- Osama
bin Laden
- Nuclear
-
- US
- Iraq
- Iran
-  Czech
"Senate committee: Bush knew Iraq claims weren't true." ... "[Republicans] President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials promoted the invasion of Iraq with public statements that weren't supported by intelligence or that concealed differences among intelligence agencies, the Senate Intelligence Committee said on Thursday in a report that was delayed by bitter partisan infighting." ... "A second report found that a special office set up under then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld conducted "sensitive intelligence activities" that were inappropriate "without the knowledge of the Intelligence Community or the State Department." That report revealed that Pentagon counterintelligence officials suspected that Iran might have tried to use the group to influence administration policymakers." ... "The Senate report, the first official examination of whether top officials knew that their public statements were unsubstantiated when they made them, reviewed five speeches by Bush, Cheney and former Secretary of State Colin Powell between August 2002 and February 2003. It also dissected key statements made by them and other top officials, including Rumsfeld and then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice." ... "The committee found that the administration's warnings that former dictator Saddam Hussein was in league with Osama bin Laden, a highly inflammatory assertion in the wake of the [September] Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaida attacks, weren't substantiated by U.S. intelligence reports. In fact, it said, [United State] U.S. intelligence agencies were telling the White House that while there'd been sporadic contacts over a decade, there was no operational cooperation between Iraq and al Qaida, the report said." ... "The administration's repeated statements "suggesting that Iraq and al Qaida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al Qaida with weapons training, were not substantiated by intelligence," it said." ... "Contentions by Bush and Cheney that Saddam had to be removed because he could give terrorists weapons of mass destruction to strike the United States were "contradicted by available intelligence information" that found that the late Iraqi dictator was unlikely to make such transfers, the report said." ... "Cheney's assertions that Mohammad Atta, the chief Sept. 11 hijacker, had met months before the attack with an Iraqi intelligence officer in the Czech capital, Prague [Czech Republic], were also unsubstantiated, the inquiry found." ... "The committee said that Bush and Cheney "failed to reflect concerns and uncertainties" expressed in intelligence analyses that questioned administration assertions that Iraqis would welcome U.S. troops as liberators and warned that American forces could face violent resistance." ... "Statements by Bush, Cheney and other top officials that Saddam had stockpiled chemical and biological weapons in violation of U.N. resolutions were "generally substantiated" by what turned out to be erroneous U.S. intelligence analyses, the report said." ... "However, while intelligence reports "generally substantiated" their claims that Iraq had secretly restarted a nuclear weapons program, the committee said, Bush and other officials failed to disclose that the State Department disputed that finding." ... "The administration's statements also failed to disclose that the Energy Department joined the State Department in rejecting allegations that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa, the report said." ... "The reports released Thursday brought to an end a lengthy investigation into how U.S. intelligence appeared to be so wrong in the run-up to the Iraq war." -By Jonathan S. Landay with contributions by Nancy A. Youssef and Mark Seibel -McClatchyDC.com [PDF] - "Senate Intelligence Iraq Phase II Report (Phase 2 a): REPORT on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information." [PDF] - "Senate Intelligence Iraq Phase II Report (Phase 2 b): REPORT on Intelligence Activities Relating to Iraq Conducted by the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group and the Office of Special Plans Within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy." [PDF] - "Phase I Senate report on Iraq Intelligence."
Dick
Cheney -  Stephen
A Cambone - Larry
Franklin - Noteworthy
- US
- Italy
- Iraq
- Iran
- Military
- Politics
- Investigation
"Did Iranian agents dupe Pentagon officials?" ... "Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have "been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service ... to reach into and influence the highest levels of the [United States] U.S. government," a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday." ... "A top aide to [Republican President Bush's] then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the Pentagon officials' activities after only a month, and the Defense Department's top brass never followed up on the investigators' recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said." ... "The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in [Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney's office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the [Republican President] Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator." ... "Iran, which was a mortal enemy of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and fought a bloody eight-year war with Iraq during his reign, has been the primary beneficiary of U.S. policy in Iraq, where Iranian-backed groups now run much of the government and the security forces." ... "The aborted counterintelligence investigation probed some Pentagon officials' contacts with Iranian exile Manucher Ghorbanifar, whom the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] had labeled a "fabricator" in 1984. Those contacts were brokered by an American civilian, Michael Ledeen, a former Pentagon and National Security Council consultant and a leading advocate of invading Iraq and overthrowing Iran's Islamic regime." ... "Stephen Cambone, then the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, shut down the counterintelligence investigation after only a month, the Senate report said." ... "The Senate committee also found that Pentagon officials concealed the contacts with Ghorbanifar from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department. Pentagon officials also provided Senate investigators with an inaccurate account of events and, with support from two unnamed officials in Cheney's office, continued meeting with Ghorbanifar after contact with him was officially ordered to stop." ... "The first meetings with Ghorbanifar, which were disclosed in August 2003 by the Long Island, N.Y. [New York], newspaper Newsday, took place in Rome [Italy's capital] in December 2001. They were attended by two Pentagon Iran experts, Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin; by an Italian military intelligence official, and by Ledeen." -By John Walcott -McClatchyDC.com
John
McCain - Corporate
- Military
- Government
- Telecommunications
- Surveillance
- Amnesty
- Politics
- Intelligence
-  John
Yoo - Torture
- Detainee
- Human
Rights - Enforcement-  Florida
- 2008
Election
"McCain tangled in flip-flop flap over wiretapping immunity." ... "A series of statements about immunizing telecommunications companies that violated federal wiretapping laws have become something of an embarrassment, and perhaps even a problem, for [2008 Election Republican] John McCain's presidential campaign." ... "The statements revolve around whether McCain, like [Republican] President Bush, supports legislation that could be voted on this month extending retroactive immunity to those companies and perhaps many more." ... "In 2005, at least, McCain was in favor of letting the courts decide whether AT&T and other telecos violated the law." ... "... [Late December 2007] McCain told the Boston Globe this: "I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is."" ... "But after McCain became the all-but-official nominee, his political principles appear to have become more malleable. He voted in February for retroactive immunity -- even though there were no explicit statements telling AT&T and other telecommunications companies that this is not a "blessing." There were no deals providing for "oversight hearings." And there certainly were no "provisions" to ensure this won't happen again." ... "Our story may have ended there. Except that campaign representative Chuck Fish (not an actual campaign lawyer, as has been incorrectly reported, but a surrogate) subsequently suggested that his candidate still wanted "hearings," which The Washington Post picked up on last week. McCain's campaign fired off a nastygram to the Post saying that their candidate's "position on immunity has not changed."" ... "Meanwhile, McCain was questioned about his position at a town hall meeting the next day -- he replied that Congress needs to "have hearings" -- which The Wall Street Journal dutifully reported. The fuss became enough to prompt the conservative National Review to begin questioning McCain's the-executive-can-wiretap-as-it-pleases credentials. Salon entered the fray too." ... "[Florida Democratic Representative] Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida, who is a member of the House Judiciary committee, sent us this statement on Wednesday:" "I am appalled by Senator John McCain's reaffirmation of support for the use of warrantless wiretapping on American citizens. Senator McCain has once again chosen to align himself with President George Bush, whose reprehensible spying program on Americans is a grave threat to our Constitutions guarantees of privacy and limited executive power. It is clear that Senator McCain, President Bush, and their Republican allies in Congress will continue to use scare tactics and fear mongering to claim that a president can simply chose to ignore America's laws... Senator McCain opposes a bipartisan House compromise bill that preserves appropriate court review of all surveillance of US citizens and gives judges the discretion to review all the necessary documents related to telecom lawsuits without offering blanket immunity.""Yet there's a more important issue here, which is why the neo-cons are pressing McCain to adhere to the Bush administration's line. And that's the administration's theory of the so-called unitary executive, which says that the president's use of military force cannot be reviewed by courts." ... "McCain's earlier statements -- especially where he says presidents must "obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress" -- seem to question the administration's interpretation. Beyond wiretapping, that touches on topics such as John Yoo's so-called torture memos, the applicability of the Geneva Convention to detainees, Bush's signing statements, and military commissions. Questioning the justifications for Bush's warrantless wiretapping means questioning the rest; no wonder McCain seems a little worried about where this may lead." -By Declan McCullagh -CNET [note: The conservative/Republican opinion magazine National Review supports lawless surveillance.]
John
McCain - Criminal
- Spying
- Secretly
- Military
- Government
- Intelligence
- Corporate
- Telecom
- Amnesty
- Terrorism
- Politics
- 2008
Election - Arizona
- Civil
Liberties
"McCain: I'd Spy on Americans Secretly, Too." ... "If elected president, [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate and Arizona] Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president's wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight, according to a statement released by his campaign Monday." ... "McCain's new tack towards the [Republican President] Bush administration's theory of executive power comes some 10 days after a McCain surrogate stated, incorrectly it seems, that the senator wanted hearings into telecom companies' cooperation with [Republican] President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, before he'd support giving those companies retroactive legal immunity." ... "As first reported by Threat Level, Chuck Fish, a full-time lawyer for the McCain campaign, also said McCain wanted stricter rules on how the nation's telecoms work with U.S. [United States] spy agencies, and expected those companies to apologize for any lawbreaking before winning amnesty." ... "But Monday, McCain adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin, speaking for the campaign, disavowed those statements, and for the first time cast McCain's views on warrantless wiretapping as identical to Bush's." "[N]either the Administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001. [...]""The Article II citation is key, since it refers to [Republican] President Bush's longstanding arguments that the president has nearly unlimited powers during a time of war. The administration's analysis went so far as to say the Fourth Amendment did not apply inside the United States in the fight against terrorism, in one legal opinion from 2001." -By Ryan Singel -Wired
US
- Military
- Intelligence
- Government
- Politics
- Unlawful
- Iraq
- Afghanistan
- Torture
- Prisons
- History
- Book
"Lt. Gen Sanchez: [Republican President] Bush Administration Guilty of "Gross Incompetence and Dereliction of Duty"." ... "In [retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez's book] "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story," [General] Gen. Sanchez goes into detail about various military blunders that led to where we are today." ... "In one excerpt, published by TIME, Sanchez explains why there were inadequate troop levels in Iraq for a time:" [From retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez's book, "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story:]"In an excerpt published on NPR's website, Sanchez writes[:]" [From retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez's book, "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story:]"And regarding Abu Ghraib, Sanchez writes -- according to Eli Lake of the New York Sun -- that the [United States] U.S. was torturing prisoners." ... "A remarkable admission." [From retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez's book, "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story:]-By Jake Tapper -ABCNEWS.com
John
McCain - Barack
Obama - US
- Iran
- Military
- Technology
- Intelligence
- Politics
- Terrorism
- Iraq
-
- Ariz
- Ill
- 2008
Election
"Both McCain, Obama exaggerating Iran's nuclear program." ... "The presumptive Republican nominee for president and the leading contender for the Democratic nomination are exaggerating what's known about Iran's nuclear program as they duel over how best to deal with Tehran." ... "[2008 Election Presidential Candidates and Senators] Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz. [Republican-Arizona], and Barack Obama, D-Ill. [Democratic-Illinois], say that Iran is developing nuclear weapons." ... "The U.S. intelligence community, however, thinks that Iran halted an effort to build a nuclear warhead in mid-2003, and the [United Nations] U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, which is investigating the program, has found no evidence to date of an active Iranian nuclear-weapons project." ... "The candidates' comments raise questions about how carefully the two have studied the public record on what's become a major campaign issue and is one of the most difficult foreign-policy challenges likely to confront the next president." ... "The issue is also significant because the [Republican President] Bush administration inflated assessments of the Iraqi nuclear threat and the possibility that former dictator Saddam Hussein could pass nuclear weapons to terrorists as it sought to whip up public support for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq." ... "Iran has been expanding an industrial-scale uranium enrichment program in defiance of U.N. Security Council demands that it be suspended. Enrichment is the process that produces low-enriched uranium fuel for nuclear generating stations and highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons." ... "Iran, whose known enrichment facilities are under IAEA monitoring, says it's making low-enriched uranium reactor fuel and has no intention of developing weapons. Few experts, however, think that Iran has come clean about all its nuclear activities." -By Jonathan S. Landay -McClatchyDC.com |
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Intelligence News Sources: GlobalSecurity: 2009. 4. 3. 2. 1. 2008. 2007. 2006. 2005. 2004. 2003. 2002. 2001. 2000. Archive FAS.org: 2009: 2. 1. 2008: 12. 11. 10. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. 2007: 12. 11. 10. 9. 8. 7. 6.5. 4. 3. 2. 1. 2006: 12. 11. 10. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.2005: 12. 11. 10. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. 2004: 12. 11. 10. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. 2003: 12. 11. 10. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. 2002: 12. 11.10.9. 8. 7. 6.5. 4. 3. 2. 1. 
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- "The
Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States
Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction." ... "Report
to the President of the United States." ... "With this letter, we transmit
the report of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United
States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. Our unanimous report is based
on a lengthy investigation, during which we interviewed hundreds of experts
from inside and outside the Intelligence Community and reviewed thousands
of documents. Our report offers 74 recommendations for improving the U.S.
Intelligence Community (all but a handful of which we believe can be implemented
without statutory change). But among these recommendations a few points
merit special emphasis." ... "We conclude that the Intelligence Community
was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons
of mass destruction. This was a major intelligence failure. Its principal
causes were the Intelligence Community's inability to collect good information
about Iraq's WMD programs, serious errors in analyzing what information
it could gather, and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis
was based on assumptions, rather than good evidence. On a matter of this
importance, we simply cannot afford failures of this magnitude." ... "After
a thorough review, the Commission found no indication that the Intelligence
Community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
What the intelligence professionals told you about Saddam Hussein's programs
was what they believed. They were simply wrong." -Co-Chairmen: Laurence
H. Silberman and Charles S. Robb - 3.4MB, 618
page report via -AP.org
|
||||||
 . |
|
Scott
McClellan - Books
- Counterterrorism
- US
- Iraq
- Military
- Intelligence
- Politics
- Marketing
- "Scott
McClellan Apologizes for Bashing Richard Clarke."
... "In an encounter last night in the lobby of a New York hotel, former
[Republican President Bush] White House press secretary Scott McClellan
apologized for denouncing a former White House colleague, Richard Clarke,
the former counterterrorism adviser, after Clarke wrote a book ["Against
All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror"] highly critical of the Bush
administration in 2004." ... "Now McClellan is facing a similar denunciation
from the White House for his own highly critical book." ... "In 2004, McClellan
said Clarke's book, asserting the Bush administration failed to take timely
action against al Qaeda, was "flat-out wrong." He told reporters at a March
22, 2004 briefing, "Ask yourself why, one and a half years later, after
he left the administration, he's all of a sudden, coming forward with these
grave concerns? If he had such grave concerns, why didn't he come out with
them sooner?"" ... "Now White House aides are saying much the same thing
about McClellan's assertions, in his book "What Happened," that President
Bush waged a deceitful propaganda campaign to promote the war in Iraq.
" ... "Clarke appeared Thursday night on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart"
to talk about his new book, "Your Government Failed You," and was asked
about McClellan's criticism of him in 2004. "I think there is a box in
the White House that, if anyone escapes and tells the truth, they break
open for talking points about what to say," Clarke told Stewart." (1, 2)
-By Brian Ross with contributions by Mark Mooney
-ABCNEWS.com
US
- Chinese
- Torture- Intelligence
- Politics
- Guantanamo
Bay - Cuba
- Military
- Government
- Prison
- Investigation
- Law
- "Report:
U.S. Soldiers Did 'Dirty Work' for Chinese Interrogators:
Alleges Guantanamo Personnel Softened Up Detainees at Request of Chinese
Intelligence." ... "U.S. [United States] military personnel at Guantanamo
Bay [Cuba] allegedly softened up detainees at the request of Chinese intelligence
officials who had come to the island facility to interrogate the men --
or they allowed the Chinese to dole out the treatment themselves, according
to claims in a new government report." ... "Buried in a Department of Justice
report released Tuesday are new allegations about a 2002 arrangement between
the United States and China, which allowed Chinese intelligence to visit
Guantanamo and interrogate Chinese Uighurs held there." ... "According
to the report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, an FBI
[Federal Bureau of Investigation] agent reported a detainee belonging to
China's ethnic Uighur minority and a Uighur translator told him Uighur
detainees were kept awake for long periods, deprived of food and forced
to endure cold for hours on end, just prior to questioning by Chinese interrogators."
... "Susan Manning, a lawyer who represents several Uighurs still held
at Guantanamo, said Tuesday the allegations are all too familiar." ...
"U.S. personnel "are engaging in abusive tactics on behalf of the Chinese,"
she said Tuesday. When Uighur detainees refused to talk to Chinese interrogators
in 2002, U.S. military personnel put them in solitary confinement as punishment,
she said." ... ""Why are we doing China's dirty work?" Manning said. "Surely
we're better than that." " (1, 2)
-By Justin Rood -ABCNEWS.com
Kyle
Dustin "Dusty" Foggo - 
Brent
Wilkes - 
Randy
"Duke" Cunningham - Money
- Politics
- Vacations
- Intelligence
- Federal
- Va
- 
Calif
- "Former
CIA official indicted anew in bribery case." ...
"A new indictment of a former top CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] official
alleges that he received bribes in the form of "sexual companionship" in
exchange for helping a friend get an edge in landing multimillion-dollar
contracts from the agency." ... "Federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Va.
[Virginia], on Tuesday obtained a superseding indictment against Kyle "Dusty"
Foggo, who as executive director held the CIA's No. 3 rank before leaving
in 2006." ... "The indictment accuses Foggo of accepting tens of thousands
of dollars in meals, vacations and other perks in exchange for helping
friend Brent Wilkes obtain various contracts with the CIA." ... "Wilkes
has already pleaded guilty to paying bribes to then-[California Republican
Representative] Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif. [Republican-California],
some of which came in the form of prostitutes." -By
Matthew Barakat -AP
via -SFGate.com
Intelligence
- Secrets
- 
Archives
- Enforcement
- 
Library
- Government
- Law
- Politics
- "Keeping
Secrets: In Presidential Memo, A New Designation for Classifying Information."
... "Sometime in the next few years, if a memorandum signed by [Republican]
President Bush this month ever goes into effect, one government official
talking to another about information on terrorists will have to begin by
saying: "What I am about to tell you is controlled unclassified information
enhanced with specified dissemination."" ... "That would mean, according
to the memo, that the information requires safeguarding because "the inadvertent
or unauthorized disclosure would create risk of substantial harm."" ...
"Such information -- though it does not merit the well-known national security
classifications "confidential," "secret" or "top secret" -- is nonetheless
"pertinent" to U.S. "national interests" or to "important interests of
entities outside the federal government," the memo says." ... "Left undefined
are which laws or policies generated the requirement for protecting such
information, and which interests are pertinent." ... "Michael Clark, a
contributing editor to the blog Daily Kos, who first wrote about the Bush
memorandum, said the White House "seems to have used the crafting of new
rules as an opportunity to expand the range of government secrecy." Steven
Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on
Government Secrecy, described it as a "not even half-baked" exercise in
policymaking." ... ""The changes will make labeling and sharing information
more effective," said an administration official, and do away with other
government designations such as "For Official Use Only" and "Law Enforcement
Sensitive."" ... "The tough job of implementing the new system was assigned
to the National Archives and Records Administration." ... "The Controlled
Unclassified Information [CUI] designation was the product of a year-long
government study of how to replace the "sensitive but unclassified" [SBU]
category. "Among the 20 departments and agencies . . . surveyed, there
are at least 107 unique markings and more than 131 different labeling or
handling processes and procedures for SBU information," Ted McNamara of
the office of the director of national intelligence told the House Homeland
Security Committee in April 2007." -By Walter Pincus-WashingtonPost
Obama
- McCain
- Osama
bin Laden
- US- Iraq
- Iran
- Palestine
- Israel
- Russia
- China
- Foreign
- Military
- Terrorism
- Intelligence
- Politics
- History
- Illinois
- 2008
Election - "Obama
Strikes Back at Bush On Diplomacy." ... "[2008 Election
Democratic Presidential Candidate and Illinois Senator] Sen. Barack Obama
pushed back Friday against [Republican] President Bush's implicit criticism
of his approach to foreign policy, condemning his administration for not
capturing Osama bin Laden and blaming its Iraq war policy for strengthening
and emboldening Iran." ... ""If [Republicans] George Bush and John McCain
want to have a debate about protecting the United States of America, that
is a debate that I'm happy to have anytime, anyplace, and that is a debate
I will win because George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for,"
the Democratic front-runner said." ... "At a news conference later Friday,
Obama called it "disingenuous" to assert that he was not the clear target
of the president's comments. Obama then used the exchange to link Bush's
foreign policy record to McCain's stance toward the Middle East, and to
outline the ways his own approach to the world's most vexing problems would
differ from those of the current administration." ... "His list of grievances
included a war fought on the premise of weapons of mass destruction that
were never found, the failure to capture bin Laden and turning Iran into
the "greatest beneficiary" of the Iraq war." ... "He said McCain will "need
to answer" for a strengthened al-Qaeda leadership, Hamas's control of the
Gaza Strip [Palestine], and Iran's ability to fund Hezbollah and pose "the
greatest threat to America and Israel and the Middle East in a generation.""
... ""That's the Bush-McCain record on protecting this country," Obama
said. "Those are the failed policies that John McCain wants to double down
on."" ... "In a later appearance, Obama added that he is "puzzled" that
the concept of meeting with controversial foreign leaders is a point of
debate "when this has been the history of U.S. [United States] diplomacy
until very recently."" ... "He pointed to [Democratic] President John F.
Kennedy's meetings with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev when the United
States and Russia were on the brink of nuclear war, and to [Republican]
President Richard M. Nixon's meeting with China's Mao Zedong, "with the
knowledge that Mao had exterminated millions of people." " -By
Matthew Mosk with contributions by Perry Bacon Jr., Michael D. Shear and
Dan Eggen -WashingtonPost
WATCH
- Noteworthy
- Terrorism
- Politics
- War
Crimes - US
- Freedom
- Iraq
- Intelligence
- Military
- Families
- Sports
- McCain
- 2008
Election - "Mr.
President, the war isn’t about you — or golf: Olbermann:
[Republican President] Bush's claim he gave up game to honor dead GIs is
ludicrous." ... "President Bush has resorted anew to the sleaziest fear-mongering
and mass manipulation of an administration and public life dedicated to
realizing the lowest of our expectations. And he has now applied these
poisons to the 2008 presidential election, on behalf of the party at whose
center he and [Republican Candidate] John McCain lurk." ... "Mr. Bush has
predicted that the election of a Democratic president could "eventually
lead to another attack on the United States." This ludicrous, infuriating,
holier-than-thou and most importantly bone-headedly wrong statement came
during a
May 13 interview with Politico.com and online users of Yahoo."
... "The question was phrased as follows: "If we were to pull out of Iraq
next year, what's the worst that could happen, what's the doomsday scenario?""
... "The president replied: "Doomsday scenario of course is that extremists
throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually
lead to another attack on the United States. The biggest issue we face
is, it's bigger than Iraq, it's this ideological struggle against cold-blooded
killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives."" ...
"Mr. Bush, at long last, has it not dawned on you that the America you
have now created, includes "cold-blooded killers who will kill people to
achieve their political objectives?" They are those in — or formerly in
— your employ, who may yet be charged some day with war crimes." ... "Through
your haze of self-congratulation and self-pity, do you still have no earthly
clue that this nation has laid waste to Iraq to achieve your political
objectives? "This ideological struggle," Mr. Bush, is taking place within
this country." ... "It is a struggle between Americans who cherish freedom,
ours and everybody else's, and Americans like you, sir, to whom freedom
is just a brand name, just like "Patriot Act" is a brand name or "Protect
America" is a brand name." ... "But wait, there's more: You also said "Iraq
is the place where al-Qaida and other extremists have made their stand
and they will be defeated." They made no "stand" in Iraq, sir, you allowed
them to assemble there!" ... "As certainly as if that were the plan, the
borders were left wide open by your government's farcical post-invasion
strategy of "they'll greet us as liberators." And as certainly as if that
were the plan, the inspiration for another generation of terrorists in
another country was provided by your government's farcical post-invasion
strategy of letting the societal infra-structure of Iraq dissolve, to be
replaced by an American viceroy, enforced by merciless mercenaries who
shoot unarmed Iraqis and then evade prosecution in any country by hiding
behind your skirts, sir." ... "Terrorism inside Iraq is your creation,
Mr. Bush!" ... "Then came Mr. Bush's final blow to our nation's solar plexus,
his last reopening of our common wounds, his last remark that makes the
rest of us question not merely his leadership or his judgment but his very
suitably to remain in office." ... ""Mr. President," he was asked, "you
haven't been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?"" ... ""Yes,"
began perhaps the most startling reply of this nightmarish blight on our
lives as Americans on our history. "It really is. I don't want some mom
whose son may have recently died to see the Commander in Chief playing
golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as — to be in solidarity as
best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends
the wrong signal."" ... "Golf, sir? Golf sends the wrong signal to the
grieving families of our men and women butchered in Iraq? Do you think
these families, Mr. Bush, their lives blighted forever, care about you
playing golf? Do you think, sir, they care about you?" ... "You, Mr. Bush,
let their sons and daughters be killed. Sir, to show your solidarity with
them you gave up golf? Sir, to show your solidarity with them you didn't
give up your pursuit of this insurance-scam, profiteering, morally and
financially bankrupting war." ... "Sir, to show your solidarity with them
you didn't even give up talking about Iraq, a subject about which you have
incessantly proved without pause or backwards glance, that you may literally
be the least informed person in the world?" ... "Sir, to show your solidarity
with them, you didn't give up your presidency? In your own words
"solidarity as best as I can" is to stop a game? That is the "best" you
can do?" ... "Four thousand Americans give up their lives and your sacrifice
was to give up golf!" ... "The great Bushian sacrifice — an Army private
loses a leg, a Marine loses half his skull, 4,000 of their brothers and
sisters lose their lives — and you lose golf, and they have to pull you
off the golf course to get you to just do that?" ... "If it's even true."
... "... CBS News has records of you playing golf as late as [October]
Oct. 13 of that year, nearly two months later [two months after Bush claimed
that he had given up golf "in solidarity" with the families of American
troops.]." (1, 2,
3,
4)
-By
Keith Olbermann
-MSNBC
Secret
- Government
- Intelligence
- Terrorism
- Politics
- Illegal
- Surveillance
- Investigation
- Internet
- Archive
- Library
- Electronic
- Civil
Liberties - Brewster_Kahle
- Censorship
- San
Francisco - California
- Student
- Health
- Consumer
- Telephone
- Electronic
- Data
- National
Security Letter - "FBI
Targets Internet Archive With Secret 'National Security Letter', Loses."
... "The Internet Archive, a project to create a digital library of the
web for posterity, successfully fought a secret government Patriot Act
order for records about one of its patrons and won the right to make the
order public, civil liberties groups announced Wednesday morning." ...
"On November 26, 2007, the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] served
a controversial National
Security Letter (.pdf) on the Internet
Archive's founder Brewster Kahle, asking for records about one of the
library's registered users, asking for the user's name, address and activity
on the site." ... "The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Internet Archive's
lawyers, fought the NSL [National Security Letter], challenging its constitutionality
in a December 14 complaint
(.pdf) to a federal court in San Francisco [California]. The FBI agreed
on April 21 to withdraw the letter and unseal the court case, making some
of the documents available to the public." ... "The Patriot Act greatly
expanded the reach of NSLs, which are subpoenas for documents such as billing
records and telephone records that the FBI can issue in terrorism investigations
without a judge's approval. Nearly all NSLs come with gag orders forbidding
the recipient from ever speaking of the subpoena, except to a lawyer."
... "Brewster Kahle called the gag order "horrendous," saying he couldn't
talk about the case with his board members, wife or staff, but said that
his stand was part of a time-honored tradition of librarians protecting
the rights of their patrons." ... ""This is an unqualified success that
will help other recipients understand that you can push back on these,"
Kahle said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday morning." ...
"Though FBI guidelines on using NSLs warned of overusing them, two Congressionally
ordered audits revealed that the FBI had issued hundreds of illegal requests
for student health records, telephone records and credit reports. The reports
also found that the FBI had issued hundreds of thousands of NSLs since
2001, but failed to track their use. In a letter to Congress last week,
the FBI admitted it can only estimate how many NSLs it has issued." -By
Ryan Singel -Wired
US- Pakistan
- Afghanistan
- Iraq
- Military
- Terrorism
- Intelligence
- "US
report says al-Qaida gaining strength." ... "Al-Qaida
has rebuilt some of its pre-[September]Sept. 11 capabilities from remote
hiding places in Pakistan, leading to a major spike in attacks last year
in that country and neighboring Afghanistan, the [Republican President]
Bush administration said Wednesday." ... "Attacks in Pakistan more than
doubled from 375 to 887 between 2006 and 2007, and the number of fatalities
jumped by almost 300 percent from 335 to 1,335, the State Department said
in its annual terrorism report." ... "In Afghanistan, the number of attacks
rose 16 percent, to 1,127 incidents last year, killing 1,966 people, 55
percent more than the 1,257 who died in 2006, it said." ... "The report
said attacks in Iraq dipped slightly between 2006 and 2007, but they still
accounted for 60 percent of worldwide terrorism fatalities, including 17
of the 19 Americans who were killed in attacks last year. The other two
were killed in Afghanistan." -By Matthew Lee
-AP via -SeattleTimes
US
- Worldwide
- Intelligence
- Terrorism
- Politics
- "More
Suicide Bombers, New Tactics, More Victims: U.S.
[United States] Has Bad News on Terror War." ... "Are we winning? Looking
at the just-released State Department report on terrorism, the answer appears
to be "no."" ... "The number of terror victims killed or injured is on
the rise worldwide, according to the report, and al Qaeda's senior leadership
has restored some of its control over the terror group's operations, and
increased its mobility and ability to plan attacks." ... "Most dramatically,
there was a 50 percent increase worldwide in suicide bombings last year.
All told, 66,995 people were killed or wounded in terror attacks in 2007
(up from 59,327 in 2006 and 39,469 in 2005)." -By
Jonathan Karl and Kirit Radia -ABCNEWS.com
US
- Pakistan- Afghanistan
- Global
- Usama
bin Ladin
- Military
- Terrorism
- Intelligence
- "Country
Reports on Terrorism 2007." ... "Chapter
1 -- Strategic Assessment." ... "AL-QA’IDA AND ASSOCIATED TRENDS:
Al-Qa’ida (AQ) and associated networks remained the greatest terrorist
threat to the United States and its partners in 2007. It has reconstituted
some of its pre-9/11 operational capabilities through the exploitation
of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), replacement of
captured or killed operational lieutenants, and the restoration of some
central control by its top leadership, in particular Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Although Usama bin Ladin remained the group’s ideological figurehead, Zawahiri
has emerged as AQ’s strategic and operational planner." ... "AQ and its
affiliates seek to exploit local grievances for their own local and global
purposes. They pursue their own goals, often at large personal cost to
the local population. These networks are adaptive, quickly evolving new
methods in response to countermeasures. AQ utilizes terrorism, as well
as subversion, propaganda, and open warfare; it seeks weapons of mass destruction
in order to inflict the maximum possible damage on anyone who stands in
its way, including other Muslims and/or elders, women, and children." ...
"Despite the efforts of both Afghan and Pakistani security forces, instability,
coupled with the Islamabad [Pakistan's capital] brokered cease-fire agreement
in effect for the first half of 2007 along the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier,
appeared to have provided AQ leadership greater mobility and ability to
conduct training and operational planning, particularly that targeting
Western Europe and the United States. Numerous senior AQ operatives have
been captured or killed, but AQ leaders continued to plot attacks and to
cultivate stronger operational connections that radiated outward from Pakistan
to affiliates throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe." -State.gov
WATCH
- US
- Iraq
- Military
- Government
- Intelligence
- Illegal
- Psychological
- Media
-
- Marketing
- Politics
- "Government
Curries Favor With Military News Analysts." ... "The
Pentagon may influence the analysis of some retired military personnel
who appear on television news programs, the New York Times recently reported.
Media insiders discuss the details of this murky world of defense companies,
the current administration and the war in Iraq.Now, a lengthy New York Times investigation, published on Sunday, revealed the Pentagon targeted many of these analysts as part of an information apparatus to generate favorable news coverage of the administration's wartime performance.
Pentagon officials organized hundreds of private meetings with senior military leaders and the military analysts. They included talks with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
According to the Times, analysts were also taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated.
It
was also disclosed that most of the analysts have ties to military contractors
[corporate military money ties].
...
JOHN
STAUBER, Center for Media and Democracy [and author of the book, "Weapons
of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq."]: Well,
Judy, first of all, congratulations to the NewsHour for doing this report.
And it's a shame on the networks who were duped this way that they didn't
show up to defend or explain their actions.
What happened here was a psy-ops campaign [a psychological operations campaign], an incredible government propaganda campaign whereby Donald Rumsfeld and Torie Clark, the head of public relations for the Pentagon, designed a program to recruit 75, at least 75 former military officers, as your report said, most of them now lobbyists or consultants to military contractors, and insert them, beginning in 2002, before the attack on Iraq was even launched, into the major networks to manage the messages, to be surrogates.
And that's the words that are actually used, "message multipliers" for the secretary of defense and for the Pentagon. This program continues right up to now.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And is the essence of this that what they did was -- what the Pentagon did was illegal?
JOHN STAUBER: Yes, what they did was illegal. Now, the Pentagon might contest that, but we've had various laws on the books in our country going back to the 1920s. It is illegal for the U.S. government to propagandize citizens in this way.
In my opinion, this war could have never been sold if it were not for this sophisticated propaganda campaign. And what we need is congressional investigation of not just this Pentagon military analyst program, but all the rest of the deception and propaganda that came out of the Bush administration and out of the Pentagon that allowed them to sell and manage this war.
Criminal
- Torture
- Secret
- Military
- Prison
- Censored
- Intelligence
- Law
- Politics
- Federal
- New
York
- "CIA
Foresaw Interrogation Issues: Agency Considered Investigations
'Virtually Inevitable'." ... "The CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] concluded
that criminal, administrative or civil investigations stemming from harsh
interrogation tactics were "virtually inevitable," leading the agency to
seek legal support from the Justice Department, according to a CIA official's
statement in court documents filed yesterday." ... "The CIA said it had
identified more than 7,000 pages of classified memos, e-mails and other
records relating to its secret prison and interrogation program, but maintained
that the materials cannot be released because they relate to, in part,
communications between CIA and Justice Department attorneys or discussions
with the [Republican President Bush] White House." ... "Nineteen of those
documents were withheld from disclosure specifically because the Bush administration
decided they are covered by a "presidential communications privilege,"
according to the filings, made in federal court in Manhattan [New York].
Some were "authored or solicited and received by the President's senior
advisors in connection with a decision, or potential decision, to be made
by the president."" ... "Although the precise content of the documents
is unknown, the agency's statements illustrate the extent to which senior
White House officials were involved in decision-making on CIA detentions,
interrogations, and renditions, a term for forced transfers of prisoners."
-By Dan Eggen with contributions by Julie Tate
-WashingtonPost
Corporate
- Hackers
- Manufacture
- Electronics
- Technology
- California
- 
Texas
- US
- Global
- TV
- Telecom
- Media
- 
Copyright
- Enforcement
- German
- Canada
- UK
- Israeli
- Intelligence
- Spying
- "Rupert
Murdoch Firm Goes on Trial for Alleged Tech Sabotage."
... "Did a Rupert Murdoch company go too far and hire hackers to sabotage
rivals and gain the top spot in the global pay-TV war?" ... "This is the
question a jury will be facing in a spectacular five-year-old civil lawsuit
that is finally being tried this month in California but which has, oddly,
received little notice from U.S. [United States] media." ... "The case
involves a colorful cast of characters that includes former intelligence
agents, Canadian TV pirates, Bulgarian and German hackers, stolen e-mails
and the mysterious suicide of a Berlin [Germany's capital] hacker who had
been courted by the Murdoch company not long before his death." ... "On
the hot spot is NDS Group, a UK-Israeli firm that makes smartcards for
pay-TV systems like DirecTV. The company is a majority-owned subsidiary
of Murdoch's News Corporation. The charges stem from 1997 when NDS is accused
of cracking the encryption of rival NagraStar, which makes access cards
and systems for EchoStar's Dish Network and other pay-TV services. Further,
it’s alleged NDS then hired hackers to manufacture and distribute counterfeit
NagraStar cards to pirates to steal Dish Network's programming for free."
... "NagraStar and one of its parent companies, EchoStar, are seeking about
$101 million for damages for piracy, copyright infringement, misconduct
and unfair competition. The list of witnesses in the case includes EchoStar's
founder and CEO Charlie Ergen; several hackers and pirates; and Reuven
Hazak, an Israeli who heads security for NDS and is a former deputy head
of Shabak, or Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security agency (the equivalent
of Britain's MI5)." ... "According to court documents, the scheme began
to unravel in 2000 when law-enforcement agents in Texas seized suspicious
packages containing CD and DVD players stuffed with more than $40,000 in
cash. Parcels similar to this were being sent almost daily from Canada,
via Texas, to a hacker in California named Christopher Tarnovsky, who was
working for NDS as an engineer. The money was allegedly part of the conspiracy
between Tarnovsky and NDS Group to sabotage NagraStar's cards." -By
Kim Zetter -Wired
Corporate
- Government
- Psychological
- Military
- Intelligence
- Television
- 
Radio
- Media
- Politics
- Classified
- US
- History
- Guantánamo
- Prison
- Cuba
- Human
Rights - Justice
-
- Iraq
- Terrorism
- Cheney
- Gonzales
- "Behind
TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand." ... "In the
summer of 2005, the [Republican President] Bush administration confronted
a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay [US military prison
in Cuba]. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our
times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from
United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure."
... "The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early
one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one
of the jets normally used by [Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney and
flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo."
... "To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented
tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts”
whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered
judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-[September]Sept. 11
world." ... "Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a
Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign
to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance,
an examination by The New York Times has found." ... "The effort, which
began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought
to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial
dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested
in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air." ... "Those business
relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not
even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane
and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military
contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants.
The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller
companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for
hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s
war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information
and easy access to senior officials are highly prized." ... "Records and
interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access
and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media
Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from
inside the major TV and radio networks." ... "Analysts have been wooed
in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including
officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters,
records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to
classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White
House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto
R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley." ... "In turn, members of this group
have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected
the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed
doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access." ... "A few expressed
regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the
American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis."
... "Many also shared with Mr. Bush’s national security team a belief that
pessimistic war coverage broke the nation’s will to win in Vietnam, and
there was a mutual resolve not to let that happen with this war." ... "This
was a major theme, for example, with Paul E. Vallely, a Fox News analyst
from 2001 to 2007. A retired Army general who had specialized in psychological
warfare, Mr. Vallely co-authored a paper in 1980 that accused American
news organizations of failing to defend the nation from “enemy” propaganda
during Vietnam." ... "“We lost the war — not because we were outfought,
but because we were out Psyoped,” he wrote. He urged a radically new approach
to psychological operations in future wars — taking aim at not just foreign
adversaries but domestic audiences, too. He called his approach “MindWar”
— using network TV and radio to “strengthen our national will to victory.”"
(1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
DOCUMENTS)
-By David
Barstow -NYTimes
WATCH
- "How
the Pentagon Spread Its Message." ... "David Barstow,
an investigative reporter for The Times, examines primary source documents
detailing the Pentagon’s response to criticism of then-Secretary of Defense
Donald H. Rumsfeld by a group of prominent retired generals." -By
David
Barstow -NYTimes
US
- Iraq
- Iran
- Military
- Intelligence
- Terrorism
- Politics
- "Pentagon
institute calls Iraq war 'a major debacle' with outcome 'in doubt'."
... "The war in Iraq has become "a major debacle" and the outcome "is in
doubt" despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. [United
States] forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday
by the Pentagon's premier military educational institute." ... "The report
released by the National Defense University raises fresh doubts about [Republican]
President Bush's projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after
Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions." ... "The
report carries considerable weight because it was written by Joseph Collins,
a former senior Pentagon official, and was based in part on interviews
with other former senior defense and intelligence officials who played
roles in prewar preparations." ... "It was published by the university's
National Institute for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department research
center." ... ""Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved
the status of a major war and a major debacle," says the report's opening
line." ... "The report said that the United States has suffered serious
political costs, with its standing in the world seriously diminished. Moreover,
operations in Iraq have diverted "manpower, materiel and the attention
of decision-makers" from "all other efforts in the war on terror" and severely
strained the U.S. armed forces." ... ""Compounding all of these problems,
our efforts there (in Iraq) were designed to enhance U.S. national security,
but they have become, at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism
and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle
East," the report continued." -By Jonathan
S. Landay and John Walcott
-McClatchyDC.com
Media
- Opinion
- Dick
Cheney
- Torture
- War
Crimes - Criminal
- Government
- Military
- Intelligence
- Law
- US
- International
- Politics
- "Bush
OK'd Torture Meetings." ... "[Republican] President
Bush says he was aware that his top aides met in the White House basement
to micromanage the application of waterboarding and other widely-condemned
interrogation techniques. And he says it was no big deal." ... ""I'm aware
our national security team met on this issue. And I approved," Bush told
ABC News' Martha Raddatz on Friday. "I don't know what's new about that;
I'm not so sure what's so startling about that."" ... "It's true that it
has been widely assumed and occasionally reported that the CIA's [Central
Intelligence Agency's] use of brutal interrogation techniques could be
traced back to the White House on a general level. But it was most definitely
new last week when ABC
News reported that a group of Bush's top aides, including [Republican]
Vice President Cheney, took part in meetings where they explicitly discussed
and approved -- literally blow by blow -- tactics such as waterboarding.
And while Bush has previously defended these tactics -- vaguely, and insisting
against all evidence that they did not amount to torture -- he had not,
until now, acknowledged that he personally OK'd them beforehand." ... "If
you consider what the government did to be torture, which is a crime according
to U.S. [United States] and international law, Bush's statement shifts
his role from being an accessory after the fact to being part of a conspiracy
to commit." ... "The mainstream media by and large seem to agree with Bush
that the ABC News Report wasn't so startling, and they have given Bush's
remarks almost no coverage. There was no mention of Bush's admission in
the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or the Los Angeles Times. There
was nothing on the major wire services. And nothing on CNN, CBS or NBC."
(1, 2,
3,
4,
5)
-By Dan Froomkin -WashingtonPost
Dick
Cheney - 
John
Ashcroft - Torture
- Government
- Military
- Intelligence
- Terrorism
- Politics
- US
- International
- Law
- War
Crimes - "Bush
Aware of Advisers' Interrogation Talks: President
Says He Knew His Senior Advisers Discussed Tough Interrogation Methods."
... "[Republican] President Bush says he knew his top national security
advisers discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al
Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency,
according to an exclusive interview with ABC News Friday." ... ""Well,
we started to connect the dots in order to protect the American people."
Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. "And yes,
I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.""
... "These top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top
al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of
sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding, sources
told ABC news." ... "At the time, the [National Security Council's] Principals
Committee included Vice President Dick Cheney, former National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary
of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney
General John Ashcroft." ... "The so-called Principals who participated
in the meetings also approved the use of "combined" interrogation techniques
-- using different techniques during interrogations instead of using one
method at a time -- on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break,
sources said." ... "Critics at home and abroad have harshly criticized
the interrogation program, which pushed the limits of international law
and, they say, condoned torture." (1, 2,
3,
4)
-By Jan Crawford Greenburg, Howard L. Rosenberg and
Ariane de Vogue -ABCNEWS.com
Dick
Cheney - John
Ashcroft - 
Jay
Bybee - 
Michael
Mukasey
- Torture
- War
Crimes - Government
- Military
- Intelligence
- Terrorism
- Politics
- Secret
- Law
- History
- US
- Overseas
- "Cheney,
Others OK'd Harsh Interrogations." ... "[Republican
President] Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney
on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected
terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality,
The Associated Press has learned." ... "The officials also took care to
insulate President Bush from a series of meetings where CIA [Central Intelligence
Agency] interrogation methods, including waterboarding, which simulates
drowning, were discussed and ultimately approved." ... "Between 2002 and
2003, the Justice Department issued several memos from its Office of Legal
Counsel that justified using the interrogation tactics, including ones
that critics call torture." ... "The meetings were held in the White House
Situation Room in the years immediately following the [September] Sept.
11 attacks. Attending the sessions were Cheney, then-Bush aides Attorney
General John Ashcroft, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George
Tenet and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice." ... "The principals
eventually authorized physical abuse such as slaps and pushes, sleep deprivation,
or waterboarding. This technique involves strapping a person down and pouring
water over his cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning."
... "The Office of Legal Counsel issued at least two opinions on interrogation
methods." ... "In one, dated [August] Aug. 1, 2002, then-Assistant Attorney
General Jay Bybee defined torture as covering "only extreme acts" causing
pain similar in intensity to that caused by death or organ failure. A second,
dated March 14, 2003, justified using harsh tactics on detainees held overseas
so long as military interrogators did not specifically intend to torture
their captives." ... "Both legal opinions since have been withdrawn." ...
"The department issued another still-secret memo in October 2001 that,
in part, sought to outline novel ways the military could be used domestically
to defend the country in the face of an impending attack. The Justice Department
so far has refused to release it, citing attorney-client privilege, and
Attorney General Michael Mukasey declined to describe it Thursday at a
Senate panel where Democrats characterized it as a "torture memo."" -By
Lara Jakes Jordan and Pamel Hess contributed to by Pete Yost
-AP via -SeattleTimes
Investigation
- Classified
- Military
- Intelligence
- Torture
- Prisons
- US
- Afghanistan
- Guantanamo
- Cuba
- Iraq
- International
- "Exclusive:
Pentagon delays report on FBI role in detainee abuse."
... "The release of a report on the FBI's [Federal Bureau of Investigation]
role in the interrogations of prisoners in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay
[Cuba] and Iraq has been delayed for months because the Pentagon is reviewing
how
much of it should remain classified, according to the Justice Department's
watchdog." ... "Glenn Fine, the Justice Department's inspector general,
told McClatchy that his office has pressed the Defense Department to finish
its review, but officials there haven't completed the process "in a timely
fashion."" ... "Fine is investigating whether FBI employees participated
in detainee abuse, whether they witnessed or reported incidents of abuse,
and how such reports were handled by the bureau." ... "Fine launched his
investigation into the FBI's role in the interrogations in early 2005 amid
disclosures that FBI agents had witnessed and complained about harsh interrogation
practices of detainees, including seeing Guantanamo Bay detainees who had
defecated and urinated on themselves and who had been chained on the floor
for more than 24 hours without food or water in more than 100 degree temperatures."
... "The delays come as the [Republican President] Bush administration
is under fire for its legal justifications of harsh interrogation practices,
which critics say equated to an endorsement of torture prohibited by U.S.
[United States] and international laws." -By
Marisa
Taylor -McClatchyDC.com
Dick
Cheney
- John
Ashcroft - Jay
Scott Bybee - Torture
- War
Crimes - Military
- Government
- Intelligence
- Terrorism
- US
- International
- Law
- Secret- Politics
- Prisoners
- "Sources:
Top Bush Advisors Approved 'Enhanced Interrogation':
Detailed Discussions Were Held About Techniques to Use on al Qaeda Suspects."
... "In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the [Republican President
Bush] White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed
and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would
be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News."
... "The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved
the use of "combined" interrogation techniques -- using different techniques
during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time -- on terrorist
suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said." ... "Highly placed
sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA [Central
Intelligence Agency] would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether
they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated
drowning, called waterboarding." ... "The high-level discussions about
these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources
said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down
to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic." ... "The
advisers were members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee,
a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President
Bush on issues of national security policy." ... "At the time, the Principals
Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor
Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State
Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General
John Ashcroft." ... "Critics at home and abroad have harshly criticized
the interrogation program, which pushed the limits of international law
and, they say, condoned torture. Bush and his top aides have consistently
defended the program. They say it is legal and did not constitute torture."
... "Lawyers in the Justice Department had written a classified memo, which
was extensively reviewed, that gave formal legal authority to government
interrogators to use the "enhanced" questioning tactics on suspected terrorist
prisoners. The August 2002 memo, signed by then head of the Office of Legal
Counsel Jay Bybee, was referred to as the so-called "Golden Shield" for
CIA agents, who worried they would be held liable if the harsh interrogations
became public." (1, 2,
3,
4)
-By Jan Crawford Greenburg, Howard L. Rosenberg and
Ariane de Vogue -ABCNEWS.com
John
C Yoo - Torture- War
Crimes - Criminal
- Military
- Intelligence
- Law
- Language
- Politics
- Terrorism
- Government
- Prisoners
- Human
Rights - California
- 
Indiana
- "Permissible
Assaults Cited in Graphic Detail." ... "Thirty pages
into a memorandum discussing the legal boundaries of military interrogations
in 2003, senior [Republican President Bush's deputy Office of Legal Counsel]
Justice Department lawyer John C. Yoo tackled a question not often asked
by American policymakers: Could the president, if he desired, have a prisoner's
eyes poked out?" ... "Or, for that matter, could he have "scalding water,
corrosive acid or caustic substance" thrown on a prisoner? How about slitting
an ear, nose or lip, or disabling a tongue or limb? What about biting?"
... "These assaults are all mentioned in a U.S. [United States] law prohibiting
maiming, which Yoo parsed as he clarified the legal outer limits of what
could be done to terrorism suspects as detained by U.S. authorities. The
specific prohibitions, he said, depended on the circumstances or which
"body part the statute specifies."" ... "But none of that matters in a
time of war, Yoo also said, because federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming
and other crimes by military interrogators are trumped by the president's
ultimate authority as commander in chief." ... "It [Yoo's memorandum] repeats
an assertion in another controversial Yoo memo that an interrogation tactic
cannot be considered torture unless it would result in "death, organ failure
or serious impairment of bodily functions."" ... "Yoo, who is now a law
professor at the University of California at Berkeley [California], also
uses footnotes to effectively dismiss the Fourth and Fifth amendments to
the Constitution, arguing that protections against unreasonable search
and seizure and guarantees of due process either do not apply or are irrelevant
in a time of war." ... "Written opinions by the Office of Legal Counsel
have the force of law within the government because its staff is assigned
to interpret the meaning of statutory or constitutional language. Yoo's
2003 memo has evoked strong criticism from legal academics, human rights
advocates and military-law experts, who say that he was wrong on basic
matters of constitutional law and went too far in authorizing harsh and
coercive interrogation tactics by the Defense Department." ... ""Having
81 pages of legal analysis with its footnotes and respectable-sounding
language makes the reader lose sight of what this is all about," said Dawn
Johnsen, an OLC chief during the [Democratic President Bill] Clinton administration
who is now a law professor at Indiana University [Indiana]. "He is saying
that poking people's eyes out and pouring acid on them is beyond Congress's
ability to limit a president. It is an unconscionable document."" -By
Dan Eggen -WashingtonPost
Noteworthy
- Media
- John
Yoo - Mike
Mukasey
- Torture
- Lawbreaking
- Surveillance
- Military
- Intelligence
- Terrorism
- Political
- Enforcement
- Barack
Obama - 
Pennsylvania
- US
- Iraq
- "The
U.S. establishment media in a nutshell." ... "In
the past two weeks, the following events transpired. A Department of Justice
memo, authored by John Yoo, was released which authorized torture and presidential
lawbreaking. It was revealed that the [Republican President Bush] Bush
administration declared the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights to be
inapplicable to "domestic military operations" within the U.S. [United
States] The U.S. Attorney General [Michael Mukasey] appears to have fabricated
a key event leading to the 9/11 attacks and made patently false statements
about surveillance laws and related lawsuits. Barack Obama went bowling
in Pennsylvania and had a low score." ... "Here are the number of times,
according to NEXIS, that various topics have been mentioned in the media
over the past thirty days:" ... ""Yoo and torture" - 102" ... ""Mukasey
and 9/11" -- 73" ... ""Yoo and Fourth Amendment" -- 16" ...
""Obama and bowling" -- 1,043" ... ""Obama and Wright" --
More than 3,000 (too many to be counted)" ... ""Obama and patriotism"
- 1,607" ... ""Clinton and Lewinsky" -- 1,079" ... "And as Eric
Boehlert documents,
even Iraq -- that little five-year U.S. occupation with no end in sight
-- has been virtually written out of the media narrative in favor of mindless,
stupid, vapid chatter of the type referenced above." ... "Think about it
this way: if you were a high government official and watched as -- all
in a couple of weeks time -- it is revealed, right out in the open, that
you suspended the Fourth Amendment, authorized torture, proclaimed yourself
empowered to break the law, and sent the nation's top law enforcement officer
to lie blatantly about how and why the 9/11 attacks happened so that you
could acquire still more unchecked spying power and get rid of lawsuits
that would expose what you did, and the political press in this country
basically ignored all of that and blathered on about Obama's bowling score
and how he eats chocolate, wouldn't you also conclude that you could do
anything you want, without limits, and know there will be no consequences?
What would be the incentive to stop doing all of that?" -By
Glenn
Greenwald -Salon
John
Yoo - Alberto
Gonzales - Surveillance
- Military
- Government
- Terrorism
- Intelligence
- Politics
- Secret
- Law
- History
- Liberties
- "Memo
Justified Warrantless Surveillance." ... "For at
least 16 months after the Sept. [September] 11 terror attacks in 2001,
the [Republican President] Bush administration believed that the Constitution's
protection against unreasonable searches and seizures on U.S. [United States]
soil didn't apply to its efforts to protect against terrorism." ... "That
view was expressed in a Justice Department legal memo dated Oct. [October]
23, 2001. The administration on Wednesday stressed that it now disavows
that view." ... "The October 2001 memo was written at the request of the
[Republican President Bush] White House by John Yoo, then the deputy assistant
attorney general, and addressed to Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel
at the time. The administration had asked the department for an opinion
on the legality of potential responses to terrorist activity." ... "The
37-page memo has not been released. Its existence was disclosed Tuesday
in a footnote of a separate secret memo, dated March 14, 2003, released
by the Pentagon in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by
the American Civil Liberties Union." ... ""Our office recently concluded
that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations,"
the footnote states, referring to a document titled "Authority for Use
of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States.""
... "Exactly what domestic military action was covered by the October memo
is unclear. But federal documents indicate that the memo relates to the
National Security Agency's Terrorist Surveillance Program, or TSP." -By
Pamela Hess and Lara Jakes Jordan -AP
via -SFGate.com
John
Yoo - Gonzales
- Cheney
- 
Addington
- War
Crimes - 
