2006 Noteworthy News:

Noteworthy - Japan- US - World - Auto - Technology - Workers - Politics - History - Fuel - "Toyota’s Sales Projections Show It Surpassing G.M.." ... "Toyota Motor said today it plans to sell 9.34 million vehicles next year, a figure that analysts said would put it ahead of troubled General Motors as the world’s largest auto company." ... "Toyota reported global group sales this year of 8.8 million cars and trucks, below G.M.’s 2006 sales forecast of 9.2 million vehicles. But the figures released today showed the two rival car giants on starkly different trajectories, with Toyota expecting to add a half million vehicle sales next year, at a time when G.M. is shuttering plants and laying off workers." ... "Surpassing G.M. would be a crowning achievement for Toyota, a company that got its start in the 1930s by reverse-engineering G.M. and Ford cars, and that spent decades catching up with Detroit. It would also end G.M.’s 81-year reign over the global auto industry, and mark another step in the rise of Asian carmakers." ... "Analysts also said reaching the top would not exhaust Toyota’s opportunities for growth. They said Toyota will continue to gain in the American market, where higher gas prices have increased the popularity of smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles." ... "Toyota’s rise would also prove a victory of sorts for its unique corporate culture, the so-called Toyota Way, which is rooted in an obsession with craftsmanship and constant improvement, or “kaizen.”" -By Martin Fackler -NYTimes 

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US - Iraq - Military - Police - Terrorism- Religion - Intelligence - Politics- Analysis - "Intensified Combat on Streets Likely." ... "President Bush's plan to send tens of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi reinforcements to Baghdad to jointly confront Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias is likely to touch off a more dangerous phase of the war, featuring months of fighting in the streets of the Iraqi capital, current and former military officials warned." ... "The prospect of a more intense battle in the Iraqi capital could put U.S. military commanders in exactly the sort of tough urban fight that war planners strove to avoid during the spring 2003 invasion of the country. The plan to partner U.S. and Iraqi units may compel American soldiers to rely on questionable Iraqi army and police forces as never before. And while the president insisted there is no timetable associated with the troop increase, military officials said sustaining it for more than a few months would place a major new strain on U.S. forces that already are feeling burdened by an unexpectedly long and difficult war." ... "Most of all, the White House's insistence on confronting all insurgents and militias, both Sunni and Shiite, may mean that the U.S. military will wind up fighting the Mahdi Army of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. That militia is estimated by some U.S. intelligence officials to have grown over the past year to about 60,000 fighters, and some in the Pentagon consider it more militarily effective than the Iraqi army." -By Thomas E. Ricks and Ann Scott Tyson -WashingtonPost

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US - Iraq- Afghanistan - Government - Military - Technology - Money - Politics - People - Flying - Vehicles - Alabama - "U.S. Army Battling To Save Equipment: Gear Piles Up at Depots, Awaiting Repair." ... "Field upon field of more than 1,000 battered M1 tanks, howitzers and other armored vehicles sit amid weeds here at the 15,000-acre Anniston Army Depot [Alabama] -- the idle, hulking formations symbolic of an Army that is wearing out faster than it is being rebuilt." ... "The Army and Marine Corps have sunk more than 40 percent of their ground combat equipment into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to government data. An estimated $17 billion-plus worth of military equipment is destroyed or worn out each year, blasted by bombs, ground down by desert sand and used up to nine times the rate in times of peace. The gear is piling up at depots such as Anniston, waiting to be repaired." ... "The depletion of major equipment such as tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and especially helicopters and armored Humvees has left many military units in the United States without adequate training gear, officials say. Partly as a result of the shortages, many U.S. units are rated "unready" to deploy, officials say, raising alarm in Congress and concern among military leaders at a time when Iraq strategy is under review by the White House and the bipartisan Iraq Study Group." ... "Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, is lobbying hard for more money to repair what he calls the "holes" in his force, saying current war funding is inadequate to make the Army "well." Asked in a congressional hearing this past summer whether he was comfortable with the readiness levels of non-deployed Army units, Schoomaker replied: "No."" ... "Despite the work piling up, the Army's depots have been operating at about half their capacity because of a lack of funding for repairs." -By Ann Scott Tyson -WashingtonPost

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Noteworthy - Secret - US - Iraq - Iran - Religious - Terrorism - Military - Intelligence - History - "Gates’ CIA Past Could Haunt Him in Confirmation Hearings." ... "President Bush’s pick to replace Donald H. Rumsfeld with former CIA Director Robert Gates is an odd one, considering it’s almost certain to revive festering questions about the Bush administration’s handling of pre-war intelligence on Iraq." ... "In early 1987, his role in the so-called Iran-Contra affair, a secret White House operation to sell weapons to radical Islamic Iran in exchange for the release of U.S. hostages — and cash for CIA-backed rebels in Nicaragua — came under scrutiny." ... "Then, in during his 1991 nomination hearings to run the CIA, Gates ran into a buzz saw of testimony from a former agency analyst who said that during the 1980s Gates had skewered intelligence to fit the convictions of senior Reagan administration officials that Soviet agents had concocted a plot to assassinate the pope and were arming and encouraging Marxist revolutionary groups to carry out terrorist attacks." ... "Both theories turned out to be wrong, according Carolyn McGiffert Ekedahl, who headed a team of CIA analysts assigned the task of investigating the theory." ... "Senior former CIA analyst Mel Goodman charged Gates with a number of improprieties, including “the imposition of intelligence judgments, often over the protests of the consensus in the Directorate of Intelligence, to slant intelligence . . . suppression of intelligence that didn’t support the Casey agenda . . . (and) use of the Directorate of Operations to slant intelligence of the Directorate of Intelligence.”" -By Jeff Stein -CQ.com

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Secret - US - Iraq - Nuclear - Government - Military - Intelligence - Internet - Archive - History - Hoekstra - Michigan - Roberts - Kansas - Legislation - Politics - "U.S. Web Archive Is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Primer." ... "Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein." ... "But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb." ... "Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the director of national intelligence said access to the site had been suspended “pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing.”" ... "Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency, fearing that the information could help states like Iran develop nuclear arms, had privately protested last week to the American ambassador to the agency, according to European diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. One diplomat said the agency’s technical experts “were shocked” at the public disclosures." ... "The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs." ... "The director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, had resisted setting up the Web site, which some intelligence officials felt implicitly raised questions about the competence and judgment of government analysts. But President Bush approved the site’s creation after Congressional Republicans proposed legislation to force the documents’ release." ... "The campaign for the Web site was led by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Peter Hoekstra [Republican] of Michigan. Last November, he and his Senate counterpart, Pat Roberts [Republican] of Kansas, wrote to Mr. Negroponte, asking him to post the Iraqi material." (1, 2, 3) -By William J. Broad with contributions by Scott Shane -NYTimes 

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Noteworthy - US - Iraq- Military - Intelligence - Politics - History - "Bush owes troops an apology, not Kerry: Olbermann: Bush 'appearing to be stupid' about Kerry's joke." ... "A brief reminder, Mr. Bush: You are not the United States of America." ... "You are merely a politician whose entire legacy will have been a willingness to make anything political; to have, in this case, refused to acknowledge that the insult wasn't about the troops, and that the insult was not even truly about you either, that the insult, in fact, is you." ... "So now John Kerry has apologized to the troops; apologized for the Republicans' deliberate distortions." ... "Thus, the president will now begin the apologies he owes our troops, right?" ... "This president must apologize to the troops for having suggested, six weeks ago, that the chaos in Iraq, the death and the carnage, the slaughtered Iraqi civilians and the dead American service personnel, will, to history, "look like just a comma."" ... "This president must apologize to the troops because the intelligence he claims led us into Iraq proved to be undeniably and irredeemably wrong." ... "This president must apologize to the troops for having laughed about the failure of that intelligence at a banquet while our troops were in harm's way." ... "This president must apologize to the troops because the streets of Iraq were not strewn with flowers and its residents did not greet them as liberators." ... "This president must apologize to the troops because his administration ran out of "plan" after barely two months." ... "This president must apologize to the troops for getting 2,815 of them killed." (1, 2, 3, 4) -By Keith Olbermann -MSNBC

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Noteworthy - US - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Military - Intelligence - Torture - Terrorism - Prison - Religion - People - War Crimes - Law Enforcement - Politics - "Can the '20th hijacker' of Sept. 11 stand trial? Aggressive interrogation at Guantanamo may prevent his prosecution." ... "Mohammed al-Qahtani, detainee No. 063, was forced to wear a bra. He had a thong placed on his head. He was massaged by a female interrogator who straddled him like a lap dancer. He was told that his mother and sisters were whores. He was told that other detainees knew he was gay. He was forced to dance with a male interrogator. He was strip-searched in front of women. He was led on a leash and forced to perform dog tricks. He was doused with water. He was prevented from praying. He was forced to watch as an interrogator squatted over his Koran." ... "That much is known. These details were among the findings of the U.S. Army's investigation of al-Qahtani's aggressive interrogation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." ... "But only now is a picture emerging of how the interrogation policy developed, and the battle that law enforcement agents waged, inside Guantanamo and in the offices of the Pentagon, against harsh treatment of al-Qahtani and other detainees by military intelligence interrogators." ... "In interviews with MSNBC.com - the first time they have spoken publicly -former senior law enforcement agents described their attempts to stop the abusive interrogations. The agents of the Pentagon's Criminal Investigation Task Force, working to build legal cases against suspected terrorists, said they objected to coercive tactics used by a separate team of intelligence interrogators soon after Guantanamo's prison camp opened in early 2002. They ultimately carried their battle up to the office of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who approved the more aggressive techniques to be used on al-Qahtani and others." ... "Although they believed the abusive techniques were probably illegal, the Pentagon cops said their objection was practical. They argued that abusive interrogations were not likely to produce truthful information, either for preventing more al-Qaida attacks or prosecuting terrorists." ... "And they described their disappointment when military prosecutors told them not to worry about making a criminal case against al-Qahtani, the suspected "20th hijacker" of Sept. 11, because what had been done to him would prevent him from ever being put on trial." ... "Defense Department e-mails seen by MSNBC.com show that a delegation visiting Guantanamo on Sept. 25, 2002, included Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel and now attorney general; David S. Addington, legal counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, now his chief of staff; Timothy E. Flanigan, the deputy White House counsel; William Haynes III, the Pentagon general counsel; Larry Thompson, then deputy attorney general; Christopher A. Wray, the principal associate deputy attorney general, now head of Criminal Division at the Justice Department; and John Yoo, a lawyer in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, who reportedly had just helped write an Aug. 1, 2002, "torture memo" to Gonzales, defining torture narrowly as causing pain equivalent to organ failure or death." ... "The visiting VIPs met with Gen. Dunlavey and his staff, but not with any of the law enforcement investigators who opposed the aggressive interrogations." ... "Under the Military Commissions Act signed last week by President Bush, statements made under torture would not be admissible in a military trial." ... "But the law says a military judge could accept statements made under coercion. A court may have to decide which category, torture or coercion, encompasses such techniques as a fake trip to Egypt, sleep deprivation, and being forced to do dog tricks. The new law also extends legal protection from prosecution for war crimes to any U.S. personnel who used coercive tactics, if they believed in good faith that what they were doing was lawful." (1, 2, 3, 4) -By Bill Dedman -MSNBC

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Secret - Electronic - Voting Machines - Company - Hackers - Technology - Election 2006 - Politics- Maryland - "Electronic Voting Machines Could Skew Elections: Researchers, Candidates Have Little Confidence in Machines Designed to Make Elections Easier to Call." ... "Cheryl Kagan, a former Maryland Democratic legislator, was shocked when she opened her mail Wednesday morning." ... "Inside, she discovered three computer discs. With them was an anonymous letter saying the discs contained the secret source code for vote-counting that could be used to alter the votes cast through Maryland's new electronic voting machines." ... ""My understanding is that with these disks a malicious person could skew the outcome of an election," Kagan said." ... "Diebold, the company that makes the voting machines, told ABC News, "These discs do not alter the security of the Diebold touch-screen system in any way," because election workers can set their own passwords." ... "But ABC News has obtained an independent report commissioned by the state of Maryland and conducted by Science Applications International Corporation revealing that the original Diebold factory passwords are still being used on many voting machines." ... "The SAIC study also shows myriad other security flaws, including administrative over-ride passwords that cannot be changed by local officials but can be used by hackers or those who have seen the discs." (1, 2) -By Jake Tapper, Rebecca Abrahams, and Eduardo Sunol -ABCNEWS.com 

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Secret - Military - Terrorism - Torture - Prisons - Legislation - Religious - Civil Liberties - History - Politics - "Bush Signs Terror Interrogation Law." ... "President Bush signed legislation Tuesday authorizing tough interrogation of terror suspects and smoothing the way for trials before military commissions, calling it a "vital tool" in the war against terrorism." ... "Bush's plan for treatment of the terror suspects became law just six weeks after he acknowledged that the CIA had been secretly interrogating suspected terrorists overseas and pressed Congress to quickly give authority to try them in military commissions." ... "A coalition of religious groups staged a protest against the bill outside the White House, shouting "Bush is the terrorist" and "Torture is a crime." About 15 of the protesters, standing in a light rain, refused orders to move. Police arrested them one by one." ... "The law protects detainees from blatant abuses during questioning - such as rape, torture and "cruel and inhuman" treatment - but does not require that any of them be granted legal counsel. Also, it specifically bars detainees from filing habeas corpus petitions challenging their detentions in federal courts." ... "Many Democrats opposed the legislation because they said it eliminated rights of defendants considered fundamental to American values, such as a person's ability to go to court to protest their detention and the use of coerced testimony as evidence." ... "The American Civil Liberties Union said the new law is "one of the worst civil liberties measures ever enacted in American history."" ... ""The president can now, with the approval of Congress, indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero." ... ""Nothing could be further from the American values we all hold in our hearts than the Military Commissions Act," he said." -By Nedra Pickler -AP 

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Rove - Faith - Politics- Book - Foley - FL - "Book: Bush Aides Called Evangelicals 'Nuts': White House advisors sought the support of conservative Christians but mocked them in private, writes a onetime administration official." ... "A new book by a former White House official says that President Bush's top political advisors privately ridiculed evangelical supporters as "nuts" and "goofy" while embracing them in public and using their votes to help win elections." ... "The former official also writes that the White House office of faith-based initiatives, which Bush promoted as a nonpolitical effort to support religious social-service organizations, was told to host pre-election events designed to mobilize religious voters who would most likely favor Republican candidates." ... "The assertions by David Kuo, a top official in the faith-based initiatives program, have rattled Republican strategists already struggling to persuade evangelical voters to turn out this fall for the GOP." ... "Some conservatives lamented Thursday that the book, "Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction," also comes in the midst of the scandal involving former [Florida Republican] Rep. Mark Foley, another threat to conservative turnout in competitive House and Senate races." ... "In the book, Kuo, who quit the White House in 2003, accuses Karl Rove's political staff of cynically hijacking the faith-based initiatives idea for electoral gain. It assails Bush for failing to live up to his promises of boosting the role of religious organizations in delivering social services." ... "Kuo is not the first insider to accuse the White House of politicizing the faith-based program. John J. DiIulio Jr., the first director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, resigned after seven months and was quoted as saying that the White House was run by "Mayberry Machiavellians" who sometimes put politics ahead of other causes." ... "While many Democrats opposed the initiative as a violation of church-state separation, the White House used the program to build alliances with prominent African American ministers, some of whom switched political allegiances to back Bush. It was part of a larger minority outreach program designed by Rove and other conservative activists to slice off pieces of the traditional Democratic coalitions in order to build a lasting GOP majority." -By Peter Wallsten -LAtimes 

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Government - Military - Terrorism - Intelligence - History - Politics - Reporting - Book - "Records Show Tenet Briefed Rice on Al Qaeda Threat." ... "A review of White House records has determined that George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, did brief Condoleezza Rice and other top officials on July 10, 2001, about the looming threat from Al Qaeda, a State Department spokesman said Monday." ... "The account by Sean McCormack came hours after Ms. Rice, the secretary of state, told reporters aboard her airplane that she did not recall the specific meeting on July 10, 2001, noting that she had met repeatedly with Mr. Tenet that summer about terrorist threats. Ms. Rice, the national security adviser at the time, said it was “incomprehensible” she ignored dire terrorist threats two months before the Sept. 11 attacks." ... "Mr. McCormack also said records show that the Sept. 11 commission was informed about the meeting, a fact that former intelligence officials and members of the commission confirmed on Monday." ... "When details of the meeting emerged last week in a new book by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post, Bush administration officials questioned Mr. Woodward’s reporting." ... "Now, after several days, both current and former Bush administration officials have confirmed parts of Mr. Woodward’s account." ... "Officials now agree that on July 10, 2001, Mr. Tenet and his counterterrorism deputy, J. Cofer Black, were so alarmed about an impending Al Qaeda attack that they demanded an emergency meeting at the White House with Ms. Rice and her National Security Council staff." ... "According to two former intelligence officials, Mr. Tenet told those assembled at the White House about the growing body of intelligence the Central Intelligence Agency had collected pointing to an impending Al Qaeda attack." -By Philip Shenon and Mark Mazzetti -NYTimes

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Government - Military - Terrorism - Intelligence - History - Politics - "Rumsfeld, Ashcroft received warning of al Qaida attack before 9/11." ... "Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target that was given to the White House two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks." ... "The State Department's disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don't remember the warning." ... "One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as a "10 on a scale of 1 to 10" that "connected the dots" in earlier intelligence reports to present a stark warning that al-Qaida, which had already killed Americans in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and East Africa, was poised to strike again." ... "Former CIA Director George Tenet gave the independent Sept. 11, 2001, commission the same briefing on Jan. 28, 2004, but the commission made no mention of the warning in its 428-page final report. According to three former senior intelligence officials, Tenet testified to commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste and to Philip Zelikow, the panel's executive director and the principal author of its report, who's now Rice's top adviser." ... "A new book by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post alleges that Rice failed to take the July 2001 warning seriously when it was delivered at a White House meeting by Tenet, Cofer Black, then the agency's chief of top counterterrorism, and a third CIA official whose identity remains protected." ... "Rice's deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, who became national security adviser after she became secretary of state, and Rice's top counterterrorism aide, Richard Clarke, also were present." -By Jonathan S. Landay, Warren P. Stroebel, and John Walcott with contributions by Matt Stearns and Drew Brown -McClatchy via -RealCities

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Reynolds - Hastert - Foley - Boehner - E-Mails - Louisiana - Teen - Noteworthy - Lawmakers - Enforcement - Secrets - 2006 Election - NY - Ill - Fla - Ohio - Mich - "GOP Leader Rebuts Hastert on Foley: [New York Republican Thomas] Reynolds: Speaker Knew of E-Mails in Spring." ... "House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert ([Republican, Illnois] R-Ill.) was notified early this year of inappropriate e-mails from former representative Mark Foley ([Republican, Florida] R-Fla.) to a 16-year-old page, a top GOP House member said yesterday -- contradicting the speaker's assertions that he learned of concerns about Foley only last week." ... "Hastert did not dispute the claims of Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.), and his office confirmed that some of Hastert's top aides knew last year that Foley had been ordered to cease contact with the boy and to treat all pages respectfully." ... "Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, became the second senior House Republican to say that Hastert has known of Foley's contacts for months, prompting Democratic attacks about the GOP leadership's inaction. Foley abruptly resigned his seat Friday." ... "House Majority Leader John A. Boehner ([Republican] R-Ohio) told The Washington Post on Friday that he had learned in late spring of inappropriate e-mails Foley sent to the page, a boy from Louisiana, and that he promptly told Hastert, who appeared to know already of the concerns. Hours later, Boehner contacted The Post to say he could not be sure he had spoken with Hastert." ... "Yesterday's developments revealed a rift at the highest echelons of House Republican ranks a month before the Nov. 7 [2006] elections, and they threatened to expand the scandal to a full-blown party dilemma." ... "Republicans appeared to have kept the matter under wraps. Rep. Dale E. Kildee (Mich.), the only Democrat on the House Page Board, said yesterday: "I was never informed of the allegations about Mr. Foley's inappropriate communications with a House page, and I was never involved in any inquiry into this matter."" (1, 2) -By Jonathan Weisman and Charles Babington with contributions by R. Jeffrey Smith and Magda Jean-Louis -WashingtonPost

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Noteworthy - US - Iraq - Political - Intelligence - History- Book - "Book Says Bush Ignored Urgent Warning on Iraq." ... "The White House ignored an urgent warning in September 2003 from a top Iraq adviser who said that thousands of additional American troops were desperately needed to quell the insurgency there, according to a new book by Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter and author. The book describes a White House riven by dysfunction and division over the war." ... "The warning is described in “State of Denial,” scheduled for publication on Monday by Simon & Schuster. The book says President Bush’s top advisers were often at odds among themselves, and sometimes were barely on speaking terms, but shared a tendency to dismiss as too pessimistic assessments from American commanders and others about the situation in Iraq." ... "As late as November 2003, Mr. Bush is quoted as saying of the situation in Iraq: “I don’t want anyone in the cabinet to say it is an insurgency. I don’t think we are there yet.”" ... "Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is described as disengaged from the nuts-and-bolts of occupying and reconstructing Iraq — a task that was initially supposed to be under the direction of the Pentagon — and so hostile toward Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, that President Bush had to tell him to return her phone calls. The American commander for the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, is reported to have told visitors to his headquarters in Qatar in the fall of 2005 that “Rumsfeld doesn’t have any credibility anymore” to make a public case for the American strategy for victory in Iraq." ... "Robert D. Blackwill, then the top Iraq adviser on the National Security Council, is said to have issued his warning about the need for more troops in a lengthy memorandum sent to Ms. Rice. The book says Mr. Blackwill’s memorandum concluded that more ground troops, perhaps as many as 40,000, were desperately needed." ... "It says that Mr. Blackwill and L. Paul Bremer III, then the top American official in Iraq, later briefed Ms. Rice and Stephen J. Hadley, her deputy, about the pressing need for more troops during a secure teleconference from Iraq. It says the White House did nothing in response." (1, 2) -By David E. Sanger with contributions by Mark Mazzetti, David Johnston, and Julie Bosman -NYTimes

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US - Afghanistan - Iraq - Pakistan - Osama bin Laden - Religious - Terrorism - Money - Politics - Military - Intelligence - "Afghanistan, 5 years later: U.S. confront Taliban's return." ... "Afghanistan has become Iraq on a slow burn. Five years after they were ousted, the Taliban are back in force, their ranks renewed by a new generation of diehards. Violence, opium trafficking, ethnic tensions, official corruption and political anarchy are all worse than they've been at any time since the U.S.-led intervention in 2001." ... "By failing to stop Taliban leaders and Osama bin Laden from escaping into Pakistan, then diverting troops and resources to Iraq before finishing the job in Afghanistan, the Bush administration left the door open to a Taliban comeback. Compounding the problem, reconstruction efforts have been slow and limited, and the U.S. and NATO didn't anticipate the extent and ferocity of the Taliban resurgence or the alliances the insurgents have formed with other Islamic extremists and with the world's leading opium traffickers." ... "There are only 42,000 U.S. and NATO-led troops to secure a country that's half again the size of Iraq, where 150,000 U.S.-led coalition troops are deployed. Suicide bombings have soared from two in all of 2002 to about one every five days. Civilian casualties are mounting." ... "James Dobbins, who was President Bush's special envoy to Afghanistan, said that the administration dismissed European offers of a major peacekeeping force after the U.S. intervention and almost immediately began shifting military assets to invade Iraq." ... "The White House "resisted the whole concept of peacekeeping," said Dobbins. "They wanted to demonstrate a different approach, one that would be much lower cost. So the decision to skimp on manpower and deploy one-fiftieth the troops as were deployed in Bosnia was accompanied by a decision to underplay economic assistance." ... ""We invaded Afghanistan in October 2001. We conquered the country in December, and Congress was not asked to provide any (reconstruction) money until the following October," he continued. "Much of the money didn't show up for years. And not only were the actual sums relatively small, but with the failure to establish even a modicum of security in the countryside, there was no way to spend it."" ... "There are 22,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. But there are only 5,000 U.S. combat soldiers in eastern Afghanistan bordering Taliban refuges in Pakistan, a 27,000-square-mile area of vast deserts and mountains nearly the size of South Carolina." ... "ISAF [International Security Assistance Force led by NATO], with 20,000 troops from 36 nations, has only 8,000 troops for 77,000 square miles - slightly smaller than Minnesota - in the south." ... "The insurgents and their leaders operate from Pakistan, aided by Pakistani officials, radical Islamic parties and al Qaida. They're flush with recruits from Islamist seminaries on both sides of the border that offer religious instruction and combat training." ... "Taliban extremists also have been to Iraq for training in combat and bomb-making, and Iraqi insurgents have traveled to Pakistan to forge closer ties with Afghan and Pakistani extremists, according to U.S. intelligence officials." ... "The Afghan army has about 30,000 troops who participate in operations with U.S. and ISAF forces. But they lack basic equipment - helmets, radios and armored vehicles - and rely on U.S. and other foreign funds for their salaries." -By Jonathan S. Landay -McClatchy-RealCities

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US - Government - Intelligence - Iraq - Global - Religious - Military - Terrorism - Politics - "Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat." ... "A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks." ... "The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document." ... "The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe." ... "An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology." ... "The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official." ... "The estimate’s judgments confirm some predictions of a National Intelligence Council report completed in January 2003, two months before the Iraq invasion. That report stated that the approaching war had the potential to increase support for political Islam worldwide and could increase support for some terrorist objectives." ... "The [new] estimate concludes that the radical Islamic movement has expanded from a core of Qaeda operatives and affiliated groups to include a new class of “self-generating” cells inspired by Al Qaeda’s leadership but without any direct connection to Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants." ... "In early 2005, the National Intelligence Council released a study concluding that Iraq had become the primary training ground for the next generation of terrorists, and that veterans of the Iraq war might ultimately overtake Al Qaeda’s current leadership in the constellation of the global jihad leadership." (1, 2) -By Mark Mazzetti -NYTimes 

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Torture - Secret - Noteworthy - United States - Government - International - Military - Intelligence - Terrorism - Prisons - Human Rights - War Crimes - Law - Politics - Ariz - SC - VA - "The Abuse Can Continue: Senators won't authorize torture, but they won't prevent it, either." ... "The bad news is that Mr. Bush, as he made clear yesterday, intends to continue using the CIA to secretly detain and abuse certain terrorist suspects. He will do so by issuing his own interpretation of the Geneva Conventions in an executive order and by relying on questionable Justice Department opinions that authorize such practices as exposing prisoners to hypothermia and prolonged sleep deprivation. Under the compromise agreed to yesterday, Congress would recognize his authority to take these steps and prevent prisoners from appealing them to U.S. courts. The bill would also immunize CIA personnel from prosecution for all but the most serious abuses and protect those who in the past violated U.S. law against war crimes." ... "In short, it's hard to credit the statement by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) yesterday that "there's no doubt that the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved." In effect, the agreement means that U.S. violations of international human rights law can continue as long as Mr. Bush is president, with Congress's tacit assent. If they do, America's standing in the world will continue to suffer, as will the fight against terrorism." ... "In theory, Congress could override Mr. Bush's regulations governing treatment if it judges that they are being used to authorize unacceptable practices." ... "But the senators who have fought to rein in the administration's excesses -- led by Sens. McCain, Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and John W. Warner (R-Va.) -- failed to break Mr. Bush's commitment to "alternative" methods that virtually every senior officer of the U.S. military regards as unreliable, counterproductive and dangerous for Americans who may be captured by hostile governments." ... "Mr. Bush will go down in history for his embrace of torture and bear responsibility for the enormous damage that has caused." -WashingtonPost 

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US - Iraq - Government - Military - Money - Politics - "Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq." ... "After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon." ... "To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration." ... "O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade." ... "Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance --but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting." ... "The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort." (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) -By Rajiv Chandrasekaran -WashingtonPost 

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GOV - TV - Media - Telecom - Business -Law - "Media ownership study ordered destroyed: FCC draft suggested fewer owners would hurt local TV coverage." ... "The Federal Communications Commission ordered its staff to destroy all copies of a draft study that suggested greater concentration of media ownership would hurt local TV news coverage, a former lawyer at the agency says." ... "The report, written in 2004, came to light during the Senate confirmation hearing for FCC Chairman Kevin Martin." ... "Adam Candeub, now a law professor at Michigan State University, said senior managers at the agency ordered that "every last piece" of the report be destroyed. "The whole project was just stopped - end of discussion," he said. Candeub was a lawyer in the FCC's Media Bureau at the time the report was written and communicated frequently with its authors, he said." ... "The report, written by two economists in the FCC's Media Bureau, analyzed a database of 4,078 individual news stories broadcast in 1998. The broadcasts were obtained from Danilo Yanich, a professor and researcher at the University of Delaware, and were originally gathered by the Pew Foundation's Project for Excellence in Journalism." ... "The analysis showed local ownership of television stations adds almost five and one-half minutes of total news to broadcasts and more than three minutes of "on-location" news. The conclusion is at odds with FCC arguments made when it voted in 2003 to increase the number of television stations a company could own in a single market." -AP via -MSNBC 

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Noteworthy - US - Iraq - Secret - Censored - Intelligence - Transportation - Government - Politics - Virginia - "[US Army Fort] Eustis chief: Iraq post-war plan muzzled: Army Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, an early planner of the war, tells about challenges of invasion and rebuilding." ... "Months before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists from developing plans for securing post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday." ... "In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a post-war plan." ... "Rumsfeld did replace Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff in 2003, after Shinseki told Congress that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to secure post-war Iraq." ... "Scheid, who is also the commander of Fort Eustis in Newport News [Virginia], made his comments in an interview with the Daily Press. He retires in about three weeks." ... "Scheid said the planners continued to try "to write what was called Phase 4," or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations like occupation." ... "Even if the troops didn't stay, "at least we have to plan for it," Scheid said." ... ""I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that," Scheid said. "We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today." ... ""He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war."" -By Stephanie Heinatz with contributions by Tracy Sorensen-DailyPress.com

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Noteworthy - US - Iraq - Military - Terrorism - Religion - Osama bin Laden - Dick Cheney - Politics - "Intelligence Didn't Back Bush Iraq Claims, Senate Reports Say." ... "Bush administration claims justifying the war against Iraq were based on fragmented, conflicting, and at times unreliable intelligence, according to two reports released today by the Senate Intelligence Committee." ... "Administration statements that Saddam Hussein was allied with Osama bin Laden and was helping al-Qaeda obtain chemical and biological weapons proved wrong and misleading and weren't based on solid intelligence in its possession, the declassified Senate reports said." ... "Contrary to assertions by Vice President Dick Cheney and other senior Bush administration officials, Hussein didn't have links to al-Qaeda and the Sept. 11 terrorist plot, the reports said." ... "``Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime,'' one of the reports said. Hussein refused all requests from al-Qaeda to provide material or operational support, said the reports." ... "Allegations that Hussein provided chemical and biological weapons training to al-Qaeda operatives also turned out to be false, the reports said. The Defense Intelligence Agency said in 2002 that it was unlikely Iraq gave Bin Laden any useful weapons assistance." ... "While Bin Laden's al-Qaeda lieutenant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was in Iraq in 2002, he was traveling under cover and eluded efforts by Hussein to capture him, the reports said." -By William Roberts and James Rowley -Bloomberg 

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Noteworthy - US - World - Military - Intelligence - Legislation - Secret - Prisons - Human Rights - War Crimes Act - "Interrogation Methods Rejected by Military Win Bush’s Support." ... "Many of the harsh interrogation techniques repudiated by the Pentagon on Wednesday would be made lawful by legislation put forward the same day by the Bush administration. And the courts would be forbidden from intervening." ... "The proposal is in the last 10 pages of an 86-page bill devoted mostly to military commissions, and it is a tangled mix of cross-references and pregnant omissions." ... "But legal experts say it adds up to an apparently unique interpretation of the Geneva Conventions, one that could allow C.I.A. operatives and others to use many of the very techniques disavowed by the Pentagon, including stress positions, sleep deprivation and extreme temperatures." ... "So-called high-value detainees held by the C.I.A. have been subjected to tough interrogation in secret prisons around the world." ... "More run-of-the-mill prisoners held by the Defense Department have, for the most part, faced milder questioning, although human rights groups say there have been widespread abuses." ... "The new bill would continue to give the C.I.A. the substantial freedom it has long enjoyed, while the revisions to the Army Field Manual announced Wednesday would further restrict military interrogators." ... "The legislation would leave open the possibility that the military could revise its own standards to allow the harsher techniques." ... "The intent of the legislation, they [anonymous senior officials] said, is to prevent the prosecution of interrogators under amendments to the War Crimes Act that were passed in the 1990’s." ... "The bill proposed by the White House would also amend the War Crimes Act, which makes violations of Common Article 3 a felony." (1, 2) -By Adam Liptak with contributions by Neil A. Lewis -NYTimes 

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- US - Iraq - Government - Military - Terrorism - Intelligence - Politics - Noteworthy - Religion - Human Rights - Law - History - Salt Lake City - Utah - Ross C. Anderson

Ross C. Anderson, Mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah
Challenging the Culture of Obedience.
 

"A patriot is a person who loves his or her country. Who among you loves your country so much that you have come here today to raise your voice out of deep concern for our nation--and for our world?

And who among you loves your country so much that you insist that our nation's leaders tell us the truth?

Let's hear it: "Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give us the truth!"

Let no one deny we are patriots. We love our country, we hold dear the values upon which our nation was founded, and we are distressed at what our President, his Administration, and our Congress are doing to, and in the name of, our great nation.

Blind faith in bad leaders is not patriotism.

A patriot does not tell people who are intensely concerned about their country to just sit down and be quiet; to refrain from speaking out in the name of politeness or for the sake of being a good host; to show slavish, blind obedience and deference to a dishonest, war-mongering, human-rights-violating President.

That is not a patriot. Rather, that person is a sycophant. That person is a member of a frightening culture of obedience--a culture where falling in line with authority is more important than choosing what is right, even if it is not easy, safe, or popular. And, I suspect, that person is afraid--afraid we are right, afraid of the truth (even to the point of denying it), afraid he or she has put in with an oppressive, inhumane regime that does not respect the laws and traditions of our country, and that history will rank as the worst presidency our nation has ever had to endure.

In response to those who believe we should blindly support this disastrous President, his Administration, and the complacent, complicit Congress, listen to the words of Theodore Roosevelt, a great President and a Republican, who said: The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole.

Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."

" -By Ross C. "Rocky" Anderson, mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah speech, Challenging the Culture of Obedience. - Ross C. Anderson

US - Iraq - Government - Military - Politics - "Feeling morally, intellectually confused?" ... "The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack." ... "Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet." ... "Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of every American." ... "For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve." ... "Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq." ... "It is also essential.  Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong." -By Keith Olbermann -MSNBC

• -Video via CrooksandLiars.com

US - Iraq - Government - Military - People - Money - Politics - "Soldiers die, CEOs prosper." ... "More than 2,600 US soldiers have died in Iraq. July's toll for Iraqi civilians was 3,500, the deadliest month of the US occupation. Iraq's civil war is on pace to kill 25,000 to 30,000 civilians by year's end. If you add in the tens of thousands of deaths from the 2003 invasion (we do not know the exact number because the Pentagon won't comment), researchers will inevitably say that the body count has crossed 100,000." ... "As [American] soldiers have died in displaying personal patriotism, the pay gap between soldiers and defense CEOs has exploded. Before 9/11, the gap between CEOs of publicly traded companies and army privates was already a galling 190 to 1. Today, it is 308 to 1. The average army private makes $25,000 a year. The average defense CEO makes $7.7 million." ... "The top profiteers after 9/11 were the CEOs of United Technologies ($200 million), General Dynamics ($65 million), Lockheed Martin ($50 million), and Halliburton ($49 million)." ... "While Army privates died overseas earning $25,000 a year, David Brooks, the disgraced former CEO of body-armor maker DHB, made $192 million in stock sales in 2004. He staged a reported $10 million bat mitzvah for his daughter. The 2005 pay package for Halliburton CEO David Lesar, head of the firm that most symbolizes the occupation's waste, overcharges, and ghost charges on no-bid contracts, was $26 million, according to the report's analysis of federal Securities and Exchange Commission filings." ... "``Those examples take the cake, especially because it's all related to their government contracts, which is money straight out of the taxpayer's pocket," Leondar-Wright said." -By Derrick Z. Jackson -Boston/Globe 

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Secret - US - International - Government - Terrorism - Intelligence - Law - Free Speech - Privacy - Telephone - Internet - Civil Righs - Journalists - Educators - Michigan - "NSA eavesdropping program ruled unconstitutional: Justice Department says it will appeal judge's decision." ... "A federal judge on Thursday ruled that the U.S. government's domestic eavesdropping program is unconstitutional and ordered it ended immediately." ... "The Justice Department said it would appeal the ruling, saying the program was "a critical tool that ensures we have in place an early warning system to detect and prevent a terrorist attack."" ... "In a 44-page memorandum and order, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, -- who is based in Detroit, Michigan -- struck down the National Security Agency's program, which she said violates the rights to free speech and privacy. (Read the complete ruling -- PDF)" ... "The defendants "are permanently enjoined from directly or indirectly utilizing the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) in any way, including, but not limited to, conducting warrantless wiretaps of telephone and Internet communications, in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Title III," she wrote." ... "She further declared that the program "violates the separation of powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth amendments to the United States Constitution, the FISA and Title III."" ... "She went on to say that "the president of the United States ... has undisputedly violated the Fourth in failing to procure judicial orders."" ... "The lawsuit, filed January 17 by civil rights organizations, lawyers, journalists and educators, "challenges the constitutionality of a secret government program to intercept vast quantities of the international telephone and Internet communications of innocent Americans without court approval."" -With contributions by Bill Mears and Andrea Koppel-CNN 

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US - World - Government - Intelligence - Free Speech - Privacy - Civil Liberties - Journalists - Scholars - Michigan - "Judge nixes warrantless surveillance." ... "A federal judge ruled Thursday that the government's warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it." ... "U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit [Michigan] became the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency's program, which she says violates the rights to free speech and privacy as well as the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution." ... ""Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution," Taylor wrote in her 43-page opinion." ... "The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of journalists, scholars and lawyers who say the program has made it difficult for them to do their jobs. They believe many of their overseas contacts are likely targets of the program, which involves wiretapping conversations between people in the U.S. and people in other countries." -By Sarah Karush -AP via -HoustonChronicle.com 

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DCI - Marketing - Oil - Corporation - Politics - Global - Climate - Internet - Computer- Entertainment -  - Environment - Al Gore - "Al Gore YouTube Spoof Not So Amateurish: Republican PR [public relations] Firm Said to Be Behind 'Inconvenient Truth' Spoof." ... "A tiny little movie making fun of Al Gore, supposedly made by an amateur filmmaker, recently appeared on the popular Web site YouTube.com." ... "At first blush, the spoof seemed like a scrappy little homemade film poking fun at Gore and his anti-global warming crusade." ... "The film actually came from a slick Republican public relations firm called DCI, which just happens to have oil giant Exxon as a client." ... "Public relations firms have long used computer technology to create bogus grassroots campaigns, which are called "Astroturf."" ... "Now these firms are being hired to push illusions on the Internet to create the false impression of real people blogging, e-mailing and making films. " (1, 2) -By Jake Tapper and Max Culhane -ABCNEWS.com

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DCI - Marketing - Psychology - Oil - Corporation - Politics - Opinion - Internet - Video - California - Entertainment - Media - Search Engine - Computer - Communications - EMail - Environmental - Science - Global - Climate - Al Gore - "Where did that video spoofing Gore's film come from?" ... "Everyone knows Al Gore stars in the global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." But who created "Al Gore's Penguin Army," a two-minute video now playing on YouTube.com?" ... "Like other videos on the popular YouTube site, it has a home-made, humorous quality. The video's maker is listed as "Toutsmith," a 29-year-old who identifies himself as being from Beverly Hills [California] in an Internet profile." ... "In an email exchange with The Wall Street Journal, Toutsmith didn't answer when asked who he was or why he made the video, which has just over 59,000 views on YouTube. However, computer routing information contained in an email sent from Toutsmith's Yahoo account indicate it didn't come from an amateur working out of his basement." ... "Instead, the email originated from a computer registered to DCI Group, a Washington, D.C., public relations and lobbying firm whose clients include oil company Exxon Mobil Corp [Corporation]." ... "The anti-Gore video represents a less well-known side of YouTube. As its popularity has exploded, the public video-sharing site has drawn marketers looking to build buzz for new music releases and summer blockbusters. Now, it's being tapped by political operatives, public relations experts and ad agencies to sway opinions." ... "DCI is no stranger to the debate over global warming. Partly through Tech Central Station, an opinion Web site it operates, DCI has sought to raise doubts about the science of global warming and about Mr. Gore's film, placing skeptical scientists on talk-radio shows and paying them to write editorials." ... "Internet videos could prove particularly potent, because they may influence watchers in ways they don't realize. Nancy Snow, a communications professor at California State University, Fullerton, viewed the penguin video and calls it a lesson in "Propaganda 101." It contains no factual information, but presents a highly negative image of the former vice president, she says. The purpose of such images is to harden the views of those who already view Mr. Gore negatively, Dr. Snow says." ... "Traffic to the penguin video, first posted on YouTube.com in May, got a boost from prominently placed sponsored links that appeared on the Google search engine when users typed in "Al Gore" or "Global Warming." The ads, which didn't indicate who had paid for them, were removed shortly after The Wall Street Journal contacted DCI Group on Tuesday." -By Antonio Regalado and Dionne Searcey with contributions by Jeffrey Ball -WSJ.com via -Post-Gazette.com

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Secret - Government - Law - Enforcement - Military - Intelligence - Aviation - Transportation - Terrorism - Politics - "9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by Pentagon: Allegations Brought to Inspectors General." ... "Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon's initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate." ... "Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources. Staff members and some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission, hoping to hide the bungled response to the hijackings, these sources said." ... "In the end, the panel agreed to a compromise, turning over the allegations to the inspectors general for the Defense and Transportation departments, who can make criminal referrals if they believe they are warranted, officials said." ... ""We to this day don't know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us," said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. "It was just so far from the truth. . . . It's one of those loose ends that never got tied."" ... "For more than two years after the attacks, officials with NORAD and the FAA provided inaccurate information about the response to the hijackings in testimony and media appearances." -By Dan Eggen -WashingtonPost 

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Noteworthy - Secret - Military - Intelligence - Terrorism - Detainee - Civil Righs - Politics - "Bush Submits New Terror Detainee Bill." ... "U.S. citizens suspected of terror ties might be detained indefinitely and barred from access to civilian courts under legislation proposed by the Bush administration, say legal experts reviewing an early version of the bill." ... "According to the draft, the military would be allowed to detain all "enemy combatants" until hostilities cease. The bill defines enemy combatants as anyone "engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners who has committed an act that violates the law of war and this statute."" ... "Legal experts said Friday that such language is dangerously broad and could authorize the military to detain indefinitely U.S. citizens who had only tenuous ties to terror networks like al Qaeda." ... "Scott L. Silliman, a retired Air Force Judge Advocate, said the broad definition of enemy combatants is alarming because a U.S. citizen loosely suspected of terror ties would lose access to a civilian court — and all the rights that come with it. Administration officials have said they want to establish a secret court to try enemy combatants that factor in realities of the battlefield and would protect classified information." ... "The administration's proposal, as considered at one point during discussions, would toss out several legal rights common in civilian and military courts, including barring hearsay evidence, guaranteeing "speedy trials" and granting a defendant access to evidence. The proposal also would allow defendants to be barred from their own trial and likely allow the submission of coerced testimony." -By Anne Plummer Flaherty -AP via -SFGate.com 

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Noteworthy - International - US - Afghanistan - Iraq - Military - Intelligence - Terrorism - Detainee - Death Penalty - Human Rights - Politics - History - "Detainee Abuse Charges Feared: Shield Sought From '96 War Crimes Act." ... "An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts." ... "Senior officials have responded by drafting legislation that would grant U.S. personnel involved in the terrorism fight new protections against prosecution for past violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996. That law criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions governing conduct in war and threatens the death penalty if U.S.-held detainees die in custody from abusive treatment." ... "In light of a recent Supreme Court ruling that the international Conventions apply to the treatment of detainees in the terrorism fight, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has spoken privately with Republican lawmakers about the need for such "protections," according to someone who heard his remarks last week." ... "Gonzales told the lawmakers that a shield is needed for actions taken by U.S. personnel under a 2002 presidential order, which the Supreme Court declared illegal, and under Justice Department legal opinions that have been withdrawn under fire, the source said." ... "Since the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, hundreds of service members deployed to Iraq have been accused by the Army of mistreating detainees, and at least 35 detainees have died in military or CIA custody, according to a tally kept by Human Rights First. The military has asserted these were all aberrant acts by troops ignoring their orders." ... "Defense attorneys for many of those accused of involvement have alleged that their clients were pursuing policies of rough treatment set by officials in Washington. That claim is amplified in a 53-page Human Rights Watch report this week that quoted interrogators at three bases in Iraq as saying that abuse was part of regular, authorized procedures. But this argument has yet to gain traction in a military court, where U.S. policy requires that active-duty service members be tried for any maltreatment." (1, 2) -By R. Jeffrey Smith with contributions by Julie Tate and Madonna Lebling -WashingtonPost 

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Noteworthy - Government - Law - History - Politics - Religious - "Dobbs: Why is the president ignoring our laws? Bush, feds flout the Constitution by finding ways around laws." ... "With upraised right hand and left hand on the Bible, each of our presidents, from George Washington to George W. Bush, has solemnly sworn to "preserve, protect and defend" the Constitution of the United States." ... "The American Bar Association claims President Bush has violated that oath by issuing hundreds of "signing statements" to disregard selected provisions of the laws that Congress passed and he signed." ... "A bipartisan, 11-member panel of the ABA found that President Bush is not only disregarding laws but using such signing statements far more than any president in history. In fact, Bush has used signing statements to raise constitutional objections to more than 800 provisions in more than 100 laws. All of the presidents combined before 2001 had issued only 600." ... "The ABA asserts that signing statements cannot be a substitute for a presidential veto and that such an assertion of presidential power amounts to a line-item veto, which the Supreme Court already has ruled unconstitutional." ... "The matter will likely be resolved in court. But it stands as a metaphor for a 21st century America that is no longer secure in the claim to be a nation of laws." ... "As Abraham Lincoln said, if bad laws exist they should "be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed." President Lincoln devoutly believed that rule of law assured that ours would continue to be a government of the people, by the people and for the people." ... "And that should be the first demand of every American today." -By Lou Dobbs -CNN 

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Noteworthy - Political - History - "Legal Group Faults Bush for Ignoring Parts of Bills." ... "The American Bar Association said Sunday that President Bush was flouting the Constitution and undermining the rule of law by claiming the power to disregard selected provisions of bills that he signed." ... "In a comprehensive report, a bipartisan 11-member panel of the bar association said Mr. Bush had used such “signing statements” far more than his predecessors, raising constitutional objections to more than 800 provisions in more than 100 laws on the ground that they infringed on his prerogatives." ... "These broad assertions of presidential power amount to a “line-item veto” and improperly deprive Congress of the opportunity to override the veto, the panel said." ... "The bar association panel said the use of signing statements in this way was “contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers.” From the dawn of the Republic, it said, presidents have generally understood that, in the words of George Washington, a president “must approve all the parts of a bill, or reject it in toto.”" ... "Michael S. Greco, the president of the bar association, who created the study panel, said its report highlighted a “threat to the Constitution and to the rule of law.”" ... "The issue has deep historical roots, the panel said, noting that Parliament had condemned King James II for nonenforcement of certain laws in the 17th century. The panel quoted the English Bill of Rights: “The pretended power of suspending of laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of Parliament, is illegal.”" -By Robert Pear -NYTimes 

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Noteworthy - Secret - US - Belgium - International - Financial - Consumer - Civil Liberties - Free Speech - Media - Government - Terrorism - Law Enforcement - Intelligence - Politics - "What the Government Knows: While an overseas program to track bank records has unleashed a political storm, the domestic Patriot Act has already made a wealth of financial data available to U.S. law enforcement agencies." ... "Over the last four years, U.S. law enforcement agencies have gained access to over 28,000 financial records inside the United States under a little known provision of the USA Patriot Act that parallels the secret international bank data program disclosed by news organizations last week, Treasury Department records show." ... "The disclosure of the overseas program-under which Treasury Department officials have tapped into the records of a vast Belgian-based international financial database called Swift (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications)-has kicked up a storm of controversy. Some critics have decried the program as another example of the administration's invasion of privacy in the name of the war on terror.  At the same time, President Bush today condemned as "disgraceful" the disclosure of the operation, which intended to help the government track overseas money movements of suspected terrorists. "For people to leak that program, and for a newspaper to publish it, does great harm to the United States of America," Bush told reporters in Washington." ... "But the international program is only one part of a much broader, if little publicized, Treasury Department effort to probe suspect financial records-including thousands of bank accounts, wire transfers and other transactions involving individuals, companies and nonprofit organizations inside the United States." ... "Although it has received little attention, the Patriot Act program has produced a wealth of previously unavailable financial data that has been shared with U.S. law enforcement agencies-without any notice to the account holders who are being investigated. Since the fall of 2002, when the program began, U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN)-an arm of the Treasury Department-has directed searches of 4,397 "subjects of interest" and received reports back on 28,463 accounts and financial transactions, according to recent Treasury records." (1, 2) -By Michael Isikoff -MSNBC/Newsweek

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Noteworthy - Government - Police - Civil Righs - Politics - Samuel Alito - Sandra Day O'Connor - Homes - "Police don't have to knock, justices say: Alito's vote breaks 4-4 tie in police search case." ... "The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that police armed with a warrant can barge into homes and seize evidence even if they don't knock, a huge government victory that was decided by President Bush's new justices." ... "The 5-4 ruling clearly signals the court's conservative shift following the departure of moderate Sandra Day O'Connor." ... "The case tested previous court rulings that police armed with warrants generally must knock and announce themselves or they run afoul of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches." -AP via -CNN

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Noteworthy - Government - Intelligence - Law Enforcement - Politics - Karl Rove - I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby - Dick Cheney - Journalism - "What Ashcroft Was Told." ... "Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft continued to oversee the Valerie Plame-CIA leak probe for more than two months in late 2003 after he learned in extensive briefings that FBI agents suspected White House aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby of trying to mislead the FBI to conceal their roles in the leak, according to government records and interviews. Despite these briefings, which took place between October and December 2003, and despite the fact that senior White House aides might become central to the leak case, Ashcroft did not recuse himself from the matter until December 30, when he allowed the appointment of a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, to take over the investigation." ... "According to people with firsthand knowledge of the briefings, senior Justice Department officials told Ashcroft that the FBI had uncovered evidence that Libby, then chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, had misled the bureau about his role in the leaking of Plame's identity to the press." ... "By November, investigators had obtained personal notes of Libby's that indicated he had first learned from Cheney that Plame was a CIA officer. But Libby was insisting in FBI interviews that he had learned Plame's name and identity from journalists. Libby was also telling investigators that when he told reporters that Plame worked for the CIA, he was only passing along an unsubstantiated rumor." ... "Officials also told Ashcroft that investigators did not believe Libby's account, according to sources knowledgeable about the briefings, and that Libby might have lied to the FBI to defend other -- more senior -- administration officials." ... "Ashcroft was told no later than November 2003 that investigators also doubted the accounts that Rove, President George W. Bush's chief political adviser, had given the FBI as to how he, too, learned that Plame was a CIA officer and how he came to disclose that information to columnist Robert Novak." ... "It was Novak who, in a July 14, 2003, syndicated column, outed Plame as a CIA employee, relying on Rove as one of his sources." -By Murray Waas -NationalJournal

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Noteworthy - Government - Military - Intelligence - Computer - Database - Identity Theft - Law Enforcement - Maryland - "Data Theft Affected Most in Military: National Security Concerns Raised." ... "Social Security numbers and other personal information for as many as 2.2 million U.S. military personnel -- including nearly 80 percent of the active-duty force -- were among the data stolen from the home of a Department of Veterans Affairs analyst last month, federal officials said yesterday, raising concerns about national security as well as identity theft." ... "The department announced that personal data for as many as 1.1 million active-duty military personnel, 430,000 National Guard members and 645,000 reserve members may have been included on an electronic file stolen May 3 from a department employee's house in Aspen Hill [Maryland]. The data include names, birth dates and Social Security numbers, VA spokesman Matt Burns said." ... "Defense officials said the loss is unprecedented and raises concerns about the safety of U.S. military forces. But they cautioned that law enforcement agencies investigating the incident have not found evidence that the stolen information has been used to commit identity theft." ... "Army spokesman Paul Boyce said: "Obviously there are issues associated with identity theft and force protection."" ... "For example, security experts said, the information could be used to find out where military personnel live. "This essentially can create a Zip code for where each of the service members and [their] families live, and if it fell into the wrong hands could potentially put them at jeopardy of being targeted," said David Heyman, director of the homeland security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)." ... "Another worry is that the information could reach foreign governments and their intelligence services or other hostile forces, allowing them to target service members and their families, the experts said." (1, 2) -By Ann Scott Tyson and Christopher Lee with contributions by Ernesto Londoño -WashingtonPost 

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US - Iraq - International - Prisoner - Human Rights - Intelligence - Politics - "Army Manual to Skip Geneva Detainee Rule: The Pentagon's move to omit a ban on prisoner humiliation from the basic guide to soldier conduct faces strong State Dept. opposition." ... "The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans "humiliating and degrading treatment," according to knowledgeable military officials, a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards." ... "The decision could culminate a lengthy debate within the Defense Department but will not become final until the Pentagon makes new guidelines public, a step that has been delayed. However, the State Department fiercely opposes the military's decision to exclude Geneva Convention protections and has been pushing for the Pentagon and White House to reconsider, the Defense Department officials acknowledged." ... "For more than a year, the Pentagon has been redrawing its policies on detainees, and intends to issue a new Army Field Manual on interrogation, which, along with accompanying directives, represents core instructions to U.S. soldiers worldwide." ... "President Bush's critics and supporters have debated whether it is possible to prove a direct link between administration declarations that it will not be bound by Geneva and events such as the abuses at Abu Ghraib or the killings of Iraqi civilians last year in Haditha, allegedly by Marines." ... "But the exclusion of the Geneva provisions may make it more difficult for the administration to portray such incidents as aberrations. And it undercuts contentions that U.S. forces follow the strictest, most broadly accepted standards when fighting wars." (1, 2) -By Julian E. Barnes -LAtimes 

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Noteworthy - Opinion - US - Military - Terrorism - Countries - Intelligence - Libya - Egypt - Lebanon - China - North Korea - Iran - "Neo-cons question Bush’s democratisation strategy." ... "President George W. Bush has likened the “war on terrorism” to the cold war against communism." ... "Addressing military cadets graduating from West Point, Mr Bush reaffirmed at the weekend that the US “will not rest until the promise of liberty reaches every people in every nation”." ... "But as the US struggles to assert itself on the international stage, the president’s most radical supporters now dismiss this as mere rhetoric, and traditional conservatives are questioning the wisdom of a democratisation strategy that has brought unpleasant consequences in the Middle East." ... "Neo-conservative commentators at the American Enterprise Institute wrote last week what amounted to an obituary of the Bush freedom doctrine." ... "“Bush killed his own doctrine,” they said, describing the final blow as the resumption of diplomatic relations with Libya. This betrayal of Libyan democracy activists, they said, came after the US watched Egypt abrogate elections, ignored the collapse of the “Cedar Revolution” in Lebanon, abandoned imprisoned Chinese dissidents and started considering a peace treaty with Stalinist North Korea." ... "The neo-conservatives offered no explanation for desertion of the doctrine, other than a desire to make quick but transitory short-term gains. “The president continues to believe his own preaching, but his administration has become incapable of making the hard choices those beliefs require,” they wrote." -By Guy Dinmore -FT.com 

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Noteworthy - Law - Politics - History - Louisiana - "Separation Of Powers: Fight brewing." ... "What's being billed as an attempt to defuse a confrontation may instead show that the White House is spoiling for a constitutional fight over separation of powers." ... "Surely no president would stand for congressional security folks rifling through White House files in search of damning material." ... "The Constitution's so-called speech and debate clause has a long and storied history that can be traced back to the English Bill of Rights of 1689, according to research compiled on findlaw.com. In United States v. Brewster 1972, the Supreme Court explained that while a congressman taking a bribe was not immune from prosecution, the clause was "not written into the Constitution simply for the personal or private benefit of members of Congress, but to protect the integrity of the legislative process by insuring the independence of individual legislators."" ... "The criminal case looks bad for [Louisiana Democrat] Jefferson. There is a videotape of him accepting $100,000. Officers found $90,000 in cash stashed in his home freezer. Indeed, prosecutors would seem to have had plenty on Jefferson without risking a constitutional confrontation." ... "But even if Jefferson is proved corrupt, the larger concern is the harm that could be done by a corrupt executive seeking to discredit or intimidate a congressional enemy." -SeattlePI.NWsource 

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Noteworthy - Cheney - Terrorism - Libby - US - Colombia - Military - Science - Politics - "Cheney aide is screening legislation: Adviser seeks to protect Bush power." ... "The office of Vice President Dick Cheney routinely reviews pieces of legislation before they reach the president's desk, searching for provisions that Cheney believes would infringe on presidential power, according to former White House and Justice Department officials." ... "The officials said Cheney's legal adviser and chief of staff, David Addington, is the Bush administration's leading architect of the ``signing statements" the president has appended to more than 750 laws. The statements assert the president's right to ignore the laws because they conflict with his interpretation of the Constitution." ... "The Bush-Cheney administration has used such statements to claim for itself the option of bypassing a ban on torture, oversight provisions in the USA Patriot Act, and numerous requirements that they provide certain information to Congress, among other laws." ... "Using signing statements, the administration has challenged more laws than all previous administrations combined." ... "Addington played a major role in shaping the administration's legal policies in the war on terrorism, including a 2002 memo arguing that Bush could authorize interrogators to bypass anti torture laws. In October, when Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis ``Scooter" Libby, was indicted for perjury and resigned, Cheney replaced Libby with Addington." ... "In addition to the torture ban and oversight provisions of the Patriot Act, the laws Bush has claimed the authority to disobey include restrictions against US troops engaging in combat in Colombia, whistle-blower protections for government employees, and safeguards against political interference in taxpayer-funded research." ... "Mainstream legal scholars across the political spectrum reject Cheney's expansive view of presidential authority, saying the Constitution gives Congress the power to make all rules and regulations for the military and the executive branch and the Supreme Court has consistently upheld laws giving bureaucrats and certain prosecutors the power to act independently of the president." -By Charlie Savage -Boston/Globe 

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2006 Election - Political - Hacker - Technology - "Will Your Vote Count in 2006? 'When you're using a paperless voting system, there is no security,' says Stanford's David Dill." ... "Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the voting booth, here comes more disturbing news about the trustworthiness of electronic touchscreen ballot machines. Earlier this month a report by Finnish security expert Harri Hursti analyzed Diebold voting machines for an organization called Black Box Voting. Hursti found unheralded vulnerabilities in the machines that are currently entrusted to faithfully record the votes of millions of Americans." ... "How bad are the problems? Experts are calling them the most serious voting-machine flaws ever documented. Basically the trouble stems from the ease with which the machine's software can be altered. It requires only a few minutes of pre-election access to a Diebold machine to open the machine and insert a PC card that, if it contained malicious code, could reprogram the machine to give control to the violator. The machine could go dead on Election Day or throw votes to the wrong candidate. Worse, it's even possible for such ballot-tampering software to trick authorized technicians into thinking that everything is working fine, an illusion you couldn't pull off with pre-electronic systems. "If Diebold had set out to build a system as insecure as they possibly could, this would be it," says Avi Rubin, a Johns Hopkins University computer-science professor and elections-security expert." -By Steven Levy 20060529 Issue -MSNBC/Newsweek 

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- John Edwards - Cheney - Noteworthy - 2008 Election - "Edwards Bashes Cheney, Bush: 2004 vice presidential contender blasts Bush and readies to run again." -With George Stephanopoulos -ThisWeek-ABCNEWS.com 

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US - Iraq - Edwards - Cheney- Disaster - Energy - Health - Government - Intelligence - Law - History - 2008 Election - NC - "Edwards: Bush Worse than Nixon." ... "Former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., says George W. Bush is the "worst president of our lifetime," and "absolutely" worse than Watergate-tainted President Richard M. Nixon." ... "In an exclusive appearance on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," the former presidential and vice presidential contender said of Bush, "He's done a variety of things -- things which are going to take us forever to recover from." ... ""You have to give Bush and Cheney and gang credit for being good at politics -- you know, good at political campaigns," Edwards added. "They're very good at dividing the country and taking advantage of it. What they're not good at is governing, and it shows every single day in this administration. And the country is paying a huge price for that."" ... ""It is not an accident that he's [Vice President Cheney] unbelievably poorly thought of," Edwards said. "He is one of -- if not the --principal architects of this disaster in Iraq. He put us on an energy path that the American people are paying an enormous price for right now. He paid little to no attention to making sure the government was prepared to respond to the kind of disaster that hit our Gulf Coast. We've got a health care crisis going on, he's had no proposal of any kind that I know of. And people don't trust him anymore, which is understandable. I wouldn't trust him."" ... "Edwards made the pitch for a Democratic president in 2008, claiming the Bush has "intentionally ignored" the law and constitution in the NSA wiretapping controversy." (1, 2, 3, 4) -By Ed O'Keefe-ABCNEWS.com

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Government - Phone - Company - Noteworthy - Reporters - Free Speech - Civil Liberties - Privacy - Law - Politics - "FBI Acknowledges: Journalists Phone Records are Fair Game." ... "The FBI acknowledged late Monday that it is increasingly  seeking reporters' phone records in leak investigations." ... "Officials say the FBI makes extensive use of a new provision of the Patriot Act which allows agents to seek information with what are called National Security Letters (NSL)." ... "The NSLs are a version of an administrative subpoena and are not signed by a judge. Under the law, a phone company receiving a NSL for phone records must provide them and may not divulge to the customer that the records have been given to the government." -Brian Ross and Richard Esposito -ABCNEWS.com

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Government - Law Enforcement - Phone - Intelligence - Reporters - Free Speech - Civil Liberties - Privacy - Law - Politics - "Federal Source to ABC News: We Know Who You're Calling." ... "A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources." ... ""It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation." ... "ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls." ... "Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation." -Brian Ross and Richard Esposito -ABCNEWS.com

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Noteworthy - Voting Machines - Science - Hacker - Politics - Business - 2006 Election - 2008 Election - Pennsylvania - California - Iowa - "New Fears of Security Risks in Electronic Voting Systems." ... "With primary election dates fast approaching in many states, officials in Pennsylvania and California issued urgent directives in recent days about a potential security risk in their Diebold Election Systems touch-screen voting machines, while other states with similar equipment hurried to assess the seriousness of the problem." ... ""It's the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system," said Michael I. Shamos, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who is an examiner of electronic voting systems for Pennsylvania, where the primary is to take place on Tuesday." ... ""This is the barn door being wide open, while people were arguing over the lock on the front door," said Douglas W. Jones, a professor of computer science at the University of Iowa, a state where the primary is June 6." ... "The new concerns about Diebold's equipment were discovered by Harri Hursti, a Finnish computer expert who was working at the request of Black Box Voting Inc., a nonprofit group that has been critical of electronic voting in the past." ... "Aviel Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, did the first in-depth analysis of the security flaws in the source code for Diebold touch-screen machines in 2003. After studying the latest problem, he said: "I almost had a heart attack. The implications of this are pretty astounding."" -By Monica Davey with contributions by Gretchen Ruethling and John Schwartz -NYTimes

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Michael Hayden - Secret- Government - Terrorism - Telecommunications - Intelligence - Database- People - Business - Law - Civil Liberties - Privacy - Politics - "NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls." ... "The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY." ... "The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans —  most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews." ... ""It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added." ... "For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made —  across town or across the country —  to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others." ... "The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the sources said. The program is aimed at identifying and tracking suspected terrorists, they said." ... "The sources would talk only under a guarantee of anonymity because the NSA program is secret." ... "Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, nominated Monday by President Bush to become the director of the CIA, headed the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005. In that post, Hayden would have overseen the agency's domestic call-tracking program. Hayden declined to comment about the program." ... "The NSA's domestic program, as described by sources, is far more expansive than what the White House has acknowledged. Last year, Bush said he had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop — without warrants — on international calls and international e-mails of people suspected of having links to terrorists when one party to the communication is in the USA. Warrants have also not been used in the NSA's efforts to create a national call database." -By Leslie Cauley with contributions by John Diamond -USATODAY 

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Michael Hayden - Noteworthy - Secret - Government - Military - Terrorism - Intelligence - Civil Liberties - Telecom - Privacy - Law - Pennsylvania - "House Panel Chairman Opposes Hayden as Next CIA Chief (Update1)." ... "The Republican chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee urged the White House not to nominate Air Force Lieutenant General Michael Hayden to head the civilian Central Intelligence Agency." ... "The appointment may spark a political confrontation over Hayden's role in the government's warrantless wiretapping of suspected terrorists, a secret operation that alarmed civil liberties groups and angered Democrats. Lawmakers from both parties said his confirmation hearings in the Senate may provide an opportunity to examine a program the White House refuses to discuss in detail." ... "The Judiciary Committee chairman, Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said the confirmation process and the budget are the only tools Congress has to extract information from the White House on the wiretapping." ... "``If the Senate has a mind to assert its constitutional prerogatives here, then we could use this for leverage to find out,'' he told ``Fox News Sunday.'' ``I think people do want to know what's going on to protect civil liberties.''" -By Avram Goldstein with contributions by Catherine Larkin and Viola Gienger -Bloomberg 

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Government - Law - Politics - Military - Immigration - Nuclear - Science - History - Opinion - NY - "Bush challenges hundreds of laws: President cites powers of his office." ... "President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution." ... "Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research." ... "Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional." ... "David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive-power issues, said Bush has cast a cloud over ''the whole idea that there is a rule of law," because no one can be certain of which laws Bush thinks are valid and which he thinks he can ignore." ... "''Where you have a president who is willing to declare vast quantities of the legislation that is passed during his term unconstitutional, it implies that he also thinks a very significant amount of the other laws that were already on the books before he became president are also unconstitutional," Golove said." ... "Golove said that to the extent Bush is interpreting the Constitution in defiance of the Supreme Court's precedents, he threatens to ''overturn the existing structures of constitutional law."" ... "A president who ignores the court, backed by a Congress that is unwilling to challenge him, Golove said, can make the Constitution simply ''disappear."" -By Charlie Savage -Boston/Globe

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Noteworthy - Secret - Government - Intelligence - Privacy - Terrorism - Politics - "Examples of the president's signing statements." ... "The federal government is instructed to follow the statements when it enforces the laws." ... "March 9: Justice Department officials must give reports to Congress by certain dates on how the FBI is using the USA Patriot Act to search homes and secretly seize papers." ... "Bush's signing statement: The president can order Justice Department officials to withhold any information from Congress if he decides it could impair national security or executive branch operations." ... "Dec. 30, 2005: US interrogators cannot torture prisoners or otherwise subject them to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment." ... "Bush's signing statement: The president, as commander in chief, can waive the torture ban if he decides that harsh interrogation techniques will assist in preventing terrorist attacks." -By Charlie Savage -Boston/Globe

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US - Iraq - Noteworthy - Government- Military - Intelligence - Secrets - Law - Pat Roberts - Kansas - "Is There A Double Standard On Leak Probes?" ... "When the CIA announced on Friday that it had fired an employee who the agency claims "knowingly and willfully shared classified intelligence" with a newspaper reporter, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, immediately praised the agency's action, saying that "unauthorized disclosures of classified information can significantly harm our ability to protect the American people."" ... "Roberts, one of the staunchest defenders of the Bush administration's effort to stop the flow of sensitive information to the press, said in a statement that "[t]hose who leak classified information not only risk the disclosure of intelligence sources and methods, but also expose the brave men and women of the intelligence community to greater danger. Clearly, those guilty of improperly disclosing classified information should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."" ... "But three years ago on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, Roberts himself was involved in disclosing sensitive intelligence information that, according to four former senior intelligence officers, impaired efforts to capture Saddam Hussein and potentially threatened the lives of Iraqis who were spying for the United States." ... "On March 20, 2003, at the onset of military hostilities between U.S. and Iraqi forces, Roberts said in a speech to the National Newspaper Association that he had "been in touch with our intelligence community" and that the CIA had informed President Bush and the National Security Council "of intelligence information from what we call human intelligence that indicated the location of Saddam Hussein and his leadership in a bunker in the suburbs of Baghdad."" ... "The former intelligence officials said in interviews that Roberts was never held accountable for his comments, which bore directly on the issue of intelligence-gathering sources and methods, and revealed that Iraqis close to Hussein were probably talking to the United States." ... "After opening his speech with the information about human intelligence and Saddam Hussein's location in a Baghdad bunker, the senator said that President Bush had conferred with his top military advisers and had "authorized a pre-emptive surgical strike with 40 Tomahawk Missiles launched by ship and submarines and so called bunker bombs by F-117 stealth aircraft. I do not have a damage assessment. The Iraqi's report 14 killed and one wounded and are reporting damage in residential areas."" ... "At the time, it was one of the most sensitive secrets in government that the CIA had recruited Iraqi nationals who claimed to have infiltrated Hussein's inner circle to be able to follow his movements at the onset of war. But after the bombs and missiles hit an Iraqi governmental complex known as Dora Park, located on the Tigris River south of Baghdad, Hussein either was not there, or escaped unharmed." ... "Whether or not Roberts' comments were inadvertent, former intelligence officials said, they almost certainly tipped off the Iraqi dictator that there were spies close to him. "He [Roberts] had given up that we had a penetration of [Saddam's] inner circle," says a former senior intelligence official. "It was the worst thing you could ever do."" -By Murray Waas with contributions by Brian Beutler -NationalJournal

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Secret - Government - Intelligence- Noteworthy - Reporters - Calif. - Massachusetts - "Democrats Suggest Double Standard on Leaks: White House Aides' Actions Are Cited." ... "Key Democratic legislators yesterday joined Republicans in saying they do not condone the alleged leaking of classified information that led to last week's firing of a veteran CIA officer. But they questioned whether a double standard exists that lets the White House give reporters secretly declassified information for political purposes." ... ""I don't know this woman, and I do not condone leaks of classified information," said Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, referring to the firing of Mary McCarthy." ... "Harman added that "while leaks are wrong, I think it is totally wrong for our president in secret to selectively declassify certain information and empower people in his White House to leak it to favored reporters so that they can discredit political enemies," she said on Fox News Sunday." ... "Then drawing a parallel to the Plame case, [on ABC's "This Week," Massachusettes Senator John] Kerry said that with McCarthy, "you have somebody being fired from the CIA for allegedly telling the truth, and you have no one fired from the White House for revealing a CIA agent in order to support a lie. That underscores what's really wrong in Washington, D.C."" -By Walter Pincus -WashingtonPost

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US - Iraq - Noteworthy - Secret - Military - Technology - Intelligence - "Lacking Biolabs, Trailers Carried Case for War: Administration Pushed Notion of Banned Iraqi Weapons Despite Evidence to Contrary." ... "On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."" ... "The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true." ... "A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement." ... "The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories." ... "The contents of the final report, "Final Technical Engineering Exploitation Report on Iraqi Suspected Biological Weapons-Associated Trailers," remain classified. But interviews reveal that the technical team was unequivocal in its conclusion that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological weapons." (1, 2, 3, 4) -By Joby Warrick with contributions by Alice Crites -WashingtonPost 

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Terrorism - Government - Telephone - Privacy - Law - Politics - Calif. - "Warrantless Wiretaps Possible in U.S.." ... "Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales left open the possibility yesterday that President Bush could order warrantless wiretaps on telephone calls occurring solely within the United States -- a move that would dramatically expand the reach of a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program." ... "In response to a question from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) during an appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, Gonzales suggested that the administration could decide it was legal to listen in on a domestic call without supervision if it were related to al-Qaeda." ... ""I'm not going to rule it out," Gonzales said." ... "In yesterday's testimony, Gonzales reiterated earlier hints that there may be another facet to the NSA program that has not been revealed publicly, or even another program that has prompted dissension within the government. While" -By Dan Eggen -WashingtonPost 

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US - Iraq - Government - Nuclear - Military - Intelligence - Law - Lewis Libby - Dick Cheney - Karl Rove - Politics - "Bush Authorized Leak to Times, Libby Told Grand Jury." ... "A former White House aide under indictment for obstructing a leak probe, I. Lewis Libby, testified to a grand jury that he gave information from a closely-guarded "National Intelligence Estimate" on Iraq to a New York Times reporter in 2003 with the specific permission of President Bush, according to a new court filing from the special prosecutor in the case." ... "The court papers from the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, do not suggest that Mr. Bush violated any law or rule. However, the new disclosure could be awkward for the president because it places him, for the first time, directly in a chain of events that led to a meeting where prosecutors contend the identity of a CIA employee, Valerie Plame, was provided to a reporter." ... "Mr. Fitzgerald's inquiry initially focused on the alleged leak, which occurred after a former ambassador who is Ms. Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times questioning the accuracy of statements Mr. Bush made about Iraq's nuclear procurement efforts in Africa." ... "While prosecutors initially said Mr. Libby was the first government official to disclose Ms. Plame's identity, it subsequently emerged that a Washington Post reporter, Bob Woodward, learned earlier about her CIA employment from another government official. Neither Mr. Woodward nor Ms. Miller wrote about Ms. Plame at the time. Another journalist, Robert Novak, first disclosed the employment of Mr. Wilson's wife in a syndicated column released on July 14, 2003. The columnist based his story on interviews with Mr. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, and another official who has not been officially identified." ... "Prosecutors argued that Mr. Libby covered up his role in the disclosures because "he knew the White House had publicly staked its credibility on there being no White House involvement in the leaking of information about Ms. Wilson." They also noted that Mr. Bush publicly declared he would fire anyone found to have leaked classified information." -By Josh Gerstein -http://NYSun.com 

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US - Iraq - Karl Rove - Secret - Government - Nuclear - Military - Intelligence - 2004 Election - "Insulating Bush." ... "Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address -- that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon -- might not be true, according to government records and interviews." ... "Hadley was particularly concerned that the public might learn of a classified one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, specifically written for Bush in October 2002. The summary said that although "most agencies judge" that the aluminum tubes were "related to a uranium enrichment effort," the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department's intelligence branch "believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons."" ... "Three months after receiving that assessment, the president stated without qualification in his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."" -By Murray Waas with contributions by Brian Beutler -NationalJournal 

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US - Britain- Iraq- Military - UN - "Bush Was Set on Path to War, Memo by British Adviser Says." ... "In the weeks before the United States-led invasion of Iraq, as the United States and Britain pressed for a second United Nations resolution condemning Iraq, President Bush's public ultimatum to Saddam Hussein was blunt: Disarm or face war." ... "But behind closed doors, the president was certain that war was inevitable. During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times." ... "The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein." ... "Those proposals were first reported last month in the British press, but the memo does not make clear whether they reflected Mr. Bush's extemporaneous suggestions, or were elements of the government's plan." -By Don Van Natta Jr. -NYTimes 

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Secret - Government - Terrorism - Police - Intelligence - Civil Liberties - Law - Politics - "Bush shuns Patriot Act requirement: In addendum to law, he says oversight rules are not binding." ... "When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers." ... "The bill contained several oversight provisions intended to make sure the FBI did not abuse the special terrorism-related powers to search homes and secretly seize papers. The provisions require Justice Department officials to keep closer track of how often the FBI uses the new powers and in what type of situations. Under the law, the administration would have to provide the information to Congress by certain dates." ... "In the [addendum] statement, Bush said that he did not consider himself bound to tell Congress how the Patriot Act powers were being used and that, despite the law's requirements, he could withhold the information if he decided that disclosure would ''impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative process of the executive, or the performance of the executive's constitutional duties."" ... "Bush wrote: ''The executive branch shall construe the provisions . . . that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch . . . in a manner consistent with the president's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information . . . "." -By Charlie Savage -BostonGlobe 

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Government - Climate - Fuel - Air - Ice - Environment- Science - Politics - "Rewriting The Science." ... "As a government scientist, James Hansen is taking a risk. He says there are things the White House doesn't want you to hear but he's going to say them anyway." ... "Hansen is arguably the world's leading researcher on global warming. He's the head of NASA's top institute studying the climate. But this imminent scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science." ... "Asked if he believes the administration is censoring what he can say to the public, Hansen says: "Or they're censoring whether or not I can say it. I mean, I say what I believe if I'm allowed to say it."" ... "What James Hansen believes is that global warming is accelerating. He points to the melting arctic and to Antarctica, where new data show massive losses of ice to the sea." ... "Those human changes, he says, are driven by burning fossil fuels that pump out greenhouse gases like CO2, carbon dioxide. Hansen says his research shows that man has just 10 years to reduce greenhouse gases before global warming reaches what he calls a tipping point and becomes unstoppable. He says the White House is blocking that message." (1, 2, 3) -Produced By Catherine Herrick and Bill Owens -60 Minutes -CBSNews 

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Gordon Smith - Money - Politics - Virgin Islands - Vacation - Lawmakers - Idaho - Oregon - Montana - Wyoming - Missouri - "Virgin Islands Donors Invest In Key Senators." ... "Concern is mounting that Senate support for the [United States] U.S. Virgin Islands' efforts to reopen a tax loophole is being won with more than $235,000 in campaign contributions." ... "Five senators identified by USVI [United States Virgin Islands] representatives as allies in their campaign - Senator [Mike] Crapo, a Republican of Idaho; Senator Gordon Smith, a Republican of Oregon; Senator [Max] Baucus, a Democrat of Montana; Senator [Craig] Thomas, a Republican of Wyoming, and Senator [James] Talent, a Republican of Missouri - have each received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from scores of USVI residents in the last year, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission." ... "Lobbyists for the USVI said yesterday that the donations resulted from fund-raisers held by the lawmakers during trips to the Virgin Islands." ... "As The New York Sun reported last week, the USVI is currently campaigning for Congress and the Treasury Department to loosen restrictions imposed in 2004 on the territory's Economic Development Commission - a program designed to spur investment in the territory with tax incentives for individuals and businesses." ... "As the Sun reported in 2003, the program's tax breaks were taken up by some of America's top money managers - including Richard Driehaus and Jeffrey Epstein, who keep high profiles in Chicago and New York but declare the USVI as their place of residence for tax purposes. The EDC [Economic Development Commission] loophole allowed some wealthy Americans to dodge almost 90% of their federal income tax bills." ... "According to FEC [Federal Election Commission] records, Mr. Driehaus last year donated, as a USVI resident, $2,000 each to the campaigns of Messrs. Crapo, Thomas, and Baucus." ... "Mr. Baucus received $66,500 from 52 USVI contributors. Mr. Crapo last year received $39,000 from 27 USVI donors. Mr. Thomas received $21,000 from 16 USVI donors, and Mr. Talent received $38,600 from 30 USVI donors. Mr. Smith raked in $47,000 from 48 donors. The numbers were first published in the St. Thomas Source." ... "Contributions to Mr. Smith, in particular, have drawn fire from a Democratic interest group, the Senate Majority Project. The group, which notes that the USVI was Mr. Smith's fourth-largest donor base by geography after Oregon, Washington, and Virginia, alleges that Mr. Smith's support for reducing the EDC residency requirements contradicts past efforts to keep American business from moving to more tax friendly locales like Bermuda." ... ""Gordon Smith took a trip down to the Virgin Islands, and came back with $47,000 and a new position on offshore tax havens," the Executive Director of the Senate Majority Project, Mike Gehrke, said in a press release from the group." (1, 2, 3) -By Meghan Clyne -NYSun.com

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Media - Intelligence - Government - Law - Law Enforcement - Politics - Secret- Prisons - "White House Trains Efforts on Media Leaks: Sources, Reporters Could Be Prosecuted." ... "The Bush administration, seeking to limit leaks of classified information, has launched initiatives targeting journalists and their possible government sources. The efforts include several FBI probes, a polygraph investigation inside the CIA and a warning from the Justice Department that reporters could be prosecuted under espionage laws." ... "In recent weeks, dozens of employees at the CIA, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies have been interviewed by agents from the FBI's Washington field office, who are investigating possible leaks that led to reports about secret CIA prisons and the NSA's warrantless domestic surveillance program, according to law enforcement and intelligence officials familiar with the two cases." ... "Some media watchers, lawyers and editors say that, taken together, the incidents represent perhaps the most extensive and overt campaign against leaks in a generation, and that they have worsened the already-tense relationship between mainstream news organizations and the White House." ... ""There's a tone of gleeful relish in the way they talk about dragging reporters before grand juries, their appetite for withholding information, and the hints that reporters who look too hard into the public's business risk being branded traitors," said New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, in a statement responding to questions from The Washington Post. "I don't know how far action will follow rhetoric, but some days it sounds like the administration is declaring war at home on the values it professes to be promoting abroad."" (1, 2, 3) -By Dan Eggen with contributions by Charles Lane and Julie Tate -WashingtonPost

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Mitchell J Wade - Randy "Duke" Cunningham - Katherine Harris - Virgil H Goode Jr - Criminal - Money - Politics - Election - Illegal - Government - Military - Intelligence - MZM - Calif - Va - Fla - "Contractor Pleads Guilty to Corruption: Probe Extends Beyond Bribes to Congressman." ... "Washington defense contractor Mitchell J. Wade admitted yesterday in federal court that he attempted to illegally influence Defense Department contracting officials and tried to curry favor with two House members, in addition to lavishing more than $1 million in cash, cars, a boat, antiques and other bribes on convicted [California Republican Representative] Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif. [Republican-California])." ... "The new admissions, including details that identify [Republican Representatives] Reps. Virgil H. Goode Jr. (R-Va. [Republican-Virginia]) and Katherine Harris (R-Fla. [Republican-Florida]) as recipients of illegal campaign contributions, are contained in Wade's agreement to plead guilty to four criminal charges stemming from his role in the Cunningham probe. The congressman resigned after pleading guilty in November to taking $2.4 million in bribes from Wade and others in return for steering federal funds and contracts their way." ... "The court filings indicated a new direction for the corruption inquiry, as Wade pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge that he also provided benefits to an unnamed Defense official and other Defense employees to get them to help Wade's company, MZM Inc." ... "The description of the official-turned-MZM-employee in the court papers matches Robert Fromm, who worked at the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center in Charlottesville [Virginia] as program manager for a computer project known as FIRES and subsequently went to work for MZM." ... "Wade also pleaded guilty to election law fraud for making nearly $80,000 in illegal campaign contributions to "Representatives A and B," who are identifiable as Goode and Harris." ... "The congressman identifiable as Goode received $46,000 in such disguised contributions in 2003 and 2005, the court papers said. That was part of about $90,000 Wade and his workers contributed to Goode. Wade then asked the member to request appropriations for an MZM facility in his district, the Wade papers said, and a Goode staff member confirmed to Wade that the bill would include $9 million in funding." ... "The member identifiable as Harris received $32,000 in illegal donations from Wade and his employees in 2004. Documents filed with Wade's plea say that he took Harris to dinner early last year, where they discussed the possibility of another fundraiser and the possibility of getting funding for a Navy counterintelligence program in the member's district. One source familiar with the inquiry said Harris made such a request for funding, but it was not granted." -By Charles R. Babcock with contributions by Walter Pincus and Madonna Lebling -WashingtonPost

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New York - Terrorism - Government - Environmental - Air - Health - Science - Politics - People - "Judge Blasts EPA Ground Zero Appraisal." ... "A judge attacked former Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine Todd Whitman for reassuring Manhattan residents soon after the 2001 terrorist attacks that the environment was safe to return to homes and offices while toxic dust was polluting the neighborhood." ... ""No reasonable person would have thought that telling thousands of people that it was safe to return to lower Manhattan, while knowing that such return could pose long-term health risks and other dire consequences, was conduct sanctioned by our laws," U.S. District Judge Deborah A. Batts wrote, calling Whitman's actions "conscience-shocking."" ... "The EPA's internal watchdog found the agency, at the urging of White House officials, gave misleading assurances there was no health risk from the dust in the air after the towers' collapse." ... "Quoting a ruling in an earlier court case, the judge said a public official cannot be held personally liable for putting the public in harm's way unless the conduct was so egregious as "to shock the contemporary conscience."" ... "Given her role in protecting the health and environment for Americans, Whitman's "reassuring and misleading statements of safety after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks are without question conscience-shocking," Batts said." ... "The judge said Whitman knew that the collapse of the buildings released tons of hazardous materials into the air that would have endangered the public and yet she encouraged residents, workers and students to return to the area." (1, 2) -APvia -CBSNews

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