Terrorism News Articles

Terrorism News Articles
Excerpts of Key Terrorism News Articles in Media

Below are highly revealing excerpts of important terrorism news articles from the major
media suggesting a cover-up. Links are provided to the full news articles for verification. If any
link fails to function, read this webpage. These terrorism news articles are listed by order of
importance. You can also explore the articles listed by order of the date of the news article or by
the date posted. By choosing to educate ourselves and to spread the word, we can and will build
a brighter future.
Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of
engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever
published.
U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba

2001-05-01, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662
In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent
people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against
Cuba. Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible
assassination of Cuban migrs, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking
planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities. The plans
were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into
supporting a war to oust Cuba's ... Fidel Castro. America's top military brass even contemplated
causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and
blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national
indignation." The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were
presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they
apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.
The Joint Chiefs even proposed using the potential death of astronaut John Glenn during the first
attempt to put an American into orbit as a false pretext for war with Cuba. Should the rocket
explode and kill Glenn, they wrote, "the objective is to provide irrevocable proof that the fault
lies with the Communists." The scary thing is none of this stuff comes out until 40 years after.
Note: Why was ABC the only major news source to report on this highly revealing story? Read the
shocking declassified documents on Operation Northwoods. Many military and political leaders
look at the world as a grand chessboard. Sacrificing pawns (innocent civilians) is sometimes
necessary to capture the queen. Explore revealing news articles on military corruption. Then check
out eye-opening 9/11 news articles.
[9/11] Hijack 'suspects' alive and well

2001-09-23, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1559151.stm
Another of the men named by the FBI as a hijacker in the [9/11] suicide attacks on Washington and
New York has turned up alive and well. The identities of four of the 19 suspects accused of having
carried out the attacks are now in doubt. Saudi Arabian pilot Waleed Al Shehri was one of five men
that the FBI said had deliberately crashed American Airlines flight 11 into the World Trade Centre
on 11 September. His photograph was released, and has since appeared in newspapers and on
television around the world. He told journalists there that he had nothing to do with the attacks. He
has contacted both the Saudi and American authorities. He acknowledges that he attended
flight training school at Daytona Beach in the United States, and is indeed the same Waleed
Al Shehri to whom the FBI has been referring. But, he says, he left the United States in
September last year [and] became a pilot with Saudi Arabian airlines. Abdulaziz Al Omari,
another of the Flight 11 hijack suspects ... says he is an engineer with Saudi Telecoms, and that he
lost his passport while studying in Denver. Meanwhile ... a London-based Arabic daily says it has
interviewed Saeed Alghamdi. He was listed by the FBI as a hijacker in the United flight that
crashed in Pennsylvania. And there are suggestions that another suspect, Khalid Al Midhar, may
also be alive. FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged on Thursday that the identity of several of
the suicide hijackers is in doubt.
Note: The deceptions in the official story of 9/11 are nowhere more clearly shown than in this
important story. The FBI never revised its list of alleged hijackers, and these four are all later
listed in the official 9/11 Commission report as the hijackers. Click here and scroll down a
little over half way to see their photos in the official report. For more on this, click here. For an
abundance of reliable information suggesting a major 9/11 cover-up, click here. For other revealing
news articles on 9/11, click here.
US plans to fight the net revealed

2006-01-27, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4655196.stm
A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military's plans for
"information operations". The declassified document is called "Information Operations Roadmap".
It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University using the
Freedom of Information Act. Officials in the Pentagon wrote it in 2003. The Secretary of Defense,
Donald Rumsfeld, signed it. The operations described in the document include a surprising range
of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops
who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists
who seek to destroy enemy networks. The military's psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding
its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans. "Psyops messages will
often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public.
Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will 'fight the net' as it
would an enemy weapons system," it reads. The document recommends that the United States
should seek the ability to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum". US
forces should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging
communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the
electromagnetic spectrum". The fact that the "Information Operations Roadmap" is approved by
the Secretary of Defense suggests that these plans are taken very seriously indeed in the
Pentagon.
Note: For other revealing news articles on military corruption, click here. For other revealing news
articles on government corruption, click here.
Alleged [9/11] Hijackers May Have Trained At U.S. Bases

2001-09-14, Newsweek Magazine
http://www.newsweek.com/2001/09/14/alleged-hijackers-may-have-trained-at-u-s-...
U.S. military sources have given the FBI information that suggests five of the alleged hijackers of
the planes that were used in [the 9/11] terror attacks received training at secure U.S. military
installations in the 1990s. Three of the alleged hijackers listed their address on drivers
licenses and car registrations as the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla. -- known as the
"Cradle of U.S. Navy Aviation," according to a high-ranking U.S. Navy source. Another of
the alleged hijackers may have been trained in strategy and tactics at the Air War College in
Montgomery, Ala., said another high-ranking Pentagon official. The fifth man may have received
language instruction at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Tex. Both were former Saudi Air
Force pilots who had come to the United States, according to the Pentagon source. The five men
were on a list of 19 people identified as hijackers by the FBI on [September 14]. The three foreign
nationals training in Pensacola appear to be Saeed Alghamdi and Ahmad Alnami, who were
among the four men who allegedly commandeered United Airlines Flight 93. That flight [ended in]
rural Pennsylvania. The third man who may have trained in Pensacola, Ahmed Alghamdi, allegedly
helped highjack United Airlines Flight 75, which hit the south tower of the World Trade Center.
Military records show that the three used as their address 10 Radford Boulevard, a base roadway
on which residences for foreign-military flight trainees are located.
Note: For more on this vitally important news, see the Washington Post news article available here
and the Los Angeles Times news article here. Several of the alleged hijackers also contacted US
media shortly after 9/11 to report that they were alive and were not on the hijacked planes. See the
BBC News and Times of London news articles on this. Yet the 9/11 Commission Report lists these
men as the official hijackers at this link. So what's really going on here? For many other major
media news articles suggesting that rogue elements of government were involved in 9/11, click
here. For our reliable 9/11 Information Center, click here.
When Seeing and Hearing Isn't Believing

1999-02-01, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/dotmil/arkin020199.htm
"Gentlemen! We have called you together to inform you that we are going to overthrow the United
States government." So begins a statement being delivered by Gen. Carl W. Steiner. At least the
voice sounds amazingly like him. But it is not Steiner. It is the result of voice "morphing" technology
developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Psychological operations ...
PSYOPS, as the military calls it, seek to exploit human vulnerabilities in enemy governments,
militaries and populations to pursue national and battlefield objectives. Covert operators kicked
around the idea of creating a computer-faked videotape of Saddam Hussein crying or showing
other such manly weaknesses, or in some sexually compromising situation. The nascent plan was
for the tapes to be flooded into Iraq and the Arab world. The tape war never proceeded ... but the
"strategic" PSYOPS scheming didn't die. What if the U.S. projected a holographic image of
Allah floating over Baghdad urging the Iraqi people and Army to rise up against Saddam?
According to a military physicist given the task of looking into the hologram idea, the
feasibility had been established of projecting large, three-dimensional objects that
appeared to float in the air. A super secret program was established in 1994 to pursue the very
technology for PSYOPS application. The "Holographic Projector" is described in a classified Air
Force document as a system to "project information power from space ... for special operations
deception missions."
Note: If the above link fails, click here. If you want to understand some of the many hidden
capabilities of the U.S. military, this article is a must read. For other revealing news articles on the
use of these "nonlethal" weapons, click here.
Terrorist Plots, Hatched by the F.B.I.

2012-04-29, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/terrorist-plots-helped-along...
[We've] been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years or so it has seemed. A
would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb
synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh,
N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was
hatched in Massachusetts. But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose
undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4
explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects navely played
their parts until they were arrested. When an Oregon college student ... thought of using a car
bomb to attack a festive Christmas-tree lighting ceremony in Portland, the F.B.I. provided a van
loaded with six 55-gallon drums of inert material, harmless blasting caps, a detonator cord and a
gallon of diesel fuel. An undercover F.B.I. agent even did the driving, with Mr. Mohamud in the
passenger seat. To trigger the bomb the student punched a number into a cellphone and got no
boom, only a bust. Typically, the stings initially target suspects for pure speech comments to an
informer outside a mosque, angry postings on Web sites, e-mails with radicals overseas then
woo them into relationships with informers, who are often convicted felons [or] F.B.I. agents posing
as members of Al Qaeda or other groups. This is legal, but is it legitimate? Without the F.B.I.,
would the culprits commit violence on their own? Is cultivating potential terrorists the best use of
the manpower designed to find the real ones?
Note: Read the entire article to find out just how far the FBI will go to entrap incompetent
individuals. To read a New York Times article showing that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing
involved similar entrapment, only the bomber was not stopped by knowing FBI agents, click here.
More on that available here. For reports on other crazy cases of FBI entrapment, click here and
here. For reliable, verifiable information suggesting 9/11 may have been facilitated in some way
click here.
FAA Received Alert About 9/11 Hijacker

2006-01-07, ABC News/Associated Press
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=91659&page=2
Federal aviation authorities were alerted in early 2001 that an Arizona flight school believed one of
the eventual Sept. 11 hijackers lacked the English and flying skills necessary for the commercial
pilot's license he already held. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector even sat next to the
hijacker, Hani Hanjour, in one of the Arizona classes, checked records to ensure Hanjour's 1999
pilot's license was legitimate but concluded no other action was warranted. Hanjour is believed to
have piloted the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11. The operations manager for
the now-defunct JetTech flight school in Phoenix said she called the FAA inspector that
oversaw her school three times in January and February 2001 to express her concerns
about Hanjour. "I couldn't believe he had a commercial license of any kind with the skills
that he had," said Peggy Chevrette, the JetTech manager. She also has been interviewed by
the FBI. Marilyn Ladner, a vice president for the Pan Am International Flight Academy that owned
JetTech before it closed in the aftermath of Sept. 11, said the flight school expressed its concerns
and believes the FAA official observed Hanjour's weaknesses firsthand. The Arizona school's alert
is the latest revelation about the extent of information the government possessed before Sept. 11
Note: This article fails to mention the key fact the Hanjour is officially listed as the hijacker
pilot who executed an extremely sophisticated 330-degree diving turn to crash the plane
into the Pentagon (see official report at this link). Yet this article claims his flight instructor said his
skills were so poor she couldn't believe he had any pilot's license. How can that be? For more
information suggesting Hanjour was assisted by U.S. authorities in obtaining his license, click here.
And why has the Pentagon only released a few of the many dozens of security camera videos they
have of the 9/11 Pentagon crash? And these few show nothing conclusive. For lots more reliable
information questioning what really happened on 9/11, click here.
Is Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?

2005-01-11, Los Angeles Times
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jan/11/opinion/oe-scheer11
Is it conceivable that Al Qaeda, as defined by President Bush as the center of a vast and wellorganized international terrorist conspiracy, does not exist? To even raise the question amid all the
officially inspired hysteria is heretical. Yet a brilliant new BBC film produced by one of Britain's
leading documentary filmmakers systematically challenges this. "The Power of Nightmares: The
Rise of the Politics of Fear" ... argues coherently that much of what we have been told about the
threat of international terrorism "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by
politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned ... around the world." Why have we
heard so much frightening talk about "dirty bombs" when experts say it is panic rather than
radioactivity that would kill people? Why did Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claim on "Meet
the Press" in 2001 that Al Qaeda controlled massive high-tech cave complexes in Afghanistan,
when British and U.S. military forces later found no such thing? The film ... directly challenges
the conventional wisdom by making a powerful case that the Bush administration, led by a
tight-knit cabal of Machiavellian neoconservatives, has seized upon the false image of a
unified international terrorist threat to replace the expired Soviet empire in order to push a
political agenda. "The nightmare vision of a uniquely powerful hidden organization waiting to
strike our societies is an illusion. Wherever one looks for this Al Qaeda organization, from the
mountains of Afghanistan to the 'sleeper cells' in America, the British and Americans are chasing a
phantom enemy."
Note: If above link fails, click here. This highly revealing film by one of Britain's most respected
documentary makers is available for free viewing on the Internet. For the link and lots more on this
amazingly revealing documentary, click here. For an excellent review of the film in one of the
U.K.'s leading newspapers, click here.
The 9/11 Secret in the CIA's Back Pocket

http://articles.latimes.com/2004/oct/19/opinion/oe-scheer19
It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the
election, and this one names names. "It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level
people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed," an
intelligence official who has read the report told me. [The] release of the report, which represents
an exhaustive 17-month investigation by an 11-member team within the agency, has been
"stalled." First by acting CIA Director John McLaughlin and now by Porter J. Goss, the former
Republican House member (and chairman of the Intelligence Committee) who recently was
appointed CIA chief. The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than the
earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed Sept. 11 commission and Congress.
"The report found very senior-level officials responsible." By law, the only legitimate reason
the CIA director has for holding back such a report is national security. None of this should surprise
us given the Bush administration's great determination since 9/11 to resist any serious
investigation. The president fought against the creation of the Sept. 11 commission, for example,
agreeing only after enormous political pressure was applied by a grass-roots movement led by the
families of those slain. And then Bush refused to testify to the commission under oath. Instead
he deigned only to chat with the commission members, with Vice President Dick Cheney present,
in a White House meeting in which commission members were not allowed to take notes.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. For other reliable information on the 9/11 cover-up, click
here.
Connections And Then Some

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A25...
The Carlyle Group [is] an investment house famous as one of the most well-connected companies
anywhere. Former president George H.W. Bush is a Carlyle adviser. Former British prime minister
John Major heads its European arm. Former secretary of state James Baker is senior counselor,
former White House budget chief Richard Darman is a partner, former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt
is senior adviser -- the list goes on. Those associations have brought Carlyle enormous success.
The Washington-based merchant bank controls nearly $14 billion in investments, making it the
largest private equity manager in the world. It buys and sells whole companies the way some firms
trade shares of stock. But the connections also have cost Carlyle. It has developed a reputation as
the CIA of the business world -- omnipresent, powerful, a little sinister. Media outlets from the
Village Voice to BusinessWeek have depicted Carlyle as manipulating the levers of government
from shadowy back rooms. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) even suggested that
Carlyle's and Bush's ties to the Middle East made them somehow complicitous in the Sept. 11
terror attacks. It didn't help that as the World Trade Center burned on Sept. 11, 2001, the
news interrupted a Carlyle business conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel here attended by a
brother of Osama bin Laden. Former president Bush, a fellow investor, had been with him at
the conference the previous day. Bush['s] primary function is to give speeches for Carlyle that
attract wealthy foreigners in places where the former president is especially revered, such as Asia.
The company has rewarded its faithful with a 36 percent average annual rate of return.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. To understand the amazingly powerful role of this lowprofile, yet extremely wealthy and influential group, click here to view free a 48-minute
documentary shown on Dutch national TV which clearly depicts the depths of corruption and deceit
at the highest levels of government. You will be thankful that you watched this highly educational
film.
Defence redefined means securing cheap energy

2002-12-26, Sydney Morning Herald (One of Australia's leading newspapers)
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/12/25/1040511092926.html
As troops and equipment pour into the Gulf for a looming war with Iraq, United States military
thinkers admit that "defence" means protecting ... cheap oil. As far back as 1975, Henry Kissinger,
then secretary of state, said America was prepared to wage war over oil. Separate plans
advocating US conquest of Saudi oilfields were published in the '70s. So it should come as little
surprise that ... four months before the terrorist attacks on Washington and New York - a
battle plan for Afghanistan was already being reviewed by the US Command that would
carry it out after September 11. Military strategists were highlighting the energy wealth of the
Caspian Sea and Central Asia and its importance to America's "security". The Indian media and
Jane's Intelligence Review reported that the US was fighting covert battles against the Taliban,
months before the "war on terrorism" was declared. Over several months beginning in April last
year a series of military and governmental policy documents was released that sought to legitimise
the use of US military force in the pursuit of oil and gas. A spring 2001 article by Jeffrey Record in
the War College's journal, Parameters, argued the legitimacy of "shooting in the Persian Gulf on
behalf of lower gas prices". Mr Record [is] a former staff member of the Senate armed services
committee (and an apparent favourite of the Council on Foreign Relations). [He] advocated the
acceptability of presidential subterfuge in the promotion of a conflict. Mr Record explicitly
urged painting over the US's actual reasons for warfare with a nobly high-minded veneer,
seeing such as a necessity for mobilising public support for a conflict.
Note: This highly revealing report on the military planning of wars for oil is well worth reading in its
entirety, at the link above. For lots more on major deception and manipulation around the event of
9/11, click here.
Pipeline politics taint U.S. war

2002-03-18, Chicago Tribune
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2002-03-18/news/0203180046_1_caspian-talib...
Outside this country, there is a widespread belief that U.S. military deployments in Central Asia
mostly are about oil. An article in the Guardian of London headlined, A pro-western regime in
Kabul should give the U.S. an Afghan route for Caspian oil, foreshadowed the kind of skeptical
coverage the U.S. war now receives in many countries. Author George Monbiot ... wrote that the
U.S. oil company Unocal Corp. had been negotiating with the Taliban since 1995 to build "oil and
gas pipelines from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan and into Pakistani ports on the Arabian
sea." Unocal pulled out of the deal after the 1998 terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania were linked to terrorists based in Afghanistan. The terrorist acts of Sept. 11, though
tragic, provided the Bush administration a [pretext] to invade Afghanistan, oust the recalcitrant
Taliban and, coincidentally, smooth the way for the pipeline. To make things even smoother, the
U.S. engineered the rise to power of two former Unocal employees: Hamid Karzai, the new
interim president of Afghanistan, and Zalmay Khalizad, the Bush administrations
Afghanistan envoy. [Uri] Averny, a former member of the Israeli Knesset ... argues that the war
on terrorism provides a perfect pretext for Americas imperial interests. If one looks at the map
of the big American bases created for the war, one is struck by the fact that they are
completely identical to the route of the projected oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean. No
wonder the rest of the world is a bit skeptical about our war on evildoers.
Note: Why do so few people know that these two top officials of Afghanistan were once paid by an
American oil company? For important reports from major media sources on the realities of the "war
on terror," click here.
'We've Hit The Targets'

2001-09-13, Newsweek
http://www.newsweek.com/2001/09/12/we-ve-hit-the-targets.html
Could the [9/11] bombers have been stopped? NEWSWEEK has learned that while U.S.
intelligence received no specific warning, the state of alert had been high during the past two
weeks, and a particularly urgent warning may have been received the night before the [9/11]
attacks, causing some top Pentagon brass to cancel a trip. Why that same information was
not available to the 266 people who died aboard the four hijacked commercial aircraft may become
a hot topic on the Hill.
Note: This most astounding information is buried in this long article. Yet it is repeated in a
Newsweek article 11 days later (9/24/2001), which states, "On Sept. 10, NEWSWEEK has
learned, a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next
morning, apparently because of security concerns." It was again buried in a longer article, yet the
author felt it important enough to include. Why was there no follow up? WantToKnow.info's Fred
Burks has a reliable deep cover CIA contact who says he was informed just hours before the
attacks that there was going to be a major attack on Washington on 9/11. For an abundance of
reliable verifiable information suggesting a major cover-up around 9/11, click here and here.
INTELLIGENCE: Of Dart Guns and Poisons

1975-09-09, Time Magazine
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,913459,00.html
For nearly nine months the congressional investigations of the Central Intelligence Agency have
been conducted behind closed doors. In the old Senate caucus room the ten members of the
select Senate committee were questioning CIA officials, including Director William Colby and the
deputy director for science and technology, Sayre Stevens, about 11 gm. of shellfish toxin and 8
mg. of cobra venom discovered last May in a CIA storeroom. Colby revealed that the agency in
1952 began a supersecret research program, code-named M.K. Naomi, partly to find
countermeasures to chemical and biological weapons that might be used by the Russian KGB. CIA
researchers ... came up with an array of James Bond weaponry that could use the shellfish toxin
and other poisons as ammunition. To illustrate his testimony, Colby handed a pistol to Committee
Chairman Frank Church. Resembling a Colt .45 equipped with a fat telescopic sight, the gun
fires a toxin-tipped dart, almost silently and accurately up to 250 ft. Moreover, the dart is so
tinythe width of a human hair and a quarter of an inch longas to be almost indetectable,
and the poison leaves no trace in a victim's body. Charles Senseney, an engineer for the
Defense Department, told the Senators that he had devised dart launchers that were disguised as
walking canes and umbrellas.
Note: This silent, lethal dart gun causes what looks like a natural heart attack. If this sophisticated
assassination technology was available back in 1975, what kind of secret weapons do you think
they have now? To watch an incredible one-minute video clip on this dart gun, click here. To
watch the full, highly revealing Warner Brothers documentary Secrets of the CIA, click here. For
other riveting major media articles along these lines, click here.
How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and

Destroy Reputations
2014-02-24, The Intercept
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
Western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with
extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. Today, [The Intercept is] publishing [a
document from GCHQs previously secret unit, JTRIG, the Joint Threat Research Intelligence
Group], entitled The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations. Among the core
self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the
internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other
techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers
desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to
achieve those ends: false flag operations (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it
to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose
reputation they want to destroy), and posting negative information on various forums.
Government plans to monitor and influence internet communications, and covertly infiltrate
online communities in order to sow dissension and disseminate false information, have
long been the source of speculation. Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein, a close Obama
adviser and the White Houses former head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs,
wrote a controversial paper in 2008 proposing that the US government employ teams of covert
agents and pseudo-independent advocates to cognitively infiltrate online groups and websites,
as well as other activist groups. Sunstein also proposed sending covert agents into chat
rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups which spread what he views as
false and damaging conspiracy theories about the government.
Note: To see a guidebook developed by intelligence agencies full of charts and information on how
to infiltrate and deceive the public, click here. The Intercept is the new media source being funded
by Pierre Omidyar and featuring Glenn Greenwald and other top reporters known for their
independence. Note that Greenwald fails to mention that Sunstein's almost exclusive focus was on
"conspiracy theories" advocated by the 9/11 truth movement. For more on his call for what
amounts to a new COINTELPRO, see David Ray Griffin's book Cognitive Infiltration: An Obama
Appointee's Plan to Undermine the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory.
Admiral: 'Destroy' photos of Osama bin Laden's corpse

2014-02-12, USA Today/Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/02/12/osama-bin-laden-photo-cor...
Less than two weeks after the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, a top Pentagon official
ordered all photos of bin Laden's corpse be destroyed or turned over to the CIA. In an e-mail
dated May 13, 2011, Adm. William McRaven, the U.S. Special Operations commander, wrote:
"One particular item that I want to emphasize is photos; particularly UBLs remains. At this point
all photos should have been turned over to the CIA; if you still have them destroy them
immediately or get them to the (redacted)." Shortly after the raid in Pakistan, President Obama
said he would not authorize the release of any images of the al-Qaeda leader's body. Days
before the order to destroy the photos, watchdog group Judicial Watch and the Associated Press
had separately filed a Freedom of Information Act request for photos, videos and documents
regarding bin Laden during the raid. Typically, when a Freedom of Information Act request is filed
to a government agency under the Federal Records Act, the agency is obliged to preserve the
material sought even if the agency later denies the request.
Note: Why would a top military commander order all photos of bin Laden's dead body destroyed?
Why would Obama prevent the release of any images of the body? For powerful evidence that the
dead body was not, in fact, bin Laden's, click here and here. For other solid evidence that the
official story of 9/11 is riddles with holes, see our 9/11 Information Center available here.
Agent: I was ordered to let U.S. guns into Mexico

2011-03-03, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/03/eveningnews/main20039031.shtml
Federal agent John Dodson says what he was asked to do was beyond belief. He was intentionally
letting guns go to Mexico. An Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms [ATF] senior agent assigned to the
Phoenix office in 2010, Dodson's job is to stop gun trafficking across the border. Instead, he
says he was ordered to sit by and watch it happen. Investigators call the tactic letting guns
"walk." In this case, walking into the hands of criminals who would use them in Mexico and the
United States. Dodson's bosses say that never happened. Agent Dodson and other sources say
the gun walking strategy was approved all the way up to the Justice Department. The idea was to
see where the guns ended up, build a big case and take down a cartel. And it was all kept secret
from Mexico. ATF named the case "Fast and Furious." Documents show the inevitable result: The
guns that ATF let go began showing up at crime scenes in Mexico. And as ATF stood by
watching thousands of weapons hit the streets. The Fast and Furious group supervisor
noted the escalating Mexican violence. One e-mail noted, "958 killed in March 2010 ... most
violent month since 2005." Dodson feels that ATF was partly to blame for the escalating
violence. Senior agents including Dodson ... confronted their supervisors over and over. Their
answer ... "If you're going to make an omelette, you've got to break some eggs." On Dec. 14,
2010, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down. Two assault rifles ATF had let go nearly
a year before were found at Terry's murder. Dodson said, "I felt guilty. I mean it's crushing."
Dodson said they never did take down a drug cartel. However, he said thousands of Fast and
Furious weapons are still out there and will be claiming victims on both sides of the border for
years to come.
Note: Could it be that there are those in high positions of power who want this violence to keep us
in fear? The fear industry brings huge profits. For more powerful information on this, click here and
here.
Mind Games
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/10/AR20070110013...
A community of people who believe the government is beaming voices into their minds ... may be
crazy, but the Pentagon has pursued a weapon that can do just that. An academic paper written
for the Air Force in the mid-1990s mentions the idea of [such] a weapon. "The signal can be a
'message from God' that can warn the enemy of impending doom, or encourage the enemy to
surrender." In 2002, the Air Force Research Laboratory patented precisely such a technology:
using microwaves to send words into someone's head. The patent was based on human
experimentation in October 1994 at the Air Force lab, where scientists were able to transmit
phrases into the heads of human subjects, albeit with marginal intelligibility. The official U.S.
Air Force position is that there are no non-thermal effects of microwaves. Yet ... the military's use
of weapons that employ electromagnetic radiation to create pain is well-known. In 2001, the
Pentagon declassified one element of this research: the Active Denial System, a weapon that uses
electromagnetic radiation to heat skin and create an intense burning sensation. While its exact
range is classified, Doug Beason, an expert in directed-energy weapons, puts it at about 700
meters, and the beam cannot penetrate a number of materials, such as aluminum. Given the
history of America's clandestine research, it's reasonable to assume that if the defense
establishment could develop mind-control or long-distance ray weapons, it almost certainly would.
And, once developed, the possibility that they might be tested on innocent civilians could not be
categorically dismissed.
Note: For lots more reliable, verifiable information on the little-known, yet critical topic of nonlethal
weapons, click here. For an excellent two-page summary of government mind control programs,
click here.
Why I Resigned From the CIA

http://articles.latimes.com/2004/dec/05/opinion/oe-scheuer5
Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA, wrote "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the
War on Terror." Between January 1996 and June 1999 I was in charge of running operations
against Al Qaeda from Washington. When it comes to this small slice of the large U.S. national
security pie, I speak with firsthand experience (and for several score of CIA officers) when I
state categorically that during this time senior White House officials repeatedly refused to
act on sound intelligence that provided multiple chances to eliminate Osama bin Laden
either by capture or by U.S. military attack. I witnessed and documented, along with dozens of
other CIA officers, instances where life-risking intelligence-gathering work of the agency's men and
women in the field was wasted. I was never charged with deciding whether to act against Bin
Laden. That decision properly belongs solely to senior White House officials. However, as a nowprivate American citizen, it is my right to question their judgment; I am entitled to know why the
protection of Americans most selfishly, my own children and grandchildren was not the top
priority of the senior officials who refused to act on the opportunities to attack Bin Laden provided
by the clandestine service. Each of these officials have publicly argued that the intelligence was
not "good enough" to act, but they almost always neglect to say that they were repeatedly advised
that the intelligence was not going to get better and that Bin Laden was going to kill thousands of
Americans if he was not stopped.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. For many other serious questions around the 9/11 attacks,
click here.
Brainwash victims win cash claims

2004-10-17, Times of London
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2090-1313808,00.html
Hundreds of mentally ill patients who were subjected to barbaric CIA-funded brainwashing
experiments ... could be entitled to compensation following a landmark court ruling. Doctor Ewan
Cameron, who became one of the worlds leading psychiatrists, developed techniques used
by Nazi scientists to wipe out the existing personalities of people in his care. Cameron ...
was recruited by the CIA during the cold war while working at McGill University in Montreal,
Canada. He carried out mind-control experiments using drugs such as LSD on hundreds of
patients, but only 77 of them were awarded compensation. Now a landmark ruling by a Federal
Court judge in Montreal will allow more than 250 former patients, whose claims were rejected, to
seek compensation. Last week, Alan Stein, of Montreal law firm Stein and Stein ... confirmed he
was in the process of contacting former clients who could now renew their appeal. There are
about 200 people still due compensation, he said. Using techniques similar to those portrayed
in the celebrated novel the Manchurian Candidate, it was believed that people could be
brainwashed and reprogrammed to carry out specific acts. Cameron developed a range of
depatterning treatments. Patients were woken from drug-induced stupors two or three times a
day for multiple electric shocks. In a specially designed sleep room made famous by Anne
Collinss book of the same name, Cameron placed a speaker under the patients pillow and
relayed negative messages for 16 hours a day. Cameron ... rose to become the first president of
the World Psychiatric Association.
Note: If the above link does not work, click here. Dr. Cameron was once President of the American
and World Psychiatric Associations. For more on the severe abuses of doctors in serving the CIA's
mind control programs, click here. This article clearly shows that the Manchurian candidate
(programmed assassin) is not just fiction. For a powerful two-page summary of 18,000 pages of
declassified CIA documents on this disturbing mind control program, click here. Links to view the
original top secret documents are included.
FAA Managers Destroyed 9/11 Tape

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A6892-200...
Six air traffic controllers provided accounts of their communications with hijacked planes on Sept.
11, 2001, on a tape recording that was later destroyed by Federal Aviation Administration
managers. It is unclear what information was on the tape because no one ever listened to,
transcribed or duplicated it. The FAA ... said it took disciplinary action against the employee who
destroyed the tape but declined to elaborate on what kind of action they took. [Earlier, an FAA
official incorrectly stated that the agency took action against two employees in the case.] Hours
after the [9/11 attacks] an FAA manager at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center gathered
six controllers who communicated or tracked two of the hijacked planes and recorded in a onehour interview their personal accounts of what occurred. The manager, who is not named in the
report, said that his intentions were to provide quick information to federal officials investigating the
attack before the air traffic controllers involved took sick leave for the stress of their experiences,
as is common practice. A second manager ... destroyed the tape between December 2001 and
January 2002 by crushing the tape with his hand, cutting it into small pieces and depositing
the pieces into trash cans around the building. The tape's existence was never made known to
federal officials investigating the attack. The New York managers acknowledged that they received
an e-mail from FAA officials instructing them to retain all materials related to the Sept. 11 attacks.
But the managers decided not to include the tape in a November 2001 "Formal Accident Package"
report the office prepared.
Note: Why on earth wouldn't this most important tape have been included in the FAA's official
report. And more importantly, why did someone later destroy it so carefully and thoroughly. For lots
more, click here.
Transcript: Rice's Testimony on 9/11 (for 9/11 Commissioner Lehman)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61252-2004Apr8_4.html
LEHMAN. Were you told that there were numerous young Arab males in flight training? RICE. I
was not. LEHMAN. Were you told that the red team in F.A.A. for 10 years had reported ... that the
U.S. airport security system never got higher than 20 percent effective. RICE. To the best of my
recollection I was not told that. LEHMAN. Were you aware that I.N.S. had quietly internally halved
its internal security enforcement budget? RICE. I was not made aware of that. LEHMAN. Were you
aware that it was the U.S. government established policy not to question or oppose the sanctuary
policies [which] prohibited the local police from cooperating at all with federal immigration
authorities? RICE. I do not believe I was aware of that. LEHMAN. Were you aware of a program
that was well established that allowed Saudi citizens to get visas without interviews? RICE. I
learned of that after 9/11. LEHMAN. Were you aware of the extensive activities [of] the Saudi
government in supporting over 300 radical teaching schools and mosques around the country,
including right here in the United States? Were you aware at the time of the fact that Saudi
Arabia ... had in their custody the C.F.O. [Chief Financial Officer] and the closest confidante
of Al Qaeda, of Osama bin Laden, and that they refused direct access to the United States?
RICE. I don't remember anything of that kind. LEHMAN. Were you aware that they would not
cooperate and give us access to the perpetrators of the Cobar Towers attack? RICE. I was very
involved in issues concerning Cobar Towers. LEHMAN. Were you aware that it was the policy of
the Justice Department ... to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in
secondary questioning? RICE. No.
Note: Don't miss the full revealing transcript at the link above. Most of the quotes above are
towards the bottom of the webpage. Why didn't we hear lots more about these astounding facts
put forward by one of the 9/11 commissioners, yet hardly mentioned in the final report? For lots
more, click here.
Senators: State Department Had Key to Stopping 9/11 Attacks

2002-12-18, Fox News/Associated Press
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,73395,00.html
Sens. Jon Kyl and Pat Roberts said in a report that "the answer to the question could 9/11
have been prevented is yes, if State Department personnel had merely followed the law
and not granted non-immigrant visas to 15 of the 19 hijackers in Saudi Arabia." If laws had
been followed, "most of the hijackers would not have been able to obtain visas and 9/11 would not
have happened," they said. Both [senators] were part of the House and Senate intelligence
committees' inquiry into intelligence failures leading up to the attacks. Last week, in its final report,
the inquiry said agencies were poorly organized and failed to share information, but didn't identify
a single intelligence error that, by itself, allowed the attacks to occur. Kyl and Roberts ... said the
inquiry findings, most of which remain classified, didn't dig deeply enough into the cause of
intelligence problems. They said also intelligence committee leaders excluded other lawmakers
from key decisions during the investigation. Their report also said the investigation's scope,
confined to intelligence issues, was too limited. The most glaring omission, they said, was the
failure to examine State Department procedures for issuing visas.
Note: For many questions concerning the official account of 9/11 asked by highly-respected
professionals, click here and here.
Federal agency planned plane-crashing-into-building drill [on] Sept. 11

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-08-22-sept-11-plane-drill-_x.htm
In what the government describes as a bizarre coincidence, one U.S. intelligence agency
was planning an exercise last Sept. 11 in which an errant aircraft would crash into one of its
buildings. But the cause wasn't terrorism it was to be a simulated accident. Officials at the
Chantilly, Va.-based National Reconnaissance Office had scheduled an exercise that morning in
which a small corporate jet would crash into one of the four towers at the agency's headquarters
building. The agency is about four miles from the runways of Washington Dulles International
Airport. "It was just an incredible coincidence that this happened to involve an aircraft crashing into
our facility," [NRO spokesman Art] Haubold said. "As soon as the real world events began, we
canceled the exercise." Adding to the coincidence, American Airlines Flight 77 the Boeing 767
that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon took off from Dulles at 8:10 a.m. on Sept. 11,
50 minutes before the exercise was to begin. It struck the Pentagon around 9:40 a.m., killing 64
aboard the plane and 125 on the ground. The National Reconnaissance Office operates many of
the nation's spy satellites. It draws its personnel from the military and the CIA. In a promotion for
speaker John Fulton, a CIA officer assigned as chief of NRO's strategic gaming division, the
announcement says, "On the morning of September 11th 2001, Mr. Fulton and his team ... were
running a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created
if a plane were to strike a building."
Note: For many more disturbing coincindences and outright cover-ups around 9/11, click here.
And for yet another amazing "coincidence" surrounding the London bombings, click here.
Whistleblower Complains of FBI Obstruction

2002-05-30, Fox News
[An] FBI counter-terrorism agent [is] accusing the agency of prohibiting him from conducting his
probe into terror financing activities because he complained about obstruction by bureau superiors.
Chicago-based FBI Special Agent Robert Wright ... said the recent trajectory of his FBI career has
taken a downward spiral since he complained about two incidents that inhibited his ability to
continue terror funding and money laundering probes of members of ... Hamas and Hezbollah.
The FBI has been under fire since it was revealed that FBI field alerts to Washington of
Middle Eastern men training at U.S. flight schools during the summer of 2001 were buried in
paperwork, and agents in Minneapolis who circumvented normal channels to contact the CIA
about suspected "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui were reprimanded. Agents who have
complained about bureaucratic barriers in the past have been punished, and Wright said that he is
one of them. Wright has been demoted to "paper pusher" and "chief dishwasher" at the Chicago
field office since he complained about the wrenches thrown into his probe. Wright is under threat
of retribution should he talk to members of Congress about what he knows. Wright said
throughout his six-year posting in counter-terrorism, he was involved in probes of Hamas and
Hezbollah. His most successful 'get' netted $1.4 million in terrorist money in 1998, money that he
said today was linked to Saudi businessman and financier Yassin Kadi, who was identified late last
year as a close associate of Usama Bin Laden.
Note: For lots more on what happened with Robert Wright, click here. For many still-unanswered
questions from highly respected government officials and professors about the behavior of the
highest levels of the FBI and other US government agencies before, during and after the 9/11
attacks, click here and here.
Has someone been sitting on the FBI?

2001-11-06, BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/events/newsnight/1645527.stm
GREG PALAST: The CIA and Saudi Arabia, the Bushes and the Bin Ladens. Did their connections
cause America to turn a blind eye to terrorism? UNNAMED MAN: There is a hidden agenda at the
very highest levels of our government. PETER ELSNER: How can it be that the former President
of the US and the current President of the US have business dealings with characters that need to
be investigated? PALAST: In the eight weeks since the attacks, over 1,000 suspects and potential
witnesses have been detained. Yet, just days after the hijackers took off from Boston aiming for the
Twin Towers, a special charter flight out of the same airport whisked 11 members of Osama Bin
Laden's family off to Saudi Arabia. That did not concern the White House. Their official line is
that the Bin Ladens are above suspicion - apart from Osama, the black sheep, who they say
hijacked the family name. That's fortunate for the Bush family and the Saudi royal
household, whose links with the Bin Ladens could otherwise prove embarrassing. But
Newsnight has obtained evidence that the FBI was on the trail of other members of the Bin Laden
family for links to terrorist organisations before and after September 11th. This document is
marked "Secret". Case ID - 199-Eye WF 213 589. 199 is FBI code for case type. 9 would be
murder. 65 would be espionage. 199 means national security. WF indicates Washington field office
special agents were investigating ABL. ABL is Abdullah Bin Laden.
Note: For a Washington Post article showing that former President George H.W. Bush was
meeting with a brother of Osama bin Laden the day before 9/11, click here. For lots more on the
unanswered questions about the official account of 9/11, click here and here.
Sloppy State Dept. Paper Work Let Sept. 11 Hijackers Into the U.S
2001-10-23, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=130051
A new report accuses the State Department of staggering lapses in its visa program that gave
Sept. 11 hijackers entry into the United States. The political journal National Review obtained the
visa applications for 15 of the 19 hijackers and evidence that all of them should have been
denied entry to the country. Almost all of the hijacker's visas were issued in Saudi Arabia, at the
U.S. Embassy in Riyadh or the U.S. Consulate in Jedda. Terrorist ties aside, the applications
themselves should have raised red flags, say experts. The forms are incomplete and often
incomprehensible yet that didn't stop any of the 15 terrorists for whom the visa
applications were obtained from coming to the United States. The only alleged would-be
hijacker who failed to get a visa was Ramzi Binalshibh, who was denied entrance to the United
States repeatedly. "This is a systemic problem," said Nikolai Wenzel, a former U.S. consular
officer. "It's a problem of sloppiness, it's a problem of negligence which I would call criminal
negligence because obviously, having reviewed all these applications, there is a pattern here." The
pattern? None of the 15 applications reviewed was filled out properly. The State Department would
not allow interviews with current consular affairs employees.
Note: For many questions concerning the official account of 9/11 asked by highly-respected
professionals, click here and here.
Resentful west spurned Sudan's key terror files

2001-09-30, The Observer (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/sep/30/terrorism.afghanistan2
Security chiefs on both sides of the Atlantic repeatedly turned down the chance to acquire
a vast intelligence database on Osama bin Laden and more than 200 leading members of
his al-Qaeda terrorist network in the years leading up to the 11 September attacks. They
were offered thick files, with photographs and detailed biographies of many of his principal cadres,
and vital information about al-Qaeda's financial interests in many parts of the globe. On two
separate occasions, they were given an opportunity to extradite or interview key bin Laden
operatives who had been arrested in Africa because they appeared to be planning terrorist
atrocities. None of the offers, made regularly from the start of 1995, was taken up. One senior CIA
source admitted last night: 'This represents the worst single intelligence failure in this whole terrible
business.' Bin Laden and his cadres came to Sudan in 1992 because at that time it was one of the
few Islamic countries where they did not need visas. He used his time there to build a lucrative
web of legitimate businesses, and to seed a far-flung financial network - much of which was
monitored by the Sudanese. They also kept his followers under close surveillance. One US source
who has seen the files on bin Laden's men in Khartoum said some were 'an inch and a half thick'.
They included photographs, and information on their families, backgrounds and contacts.
Note: For many questions raised about the official account of the 9/11 attacks by highly credible
professors and officials, click here and here.
2nd Witness Arrested; 25 Held for Questioning

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38270-2001Sep15
Investigators yesterday arrested a second person as a material witness in the attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon. As the investigation gathered strength yesterday, unusual leads
began to surface, among them the possibility that some of the hijackers may have received
training at Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida or other U.S. military facilities. Two of 19
suspects named by the FBI, Saeed Alghamdi and Ahmed Alghamdi, have the same names
as men listed at a housing facility for foreign military trainees at Pensacola. Two others,
Hamza Alghamdi and Ahmed Alnami, have names similar to individuals listed in public records as
using the same address inside the base. In addition, a man named Saeed Alghamdi graduated
from the Defense Language Institute at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, while men with
the same names as two other hijackers, Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari, appear as
graduates of the U.S. International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., and the
Aerospace Medical School at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, respectively.
Note: For more on this vitally important news, see the Newsweek article available here and the
New York Times article here. Several of the alleged hijackers also contacted US media shortly
after 9/11 to report that they were alive and were not on the hijacked planes. See the BBC News
and Times of London articles on this. Yet the 9/11 Commission Report lists these men as the
official hijackers at this link. So what's really going on here? For many other major media reports
suggesting that rogue elements of government were involved in 9/11, click here. For our reliable
9/11 Information Center, click here.
Why Does the FBI Have to Manufacture its Own Plots if Terrorism and
ISIS Are Such Grave Threats?
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/26/fbi-manufacture-plots-terrorism...
The FBI and major media outlets yesterday trumpeted the ... latest counterterrorism triumph: the
arrest of three Brooklyn men, ages 19 to 30, on charges of conspiring to travel to Syria to fight for
ISIS. It appears that none of the three men was in any condition to travel or support the Islamic
State, without help from the FBI informant. One of the frightening terrorist villains told the FBI
informant that, beyond having no money, he had encountered a significant problem in following
through on the FBIs plot: his mom had taken away his passport. In this regard, this latest arrest
appears to be quite similar to the overwhelming majority of terrorism arrests the FBI has proudly
touted over the last decade. These cases ... end up sending young people to prison for
decades for crimes which even their sentencing judges acknowledge they never would
have seriously considered, let alone committed, in the absence of FBI trickery. Were
constantly bombarded with dire warnings about the grave threat of [terrorism]. But how serious of a
threat can all of this be, at least domestically, if the FBI continually has to resort to manufacturing
its own plots by trolling the Internet in search of young drifters and/or the mentally ill whom they
target? Shouldnt there be actual plots, ones that are created and fueled without the help of the
FBI? The Justice Department is aggressively pressuring U.S. allies to employ these same
entrapment tactics in order to create their own terrorists, who can then be paraded around as
proof of the grave threat. The FBIs terrorism strategy keep fear alive drives everything they
do.
Note: Human Rights Watch has documented the government manufacture of fake "terrorism" plots
being used to keep fear alive in war on terror. There is even evidence that the 1993 World Trade
Center bombing was an F.B.I. entrapment plan gone awry. In 2012, the New York Times exposed
the pattern of F.B.I. entrapment used to produce these fake "terrorism" plots. How can corrupt
intelligence agencies continue to blatantly manipulate public perception like this?
The US government can brand you a terrorist based on a Facebook post

2014-08-30, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/30/terrorist-watch-list-rul...
The US governments web of surveillance is vast and interconnected. You can be pulled into the
National Security Agencys database quietly and quickly. Through ICREACH, a Google-style
search engine created for the intelligence community, the NSA provides data on private
communications to 23 government agencies. More than 1,000 analysts had access to that
information. It was confirmed earlier this month that the FBI shares its master watchlist, the
Terrorist Screening Database, with at least 22 foreign governments, countless federal agencies,
state and local law enforcement, plus private contractors. The watchlist [is] based on [low]
standards and secret evidence, which ensnares innocent people. Indeed, the standards are so low
that the US governments guidelines specifically allow for a single, uncorroborated source of
information including a Facebook or Twitter post to serve as the basis for placing you on its
master watchlist. Of the 680,000 individuals on that FBI master list, roughly 40% have no
recognized terrorist group affiliation, according to the Intercept. These individuals dont
even have a connection as the government loosely defines it to a designated terrorist
group, but they are still branded as suspected terrorists. The US [government uses] a loose
standard so-called reasonable suspicion in determining who, exactly, can be watchlisted.
["Reasonable suspicion"] requires neither concrete evidence nor irrefutable evidence. Instead,
an official is permitted to consider reasonable inferences and to draw from the facts in light of
his/her experience.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing terrorism news articles from
reliable major media sources.
Inquiry by C.I.A. Affirms It Spied on Senate Panel

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/01/world/senate-intelligence-commitee-cia-inte...
An internal investigation by the C.I.A. has found that its officers penetrated a computer network
used by the Senate Intelligence Committee in preparing its damning report on the C.I.A.s
detention and interrogation program. The report by the agencys inspector general also found that
C.I.A. officers read the emails of the Senate investigators and sent a criminal referral to the
Justice Department based on false information. The investigation also discovered that the
officers created a false online identity to gain access on more than one occasion to
computers used by the committee staff. The inspector generals account of how the C.I.A.
secretly monitored a congressional committee charged with supervising its activities touched off
angry criticism from members of the Senate and amounted to vindication for Senator Dianne
Feinstein of California, the committees Democratic chairwoman, who excoriated the C.I.A. in
March when the agencys monitoring of committee investigators became public. Senator Mark
Udall, Democrat of Colorado and another member of the Intelligence Committee, demanded Mr.
Brennans resignation. The C.I.A. unconstitutionally spied on Congress by hacking into the Senate
Intelligence Committee computers, he said in a written statement. This grave misconduct not
only is illegal but it violates the U.S. Constitutions requirement of separation of powers, he
added.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing intelligence agency operations
news articles from reliable major media sources.
Government agents 'directly involved' in most high-profile US terror

plots
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/21/government-agents-directly-invol...
Nearly all of the highest-profile domestic terrorism plots in the United States since 9/11 featured
the "direct involvement" of government agents or informants, a new report says. Some of the
controversial "sting" operations "were proposed or led by informants", bordering on entrapment by
law enforcement. Yet the courtroom obstacles to proving entrapment are significant, one of the
reasons the stings persist. The lengthy report, released on [July 21] by Human Rights Watch,
raises questions about the US criminal justice system's [respect for] civil rights and due process in
post-9/11 terrorism cases. [The report] portrays a system that features not just the sting
operations but secret evidence, anonymous juries, extensive pretrial detentions and
convictions significantly removed from actual plots. "In some cases the FBI may have
created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals by suggesting the idea of taking terrorist
action or encouraging the target to act," the report alleges. Out of the 494 cases related to
terrorism the US has tried since 9/11, the plurality of convictions ... are not for thwarted plots but
for "material support" charges, a broad category expanded further by the 2001 Patriot Act that
permits prosecutors to pursue charges with tenuous connections to a terrorist act or group.
Several cases featured years-long solitary confinement for accused terrorists before their trials.
Some defendants displayed signs of mental incapacity. Jurors for the 2007 plot to attack the Fort
Dix army base, itself influenced by government informants, were anonymous, limiting defense
counsel's ability to screen out bias.
Note: Why was this important news not picked up by any major US media? For more on this, see
concise summaries of deeply revealing intelligence agency operations news articles from reliable
major media sources.
The 9/11 Phone Calls: Disturbing Irregularities Uncovered in the Calls

that Flashed around the World
2013-05-16, Wall Street Journal/PRNewswire
http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20130516-909978.html
The 9/11 Consensus Panel now offers four evidence-based points about the alleged phone calls
from the 9/11 flights. The famous "let's roll" drama of the passenger revolt on UA 93 was relayed
by passenger Todd Beamer's 13-minute unrecorded seat-back call to GTE telephone supervisor
Lisa Jefferson, who reported Beamer as strangely tranquil, declining to speak to his wife.
Eerily, Beamer's line remained open for 15 minutes after the crash. Oddly, the Verizon
wireless record shows that 19 calls were made from Beamer's cell phone long after the
crash of UA 93. Initial media reports and FBI interviews detailed more than a dozen cell phone
calls from the planes at high elevation. Yet in 2001, a telephone spokesperson stated that
sustained mobile calls were not possible above 10,000 feet. During the 2006 Moussaoui Trial, the
FBI (under oath) reduced the number of cell phone calls to two calls made from 5,000 feet, and
presented evidence of only one (not two) "unconnected" call from Barbara Olson, lasting "0
seconds." In another twist, two other women reported that Caller-ID showed their husband's cell
numbers on their answering machines, which while lasting several minutes, had been made from
elevations of 25,000 and 35,000 feet. Although the FBI conducted a massive investigation into the
calls, none of the telephone billing, nor any of the cell phone location data stored in standard
phone company records has been publicly released.
Note: The 9/11 Consensus Panel, consisting of scientists, pilots, professors, attorneys, and
journalists, has developed 32 Points of evidence contradicting specific claims made by the official
account of 9/11. For many unanswered questions about 9/11 raised by highly credible former
government officials and professors, click here and here. For our 9/11 Information Center filled with
reliable, verifiable 9/11 resources, click here.
1.6 Billion Rounds Of Ammo For Homeland Security? It's Time For A
National Conversation
2013-03-11, Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2013/03/11/1-6-billion-rounds-of-ammo-...
The Denver Post, on February 15th, ran an Associated Press article entitled "Homeland Security
aims to buy 1.6b rounds of ammo". It confirmed that the Department of Homeland Security has
issued an open purchase order for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition. Some of this purchase
order is for hollow-point rounds, forbidden by international law for use in war, along with a
frightening amount specialized for snipers. Also reported elsewhere, at the height of the Iraq
War the Army was expending less than 6 million rounds a month. Therefore 1.6 billion rounds
would be enough to sustain a hot war for 20+ years. DHS now is [also] showing off its
acquisition of heavily armored personnel carriers, repatriated from the Iraqi and Afghani theaters of
operation. The Department of Homeland Security is apparently taking delivery (apparently through
the Marine Corps Systems Command, Quantico VA, via the manufacturer Navistar Defense LLC)
of an undetermined number of [recently retrofitted] Mine Resistant Protected MaxxPro MRAP
vehicles for service on the streets of the United States. Why would they need such over-the-top
vehicles on U.S. streets to withstand IEDs, mine blasts, and 50 caliber hits to bullet-proof glass? In
a war zone yes, definitely. [But] on the streets of America?
Note: For a U.S. Army field manual titled "Internment and Resettlement Operations" (FM 3-39.40)
describing how large numbers of American citizens could be sent to internment camps if involved
in "terrorist" activities, click here. The introduction to this document states, "Commanders will use
technology and conduct police intelligence operations to influence and control populations,
evacuate detainees and, conclusively, transition rehabilitative and reconciliation operations to other
functional agencies." For a disturbing report on the massive expansion of drones over US skies,
click here.
To Kill an American
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/06/opinion/to-kill-an-american.html
The newly disclosed white paper offering a legal reasoning behind the claim that President
Obama has the power to order the killing of American citizens ... coyly describes another,
classified document ... that actually provided the legal justification for ordering the killing of
American citizens. That document still has not been provided to Congress, despite repeated
demands from lawmakers. According to the white paper, the Constitution and the Congressional
authorization for the use of force after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, gave Mr. Obama the right to
kill any American citizen that an informed, high-level official decides is a senior operational
leader of Al Qaeda or an associated force and presents an imminent threat of violent attack. It
never tries to define what an informed, high-level official might be, and the authors of the
memo seem to have redefined the word imminent in a way that diverges sharply from its
customary meaning. It takes the position that the only oversight needed for such a
decision resides within the executive branch, and there is no need to explain the judgment to
Congress, the courts or the public or, indeed, to even acknowledge that the killing took place.
The paper argues that judges and Congress dont have the right to rule on or interfere with
decisions made in the heat of combat. The white paper is a confusing blend of self-defense and
law of war concepts said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies. Its due
process analysis is especially weak.
Note: To read the entire 'white paper' on drone strikes on Americans, click here. For a more
detailed analysis by a distinguished lawyer, click here. What this means is that if the president
doesn't like someone and deems him an imminent threat, he can have that person killed and
legally keep it all a secret. Is America drifting towards a police state?
The 'war on terror' - by design - can never end

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/04/war-on-terror-endless-joh...
In October, the Washington Post's Greg Miller reported that the administration was instituting a
"disposition matrix" to determine how terrorism suspects will be disposed of, all based on this fact:
"among senior Obama administration officials, there is broad consensus that such operations are
likely to be extended at least another decade." As Miller puts it: "That timeline suggests that the
United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on
terrorism." The polices adopted by the Obama administration ... leave no doubt that they are
accelerating, not winding down, the war apparatus that has been relentlessly strengthened
over the last decade. In the name of the War on Terror, the current president has diluted
decades-old Miranda warnings; codified a new scheme of indefinite detention on US soil; plotted to
relocate Guantanamo to Illinois; increased secrecy, repression and release-restrictions at the
camp; minted a new theory of presidential assassination powers even for US citizens; renewed the
Bush/Cheney warrantless eavesdropping framework for another five years, as well as the Patriot
Act, without a single reform; and just signed into law all new restrictions on the release of
indefinitely held detainees. Does that sound to you like a government anticipating the end of the
War on Terror any time soon? Or does it sound like one working feverishly to make their terrorismjustified powers of detention, surveillance, killing and secrecy permanent? There's a good reason
US officials are assuming the "War on Terror" will persist indefinitely: namely, their actions
ensure that this occurs.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the War on Terror, click
here.
Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown...
New documents prove what was once dismissed as paranoid fantasy: totally integrated corporatestate repression of dissent. It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents
show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall so mystifying at the time was not just
coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The
crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to
the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in
bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves was coordinated with the big banks
themselves. The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once
more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America
left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document reproduced here in an
easily searchable format shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police,
regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another
that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the
Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally
planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working
for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.
Note: For analysis of these amazing documents revealing the use of joint government and
corporate counterterrorism structures against peaceful protestors of financial corruption, click here
and here. For a Democracy Now! video segment on this, click here.
Cleveland anarchist bomb plot aided and abetted by the FBI

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/28/cleveland-anarchist-bomb-...
On 20 November, district court Judge David D Dowd Jr sentenced three anarchists with the
Occupy Cleveland movement to prison terms ranging from 8 to 11.5 years for attempting to bomb
a highway bridge last spring. Shaquille Azir, a paid FBI informant with a 20-year criminal record,
facilitated every step in the plot. Azir molded the five's childish bravado and drunken fantasies into
terrorism. He played father figure to the lost men, providing them with jobs, housing, beer and
drugs. Every time the scheme threatened to collapse into gutterpunk chaos, he kept it on track.
FBI tapes reveal Azir led the brainstorming of targets, showed them bridges to case out,
pushed them to buy C-4 military-grade explosives, provided the contact for weapons, gave
them money for the explosives and demanded they develop a plan because "we on the
hook" for the weapons. This case could have put on trial the post-September 11 strategy of
"preventative prosecution", in which the FBI dispatches provocateurs to infiltrate targeted religious
and political groups to see what they can stir up. Anarchists are inherently suspect. A recent FBI
document calls anarchists "criminals seeking an ideology to justify their activities." Pardiss
Kebriaei, a senior attorney specializing in national security at the Center for Constitutional Rights,
claims standard operating procedure in terror cases "starts with surveillance and profiling on the
basis of religion, politics and national origin". She notes parallels between the Cleveland
anarchists and the "Newburgh Four", named for the upstate New York town in which the plot was
hatched.
Note: For information on how to contact Brandon Baxter, Joshua Stafford, Connor Stevens and
Douglas Wright, see cleveland4solidarity.org. For the Newburgh Four, see projectsalam.org For
deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on entrapment operations and other
manipulations by the FBI and intelligence agencies, click here.
Informant: NYPD Paid Me to 'Bait' Muslims

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/informant-nypd-paid-bait-muslims-17547920#...
A paid informant for the New York Police Department's intelligence unit was under orders to "bait"
Muslims into saying inflammatory things as he lived a double life, snapping pictures inside
mosques and collecting the names of innocent people attending study groups on Islam. Shamiur
Rahman, a 19-year-old American of Bangladeshi descent who has now denounced his work as an
informant, said police told him to embrace a strategy called "create and capture." He said it
involved creating a conversation about jihad or terrorism, then capturing the response to send to
the NYPD. For his work, he earned as much as $1,000 a month and goodwill from the police after
a string of minor marijuana arrests. Rahman's account shows how the NYPD unleashed
informants on Muslim neighborhoods, often without specific targets or criminal leads. Much of what
Rahman said represents a tactic the NYPD has denied using. The AP corroborated Rahman's
account through arrest records and weeks of text messages between Rahman and his police
handler. Informants like Rahman are a central component of the NYPD's wide-ranging programs to
monitor life in Muslim neighborhoods since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Police officers have
eavesdropped inside Muslim businesses, trained video cameras on mosques and collected license
plates of worshippers. Informants who trawl the mosques known informally as "mosque
crawlers" tell police what the imam says at sermons and provide police lists of
attendees, even when there's no evidence they committed a crime. The programs were built
with unprecedented help from the CIA.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the games intelligence
agencies and units play, click here.
The Deafness Before the Storm

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/opinion/the-bush-white-house-was-deaf-to-9-...
It was perhaps the most famous presidential briefing in history. On Aug. 6, 2001, President George
W. Bush received a classified review of the threats posed by Osama bin Laden and his terrorist
network, Al Qaeda. That mornings presidential daily brief the top-secret document prepared
by Americas intelligence agencies featured the now-infamous heading: Bin Laden Determined
to Strike in U.S. On April 10, 2004, the Bush White House declassified that daily brief and only
that daily brief in response to pressure from the 9/11 Commission. [But] the Aug. 6 document,
for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came
before it. The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in
the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report
that a group presently in the United States was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on
June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be imminent, although intelligence
suggested the time frame was flexible. Operatives connected to Bin Laden, one [warning]
reported on June 29, expected the planned near-term attacks to have dramatic
consequences, including major casualties. Yet, the White House failed to take significant
action. In the aftermath of 9/11, Bush officials attempted to deflect criticism that they had ignored
C.I.A. warnings by saying they had not been told when and where the attack would occur.
Note: For many revealing reports from major media sources on 9/11, click here.
Expert Group Rejects World Trade Center Reports

2012-05-22, MarketWatch (Part of the Wall Street Journal's digital network)
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/expert-group-rejects-world-trade-center-repo...
If you thought that the fires at the World Trade Center twin towers, set off by the horrific jetliner
impacts of September 11, 2001, were the cause of the destruction of those iconic skyscrapers, you
may be mistaken. Experts now cite evidence showing that high-temperature incendiaries
and explosives were planted throughout the twin towers and the lesser-known 47-story
Building 7, also destroyed later the same day. So says a group of architects and engineers
nearly 1700 strong, represented by Richard Gage, AIA, founder of Architects & Engineers For 9/11
Truth and the director/producer of a new documentary. Two years in the making, the documentary
"9/11: Explosive Evidence - Experts Speak Out - FINAL EDITION " officially debuted today. The
film features 43 experts in building engineering, physics, chemistry, and other technical
fields, plus a half-dozen psychologists who discussed the denial of the evidence that the
AE911Truth engineers have been seeking to get attention to since the founding of the nonprofit
organization in 2007. The group's petition, signed by 14,000 concerned citizens in addition to the
architectural and engineering experts, calls upon the U.S. Congress to initiate a new independent
investigation. "The official story about the attacks of September 11 falls apart when you look
squarely at the facts and apply basic scientific principles to interpret them," says Gage.
Note: For an early version of this powerful documentary, click here. See our 9/11 Information
Center for lots more information on the realities behind 9/11.
Investigating the Investigation

2012-04-13, Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303299604577323843914377930.html
On April 19, 1995, a huge truck bomb destroyed a large part of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal
Building in Oklahoma City ... killing 168 people, including 19 children. In a matter of days the FBI
established that the bombing was the work of a conspiracy. The first conspirator arrested was
Timothy McVeigh, a 27-year-old Army veteran. The second conspirator arrested was Terry Nichols.
"Oklahoma City," an extraordinarily well-researched book, asserts that the FBI investigation of the
bombing was badly flawed and missed, or disregarded, evidence of a larger conspiracy. The
authors, Andrew Gumbel and Roger Charles, are both highly regarded investigative reporters who
have been immersed in this case for more than a decade. They were given access to vast
amounts of material assembled by the defense teams, including 18,000 FBI witness interviews.
The book ... outlines how federal prosecutors, eager to wrap up the McVeigh and Nichols cases,
avoided raising questions about possible co-conspirators that the defense could use to confound a
jury. Among the glaring gaps in the investigation was the failure of the FBI to attempt to match the
more than 1,000 unidentified latent fingerprints found in the investigation. [And] almost all the
eyewitnesses to the crime claimed that McVeigh was not alone. No fewer than 24 witnesses said
that they saw McVeigh, just before and after the crime, with a man who could not have been
... Mr. Nichols. The FBI concluded that these witnesses had all been confused. Certainly
eyewitness testimony can be unreliable, but 24 mistaken witnessesand no accurate
ones?
Note: Many aspects of the Oklahoma City bombing were covered up. For a compilation of media
videos showing without doubt there were other bombs in the building which later were completely
ignored, click here. For other major media articles showing major manipulation, click here click
here, here, and here.
Pentagon says it has no records of bin Laden's death; CIA hasn't

answered open records request
2012-03-15, Minneapolis Star Tribune/Associated Press
http://www.startribune.com/nation/142811145.html
Government officials have openly discussed details of the mission [to kill Osama bin Laden] in
speeches, interviews and television appearances, but the administration won't disclose records
that would confirm their narrative of that fateful night. The Associated Press asked for files about
the raid in more than 20 separate [FOIA] requests, mostly submitted the day after bin Laden's
death. The Pentagon told the AP this month it could not locate any photographs or video
taken during the raid or showing bin Laden's body. It also said it could not find any images of
bin Laden's body on the Navy aircraft carrier where the al-Qaida leader's body was taken. The
Pentagon said it could not find any death certificate, autopsy report or results of DNA
identification tests for bin Laden, or any pre-raid materials discussing how the government
planned to dispose of bin Laden's body if he were killed. It said it searched files at the Pentagon,
U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., and the Navy command in San Diego that
controls the USS Carl Vinson, the aircraft carrier used in the mission. The Defense Department
told the AP in late February it could not find any emails about the bin Laden mission or his
"Geronimo" code name that were sent or received in the year before the raid by William
McRaven, the three-star admiral at the Joint Special Operations Command who organized and
oversaw the mission. It also could not find any emails from other senior officers who would have
been involved in the mission's planning.
Note: WantToKnow team member Prof. David Ray Griffin, in his book Osama bin Laden: Dead or
Alive?, lays out the extensive evidence that bin Laden died in December 2001, and that since that
time Pentagon psyops had been keeping him "alive" with fake videos and audiotapes to maintain a
crucial pretext for the ever-expanding "war on terror." Could it be that the Pentagon will produce no
records of its purported "death raid" because in fact it will reveal major manipulations involving bin
Laden's death?
10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-the-united-states-still-the-land-of...
Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any
definition of a free nation must include their own the land of [the] free. Yet ... in the decade since
Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an
expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization
Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. While each new national
security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often
discussed in isolation. But they dont operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers
under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often
proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba
and China as categorically unfree. [Yet] the United States now has much more in common with
such regimes than anyone may like to admit. These countries also have constitutions that purport
to guarantee freedoms and rights. But their governments have broad discretion in denying those
rights and few real avenues for challenges by citizens precisely the problem with the new laws
in this country. The list of powers acquired by the U.S. government since 9/11: 1. Assassination of
U.S. citizens. 2. Indefinite detention. 3. Arbitrary justice. 4. Warrantless searches. 5. Secret
evidence. 6. War crimes. 7. Secret court. 8. Immunity from judicial review. 9. Continual monitoring
of citizens. 10. Extraordinary renditions.
Note: Thank you to the Washington Post for publishing this amazing article revealing the
disturbing and severe erosion of freedom and civil liberties in the U.S. ever since 9/11. Written by
Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University in the nation's capital, this incisive
essay lays bare what so many citizens don't know, and what many don't even want to know. Yet, in
this case, ignorance is not bliss. Don't miss the full article listing the loss of 10 important civil
liberties at this link.
Newburgh Four: poor, black, and jailed under FBI 'entrapment' tactics
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/12/newburgh-four-fbi-entrapment-terror
Imam Salahuddin Muhammad could hardly miss Shahed Hussain when he first appeared three
years ago at his mosque in the dilapidated town of Newburgh, just 60 miles up the Hudson River
from New York. Hussain was flash, drove expensive cars and treated people to gifts of cash and
food. Hussain would make Newburgh's Muslim community famous when earlier this year four
other black Newburgh Muslims were jailed for 25 years for a 2009 plot to fire a Stinger missile at
US military planes. All four followed the instructions of Hussain, who meticulously organised the
scheme: from getting the missile and bombs, to reconnaissance missions, to teaching the tenets of
radical Islam. Hussain was a fake. In fact, Hussain worked for the FBI as an informant trawling
mosques in hope of picking up radicals. Yet far from being active militants, the four men he
attracted were impoverished individuals struggling with Newburgh's grim epidemic of crack, drug
crime and poverty. Hussain offered the men huge financial inducements to carry out the plot
including $250,000 to one man and free holidays and expensive cars. The Newburgh
Four ... represent the most extreme form of a controversial FBI policy to use invented
terrorist plots to lure targets. "There has been no case as egregious as this. It is unique in
the incentive the government provided. A quarter million dollars?" said Professor Karen
Greenberg, a terrorism expert at Fordham University.
Note: For a powerful BBC documentary showing clearly that much of the war on terror is a
fabrication to forward a political agenda, watch Power of Nightmares at this link. For many reports
from major media sources on the fake terror behind the "global war on terror", click here.
Top Secret America: A look at the militarys Joint Special Operations

Command
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/top-secret-america-a-lo...
The CIAs armed drones and paramilitary forces have killed dozens of al-Qaeda leaders and
thousands of its foot soldiers. But there is another mysterious organization that has killed even
more of Americas enemies in the decade since the 9/11 attacks. Troops from this other secret
organization have imprisoned and interrogated 10 times as many [suspects as has the CIA],
holding them in jails that it alone controls in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks, this secretive group of men (and a few women) has grown tenfold while sustaining a level
of obscurity that not even the CIA managed. Were the dark matter. Were the force that orders
the universe but cant be seen, a strapping Navy SEAL, speaking on the condition of
anonymity, said in describing his unit. The SEALs are just part of the U.S. militarys Joint Special
Operations Command, known by the acronym JSOC, which has grown from a rarely used hostage
rescue team into Americas secret army, routinely [used] to mount intelligence-gathering missions
and lethal raids, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in countries with which the United States
was not at war, including Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, the Philippines, Nigeria and Syria. The
president has also given JSOC the rare authority to select individuals for its kill list and
then to kill, rather than capture, them. JSOC has grown from 1,800 troops prior to 9/11 to as
many as 25,000. It has its own intelligence division, its own drones and reconnaissance planes,
even its own dedicated satellites.
Note: This article describing JSOCs spectacular rise, much of which has not been publicly
disclosed before, is adapted from a chapter of the newly released Top Secret America: The Rise of
the New American Security State, by Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William M. Arkin.
For lots more on the secret realities of the "Endless War" launched by the 9/11 false-flag operation,
click here.
Obama Says 'Justice Has Been Done': Bin Laden Scholar Says No
2011-05-06, CNBC News (NBC's Business News Channel)
http://www.cnbc.com/id/42929478/
President Obama, speaking of the operation to kill Osama bin Laden, said: "Justice has been
done." It has been widely assumed that, if bin Laden is now dead, the person most responsible for
the 9/11 attacks has been brought to justice. But the US government has never provided
evidence that the attacks were carried out by bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization. In
September 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell promised to provide this evidence, but the next
day recanted, saying "most of [the evidence] is classified." In October, Prime Minister Tony Blair
provided evidence that bin Laden and al-Qaeda planned and executed the 9/11 attacks. But he
added: "This document does not purport to provide a prosecutable case against Osama Bin Laden
in a court of law." The FBI's acts that made bin Laden a "Most Wanted Terrorist" do not include the
9/11 attacks. The FBI's chief of investigative publicity explained: "The FBI has seen no hard
evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11." Could al-Qaeda have carried out the attacks? Scientists
for 9/11 Truth views the rapid, symmetrical, straight-down collapses of the Towers and nearby
WTC 7 as consistent only with controlled demolition. And 1500 members of Architects and
Engineers for 9/11 Truth agree: The 9/11 attacks were not the work of al-Qaeda.
Note: CNBC removed this article not long after posting it. To read this critically important press
release by WantToKnow.info team member and Nobel Peace Prize nominee David Ray Griffin in
its entirety, click here. Dr. Griffin's 2009 book, Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? presented
compelling evidence that bin Laden died in December 2001 -- prompting a BBC documentary of
the same name. Griffin was named among the New Statesman's "50 People Who Matter Today".
For an abundance of reliable news articles, videos, and more showing major deception on 9/11,
click here.
The nagging questions that refuse to go away

2011-05-05, The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-the-nag...
Some 36 hours after the world first learnt of the US commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden,
the White House changed parts of its story. A woman was killed, its spokesman said, but she was
not Bin Laden's wife who survived after being shot in the leg. Bin Laden did not, as had earlier
been claimed, use his wife as a human shield; she was injured when she tried to challenge one of
the US commandos. And Bin Laden was not, after all, armed, although he did, the spokesman
said, put up some resistance. The new version no wife as human shield, no weapon makes
[bin Laden] more ordinary and more vulnerable. It also raises further questions. If the first version
was incorrect, perhaps even to an extent "spun" for a certain effect, might there not be
room for doubt about other aspects of the official narrative? About, say, whether the crucial
intelligence about Bin Laden was extracted from al-Qa'ida operatives under torture, which might
appear to justify such methods and lift some of the opprobrium from the previous US
administration and the CIA. A no less pertinent question that the new version raises is whether Bin
Laden was ever actually given a chance to surrender and whether he might have been taken alive
rather than dead. When President Obama said that justice had been done, was this strictly
speaking justice, or was it cold-blooded retribution?
Note: WantToKnow team member David Ray Griffin's book establishing the likelihood that Osama
bin Laden died in December 2001, Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?, is available here. For many
other major media news articles showing clear deception and more by government officials, click
here.
US 'fails to account' for Iraq reconstruction billions

2010-07-27, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10774002
A US federal watchdog has criticised the US military for failing to account properly for billions of
dollars it received to help rebuild Iraq. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction says
the US Department of Defence is unable to account properly for 96% of the money. Out of
just over $9bn, $8.7bn is unaccounted for, the inspector says. Much of the money came
from the sale of Iraqi oil and gas, and some frozen Saddam Hussein-era assets were also sold
off. The money was in a special fund administered by the US Department of Defense, the
Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), and was earmarked for reconstruction projects. But the report
says that a lack of proper accounting and poor oversight makes it impossible to say exactly what
happened to most of it. "The breakdown in controls left the funds vulnerable to inappropriate uses
and undetected loss," the report said. This is not the first time that allegations of missing billions
have surfaced in relation to the US-led invasion of Iraq and its aftermath. In 2005, the inspector
general criticised the Coalition Provisional Authority, the US-led occupation administration, for its
management of an $8.8bn fund that belonged to the Iraqi government. A criminal investigation
conducted led to the conviction of eight US officials on bribery, fraud and money-laundering
charges.
Note: For a collection of major media articles showing how the US military has repeatedly failed to
account for hundreds of billions of dollars, click here.
A hidden world, growing beyond control

http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/tsa/static/articles/hid...
In the Department of Defense, where more than two-thirds of the intelligence programs reside,
only a handful of senior officials - called Super Users - have the ability to even know about all the
department's activities. Most [sources for this story] requested anonymity either because they are
prohibited from speaking publicly or because, they said, they feared retaliation at work for
describing their concerns. Beyond redundancy, secrecy within the intelligence world hampers
effectiveness in other ways. For the Defense Department, [the] problem goes back to an ultrasecret group of programs for which access is extremely limited and monitored by specially trained
security officers. These are called Special Access Programs - or SAPs - and the Pentagon's list of
code names for them runs 300 pages. The intelligence community has hundreds more of its own,
and those hundreds have thousands of sub-programs with their own limits on the number of
people authorized to know anything about them. All this means that very few people have a
complete sense of what's going on. Such secrecy can undermine the normal chain of
command when senior officials use it to cut out rivals or when subordinates are ordered to
keep secrets from their commanders. One military officer involved in one such program said he
was ordered to sign a document prohibiting him from disclosing it to his four-star commander, with
whom he worked closely every day, because the commander was not authorized to know about it
Note: To read the full text of this important article, please make sure to press the "Continue
Reading" button at the end of the first webpage to access all of the fascinating information
provided. For lots more on government secrecy, click here.
Obama gives order to kill American imam

2010-04-08, The Times (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7089899.ece
The Obama Administration has taken the unprecedented step of authorising the killing of a US
citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. The decision is extraordinary not only
because Mr al-Awlaki is believed to be the first American whose killing has been approved
by a US President, but also because the Obama Administration chose to make the move
public. The Los Angeles Times reported in January that Mr al-Awlakis name had been placed on
a top-secret list of targeted killings. In the past 24 hours, however, a handful of intelligence and
counter-terrorism officials have briefed Reuters and The New York Times on the decision. The
authorisation ... and the decision to make it public is a high-risk strategy. Tina Foster, of the USbased International Justice Network, told The Times: It is shocking that our Government would go
to these extremes, even depriving someone of their life without a legal process. The policy of
targeted killings is controversial. President Ford issued an order in 1976 banning political
assassinations. Yet Congress approved the use of force against al-Qaeda after the September 11
attacks.
Note: Obama is the first president to publicly order the assassination an American citizen. Neither
George W. Bush nor Dick Cheney asserted such a power on the part of the president.
Leaked U.S. video shows deaths of Reuters' Iraqi staffers

2010-04-05, Washington Post/Reuters
Classified U.S. military video showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters that killed a dozen
people in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff, was released on [April 5] by a group that
promotes leaking to fight government and corporate corruption. The group, WikiLeaks, told a
news conference in Washington that it acquired encrypted video of the July 12, 2007, attack
from military whistleblowers and had been able to view and investigate it after breaking the
encryption code. A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the
video and audio were authentic. David Schlesinger, Reuters' editor-in-chief, said the video
released by WikiLeaks showed the deaths of [Namir] Noor-Eldeen and [Saeed] Chmagh were
"tragic and emblematic of the extreme dangers that exist in covering war zones." "The video
released today via WikiLeaks is graphic evidence of the dangers involved in war journalism and
the tragedies that can result," he said. Reuters has pressed the U.S. military to conduct a full and
objective investigation into the killing of the two staff. WikiLeaks posted the video at
http://www.collateralmurder.com.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. Should the above video disappear, click here to view it on
one of our websites. The only reason this event made news is because the two cameramen killed
were Reuters reporters. US forces then fired on an unarmed van with children in it, which was
attempting to bring the dead and wounded out of the combat zone. How many innocent civilians
are killed like this and never make the news? Spread this important video and help others to wake
up and work together to stop the creulty of some of the US forces. The Pentagon is working hard
to shut down Wikileaks, the organization which secured this powerful video.
Terror suspect allowed to keep visa by intelligence officials

2010-01-27, Detroit News
http://detnews.com/article/20100127/NATION/1270405/Terror-suspect-kept-visa-t...
The State Department didn't revoke the visa of foiled terrorism suspect Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab because federal counterterrorism officials had begged off revocation, a top
State Department official revealed. Patrick F. Kennedy, an undersecretary for management at
the State Department, said Abdulmutallab's visa wasn't taken away because intelligence officials
asked his agency not to deny a visa to the suspected terrorist. "Revocation action would have
disclosed what they were doing," Kennedy said in testimony before the House Committee on
Homeland Security. Since the failed attack, criticism has swirled around leaders of the U.S.
intelligence community who have indicated they were warned by the suspect's father about a
month before the flight of a potential terror threat, but failed to stop Abdmutallab, despite other
warning signs like the fact that he purchased a one-way ticket to Detroit with cash.
Note: So federal counterterrorism officials stopped the bomber's visa from being revoked.
Hmmmm... Clearly there is more going on in this case than "failure to connect the dots." Why
aren't other major media reporting this important story? Kurt Haskell, a key eyewitness passenger
who almost lost his life, has written a powerfully revealing blog piece on what he thinks is really
going on, available here. For more on this key case, click here.
David Kelly death evidence 'to be kept secret for 70 years'

2010-01-25, Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/7066383/David-Kelly-death-evidence-to-...
A highly unusual ruling by Lord Hutton, who chaired the inquiry into Dr Kelly's death, means
medical records including the post-mortem report will remain classified until after all those with a
direct interest in the case are dead. And a 30-year secrecy order has been placed on written
records provided to Lord Hutton's inquiry which were not produced in evidence. Liberal Democrat
MP Norman Baker, who has conducted his own investigations into Dr Kelly's death, described the
order as "astonishing". Dr Kelly's body was found in woods close to his Oxfordshire home in
2003, shortly after it was revealed that he was the source of a BBC report casting doubt on
the Government's claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction capable of being fired
within 45 minutes. An inquest was suspended by then Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer, who ruled
that Lord Hutton's inquiry could take its place. But ... the inquiry focused more on the question of
how the BBC report came to be broadcast than on the medical explanation for Dr Kelly's death.
Lord Hutton's report in 2004 concluded that Dr Kelly killed himself by cutting an artery in his wrist.
But the finding has been challenged by doctors who claim that the weapons inspector's stated
injuries were not serious enough.
Note: For a cache of illuminating reports on government secrecy, click here.
Meet Mikey, 8: U.S. Has Him on Watch List

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/nyregion/14watchlist.html
The Transportation Security Administration ... has on its web site a mythbuster that tries to
reassure the public. Myth: The No-Fly list includes an 8-year-old boy. Buster: No 8-year-old is on a
T.S.A. watch list. Meet Mikey Hicks, said Najlah Feanny Hicks, introducing her 8-year-old son, a
New Jersey Cub Scout and frequent traveler who has seldom boarded a plane without a hassle
because he shares the name of a suspicious person. Its not a myth. Hickss mother initially
sensed trouble when he was a baby and she could not get a seat for him on their flight to Florida at
an airport kiosk; airline officials explained that his name was on the list, she recalled. The first
time he was patted down, at Newark Liberty International Airport, Mikey was 2. He cried.
After years of long delays and waits for supervisors at every airport ticket counter, this years
vacation to the Bahamas badly shook up the family. Mikey was frisked on the way there, then more
aggressively on the way home. Up your arms, down your arms, up your crotch someone
is patting your 8-year-old down like hes a criminal, Mrs. Hicks recounted. It is true that Mikey
is not on the federal governments no-fly list, which includes about 2,500 people, less than 10
percent of them from the United States. But his name appears to be among some 13,500 on the
larger selectee list, which sets off a high level of security screening.
Note: For many reports from major media sources on the extreme loss of liberties brought about
by the highly touted "war on terrorism," click here.
Is Osama Bin Laden dead or alive?

2010-01-09, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8444069.stm
Osama Bin Laden died eight years ago during the battle for Tora Bora in Afghanistan, either from a
US bomb or from a serious kidney disease. Or so the conspiracy theory goes. The theory that has
developed on the web since 9/11 is that US intelligence services are manufacturing the Bin Laden
statements ... to justify the so-called war on terror in Afghanistan, Iraq and back at home.
Numerous audio and video statements purporting to be from Bin Laden have been released, but
their authenticity has been continually questioned. The veracity of all of the videos is questioned by
David Ray Griffin, a former theology professor and member of the 9/11 Truth Movement, which
also questions mainstream accounts of the attack on the World Trade Centre. "None of them can
be proven to be authentic," he says. "At least three of them can be shown to be almost
certainly fake. And if somebody is faking Bin Laden videos, then that leads to the suspicion
that all the videos and audio tapes have been faked." His first example is a video released by
the US Department of Defense in December 2001. In it, [the] Bin Laden [figure] confesses to 9/11,
yet Mr Griffin points out that al-Qaeda has only rarely admitted responsibility for terrorist attacks.
He also maintains that the Bin Laden figure looks very different to previous footage - fatter, with
shorter fingers, and that he is even writing with the wrong hand.
Note: To see how easily audio and video materials can be faked, read excerpts from this
Washington Post article. WantToKnow supporter David Ray Griffin has written extensively about
the evidence regarding whether Osama bin Laden is alive or dead, including his recent book,
Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? BBC also interviewed former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir
Bhutto, who stated in 2007 that bin Laden was dead. She was murdered one month later. For
more on this, click here
The Lies They Told

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/review/Heilbrunn-t.html
When Sept. 11, 2001, dawned, the Northeast Air Defense Sector in Rome, N.Y., went on full alert
to prepare for a training exercise that envisioned a sneak attack by Russian planes flying over
the North Pole to bomb the United States, a prospect that Defense Secretary Robert McNamara
had dismissed as outdated in 1966. Later that morning, ... three F-16 fighter jets were scrambled
from Langley Air Force Base to form a combat air patrol over Washington. But degraded radio
transmission quality meant that the pilots were left clueless about the nature of their mission. On
seeing the Pentagon in flames, the lead fighter pilot later explained, I reverted to the Russian
threat. Im thinking cruise missile threat from the sea. You know, you look down and see the
Pentagon burning, and I thought the bastards snuck one by us. You couldnt see any airplanes,
and no one told us anything. As senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, [Farmer] investigated
the derelict conduct of the national security apparatus. Now that numerous transcripts and tapes
have been declassified, [in his book The Ground Truth] Farmer draws on them to assail the
governments official depiction of 9/11 as so much public relations flimflam. Both Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney, Farmer says, provided
palpably false versions that touted the militarys readiness to shoot down United 93 before
it could hit Washington. Planes were never in place to intercept it. Farmer ... was the attorney
general of New Jersey and is the dean of the Rutgers School of Law,
Note: For more on Farmer's book, see a summary of this Time magazine article. For more on this,
see concise summaries of deeply revealing 9/11 news articles from reliable major media sources.
Material missing from Oklahoma bombing tapes, lawyer says

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-09-27-okla-city-bombing-tapes_N.htm
Long-secret security tapes showing the chaos immediately after the 1995 bombing of the
Oklahoma City federal building are blank in the minutes before the blast and appear to have been
edited, an attorney who obtained the recordings said Sunday. "The real story is what's missing,"
said Jesse Trentadue, a Salt Lake City attorney who obtained the recordings through the federal
Freedom of Information Act as part of an unofficial inquiry he is conducting into the April 19, 1995,
bombing that killed 168 people and injured hundreds more. The tapes turned over by the FBI came
from security cameras various companies had mounted outside office buildings near the Alfred P.
Murrah Federal Building. They are blank at points before 9:02 a.m., when a truck bomb carrying a
4,000-pound fertilizer-and-fuel-oil bomb detonated in front of the building, Trentadue said. "Four
cameras in four different locations going blank at basically the same time on the morning of
April 19, 1995. There ain't no such thing as a coincidence," Trentadue said. He said
government officials claim the security cameras did not record the minutes before the bombing
because "they had run out of tape" or "the tape was being replaced." "The absence of footage
from these crucial time intervals is evidence that there is something there that the FBI
doesn't want anybody to see." Trentadue said he is seeking more tapes along with a variety of
bombing-related documents from the FBI and the CIA. An FOIA request by Trentadue for 26 CIA
documents was rejected in June. A letter from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which
reviewed the documents, said their release "could cause grave damage to our national security."
Note: This revealing article also tells how Trentadue's brother was murdered by FBI agents who
mistakenly thought his brother was the bomber. For more valuable information on this and other
evidence challenging the official story of the Oklahoma City bombing, click here.
Pentagon sets sights on public opinion

2009-02-05, MSNBC/Associated Press
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29040299/
The Pentagon is steadily and dramatically increasing the money it spends to win what it calls "the
human terrain" of world public opinion. In the process, it is raising concerns of spreading
propaganda at home in violation of federal law. An Associated Press investigation found that over
the past five years, the money the military spends on winning hearts and minds at home and
abroad has grown by 63 percent, to at least $4.7 billion this year, according to Department of
Defense budgets and other documents. That's almost as much as it spent on body armor for
troops in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2004 and 2006. This year, the Pentagon will employ
27,000 people just for recruitment, advertising and public relations almost as many as
the total 30,000-person work force in the State Department. The biggest chunk of funds
about $1.6 billion goes into recruitment and advertising. Another $547 million goes into public
affairs, which reaches American audiences. And about $489 million more goes into what is
known as psychological operations. Staffing across all these areas costs about $2.1 billion, as
calculated by the number of full-time employees and the military's average cost per service
member. That's double the staffing costs for 2003. Recruitment and advertising are the only two
areas where Congress has authorized the military to influence the American public. Far more
controversial is public affairs, because of the prohibition on propaganda to the American public.
Note: For more revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities of the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq, click here.
Whistleblower exposes spying on Americans

2009-01-22, MSNBC Countdown With Keith Olberman
OLBERMANN: It has taken less than 24 hours after the Bush presidency ended for a former
analyst at the National Security Agency to come forward to reveal new allegations about how this
nation was spied on by its own government. Russell Tice [reveals] that under the collar of fighting
terrorism, the Bush administration was also targeting specific groups of Americans for surveillance.
TICE: The National Security Agency had access to all Americans communications, faxes,
phone calls, and their computer communications. They monitored all communications.
What was done was a sort of an ability to look at the meta data, the signaling data for
communications, and ferret that information to determine what communications would ultimately
be collected. Basically, filtering out sort of like sweeping everything with that meta data, and then
cutting down ultimately what you are going to look at and what is going to be collected, and in the
long run have an analyst look at, you know, needles in a haystack for what might be of interest.
OLBERMANN: I mention that you say specific groups were targeted. What group or groups can
you tell us about? TICE: [Some of the groups they] collected on were U.S. news organizations and
reporters and journalists. The collection ... was 24/7, and you know, 365 days a year, and it made
no sense.
Note: To watch this revealing clip on video, click here. For many reports on government
surveillance and invasions of privacy, click here.
BAE: secret papers reveal threats from Saudi prince

2008-02-15, The Guardian (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/15/bae.armstrade
Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless
corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents
revealed yesterday. Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced
"another 7/7" and the loss of "British lives on British streets" if they pressed on with their
inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence. Prince Bandar, the head of
the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the
man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces
accusations that he himself took more than 1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.
He was accused in yesterday's high court hearings of flying to London in December 2006 and
uttering threats which made the prime minister, Tony Blair, force an end to the Serious Fraud Office
investigation into bribery allegations involving Bandar and his family. The threats halted the fraud
inquiry. Lord Justice Moses, hearing the civil case with Mr Justice Sullivan, said the government
appeared to have "rolled over" after the threats. He said one possible view was that it was "just as
if a gun had been held to the head" of the government. The SFO investigation began in 2004,
when Robert Wardle, its director, studied evidence unearthed by the Guardian. This revealed that
massive secret payments were going from BAE to Saudi Arabian princes, to promote arms deals.
Yesterday, anti-corruption campaigners began a legal action to overturn the decision to halt the
case. They want the original investigation restarted, arguing the government had caved into
blackmail.
Note: This report comes very close to confirming the close link between terrorist attacks and highlevel policy of certain states. For many revealing clues along these lines from reliable sources,
click here.
Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto: Osama bin Laden is Dead

2007-11-02, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7070000/newsid_7075800/7075843.stm
David Frost: Does anyone know exactly who was responsible for this assassination attempt?
There is one report that said that you arranged to send President Musharraf a letter ... in the event
of your death by assassination, urging him to investigate certain individuals in his government. Is
that true? Benazir Bhutto: Yes it is true that I wrote to General Musharraf. I feel these are the
forces that really want to stop not just me, but the democratic process and the will of the people
[from] triumphing. David Frost: In terms of these three people you mentioned where they members
of or associated with the government? Benazir Bhutto: One of them is a very key figure in security.
He is a former military officer. He is someone who has had dealings with Jaish-e-Mohammad, one
of the band [of] groups of Maulana Masood Azhar, who was in an Indian jail for decapitating
three British tourists and three American tourists. And he also had dealings with Omar
Shiekh, who murdered Osama bin Laden.
Note: The key statement on bin Laden's murder happens at minute five in the video at the above
link. If the link fails, click here. For a Jan. 9, 2010 BBC article also suggesting bin Laden may
already have been dead years earlier and that his death had been covered up, click here. Bhutto
was assassinated not long after this interview on Dec. 27, 2007.
Terrorized by 'War on Terror'

The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration's elevation of
these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious
impact on American democracy. Constant reference to a "war on terror" did accomplish one
major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason,
intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on
behalf of the policies they want to pursue. America today is not the self-confident and
determined nation that responded to Pearl Harbor; nor is it the America that heard from its leader,
at another moment of crisis, the powerful words "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Fearmongering, reinforced by security entrepreneurs, the mass media and the entertainment industry,
generates its own momentum. The terror entrepreneurs ... are necessarily engaged in competition
to justify their existence. Hence their task is to convince the public that it faces new threats.
"Security" procedures have become routine, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and further
contributing to a siege mentality. Government at every level has stimulated the paranoia. The
record is even more troubling in the general area of civil rights. The culture of fear has bred
intolerance, suspicion of foreigners and the adoption of legal procedures that undermine
fundamental notions of justice. Innocent until proven guilty has been diluted if not undone, with
some -- even U.S. citizens -- incarcerated for lengthy periods of time without ... due process. There
is no known, hard evidence that such excess has prevented significant acts of terrorism.
Note: This is an amazingly deep and powerful analysis of the use of fear by politicians, big
business, and the media to promote their own agendas. Amazingly, the article was written by
Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Carter. This is the same man who
wrote in his book The Grand Chessboard, that U.S. global primacy is not likely to be achieved
"except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat."
Strange, but the article is well worth reading in its entirety. For more, click here.
The 9/11 conspiracy movement

2007-02-14, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/conspiracy_files/6354679.stm
9/11 was the first global event in the age of the internet. And now the world wide web is being
used as a platform for a wide range of conspiracy theories ... which allege that the US
government was somehow involved in the attacks. Those who question the official account
of 9/11 form a broad coalition. Loose Change has been viewed tens of millions of times and pulls
no punches. [Creator Dylan Avery claims] "our government will willingly kill its own citizens for
whatever gain it deems necessary ... and then lie as much as they need to cover it up." At the
other extreme [Professor Jim] Fetzer is a former US Marine officer and retired professor of
philosophy. Puzzled by the apparent discrepancies in the official account of 9/11, he founded a
coalition of like-minded academics called Scholars For 9/11 Truth. Its purpose is to research
exactly what happened that day, using the principles of scientific research. Alex Jones, a nationally
syndicated radio talk show host ... believes 9/11 was "an inside job." "It's a self inflicted wound, it's
a false-flag terror operation," he claims. After the attacks, government officials were summoned to
give evidence before a Congressional Inquiry set up to investigate the intelligence failure before
9/11. Co-chairman Senator Bob Graham told ... of his frustration at the lack of co-operation from
the FBI in that inquiry, and by the government's decision to censor over 30 pages of his report
which related to Saudi Arabia. "Within 9/11 there are too many secrets," he said, "withholding of
those secrets has eroded public confidence in their government."
Note: Don't miss the BBC's impressive 9/11 Timeline available here which is related to the above
article. And for lots more reliable, verifiable information suggesting a 9/11 cover-up, click here. If
the above link to the BBC article does not function, click on The 9/11 Conspiracy Movement.
500 Conspiracy Buffs Meet to Seek the Truth of 9/11

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/05/us/05conspiracy.html?ex=1307160000&en=2d326...
In the ballroom foyer of the Embassy Suites Hotel, the two-day International Education and
Strategy Conference for 9/11 Truth was off to a rollicking start. More than 500 people from
Italy to Northern California gathered for the weekend at a major chain hotel near the
runways of O'Hare International. There were talks on the Reichstag fire and the sinking of the
Battleship Maine as precedents for 9/11. There were speeches by the lawyer for James Earl Ray,
who claimed that a military conspiracy killed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, and by a former
operative for the British secret service, MI5. 9/11 Truthers [are] a group that, in its rank and file,
includes professors, chain-saw operators, mothers, engineers, activists, used-book sellers, pizza
deliverymen, [and] college students. Steven E. Jones [is] a professor of physics at Brigham Young
University and the movement's expert in the matter of collapse. Dr. Jones...is a soft-spoken man
who lets his writing do the talking. He composed an account of the destruction of the towers...that
holds that "pre-positioned cutter-charges" brought the buildings down. There is a plan by the
British delegation...to get members of Parliament to watch "Loose Change," the seminal
movement DVD. The Truthers are not alone in believing the whole truth has not come out. A poll
released last month by Zogby International found that 42 percent of all Americans believe the 9/11
Commission "concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence" in the attacks. [And a] Zogby
poll two years ago that found that 49 percent of New York City residents agreed with the idea that
some leaders "knew in advance" that the attacks were planned and failed to act.
Losing bin Laden

Despite a huge and costly effort by the media, the public still has an incomplete picture of what
really happened during the [war in Afghanistan] and of how Osama bin Laden survived it. Gary
Berntsen's Jawbreaker provides a valuable new account by a major participant that fills in many
blanks. Berntsen was a top CIA field commander in the most critical sector of a new kind of war; at
various times, the CIA veteran had elements of the Delta Force, Army Rangers, Navy SEALs and
tactical air units reporting to him. Crown Publishers has chosen unnecessarily to position it as a
diatribe that the CIA tried to suppress. In fact, while the CIA dragged its feet in reviewing the
manuscript for classified material and redacted plenty of specifics, the book is hardly an attack on
the CIA. In fact, the overall picture of the CIA here is far more flattering than that in The 9/11
Commission Report. Still, to portray Jawbreaker as "the book the CIA doesn't want you to read" (as
the cover puts it), the publisher has displayed the redactions throughout the book as large black
lines. Contradicting Bush administration denials, Berntsen writes that his teams discovered bin
Laden and the remnants of his entourage in the now famous Tora Bora Mountains along the
lawless, rugged Afghan-Pakistani border. Berntsen recounts very credibly how he and others
pleaded with Gen. Tommy Franks and the Pentagon brass to put in blocking forces so that
bin Laden and the remnants of al Qaeda's leadership could not flee into Pakistan. But for
reasons that remain unclear to Berntsen ... the Bush administration or Franks decided to
depend instead on local Afghan warlords rather than put U.S. forces on the ground to block
bin Laden's escape.
Note: To read a concise summary of reliable news reports that raise serious questions about what
really happened on 9/11, click here.
U.S. Can Confine Citizens Without Charges, Court Rules

A federal appeals court yesterday backed the president's power to indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen
captured on U.S. soil without any criminal charges, holding that such authority is vital during
wartime to protect the nation from terrorist attacks. The ruling, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
4th Circuit, came in the case of Jose Padilla, a former gang member and U.S. citizen arrested in
Chicago in 2002 and a month later designated an "enemy combatant" by President Bush. Padilla
has been held without trial in a U.S. naval brig for more than three years, and his case has ignited
a fierce battle over the balance between civil liberties and the government's power to fight
terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A host of civil liberties groups and former attorney
general Janet Reno weighed in on Padilla's behalf, calling his detention illegal and arguing that the
president does not have unchecked power to lock up U.S. citizens indefinitely. In its ruling
yesterday, the three-judge panel overturned a lower court. Avidan Cover, a senior associate at
Human Rights First, said the ruling "really flies in the face of our understanding of what
rights American citizens are entitled to." Opponents have warned that if not constrained by
the courts, Padilla's detention could lead to the military being allowed to hold anyone who,
for example, checks out what the government considers the wrong kind of reading
materials from the library.
Note: For many disturbing reports from major media sources on government threats to civil
liberties, click here.
Getting Agnostic About 9/11

http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm-crgriffin35aug28,...
Anyone who types the words "9/11" and "conspiracy" into an online search engine soon learns that
not everybody buys the official narrative of what took place on Sept. 11, 2001. As a professor
emeritus at the Claremont School of Theology, 66-year-old David Ray Griffin would seem to have
more affinity for leather elbow patches than tin hats, yet after friends and colleagues prodded him
into sifting through the evidence, he experienced a conversion. "For the first year and a half I
just accepted the conventional view ... that this was blowback for our foreign policy. When
a colleague suggested to me ... forces within our own government had arranged it, I didn't
accept that. Then several months later another colleague sent me a website that had a
timeline. Once I ... saw all those stories drawn from mainstream sources that contradicted the
official account, I decided I needed to look into it more carefully, and the more I looked, the worse it
got. The fact that Building 7 ... collapsed when it had not been hit by an airplane ... that's a
smoking gun. The fact that standard operating procedures were not followed that morning, and
we've gotten three different stories now by the U.S. military as to why they did not intercept the
planes, that's a smoking gun. The 9/11 commission simply ignored those questions. The official
account itself is a conspiracy theory. It says that 19 Arab Muslims...conspired to pull off this
operation. The question is not whether one is a conspiracy theorist about 9/11. It's which
conspiracy theory do you find most supported by the evidence?"
Note: If the Los Angeles Times link does not work, click here for the full article. The timeline to
which Prof. Griffin refers is the WantToKnow.info timeline at http://www.WantToKnow.info/911cover-up
CIA Commander: U.S. Let bin Laden Slip Away

2005-08-15, Newsweek magazine
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8853000/site/newsweek/
During the 2004 presidential campaign, George W. Bush and John Kerry battled about whether
Osama bin Laden had escaped from Tora Bora in the final days of the war in Afghanistan. Bush
asserted that U.S. commanders on the ground did not know if bin Laden was at the mountain
hideaway along the Afghan border. But in a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the
agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders did
know that ... bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora ... and could have been caught. Asked to
comment on Berntsen's remarks, National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones passed
on 2004 statements from former CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks. "We don't know to
this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001," Franks wrote in an Oct. 19
New York Times op-ed. [CIA Commander] Berntsen says Franks is "a great American. But he was
not on the ground out there. I was." In his booktitled "Jawbreaker"the decorated career CIA
officer criticizes Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department for not providing enough support to the
CIA and the Pentagon's own Special Forces teams in the final hours of Tora Bora. Berntsen ... has
sued the agency over what he calls unacceptable delays in approving his book. "They're just
holding the book," which is scheduled for October release, he says. "CIA officers, Special
Forces and U.S. air power drove the Taliban out in 70 days. The CIA has taken roughly 80
days to clear my book."
Note: For a concise summary of reliable, verifiable information questioning the official account of
9/11, click here.
Was Use of Cell Phones on 9/11 Flights Possible?

2004-12-15, WantToKnow.info/Washington Post/SF Chronicle/Associated Press
http://www.WantToKnow.info/911cellphonecalls
Once you get to a certain height, you are no longer in the range of the cellular network,
because cell phone towers aren't built to project their signals that high.
Washington Post, 12/9/04
Today's vote by the FCC is intended to address whether technology has improved to the
extent that cell phone calls now are possible above 10,000 feet -- they weren't in the past.
San Francisco Chronicle, 12/15/04
"With television cameramen hovering, Qualcomm chief executive Irwin Jacobs sat in the
front row of coach and made one of the first legal cell phone calls from a commercial
jetliner. Jacobs pronounced the [brand new] technology behind the airborne phone call a
success, although adding that it will be improved over the next couple years. Connections
from the plane were generally good, although some calls were dropped."
USA Today/Associated Press, 7/16/04
Note: To find articles showing multiple cell phone use on Sept. 11, 2001, type "9/11" and "cell
phone calls" into your favorite search engine, or click here for a Washington Post report on an
alleged 30-minute uninterrupted cell phone call from Flight 93. Click here for a CNN report on
another call from that flight. Tests have shown it is not possible to have an extended cell phone
conversation above 10,000 feet.
Write More About Skull And Bones

2004-10-27, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2004/10/27/notes102704.DTL
I get this a lot: Hey Mark ... why don't you quit toeing the typical blas journalism line ... and
instead write about the real truths? Like for example how both Kerry and Bush are members of
mega-yuppie Yale secret society/boys' club Skull & Bones. And why, furthermore, don't you talk
about the real truths of 9/11? Haven't you seen that amazing [9/11] video on that Web site? And
what about Building 7? Why did that 47-story tower adjacent to the WTC collapse when it had no
fire and no plane crash? Why isn't the media reporting any of this? Does this make you laugh?
Scoff? It is, after all, incredibly easy to dismiss conspiracy theories. But you know what? It's not
that easy. These people ... have a point. They are indeed onto something quite large and ominous
and it very much has to do with the media toeing the line of "safe" information. There is indeed
ample evidence that the U.S. government, long before 9/11, had already discussed the quite
plausible possibilities and strategic benefits of unleashing a "Pearl Harbor"-type event on America.
There are plenty of strangely unanswered questions about 9/11, about the stunning inaction of
NORAD and Bush's stupefying nonreaction upon hearing of the attack, not to mention his
administration's incredible attempts to halt any independent 9/11 investigations. Of course, no
one in any major media will touch this stuff. It is professional suicide to dare suggest an
alternate truth to the one supplied by the Pentagon and regurgitated by the media. And the
truth is, we don't really want such unstable questions answered. We simply cannot tolerate to have
our world, our leaders, our foundations so questioned. We prefer stasis to growth, security to true
knowledge.
Conspiracy Theories Flourish on the Internet

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13059-2004Oct6.html
Darren Williams spent four weeks this summer making a short but startling video that raises novel
questions about the 2001 attack. The video, "9/11: Pentagon Strike," suggests that it was not
American Airlines Flight 77 that slammed into the Pentagon, but a missile or a small plane. The
video offers flashes of photographs taken shortly after impact, interspersed with witness accounts.
The pictures seem incompatible with damage caused by a jumbo jet. Firefighters stand outside a
perfectly round hole in a Pentagon wall where the Boeing 757 punched through; it is less than 20
feet in diameter. Propelled by word of mouth, Internet search engines and e-mail, the video
has been downloaded by millions of people around the world. Williams created a Web site for
the video, www.pentagonstrike.co.uk. Then he e-mailed a copy to Laura Knight-Jadczyk [who]
posted a link to the video on the group's Web site, www.Cassiopaea.org. Within 36 hours,
Williams's site collapsed under the crush of tens of thousands of visitors. But there were others to
fill the void. In Texas, a former casino worker who downloaded the video began drawing almost
700,000 visitors a day. In Louisiana, a young Navy specialist put the video on his personal Web
page. Suddenly, the site was inundated by more than 20,000 hits. "Pentagon Strike" is just the
latest and flashiest example of a growing number of Web sites, books and videos contending that
something other than a commercial airliner hit the Pentagon. Knight-Jadczyk said she never
imagined anyone outside her group would ever view "Pentagon Strike." "The fact everybody's
been sending it to his brother and his cousin ... reflects the fact that there is a deep unease," she
said.
Note: This five-minute video is well worth watching, even though it was made a few years ago. To
view it free online, click here. For lots more information suggesting a major 9/11 cover-up, click
here.
Letter to Thomas Kean from Sibel Edmonds

2004-08-05, AsiaTimes ('Asia's most trusted news source')
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FH05Aa01.html
Your commission ... has now issued its "9/11 Commission Report". After [9/11] we, the
translators at the FBI's largest and most important translation unit, were told to slow down,
even stop, translation of critical information related to terrorist activities. This issue has
been confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Melek Can Dickerson, with the assistance of
her direct supervisor, forged signatures on top-secret documents related to certain 9/11 detainees.
Not only does the supervisor facilitating these criminal conducts remain in a supervisory position,
he has been promoted. In April 2001, a long-term FBI informant/asset ... received information that:
1) Osama Bin Laden was planning a major terrorist attack in the United States targeting 4-5 major
cities, 2) the attack was going to involve airplanes [and] the attack was going to be carried out
soon. No action was taken. After 9/11, the agents and the translators were told to 'keep quiet'
regarding this issue. The translator who was present ... reported this incident to Director Mueller in
writing. Why did your report choose to exclude the information ... despite the public confirmation by
the FBI, witnesses provided to your investigators, and briefings you received directly? As you are
fully aware, these issues and incidents were found confirmed by a Senior Republican Senator,
Charles Grassley, and a Senior Democrat Senator, Patrick Leahy. Even FBI officials 'confirmed all
my allegations and denied none' during their unclassified meetings with the Senate Judiciary staff.
However, neither your commission's hearings, nor your commission's five hundred sixty sevenpage report ... include these serious issues, major incidents, and systemic problems.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. Sibel Edmonds is one of the great heroes of our day. She
has been gagged directly by the U.S. Attorney General from telling what she knows. The above
letter was not published in any major U.S. media, though widely reported in alternative new
sources. To understand how such vital information is hidden from the public, click here. For lots
more on Ms. Edmonds, click here.
9-11 Commission Funding Woes

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,437267,00.html
Is the Bush White House trying to put the brakes on the congressional panel created last fall to
investigate 9-11 attacks? The White House brushed off a request quietly made last week by the 911 Commission Chairman Tom Kean, the Republican former governor of New Jersey, to boost his
budget by $11 million. The panel has until the end of May 2004 to complete its work, but it will
spend the $3 million it was originally allotted by around August 2003 if it doesn't get the
supplement. Bush's recent move has miffed some members of the 9-11 panel. Kean and former
congressman Lee Hamilton, the panel's top Democrat, requested additional funding in a letter to
the administration last week. In denying the request, the White House irritated many of the
members of the commission. The White House sidestepped the issue of why the request wasn't
granted. The latest effort to curtail funding has angered victims of the attacks. Stephen Push, a
leader of the 9/11 victims' families, who are closely monitoring the commission, said the White
House decision was another in a long line of efforts to water down or shrink the panel's
role. Commission member Tim Roemer ... has gone so far as to draw comparisons with the
$50 million provided to investigate the recent Columbia tragedy in which seven people died.
"If we're looking at well over $11 million for that, we certainly should be looking for at least the
same vicinity of money for how 3,000 people died and how to strengthen our homeland security,"
he said.
Note: MSNBC reported that "the Ken Starr investigation of Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky cost
the tax-payer $64 million." The Columbia tragedy invstigation ran $50 million. Yet the White House
wanted to limit the investigation of the worst terror attack ever to $3 million. What secrets are they
hiding? Click here for more.
The Secret War

http://articles.latimes.com/2002/oct/27/opinion/op-arkin27
The Defense Department is dramatically expanding its 'black world' of covert operations. The Bush
administration has turned to what the Pentagon calls the "black world" to press the war on
terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. The increasingly dominant role of the military ...
reflects the desire of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to gain greater overall control of the
war on terror. "Our task is to find and destroy the enemy before they strike us." Though covert
action can bring quick results, because it is isolated from the normal review processes it can just
as quickly bring mistakes and larger problems. The epicenter of the Pentagon's covert operations
remains the North Carolina-based Joint Special Operations Command, often referred to as Delta
Force. The super-secret command is still not officially acknowledged to exist. Rumsfeld's influential
Defense Science Board ... recommends creation of a super-Intelligence Support Activity, an
organization it dubs the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group, (P2OG), to bring together CIA
and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception. This body
would launch secret operations aimed at "stimulating reactions" among terrorists and
states possessing weapons of mass destruction -- that is, for instance, prodding terrorist
cells into action and exposing themselves to "quick-response" attacks by U.S. forces. The
Air Force is designing its own Global Response Task Force ... capable of delivering a "worldwide
attack within an hour."
Note: For an amazing expos by a highly decorated U.S. general on the hidden reasons behind
war, click here.
Coleen Rowley's Memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller

http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020603/memo.html
Dear Director Mueller: I feel that certain facts, including the following, have, up to now, been
omitted, downplayed, glossed over and/or mis-characterized in an effort to avoid or minimize
personal and/or institutional embarrassment on the part of the FBI and/or perhaps even for
improper political reasons: ... 5) The fact is that key FBIHQ personnel whose job it was to assist
and coordinate with field division agents ... continued to, almost inexplicably, throw up roadblocks
and undermine Minneapolis' by-now desperate efforts to obtain a FISA search warrant. In all of
their conversations and correspondence, HQ personnel never disclosed to the Minneapolis
agents that the Phoenix Division had, only approximately three weeks earlier, warned of Al
Qaeda operatives in flight schools seeking flight training for terrorist purposes! Nor did
FBIHQ personnel do much to disseminate the information about Moussaoui to other
appropriate intelligence/law enforcement authorities. When, in a desperate 11th hour measure
to bypass the FBIHQ roadblock, the Minneapolis Division undertook to directly notify the CIA's
Counter Terrorist Center (CTC), FBIHQ personnel actually chastised the Minneapolis agents for
making the direct notification without their approval!
Note: If the above link fails, click here. For many more serious questions about the official account
of 9/11 raised by former officials like Colleen Rowley, click here. For more solid information
suggesting a major cover-up, click here.
Clues Alerted White House to Potential Attacks

[There are] many examples of "missed leads" that the Bush administration was given prior to Sept.
11. An Iranian in custody in New York City told local police last May of a plot to attack the World
Trade Center. German intelligence alerted the Central Intelligence Agency, Britain's MI-6
intelligence service, Israel's Mossad in June 2001 that Middle Eastern terrorists were training for
hijackings and targeting American and Israeli interests. Based on its own intelligence, the
Israeli government provided "general" information to the United States in the second week
of August that an Al Qaeda attack was imminent. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said
publicly that he ordered his intelligence agencies to alert the United States last summer that
suicide pilots were training for attacks on U.S. targets. An Islamic terrorist conspiracy was
uncovered in 1996 in the Philippines to hijack a dozen airplanes and fly them into CIA
headquarters and other buildings. U.S. investigators confirmed in October that a 29-year-old
Iranian ... made phone calls to U.S. police from his deportation cell that an attack on the World
Trade Center was imminent in "the days before the attack." [A] memo from the FBI Phoenix office
about Arabs training in U.S. flight schools never reached headquarters. In 1999, the Federal
Research Division at the Library of Congress published its own report ... which described that
"Suicide bomber(s) belonging to Al Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft
packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the [CIA], or
the White House."
Note: For lots more evidence that suggest 9/11 at the very least may have been allowed to
happen, click here.
'Shadow Government' News To Congress

2002-03-01, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/03/01/attack/main502530.shtml
Key congressional leaders say they didn't know President Bush had established a "shadow
government," moving dozens of senior civilian managers to secret underground locations outside
Washington. Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) [said] he had not been
informed by the White House about the role, location or even the existence of the shadow
government that the administration began to deploy the morning of the Sept. 11 hijackings.
Among Congress's GOP leadership, aides to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.), second in line
to succeed the president if he became incapacitated, and to Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott
(Miss.) said they were not sure whether they knew. Mr. Bush acknowledged yesterday that the
administration had taken extensive measures to guarantee "the continuity of government," adding,
"This is serious business." Such an operation was conceived as a Cold War precaution against
nuclear attack during the Eisenhower administration but never used until now. It went into effect in
the first hours after the terror attacks [and] is an extension of a policy that has kept Vice President
Dick Cheney in secure, undisclosed locations away from Washington. Cheney has moved in and
out of public view as threat levels have fluctuated.
Note: For lots more on government secrecy from reliable sources, click here. For an abundance of
solid information suggesting a major cover-up around 9/11, click here.
German Firm Probes Final World Trade Center Deals

2001-12-17, Fox News/Reuters
German computer experts are working round the clock to unlock the truth behind an
unexplained surge in financial transactions made just before two hijacked planes crashed
into New York's World Trade Center Sept. 11. Were criminals responsible for the sharp rise in
credit card transactions that moved through some computer systems at the WTC shortly before the
planes hit the twin towers? Or was it coincidence that unusually large sums of money,
perhaps more than $100 million, were rushed through the computers as the disaster
unfolded? A world leader in retrieving data, German-based firm Convar is trying to answer those
questions. Using a pioneering laser scanning technology to find data on damaged computer hard
drives and main frames found in the rubble of the World Trade Center and other nearby collapsed
buildings, Convar has recovered information from 32 computers that support assumptions of dirty
doomsday dealings. "The suspicion is that inside information about the attack was used to send
financial transaction commands and authorizations in the belief that amid all the chaos the
criminals would have, at the very least, a good head start,'' said Convar director Peter Henschel.
"Not only the volume but the size of the transactions was far higher than usual for a day like that.
There is a suspicion that these were possibly planned to take advantage of the chaos.''
Note: For a CNN article on this most bizarre news, click here. A German news broadcast from
March 11, 2002 at this link reveals that the results are being kept secret. But why? And why hasn't
there been any follow-up news on this astounding information? Could it be that key government
insiders knew there was going to be an attack? For lots more reliable, verifiable information on
9/11 raising serious questions, click here.
Bin Laden treated for kidney problem in Dubai, claims report

2001-10-31, Sydney Morning Herald (Australia's leading newspaper)
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0110/31/world/world105.html
Osama bin Laden underwent treatment in July at the American Hospital in Dubai where he met a
US Central Intelligence Agency official, French daily Le Figaro and Radio France International
reported today. Quoting "a witness, a professional partner of the administrative management of the
hospital," they said the man suspected by the United States of being behind the September 11
terrorist attacks had arrived in Dubai on July 4 by air from Quetta, Pakistan. He was immediately
taken to the hospital for kidney treatment. He left the establishment on July 14, Le Figaro said.
During his stay, the daily said, the local CIA representative was seen going into bin Laden's
room and "a few days later, the CIA man boasted to some friends of having visited the
Saudi-born millionaire." Quoting "an authoritative source," Le Figaro and the radio station said
the CIA representative had been recalled to Washington on July 15. Bin Laden ... was admitted to
the urology department of Dr Terry Callaway, who specialises in kidney stones and male infertility.
Telephoned several times, the doctor declined to answer questions. Several sources had reported
that bin Laden had a serious kidney infection. He had a mobile dialysis machine sent to his
Kandahar hideout in Afghanistan in the first half of 2000, according to "authoritative sources"
quoted by Le Figaro and RFI.
Note: This article has disappeared from the Herald website. To read the full original as we copied
it, click here. For excerpts from many major media articles suggesting a 9/11 cover-up, click here.
[9/11] Suicide hijackers hid behind stolen Arab identities

2001-09-20, WantToKnow.info/London Times
http://www.WantToKnow.info/010920londontimes.hijackers
Five of the [9/11] hijackers were using stolen identities, and investigators are studying the
possibility that the entire suicide squad consisted of impostors. In Saudi Arabia, five of the
alleged hijackers have emerged, alive, innocent and astonished to see their names and
photographs appearing on satellite television. "The name is my name and the birth date is
the same as mine, but I am not the one who bombed the World Trade Centre," Abdulaziz
Alomari told the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper. Mr Alomari, 28, ... said that he had
left the United States in April 2000. The US-educated engineer had reported to police that his
passport was stolen when his flat in Denver, Colorado, was burgled in 1995. A Saudi diplomat
formerly based in Washington, Ahmed al-Shehri, told al-Eqtisadiah newspaper that details of one
of the hijackers matched his son, Waleed. The young man, a pilot with Saudi Arabian Airlines who
graduated four years ago from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, is living in
Morocco. Another Saudi pilot, Said Hussein al-Ghamdi, whose photograph was broadcast on CNN
when it portrayed him as a hijacker, is living in Tunis. The family of Ziad al-Jarrah, an alcoholdrinking Lebanese partygoer, deny he could have been the fanatical Muslim hijacker whose aircraft
crashed in Pennsylvania. Alarming reports claimed that three of the hijackers -Saeed al-Ghamdi,
Ahmed al-Mani and Ahmed al-Ghamdi -had learned to fly at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola,
Florida, known as the "Cradle of US Naval Aviation".
Note: Yet these individuals are all later listed in the 9/11 Commission report as the hijackers. Click
here and scroll down a little over half way to see their photos in the official report. For more on this,
click here. For an abundance of reliable information suggesting a major 9/11 cover-up, click here.
On Flight 77: 'Our Plane Is Being Hijacked'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14365-2001Sep11
About an hour after takeoff from Dulles International Airport yesterday morning, Flight 77, a Boeing
757 headed for Los Angeles with 64 people aboard, became a massive missile aimed at the White
House. The target would change suddenly, but the symbolism was equally devastating. The diving
plane carved out a massive chunk of the Pentagon. The unidentified pilot executed a pivot so
tight that it reminded observers of a fighter jet maneuver. The plane circled 270 degrees to the
right to approach the Pentagon from the west, whereupon Flight 77 fell below radar level,
vanishing from controllers' screens. Aviation sources said the plane was flown with
extraordinary skill, making it highly likely that a trained pilot was at the helm, possibly one of
the hijackers. Someone even knew how to turn off the transponder, a move that is considerably
less than obvious.
Note: Yet Hani Hanjour, the alleged terrorist pilot of Flight 77, was a terrible pilot. According to a
New York Times article, "Marcel Bernard, the chief flight instructor at the school, said Mr. Hanjour
showed up in Washington asking to rent a single-engine plane. But he was told that he had to
prove his skills before being allowed to do so. Mr. Bernard said Mr. Hanjour made three flights with
two different instructors but was unable to prove that he had the necessary skills." The article
states this was less than a month before 9/11. How then was he able to execute the "fighter jet
maneuver" above on a Boeing 757? Click here for more.
Tsunami bomb - NZ's devastating war secret

1999-09-25, New Zealand Herald (New Zealand's leading newspaper)
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=14727
Top-secret wartime experiments were conducted off the coast of Auckland to perfect a tidal
wave bomb, declassified files reveal. United States defence chiefs said that if the project had
been completed before the end of the war it could have played a role as effective as that of the
atom bomb. Details of the tsunami bomb, known as Project Seal, are contained in 53-year-old
documents released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Papers stamped "top secret"
show the US and British military were eager for Seal to be developed in the post-war years too.
The experiments involved laying a pattern of explosives underwater to create a tsunami. It is
unclear what happened to Project Seal once the final report was forwarded to Wellington Defence
Headquarters late in the 1940s. The bomb was never tested on a full scale. "Whether it could ever
be resurrected ... Under some circumstances I think it could be devastating."
Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F00617FE3A5C0C7B8EDDA...
Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used
to blow up the World Trade Center. The informer was to have helped the plotters build the
bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I. supervisor who
had other ideas about how the informer, Emad A. Salem, should be used. The account, which
is given in the transcript of hundreds of hours of tape recordings Mr. Salem secretly made of his
talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as in a far better position than
previously known to foil the Feb. 26 bombing of New York City's tallest towers. The explosion left
six people dead, more than 1,000 injured and damages in excess of half a billion dollars. The
transcript quotes Mr. Salem as saying that he wanted to complain to F.B.I. headquarters in
Washington about the bureau's failure to stop the bombing, but was dissuaded by an agent
identified as John Anticev. "He said, I don't think that the New York people would like the things out
of the New York office to go to Washington, D.C." Another agent ... does not dispute Mr. Salem's
account, but rather, appears to agree with it. Other Salem tapes and transcripts were being
withheld pending Government review, of "security and other issues." William M. Kunstler, a
defense lawyer in the case, accused the Government this week of improper delay in handing over
all the material. The transcripts he had seen, he said, "were filled with all sorts of Government
misconduct." But citing the judge's order, he said he could not provide any details.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. For a two-minute CBS News clip the same day giving more
information on this little-known story, click here.
The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis

1987-11-04, WantToKnow.info/PBS Documentary
http://www.WantToKnow.info/050423secretgovernment
The Secret Government is an interlocking network of official functionaries, spies,
mercenaries, ex-generals, profiteers and superpatriots, who, for a variety of motives,
operate outside the legitimate institutions of government. The Russians had been our ally
against the Nazis, an expedient alliance for the sake of war. Now they were our enemy. To fight
them we turned to some of the very men who had inflicted on humanity the horrors of Hitlers
madness. We hired Nazis as American spies. Admiral Gene La Rocque: That National Security
Act of 1947 changed dramatically the direction of this great nation. It established the framework for
a national security state. Never have we had a National Security Council so concerned about the
nations security that were always looking for threats and looking how to orchestrate our society to
oppose those threats. National Security was invented, almost, in 1947, and now it has become the
prime mover of everything we do. The National Security Act also gave us the Central Intelligence
Agency." In 1975 ... Congress took its first public look at the Secret Government. Senator Frank
Church chaired the Select Committee to study government operations. The hearings opened the
books on a string of lethal activities. From the use of electric pistols and poison pellets, to Mafia
connections and drug experiments. And they gave us a detailed account of assassination plots
against foreign leaders and the overthrowing of sovereign governments. This is a system easily
corrupted. While freedom does have enemies in the world, it can also be undermined here at
home, in the dark, by those posing as its friends.
Note: This highly revealing PBS documentary is available for free viewing on the Internet. For the
link, written text, and much more on this amazingly revealing documentary, click here.
C.I.A.: Maker of Policy, or Tool?

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0A15FA3D5D137B93C7AB178FD85...
[Many questions] have dogged the [CIA] for years. This secret body [is] known to have overthrown
governments and installed others, raised armies, staged an invasion of Cuba, spied and
counterspied, established airlines, radio stations and schools. Was it in fact damaging, while it
sought to advance, the national interest? Former President Truman, whose administration
established the CIA in 1947, said In 1963 that by then he saw "something about the way the CIA
has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic positions." President Kennedy, as
the enormity of the Bay of Pigs disaster came home to him, said to one of the highest
officials of his administration that he wanted "to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and
scatter it to the winds." In the 19 years that the CIA has been in existence, 150 resolutions
for tighter congressional control have been introduced - and put aside. Few persons in or out
of the American Government know much about its work, its organization, its supervision or its
relationship to the other arms of the executive branch. In 1960, CIA agents in Laos, disguised as
"military advisers," stuffed ballot boxes and engineered local uprisings to help a hand-picked
strongman ... set up a "pro-American" government. It was the CIA that built up Ngo Dinh Diem as
the pro-American head of South Vietnam after the French ... had found him in a monastery cell in
Belgium and brought him back to Saigon as Premier. The revelation that CIA agents served among
Michigan State University scholars in South Vietnam from 1955 to 1959 has contributed to the fear
[of infiltration of universities].
Note: For a longer, even more revealing summary of this very lengthy article, click here. To see a
full copy of this article, click here. For more on the secret and illegal activities of major intelligence
agencies, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
CIA's torture experts now use their skills in secret drones program
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/29/cias-torture-experts-now...
The New York Times reported on Sunday that many of those in charge of the CIAs torture
program the same people whose names were explicitly redacted from the Senates torture
report in order to avert accountability have ascended to the agencys powerful senior
ranks and now run the CIA drone program. Rather than being fired and prosecuted, they have
been rewarded with promotions. The longtime Counterterrorism Center chief who just stepped
down, Michael DAndrea, was previously in charge of the notorious CIA prison known as the Salt
Pit, where prisoners were regularly tortured and some died. His replacement, Chris Wood, was
also central to the interrogation program, according to the Times. The only reason we know
DAndrea and Woods names is because the New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet
commendably decided to publish them. The CIA asked them not to. Adding to the disturbing nature
of the CIAs ability to kill people in complete secrecy, the agency apparently now has a carte
blanche to conduct drone strikes on its own. President Obama doesnt individually approve them
anymore he lets the CIA unilaterally decide to kill people. The Obama administration has
promised more transparency around drone strikes, yet at the same time, wont even acknowledge
that the controversial drone strike its apologizing for even happened - just because such
admission might force courts to hold the government accountable for its actions.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about
corruption in government and in the intelligence community.
41 men targeted but 1,147 people killed: US drone strikes the facts on
the ground
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone-strikes-kill-1147
A new analysis of the data available to the public about drone strikes, conducted by the
human-rights group Reprieve, indicates that even when operators target specific
individuals the most focused effort of what Barack Obama calls targeted killing they
kill vastly more people than their targets, often needing to strike multiple times. Attempts to
kill 41 men resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1,147 people, as of 24 November. Reprieve
[focused on] cases in which specific people were targeted by drones multiple times. Their data,
shared with the Guardian, raises questions about the accuracy of US intelligence. The analysis is
a partial estimate. Drone strikes ... are only as precise as the intelligence that feeds them. There
is nothing precise about intelligence that results in the deaths of 28 unknown people, including
women and children, for every bad guy the US goes after, said Reprieves Jennifer Gibson. The
data cohort is only a fraction of those killed by US drones. Neither Reprieve nor the Guardian
examined ... the so-called signature strikes that attack people based on a pattern of behavior
considered suspicious, rather than intelligence tying their targets to terrorist activity. An analytically
conservative Council on Foreign Relations tally assesses that 500 drone strikes outside of Iraq and
Afghanistan have killed 3,674 people. Like all weapons, drones will inevitably miss their targets.
But the secrecy surrounding them obscures how often misses occur and the reasons for them.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing military corruption
news articles from reliable major media sources, including this NPR article that reports on the
possibility of future drone strikes taking place within the US.
Ex-Senator: FBI covered up 9/11 investigation

2014-09-10, WTSP-TV (Tampa Bay, FL CBS affiliate)
http://www.wtsp.com/story/news/investigations/2014/09/10/911-cover-up-fbi-for...
A major FBI cover-up ... connects Sarasota and the 9/11 hijackers to the Saudi Arabian
government. While still at Sarasota's Emma E. Booker Elementary on the day of the 2001 terrorist
attacks, President George W. Bush said, "Terrorism against our nation will not stand." However,
the president's visit wasn't the only thing to tie this Bay area county to the September 11th attacks.
Within days, we learned three of the hijackers had been living in the area while taking flying
lessons at Huffman Aviation and Florida Flight Training in Sarasota County... but there is even
more than that. "There was a network supporting the hijackers," says former U.S. Senator
and Florida governor Bob Graham. According to Graham, the FBI has been covering up that
fact for years, and continues to try and hide it even now. Graham says he is convinced
there was a direct line between some of the terrorists who carried out the September 11th
attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia. According to Graham, the FBI was aware of the
strong connection between hijackers and a Saudi Arabian family who were living in an upscale
Sarasota gated community. Twelve days before 9/11, the family abandoned the house -- leaving
behind valuable items including food, clothing, furnishings and three vehicles. "There are some
things I can't talk about," Graham told us, "And there are others like what I know is involved in the
investigation in Sarasota, which is diametrically opposed to what the FBI said publicly."
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing 9/11 news articles from
Trigger happy
2014-08-15, The Economist blog
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/08/armed-police
The shooting of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African-American, by a police officer in Ferguson,
Missouri, is a reminder that civiliansinnocent or guiltyare far more likely to be shot by police in
America than in any other rich country. In 2012, according to data compiled by the FBI, 410
Americans were justifiably killed by police409 with guns. That figure may well be an
underestimate. Not only is it limited to the number of people who were shot while committing a
crime, but also, amazingly, reporting the data is voluntary. Last year, in total, British police
officers actually fired their weapons three times. The number of people fatally shot was
zero. In 2012 the figure was just one. Even after adjusting for the smaller size of Britains
population, British citizens are around 100 times less likely to be shot by a police officer than
Americans. Between 2010 and 2014 the police force of one small American city, Albuquerque in
New Mexico, shot and killed 23 civilians; seven times more than the number of Brits killed by all of
England and Waless 43 forces during the same period. The explanation for this gap is simple. In
Britain, guns are rare. Only specialist firearms officers carry them; and criminals rarely have
access to them. In America, by contrast, it is hardly surprising that cops resort to their weapons
more frequently. In 2013, 30 cops were shot and killedjust a fraction of the 9,000 or so murders
using guns that happen each year. Add to that a hyper-militarised police culture and a deep history
of racial strife and you have the reason why so many civilians are shot by police officers.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing police corruption news articles
from reliable major media sources.
More secret 9/11 documents identified, but FBI has yet to turn them over
to judge
2014-04-30, Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/04/30/4090497/more-secret-911-documents-ident...
Contradicting an earlier assertion made under oath by a senior FBI official, an attorney for the
Justice Department said [on April 30] that the FBI has identified four more boxes of classified
9/11 documents held by its Tampa field office. The government, however, has yet to comply with a
federal judges orders ... that it turn over copies of that massive 9/11 file now said to total 27
boxes for his personal inspection. U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch issued those orders in a
Freedom of Information lawsuit brought by BrowardBulldog.org seeking records about the FBIs
investigation into apparent pre-9/11 terrorist activity in Sarasota. Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham,
who co-chaired Congress Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, has said that the FBI did not disclose
the existence of the Sarasota investigation to either the Joint Inquiry or the subsequent 9/11
Commission. The documents state that the Sarasota Saudis had many connections to
individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001. One document lists three
individuals, with names blacked out, and ties them to the Venice, Fla., flight school where
suicide hijackers Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi trained.
Note: For solid evidence that many more were involved in 9/11 than is generally admitted, see the
revealing newspaper article at this link. For an excellent documentary focused on the Venice,
Florida flight school which all but proves a major cover-up involving US citizens involved in the
planning of 9/11, click here. And for a treasure trove of reliable information showing a major coverup around 9/11, click here.
Senator accuses CIA of spying on Congress

2014-03-11, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/feinstein-cia-senate
Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein accused the CIA on [March 11] of violating
the law and the Constitution of the United States by interfering in a committee investigation into
Bush-era torture of terror suspects. Feinstein said the CIA had removed documents provided to the
committee through a special, segregated network set up by the agency for the committee to
pursue its investigation. Among the documents removed was an internal review of CIA
interrogation techniques conducted by then-CIA Director Leon Panetta, which committee members
have said corroborated committee findings critical of the agencys interrogation program. The CIA
just went and searched the committees computers, Feinstein said on the Senate floor.
This was done without the knowledge or approval of committee members or staff, and in
violation of our written agreements. Further, this type of behavior would not have been possible
had the CIA allowed the committee to conduct the review of documents here in the Senate,
Feinstein said. Feinstein said that the CIAs activities may have violated the Fourth Amendment,
the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and executive order 12333, which bars the CIA from
conducting domestic surveillance. Feinstein also said the CIAs activities violated the separation of
powers principles in the Constitution by interfering with congressional oversight of the executive
branch.
Note: For more on the out-of-control activities of intelligence agencies, see the deeply revealing
reports from reliable major media sources available here.
James Clapper might as well be called director of US fearmongering

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/06/james-clapper-us-threat-...
James Clapper is very worried. It's not the first time. Last week the man who serves as America's
Director of National Intelligence [told] assembled members of the Senate Select Intelligence
Committee that the annual worldwide threat assessment ... has filled him with dread. Last year he
appeared before Congress for a similar purpose. He was very, very concerned then too. [And the
same] in 2012. Of course, one must consider the possibility that over the past five decades the
world has never been as dangerous, complex and challenging as it's been over the past three
years, [even though the] whole "threat of nuclear holocaust" ... defined much of the 60s, 70s and
80s. Clapper's alarmist tone is hardly matched by the threats he cites. Significantly more
Americans die each year from falling furniture [than from terrorist acts]. To listen to Clapper and
others in the intelligence community one might never know that inter-state war has largely
disappeared and that wars in general are in the midst of a multi-decade decline. 2013 was a
landmark year for non-proliferation with important progress made in slowing down Iran's nuclear
aspirations and enforcing the norm on chemical weapons usage. There are real threats to the US,
but Clapper should be able to talk about them in sober, evidence-based, non-hysterical terms. It's
almost as if Clapper and the intelligence community that he helms are playing up foreign
threats in order to justify bloated post-9/11 budgets. [Remember that] he allegedly lied to
Congress over the extent to which the National Security Agency was collecting phone and e-mail
records of individual Americans. [Sadly,] threat mongering and exaggeration is the norm rather
than the exception.
Note: For a dramatic BBC documentary showing how many politicians literally promote fear for
their own self benefit, watch Power of Nightmares at this link. For more on intense deception
perpetrated by the intelligence community, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major
media sources available here.
U.S., British intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies
in broad secret program

http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from...
The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine
leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails,
documents, and connection logs. The program, code-named PRISM, has not been made public
until now. It may be the first of its kind. Equally unusual is the way the NSA extracts what it wants,
according to the document: Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers:
Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple. GCHQ, Britains
equivalent of the NSA, also has been secretly gathering intelligence from the same internet
companies through an operation set up by the NSA. PRISM was launched from the ashes of
President George W. Bushs secret program of warrantless domestic surveillance in 2007, after
news media disclosures, lawsuits and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court forced the
president to look for new authority. Congress obliged with the Protect America Act in 2007 and the
FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which immunized private companies that cooperated voluntarily
with U.S. intelligence collection. Government officials and the document itself made clear that
the NSA regarded the identities of its private partners as PRISMs most sensitive secret,
fearing that the companies would withdraw from the program if exposed. 98 percent of
PRISM production is based on Yahoo, Google and Microsoft; we need to make sure we
dont harm these sources, the briefings author wrote in his speakers notes.
Note: For graphs and lots more on the Prism program, see the Guardian article at this link.
Technically, U.S. officials are not allowed to mine personal data from U.S. citizens. Yet if U.K.
authorities mine data on U.S. citizens, they can share it freely with officials in the U.S. and vice
versa. There is evidence that this happens quite frequently, thus circumventing privacy protections.
For an excellent article which goes deep into this issue, click here.
Graham: FBI hindered Congresss 9/11 inquiry, withheld reports about

Sarasota Saudis
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/05/3434487/graham-fbi-hindered-congresss.html
Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham has accused the FBI in court papers of having impeded
Congresss Joint Inquiry into 9/11 by withholding information about a Florida connection to the ...
attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. The information ... includes a recently declassified FBI
report that ties a Saudi family who once lived in Sarasota to individuals associated with the
terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001. The FBIs failure to call (to the Joint Inquirys attention) documents
finding many connections between Saudis living in the United States and individuals associated
with the terrorist attack(s) interfered with the Inquirys ability to complete its mission, said
Graham, co-chairman of the Joint Inquiry. Graham said the FBI kept the 9/11 Commission in the
dark, too. He said co-chairmen Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton and executive director Philip
Zelikow all told him they were unaware of the FBIs Sarasota investigation. Moreover, Graham
stated that Deputy FBI Director Sean Joyce, the Bureaus second in command, personally
intervened to block him from speaking with the special agent-in-charge of the Sarasota
investigation. I am troubled by what appears to me to be a persistent effort by the FBI to
conceal from the American people information concerning possible Saudi support of the
Sept. 11 attacks, Floridas former governor said.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the 9/11 attacks, click
here.
Indisputable Torture
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/17/opinion/indisputable-torture-of-prisoners.html
A dozen years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, an independent, nonpartisan panels
examination of the interrogation and detention programs carried out in their aftermath by the Bush
administration ... provides a valuable, even necessary reckoning. The work of the [11-member task
force convened by the Constitution Project, a legal research and advocacy group] is informed by
interviews with dozens of former American and foreign officials, as well as with former prisoners. It
is the fullest independent effort so far to assess the treatment of detainees at Guantnamo Bay, in
Afghanistan and Iraq, and at the C.I.A.s secret prisons. The reports authoritative conclusion that
the United States engaged in the practice of torture is impossible to dismiss. The report found
that those methods violated international legal obligations with no firm or persuasive evidence
that they produced valuable information that could not have been obtained by other means. The
task force found that using torture like waterboarding, slamming prisoners into walls,
and chaining them in uncomfortable stress position for hours had no justification. And
in engineering enforced disappearances and secret detentions, the United States violated
its international treaty obligations. As the panel notes, there never was before the kind of
considered and detailed discussions that occurred after 9/11 directly involving a president and his
top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees
in our custody.
Note: For another informative article on this from the Times, click here.
British terror suspects quietly stripped of citizenship then killed by

drones
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/british-terror-suspects-quietly-st...
The Government has secretly ramped up a controversial programme that strips people of their
British citizenship on national security grounds with two of the men subsequently killed by
American drone attacks. Since 2010, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, has revoked the
passports of 16 individuals, many of whom are alleged to have had links to militant or terrorist
groups. Critics of the programme warn that it allows ministers to wash their hands of
British nationals suspected of terrorism who could be subject to torture and illegal
detention abroad. They add that it also allows those stripped of their citizenship to be killed
or rendered without any onus on the British Government to intervene. At least five of those
deprived of their UK nationality ... were born in Britain, and one man had lived in the country for
almost 50 years. Those affected have their passports cancelled, and lose their right to enter the
UK making it very difficult to appeal. The leading human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce said the
present situation smacked of mediaeval exile, just as cruel and just as arbitrary. Ian Macdonald
QC, the president of the Immigration Law Practitioners Association, described the citizenship
orders as sinister. Its not open government; its closed, and it needs to be exposed.
Government officials act when people are out of the country on two occasions while on holiday
before cancelling passports and revoking citizenships.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on crimes committed in wars
of aggression, click here.
JSOC: Obama's secret assassins

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/03/jsoc-obama-secret-assassins
The president has a clandestine network targeting a 'kill list' justified by secret laws. How is that
different than a death squad? The film Dirty Wars, which premiered at Sundance ... tracks the Joint
Special Operations Command (JSOC), a network of highly-trained, completely unaccountable US
assassins, armed with ever-expanding "kill lists". [Narrator Jeremy] Scahill and [director Rick]
Rowley track this new model of US warfare that strikes at civilians and insurgents alike in 70
countries. They interview former JSOC assassins, who are shell-shocked at how the "kill lists" they
are given keep expanding, even as they eliminate more and more people. Our conventional forces
are subject to international laws of war: they are accountable for crimes in courts martial; and they
run according to a clear chain of command. As much as the US military may fall short of these
standards at times, it is a model of lawfulness compared with JSOC, which has far greater scope
to undertake the commission of extra-legal operations and unimaginable crimes. JSOC morphs
the secretive, unaccountable mercenary model of private military contracting, which Scahill
identified in Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, into a hybrid with
the firepower and intelligence backup of our full state resources. JSOC operates outside the
traditional chain of command; it reports directly to the president of the United States. What
does it means for the president to have an unaccountable paramilitary force, which can
assassinate anyone anywhere in the world?
Note: For more on JSOC, click here.
Cleric may have booked pre-9/11 flights for hijackers, FBI documents
show
2013-01-03, Fox News

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/03/exclusive-al-awlaki-booked-pre-11-...
The FBI suspected within days of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that the American Muslim
cleric Anwar al-Awlaki may have purchased tickets for some of the hijackers for air travel in
advance of the attacks, according to newly released documents. The heavily redacted records
obtained by Judicial Watch through a [FOIA] request suggest the FBI held evidence tying the
American-born cleric to the hijackers just 16 days after the attack that killed nearly 3,000
Americans. We have FBI documents showing that the FBI knew that al-Awlaki had bought three
tickets for three of the hijackers to fly into Florida and into Las Vegas, including the lead hijacker,
Mohammad Atta, Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, told Fox News. He added that the
records show the cleric, killed in September 2011 by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen, was a central
focus of the FBI's investigation of 9/11. They show he wasn't cooperative. And they show that he
was under surveillance. The cleric was a guest speaker on moderate Islam at a Pentagon
executive dining room in February 2002. The newly released documents now suggest the
FBI knew five months earlier of al-Awlakis probable link to the hijackers. Al-Awlaki was held
at New York Citys JFK airport on Oct. 10, 2002, under a warrant for passport fraud, a felony
punishable by 10 years. However, ... an FBI agent, Wade Ammerman, from the bureaus
Washington field office ordered the cleric be released from custody, even though there was
an active warrant for his arrest.
Note: Click here to view the more than 200 pages of documents obtained by Judicial Watch. Isn't it
quite strange that the continuously monitored Al-Awlaki was breakfasting with the Pentagon brass
and was released from custody by the FBI, after the 9/11 attacks? Could his assassination by
drone have been for the purpose of keeping him quiet about what he knew concerning 9/11?
U.S. Terrorism Agency to Tap a Vast Database of Citizens

Through Freedom of Information Act requests and interviews with officials at numerous agencies,
The Wall Street Journal has reconstructed the clash over the counterterrorism program within the
administration of President Barack Obama. The attorney general [has] signed the changes into
effect. The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the
government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to
suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing
information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an
investigation. Now, NCTC can copy entire government databasesflight records, casinoemployee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. The
agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to
analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited. Data about
Americans "reasonably believed to constitute terrorism information" may be permanently retained.
"It's breathtaking" in its scope, said a former senior administration official. The Fourth Amendment
of the Constitution says that searches of "persons, houses, papers and effects" shouldn't be
conducted without "probable cause" that a crime has been committed.
Note: This article requires subscription to view at the link above. To read it for free, click here. For
analysis of this sweeping increase in government privacy invasions, click here. For deeply
revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government privacy invasions, click here.
Living with death by drone

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/04/opinion/la-oe-gibson-drones-civilians...
Last week, Stanford University and New York University released a major study about the use of
drones in the ever-evolving but never-ending war on terror. Drones are terrorizing an entire civilian
population. [We] spent weeks in Pakistan interviewing more than 60 people from North Waziristan.
Many were survivors of strikes. Others had lost loved ones and family members. All of them live
under the constant threat of annihilation. What my colleagues and I learned from these unnamed
and unknown victims of America's drone warfare gave the report its title: "Living Under Drones."
Drones are a constant presence in the skies above the North Waziristan tribal area in Pakistan,
with as many as six hovering over villages at any one time. People hear them day and night. They
are an inescapable presence, the looming specter of death from above. And that presence is
steadily destroying a community twice the size of Rhode Island. The routines of daily life have
been ripped to shreds. Indisputably innocent people cower in their homes, afraid to assemble
on the streets. "Double taps," or secondary strikes on the same target, have stopped
residents from aiding those who have been injured. A leading humanitarian agency now
delays assistance by an astonishing six hours. What makes this situation even worse is that no
one can tell people in these communities what they can do to make themselves safe. No one
knows who is on the American kill list, no one knows how they got there and no one knows what
they can do to get themselves off. It's all terrifyingly random. Suddenly, and without warning, a
missile launches and obliterates everyone within a 16-yard radius.
Note: The author of this report, Jennifer Gibson, is a staff attorney with Reprieve, a London-based
legal charity that represents dozens of Pakistani drone victims. For an excellent, seven-minute
video by professors exploring the tragic reality of drone strikes in Pakistan, click here. For the
"Living Under Drones" website where you can read a summary and download this report by
Stanford University and the New York Times, click here. To learn about a beautiful movement to
place large photos of children's faces in target areas to stop drone operators from killing innocents,
click here.
FBI releases more records on Richard Aoki

2012-09-07, San Francisco Chronicle/Center for Investigative Reporting
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/FBI-releases-more-records-on-Richard-Aoki...
Revelations that prominent radical activist Richard Aoki was an FBI informant have prompted
angry denials among his supporters, but newly released records confirm he was secretly providing
information to agents during the period he gave the Black Panthers guns and firearms training.
The documents from Aoki's FBI informant file - totaling 221 pages - were released after a court
challenge under the Freedom of Information Act and show that Aoki was an informant from 1961 to
1977, with only brief interruptions. The records say that at various points, he provided information
that was "unique" and of "extreme value." The records chronicle Aoki's 16-year career as an
informant, including years in which he was a student at Merritt College in Oakland and at UC
Berkeley, participating in the Black Panthers and other radical groups. They also cover years
during which Aoki was a teacher at those universities. An early FBI report says Aoki was assigned
the alias "Richard Ford" to use when signing reports, as well as a permanent informant number,
which the FBI redacted. It notes his date of birth, his parents' names and his address. "Coverage
furnished by this informant is unique and not available from any other source," the FBI
report says. "Many activist individuals seek informant's advice and counseling since
informant is considered as a militant who has succeeded within the establishment without
surrending (sic) to it."
Note: Here is undeniable evidence that the FBI was involved in infiltrating movements and
radicalizing them with guns and weapons. Why isn't this being discussed widely in the media,
particularly as it is likely this is still going on, most recently with the Occupy movement? The
revelation that Aoki was an informant was first made last month in a news report and video by the
Center for Investigative Reporting, based on the new book Subversives: The FBI's War on Student
Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power.
What makes our NDAA lawsuit a struggle to save the US constitution

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/10/ndaa-lawsuit-struggle-us-...
I [Tangerine Bolen] am one of the lead plaintiffs in the civil lawsuit against the National Defense
Authorization Act, which gives the president the power to hold any US citizen anywhere for as long
as he wants, without charge or trial. In a May hearing, Judge Katherine Forrest issued an
injunction against it; this week, in a final hearing in New York City, US government lawyers
asserted even more extreme powers the right to disregard entirely the judge and the law. On
Monday 6 August, Obama's lawyers filed an appeal to the injunction a profoundly important
development that, as of this writing, has been scarcely reported. In the earlier March hearing, US
government lawyers had confirmed that, yes, the NDAA does give the president the power to lock
up people like journalist Chris Hedges and peaceful activists like myself and other plaintiffs.
Government attorneys stated on record that even war correspondents could be locked up
indefinitely under the NDAA. In this hearing ... Obama's attorneys refused to assure the court,
when questioned, that the NDAA's section 1021 the provision that permits reporters and
others who have not committed crimes to be detained without trial has not been applied
by the US government anywhere in the world after Judge Forrest's injunction. In other
words, they were telling a US federal judge that they could not, or would not, state whether
Obama's government had complied with the legal injunction that she had laid down before them. I,
like many in this fight, am now afraid of my government. We have good reason to be.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on civil liberties, click here.
Drones over America. Are they spying on you?

2012-06-16, Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2012/0616/Drones-over-America.-Are-they-spying-o...
Most Americans have gotten used to regular news reports about military and CIA drones attacking
terrorist suspects including US citizens in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere abroad. But picture
thousands of drone aircraft buzzing around the United States. By some government estimates, as
many as 30,000 drones could be part of intelligence gathering and law enforcement here in
the United States within the next ten years. Operated by agencies down to the local level,
this would be in addition to the 110 current and planned drone activity sites run by the
military services in 39 states, reported this week by the Federation of American Scientists, a
non-government research project. Civil libertarians warn that unmanned aircraft carrying cameras
raise the prospect of a significant new avenue for the surveillance of American life, as the
American Civil Liberties Union put it in a report last December. The technology is quickly
becoming cheaper and more powerful, interest in deploying drones among police departments is
increasing, and our privacy laws are not strong enough to ensure that the new technology will be
used responsibly and consistently with democratic values, reported the ACLU. In short, all the
pieces appear to be lining up for the eventual introduction of routine aerial surveillance in American
life.
Note: For deeper analysis of the threats posed to American citizens by military and police drones
in the skies, click here. For information on a federal recent law compelling the Federal Aviation
Administration to allow drones to fly in US skies, click here. For more information on the use of
drones by police in the US, click here. For lots more from reliable sources on surveillance in the
US, click here.
The spectacle of terror and its vested interests

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/09/spectacle-terr...
A cycle of overhyped terror plots involving government agency entrapment feeds a multimilliondollar surveillance industry. The news stories ... quickly surface, long enough to cause scary
headlines, then vanish before people can learn how often the cases are thrown out. These are
stories about "bumbling fantasists", hapless druggies, the aimless, even the virtually homeless and
mentally ill, and other marginal characters with not the strongest grip on reality, who have been
lured into discourses about violence against America only after assiduous courting, and in some
cases outright payment, by undercover FBI or police informants. But the tales of entrapment and
terror hype continue apace ten years after 9/11. Now we have another "underwear bomber"
declared by the Pentagon to have been about to launch a major attack via a US-bound plane, but
who appears, reportedly, to have been a CIA-run double agent. What is the evidence that the
"device", which is supposedly so sophisticated that there is doubt as to whether existing
surveillance technologies in US airports would have caught it, actually exists? It is important
to note that we can no longer assume that the FBI and the CIA and the NSA work ... for the safety
of the American people; they [now] represent a revolving door of government officials who become
security industry lobbyists and manufacturers, which, in turn, get the multimillion-dollar contracts
for tackling the very problems these stories [hype].
Note: For more on this bizarre news, see the CBS report at this link. Isn't it amazing how many
terrorist groups have undercover FBI and CIA agents involved in actually pushing plots forward?
One has to wonder how far the plots would go without prompting by intelligence insiders. For a
powerful BBC documentary suggesting that terrorism is pushed and sold by politicians for a
deeper agenda, click here.
Executive Order -- National Defense Resources Preparedness

2012-03-16, The White House
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/16/executive-order-nationa...
Section 101. Purpose. This order delegates authorities and addresses national defense resource
policies and programs under the Defense Production Act of 1950. Sec. 103. General Functions.
Executive departments and agencies ... responsible for plans and programs relating to national
defense ... or for resources and services needed to support such plans and programs, shall: ... (c)
be prepared, in the event of a potential threat to the security of the United States, to take actions
necessary to ensure the availability of adequate resources and production capability, including
services and critical technology, for national defense requirements; ... Sec. 310. Critical Items. The
head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense is delegated the
authority of the President ... to take appropriate action to ensure that critical components,
critical technology items, essential materials, and industrial resources are available from
reliable sources when needed to meet defense requirements during peacetime, graduated
mobilization, and national emergency. Appropriate action may include restricting contract
solicitations to reliable sources, restricting contract solicitations to domestic sources (pursuant to
statutory authority), stockpiling critical components, and developing substitutes for critical
components or critical technology items. [signed] BARACK OBAMA
Note: For analysis of this executive order issued by President Obama giving legal power to the
executive office to take control of all national resources, public or private, in peacetime or in war,
click here.
Holder: US can legally kill Americans in terror groups
2012-03-05, MSNBC
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/05/10585197-holder-us-can-legally-k...
The U.S. government is legally justified in killing its own citizens overseas if they are involved in
plotting terror attacks against America, Attorney General Eric Holder said [on March 5], offering the
Obama administration's most detailed explanation so far of its controversial targeted killing
program. The Fifth Amendment provides that no one can be "deprived of life" without due process
of law. But that due process, Holder said, doesn't necessarily come from a court. "Due process
and judicial process are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The
Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process," the attorney general said. The ACLU
called Holder's explanation "a defense of the governments chillingly broad claimed authority to
conduct targeted killings of civilians, including American citizens, far from any battlefield without
judicial review or public scrutiny." "Few things are as dangerous to American liberty as the
proposition that the government should be able to kill citizens anywhere in the world on the
basis of legal standards and evidence that are never submitted to a court, either before or
after the fact," said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLUs National Security Project. "Anyone willing
to trust President Obama with the power to secretly declare an American citizen an enemy of the
state and order his extrajudicial killing should ask whether they would be willing to trust the next
president with that dangerous power, she said. The ACLU is suing the Obama administration,
seeking to have documents regarding the targeted killing program made public.
Note: Attorney General Holder's claim that US citizens can be killed by the government without
judicial process clearly violates the U.S. Bill of Rights. In addition to the Fifth Amendment that
states that no person shall be held to answer for a crime "without due process of law," the Sixth
Amendment states that "the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial."
FBI tracking videotapers as terrorists?

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/environment/la-me-gs-fbi-tracking-animal-vi...
The FBIs Joint Terrorism Task Force has recommended for many years that animal activists who
carry out undercover investigations on farms could be prosecuted as domestic terrorists. New
documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by activist Ryan Shapiro show
the FBI advising that activists including Shapiro who walked onto a farm, videotaped animals
there and rescued an animal had violated terrorism statutes. The documents ... were issued by
the Joint Terrorism Task Force in 2003 in response to an article in an animal rights publication in
which Shapiro and two other activists (whose names were redacted from the document), openly
claimed responsibility for shooting video and taking animals from a farm. The FBI notes discuss
the videotaping, illegal entry and the removal of animals, then concludes with there is a
reasonable indication that [Subject 1] and other members of the [redacted] have violated the
Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, 18 USC Section 43 (a). The penalties for such a conviction can
include terrorism enhancements which can add decades to a sentence. Its simply outrageous
to consider civil disobedience as terrorism, Shapiro [said]. Civil disobedience is not
terrorism. It has a long and proud place in our nations history, from Martin Luther King to
Occupy Wall Street, and the [Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act] takes that kind of advocacy
that we celebrate from the civil rights movement and turns it into a terrorist event.
Note: As the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act shows, the animal experimentation lobby has
demonstrated its considerable clout by getting Congress to pass legislation making principled
demonstrations against animal torture and killing into a form of "terrorism". Do you think that Wall
Street might lobby for a similar law making "terrorists" out of Occupiers?
Drones Evolve Into Weapon in Age of Terror

The Sept. 11 attacks triggered a revolution in U.S. spycraft as the intelligence services shattered a
longstanding taboo by launching an expansive program of targeted killings by remote control. The
greatest shift both in tactics and mindset has been the embrace of the pilotless, hunter-killer
aircraft known as drones. The CIA, which doesn't formally acknowledge the covert program, has
killed about 2,000 militants with drones, U.S. officials say, most in the past two years as President
Barack Obama's national security team aggressively expanded the program. In 2010, the number
of drone strikes more than doubled, to 114, and this year, drone campaigns are expanding. The
CIA now plans flights in Yemen, and the military is using drones to kill militants in Somalia. Legal
challenges to the drone program have secured little traction. The main debate inside the
government has been over how to execute the campaign without irreversibly damaging Pakistani
cooperation. American citizens can be targets, too. Under the legal authority for the drone
program, the CIA must consult the National Security Council before capturing an American
posing an imminent threat, but no additional consultation is required to kill an American, a
former senior intelligence official said. "The reason there hasn't been more of an outcry about it is,
it's the Obama administration defending this authority," said the American Civil Liberties Union's
Jameel Jaffer.
Note: For lots more on the illegal methods employed by the CIA and Pentagon in its "endless war",
click here.
The Terrible Missed Chance

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/09/04/the-terrible-missed-chance.html
It was early afternoon on Friday, Aug. 17, 2001. Special Agent Harry Samit of the FBIs
Minneapolis field office [sat] across from ... Zacarias Moussaoui, a 33-year-old French-born
student arrested the day before for overstaying his visa. Samit, a former intelligence officer at the
Navys celebrated Top Gun flight school, felt sure the man across the desk from him was a Muslim
extremist who was part of a plot to hijack a commercial jetliner filled with passengers. That same
day [at] FBI headquarters ... in Washington, counterterrorism supervisors were treating Samits first
reports about Moussaoui with skepticism, even contempt. New disclosures about Samits story
suggest that FBI agents in Minneapolis were much closer to unraveling the 9/11 plot than
previously known. The officials directly involved in the case were denied access to a key
internal memo - prepared for outgoing FBI Director Louis Freeh - that could have
allowed the Minneapolis field office to connect the dots and possibly preempt the attacks.
Their efforts were thwarted by a group of arrogant, slow-moving supervisors at FBI headquarters.
There is no clear reference to the Freeh memo in the 9/11 commissions report.
Note: For questions raised about the official story of 9/11 by hundreds of highly-respected citizens
from all walks of life, click here and here.
Guatemala to Restore Legacy of a President the U.S. Helped Depose

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/world/americas/24guatemala.html
After President Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown in a C.I.A.-backed coup in 1954, the Guatemalan
government reversed his policies and branded him a Communist, all but erasing his brief
presidency from history. Nearly six decades later, a democratic Guatemala has promised to restore
his legacy and treat him as a statesman. In an agreement signed with Mr. Arbenzs descendants
last week, the government promised to revise the school curriculum and grant Mr. Arbenz the
treatment afforded to historical heroes. It will name a main highway and a museum wing after the
ousted president, prepare a biography of him, publish his widows memoir and mount an exhibition
about him and his legacy in the National History Museum. The post office will even issue a series
of stamps in his honor. After winning the presidency in a landslide election in 1950, Mr. Arbenz
began an effort to modernize the economy, including a land-redistribution program that
angered American corporations and the United States government. President Eisenhower,
convinced that Mr. Arbenz was giving the Communists a foothold in the Americas,
authorized a coup that ousted the Guatemalan president in nine days.
Note: Many are still not aware of the role of the US in overthrowing democratically-elected leaders
like Guatemala's Arbenz. For a powerful documentary featuring five CIA whistleblowers, one of
whom was directly involved in overthrowing Arbenz, only later to regret his actions, click here.
Skeptics Question Osama Bin Laden Death, Asking for Proof

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/WorldNews/conspiracy-theories-proof-bin-ladens...
As elated crowds celebrated the death of Osama bin Laden after Navy SEALs killed the al-Qaida
chief in a weekend raid in Pakistan some are asking, "Where's the proof?" Photos depicting a
bloodied and bruised face appearing to be that of bin Laden began appearing on Twitter and
Facebook last night soon after news of his death spread across the Internet. According to Reuters,
an archive photo of bin Laden at a news conference proves that image was a fake. Now people
are asking to see the evidence proving bin Laden is dead. From Pakistan to the U.S. people
expressed their skepticism about the death of the man who is perhaps the most infamous terrorist
ever known. Officials said today they are "99.9 percent" certain that bin Laden was shot dead in
Pakistan. They also cited CIA photo analysis matching physical features such as bin Laden's
height. Rep. Mike Roger, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told the Associated Press
that more than one DNA sample was used to identify Osama bin Laden. After Adolf Hitler's
suicide in April 1945, conspiracy theories for years suggested Hitler was alive and in
hiding. The Russian secret services came forward with a skull and jawbones. DNA results
eventually showed the skull was that of a female.
Note: For two BBC reports suggesting that bin Laden may already have been dead, click here and
here. Why would bin Laden's body be buried at sea? Could it be to prevent a proof of identity?
Guantnamo leaks lift lid on world's most controversial prison

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-files-lift-lid-prison
More than 700 leaked secret files on the Guantnamo detainees lay bare the inner workings of
America's controversial prison camp in Cuba. The US military dossiers ... reveal how ... many
prisoners were flown to the Guantnamo cages and held captive for years on the flimsiest
grounds, or on the basis of lurid confessions extracted by maltreatment. The 759
Guantnamo files, classified "secret", cover almost every inmate since the camp was opened in
2002. More than two years after President Obama ordered the closure of the prison, 172 are still
held there. The files depict a system often focused less on containing dangerous terrorists or
enemy fighters, than on extracting intelligence. Among inmates who proved harmless were an 89year-old Afghan villager, suffering from senile dementia, and a 14-year-old boy who had been an
innocent kidnap victim. The documents also reveal: US authorities listed the main Pakistani
intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), as a terrorist organisation.
Almost 100 of the inmates who passed through Guantnamo are listed by their captors as having
had depressive or psychotic illnesses. Many went on hunger strike or attempted suicide. A
number of British nationals and residents were held for years even though US authorities knew
they were not Taliban or al-Qaida members.
Note: For many key reports on government secrecy from major media sources, click here.
Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/secret-memos-expose-link-betwee...
Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest
oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents
show. The papers ... raise new questions over Britain's involvement in the war, which had divided
Tony Blair's cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had
weapons of mass destruction. The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and
senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies
and Western governments at the time. In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, Shell
denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as "highly inaccurate".
BP denied that it had any "strategic interest" in Iraq, while Tony Blair described "the oil conspiracy
theory" as "the most absurd". But documents from October and November the previous year paint
a very different picture. Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the
Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share
of Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair's military commitment to US
plans for regime change. The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush
administration on BP's behalf because the oil giant feared it was being "locked out" of deals that
Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the real reasons behind the "global war on terrorism",
click here.
Indiana prosecutor resigns for encouraging fake attack on Wisconsin

governor
2011-03-25, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20047130-503544.html
Carlos Lam, a Republican activist and Indiana deputy prosecutor, has resigned amid revelations
that he sent an email calling for a fake attack on Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker designed to
discredit union protesters. Walker, a Republican, was the target of protests for his efforts to roll
back many union collective bargaining rights in his state. In a Feb. 19 email uncovered by the
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, Lam apparently told Walker he had a "good
opportunity" to win public sympathy with a "'false flag' operation." "If you could employ an
associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the unions' cause to physically attack you (or
even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the unions," read the email. Lam initially
denied having sent the email. He [claimed] he had been shopping for a minivan with his family
when it was sent, and suggested his email account had been infiltrated by his political enemies.
Lam resigned as deputy prosecutor on Thursday morning, however, reportedly telling his boss he
had indeed sent the email. Last month, another Indiana official -- Deputy Attorney General Jeff
Cox - lost his job for calling on law enforcement to "use live ammunition" on Wisconsin protesters.
Also in February, Walker was the victim of a prank call by a liberal journalist pretending to be
billionaire conservative activist David Koch. When the journalist suggested planting people among
the protesters to stir up trouble, Walker responded that "we thought about that" but added that he
had decided against it.
Note: To learn more about the prevalence of "false flag" operations in politics with links to reliable,
verifiable sources, click here. For more on this official's call for a false-flag attack, click here.
At CIA, Grave Mistakes, Then Promotions

2011-02-11, ABC News/AP
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=12874101
In December 2003, security forces boarded a bus in Macedonia and snatched a German citizen
named Khaled el-Masri. For the next five months, el-Masri was a ghost. Only a select group of CIA
officers knew he had been whisked to a secret prison for interrogation in Afghanistan. But he was
the wrong guy. In the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, officers who committed
serious mistakes that left people wrongly imprisoned or even dead have received only
minor admonishments or no punishment at all. Many officers who made significant
missteps are now the senior managers fighting the president's spy wars. The AP
investigation of the CIA's actions revealed a disciplinary system that takes years to make
decisions, hands down reprimands inconsistently and is viewed inside the agency as prone to
favoritism and manipulation. When people are disciplined, the punishment seems to roll downhill,
sparing senior managers even when they were directly involved in operations that go awry. Two
officers involved in the death of a prisoner in Afghanistan, for instance, received no discipline and
have advanced into Middle East leadership positions. Other officers were punished after
participating in a mock execution in Poland and playing a role in the death of a prisoner in Iraq.
Those officers retired, then rejoined the intelligence community as contractors. Since 9/11, retired
CIA officers have published a variety of books opining on what ails the CIA. Their conclusions
differ, but they are in nearly unanimous agreement that the system of accountability is broken.
Note: It is great news that the media is now revealing some of the craziness at the CIA, a topic
that was almost taboo for the press in the past.
Critics question billions in aid routed back to US contractors

2011-02-03, Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2011/02/03/critics_question_billio...
United States taxpayers have funneled more than $60 billion of aid into Egypt since President
Hosni Mubarak came to power in 1981, but more than half of the money has been spent supplying
weapons to the countrys military. About $34 billion of the aid to Egypt has come in the form of
grants that Congress requires Egypt to spend on American military hardware. In recent
years the large amount of aid earmarked for the military, and the relatively low sums supporting
civilian aid, have attracted scathing criticism from Egyptians, some of whom argue that US aid has
gone to entrench a military dictator at the expense of the fledgling democracy activists. During the
early turmoil, protesters were the target of tear gas canisters that read "made in the USA,"
fueling debate about the aid. Last year, Egypt was the fifth-largest recipient of US aid, getting $1.6
billion. Congress ... authorized major aid packages to both [Egypt and Israel in 1979], using an
informal formula not enshrined in the peace treaty that gave Egypt $2 for every $3 that Israel
received. Israel quickly became the largest recipient of US aid, and Egypt the second-largest
rankings that were only recently overtaken by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and last year,
the disaster in Haiti. The strong interest of US companies could help explain why US military
assistance to Egypt has remained at $1.3 billion a year, while its civilian economic assistance has
steadily shrunk, from $815 million a decade ago to $250 million requested for 2011. The decline
began in 1998, when Israel arranged for a reduction in economic support and an increase military
aid. As Israelis economic aid shrunk, so too did Egypts.
Note: Israel receives about $3 billion a year from the US, yet the population of the country is 8
million. If you do the math, the US is providing the equivalent of nearly $4,000 in aid per year
to every man, woman and child in Israel, with $3,000 of that to buy US military hardware. For
lots more reliable information on how the military/industrial complex manipulates world politics to
support the war machine, click here and here.
U.S. officials protected Gestapo agents

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40605965/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts
A report to Congress reveals details on how U.S. intelligence officials used and protected some
Nazi Gestapo agents after World War II. The report was authored by historians hired by the U.S.
National Archives and Records Administration. The report draws from an unprecedented trove of
records on clandestine operations that the CIA was persuaded to declassify and from previously
inaccessible Army intelligence files. "The CIA records give us a much better picture of the
movements of Nazi war criminals in the postwar period. The Army records are voluminous,
and will be keeping people busy for many years," said Richard Breitman, of the American
University in Washington, D.C., who co-authored the report with Norman J.W. Goda, of the
University of Florida. The records were made available under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act
of 1998. Nazi hunters and lawmakers have long raised questions about what U.S. government
knew and its involvement with war criminals during the Cold War. The Nazi War Crimes Disclosure
Act has so far resulted in more than 8 million documents being declassified; a landmark 2005 book
on U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis in part authored by Breitman and Goda; and a final report to
Congress.
Note: The CIA would never have declassified these documents were it not for pressure from
caring citizens which caused Congress to act. For details of the CIA employment of Nazis in its
post-war mind-control experimentation on humans without their consent, click here.
Tension grows between Calif. Muslims, FBI after informant infiltrates

mosque
Before the sun rose, the informant donned a white Islamic robe. A tiny camera was sewn into a
button, and a microphone was buried in a device attached to his keys. The undercover FBI
informant - a convicted forger named Craig Monteilh - then drove off for 5 a.m. prayers at the
Islamic Center of Irvine, where he says he spied on dozens of worshipers in a quest for potential
terrorists. Monteilh's mission as an informant backfired. Muslims were so alarmed by his talk of
violent jihad that they obtained a restraining order against him. He had helped build a terrorismrelated case against a mosque member, but that also collapsed. The Justice Department recently
took the extraordinary step of dropping charges against the worshiper, who Monteilh had caught
on tape agreeing to blow up buildings, law enforcement officials said. Prosecutors had portrayed
the man as a dire threat. Compounding the damage, Monteilh has gone public, revealing secret
FBI methods and charging that his "handlers" trained him to entrap Muslims as he
infiltrated their mosques, homes and businesses. He is now suing the FBI. Officials ...
confirm that he was a paid FBI informant. Court records and interviews corroborate not only
that Monteilh worked for the FBI - he says he made $177,000, tax-free, in 15 months - but that he
provided vital information on a number of cases.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the long series of fake terror scares used by
governments to control their domestic populations by fear, click here.
Iraq war logs: secret files show how US ignored torture

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/22/iraq-war-logs-military-leaks
A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of
American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian ... via the
whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. The new logs detail how: A US helicopter gunship involved
in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.
More than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents. The logs record 66,081 noncombatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities. The numerous reports of detainee abuse,
often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists
or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a
detainee's apparent death. The whistleblowing activists say they have deleted all names from the
documents that might result in reprisals.
Note: For an analysis by the Ad Hoc Committee for Justice for Iraq of the still very one-sided
picture of the devastation of Iraq provided by this leak of Iraq war logs, click here. For an interview
of the leader of Wikileaks on CNN in which he walks out after being asked about his personal life
rather than Iraqi deaths, click here.
Pentagon Destroys Copies of Controversial Memoir Written by Army

Officer
2010-09-25, Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/25/pentagon-destroys-copies-controver...
The Pentagon has burned 9,500 copies of Army Reserve Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer's memoir
Operation Dark Heart, his book about going undercover in Afghanistan. A Department of
Defense official tells Fox News that the department purchased copies of the first printing
because they contained information which could cause damage to national security. The
U.S. Army originally cleared the book for release. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency attempted
to block the book about the tipping point in Afghanistan and a controversial pre-9/11 data mining
project called "Able Danger." In a letter obtained by Fox News, the DIA says national security could
be breached if Operation Dark Heart is published in its current form. The agency also attempted to
block key portions of the book that claim "Able Danger" successfully identified hijacker Mohammed
Atta as a threat to the United States before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Note: Able Danger was the program which identified Mohamed Atta and three other alleged 9/11
hijackers as a potential terror threat before 9/11. To read major media reports on the intense
controversy around this program (which is likely why the book is being burned), click here.
Report Details Torture at Secret Baghdad Prison

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/world/middleeast/28baghdad.html
The torture of Iraqi detainees at a secret prison in Baghdad was far more systematic and brutal
than initially reported, Human Rights Watch reported. Human Rights Watch ... documented its
findings, which it described as credible and consistent, in a draft report provided to The New York
Times. The group said it had interviewed 42 detainees who displayed fresh scars and wounds.
Many said they were raped, sodomized with broomsticks and pistol barrels, or forced to
engage in sexual acts with one another and their jailers. All said they were tortured by
being hung upside down and then whipped and kicked before being suffocated with a
plastic bag. Those who passed out were revived, they said, with electric shocks to their genitals
and other parts of their bodies. The horror we found suggests torture was the norm in Muthanna,
said Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East program at Human Rights Watch. Security
officials whipped detainees with heavy cables, pulled out finger and toenails, burned them with
acid and cigarettes, and smashed their teeth, Human Rights Watch said.
Note: For more on the atrocities committed by the US and its recent wars, click here.
George W. Bush 'knew Guantnamo prisoners were innocent'

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men
were sent to the Guantnamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would
harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document
obtained by The Times. The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin
Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed
by a Guantnamo detainee. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defence Secretary
knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantnamo in 2002 were innocent but
believed that it was politically impossible to release them. Colonel Wilkerson, a long-time critic of
the Bush Administrations approach to counter-terrorism and the war in Iraq, claimed that the
majority of detainees children as young as 12 and men as old as 93 never saw a US
soldier when they were captured. He said that many were turned over by Afghans and
Pakistanis for up to $5,000. Little or no evidence was produced as to why they had been
taken. He also claimed that one reason Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld did not want the innocent
detainees released was because the detention efforts would be revealed as the incredibly
confused operation that they were.
Note: For lots more on the realities of the "war on terror", click here.
U.S. Turns a Blind Eye to Opium in Afghan Town

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/world/asia/21marja.html
The effort to win over Afghans on former Taliban turf in Marja has put American and NATO
commanders in the unusual position of arguing against opium eradication. From Gen. Stanley A.
McChrystal on down, the militarys position is clear: U.S. forces no longer eradicate, as
one NATO official put it. Opium is the main livelihood of 60 to 70 percent of the farmers in Marja.
American Marines occupying the area are under orders to leave the farmers fields alone.
United Nations drug officials agree with the Americans. Pictures of NATO and other allied soldiers
walking next to the opium fields wont go well with domestic audiences, but the approach of
postponing eradicating in this particular case is a sensible one, said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, who is in
charge of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime here. Though the United States
governments official position is still to support opium crop eradication in general, some American
civilian officials say that the internal debate over Marja is far from over within parts of the State
Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration. A spokesman for the United States
Embassy in Kabul, Brendan J. OBrien, said officials would decline to comment while the matter
was under review.
Note: For weeks the Pentagon and press claimed Marja is a city of 80,000 people, and compared
the "battle for Marja" as comparable to the attack on Falluja, Iraq. Then the news leaked out that
Marja is not even a town, but an unincorporated agricultural area with a few villages. Now the "city"
turns out to be a center of opium poppy production! Could protection of the lucrative poppy crops
be the real reason for the selection of this area for the largest single military operation of the
occupiers since the invasion in 2001? For more on this, click here.
Police or provocateurs?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/18/undercover-police-infiltr...
Last Sunday's Observer claimed to expose how "an officer from a secretive unit of the Metropolitan
police" worked "undercover among anti-racist groups in Britain, during which he routinely engaged
in violence against members of the public and uniformed police officers to maintain his cover".
Despite this sensationalist introduction, "Officer A" does not describe his involvement in any violent
incidents. No wonder. The organisation he infiltrated, Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE)
is a peaceful organisation of young people, which in the 1990s organised mass protests
against racism and the BNP [British National Party]. YRE [has often faced] violence from
the far right, and unfortunately also from the police. The police not only used violence against
[YRE] demonstrations but also carried out a secretive, unaccountable and clearly expensive
infiltration operation. They gained nothing from it. Far from being secretive [YRE] publicly
advertised [its] events. The Observer's revelation is not unique. Christopher Andrew's The Defence
of the Realm: the Authorized History of M15, published last year, also describes state infiltration of
Militant, the National Union of Miners and others. Surveillance of peaceful protestors has
mushroomed. Police brutality also, as the tragic death of Ian Tomlinson showed, is not a thing of
the past.
Note: Why would police place officers promoting violence in peaceful groups working against
racism? Could it be that key elements within the police are racist?
Jesse Ventura claims govt involved in 9/11

2010-03-09, MSNBC
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/35728268/ns/today-today_books
In his new book, American Conspiracies: Lies, Lies, and More Dirty Lies That the Government
Tells Us, former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura begins an investigative journey to prove that there
is more to our national history than the government wants us to know. In this excerpt, he writes
about an alleged 9/11 cover-up. Chapter 12: What really happened on September 11? Our
government engaged in a massive cover-up of what really happened, including its own ties to the
hijackers. Unanswered questions remain about how the towers were brought down, and whether a
plane really struck the Pentagon. The Bush Administration either knew about the plan and allowed
it to proceed, or they had a hand in it themselves. I certainly never expected to think that elements
of the Bush Administration were complicit. Today, though, I am convinced that some people
inside our government knew the attack was going to happen and allowed it to come to pass
because it furthered their political agenda. I say this after expending many hours
researching things about the official story that dont add up, and interviewing a number of
witnesses with firsthand knowledge that contradicts what we were told. As a patriotic American, I
say this with a heavy heart and with an outrage that really knows no words. But its something
we, as a nation, must come to terms with. Otherwise, it could happen again.
Note: For the questions raised by many other highly respected former government officials about
what really happened on 9/11, click here.
The Anthrax Attacks Remain Unsolved

The investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks ended as far as the public knew on July 29, 2008,
with the death of Bruce Ivins, a senior biodefense researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research
Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Md. Less than a week after his apparent suicide,
the FBI declared Ivins to have been the sole perpetrator of the 2001 Anthrax attacks. The FBI
[had] turned the pressure up on him, isolating him at work and forcing him to spend what little
money he had on lawyers to defend himself. He became increasingly stressed. Then came his
suicide (which, as Eric Nadler and Bob Coen show in their documentary "The Anthrax War," was
one of four suicides among American and British biowarfare researchers in past years). But there
was still a vexing problem. Silicon was used in the 1960s to weaponize anthrax. Anthrax spores
were coated with the substance to prevent them from clinging together so as to create a lethal
aerosol. But since weaponization was banned by international treaties, research anthrax no longer
contains silicon, and the [anthrax] at Fort Detrick contained none. Ivins, no matter how weird he
may have been, had neither the set of skills nor the means to attach silicon to anthrax
spores. If Ivins had neither the equipment or skills to weaponize anthrax with silicon, then
some other party with access to the anthrax must have done it.
Note: As usual, the FBI tries to pin it on one wacko, when it is clear others most have been
involved. Remember that the anthrax attacks occurred as Congress was considering the PATRIOT
Act, and were directed in part at key senators opposed to the act. Congress was shut down for a
period, and when it reconvened it passed the bill without discussion. For lots more on the antrax
attacks as a likely false-flag operation, click here.
Guantanamo guard reunited with ex-inmates

2010-01-12, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8452937.stm
Why would a former Guantanamo Bay prison guard track down two of his former captives - two
British men - and agree to fly to London to meet them? The last time Ruhal Ahmed met Brandon
Neely, he was "behind bars, behind a cage and [Brandon] was on the other side". The location had
been Camp X-Ray - the high-security detention camp run by the US in Guantanamo Bay. Mr
Ahmed, originally from Tipton in the West Midlands, was among several hundred foreign terror
suspects held at the centre. Mr Neely was one of his guards. The scene of this current exchange
of pleasantries couldn't be more different from where they last met - a television studio in London.
Also here is Shafiq Rasul, a fellow ex-Guantanamo prisoner, without whose Facebook page the
reunion would never have happened. Mr Neely, 29, ... left the US military in 2005 to become a
police officer and was still struggling to come to terms with his time as a guard at Guantanamo. He
felt anger at a number of incidents of abuse he says he witnessed, and guilt over one in particular.
"The news would always try to make Guantanamo into this great place," he says, "like 'they
[prisoners] were treated so great'. No it wasn't. You know here I was basically just putting
innocent people in cages."
Note: The video of this reunion at the BBC link above is quite extraordinary for what it represents.
How did these innocent men end up suffering so much? For a possible answer and wake-up call,
click here.
Capability Surprise
2010-01-00, U.S. Office of the Under Secretary of Defense
http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/2010-10-Capability_Suprise_Vol_2.pdf
Deception [is reliant] on the close control of information, running agents (and double-agents) and
creating stories that adversaries will readily believe. In an era of ubiquitous information access,
anonymous leaks and public demands for transparency, deception operations are extraordinarily
difficult. Nevertheless, successful strategic deception has in the past provided the United States
with significant advantages that translated into operational and tactical success. Successful
deception also minimizes U.S. vulnerabilities, while simultaneously setting conditions to surprise
adversaries. Thus, strategic deception capabilities and plans must perforce be highly
classified. Deception cannot succeed in wartime without developing theory and doctrine in
peacetime. In order to mitigate or impart surprise, the United States should develop more
robust interagency deception planning and action prior to the need for military operations.
To be effective, a permanent standing office with strong professional intelligence and operational
expertise needs to be established.
Note: The above excerpts can be found on pages 77 and 78. For a powerful two-page summary of
a top general's description of how the American public is deceived into supporting war, click here.
CIA working with Palestinian security agents

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/17/cia-palestinian-security-agents
Palestinian security agents who have been detaining and allegedly torturing supporters of the
Islamist organisation Hamas in the West Bank have been working closely with the CIA, the
Guardian has learned. Less than a year after Barack Obama signed an executive order that
prohibited torture and provided for the lawful interrogation of detainees in US custody, evidence is
emerging the CIA is co-operating with security agents whose continuing use of torture has been
widely documented by human rights groups. The relationship between the CIA and the two
Palestinian agencies involved Preventive Security Organisation (PSO) and General Intelligence
Service (GI) is said by some western diplomats and other officials in the region to be so close
that the American agency appears to be supervising the Palestinians' work. One senior
western official said: "The [Central Intelligence] Agency consider them as their property,
those two Palestinian services." A diplomatic source added that US influence over the agencies
was so great they could be considered "an advanced arm of the war on terror". Among the human
rights organisations that have documented or complained about the mistreatment of detainees
held by the PA in the West Bank are Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, al-Haq and the
Israeli watchdog B'Tselem.
Note: For many accounts from major media sources of the horrific abuses committed by military,
intelligence and security forces in the wars of occupation in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan, click
here.
Cluster bomb trade funded by world's biggest banks

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oct/29/banks-fund-cluster-bomb-trade
The deadly trade in cluster bombs is funded by the world's biggest banks who have loaned
or arranged finance worth $20bn (12.5bn) to firms producing the controversial weapons,
despite growing international efforts to ban them. HSBC, led by ordained Anglican priest
Stephen Green, has profited more than any other institution from companies that manufacture
cluster bombs. The British bank ... has earned a total of 657.3m in fees arranging bonds and
share offerings for Textron, which makes cluster munitions described by the US company as
"leaving a clean battlefield". HSBC will face protests outside its London headquarters today.
Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JP Morgan and UK-based Barclays Bank are also named
among the worst banks in a detailed 126-page report by Dutch and Belgian campaign groups IKV
Pax Christi and Netwerk Vlaanderen. Goldman Sachs, the US bank which made 3.19bn proft in
just three months, earned $588.82m for bank services and lent $250m to Alliant Techsystems and
Textron. Last December 90 countries, including the UK, committed themselves to banning cluster
bombs by next year. But the US was not one of them. So far 23 countries have ratified the
convention. The UK has yet to do so.
Note: For many verifiable revelations of war profiteering by large corporations, click here.
CIA's black sites, illuminated

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cia-detainee31-2009aug31...
The secret overseas "black sites" where the CIA conducted the interrogations are empty now, if not
already dismantled. They were never examined by a congressional committee, nor inspected by
the international Red Cross. The black sites not only imprisoned men but reduced them to a near
helpless state. The aim, as outlined in one document, was to teach every detainee "to perceive
and value his personal welfare, comfort and immediate needs more than the information he is
protecting." The prisoners' arrival -- almost always in diapers -- was engineered to achieve that
end. After being shaved, stripped and photographed nude, detainees were examined by CIA
medical and psychological personnel. Then came a preliminary interrogation that would determine
the prisoners' fate. Only those considered extremely cooperative would avoid a trio of techniques
designed to produce a "baseline, dependent" state: the deprivation of clothes, solid food and
sleep. Follow-up sessions would start with the prisoner standing with his back against a wall and a
towel or collar to prevent whiplash wrapped around his neck. He could be thrown against the wall
just once "to make a point, or 20 to 30 times consecutively." Prisoners so abhorred the repeated
slamming that they would remain in so-called stress positions, such as painful kneeling postures,
for hours to avoid a return to the wall, according to one Dec. 30, 2004, memo that amounts to a
CIA blueprint for breaking a detainee's will. Earlier this year, the Obama administration
released a series of Justice Department memos laying out legal rationales for the array of
coercive interrogation methods the CIA employed.
Note: For further revelations from major media sources on the illegal methods used by the US
government in its wars around the world, click here.
Abu Ghraib abuse photos 'show rape'

2009-05-28, The Telegraph (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5395830/Abu-Ghraib...
Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include
images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged. At least one picture shows an
American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male
translator raping a male detainee. Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on
prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube. Another apparently
shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts. Detail of the
content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who
conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq. Allegations of rape and abuse were
included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has
now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. The graphic nature of
some of the images may explain the US Presidents attempts to block the release of an estimated
2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them
to be published. Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the Presidents
decision, adding: These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency. I am not sure
what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to
imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them. The mere
description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.
Interrogation Memos Detail Harsh Tactics by the C.I.A.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/us/politics/17detain.html?partner=rss&emc=r...
The Justice Department ... made public detailed memos describing brutal interrogation techniques
used by the Central Intelligence Agency, as President Obama sought to reassure the agency that
the C.I.A. operatives involved would not be prosecuted. In dozens of pages of dispassionate legal
prose, the methods approved by the Bush administration for extracting information from senior
operatives of Al Qaeda are spelled out in careful detail like keeping detainees awake for up to
11 straight days, placing them in a dark, cramped box or putting insects into the box to exploit their
fears. The interrogation methods were authorized beginning in 2002, and some were used
as late as 2005 in the C.I.A.s secret overseas prisons. The United States prosecuted some
Japanese interrogators at war crimes trials after World War II for waterboarding and other
methods detailed in the memos. Together, the four memos give an extraordinarily detailed
account of the C.I.A.s methods and the Justice Departments long struggle, in the face of graphic
descriptions of brutal tactics, to square them with international and domestic law. Passages
describing forced nudity, the slamming of detainees into walls, prolonged sleep deprivation and the
dousing of detainees with water as cold as 41 degrees alternate with elaborate legal arguments
concerning the international Convention Against Torture. The revelations may give new momentum
to proposals for a full-blown investigation into Bush administration counterterrorism programs and
possible torture prosecutions.
Note: For many revealing reports from major media sources on increasing threats to civil liberties,
click here.
Detainee's Harsh Treatment Foiled No Plots

When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and
other harsh interrogation methods, they ... succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of alQaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads. In the end, though, not a
single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions,
according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations.
Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most
of the useful information from Abu Zubaida -- chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates
-- was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said. Moreover, within weeks of his
capture, U.S. officials had gained evidence that made clear they had [falsely accused] Abu
Zubaida. Abu Zubaida was not even an official member of al-Qaeda, according to a portrait of the
man that emerges from court documents and interviews with current and former intelligence, law
enforcement and military sources. Rather, he was a "fixer" for radical Muslim ideologues, and he
ended up working directly with al-Qaeda only after Sept. 11 -- and that was because the United
States stood ready to invade Afghanistan. Since 2006, Senate intelligence committee members
have pressed the CIA, in classified briefings, to provide examples of specific leads that were
obtained from Abu Zubaida through the use of waterboarding and other methods, according to
officials familiar with the requests. The agency provided none, the officials said.
Note: Was the torture of Abu Zubaida an error, or was it for some other purpose than extracting
information from him? For many reports which raise similar questions about the so-called "Global
War on Terror", click here.
Has Anyone Seen a Stray H-Bomb?

2008-11-11, New York Times Blog
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/has-anyone-seen-a-stray-h-bomb
A hydrogen bomb is missing from the United States' arsenal and has been, evidently, for 40 years.
When last seen, the bomb was one of four aboard an Air Force B-52 bomber that crashed on a
frozen bay near Thule Air Force Base in northern Greenland on Jan. 21, 1968. Two years later, the
United States and Denmark reported that they agreed "that the accident caused no danger to man
or animal and plant life in the area." The 96-page report of the investigation indicated that all four
nuclear warheads aboard the plane had disintegrated on impact. Case closed. Well, maybe not,
the BBC says this week. Declassified documents that the BBC obtained under the United
States Freedom of Information Act indicate that only three of the bombs were accounted
for, and that the United States searched secretly for the fourth bomb, without success. By
April [1968], a decision had been taken to send a Star III submarine to the base to look for the lost
bomb, which had the serial number 78252. (A similar submarine search off the coast of Spain two
years earlier had led to another weapon being recovered.) But the real purpose of this search was
deliberately hidden from Danish officials. One document from July reads: "Fact that this operation
includes search for object or missing weapon part is to be treated as confidential NOFORN", the
last word meaning not to be disclosed to any foreign country. "For discussion with Danes, this
operation should be referred to as a survey repeat survey of bottom under impact point," it
continued. And what does the Pentagon have to say about all this now? It had no comment for the
BBC.
Note: To read the original New York Times article from Jan. 22, 1968 on this incident, click here.
Israeli ex-agent: We allowed Nazi doc to escape

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26505933/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/israeli...
Israeli agents who kidnapped Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann from Argentina in 1960
found the notorious death camp doctor Josef Mengele but let him get away, one of the
operatives said Tuesday. Mengele was one of the most wanted Nazi war criminals, a doctor
who conducted cruel experiments on twins and dwarves at the Auschwitz concentration camp and
killed children with lethal injections. He selected prisoners who would be subjected to his
experiments and sent others straight to their death in gas chambers. Rafi Eitan, now an 81-yearold Israeli Cabinet minister, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he and other Mossad
agents located Mengele living in a Buenos Aires apartment with his wife at the time of Eichmann's
capture in 1960. But they decided that trying to nab him would risk sabotaging the capture of
Eichmann, who implemented Adolf Hitler's "final solution" to kill European Jewry and was deemed
a more important target. Mengele was infamous for his sadistic experiments in the death
camps. He injected dye into the eyes of twins to change their color and sewed them together to try
to create artificially conjoined twins. He ordered twins killed simultaneously and then dissected for
examination of their organs. His horrors earned him the title "Angel of Death." After the war,
Mengele fled Germany under an assumed name and ended up in Argentina ... in 1949 but left in
1959 and became a naturalized citizen of Paraguay. After Eichmann was captured in May 1960,
Mengele moved to Brazil, according to the report by the Office of Special Investigations (OSI),
which tracks Nazis.
Note: It is suspected by many who have researched government mind control programs that after
he escaped capture as mentioned above, Mengele was secretly brought to the U.S., where he
trained top operatives of the infamous MKULTRA program in mind control techniques he perfected
while experimenting without ethical limitations on live humans at Auschwitz. For more on this, click
here and here.
McCain's 'big advantage'

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/24/EDPC11EHS4.DTL
Charlie Black, senior adviser to John McCain, caused a fluff by saying that a terrorist attack on
U.S. soil would be a "big advantage" to his candidate. No one mentioned that eight years ago, the
Project for a New American Century called for "a new Pearl Harbor" that could move the American
people to accept the neoconservative vision of militarized global domination. Then 9/11 happened,
lifting George W. Bush from the shadows of a disputed election to the heights of a "war
presidency." Bush has taken on unprecedented powers since the events of 9/11. On that day, the
president issued his "Declaration of Emergency by Reason of Certain Terrorist Attacks" under the
authority of the National Emergencies Act. This declaration, which can be rescinded by joint
resolution of Congress, has instead been extended six times. In 2007, the declaration was quietly
strengthened with the issuance of National Security Presidential Directive 51, which gave the
president the authority to do whatever he deems necessary in a vaguely defined
"catastrophic emergency," including everything from canceling elections to suspending the
Constitution to launching a nuclear attack. Not a single congressional hearing was held on
this directive. Will Congress act decisively to remove the president's emergency powers,
challenge the directive and defend the Constitution?
Permissible Assaults Cited in Graphic Detail

Thirty pages into a memorandum discussing the legal boundaries of military interrogations in 2003,
senior Justice Department lawyer John C. Yoo tackled a question not often asked by American
policymakers: Could the president, if he desired, have a prisoner's eyes poked out? Or, for
that matter, could he have "scalding water, corrosive acid or caustic substance" thrown on
a prisoner? How about slitting an ear, nose or lip, or disabling a tongue or limb? What
about biting? These assaults are all mentioned in a U.S. law prohibiting maiming, which Yoo
parsed as he clarified the legal outer limits of what could be done to terrorism suspects as
detained by U.S. authorities. The specific prohibitions, he said, depended on the circumstances or
which "body part the statute specifies." But none of that matters in a time of war, Yoo also said,
because federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes by military interrogators are
trumped by the president's ultimate authority as commander in chief. In the sober language of
footnotes, case citations and judicial rulings, the memo explores a wide range of unsavory topics,
from the use of mind-altering drugs on captives to the legality of forcing prisoners to squat on their
toes in a "frog crouch." It repeats an assertion in another controversial Yoo memo that an
interrogation tactic cannot be considered torture unless it would result in "death, organ failure or
serious impairment of bodily functions." Yoo, who is now a law professor at the University of
California at Berkeley, also uses footnotes to effectively dismiss the Fourth and Fifth amendments
to the Constitution, arguing that protections against unreasonable search and seizure and
guarantees of due process either do not apply or are irrelevant in a time of war. He frequently cites
his previous legal opinions to bolster his case.
Administration Asserted a Terror Exception on Search and Seizure

The Justice Department concluded in October 2001 that military operations combating terrorism
inside the United States are not limited by Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable
searches and seizures, in one of several secret memos containing new and controversial
assertions of presidential power. The memo, sent on Oct. 23, 2001, to the Defense Department
and the White House by the Office of Legal Counsel, focused on the rules governing any
deployment of U.S. forces inside the country "in the event of further large-scale terrorist activities."
Administration officials declined to detail what domestic military operations were being
contemplated at the time. The memo has not been formally withdrawn. The Fourth Amendment
assertion is one of several far-reaching legal arguments revealed by the disclosure Tuesday
of a 2003 Justice Department memo that authorized harsh military interrogations. In its
footnotes, asides and central text, that 81-page memo asserted nearly unlimited
presidential powers during a time of war. The document disclosed, for example, that the
administration's top lawyers had declared that the president has unfettered power to seize
oceangoing ships as commander in chief; that Congress has no ability to pass legislation
governing the interrogations of enemy combatants; and that federal laws prohibiting assault and
other crimes did not apply to military interrogators. One section discussed to what extent the
president might be allowed to legally maim a prisoner, such as through the use of a "scalding,
corrosive, or caustic substance." A footnote argued that Fifth Amendment guarantees of dueprocess rights "do not address actions the Executive takes in conducting a military campaign
against the Nation's enemies."
Note: For further disturbing reports on threats to civil liberties, click here.
What FBI whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds found in translation

2008-02-17, Dallas Morning News (Dallas' leading newspaper)
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/DN-sibe...
Most Americans have never heard of Sibel Edmonds, and if the U.S. government has its way, they
never will. The former FBI translator turned whistle-blower tells a chilling story of corruption at
Washington's highest levels sale of nuclear secrets, shielding of terrorist suspects, illegal arms
transfers, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, espionage. Ms. Edmonds' account is full of
dates, places and names. And if she is to be believed, a treasonous plot to embed moles in
American military and nuclear installations and pass sensitive intelligence to Israeli,
Pakistani and Turkish sources was facilitated by figures in the upper echelons of the State
and Defense Departments. Her charges could be easily confirmed or dismissed if classified
government documents were made available to investigators. But Congress has refused to act,
and the Justice Department has shrouded Ms. Edmonds' case in the state-secrets privilege,
a rarely used measure so sweeping that it precludes even a closed hearing attended only by
officials with top-secret security clearances. Ms. Edmonds' revelations have attracted corroboration
in the form of anonymous letters apparently written by FBI employees. There have been frequent
reports of FBI field agents being frustrated by the premature closure of cases dealing with foreign
spying, particularly when those cases involve Israel, and the State Department has frequently
intervened to shut down investigations based on "sensitive foreign diplomatic relations." Curiously,
the state-secrets gag order binding Ms. Edmonds, while put in place by DOJ in 2002, was not
requested by the FBI but by the State Department and Pentagon which employed individuals she
identified as being involved in criminal activities. If her allegations are frivolous, that order would
scarcely seem necessary.
Note: The author of this article, Philip Giraldi, is a retired career CIA officer. For further powerful
details of Sibel Edmonds' revelations, click here.
Stonewalled by the C.I.A.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02kean.html
More than five years ago, Congress and President Bush created the 9/11 commission. Soon after
its creation, the presidents chief of staff directed all executive branch agencies to cooperate with
the commission. The commissions mandate was sweeping and it explicitly included the
intelligence agencies. But the recent revelations that the C.I.A. destroyed videotaped
interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond
to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. Those who knew about those
videotapes and did not tell us about them obstructed our investigation. No one in the
administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations.
We did ask, repeatedly, for the kind of information that would have been contained in such
videotapes. Beginning in June 2003, we requested all reports of intelligence information ... that had
been gleaned from the interrogations of 118 named individuals, including both Abu Zubaydah and
Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, two senior Qaeda operatives, portions of whose interrogations were
apparently recorded and then destroyed. The C.I.A. gave us many reports summarizing
information gained in the interrogations. But the reports raised almost as many questions as they
answered. So, in October 2003, we sent another wave of questions to the C.I.A.s general counsel.
The general counsel responded in writing with non-specific replies. The agency did not disclose
that any interrogations had ever been recorded or that it had held any further relevant information,
in any form. Government officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by
Congress and the president, to investigate one the greatest tragedies to confront this country. We
call that obstruction.
Note: The authors of this op-ed, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, served as chairman and
vice chairman, respectively, of the 9/11 Commission.
Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/washington/04interrogate.html?ex=1349150400...
When the Justice Department publicly declared torture abhorrent in a legal opinion in December
2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited
presidential authority to order brutal interrogations. But soon after Alberto R. Gonzaless arrival as
attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one
in secret. It was a very different document; according to officials briefed on it, [it was] an
expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central
Intelligence Agency. The new opinion ... for the first time provided explicit authorization to
barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including
head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures. Later that year, as Congress moved
toward outlawing cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, the Justice Department issued
another secret opinion. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A.
interrogation methods violated that standard. The classified opinions, never previously disclosed,
are a hidden legacy of President Bushs second term and Mr. Gonzaless tenure at the Justice
Department. Congress and the Supreme Court have intervened repeatedly in the last two years to
impose limits on interrogations, and the administration has responded as a policy matter by
dropping the most extreme techniques. But the 2005 Justice Department opinions remain in effect,
and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several more recent memorandums, officials
said. They show how the White House has succeeded in preserving the broadest possible legal
latitude for harsh tactics.
Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency

Part One: 'A Different Understanding With the President': In less than an hour ... Cheney's
proposal had become a military order from the commander in chief. Foreign terrorism suspects
held by the United States were stripped of access to any court -- civilian or military, domestic or
foreign. They could be confined indefinitely without charges and would be tried, if at all, in closed
"military commissions." "What the hell just happened?" Secretary of State Colin L. Powell
demanded ... when CNN announced the order that evening, Nov. 13, 2001. National security
adviser Condoleezza Rice, incensed, sent an aide to find out. Even witnesses to the Oval Office
signing said they did not know the vice president had played any part. "Angler," as the Secret
Service code-named him, has approached the levers of power obliquely, skirting orderly
lines of debate he once enforced as chief of staff to President Gerald R. Ford. He has
battled a bureaucracy he saw as hostile, using intimate knowledge of its terrain. He has
empowered aides to fight above their rank, taking on roles reserved in other times for a White
House counsel or national security adviser. And he has found a ready patron in George W. Bush
for edge-of-the-envelope views on executive supremacy that previous presidents did not assert.
Over the past six years, Cheney has shaped his times as no vice president has before. [The]
relationship [between Bush and Cheney] is opaque, a vital unknown in assessing Cheney's impact
on events. Officials who see them together often, not all of them admirers of the vice president,
detect a strong sense of mutual confidence that Cheney is serving Bush's aims.
Note: This is an important, in-depth investigation of the Cheney vice-presidency. It is highly
revealing and well worth reading it its entirety.
Ex-CIA official, contractor face new charges

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18622361
New charges have been filed alleging that a former top CIA official pushed a proposed $100 million
government contract for his best friend in return for lavish vacations, private jet flights and a
lucrative job offer. The indictment [brings] charges ... against Kyle Dusty Foggo, who resigned
from the spy agency a year ago, and ... defense contractor Brent Wilkes. The charges grew from
the bribery scandal that landed former U.S. Rep. Randy Duke Cunningham in prison. The pair
now face 30 wide-ranging counts of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering [including that] Foggo
provided Wilkes with sensitive, internal information related to ... national security, including
classified information, to help him prepare proposals for providing undercover flights for the CIA
under the guise of a civil aviation company and armored vehicles for agency operations. Then, he
pushed his CIA colleagues to hire Wilkes companies without disclosing their friendship,
prosecutors allege. In a June 2005 e-mail to the head of CIA air operations quoted in the
indictment, Foggo offered to use some EXDIR grease on Wilkes behalf. Foggo was the
agencys executive director at the time. In return, Wilkes offered to hire Foggo after he retired
from government service. [An] initial indictment in February charged the pair with 11 counts of the
same charges in connection with a $1.7 million water-supply contract Foggo allegedly helped win
for one of Wilkes companies while he was working as a logistics coordinator at a CIA supply hub
overseas. Foggo, the former No. 3 official at the CIA, resigned from the spy agency after his house
and office were raided by federal agents.
Note: Until just a few years ago, there was a virtual blackout in the media on any negative
coverage of the CIA. The prosecution of the #3 man in the CIA is an external manifestation of huge
shake-ups going on behind the scenes. Buzzy Krongard, the previous #3 at the CIA has been
linked to the millions of dollars in suspicious stock option trades made just prior to 9/11 that were
never claimed, though this received little media coverage.
Opium, thugs bloom under U.S. policies in Afghanistan war

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/17/ING08MTPMB1.DTL
The Taliban ... briefly banned poppy cultivation in 2000 in an effort to gain U.S. diplomatic
recognition and aid. When the Bush administration invaded Afghanistan in October 2001,
poppies were grown on only 7,600 hectares. Under the American occupation ... poppy
cultivation spread to every province, and overall production has increased exponentially
ever since -- this year by 60 percent. Within Afghanistan, where perhaps 3 million people draw
direct income from poppy, profits may reach $3 billion this year. In-country profit adds up to an
estimated 60 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product, or more than half the country's
annual income. Afghanistan provides 92 percent of the world's heroin. Through many
administrations, the U.S. government has been implicated in the Afghan drug trade. Before the
American and Pakistani-sponsored mujahedeen took on the Soviets in 1979, Afghanistan
produced a very small amount of opium for regional markets, and no heroin at all. By the end of
the jihad against the Soviet army, it was the world's top producer of both drugs. The CIA made it all
possible by providing legal cover for these operations. The United States [encouraged] Islamist
extremists (then "our" soldiers) and ... set the stage for the Taliban. [Currently,] President Hamid
Karzai['s] strategy is to avoid confrontation, befriend potential adversaries and give them offices,
often in his Cabinet. The trade penetrates even the elected Parliament. Among the 249 members
of the Wolesi Jirga (lower house) are at least 17 known drug traffickers, in addition to 40
commanders of armed militias, 24 members of criminal gangs, and 19 men facing serious
allegations of war crimes.
Note: Could it be that some U.S. officials are turning a blind eye, or even supporting this drug
trade? For some very strong evidence of this from a former award-winning DEA agent turned
journalist and author, click here.
Pentagon resists pleas for help in Afghan opium fight

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-fg-afghandrugs5dec05,...
The Pentagon ... has resisted entreaties from U.S. anti-narcotics officials to play an aggressive
role in the faltering campaign to curb the country's opium trade. Military units in Afghanistan
largely overlook drug bazaars, rebuff some requests to take U.S. drug agents on raids and
do little to counter the organized crime syndicates shipping the drug to Europe, Asia and,
increasingly, the United States. Poppy cultivation has exploded, increasing by more than half
this year. Afghanistan supplies about 92% of the world's opium. "It is surprising to me that we have
allowed things to get to the point that they have," said ... a former top State Department counternarcotics official. Outgoing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said that Afghanistan's
flourishing opium trade is a law enforcement problem, not a military one. The opium trade is onethird of the country's economy. Several dozen kingpins ... have become more brazen, richer and
powerful. [They] openly run huge opium bazaars and labs that turn opium into heroin. [The] head
of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said ... that the location of major drug operations
were "well-known to us and to the authorities." The Pentagon has balked at drug interdiction efforts
even when it had the resources, said a former senior U.S. anti-drug official. "There were [drug]
convoys where military people looked the other way," the former official said. "DEA would identify a
lab to go hit or a storage facility and [the Pentagon] would find a reason to ground the helicopters."
A recent congressional report said the DEA asked the Pentagon for airlifts on 26 occasions in
2005, and the requests were denied in all but three cases.
Note: Some observers and insiders believe the reason Afghanistan was attacked is because the
Taliban had virtually stopped the opium trade in 2001. For reliable evidence supporting these
allegations, click here.
Why did the 9/11 Commission ignore 'Able Danger'

2005-11-17, Wall Street Journal Article by Former FBI Director Louis Freeh
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007559
The Able Danger intelligence, if confirmed, is undoubtedly the most relevant fact of the entire post9/11 inquiry. Even the most junior investigator would immediately know that the name and photo ID
of Atta in 2000 is precisely the kind of tactical intelligence the FBI has many times employed to
prevent attacks. Yet the 9/11 Commission inexplicably concluded that it "was not historically
significant." This astounding conclusion -- in combination with the failure to investigate Able
Danger and incorporate it into its findings -- raises serious challenges to the commission's
credibility and, if the facts prove out, might just render the commission historically
insignificant itself. The Able Danger team had identified Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers by
mid-2000 but were prevented by military lawyers from giving this information to the FBI. The
Pentagon...blocked several military officers from testifying...about the Able Danger program. The
chairman of the 9/11 Commission reacted to Able Danger with the standard Washington PR
approach. [He] demanded that the Pentagon conduct an "investigation" to evaluate the "credibility"
of Col. Shaffer and Capt. Phillpott. The final 9/11 Commission report...concluded that "American
intelligence agencies were unaware of Mr. Atta until the day of the attacks." This now looks to be
embarrassingly wrong. The Joint Intelligence Committees should reconvene and, in addition to
Able Danger team members, we should have the 9/11 commissioners appear as witnesses so the
families can hear their explanation why this doesn't matter.
Note: If the above link fails, click here.
FBI to Fire Dissident Agent

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10381-2005Apr22.html
The FBI has moved to fire a veteran agent who alleged that the bureau had mishandled
domestic investigations. On Thursday, Robert Wright was ordered by superiors at an FBI
counterterrorism command office in Washington to hand over his badge and weapon, was
suspended and was told he would be fired within 30 days, said an official with Judicial Watch, a
government watchdog group whose attorneys represent Wright. Wright was told he was being
dismissed for, among other things, publicly discussing sensitive FBI matters in 2003, the official
said. Wright has been under disciplinary investigation for almost three years. He has two lawsuits
pending against the FBI. Yesterday, Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Patrick J. Leahy (DVt.) sent FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III a letter repeating their support for Wright and
expressing concern that the FBI was retaliating against him for his public statements.
Note: What the Post article completely fails to mention is that Robert Wright was hot on the
trail of key terrorists before 9/11, yet he was ordered to stop the investigation by his FBI
supervisors. For past media stories on this with links to original sources, click here, here, and here.
Mr. Wright is one of the FBI agents who approached renowned attorney David Schippers just
weeks before 9/11 to warn that a major terrorist attack was going to take place in lower Manhattan.
For more, click here.
New Details on F.B.I. Aid for Saudis After 9/11

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/politics/27exodus.html?ex=1269579600&en=e2d...
In the frenzied days after Sept. 11, 2001, when some flights were still grounded, dozens of
well-connected Saudis, including relatives of Osama bin Laden, managed to leave the
United States on specially chartered flights. Newly released government records show
previously undisclosed flights ... and point to a more active role by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation in aiding some of the Saudis in their departure. The F.B.I. gave personal airport
escorts to two prominent Saudi families who fled the United States, and several other Saudis were
allowed to leave the country without first being interviewed. The material ... provides details about
the F.B.I.'s interaction with at least 160 Saudis who were living in or visiting the United States and
were allowed to leave the country. Some of the departing Saudis were related to Osama bin
Laden. In several ... cases, Saudi travelers were not interviewed before departing the country, and
F.B.I. officials sought to determine how what seemed to be lapses had occurred. "From these
documents, [the Saudi interviews that did occur] look like they were courtesy chats, without the
time that would have been needed for thorough debriefings," said Christopher J. Farrell, who is ...
a former counterintelligence interrogator for the Army. "It seems as if the F.B.I. was more interested
in achieving diplomatic success than investigative success." The F.B.I. documents left open the
possibility that some departing Saudis had information relevant to the Sept. 11 investigation.
Note: For lots more crucial, verifiable information suggesting a 9/11 cover-up, click here.
United States Interventions: What For?

2005-03-21, Revista: Harvard Review of Latin America
http://www.drclas.harvard.edu/revista/articles/view/828
In the slightly less than a hundred years from 1898 to 1994, the U.S. government has
intervened successfully to change governments in Latin America a total of at least 41 times.
That amounts to once every 28 months for an entire century. Direct intervention occurred in 17
of the 41 cases. These incidents involved the use of U.S. military forces, intelligence agents or
local citizens employed by U.S. government agencies. In another 24 cases, the U.S. government
played an indirect role. That is, local actors played the principal roles, but either would not have
acted or would not have succeeded without encouragement from the U.S. government. The 41
cases do not include incidents in which the United States sought to depose a Latin American
government, but failed in the attempt. The most famous such case was the failed Bay of Pigs
invasion of April 1961. Also absent from the list are numerous cases in which the U.S. government
acted decisively to forestall a coup detat or otherwise protect an incumbent regime from being
overthrown. In nearly every case, U.S. officials cited U.S. security interests, either as
determinative or as a principal motivation. With hindsight, it is now possible to dismiss most
these claims as implausible. In many cases, they were understood as necessary for generating
public and congressional support, but not taken seriously by the key decision makers.
Inspector General Rebukes F.B.I. over Espionage Case and Firing of

Whistle-Blower
http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F60F15F73F5C0C768DDDA...
The F.B.I. has failed to aggressively investigate accusations of espionage against a translator at
the bureau and fired the translator's co-worker in large part for bringing the accusations, the
Justice Department's inspector general concluded. In a long-awaited report that the Justice
Department sought for months to keep classified, the inspector general issued a sharp
rebuke to the F.B.I. over its handling of claims of espionage and ineptitude made by Sibel
Edmonds, a bureau translator who was fired in 2002 after superiors deemed her conduct
"disruptive." The report [came] from the office of Glenn A. Fine, the Justice Department's
inspector general. Mr. Fine's investigation found that many of Ms. Edmonds's accusations "were
supported, that the F.B.I. did not take them seriously enough and that her allegations were, in fact,
the most significant factor in the F.B.I.'s decision to terminate her services." Ms. Edmonds's case
has become a cause clbre for critics who accused the bureau of retaliating against her and other
whistle-blowers who have sought to expose management problems related to the campaign
against terrorism. The American Civil Liberties Union joined her cause earlier this week, asking an
appellate court to reinstate a whistle-blower lawsuit she brought against the government. The suit
was dismissed last year after Attorney General John Ashcroft, invoking a rarely used power,
declared her case to be a matter of "state secret" privilege, and the Justice Department
retroactively classified a 2002 Congressional briefing about it.
Note: What this article completely fails to mention is that Ms. Edmonds has claimed
repeatedly that she has key information revealing major corruption related to 9/11. For a
highly revealing report written by Ms. Edmonds to the 9/11 Commission chairman, click here.
Another highly revealing article is available here. The Times link above requires payment. To view
the above article free, click here.
A Hidden Story Behind Sept. 11? One Man's Ad Campaign Says So

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/nyregion/08ads.html?ex=1257656400&en=730dbc...
The grainy 30-second commercials ... suggest a government cover-up of the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks. The advertisements, which ran repeatedly ... on several cable networks, including CNN,
Fox News and ESPN, offer a Web site, an address and a phone number. The ads are the latest
salvo from James W. Walter ... who over the years has financed programs promoting voter
registration in low-income neighborhoods and prison reform. The television commercials, as well
as ads in magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and
The Daily News, are part of a $3 million national campaign paid for by Mr. Walter in an effort to
press for the reopening of the investigation by the independent Sept. 11 commission. "We've
never gotten solid answers on why Tower 7 collapsed when it was two full blocks away
from where the planes hit," he said. "We've also never received an answer for how such a large
plane left such a small hole in the side of the Pentagon." A Zogby poll of New Yorkers' opinions
about the 9/11 investigation, released last month, indicated that 49 percent of New York City
residents and 41 percent of New York state residents believed that some federal officials "knew in
advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously
failed to act." The poll also found that 66 percent of New York City residents and 56 percent of
state residents wanted a fuller investigation of the "still unanswered questions."
Note: For lots more reliable information suggesting a major cover-up of 9/11, click here.
The Pakistan connection

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1266520,00.html
There is evidence of foreign intelligence backing for the 9/11 hijackers. Why is the US
government so keen to cover it up? Omar Sheikh, a British-born Islamist militant, is waiting to
be hanged in Pakistan for a murder he almost certainly didn't commit - of the Wall Street Journal
reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. Both the US government and Pearl's wife have since acknowledged
that Sheikh was not responsible. Significantly, Sheikh is also the man who, on the instructions of
General Mahmoud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), wired
$100,000 before the 9/11 attacks to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker. It is extraordinary that
neither Ahmed nor Sheikh have been charged and brought to trial on this count. Ahmed, the
paymaster for the hijackers, was actually in Washington on 9/11, and had a series of pre-9/11 toplevel meetings in the White House, the Pentagon, the national security council, and with George
Tenet, then head of the CIA. Why hasn't the US demanded that he be questioned and tried in
court? [Another] witness is Sibel Edmonds ... former FBI translator of intelligence. She tried to blow
the whistle on the cover-up of intelligence that names some of the culprits who orchestrated the
9/11 attacks, but is now under two gagging orders that forbid her from testifying in court or
mentioning the names of the people or the countries involved. The FBI, illegally, [also] continues to
refuse the to release of their agent Robert Wright's 500-page manuscript Fatal Betrayals of the
Intelligence Mission, and has even refused to turn the manuscript over to Senator Shelby, vicechairman of the joint intelligence committee charged with investigating America's 9/11 intelligence
failures.
Note: The above article was written by Michael Meacher, who served as the U.K. Minster of
Environment from 1997 to 2003. For lots more reliable information suggesting a major cover-up
around 9/11, click here.
NORAD had drills of jets as weapons

2004-04-18, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-04-18-norad_x.htm
In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense
Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at
the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass
casualties. One of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center. In another exercise ... the
target was the Pentagon but that drill was not run after Defense officials said it was unrealistic,
NORAD and Defense officials say. NORAD, in a written statement, confirmed that such hijacking
exercises occurred. "Numerous types of civilian and military aircraft were used as mock hijacked
aircraft," the statement said. "These exercises tested track detection and identification; scramble
and interception; hijack procedures; internal and external agency coordination and operational
security and communications security procedures." On April 8, the commission investigating the
Sept. 11 attacks heard testimony from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that the White
House didn't anticipate hijacked planes being used as weapons. President Bush said ... "Nobody
in our government ... could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale." One
operation, planned in July 2001 ... involved planes from airports in Utah and Washington state that
were "hijacked." NORAD officials have acknowledged that "scriptwriters" for the drills included the
idea of hijacked aircraft being used as weapons. "Threats of killing hostages or crashing were left
to the scriptwriters to invoke creativity and broaden the required response," Maj. Gen. Craig
McKinley, a NORAD official, told the 9/11 commission.
Note: This highly revealing news was reported on the front page of USA Today, yet no other major
media even picked up the story. Why? For lots more, click here and here.
Bush: 'Had I Known, We Would Have Acted'

2004-04-12, CNN News
http://articles.cnn.com/2004-04-11/politics/911.investigation_1_intelligence-...
President Bush said Sunday that an intelligence memo he read shortly before September 11,
2001, contained no "actionable intelligence" that would have helped him to try to prevent the 9/11
attacks. "The (August 6, 2001 memo) was no indication of a terrorist threat," Bush said. But a
member of the independent commission investigating the September 11 attacks said ... the memo
-- the president's daily briefing, or PDB -- should have alerted Bush to the strong possibility of such
an attack. Richard Ben-Veniste [said] the memo and other reports and incidents made up a
"substantial body of information" about Osama bin Laden's possible plans. The briefing was
headlined, "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US." "The CIA was reminding the president -- with
the headline ... 'don't just look overseas for the possibility of this spectacular event that everyone
was predicting,' " Ben-Veniste told reporters. Ben-Veniste also took issue with national security
adviser Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the committee ... that the White House had no
inkling al Qaeda would use planes as missiles. He said he would "be surprised if Dr. Rice
didn't know" about a no-fly zone in place over Genoa, Italy, for the spring 2001 G8 meeting,
spurred by fears terrorists could crash planes "into the buildings where the leaders were meeting."
Note: To see the daily presidential briefing which shows beyond any doubt that Bush was not
telling the truth on this, click here. For excerpts from many major media articles suggesting a 9/11
cover-up, click here.
FBI let innocents get death sentences

The FBI used murderers as informants in Boston for three decades, even allowing innocent men to
be sentenced to death to protect the secret operation, a government report has found. The FBI's
policy "must be considered one of the greatest failures in the history of federal law enforcement"
and had "disastrous consequences", the report by the House Committee on Government Reform
said. More than 20 people were murdered by FBI informants in Boston from 1965, often with
the help of FBI agents, it said. But no FBI agent or official has ever been disciplined. The
FBI's policy of using murderers grew out of a belated effort by a former director, J. Edgar Hoover,
to go after the Mafia, which Hoover had earlier denied even existed. In the early 1960s, the bureau
began recruiting underworld informers in its new campaign. The report focuses heavily on one
episode, the 1965 murder of Edward Deegan, a small-time hoodlum who was killed by Jimmy
Flemmi and Joseph Barboza, who had just been recruited by an FBI agent in Boston. The FBI
knew the two men were the killers because it had been using an unauthorised wire tap and had
heard Flemmi ask the Mafia boss, Raymond Patriarca, for permission to kill Deegan. A few days
later, Deegan was shot dead. Four men who had nothing to do with the killing were tried and
convicted, with two sentenced to death and two to life in prison. Two of the men died in prison and
two had their sentences commuted and were freed after serving 30 years behind bars. Hoover was
kept fully informed about this murder and the wrongful convictions, the report said.
Did LBJ Cover For Israel?

2003-10-23, CBS News/Associated Press
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/23/national/main579649.shtml
A former Navy attorney who helped lead the military investigation of the 1967 Israeli attack on the
USS Liberty that killed 34 American servicemen says former President Lyndon Johnson and his
defense secretary, Robert McNamara, ordered that the inquiry conclude the incident was an
accident. Retired Capt. Ward Boston said Johnson and McNamara told those heading the Navy's
inquiry to "conclude that the attack was a case of 'mistaken identity' despite overwhelming
evidence to the contrary." Boston was senior legal counsel to the Navy's original 1967 review of
the attack. He said in the sworn statement that he stayed silent for years because ... "when orders
come ... I follow them." The USS Liberty was an electronic intelligence-gathering ship that was
cruising international waters off the Egyptian coast on June 8, 1967. Israeli planes and torpedo
boats opened fire on the Liberty. It was "one of the classic all-American cover-ups," said Ret.
Adm. Thomas Moorer, a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman who spent a year
investigating the attack as part of an independent panel he formed with other former
military officials. The panel also included a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, James
Akins. David Lewis of Lemington, Vt., was on the Liberty when it was attacked. In an interview, he
said Israel had to know it was targeting an American ship. He said a U.S. flag was flying that day
and Israel shot it full of holes. The sailors on the ship, he said, quickly hoisted another American
flag, a much bigger one, to show Israel it was a U.S. vessel.
Note: For lots more on this major cover-up by a U.S. president and top military officers, click here.
ABC producer James Bamford, who exposed the Operation Northwoods cover-up, also has an
excellent chapter on this event in his highly revealing book, Body of Secrets, about the National
Security Agency.
This war on terrorism is bogus (by past U.K. Minister of Environment)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1036571,00.html
At least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad
experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists
said to be preparing a big operation. The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11
hijackers, none of whom was arrested. In November 2001 the US airforce complained it had
had al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in its sights as many as 10 times over the previous six
weeks, but had been unable to attack because they did not receive permission quickly enough.
The BBC reported [that] a former Pakistan foreign secretary was told by senior American officials
at a meeting in Berlin in mid-July 2001 that "military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by
the middle of October". Zacarias Moussaoui ... was arrested in August 2001. One agent wrote, a
month before 9/11, that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers. US agents ...
sought a warrant to search his computer. They were turned down by the FBI. [A] PNAC blueprint
supports an earlier document ... which said the US must "discourage advanced industrial nations
from challenging our leadership". The document also calls for the creation of "US space forces" to
dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent "enemies" using the internet. It also
hints that the US may consider developing biological weapons "that can target specific genotypes
[and] may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool". The
conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the "global war on terrorism" has the hallmarks of
a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world
hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the
whole project.
Note: This is one of the very few articles recommended as a must read. Michael Meacher
was the U.K. Minister of Environment from May 1997 to June 2003. Mr. Meacher lays out a wealth
of highly revealing information backed by reliable sources. To confirm most of his statements on
our 9/11 timeline, click here. Mr. Meacher's cliams were reported on BBC News, as well, though
the BBC mentioned amazingly little on his claims of U.S. involvement in 9/11. To see the BBC
article click here.
Maybe It Stands for War's Mission Disputed

2003-06-08, WantToKnow.info/Minneapolis Star Tribune
http://www.WantToKnow.info/disappearededitorial
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass
destruction." Vice President Dick Cheney, Aug. 26, 2002 [White House website] "Our
intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500
tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent." President Bush, Jan. 28, 2003 [St. Petersburg Times
website] "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime
continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." President
Bush, March 17, 2003 [White House website] "There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam
Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. As this operation continues, those weapons will
be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them." Gen.
Tommy Franks, March 22, 2003 [Washington Post] "They may have had time to destroy them, and
I don't know the answer." Donald Rumsfeld, May 27, 2003 [Washington Post website]"For
bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction [as justification for
invading Iraq] because it was the one reason everyone could agree on." Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, May 28, 2003 [CNN website]
Note: This article was published on the front page of the editorial section in the June 8, 2003
edition of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Yet within weeks of its publication it disappeared from their
website. Why have the media so avoided these most important facts? For an enlightening
answer to this question, a powerful article by a highly decorated U.S. general is available here.
The Kissinger Commission

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60812FB395C0C7A8EDDA80994DA4...
In naming Henry Kissinger to direct a comprehensive examination of the government's failure to
prevent the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush has selected a consummate Washington insider.
Unfortunately, his affinity for power and the commercial interests he has cultivated since leaving
government may make him less than the staunchly independent figure that is needed for this
critical post. Indeed, it is tempting to wonder if the choice of Mr. Kissinger is not a clever
maneuver by the White House to contain an investigation it long opposed. It seems
improbable to expect Mr. Kissinger to report unflinchingly on the conduct of the
government, including that of Mr. Bush. He would have to challenge the established order and
risk sundering old friendships and business relationships. The new inquiry will be undone if the 10member panel is hesitant to call government organizations and officials to account. There can be
no place for the kind of political calculation and court flattery that Mr. Kissinger practiced so
assiduously during his tenure as Richard Nixon's national security adviser and secretary of state.
Nor is there any tolerance for the kind of cynicism that Mr. Kissinger applied to the prosecution of
the Vietnam War.
Note: Kissinger was later forced to decline this offer as it was revealed that he was a paid advisor
to members of the bin Laden family. To confirm this, watch minutes 15 to 18 of the amazing 84minute 9/11 documentary, "9/11: Press for Truth," available here. This excellent video is focused on
the revealing investigations of the "Jersey Girls," who lost their husbands in the attacks and
uncovered Kissinger's bin Laden connections. Yet though the major media reported widely that
Kissinger resigned for "conflict of interest" reasons, none of the media mentioned that it was
because of his bin Laden connections. To find out why, click here
Revealed: The Taliban minister, the US envoy and the warning of

September 11 that was ignored
2002-09-07, The Independent (One of the UK's leading newpapers)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=331115
Weeks before the terrorist attacks on 11 September, the United States and the United
Nations ignored warnings from a secret Taliban emissary that Osama bin Laden was
planning a huge attack on American soil. The warnings were delivered by an aide of Wakil
Ahmed Muttawakil, the Taliban Foreign Minister at the time, who was known to be deeply unhappy
with the foreign militants in Afghanistan, including Arabs. The minister then ordered him to alert the
US and the UN about what was going to happen. The message was disregarded because of
what sources describe as "warning fatigue". At the same time, the FBI and the CIA failed to
take seriously warnings that Islamic fundamentalist students had enrolled in flight schools across
the US. Mr Muttawakil's aide, who has stayed on in Kabul and who has to remain anonymous for
his security, described in detail to The Independent how he alerted first the Americans and then
the United Nations of the coming calamity of 11 September.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. For many other revealing major media articles raising
serious questions about what happened on 9/11, click here.
Ashcroft Travel Alert Didn't Involve Bin Laden

Attorney General John Ashcroft was urged in May 2001 by his top security experts not to fly
aboard commercial aircraft because of personal threats on his life, not out of fears about terrorist
hijackings, the Justice Department said. The department moved quickly to quell suggestions
that Ashcroft, who routinely flies aboard a small jet operated by the FBI, took precautions
for his own safety in the months before Sept. 11 based on warnings of any threats involving
Usama bin Laden or the Al Qaeda terrorist network. Ashcroft declined to discuss the issue while
visiting ... with Bulgarian justice officials in his office. Ashcroft walked from the room without
comment when a reporter asked about it. An FBI security review after Ashcroft took office
recommended that the attorney general eschew flying on commercial planes whenever possible,
citing nonspecific threats against Ashcroft's life. Since July 2001, Ashcroft has typically flown
aboard an FBI jet or aboard other jets leased by U.S. agencies, although he occasionally has
traveled on commercial flights.
Note: For more on this bizarre news, see the CBS report available here. Did Ashcroft have access
to information about an impending air disaster that others didn't? For many other major media
reports suggesting that rogue elements of government were involved in 9/11, click here.
Millions were in germ war tests

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2002/apr/21/uk.medicalscience
The Ministry of Defence turned large parts of the country into a giant laboratory to conduct a series
of secret germ warfare tests on the public. A government report just released provides for the first
time a comprehensive official history of Britain's biological weapons trials between 1940 and 1979.
Many of these tests involved releasing potentially dangerous chemicals and micro-organisms over
vast swaths of the population without the public being told. While details of some secret trials have
emerged in recent years, the 60-page report reveals new information about more than 100
covert experiments. The report reveals that military personnel were briefed to tell any
'inquisitive inquirer' the trials were part of research projects into weather and air pollution.
The tests [were] carried out by government scientists at Porton Down. In most cases, the
trials did not use biological weapons but alternatives which scientists believed would mimic germ
warfare and which the MoD claimed were harmless. But families in certain areas of the country
who have children with birth defects are demanding a public inquiry.
Note: Military personnel were ordered to lie to cover-up potentially dangerous experiments on the
public. So how can we trust that these people have the public interest as a priority?
CIA agent alleged to have met Bin Laden in July

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/nov/01/afghanistan.terrorism
Two months before September 11 Osama bin Laden flew to Dubai for 10 days for treatment at the
American hospital, where he was visited by the local CIA agent, according to the French
newspaper Le Figaro. Bin Laden is reported to have arrived in Dubai on July 4 from Quetta in
Pakistan with his own personal doctor, nurse and four bodyguards, to be treated in the urology
department. While there he was visited by several members of his family and Saudi
personalities, and the CIA. The CIA chief was seen in the lift, on his way to see Bin Laden,
and later, it is alleged, boasted to friends about his contact. Intelligence sources say that
another CIA agent was also present; and that Bin Laden was also visited by Prince Turki al Faisal,
then head of Saudi intelligence, who had long had links with the Taliban, and Bin Laden. The
American hospital in Dubai emphatically denied that Bin Laden was a patient there. Washington
last night also denied the story. Bin Laden has often been reported to be in poor health. Some
accounts claim that he is suffering from Hepatitis C, and can expect to live for only two more years.
According to Le Figaro, last year he ordered a mobile dialysis machine to be delivered to his base
at Kandahar in Afghanistan.
Note: For many unanswered questions about the official account of 9/11 asked by highlyrespected professors and officials, click here and here.
Fearing Harm, bin Laden Kin Fled From U.S.

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60F14F63F590C738FDDA00894D94...
In the first days after the terror attacks on New York and Washington, Saudi Arabia supervised the
urgent evacuation of 24 members of Osama bin Laden's extended family from the United States,
fearing that they might be subjected to violence. Most of Mr. bin Laden's relatives were attending
high school and college. They are among the 4,000 Saudi students in the United States. King
Fahd, the ailing Saudi ruler, sent an urgent message to his embassy here saying there were "bin
Laden children all over America" and ordered, "Take measures to protect the innocents," the
ambassador said. The young members of the bin Laden clan were driven or flown under
F.B.I. supervision to a secret assembly point in Texas and then to Washington from where
they left the country on a private charter plane when airports reopened three days after the
attacks. A majority of the men who hijacked four airliners in the attacks carried Saudi passports.
Surprisingly, Osama bin Laden was not a stranger even to a royal family member like Prince
Bandar. In the early 1980's, bin Laden came to greet the prince and thank him for helping to build
the coalition that fought against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. Mr. bin Laden is one of 52
children of a Yemeni-born migrant who made a vast fortune building roads and palaces in Saudi
Arabia.
Note: Should the above link fail to function, click here. For a Boston Globe article on this key topic,
click here. For more detailed information which both the Times and Globe neglected to report, click
here.
FBI Knew Terrorists Were Using Flight Schools

2001-09-23, The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A10...
Federal authorities have been aware for years that suspected terrorists with ties to Osama bin
Laden were receiving flight training at schools in the United States and abroad, according to
interviews and court testimony. Three days after the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade
Center, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III described reports that several of the hijackers had
received flight training in the United States as "news, quite obviously," adding, "If we had
understood that to be the case, we would have -- perhaps one could have averted this." A senior
government official yesterday acknowledged law enforcement officials were aware that ... a dozen
people with links to bin Laden had attended U.S. flight schools. Abdul Hakim Murad ... was
arrested in Manila in 1995 and later convicted in New York of plotting to blow up a dozen
U.S. airliners over the Pacific, then crash a suicide plane into CIA headquarters. According to
law enforcement officials and press reports, the 19 suspected terrorists received flight training from
at least 10 U.S. flight schools. At least 44 people sought by the FBI for questioning received some
flight instruction.
Note: Why did the upper levels of the FBI "not know" about the suspicious people in US flight
schools, when so many lower-level FBI personnel were desperately trying to inform them of these
facts? For many other unanswered questions about the official account of 9/11 from highly
respected professionals, click here and here.
A Conspiracy So Vast; How Crimes Become Obsessions

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/13/weekinreview/the-nation-a-conspiracy-so-vas...
The disclosure that the Federal Bureau of Investigation withheld documents from Timothy
McVeigh's lawyers seems certain to ignite a controversy that will burn for years, perhaps
decades. ''If any questions or doubts remain about this case, it would cast a permanent cloud over
justice,'' said Attorney General John D. Ashcroft in delaying Mr. McVeigh's execution until at least
June 11. But for some people the cloud has been there all along, and always will be. They will
never accept the government's assertion that the withholding of the documents was simple human,
bureaucratic error. And so the 1995 bombing of a federal office building in Oklahoma City seems
likely to join the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as
events whose truth -- in the eyes of some Americans -- is forever untold. ''Gee, how did that
happen?'' Charles Key, a former member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, said in
sarcastic response to the news that the McVeigh defense team had been denied evidence held by
the government. Mr. Key, who lives in Oklahoma City, said he has always been convinced that Mr.
McVeigh had accomplices beyond Terry Nichols, the other person convicted in the bombing. The
government has not pursued the case aggressively, he said, because the full truth would be too
damning.
Note: There is an abundance of solid information that the Oklahoma City bombing was
manipulated in major ways. For two revealing AP articles on the FBI concealing evidence, click
here and here. For news reports that there were undetonated bombs in the building, sharply
contradicting the official story click here and here.
The C.I.A. in Iran -- How a Plot Convulsed Iran in '53 (and in '79)
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html
The Central Intelligence Agency's secret history of its covert operation to overthrow Iran's
government in 1953 offers an inside look at how the agency stumbled into success, despite a
series of mishaps that derailed its original plans. Written in 1954 by one of the coup's chief
planners, the history details how United States and British officials plotted the military coup that
returned the shah of Iran to power and toppled Iran's elected prime minister, an ardent nationalist.
The document shows that: * The C.I.A. and S.I.S., the British intelligence service, handpicked Gen.
Fazlollah Zahedi to succeed Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and covertly funneled $5
million to General Zahedi's regime two days after the coup prevailed. * Iranians working for the
C.I.A. and posing as Communists harassed religious leaders and staged the bombing of
one cleric's home in a campaign to turn the country's Islamic religious community against
Mossadegh's government.
Note: For the complete text of this major report in single-page format, click here.
Experimental bomb to create huge tidal wave was tested in 1944

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/experimental-bomb-to-create-huge-tidal-wave...
Secret wartime experiments were conducted off the New Zealand coast to perfect a bomb
that could trigger devastating tidal waves, according to government files declassified in
Auckland. The New Zealand Herald, citing the files, said that senior United States defence
officials believed the weapon had the potential to be as deadly as the atomic bomb. But the
tsunami bomb, as it was known, was never fully tested and the war ended before the project was
completed. Its mastermind was Thomas Leech, an Australian professor who as the dean of
engineering at Auckland University from 1940 to 1950. He was seconded to the New Zealand
Army during the Second World War. He set off a series of underwater explosions that triggered
mini tidal waves at Whangaparaoa, just north of Auckland, in 1944 and 1945. Details of the
research, known as Project Seal, are contained in 53- year-old documents released by the New
Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. What happened to Project Seal once the final report
was forwarded to Wellington in the late 1940s is not clear.
Note: For a revealing, well researched article presenting solid evidence that elements within the
military have much more control over the weather than is generally believed, click here.
Bin Laden comes home to roost

1998-08-24, MSNBC News
At the CIA, it happens often enough to have a code name: Blowback. Simply defined, this is the
term describing an agent, an operative or an operation that has turned on its creators. Osama bin
Laden, our new public enemy Number 1, is the personification of blowback. And the fact that he is
viewed as a hero by millions in the Islamic world proves again the old adage: Reap what you sow.
There are times when the United States, faced with ... moral dilemmas, should have resisted the
temptation to act. Arming a multi-national coalition of Islamic extremists in Afghanistan during the
1980s ... was one of those times. Bin Laden is the heir to Saudi construction fortune who ... has
used that money to finance countless attacks on U.S. interests. Bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to fight
the Soviet army in Afghanistan. By 1984, he was running a front organization known as ... the MAK
- which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war. MAK was
nurtured by Pakistans state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the
CIAs primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscows occupation. The CIA ... had
conclusive evidence by the mid-1980s of the deepening crisis of infrastructure within the Soviet
Union. The CIA, as its deputy director Robert Gates acknowledged under congressional
questioning in 1992, had decided to keep that evidence from President Reagan and his top
advisors and instead continued to grossly exaggerate Soviet military and technological
capabilities. Given that context, a decision was made to provide Americas potential enemies with
the arms, money - and most importantly - the knowledge of how to run a war of attrition violent and
well-organized enough to humble a superpower. That decision is coming home to roost.
Note: The #2 man (who later became #1) at the CIA acknowledges that the CIA deceived the
president in order to forward its own confrontational objectives. How often do you think this might
happen? Who's really in charge here? For a highly revealing documentary titled "Secrets of the
CIA," click here.
Inside the CIA: An interview with former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman
1998-01-00, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/21/interviews/goodman/
Melvin Goodman was a senior analyst in Soviet affairs at the Central Intelligence Agency, where
he worked for two decades (1966-1986). He currently is professor of international studies at the
National War College. [In the CIA], not only do you have political assassinations -- attempts at
least -- throughout the Fifties and the Sixties ... but you even have assassination attempts against
international leaders: the Mongoose operation in Cuba [and] assassination attempts in Chile,
where you were dealing with a country that wasn't even in the vital national interests or concerns
of the United States. All of these assassination attempts were done with the authorization of the
White House. I think the major problem at the CIA -- and it exists to this day -- is that you have two
cultures. You have an intelligence or analytical culture that must remain open. The opposite of that
is the clandestine side: it's secret, it's a policy branch of the government. The White House
basically uses the operational component of the CIA to do its bidding. It's very useful to
have a clandestine corps to carry out military or paramilitary actions very cheaply, without
the hand of the United States or a particular president being obvious. In many ways, you're
getting worst-case assessments, because quite often the contacts of the CIA are people on the
CIA payroll, telling the CIA what these people believe the CIA wants to know -- in return for
payment. So the whole tradecraft is somewhat suspicious and somewhat corrupt from the very
outset.
Note: Melvin Goodman is one of many senior government officials who question the government's
9/11 story. For his comments on this, click here. For other senior officials with similar sentiments,
click here.
In the Fog of War, the U.S. Has Armed ISIS

2015-06-02, Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/02/van-buren-iraq-idUSL1N0YO25X20150602
Iraqi security forces lost 2,300 Humvee armored vehicles when Islamic State overran the northern
city of Mosul in June 2014. Coupled with previous losses of American weapons, the conclusion is
simple: The United States is effectively supplying Islamic State with tools of war the militant group
cannot otherwise hope to acquire. Losses to Islamic State include at least 40 M1A1 main battle
tanks ... 74,000 machine guns, and as many as 52 M198 howitzer mobile gun systems. To help
replenish Iraq's motor pool, the U.S. State Department last year approved a sale to Iraq of 1,000
Humvees, along with their armor upgrades, machine guns and grenade launchers. The United
States previously donated 250 Mine Resistant Armored Personnel carriers (MRAPs) to Iraq, plus
unaccountable amounts of material left behind when American forces departed in 2011. The
United States is currently in the process of moving to Iraq 175 M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks,
55,000 rounds of main tank-gun ammunition, $600 million in howitzers and trucks, $700 million
worth of Hellfire missiles and 2,000 AT-4 rockets. The Hellfires and AT-4's, anti-tank weapons,
are presumably going to be used to help destroy the American armor in the hands of
Islamic State. It's a surreal state of affairs in which American weaponry is being sent into
Iraq to destroy American weaponry previously sent into Iraq.
Note: Remember that many in power want perpetual war to keep the profits flowing. Read a
verifiable and carefully researched report on the covert origins of ISIS. Explore a powerful article
titled "Ex-US Intelligence Officials Confirm: Secret Pentagon Report Proves US Complicity In
Creation Of ISIS." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war
Former F.B.I. Agent Sues, Claiming Retaliation Over Misgivings in

Anthrax Case
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/us/ex-fbi-agent-claims-retaliation-for-diss...
When Bruce E. Ivins, an Army microbiologist, took a fatal overdose of Tylenol in 2008, the
government declared that he had been responsible for the anthrax letter attacks of 2001, which
killed five people and set off a nationwide panic, and closed the case. Now, a former senior F.B.I.
agent who ran the anthrax investigation for four years says that the bureau gathered a staggering
amount of exculpatory evidence regarding Dr. Ivins that remains secret. The former agent,
Richard L. Lambert, who spent 24 years at the F.B.I., says he believes it is possible that Dr. Ivins
was the anthrax mailer, but he does not think prosecutors could have convicted him had he lived to
face criminal charges. In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Tennessee last Thursday, Mr. Lambert
accused the bureau of trying to railroad the prosecution of Ivins and, after his suicide, creating
an elaborate perception management campaign to bolster its claim that he was guilty. Mr.
Lamberts lawsuit accuses the bureau and the Justice Department of forcing his dismissal
from a job as senior counterintelligence officer ... in retaliation for his dissent on the
anthrax case. The anthrax letters were mailed to United States senators and news organizations
in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The bureaus investigation ... focused on a
former Army scientist and physician, Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, who was subsequently cleared and given
a $4.6 million settlement to resolve a lawsuit.
Note: There is more strong evidence that the anthrax scare was fabricated by inside sources.
Read an excellent article with more on this strange case.
We dream about drones, said 13-year-old Yemeni before his death in a

CIA strike
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/10/drones-dream-yemeni-teenager-moh...
A 13-year-old boy killed in Yemen last month by a CIA drone strike had told the Guardian
just months earlier that he lived in constant fear of the death machines in the sky that had
already killed his father and brother. I see them every day and we are scared of them, said
Mohammed Tuaiman. He died two weeks ago. In 2011 an unmanned combat drone killed his
father and teenage brother as they were out herding the familys camels. The drone that would kill
Mohammed struck on 26 January in Hareeb, about an hour from his home. The drone hit the car
carrying the teenager, his brother-in-law Abdullah Khalid al-Zindani and a third man. I saw all the
bodies completely burned, like charcoal, Mohammeds older brother Maqded said. US
government officials told Reuters that the strike had been carried out by the CIA and had killed
three men believed to be al-Qaida militants. Maqdad said the family had been wrongly
associated with al-Qaida. Speaking from al-Zur the day after his brothers death, Meqdad said:
After our father died, al-Qaida came to us to offer support. But we are not with them. We will do
anything go to court, whatever in order to prove that [Mohammed] was not with al-Qaida.
When the Guardian interviewed Mohammed last September, he spoke of his anger towards the
US government: They tell us that these drones come from bases in Saudi Arabia and also from
bases in the Yemeni seas and America sends them to kill terrorists, but they always kill innocent
people. We dont know why they are killing us."
Note: How is it that the US gets away with killing so many innocent civilians and there is not an
uproar? For a possible answer, read what a top US general had to say in this article . For more,
read a summary of the revealing Los Angeles Times report "Living with death by drone".
King Abdullah dead: We can't afford not to hold Saudi Arabia's royals to
account
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/king-abdullah-dead-we-cant-afford-not-to-...
What do you call the unelected leader of a state that beheads people in public, permits only one
faith and exports an extreme form of Islam to other countries? If he happens to be Abu Bakr al
Baghdadi, self-appointed caliph of Islamic State (Isis), the answer is one of the worlds most
wanted terrorists. If he is King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, the proper form of address is Your
Majesty. Yesterday, the Prince of Wales and the Prime Minister turned up in Riyadh to pay their
respects to Salmans half-brother, King Abdullah, whose death was announced on Friday. Flags
flew at half-mast in Whitehall while David Cameron ... praised the deceased despots efforts
towards strengthening understanding between faiths. This is the same David Cameron who
marched in Paris two weeks ago in solidarity with the victims of al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism.
Barack Obama ... found the time to praise the absolute monarch and hailed the US-Saudi
relationship as a force for stability and security in the Middle East. Few of the people hailing
Abdullah as a reformer said anything about [how] the Saudi royal family promoted the
puritanical ideology that created al-Qaeda and its offshoots, [and] sent Osama bin Laden
and other young Saudis to fight in Afghanistan, creating a worldwide jihadist movement.
Since then, Wahhabist ideology has inspired horrific attacks on civilians in the Middle East, Africa,
the US and a string of European capitals.
Note: Read how several current and former US government officials have been trying to expose
the Saudi government money behind terrorism. For more along these lines, see concise
summaries of deeply revealing government corruption articles from reliable major media sources.
Secret CIA report: Drone strikes and targeted killings 'boost support for
terror groups'
2014-12-18, International Business Times
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/secret-cia-report-drone-strikes-targeted-killings-bo...
Drone strikes and "targeted killings" of terror targets by the United States can be
counterproductive and bolster the support of extremist groups, the CIA has admitted in a
secret report released by WikiLeaks. The document, by the intelligence agency's Directorate of
Intelligence, said that despite the effectiveness of "high value targeting" (HVT), air strikes
and special forces operations had a negative impact by boosting the popular support of terror
organisations. The CIA report is dated 2009 and talks of operations conducted in countries such as
Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Afghanistan and Yemen. Operations against terror targets "may increase
support for the insurgents, particularly if these strikes enhance insurgent leaders' lore, if noncombatants are killed in the attacks, if legitimate or semi-legitimate politicians aligned with the
insurgents are targeted, or if the government is already seen as overly repressive or violent," the
report said. "Senior Taliban leaders' use of sanctuary in Pakistan has also complicated the HVT
effort," it reveals. "Moreover, the Taliban has a high overall ability to replace lost leaders ...
especially at the middle levels." It speaks of drone strikes also having limited effect in Iraq.
According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, US drone strikes have killed between 2,400
and 3,888 people in Pakistan in the years 2004 to 2014 and between 371 and 541 people in
Yemen in the years 2002 to 2014.
Note: This report proves that the CIA has been aware that drone strikes are ineffective since at
least 2009. If drones help terrorists, almost always miss their intended targets, and may be used to
target people in the US in the future, what are the real reasons for the US government's drone
program?
Stand Tall, America, We're No. 1!

2014-10-23, Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-engelhardt/america-is-number-one_b_6034626....
Here's the beginning of a little post-9/11 list: six incontestable areas where America is #1.
Investment in our military and our national security state! No other country comes within a light
year of us! In 2011, the defense budgets of the next 13 countries combined didn't quite equal
ours and we've been dumping up to a trillion dollars yearly into the national security budget
since 9/11. We're #1 in "renditions" ("kidnappings")! Post-9/11, at least 136 "terror suspects"
(some certifiably innocent) were taken by the CIA and other American outfits off the streets of
global cities. We're #1 in knocking off wedding parties from the air! At least eight of them in three
countries! Bridal parties, brides and grooms, hundreds of wedding goers obliterated by American
air power! We're #1 in military bases on foreign soil! We have hundreds of them across the planet,
some the size of small American towns. We're number #1 in invading, occupying, and/or
bombing Muslim countries, 14 of them since 1980! I challenge you, find me another country
with such an accomplishment. We're number #1 in investing in militaries that won't "stand up"! At
least $25 billion for the Iraqi military alone (and you know how successful we were there, since it
recently collapsed, allowing us to rearm it and stand it up again). And that's nothing compared to
the Afghan military into which our country had poured $51 billion by 2011 and billions more
thereafter.
Note: For more along these lines, see these concise summaries of deeply revealing war news
articles from reliable sources.
Afghan Poppies Hit Record High Despite $7 Billion US Campaign

2014-10-20, NBC News
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/afghan-opium-poppies-hit-record-hi...
Opium poppy cultivation has hit an all-time high in Afghanistan despite a 10-year, $7.6
billion effort by the U.S. government to fight it, according to a new report. The Special
Inspector General for Afghanistan, who authored the report, warned Secretary of State John Kerry,
Attorney General Eric Holder and other top U.S. officials that the gap between expenditures and
results should make them rethink their approach. "Given the severity of the opium problem and its
potential to undermine U.S. objectives in Afghanistan," said Special Inspector General John Sopko
in a letter to the officials, "I strongly suggest that your departments consider the trends in opium
cultivation and the effectiveness of past counternarcotics efforts when planning future initiatives."
According to SIGAR's report, the value of the opium produced in Afghanistan reached $3
billion in 2013, a 50 percent increase from 2012, and is likely to increase still further in 2014.
Some of the increase is due to the use of affordable deep well technology over the past decade
to turn 200,000 hectares of former desert in southwestern Afghanistan into arable land. Some of
the land is now being used to grow opium poppies. Opium poppy cultivation is used to fund the
Taliban and other insurgent groups and stokes corruption, says the report.
Note: A 2002 news article shows that "the Taliban in July 2000, coupled with severe droughts last
year, reduced the country's opium yield by 91% in 2001." Yet once the allies defeated the Taliban,
opium production hit new records. Do you really think the plan was to eradicate opium? This huge
source of income is used to fund all kinds of secret projects. Read powerful evidence that the CIA
and US military are directly involved in the drug trade.
Syria Becomes the 7th Predominantly Muslim Country Bombed by 2009

Nobel Peace Laureate
2014-09-23, The Intercept With Glenn Greenwald
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/23/nobel-peace-prize-fact-day-syri...
The U.S. today began bombing targets inside Syria, in concert with its lovely and inspiring group of
five allied regimes: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Jordan. That means
that Syria becomes the 7th predominantly Muslim country bombed by 2009 Nobel Peace Laureate
Barack Obamaafter Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Iraq. The utter lack of
interest in what possible legal authority Obama has to bomb Syria is telling indeed: Empires bomb
who they want, when they want, for whatever reason (indeed, recall that Obama bombed Libya
even after Congress explicitly voted against authorization to use force). It was just over a year ago
that Obama officials were insisting that bombing and attacking Assad was a moral and strategic
imperative. Instead, Obama is now bombing Assads enemies while politely informing his regime of
its targets in advance. It seems irrelevant on whom the U.S. wages war; what matters is that it
be at war, always and forever. Six weeks of bombing hasnt budged ISIS in Iraq, but it has
caused ISIS recruitment to soar. Thats all predictable: the U.S. has known for years that
what fuels and strengthens anti-American sentiment is exactly what they keep doing:
aggression in that region. They do all of this not despite triggering those outcomes, but because
of it. Continuously creating and strengthening enemies is a feature, not a bug. It is what justifies
the ongoing greasing of the profitable and power-vesting machine of Endless War. As the
disastrous Libya intervention should conclusively and permanently demonstrate, the U.S. does
not bomb countries for humanitarian objectives. Humanitarianism is the pretense, not the purpose.
Note: Read this powerful essay showing how the US has fed Islamic extremism in order to fill the
pockets of those who run the war machine. For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply
revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.
Guantanamo Defense Lawyer Resigns, Says U.S. Case Is 'Stacked'
2014-08-31, NPR
http://www.npr.org/2014/08/31/344576895/guantanamo-defense-lawyer-resigns-say...
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed [is] facing a military commission at Guantanamo Bay and potentially the
death penalty. He was captured in 2003 but his case still hasn't gone to trial. Last week, Maj.
Jason Wright one of the lawyers defending Mohammed resigned from the Army. He has
accused the U.S. government of "abhorrent leadership" on human rights and due process
guarantees and says it is crafting a "show trial." For nearly three years, he served on Mohammed's
defense team. Wright formally resigned on Aug. 26. Wright [says] that it's hard to gain any client's
trust, but it was especially hard with Mohammed. His former client is one of six "high-value
detainees" being prosecuted at Guantanamo for offenses that could carry the death penalty. "All
six of these men have been tortured by the U.S. government," he says. Wright says Mohammed in
particular has faced a level of torture "beyond comprehension." He says his client was
waterboarded by the CIA 183 times and subjected to over a week of sleep deprivation; there
were threats that his family would be killed. "And those are just the declassified facts that
I'm able to actually speak about," Wright says. Wright wasn't allowed to discuss too many
details of the detainee abuse in court. "The CIA tortured these men. They've gone to extraordinary
lengths to try to keep that completely hidden from public view," Wright says. "So the statute that
Congress passed has a number of protections to ensure that no information about the U.S.
torture program will ever come out."
Note: Why hasn't this been covered by other major media in the US? For more on this, see
concise summaries of deeply revealing terrorism news articles from reliable major media sources.
The Day Ferguson Cops Were Caught in a Bloody Lie

2014-08-15, The Daily Beast
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/15/the-day-ferguson-cops-were-c...
The officers got the wrong man, but charged him anywaywith getting his blood on their
uniforms. Police in Ferguson, Missouri, once charged a man with destruction of property for
bleeding on their uniforms while four of them allegedly beat him. [A] 52-year-old welder named
Henry Davis ... had been arrested for an outstanding warrant that proved to actually be for another
man of the same surname, but a different middle name and Social Security number. The booking
officer had no other reason to hold Davis, who ended up in Ferguson only because he missed the
exit for St. Charles and then pulled off the highway because the rain was so heavy he could not
see to drive. The cop who had pulled up behind him must have run his license plate and assumed
he was that other Henry Davis. Davis said the cop approached his vehicle, grabbed his cellphone
from his hand, cuffed him and placed him in the back seat of the patrol car, without a word of
explanation. The booking officer ... proceeded to escort him to a one-man cell that already had a
man in it asleep on the lone bunk. Davis balked at being a second man in a one-man cell. The
booking officer summoned a number of fellow cops. One opened the cell door while another
suddenly charged, propelling Davis inside and slamming him against the back wall. [A] female
officer allegedly lifted Davis head as the cop who had initially pushed him into the cell reappeared.
He ran in and kicked me in the head, Davis recalled. Paramedics came. They said it was too
much blood. I had to go to the hospital. A federal magistrate ruled that the [police] perjury
about the property damage charges was too minor to constitute a violation of due
process and that Davis injuries were ... too minor to warrant a finding of excessive force.
Never mind that a CAT scan taken after the incident confirmed that he had suffered a concussion.
Note: If you are willing to know how bad it gets, read the entire article at the link above. Then read
an educational article on the skewed reporting of the New York Times on the Michael Brown
murder. For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government surveillance
After A Traffic Stop, Teen Was 'Almost Another Dead Black Male'
2014-08-15, NPR
http://www.npr.org/2014/08/15/340419821/after-a-traffic-stop-teen-was-almost-...
Alex Landau, who is African-American, was adopted by a white couple as a child and grew up in
largely white, middle-class suburbs of Denver. "I thought that love would conquer all and skin color
really didn't matter," [his mother, Patsy] Hathaway [said, speaking to her son]. "I had to learn the
really hard way when they almost killed you." That was in 2009, when Landau, then a college
student, was stopped by Denver police officers and severely beaten. Landau was 19 at the time,
driving around Denver with a friend in the passenger seat. He noticed red and blue lights behind
him. The officer who pulled him over "explained I had made an illegal left turn, and to step out of
the car," Landau says. Landau thought he was safe. He wasn't in handcuffs, he says, and he'd
already been patted down. "Plus there's three officers on the scene. And I had never had a
negative interaction with police in my life. "So I ask them, 'Can I please see a warrant before you
continue the search?' " Landau says. "And they grab me and began to hit me in the face. I was hit
several times, and I remember gasping for air" and spitting blood, he says. "And then I hear an
officer shout out, 'He's reaching for a gun,' " he tells his mother. "I immediately started
yelling, 'No, I'm not. I'm not reaching for anything.' " Landau felt a gun against his head, he
says. "And I expected to be shot. And at that point I lost consciousness. ... It took 45
stitches to close up the lacerations in my face alone," Landau says. I was just another black
face in the streets, and I was almost another dead black male." In 2011, Alex was awarded a
$795,000 settlement by the City of Denver.
Note: Listen to the very moving three-minute audio of this white mother and her black son who
was nearly killed by police simply for being black. Then read an educational article on the skewed
reporting of the New York Times on the Michael Brown murder. For more on this, see concise
summaries of deeply revealing police corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
Campaign Mounts to Declassify 9/11 Reports References to Alleged

Saudi Involvement
2014-08-07, Vice News

https://news.vice.com/article/campaign-mounts-to-declassify-911-reports-refer...
Nearly 13 years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the extent of Saudi involvement in the deaths of
almost 3,000 people remains unclear but according to members of Congress and the families of
victims, information about this has been suppressed ever since the publication of a 2002
congressional investigation into the plot. Prior to the release of the final report of the Joint Inquiry
into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11,
2001, the Bush administration classified a 28-page section in the name of national security. The 28
pages make up part four of the report, a section titled Finding, Discussion and Narrative
Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters. They are widely believed to implicate
Saudi officials or describe support from Saudi intelligence for the hijackers, 15 of whom were
Saudi citizens. Former Senator Bob Graham of Florida, who co-chaired the joint Senate-House
investigation, dispensed with the equivocation and told VICE News that the redactions are a cover
up. Ive said this since the first classification of the 28 pages, he remarked. Its become more
and more inexplicable as to why two administrations have denied the American people
information that would help them better understand what happened on 9/11. Graham said
that the 28 pages describe the financing of the attacks. Follow the money, he said. That
will illuminate other significant aspects of 9/11. The Saudi kingdom has always denied any
complicity in the attacks.
Note: Watch a video of Congressman Massie telling how shocked he was to read these 28 pages.
Why aren't the major media reporting this important news? For more on this, see concise
summaries of deeply revealing 9/11 news articles from reliable major media sources.
The Secret Government Rulebook For Labeling You a Terrorist

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/07/23/blacklisted/
The Obama administration has quietly approved a substantial expansion of the terrorist watchlist
system, authorizing a secret process that requires neither concrete facts nor irrefutable
evidence to designate an American or foreigner as a terrorist. The March 2013 Watchlisting
Guidance, a 166-page document issued last year by the National Counterterrorism Center, spells
out the governments secret rules for putting individuals on its main terrorist database, as well as
the no fly list and the selectee list, which triggers enhanced screening at airports and border
crossings. The new guidelines allow individuals to be designated as representatives of
terror organizations without any evidence they are actually connected to such
organizations, and it gives a single White House official the unilateral authority to place
entire categories of people the government is tracking onto the no fly and selectee lists. It
broadens the authority of government officials to nominate people to the watchlists based on
what is vaguely described as fragmentary information. It also allows for dead people to be
watchlisted. The rulebook ... was developed behind closed doors by representatives of the nations
intelligence, military, and law-enforcement establishment, including the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, and
FBI. Emblazoned with the crests of 19 agencies, it offers the most complete and revealing look into
the secret history of the governments terror list policies to date.
NSA performed warrantless searches on Americans' calls and emails

Clapper
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/01/nsa-surveillance-loophole-americ...
US intelligence chiefs have confirmed that the National Security Agency has [performed]
warrantless searches on Americans communications. The NSA's collection programs are
ostensibly targeted at foreigners, but in August the Guardian revealed a secret rule change
allowing NSA analysts to search for Americans' details within the databases. Now, in a letter to
Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the intelligence committee, the director of national
intelligence, James Clapper, has confirmed the use of this legal authority to search for data related
to US persons. The legal authority to perform the searches, revealed in top-secret NSA
documents provided ... by Edward Snowden, was denounced by Wyden as a backdoor search
loophole. Many of the NSA's most controversial programs collect information under the law
affected by the so-called loophole. These include Prism, which allows the agency to collect data
from Google, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo and other tech companies, and the agency's Upstream
program a huge network of internet cable taps. Confirmation that the NSA has searched for
Americans communications in its phone call and email databases complicates President Barack
Obamas initial defenses of the broad surveillance in June. Wyden and Udall [said] Todays
admission by the Director of National Intelligence is further proof that meaningful
surveillance reform must include closing the back-door searches loophole and requiring
the intelligence community to show probable cause before deliberately searching through
... the communications of individual Americans."
Note: For more on the realities of intelligence agency operations, see the deeply revealing reports
from reliable major media sources available here.
Snowden: Feinstein a Hypocrite for Blasting CIA Spying

2014-03-12, NBC News
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/cia-senate-snooping/snowden-feinstein-hypocr...
Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden accused Sen. Dianne Feinstein of hypocrisy ... for
complaining about alleged CIA spying on U.S. senators while tolerating government spying on
private citizens. "It's clear the CIA was trying to play 'keep away' with documents relevant to an
investigation by their overseers in Congress, and that's a serious constitutional concern, said
Snowden in a statement to NBC News. But it's equally if not more concerning that we're seeing
another 'Merkel Effect,' where an elected official does not care at all that the rights of
millions of ordinary citizens are violated by our spies, but suddenly it's a scandal when a
politician finds out the same thing happens to them." Snowden was ... referring to German
Chancellor Angela Merkels indignation at reports that the U.S. had listened in on her personal
conversations, but her failure to condemn the NSA for mass surveillance of communications of
German citizens. Both were revealed by the release of documents that Snowden took from NSA
computers and distributed to journalists.
I got 30 months in prison. Why does Leon Panetta get a pass?

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-kiriakou-panetta-whistleblowe...
The confirmation in December that former CIA Director Leon Panetta let classified information slip
to "Zero Dark Thirty" screenwriter Mark Boal during a speech at the agency headquarters should
result in a criminal espionage charge if there is any truth to Obama administration claims that it
isn't enforcing the Espionage Act only against political opponents. I'm one of the people the
Obama administration charged with criminal espionage, one of those whose lives were torn apart
by being accused, essentially, of betraying [their] country. The president and the attorney general
have used the Espionage Act against more people than all other administrations combined, but not
against real traitors and spies. The law has been applied selectively, often against whistleblowers and others who expose illegal, corrupt government actions. After I blew the whistle
on the CIA's waterboarding torture program in 2007, I was the subject of a years-long FBI
investigation. In 2012, the Justice Department charged me with "disclosing classified information
to journalists, including the name of a covert CIA officer and information revealing the role of
another CIA employee in classified activities." I had revealed no more than others who were never
charged, about activities ... that were hardly secret. I am serving a 30-month sentence. The
Espionage Act, the source of the most serious charges against me, was written and passed during
World War I and... is so outdated that it refers only to "national defense information" rather than
"classified information," because the classification system had not yet been invented.
Note: The author of this article, John Kiriakou, is a former CIA counter-terrorism officer and former
senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is incarcerated in the Federal
Correctional Institution in Loretto, Pa. You can read about his case at http://www.defendjohnk.com.
For more on the out-of-control activities of intelligence agencies, see the deeply revealing reports
Report: CIA spied on Senate committee staff

2014-03-05, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-cia-spied-on-senate-committee-staff/
As staff for the Senate Intelligence Committee gathered information to conduct oversight of the
CIA, the CIA was secretly monitoring them, according to reports from McClatchy [News] and the
New York Times. The committee staff was reviewing documents in a secure room at CIA
headquarters as part of its investigation into the CIA's now-defunct detention and interrogation
program, but the agency was secretly monitoring their work, according to reports. Complaints
about the spying have reportedly prompted the CIA inspector general -- the agency's internal
watchdog -- to look into the agency's behavior. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., seemed to reference the
surveillance in a letter to President Obama ... in which he urged the president to support the fullest
declassification of the committee's CIA report. "As you are aware, the C.I.A. has recently taken
unprecedented action against the committee in relation to the internal C.I.A. review, and I
find these actions to be incredibly troubling for the committee's oversight responsibilities
and for our democracy," Udall wrote. "It is essential that the Committee be able to do its
oversight work -- consistent with our constitutional principle of the separation of powers -- without
the CIA posing impediments or obstacles as it is today." Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., another
member of the intelligence committee, declared in a statement Wednesday, "The Senate
Intelligence Committee oversees the CIA, not the other way around."
Note: For more on the realities of intelligence agency activities, see the deeply revealing reports
Alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev believed in

'majestic mind control'
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/alleged-boston-marathon-bomb...
Suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev heard voices inside his head and had an
alter-ego, a report published in The Boston Globe claimed yesterday. Donald Larking, 67, who
attended the same Boston mosque as the suspected bomber, said Tsarnaev believed the voices
were part of a majestic mind control, which was a way of breaking down a person and
creating an alternative personality with which they must coexist." Larking also told the Globe
that Tsarnaev was torn between himself and an alter-ego. You can give a signal, a phrase
or a gesture, and bring out the alternate personality and make them do things, he said;
Tamerlan thought someone might have done that to him. According to the report, the voices
came to [Tsarnaev] at unexpected times, an internal rambling that he alone could hear. Alarmed,
he confided to his mother that the voice 'felt like two people inside of me. As he got older, the
voice became more authoritative, its bidding more insistent. Tamerlan confided in a close friend
that the voice had begun to issue orders and to require him to perform certain acts, though he
never told his friend specifically what those acts were. Tamerlan, 26, and his younger brother
Dzhokhar, 20, are alleged to have planted the two pressure cooker bombs that killed three and
injured more than 260 at the Boston Marathon in April. While Tamerlan was later killed in a
shootout with police, his brother was captured and now potentially faces the death penalty under
charges of terrorism.
Note: Many have long suspected that most mass murderers are mind control victims subject to top
secret mind control programs, like those revealed in declassified government documents on this
webpage. For the full investigative report in the Boston Globe, click here. For lots more verifiable
information on these mind control programs, click here.
Inside the Saudi 9/11 coverup

2013-12-15, New York Post
http://nypost.com/2013/12/15/inside-the-saudi-911-coverup/
After the 9/11 attacks, the public was told al Qaeda acted alone, with no state sponsors. But the
White House never let it see an entire section of Congress investigative report on 9/11 dealing
with specific sources of foreign support for the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals. It
was kept secret and remains so today. President Bush inexplicably censored 28 full pages of the
800-page report. The pages are completely blank. Some information already has leaked from the
classified section, which is based on both CIA and FBI documents, and it points back to Saudi
Arabia, a presumed ally. The Saudis deny any role in 9/11. The findings, if confirmed, would back
up open-source reporting showing the hijackers had, at a minimum, ties to several Saudi officials
and agents while they were preparing for their attacks inside the United States. Is the federal
government protecting the Saudis? Case agents [say] they were repeatedly called off
pursuing 9/11 leads back to the Saudi Embassy, which had curious sway over White House
and FBI responses to the attacks. Just days after Bush met with the Saudi ambassador in the
White House, the FBI evacuated from the United States dozens of Saudi officials, as well as
Osama bin Laden family members. [Ambassador Bandar ibn-Saud] made the request for
escorts directly to FBI headquarters on Sept. 13, 2001 just hours after he met with the
president.
Note: For verifiable evidence the bin Ladens were evacuated shortly after 9/11, click here. Why
are most media not reporting this important story? A search showed only one other major media
outlet in the US (Boston Globe at this link) that covered this news. The appearance of this article in
the most popular tabloid in New York is being interpreted by some observers as a sea change in
public attitudes to the tragedy of 9/11. Of course the most important question is whether there was
US government involvement in the attacks. For abundant evidence implying this, see the deeply
revealing reports available at our 9/11 Information Center.
9/11 Link To Saudi Arabia Is Topic Of 28 Redacted Pages In Government

Report; Congressmen Push For Release
http://www.ibtimes.com/911-link-saudi-arabia-topic-28-redacted-pages-governme...
[Since] Sept. 11, 2001, victims loved ones, injured survivors, and members of the media have all
tried without much success to discover the true nature of the relationship between the 19 hijackers
15 of them Saudi nationals and the Saudi Arabian government. Many news organizations
reported that some of the terrorists were linked to the Saudi royals and that they even may have
received financial support from them as well as from several mysterious, moneyed Saudi men
living in San Diego. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly denied any connection. But earlier this year,
Reps. Walter B. Jones, R-N.C., and Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., were given access to the 28
redacted pages of the [Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the
Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001] issued in late 2002, which have been thought to hold
some answers about the Saudi connection to the attack. Last week, Jones and Lynch introduced a
resolution that urges President Obama to declassify the 28 pages, which were originally classified
by President George W. Bush. It has never been fully explained why the pages were blacked out,
but President Bush stated in 2003 that releasing the pages would violate national security. Some
of the information has leaked out over the years ... that the 28 pages in fact clearly portray
that the Saudi government had at the very least an indirect role in supporting the terrorists
responsible for the 9/11 attack. In addition, these classified pages clarify somewhat the
links between the hijackers and at least one Saudi government worker living in San Diego.
Note: For more on the government cover-up of the truth behind 9/11, see the deeply revealing
New Yorker, Washington Post Passed On Seymour Hersh Syria Report

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/08/seymour-hersh-syria-report_n_4409674...
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh accused the Obama administration ... of having
cherry-picked intelligence regarding the Aug. 21 chemical attack in Syria that served as evidence
for an argument in favor of striking President Bashar Assad's government. Though President
Barack Obama eventually decided not to strike Syria, the administration made a public case for
war by saying that Assads regime was responsible for a poison gas attack in the outskirts of
Damascus. The U.N. later concluded the attack had involved the nerve agent sarin. In his piece -titled "Whose Sarin?" -- Hersh reported that al-Nusra, a jihadi group fighting in Syrias longrunning civil war, had also "mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of
manufacturing it in quantity. Therefore, he wrote, Obama did not tell the whole story
when stating with certainty that Assad had to be responsible, crossing a so-called "red
line" that would trigger U.S. retaliation. Hersh is a freelancer, but he's best known these days
for his work in The New Yorker, where he helped break the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004. In an
email, Hersh wrote that there was little interest for the story at The New Yorker. Hersh then took
the story to The Washington Post. Hersh wrote that he was told by email that Executive Editor
Marty Baron decided that the sourcing in the article did not meet the Post's standards. Hersh
[then] sent the Syria story to editors at the London Review of Books, LRB Senior Editor Christian
Lorentzen [said]. Lorentzen said the piece was not only edited, but thoroughly fact checked by a
former New Yorker fact checker who had worked with Hersh in the past.
Note: For more on government lies to provide pretexts for war, see the deeply revealing reports
Who Is Watching the Watch Lists?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/01/sunday-review/who-is-watching-the-watch-lis...
The federal governments main terrorist watch list has grown to at least 700,000 people, with little
scrutiny over how the determinations are made or the impact on those marked with the terrorist
label. The government refuses to confirm or deny whether someone is on the list, officially called
the Terrorist Screening Database, or divulge the criteria used to make the decisions. Even less is
known about the secondary watch lists that are derived from the main one, including the no-fly list
(used to prevent people from boarding aircraft), the selectee and expanded selectee lists (used to
flag travelers for extra screening at airport checkpoints), the TECS database (used to vet people
entering or leaving the United States), the Consular Lookout and Support System (used to screen
visa applications) and the known or suspected terrorists list (used by law enforcement in routine
police encounters). For people who have landed on these lists, the terrorist designation has
been difficult to challenge legally. The Terrorist Screening Center, which administers the
main terrorist watch list, declined to discuss its procedures, or to release current data
about the number of people on various watch lists, and how many of them are American
citizens.
Note: For more on government threats to civil liberties, see the deeply revealing reports from
reliable major media sources available here.
CIA turned some Guantanamo Bay prisoners into double agents against
al-Qaeda
2013-11-26, Washington Post/Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-turned-some-guantan...
In the early years after Sept. 11, 2001, the CIA turned some Guantanamo Bay prisoners into
double agents, sending them home to help the United States kill terrorists, current and former U.S.
officials said. The CIA promised the prisoners freedom, safety for their families and millions of
dollars from the agencys secret accounts. It was a gamble. Officials knew there was a chance
that some prisoners might quickly spurn their deal and kill Americans. Nearly a dozen
current and former U.S. officials described aspects of the program to the Associated Press.
Dozens of prisoners were evaluated, but only a handful, from a variety of countries, were turned
into spies who signed agreements to work for the CIA. Prisoners agreed to cooperate for a variety
of reasons, officials said. Some received assurances that the United States would resettle their
families. Another agreed to cooperate after the agency insinuated that it would harm his children, a
former official said, a threat similar to those interrogators made to self-proclaimed Sept. 11
mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. All were promised money. Exactly how much each
received remains unclear. But altogether, the government paid millions for their services,
officials said. The money came from a secret CIA account, code-named Pledge, that is used
to pay informants, officials said. Officials said the program ended in 2006 as the flow of detainees
to Guantanamo Bay slowed to a trickle. The last prisoner arrived there in 2008.
Note: There is no doubt that the CIA used mind control techniques to control and likely program
some of the prisoners. To read verifiable documentation on the U.S. governments secret mind
control programs, click here. For more on the realities of intelligence agency activities, see the
deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Canada should investigate Dick Cheney for war crimes

2013-10-29, Toronto Star (One of Canada's leading newspapers)
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2013/10/29/canada_should_investigat...
As vice-president of the United States, Dick Cheney was a key architect of a post-9/11 response
that featured waterboarding and other acts of torture, a global secret detention program where
people were held for years without charge, and extraordinary rendition, by which innocent men
such as Maher Arar were sent to countries like Syria to be tortured. His legacy of endless war
continues today. Dick Cheneys $500-a-person book tour appearance in Vancouver in September
2011 resulted in protests, with demonstrators calling for Cheney to be banned or prosecuted as a
war criminal. Instead of returning to Canada last year, Cheney cancelled a trip to Toronto, deeming
Canada too dangerous because of the likely demonstrators that would greet him. Its unclear why
Cheney now feels safe enough to venture north to Toronto. Bush was also met by hundreds of
protestors seeking his arrest when he spoke at a business forum in Surrey, British Columbia in
October 2011. In addition, with the support of the Canadian Centre for International Justice and the
New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, four men who were tortured at Guantnamo
initiated a private prosecution for torture against Bush. Canada is a signatory to the United
Nations Convention Against Torture. Under the Torture Convention, Canada is obligated to
investigate and prosecute known torturers present in its territory (or, when possible,
extradite them elsewhere for prosecution). Canada has incorporated this obligation into its
domestic criminal code.
Note: How amazing to read an article like this in one of Canada's most respected newspapers!
The times they are a-changin'!
Civilian Deaths in Drone Strikes Cited in Report

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/22/world/asia/civilian-deaths-in-drone-strikes...
[In] Miram Shah, the frontier Pakistani town that has become a virtual test laboratory for drone
warfare, ... residents paint a portrait of extended terror and strain within a tribal society caught
between vicious militants and the American drones hunting them. Their claims of distress are now
being backed by a new Amnesty International investigation that found, among other points, that at
least 19 civilians in the surrounding area of North Waziristan had been killed in just two of the
drone attacks since January 2012 a time when the Obama administration has held that strikes
have been increasingly accurate and free of mistakes. Miram Shah ... has become a fearful and
paranoid town, dealt at least 13 drone strikes since 2008 more than any other urban
settlement in the world. Even when the missiles do not strike, buzzing drones hover day
and night, scanning the alleys and markets with roving high-resolution cameras. The
strikes in the area mostly occur in densely populated neighborhoods. The drones have hit a
bakery, a disused girls school and a money changers market, residents say. The constant
presence of circling drones and accompanying tension over when, or whom, they will strike
is a crushing psychological burden for many residents. Sales of sleeping tablets, antidepressants
and medicine to treat anxiety have soared, said Hajji Gulab Jan Dawar, a pharmacist in the town
bazaar. Women were particularly troubled, he said, but men also experienced problems. State
services have virtually collapsed. At the local hospital, corrupt officials are reselling supplies of
medicine and fuel in the town market, doctors said.
Note: For more on the illegal killing worldwide of innocent men, women, and children by missile
strikes from US drones, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources
available here.
Drone strikes by US may violate international law, says UN

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/18/drone-strikes-us-violate-law-un
A United Nations investigation has so far identified 33 drone strikes around the world that have
resulted in civilian casualties and may have violated international humanitarian law. The report by
the UN's special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, Ben Emmerson, calls on the
US to declassify information about operations co-ordinated by the CIA and clarify its position on
the legality of unmanned aerial attacks. The 22-page document examines incidents in Afghanistan,
Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan and Gaza. It has been published to coincide with a related
report [by] Professor Christof Heyns, the UN's special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or
arbitrary executions, which warned that the technology was being misused as a form of "global
policing". Emmerson, who travelled to Islamabad for his investigation, said the Pakistan ministry
of foreign affairs has records of as many as 330 drone strikes in the country's northwestern tribal areas since 2004. Up to 2,200 people have been killed of whom at least 400
were civilians according to the Pakistan government. In Yemen, Emmerson's report says
that as many as 58 civilians are thought to have been killed in attacks by UAVs (unmanned aerial
vehicles). Emmerson criticises the CIA's involvement in US drone strikes for creating "an almost
insurmountable obstacle to transparency". He adds: "One consequence is that the United States
has to date failed to reveal its own data on the level of civilian casualties inflicted through the use
of remotely piloted aircraft in classified operations conducted in Pakistan and elsewhere."
Note: If just one citizen were killed in the U.S. or Europe by a foreign drone, there would be an
absolute uproar. Why the double standard? For more on the use of drones to kill abroad and spy at
home, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Seymour Hersh on Obama, NSA and the 'pathetic' American media

http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2013/sep/27/seymour-hersh-obama-n...
[Seymour] Hersh, the investigative journalist who has been the nemesis of US presidents since the
1960s and who was once described by the Republican party as "the closest thing American
journalism has to a terrorist", ... is angry about the timidity of journalists in America, their failure to
challenge the White House and be an unpopular messenger of truth. Don't even get him started
on the ... death of Osama bin Laden. "Nothing's been done about that story, it's one big lie,
not one word of it is true," he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011. Hersh is
writing a book about national security and has devoted a chapter to the bin Laden killing. He says
a recent report put out by an "independent" Pakistani commission about life in the Abottabad
compound in which Bin Laden was holed up would not stand up to scrutiny. "The Pakistanis put
out a report, don't get me going on it. Let's put it this way, it was done with considerable
American input. It's a bullshit report," he says hinting of revelations to come in his book. The
Obama administration lies systematically, he claims, yet none of the leviathans of American media,
the TV networks or big print titles, challenge him. He is certain that NSA whistleblower Edward
Snowden "changed the whole nature of the debate" about surveillance. "But I don't know if it's
going to mean anything in the long [run] because the polls I see in America the president can still
say to voters 'al-Qaida, al-Qaida' and the public will vote two to one for this kind of surveillance,
which is so idiotic," he says.
Note: For a powerful analysis by scholar David Ray Griffin of the years-long Osama bin Laden
psyop, arguing that bin Laden probably died in December 2001, see his book Osama Bin Laden:
Dead or Alive?. For more on media cover-ups of important realities, see the deeply revealing
FBI calls half of populace with 9/11 doubts potential terrorists

2013-09-19, Digital Journal
http://digitaljournal.com/article/358624
A Department of Justice memo [distributed by the FBI] instructs local police, under a program
named "Communities Against Terrorism," to consider anyone who harbors "conspiracy theories"
about 9/11 to be a potential terrorist. The memo thus adds 9/11-official-story skeptics to a
growing list of targets described by federal law enforcement [as] security threats, such as
those who express "libertarian philosophies," "Second Amendment-oriented views,"
interest in "self-sufficiency," "fears of Big Brother or big government," and "Declarations of
Constitutional rights and civil liberties." A newly released national poll shows that 48 percent of
Americans either have some doubts about the official account of 9/11, or do not believe it at all.
The FBI memo entitled "Potential Indicators of Terrorist Activities Related to Sleepers" says that
people who should be 'considered suspicious' [for] possible involvement in "terrorist activity"
include those who hold the "attitude" described as "Conspiracy theories about Westerners." The
memo continues: "e.g. (sic) the CIA arranged for 9/11 to legitimize the invasion of foreign lands."
"Sleepers" refers to "sleeper cells," in FBI jargon, which are terrorists awaiting orders to be
activated into terrorist activity. According to the polling firm YouGov, 38% of Americans have some
doubts about the official account of 9/11, 10% do not believe it at all, and 12% are unsure about it.
Among well-known doubters of the official 9/11 account are many military officers, law enforcement
personnel, firefighters, and pilots.
Note: We don't normally use Digital Journal as a news source, but this article is too important to
not include, and no major media source is covering the story. For evidence that search engines are
actively blocking 9/11 truth videos, click here. For more on the questions raised about the official
explanation of the 9/11 events by highly respected professors and former government and military
officials, click here and here.
Report: Capitol Police thwarted from aiding at Navy Yard

2013-09-18, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/18/navy-yard-capitol-police...
The U.S. Capitol Police have launched an investigation into whether an elite tactical team was
abruptly recalled from responding to [the] Navy Yard shooting massacre before D.C. Metropolitan
Police officers confronted the shooter. Two Metropolitan Police officers entered the Navy Yard
without the Capitol Police team and one was wounded by the gunman, Aaron Alexis. The elite
Capitol Police Containment & Emergency Response Team [CERT] is based just a few blocks from
the Navy Yard. A law enforcement source told WUSA-TV the unit was less than 30 seconds from
the gate and responded as Metropolitan Police pleaded for help. A Capitol Police watch
commander "wouldn't let them go in and stop people from being slaughtered," one officer told the
Washington TV station. An officer told The Washington Post that the officers' union had filed a
complaint. The Capitol Police have launched an investigation into the allegation "We were
definitely the closest tactical team in the city," the unidentified officer told the newspaper. "
[The team] was at the scene very early on, within a couple of minutes. They were ordered to
disengage and turn back. For what reason, we don't know." The CERT, created in 1978,
consists of three "cells" two assault teams of at least six officers each, plus and a countersniper unit. Two teams were on duty [at the time of the shooting incident].
Note: How strange that the Capitol Police commander would order the CERT to go back to its
base in such a situation! Could there be more than just an error of judgement here?
NYPD's massive mosque spying operations revealed

2013-08-28, MSN/Associated Press
http://news.msn.com/us/nypds-massive-mosque-spying-operations-revealed
The New York Police Department has secretly labeled entire mosques as terrorism organizations,
a designation that allows police to use informants to record sermons and spy on imams, often
without specific evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Designating an entire mosque as a terrorism
enterprise means that anyone who attends prayer services there is a potential subject of an
investigation and fair game for surveillance. Since the 9/11 attacks, the NYPD has opened at
least a dozen "terrorism enterprise investigations" into mosques, according to interviews
and confidential police documents. Many TEIs stretch for years, allowing surveillance to
continue even though the NYPD has never criminally charged a mosque or Islamic
organization with operating as a terrorism enterprise. The documents show in detail how, in its
hunt for terrorists, the NYPD investigated countless innocent New York Muslims and put
information about them in secret police files. As a tactic, opening an enterprise investigation on a
mosque is so potentially invasive that while the NYPD conducted at least a dozen, the FBI never
did one, according to interviews with federal law enforcement officials. The revelations about the
NYPD's massive spying operations are in documents recently obtained by The Associated Press
and part of a new book, Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD's Secret Spying Unit... The book ... is
based on hundreds of previously unpublished police files and interviews with current and former
NYPD, CIA and FBI officials.
Note: For more on the realities of intelligence operations, see the deeply revealing reports from
FBI director does not deny al-Awlaki may have been government asset
2013-08-23, Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/08/23/did-us-government-try-to-recruit-r...
Newly declassified documents obtained [by] Judicial Watch, are raising questions over the U.S.
government's handling of Anwar al-Awlaki, and whether it [recruited] the radical American cleric as
an intelligence source in 2002. Director Robert Mueller did not dismiss the possibility. "I am
not personally familiar with any effort to recruit Anwar al-Awlaki as an asset -- that does not
mean to say there was not an effort at some level of the Bureau (FBI) or another agency to
do so," Mueller said. Fox's ongoing reporting ... shows that in 2002 he was released from
custody at JFK international airport -- despite an active warrant for his arrest -- with the okay of FBI
Agent Wade Ammerman. Within days of his re-entry, al-Awlaki showed up in Ammerman's
counter-terrorism investigation in Virginia into Ali al-Timimi, who is now serving a life sentence on
non-terrorism charges. None of the information about al-Awlaki's release from federal custody at
JFK, a sudden decision by the Justice Department in October 2002 to rescind an arrest warrant for
the cleric, nor the cleric's connection to Ammerman was provided to the defense during Timimis
2005 trial. Documents ... show the FBI Director was more deeply involved in the post-9/11
handling of al-Awlaki than previously known. One memo from Mueller to then-Attorney General
John Ashcroft on Oct. 3, 2002 -- seven days before the cleric re-entered the U.S. and was
detained at JFK -- is marked "Secret" and titled "Anwar Aulaqi: IT-UBL/AL-QAEDA." "Why would
al-Awlaki get the attention of the FBI Director? Why would a warrant for his arrest be pulled when
he's trying to reenter the country?" asked Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
Note: Al-Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and was a US citizen, died in a U.S. drone attack in
Yemen nearly two years ago, the first American targeted for death by the CIA, by its own
admission. With the confirmation that he had been an intelligence asset for the US government as
early as 2002, his assassination takes on new significance. For more on the murky background of
Al-Awlaki, click here and here.
CIA 'running arms smuggling team in Benghazi when consulate was

attacked'
2013-08-02, The Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/10218288...
The CIA has been subjecting operatives to monthly polygraph tests in an attempt to
suppress details of a reported US arms smuggling operation in Benghazi that was ongoing
when its ambassador was killed by a mob in the city last year, according to reports. Up to 35 CIA
operatives were working in the city during the attack last September on the US consulate that
resulted in the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, according to CNN.
The television network said that a CIA team was working in an annex near the consulate on a
project to supply missiles from Libyan armouries to Syrian rebels. Sources said that more
Americans were hurt in the assault ... than had been previously reported. CIA chiefs were actively
working to ensure the real nature of its operations in the city did not get out. So only the losses
suffered by the State Department in the city had been reported to Congress. Frank Wolf, a US
congressman who represents the district that contains CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, is
one of 150 members of Congress for a new investigation into the failures in Benghazi. "I think it is
a form of a cover-up, and I think it's an attempt to push it under the rug," he said. "We should have
the people who were on the scene come in, testify under oath, do it publicly, and lay it out. And
there really isn't any national security issue involved with regards to that."
Note: For more on the hidden realities of intelligence agency operations, see the deeply revealing
Bin Laden Records Kept in the Shadows

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/secret-move-bin-laden-records-shadow...
The top U.S. special operations commander, Adm. William McRaven, ordered military files about
the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout to be purged from Defense Department
computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made
public. The secret move, described briefly in a draft report by the Pentagon's inspector general, set
off no alarms within the Obama administration even though it appears to have sidestepped federal
rules and perhaps also the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. The CIA, noting that the bin Laden
mission was overseen by then-CIA Director Leon Panetta before he became defense secretary,
said that the SEALs were effectively assigned to work temporarily for the CIA, which has
presidential authority to conduct covert operations. The records transfer was part of an effort by
McRaven to protect the names of the personnel involved in the raid, according to the inspector
general's draft report. But secretly moving the records allowed the Pentagon to tell The Associated
Press that it couldn't find any documents inside the Defense Department that AP had requested
more than two years ago, and would represent a new strategy for the U.S. government to shield
even its most sensitive activities from public scrutiny. "Welcome to the shell game in place of
open government," said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a private
research institute at George Washington University. "Guess which shell the records are under.
If you guess the right shell, we might show them to you. It's ridiculous."
Note: For a powerful analysis of the strong evidence that Osama bin Laden most likely died in
Afghanistan in December 2001, long before he was "killed" by the SEALs raid in Pakistan, read
David Ray Griffin's Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? For more on government secrecy, see the
In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of N.S.A.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/us/in-secret-court-vastly-broadens-powers-o...
In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nations surveillance court has created a secret body of
law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans.
The rulings, some nearly 100 pages long, reveal that the court has taken on a much more
expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important
judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny. The 11-member Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving caseby-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial
oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become
almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and
delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come. In one of the
courts most important decisions, the judges have expanded the use in terrorism cases of a legal
principle known as the special needs doctrine and carved out an exception to the Fourth
Amendments requirement of a warrant for searches and seizures. Unlike the Supreme Court, the
FISA court hears from only one side in the case the government and its findings are almost
never made public.
Note: For more on government secrecy, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major
U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html?pagewanted...
Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: a handwritten card,
apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the
letters and packages sent to his home. Show all mail to supv supervisor for copying prior
to going out on the street, read the card. It included Mr. Pickerings name, address and the type of
mail that needed to be monitored. The word confidential was highlighted in green. It was a bit of
a shock to see it, said Mr. Pickering, who with his wife owns a small bookstore in Buffalo. More
than a decade ago, he was a spokesman for the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental
group labeled eco-terrorists by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As the world focuses on the
high-tech spying of the National Security Agency, the misplaced card offers a rare glimpse inside
the seemingly low-tech but prevalent snooping of the United States Postal Service. Mr. Pickering
was targeted by a longtime surveillance system called mail covers, a forerunner of a vastly
more expansive effort, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal
Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in
the United States about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the
government saves the images. The Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program was created after
the anthrax attacks in late 2001. It enables the Postal Service to retrace the path of mail at the
request of law enforcement. No one disputes that it is sweeping.
Note: The exposure by whistleblower Edward Snowden of the NSA's massive domestic and global
spying operations seems to have triggered a series of other revelations about surveillance of the
US population, like this report on the US Postal Service's photographing all mail. Hardly a week
goes by without another major revelation, such as a new digital photo-ID database utilized by the
FBI and police forces, and the development by US police of a national DNA database on all
"potential suspects". Since very few US citizens are terrorists, what is the real purpose behind this
total surveillance?
NSA surveillance played little role in foiling terror plots, experts say
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/12/nsa-surveillance-data-terror-attack
Lawyers and intelligence experts with direct knowledge of two intercepted terrorist plots that the
Obama administration says confirm the value of the NSA's vast data-mining activities have
questioned whether the surveillance sweeps played a significant role, if any, in foiling the attacks.
The defence of the controversial data collection operations ... has been led by Dianne Feinstein,
chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, and her equivalent in the House, Mike Rogers.
The two politicians have attempted to justify the NSA's use of vast data sweeps such as Prism and
Boundless Informant by pointing to the arrests and convictions of would-be New York subway
bomber Najibullah Zazi in 2009 and David Headley, who is serving a 35-year prison sentence for
his role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks. But court documents lodged in the US and UK, as well as
interviews with involved parties, suggest that data-mining through Prism and other NSA
programmes played a relatively minor role in the interception of the two plots. Conventional
surveillance techniques, in both cases including old-fashioned tip-offs from intelligence services in
Britain, appear to have initiated the investigations. The Headley case is a peculiar choice for the
administration to highlight as an example of the virtues of data-mining. The fact that the
Mumbai attacks occurred, with such devastating effect, in itself suggests that the NSA's
secret programmes were limited in their value as he was captured only after the event.
Headley ... had been an informant working for the Drug Enforcement Administration perhaps as
recently as 2005. There are suggestions that he might have then worked in some capacity for the
FBI or CIA.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the realities of
intelligence agency activity, click here.
Everything you need to know about the NSAs phone records scandal
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/06/everything-you-nee...
The Guardian [has] released a classified court order requiring Verizon to turn over records of all
domestic phone calls to the National Security Agency. The revelation has led to a renewed debate
over the legality and policy merits of indiscriminate government surveillance of Americans. The
court order, issued by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court, only sought metadata a
fancy word for information like what numbers you called, what time you made the calls, and how
long the calls were. The order does not seek the audio of calls. Of course, its possible the NSA
has other programs collecting the contents of calls. In 2006 a whistleblower reported the existence
of a secret, NSA-controlled room in an AT&T switching facility in San Francisco. So its possible
the NSA is using rooms like that to listen to everyones phone calls. But all we know for sure is that
the NSA has been requesting information about our phone calls. We only have proof of spying
on Verizon customers, but its hard to imagine the NSA limiting its surveillance program to
one company. There are probably similar orders in effect for AT&T and CenturyLink, the
other major telephone companies. The order includes hints that the NSA is also collecting
information from cellular customers. In addition to phone numbers and call times, the order
seeks information about the specific cell phone tower the customer used to connect to the network
during each call. Cellphones make calls using the closest tower. So if the NSA knows you made a
call using a specific tower, they can safely assume you were near that tower at the time of the call.
Note: For graphs and lots more on the Prism program, see the Guardian article at this link.
Technically, U.S. officials are not allowed to mine personal data from U.S. citizens. Yet if U.K.
authorities mine data on U.S. citizens, they can share it freely with officials in the U.S. and vice
versa. There is evidence that this happens quite frequently, thus circumventing privacy protections.
For an excellent article which goes deep into this issue, click here.
Congressman: Boston bombs triggered by remote control

2013-04-24, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57581244/boston-marathon-bombs-possibly-t...
Two U.S. officials say Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect [in the Boston Marathon
bombings], was unarmed when police captured him hiding inside a boat in a neighborhood
back yard. Authorities originally said they had exchanged gunfire with Dzhokhar for more
than one hour Friday evening before they were able to subdue him. The officials tell The
Associated Press that no gun was found in the boat. Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said
earlier that shots were fired from inside the boat. Investigators also believe the brothers helped
finance their plot through drug sales. Sources say Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was unemployed,
made money selling marijuana. Police think the brothers killed a Massachusetts Institute of
Technology campus police officer for his weapon while they were the subjects of last week's
massive manhunt. The brothers only had one real gun and one pellet gun when they were on the
run Thursday. Investigators now believe that Officer Sean Collier was killed Thursday because the
two bombing suspects wanted to take his gun. Investigators believe because the officer's holster
had a locking system, they apparently couldn't get the gun out. Collier was shot in the head
execution-style while sitting in his patrol car. In his questioning in the hospital, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
said they were self-taught and self-radicalized.
Note: Don't these details released by investigators sound odd? If Dzhokhar was not armed, why
did authorities say they exchanged gunfire for an hour? And previous reports claimed Dzhokhar
was shot in the throat, so that he could not speak about his version of what happened. High
strangeness here. For powerful evidence from a respected researcher that the uncle of the Boston
bombers was a top CIA official, click here. This is evidence supporting the theory that the brothers
may have been CIA-controlled Manchurian Candidates. For more on this, click here.
Boston suspect was under FBI surveillance, mother says

2013-04-20, Chicago Tribune/Reuters
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-explosions-boston-motherbre9...
One of the two ethnic Chechens suspected by U.S. officials of being behind the Boston Marathon
bombings had been under FBI surveillance for at least three years, his mother said. Zubeidat
Tsarnaeva told the English-language Russia Today state television station in a phone interview, a
recording of which was obtained by Reuters, that she believed her sons were innocent and had
been framed. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a shootout with police and his 19-year-old
brother Dzhokhar was captured after a day-long manhunt. "He (Tamerlan) was controlled by the
FBI, like, for three to five years," she said, speaking in English. "They knew what my son
was doing, they knew what sites on the Internet he was going to," she said. Tsarnaeva
echoed the boys' father, Anzor, who said ... that he believed they had been framed.
Tsarnaeva suggested FBI officers had visited her home when she still lived in the United States
and told her that Tamerlan "was really an extremist leader and that they were afraid of him. It is
really, really a hard thing to hear. And being a mother, what I can say is that I am really sure, I am,
like, 100 percent sure, that this is a set-up," she said. U.S. government officials have said the
brothers were not under surveillance as possible militants. But the FBI said in a statement on
Friday that in 2011 it interviewed Tamerlan at the request of a foreign government, which it did not
identify. The FBI statement was the first evidence that the family had come to security officials'
attention after they emigrated to the United States from Dagestan about a decade ago.
Note: For a sharp analysis of unanswered questions raised by the official account of the bombings
in Boston, click here. For the local NBC station report that bomb-sniffing dogs were present at the
finish line of the Boston Marathon before the bombs exploded, watch this video clip. And for a
Washington Times article raising more questions on the bombing, including government agents
seen at the scene with suspicious backpacks, click here.
Gitmo Is Killing Me
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/15/opinion/hunger-striking-at-guantanamo-bay.html
Ive been detained at Guantnamo for 11 years and three months. I have never been charged with
any crime. I have never received a trial. Last month, on March 15, I was sick in the prison hospital
and refused to be fed. A team from the E.R.F. (Extreme Reaction Force), a squad of eight military
police officers in riot gear, burst in. They tied my hands and feet to the bed. They forcibly inserted
an IV into my hand. I spent 26 hours in this state, tied to the bed. During this time I was not
permitted to go to the toilet. They inserted a catheter, which was painful, degrading and
unnecessary. I was not even permitted to pray. I will never forget the first time they passed the
feeding tube up my nose. I cant describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust
in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit, but I couldnt. There was agony in my chest,
throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel
punishment upon anyone. I am still being force-fed. Two times a day they tie me to a chair in my
cell. My arms, legs and head are strapped down. When they come to force me into the chair, if I
refuse to be tied up, they call the E.R.F. team. So I have a choice. Either I can exercise my right
to protest my detention, and be beaten up, or I can submit to painful force-feeding. The only
reason I am still here is that President Obama refuses to send any detainees back to
Yemen. This makes no sense. I am a human being ... and I deserve to be treated like one.
Note: Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, has been a prisoner at Guantnamo Bay since 2002. For an
illuminating analysis of this situation by the Washington Post, click here.
The FBI's anticipatory prosecution of Muslims to criminalize speech

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/19/preemptive-prosecution-mu...
One of the major governmental abuses denounced by the 1976 final report of the Church
Committee was the FBI's domestic counter intelligence programs (COINTELPRO). Under that
program, the FBI targeted political groups and individuals it deemed subversive and dangerous ...
and infiltrated them with agents who, among other things, attempted to manipulate members into
agreeing to commit criminal acts so that the FBI could arrest and prosecute them. What made the
program so controversial was that the FBI was attempting to create and encourage crimes rather
than find actual criminals - all in order to punish those whose constitutionally protected political
activism the US government found threatening. Over the past decade, US Muslims have been
routinely targeted with precisely this same tactic of preemptive or anticipatory prosecution.
It's all designed to take people engaged in political and religious advocacy which the US
government dislikes ... and use paid informants to trick them into saying just enough to
turn them into criminals who are then prosecuted and imprisoned for decades. The same
pattern repeats itself over and over. The FBI ensnares some random Muslim in a garden-variety
criminal investigation involving financial fraud or drugs. Rather than prosecute him, the FBI puts
the Muslim criminal suspect on its payroll, sending him into Muslim communities and mosques in
order not only to spy on American Muslims, but to befriend them and then actively manipulate
them into saying just enough to make their prosecution possible.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on illegal activities of
intelligence agencies, click here.
New Pope Tied up in Argentina's 'Dirty War' Debate

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/papal-election-stirs-argentinas...
It's beyond dispute that Jorge Mario Bergoglio, [the new Pope], failed to openly confront the 19761983 military junta as it kidnapped and killed thousands of people in a "dirty war" to eliminate leftist
opponents. But human rights activists differ on how much responsibility Pope Francis personally
deserves for the Argentine church's dark history of supporting the murderous dictatorship. Some
leading Argentine human rights activists agree that Bergoglio, now 76, doesn't deserve to be
lumped together with other church figures who were closely aligned with the dictatorship. "Perhaps
he didn't have the courage of other priests, but he never collaborated with the dictatorship," Adolfo
Perez Esquivel, who won the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize for documenting the junta's atrocities, said.
But others say Bergoglio's rise through the Argentine church since then has put him in
many positions of power where he could have done more to atone for the sins of Catholic
officials who did actively conspire with the dictators. Some priests even worked inside
torture centers, and blessed those doing the killing. Bergoglio twice invoked his right under
Argentine law to refuse to appear in open court in trials involving torture and murder inside the
feared Navy Mechanics School and the theft of babies from detainees.
Note: An entire edition of Democracy Now! was devoted to the record of Bergoglio, including an
interview with the Argentine journalist Horacio Verbitsky. For more analysis, click here, here and
here.
Three Democratic myths used to demean the Paul filibuster

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/10/paul-filibuster-drones-pr...
Commencing immediately upon the 9/11 attack, the US government ... has spent 12 straight years
inventing and implementing new theories of government power in the name of Terrorism. Every
year since 9/11 has ushered in increased authorities of exactly the type Americans are
inculcated to believe only exist in those other, non-free societies: ubiquitous surveillance,
impenetrable secrecy, and the power to imprison and even kill without charges or due
process. The Obama administration has already exercised the power to target even its own
citizens for execution far from any battlefield. [This] has prompted almost no institutional resistance
from the structures designed to check executive abuses: courts, the media, and Congress. Last
week's 13-hour filibuster of John Brennan's confirmation as CIA director by GOP Sen. Rand Paul
was one of the first ... Congressional efforts to dramatize and oppose just how radical these
Terrorism-justified powers have become. For the first time since the 9/11 attack, even lowly cable
news shows were forced ... to extensively discuss the government's extremist theories of power.
All of this put Democrats ... in a very uncomfortable position. The politician who took such a unique
stand in defense of these principles was not merely a Republican but a leading member of its
dreaded Tea Party wing. Some Democrats, to their credit, publicly supported Paul. But most
Democratic Senators ran away as fast as possible from having anything to do with the debate.
Paul was doing nothing more than voicing concerns that have long been voiced by leading civil
liberties groups such as the ACLU. But almost without exception, progressives who defend
Obama's Terrorism policies steadfastly ignore the fact that they are embracing policies that are
vehemently denounced by the ACLU.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the loss of civil liberties in
the US, click here.
President Could, In Theory, Order Drone Strike Inside U.S., Holder Says
2013-03-05, NPR
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/03/05/173572444/president-could-in-t...
Attorney General Eric Holder has said in a letter to Sen. Rand Paul that the president could in an
"entirely hypothetical" situation authorize the military to use lethal force within U.S. territory. The
letter to Paul came in response to three inquiries the Kentucky Republican sent to John Brennan,
President Obama's nominee for CIA director. Paul's letters asked if it was legal for the U.S.
government to use lethal force, including in the form of drone strikes, on Americans inside the
country. Here's Holder's response, in part: "As members of this Administration have previously
indicated, the U.S. government has not carried out drone strikes in the United States and
has no intention of doing so. The question you have posed is therefore entirely
hypothetical, unlikely to occur, and one we hope no President will ever have to confront. It
is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary
and appropriate for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of
the United States. For example, the President could conceivably have no choice but to authorize
the military to use such force if necessary to protect the homeland in the circumstances of a
catastrophic attack like the ones suffered on December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001."
the US, click here.
FBI's apparent entrapment of San Jose man continues its track record
2013-02-27, San Jose Mercury News (Silicon Valley's leading newspaper)
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_22665506/fadi-saba-fbis-apparent-entrap...
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has a track record of attacking the undesirables of the time. In
the early part of the 20th century, immigrants from Italy were the focus; in the 1940s, it was
Japanese-Americans; in the 1950s, it was Americans who questioned U.S. foreign policy; in the
1960s, civil rights activists. Today, it's ... the Arab. It's the South Asian. And often, the FBI uses
entrapment to create a terror case out of thin air and then claim to have foiled it. San Jose
resident Matthew Llaneza, who converted to Islam in 2011, is accused of attempting to bomb a
bank building in Oakland. However, many feel that the FBI used entrapment, which, in criminal law,
is a legal defense. It is the act by law enforcement officers of inducing or encouraging a person to
commit a crime when the potential criminal is not otherwise predisposed to committing the crime.
Over the past several years, the FBI has repeatedly manufactured terror plots by targeting
vulnerable members of the Arab, South Asian and Muslim communities. The target is
usually an individual or a small group of people with a troubled past, psychological issues
or financial problems. Llaneza's is a classic case of entrapment. [It] closely follows the pattern.
[He] has a history of psychological problems. This presumed inability to make sound judgment is
perfect for entrapment. His bombing plot seems to first emerge in a conversation with law
enforcement, and his history of mental illness indicates he didn't have the capacity to commit acts
of terror on his own.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the games intelligence
agencies play, click here.
Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on

Americans
2013-02-04, NBC News
http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/04/16843014-exclusive-justice-de...
A confidential Justice Department memo concludes that the U.S. government can order the killing
of American citizens if they are believed to be senior operational leaders of al-Qaida or an
associated force -- even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to
attack the U.S. The 16-page memo ... provides new details about the legal reasoning behind one
of the Obama administrations most secretive and controversial polices: its dramatically increased
use of drone strikes against al-Qaida suspects abroad, including those aimed at American citizens.
In March, Attorney General Eric Holder specifically endorsed the constitutionality of targeted
killings of Americans, saying they could be justified if government officials determine the target
poses an imminent threat of violent attack. But the confidential Justice Department white paper
introduces a ... broader concept of imminence than actual intelligence about any ongoing plot
against the U.S. homeland. The condition that an operational leader present an imminent
threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have
clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the
immediate future, the memo states. Instead, it says, an informed, high-level official of the U.S.
government may determine that the targeted American has been recently involved in activities
posing a threat of a violent attack and there is no evidence suggesting that he has renounced or
abandoned such activities. The memo does not define recently or activities.
Note: To read the entire 'white paper' on drone strikes on Americans, click here. For detailed
analysis by a distinguished lawyer, click here.
Justice for the PayPal WikiLeaks protesters: why DDoS is free speech
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/22/paypal-wikileaks-proteste...
In December 2010, the hacktivist collective Anonymous voiced their displeasure with PayPal, over
that company's part in the banking blockade of Wikileaks. A reported 10,000 protesters around the
world took to the internet with a protest method known as DDoS (distributed denial of service)
the functional equivalent of repeatedly hitting the refresh button on a computer. With enough
people refreshing enough times, the site is flooded with traffic, slowed, or even temporarily
knocked offline. No damage is done to the site or its backing computer system; and when the
protest is over, the site resumes business as usual. This is not "hacking". It is protest, and it is
speech. Or it was until the United States government decided to serve 42 warrants and indict 14
protesters. While protest charges have typically been seen as tantamount to nuisance crimes, like
trespassing or loitering, these were different. The 14 PayPal defendants, some of whom were
teenagers when the protest occurred, find themselves looking at 15 years in federal prison
for exercising their free speech rights; for redressing their grievances to PayPal, a major
corporation; for standing up for what they believed was right. Instead of being handed a $50
fine, as one would face for traditional protest crimes such as a sit-in, the PayPal defendants'
freedoms are in real jeopardy. Since the PayPal prosecution, there have been no DDoS protests
on that scale. Speech has been chilled. Supreme court Justice William O Douglas said:
"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one
un-American act that could most easily defeat us."
The coming drone attack on America

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/21/coming-drone-attack-america
With the importation of what will be tens of thousands of drones, by both US military and
by commercial interests, into US airspace, with a specific mandate to engage in
surveillance and with the capacity for weaponization which is due to begin in earnest at
the start of the new year it means that the police state is now officially here. In February of
this year, Congress passed the FAA Reauthorization Act, with its provision to deploy fleets of
drones domestically. Jennifer Lynch, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that
this followed a major lobbying effort, "a huge push by the defense sector" to promote the use of
drones in American skies: 30,000 of them are expected to be in use by 2020, some as small as
hummingbirds. Others will be as big as passenger planes. Business-friendly media stress their
planned abundant use by corporations: police in Seattle have already deployed them. An
unclassified US Air Force document reported by CBS News expands on this unprecedented and
unconstitutional step one that formally brings the military into the role of controlling domestic
populations on US soil. This document accompanies a major federal push for drone deployment
this year in the United States, accompanied by federal policies to encourage law enforcement
agencies to obtain and use them locally, as well as by federal support for their commercial
deployment. That is to say: now HSBC, Chase, Halliburton etc can have their very own fleets of
domestic surveillance drones.
Push to step up domestic use of drones

2012-11-27, San Francisco Chronicle (SF's leading newspapers)
http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Push-to-step-up-domestic-use-of-drones-4...
Are unmanned aircraft, known to have difficulty avoiding collisions, safe to use in America's
crowded airspace? And would their widespread use for surveillance result in unconstitutional
invasions of privacy? Experts say neither question has been answered satisfactorily. Yet the
federal government is rushing to open America's skies to tens of thousands of the drones - pushed
to do so by a law championed by manufacturers of the unmanned aircraft. The 60-member House
of Representatives' "drone caucus" - officially, the House Unmanned Systems Caucus - has
helped push that agenda. And over the last four years, caucus members have drawn nearly
$8 million in drone-related campaign contributions. Domestic use of drones began with limited
aerial patrols of the nation's borders by Customs and Border Patrol authorities. But the industry
and its allies pushed for more, leading to provisions in the FAA Modernization and Reform Act,
signed into law on Feb. 14 of this year. The law requires the FAA to fully integrate the unmanned
aerial vehicles into national airspace by September 2015. The FAA has predicted that 30,000
drones could be flying in the United States in less than 20 years. House members from
California, Texas, Virginia and New York on the bipartisan "drone caucus" received the lion's share
of the funds channeled to lawmakers from dozens of firms that are members of the Association for
Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on drone killings and other
war crimes committed by the US in its wars of aggression in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, click
here.
Obama: a GOP president should have rules limiting the kill list
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/26/obama-drones-kill-list-fr...
For the last four years, Barack Obama has not only asserted, but aggressively exercised,
the power to target for execution anyone he wants, including US citizens, anywhere in the
world. He has vigorously resisted not only legal limits on this assassination power, but
even efforts to bring some minimal transparency to the execution orders he issues. This
claimed power has resulted in four straight years of air bombings in multiple Muslim countries in
which no war has been declared using drones, cruise missiles and cluster bombs ending the
lives of more than 2,500 people, almost always far away from any actual battlefield. They are
typically targeted while riding in cars, at work, at home, and even while rescuing or attending
funerals for others whom Obama has targeted. A substantial portion ... have been civilians,
including dozens of children. President Obama was recently convinced that some limits and a real
legal framework might be needed to govern the exercise of this assassination power. What was it
that prompted Obama finally to reach this conclusion? It was the fear that he might lose the
election, which meant that a Big, Bad Republican would wield these powers, rather than a
benevolent, trustworthy, noble Democrat - i.e., himself. The core premise is that the political world
is shaped by a clean battle of Good v. Evil. The side of Good is the Democratic Party; the side of
Evil is the GOP. All political truths are ascertainable through this Manichean prism. It is genuinely
inconceivable that a leader as noble, kind and wise as Barack Obama would abuse his
assassination and detention powers.
Note: If any other nation were using drones to kill terrorists in the U.S. or Europe, there would be a
huge public uproar. Why do people care so little about these indiscriminate killings elsewhere? For
deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on drone killings and other war crimes
committed by the US in its wars of aggression in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, click here.
Drone strikes in Pakistan have killed many civilians, study says

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/24/world/la-fg-drone-study-20120925
Far more civilians have been killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas than U.S.
counter-terrorism officials have acknowledged, a new study by human rights researchers at
Stanford University and New York University contends. The report, "Living Under Drones," also
concludes that the classified CIA program has ... turned the Pakistani public against U.S. policy in
the volatile region. "Real people are suffering real harm" but are largely ignored in government or
news media discussions of drone attacks, said James Cavallaro of Stanford, one of the study's
authors. Cavallaro said the study was intended to challenge official accounts of the drones as
precise instruments of high-tech warfare with few adverse consequences. The study concludes
that only about 2% of drone casualties are top militant leaders. The study authors did not estimate
overall civilian casualties because of limited data, Cavallaro said. But it cites estimates by the
Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which has reported extensively on drone strikes, of 474
to 884 civilian deaths since 2004, including 176 children. In April, Obama's top counterterrorism advisor, John Brennan, described civilian casualties from drone strikes as
"exceedingly rare." The study challenges official versions of three attacks between 2009 and
2011, including a drone strike on March 17, 2011, that killed an estimated 42 people.
Note: Imagine the uproar if another country killed innocent civilians in the US while using drones to
kill terrorists in the country. Visit the Living Under Drones website here. For a Democracy Now!
report on the results of this study click here. For more analysis click here and here.
SEAL's book contradicts official report

2012-08-29, San Francisco Chronicle/Associated Press
http://www.sfgate.com/world/article/SEAL-s-book-contradicts-official-report-3...
A Navy SEAL's firsthand account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden pulls back the veil on the
secret operations conducted almost nightly by elite American forces against terrorist suspects.
Former SEAL Matt Bissonnette's account contradicted in key details the account of the raid
presented by administration officials in the days after the May 2011 raid in Abbotabad, Pakistan.
Bissonnette wrote that the SEALs spotted bin Laden at the top of a darkened hallway and
shot him in the head even though they could not tell whether he was armed. Administration
officials have described the SEALs shooting bin Laden only after he ducked back into a
bedroom because they assumed he might be reaching for a weapon. Bissonnette wrote the
book, No Easy Day, under the pseudonym Mark Owen, as one of the men in the room when they
killed bin Laden. In [one] scene, a terrified mother clutches her child and a young girl identifies the
dead man as Osama bin Laden. The SEAL author says he did "not disclose confidential or
sensitive information that would compromise national security in any way."
Note: Isn't it interesting that the SEAL team "spotted bin Laden at the top of a darkened hallway
and shot him in the head." If it was a darkened hallway, how did they know it was bin Laden? The
articles states "a young girl identifies the dead man as Osama bin Laden." Is that really how they
ID'd this guy? And why did they then dump his body into the ocean, so that there could never be
definitive proof that the body was indeed bin Laden? So many questions remain. For more
evidence bin Laden was not killed by SEALs, click here.
Man Who Armed Black Panthers Was FBI Informant

2012-08-20, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48721445/ns/local_news-san_francisco_bay_area_ca/...
The man who gave the Black Panther Party some of its first firearms and weapons training which
preceded fatal shootouts with Oakland police in the turbulent 1960s was an undercover FBI
informer, according to a former bureau agent and an FBI report. One of the Bay Areas most
prominent radical activists of the era, Richard Masato Aoki was known as a fierce militant who
touted his street-fighting abilities. He was a member of several radical groups before joining and
arming the Panthers. But unbeknownst to his fellow activists, Aoki had served as an FBI
intelligence informant, covertly filing reports on a wide range of Bay Area political groups,
according to the bureau agent who recruited him, [Burney Threadgill Jr.]. Aokis work for the FBI ...
was uncovered and verified during research for the book, Subversives: The FBIs War on Student
Radicals, and Reagans Rise to Power. The FBI ... released records about Aoki in response to a
Freedom of Information Act request. A Nov. 16, 1967, intelligence report on the Black Panthers
lists Aoki as an informant with the code number T-2. Aoki gave the Panthers some of their
first guns. As [Bobby] Seale recalled in his memoir, Seize the Time, the group approached
Aoki, a Third World brother we knew, a Japanese radical cat. He had guns .357
Magnums, 22s, 9mms, what have you. In early 1967, Aoki joined the Black Panther Party and
gave them more guns, Seale wrote. Aoki also gave Panther recruits weapons training.
Note: For a Democracy Now! video report on the discovery that Aoki was an FBI infiltrator,
informer and provocateur, click here. This is more solid evidence that elements within government
have consistently instigated violence within progressive movements in order to discredit them.
Sadly, this policy appears to continue up to the present.
Top official admits FBI had al-Awlaki in custody before letting him go in
2002
2012-08-01, Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/01/top-official-admits-fbi-had-al-awl...
The FBI, for the first time, has admitted publicly that it knew the radical Muslim cleric Anwar alAwlaki was returning to the U.S. in October 2002 and that an FBI agent discussed the American's
return with a U.S. attorney before he was detained and then abruptly released from federal
custody. Al-Awlaki, who would become the first American targeted for death by the CIA, eventually
was killed last September in Yemen by a U.S. drone strike. Mark Giuliano, the FBI's assistant
director for national security, testified [on August 1] that the FBI knew in advance that he was
making his way back to the United States. Al-Awlaki was detained at New York City's JFK airport
because a customs database flagged him based on an outstanding arrest warrant. Former FBI
agents say there are only likely two explanations: The bureau let the cleric into the country to track
him for intelligence, or the bureau wanted to work with him as a friendly contact. The FBI has
never explained why it let al-Awlaki walk free at a time when dozens of young Muslim men
were being held in detention centers on material witness warrants in the wake of the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks. Al-Awlaki was under a full FBI investigation by the Washington office
when he was invited to lunch at an executive dining room at the Pentagon in February 2002.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the hidden realities of
Secret Kill List Proves a Test of Obamas Principles and Will

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda....
Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret "nominations" process to designate
terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. Mr. Obama ...
insisted on approving every new name on an expanding "kill list," poring over terrorist suspects'
biographies. When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises -- but his family is
with him -- it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation. In interviews
with The New York Times, three dozen of his current and former advisers described Mr. Obama's
evolution since taking on the role, without precedent in presidential history, of personally
overseeing the shadow war. They describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative dealmaking required to close the detention facility at Guantnamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal
action without hand-wringing. When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is
usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign ... even when it comes to killing an
American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was "an easy one."
Beside the president at every step is his counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, who is
variously compared by colleagues to a dogged police detective, tracking terrorists from his
cavelike office in the White House basement, or a priest whose blessing has become
indispensable to Mr. Obama, echoing the president's attempt to apply the "just war" theories of
Christian philosophers to a brutal modern conflict.
Note: For further analysis of Obamas role in the selection of drone missile targets, click here.
America's murderous drone campaign is fuelling terror

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/29/americas-drone-campaign-t...
From Pakistan to Somalia, CIA-controlled pilotless aircraft rain down Hellfire missiles on an everexpanding hit list of terrorist suspects they have already killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
civilians in the process. At least 15 drone strikes have been launched in Yemen this month, as
many as in the whole of the past decade, killing dozens; while in Pakistan, a string of US attacks
has been launched against supposed "militant" targets in the past week, incinerating up to 35
people and hitting a mosque and a bakery. But then Predators and Reapers are Barack Obama's
weapons of choice and coercion, deployed only on the territory of troublesome US allies, such as
Pakistan and Yemen and the drone war is Obama's war. In his first two years in office, the US
president more than tripled the number of attacks in Pakistan alone. Since 2004, between 2,464
and 3,145 people are reported to have been killed by US drone attacks in Pakistan, of whom up to
828 were civilians (535 under Obama) and 175 children. Some Pakistani estimates put the civilian
death toll much higher plausibly, given the tendency to claim as "militants" victims later
demonstrated to be nothing of the sort. The US president insisted recently that the civilian
death toll was not a "huge number". These killings are, in reality, summary executions and
widely regarded as potential war crimes by international lawyers. The CIA's now retired
counsel, John Rizzo, who authorised drone attacks, himself talked about having been
involved in "murder".
Note: For a deep analysis of how killer drone technology and the concept of remote war have
altered the balance of options available to our political and military leaders and made the political
cost of military intervention much lower than it had previously been, click here.
FBI Investigates Media Leaks in Yemen Bomb Plot

2012-05-16, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/fbi-investigates-media-leaks-in-...
FBI director Robert S. Mueller III today disclosed that the FBI is investigating leaks to the news
media about the recently disrupted plot by Al Qaedas Yemen affiliate to smuggle a bomb designed
to be concealed in underwear onto a U.S. bound jet. The plans for the attack, which featured a
more sophisticated version of the device the underwear bomber of Christmas 2009 was arrested
with, were first revealed by the AP. But a day later, it was revealed that the individual at the
center of the plot was a double agent working for Britains MI-6 secret intelligence service
and the CIA along with Saudi Arabian intelligence assets. We have initiated an
investigation into this leak, Mueller testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on
Wednesday. Justice Department officials and an FBI spokesman declined to comment on the
nature of the investigation. The CIA also declined comment. Matthew Olsen, director of the
National Counterterrorism Center, addressed the issue of media leaks relating to the plot and
called it devastating.
Note: Yes, it's devastating to the image of the FBI to be caught aiding terrorist plots. Now why isn't
the government investigating why the FBI is doing such things? For lots more from reliable sources
on the games intelligence agencies play, click here.
'Underwear bomber' was working for the CIA

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/09/underwear-bomber-working-for-cia
A would-be "underwear bomber" involved in a plot to attack a US-based jet was in fact working as
an undercover informer with Saudi intelligence and the CIA, it has emerged. The revelation is the
latest twist in an increasingly bizarre story about the disruption of an apparent attempt by al-Qaida
to strike at a high-profile American target using a sophisticated device hidden in the clothing of an
attacker. The news that the individual at the heart of the bomb plot was in fact an informer for US
intelligence is likely to raise just as many questions as it answers. Citing US and Yemeni
officials, Associated Press reported that the unnamed informant was working under cover
for the Saudis and the CIA when he was given the bomb, which was of a new non-metallic
type aimed at getting past airport security. The informant then turned the device over to his
handlers and has left Yemen, the officials told the news agency.
Note: For more on this bizarre news, see the CBS report at this link. Isn't it amazing how many
terrorist groups have undercover FBI and CIA agents involved in actually pushing plots forward?
One has to wonder how far the plots would go without prompting by intelligence insiders. For a
powerful BBC documentary suggesting that terrorism is pushed and sold by politicians for a
deeper agenda, click here.
Mueller grilled on FBI's release of al-Awlaki in 2002

2012-03-08, Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/03/07/mueller-grilled-on-fbis-release-al...
Several congressional committees want the FBI director to explain why one of his agents ordered
the release of Anwar al-Awlaki from federal custody on Oct. 10, 2002, when there was an
outstanding warrant for the American Muslim clerics arrest. The cleric was held by customs
agents at JFK International Airport in New York City in early morning of Oct. 10, 2002, until FBI
Agent Wade Ammerman ordered his release even though a warrant for the clerics arrest on
passport fraud was still active. The warrant was generated by the Joint Terrorism Task Force in
San Diego, which considered the cleric a tier one target because of his connections to at least
three of the 9/11 hijackers. The passport fraud warrant was described ... as a holding charge that
would allow federal investigators to pressure al-Awlaki over his 9/11 contacts. The warrant was
pulled by a judge in Colorado, after the cleric entered the U.S.. After al-Awlaki re-entered the U.S.
in the fall of 2002 with the FBIs help, the cleric then appeared in a high-profile investigation, in
which Agent Ammerman was a lead investigator. Former FBI agents say Ammerman would have
needed permission from higher up in the bureau to let al-Awlaki go. Former FBI agents, familiar
with al-Awlakis re-entry in October 2002, say only two scenarios seem to explain what
happened. The FBI was tracking the cleric for intelligence or the FBI was working with the
cleric and saw him as a friendly contact.
Note: For further details of the FBI's release of al-Awlaki, click here. How interesting that "al-Awlaki
re-entered the U.S. in 2002 with the FBIs help." What may be happening is that individuals like alAwlaki are CIA assets programmed to be Manchurian Candidates using mind control techniques
perfected by intelligence agencies. They are then released to do what they've been programmed
to do to forward a hidden shadow-government agenda. Many terrorists and mass murderers may
actually be Manchurian Candidates programmed to engage in acts which keep the public in fear.
For more on this, click here.
Saudi Arabia May Be Tied to 9/11, 2 Ex-Senators Say

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/us/graham-and-kerrey-see-possible-saudi-9-1...
For more than a decade, questions have lingered about the possible role of the Saudi government
in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, even as the royal kingdom has made itself a crucial
counterterrorism partner in the eyes of American diplomats. Now, in sworn statements that seem
likely to reignite the debate, two former senators who were privy to top secret information on the
Saudis' activities say they believe that the Saudi government might have played a direct role in the
terrorist attacks. "I am convinced that there was a direct line between at least some of the
terrorists who carried out the September 11th attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia,"
former Senator Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida, said in an affidavit filed as part of a lawsuit
brought against the Saudi government and dozens of institutions in the country by families of Sept.
11 victims and others. Mr. Graham led a joint 2002 Congressional inquiry into the attacks. His
former Senate colleague, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, a Democrat who served on the separate 9/11
Commission, said in a sworn affidavit of his own in the case that "significant questions remain
unanswered" about the role of Saudi institutions. "Evidence relating to the plausible involvement of
possible Saudi government agents in the September 11th attacks has never been fully pursued,"
Mr. Kerrey said. Their affidavits ... are part of a multibillion-dollar lawsuit that has wound its way
through federal courts since 2002.
Note: Much evidence exists implicating not only Saudi Arabia, but also Pakistan, Israel and the UK
in the 9/11 attacks. Could the purpose behind these high-profile claims from former US senators
be to create a "limited hangout" to deflect attention from the real perpetrators, traitors in high
positions within the US government? As WantToKnow team member Prof. David Ray Griffin has
exhaustively demonstrated, almost all of the evidence for "Islamic hijackers" vanishes on close
examination. For more serious questions on 9/11, click here.
Military given go-ahead to detain US terrorist suspects without trial

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/15/americans-face-guantanamo-detenti...
Barack Obama has abandoned a commitment to veto a new security law that allows the military to
indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be
shipped to Guantnamo Bay. Human rights groups accused the president of deserting his
principles and disregarding the long-established principle that the military is not used in domestic
policing. The legislation has also been strongly criticised by libertarians on the right angered at the
stripping of individual rights for the duration of "a war that appears to have no end". The law ...
effectively extends the battlefield in the "war on terror" to the US and applies the
established principle that combatants in any war are subject to military detention. The law's
critics describe it as a draconian piece of legislation that extends the reach of detention
without trial to include US citizens arrested in their own country. "It's something so radical
that it would have been considered crazy had it been pushed by the Bush administration," said
Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "It establishes precisely the kind of system that the
United States has consistently urged other countries not to adopt. At a time when the United
States is urging Egypt, for example, to scrap its emergency law and military courts, this is not
consistent."
Note: The implications of the passage of this bill to authorize the US military to carry out domestic
arrest and imprisonment of US citizens have hardly been reported on by the major media. The
defense authorization bill undermines protections established by the Bill of Rights and the Posse
Comitatus Act against use of US military forces in domestic control and arrest. For further analysis
of the implications of this legislation, click here and here.
Fake terror plots, paid informants: the tactics of FBI 'entrapment'

questioned
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/16/fbi-entrapment-fake-terror-plots
In May, 2009, David Williams was arrested ... and hit with a 25-year jail sentence. Williams and
three other struggling ... men beset by drug, criminal and mental health issues were convicted of
an Islamic terrorist plot to blow up Jewish synagogues and shoot down military jets with missiles.
Even more shocking was that the organisation, money, weapons and motivation for this plot
did not come from real Islamic terrorists. It came from the FBI, and an informant paid to
pose as a terrorist mastermind paying big bucks for help in carrying out an attack. Lawyers
for the so-called Newburgh Four have now launched an appeal that will be held early next year.
Advocates hope the case offers the best chance of exposing the issue of FBI "entrapment" in
terror cases. "We have as close to a legal entrapment case as I have ever seen," said Susanne
Brody, who represents another Newburgh defendant, Onta Williams. "The target, the motive, the
ideology and the plot were all led by the FBI," said Karen Greenberg, a law professor at Fordham
University in New York, who specialises in studying the new FBI tactics. But the issue is one that
stretches far beyond Newburgh. Critics say the FBI is running a sting operation across America,
targeting to a large extent the Muslim community by luring people into fake terror plots.
Note: For a powerful BBC documentary showing clearly that much of the war on terror is a
fabrication to forward a political agenda, watch Power of Nightmares at this link. For many reports
from major media sources on the fake terror behind the "global war on terror", click here.
U.S. airstrike that killed American teen in Yemen raises legal, ethical
questions
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-airstrike-that-kille...
One week after a U.S. military airstrike killed a 16-year-old American citizen in Yemen, no one in
the Obama administration, Pentagon or Congress has taken responsibility for his death, or even
publicly acknowledged that it happened. The absence of official accountability for the demise
of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a Denver native and the son of [Anwar al-Awlaki], deepens the
legal and ethical murkiness of the Obama administrations campaign to kill alleged enemies
of the state outside of traditional war zones. Officials throughout the U.S. government ... have
refused to answer questions for the record about how or why Awlaki was killed Oct. 14 in a remote
part of Yemen, along with eight other people. The official silence about the death of the American
teenager contrasts with the Obama administrations eagerness to trumpet another airstrike in
Yemen two weeks earlier. In that case, armed drones controlled by the CIA killed the teens father,
Anwar al-Awlaki. [A] U.S. official said the airstrike was launched by the militarys secretive Joint
Special Operations Command, or JSOC. The younger Awlaki was the third U.S. citizen killed by
the U.S. government in Yemen in recent weeks.
Note: For deep background on reasons why the US government may have wanted to eliminate
Anwar al-Awlaki and his son, click here.
Questions Linger Over Why CIA Operative Is at NYPD

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/cia-nypd-depends-14750628
Working inside the New York Police Department is one of the CIA's most experienced
clandestine operatives. He arrived in July as the special assistant to the deputy commissioner of
intelligence. While his title is clear, his job responsibilities are not. Federal and city officials have
offered differing explanations for why this top CIA officer was assigned to a municipal police
department. The CIA is prohibited from spying domestically, and its unusual partnership
with the NYPD has troubled top lawmakers and prompted an internal investigation. The last
time a CIA officer worked so closely with the NYPD, beginning in the months after the 9/11 attacks,
he became the architect of aggressive police programs that monitored Muslim neighborhoods.
With that earlier help from this CIA official, the police put entire communities under a microscope
based on ethnicity rather than allegations of wrongdoing. On Monday, New York Mayor Michael
Bloomberg defended the arrangement. "If the CIA can help us I'm all for getting any information
they have and then letting the police department use it," he said. All of this has troubled
lawmakers, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, who has said the CIA has "no business or authority in domestic spying, or in advising
the NYPD how to conduct local surveillance."
Note: While it is quite amazing that this information was reported in the major media, well-informed
people have known that CIA operatives are secretly inserted in police stations across the US. They
are also deployed in key positions in every major media outlet in the U.S. and many around the
world, where they can stop reporting of information which reveals too much. To read the
fascinating accounts of two award-winning journalist providing clear evidence of this, click here.
Secret panel can put Americans on 'kill list'

2011-10-06, MSNBC/Reuters
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/44794516/ns/today-today_news/t/secret-panel-can...
American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of
senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.
There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White
House's National Security Council. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out
the rules by which it is supposed to operate. The panel was behind the decision to add Awlaki ... to
the target list. He was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen late last month. The White House is
portraying the killing of Awlaki as a demonstration of President Barack Obama's toughness toward
militants who threaten the United States. But the process that led to Awlaki's killing has drawn
fierce criticism from both the political left and right. Obama, who ran for president
denouncing predecessor George W. Bush's expansive use of executive power in his "war
on terrorism," is being attacked in some quarters for using similar tactics. They include
secret legal justifications and undisclosed intelligence assessments. Liberals criticized the
drone attack on an American citizen as extra-judicial murder. Conservatives criticized Obama for
refusing to release a Justice Department legal opinion that reportedly justified killing Awlaki.
Note: State assassination of a citizen without due process would seem to be the ultimate attack on
civil liberties. For lots more on such threats from reliable sources, click here.
Can U.S. legally kill a citizen overseas without due process?

2011-09-30, MSNBC
http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/30/8063632-can-us-legally-kill...
Is it legal for the federal government to kill a U.S. citizen overseas, someone who has never been
charged or convicted of a crime? Civil liberties groups are condemning the killing of Anwar alAwlaki, but many legal scholars say it is justified. No U.S. court has ever weighed in on the
question, because judges consider these sorts of issues exclusively matters for the president.
Anwar al-Awlaki's father, Nasser, with the help of the ACLU, sued President Barack Obama,
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and CIA Director Leon Panetta a year ago, when it became clear
that the U.S. was targeting the younger al-Awlaki. But U.S. District Judge John Bates threw the
case out, ruling that federal courts were in no position to evaluate whether someone was a terrorist
whose activities threatened national security and against whom the use of deadly force could be
justified. The ACLU lawyer who handled the case, Jameel Jaffer, said Friday that the U.S. program
that targeted al-Awlaki was a violation of both U.S. and international law. "The government's
authority to use lethal force against its own citizens should be limited to circumstances in
which the threat to life is concrete, specific and imminent. It is a mistake to invest the
president, any president, with the unreviewable power to kill any American whom he deems
to present a threat to the country," Jaffer said.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the illegal prosecution of the "Global War on Terror",
click here.
National Archives sits on 9/11 Commission records

2011-09-08, Reuters News
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/08/us-sept11-archive-idUSTRE7872QI2011...
Ten years after [the 9/11 attacks], the vast majority of the 9/11 Commission's investigative records
remain sealed at the National Archives in Washington, even though the commission had directed
the archives to make most of the material public in 2009. The National Archives' failure to release
the material presents a hurdle for historians and others seeking to plumb one of the most dramatic
events in modern American history. Matt Fulgham, assistant director of the archives' center for
legislative affairs..., said that more than a third of the material has been reviewed for possible
release. But many of those documents have been withheld or heavily redacted, and the released
material includes documents that already were in the public domain, such as press articles.
Commission items still not public include a 30-page summary of an April 29, 2004 interview
by all 10 commissioners with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney,
conducted in the White House's Oval Office. This was the only time the two were formally
questioned about the events surrounding the attacks. The information could shed light on
public accounts the two men have given in recent weeks of their actions around the time of the
attacks. The still-sealed documents contain source material on subjects ranging from actions by
President Bush on the day of the attacks to ... vast amounts of information on al Qaeda and U.S.
intelligence efforts in the years preceding the attacks.
Note: For lots more on government secrecy from major media sources, click here.
With CIA help, NYPD moves covertly in Muslim areas

2011-08-24, Boston Globe/Associated Press
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2011/08/24/with_cia_hel...
Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the New York Police Department has become one of the
nation's most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies, targeting ethnic communities in ways that
would run afoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal government. The operations have
benefited from unprecedented help from the CIA, a partnership that has blurred the line between
foreign and domestic spying. The department has dispatched undercover officers, known as
"rakers," into minority neighborhoods as part of a human mapping program, according to
officials directly involved in the program. They've monitored daily life in bookstores, bars,
cafes and nightclubs. Police have also used informants, known as "mosque crawlers," to monitor
sermons, even when there's no evidence of wrongdoing. Many of these operations were built with
help from the CIA, which is prohibited from spying on Americans but was instrumental in
transforming the NYPD's intelligence unit. A veteran CIA officer, while still on the agency's payroll,
was the architect of the NYPD's intelligence programs. The CIA trained a police detective at the
Farm, the agency's spy school in Virginia, then returned him to New York, where he put his new
espionage skills to work inside the United States. And just last month, the CIA sent a senior officer
to work as a clandestine operative inside police headquarters.
Note: For more on this important story from NPR, click here. For lots more from reliable sources
on government threats to civil liberties, click here.
Senators sound alarm over Patriot Act extension

2011-06-02, Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politicsnow/la-pn-patriot-act-alarm-201106...
When two senators warned that the Patriot Act is being interpreted in a secret way that would
alarm Americans if they knew the details, civil liberties activists could only speculate about what
they meant. The activists' fear: that the government is using the anti-terrorism law to collect vast
troves of personal information, including cellphone records, on Americans who have no link to
terrorism. Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, both Democrats, proclaimed
that the Patriot Act's surveillance powers are being used far more expansively than most
Americans realize. "Today the American people do not know how their government
interprets the language of the Patriot Act," Wyden said. "Someday they are going to find
out, and a lot of them are going to be stunned. Some of them will undoubtedly ask their
senators: 'Did you know what this law actually did? Why didn't you know? Wasn't it your job to
know, before you voted on it?'" The warnings by two lawmakers with access to secret
information underscore the extent to which government surveillance is shielded from view,
in an age when nearly every American leaves a digital trail through the Internet and mobile
devices. A clue about Wyden's concerns may be found in a separate bill he is proposing, to forbid
the government from tracking, without a court order, the location of Americans through the GPS
signals given out by their cellphones.
Note: For key reports from major media sources on government surveillance and other threats to
privacy and civil liberties, click here and here.
Report of bin Ladens death spurs questions from conspiracy theorists

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/report-of-bin-ladens-death-spur...
While much of America celebrated the dramatic killing of Osama bin Laden, the Sept. 11
conspiracy theorists still had questions. For them and a growing number of skeptics, the plot only
thickened. Could the public trust bin Ladens DNA samples? Why was [his body disposed of] in an
undisclosed location in the northern Arabian Sea? This has not put a single of the 9/11 questions
to bed, said Steven Jones, a retired Brigham Young University physics professor and contributor
to the 9/11 Truth Movement. I dont know how you can have closure, when there are hundreds of
contradictions to the stories that you were told. The story doesnt end here because we are told bin
Laden is dead, said Mike Berger, who works with 911Truth.org, an organization founded to
examine facts around the attack. Alex Jones, a radio personality out of Austin, who gives voice to
the 9/11 Truth Movement and runs the Web site Infowars.com, sent out a Web headline, Red
Alert. Inside Sources: Bin Laden Corpse Has Been on Ice for Nearly a Decade. He lists FBI
officials and counterintelligence leaders from Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan who have said
for years that bin Laden was dead. Former Council on Foreign Relations member Steve R.
Pieczenik even told Jones on the air in 2002 that bin Laden had been dead for months.
Note: For intriguing BBC News reports from 2010 and 2007 which claim bin Laden was already
dead at that time, click here and here. WantToKnow team member David Ray Griffin's book
establishing the likelihood that Osama bin Laden died in December 2001, Osama bin Laden: Dead
or Alive?, is available here.
Osama Bin Laden never charged for 9/11

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/140099/20110502/osama-bin-laden-never-charged...
Osama Bin Laden's death is being celebrated, and everyone seems to repeat the old conspiracy
theory that he was indeed the mastermind behind the terror attacks of 9/11. But that was never
proven, and there is not even evidence hinting at such a connection according to the FBI. Osama
Bin Laden was never formally charged, because the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation didn't
deliver the necessary evidence to the Department of Justice. Read ... what Rex Tomb, FBI Director
of Investigative Publicity, stated in 2006 about the FBI's position: The FBI gathers evidence. Once
evidence is gathered, it is turned over to the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice
then decides whether it has enough evidence to present to a federal grand jury. In the case of the
1998 United States Embassies being bombed, bin Laden has been formally indicted and
charged by a grand jury. He has not been formally indicted and charged in connection with
9/11 because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11." The connection
between Bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks was made by the Bush-Cheney administration, [on] the
morning of the attacks, before the first tower even collapsed. Nearly ten years later, after intensive
investigation, a government commission, two wars and the interrogation under torture of some 750
people detained in Guantanamo Bay without charges, no hard evidence could be found that would
confirm the initial allegation.
Note: The International Business Times is an online global business newspaper, published in
thirteen editions in twelve countries across eight languages. It is among the top-ten online
business newspapers in the world. WantToKnow team member David Ray Griffin's book
establishing the likelihood that Osama bin Laden died in December 2001, Osama bin Laden: Dead
or Alive?, is available here.
World's media tricked by fake bin Laden photo

2011-05-02, New Zealand Herald (New Zealand's leading newspaper)
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10723030
An image of Osama bin Laden after his death yesterday has been revealed as a fake. The photo,
which shows a bloodied bin Laden with a gun wound to the head, is the photo-shopped
combination of two images - one of the al Qaeda founder alive in 1998 and another of an unnamed
corpse. The image has reportedly been circulating for two years, but that did not stop the
image being picked up by media across the world in the wake of the terrorist's death. Britain's
Daily Mail, Times of London, Telegraph, Sun and Daily Mirror ... all used the image of their
websites' front pages, the Guardian reported, although they were quickly taken down. Associated
Press had placed the image on its wires, but soon retracted the photo as it could not verify its
authenticity. The picture appears to have first been published by the Middle East online newspaper
themedialine.org on April 29, 2009, although the site's editor then said they could not ascertain
whether it was genuine. A US official revealed the body was photographed before being
buried at sea, although no images have been released by the Obama administration. It is not
clear whether photos of bin Laden's body will be released.
Note: How did this photo become accepted by the media? And why was bin Laden's body buried
at sea? Could it be that those involved did not want anyone to be able to investigate whether the
body was indeed that of bin Laden? For two BBC reports suggesting that bin Laden may already
have been dead, click here and here.
U.S. to continue Pakistan strikes despite protests

2011-04-23, San Francisco Chronicle/Los Angeles Times
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2011/04/23/MN921J5V20.DTL
A U.S. missile strike in Pakistan's North Waziristan region killed at least 25 people on [April 22],
sending a clear sign that Washington's use of drones against militants along the Afghan border will
continue despite rising opposition from Islamabad's top civilian and military leaders. The strike in
the village of Spinwam came two days after Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint
Chiefs of Staff, held tense talks with Pakistani army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani amid a pall of
mistrust that has weakened relations between Washington and Islamabad in recent months.
Pakistan intensified its criticism of the drone campaign after a March 17 strike killed more than 40
people in the North Waziristan village of Datta Khel. Pakistani military leaders said that missile
strike killed civilian tribal elders meeting to discuss a dispute over local mining rights, though the
U.S. maintains that the people killed were militants. The Datta Khel strike came a day after the
release of Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor whose arrest in connection with the shooting deaths
of two Pakistanis brought relations between Washington and Islamabad to one of their lowest
points in years. Officials in North Waziristan said [the April 22] strike killed 18 suspected militants,
though seven of the dead were civilians - three women and four children. Four missiles were fired,
two of which struck a guest house with the suspected militants, the officials said. The other two
missiles hit another building where the women and children were.
Note: Imagine if another country were flying unmanned flights in the US and killing US citizens
who they suspected were terrorists along with innocent civilians as collateral damage. There would
be an uproar. Why isn't anyone talking about the legality of a foreign country killing citizens of
another country without any judicial process at all, especially when the government of the invaded
country opposes the attacks?
War on drugs has failed, say former heads of MI5, CPS and BBC
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8393838/War-on-drugs-has...
The "war on drugs" has failed and should be abandoned in favour of evidence-based policies that
treat addiction as a health problem, according to prominent public figures including former heads
of MI5 and the Crown Prosecution Service. Leading peers including prominent Tories say that
despite governments worldwide drawing up tough laws against dealers and users over the past 50
years, illegal drugs have become more accessible. Vast amounts of money have been
wasted on unsuccessful crackdowns, while criminals have made fortunes importing drugs
into this country. The increasing use of the most harmful drugs such as heroin has also led
to enormous health problems, according to the group. The MPs and members of the House of
Lords, who have formed a new All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform, are calling
for new policies to be drawn up on the basis of scientific evidence. It could lead to calls for the
British government to decriminalise drugs, or at least for the police and Crown Prosecution Service
not to jail people for possession of small amounts of banned substances.
Note: If you examine topics on which the government has declared war, what is being fought
against often increases instead of decreasing. Could it be that the best way to deal with serious
problems is not to wage war?
The figure in the new budget proposal nobody in power wants you to
notice
2011-03-01, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/01/opinion/main20038078.shtml
Normally, in media accounts, you hear about the Pentagon budget and the war-fighting
supplementary funds passed by Congress for our conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. That already
gets you into a startling price range -- close to $700 billion for 2012 -- but that's barely more than
half of it. If Americans were ever presented with the real bill for the total U.S. national
security budget, it would actually add up to more than $1.2 trillion a year. Take that in for a
moment. It's true; you won't find that figure in your daily newspaper or on your nightly newscast,
but it's no misprint. It's the real thing when it comes to your tax dollars. The simplest way to
grasp just how Americans could pay such a staggering amount annually for "security" is to go
through what we know about the U.S. national security budget, step by step, and add it all up.
[Click here for details] Still, don't for a second think that $1.2 trillion is the actual grand total for
what the U.S. government spends on national security. Former Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld once famously spoke of the world's "known unknowns." Explaining the phrase this way:
"That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know." It's a concept that couldn't apply
better to the budget he once oversaw. American taxpayers should know just what they are paying
for.
Note: When discussing budget cuts, why is it we never hear about cuts to the massive national
security budget? Donald Rumsfeld also once admitted that the Pentagon couldn't track $2.3 trillion
in transactions, as reported by CBS News in this video clip. For lots more on the rampant
corruption of military funds, click here. And for a top US general revealing how bankers and
industry tycoons rake in profits from war, click here.
Military to investigate claim that psy-ops team was used to influence

U.S. senators
The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan intends to order an investigation into whether a
three-star general responsible for training Afghan security forces inappropriately used members of
a psychological operations team to influence visiting U.S. senators into providing more funding for
the war. The U.S. command in Kabul issued a statement Thursday saying Gen. David H. Petraeus
"is preparing to order an investigation to determine the facts and circumstances surrounding the
issue." The investigation stems from an article published ... on the Web site of Rolling Stone
magazine alleging that Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, the head of the U.S. and NATO training
operation for Afghan forces, used an "information operations" team to "manipulate visiting
American senators" and other visitors, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
Adm. Mike Mullen. The article is based on the claims of a lieutenant colonel who served on a
psychological operations team in Afghanistan last year and who alleges he was subjected to
retribution when he resisted the assignment.
Note: To read Rolling Stone's fascinating report on how the US military used a secret program to
pressure Senators to support the war, click here.
Iraqi Says He Made Up Tale of Biological Weapons Before War

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/world/middleeast/16curveball.html
The Iraqi defector whose claims that Saddam Husseins government had biological weapons
became part of the Bush administrations justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq has admitted
that he fabricated his story. The defector, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, who was code-named
Curveball by the Central Intelligence Agency and German intelligence officials, told the British
newspaper The Guardian on [February 15] that he had concocted his tale that Iraq was hiding
mobile bioweapons laboratories. The strange case of Curveball has become one of the most
infamous episodes in the Bush administrations case for war. Mr. Janabis claim about the
mobile laboratories was featured prominently in Secretary of State Colin L. Powells
address to the United Nations in February 2003, when he laid out the administrations case that
Mr. Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction. The United States invaded Iraq in March
2003, and eventually determined that Iraq did not have any such weapons. It later became clear
that the Bush administration had relied heavily on bogus information from unreliable exiles like Mr.
Janabi.
Note: For background information on "Curveball" in the runup to the Iraq war, click here.
Former Spy With Agenda Operates a Private C.I.A.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/world/23clarridge.html
Duane R. [Dewey] Clarridge parted company with the Central Intelligence Agency more than two
decades ago, but from poolside at his home near San Diego, he still runs a network of spies. Over
the past two years, he has fielded operatives in the mountains of Pakistan and the desert badlands
of Afghanistan. Since the United States military cut off his funding in May, he has relied on likeminded private donors to pay his agents to continue gathering information about militant fighters
[and] Taliban leaders. Mr. Clarridge, 78, ... was indicted on charges of lying to Congress in the
Iran-contra scandal and later pardoned. His dispatches an amalgam of fact, rumor, analysis and
uncorroborated reports have been sent to military officials who, until last spring at least, found
some credible enough to be used in planning strikes against militants in Afghanistan. They are
also fed to conservative commentators, including Oliver L. North, a compatriot from the Iran-contra
days and now a Fox News analyst, and Brad Thor, an author of military thrillers and a frequent
guest of Glenn Beck. Mr. Clarridges operation ... is a startling demonstration of how private
citizens can exploit the chaos of combat zones and rivalries inside the American
government to carry out their own agenda. It also shows how the outsourcing of military
and intelligence operations has spawned legally murky clandestine operations.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on the role of private contractors in the illegal US wars
of aggression in Afganistan and Iraq, click here.
Undercover police cleared 'to have sex with activists'

2011-01-22, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/22/undercover-police-cleared-sex-activists
Undercover police officers routinely adopted a tactic of "promiscuity" with the blessing of senior
commanders, according to a former agent who worked in a secretive unit of the Metropolitan police
for four years. The former undercover policeman claims that sexual relationships with activists
were sanctioned for both men and women officers infiltrating anarchist, leftwing and
environmental groups. Sex was a tool to help officers blend in, the officer claimed, and was
widely used as a technique to glean intelligence. He said undercover officers, particularly those
infiltrating environmental and leftwing groups, viewed having sex with a large number of partners
"as part of the job". His comments contradict claims last week from the Association of Chief Police
Officers that operatives were absolutely forbidden to sleep with activists. The claims follow the
unmasking of undercover PC Mark Kennedy, who had sexual relationships with several women
during the seven years he spent infiltrating a ring of environmental activists. Another two covert
officers have been named in the past fortnight who also had sex with the protesters they were sent
to spy on, fuelling allegations that senior officers had authorised sleeping around as a legitimate
means of gathering intelligence.
Note: For a comprehensive overview of the still-ongoing revelations about police provocateur Mark
Kennedy and his cohorts in the UK police infiltration of environmental and related activist groups,
click here.
The state's pedlars of fear must be brought to account

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/11/police-reform-mark-stone-...
[Mark] Kennedy moved from undercover agent to agent provocateur. He worked for a murky
organisation called the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). With a budget of 5m this
operates as a branch of the National Domestic Extremism Unit (NDEU) which, in turn, works
alongside the National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit (NETCU). Ask where this stands,
and you will be told it reports to the Association of Chief Police Officers' Terrorism and Allied
Matters Committee, codenamed Acpo(TAM). Kennedy's bosses in the NPOIU work for Acpo, but
this is not what it seems. It is not, as its name suggests, the police officers' staff club, nor is it a
public body of any sort. [ACPO] is a private company, incorporated in 1997. It is subcontracted by Whitehall to operate the police end of the government's counterterrorism and
"anti-extremism" strategies. It is thus alongside MI5, but even less accountable. It now runs
its own police forces under a police chief boss, Sir Hugh Orde, like a British FBI. It trades on
its own account, generating revenue by selling data from the police national computer for 70 an
item (cost of retrieval, 60p). It owns an estate of 80 flats in central London. As a private company,
Acpo need not accede to Freedom of Information requests and presumably could distribute its
profit to its own board. The whole operation is reminiscent of the deals set up by the Pentagon with
private firms to run the Iraq and Afghan wars, free of publicity or accountability.
Note: For further information on the amazing undercover career of UK agent provocateur Mark
Kennedy, click here and here and here.
Terrorist watch list: One tip now enough to put name in database
A year after a Nigerian man allegedly tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, officials say they
have made it easier to add individuals' names to a terrorist watch list. The failure to put Umar
Farouk Abdulmutallab on the watch list last year renewed concerns that the government's system
to screen out potential terrorists was flawed. Even though Abdulmutallab's father had told U.S.
officials of his son's radicalization in Yemen, government rules dictated that a single-source tip was
insufficient to include a person's name on the watch list. Since then, senior counterterrorism
officials say they have altered their criteria so that a single-source tip, as long as it is deemed
credible, can lead to a name being placed on the watch list. But civil liberties groups argue that
the government's new criteria, which went into effect over the summer, have made it even
more likely that individuals who pose no threat will be swept up in the nation's security
apparatus, leading to potential violations of their privacy and making it difficult for them to
travel. "They are secret lists with no way for people to petition to get off or even to know if they're
on," said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. The list, which
stands at 440,000 people, [is now] about 5 percent larger than last year.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on growing threats to civil liberties, click here.
C.I.A. Secrets Could Surface in Swiss Nuclear Case

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/24/world/europe/24nukes.html
A seven-year effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to hide its relationship with a Swiss family
who once acted as moles inside the worlds most successful atomic black market hit a turning
point on [December 23] when a Swiss magistrate recommended charging the men with trafficking
in technology and information for making nuclear arms. The prospect of a prosecution, and a
public trial, threatens to expose some of the C.I.A.s deepest secrets if defense lawyers try
to protect their clients by revealing how they operated on the agencys behalf. The three
men Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, Urs and Marco helped run the atomic
smuggling ring of A. Q. Khan, an architect of Pakistans nuclear bomb program, officials in
several countries have said. In return for millions of dollars, according to former Bush
administration officials, the Tinners secretly worked for the C.I.A. as well, not only providing
information about the Khan networks manufacturing and sales efforts, which stretched from Iran to
Libya to North Korea, but also helping the agency introduce flaws into the equipment sent to some
of those countries. A trial ... could also expose in court a tale of C.I.A. break-ins in Switzerland, and
of a still unexplained decision by the agency not to seize electronic copies of a number of nuclear
bomb designs found on the computers of the Tinner family. Ultimately, copies of those blueprints
were found around the globe on the computers of members of the Khan network.
Note: This report establishes yet another connection between a secret nuclear materials network
linking both Khan and US government officials, parts of which were divulged by FBI whistleblower
Sibel Edmonds, who identified moles working with Khan in both the US State Department and the
Pentagon. For more on these highly suspicious networks, click here.
Monitoring America
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/monitoring-ame...
Nine years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, the United States is assembling a vast domestic
intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state
homeland security offices and military criminal investigators. The system, by far the largest and
most technologically sophisticated in the nation's history, collects, stores and analyzes
information about thousands of U.S. citizens and residents, many of whom have not been
accused of any wrongdoing. The months-long investigation [by The Washington Post], based on
nearly 100 interviews and 1,000 documents, found that: * Technologies and techniques honed for
use on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan have migrated into the hands of law enforcement
agencies in America. * The FBI is building a database with the names and certain personal
information, such as employment history, of thousands of U.S. citizens and residents whom a local
police officer or a fellow citizen believed to be acting suspiciously. * Law enforcement agencies
have hired as trainers self-described experts whose extremist views on Islam and terrorism are
considered inaccurate and counterproductive by the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies. * The
Department of Homeland Security sends its state and local partners intelligence reports with little
meaningful guidance, and state reports have sometimes inappropriately reported on lawful
meetings.
Note: This report is part of a series, "Top Secret America," by The Washington Post. For more,
click here.
Why does the FBI Orchestrate Fake Terror Plots?

2010-11-30, Global Research
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22175
The latest one snared Osman Mohamud, a Somali-American teenager in Portland, Oregon. The
Associated Press report by William Mall and Nedra Pickler (11-27-10) ... makes it clear that it was
a plot orchestrated by federal agents. Two sentences into the news report we have this: "The
bomb was an elaborate fake supplied by the [FBI] agents and the public was never in danger,
authorities said." The teenager was supplied with a fake bomb and a fake detonator. Documents
released by US Attorney Dwight Holton "show the sting operation began in June." Obviously, the
targeted Portland teenager was not hot to trot. The FBI had to work on him for six months. The
reporters compare "the Portland sting" to the recent arrest in Virginia of Faroque Ahmed who was
ensnared in a "bombing plot that was a ruse conducted over the past six months by federal
officials." Think about this. The FBI did a year's work in order to convince two people to
participate in fake plots. When the US government has to go to such lengths to create
"terrorists" out of hapless people, an undeclared agenda is being served. What could this
agenda be? The answer is many agendas. One agenda is to justify wars of aggression that are
war crimes under the Nuremberg standard created by the US government itself. Another agenda is
to create a police state. A police state can control people who object to their impoverishment for
the benefit of the superrich much more easily than can a democracy endowed with constitutional
civil liberties. Another agenda is to get rich. Terror plots, whether real or orchestrated, have created
a market for security.
Note: Though the source of this article is not considered major media, the writer, Paul Craig
Roberts, served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, earning
fame as a co-founder of Reaganomics. He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street
Journal, Business Week, and Scripps-Howard News Service. Roberts has been a critic of both
Democratic and Republican administrations.
No charges for destroying CIA interrogation videos

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40091824/ns/us_news-security/40091824
A special prosecutor cleared CIA employees ... of any criminal charges for destroying videotapes
that showed waterboarding of terror suspects, even though two sources close to the case say a
key witness was never questioned. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that
special counsel John Durham never issued a grand jury subpoena for testimony from Jose
Rodriguez, the CIA's former top clandestine officer, who approved the destruction of the
tapes. Rodriguez' lawyer, Bob Bennett, had made clear that his client would not testify without a
grant of immunity. But Durham's failure to call Rodriguez, or even question him as a witness,
surprised one lawyer close to the case, indicating it could raise questions about the special
counsel's claim that he had conducted a "thorough" investigation. The decision not to prosecute
anyone in the videotape destruction came five years to the day after the CIA destroyed its cache of
92 videos of two al-Qaida operatives, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri, being subjected to
waterboarding, which evokes the sensation of drowning. The deadline for prosecuting someone
under most federal laws is five years. Jamell Jaffer, a lawyer for the ACLU, criticized the decision.
"The problem here is not just the destruction of the tapes, but what the tapes depicted
interrogators using barbaric methods endorsed at the highest levels of the government."
Note: It appears that the courts are not willing to put a stop to the increasing criminality and
usurpations of power of the National Security State. For abundant documentation from major
media sources of the illegalities and atrocities committed by US intelligence and military in the
GWOT, click here.
D.E.A. Deployed Mumbai Plotter Despite Warning

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/world/asia/08terror.html
American authorities sent David C. Headley, a small-time drug dealer and sometime
informant, to work for them in Pakistan months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, despite a
warning that he sympathized with radical Islamic groups. Not long after Mr. Headley arrived
there, he began training with terrorists, eventually playing a key role in the 2008 attacks that
left 164 people dead in Mumbai. The October 2001 warning was dismissed, the authorities said,
as the ire of a jilted girlfriend and for lack of proof. Less than a month later, those concerns did not
come up when a federal court in New York granted Mr. Headley an early release from probation so
that he could be sent to work for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration in Pakistan. It
is unclear what Mr. Headley was supposed to do in Pakistan for the Americans. Two of the former
drug dealers ex-wives had gone to American authorities between 2005 and 2008, before the
Mumbai attacks, to say they feared he was plotting with terrorists. Combined with the earlier
warning from the former girlfriend, three of the women in Mr. Headleys life reported his ties to
terrorists, only to have those warnings dismissed. An examination of Mr. Headleys story
shows that his government ties ran far deeper and longer than previously known. One senior
American official knowledgeable about the case said he believed that Mr. Headley was a D.E.A.
informant until at least 2003, meaning that he was talking to American agencies even as he was
learning to deal with explosives and small arms in terrorist training camps.
Note: This story certainly raises the question whether the Mumbai attacks were not in fact a falseflag operation. For many reports from reliable sources that reveal similar ties between government
agencies running clandestine operations and terrorist attacks, click here.
Humiliate, strip, threaten: UK military interrogation manuals discovered

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/oct/25/uk-military-interrogation-manuals
The British military has been training interrogators in techniques that include threats, sensory
deprivation and enforced nakedness in an apparent breach of the Geneva conventions. Training
materials drawn up secretly in recent years tell interrogators they should aim to provoke
humiliation, insecurity, disorientation, exhaustion, anxiety and fear in the prisoners they are
questioning, and suggest ways in which this can be achieved. A manual prepared in April
2008 suggests that "Cpers" captured personnel be kept in conditions of physical discomfort
and intimidated. Sensory deprivation is lawful, it adds, if there are "valid operational reasons". It
also urges enforced nakedness. More recent training material says blindfolds, earmuffs and plastic
handcuffs are essential equipment for military interrogators, and says that while prisoners should
be allowed to sleep or rest for eight hours in each 24, they need be permitted only four hours
unbroken sleep. It also suggests that interrogators tell prisoners they will be held incommunicado
unless they answer questions. The 1949 Geneva conventions prohibit any "physical or moral
coercion", in particular any coercion employed to obtain information. All the British classified
training material was produced after the death of Baha Mousa, the Iraqi hotel receptionist tortured
to death by British troops in Basra in September 2003.
Note: For a survey of historic and contemporary uses of torture, click here. For more disturbing
information on how Nazi torture techniques were eventually used by the CIA for mind control, click
here.
WikiLeaks and 9/11: What if?

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/15/opinion/la-oe-rowley-wikileaks-20101015
If WikiLeaks had been around in 2001, could the events of 9/11 have been prevented? The idea is
worth considering. There were a lot of us in the run-up to Sept. 11 who had seen warning signs
that something devastating might be in the planning stages. One of us, Coleen Rowley, was a
special agent/legal counsel at the FBI's Minneapolis division and worked closely with those who
arrested would-be terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui on an immigration violation less than a month
before the World Trade Center was destroyed. Following up on a tip from flight school instructors
who had become suspicious of the French Moroccan who claimed to want to fly a jet as an "ego
boost," Special Agent Harry Samit and an INS colleague had detained Moussaoui. A foreign
intelligence service promptly reported that he had connections with a foreign terrorist group, but
FBI officials in Washington inexplicably turned down Samit's request for authority to search
Moussaoui's laptop computer and personal effects. Later, testifying at Moussaoui's trial,
Samit testified that he believed the behavior of his FBI superiors in Washington constituted
"criminal negligence." WikiLeaks might have provided a pressure valve for those agents who
were terribly worried about what might happen and frustrated by their superiors' seeming
indifference.
Note: For questions raised about the official account of 9/11 by many courageous professionals,
click here and here.
Witnesses in Defense Dept. Report Suggest Cover-Up of 9/11 Findings

2010-10-04, Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/10/04/exclusive-witnesses-defense-depart...
A document obtained and witnesses interviewed by Fox News raise new questions over whether
there was an effort by the Defense Department to cover up a pre-9/11 military intelligence program
known as "Able Danger." At least five witnesses questioned by the Defense Department's
Inspector General told Fox News that their statements were distorted by investigators in the final
IG's report -- or it left out key information, backing up assertions that lead hijacker Mohammed Atta
was identified a year before 9/11. Lt. Col Tony Shaffer, an operative involved with Able Danger
[and author of Operation Dark Heart, a recent book which discussed the Able Danger operation,
and all copies of which were destroyed by the Pentagon] said, "My last interview was very, very
hostile." When asked why the IG's report was so aggressive in its denials of his claims and those
of other witnesses -- that the data mining project had identified Atta as a threat to the U.S. before
9/11 -- Shaffer said [the] Defense Department was worried about taking some of the blame
for 9/11. Specifically, the Defense Intelligence Agency ... wanted the removal of references
to a meeting between Shaffer and the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip
Zelikow, removed. Shaffer alleges that in that meeting, which took place in Afghanistan, the
commission was told about Able Danger and the identification of Atta before the attacks. Shaffer,
who was undercover at the time, said there was "stunned silence" at the meeting. No mention of
this was made in the final 9/11 Commission report.
Note: Able Danger was the program which identified Mohamed Atta and three other alleged 9/11
hijackers as a potential terror threat before 9/11. To read major media reports on the intense
controversy around this program (which is likely why Shaffer's book is being burned by the
Pentagon), click here. For a highly revealing Fox News interview with Col. Shaffer on these major
deceptions, click here.
CIA hired Karzai brother before 9/11, Woodward says

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/09/cia_hired_karzai_brother_befo...
Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of Afghanistans president and boss of the strategically
important Kandahar province, has been on the CIA payroll for over a decade, Bob Woodward
writes in his new book, Obamas Wars. By the fall of 2008, Woodward says, Ahmed Wali Karzai
had been on the CIA payroll for years, beginning before 9/11. He had belonged to the CIA's
small network of paid agents and informants inside Afghanistan. In addition, the CIA paid
him money through his half-brother, the president. Hamid Karzai was plucked from obscurity
and installed as president after U.S.-backed Afghan forces chased the Taliban from power
following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. There have been many accounts of his brothers relationship
with the CIA over the years, leaving the impression that he is a CIA agent, i.e., a controlled asset
of the spy agency. But Woodwards account of the CIAs relationship with Karzai, who has also
been accused repeatedly -- but not charged with -- protecting the illicit opium trade, is more
nuanced. He was not in any sense a controlled agent who always responded to U.S. and CIA
requests and pressure, Woodward writes. He was his own man, playing all sides against the
others -- the United States, the drug dealers, the Taliban and even his brother if necessary.
Note: What this article fails to mention is that President Karzai was also an employee of the major
oil company Unocal, as reported in this Chicago Tribune article.
US soldiers killed Afghan civilians for sport

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/09/us-soldiers-afghan-civilians-fingers
Twelve American soldiers face charges over a secret "kill team" that allegedly blew up and
shot Afghan civilians at random and collected their fingers as trophies. Five of the soldiers
are charged with murdering three Afghan men who were allegedly killed for sport in
separate attacks this year. Seven others are accused of covering up the killings and assaulting a
recruit who exposed the murders. In one of the most serious accusations of war crimes to emerge
from the Afghan conflict, the killings are alleged to have been carried out by members of a Stryker
infantry brigade based in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan. According to investigators
and legal documents, discussion of killing Afghan civilians began after the arrival of Staff Sergeant
Calvin Gibbs at forward operating base Ramrod last November. Other soldiers told the army's
criminal investigation command that Gibbs boasted of the things he got away with while serving in
Iraq and said how easy it would be to "toss a grenade at someone and kill them". Investigators
said Gibbs, 25, hatched a plan with another soldier, Jeremy Morlock, 22, and other members of the
unit to form a "kill team". The Army Times reported that a least one of the soldiers collected the
fingers of the victims as souvenirs and that some of them posed for photographs with the bodies.
Note: For analysis of this latest report of US military atrocities in Afghanistan, click here and here.
For an analysis of how this and other US atrocities in Afghanistan have been systematically
suppressed by the US media, click here. For a powerful analysis of "Why America Cannot Win the
War in Afghanistan" by a former high-ranking Pakistani general, Hamid Gul, click here.
Karzai Aide in Corruption Inquiry Is Tied to C.I.A.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/world/asia/26kabul.html
The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the center of a politically sensitive corruption
investigation is being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Afghan and American
officials. Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief of administration for the National Security Council,
appears to have been on the payroll for many years, according to officials in Kabul and
Washington. It is unclear exactly what Mr. Salehi does in exchange for his money, whether
providing information to the spy agency, advancing American views inside the presidential palace,
or both. Mr. Salehis relationship with the C.I.A. underscores deep contradictions at the heart
of the Obama administrations policy in Afghanistan, with American officials
simultaneously demanding that Mr. Karzai root out the corruption that pervades his
government while sometimes subsidizing the very people suspected of perpetrating it.
Other prominent Afghans who American officials have said were on the C.I.A.s payroll include the
presidents half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, suspected by investigators of playing a role in
Afghanistans booming opium trade. Over the course of the nine-year-old war, the C.I.A. has
enmeshed itself in the inner workings of Afghanistans national security establishment. From 2002
until just last year, the C.I.A. paid the entire budget of Afghanistans spy service, the National
Directorate of Security.
Note: For key reports on the corruption and profiteering that are the real fuels for war, click here.
Plaintiff who challenged FBI's national security letters reveals concerns

For six years, Nicholas Merrill has lived in a surreal world of half-truths, where he could not tell
even his fiancee, his closest friends or his mother that he is "John Doe" -- the man who filed the
first-ever court challenge to the FBI's ability to obtain personal data on Americans without judicial
approval. No one knew he was the plaintiff challenging the FBI's authority to issue "national
security letters," as they are known, and its ability to impose a gag on the recipient. Now, following
the partial lifting of his gag order 11 days ago as a result of an FBI settlement, Merrill can speak
openly for the first time about the experience, although he cannot disclose the full scope of the
data demanded. "One of the most dangerous and troubling things about the FBI's national
security letter powers is how much it has been shrouded in secrecy," said Melissa Goodman,
a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who helped Merrill sue the government in April
2004 and was one of only a handful of people outside the FBI -- all lawyers -- who knew Merrill had
received a letter. The FBI between 2003 and 2006 issued more than 192,500 letters -- an average
of almost 50,000 a year. The Justice Department inspector general in 2007 faulted the bureau for
failing to adequately justify the issuance of such letters.
Note: For key reports from major media sources on the erosion of civil liberties by government,
click here.
Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah 'worse than Hiroshima'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assaul...
Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was
bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that
were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study. Iraqi doctors in
Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious
birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they
were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops
and insurgents. Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all
cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more
than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait. Dr Chris
Busby, ... one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said ... "to produce an
effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the
attacks happened". US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of
Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were
killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in
November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that
they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.
Note: For many reports from major media sources of the horrific impacts of the US wars of
aggression in the Middle East and Central Asia, click here.
Documents Back Saudi Link to Extremists

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/world/middleeast/24saudi.html
Documents gathered by lawyers for the families of Sept. 11 victims provide new evidence of
extensive financial support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups by members of the Saudi royal
family, but the material may never find its way into court because of legal and diplomatic obstacles.
The case has put the Obama administration in the middle of a political and legal dispute,
with the Justice Department siding with the Saudis in court last month in seeking to kill
further legal action. Adding to the intrigue, classified American intelligence documents related to
Saudi finances were leaked anonymously to lawyers for the families. The Justice Department had
the lawyers copies destroyed and now wants to prevent a judge from even looking at the material.
Two federal judges and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals have already ruled against the 7,630
people represented in the lawsuit, made up of survivors of the attacks and family members of
those killed, throwing out the suit on the ground that the families cannot bring legal action in the
United States against a sovereign nation and its leaders. The Supreme Court is expected to
decide this week whether to hear an appeal, but the families prospects dimmed last month when
the Justice Department sided with the Saudis in their immunity claim and urged the court not to
consider the appeal.
Note: For many questions about the relationship between powerful Saudis, the US government
and the events of 9/11, click here.
Army Leak Suspect Is Arrested

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/world/08leaks.html
The Department of Defense announced that Specialist [Bradley] Manning, of Potomac, Md.,
had been arrested and was under investigation [for leaking a video of a US helicopter attack
on civilians in Baghdad to a whistleblower website, Wikileaks]. The leak of the helicopter
video, which Wikileaks titled Collateral Murder, caused serious consternation at the
Pentagon, where senior officials are increasingly concerned about technology that makes it easier
to anonymously post documents, photographs and videos online. But opponents of the Iraq war
have said that the video provided irrefutable evidence of a military blunder, and that it should not
have been classified. The episode also drew wide attention to Wikileaks, a once-fringe Web site
that aims to bring to light secret information about governments and corporations. It was founded
three years ago by Julian Assange, an Australian activist and journalist, and has published
documents about toxic dumping in Africa, protocols from Guantnamo Bay and e-mail messages
from Sarah Palins personal account.
Note: In case the above video disappears, click here to view it on one of our websites. The only
reason this event made news is because the two cameramen killed were Reuters staff. US forces
then fired on an unarmed van with children in it, which was attempting to bring the dead and
wounded out of the combat zone. How many innocent civilians are killed like this and never make
the news? Please spread this important video and help others to wake up and work together to
stop the cruelty of some of the US forces. The Pentagon is working hard to shut down Wikileaks,
the organization which secured this powerful video.
Gaza flotilla activists were shot in head at close range

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/04/gaza-flotilla-activists-autopsy-r...
Israel was tonight under pressure to allow an independent inquiry into its assault on the Gaza aid
flotilla after autopsy results on the bodies of those killed, obtained by the Guardian, revealed they
were peppered with 9mm bullets, many fired at close range. Nine Turkish men on board the Mavi
Marmara were shot a total of 30 times and five were killed by gunshot wounds to the head,
according to the vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine, [Yalcin Buyuk]. The
results revealed that a 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, was shot four times in the temple, chest,
hip and back. A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, who also has US citizenship, was shot five
times from less that 45cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the
back. Two other men were shot four times, and five of the victims were shot either in the back of
the head or in the back. The new information about the manner and intensity of the killings
undermines Israel's insistence that its soldiers opened fire only in self defence and in response to
attacks by the activists. "Given the very disturbing evidence which contradicts the line from
the Israeli media and suggests that Israelis have been very selective in the way they have
addressed this, there is now an overwhelming need for an international inquiry," said
Andrew Slaughter MP, a member of the all party group on Britain and Palestine.
CIA drones have broader list of targets

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/05/world/la-fg-drone-targets-20100506
The CIA received secret permission to attack a wider range of targets, including suspected
militants whose names are not known, as part of a dramatic expansion of its campaign of drone
strikes in Pakistan's border region. The expanded authority, approved two years ago by the
Bush administration and continued by President Obama, permits the agency to rely on
what officials describe as "pattern of life" analysis ... to target suspected militants, even
when their full identities are not known, the officials said. Previously, the CIA was restricted in
most cases to killing only individuals whose names were on an approved list. Instead of just a few
dozen attacks per year, CIA-operated unmanned aircraft now carry out multiple missile strikes
each week against safe houses, training camps and other hiding places used by militants in the
tribal belt bordering Afghanistan. "There are a lot of ethical questions here about whether we know
who the targets are," said Loch Johnson, an intelligence scholar at the University of Georgia and a
former congressional aide. President Bush secretly decided in his last year in office to expand the
program. Obama has continued and even streamlined the process, so that CIA Director Leon E.
Panetta can sign off on many attacks without notifying the White House beforehand, an official
said.
Note: How can the CIA be allowed to kill people whose names aren't even known? Why are they
allowed to kill anyone without some form of judicial process? For more on this secret and
expanding CIA assassination program, click here. For analysis, click here.
C.I.A. Document Details Destruction of Tapes

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/us/16tapes.html
Porter J. Goss, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in 2005 approved of the
decision by one of his top aides to destroy dozens of videotapes documenting the brutal
interrogation of two detainees, according to an internal C.I.A. document released [on April 15].
Shortly after the tapes were destroyed at the order of Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the head
of the C.I.A.s clandestine service, Mr. Goss told Mr. Rodriguez that he agreed with
the decision, according to the document. He even joked after Mr. Rodriguez offered to
take the heat for destroying the tapes. PG laughed and said that actually, it would be
he, PG, who would take the heat, according to one document. A number of documents
released Thursday provide the most detailed glimpse yet of the deliberations inside the C.I.A.
surrounding the destroyed tapes, and of the concern among officials at the spy agency that the
decision might put the C.I.A. in legal jeopardy. The documents detailing those deliberations,
including two e-mail messages from a C.I.A. official whose name has been excised, were released
as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
According to one of the e-mail messages released Thursday, Mr. Rodriguez told Mr. Goss that the
tapes ... would make the C.I.A. look terrible; it would be devastating to us.
License to Kill? Intelligence Chief Says U.S. Can Take Out American
Terrorists
2010-02-03, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/license-kill-intelligence-chief-us-american-te...
The director of national intelligence affirmed rather bluntly today that the U.S. intelligence
community has authority to target American citizens for assassination if they present a
direct terrorist threat to the United States. "We take direct actions against terrorists in the
intelligence community; if we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific
permission to do that," Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the House Intelligence
Committee. "Whether that American is involved in a group that is trying to attack us, whether that
American ... is a threat to other Americans. Those are the factors involved." Blair explained.
According to U.S. officials, only a handful of Americans would be eligible for targeting by U.S.
intelligence or military operations. The DNI said that Internet and social media sites have become
critical to terrorism recruitment efforts. "The homegrown radicalization of people in the United
States is a relatively new thing." Blair said U.S. intelligence was rapidly working to counter the
emerging problem.
Note: To read a valuable commentary on Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair's claimed
"war exception" to the Constitution, permitting assassination of American citizens by the US
military and intelligence services without judicial review or legal process of any kind, click here. For
the views of several legal experts, click here.
U.S. citizen in CIA's cross hairs

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/31/world/la-fg-cia-awlaki31-2010jan31
The CIA sequence for a Predator strike ends with a missile but begins with a memo. Usually no
more than two or three pages long, it bears the name of a suspected terrorist, the latest
intelligence on his activities, and a case for why he should be added to a list of people the agency
is trying to kill. No U.S. citizen has ever been on the CIA's target list. But that is expected to
change as CIA analysts compile a case against a Muslim cleric who was born in New Mexico but
now resides in Yemen. He is a U.S. citizen and until recently was mainly known as a preacher
espousing radical Islamic views. Awlaki's status as a U.S. citizen requires special
consideration, according to former officials familiar with the criteria for the CIA's targeted
killing program. But while Awlaki has not yet been placed on the CIA list, the officials said it
is all but certain that he will be. The CIA has carried out Predator attacks in Yemen since at least
2002, when a drone strike killed six suspected Al Qaeda operatives traveling in a vehicle across
desert terrain. The agency knew that one of the operatives was an American, Kamal Derwish, who
was among those killed. Derwish was never on the CIA's target list, officials said, and the strike
was aimed at a senior Al Qaeda operative.
Note: As the last few sentences of this long report indicate, assassination of their own citizens by
US military and intelligence agencies has been going on for years. For many key reports from
reliable sources on assassination as state policy, click here.
Gulf-trotting Tony Blair cashes in on his war contacts

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6879436.ece
Tony Blair has been cashing in on his contacts from the Iraq conflict and his role as Middle East
peace envoy for a private business venture expected to earn him more than 5m a year. The
former prime minister has sold his political and economic expertise to two countries, Kuwait and
the United Arab Emirates, via his fledgling private consultancy. He also represents the investment
bank JP Morgan in the region. Blair has been ... amassing a fortune from the American lecture
circuit. By offering himself to the Arab states as a statesman for hire, he could comfortably double
his annual earnings. His consultancy, the London-based Tony Blair Associates (TBA), emulates
the New York partnership Kissinger Associates, which was founded by Henry Kissinger, the former
national security adviser to President Nixon. Peter Brierley, 59, of Batley, West Yorkshire, whose
28-year-old son Shaun was killed near the Kuwait-Iraq border in 2003 and who refused to shake
Blairs hand at a memorial service this month, said: This beggars belief. Its absolutely
scandalous that hes now trying to make money from his contacts in the region. Its money
from the blood and lives of the soldiers who died in Iraq. His fees for talks, along with
contracts with JP Morgan and Zurich Financial Services, are estimated to put his earnings
excluding [a big] book deal well in excess of 5m a year.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on government corruption, click here.
Has Osama Bin Laden been dead for seven years - and are the U.S. and
Britain covering it up to continue war on terror?
2009-09-11, Daily Mail (One of the UK's largest-circulation newspapers)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1212851/Has-Osama-Bin-Laden-dead-seve...
[President] Barack Obama has launched a fresh operation to find [Osama bin Laden]. Working
with the Pakistani Army, elite squads of U.S. and British special forces were sent into Waziristan
this summer to 'hunt and kill' the shadowy figure intelligence officers still call 'the principal target' of
the war on terror. This new offensive is, of course, based on the premise that the 9/11 terrorist is
alive. Yet what if he isn't? What if he has been dead for years, and the British and U.S.
intelligence services are actually playing a game of double bluff? What if everything we
have seen or heard of him on video and audio tapes since the early days after 9/11 is a fake
- and that he is being kept 'alive' by the Western allies to stir up support for the war on
terror? Incredibly, this is the breathtaking theory that is gaining credence among political
commentators, respected academics and even terror experts. Still more questions have been
raised with the publication in America and Britain of a book called Osama Bin Laden: Dead or
Alive? Written by political analyst and philosopher Professor David Ray Griffin, ... it is provoking
shock waves - for it goes into far more detail about his supposed death and suggests there has
been a cover-up by the West. The book claims that Bin Laden died of kidney failure, or a linked
complaint, on December 13, 2001, while living in Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains close to the
border with Waziristan. His burial took place within 24 hours, in line with Muslim religious rules,
and in an unmarked grave, which is a Wahhabi custom. The author insists that the many Bin
Laden tapes made since that date have been concocted by the West to make the world believe
Bin Laden is alive. Could it be that, for years, he's just been smoke and mirrors?
Note: Hundreds of scholars, officials and professionals have raised questions about bin Laden, Al
Qaeda, and other aspects of the official conspiracy about the events of 9/11. Click here and here
to read their concerns.
Pentagon Exam Calls Protests 'Low-Level Terrorism,' Angering Activists

2009-06-17, Fox News
A written exam administered by the Pentagon labels "protests" as a form of low-level terrorism
enraging civil liberties advocates and activist groups who say it shows blatant disregard of the First
Amendment. The written exam, given as part of Department of Defense employees routine
training, includes a multiple-choice question that asks: Which of the following is an example
of low-level terrorism? Attacking the Pentagon IEDs Hate crimes against racial
groups Protests. The correct answer, according to the exam, is "Protests." Its part of a
pattern of equating dissent and protest with terrorism," said Ann Brick, an attorney with the
American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained a copy of the question after a Defense Department
employee who was taking the test printed the screen on his or her computer terminal. "It
undermines the core constitutional values the Department of Defense is supposed to be
defending, Brick said, referring to the First Amendment right to peaceably assemble. She said the
ACLU has asked the Defense Department to remove the question and send out a correction to all
employees who took the exam. There were other employees who were unhappy with it and
disturbed by it, Brick said. Anti-war protesters, who say they have been targets of federal
surveillance for years, were livid when they were told about the exam question. Thats illegal,
said George Martin, national co-chairman of United for Peace and Justice. Protest in terms of
legal dissent has to be recognized, especially by the authorities. Its not terrorism or a lack of
patriotism. We care enough to be active in our government.
Note: For lots more on the continually-escalating government threats to civil liberties, click here.
How MI5 blackmails British Muslims

2009-05-21, The Independent (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-how-mi5-blackmails-b...
Five Muslim community workers have accused MI5 of waging a campaign of blackmail and
harassment in an attempt to recruit them as informants. The men claim they were given a choice
of working for the Security Service or face detention and harassment in the UK and overseas.
They have made official complaints to the police, to the body which oversees the work of the
Security Service and to their local MP Frank Dobson. Now they have decided to speak publicly
about their experiences in the hope that publicity will stop similar tactics being used in the future.
Three of the men say they were detained at foreign airports on the orders of MI5 after leaving
Britain on family holidays last year. After they were sent back to the UK, they were interviewed by
MI5 officers who, they say, falsely accused them of links to Islamic extremism. On each occasion
the agents said they would lift the travel restrictions and threat of detention in return for their cooperation. When the men refused some of them received what they say were intimidating phone
calls and threats. Two other Muslim men say they were approached by MI5 at their homes
after police officers posed as postmen. Each of the five men, aged between 19 and 25, was
warned that if he did not help the security services he would be considered a terror
suspect. A sixth man was held by MI5 for three hours after returning from his honeymoon in Saudi
Arabia. He too claims he was threatened with travel restrictions if he tried to leave the UK."
Note: For lots more on the "war on terror" from reliable sources, click here.
Control of Cybersecurity Becomes Divisive Issue

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/us/politics/17cyber.html?partner=rss&emc=rs...
The National Security Agency has been campaigning to lead the governments rapidly growing
cybersecurity programs, raising privacy and civil liberties concerns among some officials who fear
that the move could give the spy agency too much control over government computer networks.
The security agencys interest in taking over the dominant role has met resistance, including the
resignation of the Homeland Security Department official who was until last month in charge of
coordinating cybersecurity efforts throughout the government. Rod Beckstrom, who resigned in
March as director of the National Cyber Security Center at the Homeland Security Department,
said ... that he feared that the N.S.A.s push for a greater role in guarding the governments
computer systems could give it the power to collect and analyze every e-mail message, text
message and Google search conducted by every employee in every federal agency. Mr.
Beckstrom said he believed that an intelligence service that is supposed to focus on foreign targets
should not be given so much control over the flow of information within the United States
government. To detect threats against the computer infrastructure including hackers, viruses
and intrusions by foreign agents and terrorists cybersecurity guardians must have virtually
unlimited access to networks. Mr. Beckstrom argues that those responsibilities should be divided
among agencies. I have very serious concerns about the concentration of too much power in one
agency, he said. Power over information is so important, and it is so difficult to monitor, that we
need to have checks and balances.
Note: For further disturbing reports from reliable sources on government efforts to establish total
surveillance systems, click here.
Canada blocks outspoken British MP

2009-03-20, Toronto Star
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/605682
Canadian officials have denied outspoken anti-war British MP George Galloway entry into Canada
on grounds he poses a threat to national security. Alykhan Velshi, a spokesperson for Immigration
Minister Jason Kenney, said today Galloway has openly supported Hamas, classified as a terrorist
group in Canada, as well as other terrorists. Galloway, who was expected to begin a Canadian
speaking tour in Toronto on March 30, called the ban outrageous. Galloway said his supposed
support for Hamas amounted to leading an aid convoy into Gaza to break the "illegal siege"
following the month-long Israeli incursion in January. "I led a convoy of 110 British vehicles,
more than 300 British citizens, to break the illegal siege of Gaza just a few days ago. Most
people in the world think that feeding people under siege is something to be commended
rather than something to get you banned," he told the Star in a telephone interview from his
London office. He noted that when news he was being denied entry to visit Canada first appeared
in the British press, it was supposedly because he had expressed opposition to the NATO-led
Afghan war. Some critics have called the government's decision to bar Galloway an attack on free
speech. Galloway was expelled from the Labour Party in 2003 for urging British soldiers not to fight
in Iraq. He formed his own party, Respect, and won re-election to the Commons in 2005.
The 9/11 Commission and Torture

http://www.newsweek.com/id/189251
Powerful Democrats on Capitol Hill are clamoring for creation of a bipartisan "9/11 style"
commission to investigate the legality of the Bush administration's antiterrorism tacticsespecially
its use of harsh interrogation techniques. The case for a "truth" commission was bolstered by
the disclosure this month that the CIA had destroyed 92 videotapes of the interrogations
and confinement of Al Qaeda suspects. A dozen showed the use of ... torture. Lawmakers
say the obvious model for such an inquiry would be the 9/11 Commission. [But] the commission
appears to have ignored obvious clues throughout 2003 and 2004 that its account of the 9/11 plot
and Al Qaeda's history relied heavily on information obtained from detainees who had been
subjected to torture, or something not far from it. The [Commission] raised no public protest over
the CIA's interrogation methods. In fact, the Commission demanded that the CIA carry out new
rounds of interrogations in 2004 to get answers to its questions. That has troubling implications for
the credibility of the commission's final report. In intelligence circles, testimony obtained through
torture is typically discredited; research shows that people will say anything under threat of intense
physical pain. Former senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, a Democrat on the commission, told me
last year he had long feared that the investigation depended too heavily on the accounts of Al
Qaeda detainees who were physically coerced into talking. Kerrey said it might take "a
permanent 9/11 commission" to end the remaining mysteries of September 11.
Note: For key statements by hundreds of respected scholars and professionals questioning the
accuracy of the 9/11 Commission's report, click here.
Known Unknowns: Uncoventional

2008-11-01, U.S. Army Website, Strategic Studies Institute
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB890.pdf
Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to
reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security. Deliberate
employment of weapons of mass destruction or other catastrophic capabilities, unforeseen
economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or
insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters
are all paths to disruptive domestic shock. An American government and defense establishment
lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or
most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at
home. Already predisposed to defer to the primacy of civilian authorities in instances of domestic
security and divest all but the most extreme demands in areas like civil support and consequence
management, DoD might be forced by circumstances to put its broad resources at the
disposal of civil authorities to contain and reverse violent threats to domestic tranquility.
Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against
hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD would be, by necessity, an essential
enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or
disturbance.
Note: For an analysis which deconstructs the opaque military jargon in which this revealing
strategic document is written, click here. Use of military forces to maintain domestic order has
been forbidden since 1878 by the Posse Comitatus Act. The Pentagon appears to be planning to
abrogate this key support of civil liberties.
Bruce Ivins Wasn't the Anthrax Culprit

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121789293570011775.html
Over the past week the media was gripped by the news that the FBI was about to charge Bruce
Ivins, a leading anthrax expert, as the man responsible for the anthrax letter attacks in
September/October 2001. But despite the seemingly powerful narrative that Ivins committed
suicide because investigators were closing in, this is still far from a shut case. The FBI needs to
explain why it zeroed in on Ivins, how he could have made the anthrax mailed to lawmakers and
the media, and how he (or anyone else) could have pulled off the attacks, acting alone. The
spores could not have been produced at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of
Infectious Diseases, where Ivins worked, without many other people being aware of it.
Furthermore, the equipment to make such a product does not exist at the institute. The
product contained essentially pure spores. The particle size was 1.5 to 3 microns in diameter.
There are several methods used to produce anthrax that small. But most of them require milling
the spores to a size small enough that it can be inhaled into the lower reaches of the lungs. In this
case, however, the anthrax spores were not milled. They were also tailored to make them
potentially more dangerous. The spores were coated with a polyglass which tightly bound
hydrophilic silica to each particle. Each particle was given a weak electric charge, thereby causing
the particles to repel each other at the molecular level. This made it easier for the spores to float in
the air, and increased their retention in the lungs. In short, the potential lethality of anthrax in this
case far exceeds that of any powdered product found in the now extinct U.S. Biological Warfare
Program.
Prosecutor turned up on U.S. terror watch list

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-07-14-justice-terror-list_N.htm
The Justice Department's former top criminal prosecutor says the U.S. government's terror watch
list likely has caused thousands of innocent Americans to be questioned, searched or otherwise
hassled. Former Assistant Attorney General Jim Robinson would know: he is one of them.
Robinson joined [with] the American Civil Liberties Union on Monday to urge fixing the list that's
supposed to identify suspected terrorists. "It's a pain in the neck, and significantly interferes with
my travel arrangements," said Robinson, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division
during the Clinton administration. He believes his name matches that of someone who was put on
the list in early 2005, and is routinely delayed while flying despite having his own government
top-secret security clearances renewed last year. He [said] "I expect my story is similar to
hundreds of thousands of people who are on this list who find themselves inconvenienced." [The
watch list] was created after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to consolidate 12 existing lists. Audits of
the watch list over the last several years ... have concluded that it has mistakenly flagged innocent
people whose names are similar to those on it. More than 30,000 airline passengers had asked
the Homeland Security Department to clear their names from the list as of October 2006.
The ACLU predicted the watch list would include 1 million names as early as Monday. The
civil liberties group reached that number by citing the 700,000 records on the watch list as of last
September and adding 20,000 names each month, as forecast by the Justice Department's
inspector general.
Note: For many disturbing reports on threats to civil liberties, click here.
General Accuses White House of War Crimes

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/06/18/BL2008061801546....
The two-star general who led an Army investigation into the horrific detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib
has accused the Bush administration of war crimes and is calling for accountability. In his 2004
report on Abu Ghraib, then-Major General Anthony Taguba concluded that "numerous incidents of
sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees." He called the
abuse "systemic and illegal." And, as Seymour M. Hersh reported in The New Yorker, he was
rewarded for his honesty by being forced into retirement. Now, in a preface to a Physicians for
Human Rights report based on medical examinations of former detainees, Taguba adds an
epilogue to his own investigation. The new report, he writes, "tells the largely untold human story
of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under
him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is
scrawled for the rest of these individual's lives on their bodies and minds. The profiles of
these eleven former detainees, none of whom were ever charged with a crime or told why they
were detained, are tragic and brutal rebuttals to those who claim that torture is ever justified. In
order for these individuals to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were subjected, a government
policy was promulgated to the field whereby the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of
Military Justice were disregarded. The UN Convention Against Torture was indiscriminately
ignored. There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war
crimes."
Note: For many revealing reports on the brutal realities of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, click
here.
Guantanamo: Policy goals trumped law

2008-06-18, Miami Herald/McClatchy Newspapers
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/story/574074.html
The framework under which detainees were imprisoned for years without charges at Guantanamo
and in many cases abused in Afghanistan wasn't the product of American military policy or the
fault of a few rogue soldiers. It was largely the work of five White House, Pentagon and Justice
Department lawyers who, following the orders of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney,
reinterpreted or tossed out the U.S. and international laws that govern the treatment of prisoners in
wartime, according to former U.S. defense and Bush administration officials. The Supreme Court
now has struck down many of their legal interpretations. The quintet of lawyers, who called
themselves the War Council," drafted legal opinions that circumvented the military's code
of justice, the federal court system and America's international treaties in order to prevent
anyone ... from being held accountable for activities that at other times have been
considered war crimes. The international conventions ... to which [the US is] a party, were
abandoned in secret meetings among the five men in one another's offices: ... David Addington,
the ... longtime legal adviser and now chief of staff to Cheney [whose] primary motive, according to
several former administration and defense officials, was to push for an expansion of presidential
power that Congress or the courts couldn't check; Alberto Gonzales, first the White House counsel
and then the attorney general; William J. Haynes II, the former Pentagon general counsel; former
Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, [and] Timothy E. Flanigan, a former deputy to Gonzales.
Note: Virtually no major media other than the Herald picked up this key story.
Documents indicate U.S. hid terror suspects from Red Cross

2008-06-17, Miami Herald/McClatchy Newspapers
The U.S. military hid the locations of ... detainees and concealed harsh treatment to avoid the
scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to documents that a Senate
committee released. "We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is
better not to expose them to any controversial techniques," Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, a military
lawyer, said during an October 2002 meeting at the Guantanamo Bay prison. Her comments were
recorded in minutes of the meeting. At that same meeting, Beaver also appeared to confirm that
U.S. officials at another detention facility Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan were using sleep
deprivation to "break" detainees. "True, but officially it is not happening," she is quoted as having
said. [Another] person at the meeting, Jonathan Fredman, the chief counsel for the CIA's
Counterterrorism Center, disclosed that detainees were moved routinely to avoid the scrutiny of
the ICRC, which keeps tabs on prisoners in conflicts around the world. "In the past when the ICRC
has made a big deal about certain detainees, the DOD (Defense Department) has 'moved' them
away from the attention of the ICRC," Fredman said. The document, along with two dozen others,
shows that top administration officials pushed relentlessly for tougher interrogation
methods. Fredman of the CIA also appeared to be advocating the use of techniques harsher
than those authorized by military field guides. "If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong,"
the minutes report Fredman saying at one point.
Note: For many revealing reports on the brutal realities of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, click
here.
Sources: Top Bush Advisors Approved 'Enhanced Interrogation'

2008-04-09, ABC News
http://www.abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/Story?id=4583256
In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush
administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda
suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News. The
so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of "combined"
interrogation techniques -- using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one
method at a time -- on [captives] who proved difficult to break, sources said. The high-level
discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources
said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of
times CIA agents could use a specific tactic. The advisers were members of the National Security
Council's Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise
President Bush on issues of national security policy. At the time, the Principals Committee
included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice,
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA
Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft. Rice chaired the meetings, which
took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by most of the
principals or their deputies. According to multiple sources, it was members of the Principals
Committee that not only discussed specific plans and specific interrogation methods, but approved
them. The Principals also approved interrogations that combined different methods, pushing the
limits of international law and even the Justice Department's own legal approval in the [infamous]
2002 memo.
9/11 Commission Chief's Ties to White House

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/they-knew-but-did-nothing/2008/03/07/1204780...
The members of Mike Hurley's [9/11 Commisson investigative] team were ... alarmed by the
revelations, week by week, month by month, of how close the commission's chief director, Philip
Zelikow, was to Rice and others at the White House. They learned early on about Zelikow's
work on the Bush transition team in 2000 and early 2001, and about how much antipathy
there was between him and ["Counterterrorism Czar"] Richard Clarke. They heard the
stories about Zelikow's role in developing the "pre-emptive war" strategy at the White
House in 2002. Zelikow's friendships with Rice and others were a particular problem for Warren
Bass, since Rice and Clarke were at the heart of his part of the investigation. It was clear to some
members of team that they could not have an open discussion in front of Zelikow about Rice and
her performance as National Security Adviser. For Hurley's team, there was a reverse problem
with Clarke. It was easy to talk about Clarke in Zelikow's presence, as long as the conversation
centred on Clarke's failings at the NSC and his purported dishonesty. Long before Bass had seen
Clarke's files, Zelikow made it clear to the team's investigators that Clarke should not be believed,
that his testimony would be suspect. He argued that Clarke was a braggart who would try to
rewrite history to justify his errors and slander his enemies, Rice in particular.
Note: This critique of the close ties to the White House of Philip Zelikow, Executive Director of the
9/11 Commission, is an excerpt from Philip Shenon's new book, The Commission: The
Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation. For an even deeper analysis of the Commission's
failings, read WantToKnow.info team member David Ray Griffin's book, The 9/11 Commission
Report: Omissions and Distortions.
U.S. Payments To Pakistan Face New Scrutiny

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/02/20/ST2008022002819...
Once a month, Pakistan's Defense Ministry delivers 15 to 20 pages of spreadsheets to the U.S.
Embassy in Islamabad. They list costs for feeding, clothing, billeting and maintaining 80,000 to
100,000 Pakistani troops in the volatile tribal area along the Afghan border. No receipts are
attached. In response, the Defense Department has disbursed about $80 million monthly, or
roughly $1 billion a year for the past six years, in one of the most generous U.S. military
support programs worldwide. But vague accounting, disputed expenses and suspicions
about overbilling have recently made these payments to Pakistan highly controversial --
even within the U.S. government. Questions have already been raised about where the money
went and what the Bush administration got in return. In perhaps the most disputed series of
payments, Pakistan received about $80 million a month in 2006 and 2007 for military operations
during cease-fires with pro-Taliban tribal elders along the border, including a 10-month truce in
which troops returned to their barracks. U.S. officials say the payments to Pakistan -- which over
the past six years have totaled $5.7 billion -- were cheap compared with expenditures on Iraq,
where the United States now spends at least $1 billion a week on military operations alone.
Congressional officials and others are concerned that the administration has been so eager to
prop up Musharraf that it overlooked U.S. foreign aid and accounting standards. A congressional
oversight subcommittee is also set to begin an investigation next month, while the Government
Accountability Office plans to finish its own inquiry in April.
How the spooks took over the news

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/how-the-spooks-took-over-the-news-780...
On the morning of 9 February 2004, The New York Times carried an exclusive and alarming story.
The paper's Baghdad correspondent, Dexter Filkins, reported that US officials had obtained a 17page letter, believed to have been written by the notorious terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi to the
"inner circle" of al-Qa'ida's leadership, urging them to accept that the best way to beat US forces in
Iraq was effectively to start a civil war. The story went on to news agency wires and, within 24
hours, it was running around the world. There is very good reason to believe that that letter was a
fake and a significant one because there is equally good reason to believe that it was one
product among many from a new machinery of propaganda which has been created by the
United States and its allies since the terrorist attacks of September 2001. For the first time
in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the
mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it. The
sheer ease with which this machinery has been able to do its work reflects a creeping structural
weakness which now afflicts the production of our news. The "Zarqawi letter" which made it on to
the front page of The New York Times in February 2004 was one of a sequence of highly suspect
documents which were said to have been written either by or to Zarqawi and which were fed into
news media. This material is being generated, in part, by intelligence agencies who continue to
work without effective oversight; and also by a new ... structure of "strategic communications"
which was originally designed ... in the Pentagon and Nato.
Note: This article is an edited excerpt from investigative journalist Nick Davies' new book, Flat
Earth News: an award-winning reporter exposes falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the
global media. To read about or purchase it, click here. For a highly revealing two-page summary of
20 award-winning journalists describing how huge stories they tried to report were shut down by
corporate media ownership, click here.
Rule by fear or rule by law?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/04/ED5OUPQJ7.DTL
Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the federal government has
assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and
noncitizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse in the event of "an
emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs."
Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with
Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed
locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several
companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles,
ostensibly to transport detainees. According to diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott, the
KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal
the removal of "all removable aliens" and "potential terrorists." What kind of "new programs"
require the construction and refurbishment of detention facilities in nearly every state of the union
with the capacity to house perhaps millions of people? The 2007 National Defense Authorization
Act (NDAA) ... gives the executive the power to invoke martial law. The Military Commissions Act
of 2006 ... allows for the indefinite imprisonment of anyone who ... speaks out against the
government's policies. The law calls for secret trials for citizens and noncitizens alike. What could
the government be contemplating that leads it to make contingency plans to detain without
recourse millions of its own citizens?
Note: This important warning from former U.S. Congressman Dan Hamburg and Lewis Seiler
should be read in its entirety. For more chilling reports on serious threats to our civil liberties, click
here.
CIA director investigating watchdog

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/10/12/MNP1SOQI9.DTL
CIA Director Michael Hayden has mounted a highly unusual challenge to his agency's chief
watchdog, ordering an internal investigation of an inspector general who has issued a series of
reports sharply critical of top CIA officials. Hayden is seeking to rein in an inspector general who
has used the office to bring ... scrutiny upon CIA figures from former Director George Tenet to
undercover operatives running secret overseas prison sites. The investigation is focused on ... CIA
Inspector General John Helgerson and his office, particularly whether they were fair and impartial
in their scrutiny of the agency's terrorist detention and interrogation programs. Officials said that
the investigation also will span other subjects and that it already has expanded since its start
months ago. U.S. intelligence officials concerned about the inquiry said it is unprecedented
and could threaten the independence of the inspector general position. The investigation
"could at least lead to appearances he's trying to interfere with the IG, or intimidate the IG,
or get the IG to back off," one U.S. official familiar with the investigation said. Frederick Hitz, who
served as the CIA's inspector general from 1990 to 1998, said the move will be perceived as an
attempt by Hayden "to call off the dogs." "What it would lead to is an undercutting of the inspector
general's authority and his ability to investigate allegations of wrongdoing," Hitz said. "The rank
and file will become aware of it, and it will undercut the inspector general's ability to get the truth
from them." Hayden has been a staunch defender of the Bush administration's counterterrorism
programs.
Note: What does it say about an agency when they accuse their own internal investigator of being
corrupt?
Who Runs the CIA? Outsiders for Hire.

The most intriguing secrets of the "war on terror" have nothing to do with al-Qaeda and its fellow
travelers. They're about the mammoth private spying industry that all but runs U.S. intelligence
operations today. In April, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell was poised to publicize
a year-long examination of outsourcing by U.S. intelligence agencies. But the report was
inexplicably delayed -- and suddenly classified a national secret. What McConnell doesn't want
you to know is that the private spy industry has succeeded where no foreign government has: It
has penetrated the CIA and is running the show. Over the past five years (some say almost a
decade), there has been a revolution in the intelligence community toward wide-scale outsourcing.
Private companies now perform key intelligence-agency functions, to the tune ... of more than $42
billion a year. Intelligence professionals [say] that more than 50 percent of the National
Clandestine Service (NCS) -- the heart, brains and soul of the CIA -- has been outsourced to
private firms such as Abraxas, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. These
firms recruit spies, create non-official cover identities and control the movements of CIA
case officers. They also provide case officers and watch officers at crisis centers and regional
desk officers who control clandestine operations worldwide. As The Los Angeles Times first
reported last October, more than half the workforce in two key CIA stations -- Baghdad and
Islamabad, Pakistan -- is made up of industrial contractors, or "green badgers," in CIA parlance.
Intelligence insiders say that entire branches of the NCS have been outsourced to private industry.
Judges OK warrantless monitoring of Web use

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/07/07/BAGMNQSJDA1.DTL
Federal agents do not need a search warrant to monitor a suspect's computer use and determine
the e-mail addresses and Web pages the suspect is contacting, a federal appeals court ruled
Friday. In a drug case from San Diego County, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San
Francisco likened computer surveillance to the "pen register" devices that officers use to pinpoint
the phone numbers a suspect dials, without listening to the phone calls themselves. In Friday's
ruling, the court said computer users should know that they lose privacy protections with e-mail
and Web site addresses when they are communicated to the company whose equipment carries
the messages. The search is no more intrusive than officers' examination of a list of phone
numbers or the outside of a mailed package, neither of which requires a warrant, Judge Raymond
Fisher said in the 3-0 ruling. Defense lawyer Michael Crowley disagreed. His client, Dennis Alba,
was sentenced to 30 years in prison after being convicted of operating a laboratory in Escondido
that manufactured the drug ecstasy. Some of the evidence against Alba came from agents'
tracking of his computer use. The court upheld his conviction and sentence. Expert evidence in
Alba's case showed that the Web addresses obtained by federal agents included page numbers
that allowed the agents to determine what someone read online, Crowley said. The ruling
"further erodes our privacy," the attorney said. "The great political marketplace of ideas is
the Internet, and the government has unbridled access to it."
Note: So now every email you send and read can be monitored legally. Why didn't this make news
headlines?
Nuking Iran: The Republican Agenda?

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2007/06/nuking_iran_the_republica...
At the Republican debate, almost all the candidates said that they would not rule out a nuclear
attack on Iran as a means to prevent it from getting its own nuclear weapons. Only one [candidate]
would say that attacking Iran -- indeed even threatening to nuke Iran -- is not the right strategy.
"We have to come to our senses about this issue of war and preemption," he said. The audience
applauded, but he didn't get much support from his fellow candidates. Rep. Duncan Hunter of
California was the starkest: "I would authorize the use of tactical nuclear weapons if there was no
other way to preempt those particular centrifuges," he said. Former New York Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani ... added that "you can't rule out anything and you shouldn't take any option off the table."
Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore also [stated] "all options are on the table" with regard to Iranian
nuclear weapons. Said former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney: "I wouldn't take any options off
the table." After the debate, former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, who did not particpate,
added his name to the list of candidates who would consider a preemptive attack against Iran.
Only Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, the "Dennis the Menace" of his party, said he opposed a
nuclear strike on moral grounds and because he believed Iran "has done no harm to us
directly and is no threat to our national security." The Iraq war and the war against terrorism
are the central battles of our time, these candidates say. They all profess their faith in God and the
United States, and speak of a moral struggle between good and evil, between the United States
and "radical Islam." Yet they are not willing to say that nuclear weapons have no place in modern
confrontations.
Note: For what a top US general has to say about war manipulations, click here.
20-year seal put on Columbine depositions

2007-04-03, Denver Post
http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_5580190
The depositions of the parents of Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold will be
kept under seal in the National Archives for 20 years, a federal judge ruled Monday. No one,
including violence prevention experts, will be able to see them until they are unsealed, U.S.
District Judge Lewis Babcock ruled. They will be kept permanently in the National Archives, where
they are considered to be of historical value. The depositions of the parents took place in 2003 in
connection with a lawsuit filed by the families of five slain Columbine High School students. Brian
Rohrbough, the father of slain student Daniel Rohrbough, said he was angered by the ruling.
Rohrbough, who watched as attorneys interviewed the parents during the deposition sessions,
said there is nothing in them that would cause any harm. Instead, their release could prevent
further school shootings, he said. Rohrbough is under court order not to divulge details. "There is
no rational reason to lock them up," Rohrbough said. "It's just the idea that it would be OK in 20
years, and can't be OK today."
Note: Why all the secrecy? Could it be to hide evidence showing it could have been stopped?
A monstrous war crime

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2044345,00.html
Our collective failure has been to take our political leaders at their word. This week the BBC
reported that the government's own scientists advised ministers that the Johns Hopkins study on
Iraq civilian mortality was accurate and reliable. Published in the Lancet ...it estimated that 650,000
Iraqi civilians had died since the American and British led invasion in March 2003. Immediately
after publication, the prime minister's official spokesman said that the Lancet's study "was not one
we believe to be anywhere near accurate". The foreign secretary ... said that the Lancet figures
were "extrapolated" and a "leap". President Bush said: "I don't consider it a credible report".
Scientists at the UK's Department for International Development thought differently. They
concluded that the study's methods were "tried and tested". Indeed, the Johns Hopkins approach
would likely lead to an "underestimation of mortality". The Ministry of Defence's chief scientific
adviser ... recommended "caution in publicly criticising the study". When these recommendations
went to the prime minister's advisers, they were horrified. Tony Blair was advised to say: "The
overriding message is that there are no accurate or reliable figures of deaths in Iraq". At a time
when we are celebrating our enlightened abolition of slavery 200 years ago, we are continuing to
commit one of the worst international abuses of human rights of the past half-century. Two
hundred years from now, the Iraq war will be mourned as the moment when Britain violated
its delicate democratic constitution and joined the ranks of nations that use extreme preemptive killing as a tactic of foreign policy.
Note: This article is written by Richard Horton, the editor of the highly esteemed British medical
journal Lancet.
[N.Y.] City Police Spied Broadly Before G.O.P. Convention

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/nyregion/25infiltrate.html?ex=1332475200&en...
For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, teams of undercover New
York City police officers traveled to cities across the country, Canada and Europe to conduct covert
observations of people who planned to protest at the convention, according to police records and
interviews. From Albuquerque to Montreal, San Francisco to Miami, undercover New York police
officers attended meetings of political groups, posing as sympathizers or fellow activists. They
made friends, shared meals, swapped e-mail messages and then filed daily reports with the
departments Intelligence Division. In hundreds of reports stamped N.Y.P.D. Secret, the
Intelligence Division chronicled the views and plans of people who had no apparent
intention of breaking the law. These included members of street theater companies, church
groups and antiwar organizations. Three New York City elected officials were cited in the reports.
In at least some cases, intelligence on what appeared to be lawful activity was shared with police
departments in other cities. In addition to sharing information with other police departments, New
York undercover officers were active themselves in at least 15 places outside New York
including California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montreal,
New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Washington, D.C. and in Europe.
To date, as the boundaries of the departments expanded powers continue to be debated, police
officials have provided only glimpses of its intelligence-gathering.
Call to reopen Oklahoma bomb case

2007-03-02, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/6275147.stm
The FBI man in charge of collecting evidence from the government building destroyed by the
Oklahoma bomb has called for the case to be reopened. Former deputy assistant director Danny
Coulson ... said a federal grand jury is now needed to find out what really happened. He argues
this is the only way to prove whether other people were involved in the bombing in a wider
conspiracy beyond Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Mr Coulson spent 31 years in the FBI.
Between 1991 and 1997 he was the deputy assistant director of the Criminal Division of the FBI in
Washington, responsible for all violent crime cases in the United States. Mr Coulson said there
were some "very strong indicators" that other people were involved with Timothy McVeigh. The
FBI interviewed 24 people who claimed to have seen McVeigh in Oklahoma City with
someone else on the morning of the attack, yet the only known accomplice of McVeigh,
Terry Nichols, was at home in Kansas over 200 miles away on that day. The FBI's
investigation concluded that the eyewitnesses were unreliable. However, Danny Coulson says they
were "extremely credible" and had no reason to make it up. "If only one person had seen it, or two
of three, but 24?" he said. "I know FBI headquarters told [agents] to close down the investigation in
Elohim City which has some very significant connections to Mr McVeigh. "Never in my career did I
have FBI headquarters tell me not to investigate something." Last December a US Congressional
report found no conclusive evidence of a wider conspiracy, but the report concluded that
"questions remain unanswered and mysteries remain unsolved."
Note: Don't miss a highly revealing four-minute video-clip showing live media coverage of the
Oklahoma City bomb available here. The official story is that one truck with a huge bomb was
parked in front of the Oklahoma City federal building and only Timothy McVeigh and his partner
were involved. The news footage proves that others must have been involved, as multiple
unexploded bombs were recovered from points inside the building. Yet none of this was
questioned in later testimony.
FBI Chided for OKC Bomb Investigation

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2749903
A two-year congressional inquiry into the Oklahoma City bombing concludes that the FBI
didn't fully investigate whether other suspects may have helped Timothy McVeigh and Terry
Nichols with the deadly 1995 attack, allowing questions to linger a decade later. The House
International Relations investigative subcommittee [declared that] there is no conclusive evidence
of a foreign connection to the attack, but that far too many unanswered questions remain. The
report also sharply criticizes the FBI for failing to be curious enough to pursue credible information
that foreign or U.S. citizens may have had contact with Nichols or McVeigh and could have
assisted their plot. "We did our best with limited resources, and I think we moved the
understanding of this issue forward a couple of notches even though important questions remain
unanswered," Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., the subcommittee chairman, said in an interview
with The Associated Press. Rohrabacher's subcommittee saved its sharpest words for the Justice
Department, saying officials there exhibited a mindset of thwarting congressional oversight and did
not assist the investigation fully.
Note: Should you choose to explore the deadly Oklahoma City bombing, you will find that there
are many strange inconsistencies suggesting a major cover-up. If you are interested in more, you
might start here.
The 9/11 Truth Movement's Dangers

2006-12-10, CBS News/The Nation
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/08/opinion/main2242387.shtml
Tens of millions of Americans really believe their government was complicit in the murder of 3,000
of their fellow citizens. The government these Americans suspect of complicity in 9/11 has
acquired a justified reputation for deception: weapons of mass destruction, secret prisons, illegal
wiretapping. The Truth Movement's recent growth can be largely attributed to the Internetdistributed documentary "Loose Change." It's been viewed over the Internet millions of times.
Complementing "Loose Change" are the more highbrow offerings of a handful of writers and
scholars, many of whom are associated with Scholars for 9/11 Truth. Two of these academics,
retired theologian David Ray Griffin and retired Brigham Young University physics professor
Steven Jones, have written books and articles that serve as the movement's canon. The Truth
Movement's relationship to the truth may be tenuous, but that it is a movement is no longer in
doubt. For the Administration, "conspiracy" is a tremendously useful term, and can be applied even
in the most seemingly bizarre conditions to declare an inquiry or criticism out of bounds. Of
course, the ommission report was something of a whitewash Bush would only be
interviewed in the presence of Dick Cheney, the commission was denied access to other
key witnesses, and ... a meeting convened by George Tenet the summer before the attacks
to warn Condoleezza Rice about al Qaeda's plotting ... was nowhere mentioned in the
report. It's hard to blame people for thinking we're not getting the whole story. For six years, the
government has prevaricated and the press has largely failed to point out this simple truth.
Note: Though this article belittles the 9/11 movement, there is abundant evidence to support the
claim that the 9/11 Commission was a whitewash and the attacks may have been orchestrated.
For more, click here.
Rove leak is just part of larger scandal

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0715/p09s02-cods.html
The underlying issue in the Karl Rove controversy is not a leak, but a war and how America was
misled into that war. In 2002 President Bush, having decided to invade Iraq, was casting about for
a casus belli. The weapons of mass destruction theme was not yielding very much until a dubious
Italian intelligence report ... provided reason to speculate that Iraq might be trying to buy so-called
yellowcake uranium from the African country of Niger. the CIA sent Joseph Wilson, an old Africa
hand, to Niger to investigate. Mr. Wilson spent eight days talking to everyone in Niger possibly
involved and came back to report no sign of an Iraqi bid for uranium. Ignoring Wilson's report,
Cheney talked on TV about Iraq's nuclear potential. And the president himself, in his 2003 State of
the Union address no less, pronounced: "The British government has learned that Saddam
Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Wilson directly challenged
the administration with a July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed headlined, "What I didn't find in
Africa," and making clear his belief that the president deliberately manipulated intelligence in order
to justify an invasion. Three days later, Bob Novak's column appeared giving Wilson's wife's
name, Valerie Plame, and the fact she was an undercover CIA officer. Enough is known to
surmise that the leaks of Rove, or others deputized by him, amounted to retaliation against
someone who had the temerity to challenge the president of the United States. The role of Rove
and associates added up to a small incident in a very large scandal - the effort to delude America
into thinking it faced a threat dire enough to justify a war.
London Bombings: Strange Coincidences Raise Serious Questions

2005-07-13, BBC/MSNBC/London Times/More
http://www.WantToKnow.info/050713londonbombingcoverup
At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a
thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the
railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my
neck standing up right now. -- Former Scotland Yard Official Peter Power on BBC Radio, 7/7/05
(the day of the bombings)
"The explosives appear to be of military origin, which is very worrying," said Christophe Chaboud,
head of the French Anti-Terrorism Coordination Unit and one of five top officials sent by Paris to
London immediately after Thursday's attacks. -- Reuters, 7/11/05
A SINGLE bombmaker using high-grade military explosives is believed to be responsible for
building the four devices that killed more than 50 people last week. Similar components from the
explosive devices have been found at all four murder sites, leading detectives to believe that each
of the 10lb rucksack bombs was the work of one man. They also believe that the materials used
were not home made but sophisticated military explosives. -- London Times, 7/12/05
Translator Jacob Keryakes, who said that a copy of the message was later posted on a secular
Web site, noted that the claim of responsibility contained an error in one of the Quranic verses it
cited. That suggests that the claim may be phony. "This is not something al-Qaida would do." he
said. - MSNBC News, 7/7/05
Court Dismisses FBI Contractor's Suit Against U.S.

A federal appeals court rejected a fired FBI contractor's bid to revive her lawsuit against the
government. Sibel Edmonds said she was fired from her job as a wiretap translator because she
told superiors she suspected that a co-worker was leaking information to targets of an ongoing FBI
investigation. The FBI said it fired her because she committed security violations and disrupted the
office. The Justice Department's inspector general said Edmonds's allegations about a
coworker "raised serious concerns that, if true, could potentially have extremely damaging
consequences for the FBI."
Note: This article doesn't even mention 9/11, yet Ms. Edmonds has stated publicly that her
testimony would put top government officials behind bars for their role in blocking information
which could have stopped the 9/11 attacks. For more eye-opening information, click here and here.
Read Ms. Edmond's open letter to the chairman of the 9/11 Commission to find out what key
people in government don't want you to know about her testimony. See also her excellent website
http://www.justacitizen.com
She was also instrumental in forming a National Security
Whistleblowers Coalition.
The ricin ring that never was

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/attacks/comment/0,1320,1459178,00.html
Colin Powell does not need more humiliation. But yesterday a London jury brought down another
section of the case he made for war - that Iraq and Osama bin Laden were supporting and
directing terrorist poison cells throughout Europe, including a London ricin ring. Yesterday's
verdicts on five defendants ... make clear there was no ricin ring. Nor did the "ricin ring"
make or have ricin. Not that the government shared that news with us. The public record for the
past three fear-inducing years has been that ricin was found in the Wood Green flat occupied by
some of yesterday's acquitted defendants. It wasn't. [Found there] were the internal documents of
the supposed al-Qaida cell planning the "big one" in Britain. But the recipes were untested and
unoriginal, borrowed from US sources. Moreover, ricin is not a weapon of mass destruction. It
is a poison which has only ever been used for one-on-one killings. All the information roads
led west, not to Kabul but to California and the US midwest. The recipes for ricin now seen on the
internet were invented 20 years ago by survivalist Kurt Saxon. The chemical lists found in London
were an exact copy of pages on an internet site in Palo Alto, California. But it seems this
information was not shared with the then home secretary, David Blunkett, who was still whipping
up fear two weeks later. The most ironic twist was an attempt to introduce an "al- Qaida manual"
into the case. To show that the Jihad manual was written in the 1980s ... was easy. The ricin recipe
it contained was a direct translation from a 1988 US book called the Poisoner's Handbook. We
have all been victims of this mass deception.
Note: As the above link no longer functions, click here for the full article. According to a post on
Prof. Michel Chossudovsky's excellent Center for Research on Globalization website and other
inside sources, the British government ordered the above article removed from the website
within a week of its publication. Someone doesn't want us knowing how we are manipulated into
fear. For more on this, click here.
Lost in Translation: How Bush Interpreter Got Through Security

2005-02-22, Wall Street Journal (Article on website founder Fred Burks)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110901231065260117,00.html?mod=todays_us_p...
Frederick Burks believes in UFOs, communes with dolphins, [and] runs a Web site that promotes
conspiracy theories about U.S. complicity in the 9/11 attacks. And, until last October, he had the
ear of the world's most powerful man ... George W. Bush. When President Bush traveled to Bali for
a meeting with President Megawati in October 2003 ... [Karen] Brooks, then the National Security
Council's Indonesia expert, says she personally requested that he get the job because he was so
good and "Megawati loved him." Now Mr. Burks has popped up in Jakarta as a star witness for the
defense in the terrorism trial of a fundamentalist Islamic cleric. Speaking to the Jakarta court in
fluent Indonesian, Mr. Burks described a secret 2002 meeting between a U.S. presidential envoy
and Indonesia's then president, Megawati Sukarnoputri. Mr. Burks's testimony, delivered last
month in a south Jakarta court, turned the former White House interpreter ... into a national
celebrity here in Indonesia. While working as Mr. Bush's Indonesian-language interpreter, Mr.
Burks set up several Web sites, including momentoflove.org, weboflove.org and WantToKnow.info.
After 9/11, he began collecting and then posting documents he believes show that parts of
the U.S. government knew an attack was coming and may even have been complicit in its
execution. "I'm sometimes labeled a conspiracy theorist, but I'm not," he says. "I'm someone who
can handle dark energy, the really ugly things that are going on behind the scenes, without getting
too upset."
Note: This article surprisingly was on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. The above link
requires payment to read the full article. To read it free and learn much more, click here.
Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-turley14aug14.story
Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft's announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems to be "enemy
combatants" has moved him from merely being a political embarrassment to being a constitutional
menace. Ashcroft's plan, disclosed last week but little publicized, would allow him to order
the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and summarily strip them of their constitutional
rights and access to the courts by declaring them enemy combatants. Ashcroft hopes to use
his self-made "enemy combatant" stamp for any citizen whom he deems to be part of a wider
terrorist conspiracy. Aides have indicated that a "high-level committee" will recommend which
citizens are to be stripped of their constitutional rights and sent to Ashcroft's new camps. Few
would have imagined any attorney general seeking to reestablish such camps for citizens. We
have learned from painful experience that unchecked authority, once tasted, easily becomes
insatiable. We are only now getting a full vision of Ashcroft's America. Ashcroft seems to dream of
a country secured from itself, neatly contained and controlled by his judgment of loyalty. For more
than 200 years, security and liberty have been viewed as coexistent values. Ashcroft and his aides
appear to view this relationship as lineal, where security must precede liberty. Every generation
has its test of principle in which people of good faith can no longer remain silent in the face of
authoritarian ambition. If we cannot join together to fight the abomination of American camps, we
have already lost what we are defending.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. This aritcle was written by Jonathan Turley, a professor of
constitutional law at George Washington University. Though Ashcroft resigned, the laws he crafted
remain in place.
FBI Chief Acknowledges 9/11 Errors

2002-05-30, CBS News
FBI Director Robert Mueller, acknowledging serious lapses in how the FBI mishandled some
information prior to Sept. 11, suggested for the first time that investigators might have detected the
terrorist plot if they had pursued leads more diligently. Mueller's acknowledgment came amid two
new disclosures of what could be missed hints about Sept. 11. The first was a warning from
another agency to the FBI that a Middle Eastern country was seeking to buy commercial
flight simulators. The second was a memo from an Oklahoma City FBI agent who reported
observing large numbers of Middle Eastern pilots and flight students in his area. Neither
memo apparently drew much attention at the time. Mueller's remarks came after his
announcement of a broad reorganization of the FBI, partly because of its failure to predict the
attacks. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced loosened restrictions on domestic spying,
handing the FBI authority to monitor Internet sites and libraries. The American Civil Liberties Union
has criticized the loosening of restrictions on domestic spying, saying they could renew abuses of
the past. Mueller, who took over as FBI director just days before Sept. 11, is the first senior official
in the Bush administration to say that counterterrorism investigators might have detected and
averted the attacks if they had recognized what they were collecting.
Note: Yet no one in the US government was held accountable for these failures.
US media cowed by patriotic fever, says CBS star

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2002/may/17/terrorismandthemedia.broadcasting
Dan Rather, the star news anchor for the US television network CBS, said last night that
"patriotism run amok" was in danger of trampling the freedom of American journalists to ask tough
questions. And he admitted that he had shrunk from taking on the Bush administration over the
war on terrorism. In an interview with BBC's Newsnight, he graphically described the pressures to
conform that built up after the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. "There was a
time in South Africa that people would put flaming tyres around people's necks if they
dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a
flaming tyre of lack of patriotism put around your neck," he said. "Now it is that fear that
keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions." Rather did not exempt
himself from the criticism, and said the problem was self-censorship. "One finds oneself saying: 'I
know the right question, but you know what? This is not exactly the right time to ask it.'" Such a
confession is astonishing, bearing in mind its source. He said his view of the patriotism differed
from that of the administration. "It's unpatriotic not to stand up, look them in the eye, and ask the
questions they don't want to hear - they being those who have the responsibility, the ultimate
responsibility - of sending our sons and daughters, our husbands, wives, our blood, to face death."
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on media cover-ups, click here.
Bush Opposes 9/11 Query Panel

2002-05-15, CBS News
President Bush took a few minutes during his trip to Europe ... to voice his opposition to
establishing a special commission to probe how the government dealt with terror warnings
before Sept. 11. Mr. Bush said the matter should be dealt with by congressional intelligence
committees. Mr. Bush said the investigation should be confined to Congress because it deals with
sensitive information that could reveal sources and methods of intelligence. Mr. Bush's comments
come after a two-day hearing on Capitol Hill with FBI director Robert Mueller and the agent who
wrote the so-called "Phoenix memo" last summer warning about ... Arab students training at U.S.
aviation schools. Current and former government officials, who are familiar with Williams' memo
and debriefings, told the AP the counterterrorism agent from Phoenix had ascertained that several
Arab students training at Arizona flight school held anti-American views. Williams identified several
Arab students at Arizona aviation schools, including one school in Prescott, who were seeking
training in aviation engineering, flight lessons and airport operations. He had ascertained that at
least one of the students had also made inquiries about airport security operations, the officials
said.
Note: For many questions raised by highly-respected former government officials about the
investigation that was, after four years, finally authorized, click here.
US grants N Korea nuclear funds

2002-04-02, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1908571.stm
The US Government has announced that it will release $95m to North Korea as part of an
agreement to replace the Stalinist country's own nuclear programme, which the US suspected was
being misused. In releasing the funding, President George W Bush waived the Framework's
requirement that North Korea allow inspectors to ensure it has not hidden away any
weapons-grade plutonium from the original reactors. President Bush argued that the
decision was "vital to the national security interests of the United States". The head of the
Non-proliferation Policy Education Centre in Washington, a critic of the Agreed Framework, has
warned that even when the new reactors are completed they may not be tamper-proof. "These
reactors are like all reactors, They have the potential to make weapons. So you might end up
supplying the worst nuclear violator with the means to acquire the very weapons we're trying to
prevent it acquiring," Henry Sokolski told the Far Eastern Economic Review.
Note: Though this article is from 2002, one must ask why on earth President Bush would waive
the requirement for inspectors who would ensure no nuclear weapons development? Wasn't this
one of three countries he had already labeled as the axis of evil? For answers to these questions,
click here.
From U.S., the ABC's of Jihad

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5339-2002Mar22
In the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan
schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of
covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation. The primers, which were filled with talk
of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the
Afghan school system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books,
though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist
code. What seemed like a good idea in the context of the Cold War is being criticized by
humanitarian workers as a crude tool that steeped a generation in violence. Many of the 4 million
texts being trucked into Afghanistan, and millions more on the way, still feature Koranic verses and
teach Muslim tenets. The White House defends the religious content, saying that Islamic
principles permeate Afghan culture and that the books "are fully in compliance with U.S.
law and policy." Legal experts, however, question whether the books violate a
constitutional ban on using tax dollars to promote religion.
Note: The author doesn't mention that these US-produced books are also openly promoting
violence and war. Of course, that is not against the law, while using US tax money to promote
religion is.
Planning for Terror but Failing to Act

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/30/national/30TERR.html
An extensive review of the nation's antiterrorism efforts shows that for years before Sept. 11, ... top
leaders never reacted as if they believed the country was as vulnerable as it proved to be that
morning. Dozens of interviews with current and former officials demonstrate that even as the threat
of terrorism mounted through eight years of the Clinton administration and eight months of
President Bush, the government did not marshal its full forces against it. The rising threat of the
Islamic jihad movement was first detected by United States investigators after the 1993 bombing of
the World Trade Center. The inquiry into that attack revealed a weakness in the immigration
system used by one of the terrorists, but that hole was never plugged, and it was exploited by one
of the Sept. 11 hijackers. On at least three occasions between 1998 and 2000, the C.I.A. told
the White House it had learned where Mr. bin Laden was and where he might soon be. Each
time, Mr. Clinton approved the strike. Each time, George Tenet, the director of central
intelligence, called the president to say that the information was not reliable enough to be
used in an attack, a former senior Clinton administration official said."
Note: For many unanswered questions about the official explanation of what happened before and
on 9/11 raised by highly credible officials and professionals, click here and here.
America's pipe dream

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/23/afghanistan.terrorism11
The invasion of Afghanistan is ... a late colonial adventure. Afghanistan [is] indispensable to the
regional control and transport of oil in central Asia. Its northern neighbours ... contain reserves
which could be critical to future global supply. In 1998, Dick Cheney, now US vice-president but
then chief executive of a major oil services company, remarked: "I cannot think of a time when we
have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian." But
the oil and gas there is worthless until it is moved. The only route which makes both
political and economic sense is through Afghanistan. Pipelines through Afghanistan would
allow the US both to pursue its aim of "diversifying energy supply" and to penetrate the
world's most lucrative markets. Growth in European oil consumption is slow and competition is
intense. In south Asia, by contrast, demand is booming and competitors are scarce. Pumping oil
south and selling it in Pakistan and India, in other words, is far more profitable than pumping it
west and selling it in Europe. As the author Ahmed Rashid has documented, in 1995 the US oil
company Unocal started negotiating to build oil and gas pipelines from Turkmenistan, through
Afghanistan and into Pakistani ports on the Arabian sea. The company's scheme required a single
administration in Afghanistan, which would guarantee safe passage for its goods.
Note: Is it unusual that the president installed by the U.S. in Afghanistan once worked for Unocal?
Many details of the attempts by the US government to pressure the Taliban into going along with
Unocal's pipeline dream are revealed in Ahmed Rashid's book Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and
Fundamentalism in Central Asia.
Warnings: Earlier Hijackings Offered Signals That Were Missed

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/03/us/a-nation-challenged-warnings-earlier-hij...
Over and over since Sept. 11, aviation and security officials have said they were shocked that
terrorists had hijacked airliners and crashed them into landmark buildings. ''This is a whole new
world for us,'' Jane F. Garvey, the administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, said
in testimony before a House subcommittee on Sept. 20. But the record shows that for her
and others, there were numerous warnings. In 1994, two jetliners were hijacked by people who
wanted to crash them into buildings, one of them by an Islamic militant group. And the 2000 edition
of the F.A.A.'s annual report on Criminal Acts Against Aviation, published this year, said that
although Osama bin Laden ''is not known to have attacked civil aviation, he has both the
motivation and the wherewithal to do so." The previous year's edition of that report said that an
exiled Islamic leader in Britain proclaimed in August 1998 that Mr. bin Laden would ''bring down an
airliner, or hijack an airliner to humiliate the United States.'' The authorities appeared to draw no
lessons from the two attacks in 1994.
Note: For many unanswered questions about the official explanation of what happened before and
on 9/11 raised by highly credible officials and professionals, click here and here.
Scarred Steel Holds Clues, And Remedies

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/02/science/scarred-steel-holds-clues-and-remed...
On his first night in the city to collect scientific data on the collapsed World Trade Center buildings,
Dr. Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl looked out the window of his room at the Tribeca Grand Hotel and
saw a flatbed truck parked outside. By chance, trucks hauling steel from the trade center site
paused there for an hour or two before proceeding to the docks, where the steel was loaded onto
barges. Dr. Astaneh-Asl, a professor of structural engineering at the University of California at
Berkeley, ... went downstairs for a closer look. Over the next few nights, he cataloged 30 to 40 of
the mighty beams and columns as trucks stopped in front of the hotel. ''I've found quite a number
of interesting items,'' he said. Dr. Astaneh-Asl hopes to conduct what is, in essence, an autopsy of
the buildings felled by the terrorist attacks, to understand precisely how they fell apart. One piece
Dr. Astaneh-Asl saw was a charred horizontal I-beam from 7 World Trade Center, a 47-story
skyscraper that collapsed from fire eight hours after the attacks. The beam ... had clearly
endured searing temperatures. Parts of the flat top of the I, once five-eighths of an inch
thick, had vaporized. Dr. Astaneh-Asl and other engineers had assumed that the estimated
310,000 tons of steel columns and beams were being taken to Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island
with the rest of the debris, to be sifted by investigators. But because the steel provides no clues to
the criminal investigation, New York City started sending it to recyclers.
Note: Normal fire cannot vaporize steel, so Dr. Astaneh-Asl's finding clearly contradicts the official
story. For an abundance of powerful evidence presented by respected architects and engineers
that World Trade Center 7 was brought down by explosives, click here.
WWII War Crimes List in 1996 Puzzles Japan

http://articles.latimes.com/1996-12-13/news/mn-8706_1_wwii-war-crimes
Why has the United States decided to crack down on suspected Japanese war criminals 50 years
after granting them immunity from prosecution? Japanese scratched their heads last week at the
unexpected announcement that the U.S. Justice Department had included former members of an
infamous bacterial warfare research unit on a "watch list" of 16 suspected Japanese World War II
war criminals prohibited from entering the United States. The United States has been aware of the
identities of the Unit 731 leaders and of their gruesome experiments on human subjects since the
end of the war. Details of Unit 731 atrocities have appeared in the Western and Japanese media
for more than a decade. In secret laboratories in occupied China, Unit 731 researchers tested
poison gas and biological weapons on prisoners; froze and defrosted victims' limbs to
study frostbite; and vivisected humans without anesthetic. After the war, the United States
concluded that the results of these experiments were "of the highest intelligence value."
Fearful that those results would fall into Soviet hands, the U.S. occupation authorities gave the
head of Japan's bacterial warfare program, Dr. Shiro Ishii, and his colleagues immunity from
prosecution ... in exchange for their secret data. Many of Ishii's colleagues went on to
distinguished careers in postwar Japan, holding posts in the National Institute of Health, serving as
medical school deans and laboratory heads.
Note: The military has repeatedly condoned horrendous research on live subjects. For a revealing
list of highly unethical experimentation on human over the past 75 years, click here. For a concise
summary of the government's secret quest to control the mind and human behavior no matter what
the cost, click here.
Major Questions Remain Unanswered in Boston Killing of Alleged ISIS

Beheading Plotter
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/10/major-questions-remain-unanswer...
Last week in the Boston area, a 26-year-old black Muslim man was shot and killed by
agents of the FBI and Boston Police Department. A surveillance video ... was finally released
on Monday. Its virtually impossible to know what happened from this highly touted video, other
than the fact that [Usaamah] Rahim appears to have been walking peacefully when he was
approached by multiple individuals, wearing no police uniforms, in a threatening, military-style
formation. Rahims family issued a statement detailing the numerous questions raised by the
video. Early reports claimed that there was a third conspirator beyond Rahim and [his nephew and
accused co-conspirator David] Wright. The FBI affidavit filed against Wright repeatedly references
a third person who plotted with Rahim and Wright and met with them. Yet there has been no
further mention of this third person, and apparently no arrest of him. Why not? Is that third person
an FBI informant? Is this yet another case where the director and prime mover of a scary terror
plot is in fact the FBI itself. What basis exists for the highly inflammatory claim that Rahim was
linked to or inspired by ISIS? He was not only wary of being set up by the FBI, but
specifically said he was preaching AGAINST violence and terrorism. As AP noted, on social
media Rahim spoke out against the kind of violence Islamic State extremists are fomenting across
the Middle East, and made none of the violent calls to arms many supporters of armed extremist
groups espouse on social media.
the erosion of civil liberties and the manipulation of public perception.
CIA sex abuse and torture went beyond Senate report disclosures,
detainee says
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/02/cia-sexual-abuse-torture-majid...
The US Central Intelligence Agency used a wider array of sexual abuse and other forms of torture
than was disclosed in a Senate report last year, according to a Guantnamo Bay detainee turned
government cooperating witness. Majid Khan said interrogators poured ice water on his genitals,
twice videotaped him naked and repeatedly touched his private parts none of which was
described in the Senate report. Khans is the first publicly released account from a high-value alQaida detainee who experienced [these] enhanced interrogation techniques. The 35-year-old
Khan ... is awaiting sentencing after [confessing] to delivering $50,000 to al-Qaida operatives in
Indonesia. Khan was captured in Pakistan and held at an unidentified CIA black site from 2003 to
2006, according to the Senate report. In the interviews with his lawyers, Khan described a carnivallike atmosphere of abuse when he arrived at the CIA detention facility. He said that he experienced
excruciating pain when hung naked from poles and that guards repeatedly held his head under ice
water. In a July 2003 session, Khan said, CIA guards hooded and hung him from a metal pole for
several days and repeatedly poured ice water on his mouth, nose and genitals. When a doctor
arrived to check his condition, Khan begged for help. Instead, Khan said, the doctor
instructed the guards to again hang him from the metal bar. After hanging from the pole for
24 hours, Khan was forced to write a confession while being videotaped naked.
Note: For more, read about the 10 Craziest Things in the Senate Report on Torture and many
other questionable intelligence agency practices.
Rand Paul calls for release of 9/11 documents

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/06/02/rand-paul-cal...
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), fresh off a fight over the Patriot Act, has turned his attention to
another national security battle: declassifying 28 pages of a 2002 Senate inquiry into the
cause of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Paul is sponsoring the "Transparency for the Families of
9/11 Victims and Survivors Act," which would require President Obama to declassify and make
public the pages. The issue is a politically charged one, with some claiming the pages will show
that Saudi Arabia financed the attacks. Paul appeared at a Capitol Hill press conference with a
bipartisan group of House sponsors, including Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Walter Jones (RN.C.) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), and Former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.). The group were
flanked by members of the group 9/11 Families United for Justice Against Terrorism. Paul pointed
out that 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, saying that information that has been
reported over the years "does raise question about their (the government's) support" and if it was
provided to the hijackers. "We cannot let page after page of blanked out documents to be
obscured by a veil, leaving these family members to wonder if there is additional information
surrounding these horrible acts," Paul said. "The 28 pages in the report of over 800 pages go to
the question of who financed 9/11and they point a strong finger at Saudi Arabia," Graham
said.
Note: Rand Paul joins several prominent current and former US politicians that are working to
expose the Saudi government money behind terrorism by declassifying this material. Explore the
statements of over 3,000 respected government officials, professors, military officers, architects,
engineers who have gone on the record raising serious questions about the 9/11 official story. For
more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing 9/11 investigation news
articles from reliable major media sources.
New report questions story behind killing of Osama bin Laden

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2015/05/11/new-report-questions-story...
Four years after the death of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden at the hands of US Navy Seals in
Abottabad, Pakistan, a new report ... by journalist Seymour Hersh questions the Obama
administrations account of the killing of Osama bin Laden. The report claims that, among
the lies, the biggest was the idea that the raid in May 2011 that killed bin Laden was an allAmerican event. "The most blatant lie was that Pakistans two most senior military leaders
General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director
general of the ISI were never informed of the US mission," the report says. The report also says
that Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence agency had been holding bin Laden as a prisoner since
2006, and that the US learned about the Al Qaeda leaders location through a former senior
Pakistani intelligence officer, who gave the information in return for the reward being offered by
American officials. The White House has said bin Laden was found through tracking his couriers.
Hershs primary US source for his story is "a retired senior intelligence official who was
knowledgeable about the initial intelligence about bin Ladens presence in Abbottabad." White
House spokesman Josh Earnest ... dismissed the Hersh piece, saying it was "riddled with
inaccuracies." Hersh, a longtime contributor to The New Yorker, is an award-winning journalist who
has won numerous prizes for his investigative reporting, including the Pulitzer Prize.
Note: There are many big problems with the official story of the killing of bin Laden. For starters,
read the review on the London Review of Books website. For more, see this ABC News article, this
BBC article and this AP article.
The shroud of secrecy around US drone strikes abroad must be lifted

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/15/shroud-secrecy-us-drone-...
Its been over two years since President Obama promised new transparency and
accountability rules when it comes to drone strikes. Virtually no progress has been made.
The criteria for who gets added to the unaccountable kill list is still shrouded in secrecy even
when the US government is targeting its own citizens. We know because a Texas-born man
named Mohanad Mahmoud Al Farekh recently captured overseas was arraigned in federal court
this week. It turns out, as the Times reported, that in 2013 his government debated whether he
should be killed by a drone strike in Pakistan. The CIA and military were reportedly pushing hard
to send drones to kill Al Farekh, but the Justice Department didnt think there was enough
evidence. An important new report released by the Open Society Justice Initiative this week also
shows that - despite the Obama administrations internal requirements for drone strikes that
supposedly require a near certainty that civilians wont get killed - the government quite often just
disregards its own rules, which has led to the death of dozens of civilians in Yemen in the past two
years. Though without Open Societys study, the public would have no clue, since the Obama
administration still steadfastly refuses to officially release any information on drone strikes in
Yemen. The administration has said for years it prefers capturing to killing but the data
indicates that they practice the opposite.
Note: The CIA has been aware that drone strikes are ineffective since at least 2009. If drones help
terrorists, almost always miss their intended targets, and may be used to target people in the US in
the future, what are the real reasons for the US government's drone program?
C.I.A. Cash Ended Up in Coffers of Al Qaeda

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/world/asia/cia-funds-found-their-way-into-a...
In the spring of 2010, Afghan officials struck a deal to free an Afghan diplomat held hostage by Al
Qaeda. But the price was steep $5 million. To come up with the money, [senior security officials]
turned to a secret fund that the Central Intelligence Agency bankrolled with monthly cash deliveries
to the presidential palace in Kabul, according to several Afghan officials. The Afghan government,
they said, had already squirreled away about $1 million from that fund. Within weeks, that money
... was handed over to Al Qaeda, replenishing its coffers after a relentless C.I.A. campaign of
drone strikes in Pakistan had decimated the militant networks upper ranks. The C.I.A.s
contribution to Qaedas bottom line, though, was no well-laid trap. It was just another in a
long list of examples of how the United States, largely because of poor oversight and loose
financial controls, has sometimes inadvertently financed the very militants it is fighting.
While refusing to pay ransoms for Americans kidnapped by Al Qaeda, the Taliban or, more
recently, the Islamic State, the United States has spent hundreds of billions of dollars over the last
decade at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, some of which has been siphoned off to enemy fighters.
The C.I.A., meanwhile, continued dropping off bags of cash ranging each time from a few
hundred thousand dollars to more than $1 million at the presidential palace every month until
last year, when Mr. Karzai stepped down. The money was used to buy the loyalty of warlords,
legislators and other prominent and potentially troublesome Afghans, helping the palace
finance a vast patronage network that secured Mr. Karzais power base.
Note: A 2013 New York Times article called the US the "biggest source of corruption in
Afghanistan" for its CIA bankrolling of Afghan warlords. Meanwhile, over a billion dollars of Iraqi
"reconstruction" cash disappeared and was later tracked to a bunker in Lebanon. For more along
these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war corruption news articles from reliable
major media sources.
Claims Against Saudis Cast New Light on Secret Pages of 9/11 Report
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/us/claims-against-saudis-cast-new-light-on-...
A still-classified section of the investigation by congressional intelligence committees into the Sept.
11, 2001, attacks has taken on an almost mythic quality over the past 13 years. Now new claims
by Zacarias Moussaoui, a convicted former member of Al Qaeda, that he had high-level
contact with officials of the Saudi government in the prelude to Sept. 11 have brought
renewed attention to the inquirys withheld findings. Representative Stephen F. Lynch,
Democrat of Massachusetts [has authored] a bipartisan resolution encouraging President Obama
to declassify the section. Mr. Lynch and his allies have been joined by former Senator Bob Graham
of Florida, who as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee was a leader of the inquiry. He
has called for the release of the reports [28 page] Part 4, which dealt with Saudi Arabia, since
President George W. Bush ordered it classified when the rest of the report was released in
December 2002. Mr. Graham has repeatedly said it shows that Saudi Arabia was complicit in the
Sept. 11 attacks. The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and they point a very strong
finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier, Mr. Graham said last month as he pressed
for the pages to be made public. Proponents of releasing Part 4, titled Finding, Discussion and
Narrative Regarding Certain National Security Matters, have suggested that the Bush and Obama
administrations have held it back for fear of alienating an influential military and economic partner
rather than for any national security consideration.
Note: Several prominent current and former US politicians are working to expose the Saudi
government money behind terrorism by declassifying this material. Moussaoui's new claims
suggest that they are on the right track. For more along these lines, read concise summaries of
deeply revealing 9/11 investigation news from reliable major media sources.
Senate Report Rejects Claim on Hunt for Bin Laden

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/world/senate-report-raises-doubts-about-cia...
Months before the operation that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, the Central Intelligence Agency
secretly prepared a public-relations plan that would stress that information gathered from its
disputed interrogation program had played a critical role in the hunt. Starting the day after the raid,
agency officials in classified briefings made that point to Congress. But in page after page of
previously classified evidence, the Senate Intelligence Committee report on C.I.A. torture,
released Tuesday, rejects the notion that torturing detainees contributed to finding Bin
Laden. The crucial breakthrough in the hunt was the identification of ... Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. The
United States had started wiretapping a phone number associated with Mr. Kuwaiti by late 2001. It
was in 2004 that the C.I.A. came to realize that it should focus on finding Mr. Kuwaiti as part of the
hunt for Bin Laden. [A man named] Hassan Ghul, who had been captured in Iraqi Kurdistan ...
provided the most accurate intelligence that the agency produced about Mr. Kuwaitis role and
ties to Bin Laden. Mr. Ghul provided all the important information about [Mr. Kuwaiti] before he was
subjected to any torture techniques. During that [initial] two-day period in January 2004, He
opened up right away and was cooperative from the outset. Nevertheless, the C.I.A. then decided
to torture Mr. Ghul. During and after that treatment, he provided no actionable threat information.
Note: Read revealing excerpts from this most disturbing report.
On Media Outlets That Continue to Describe Unknown Drone Victims As

Militants
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/18/media-outlets-continue-describe...
It has been more than two years since The New York Times revealed that Mr. Obama embraced a
disputed method for counting civilian casualties of his drone strikes which in effect counts all
military-age males in a strike zone as combatants ... unless there is explicit intelligence
posthumously proving them innocent. The paper noted that this counting method may partly
explain the official claims of extraordinarily low collateral deaths, and even quoted CIA officials as
deeply troubled by this decision. After the Times article, most large western media outlets
continued to describe completely unknown victims of U.S. drone attacks as militants even
though they (a) had no idea who those victims were or what they had done and (b) were wellaware by that point that the term had been re-defined by the Obama administration. Like the U.S.
drone program itself, this deceitful media practice continues unabated. The U.S. government
itself let alone the media outlets calling them militants often has no idea who has
been killed by drone strikes in Pakistan. The Intercept previously reported that targeting
decisions can even be made on the basis of nothing more than metadata analysis and
tracking of SIM cards in mobile phones. Just last month, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism
documented that fewer than 4% of the people killed have been identified by available records as
named members of al Qaeda.
military corruption and high level manipulation of mass media from reliable sources.
Senator's "Wastebook" has everything that will fit in a pork barrel

2014-10-22, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/22/politics/tom-coburn-wastebook
Monkeys taught how to gamble and play video games. People paid to watch grass grow.
Swedish massages given to rabbits. These are just a few examples from the 100 entry-long list
in a book detailing government waste, compiled by retiring GOP Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. In
the 2014 edition of the "Wastebook," Coburn notes that getting rid of the practice of pork barrel
spending is next to impossible. "What I have learned from these experiences is Washington will
never change itself," he said." Some of the worst offenses listed in the book: The $1 billion price
tag the Pentagon paid to destroy $16 billion worth of ammunition, enough to pay a full years' salary
for over 54,000 Army privates. The book cites Pentagon officials who said the surplus ammunition
has become "obsolete, unusable, or their use is banned by international treaty." The Army spent
nearly half a million dollars -- $414,000 -- to develop a video game called "America's Army," a
version of which terrorists have used to train for missions, according to National Security
Agency e-mails sent in 2007 and leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Coburn
notes ... the national debt, which is "quickly approaching $18 trillion."
Note: For more, see the Chicago Tribune's article on "Wastebook".
The Fake Terror Threat Used To Justify Bombing Syria

2014-09-28, The Intercept with Glenn Greenwald
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/28/u-s-officials-invented-terror-g...
As the Obama Administration prepared to bomb Syria without congressional or U.N. authorization,
it faced two problems. The first was the difficulty of sustaining public support for a new years-long
war against ISIS, a group that clearly posed no imminent threat to the homeland. A second was
the lack of legal justification for launching a new bombing campaign. The solution to both problems
was found in the wholesale concoction of a brand new terror threat that was branded The
Khorasan Group. After spending weeks depicting ISIS as an unprecedented threat too radical
even for Al Qaeda! administration officials suddenly began spoon-feeding their favorite media
organizations ... tales of a secret group that was even scarier and more threatening than ISIS, one
that posed a direct and immediate threat to the American Homeland. The unveiling of this new
group was performed in a September 13 article by the Associated Press, who cited unnamed U.S.
officials. AP depicted the U.S. officials who were feeding them the narrative as engaging in some
sort of act of brave, unauthorized truth-telling. On the morning of September 18, CBS News
broadcast a segment that is as pure war propaganda as it gets: directly linking the soon-to-arrive
U.S. bombing campaign in Syria to the need to protect Americans from being exploded in civilian
jets by Khorasan. As usual, anonymity was granted to U.S. officials to make these claims. As
usual, there was almost no evidence for any of this. Nonetheless, American media outlets
eager, as always, to justify American wars spewed all of this with very little
skepticism. Worse, they did it by pretending that the U.S. government was trying not to talk
about all of this too secret! but they, as intrepid, digging journalists, managed to
unearth it from their courageous sources.
Note: Read the entire informative article to see how the media participates in manipulating
unsuspecting citizens into more war. For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing
media corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
Who profits from our new war? Inside NSA and private contractors
secret plans
2014-09-24, Salon
http://www.salon.com/2014/09/24/heres_who_profits_from_our_new_war_inside_nsa...
A massive, $7.2 billion Army intelligence contract signed just 10 days ago underscores the central
role to be played by the National Security Agency and its army of private contractors in the
unfolding air war being carried out by the United States and its Gulf States allies against the
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. INSCOMs global intelligence support contract will place the
contractors at the center of this fight. Under its terms, 21 companies, led by Booz Allen
Hamilton, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, will compete over the
next five years to provide fully integrated intelligence, security and information
operations in Afghanistan and future contingency operations around the world. INSCOM
announced the global intelligence contract two days after President Obama, in a speech to the
nation, essentially declared war on ISIS in Iraq and Syria and outlined a campaign of airstrikes and
combat actions to degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group. The top contractors on the
INSCOM contract are already involved in the war. Lockheed Martin, for example, makes the
Hellfire missiles that are used extensively in U.S. drone strikes. Northrop Grumman makes the
Global Hawk surveillance drone. Both companies have large intelligence units. 70 percent of the
U.S. intelligence budget is spent on private contractors. This spending [is] estimated at around $70
billion a year. [There is a] revolving door between INSCOM and its contractors. The system is
corrupted by the close relationships between the companies and their agencies, said [Tom] Drake,
who as a whistle-blower was nearly sent to prison for exposing the waste, fraud and abuse in a
contracted program at the NSA that ended up losing over $7 billion.
Note: Read a powerful essay written by a top US general showing how he was fooled into
supporting wars that were generated by the powerful global elite who want never-ending war in
order to keep their profits flowing.
US Senator: 'US Turned Blind Eye to Saudi Role in 9/11, Fuelling Rise of
Isis'
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/us-senator-us-turned-blind-eye-saudi-role-9-11-fuell...
The rise of ISIS has been aided by the failure of the US government to investigate the connection
between the Saudi Arabian government and jihadist networks, said former senator Bob Graham.
Senator Graham, who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that successive
administrations had failed to examine the connections between the Saudis and Sunni militant
groups. "I believe that the failure to shine a full light on Saudi actions ... has contributed to the
Saudi ability to continue to engage in actions that are damaging to the US and in particular their
support for ISIS," he said. The Saudis have been accused of using Sunni militant groups as
proxies, channeling money to Islamist groups battling the forces of president Bashar alAssad in the Syrian civil war, as Sunni and Shia battle for hegemony in the Middle East. The
Shia Iranians are chief backers of Assad, and Nouri al Maliki's Shia-dominated government which
collapsed following ISIS' onslaught in Iraq, accused the Saudi Arabia and Qatar of funding ISIS,
and facilitating "genocide". [Graham] said that Saudi Arabia gives support to the "the most
extremist elements among the Sunni". Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was the son of a wealthy
construction magnate, who had close ties to the Saudi royal family. It is alleged that redacted
pages of the [Joint Congressional 9/11 inquiry] report establish links between Saudi
government officials and al-Qaida.
Note: Watch the highly illuminating BBC documentary "Power of Nightmares" that reveals that alQaida, under the control of Osama bin Laden, has never actually existed, but is a US/UKgovernment psychological operation to launch the "Global War on Terror". For more on this, read
Prof. David Ray Griffin's deeply revealing book Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?
Homeland Security was built to fend off terrorists. Why's it so busy

arming cops to fight average Americans?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/homeland-security-depart...
America has raged against the appalling behavior of the local police in Ferguson, Missouri, and for
good reason: automatic rifles pointed at protesters, tank-like armored trucks blocking marches, the
teargassing and arresting of reporters, tactics unfit even for war zones. [But ire] should also be
focused on the federal government agency that has enabled the rise of military police, and so
much more: the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The 240,000-employee [agency] has
been the primary arms dealer for out-of-control local cops in Ferguson and beyond, handing out
tens of billions of dollars in grants for military equipment in the last decade with little to no
oversight. Police can act like paramilitary forces to combat the most mundane crimes without much
worry of the consequences. But the problem with DHS is much larger than just combat gear:
Homeland Security is also transferring tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in high-tech spying
technology to local police through a sprawling backroom operation surveilling your neighborhood,
much of which may be unconstitutional. DHS has its own fleet of Predator drones roaming the US
border and far beyond, which it has loaned out to police over 500 times. Homeland Security is
also handing out millions of dollars to local police to accelerate and facilitate the
adoption of smaller drones that police can fly themselves. Cops claim they want these
middleman drones for emergencies, but ... documents show theyll end up using them
for crowd control and intelligence gathering.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing terrorism news articles from
NYT Will Use The Word Torture, Finally

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/07/nyt-torture_n_5659997.html
The New York Times announced on [August 7] that it will use the word torture to describe the
United States' controversial interrogation tactics on terror suspects. "From now on, The Times
will use the word torture to describe incidents in which we know for sure that
interrogators inflicted pain on a prisoner in an effort to get information," said Times
executive editor Dean Baquet. In the past, the Times had been sharply criticized for not
using the word torture. Instead, [it] had referred to torture as "brutal interrogation," or similar
epithets. The Times is hardly the only major media outlet to avoid using the word "torture." Reuters
referred to the tactics as "brutal interrogation methods" and the AP has called them "enhanced
interrogation techniques." The media have been accused of following along with President Bush's
denial that the U.S. does not use torture. Banquet [says] that "while the methods set off a national
debate, the Justice Department insisted that the techniques did not rise to the legal definition of
'torture.' Baquet said that reporters and editors had debated the issue in wake of the Senate
Intelligence Committee's torture report, which has yet to be released. Last week, President Obama
admitted that the CIA "tortured some folks" in post-9/11 anti-terror efforts.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing media cover-ups news articles
from reliable major media sources.
New leaker disclosing U.S. secrets, government concludes

2014-08-06, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/05/politics/u-s-new-leaker
The federal government has concluded there's a new leaker exposing national security
documents in the aftermath of surveillance disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward
Snowden, U.S. officials tell CNN. Proof of the newest leak comes from national security
documents that formed the basis of a news story published [August 5] by the Intercept, the news
site launched by Glenn Greenwald, who also published Snowden's leaks. The Intercept article
focuses on the growth in U.S. government databases of known or suspected terrorist names
during the Obama administration. The article cites documents prepared by the National
Counterterrorism Center dated August 2013, which is after Snowden left the United States to avoid
criminal charges. Government officials have been investigating to find out that identity. In a
February interview with CNN's Reliable Sources, Greenwald said: "I definitely think it's fair
to say that there are people who have been inspired by Edward Snowden's courage and by
the great good and virtue that it has achieved." The biggest database, called the Terrorist
Identities Datamart Environment, now has 1 million names, a U.S. official confirmed to CNN. The
Intercept first reported the new TIDE database numbers, along with details of other databases. As
of November, 2013, there were 700,000 people listed in the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB),
or the "Terrorist Watchlist, according to a U.S. official. The Intercept report said, citing the
documents, that 40% on the "Terrorist Watchlist" aren't affiliated with terror groups.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing 'terror' manipulation news
Barack Obamas Secret Terrorist-Tracking System, by the Numbers

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/08/05/watch-commander
Nearly half of the people on the U.S. governments widely shared database of terrorist suspects
are not connected to any known terrorist group, according to classified government documents
obtained by The Intercept. Of the 680,000 people caught up in the governments Terrorist
Screening Databasea watchlist of known or suspected terrorists that is shared with
local law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign governmentsmore than
40 percent are described by the government as having no recognized terrorist group
affiliation. The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that
the Obama Administration has presided over an unprecedented expansion of the terrorist
screening system. Since taking office, Obama has boosted the number of people on the no fly list
more than ten-fold, to an all-time high of 47,000. If everything is terrorism, then nothing is
terrorism, says David Gomez, a former senior FBI special agent. The watchlisting system, he
adds, is revving out of control. The classified documents were prepared by the National
Counterterrorism Center, the lead agency for tracking individuals with suspected links to
international terrorism. Stamped SECRET and NOFORN (indicating they are not to be shared
with foreign governments), they offer the most complete numerical picture of the watchlisting
system to date. The government adds names to its databases, or adds information on existing
subjects, at a rate of 900 records each day.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing 'terror' manipulation news
U.S. Senate report to suggest harsh CIA interrogations were

unnecessary
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/sns-rt-us-usa-cia-tor...
A U.S. Senate committee report will conclude that the CIA's use of harsh interrogation after
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks yielded no critical intelligence on terrorist plots that could not
have been obtained through non-coercive methods, U.S. officials familiar with the document
said. [The] report [is] expected to suggest that the "enhanced" techniques were unnecessary and
also to accuse some CIA officers of misleading Congress about the effectiveness of the program.
Officials said the Senate Intelligence Committee was unlikely to release the report to the public
without some additional review. "A preliminary review of the report indicates there have been
significant redactions. We need additional time to understand the basis for these redactions and
determine their justification. Therefore the report will be held until further notice and released when
that process is completed," Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the committee's chair, said.
Committee investigators also concluded that the agency misled other executive branch
agencies and Congress by claiming that only by using harsh methods did the agency
achieve ... counter-terrorism breakthroughs that otherwise would not have been possible.
The report will criticize some CIA officials by name, the officials said.
FBI Defends Search for Oklahoma City Bombing Video

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/trial-opening-video-oklahoma-city-bombing-...
The FBI thoroughly searched its archives and found no evidence that more videos of the
Oklahoma City bombing exist, agency employees told a judge [on July 28] in a trial that has
rekindled questions about whether any others were involved in the 1995 attack. Additional
searches for videos that Salt Lake City lawyer Jesse Trentadue believes are being withheld would
be burdensome and fruitless, FBI attorney Kathryn Wyer argued during the first day of a bench
trial. Trentadue says the agency is refusing to release videos that show a second person was with
Timothy McVeigh when he parked a truck outside the Oklahoma City federal building and
detonated a bomb that killed 168 people. The government says McVeigh was alone. [But] the
30 video recordings the FBI has released don't show the explosion or McVeigh's arrival in a
rental truck. Unsatisfied by the FBI's previous explanations and citing the public
importance of the tapes, U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups has ordered the agency to
explain why it can't find videos that are mentioned in evidence logs. Trentadue believes the
presence of a second suspect explains why his brother, Kenneth Trentadue, was flown to
Oklahoma several months after the bombing, where he died in a federal holding cell. Kenneth
Trentadue bore a striking resemblance to a police sketch based on witness descriptions of the
enigmatic suspect "John Doe No. 2," who was never identified..
Note: There is strong evidence of a major cover-up in the Oklahoma City bombing. See this Wall
Street Journal article, this Associated Press article, this ABC News article, and this Deseret News
article for examples.
Despite Obama's new rules, no end in sight for drone war

2014-05-23, MSN/Reuters
http://news.msn.com/in-depth/despite-obamas-new-rules-no-end-in-sight-for-dro...
A year after Obama laid out new conditions for drone attacks around the world, U.S. forces are
failing to comply fully with the rules he set for them: to strike only when there is an imminent threat
to Americans and when there is virtually no danger of taking innocent lives. Although Obama
promised greater transparency in his speech at the National Defense University, U.S. lawmakers
are increasingly critical of the secrecy surrounding the operations. There are growing concerns in
Washington that the net effect of the targeted-killing program may be counterproductive. [Obama]
is showing no sign of relinquishing what has become his counterterrorism weapon of choice since
he took office in 2009. Drones are spreading to new areas ... in far-flung places like Somalia and in
Nigeria. "Here we are, a year later, asking 'what has really changed?'" said University of Notre
Dame law professor Mary Ellen O'Connell, a leading expert on extrajudicial killings who has
testified before U.S. congressional committees. "The drones are still flying and the president
still sees the attractiveness of this cold and antiseptic means of killing." Obama's vision of
shifting control of the drone program from the shadowy paramilitary arm of the Central Intelligence
Agency to the more publicly accountable Pentagon is moving at what one national security source
described as a "glacial pace." The Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command is widely
believed to have been behind the December 12 drone strike in a remote part of Yemen that hit a
convoy later identified as a wedding procession, killing 15 people.
Note: For more on the expansion of drones in skies worldwide, see the deeply revealing reports
Behind Clash Between C.I.A. and Congress, a Secret Report on

Interrogations
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/us/politics/behind-clash-between-cia-and-co...
It was early December when the Central Intelligence Agency began to suspect it had suffered what
it regarded as an embarrassing computer breach. Investigators for the Senate Intelligence
Committee, working in the basement of a C.I.A. facility in Northern Virginia, had obtained an
internal agency review summarizing thousands of documents related to the agencys detention
and interrogation program. Parts of the C.I.A. report cast a particularly harsh light on the program,
the same program the agency was in the midst of defending in a prolonged dispute with the
intelligence committee. What the C.I.A. did next opened a new and even more rancorous chapter
in the struggle over how the history of the interrogation program will be written. Agency officials
began scouring the digital logs of the computer network used by the Senate staff members to try to
learn how and where they got the report. Their search not only raised constitutional questions
about the propriety of an intelligence agency investigating its congressional overseers, but
has also resulted in two parallel inquiries by the Justice Department one into the C.I.A.
and one into the committee. Each side accuses the other of spying on it, with the Justice
Department now playing the uneasy role of arbitrator in the bitter dispute. Its always been a dicey
proposition to be investigating Congress, said W. George Jameson, a C.I.A. lawyer for decades.
You dont do it lightly.
Who Tried to Silence Drone Victim Kareem Khan?

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/25/tried-silence-drone-victim-kare...
In the early morning hours of February 5, a group of armed men some dressed in Pakistani
police uniforms appeared at Kareem Khans home, awoke him and his family at gunpoint, and
took him away in an unmarked vehicle. Khan was hooded, shackled around the wrists and ankles,
and driven for hours, eventually arriving at a building where he was thrown into a windowless
holding cell. There he stayed for more than a week, during which he was subjected to sensory
deprivation and physical abuse. Khan says he was repeatedly beaten on the soles of his feet and
threatened with death by his captors. He was kept hooded and shackled for most of the day, and
fed only dry bread and water. Khan has no doubts about why he was targeted. He is the first
person to attempt a legal challenge to the CIA drone program in Pakistan, after his son and brother
were killed in a drone strike near his home in North Waziristan on December 31st 2009. His
abduction and detention occurred just over a week before Khan was to travel with [his
Pakistani lawyer, Shahzad] Akbar and Jennifer Gibson, a lawyer with the UK-based legal
charity Reprieve, to speak with European parliamentarians about the CIA drone program.
Among the topics of discussion were the extralegal nature of the program, as well as covert
intelligence sharing by European spy agencies. While in captivity, Khan was interrogated by men
who refused to identify themselves, and who questioned him repeatedly about his plans to speak
with the media and about the cases of others who had been killed by drones. Since the start of the
War on Terror it has been estimated by local human rights groups that as many as 8,000
Pakistani citizens have been disappeared by local intelligence agencies, often at the behest of
their American counterparts.
Note: The Intercept is the new media source being funded by Pierre Omidyar and featuring Glenn
Greenwald and other top reporters known for their independence. For more on the atrocities
committed by the US and UK in the illegal "global war on terror", see the deeply revealing reports
Judge Tosses Muslim Spying Suit Against NYPD, Says Any Damage
Was Caused by Reporters Who Exposed It
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/21/judge-tosses-muslim-spying-suit...
A federal judge in Newark has thrown out a lawsuit against the New York Police Department
for spying on New Jersey Muslims, saying if anyone was at fault, it was the Associated
Press for telling people about it. In his ruling ... U.S. District Court Judge William J. Martini
simultaneously demonstrated the willingness of the judiciary to give law enforcement alarming
latitude in the name of fighting terror, greenlighted the targeting of Muslims based solely on their
religious beliefs, and blamed the media for upsetting people by telling them what their government
was doing. The NYPDs clandestine spying on daily life in Muslim communities in the region
with no probable cause, and nothing to show for it was exposed in a Pulitzer-Prize winning
series of stories by the AP. The stories described infiltration and surveillance of at least 20
mosques, 14 restaurants, 11 retail stores, two grade schools, and two Muslim student associations
in New Jersey alone. In a cursory, 10-page ruling issued before even hearing oral arguments,
Martini essentially said that what the targets didnt know didnt hurt them: "None of the Plaintiffs
injuries arose until after the Associated Press released unredacted, confidential NYPD documents
and articles expressing its own interpretation of those documents. Nowhere in the Complaint do
Plaintiffs allege that they suffered harm prior to the unauthorized release of the documents by the
Associated Press. This confirms that Plaintiffs alleged injuries flow from the Associated Presss
unauthorized disclosure of the documents. The harms are not fairly traceable to any act of
surveillance."
Note: For more on government corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major
The NSAs Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program

2014-02-10, The Intercept (With Glenn Greenwald)
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/02/10/the-nsas-secret-role/
The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather
than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes
an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people. According to
a former drone operator for the militarys Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also
worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis
and cell-phone tracking technologies. Rather than confirming a targets identity with operatives or
informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and
location of the mobile phone. The former JSOC drone operator ... states that innocent people have
absolutely been killed as a result. Some top Taliban leaders, knowing of the NSAs targeting
method, have purposely and randomly distributed SIM cards among their units in order to elude
their trackers. As a result, even when the agency correctly identifies and targets a SIM card
belonging to a terror suspect, the phone may actually be carried by someone else, who is then
killed in a strike. The Obama administration has repeatedly insisted that its operations kill terrorists
with the utmost precision. Within the NSA ... a motto quickly caught on at Geo Cell: We Track Em,
You Whack Em. In December 2009, utilizing the NSAs metadata collection programs, the
Obama administration dramatically escalated U.S. drone and cruise missile strikes in Yemen. The
first strike in the country known to be authorized by Obama targeted an alleged Al Qaeda camp in
the southern village of al-Majala. The strike, which included the use of cluster bombs, resulted in
the deaths of 14 women and 21 children.
Note: For an in-depth interview on this important topic, click here. Would anyone in a developed
country tolerate their citizens being killed by the drones of a foreign government? Note also that
The Intercept is the new media source being funded by Pierre Omidyar and featuring Glenn
Greenwald and other top reporters known for the their independence.
'Transparent' detention at Guantanamo? Not anymore

2014-01-09, MSN
http://news.msn.com/in-depth/transparent-detention-at-guantanamo-not-anymore
After a tumultuous year at the war-on-terror detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the
U.S. military's motto is "Safe, Humane, Legal, Transparent," operations are cloaked in secrecy.
The prison approaches the start of its 13th year next week with a new reclusive regime that
no longer discloses what was once routinely released information. The daily tally of hunger
striking detainees the protest that engulfed more than 100 prisoners at its peak this
summer stopped in December. Guards and other prison camp troops are under orders to
withhold their names when talking to reporters. On the witness stand in the war court recently,
a lawyer in the uniform of an Air Force officer gave sworn testimony under a curious, unexplained
fake name "Major Krueger." Guantanamo is remote, and what is happening there in this new
era has mostly gone unnoticed. The government controls access to everything pertaining to
Guantanamo. Journalists have to get the military's permission to go there, navigate censorship of
their pictures, wait 40 seconds to hear what happens in court and then wait weeks to see court
filings. The current crackdown on information can range from the mildly curious to the outright
comedic. At times it seems to signify a gratuitous use of power by troops on rotation with sudden
power to [wield] a censor's scissors. At times, it suggests a government bureaucracy whose
default is knee-jerk secrecy.
I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really
goes on
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/29/drones-us-military
Whenever I read comments by politicians defending the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Predator and
Reaper program aka drones I wish I could ask them a few questions. I'd start with: "How many
women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile?" Few of these politicians who
so brazenly proclaim the benefits of drones have a real clue of what actually goes on. I, on the
other hand, have seen these awful sights first hand. What the public needs to understand is that
the video provided by a drone is not usually clear enough to detect someone carrying a weapon,
even on a crystal-clear day. This makes it incredibly difficult for the best analysts to identify if
someone has weapons for sure. One example comes to mind: "The feed is so pixelated, what if
it's a shovel, and not a weapon?" I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV
analysts. We always wonder if ... we destroyed an innocent civilian's life all because of a
bad image or angle. I know the feeling you experience when you see someone die.
Horrifying barely covers it. When you are exposed to it over and over again it becomes like a
small video, embedded in your head, forever on repeat, causing psychological pain and suffering.
UAV troops are victim to not only the haunting memories of this work that they carry with them, but
also the guilt of always being a little unsure of how accurate their confirmations of weapons or
identification of hostile individuals were. The UAVs in the Middle East are used as a weapon, not
as protection, and as long as our public remains ignorant to this, this serious threat to the sanctity
of human life at home and abroad will continue.
Note: For more on war crimes committed by the US and UK in the illegal "global war on terror",
see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
CIA made doctors torture suspected terrorists after 9/11, taskforce finds
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/04/cia-doctors-torture-suspected-te...
Doctors and psychologists working for the US military violated the ethical codes of their profession
under instruction from the defence department and the CIA to become involved in the torture and
degrading treatment of suspected terrorists, an investigation has concluded. The report of the
Taskforce on Preserving Medical Professionalism in National Security Detention Centres
concludes that after 9/11, health professionals working with the military and intelligence
services "designed and participated in cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment and
torture of detainees". The report lays blame primarily on the defence department (DoD) and
the CIA, which required their healthcare staff to put aside any scruples in the interests of
intelligence gathering and security practices that caused severe harm to detainees, from
waterboarding to sleep deprivation and force-feeding. The two-year review by the 19-member
taskforce, Ethics Abandoned: Medical Professionalism and Detainee Abuse in the War on Terror,
supported by the Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP) and the Open Society Foundations,
says that the DoD termed those involved in interrogation "safety officers" rather than doctors.
Doctors and nurses were required to participate in the force-feeding of prisoners on hunger strike,
against the rules of the World Medical Association and the American Medical Association. Doctors
and psychologists working for the DoD were required to breach patient confidentiality and share
what they knew of the prisoner's physical and psychological condition with interrogators, and were
used as interrogators themselves.
Human rights groups accuse US of war crimes

2013-10-22, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/human-rights-groups-accuse-us-war-crimes
The United States is facing increasingly harsh criticism over its use of lethal drone strikes to target
suspected terrorists. American drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen may amount to war crimes,
according to a pair of reports released by international human rights groups. Examining nine drone
strikes in Pakistan, the Amnesty International report concludes that the attacks killed large
numbers of innocent civilians, and accuses the U.S. of targeting rescuers who arrive in the
aftermath of the strikes to aid the wounded. A report from Human Rights Watch states that the
majority of people killed by six drone strikes in Yemen were civilians (57 out of the 82 killed). The
groups findings that the United States has killed more civilians than it has admitted are
bolstered by a UN report ... that stated U.S. drone strikes had killed as many as 400 civilians
in Pakistan and almost 60 in Yemen. These reports clash with the U.S. governments own
assessment of the strikes. Officials have maintained that civilian casualties from drone strikes
are minimal, even in the face of multiple third-party evaluations that state otherwise. Both groups
are demanding that the Obama administration investigate allegations of civilian deaths, release
more information about the legal basis for drone strikes on suspected terrorists, provide restitution
to those unjustly harmed and reveal the identities of those who lost their lives in the attacks.
Note: If a single civilian in the US were killed by a foreign drone, the entire nation would be up in
arms. Do we have a double standard here? For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply
revealing war atrocities news articles from reliable major media sources.
US drone strikes could be classed as war crimes, says Amnesty

International
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/22/amnesty-us-officials-war-crimes-...
US officials responsible for the secret CIA drone campaign [in] Pakistan may have committed war
crimes and should stand trial, a report by a leading human rights group warns. Amnesty
International has highlighted the case of a grandmother who was killed while she was picking
vegetables and other incidents which could have broken international laws designed to protect
civilians. The report is issued in conjunction with an investigation by Human Rights Watch detailing
missile attacks in Yemen which the group believes could contravene the laws of armed conflict,
international human rights law and Barack Obama's own guidelines on drones. Getting to the
bottom of individual strikes is exceptionally difficult in the restive areas bordering Afghanistan,
where thousands of militants have settled. People are often terrified of speaking out, fearing
retribution from both militants and the state, which is widely suspected of colluding with the CIA-led
campaign. But Amnesty mounted a major effort to investigate nine of the many attacks to have
struck the region over the last 18 months, including one that killed 18 labourers in North Waziristan
as they waited to eat dinner in an area of heavy Taliban influence in July 2012. All those
interviewed by Amnesty strongly denied any of the men had been involved in militancy.
"Amnesty International has serious concerns that this attack violated the prohibition of the
arbitrary deprivation of life and may constitute war crimes or extrajudicial executions," the
report said. It called for those responsible to stand trial.
Note: If just one citizen were killed in the U.S. or Europe by a foreign drone, there would be an
absolute uproar. Why the double standard? For more on the use of drones to kill abroad and spy at
home, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
5 companies that make money by keeping Americans scared

2013-08-19, Salon
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/19/5_companies_that_make_money_by_keeping_americ...
Michael Hayden, the former director of the National Security Agency, has invaded Americas
television sets in recent weeks to warn about Edward Snowdens leaks and the continuing terrorist
threat to America. But what often goes unmentioned, as the Guardians Glenn Greenwald pointed
out, is that Hayden has a financial stake in keeping Americans scared and on a permanent
war footing against Islamist militants. And the private firm he works for, called the Chertoff
Group, is not the only one making money by scaring Americans. Post-9/11 America has
witnessed a boom in private firms dedicated to the hyped-up threat of terrorism. The drive to
privatize Americas national security apparatus accelerated in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks,
and its gotten to the point where 70 percent of the national intelligence budget is now spent on
private contractors, as author Tim Shorrock reported [in Spies for Hire: the Secret World of
Intelligence Outsourcing]. The private intelligence contractors have profited to the tune of at least
$6 billion a year. In 2010, the Washington Post revealed that there are 1,931 private firms across
the country dedicated to fighting terrorism. What it all adds up to is a massive industry profiting off
government-induced fear of terrorism, even though Americans are more likely to be killed by a car
crash or their own furniture than a terror attack. Here are five private companies cashing in on
keeping you afraid. 1. The Chertoff Group 2. Booz Allen Hamilton 3. Science Applications
International Corp. 4. Center for Counterintelligence and Security Studies 5. Security Solutions
International.
Note: For more on government and corporate corruption in pushing the terror hoax, see the deeply
revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Texas Police Hit Organic Farm With Massive SWAT Raid

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/15/texas-swat-team-conducts-_n_3764951....
A small organic farm in Arlington, Texas, was the target of a massive police action ... that included
aerial surveillance, a SWAT raid and a 10-hour search. Members of the local police raiding party
had a search warrant for marijuana plants, which they failed to find at the Garden of Eden farm.
Farm owners and residents who live on the property [said] that the real reason for the law
enforcement exercise appears to have been code enforcement. Local authorities had cited the
Garden of Eden in recent weeks for code violations, including "grass that was too tall, bushes
growing too close to the street, a couch and piano in the yard, chopped wood that was not properly
stacked, a piece of siding that was missing from the side of the house, and generally unclean
premises." The raid on the Garden of Eden farm appears to be the latest example of police
departments using SWAT teams and paramilitary tactics to enforce less serious crimes. In
recent years, SWAT teams have been called out to perform regulatory alcohol inspections at a bar
in Manassas Park, Va.; to raid bars for suspected underage drinking in New Haven, Conn.; to
perform license inspections at barbershops in Orlando, Fla.; and to raid a gay bar in Atlanta where
police suspected customers and employees were having public sex. A federal investigation later
found that Atlanta police had made up the allegations of public sex. Other raids have been
conducted on food co-ops and Amish farms suspected of selling unpasteurized milk
products. The federal government has for years been conducting raids on medical
marijuana dispensaries in states that have legalized them.
Note: The author of this report, Radley Balko, is a senior writer and investigative reporter for The
Huffington Post. He is also the author of the new book, Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization
of America's Police Forces. For an ABC News report on this disturbing raid, click here.
U.S. allowed Italian kidnap prosecution to shield higher-ups, ex-CIA

officer says
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/27/3525414/us-allowed-italian-kidnap-prose...
A former CIA officer has broken the U.S. silence around the 2003 abduction of a radical
Islamist cleric in Italy, charging that the agency inflated the threat the preacher posed and
that the United States then allowed Italy to prosecute her and other Americans to shield
President George W. Bush and other U.S. officials from responsibility for approving the
operation. Confirming for the first time that she worked undercover for the CIA in Milan when the
operation took place, Sabrina De Sousa provided new details about the extraordinary rendition
that led to the only criminal prosecution stemming from the secret Bush administration rendition
and detention program launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The cleric, Osama Mustapha
Hassan Nasr, was snatched from a Milan street by a team of CIA operatives and flown to Egypt,
where he was held for the better part of four years without charges and allegedly tortured. An
Egyptian court in 2007 ruled that his imprisonment was unfounded and ordered him released.
Among the allegations made by De Sousa in a series of interviews with McClatchy: The former
CIA station chief in Rome, Jeffrey Castelli, whom she called the mastermind of the operation,
exaggerated Nasr's terrorist threat to win approval for the rendition and misled his superiors [to
believe] that Italian military intelligence had agreed to the operation. Senior CIA officials,
including then-CIA Director George Tenet, approved the operation even though Nasr wasnt
wanted in Egypt and wasnt on the U.S. list of top al Qaida terrorists. Condoleezza Rice, then the
White House national security adviser, ... agreed to it and recommended that Bush approve the
abduction.
FBI bars Fla. from releasing Todashev autopsy

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/07/16/fbi-bars-florida-from-releasing-a...
A Florida medical examiners office said [on July 16] that the FBI has ordered the office not to
release its autopsy report of a Chechen man fatally shot by a Boston FBI agent in May. The
medical examiners office said it completed the autopsy report on Ibragim Todashev, a friend of [a]
suspected Boston Marathon bomber, on July 8 and that the report was ready for release. The
agent shot and killed Todashev on May 22 in his Orlando apartment during an interrogation related
to the Boston Marathon bombings. Critics have called for an independent inquiry, questioning the
blanket of secrecy surrounding the case. The FBI and the Massachusetts State Police sought out
Todashev after the Marathon bombings, but have refused to release details of the shooting. Media
reports have provided conflicting accounts: Some said Todashev attacked the agent with a blade
during an interrogation, while others said Todashev was unarmed. Another said he lunged at the
agent with a metal pole or a broomstick. The agent shot Todashev multiple times, according to
family members who released photos of Todashevs dead body as part of their call for an
inquiry into his death. Family members and advocacy groups have questioned the media
accounts, pointing out that Todashev had repeatedly cooperated with the FBI. The Council
on American-Islamic Relations and the ACLU have called for independent inquiries into the
shooting. According to CAIR in Florida, which is conducting its own investigation into Todashevs
slaying, Todashev had spoken to the FBI at least three times at their offices after the Marathon
bombings.
Note: What are they hiding here?
Lawmakers say FBI thwarts inquiry into Boston bombings

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2013/07/10/house-chairman-says-fbi-s...
Members of a congressional committee [on July 10] accused the FBI of stalling an inquiry into the
Boston Marathon bombings, saying the bureau had no grounds for withholding what it knew about
Tamerlan Tsarnaev prior to the attacks. The information requested by this committee belongs to
the American people, said Representative Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican who chairs the
House Homeland Security Committee. It does not belong solely to the FBI. The frustrations, aired
publicly after FBI officials rebuffed an invitation to appear before the committee, stemmed from the
FBIs unwillingness to detail how it handled a security review of Tsarnaev nearly two years before
the Marathon bombings. The FBI continues to refuse this committees appropriate requests
for information and documents crucial to our investigation into what happened in Boston,
McCaul declared as he opened a committee hearing. Tsarnaev died after a firefight with police in
Watertown within hours of being identified as a suspect. Members were particularly frustrated by a
July 3 letter to the committee from the FBI. The letter, reviewed by the Globe, said the bureau
would not be responding to all the committees requests for information. The fact that the FBI is
not sharing information with this committee with jurisdiction over homeland security I think
is just totally unacceptable, said Representative Peter King, a New York Republican.
Note: For more strangeness around the Boston bombing with a key witness being deported, click
here. For more on the realities of intelligence agency manipulations, see the deeply revealing
South American Leaders Demand Apology in Plane Row

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/07/05/world/americas/ap-lt-nsa-surveilla...
South America's leftist leaders rallied to support Bolivian President Evo Morales after his plane
was rerouted amid suspicions that NSA leaker Edward Snowden was on board and they
demanded an apology from France, Italy, Portugal and Spain. The presidents of Argentina,
Ecuador, Suriname, Venezuela and Uruguay joined Morales in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba ...
to denounce the treatment of Morales, who warned that he would close the U.S. Embassy in
Bolivia if necessary. Morales again blamed Washington for pressuring European countries to
refuse to allow his plane to fly through their airspace on Tuesday, forcing it to land in Vienna,
Austria, in what he called a violation of international law. He had been returning from a summit in
Russia during which he had suggested he would be willing to consider a request from Snowden for
asylum. Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said Friday that his nation
and other European countries were told Snowden was aboard the Bolivian presidential
plane. He did not say who supplied the information and declined to say whether he had
been in contact with the United States. Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said that he and
other leaders were offering full support to Morales following the rerouting of the plane, calling it an
aggression against the Americas. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro protested alleged
attempts by Spanish officials to search the Bolivian presidential plane and accused the CIA of
encouraging several European countries to deny the presidential plane their airspace.
Note: The subservience of European governments to the US attempt to apprehend Snowden by
forcing Pres. Morales' plane down is logical given the recent revelations that they are also
engaging in total surveillance of their own populations. For information on this click here (France),
here (the UK), and here (Germany).
How cash rules surveillance policy

2013-07-04, San Francisco Chronicle (SF's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/How-cash-rules-surveillance-policy...
Have you noticed anything missing in the political discourse about the National Security
Administration's unprecedented mass surveillance? There's at least been some conversation
about the intelligence community's potential criminality and constitutional violations. But there have
only been veiled references to how cash undoubtedly tilts the debate against those who challenge
the national security state. Those indirect references have come in stories about Booz Allen
Hamilton, the security contractor that employed Edward Snowden. CNN/Money notes that 99
percent of the firm's multibillion-dollar annual revenues now come from the federal government.
Those revenues are part of a larger and growing economic sector within the military-industrial
complex - a sector that, according to author Tim Shorrock, is "a $56 billion-a-year industry." Yet
few in the Washington press corps mention that politicians' attacks on surveillance critics
may have nothing to do with principle and everything to do with shilling for campaign
donors. For a taste of what that kind of institutionalized corruption looks like, peruse the Influence
Explorer site to see how much Booz Allen Hamilton and its parent company, the Carlyle Group,
spend. As you'll see, from Barack Obama to John McCain, many of the politicians publicly
defending the surveillance state have taken huge sums of money from the firms. Simply put,
there are corporate forces with a vested financial interest in making sure the debate over security
is tilted toward the surveillance state and against critics of that surveillance state.
Note: Tim Shorrock, quoted above, is the author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence
Outsourcing.
This is how to deal with armed forces' brutality

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/09/armed-forces-brutality-i...
Baha Mousa was tortured to death in September 2003 while in the custody of the British armed
forces in Iraq. The subsequent inquiry led to a report, published in September 2011, that leaves no
doubt about the ... brutal illegality of the UK's current approach to the detention and interrogation
of suspected insurgents. The training of interrogators used in Iraq involved blatant illegality: forced
nakedness, screaming foul abuse into detainees' faces, sensory deprivation and [other forms of
torture]. The list of unlawful killings is endless. And there are hundreds of Iraqis' cases before
British courts in which allegations are made of egregious acts of torture and cruel, inhuman and
degrading treatment. A high court judgment in late May ... involves more than 1,000 Iraqi
cases of unlawful killings and acts of torture. It establishes that whenever UK personnel
abroad have authority and control over others and commit what might be acts of unlawful killing
and torture there must be an "inquisitorial process" in public into each case. There must also be
public scrutiny of the systemic issues arising from these cases. Take, for example, the case of
Huda, an eight-year-old girl in a yellow dress playing with her friends one sunlit morning in
Basra. A British rifleman in a tank, apparently perceiving her to be a threat to force security,
shot her dead without warning at close range. Before this new judgment, the Ministry of
Defence successfully shut the door on any accountability. Under the new system, the commanding
officer would have to suspend the soldier and send in the military police to forensically examine the
scene, interview witnesses and family, and send the results of a full investigation back to London
to be examined independently and publicly.
Note: For more on atrocities committed by the US and UK military forces in their wars of
aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media
sources available here.
What if laws applied to everyone?

2013-06-06, Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/06/06/what-if-laws-applied-to-everyone/
What if government officials have written laws that apply only to us and not to them? What if we
gave them the power to protect our freedoms and our safety and they used that power to trick and
trap some of us? What if government officials broke the laws we hired them to enforce? What if
they prosecuted others for breaking the same laws they broke? What if the government enacted a
law making it a crime to provide material assistance to terrorist organizations? What if the
government looked at that law and claimed it applied to a dentist or a shopkeeper who sold
services or goods to a terrorist organization, and not just to financiers and bomb makers? What if
the Supreme Court ruled that the law is so broad that it covers backslapping, advocacy and free
speech? What if the law is so broad that it punishes ideas and the free expression of those ideas,
even if no one is harmed thereby? What if FBI agents pretended to be members of these terrorist
organizations and set out to find people in America who were willing to join? What if the FBI
arrested the people it found and encouraged just as they were about to leave the U.S. and then
charged them with providing material assistance to terrorist organizations? What if the president
boasted that in his mind these duped dopes were really terrorists and their arrests kept us all
safer? What if offensive wars are illegal and morally wrong? What if killing is evil when not
done in self-defense? What if those who kill not in self-defense are prosecuted and
punished, except when they do so in large numbers and to the sounds of trumpets blaring?
What do we do about a government that breaks the laws we have hired it to enforce?
Note: Andrew P. Napolitano, author of this opinion, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News
Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution. His latest is
Theodore and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedom.
Bilderberg 2013: welcome to 1984

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/05/bilderberg-2013-goldman-sachs-wat...
The auditorium grew hushed as a senior Watford borough councillor took to his feet. Now it was
the turn of the people of Watford to speak. What would they make of this international three-day
policy summit, with its heavyweight delegate list bulging with billionaire financiers, party leaders
and media moguls, protected by the biggest security operation Watford has ever seen? At one
point in the meeting, during a tense exchange about contingency plans for dog-walkers, [Chief
Inspector] Rhodes let slip that Operation Discuss (the codename for the Bilderberg security
operation) had been up and running for 18 months. Residents and journalists shared an intake of
breath. "Eighteen months?" The reason for all the secrecy? "Terrorism". After 59 years of
Bilderberg guests scuttling about in the shadows, ducking lenses and dodging the news, that's the
rationale we're given? The same rationale, presumably, is behind the Great Wall of Watford, a
concrete-and-wire security fence encircling the hotel. As ugly as it is unnecessary, it looks like the
kind of thing you throw yourself against in a stalag before being machine-gunned from a
watchtower. Appropriately fascistic, you might say, if you regard fascism as "the merger of
corporate and government power", as Mussolini put it. The same threat of "terrorism" was used to
justify the no-pedestrian, no-stopping zones near the venue. The police laid out their logic: they
had "no specific intelligence" regarding a terror threat. However, in recent incidents, such
as Boston and Woolwich, there had been no intelligence prior to the attack. Therefore the
lack of any threat of a terror attack fitted exactly the profile of a terror attack. The lack of a
threat was a threat. Welcome to 1984.
Note: For a list of this year's Bilderberg participants, which include 90-year-old Henry Kissinger,
click here. For lots more on secret societies from reliable sources, click here.
U.S. acknowledges killing of four U.S. citizens in counterterrorism

operations
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-acknowledges-killing...
The Obama administration acknowledged [on May 22] that it has killed four Americans in overseas
counterterrorism operations since 2009, the first time it has publicly taken responsibility for the
deaths. Three are known to have died in CIA drone strikes in Yemen in 2011: Anwar al-Awlaki, his
16-year-old son and Samir Khan. The fourth Jude Kennan Mohammad, a Florida native indicted
in North Carolina in 2009 was killed in Pakistan, where the CIA has operated a drone campaign
against terrorism suspects for nearly a decade. His death was previously unreported. In addition to
disclosure of the four killings, Holder wrote that Obama has approved classified briefings for
Congress on an overall policy document, informally called the playbook. The document, more
than a year in the making, codifies the administrations standards and processes for its
unprecedented program of targeted killing and capture of terrorism suspects outside of war zones.
Nearly 400 drone strikes, in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, have been launched by the CIA and
U.S. military forces during Obamas presidency. According to Holders letter, Awlaki was the only
U.S. citizen the administration has specifically targeted and killed. Two weeks after Awlakis
death, his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman who had gone to the Yemeni desert in search of
his father was killed in a drone strike meant for someone else. That strike was similarly
unacknowledged, although a senior administration official privately characterized it as a
mistake.
Note: So an American citizen, Awlaki's son, was killed by a drone by "mistake"? What happened
to the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states no citizen shall "be deprived of life,
liberty, or property, without due process of law"? For deeply revealing reports from reliable major
media sources on the atrocities carried out by the US and UK in their global wars of aggression,
click here.
Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/04/telephone-calls-recorded-...
CNN's Out Front with Erin Burnett [has been] focused on the possible involvement in the Boston
Marathon attack of Katherine Russell, the 24-year-old American widow of the deceased suspect,
Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Anonymous government officials are claiming that they are now focused on
telephone calls between Russell and Tsarnaev that took place both before and after the attack to
determine if she had prior knowledge of the plot or participated in any way. Burnett interviewed Tim
Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, about whether the FBI would be able to discover
the contents of past telephone conversations between the two. He quite clearly insisted that they
could: BURNETT: There's no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells
them? CLEMENTE: No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security
investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. We certainly can find
that out. BURNETT: So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is
incredible. CLEMENTE: No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we
speak whether we know it or like it or not. On Thursday night, Clemente again appeared on
CNN. He reiterated what he said the night before but added expressly that "all digital
communications in the past" are recorded and stored. All digital communications - meaning
telephone calls, emails, online chats and the like - are automatically recorded and stored and
accessible to the government after the fact. To describe that is to define what a ubiquitous,
limitless Surveillance State is.
Note: All of our communications have been monitored by government computers for years. BBC
News reported in this this 1999 article about the Echelon network which monitors all
communications globally. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on
government and corporate threats to privacy, click here.
Report: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's repeated requests for a lawyer were

ignored
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/29/tsarnaev-right-to-counsel...
The initial debate over the treatment of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev focused on whether he should be
advised of his Miranda rights or whether the "public safety exception" justified delaying it. Now, the
Los Angeles Times ... reports something which, if true, would be a much more serious violation of
core rights than delaying Miranda warnings - namely, that ... Tsarnaev had repeatedly asked for a
lawyer, but the FBI simply ignored those requests, instead allowing the interagency High Value
Detainee Interrogation Group to continue to interrogate him alone: "Tsarnaev has not answered
any questions since he was given a lawyer and told he has the right to remain silent by Magistrate
Judge Marianne B. Bowler on Monday, officials said. Until that point, Tsarnaev had been
responding to the interagency High Value Detainee Interrogation Group, including admitting his
role in the bombing, authorities said. A senior congressional aide said Tsarnaev had asked several
times for a lawyer, but that request was ignored since he was being questioned under the public
safety exemption to the Miranda rule." Denying him the right to a lawyer after he repeatedly
requests one is ... as fundamental a violation of crucial guaranteed rights as can be
imagined. To ignore the repeated requests of someone in police custody for a lawyer, for
hours and hours, is just inexcusable and legally baseless. If the LA Times report is true, then it
means that the DOJ did not merely fail to advise him of his right to a lawyer but actively blocked
him from exercising that right.
Note: The government appears to be setting a precedent in seeing how far they can go with taking
away our constitutionally guaranteed rights. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media
sources on civil liberties, click here.
Father of Boston Bombing Suspects Keeps Faith in His Sons

The father of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects said he was present at the family house in
Cambridge, Mass., when the FBI interviewed his older son in 2011. Anzor Tsarnaev, speaking ...
from Makhachkala in Russia's Republic of Dagestan, said Federal Bureau of Investigation agents
came to talk to his older son, Tamerlan, as a "person of interest." "Yes, I was there. Of course I
was there," Mr. Tsarnaev said. "It was in Cambridge. 410 Norfolk Street, Cambridge." He said U.S.
authorities visited the house for what he described as "prevention" activities that involved
Tamerlan. "They said: We know what sites you are on, we know where you are calling, we know
everything about you. Everything," Mr. Tsarnaev recalled. "They said we are checking and
watchingthat's what they said." The father of the pair said he wasn't nervous that the FBI
showed up at his home. "I knew what he was doing, where he was going. I raised my children
right," he said of his sons. He said he is sure Tamerlan and his brother Dzhokhar must have
been framed for the Boston bombing. "This is all lies. These are my children. I know my
children," Mr. Tsarnaev said. He said his own brother, Ruslan, called his sons "losers" in an
American television interview Friday because of a family feud. Asked if it was possible Tamerlan
encountered Muslim fundamentalists while in Dagestan, he said there was no way. "There aren't
even any of those here anymore," Mr. Tsarnaev said.
Note: Another article in the UK's respected Independent states, "the men's mother, Zubeidat
Tsarnaeva said: 'I am 100% sure that this is a set-up.'" Could this have been yet another case of
FBI entrapment like this and this? Or could they even have been programmed to do this using
mind control using techniques described at this link? And for a Washington Times article raising
more questions on the bombing, click here.
Domestic drones and their unique dangers

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/29/domestic-drones-unique-da...
The use of drones by domestic US law enforcement agencies is growing rapidly, both in terms of
numbers and types of usage. As a result, civil liberties and privacy groups led by the ACLU ... have
been devoting increasing efforts to publicizing their unique dangers and agitating for statutory
limits. The belief that weaponized drones won't be used on US soil is patently irrational. Police
departments are already speaking openly about how their drones "could be equipped to carry
nonlethal weapons such as Tasers or a bean-bag gun." The drone industry has already developed
and is now aggressively marketing precisely such weaponized drones for domestic law
enforcement use. Domestic weaponized drones will be much smaller and cheaper, as well as more
agile - but just as lethal [as the large missile-firing drones used by the US military overseas]. The
nation's leading manufacturer of small "unmanned aircraft systems" (UAS) ... is AeroVironment,
Inc. (AV). AV is now focused on drone products - such as the "Qube" - that are so small that they
can be "transported in the trunk of a police vehicle or carried in a backpack." AV's website ... touts
a February, 2013 Defense News article describing how much the US Army loves [its]
"Switchblade" [drone]. Time Magazine heralded this tiny drone weapon as "one of the best
inventions of 2012", gushing: "the Switchblade drone can be carried into battle in a
backpack. It's a kamikaze: the person controlling it uses a real-time video feed from the
drone to crash it into a precise target. Its tiny warhead detonates on impact."
Note: This important article also discusses drones used by government agencies such as police
for purposes of continuous surveillance. But it misses entirely another major dimension: privately
owned and controlled drones, which are becoming dirt cheap and within the reach of virtually
anyone. Will the new "DroneWorld" in the making combine the worst features of the Police State
with the Wild West?
UN: Pakistan 'does not sanction' US drone strikes

2013-03-15, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21803391
The head of a UN team investigating US drone strikes in Pakistan has said that Islamabad does
not consent to them and sees them as a territorial violation. American officials say privately that
co-operation with Pakistan has not ended altogether - despite a cooling of relations - and key
Pakistani military officers and civilian politicians continue to support the strikes. It is estimated that
between 2004 and 2013, CIA drone attacks in Pakistan killed up to 3,460 people. About 890 of
them were civilians and the vast majority of strikes were carried out under the President Barack
Obama's administration. "The position of the government of Pakistan is quite clear," Mr Emmerson
said on Friday. "It does not consent to the use of drones by the United States on its territory and it
considers this to be a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and territorial integrity." The drone
campaign "involves the use of force on the territory of another state without its consent",
he said. Furthermore Pakistan believes that drone strikes are radicalising a new generation
of militants, he said, when it was capable of fighting Islamist extremists in the country by itself.
The UN special rapporteur said that as a matter of international law, drone strikes were only lawful
if they took place at the express request of the country concerned.
Note: Why are these drone strikes allowed to continue when Pakistan clear opposes them and
when there is not doubt many civilians are killed? For deeply revealing reports from reliable major
media sources on government corruption, click here.
Above the law

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-above-the-law/20...
The government of the United States, wrote Chief Justice John Marshall in his famous decision in
Marbury v. Madison, has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men. This
principle grounded in the Constitution, enforced by an independent judiciary is central to the
American creed. Citizens have rights, and fundamental to these is due process of the law. Yet last
week Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking for the administration with an alarmingly casual
nonchalance, traduced the whole notion of a nation of laws. First, the attorney general responded
to Sen. Rand Pauls inquiry as to whether the president claimed the power to authorize a lethal
force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil and without trial. Holder wrote
that, speaking hypothetically, it is possible to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which that
power might become necessary and appropriate. In response to the growing furor, Holder sent
Paul another letter, stating clearly that the president has no authority to use a weaponized drone
against an American in the United States who is not engaged in combat. But that, of course, only
underscores the issue. The country is waging a war on terrorism that admits no boundary
and no end. Now Holder is saying that the president has the authority to kill Americans in
the United States if they are engaged in combat. No hearing, no review, no due process of
law.
Note: For a disturbing report on the massive expansion of drones over US skies, click here.
Rand Paul filibusters vote on CIA director nominee John Brennan over
drones
2013-03-06, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57572883/rand-paul-filibusters-vote-on-ci...
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is filibustering the nomination of John Brennan to be director of the CIA,
delivering a protracted speech on the Senate floor in protest of the Obama administration's
controversial drone program, of which Brennan has been a key architect. Paul, speaking during
the debate surrounding Brennan's nomination on the Senate floor, said he would "speak until I can
no longer speak" in order to get his point across. "I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is
sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are
precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being
charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court," he said. Yesterday,
Attorney General Eric Holder clarified to Paul in a letter that the U.S. drone policy does
authorize the use of military force on against Americans on U.S. soil in cases of
"extraordinary circumstance." Paul, a longstanding opponent of the administration's

controversial targeted killing policy, expressed his outrage in a statement following his receipt of
the letter and continued that tirade on the floor today. "That Americans could be killed in a cafe in
San Francisco or in a restaurant in Houston or at their home in bowling green, Kentucky, is an
abomination," Paul said. "I object to people becoming so fearful they gradually give up their rights."
the US, click here.
The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/sunday-review/the-holocaust-just-got-more-s...
Researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe,
spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitlers reign
of brutality from 1933 to 1945. The documented camps include not only killing centers but
also thousands of forced labor camps, where prisoners manufactured war supplies; prisoner-ofwar camps; sites euphemistically named care centers, where pregnant women were forced to
have abortions or their babies were killed after birth; and brothels, where women were coerced into
having sex with German military personnel. Auschwitz and a handful of other concentration camps
have come to symbolize the Nazi killing machine in the public consciousness. Likewise, the Nazi
system for imprisoning Jewish families in hometown ghettos has become associated with a single
site the Warsaw Ghetto, famous for the 1943 uprising. But these sites, infamous though they
are, represent only a minuscule fraction of the entire German network, the new research makes
painfully clear. The maps the researchers have created to identify the camps and ghettos turn wide
sections of wartime Europe into black clusters of death, torture and slavery centered in
Germany and Poland, but reaching in all directions. The lead editors on the project, Geoffrey
Megargee and Martin Dean, estimate that 15 million to 20 million people died or were
imprisoned in the sites that they have identified as part of a multivolume encyclopedia.
Bradley Manning: the face of heroism

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/28/bradley-manning-heroism-p...
If Bradley Manning did what he is accused of doing, then he is a consummate hero, and deserves
a medal and our collective gratitude, not decades in prison. At his court-martial proceeding [today]
in Fort Meade, Manning ... pleaded guilty to having been the source of the most significant leaks to
WikiLeaks. He also pleaded not guilty to 12 of the 22 counts, including the most serious - the
capital offense of "aiding and abetting the enemy", which could send him to prison for life - on the
ground that nothing he did was intended to nor did it result in harm to US national security. The US
government will now almost certainly proceed with its attempt to prosecute him on those remaining
counts. Spencer Ackerman was there and reported: "Manning's motivation in leaking, he said,
was to 'spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and foreign policy in general', he
said, and 'cause society to reevaluate the need and even desire to engage in counterterrorism and
counterinsurgency operations that ignore their effect on people who live in that environment every
day.' Manning is absolutely right when he said today that the documents he leaked "are some of
the most significant documents of our time". They revealed a multitude of previously secret
crimes and acts of deceit and corruption by the world's most powerful factions. Journalists
and even some government officials have repeatedly concluded that any actual national security
harm from his leaks is minimal if it exists at all. To this day, the documents Manning just admitted
having leaked play a prominent role in the ability of journalists around the world to inform their
readers about vital events.
Obama officials refuse to say if assassination power extends to US soil

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/22/obama-brennan-paul-assass...
The Justice Department "white paper" purporting to authorize Obama's power to extrajudicially
execute US citizens was leaked three weeks ago. Since then, the administration - including the
president himself and his nominee to lead the CIA, John Brennan - has been repeatedly asked
whether this authority extends to US soil, i.e., whether the president has the right to execute US
citizens on US soil without charges. In each instance, they have refused to answer. Brennan has
been asked the question several times as part of his confirmation process. Each time, he simply
pretends that the question has not been asked, opting instead to address a completely different
issue. It's really worth pausing to remind ourselves of how truly radical and just plainly
unbelievable this all is. What's more extraordinary: that the US Senate is repeatedly asking
the Obama White House whether the president has the power to secretly order US citizens
on US soil executed without charges or due process, or whether the president and his
administration refuse to answer? That this is the "controversy" surrounding the confirmation of
the CIA director - and it's a very muted controversy at that - shows just how extreme the
degradation of US political culture is.
Note: For a revealing 27-minute documentary on drones which operate in swarms and pose
serious ethical questions in both peace and war, click here.
US newspapers accused of complicity as drone report reopens security

debate

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/feb/06/us-newspapers-accused-complicity-...
[The] New York Times and Washington Post ... are facing accusations of complicity after it
emerged that they bowed to pressure from the Obama administration not to disclose the existence
of a secret drone base in Saudi Arabia despite knowing about it for a year. Amid renewed scrutiny
over the Obama administration's secrecy over its targeted killing programme, media analysts and
national security experts said the revelation that some newspapers had co-operated over the
drone base had reopened the debate over the balance between freedom of information and
national security. One expert described the initial decision not to publish the base's location as
"shameful and craven". Dr Jack Lule, a professor of journalism and communication at Lehigh
University in Pennsylvania, said that the national security implications did not merit holding on to
the story. "The decision not to publish is a shameful one. The national security standard has
to be very high, perhaps imminent danger," he said. The Obama administration has resisted
any effort to open up its targeted killing programme to public scrutiny. The White House legal
advice on the assassinations program, including the killing of a US citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, has
been withheld from the public and Congress, despite repeated requests to make it public. Lule said
that in not publishing the location of the base when it had the information, the newspaper had
failed in its responsibility to the public. "It happened at the top ranks of the media, too. They
should have been leading the pack in calling for less secrecy. For them to give up that post
is terrible."
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on major media coverups,
click here.
Obama's non-closing of GITMO

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/29/obama-guantanamo-pentagon...
The New York Times ... reported yesterday that the State Department "reassigned Daniel Fried,
the special envoy for closing the prison at Guantnamo Bay, Cuba, and will not replace him". That
move obviously confirms what has long been assumed: that the camp will remain open indefinitely.
Dozens of the current camp detainees have long been cleared by Pentagon reviews for release including Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, a 36-year-old Yemeni who died at the camp in September
after almost 11 years in a cage despite never having been charged with a crime. Like so many of
his fellow detainees, his efforts to secure his release were vigorously (and successfully) thwarted
by the Obama administration. What [makes] Guantnamo such a travesty of justice [is] not its
geographic locale in the Caribbean Sea, but rather its system of indefinite detention: that people
[are] put in cages, often for life, without any charges or due process. Obama's plan was to
preserve and continue that core injustice - indefinite detention - but simply moved onto US
soil. Put simply, Obama's plan was never to close Gitmo as much as it was to re-locate it to
Illinois: to what the ACLU dubbed "Gitmo North". That's why ACLU Executive Director Anthony
Romero said of Obama's 2009 "close-Gitmo" plan that it "is hardly a meaningful step forward" and
that "while the Obama administration inherited the Guantnamo debacle, this current move is its
own affirmative adoption of those policies." That's because, he said, "the administration plans to
continue its predecessor's policy of indefinite detention without charge or trial for some detainees,
with only a change of location."
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government attacks on
civil liberties, click here.
Pentagon's new massive expansion of 'cyber-security' unit is about

everything except defense
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/28/pentagon-cyber-security-e...
Cyber-threats are the new pretext to justify expansion of power and profit for the public-private
National Security State. The Washington Post [reports] "a major expansion of [the Pentagon's]
cybersecurity force over the next several years, increasing its size more than fivefold." Specifically,
... "the expansion would increase the Defense Department's Cyber Command by more than 4,000
people, up from the current 900." The Post describes this expansion as "part of an effort to turn an
organization that has focused largely on defensive measures into the equivalent of an Internet-era
fighting force." This Cyber Command Unit operates under the command of Gen. Keith Alexander,
who also happens to be the head of the National Security Agency, the highly secretive government
network that spies on the communications of foreign nationals - and American citizens. These
activities pose a wide array of serious threats to internet freedom, privacy, and international law
that, as usual, will be conducted with full-scale secrecy and with little to no oversight and
accountability. And, as always, there is a small army of private-sector corporations who will benefit
most from this expansion. The fear-mongering rhetoric from government officials has
relentlessly intensified, all devoted to scaring citizens into believing that the US is at
serious risk of cataclysmic cyber-attacks from "aggressors". This all culminated when
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, last October, warned of what he called a "cyber-Pearl
Harbor". This "would cause physical destruction and the loss of life, an attack that would paralyze
and shock the nation and create a profound new sense of vulnerability."
Note: Defense Secretary Panetta's warning of a 'cyber-Pearl Harbor' will surely serve as a
reminder for many of the Project for the New American Century's call for a 'new Pearl Harbor' just
a few months before 9/11. Is it likely that he was unaware of the baggage such language carries at
present? For more on WantToKnow team member Prof. David Ray Griffin's epochal book The New
Pearl Harbor, click here.
President of perpetual war

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/President-of-perpetual-war-4221915.php
Four years into his presidency, President Obama's political formula should be obvious. He gives
fabulous speeches teeming with popular liberal ideas, often refuses to take the actions necessary
to realize those ideas and then banks on most voters, activists, reporters and pundits never
bothering to notice - or care about - his sleight of hand. Never was this formula more apparent than
when the president discussed military conflicts during his second inaugural address. Declaring that
"a decade of war is now ending," he insisted that he "still believe(s) that enduring security and
lasting peace do not require perpetual war." Few seemed to notice that the words came from the
same president who is manufacturing a state of "perpetual war." Obama, let's remember, is the
president who escalated the Afghanistan War and whose spokesman recently reiterated that U.S.
troops are not necessarily leaving that country anytime soon. He is the president who has initiated
undeclared wars in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya. Just days before Obama's inaugural
address declaring an end to war, the Washington Post reported that the administration's new
manual establishing "clear rules" for counterterrorism operations specifically creates a
"carve-out (that) would allow the CIA to continue" the president's intensifying drone war.
That's the "perpetual war," you'll recall, in which Obama asserts the extra-constitutional
right to compile a "kill list" and then order bombing raids of civilian areas in hopes of killing
alleged militants - including U.S. citizens.
Note: Could it be that the military-industrial complex has significantly more power than the
president? For powerful evidence of this from a high-ranking US general, click here.
The FBI and protesters, then and now

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/The-FBI-and-protesters-then-a...
Recently released FBI files about the Occupy movement do not reveal the kind of dirty tricks J.
Edgar Hoover's bureau used against demonstrators in the Bay Area during the '60s, but they
present some striking parallels to those dark days and have rightly raised concern among civil
libertarians. The records ... show that over the decades the machinery of surveillance remains
much the same, even as expanded intelligence powers and technological advances magnify
potential abuse. As in the '60s, the FBI reports use sweeping language like "potential
terrorist threat" to characterize nonviolent dissent. As then, the bureau exchanges
information with a vast network of federal agencies, state and local police, campus cops
and corporate security. And once again the FBI is invoking great secrecy. Such activity,
Congress found in the '70s, contributed to massive intelligence abuses. The FBI released 99
heavily redacted pages and withheld 288 more in response to a Freedom of Information Act
request from the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, a public-interest legal organization in
Washington, D.C. Even while noting Occupy organizers do "not condone the use of violence," the
records show that FBI field offices across the nation collected information on the premise [that] the
protests posed a potential "terrorist" or "criminal" threat. The bureau shared information on Occupy
with police on joint terrorism task forces, which have raised concerns about skirting local
surveillance restrictions, and with fusion centers, regional intelligence hubs recently criticized by
Congress as violating civil liberties.
Note: The writer of this article, Seth Rosenfeld, is the author of Subversives: The FBI's War on
Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major
media sources on the games intelligence agencies play, click here.
F.B.I. Counterterrorism Agents Monitored Occupy Movement

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/25/nyregion/occupy-movement-was-investigated-b...
The Federal Bureau of Investigation used counterterrorism agents to investigate the Occupy Wall
Street movement, including its communications and planning, according to newly disclosed agency
records. The F.B.I. records show that as early as September 2011, an agent from a
counterterrorism task force in New York notified officials of two landmarks in Lower Manhattan
Federal Hall and the Museum of American Finance that their building was identified as a point
of interest for the Occupy Wall Street. In the following months, F.B.I. personnel around the country
were routinely involved in exchanging information about the movement with businesses, local lawenforcement agencies and universities. An October 2011 memo from the bureaus
Jacksonville, Fla., field office was titled Domain Program Management Domestic Terrorist.
The memo said agents discussed past and upcoming meetings of the movement, and its
spread. It said agents should contact Occupy Wall Street activists to ascertain whether
people who attended their events had violent tendencies. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks,
the F.B.I. has come under criticism for deploying counterterrorism agents to conduct surveillance
and gather intelligence on organizations active in environmental, animal-cruelty and poverty
issues. The records were obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, a civil-rights
organization in Washington, through a Freedom of Information request to the F.B.I.
Note: For analysis of these amazing documents revealing the use of joint government and
corporate counterterrorism structures against peaceful protestors of financial corruption, click here
and here. For a Democracy Now! video segment on this, click here.
Newtown kids v Yemenis and Pakistanis: what explains the disparate

reactions?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/19/newtown-drones-children-d...
Numerous commentators have lamented the vastly different reactions in the US to the heinous
shooting of children in Newtown, Connecticut ... compared to the continuous killing of (far more)
children and innocent adults by the US government in Pakistan and Yemen, among other places. It
is well worth asking what accounts for this radically different reaction to the killing of children and
other innocents. There are ... two key issues highlighted by the intense grief for the Newtown
victims compared to the utter indifference to the victims of Obama's militarism. The first is that it
underscores how potent and effective the last decade's anti-Muslim dehumanization campaign has
been. Every war - particularly protracted ones like the "War on Terror" - demands sustained
dehumanization campaigns against the targets of the violence. Few populations will
tolerate continuous killings if they have to confront the humanity of those who are being
killed. That's what dehumanization is: their humanity is disappeared so that we don't have to face
it. [The] other issue highlighted by this disparate reaction: the question of agency and culpability.
It's easy to express rage over the Newtown shooting because so few of us bear any responsibility
for it. Exactly the opposite is true for the violence that continuously kills children and other innocent
people in the Muslim world. US citizens pay for it, enable it, and now under Obama, most at the
very least acquiesce to it if not support it. It's always much more difficult to acknowledge the
deaths that we play a role in causing than it is to protest those to which we believe we have no
connection.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on war crimes committed in
the US wars of aggression in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, click here. For a key article raising
serious questions about the official story of the Newtown shooting, click here.
CIA 'tortured and sodomised' terror suspect, human rights court rules
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/dec/13/cia-tortured-sodomised-terror-suspect
CIA agents tortured a German citizen, sodomising, shackling, and beating him, as
Macedonian state police looked on, the European court of human rights said in a historic
judgment released on [December 13]. In a unanimous ruling, it also found Macedonia guilty
of torturing, abusing, and secretly imprisoning Khaled el-Masri, a German of Lebanese origin
allegedly linked to terrorist organisations. Masri was seized in Macedonia in December 2003 and
handed over to a CIA "rendition team" at Skopje airport and secretly flown to Afghanistan. It is the
first time the court has described CIA treatment meted out to terror suspects as torture. "The grand
chamber of the European court of human rights unanimously found that Mr el-Masri was subjected
to forced disappearance, unlawful detention, extraordinary rendition outside any judicial process,
and inhuman and degrading treatment," said James Goldston, executive director of the Open
Society Justice Initiative. He described the judgment as "an authoritative condemnation of some of
the most objectionable tactics employed in the post-9/11 war on terror". Jamil Dakwar, of the
American Civil Liberties Union, described the ruling as "a huge victory for justice and the rule of
law". The Strasbourg court said it found Masri's account of what happened to him "to be
established beyond reasonable doubt".
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on illegal acts by US
DIA sending hundreds more spies overseas

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/dia-to-send-hundreds-mo...
The Pentagon will send hundreds of additional spies overseas as part of an ambitious plan to
assemble an espionage network that rivals the CIA in size, U.S. officials said. The project is aimed
at transforming the Defense Intelligence Agency ... into a spy service focused on emerging threats
and more closely aligned with the CIA and elite military commando units. When the expansion is
complete, the DIA is expected to have as many as 1,600 collectors in positions around the world,
an unprecedented total. They will be trained by the CIA and often work with the U.S. Joint Special
Operations Command, but they will get their spying assignments from the Department of Defense.
Among the Pentagons top intelligence priorities, officials said, are Islamist militant groups in
Africa, weapons transfers by North Korea and Iran, and military modernization underway in China.
The Pentagons plan to create what it calls the Defense Clandestine Service, or DCS, reflects the
militarys latest and largest foray into secret intelligence work. The DIA overhaul combined with
the growth of the CIA since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks will create a spy network of
unprecedented size. The expansion of the agencys clandestine role is likely to heighten
concerns that it will be accompanied by an escalation in lethal strikes and other operations
outside public view. Because of differences in legal authorities, the military isnt subject to
the same congressional notification requirements as the CIA.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on secret operations by the
DIA and CIA in the "global war on terror", click here.
Rules on drone use overdue

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/editorials/article/Rules-on-drone-use-overdue-4...
This country's secret, worldwide war waged by drones may at long last be restrained by
rules. But the writing of these guidelines will be overseen by President Obama, who has
secretly handpicked human targets for years with few restraints. Drones barely rated a
mention in the presidential campaign. But as the election drew close, nervous White House aides
reportedly began debating written limitations on the use of the pilotless aircraft, which remain an
off-the-books weapon. The idea, strange as it sounds, was to give the next president explicit
guidance on how to use the lethal planes, which have figured in 300 strikes and killed an estimated
2,500 people in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. White House officials, according to a New York
Times report, wanted a rulebook in case GOP candidate Mitt Romney won. With Obama's reelection, the urgency behind such drafting has tapered off. Obama has directed drones at human
targets from a "kill list" given him by military and intelligence officials. There is no outside vetting,
legal review or congressional consensus on the president's personal strike force. This is a nation
of laws, due process and an expressed commitment to human rights. The White House owes the
nation a clear explanation of the scope and limits of this use of deadly force.
Note: If any other nation were using drones to kill terrorists in the U.S. or Europe, there would be a
huge public uproar. Why do people care so little about these indiscriminate killings elsewhere? For
deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on drone killings and other war crimes
committed by the US in its wars of aggression in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, click here.
Election Spurred a Move to Codify U.S. Drone Policy

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/world/white-house-presses-for-drone-rule-bo...
[There have been] more than 300 drone strikes and some 2,500 people killed by the Central
Intelligence Agency and the military since Mr. Obama first took office. Mr. Obama and his
advisers are still debating whether remote-control killing should be a measure of last resort against
imminent threats to the United States, or a more flexible tool, available to help allied governments
attack their enemies or to prevent militants from controlling territory. Though publicly the
administration presents a united front on the use of drones, behind the scenes there is
longstanding tension. The administration is still pushing to make the rules formal and resolve
internal uncertainty and disagreement about exactly when lethal action is justified. The Defense
Department and the C.I.A. continue to press for greater latitude to carry out strikes. The
administrations legal reasoning has not persuaded many other countries that the strikes
are acceptable under international law. For years before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the United
States routinely condemned targeted killings of suspected terrorists by Israel, and most countries
still object to such measures. Partly because United Nations officials know that the United States is
setting a legal and ethical precedent for other countries developing armed drones, the U.N. plans
to open a unit in Geneva early next year to investigate American drone strikes.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on atrocities carried out by
the US in its illegal wars of aggression in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, click here.
Plan for hunting terrorists signals U.S. intends to keep adding names to
kill lists
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/plan-for-hunting-terror...
Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint
for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the disposition matrix. The matrix
contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an accounting of the resources being
marshaled to track them down, including sealed indictments and clandestine operations. U.S.
officials said the database is designed to go beyond existing kill lists, mapping plans for the
disposition of suspects beyond the reach of American drones. The government expects to
continue adding names to kill or capture lists for years. Among senior Obama administration
officials, there is a broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another
decade. That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was
once known as the global war on terrorism. Targeting lists that were regarded as finite
emergency measures after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are now fixtures of the national
security apparatus. The rosters expand and contract with the pace of drone strikes but
never go to zero. Obama has institutionalized the highly classified practice of targeted killing,
transforming ad-hoc elements into a counterterrorism infrastructure capable of sustaining a
seemingly permanent war. Privately, officials acknowledge that the development of the matrix is
part of a series of moves, in Washington and overseas, to embed counterterrorism tools into U.S.
policy for the long haul.
Note: Through the drone program, the U.S. has license to kill in foreign countries without those
being killed given any sort of trial or rights. Is it any wonder some countries are highly critical of this
program? For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the secret and illegal
operations of the "global war on terror," click here.
Drone strikes kill, maim and traumatize many civilians, U.S. study says
2012-09-25, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/25/world/asia/pakistan-us-drone-strikes/index.html
U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan have killed far more people than the United States has
acknowledged, have traumatized innocent residents and largely been ineffective, according to a
new study released [on September 25]. The study by Stanford Law School and New York
University's School of Law calls for a re-evaluation of the practice, saying the number of "highlevel" targets killed as a percentage of total casualties is extremely low -- about 2%. In contrast to
more conservative U.S. statements, the Stanford/NYU report -- titled "Living Under Drones" -offers starker figures published by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, an independent
organization based at City University in London. Based on interviews with witnesses, victims and
experts, the report accuses the CIA of "double-striking" a target, moments after the initial
hit, thereby killing first responders. It also highlights harm "beyond death and physical
injury," publishing accounts of psychological trauma experienced by people living in
Pakistan's tribal northwest region, who it says hear drones hover 24 hours a day. "Before
this we were all very happy," the report quotes an anonymous resident as saying. "But after these
drones attacks a lot of people are victims and have lost members of their family. A lot of them, they
have mental illnesses." People have to live with the fear that a strike could come down on them at
any moment of the day or night, leaving behind dead whose "bodies are shattered to pieces," and
survivors who must be desperately sped to a hospital.
Note: Visit the Living Under Drones website here. For a Democracy Now! report on the results of
this study click here. For more analysis click here and here.
The Face of Indefinite Detention

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/14/opinion/life-and-death-at-guantanamo-bay.html
Before he died on Sept. 8, Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif had spent close to 4,000 days and nights in
the American prison at Guantnamo Bay, Cuba. He was found unconscious, alone in his cell,
thousands of miles from home and family in Yemen. Like so many men still imprisoned at
Guantnamo, Mr. Latif was fleeing American bombing - not fighting - when he was apprehended
by the Pakistani police near the Afghan border and turned over to the United States military. He
was never charged with a crime. The United States government claims the legal authority to
hold men like Mr. Latif until the "war on terror" ends, which is to say, forever. Setting aside
this troubling legal proposition, his death and the despair he endured in the years
preceding it remind us of the toll Guantnamo takes on human beings. Adnan Latif is the
human face of indefinite detention. [In 2010] a United States District Court judge hearing Mr.
Latifs habeas corpus petition ordered him released, ruling that the accusations against him were
"unconvincing" and that his detention was "not lawful." By that time, Mr. Latif had been cleared for
release from Guantnamo on three separate occasions, including in 2009 by the Obama
administrations multiagency Guantnamo Review Task Force. Nevertheless, the Department of
Justice appealed the district courts decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the District
of Columbia Circuit - which has ruled in the governments favor in nearly every habeas corpus
appeal it has heard.
Trapwire surveillance system exposed in document leak

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/13/trapwire-surveillance-system-expo...
[Trapwire is] a CCTV surveillance system that recognises people from their face or walk and
analyses whether they might be about to commit a terrorist or criminal act. According to
documents released online by WikiLeaks [it] is being used in a number of countries to try to
monitor people and threats. Founded by former CIA agents, Trapwire uses data from a network of
CCTV systems and numberplate readers to figure out the threat level in huge numbers of
locations. The documents outlining Trapwire's existence and its deployment in the US were
apparently obtained in a hack of computer systems belonging to the intelligence company Stratfor
at the end of last year. Documents from the US department of homeland security show that it paid
$832,000 to deploy Trapwire in Washington DC and Seattle. Stratfor describes Trapwire as "a
unique, predictive software system designed to detect patterns of pre-attack surveillance
and logistical planning". It serves "a wide range of law enforcement personnel and public
and private security officials domestically and internationally", Stratfor says. Some have
expressed doubts that Trapwire could really forecast [future] acts based on data from cameras.
The claims might seem overblown, but then the idea that the US could have an international
monitoring system seemed absurd until the discovery of the Echelon system, used by the US to
eavesdrop on electronic communications internationally.
Note: For more on the growing use of this secret technology, click here. For deeply revealing
reports from reliable major media sources on privacy, click here.
Activists subpoenaed to grand jury meeting in Seattle

2012-08-01, Seattle Times blog
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/today/2012/08/activists-subpoened-to-thursday-g...
Two Portland residents say they will appear before a federal grand jury in Seattle Thursday in an
investigation of anarchist activity, according to a statement they released on [August 1]. Grand jury
subpoenas have also been served to activists in Olympia and Seattle ... according to the Seattle
Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, which identifies itself as an association of progressive
lawyers. The guild urged the U.S. Attorneys Office to drop the subpoenas [because] they
were being used as a pretext for harassing political activists. It concerns us any time
there are law-enforcement raids that target political literature, first amendment-protected
materials, [guild spokesman Neil] Fox said. Two weeks before a heavily armed, July 25 FBI raid
that Dennison Williams and Leah-Lynn Plante said took place at their Portland home, the Seattle
Police Department SWAT team seized evidence connected to the May Day investigation from a
Judkins Park apartment of Occupy Seattle members. In both cases, those searched told media
that law-enforcement charged into their homes [with a battering-ram] early in the morning
and used a stun grenade, a non-lethal object that creates a disorienting loud bang and bright
light. Williams told The Oregonian that the FBI took his laptop computer, cell phone, two thumb
drives, multiple pieces of black clothing, and a T-shirt that read on the front Multi Death
Corporations.
Note: Amazingly, the FBI raids on political activists in Seattle and Portland have gone completely
unreported by the mass media. For analysis of the FBI's attacks on dissenters, click here, here
and here. For a Democracy Now! video report, click here. For deeply revealing reports from
reliable major media sources on civil liberties, click here.
TSA defies the courts

2012-07-18, Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jul/18/editorial-tsa-defies-courts/
The days of secrecy at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) may be coming to an end.
Its a widely held belief that the agencys hasty embrace of expensive, X-rated x-ray machines has
more to do with closed-door lobbying efforts of manufacturers than a deliberate consideration of
the devices merits. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) [has] pushed for some
transparency by asking the D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to compel the agency to hold a
public notice-and-comment period on the use of pornographic scanners, as the law requires. EPIC
has a good case because on July 15, 2011, the D.C. Circuit issued a ruling insisting TSA
promptly come into compliance with Administrative Procedure Act requirements regarding public
hearings. TSA believed it wasnt subject to such rules because the virtual strip-searching of
women, children and the elderly is an essential security operation. The last thing TSA wants
is the public-relations disaster of having to collect and publish the horror tales from
Americans subjected to humiliation from the nude photography and intrusive pat-down
groping sessions. Its time to admit the post-Sept. 11 experiment in having the government take
over airport screening duties has been a colossal flop. TSA has defied the Administrative
Procedures Act, an appellate court, the public will and common decency. Its not enough just to
pull the plug on the scanners; the plug should be pulled on TSA itself.
Note: According to this PBS report, "European Union regulators recently banned any body
scanner that uses X-rays, 'in order not to risk jeopardizing citizens' health and safety.'" It also
states, "The TSA tested the devices behind closed doors, without scrutiny from independent
scientists." For lots more on this topic important to all air travelers, click here.
A Cruel and Unusual Record

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/opinion/americas-shameful-human-rights-reco...
Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American
citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nations violation of human rights
has extended. This development began after [9/11] and has been sanctioned and escalated by
bipartisan executive and legislative actions. While the country has made mistakes in the past, the
widespread abuse of human rights over the last decade has been a dramatic change from the
past. With leadership from the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was
adopted in 1948 as the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. This was a bold
and clear commitment that power would no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people,
and it established equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal protection of the
law and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention or forced exile. It is disturbing that, instead of
strengthening these principles, our governments counterterrorism policies are now clearly violating
at least 10 of the declarations 30 articles, including the prohibition against cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment or punishment. Recent legislation has made legal the presidents right to
detain a person indefinitely on suspicion of affiliation with terrorist organizations or
associated forces, a broad, vague power that can be abused without meaningful
oversight from the courts or Congress. This law violates the right to freedom of expression and
to be presumed innocent until proved guilty, two other rights enshrined in the declaration.
Note: For revealing reports from major media sources on war crimes committed by US forces in
the "global war on terror," click here.
U.N. investigator decries U.S. use of killer drones

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47870193#.T-S1S1LDuSo
A U.N. investigator has called on the Obama administration to justify its policy of assassinating
rather than capturing al Qaeda or Taliban suspects, increasingly with the use of unmanned drone
aircraft that also take civilian lives. Christof Heyns, U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial,
summary or arbitrary executions, urged Washington to clarify the basis under international law of
the policy, in a report issued overnight to the United Nations Human Rights Council. The U.S.
military has conducted drone attacks in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, in
addition to conventional raids and air strikes, according to Heyns, a South African jurist
serving in the independent post. Citing figures from the Pakistan Human Rights
Commission, he said U.S. drone strikes killed at least 957 people in Pakistan in 2010 alone.
Thousands have been killed in 300 drone strikes there since 2004, 20 percent of whom are
believed to be civilians." Although figures vary widely with regard to drone attack estimates, all
studies concur on one important point: there has been a dramatic increase in their use over the
past three years," Heyns said. Human rights law requires that every effort be made to arrest a
suspect, in line with the "principles of necessity and proportionality on the use of force", the
investigator said.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the warcrimes committed by the US military, click
here.
Bradley Manning, America's martyr for open government

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/29/bradley-manning-americas-...
Today marks two years of imprisonment of Private Bradley Manning. The US government was
going to use Manning as a warning to anyone else who might feel compelled to report on
war crimes, or any other crimes they witness from within the system. Blow the whistle,
goes the warning, and you will be buried alive by the state, shredded by the same secrecy
machine a whistleblower would try to expose. Because of courage and creativity of activists,
Bradley Manning has not been forgotten, even if that was the aim of authorities, and he never shall
be forgotten. His case has been largely shunned by most of the mainstream media, especially in
the US. This needs to change, because if he is indeed found guilty of being a whistleblower of
such magnitude that it shook the entire secrecy machine of our world out of its comfort zone, his
acts would need to be honored as an inspiration to change the way governments hide the reality of
their actions from the people they are supposed to be serving and informing. Manning should not
be convicted in secret: the media should be given access to the court filings; and the media should
be pushing harder for the first amendment of the US constitution to be honored in the Manning
case.
Note: For key reports on government secrecy from reliable sources, click here.
Why was the US military teaching 'total war' on Islam?

2012-05-10, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18030105
America's top military officer [the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey]
has condemned a course taught about Islam at one of America's top military schools as "totally
objectionable". The course taught officers there was no such thing as moderate Islam and
that they should consider the religion their enemy. It advocated "total war" against all the
world's Muslims, including possible nuclear attacks on the holy cities of Mecca and Medina
and the wiping out [of] civilian populations. The Pentagon has confirmed [that] the course
material found on their website is authentic. This is not ... a rather sick academic exercise in
stretching the bounds of what could be thought. It is actually what the officer teaching it believes.
In other words: completely nutty stuff that would disgrace the wilder fringes of the blogosphere.
The voluntary course aimed at senior officers was taught at the Joint Forces Staff College in
Norfolk, Virginia, for a year. It came to light when one of the officers on the course complained last
month. There is now an investigation into how the course was approved and why it was part of the
curriculum. A lieutenant colonel has been suspended from teaching, but for the moment keeps his
job.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the extremism evident in the prosecution of the
"global war on terror," click here.
US anti-terrorism law curbs free speech and activist work, court told
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/29/journalists-us-anti-terrorism-law...
A group [of] political activists and journalists has launched a legal challenge to stop an American
law they say allows the US military to arrest civilians anywhere in the world and detain them
without trial as accused supporters of terrorism. The seven figures, who include ex-New York
Times reporter Chris Hedges, professor Noam Chomsky and Icelandic politician and WikiLeaks
campaigner Birgitta Jonsdottir, testified to a Manhattan judge that the law dubbed the NDAA or
Homeland Battlefield Bill would cripple free speech around the world. They said that various
provisions written into the National Defense Authorization Bill, which was signed by
President Barack Obama at the end of 2011, effectively broadened the definition of
"supporter of terrorism" to include peaceful activists, authors, academics and even
journalists interviewing members of radical groups. Controversy centres on the loose
definition of key words in the bill, in particular who might be "associated forces" of the law's named
terrorist groups al-Qaida and the Taliban and what "substantial support" to those groups might get
defined as. Whereas White House officials have denied the wording extends any sort of blanket
coverage to civilians, rather than active enemy combatants, or actions involved in free speech,
some civil rights experts have said the lack of precise definition leaves it open to massive potential
abuse.
Note: For discussion of the extreme crackdown by police, based on "anti-terrorism" legislation,
against Occupy movement protestors, click here.
U.S. Relaxes Limits on Use of Data in Terror Analysis

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/us/politics/us-moves-to-relax-some-restric...
The Obama administration is moving to relax restrictions on how counterterrorism analysts may
retrieve, store and search information about Americans gathered by government agencies for
purposes other than national security threats. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. [has] signed new
guidelines for the National Counterterrorism Center. The guidelines will lengthen to five years
from 180 days the amount of time the center can retain private information about
Americans when there is no suspicion that they are tied to terrorism, intelligence officials
said. The guidelines are also expected to result in the center making more copies of entire
databases and data mining them. They also set off civil-liberties concerns among privacy
advocates who invoked the Total Information Awareness program. That program, proposed early
in the George W. Bush administration and partially shut down by Congress after an outcry,
proposed fusing vast archives of electronic records like travel records, credit card transactions,
phone calls and more. Were all in the dark, and for all we know it could be a rerun of Total
Information Awareness, which would have allowed the government to make a computerized
database of everything on everybody, said Kate Martin, the director of the Center for National
Security Studies, who criticized the administration for not making the draft guidelines public for
scrutiny ahead of time.
Note: For excellent and insightful analyses of the disturbing growth of government surveillance
and secrecy described in this NYT report, click here and here and here and here.
Classified documents contradict FBI on post-9/11 probe of Saudis, exsenator says

2012-03-13, MSNBC
http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/13/10656262-classified-documen...
Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired Congress Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 terrorist
attacks, has seen two classified FBI documents that he says are at odds with the bureaus public
statements that there was no connection between the hijackers and Saudis then living in Sarasota,
Fla. There are significant inconsistencies between the public statements of the FBI in September
and what I read in the classified documents, Graham said. One document adds to the
evidence that the investigation was not the robust inquiry claimed by the FBI, Graham
said. An important investigative lead was not pursued and unsubstantiated statements
were accepted as truth. Congresss bipartisan inquiry released its public report in July 2003.
The final 28 pages, regarding possible foreign support for the terrorists, were censored in their
entirety -- on President George W. Bushs instructions. Graham said the two classified FBI
documents that he saw, dated 2002 and 2003, were prepared by an agent who participated in the
Sarasota investigation. He said the agent suggested that another federal agency be asked to join
the investigation, but that the idea was rejected. Graham attempted in recent weeks to contact
the agent, he said, only to find the man had been instructed by FBI headquarters not to talk.
Note: Much evidence exists implicating not only Saudi Arabia, but also Pakistan, Israel and the UK
in the 9/11 attacks. Could the purpose behind these high-profile claims from former US senators
be to deflect attention from the key perpetrators, rogue elements within the US government? As
WantToKnow team member Prof. David Ray Griffin has exhaustively demonstrated, almost all of
the evidence for Muslim hijackers vanishes on close examination. For more serious questions on
9/11, click here.
Excesses cross party lines

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/06/EDLG1NGNRF.DTL
Attorney General Eric Holder thinks it's legal to kill American terrorism suspects overseas without
any judicial review or public notice. It's an astonishing claim to make and a shameful stand for the
Obama administration, which came to office pledging to curb such constitutionally shaky excesses.
In a speech, Holder essentially offer the "trust us" argument in defense of targeted killings. The
guidelines are murky: The military will compile a list of dangerous terrorists including U.S. citizens,
hunt them down, and if the host country can't or won't catch the suspect, then the United States
will. The example at issue is last year's drone attack that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a New Mexicoborn al Qaeda leader. Under Holder's ground rules there is no outside review, court deliberation or
explanation of how a suspect makes the kill list. For those critics concerned about oversight or
legal caution, he offered this observation: " 'Due process' and 'judicial process' are not one and the
same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process,
not judicial process." Holder didn't cite an in-house legal opinion used to justify the policy, which
he's refused to release and is the subject of a civil liberties lawsuit. Obama still hasn't closed the
Guantanamo Bay gulag as promised. Now he's shielding targeted killings from genuine
review. This presidential subversion of rule of law was unacceptable under George W.
Bush, and it is unacceptable under Barack Obama.
Note: Attorney General Holder's claim that US citizens can be killed by the government without
judicial process clearly violates the U.S. Bill of Rights. In addition to the Fifth Amendment that
states that no person shall be held to answer for a crime "without due process of law," the Sixth
Amendment states that "the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial."
London-based oil executive linked to 9/11 hijackers

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/september-11-attacks/9089896/London...
A Saudi Arabian accused of associating with several of the September 11 hijackers and who
disappeared from his home in the United States a few weeks before the attacks on the World
Trade Centre and the Pentagon, is in London working for his countrys state oil company.
Abdulaziz al-Hijji ... flew to Saudi Arabia in August 2001. Security records of cars passing
through a checkpoint at the Prestancia gated community indicated that Mr al-Hijjis home,
4224 Escondito Circle, had been visited a number of times by Mohamed Atta, the leader of
the 19-strong hijack team, who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the
World Trade Centre in 2001. The logs also indicated that Marwan Al-Shehhi, who crashed United
Airlines Flight 175 into the South Tower, and Ziad Jarrah, who was at the controls of United Airlines
Flight 93 when it crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, had visited the house. All three men had
trained to fly at Venice Airport, which is 19 miles from Sarasota. Mr al-Hijji is resident in London,
working for the European subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabias state oil company. Described
as a career counsellor, he is based in the offices of Aramco Overseas Company UK Limited and
lives in an expensive flat in central London.
Note: The US media has failed to report on this major news, with the exception of a small
newspaper in Sarasota, FL, where the hijackers had been training. For two revealing articles in
that paper, click here and here.
Under Obama, an emerging global apparatus for drone killing

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/under-obama-an-emerg...
In the space of three years, the [Obama] administration has built an extensive apparatus for using
drones to carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists and stealth surveillance of other
adversaries. The apparatus involves dozens of secret facilities, including two operational hubs on
the East Coast, virtual Air Force cockpits in the Southwest and clandestine bases in at least six
countries on two continents. No president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing
of individuals to advance the nations security goals. Lethal operations are increasingly
assembled a la carte, piecing together personnel and equipment in ways that allow the White
House to toggle between separate legal authorities that govern the use of lethal force. In Yemen,
for instance, the CIA and the militarys Joint Special Operations Command pursue the same
adversary with nearly identical aircraft. But they alternate taking the lead on strikes to exploit their
separate authorities, and they maintain separate kill lists that overlap but dont match. CIA and
military strikes this fall killed three U.S. citizens, two of whom were suspected al-Qaeda
operatives. Although human rights advocates and others are increasingly critical of the drone
program, the level of public debate remains muted. [One] reason for the lack of extensive debate is
secrecy. The White House has refused to divulge details about the structure of the drone program
or, with rare exceptions, who has been killed.
Note: Not that the US citizens killed were not given their constitutional rights for a fair trail before
being assassinated. For lots more from major media sources on government secrecy, click here.
Police employ Predator drone spy planes on home front

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-drone-arrest-20111211,0,...
Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows
on the Brossart family farm in [eastern North Dakota]. He called in reinforcements from the state
Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three
other counties. He also called in a Predator B drone. Sophisticated sensors under the nose helped
pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first
known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped
revolutionize modern warfare. But that was just the start. Local police say they have used two
unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen
surveillance flights since June. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have used
Predators for other domestic investigations, officials said. The drones belong to U.S.
Customs and Border Protection, which operates eight Predators on the country's northern and
southwestern borders to search for illegal immigrants and smugglers. The previously unreported
use of its drones to assist local, state and federal law enforcement has occurred without any public
acknowledgment or debate.
Note: "Looking for six cows," the Sheriff called in "a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad,
ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties. He also called in a Predator B drone."
Does that sound like a reasonable response to the problem of missing cows? Or could there be an
agenda to establish aerial surveillance by drones as the norm in the US?
U.S. drone strikes must stop, says American lawyer

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39397361/t/us-drone-strikes-must-stop-says-americ...
Prominent international human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith was impressed by the 16-yearold boy who wanted to draw attention to civilian deaths caused by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan.
Tariq Aziz had volunteered to take pictures of people killed by the remotely piloted aircraft to help
Stafford Smith highlight what he calls illegal killings. Three days later, on October 31, he and his
12-year-old cousin were themselves killed by a drone missile strike in the North Waziristan region
on the Afghan border, Stafford Smith said. For the veteran lawyer, the deaths highlighted major
flaws in the CIA-run drone campaign, which U.S. officials say is invaluable in the war on militants.
He considers the drones as "scandalous" as the secret U.S. bombing of Cambodia during the
Vietnam War. "What we are seeing in Waziristan is a process that is alienating the
population just as napalm in Vietnam did and it's achieving very little benefit." Stafford
Smith [also] drew parallels between Guantanamo and the drone campaign in Pakistan,
arguing both detentions and strikes were often based on dubious intelligence. He suspects
the death of Aziz was a prime example of that. "We as America offer large bounties to different
informants and these informants would sell their own mothers," said Stafford Smith, 52, a dual
U.S.-British citizen who is the director of Reprieve, an organization that advocates for prisoners'
rights.
Note: For key reports from major media sources on the killing of innocent people by US drones,
click here.
CDC official accused of child molestation, bestiality

2011-10-11, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/11/justice/georiga-cdc-arrest/index.html
An official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been arrested and charged
with two counts of child molestation and one count of bestiality, police said. Police arrested Dr.
Kimberly Quinlan Lindsey, 44, in DeKalb County, Georgia, on Sunday. Authorities also charged
Lindsey's live-in boyfriend, Thomas Joseph Westerman, 42, with two counts of child molestation.
The two are accused of "immoral and indecent" sexual acts involving a 6-year-old. The bestiality
charge says Lindsey "did unlawfully perform or submit to any sexual act with an animal." The
alleged incidents took place between January 1, 2010, and August 22, 2011. Lindsey is the deputy
director for the Laboratory Science Policy and Practice Program Office at the CDC, according to
her biography on the agency's website. Prior to her current role, Lindsey was the senior health
scientist in the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response. That office oversees
the allocation process for $1.5 billion in terrorism preparedness. In her 12 years at the CDC,
Lindsey has received 12 awards for outstanding performance on projects and programs, according
to her bio on Emory University's Biological and Biomedical Sciences website.
Note: Don't miss Dr. Mercola's highly revealing analysis showing that Dr. Lindsey played a primary
role in the bogus swine flu propaganda campaign. Read the article at this link. For how the CDC
came to be infiltrated with such people, read the powerful information available here.
On targeted assassinations, what about due process?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/04/ED7E1LCQ7N.DTL
U.S. officials last week acknowledged that unmanned predator aircraft killed two U.S. citizens,
Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, in Yemen. Yet, U.S. media outlets have chosen to refer to them
as "American born" or "U.S.-born," as in "the American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by
U.S. armed drones." No concrete proof of their guilt has been furnished beyond what the
government and multiple media outlets have reported. In the case of the al-Awlaki killing, U.S.
officials said, "Al-Awlaki played a 'significant operational role' in plotting and inspiring attacks on
the United States," as they justified the killing of an American citizen. In the post-9/11 world, such
reporting garners little attention from the public. But those who believe in the rule of law find such
mundane pronouncements frightening. The Sixth Amendment guarantees the accused the
right to a public trial by an impartial jury, regardless of his or her ethnic background or
previous alleged activities. Government-sanctioned assassinations of U.S. citizens without
due process should be discussed rather than blindly accepted as a victory in the war on
terror. The obvious follow-up question is: What about other U.S. citizens? Might they also be
targeted for assassination without due process? The targeted killings of al-Awlaki and Khan should
shock Americans reared on the rule of law, justice, liberty and freedom.
Note: State assassination of a citizen without due process would seem to be the ultimate attack on
civil liberties. For lots more on such threats from reliable sources, click here.
Lloyd's insurer sues Saudi Arabia for 'funding 9/11 attacks'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/lloyds-insurer-sues-saudi-arab...
A Lloyd's insurance syndicate has begun a landmark legal case against Saudi Arabia, accusing
the kingdom of indirectly funding al-Qa'ida and demanding the repayment of 136m it paid out to
victims of the 9/11 attacks. Outlined in a 156-page document filed in western Pennsylvania, where
United Airlines flight 93 crashed on 9/11, the claim suggests that the nine defendants "knowingly"
provided resources, including funding, to al-Qa'ida in the years before the attack and encouraged
anti-Western sentiment which increased support for the terror group. The case singles out the
activities of a charity, the Saudi Joint Relief Committee for Kosovo and Chechnya (SJRC),
which was alleged by UN officials to have been used as a cover by several al-Qa'ida
operatives, including two men who acted as directors of the charity. It is alleged that at the
time the SJRC was under the control of Prince Naif bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, half-brother of
King Abdullah and the long-standing Saudi Interior minister. The claim states: "Between 1998 and
2000, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, through the SJRC, diverted more than $74m to al-Qa'ida
members and loyalists affiliated with SJRC bureaus. Throughout this time, the Committee was
under the supervision and control of Saudi Interior Minister Prince Naif bin Abdul Aziz."
Note: This article singles out the important connection between Al Qaeda and the wars in Kosovo
and Chechnya, where, as in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Osama bin Laden's organization provided
Muslim jihadis to promote US imperial interests. This activity continued into the summer of 2001 in
Macedonia, just a few months before 9/11. Amazingly, the lawsuit described in the article has been
dropped. What pressures could have been brought to bear on Lloyd's to cause it to drop its suit
two weeks after bringing it?
Militias funded by US accused of rights abuses

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/militias-funded-by-us-accused-of...
Militias in Afghanistan funded by the United States are terrorising the communities they were
supposed to protect, murdering, raping and torturing civilians, including children, extorting illegal
taxes and smuggling contraband, according to a damning new report from Human Rights Watch.
In a 102-page report entitled 'Just Don't Call It a Militia' the group documents how the Afghan
government and the US military have provided guns and money to paramilitary groups without
adequate oversight or accountability. Because of their links to senior Afghan officials, many of
these groups operate with impunity. Under US General David Petraeus, who recently left
Afghanistan to head up the Central Intelligence Agency, Nato aggressively pursued a strategy
of raising militias as a security quick-fix ahead of its departure in 2014. Because US law
makes it illegal to finance groups facing credible allegations of human rights abuses, the
report's findings could, potentially, put at risk a central plank of Nato's exit strategy if US
lawmakers would have it so. The report follows an investigation earlier this year by The
Independent that found US special forces were bankrolling an Afghan mercenary called
Commander Azizullah in Afghanistan's south-eastern Paktika province. Under their patronage
Azizullah had embarked on a spate of rights abuses including murders, rape, theft, torture, the
mutilation of corpses and the desecration of a mosque.
Note: To read the HRW report on US-funded atrocities in Afghanistan, click here.
Newly Published Audio Provides Real-Time View of 9/11 Attacks

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/nyregion/newly-published-audio-provides-rea...
[A] chronicle of the civil and military aviation responses to the [9/11] hijackings that originally had
been prepared by investigators for the 9/11 Commission, but never completed or released, [is
about to be published]. Though some of the audio has emerged over the years, mainly through
public hearings and a federal criminal trial, the ... complete document, with recordings, is being
published for the first time by the Rutgers Law Review. Most of the work on the document which
commission staff members called an audio monograph was finished in 2004, not in time to go
through a long legal review before the commission was shut down that August. At hearings in 2003
and 2004, the 9/11 Commission played some of the recordings and said civil and military
controllers improvised responses to attacks they had never trained for. The account published
this week is missing two essential pieces that remain restricted or classified. One is about
30 minutes of the cockpit recording of United Airlines Flight 93. The other still-secret
recording is of a high-level conference call that ... grew, over the course of the morning, to
include ... Mr. Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the vice chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers. The recording was turned over to the National
Security Council. The 9/11 Commission was not permitted to keep a copy of it or of the transcript
... and investigators were closely monitored when they listened to it.
Note: WantToKnow team member David Ray Griffin has analyzed the use made by the 9/11
Commission of the audiotapes described in this article, in "9/11 Live or Fabricated: Do the NORAD
Tapes Verify The 9/11 Commission Report?", concluding that they may well have been faked by
the Pentagon to provide a basis for the Commission's otherwise unsupported claim that the FAA
did not notify NORAD of the hijackings in time for an air-defense response. Prof. Griffin developed
his argument further in Chapter One of his seminal book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking.
35,000 Worldwide Convicted for Terror

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=14441630
At least 35,000 people worldwide have been convicted as terrorists in the decade since the Sept.
11 attacks on the United States. But while some bombed hotels or blew up buses, others were put
behind bars for waving a political sign or blogging about a protest. In the first tally ever done of
global anti-terror arrests and convictions, The Associated Press documented a surge in
prosecutions under new or toughened anti-terror laws, often passed at the urging and with the
funding of the West. Before 9/11, just a few hundred people were convicted of terrorism each
year. The sheer volume of convictions, along with almost 120,000 arrests, shows ... that
dozens of countries are using the fight against terrorism to curb political dissent. The AP
used freedom of information queries, law enforcement data and hundreds of interviews to identify
119,044 anti-terror arrests and 35,117 convictions in 66 countries, accounting for 70 percent of the
world's population. The actual numbers undoubtedly run higher because some countries refused
to provide information. That included 2,934 arrests and 2,568 convictions in the United States,
which led the war on terror eight times more than in the decade before. More than half the
convictions came from two countries accused of using anti-terror laws to crack down on dissent,
Turkey and China. Turkey alone accounted for a third of all convictions, with 12,897.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the hidden realities behind the "Global War on
Terror", click here.
Britain and European governments helped US commit 'countless

crimes colluding with torture
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8735518/Britain-an...
Britain and other European governments have helped the US commit countless crimes by
colluding with torture and illegal rendition operations in Americas war on terror, Europes human
rights watchdog has said. Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europes rights commissioner,
accused governments of being deeply complicit in illegal activities carried out by the US over the
last 10 years, since the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. In
attempting to combat crimes attributed to terrorists, countless further crimes have been
committed in the course of the US-led 'global war on terror, he said. Many of those
crimes have been carefully and deliberately covered up. A 2007 Council of Europe (COE)
report by Dick Marty, Swiss MP, accused Britain and 13 other European governments of allowing
the CIA to run secret detention centres, of turning a blind eye to torture and the illegal abductions
of terror suspects. Mr Hammerberg accused Europes governments of blocking investigations into
rendition in line with Washingtons wishes. So far Europe has granted effective impunity to those
who committed crimes in implementing the rendition policy. An urgent rethink is required to prevent
this misjudged and failed counter terrorism approach from having a sad legacy of injustice, said
Mr Hammerberg.
CIA defends running vaccine program to find bin Laden

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-defends-running-vac...
U.S. officials ... defended a tactic used by the CIA to attempt to verify the whereabouts of Osama
bin Laden the covert creation of a vaccine program in Abbottabad, the town in Pakistan where
he was later killed in a U.S. raid. The vaccine drive was conducted shortly before the raid in early
May ... and was overseen by a Pakistani doctor who traveled to Abbottabad. A senior U.S. official
said the campaign involved actual hepatitis vaccine and should not be construed as a fake
public health effort. The vaccination campaign was part of the hunt for the worlds top
terrorist, and nothing else. The doctor who oversaw the effort has since been arrested by
Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence agency for cooperating with the CIA. U.S. officials have said
they are seeking to have him released. The senior U.S. official declined to say whether DNA from
bin Ladens relatives was collected as part of the vaccine program. Officials have previously said,
however, that they used DNA analysis to confirm bin Ladens identify after he was killed. In doing
so, they used samples taken from known relatives.
Note: For information about a disturbing Pentagon program using vaccinations to combat religious
fundamentalism, click here.
War Evolves With Drones, Some Tiny as Bugs

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/world/20drones.html
Military researchers are at work on another revolution in the air: shrinking unmanned drones ... to
the size of insects and birds. The drones in development ... are designed to replicate the flight
mechanics of moths, hawks and other inhabitants of the natural world. Were looking at how you
hide in plain sight, said Greg Parker, an aerospace engineer, as he held up a prototype of a
mechanical hawk that in the future might carry out espionage or kill. An explosion in aerial drones
is transforming the way America fights and thinks about its wars. Predator drones ... are by now a
brand name, known and feared around the world. But far less known is the sheer size, variety and
audaciousness of a rapidly expanding drone universe, along with the dilemmas that come with it.
The Pentagon now has some 7,000 aerial drones, compared with fewer than 50 a decade ago.
Within the next decade the Air Force anticipates a decrease in manned aircraft but expects its
number of multirole aerial drones like the Reaper the ones that spy as well as strike to
nearly quadruple, to 536. Already the Air Force is training more remote pilots, 350 this year
alone, than fighter and bomber pilots combined. Its a growth market, said Ashton B.
Carter, the Pentagons chief weapons buyer. The Pentagon has asked Congress for nearly
$5 billion for drones next year, and by 2030 envisions ever more stuff of science fiction: spy
flies equipped with sensors and microcameras to detect enemies
Note: Ashton B. Carter, CIA director John Deutch, and executive director of the 9/11 Commission
Philip Zelikow co-authored a 1998 article in the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations,
Foreign Affairs, titled "Catastrophic Terrorism". It predicted, years in advance, a massive attack on
the World Trade Center that would result in loss of civil liberties, detention without charge, torture,
and endless wars abroad. The Pentagon's weapons-buying spree, now including billions of dollars
for drones to be used over US soil, and for which Carter is the "chief weapons buyer," would have
been impossible without the 9/11 attacks.
Rescind President Obama's 'Transparency Award' now

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/14/rescind-barack...
On 28 March 2011, President Obama was given a "transparency award" from five "open
government" organisations: OMB Watch, the National Security Archive, the Project on Government
Oversight, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and OpenTheGovernment.org.
Ironically and quite likely in response to growing public criticism regarding the Obama
administration's lack of transparency heads of the five organisations gave their award to
Obama in a closed, undisclosed meeting at the White House. If the ceremony had been open
to the press, it is likely that reporters would have questioned the organisations' proffered
justification for the award, in contrast to the current reality: Ignoring his campaign promise to
protect government whistleblowers, Obama's presidency has amassed the worst record in US
history for persecuting, prosecuting and jailing government whistleblowers and truth-tellers.
President Obama has initiated a secret assassination programme, has publicly announced that he
has given himself the power to include Americans on the list of people to be assassinated, and has
attempted to assassinate at least one, Anwar al-Awlaki. President Obama has maintained the
power to secretly kidnap, imprison, rendition, or torture, and he has formalised the power to
lawlessly imprison in an executive order.
Note: For key reports on the lawless war on terrorism carried out by the US government, click
here.
Activists cry foul over FBI probe

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/activists-cry-foul-over-fbi-probe/2011...
FBI agents took box after box of address books, family calendars, artwork and personal letters in
their 10-hour raid in September of the ... house shared by Stephanie Weiner and her husband. The
agents seemed keenly interested in Weiners home-based business, the Revolutionary Lemonade
Stand, which sells silkscreened baby outfits and other clothes with socialist slogans, phrases like
Help Wanted: Revolutionaries. The search was part of a mysterious, ongoing nationwide
terrorism investigation with an unusual target: prominent peace activists and politically active labor
organizers. Investigators, according to search warrants, documents and interviews, are examining
possible material support for Colombian and Palestinian groups designated by the U.S.
government as terrorists. The apparent targets, all vocal and visible critics of U.S. foreign
policy in the Middle East and South America, deny any ties to terrorism. They say the
government, using its post-9/11 focus on terrorism as a pretext, is targeting them for their
political views. The activists have formed the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, organized
phone banks to flood Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.s office and the White House with protest
calls, solicited letters from labor unions and faith-based groups and sent delegations to Capitol Hill
to gin up support from lawmakers.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on government attacks on civil liberties, click here.
Political prisoner: 'I owe Amnesty International my life'

2011-05-26, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13543433
For Maria Gillespie, the memories of what she endured in a prison in Uruguay, when she was only
15 years old, are almost too much to bear. She remembers being hooded, interrogated and
tortured. Eventually every tooth was wrenched out of her mouth. But she also remembers - as
Amnesty International marks its 50th anniversary - how much she owes to the organisation that
helped end the horror and set her free. "I don't think that if I say 'thank you' it will be enough,"
Mrs Gillespie says of the Amnesty activists around the world who campaigned on her
behalf. "I think that I do owe them my life." Amnesty was founded 12 years before she was
jailed. It called for collective action on behalf of those unjustly imprisoned around the world. Maria
Gillespie fell into that category after the military seized power in Uruguay in 1973, ushering in a
period of severe repression. She was ... married to a trade union activist who was wanted by the
authorities, and had fled the country. In his absence ... Maria was arrested. She was accused of
aiding the regime's enemies, and sentenced to 75 years in prison. And so she began her solitary
confinement in a windowless cell lit only by an electric bulb. She was repeatedly taken - with her
head in a hood - for questioning about her husband's associates. But she knew nothing of his
activities. She had no answers for her interrogators.
Note: The brutal repression of political activity in Uruguay described in this article was supervised
by the CIA in its Operation Condor, a campaign of torture and killing across Latin America.
Osama bin Laden dead: Blackout during raid on bin Laden compound
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/8493391/Osama-bin-Laden-de...
Leon Panetta, director of the CIA, revealed there was a 25 minute blackout during which the
live feed from cameras mounted on the helmets of the US special forces was cut off. A
photograph released by the White House appeared to show President Barack Obama and
his aides in the situation room watching the action as it unfolded. In fact they had little
knowledge of what was happening in the compound. In an interview with PBS, Mr Panetta
said: "Once those teams went into the compound I can tell you that there was a time period of
almost 20 or 25 minutes where we really didn't know just exactly what was going on. We had some
observation of the approach there, but we did not have direct flow of information as to the actual
conduct of the operation itself as they were going through the compound." The President only
knew the mission was successful after the Navy Seals commander heard the word Geronimo on
the radio, a code word from commandos reporting that they had killed bin Laden. The absence of
footage of the raid has led to conflicting reports about what happened in the compound.
Note: The White House photo was fake and the original news was quite distorted. Hmmmm. Who
do we trust here? WantToKnow team member David Ray Griffin's book establishing the likelihood
that Osama bin Laden died in December 2001, Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?, is available
here. For a brief summary of reliable information from major media sources raising serious
questions about what happened on 9/11, click here.
Wikileaks: Many at Guantanamo 'not dangerous'

2011-04-25, BBC
Files obtained by the website Wikileaks have revealed that the US believed many of those held at
Guantanamo Bay were innocent or only low-level operatives. The files, published in US and
European newspapers, are assessments of all 780 people ever held at the facility. They show that
about 220 were classed as dangerous terrorists, but 150 were innocent Afghans and Pakistanis.
The Detainee Assessment Briefs (DABs) ... give little information on the allegations of harsh
treatment and interrogation techniques at the camp. But the files show that US military analysts
considered only 220 of those ever detained at Guantanamo to be dangerous extremists. Another
380 detainees were deemed to be low-ranking guerrillas. At least 150 people were revealed to be
innocent Afghans or Pakistanis - including drivers, farmers and chefs - rounded up during
intelligence gathering operations in the aftermath of 9/11. The detainees were then held for
years owing to mistaken identity or because they were in the wrong place at the wrong
time, the memos say. In many cases, US commanders concluded there was "no reason
recorded for transfer".
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on the prison at Guantanamo and other black sites
where torture and false allegations are the norm, click here.
The Terminators: drone strikes prompt MoD to ponder ethics of killer

robots
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/17/terminators-drone-strikes-mod-ethics
The growing use of unmanned aircraft in combat situations raises huge moral and legal issues,
and threatens to make war more likely as armed robots take over from human beings, according to
an internal study by the Ministry of Defence. The report warns of the dangers of an "incremental
and involuntary journey towards a Terminator-like reality", referring to James Cameron's 1984
movie, in which humans are hunted by robotic killing machines. "It is essential that before
unmanned systems become ubiquitous (if it is not already too late) we ensure that ... we
do not risk losing our controlling humanity and make war more likely," warns the report, titled
The UK Approach to Unmanned Aircraft Systems. MoD officials have never before grappled so
frankly with the ethics of the use of drones. The report was ordered by Britain's defence chiefs,
and coincides with continuing controversy about drones' use in Afghanistan, and growing Pakistani
anger at CIA drone attacks against suspected insurgents on the Afghan borders. It states that "the
recent extensive use of unmanned aircraft over Pakistan and Yemen may already herald a new
era". Referring to descriptions of "killer drones" in Afghanistan, it notes that "feelings are likely to
run high as armed systems acquire more autonomy".
Note: For an analysis of the expansion of the sphere of killing by drones to the new Libyan theater
of operations in the "endless war" triggered by the false-flag of 9/11, click here.
US Army 'kill team' in Afghanistan posed for photos of murdered

civilians
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/21/us-army-kill-team-afghanistan-pos...
Commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered by
the publication of "trophy" photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenceless
Afghan civilians they killed. Senior officials at Nato's International Security Assistance Force in
Kabul have compared the pictures published by the German news weekly Der Spiegel to the
images of US soldiers abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq which sparked waves of anti-US
protests around the world. They fear that the pictures could be even more damaging as they show
the aftermath of the deliberate murders of Afghan civilians by a rogue US Stryker tank unit that
operated in the southern province of Kandahar last year. The case has already created shock
around the world, particularly with the revelations that the men cut "trophies" from the
bodies of the people they killed. An investigation by Der Spiegel has unearthed
approximately 4,000 photos and videos taken by the men. The US military has strived to keep
the pictures out of the public domain. The lengthy Spiegel article that accompanies the
photographs contains new details about the sadistic behaviour of the men.
Note: For many reports from reliable sources on atrocities and illegal activities by US military
forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, click here.
Revealed: Afghan chief accused of campaign of terror is on US payroll

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/revealed-afghan-chief-accused-of...
An Afghan warlord backed by US special forces faces persistent allegations that he launched a
two-year spate of violence involving burglary, rape and murder of civilians, desecration of mosques
and mutilation of corpses. Yet, despite repeated warnings about the atrocities Commander
Azizullah is alleged to have committed, he has remained on the payroll of the US military as an
"Afghan security guard", a select band of mercenaries. Interviews with religious leaders, tribal
elders, villagers, contractors and Western and Afghan officials all pointed to a reign of terror in
which they believe 31-year-old Azizullah, an ethnic Tajik, targeted Pashtun civilians while fighting
the Taliban. The testimony also tallied with several independent reports documenting the
allegations against Azizullah. The allegations of persistent abuses are embarrassing for Nato, and
not just because of the closeness with an alleged war criminal. They also showcase the biggest
drawbacks of militias, which US commander General David Petraeus wants to expand
aggressively across Afghanistan. He wants to triple the size of "local defence initiatives"
[militias] to 30,000 members nationwide.The consequences are too awful to contemplate:
resurgent warlords, deepening ethnic tensions, widespread bloodletting and the erosion of
what little authority the government in Kabul has left.
Note: For many reports from reliable sources on atrocities and illegal activities by US military
forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, click here.
Expert Panel Is Critical of F.B.I. Work in Investigating Anthrax Letters

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/us/16anthrax.html
A review of the Federal Bureau of Investigations scientific work on the investigation of the anthrax
letters of 2001 concludes that the bureau overstated the strength of genetic analysis linking the
mailed anthrax to a supply kept by Bruce E. Ivins, the Army microbiologist whom the investigators
blamed for the attacks. The review, by a panel convened by the National Academy of
Sciences, says the genetic analysis did not definitively demonstrate that the mailed
anthrax spores were grown from a sample taken from Dr. Ivinss laboratory at Fort Detrick
in Frederick, Md. The academys report faults the F.B.I. as failing to take advantage of scientific
methods developed between the mailings in 2001 and its conclusion after Dr. Ivinss suicide in
2008 that he was the sole perpetrator. The academy panel, which was paid $1.1 million by the
F.B.I. for its review, assessed only the scientific aspects of the investigation and not the traditional
detective work. Representative Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat and physicist who has
followed the case, said he thought the academys review showed that the F.B.I. attached too
much certainty to the scientific parts of the case. I also think it shows the case was closed
prematurely, Mr. Holt said. He said he was reintroducing a bill to create a national commission,
similar to the Sept. 11 panel, to take a more comprehensive look at the anthrax case and its
implications.
Note: The government has seemed eager to pin this on Ivins, when evidence appears to point to
the U.S. military. For more strange evidence on anthrax and dead researchers, click here.
FBI involved in hundreds of violations in national security

investigations
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/30/nation/la-na-fbi-violations-20110130
The FBI disclosed to a presidential board that it was involved in nearly 800 violations of laws,
regulations or policies governing national security investigations from 2001 to 2008, but the
government won't provide details or say whether anyone was disciplined, according to a report by
a privacy watchdog group. The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation sued under
the Freedom of Information Act to obtain about 2,500 documents that the FBI submitted to the
President's Intelligence Oversight Board. Most of the records were so heavily censored that they
couldn't be properly evaluated. Nevertheless, the documents "constitute the most complete picture
of post-9/11 FBI intelligence abuses available to the public," says the report. "The documents
suggest," the report says, "that FBI intelligence investigations have compromised the civil
liberties of American citizens far more frequently, and to a greater extent, than was
previously assumed." The records obtained by the foundation go beyond national security
letters. About a third of the reports of violations involved rules governing internal oversight of
intelligence investigations, and about a fifth involved potential violations of the Constitution, the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or other laws governing criminal investigations or intelligencegathering activities, the report says.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on government attacks on civil liberties, click here.
Israel Tests on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html
The Dimona complex in the Negev desert is famous as the heavily guarded heart of Israels neveracknowledged nuclear arms program. Over the past two years ... Dimona has taken on a new,
equally secret role as a critical testing ground in a joint American and Israeli effort to undermine
Irans efforts to make a bomb of its own. Behind Dimonas barbed wire ... Israel has spun nuclear
centrifuges virtually identical to Irans at Natanz, where Iranian scientists are struggling to enrich
uranium. Dimona tested the effectiveness of the Stuxnet computer worm, a destructive program
that appears to have wiped out roughly a fifth of Irans nuclear centrifuges and helped delay,
though not destroy, Tehrans ability to make its first nuclear arms. The operations [at Dimona], as
well as related efforts in the United States, are among the newest and strongest clues suggesting
that the virus was designed as an American-Israeli project to sabotage the Iranian program. In
recent days, the retiring chief of Israels Mossad intelligence agency, Meir Dagan ... told the
Israeli Knesset in recent days that Iran had run into technological difficulties that could
delay a bomb until 2015. That represented a sharp reversal from Israels long-held argument
that Iran was on the cusp of success. The biggest single factor in putting time on the
nuclear clock appears to be Stuxnet, the most sophisticated cyberweapon ever deployed.
Note: For many key reports from reliable sources on hidden realities of the "Global War on Terror",
click here.
Say something, unless it embarrasses the TSA

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2011%2F01%2F02%2FEDQK1...
Chris Liu is an Army veteran and a helicopter pilot who rose to the rank of captain before leaving
the military to pursue a career in commercial aviation - first as an instructor, ultimately as a pilot for
a major airline. He volunteered for the Federal Flight Deck Officer program, begun after 9/11, that
trains and deputizes select pilots to carry firearms in the cockpit. After psychological and
background checks, he was accepted. Now Liu is in trouble with the government that only a few
weeks ago entrusted him with the lives of airline passengers. On Dec. 2, six federal agents and
sheriff's deputies arrived at his home outside Sacramento to confiscate his FFDO credentials and
his government-issued handgun. Days later, the Transportation Security Administration sent Liu a
letter stating that he had violated the FFDO's rules for nondisclosure and standards of conduct.
How? In November, Liu anonymously posted videos on YouTube, since removed, showing security
weaknesses at San Francisco International Airport. While passengers and even flight crews
endure body scans and pat-downs, ground crews face limited screening. "The doors, gates and
other access points where they can access the tarmac are not being manned by TSA and
certainly do not have the same metal detectors, body scanners, x-ray equipment, dogs or
other security measures that the rest of us are all too painfully forced to undergo," Liu
writes on his website.
Note: The government is happy to spend billions on invasive body scans (think big profits), yet
fails to even consider huge holes in airport security. Could this be about money?
Firms' lobbying push comes amid rancor on TSA use of airport full-body
scanners
About eight of every 10 registered lobbyists who work for scanner-technology companies
previously held positions in the government or Congress, most commonly in the homeland
security, aviation or intelligence fields, a Washington Post review of lobbying-disclosure forms and
other data shows. Industries routinely employ well-connected lobbyists to seek favorable
legislation and regulations in the nation's capital. But the extent of the connections to the
federal government is particularly notable given the relatively small size of the scanner
industry, which is dominated by half a dozen specialized businesses with heavy

investments in airport and border security technology. The roster of lobbyists for L-3
Communications includes former U.S. senator Alfonse M. D'Amato (R-N.Y.) and Linda Daschle, a
former federal aviation official who is married to Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), a former Senate
majority leader. L-3 has won nearly $900 million worth of TSA business, including for its
"millimeter-wave" machines used for airport body scans. Former homeland security chief Michael
Chertoff, a longtime advocate for increased use of passenger scanners, worked until recently as a
consultant for Rapiscan, which provides "backscatter" X-ray scanners to the TSA. Privacy and civil
liberties advocates and other critics argue that the industry's lobbying ties have encouraged a
frenzy of TSA spending on technologies that are often untested or ineffective.
Note: For key reports from major media sources on corporate and government corruption, click
here and here.
Italy court ups sentences for 23 CIA agents

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40682905/ns/world_news-europe
An Italian appeals court on [December 15] increased the sentences against 23 Americans
convicted in the kidnapping of an Egyptian terror suspect who was part of the CIA's extraordinary
renditions program. In upholding the convictions, the court added one year to the eight-year term
handed down to former Milan CIA station chief Robert Seldon Lady and two years to the five-year
terms given to 22 other Americans convicted along with him, defense lawyers said. They were
never in Italian custody and were tried and convicted in absentia but risk arrest if they travel to
Europe. The Americans and two Italians were convicted last year of involvement in the
kidnapping of ... Abu Omar from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003 the first convictions
anywhere in the world against people involved in the CIA's practice of abducting terror
suspects and transferring them to third countries where torture was permitted. The cleric
was transferred to U.S. military bases in Italy and Germany before being moved to Egypt, where
he says he was tortured. He has since been released. Amnesty International praised [the] decision
as a step toward demanding greater accountability in Europe for the CIA's extraordinary rendition
program. Julia Hall, an Amnesty counter-terrorism expert, said in a statement, "The Italian courts
have acknowledged that the chain of events leading to such serious abuses cannot go
unanswered. Kidnapping is a crime, not a 'state secret.' "
Note: This is amazing news which shows that the CIA is losing its former status as immune in
courts of law.
CIA brain experiments pursued in veterans suit

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/11/cia_brain_experiments_pursu...
In 1961, a top CIA scientist reported in an internal memo that "the feasibility of remote control of
activities in several species of animals has been demonstrated ... Special investigations and
evaluations will be conducted toward the application of selected elements of these techniques to
man," according to The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control, a 1979
book by former State Department intelligence officer John Marks. [T]his cold-blooded project,
Marks wrote, was designed ... for the delivery of chemical and biological agents or for executive
action-type operations, according to a document. Executive action was the CIA's euphemism for
assassination. Victims have sought justice for years, in vain. Now, almost 40 years later, a federal
magistrate has ordered the CIA to produce records and witnesses about the LSD and other
experiments allegedly conducted on thousands of soldiers from 1950 through 1975. U.S.
Magistrate Judge John Larsens Nov. 17 order exempted the agency from having to testify
about electrode tests on humans, but Gordon P. Erspamer, lead attorney for the veterans, says
we are pursuing this as well. Papers filed in the case describe electrical devices implanted in
brain tissue with electrodes in various regions, including the hippocampus, the hypothalamus, the
frontal lobe (via the septum), the cortex and various other places, Erspamer said.
Note: For a revealing summary of CIA mind-control experimentation, click here.
TSA Under Fire for New Security Procedures

2010-11-22, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/tsa-responds-passenger-outrages-underwear-search...
The Transportation Security Administration has come under fire for new body scanners and what
some say are highly invasive pat-downs. Thomas Sawyer, a bladder cancer survivor, said he was
humiliated after a pat-down broke his urostomy bag, leaving the 61-year-old covered in his own
urine. Sawyer said he warned the TSA officials twice that the pat-down could break the seal. Cathy
Bossi, a long-time flight attendant and breast cancer survivor, said the TSA made her take off her
prosthetic breast. "She put her full hand on my breast and said, 'What is this?' I said 'It's a
prosthesis because I've had a breast cancer,'" Bossi said. "And she said, 'You'll need to show me
that.'" In recent days, several passengers have come forward to tell such shocking stories about
their experiences with TSA officers. An ABC News employee said she was subject to a
"demeaning" search at Newark Liberty International Airport Sunday morning. "The woman who
checked me reached her hands inside my underwear and felt her way around," she said. "It
was basically worse than going to the gynecologist. It was embarrassing. It was
demeaning. It was inappropriate." The head of the Transportation Security Administration John
Pistole ... has said the TSA would not change its pat-down procedures.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on increasing threats to privacy, click here.
Pilots Refusing to Use Full Body Scanners or Submit to Patdown

2010-11-09, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/major-pilots-unions-rebel-tsa-screening-rules-ur...
Two of the largest pilots' unions in the nation are urging commercial pilots to rebel against current
airport screening rules. In late October, the Transport Security Administration implemented more
invasive patdown rules. Travelers and pilots were faced with a new dilemma -- have a revealing,
full-body scan or what some are calling an X-rated patdown. Pilots are piping mad over the
options, saying the full-body scanners emit dangerous levels of radiation and that the alternative
public patdown is disgraceful for a pilot in uniform. Some pilots have said they felt so violated after
a patdown, they were unfit to fly. The patdowns, implemented Oct. 29, allow TSA officers to pat
down passengers with the front of their hands, instead of the backs of their hands. A security
expert who demonstrated the new procedure on a mannequin for ABC News explained the
changes. "You go down the body and up to the breast portion," said Charles Slepian of the
Foreseeable Risk Analysis Center. "If it's a female passenger, you're going to see if there's
anything in the bra." The new patdown protocol could be used at any of the nation's 450 airports
on passengers who require additional screening. Tens of thousands of passengers are submitted
to patdowns and full-body scanners every day. More than 300 full-body scanners are being used at
65 airports across the country.
Note: And what about the general public having to submit to being groped?
Hollywood actor fears he's on a 'death list' of stars

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/hollywood-actor-fears-hes-on...
Randy Quaid, the American actor famous for playing characters as diverse as the trailer-trash
scrounger in the "National Lampoon" series to his nation's saviour in "Independence Day", is at the
centre of a real-life drama more bizarre than anything the movies ever cooked up for him. He and
his wife are claiming asylum in Canada because, in her words, they fear they are on a Hollywood
"death list". The couple were arrested in Vancouver after police responded to a call and found
there were warrants out for them in California. The couple told the immigration adjudicator that
they are being persecuted in the United States. Evi Quaid begged a Canadian immigration
adjudicator not to force them to return, saying that friends, such as the actors David Carradine and
Heath Ledger, had been "murdered" under mysterious circumstances and she was worried
something would happen to her husband next. "We feel our lives are in danger," she said.
"Randy has known eight close friends murdered in odd, strange manners... We feel that
we're next." During a break in the proceedings, the Quaids' lawyer, Brian Tsuji, approached the
media to read a single-sentence statement from the Quaids. "We are requesting asylum from
Hollywood star-whackers," he read, declining further comment on the mental state of his clients.
Randy Quaid, 60, complained he had been persecuted for 20 years.
Every email and website to be stored

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8075563/Every-email-and-website-to...
Every email, phone call and website visit is to be recorded and stored after the Coalition
Government revived controversial Big Brother snooping plans. It will allow security services and
the police to spy on the activities of every Briton who uses a phone or the internet. Moves
to make every communications provider store details for at least a year will be unveiled
later this year sparking fresh fears over a return of the surveillance state. It comes despite
the Coalition Agreement promised to "end the storage of internet and email records without good
reason". The plans are expected to involve service providers storing all users details for a set
period of time. That will allow the security and police authorities to track every phone call, email,
text message and website visit made by the public if they argue it is needed to tackle crime or
terrorism. The information will include who is contacting whom, when and where and which
websites are visited, but not the content of the conversations or messages. The move was buried
in the Government's Strategic Defence and Security Review.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on increasing government and corporate threats to
privacy, click here.
Canada air force commander to plead guilty to murders

2010-10-07, BBC
The commander of Canada's largest air force base is to plead guilty to the murder of two
women and the sexual assault of two others, his lawyer says. Col Russell Williams once
acted as pilot for Queen Elizabeth II and was in charge of Base Trenton in Ontario Canada's busiest air force hub. His lawyer told an Ontario court he would plead guilty to all
charges. He is also charged with 82 counts of breaking and entering. Prosecutors said he had
stolen women's underwear. One woman was found dead in her house in November 2009. The
other went missing in January this year. The murder victims were Marie Comeau, a 38-year-old
corporal, who lived in Brighton, Ontario, and Jessica Lloyd, 27, a resident of Belleville, Ontario.
The Ottawa Citizen newspaper reported that police had seized 500 items of women's underwear
from Col Williams's home in Ottawa. "He was able to lead an elaborate double life and was able to
keep it successfully concealed," said a senior officer who once promoted Col Williams, retired LtGen Angus Watt.
Note: This kind of behavior in the top levels of the military may be much more common than you
would expect. To understand more, learn about Kay Griggs, whose Marine colonel husband was
deeply involved in this kind of thing at a high level. To watch a 10-minute video clip of Kay, click
here. For more, click here.
Barack Obama accused of exaggerating terror threat for political gain

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/07/barack-obama-terror-threat-claims
A US terror alert issued this week about al-Qaida plots to attack targets in western Europe was
politically motivated and not based on credible new information, senior Pakistani diplomats and
European intelligence officials have told the Guardian. The non-specific US warning ... was an
attempt to justify a recent escalation in US drone and helicopter attacks inside Pakistan that have
"set the country on fire", said Wajid Shamsul Hasan, the high commissioner to Britain. Hasan ...
suggested the Obama administration was playing politics with the terror threat before next month's
midterm congressional elections. "I will not deny the fact that there may be internal political
dynamics, including the forthcoming midterm American elections," Hasan said. European
intelligence officials also pointed the finger at the US, and specifically at the White House. "To
stitch together [the terror plot claims] in a seamless narrative is nonsensical," said one well-placed
official. By making it clear that the US drone strikes were pre-emptive, and were not in any
way combating an imminent threat, European officials raised fresh questions ... about the
legality of the attacks, which could be viewed as assassinations. They said Washington was
the "driver" behind claims about a series of "commando-style" plots and that the CIA perhaps
because it was worried about provoking unwelcome attention to its drone strikes was also
extremely annoyed by the publicity given to them.
Note: For highly revealing reports from major media sources on the hidden realities of the "Global
War on Terror," click here.
9/11 conspiracy theories rife in Muslim world

2010-10-02, Washington Post / Associated Press
About a week ago, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared to the United Nations that
most people in the world believe the United States was behind the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11,
2001. Surveys show that a majority of the world does not in fact believe that the U.S. orchestrated
the attacks. However, the belief persists strongly among a minority, even with U.S. allies like
Turkey or in the U.S. itself. A 2006 survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that
significant majorities in Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan and Turkey ... said they did not believe
Arabs carried out the attacks. Such beliefs have currency even in the United States. In 2006,
a Scripps Howard poll of 1,010 Americans found 36 percent thought it somewhat or very
likely that U.S. officials either participated in the attacks or took no action to stop them. Tod
Fletcher of [WantToKnow.info] has worked as an assistant to David Ray Griffin, on books that
question the Sept. 11 record. He was cautious about the Iranian president's comments about
conspiracy theories, suggesting Ahmadinejad may have been politically motivated by his enmity
with the U.S. government. "It seems like it's the sort of thing that could lead to further vilification of
people who criticize the official account here in the United States," Fletcher said.
Note: To listen to Tod Fletcher's commentary on WantToKnow team member David Ray Griffin's
recent book, Cognitive Infiltration: an Obama Appointee's Plan to Undermine the 9/11 Conspiracy
Theory, about the latest attempts by the US government to vilify 9/11 truth movement members as
"extremist," "violent" and "likely to resort to terrorism", click here.
U.S. Invokes State Secrets to Bar Cleric Lawsuit

The Obama administration on Saturday invoked the state secrets privilege which would kill a
lawsuit on behalf of U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an alleged terrorist said to be targeted for
death or capture under a U.S. government program. In its court papers, the Justice Department
said that the issues in the case are for the executive branch of government to decide rather than
the courts. The department also said the case entails information that is protected by the military
and state secrets privilege. "The idea that courts should have no role whatsoever in
determining the criteria by which the executive branch can kill its own citizens is
unacceptable in a democracy," the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for
Constitutional Rights said in a statement. "In matters of life and death, no executive should
have a blank check." Al-Awlaki's father, through the CCR and the ACLU, filed the case in federal
court in Washington. The lawsuit filed on the cleric's behalf seeks to have a court declare that the
Constitution and international law bar the government from carrying out targeted killings; seeks to
block the targeted killing of al-Awlaki; and seeks to force the U.S. government to disclose the
standards for determining whether U.S. citizens can be targeted for death.
Note: For an analysis of the Obama administration's assertion of the right to assassinate US
citizens, click here. For many reports from reliable sources on state secrets, click here.
Court dismisses suit alleging 'torture flights'

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/09/BAE81FASRO.DTL
A federal appeals court ... dismissed a lawsuit [on September 8] accusing a Bay Area aviationplanning company of arranging CIA flights of [captives] to overseas dungeons. The ruling is a
victory for both President George W. Bush's administration, which directed the rendition program
and acknowledged its existence, and the Obama administration, which ... argued that it was too
sensitive to be litigated in court. The American Civil Liberties Union said it would appeal to the
Supreme Court. The high court has refused to review two rulings by other appeals courts
dismissing suits against the government by men who said they were abducted by the CIA and
flown to foreign torture chambers. "Not a single victim of the Bush administration's torture program
has had his day in court," ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner said. Jeppesen, a Boeing Co. subsidiary, was
described in a 2007 Council of Europe report as the CIA's aviation services provider. In a court
declaration in the current suit, a company employee quoted a director as telling staff members in
2006 that Jeppesen handled the CIA's "torture flights." Dissenting Judge Michael Hawkins said
the courts should decide legal disputes rather than "permitting the executive to police its
own errors." He also said the court should have kept the case alive and required the
government to show why specific evidence should remain secret.
Note: The ruling in this case can be read here. For analysis, click here and here.
Convicted Disease Doc Won't Be Charged in MIA Scare

2010-09-03, NBC Miami
http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local-beat/Convicted-Disease-Doc-Questioned-in-M...
A world-renowned Texas scientist specializing in infectious diseases who was once charged with
smuggling dangerous samples of plague bacteria into the U.S. was questioned by authorities after
a suspicious item found in his luggage caused a massive evacuation at Miami International Airport
[on September 2]. Dr. Thomas C. Butler, 70, was questioned by agents with the FBI and MiamiDade police [on September 3]. Initial tests on the item have come back negative. Butler was
released from questioning and won't be charged in the incident. Sources told NBC Miami
that Butler had been coming from Saudi Arabia when the suspicious item was spotted in
his luggage as it went through customs. Butler had been on the faculty at Texas Tech since the
late 80s until his arrest in 2003 on charges of smuggling and improperly transporting the plague
samples, as well as theft, embezzlement and fraud. He was eventually found guilty of exporting the
vials of plague and stealing research money. Butler spent nearly two years behind bars and lost
his Texas Tech job, despite the protests of several in the scientific community who denounced his
prosecution. His controversial story was even featured in a "60 Minutes" piece titled "The Case
Against Dr. Butler." He's currently listed as a faculty member at Alfaisal University in Saudi Arabia.
Note: There is likely much more to this story than meets the eye. Why is a world-renowned Texas
scientist specializing in infectious diseases who is on faculty at a university in Saudi Arabia
carrying deadly biological materials around the world?
WikiLeaks releases CIA paper on U.S. as 'exporter of terrorism'

The United States has long been an exporter of terrorism, according to a secret CIA
analysis released [August 25] by the Web site WikiLeaks. And if that phenomenon were to
become a widely held perception, the analysis said, it could damage relations with foreign allies
and dampen their willingness to cooperate in "extrajudicial" activities, such as the rendition and
interrogation of terrorism suspects. That is the conclusion of the three-page classified paper
produced in February by the CIA's Red Cell, a think tank set up after the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet to provide "out-of-the-box" analyses on "a full
range of analytic issues." The paper cites Pakistani American David Headley, among others, to
make its case that the nation is a terrorism exporter. Headley pleaded guilty this year to conducting
surveillance in support of the 2008 Lashkar-i-Taiba attacks in Mumbai, which killed more than 160
people. Such exports are not new, the paper said. In 1994, an American Jewish doctor [Baruch
Goldstein, a member of the militant group Kach founded by the late Meir Kahane,] who had
emigrated from New York to Israel years earlier, opened fire at a mosque at the Tomb of the
Patriarchs in Hebron, killing 29 Palestinian worshippers.
Note: For reports from major media sources that illuminate the realities of state-sponsored
terrorism, click here.
9/11 interrogation tapes found under desk

2010-08-17, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38735351/ns/us_news-security
The CIA has tapes of [alleged] 9/11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh being interrogated in a secret
overseas prison. Discovered under a desk, the recordings could provide an unparalleled look at
how foreign governments aided the U.S. in holding and questioning suspected terrorists. CIA
officials believed they had wiped away all of the agency's interrogation footage. But in 2007, a staff
member discovered a box tucked under a desk in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and pulled
out the Binalshibh tapes. A Justice Department prosecutor ... is now ... probing why the
Binalshibh tapes were never disclosed. Twice, the government told a federal judge they did
not exist. The tapes could complicate U.S. efforts to prosecute Binalshibh, 38. If the tapes
surfaced at trial, they could clearly reveal Morocco's role in the counterterrorism program known as
Greystone, which authorized the CIA to hold terrorists in secret prisons and shuttle them to other
countries. More significantly to his defense, the tapes also could provide evidence of Binalshibh's
mental state within the first months of his capture. In court documents, defense lawyers have been
asking for medical records to see whether Binalshibh's years in CIA custody made him mentally
unstable. He is being treated for schizophrenia with a potent cocktail of anti-psychotic medications.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the torture used by the CIA and US military in the
global "Long War", click here.
US cops: armed and dangerous?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/aug/16/police-usa-civ...
Can you invent a realistic scenario wherein you shoot a man dead; justify it with a story witnesses
contradict; confiscate any surveillance video; claim a "glitch" makes it impossible to show the video
to anyone else all while enjoying the support of state legal apparatus? Police in Las Vegas did
that last month, after they shot Erik Scott seven times as he exited a Costco. Cops say Scott
pointed a gun at them; witnesses say Scott's licensed weapon was in a concealed holster, and five
of those seven shots hit him in the back. The confiscated surveillance video might settle the
question; too bad about that glitch. At least Costco's not in trouble for recording police actions.
That's illegal in 12 states, even (or especially) when you record police misbehaviour. Even in
states where it's allowed, officers are wont to ignore the law and go after photographers anyway,
and they can always record you with their own dashboard cams. Whenever Tasers are issued,
they're used with shocking (sorry) frequency. With guns, police at least have to argue "Oops, I
thought he was dangerous", after shooting you; Tasers don't even require that. In 2004, Malaika
Brooks, then seven months pregnant, was stopped for speeding in Seattle. She refused to
sign the ticket a non-arrestable misdemeanour at the time, though she was arrested for it
anyway and was Tasered three times. Last March, a federal appeals court ruled that the
Tasering, which left permanent scars, was not "excessive force" since it only inflicted "temporary,
localised pain".
Note: The short video in this article of a mother being tazed for no apparent reason is particularly
revealing.
Before the CIA, there was the Pond

Created during World War II as [one of America's most secretive espionage agencies] the Pond
existed for 13 years and was shrouded in secrecy for more than 50 years. It used sources
that ranged from Nazi officials to Stalinists and, at one point, a French serial killer. It
operated under the cover of multinational corporations, including American Express, Chase
National Bank and Philips, the Dutch-based electronic giant. One of its top agents was a female
American journalist. Now the world can finally get a deeper look at the long-hidden roots of
American espionage as tens of thousands of once-secret documents found in locked safes and
filing cabinets in a barn near Culpeper, Virginia, in 2001 have ... become public. The papers, which
the Pond's leader tried to keep secret long after the organization was dissolved, were placed in the
National Archives in College Park, Maryland, in 2008 but only opened to the public in April. Those
records plus documents obtained by The Associated Press in the past two years from the FBI, CIA
and other agencies under the Freedom of Information Act portray a sophisticated organization
obsessed with secrecy that operated a network of 40 chief agents and more than 600 sources in
32 countries. The AP has also interviewed former officials, family members, historians and
archivists.
Note: For an illuminating video on the CIA, click here.
Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of

occupation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-war-logs-military-leaks
A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in
Afghanistan. The disclosures come from more than 90,000 records of incidents and intelligence
reports about the conflict obtained by the whistleblowers' website Wikileaks in one of the biggest
leaks in US military history. The files, which were made available to the Guardian, the New York
Times and the German weekly Der Spiegel, give a blow-by-blow account of the fighting over the
last six years. The war logs [detail]: How a secret "black" unit of special forces hunts down
Taliban leaders for "kill or capture" without trial. How the US covered up evidence that the Taliban
have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles. How the coalition is increasingly using deadly
Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada. The logs
detail, in sometimes harrowing vignettes, the toll on civilians exacted by coalition forces:
events termed "blue on white" in military jargon. The logs reveal 144 such incidents. Some of
these casualties come from the controversial air strikes ... but a large number of previously
unknown incidents also appear to be the result of troops shooting unarmed drivers or
motorcyclists. Rachel Reid, who investigates civilian casualty incidents in Afghanistan for Human
Rights Watch, said: "These files bring to light what's been a consistent trend by US and Nato
forces: the concealment of civilian casualties."
Note: To check out WikiLeak's Afghan War Diary website, click here. Despite the media attention
the logs have received, with many comparisons to the Pentagon Papers, some observers have
noted that, unlike the Pentagon Papers, very few of the "revelations" in the Afghan War Logs have
revealed anything previously unknown.
U.S. asks blog sites to shut down

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/24/BUF31EGQRC.DTL
Under mysterious circumstances and with unusual abruptness, two websites used to
create blogs and message boards were taken down at the behest of U.S. investigators
earlier this month, baffling users and commentators on the Web alike. Both Blogetery.com,
which said it hosted around 70,000 blogs, and online forum site IPBFree.com were taken offline in
early July. The initial cryptic responses to users' questions about what happened added to the
confusion. Both IPBFree administrators and Burst.net, Blogetery's Web host, deeply apologized for
the incident but said they were barred by law to provide any specific information. But Burst.net
later told PC World that they had voluntarily decided to take down Blogetery after investigators
approached them. It is still unclear who hosted the IPBFree site, why it was taken down or if the
action was related to the Blogetery case.
Note: For more on this, click here. It appears certain factions within government are testing their
ability to shut down certain websites.
Doubts surface on North Korea's role in ship sinking

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-korea-torpedo-20100724,0,...
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton calls the evidence "overwhelming" that the Cheonan, a
South Korean warship that sank in March, was hit by a North Korean torpedo. Vice President Joe
Biden has cited the South Korean-led panel investigating the sinking as a model of transparency.
But challenges to the official version of events are coming from an unlikely place: within South
Korea. Armed with dossiers of their own scientific studies and bolstered by conspiracy theories,
critics dispute the findings announced May 20 by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, which
pointed a finger at Pyongyang. They also question why Lee made the announcement nearly
two months after the ship's sinking, on the very day campaigning opened for fiercely
contested local elections. Many accuse the conservative leader of using the deaths of 46
sailors to stir up anti-Communist sentiment and sway the vote. The critics, mostly but not all
from the opposition, say it is unlikely that the impoverished North Korean regime could have pulled
off a perfectly executed hit against a superior military power, sneaking a submarine into the area
and slipping away without detection. They also wonder whether the evidence of a torpedo attack
was misinterpreted, or even fabricated. "I couldn't find the slightest sign of an explosion," said Shin
Sang-chul, a former shipbuilding executive-turned-investigative journalist. "The sailors drowned to
death. Their bodies were clean. We didn't even find dead fish in the sea."
Note: This article raises the suspicion that the sinking of the South Korean vessel was in reality a
"false-flag" operation. To read an excellent short history and analysis of false-flag attacks, click
here.
Iran scientist: CIA offered me $50m to lie about nuclear secrets

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-scientist-cia-offere...
An Iranian scientist who says he was abducted and taken to the United States by the CIA returned
to Tehran yesterday to a hero's welcome and claimed that he had been pressured into lying about
his country's nuclear programme. Shahram Amiri said that he was on the hajj pilgrimage when he
was seized at gunpoint in the city of Medina, drugged and taken to the US, where he says Israel
was involved in his interrogation. In the US, officials were reported to have admitted that Mr Amiri
was paid more than $5m (3.2m) by the CIA for information about Iran's nuclear ambitions. The
offer of a large bribe is reportedly part of a special US programme to get Iranian nuclear scientists
to defect. "Americans wanted me to say that I defected to America of my own will, to use me
for revealing some false information about Iran's nuclear work," Mr Amiri said at Tehran
airport. "I was under intensive psychological pressure by [the] CIA... the main aim of this
abduction was to stage a new political and psychological game against Iran." At his press
conference at Tehran airport, Mr Amiri stressed that he had acted under compulsion. "Israeli
agents were present at some of my interrogation sessions and I was threatened to be handed over
to Israel if I refused to cooperate with Americans," he said. He says he was offered $50m to stay in
the US.
Note: For key reports on CIA kidnappings and other methods employed in the bogus "global war
on terror", click here.
General who said it was 'fun to shoot people' takes over US Central
Command
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7880617/General-wh...
A senior US general once criticised for saying it was "fun to shoot some people" has been picked
to take over US Central Command, leading the military command running the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. General James Mattis, the current head of the US Joint Forces Command ...
previously led troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Centcom ... covers 20 countries and stretches from
Egypt across the Middle East and into south and central Asia. Gen Mattis was reprimanded [in
2005] by the Marine Corps for telling a conference in San Diego, California: "It's fun to shoot
some people. I'll be right up front with you, I like brawling." During a discussion panel he
said: "You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years
because they didn't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway.
So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."
Note: For reports from reliable sources which reveal the realities of the US wars of aggression in
the Middle East and Central Asia, click here.
WikiLeaks to release video of deadly US Afghan attack

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jun/16/wikileaks-us-military-afghanistan...
The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks says it plans to release a secret military video of one of the
deadliest US air strikes in Afghanistan in which scores of children are believed to have been killed.
It said it fears it is under attack after the US authorities said they were searching for the site's
founder, Julian Assange, following the arrest of a US soldier accused of leaking the Afghanistan
video and another of a US attack in Baghdad in which civilians were killed. It says it is still working
to prepare the film of the bombing of the Afghan village of Garani in May 2009. The video could
prove to be extremely embarrassing to the US military. The US ... used weapons that create
casualties over a wide area, including one-tonne bombs and others that burst in the air. But
two US military officials told a newspaper last year that no one checked to see whether
there were women and children in the buildings. In an email to supporters, Assange said
WikiLeaks has the Garani video and "a lot of other material that exposes human rights abuses by
the US government". In his email, Assange also calls on supporters to protect the website from
"attack" by the authorities following the detention of a US soldier, Bradley Manning, who was
arrested in Iraq after admitting to a former hacker that he leaked the Garani and Baghdad videos
to WikiLeaks.
Note: For lots more on government secrecy from major media sources, click here.
Wanted by the US: WikiLeaks founder keeps his head down

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/wanted-by-the-us-wikileaks-f...
Julian Assange, the Australian-born face of the [whistleblowers' website] WikiLeaks, is in hiding
overseas after the US military arrested one of its own soldiers, Bradley Manning, and accused him
of leaking a a secret video of a US Army helicopter gunning down civilians in Iraq in 2007. The
video was released on Wikileaks this year, and the US is now desperate to find Mr Assange
before he leaks thousands of hugely embarrassing state diplomatic cables, which are
believed to discuss the Middle East, its governments and leaders. Mr Assange, 38, is an
enigmatic figure who moves frequently between countries and has bases in Iceland, Kenya,
Australia and elsewhere. He was due to speak at a conference in Las Vegas on [June 11] but
cancelled shortly before he was due to appear. At the same time [a US website] published an
article claiming that Pentagon investigators were engaged in a "manhunt" for Mr Assange. There
have even been suggestions that Mr Assange may be in physical danger. Daniel Ellsberg, who
famously leaked a top secret US history of the Vietnam War dubbed the Pentagon Papers at the
height of that war, told US television he had spoken to Mr Assange last week. "He understood
that it was not safe for him to come to this country," Mr Ellsberg said.
Note: For more of Daniel Ellsberg's assessment of the personal dangers to Assange from the
Pentagon's manhunt for him, click here.
Saudi Arabia gives Israel clear skies to attack Iranian nuclear sites
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article7148555.ece
Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defences to enable Israeli jets to make a
bombing raid on Irans nuclear facilities, The Times can reveal. Defence sources in the Gulf
say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of
the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran. The Saudis have given their
permission for the Israelis to pass over and they will look the other way, said a US
defence source in the area. This has all been done with the agreement of the [US] State
Department. Sources in Saudi Arabia say it is common knowledge within defence circles in
the kingdom that an arrangement is in place if Israel decides to launch the raid. We all know
this. We will let them [the Israelis] through and see nothing, said one. The targets lie as far as
1,400 miles (2,250km) from Israel; the outer limits of their bombers range, even with aerial
refuelling. An open corridor across northern Saudi Arabia would significantly shorten the distance.
An airstrike would involve multiple waves of bombers, possibly crossing Jordan, northern Saudi
Arabia and Iraq. Passing over Iraq would require at least tacit agreement to the raid from
Washington.
Toronto police get 'sound cannons' for G20
2010-05-27, Toronto Star

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/torontog20summit/article/815061--toronto-poli...
Protesters marching at the G20 summit next month may be greeted with ear-splitting sound
cannons, the latest Toronto police tool for quelling unruly crowds. Toronto police have purchased
four long-range acoustic devices (LRAD) often referred to as sound guns or sound cannons
for the upcoming June 26-27 summit. Purchased this month, the LRADs will become a permanent
fixture in Toronto law enforcement, said police spokesperson Const. Wendy Drummond. They
were purchased as part of the G20 budget process, Drummond said. Its definitely going to be
beneficial for us, not only in the G20 but in any future large gatherings. But critics say they are
really non-lethal weapons and infringe upon protester rights. LRADs can emit ear-blasting
sounds so high in frequency they transcend normal thresholds of pain. LRADs are being
increasingly employed as a crowd-control device and at last years G20 summit in
Pittsburgh, police used them on protesters before deploying tear gas and stun grenades. The
acoustical devices can also be pointed at specific targets, transmitting a laser of sound that is
less aggravating for anyone standing outside its beam.
Note: This is the sort of thing on which the $1 billion in security preparations for the upcoming G8
and G20 meetings is being spent. For revealing reports from reliable sources on the grave risks
posed by so called "non-lethal" weapons, click here.
U.S. Approval of Killing of Cleric Causes Unease

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/world/14awlaki.html
The Obama administrations decision to authorize the killing by the Central Intelligence Agency of
a terrorism suspect who is an American citizen has set off a debate over the legal and political
limits of drone missile strikes, a mainstay of the campaign against terrorism. The notion that the
government can, in effect, execute one of its own citizens far from a combat zone, with no
judicial process and based on secret intelligence, makes some legal authorities deeply
uneasy. To eavesdrop on the terrorism suspect who was added to the target list, the Americanborn radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is hiding in Yemen, intelligence agencies would have to
get a court warrant. But designating him for death, as C.I.A. officials did early this year with the
National Security Councils approval, required no judicial review. Congress has protected Awlakis
cellphone calls, said Vicki Divoll, a former C.I.A. lawyer who now teaches at the United States
Naval Academy. But it has not provided any protections for his life. That makes no sense. But like
the debate over torture during the Bush administration, public discussion of what officials call
targeted killing has been limited by the secrecy of the C.I.A. drone program.
Note: Obama is the first president to publicly order the assassination of an American citizen.
Neither George W. Bush nor Dick Cheney asserted such a power on the part of the president. For
an analysis, click here.
Colleague Disputes Case Against Anthrax Suspect

A former Army microbiologist who worked for years with Bruce E. Ivins, whom the F.B.I. has
blamed for the anthrax letter attacks that killed five people in 2001, told a National Academy of
Sciences panel on [April 22] that he believed it was impossible that the deadly spores had been
produced undetected in Dr. Ivinss laboratory, as the F.B.I. asserts. Asked by reporters after
his testimony whether he believed that there was any chance that Dr. Ivins, who committed
suicide in 2008, had carried out the attacks, the microbiologist, Henry S. Heine, replied,
Absolutely not. At the Armys biodefense laboratory in Maryland, where Dr. Ivins and
Dr. Heine worked, he said, among the senior scientists, no one believes it. Dr. Heine
told the 16-member panel, which is reviewing the F.B.I.s scientific work on the investigation,
that producing the quantity of spores in the letters would have taken at least a year of intensive
work using the equipment at the army lab. Such an effort would not have escaped colleagues
notice, he added later, and lab technicians who worked closely with Dr. Ivins have told him they
saw no such work. Whoever did this is still running around out there, Dr. Heine said. I
truly believe that.
Note: For more on the still-unsolved anthrax attacks, click here.
The 'Obama doctrine': kill, don't detain

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/apr/11/obama-national...
Extrajudicial killings and targeted assassinations will soon become the main point of contention
that Obama's administration will need to justify. The extensive use of drones under Obama have
taken the death count well beyond anything that has been seen before. The legal justifications put
forward by [the Obama administration] are reminiscent of the arguments that were used by John
Yoo and others in their bid to lend legitimacy to unlawful practices such as rendition, arbitrary
detention and torture. The laws of war do not allow for the targeting of individuals outside of
the conflict zone, and yet we now find that extrajudicial killings are taking place in countries
as far apart as Yemen, the Horn of Africa and Pakistan. From a legal and moral perspective,
the rationale provided by the State Department is bankrupt and only reinforces the stereotype
that the US has very little concern for its own principles. The hope that came with the election of
Barack Obama has faded as his policies have indicated nothing more than a reconfiguration of the
basic tenet of the Bush Doctrine that the US's national security interests supersede any
consideration of due process or the rule of law. The only difference witness the rising civilian
body count from drone attacks being that Obama's doctrine is even more deadly.
Defense says NY synagogue-bomb plot was feds' idea

Four men accused of trying to bomb synagogues and shoot down planes in New York last spring
did little more than go along with a fake plot proposed, directed and funded by the federal
government, defense lawyers claim in asking the court to dismiss the case. A federal informant
chose the targets, offered payment, provided maps and bought the only real weapon
involved, a handgun, the attorneys said in a dismissal motion filed this week in federal
court. They alleged the defendants were not inclined toward any crime until the informant
began recruiting them. The dismissal motion identified the government's agent as Shaheed
Hussain, a "professional informant" for the FBI. The defense alleged that Hussain tried to incite the
defendants by blaming Jews for the world's evil and telling them that attacks against non-Muslims
were endorsed by Islam. Nevertheless, they said, he failed to motivate the defendants to any
action on their own. Hussain suggested the targets, paid for the defendants' groceries, bought a
gun, provided the fake bombs and missile, assembled the explosive devices and acted as
chauffeur, the defense said. "The alleged crimes were almost entirely the product of Hussain's
labors and the enterprise would have immediately collapsed if Hussain's guiding hand had been
removed," the defense motion said.
Note: For lots more evidence of fake terror plots used to maintain the "war on terror", click here.
Contestants turn torturers in French TV experiment

"The Game of Death" has all the trappings of a traditional television quiz show, with a roaring
crowd and a glamorous and well-known hostess urging the players on under gaudy studio lights.
But the contestants did not know they were taking part in an experiment to find out whether
television could push them to outrageous lengths, and which has prompted comparisons with the
atrocities of Nazi Germany. "We were amazed to find that 81 percent of the participants
obeyed" the sadistic orders of the television presenter, said Christophe Nick, the maker of the
documentary for the state-owned France 2 channel. "They are not equipped to disobey," he
added. The game: posing questions to another "player" and punishing him with up to 460 volts of
electricity when he gets them wrong -- even until his cries of "Let me go!" fall silent and he appears
to have died. Not knowing that the screaming victim is really an actor, the apparently reluctant
contestants yield to the orders of the presenter and chants of "Punishment!" from a studio
audience who also believed the game was real. Nick said 80 percent of the contestants went all
the way, zapping the victim with the maximum 460 volts until he appeared to die. Out of 80
players, just 16 walked out. "When it decides to abuse its power, television can do anything to
anybody," said Nick. "It has an absolutely terrifying power."
Note: For more on this powerful and disturbing phenomenon, click here.
Obama Signs One-Year Extension of Patriot Act

2010-02-27, New York Times/Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/02/27/us/politics/AP-US-Obama-Patriot-Ac...
President Barack Obama has signed a one-year extension of several provisions in the nation's
main counterterrorism law, the Patriot Act. Provisions in the measure would have expired on
[February 28] without Obama's signature [the day before]. The act, which was adopted in the
weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, expands the government's ability to monitor
Americans in the name of national security. Three sections of the Patriot Act that stay in force will:
-- Authorize court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones. -- Allow
court-approved seizure of records and property in anti-terrorism operations. -- Permit surveillance
against a so-called lone wolf, a non-U.S. citizen engaged in terrorism who may not be part of a
recognized terrorist group. Obama's signature comes after the House voted 315 to 97 Thursday to
extend the measure. The Senate also approved the measure, with privacy protections cast
aside. Thrown away were restrictions and greater scrutiny on the government's authority to
spy on Americans and seize their records.
Note: Remember that the PATRIOT Act was passed by Congress immediately after weaponized
anthrax attacks on two key senators opposed to the legislation, a crime that the FBI has closed the
books on without solving. Congress continues to support the Act despite its widespread
unpopularity with the US public. Why? For lots more from major media sources on the increasing
government threats to civil liberties, click here.
F.B.I., Laying Out Evidence, Closes Anthrax Case

More than eight years after anthrax-laced letters killed five people and terrorized the country, the
F.B.I. [has] closed its investigation, adding eerie new details to its case that the 2001 attacks were
carried out by Bruce E. Ivins, an Army biodefense expert who killed himself in 2008. A 92-page
report, which concludes what by many measures is the largest investigation in F.B.I. history, laid
out the evidence against Dr. Ivins. The report disclosed for the first time the F.B.I.s theory that Dr.
Ivins embedded in the notes mailed with the anthrax a complex coded message, based on DNA
biochemistry. Whether the voluminous documentation will convince skeptics about Dr.
Ivinss guilt was uncertain. Representative Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat and a
physicist who has sharply criticized the bureaus work, said the case should not have been
closed. He said the F.B.I. report laid out barely a circumstantial case that would not, I think,
stand up in court. Some of Dr. Ivinss colleagues at the United States Army Medical Research
Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, including several supervisors who knew him well,
publicly rejected the F.B.I.s conclusion. They said he was eccentric but incapable of such a
diabolical act, and they questioned whether he could have produced the deadly powder with the
equipment in his lab.
Note: The FBI's "closure" of its anthrax investigation won't put an end to the unanswered
questions about who the perpetrators of the attacks were. As described in this key Wall Street
Journal report, the specific formulation of the anthrax used in the attacks was beyond Ivins'
capabilities.
U.S. military teams, intelligence deeply involved in aiding Yemen on

strikes
U.S. military teams and intelligence agencies are deeply involved in secret joint operations with
Yemeni troops who in the past six weeks have killed scores of people. The operations, approved
by President Obama, involve several dozen troops from the U.S. military's clandestine Joint
Special Operations Command (JSOC), whose main mission is tracking and killing [targeted
persons]. Obama approved a Dec. 24 strike against a compound where a U.S. citizen, Anwar alAulaqi, was thought to be. He has since been added to a shortlist of U.S. citizens specifically
targeted for killing or capture by the JSOC. The combined efforts have resulted in more than two
dozen ground raids and airstrikes. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the
military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad. The Obama administration has adopted the same
stance. Both the CIA and the JSOC maintain lists of individuals, called "High Value Targets"
and "High Value Individuals," whom they seek to kill or capture. The JSOC list includes
three Americans, including Aulaqi, whose name was added late last year. As of several
months ago, the CIA list [also] included three U.S. citizens.
Note: For many reports from reliable sources on the growing governmental threats to civil liberties,
click here.
Obama quietly continues to defend Bush's terror policies

2010-01-23, Denver Post/McClatchy News
http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_14250508
Although the FBI has acknowledged it improperly obtained thousands of Americans' phone
records for years, the Obama administration continues to assert that the bureau can obtain
them without any formal legal process or court oversight. In further support of [this assertion]
the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel backed the FBI in a written opinion issued this
month. The opinion by the OLC the section that wrote the memos that justified enhanced
interrogation techniques during the last administration appears to be yet another sign that the
Obama administration can be just as assertive as Bush's in claiming sweeping and controversial
anti-terrorism powers. "The FBI says that this kind of activity is in the past," said Michael German,
a former FBI agent who's now the American Civil Liberties Union's policy counsel. "But if they're
saying that they have a continuing legal authority that means it's not in the past." In another
similarity to Bush era-legal decisions to keep legal theories under wraps, Obama's Justice
Department refused to release to McClatchy the OLC opinion, despite the administration's vow to
be more open than its predecessors.
Note: For many reports from reliable sources on the growing governmental threats to civil liberties,
click here.
'Flaws' in key Lockerbie evidence

2010-01-06, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8441796.stm
An investigation by BBC's Newsnight has cast doubts on the key piece of evidence which
convicted the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi. Tests aimed at reproducing the blast
appear to undermine the case's central forensic link, based on a tiny fragment identified as part of
a bomb timer. The tests suggest the fragment, which linked the attack to Megrahi, would not have
survived the mid-air explosion. Newsnight has ... exposed serious doubts about the forensics used
to identify the fragment as being part of a trigger circuit board. The fragment was found three
weeks after the attack. For months it remained unnoticed and unremarked, but eventually it was to
shape the entire investigation. The fragment was embedded in a charred piece of clothing, which
was marked with a label saying it was made in Malta. So the focus turned to Malta and the
question of who had bought the clothes. A shopkeeper on the island identified Megrahi, but this
came only years later after he saw him pictured in a magazine as a Lockerbie suspect. Newsnight
has discovered that the fragment - crucial to the conviction - was never subjected to
chemical analysis or swabbing to establish whether it had in fact been involved in any
explosion.
Note: For a revealing documentary showing a major cover-up of the Lockerbie bombing, click
here. For many reports from major media sources questioning the evidence presented in the
prosecution of "terrorism" cases, click here.
Yes, It Was Torture, and Illegal

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/opinion/04mon1.html
Bush administration officials came up with all kinds of ridiculously offensive rationalizations for
torturing prisoners. Its not torture if you dont mean it to be. Its not torture if you don
t nearly kill the victim. Its not torture if the president says its not torture. It was deeply
distressing to watch the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sink to
that standard in April when it dismissed a civil case brought by four former Guant namo
detainees never charged with any offense. The court said former Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld and the senior military officers charged in the complaint could not be held responsible for
violating the plaintiffs rights because at the time of their detention ... it was not clearly
established that torture was illegal. The Supreme Court could have corrected that outlandish
reading of the Constitution, legal precedent, and domestic and international statutes and treaties.
Instead, last month, the justices abdicated their legal and moral duty and declined to review the
case. The justices surely understood that their failure to accept the case would further
undermine the rule of law. In effect, the Supreme Court has granted the government
immunity for subjecting people in its custody to terrible mistreatment. It has deprived victims
of a remedy and Americans of government accountability, while further damaging the countrys
standing in the world.
Note: For many reliable reports on the torture used by governments pursuing the "war on terror",
click here.
A Torture Timeline
http://photo.newsweek.com/2009/4/photos-a-timeline-of-torture/_jcr_content.html
In 2009, the Justice Department began to release reports and top-secret memos detailing
interrogation techniques ... used by CIA officers against suspected terror operatives. The list of
brutal techniques, including holding prisoners in small boxes, staging mock executions, and water
torture, is reminiscent of some of the worst human-rights abuses on record. In medieval Europe,
torture was more than just a means of punishment. Many criminal trials of the era consisted of one
or more 'ordeals,' painful tests designed to prove guilt or innocence through supernatural
judgment. During waterboarding, a technique first used in the 14th century, torturers begin by
pumping water directly into a victim's stomach or slowly flooding his throat with liquid. Used
extensively during the Spanish Inquisition, the practice became less publicly acceptable
during the Enlightenment, then experienced an underground resurgence in the 19th
century. Since World War II, different forms of waterboarding have been employed by
governments in Japan, Cambodia, the United Kingdom and the United States, among others.
In addition to performing forced labor, prisoners at Nazi concentration camps became subjects in
some of the cruelest medical experiments ever performed. They were often held at extreme
altitudes and temperatures to help develop new survival strategies or exposed to deadly gases
and diseases in order to test vaccines. Many of these tests, directed by the infamous Josef
Mengele at Auschwitz, advanced Nazi ideology by establishing 'Jewish racial inferiority.'
Note: The above link leads to a revealing 12-part slide show on the history of torture. For more
disturbing information on how Nazi torture techniques were eventually used by the CIA for mind
control, click here.
Flight 253 hero recounts thwarting Christmas bombing attempt

2009-12-30, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/12/30/terror.passenger.account
As Northwest Flight 253 made its final approach to Detroit on Christmas, the actions of one man
put at risk the lives of nearly 300 passengers on the jetliner -- and the quick thinking of another
helped prevent disaster. Jasper Schuringa, a Dutch filmmaker, appeared on CNN's "Larry King
Live". "First, it was just 'bang,'" he said. "And you're trying to look around, like where's this bang
coming from." Immediately afterward, someone screamed "Fire!" Schuringa said he noticed a man
on the left side of the aisle, sitting still while on fire. "And he was still holding it in his hands. And I
had to, like, rip the bomb out of his hands." Schuringa said the man just stared at him, but did not
let go of whatever he was holding onto. Schuringa described how he yanked the object from the
man, stamped out the fire with his hands and tossed it. Through it all, the man appeared dazed.
"He was staring into nothing," Schuringa said. Among the passengers on the Friday flight were
Wisconsin native Richelle Keepman and her family. On "Larry King Live" she [remembered] one
odd detail. Amid the commotion, a man about 10 seats in front of Keepman was capturing it
all with a camcorder. "It was definitely a little out of the ordinary," she said. "I mean, I don't
know why he was standing up and we were supposed to be seated and he was filming it."
Note: There are many other very strange things related to this flight reported in the media. For
those interested in exploring more verifiable facts around this incident, click here.
Flight 253 passenger: Sharp-dressed man aided terror suspect Umar

Farouk Abdul Mutallab onto plane without passport
2009-12-26, Michigan Live (Michigan's leading news website)
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2009/12/flight_253_passenger_says...
A Michigan man who was aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 says he witnessed Umar Farouk
Abdul Mutallab trying to board the plane in Amsterdam without a passport. Kurt Haskell of
Newport, Mich. ... talked exclusively with MLive.com and confirmed he was on the flight by sending
a picture of his boarding pass. He and his wife, Lori, were returning from a safari in Uganda when
they boarded the NWA flight on Friday. Haskell said he and his wife were sitting on the ground
near their boarding gate in Amsterdam, which is when they saw Mutallab approach the gate with
an unidentified man. While Mutallab was poorly dressed, his friend was dressed in an
expensive suit, Haskell said. He says the suited man asked ticket agents whether Mutallab
could board without a passport. The guy said, 'He's from Sudan and we do this all the
time.' Mutallab is Nigerian. Haskell believes the man may have been trying to garner sympathy
for Mutallab's lack of documents by portraying him as a Sudanese refugee. The ticket agent
referred Mutallab and his companion to her manager down the hall, and Haskell didn't see
Mutallab again until after he allegedly tried to detonate an explosive on the plane. As Mutallab was
being led out of the plane in handcuffs, Haskell said he realized that was the same man he saw
trying to board the plane in Amsterdam. About an hour after landing, Haskell said he saw another
man being taken into custody. But a spokeswoman from the FBI in Detroit said Mutallab was the
only person taken into custody.
Note: For many other reports from reliable sources that raise profound questions about the official
accounts of "terrorist incidents," click here.
Osama bin Ladens missing family found in secret compound in Iran

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article6965756.ece
Osama bin Ladens closest relatives are living in a secret compound in Iran, members of the family
said. They include a wife and children who disappeared from his Afghan camp at the time of the
9/11 attacks on the United States. There has been uncertainty about the familys whereabouts for
the past eight years, with reports that some of the children had been killed in bombings. However,
relatives said that they found out last month that the group, including one of Osamas wives,
six of his children and 11 of his grandchildren, had been kept in a high-security compound
outside Tehran. Members of the bin Laden family are now appealing for the group to be
allowed to leave Iran and described them as the forgotten victims of 9/11. Omar Ossama
bin Laden, 29, [Osama bin Laden's] fourth-eldest son, said he had no idea that his brothers and
sisters were still alive until they called him in November. They told him how they had fled
Afghanistan just before the 9/11 attacks and walked to the Iranian border. They were taken to a
walled compound outside Tehran where guards said they were not allowed to leave for their own
safety.
Note: This article fails to mention that the US government secretly assisted many bin Laden family
members to escape the US within days of the 9/11 attacks, as reported in the major media. For
more on this, click here. For many other reports by the major media raising serious questions
about the involvement of rogue elements of government in 9/11, click here.
Mumbai terror suspect David Headley was rogue US secret agent

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6960182.ece
A key terror suspect who allegedly helped to plan last years attacks in Mumbai and plotted to
strike Europe was an American secret agent who went rogue, Indian officials believe. David
Headley, 49, who was born in Washington to a Pakistan diplomat father and an American mother,
was arrested in Chicago in October. He has denied the charges. He came to the attention of the
US security services in 1997 when he was arrested in New York for heroin smuggling. He earned a
reduced sentence by working for the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) infiltrating Pakistanlinked narcotics gangs. Indian investigators, who have been denied access to Mr Headley,
suspect that he remained on the payroll of the US security services possibly working for
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) but switched his allegiance to LeT. India is looking into
whether Headley worked as a double agent, an Indian Home Ministry official said yesterday. Mr
Headley, who changed his name from Daood Gilani, was in Mumbai until two weeks before the
attacks on the city. Despite being firmly on the radar of the US intelligence agencies, he was
allowed to return to India as recently as March. Indian officials are furious that their American
counterparts did not share details of that visit at the time. The Indian media has raised the
possibility that Mr Headley was being protected by his American handlers a theory that experts
say is credible.
Note: For many other reports from major media sources that raise profound questions about the
official account of "terrorism," click here.
C.I.A. to Expand Use of Drones in Pakistan

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/world/asia/04drones.html
The White House has authorized an expansion of the C.I.A.s drone program in Pakistans lawless
tribal areas. More C.I.A. drone attacks have been conducted under President Obama than under
President George W. Bush. The political consensus in support of the drone program ... and
its secrecy have obscured just how radical it is. For the first time in history, a civilian
intelligence agency is using robots to carry out a military mission, selecting people for
killing in a country where the United States is not officially at war. The drone warfare
pioneered by the C.I.A. in Pakistan and the Air Force in Iraq and Afghanistan is the leading edge of
a wave of push-button combat that will raise legal, moral and political questions around the world,
said P. W. Singer, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and author of the book Wired for War: The
Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century. So far, only the United States and Israel
have used the planes for strikes, but that number will grow. It is impossible to judge whether the
program violates international law without knowing whether Pakistan permits the incursions, how
targets are selected and what is done to minimize civilian casualties.
Note: For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities behind the "war on terror,"
click here.
President Obama's Secret: Only 100 al Qaeda Now in Afghanistan

2009-12-02, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/president-obamas-secret-100-al-qaeda-now-afghan...
As he justified sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan at a cost of $30 billion a year, President
Barack Obama's description ... of the al Qaeda "cancer" in that country left out one key fact: U.S.
intelligence officials have concluded there are only about 100 al Qaeda fighters in the entire
country. A senior U.S. intelligence official told ABCNews.com the approximate estimate of 100 al
Qaeda members left in Afghanistan reflects the conclusion of American intelligence agencies and
the Defense Department. The relatively small number was part of the intelligence passed on to the
White House as President Obama conducted his deliberations. With 100,000 troops in
Afghanistan at an estimated yearly cost of $30 billion, it means that for every one al Qaeda
fighter, the U.S. will commit 1,000 troops and $300 million a year. At a Senate hearing, the
former CIA Pakistan station chief, Bob Grenier, testified al Qaeda had already been defeated in
Afghanistan. "So in terms of 'in Afghanistan,'" asked Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., "they have been
disrupted and dismantled and defeated. They're not in Afghanistan, correct?" "That's true," replied
Grenier.
Note: For many reports raising profound questions about the realities of the "war on terror", click
here.
The Secret US War in Pakistan

2009-11-23, The Nation magazine
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091207/scahill
At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in
the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a
secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda
operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside
Pakistan. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret
US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator
strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus. The
previously unreported program, the military intelligence source said, is distinct from the
CIA assassination program. "This is a parallel operation to the CIA," said the source. "They
are two separate beasts." Blackwater's presence in Pakistan is "not really visible, and that's why
nobody has cracked down on it," said the source. Blackwater's operations in Pakistan, he said, are
not done through State Department contracts or publicly identified Defense contracts. "It's
Blackwater via JSOC, and it's a classified no-bid [contract] approved on a rolling basis. Some of
these strikes are attributed to [the CIA], but in reality it's JSOC. So when you see some of these
hits, especially the ones with high civilian casualties, those are almost always JSOC strikes."
Note: Don't miss this key report in it's entirety. Why haven't other major media outlets mentioned
the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) drone operations in Pakistan, running parallel to
the CIA's?
1,600 are suggested daily for FBI's list

Newly released FBI data offer evidence of the broad scope and complexity of the nation's terrorist
watch list, documenting a daily flood of names nominated for inclusion to the controversial list.
During a 12-month period ended in March this year, for example, the U.S. intelligence community
suggested on a daily basis that 1,600 people qualified for the list because they presented a
"reasonable suspicion," according to data provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee by the FBI
in September and made public last week. The ever-churning list is said to contain more than
400,000 unique names and over 1 million entries. Nine percent of those on the terrorism list,
the FBI said, are also on the government's "no fly" list. Before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,
the FBI needed initial information that a person or group was engaged in wrongdoing before it
could open a preliminary investigation. Under current practice, no such information is needed. The
inquiries can be opened by individual agents "proactively," meaning on his or her own or in
response to a lead about a threat.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the growing government threats to civil liberties,
click here.
Sir Nicholas Winton, the 'British Schindler', meets the Holocaust

survivors he helped save
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/6138441/Sir-Nicholas-Winton-...
By virtue of the foresight, humanity and sheer bloody-mindedness of a young British stockbroking
clerk called Nicholas Winton, 669 Jewish children were saved from the clutches of the Nazis. On
Friday, 22 of them were reunited with their 100-year-old saviour now Sir Nicholas who has
come to be known as the 'British Schindler'. Between March and August 1939 eight trains carried
669 children to Britain, who otherwise would probably have perished in the death camps. Fifteen
thousand Czechoslovakian children died in the war. The ninth train, containing 250 children, was
due to leave Prague on 3 September 1939, the day Britain declared war. The Germans never let it
leave the station, and most of the children never lived to see 1945. Almost as remarkable as the
scheme itself, and a mark of Sir Nicholas's modesty, was that he chose to conceal his
achievements for decades. It was only when he wife Greta unearthed a briefcase in the attic
contained lists of the children he saved and letters to the parents did he admit his part. He
said in 1999: "My wife didn't know about it for 40 years after our marriage, but there are all kinds of
things you don't talk about even with your family. "Everything that happened before the war
actually didn't feel important in the light of the war itself." He also rejected the comparison with
Oskar Schindler, who saved about 1,200 Jews in the war, saying unlike the German his actions
never put him in danger.
Note: For a touching, short video on this amazing story, click here. To listen to the story on NPR,
click here.
Doctors demand inquest into death of Dr David Kelly

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5811102/Doctors-demand-inquest-into-de...
A group of 13 doctors who believe that Dr David Kelly, the Government scientist, did not commit
suicide, but was murdered, are launching a legal campaign to demand an inquest. The original
inquest into Dr Kelly's death six years ago in woods near his Oxfordshire home was suspended by
Lord Falconer, then the Lord Chancellor. He designated the Hutton Inquiry into the circumstances
surrounding the weapons inspector's death as "fulfilling the function of an inquest". Dr Kelly died
shortly after he was exposed as the source for a story claiming the Government "probably knew"
that a claim Iraq could attack with weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes was not true. A team
of doctors unconvinced by the findings of the Hutton Report has compiled a dossier which claims
that a cut to the ulnar artery in Dr Kelly's wrist could not have killed him. The 12-page document
concludes: "The bleeding from Dr Kelly's ulnar artery is highly unlikely to have been so voluminous
and rapid that it was the cause of death." Among the doctors is ... is David Halpin, 69, a former
lecturer in anatomy at King's College, London, and a former consultant in orthopaedic and trauma
surgery at Torbay Hospital, who later went into general practice. Dr Halpin said they had argued
their case in the legal document in "microscopic" detail and added: "We reject haemorrhage as
the cause of death and see no contrary opinion which would stand its ground. I think it is
highly likely he was assassinated." The doctors have been working closely with Norman
Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP, who believes the scientist was murdered by enemies he
made in the course of his work as a weapons inspector.
Note: For a trove of revelatory reports on assassinations as a tool of state, click here.
The Alarming Record of the F.B.I.'s Informant in the Bronx Bomb Plot
2009-07-07, Village Voice (A progressive New York City street newspaper)
http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-07-08/news/the-alarming-record-of-the-f-b-i-...
Last month, police and the FBI arrested four Newburgh men on charges that they had plotted to
bomb synagogues in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx and fire a missile at a military jet. As
more details emerged, however, the less the four defendants sounded like men with the skills to
plan a sophisticated terror plot. They were small-time crooks, felons with long criminal records.
What the indictment didn't say, and what the initial news reports didn't fill in, was the extent to
which the fifth man in the plot, an unnamed FBI informant, had provided the glue to hold the
Newburgh 4 together. That informant was a Pakistani man named Shahed Hussain, code-named
"Malik," who agreed to work for the FBI to obtain leniency after he was arrested in 2002 for fraud.
Over a period of about a year, Malik met with [the] defendants ... while under FBI surveillance. The
Newburgh bomb plot isn't the first of Malik's operations for the government. He played a similar
role four years ago in an Albany case, in which he helped the FBI arrest a man named Mohammed
Hossain, a cash-poor pizzeria owner, and his imam, Yassin Aref, after persuading them to launder
$50,000 in a made-up plot to bring a missile to the U.S. and assassinate the Pakistani prime
minister. In both cases, Malik did not stumble upon active terror cells plotting to bring destruction
on American soil. Instead, in both Newburgh and Albany, he needed long periods of time to
recruit his Muslim contacts, spin elaborate tales about his terror contacts, and develop
solid plans of action, all the while providing the defendants with large amounts of
resources and cash incentives. In each case, the question remains: Would either set of
defendants have done anything remotely like plant bombs or launder money for terrorists if not for
the prodding and plotting and encouragement of Malik and the FBI?
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the hidden realities behind the never-ending
"war on terror", click here.
As rumours swell that the government staged 7/7, victims' relatives call
for a proper inquiry
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1197419/Conspiracy-fever-As-rumours-s...
The country's worst-ever terrorist atrocity during London's morning rush hour on July 7, 2005,
shattered for ever the heady euphoria in which the capital was basking the morning after winning
the bid for the 2012 Olympics. That afternoon, Tony Blair - who was hosting the G8 summit on
global poverty in Gleneagles, Scotland - returned to Downing Street to pronounce that the attack
was an act in the 'name of Islam'. Later, at a meeting of the Government's national emergency
committee COBRA, London's anti-terror police chief Andy Hayman told senior ministers that he
suspected suicide bombers. And so the story of 7/7 that we have come to accept was pieced
together: four British Muslims ... blew themselves up using home-made explosives, killing 56 and
injuring 700 on three Tube trains and a double-decker bus. But families of the dead victims and an
increasing number of 7/7 survivors claim there are inconsistencies and basic mistakes in the
official accounts that need explanation. And they are demanding a full public inquiry to answer key
questions about what the Intelligence Services and the police did and did not know before the
bombings. Meanwhile, the Government's determined refusal to meet their demands is having
a very dangerous side-effect - fuelling myriad conspiracy theories about 7/7. Books, blogs
and several video documentaries point to oddities in the official accounts. [Some] of them
suggest that the attacks were not the work of Muslim terrorists at all, but were carried out by the
Government to boost support for the Iraq war. The survivors are so intent on an independent
inquiry that they are now taking legal action in the High Court.
Note: The evidence laid out in this article of government complicity is quite strong. For revealing
reports from reliable sources on the unexplained circumstances surrounding the London Bombings
on 7/7/05, click here.
Officials Say U.S. Wiretaps Exceeded Law

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/us/16nsa.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewante...
The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans
in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last
year, government officials said in recent interviews. Several intelligence officials, as well as
lawyers briefed about the matter, said the N.S.A. had been engaged in overcollection of
domestic communications of Americans. They described the practice as significant and
systemic. The legal and operational problems surrounding the N.S.A.s surveillance activities
have come under scrutiny from the Obama administration, Congressional intelligence committees
and a secret national security court. Congressional investigators say they hope to determine if any
violations of Americans privacy occurred. It is not clear to what extent the agency may have
actively listened in on conversations or read e-mail messages of Americans without proper court
authority, rather than simply obtained access to them. While the N.S.A.s operations in recent
months have come under examination, new details are also emerging about earlier domesticsurveillance activities, including the agencys attempt to wiretap a member of Congress, without
court approval, on an overseas trip. After a contentious three-year debate that was set off by the
disclosure in 2005 of the program of wiretapping without warrants that President George W. Bush
approved after the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress gave the N.S.A. broad new authority to collect,
without court-approved warrants, vast streams of international phone and e-mail traffic as it passed
through American telecommunications gateways.
Note: For further disturbing reports from reliable sources on government efforts to establish total
surveillance systems, click here.
Report Outlines Medical Workers Role in Torture

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/world/07detain.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pag...
Medical personnel were deeply involved in the abusive interrogation of terrorist suspects held
overseas by the Central Intelligence Agency, including torture, and their participation was a gross
breach of medical ethics, a long-secret report by the International Committee of the Red Cross
concluded. Based on statements by 14 prisoners who belonged to Al Qaeda and were moved to
Guantnamo Bay, Cuba, in late 2006, Red Cross investigators concluded that medical
professionals working for the C.I.A. monitored prisoners undergoing waterboarding, apparently to
make sure they did not drown. Medical workers were also present when guards confined prisoners
in small boxes, shackled their arms to the ceiling, kept them in frigid cells and slammed them
repeatedly into walls, the report said. Facilitating such practices, which the Red Cross
described as torture, was a violation of medical ethics even if the medical workers
intentions had been to prevent death or permanent injury, the report said. But it found that
the medical professionals role was primarily to support the interrogators, not to protect the
prisoners, and that the professionals had condoned and participated in ill treatment. At times,
according to the detainees accounts, medical workers gave instructions to interrogators to
continue, to adjust or to stop particular methods. The Red Cross report was completed in 2007. It
was obtained by Mark Danner, a journalist who has written extensively about torture, and posted
Monday night with an article by Mr. Danner on the Web site of The New York Review of Books.
Note: Much of content of the Red Cross report was revealed in a March article by Mr. Danner and
in a 2008 book, The Dark Side, by Jane Mayer, but the reporting of the Red Cross investigators
conclusions on medical ethics and other issues are new.
Traces of explosives in 9/11 dust, scientists say
2009-04-06, Deseret News (One of Salt Lake City's leading newspapers)

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/0,5143,705295677,00.html
Tiny red and gray chips found in the dust from the collapse of the World Trade Center contain
highly explosive materials proof, according to a former BYU professor, that 9/11 is still a sinister
mystery. Physicist Steven E. Jones, who retired from Brigham Young University in 2006 after the
school recoiled from the controversy surrounding his 9/11 theories, is one of nine authors on a
paper published last week in the online, peer-reviewed Open Chemical Physics Journal. Also listed
as authors are BYU physics professor Jeffrey Farrer and a professor of nanochemistry at the
University of Copenhagen in Denmark. For several years, Jones has theorized that pre-positioned
explosives, not fires from jet fuel, caused the rapid, symmetrical collapse of the two World Trade
Center buildings, plus the collapse of a third building, WTC-7. The newest research, according to
the journal authors, shows that dust from the collapsing towers contained a "nano-thermite"
material that is highly explosive. A layer of dust lay over parts of Manhattan immediately
following the collapse of the towers, and it was samples of this dust that Jones and fellow
researchers requested in a 2006 paper, hoping to determine "the whole truth of the events
of that day." They eventually tested four samples they received from New Yorkers. Red/gray chips
... were found in all four dust samples. The chips were then analyzed using scanning electron
microscopy and other high-tech tools. The red layer of the chips, according to the researchers,
contains a "highly energetic" form of thermite.
Note: For the full text of this path-breaking scientific report, click here. Note that other major media
failed to pick up this important news, though you can watch a Dutch news report (with English
subtitles) on YouTube available here. For more key reports on the cutting-edge research of Prof.
Steven Jones, click here.
Judge Rules Some Prisoners at Bagram Have Right of Habeas Corpus

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/washington/03bagram.html?partner=rss&emc=rs...
A federal judge ruled on Thursday that some prisoners held by the United States military in
Afghanistan have a right to challenge their imprisonment, dealing a blow to government efforts to
detain terrorism suspects for extended periods without court oversight. In a 53-page ruling that
rejected a claim of unfettered executive power advanced by both the Bush and Obama
administrations, United States District Judge John D. Bates said that three detainees at the United
States Bagram Air Base had the same legal rights that the Supreme Court last year granted to
prisoners held at the American naval base in Guantnamo Bay, Cuba. The three detainees two
Yemenis and a Tunisian say that they were captured outside Afghanistan and taken to Bagram,
and that they have been imprisoned for more than six years without trials. Arguing that they were
not enemy combatants, the detainees want a civilian judge to review the evidence against them
and order their release, under the constitutional right of habeas corpus. The importance of Bagram
as a holding site for terrorism suspects captured outside Afghanistan and Iraq has increased under
the Obama administration, which prohibited the Central Intelligence Agency from using its secret
prisons for long-term detention and ordered the military prison at Guantnamo closed within a
year. The administration had sought to preserve Bagram as a haven where it could detain
terrorism suspects beyond the reach of American courts, telling Judge Bates in February
that it agreed with the Bush administrations view that courts had no jurisdiction over
detainees there.
Note: For key articles from major media sources on threats to civil liberties, click here.
Secret Bush Anti-Terror Memos Revealed

The Obama administration threw open the curtain on years of Bush-era secrets Monday, revealing
anti-terror memos that claimed exceptional search-and-seizure powers and divulging that the CIA
destroyed nearly 100 videotapes of interrogations and other treatment of terror suspects. The
Justice Department released nine legal opinions showing that, following the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks, the Bush administration determined that certain constitutional rights would not
apply during the coming fight. Within two weeks, government lawyers were already discussing
ways to wiretap U.S. conversations without warrants. An October 2001 memo by the Justice
Department's John Yoo authorized the use of the U.S. military within the United States in
combating terrorists. Yoo defined the 9/11 attacks as "war" and therefore concluded the
President could employ the military domestically in a "military action" rather than a police
action. Under Posse Comitatus Act, the American armed forces are forbidden from
operating domestically. A March 2003 memo gave the President broad powers to transfer
captured al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners to third countries. It also stipulated that the torture
provisions of the Geneva Convention did not apply, because these prisoners were "non state"
enemy combatants and therefore not entitled to Geneva protections. The Obama administration
also acknowledged in court documents Monday that the CIA destroyed 92 videos involving terror
suspects, including interrogations - far more than had been known.
Note: For key reports from major media sources on the hidden realities of the war on terror, click
here.
Letter from the Grave

2009-01-12, The New Yorker magazine
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/stevecoll/2009/01/letter-from-the.html
[On January 8] Lasantha Wickramatunga, who was fifty-two years old and the editor of a Sri
Lankan newspaper called The Sunday Leader, was assassinated on his way to work by two
gunmen riding motorcycles. The Leader's investigative reporting had been fiercely critical of the
government and of the conduct of its war against Tamil separatists; Wickramatunga had been
attacked before. He knew that he was likely to be murdered and so he wrote an essay with
instructions that it be published only after his own death. Read it in full below: "No other profession
calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka,
journalism. In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come
under attack. Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and
coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honor to
belong to all those categories and now especially the last. We find ourselves in the midst of a civil
war ruthlessly prosecuted by protagonists whose bloodlust knows no bounds. Terror, whether
perpetrated by terrorists or the state, has become the order of the day. Indeed, murder has
become the primary tool whereby the state seeks to control the organs of liberty. Today it is
the journalists, tomorrow it will be the judges. For neither group have the risks ever been
higher or the stakes lower.
Note: Click on the link above to read this deeply moving letter from a martyr for truth in its entirety.
More Groups Than Thought Monitored in Police Spying

The Maryland State Police surveillance of advocacy groups was far more extensive than
previously acknowledged, with records showing that troopers monitored -- and labeled as
terrorists -- activists devoted to such wide-ranging causes as promoting human rights and
establishing bike lanes. Intelligence officers created a voluminous file on Norfolk-based People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, calling the group a "security threat" because of concerns that
members would disrupt the circus. Angry consumers fighting a 72 percent electricity rate increase
in 2006 were targeted. The DC Anti-War Network, which opposes the Iraq war, was designated a
white supremacist group, without explanation. One of the possible "crimes" in the file police
opened on Amnesty International, a world-renowned human rights group: "civil rights." The
[surveillance] ... confirmed the fears of civil liberties groups that have warned about domestic
spying since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "No one was thinking this was al-Qaeda," said Stephen
H. Sachs, a former U.S. attorney and state attorney general appointed by Gov. Martin O'Malley (D)
to review the case. "But 9/11 created an atmosphere where cutting corners was easier." Maryland
has not been alone. The FBI and police departments in several cities, including Denver in 2002
and New York before the 2004 Republican National Convention, also responded to [dissent] by
spying on activists.
Note: For wide coverage from reliable sources of disturbing threats to civil liberties, click here.
Report on Detainee Abuse Blames Top Bush Officials

A bipartisan panel of senators has concluded that former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
and other top Bush administration officials bear direct responsibility for the harsh treatment of
detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and that their decisions led to more serious abuses in Iraq and
elsewhere. In the most comprehensive critique by Congress of the military's interrogation
practices, the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a report yesterday that accuses
Rumsfeld and his deputies of being the authors and chief promoters of harsh interrogation policies
that disgraced the nation and undermined U.S. security. "The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody
cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own," the report
states. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on
how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and
authorized their use against detainees." Human rights and constitutional law organizations have
urged further action, ranging from an independent commission to prosecutions of those involved in
authorizing the interrogations. Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights,
which has helped defend detainees at Guantanamo, said the committee report is valuable
because "it's official, it's bipartisan. It's open and explicit, going right to Rumsfeld and
having Rice involved," Ratner said. "It breaks new ground in saying that the [torture]
techniques basically don't work . . . that they're actually designed to elicit false
confessions."
Note: To read the full report, click here. For many key reports from major media sources detailing
US torture and war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, click here.
Spying on pacifists, environmentalists and nuns

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cop-spy7-2008dec07,0,734...
To friends in the protest movement, Lucy was an eager 20-something who attended their events
and sent encouraging e-mails to support their causes. Only one thing seemed strange. "At one
demonstration, I remember her showing up with a laptop computer and typing away," said Mike
Stark, who helped lead the anti-death-penalty march in Baltimore that day. "We all thought that
was odd." Not really. The woman was an undercover Maryland State Police trooper who between
2005 and 2007 infiltrated more than two dozen rallies and meetings of nonviolent groups.
Maryland officials now concede that, based on information gathered by "Lucy" and others, state
police wrongly listed at least 53 Americans as terrorists in a criminal intelligence database - and shared some information about them with half a dozen state and federal agencies,
including the National Security Agency. Among those labeled as terrorists: two Catholic nuns, a
former Democratic congressional candidate, a lifelong pacifist and a registered lobbyist. One
suspect's file warned that she was "involved in puppet making and allows anarchists to utilize her
property for meetings." "There wasn't a scintilla of illegal activity" going on, said David Rocah, an
attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit and in July obtained the first
surveillance files. State police have released other heavily redacted documents. Investigators, the
files show, targeted groups that advocated against abortion, global warming, nuclear arms, military
recruiting in high schools and biodefense research, among other issues.
Note: For lots more on increasing threats to civil liberties, click here.
Secret Order Lets U.S. Raid Al Qaeda

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/washington/10military.html?partner=rssuserl...
The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen
previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and
elsewhere. These military raids, typically carried out by Special Operations forces, were authorized
by a classified order that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed in the spring of 2004 with
the approval of President Bush. The secret order gave the military new authority to attack the
Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct
operations in countries not at war with the United States. In 2006, for example, a Navy Seal
team raided a suspected militants compound in the Bajaur region of Pakistan. Some of the military
missions have been conducted in close coordination with the C.I.A.. In others, like the Special
Operations raid in Syria on Oct. 26 of this year, the military commandos acted in support of C.I.A.directed operations. Apart from the 2006 raid into Pakistan, the American officials refused to
describe in detail what they said had been nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks, except
to say they had been carried out in Syria, Pakistan and other countries. The new authority was
spelled out in a classified document called Al Qaeda Network Exord, or execute order. The 2004
order identifies 15 to 20 countries, including Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and several
other Persian Gulf states.
Note: For key reports on government secrecy from major media sources, click here.
Homeland Security Detects Terrorist Threats by Reading Your Mind

2008-09-23, FOX News
Baggage searches are SOOOOOO early-21st century. Homeland Security is now testing the next
generation of security screening a body scanner that can read your mind. Most preventive
screening looks for explosives or metals that pose a threat. But a new system called MALINTENT
turns the old school approach on its head. This Orwellian-sounding machine detects the person
not the device set to wreak havoc. MALINTENT, the brainchild of the cutting-edge Human
Factors division in Homeland Security's directorate for Science and Technology, searches
your body for non-verbal cues that predict whether you mean harm to your fellow
passengers. It has a series of sensors and imagers that read your body temperature, heart rate
and respiration for unconscious [tell-tale signs] invisible to the naked eye. But this is no polygraph
test. Subjects do not get hooked up or strapped down for a careful reading; those sensors do all
the work without any actual physical contact. It's like an X-ray for bad intentions. When the sensors
identify that something is off, they transmit warning data to analysts, who decide whether to flag
passengers for further questioning. The next step involves micro-facial scanning, which involves
measuring minute muscle movements in the face for clues to mood and intention. Homeland
Security has developed a system to recognize, define and measure seven primary emotions and
emotional cues that are reflected in contractions of facial muscles. MALINTENT identifies these
emotions and relays the information back to a security screener almost in real time.
Note: For many more major-media reports on threats to civil liberties, click here.
Bin Laden driver said to have known 9/11 target

2008-07-23, Reuters
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN2230096620080723
Osama bin Laden's driver knew the target of the fourth hijacked jetliner in the September 11
attacks, a prosecutor said. Prosecutor Timothy Stone, in an attempt to draw a link between [Salim]
Hamdan and the al Qaeda leadership in the first Guantanamo war crimes trial, told the six-member
jury of U.S. military officers ... that Hamdan had inside knowledge of the 2001 attacks on the
United States because he overheard a conversation between bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman alZawahiri. "If they hadn't shot down the fourth plane it would've hit the dome," Stone, a Navy
officer, said in his opening remarks. "Virtually no one knew the intended target, but the accused
knew," Stone said. United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania. U.S. officials
have never stated it was shot down although rumours saying that abound to this day.
Note: Some 9/11 researchers have long believed the target of the fourth plane was the US Capitol.
If a number of members of Congress had been killed, Bush almost certainly would have declared
martial law, thus stripping Congress of its power and making him a virtual dictator. Just imagine
what might have happened in that case. Some suspect that Flight 93 was shot down by friendly
fire, possibly on orders of factions within the power elite who were against the plot. For more on all
this, click here and here.
Madness and Shame

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/opinion/22herbert.html?partner=rssuserland&...
In her important new book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into
a War on American Ideals, Jane Mayer of The New Yorker devotes a great deal of space to David
Addington, ... the lead architect of the Bush administrations legal strategy for the so-called war on
terror. In the view of Mr. Addington and his acolytes, anything and everything that the president
authorized in the fight against terror regardless of what the Constitution or Congress or the
Geneva Conventions might say was all right. That included torture, rendition, warrantless
wiretapping, the suspension of habeas corpus, you name it. Ms. Mayer wrote: "The legal doctrine
that Addington espoused that the president, as commander in chief, had the authority to
disregard virtually all previously known legal boundaries rested on a reading of the Constitution
that few legal scholars shared." Ms. Mayer mentioned a study conducted by attorneys and law
students at the Seton Hall University Law School. "After reviewing 517 of the Guantnamo
detainees cases in depth," she said, "they concluded that only 8 percent were alleged to
have associated with Al Qaeda. Fifty-five percent were not alleged to have engaged in any
hostile act against the United States at all, and the remainder were charged with dubious
wrongdoing, including having tried to flee U.S. bombs. The overwhelming majority all but 5
percent had been captured by non-U.S. players, many of whom were bounty hunters." The
Dark Side is essential reading for those who think they can stand the truth.
Note: For lots more on the realities behind the "war on terror", click here.
The truth is out there

2008-06-07, Financial Times
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8d66e778-3128-11dd-ab22-000077b07658.html
When Cynthia McKinney speaks the words of Martin Luther King Jr, they resound through the
church with some of Kings cadence. A time comes, declares the former US
congresswoman from Georgia, when silence is betrayal. Before the packed pews of the
Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, McKinney is speaking of the American
governments war on its own people. The shock and awe phase of this conflict ... began on
September 11 2001, when the Bush administration launched attacks on New York and
Washington, or at least waved them through. According to a show of hands that February
afternoon, several hundred people in the immaculate church believe this to be true. They had all
come to hear the message of Architects, Engineers & Scientists for 9/11 Truth, one of the dozens
of [9/11 truth] groups across the US. Last winter, Investigate 9/11 banners seemed to be
popping up all over the place. Bill Clinton was heckled by truthers in Denver while
campaigning for his wife. Country music star Willie Nelson ... described as naive the notion
that the implosion of the Twin Towers was caused by crashing jets. Meanwhile the
European Parliament screened the Italian documentary Zero, in which Gore Vidal, Italian
playwright Dario Fo, and Italian MEP Giulietto Chiesa blame the US government, not al-Qaeda, for
9/11. The following month, Japanese MP Yukihisa Fujita raised his own doubts about the official
story at a seminar in Sydney. A busy season for the 9/11 Truth movement.
Note: This extensive story in The Financial Times shows that the 9/11 movement is having a major
impact. For a detailed two-page summary of many questions about what really happened on 9/11,
click here.
US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/02/usa.humanrights/
The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror,
according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers
and whereabouts of detainees. Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites
allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over
detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. Information about the operation of
prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military,
the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners. The
analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims
there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush
declared that the practice had stopped. According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may
have used as many as 17 ships as "floating prisons" since 2001. Detainees are interrogated
aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations. Ships that are
understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are
suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean,
which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans. Clive Stafford Smith,
Reprieve's legal director, said: "They choose ships to try to keep their misconduct as far as
possible from the prying eyes of the media and lawyers. We will eventually reunite these
ghost prisoners with their legal rights."
Note: For many other investigations of the reality of the "war on terror", click here.
Online warfare research outlined

2008-05-15, Washington Times
http://washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080515/FOREIGN/586297...
Procurement documents released by the U.S. Air Force give a rare glimpse into Pentagon plans
for developing an offensive cyber-war capacity that can infiltrate, steal data from and, if necessary,
take down enemy information-technology networks. The Broad Area Announcement, posted ... by
the Air Force Research Laboratory's Information Directorate, outlines a two-year, $11 million effort
to develop capabilities to "access ... any remotely located open or closed computer
information systems," lurk on them "completely undetected," "stealthily exfiltrate
information" from them and ultimately "be able to affect computer information systems
through Deceive, Deny, Disrupt, Degrade, Destroy (D5) effects." "Of interest," the
announcement says, "are any and all techniques to enable user and/or root-level access to both
fixed [and] mobile computing platforms ... [and] methodologies to enable access to any and all
operating systems, patch levels, applications and hardware." The announcement is the latest
stage in the Air Force's effort to develop a cyber-war capability and establish itself as the service
that delivers U.S. military power in cyberspace. Last year, the Air Force announced it was setting
up a Cyberspace Command ... and was developing military doctrine for the prosecution of cyberwar operations. The developments highlight the murky legal territory on which the cyber-wars of
the future will be fought. More important, because of the difficulties in identifying attackers and
immediately quantifying damage from a cyber-attack, it can be hard to determine when such
attacks constitute an act of war as opposed to crime or even vandalism.
FBI Backs Off From Secret Order for Data After Lawsuit
The FBI has withdrawn a secret administrative order seeking the name, address and online activity
of a patron of the Internet Archive after the San Francisco-based digital library filed suit to block
the action. It is one of only three known instances in which the FBI has backed off from such a
data demand, known as a "national security letter," or NSL, which is not subject to judicial approval
and whose recipient is barred from disclosing the order's existence. NSLs are served on phone
companies, Internet service providers and other electronic communications service
providers, but because of the gag order provision, the public has little way to know about
them. FBI officials now issue about 50,000 such orders a year. The order against the Internet
Archive was served Nov. 26, and the nonprofit challenged it based on a provision of the
reauthorized USA Patriot Act, which protects libraries from such requests. The privacy advocacy
group Electronic Frontier Foundation represented the archive in the suit, which was joined by the
American Civil Liberties Union. The archive also alleged that the gag order that accompanied the
data demand violated the Constitution. As part of their settlement, the FBI agreed to drop the gag
order and the archive agreed to withdraw the complaint. The case was unsealed Monday.
Yesterday, redacted versions of key documents were filed, allowing the parties to discuss the case.
"We see this as an unqualified success," said Brewster Kahle, the archive's co-founder and digital
librarian. "The goal here was to help other recipients of NSLs to understand that you can push
back."
Note: The Internet Archive has now posted excellent information on how to deal with cases like
this at http://government.zdnet.com/?p=3795. Three cheers for the Internet Archive!
9/11 Commission controversy

2008-01-30, NBC News
http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/01/30/624314.aspx
The 9/11 Commission suspected that critical information it used in its ... Report was the product of
harsh interrogations of al-Qaida operatives - interrogations that many critics have labeled torture.
Yet, commission staffers never questioned the agency about the interrogation techniques and in
fact ordered a second round of interrogations specifically to ask additional questions of the same
operatives. Much of what was reported about the planning and execution of the terror attacks on
New York and Washington was derived from the interrogations of high-ranking al-Qaida
operatives. Each had been subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques." Some were even
subjected to waterboarding. There was a separate, second round of interrogations in early 2004,
done specifically to answer new questions from the Commission, [involving] more than 30 separate
interrogation sessions. According to both current and former senior U.S. intelligence officials, the
operatives cited by the Commission were subjected to the harshest of the CIAs methods, the
"enhanced interrogation techniques." The techniques included physical and mental abuse,
exposure to extreme heat and cold, sleep deprivation and waterboarding. In addition, officials of
both the 9/11 Commission and CIA confirm the Commission specifically asked the agency to
push the operatives on a new round of interrogations months after their first interrogations.
The Commission, in fact, supplied specific questions for the operatives to the agency. This
new round took place in early 2004, when the agency was still engaged in the full range of
harsh techniques.
Note: WantToKnow team member and renowned theologian David Ray Griffin's detailed exposure
of the many lies put forth by the 9/11 Commission is available here. And for a succinct, eyeopening summary of many unanswered questions about the official account of 9/11, click here.
Ex-9/11 Panel Chief Denies Secret White House Ties

2008-01-30, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4218157
The former executive director of the 9/11 Commission denies explosive charges of undisclosed
ties to the Bush White House or interference with the panel's report. The charges are ... contained
in New York Times reporter Philip Shenon's [new] book, The Commission: The Uncensored History
of the 9/11 Investigation, [and are] confirmed by the book's publisher. [When] 9/11 Commission cochairs [Thomas] Kean and Lee Hamilton hired former Condoleezza Rice aide Philip Zelikow to be
executive director, Zelikow failed to tell them ... that he was "instrumental" in demoting Richard
Clarke, the onetime White House counterterrorism czar. In his book, Shenon also says that while
working for the panel, Zelikow appears to have had private conversations with former White
House political director Karl Rove, despite a ban on such communication. Shenon reports
that Zelikow later ordered his assistant to stop keeping a log of his calls. Zelikow told ABC
News he was under no prohibition that barred his conversations with Rove, and did not recall
asking his assistant to stop logging his calls. Shenon directed calls to his publisher, Twelve Books,
a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group. Cary Goldstein, a spokesman for Hachette, confirmed the
[above] characterization of the book's contents, but said he could not confirm direct quotes. "It's
not a surprise," Goldstein said when asked his reaction to the leak of the book's details before its
Feb. 5 publication date. "I think people are really curious to see what the report had looked like if it
hadn't been neutered in [the panel's] effort to be unanimous."
Note: Philip Zelikow co-authored a 1998 Foreign Affairs article, "Catastrophic Terrorism: Tackling
the New Danger," which warned of a possible catastrophic attack on the World Trade Center and
accurately predicted the governmental aftermath of 9/11. And a highly significant fact is that before
he was selected as Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, he authored the Bush
administration's National Security Strategy of the United States of America for 2002. This
document for the first time asserted a national policy of pre-emptive war (the "Bush Doctrine"), and
paved the way for the war on Iraq.
Here come the thought police
2007-11-19, Baltimore Sun (Baltimore's leading newspaper)

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.thoughtpolice19nov19,0,2...
With overwhelming bipartisan support, Rep. Jane Harman's "Violent Radicalization and
Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act" passed the House 404-6 late last month. Swift Senate
passage appears certain. Not since the "Patriot Act" of 2001 has any bill so threatened our
constitutionally guaranteed rights. Diverse groups vigorously oppose Ms. Harman's effort to stifle
dissent. Unfortunately, the mainstream press and leading presidential candidates remain silent.
Ms. Harman ... thinks it likely that the United States will face a native brand of terrorism in the
immediate future and offers a plan to deal with ideologically based violence. But her plan is a
greater danger to us than the threats she fears. Her bill tramples constitutional rights by creating a
commission with sweeping investigative power and a mandate to propose laws prohibiting
whatever the commission labels "homegrown terrorism." The proposed commission is a menace
through its power to hold hearings, take testimony and administer oaths, an authority granted to
even individual members of the commission - little Joe McCarthys - who will tour the country to
hold their own private hearings. Ms. Harman's proposal includes an absurd attack on the Internet
... and legalizes an insidious infiltration of targeted organizations. While Ms. Harman denies that
her proposal creates "thought police," it defines "homegrown terrorism" as "planned" or
"threatened" use of force to coerce the government or the people in the promotion of
"political or social objectives." That means that no force need actually have occurred as
long as the government charges that the individual or group thought about doing it. Any
social or economic reform is fair game. The bill defines "violent radicalization" as promoting an
"extremist belief system." But American governments, state and national, have a long history of
interpreting radical "belief systems" as inevitably leading to violence to facilitate change.
Note: For many major media reports on serious new threats to civil liberties, click here.
From the Desk of Donald Rumsfeld . . .

In a series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld argued that Muslims avoid "physical labor" and wrote of the need to "keep
elevating the threat," "link Iraq to Iran" and develop "bumper sticker statements" to rally
public support for an increasingly unpopular war. The memos [reveal] a defense secretary
disdainful of media criticism and driven to reshape public opinion of the Iraq war. In a 2004 memo
on the deteriorating situation in Iraq, Rumsfeld concluded that the challenges there are "not
unusual." Pessimistic news reports ... simply result from the wrong standards being applied, he
wrote in one of the memos obtained by The Washington Post. Under siege in April 2006, when a
series of retired generals denounced him and called for his resignation in newspaper op-ed pieces,
Rumsfeld produced a memo after a conference call with military analysts. "Talk about Somalia, the
Philippines, etc. Make the American people realize they are surrounded in the world by violent
extremists," he wrote. People will "rally" to sacrifice, he noted after the meeting. "They are looking
for leadership. Sacrifice = Victory." The meeting also led Rumsfeld to write that he needed a team
to help him "go out and push people back, rather than simply defending" Iraq policy and strategy. "I
am always on the defense. They say I do it well, but you can't win on the defense," he wrote. "We
can't just keep taking hits." Rumsfeld suggested that the public should know that there will be no
"terminal event" in the fight against terrorism like the signing ceremony on the USS Missouri when
Japan surrendered to end World War II. "It is going to be a long war," he wrote. In one of his longer
ruminations, in May 2004, Rumsfeld considered whether to redefine the terrorism fight as a
"worldwide insurgency." The goal of the enemy, he wrote, is to "end the state system, using
terrorism, to drive the non-radicals from the world."
Cheney's Law
2007-10-16, Frontline (PBS)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/cheney/etc/synopsis.html
For three decades Vice President Dick Cheney conducted a secretive, behind-closed-doors
campaign to give the president virtually unlimited wartime power. Finally, in the aftermath of 9/11,
the Justice Department and the White House made a number of controversial legal decisions.
Orchestrated by Cheney and his lawyer David Addington, the department interpreted executive
power in an expansive and extraordinary way, granting President George W. Bush the power to
detain, interrogate, torture, wiretap and spy -- without congressional approval or judicial review.
"The vice president believes that Congress has very few powers to actually constrain the
president and the executive branch," former Justice Department attorney Marty Lederman
tells Frontline. "He believes the president should have the final word -- indeed the only
word -- on all matters within the executive branch." After Sept. 11, Cheney and Addington
were determined to implement their vision -- in secret. The vice president and his counsel found an
ally in John Yoo, a lawyer at the Justice Department's extraordinarily powerful Office of Legal
Counsel. In concert with Addington, Yoo wrote memoranda authorizing the president to act with
unparalleled authority. "There were extravagant and unnecessary claims of presidential power that
were wildly overbroad to the tasks at hand," [former Assistant Attorney General Jack L. Goldsmith]
says. As the White House and Congress continue to face off over executive privilege, the terrorist
surveillance program, and the firing of U.S. attorneys, Frontline tells the story of what's formed the
views of the man behind what some view as the most ambitious project to reshape the power of
the president in American history.
Note: To watch this revealing Frontline video, click here.
Bleakonomics
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/books/review/Stiglitz-t.html?ex=1348804800&...
The Shock Doctrine is [Naomi] Kleins ambitious look at the economic history of the last 50 years
and the rise of free-market fundamentalism around the world. Disaster capitalism, as she calls it,
is a violent system that ... requires terror to do its job. Extreme capitalism loves a blank slate, often
finding its opening after crises or shocks. Klein compares radical capitalist economic policy to
shock therapy administered by psychiatrists. She interviews Gail Kastner, a victim of covert C.I.A.
experiments in interrogation techniques that were carried out by the scientist Ewen Cameron in the
1950s. His idea was to use electroshock therapy to break down patients. Once complete
depatterning had been achieved, the patients could be reprogrammed. For Klein the larger
lessons are clear: Countries are shocked by wars, terror attacks, coups dtat and
natural disasters. Then they are shocked again by corporations and politicians who
exploit the fear and disorientation of this first shock to push through economic shock
therapy. People who dare to resist are shocked for a third time, by police, soldiers and
prison interrogators. Klein offers an account of Milton Friedman she calls him the other
doctor shock. In the 1950s, as Cameron was conducting his experiments, the Chicago School
was developing the ideas that [dominate capitalist planning today]. She quotes the Chilean
economist Orlando Letelier on the inner harmony between the terror of the Pinochet regime and
its free-market policies. Letelier said that Milton Friedman shared responsibility for the regimes
crimes, rejecting his argument that he was only offering technical advice. Letelier was killed in
1976 by a car bomb planted in Washington [DC]. For Klein, he was another victim of the Chicago
Boys who wanted to impose free-market capitalism on the region. In the Southern Cone, where
contemporary capitalism was born, the war on terror was a war against all obstacles to the new
order, she writes.
Note: For highly revealing, verifiable information on government mind control programs, click here.
Doctors accuse US of 'unethical practices' at Guantanamo Bay

2007-09-07, Independent (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://news.independent.co.uk/health/article2938962.ece
More than 260 doctors from around the world have launched an unprecedented attack on the
American medical establishment for its failure to condemn unethical practices by medical
practitioners at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba. In a letter to The Lancet, the doctors
from 16 countries, including Britain and America, say the failure of the US regulatory authorities to
act is "damaging the reputation of US military medicine". They compare the actions of the
military doctors, whom they accuse of being involved in the force-feeding of prisoners at
Guantanamo Bay and of turning a blind eye to evidence of torture in Iraq and elsewhere, to
those of the South African security police involved in the death of the anti-apartheid activist
Steve Biko 30 years ago. The group highlighted the force-feeding of prisoners at Guantanamo
Bay last year and suggested the physicians involved should be referred to their professional
bodies for breaching internationally accepted ethical guidelines. The doctors wrote: "No healthcare
worker in the War on Terror has been charged or convicted of any significant offence despite
numerous instances documented including fraudulent record-keeping on detainees who have died
as a result of failed interrogations ... The attitude of the US military establishment appears to be
one of 'See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil'." The US introduced the policy of force-feeding, in
which prisoners are strapped to a chair and a tube is forced down the throat into the stomach, after
more than 100 prisoners went on hunger strike in 2005. "Fundamental to doctors' responsibilities
in attending a hunger striker is the recognition that prisoners have a right to refuse treatment," the
doctors wrote.
Destabilizing Iraq, Broadly Defined

Be careful what you say and whom you help -- especially when it comes to the Iraq war and the
Iraqi government. President Bush issued an executive order last week titled "Blocking Property of
Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq." It could be interpreted as targeting the
financial assets of any American who directly or indirectly aids someone who has committed or
"poses a significant risk of committing" violent acts "threatening the peace or stability of Iraq" or
who undermines "efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform" in the war-torn
country. The text of the order, if interpreted broadly, could cast a far bigger net to include not just
those who commit violent acts or pose the risk of doing so in Iraq, but also third parties -- such as
U.S. citizens in this country -- who knowingly or unknowingly aid or encourage such people. The
targeting of not just those who support perpetrators of violence but also those who support
individuals who "pose a significant risk" of committing violence goes far beyond normal
legal language related to intent and could be applied in a highly arbitrary manner, said Bruce
Fein, a senior Justice Department official in the Reagan administration. Fein also questioned the
executive order's inclusion of third parties, such as U.S. citizens who assist, sponsor or make "any
contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services" to assist people on the Treasury list. "What
about a lawyer hired to get someone off the list?" Fein asked. The Treasury Department's Office of
Foreign Assets Control keeps a "Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons" roll that
includes those covered by several such executive orders. It most recently ran to 276 pages.
Note: To read the full text of the Executive Order, "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who
Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq," click here.
Special Operations Prepared for Domestic Missions

2007-06-22, washingtonpost.com
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2007/06/special_operations_prepar...
The U.S. Northern Command, the military command responsible for "homeland defense," has
asked the Pentagon if it can establish its own special operations command for domestic missions.
The request ... would establish a permanent sub-command for responses to incidents of domestic
terrorism as well as other occasions where special operators may be necessary on American soil.
The establishment of a domestic special operations mission, and the preparation of contingency
plans to employ commandos in the United States, would upend decades of tradition. Military
actions within the United States are the responsibility of state militias (the National Guard), and
federal law enforcement is a function of the FBI. Employing special operations for domestic
missions sounds very ominous, and NORTHCOM's request earlier this year should receive
the closest possible Pentagon and congressional scrutiny. There's only one problem:
NORTHCOM is already doing what it has requested permission to do. When NORTHCOM
was established after 9/11 to be the military counterpart to the Department of Homeland Security,
within its headquarters staff it established a Compartmented Planning and Operations Cell (CPOC)
responsible for planning and directing a set of "compartmented" and "sensitive" operations on
U.S., Canadian and Mexican soil. In other words, these are the very special operations that
NORTHCOM is now formally asking the Pentagon to beef up into a public and acknowledged subcommand.
Osama Flight Shocker

2007-06-21, New York Post
http://www.nypost.com/seven/06212007/news/nationalnews/osama_flight_shocker_n...
Osama bin Laden was suspected of chartering a plane that carried his family and other
Saudis from the United States shortly after 9/11, according to FBI documents released
yesterday. One FBI document referred to a Ryan Air 727 plane that left Los Angeles on Sept. 19,
2001, carrying Saudi nationals. "The plane was chartered either by the Saudi Arabian royal family
or Osama bin Laden," according to the document obtained by Judicial Watch. The flight made
stops in Orlando, Washington, D.C. and Boston, and terminated in Paris. Asked about the
documents' assertion, an FBI spokesman said, "There is no new information here. Osama bin
Laden did not charter a flight out of the U.S."
Note: To read an excellent article on the implications of this brief report, click here.
FBI Terror Watch List

2007-06-13, ABC News
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/06/fbi_terror_watc.html
A terrorist watch list compiled by the FBI has apparently swelled to include more than half a million
names. Privacy and civil liberties advocates say the list is growing uncontrollably, threatening its
usefulness in the war on terror. The bureau says the number of names on its terrorist watch list is
classified. A portion of the FBI's unclassified 2008 budget request posted to the Department of
Justice Web site, however, refers to "the entire watch list of 509,000 names." A spokesman for the
interagency National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which maintains the government's list of all
suspected terrorists with links to international organizations, said they had 465,000 names
covering 350,000 individuals. Many names are different versions of the same identity. In addition to
the NCTC list, the FBI keeps a list of U.S. persons who are believed to be domestic terrorists abortion clinic bombers, for example, or firebombing environmental extremists, who have no
known tie to an international terrorist group. Combined, the NCTC and FBI compendia comprise
the watch list used by federal security screening personnel on the lookout for terrorists. While the
NCTC has made no secret of its terrorist tally, the FBI has consistently declined to tell the public
how many names are on its list. "It grows seemingly without control or limitation," said ACLU
senior legislative counsel Tim Sparapani of the terrorism watch list. Sparapani called the 509,000
figure "stunning. If we have 509,000 names on that list, the watch list is virtually useless,"
he told ABC News. "You'll be capturing innocent individuals with no connection to crime or
terror." U.S. lawmakers and their spouses have been detained because their names were on the
watch list.
'USS Liberty' veterans demand investigation

2007-06-03, Arizona Republic (Arizona's leading newspaper)
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/viewpoints/articles/0603liberty0603....
In demanding a congressional investigation into the aborted rescue during the attack of the USS
Liberty and subsequent alleged cover-up [the following] conclusions [were] submitted in October
2003 to the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense by the USS Liberty Veterans Association, Inc.:
1. That on June 8, 1967 ... Israel launched a two-hour air and naval attack against USS Liberty ...
inflicting 34 dead and 173 wounded American servicemen; 2. That ... unmarked Israeli aircraft
dropped napalm canisters on USS Liberty's bridge and fired 30mm cannons and rockets into [the]
ship; 3. That the torpedo boat attack involved not only the firing of torpedoes, but the machinegunning of Liberty's firefighters and stretcher-bearers as they struggled to save their ship and
crew; the Israeli torpedo boats later returned to machine-gun at close range three of the Liberty's
life rafts that had been lowered into the water by survivors to rescue the most seriously wounded;
4. That there is compelling evidence that Israel's attack was a deliberate attempt to destroy
an American ship and kill her entire crew; evidence of such intent is supported by
statements from Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Undersecretary of State George Ball, former
CIA Director Richard Helms, former NSA Directors Lt. Gen. William Odom, USA (Ret.), Adm.
Bobby Ray Inman, USN (Ret.), and Marshal Carter; former NSA deputy directors Oliver Kirby and
Maj. Gen. John Morrison, USAF (Ret.); 6. The White House deliberately prevented the U.S. Navy
from coming to the defense of USS Liberty by recalling Sixth Fleet military rescue support while
the ship was under attack.
Note: To view the BBC documentary about the USS Liberty attack, "Dead in the Water," click here.
For more information about the USS Liberty, click here.
CIA Recruited Japanese War Criminals

Col. Masanobu Tsuji was a fanatical Japanese militarist and brutal warrior, hunted after
World War II for massacres of Chinese civilians. And then he became a U.S. spy. Newly
declassified CIA records ... document more fully than ever how Tsuji and other suspected
Japanese war criminals were recruited by U.S. intelligence in the early days of the Cold War. The
records [were] declassified in 2005 and 2006 under an act of Congress in tandem with Nazi war
crime-related files. In addition to Tsuji ... conspicuous figures in U.S.-funded operations included [a]
mob boss and war profiteer [and] former private secretary to Hideki Tojo, the wartime prime
minister hanged as a war criminal in 1948. The assessments ... show evidence that other U.S.
agencies, such as the Air Force, were also looking into using some of the same people as spies,
and that the CIA itself had contacts with former Japanese war criminals. Historians long ago
concluded that the Allies turned a blind eye to many Japanese war crimes, particularly those
committed against other Asians. Some of Japan's most notorious wartime killers [came] under
U.S. sponsorship. Tsuji, for instance, was wanted for involvement in the Bataan Death March of
early 1942, in which thousands of Americans and Filipinos perished. The U.S. Air Force attempted
unsuccessfully to recruit him after he was taken off the war crimes list in 1949. The Army
considered him a potentially valuable source. [Yet] a CIA assessment from 1954 ... says: "Tsuji is
the type of man who, given the chance, would start World War III without any misgivings."
Note: Those who claimed the U.S. government had links to former Nazi and Japanese war
criminals were once called "conspiracy theorists." Why does it take over 50 years for the truth to
come out? For more, click here.
Nichols says bombing was FBI op

2007-02-22, Deseret News (One of Utah's two leading newspapers)
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/660197443/Nichols-says-bombing-was-FBI-op....
The only surviving convicted criminal in the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah
Federal Building in Oklahoma City is saying his co-conspirator, Timothy McVeigh, told him he was
taking orders from a top FBI official in orchestrating the bombing. A declaration from Terry Lynn
Nichols ... was filed as part of Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue's pending wrongful death
suit against the government for the death of his brother in a federal corrections facility in Oklahoma
City. Trentadue claims his brother was killed during an interrogation by FBI agents when agents
mistook his brother for a suspect in the Oklahoma City bombing investigation. The most shocking
allegation in the 19-page signed declaration is Nichols' assertion that the whole bombing
plot was an FBI operation and that McVeigh let slip during a bout of anger that he was
taking instruction from former FBI official Larry Potts. Potts was no stranger to antigovernment confrontations, having been the lead FBI agent at Ruby Ridge in 1992, which led to
the shooting death of Vicki Weaver, the wife of separatist Randy Weaver. Potts also was reportedly
involved in the 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas in 1993, which
resulted in a fire that killed 81 Branch Davidian followers. Potts retired from the FBI under intense
pressure and criticism for the cover-up of an order to allow agents to shoot anyone seen leaving
the Weaver cabin at Ruby Ridge.
Note: For an excellent article and video clearly showing major deception around the Oklahoma
City bombing, click here. For lots more from reliable sources on the deceptive manipulations of
An explosion of disbelief - fresh doubts over 9/11

2007-02-09, The Daily Mail (The U.K.'s second most popular newspaper)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article...
A recent poll by the respected New York Times revealed that three out of four Americans now
suspect the U.S. government of not telling the truth about 9/11. This proportion has shot up from a
year ago, when half the population said they did not believe the official story. [The] accepted
version of what happened on 9/11 is being challenged by a 90-minute internet movie, [Loose
Change, which is] so popular that up to 100 million viewers have watched [it]. Why were no military
aircraft scrambled in time to head off the attacks? How could a rookie pilot - as one of the terrorists
was - fly a Boeing 757 aircraft so precisely into the Pentagon? The movie's assertions are being
explored by a number of commentators in America and Britain. Former Labour Cabinet Minister
Michael Meacher ... has said of 9/11: "Never in modern history has an event of such cataclysmic
significance been shrouded in such mystery." These words were written in a foreword for Professor
David Ray Griffin's bestselling book, The New Pearl Harbour. Griffin ... is emeritus professor at the
Claremont School of Theology in California and a respected philosopher. Together, the book and
the movie have raised the question: could the attack be a carbon copy of Operation
Northwoods, an aborted plan by President Kennedy to stage terror attacks in America and
blame them on Communist Cuba as a pretext for a U.S. invasion to overthrow Fidel Castro?
Initially ... Professor Griffin dismissed claims the attacks could have been an inside job. It was only
a year later ... that the professor was sent a 'timeline' on the day's events based entirely on
newspaper and television accounts. It was then that he changed his mind.
Note: The timeline which opened Prof. Griffin's eyes was the two-page 9/11 timeline from
WantToKnow.info available at http://www.WantToKnow.info/9-11cover-up. This is the most
supportive article yet by the mainstream media. The word is spreading. For lots more reliable,
verifiable information on 9/11, click here.
'They're all forced to listen to us'

http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,1998430,00.html
Like it or loathe it, you can't ignore Loose Change ... the most successful movie to emerge
from what followers call the 9/11 Truth Movement. They believe ... that the attacks in New
York and Washington on September 11 2001 were [the work of] of elements within the US
government. Recent polls suggest more than a third of Americans believe that either the official
version of events never happened, or that US officials knew the attacks were imminent, but did
nothing to stop them. Google Video acts as a portal for the movie. The running tally of the number
of times it has been viewed since last August ... stands at 4,048,990. On top of that, the movie was
shown on television to up to 50 million people in 12 countries on September 11 last year; 100,000
DVDs have been sold and 50,000 more given away free. The film gained airplay on old media
platforms such as Air America and Pacifica radio stations, local Fox TV outlets and on stations
around the world, including state outlets in Belgium, Ireland and Portugal. The power of the film is
that it lays down layer upon layer of seemingly rational analysis to end up with a conclusion many
would find incredible. It is compiled from original footage from numerous news sources. Yet to
come [is] Loose Change: the Final Cut, [which] filmed original interviews with Washington players,
employed lawyers to iron out copyright issues with borrowed footage, [and] commissioned 3D
graphics from Germany. The end result ... will be seen at Cannes and have a cinema release in
America and across the world on the sixth anniversary of 9/11.
Note: To view this highly revealing 9/11 documentary, click here. For an abundance of reliable,
verifiable information suggesting a 9/11 cover-up, click here.
Iran Gets Army Gear in Pentagon Sale

The U.S. military has sold forbidden equipment at least a half-dozen times to middlemen for
countries including Iran and China who exploited security flaws in the Defense Department's
surplus auctions. The sales include fighter jet parts and missile components. In one case ... a
Pakistani arms broker convicted of exporting U.S. missile parts to Iran resumed business after his
release from prison. He purchased Chinook helicopter engine parts for Iran from a U.S. company
that had bought them in a Pentagon surplus sale. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents
... say those parts made it to Iran. In [another] case, convicted middlemen for Iran bought
Tomcat parts from the Defense Department's surplus division. Customs agents confiscated
them and returned them to the Pentagon, which sold them again -- customs evidence tags
still attached -- to another buyer, a suspected broker for Iran. That incident appalled even an
expert on weaknesses in Pentagon surplus security controls. Sensitive military surplus items are
supposed to be demilitarized or "de-milled" rendered useless for military purposes or, if auctioned,
sold only to buyers who promise to obey U.S. arms embargoes, export controls and other laws.
The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, found it alarmingly easy to acquire sensitive surplus.
Last year, its agents bought $1.1 million worth including rocket launchers, body armor and
surveillance antennas by driving onto a base and posing as defense contractors. Investigators
have found the Pentagon's inventory and sales controls rife with errors.
Ex-Iraq expert: Britain saw no threat before war

2006-12-15, CNN/Associated Press
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/12/15/iraq.uk.report
Britain's former top Iraq expert at the United Nations said in previously secret testimony that most
government officials did not believe Iraq posed a threat in the months leading to the U.S.-led
invasion. Carne Ross ... told a House of Commons committee that he and other analysts believed
that Iraq had only a "very limited" ability to mount an attack of any kind, including one using
weapons of mass destruction. The committee published Ross' testimony after assuring him that
parliamentary privilege would protect him from prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. "It was
the commonly held view among officials that the threat had been contained," Ross said in
the written testimony. "Iraq's ability to launch a WMD or any form of attack was very limited.
Iraq's air force was depleted to the point of total ineffectiveness; its army was but a pale shadow of
its earlier might; there was no evidence of any connection between Iraq and any terrorist
organization that might have planned an attack," he wrote. During the months leading up to the
war, he said, there was no new evidence that Saddam Hussein posed a threat. "What changed
was the government's determination to present available evidence in a different light," he
testified. Ross told the committee that he resigned from the government in September 2004
because of his misgivings over the war. John Major, Britain's former prime minister, raised
concerns ... that other issues remain to be resolved, including the distribution of oil revenues.
Note: This recently released testimony was given in 2004, but kept secret for reasons of "national
security."
Hotel security video shows 9/11 Pentagon blast, but no plane

2006-12-02, CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/12/02/saturday/index.html
A hotel security camera video released by the U.S. government showed the explosion that
followed the crash of American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001,
but the low-quality recording did not capture an image of the 757 jetliner. The video,
recorded by a security camera at the Doubletree Hotel in Arlington, was released to public interest
group Judicial Watch and others who filed a lawsuit seeking the tape and other videos from that
day. CNN filed a Freedom of Information request for the video in February 2002, after the manager
of the hotel disclosed its existence to CNN Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre and
said it had been confiscated by the FBI. CNN's FOI request was denied because at the time the
tape was considered evidence in the investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui, who has since been
convicted. There was speculation that this video might show the American Airlines 757 jetliner
before it crashed, but a close examination by CNN only revealed the subsequent explosion and no
image of the jet. The only known record of the plane is on images from the Pentagon security
camera, first broadcast by CNN in March of 2002, and officially released in their entirety May of
this year.
Note: Scroll down at the link above to find this news clip. To watch this intriguing video footage,
click here. How would this video impact the trial of Moussaoui? Why was it confiscated right after
9/11 rather than broadcast widely? The "only known record of the plane" cited in the article is also
a highly debatable claim, as it is impossible to tell in this video what actually hit the Pentagon. For
deeply revealing information on the 9/11 attacks, click here.
The Umbrella Assassin

2006-10-04, PBS
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/previous_seasons/case_umbrella/interview.html
The investigation into the assassination of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, murdered with a
poison-filled pellet shot into his leg (possibly with a converted "umbrella gun") at a bus stop in
Britain in 1978, was the most unusual and significant case that medical doctor and forensic
specialist Christopher C. Green participated in during his twenty year career as an investigative
officer with the Central Intelligence Agency. The reason it was so unique, he says, is that "we had
pretty much all of the story from a forensic point of view. We had the body, the thing in the body
that he was hit with -- the pellet -- and the stuff from the pellet. We knew that the material used to
kill him, ricin, had been under development by a foreign service linked to the incident. We also
knew that he had been a target of assassination attempts in the past. The story of him being a
target was very well known. So we had information on the means, motive, and the opportunity." In
the Markov case, "we had 80 percent of the story," says Green, who is now a professor of
diagnostic radiology and psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at Wayne State University's
Detroit Medical Center, where he uses brain imaging techniques to watch how the brain functions
as people make decisions. His current work, he says, is a logical outgrowth of his service at
the CIA -- where he still serves as a consultant. At the CIA, Green studied how the brain
responds to chemicals and neurological agents.
Note: For more on this bizarre case, click here. A 2008 Reuters article on the case is also
available here, as is a 2006 New York Times article at this link.
President Bush is trying to pardon himself

2006-09-27, CNN The Situation Room
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0609/27/sitroom.02.html
BLITZER: Let's check in with Jack Cafferty right now. JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: The
House just passed President Bush's bill to redefine the treatment of detainees, and the Senate's
expected to do the same thing tomorrow. Buried deep inside this legislation is a provision that
will pardon President Bush and all the members of his administration of any possible
crimes connected with the torture and mistreatment of detainees dated all the way back to
September 11, 2001. At least President Nixon had Gerald Ford to do his dirty work.
President Bush is trying to pardon himself. Under the War Crimes Act, violations of the Geneva
Conventions are felonies. In some cases, punishable by death. When the Supreme Court ruled the
Geneva Conventions applied to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, President Bush and his boys
were suddenly in big trouble. They had been working these prisoners over pretty good. In an effort
to avoid possible prosecution, they're trying to cram this bill through Congress before the end of
the week when Congress adjourns. The reason there's such a rush to do this, if the Democrats get
control of the House in November, well, this kind of legislation probably wouldn't pass. You want to
know the real disgrace of what these people are about to do or are in the process of doing?
Senator Bill Frist and Congressman Dennis Hastert and their Republican stooges apparently don't
see anything wrong with this. I really do wonder sometimes what we're becoming in this country.
The question is this: Should Congress pass a bill giving retroactive immunity to President Bush for
possible war crimes?
Note: To watch a video clip of this broadcast, click here.
Bin Laden, Most Wanted For Embassy Bombings?

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is a longtime and prominent member of the FBI's "Ten Most
Wanted" list, which notes his role as the suspected mastermind of the deadly U.S. embassy
bombings in East Africa on Aug. 7, 1998. But another more infamous date -- Sept. 11, 2001 -- is
nowhere to be found on the same FBI notice. The curious omission underscores the Justice
Department's decision, so far, to not seek formal criminal charges against bin Laden for
approving al-Qaeda's most notorious and successful terrorist attack. The notice says bin
Laden is "a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world" but does not provide details.
The absence has also provided fodder for conspiracy theorists who think the U.S. government or
another power was behind the Sept. 11 hijackings. From this point of view, the lack of a Sept. 11
reference suggests that the connection to al-Qaeda is uncertain. FBI officials say the wanted
poster merely reflects the government's long-standing practice of relying on actual criminal
charges. Bin Laden was placed on the Ten Most Wanted list in June 1999 after being indicted for
murder, conspiracy and other charges in connection with the embassy bombings, and a $5 million
reward was put on his head at that time. The listing was updated after Sept. 11, 2001, to include a
higher reward of $25 million, but no mention of the attacks was added.
Note: For an article in the Ithaca Journal which probes much deeper into this matter, click here. To
see the FBI's page on bin Laden: http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm. Many
people forget that Bin Laden initially stated that though he applauded the attacks, he did not plan
them. To see this reported on CNN, click here. Why would he deny involvement? For lots more,
click here.
Marshals: Innocent People Placed On 'Watch List' To Meet Quota

2006-07-21, The Denver Channel 7 (Denver ABC affiliate)
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/9559707/detail.html
You could be on a secret government database or watch list for simply taking a picture on an
airplane. Some federal air marshals say they're reporting your actions to meet a quota, even
though some top officials deny it. The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told
7NEWS that they're required to submit at least one report a month. If they don't, there's no raise,
no bonus, no awards and no special assignments. "Innocent passengers are being entered into
an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious
manner on an aircraft ... and they did nothing wrong," said one federal air marshal. These
unknowing passengers who are doing nothing wrong are landing in a secret government document
called a Surveillance Detection Report, or SDR. Air marshals told 7NEWS that managers in Las
Vegas created and continue to maintain this potentially dangerous quota system. "Do these
reports have real life impacts on the people who are identified as potential terrorists?" 7NEWS
Investigator Tony Kovaleski asked. "Absolutely," a federal air marshal replied. "That could have
serious impact ... They could be placed on a watch list. They could wind up on databases that
identify them as potential terrorists or a threat to an aircraft. It could be very serious," said Don
Strange, a former agent in charge of air marshals in Atlanta. He lost his job attempting to change
policies inside the agency.
Note: For further reports on key civil liberties issues, click here.
FBI Keeps Watch on Activists

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-fbi27mar27,0,5815737.story
The FBI, while waging a highly publicized war against terrorism, has spent resources
gathering information on antiwar and environmental protesters and on activists who feed
vegetarian meals to the homeless, the agency's internal memos show. For years, the FBI's
definition of terrorism has included violence against property. That definition has led FBI
investigations to online discussion boards, organizing meetings and demonstrations of a wide
range of activist groups. The FBI's encounters with activists are described in hundreds of pages of
documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act
after agents visited several activists before the 2004 political conventions. ACLU attorneys
acknowledge that the FBI memos are heavily redacted and contain incomplete portraits of some
cases. Still, the attorneys say, the documents show that the FBI has monitored groups that were
not suspected of any crime. FBI officials respond that there is nothing improper about agents
attending a meeting or demonstration.
MI5 rebels expose Tube bomb cover-up

2006-02-26, London Times
MI5 is facing an internal revolt by officers alarmed about intelligence failures and the lack of
resources to fight Islamic terrorism. To illustrate their concern, agents have leaked more topsecret
documents to The Sunday Times because they want a public inquiry into the missed intelligence
leading up to the July attacks in London. They believe ministers have withheld information from the
public about what the security services knew about the suspects before the bombing of July 7 and
the abortive attacks of July 21. The documents include an admission by John Scarlett, head
of SIS, the secret intelligence service (also known as MI6), that one of the July 21 suspects
was tracked on a trip to Pakistan just months before the attempted bombings. MI5, which is
responsible for national security, allowed the July 21 suspect to travel to Pakistan after he was
detained and interviewed at a British airport. It stopped monitoring him because it said the
Pakistani authorities assessed that he was doing nothing of significance. They are critical of Blair,
who has ruled out an inquiry saying it would distract the security services from fighting terrorism.
The assessment echoes a decision by MI5 to halt surveillance on two of the July 7 bombers 16
months before the attacks. Both were filmed and taped by MI5 agents as they met two men
allegedly plotting to carry out a terrorist attack in England.
Shocking ruling
2005-09-13, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-09-13-other-news-edit_x.htm
Jose Padilla, who was born in New York and grew up in Chicago, landed at O'Hare airport more
than three years ago and hasn't been seen since. He disappeared into a succession of jails and
military prisons without being charged with a crime, without trial and without even a hearing on the
allegations against him. In a ruling that puts the liberties of every citizen at risk, a federal appeals
court said Friday there's nothing wrong with that. Worse, the ruling -- expected to be appealed -isn't limited to O'Hare airport or to Padilla. The court said Congress has given the president
authority to order the jailing of anyone anywhere for as long as he wishes, as long as he
claims it's connected to the war on terrorism. That sounds more like the power accorded a
dictator than the president of the United States. Repeal of the Constitution's Fourth, Fifth and Sixth
amendments wasn't part of the package when Congress passed that anti-terrorism resolution after
the 9/11 attacks.
UPI Hears...
2005-06-13, Washington Times/United Press International
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20050613-102755-6408r.htm
A former Bush team member during his first administration is now voicing serious doubts about the
collapse of the World Trade Center on 9-11. Former chief economist for the Department of
Labor during President George W. Bush's first term Morgan Reynolds comments that the
official story about the collapse of the WTC is "bogus" and that it is more likely that a
controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7. Reynolds, who
also served as director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis in
Dallas and is now professor emeritus at Texas A&M University said, "If demolition destroyed three
steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an 'inside job' and a
government attack on America would be compelling." Reynolds commented from his Texas A&M
office, "It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause of the collapse
of the twin towers and building 7. If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is,
then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis is not likely to be correct either. The
government's collapse theory is highly vulnerable on its own terms. Only professional demolition
appears to account for the full range of facts associated with the collapse of the three buildings."
Note: If the above link fails, click here. Why wasn't this widely reported? For 50 other senior
government officials who have seriously questioned the 9/11 Commission Report, click here.
MI6 protected Nazi who killed 100 British agents

ONE of Hitlers top intelligence officers, who ordered the murders of more than 100 British secret
agents in concentration camps, was spared execution as a war criminal and selected to work for
MI6. Newly opened papers contain startling evidence that...British Intelligence turned Horst
Kopkow, faked his death and used him to fight the Cold War. The Atkins documents have been
corroborated by newly declassified secret papers in the British and American National Archives.
Britain has denied that it engaged in the dark arts used by the Americans, whose employment of
Nazis to catch Communists has been well-documented. British intelligence sources pointed out
that Kopkow was not in the league of the butcher of Lyons, a reference to Klaus Barbie, the most
notorious war criminal employed by the Americans. The Kopkow case is uniquely chilling
because the MI6 men who spared him were colleagues and handlers of his victims.
Among those whose torture and death he sanctioned were men and women of the SOE and MI6
agents.
True Tales Odd Enough to Stop a Farm Animal's Heart

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01EFDD163EF934A35757C0A9639C...
At the start of the twisted treasure hunt that is "The Men Who Stare at Goats," the journalist Jon
Ronson appears to be looking for furtive, paranoid quacks who play mind games. Take the goats
of the title: Mr. Ronson cites a hundred of them. They have been used in top-secret
experiments by psychic spies whose existence is not officially acknowledged by the United
States Army. Military psychics are so well hidden that they aren't covered by the Army's
coffee budget. It makes them cranky to have to bring their own coffee to work. "The damn psychic
spies should be keeping their damn mouths shut, instead of chitchatting all over town about what
they did." So says retired Maj. Gen. Albert N. Stubblebine III, the first of the many characters
redolent of "Dr. Strangelove" who are found in this jaw-dropper of a -- hard to believe, but, yes -nonfiction story. Some of these experts contend that a goat's heart can be stopped by the intense
gaze of a certain kind of supersoldier. "Goat didn't have a chance," one of these tough guys [says].
Mr. Ronson ... describes the effort to deploy a Moscow scientist who had previously sent
subliminal messages to Red Army troops ... in the Branch Davidian standoff. This scientist didn't
work out because he was unwilling to transmit ... a bogus voice of God. He finds a prologue in MKULTRA, the real C.I.A. "Manchurian Candidate" research of the 1950's, which involved the
disastrous use of LSD as a potential truth serum. And somehow Mr. Ronson is able to keep his
book both light and nightmarish. [He] remains terrifically adept at capturing the horror of these
developments without losing track of their lunacy.
Note: For the above article and lots more reliable information on these mind control programs,
click here. For another excellent book by Ronson titled "Them: Adventure with Extremists," click
here.
Dayton: FAA, NORAD hid 9/11 failures

2004-07-31, Minneapolis Star Tribune (leading newspaper of Minneapolis)
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1576/4904237.html
Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., charged Friday that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the
North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) have covered up "catastrophic failures"
that left the nation vulnerable during the Sept. 11 hijackings. "For almost three years now, NORAD
officials and FAA officials have been able to hide their critical failures that left this country
defenseless during two of the worst hours in our history," Dayton declared during a Senate
Governmental Affairs Committee hearing. Dayton told leaders of the Sept. 11 commission, that,
based on the commission's report, a NORAD chronology ... said the FAA notified the military's
emergency air command of three of the hijackings while those jetliners were still airborne. Dayton
cited commission findings that the FAA failed to inform NORAD about three of the planes until after
they had crashed. Dayton said NORAD officials "lied to the American people, they lied to
Congress and they lied to your 9/11 commission to create a false impression of
competence, communication and protection of the American people." He [said] if the
commission's report is correct, President Bush "should fire whoever at FAA, at NORAD ... betrayed
their public trust by not telling us the truth." Dayton argued that if the FAA had promptly sent a
systemwide message about the hijackings, the pilot of the fourth plane seized, United Airlines
Flight 93, might have been able to secure the cockpit doors and land the plane. Dayton said
NORAD also falsely claimed that during the hijackings, it had F-16 Combat Air Patrol planes in
place at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia and an AWAC command ship in the air to protect the
nation's capital.
Note: Click here to visit the Internet archive, where you will see this article was removed not long
after it was published. No other major media reported this vital news. To see the original, click here
or here.
Columbine: Were There Warnings?

2004-02-26, CBS News
A report on the Columbine High School massacre ... could answer questions about what police
knew before the shootings that left 13 victims and two gunmen dead. The families of the victims of
the April 20, 1999 massacre were the first to see, in private, [a] mountain of evidence. Some of the
evidence is expected to show that Harris and Klebold were on police radar nearly two years before
the attack. Brian Rohrbough, whose son, Danny, died at Columbine, said he was hopeful that he
would get the answers he and other family members have been seeking. Rohrbough [has] been
one of the most vocal critics of the sheriff department's failure to follow up on tips about Harris in
the 18 months before Columbine. "I have a hard time sleeping at night because I cannot share
with you what I know," he said hours before the report was to be released. Rohrbough and
some other relatives of victims have seen a deposition given by Wayne Harris, father of Eric
Harris. A federal magistrate has ordered the deposition, which is already sealed, destroyed.
Rohrbough also is pressing for release of an investigation by the school district, which the district
insists it must withhold because teachers questioned during the probe haven't given their
permission. Rohrbough is convinced school staff saw a video the teen killers made that gave a hint
of their plans. "We were lied to about a number of things and it seems like that things were hidden
from us and we never understood why," said Scott. "And I honestly think the answers are not in the
things we looked at yesterday. I think they're in sealed reports and possibly things that have been
destroyed," he said.
Note: Why is the government destroying key evidence in this crucial case? Could it be that the
government is somehow implicated? To explore this disturbing possibility, click here.
Ex-minister attacks US over war

2003-09-06, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3085656.stm
Former minister Michael Meacher has blamed the Iraq war on the US desire for world domination.
Mr Meacher also suggested the Americans might have failed to prevent 11 September as it
gave a pretext for military action. Mr Meacher was environment minister until three months ago
and has already spoken out in opposition to the war. Writing in the Guardian newspaper, Mr
Meacher said the 11 September attacks gave an invaluable excuse for attacking Afghanistan. And
he said the US Government intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not
Saddam Hussein was in power because of its need for further secure oil supplies. In his piece Mr
Meacher wrote: "It seems that the so-called war on terrorism is being used largely as a bogus
cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives. The evidence again is quite clear
that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 11 September.
The global war on terrorism has all the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for
a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force
command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project." Speaking on BBC Radio 4's
Today programme, he said this agenda had been outlined by the Project for the New American
Century (PNAC) - a thinktank associated with leading neoconservative hawks within the US
administration. In his article, Mr Meacher also said the US had passed up opportunities to catch
Osama Bin Laden and other senior al-Qaeda figures.
Note: Mr. Meacher's comments were actually much stronger than the BBC reports. He stated
publicy on the front page of the Guardian his belief that the U.S. government was very possibly
behind the 9/11 attacks. To verify this, see the Guardian article mentioned in the BBC article above
available here.
Gore Vidal claims 'Bush junta' complicit in 9/11

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/oct/27/books.featuresreview
[Famed US novelist] Gore Vidal has launched the most scathing attack to date on George W
Bush's Presidency, calling for an investigation into the events of 9/11 to discover whether the Bush
administration deliberately chose not to act on warnings of Al-Qaeda's plans. Vidal's highly
controversial 7000 word polemic titled 'The Enemy Within' - published in the print edition of The
Observer today - argues that what he calls a 'Bush junta' used the terrorist attacks as a pretext to
enact a pre-existing agenda to invade Afghanistan and crack down on civil liberties at home. Vidal
writes: 'We still don't know by whom we were struck that infamous Tuesday, or for what true
purpose.' Vidal argues that the real motive for the Afghanistan war was to control the
gateway to Eurasia and Central Asia's energy riches. But, Vidal argues, US administrations,
both Democrat and Republican, were aware that the American public would resist any war
in Afghanistan without a truly massive and widely perceived external threat. 'Osama was
chosen on aesthetic grounds to be the frightening logo for our long-contemplated invasion and
conquest of Afghanistan ... [because] the administration is convinced that Americans are so
simple-minded that they can deal with no scenario more complex than the venerable, lone, crazed
killer ... who does evil just for the fun of it 'cause he hates us because we're rich 'n free 'n he's not.'
Vidal also attacks the American media's failure to discuss 11 September and its consequences:
'Apparently, "conspiracy stuff" is now shorthand for unspeakable truth. It is an article of faith that
there are no conspiracies in American life.
Note: "The Enemy Within" by Gore Vidal is available here. For more on Vidal's writings on the 9/11
attacks and the reasons behind them, click here. For a video clip of Vidal recommending The New
Pearl Harbor by David Ray Griffin, which reveals a major 9/11 cover-up, click here.
Bush asks Daschle to limit Sept. 11 probes

2002-01-29, CNN
http://articles.cnn.com/2002-01-29/politics/inv.terror.probe_1_daschle-house-...
President Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle ... to limit the congressional
investigation into the events of September 11, congressional and White House sources told CNN.
The request was made at a private meeting with congressional leaders Tuesday morning. Sources
said Bush initiated the conversation. He asked that only the House and Senate intelligence
committees look into the potential breakdowns among federal agencies that could have allowed
the terrorist attacks to occur, rather than a broader inquiry that some lawmakers have proposed,
the sources said. Tuesday's discussion followed a rare call to Daschle from Vice President Dick
Cheney last Friday to make the same request. Although the president and vice president told
Daschle they were worried a wide-reaching inquiry could distract from the government's
war on terrorism, privately Democrats questioned why the White House feared a broader
investigation to determine possible culpability. "We will take a look at the allocation of
resources. Ten thousand federal agents -- where were they? How many assets were used, and
what signals were missed?" a Democratic senator told CNN.
Note: For many questions raised by highly-respected former government officials about the
investigation that was, after four years, finally authorized, click here.
Report: Bin Laden Already Dead

2001-12-26, Fox News
Usama bin Laden has died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication, the Pakistan
Observer reported, citing a Taliban leader who allegedly attended the funeral of the Al Qaeda
leader. Bin Laden, according to the source, was suffering from a serious lung complication and
succumbed to the disease in mid-December, in the vicinity of the Tora Bora mountains. The source
claimed that bin Laden was laid to rest honorably in his last abode and his grave was made
as per his Wahabi belief. About 30 close associates of bin Laden in Al Qaeda, including his
most trusted and personal bodyguards, his family members and some "Taliban friends,"
attended the funeral rites. A volley of bullets was also fired to pay final tribute to the "great
leader." When asked where bin Laden was buried, the source said, "I am sure that like other
places in Tora Bora, that particular place too must have vanished."
Note: There have been numerous reports of bin Laden's death before the "official" killing besides
this one. Click here and here for two intriguing BBC reports on this. WantToKnow team member
David Ray Griffin's book establishing the likelihood that Osama bin Laden died in December 2001,
Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?, is available here.
Terrorists 'helped by CIA' to stop rise of left in Italy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/mar/26/terrorism
US intelligence services instigated and abetted rightwing terrorism in Italy during the 1970s, a
former Italian secret service general has claimed. The allegation was made by General Gianadelio
Maletti, a former head of military counter-intelligence, at the trial last week of rightwing extremists
accused of killing 16 people in the bombing of a Milan bank in 1969 - the first time such a charge
has been made in a court of law by a senior Italian intelligence figure. Gen Maletti, commander of
the counter-intelligence section of the military intelligence service from 1971 to 1975, said his men
had discovered that a rightwing terrorist cell in the Venice region had been supplied with military
explosives from Germany. Those explosives may have been obtained with the help of members of
the US intelligence community, an indication that the Americans had gone beyond the infiltration
and monitoring of extremist groups to instigating acts of violence, he said. "The CIA ... following
the directives of its government, wanted to create an Italian nationalism capable of halting
what it saw as a slide to the left and, for this purpose, it may have made use of rightwing
terrorism," Gen Maletti told the Milan court. "I believe this is what happened in other countries
as well."
Note: For an excellent overview of false-flag operations, click here.
Conference on Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and U.S.

Strategy
1997-04-28, Defense Link (Official Website of U.S. Department of Defense)
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/1997/t042897_t0428coh.html
Some countries have been trying to construct something like an Ebola Virus, and that would be a
very dangerous phenomenon, to say the least. Alvin Toeffler has written about this in terms of
some scientists in their laboratories trying to devise certain types of pathogens that would be
ethnic specific so that they could just eliminate certain ethnic groups and races; and others are
designing some sort of engineering, some sort of insects that can destroy specific crops. Others
are engaging even in an eco- type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off
earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves. So there are
plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror
upon other nations. It's real, and that's the reason why we have to intensify our efforts.
If terrorist organizations have the capability to set off earthquakes and other major natural
disasters, do you think huge military research laboratories with vast budgets might have some of
the same capabilities? For more, click here and here.
How Guantnamo Diary Escaped the Black Hole and Got Past the
Censors (Mostly)
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/31/guantanamo-diary-escaped-black-...
Guantnamo Diary ... in which Guantanamo detainee Mohamedou Ould Slahi tells of his
odyssey through overseas prisons and his torture and abuse by the US and its
counterterrorism allies, is pockmarked with redactions left by military censors. The diary
was finally published last week. Slahi, a 44-year-old Mauritanian educated in Germany, was
rendered by the CIA to prison in Jordan in late 2001, then held by the U.S. in Afghanistan and
Guantanamo. The U.S. has never charged him with a crime. By the time the editor Larry Siems got
hold of the manuscript in 2012, volumes of information about Slahis case had come into the public
record. In 2006, the government released transcripts from hearings evaluating prisoners detention
status, Slahis among them. Reports from the Justice Department and the Senate Armed Services
Committee detailed his interrogation. Siems was able to cross-reference these materials to
establish the chronology of Slahis narrative, in which all dates have been redacted. Journalists
have not been allowed to speak directly to current detainees. For Larry Siems, censorship is at the
core of Slahis story, and while the redactions sometimes impede his narrative, they serve a literary
function as well. Secrecy was imposed in order for abuse to happen, and then more secrecy
was imposed in order to cover it up, said Siems. The redactions are like the fingerprints of
that longstanding censorship regime.
Note: Despite U.S. officials acknowledging that many Guantanamo detainees pose no real threat
to society, prisoners like Slahi continue to be detained as part of the ineffective but profitable war
on terror.
Obama's legal rationale for ISIS strikes: shoot first, ask Congress later
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/11/obama-isis-syria-air-strikes-leg...
In the space of a single primetime address on [September 10], Barack Obama dealt a crippling
blow to a creaking, 40-year old effort to restore legislative primacy to American warmaking. The
administrations rationale, at odds with the war it is steadily expanding, is to forestall an endless
conflict foisted upon it by a bloodthirsty legislature. Yet one of the main authorities Obama is
relying on for avoiding Congress is the 2001 ... document known as the Authorization to
Use Military Force (AUMF) that few think actually applies to ISIS. Taken together with the
congressional leaderships shrug, Obama has stripped the veneer off a contemporary fact
of American national security: presidents make war on their own, and congresses
acquiesce. An allergy to congressional authorisation is enmeshed with the presidents stated
desire to end what he last year termed a perpetual war footing. It has led Obama in directions
legal scholars consider highly questionable. Not only has Obama rejected restrictions of his
warmaking power, he has also rejected legislative expansions of it - a more curious choice. Obama
has been wary that Congress will offer up new laws that entrench and expand an amorphous war
that, in his mind, he has waged with the minimum necessary amount of force. Obama last year
advocated the eventual repeal of the 2001 authorisation - as well as the 2002 congressional
approval of the Iraq war - to aid in turning a page on a long era of US warfare. [After Obama's
address] a senior administration official told reporters that the 2001 authorisation covered the war
against ISIS.
Note: The war machine marches on as the US presidency claims ever more power over
Congress. For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from
CIA 'tortured al-Qaeda suspects close to the point of death by drowning

them in water-filled baths'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/11080450/CIA-tortured-al-Q...
The CIA brought top al-Qaeda suspects close to the point of death by drowning them in waterfilled baths during interrogation sessions in the years that followed the September 11 attacks, a
security source has told The Telegraph. The description of the torture meted out to at least two
leading al-Qaeda suspects, including the alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, far
exceeds the conventional understanding of waterboarding, or simulated drowning so far admitted
by the CIA. They werent just pouring water over their heads or over a cloth, said the
source who has first-hand knowledge of the period. They were holding them under water
until the point of death, with a doctor present to make sure they did not go too far. This was
real torture. The account of extreme CIA interrogation comes as the US Senate prepares to
publish a declassified version of its so-called Torture Report a 3,600-page report document
based on a review of several million classified CIA documents. Publication of the report is currently
being held up by a dispute over how much of the 480-page public summary should remain
classified, but it is expected to be published within weeks. A second source who is familiar with the
Senate report told The Telegraph that it contained several unflinching accounts of some CIA
interrogations which the source predicted would deeply shock the general public.
White House should release 9/11 documents

http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/09/03/4317165/white-house-should-release-911....
Floridas former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham ... has been fighting both the Bush and Obama
administrations to declassify 28 pages of a 9/11 intelligence report that may detail and expose the
efforts of members of the Saudi Arabian royal family in aiding and abetting [9/11] terrorists in
Florida, many who were themselves Saudi. Graham is befuddled as to why the Obama
administration does not release these documents, which he read when he was chair of the Senate
Select Intelligence Committee and co-chair of a congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks. As a
result, he has joined a Freedom of Information Act request alongside others, asking that 80,000
pages of information on a Saudi family that disappeared just before the attacks be made public. It
isnt credible that 19 people most [of whom] could not speak English well and did not have
experience in the United States could carry out such a complicated task without external
assistance, Graham insists. The Saudi family living in Sarasota fled to Saudi Arabia just prior
to the 9/11 attacks. Were they tipped off that they should leave? If so, by whom? Graham
believes that there was a deliberate effort to cover up Saudi involvement in the tragedy of
9/11 by the Bush administration, one, he says, that the Obama administration appears to
support. The American public needs to know. The families of those who were lost to the 9/11
attacks or those who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq deserve an answer as well.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing 9/11 news articles from
Covert Inquiry by F.B.I. Rattles 9/11 Tribunals

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/us/politics/covert-inquiry-by-fbi-rattles-9...
Two weeks ago, a pair of F.B.I. agents appeared unannounced at the door of a member of the
defense team for one of the men accused of plotting the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As a contractor
working with the defense team at Guantnamo Bay, Cuba, the man was bound by the same
confidentiality rules as a lawyer. But the agents wanted to talk. They asked questions, lawyers say,
about the legal teams for Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other accused
terrorists who will eventually stand trial before a military tribunal at Guantnamo. Before they left,
the agents asked the contractor to sign an agreement promising not to tell anyone about the
conversation. With that signature, Mr. bin al-Shibhs lawyers say, the government turned a member
of their team into an F.B.I. informant. The F.B.I.s inquiry became the focus of the pretrial hearings
at Guantnamo this week, after the contractor disclosed it to the defense team. It was a reminder
that, no matter how much the proceedings at the island military prison resemble a familiar
American trial, the invisible hand of the United States government is at work there in ways
unlike anything seen in typical courtrooms. Its a courtroom with three benches, said
Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School. Theres one person
pretending to be the judge, and two other agencies behind the scenes exerting at least as
much influence. Thirteen years after 9/11, nobody has been convicted in connection with the
attacks.
Window Opens on Secret Camp Within Guantanamo

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/window-opens-secret-camp-guanta...
Attorney James Connell has visited his client inside the secret Guantanamo prison complex known
as Camp 7 only once, taken in a van with covered windows on a circuitous trek to disguise the
route on the scrub brush-and-cactus covered military base. Connell is allowed to say virtually
nothing about what he saw in the secret camp where the most notorious terror suspects in U.S.
custody are held except that it is unlike any detention facility he's encountered. "It's much more
isolating than any other facility that I have known," the lawyer says. "I've done cases from the
Virginia death row and Texas death row and these pretrial conditions are much more isolating."
The Camp 7 prison unit is so shrouded in secrecy that its location on the U.S. base in Cuba
is classified and officials refuse to discuss it. Camp 7 has never been part of the scripted
tours of Guantanamo offered to journalists and there are no published photos. It's not even
mentioned on a military media handout about the detention center. Military officials, while
insisting that they adhere to international human rights standards, refuse to describe Camp 7. A
few facts have come out through government reports and court testimony. It apparently holds 15 of
the 154 prisoners at Guantanamo. The men are apparently held in solid-walled cells as
opposed to the cage-like structures used soon after the U.S. began using Guantanamo as a prison
in 2002 that are intended to limit their ability to communicate with each other. The secret camp
also is apparently falling apart.
CIA lied about torture to justify using it

2014-04-01, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/cia-lied-about-torture-justify-using-it
A Senate intelligence committee investigation found that the Central Intelligence Agency employed
brutal interrogation methods that turned out to be largely useless and then lied about their
effectiveness. The Senate report contradicts the main defenses of the Bush-era torture program:
That harsh methods were needed to produce "actionable results," and that the program itself
helped save American lives by foiling terror attacks. Instead, the CIA overstated the
effectiveness of the program and concealed the harshness of the methods they used.
Intelligence breakthroughs credited to the enhanced interrogation program by the CIA
were instead gleaned through other means, and then used by the agency to bolster
defenses of the program. Conservative media figures incessantly hyped former Bush
administration officials at times verifiably false claims about the efficacy of the program. The Bush
administrations trip to the dark side provided pundits, op-ed columnists, and other media
personalities an endless stream of satisfaction from talking like the greased up protagonists of
1980s action films.
Note: For an article explaining how even though this report may be declassified, the public will not
have access to most of it, click here. For more on the realities of intelligence agency operations,
see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Defense lawyers: Did FBI pressure push Boston bomber over the edge?
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2014/0329/Defense-lawyers-Did-FBI-pressu...
Three days after an FBI agent was cleared of wrongdoing in the bizarre killing of an associate of
slain Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, lawyers for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the only
surviving bombing suspect, alleged that the FBI attempted to recruit the elder Tsarnaev as
an informant. Dzhokhar Tsarnaevs defense team said that new information suggests the
FBI interviewed Tamerlan on several occasions before the attack, and even pressured him
to surreptitiously report on the Chechen underworld. The Bureau has continued to
emphatically state that it didnt know the identities of the two suspected bombers until they were
fingerprinted, and have denied any involvement with the brothers aside from following up on a tip
from a Russian emissary that the elder Tsarnaev may have been seeking jihad. In the case of
Ibragim Todashev, who allegedly took part with Tamerlan in a robbery turned triple-homicide in
Waltham, in 2011, family members have also stated that FBI pressure may have pushed the 20something ethnic Chechen and mixed martial arts fighter to the brink of violence. Since the terrorist
attacks of 9/11, the Bureau has stepped up surveillance of specific racial, ethnic and religious
communities, including the use of informants. The tactics have ... left the Bureau open to charges
of entrapment, not to mention assorted Internet conspiracy theories. Part of those post-9/11 tactics
are the use of voluntary interviews often encouraging interviewees to serve as informants in
their communities, writes the American Civil Liberties Union.
Note: Why didn't the FBI reveal its attempt to recruit the elder Tsarnaev when the bombing
happened? Something is quite fishy here.
Security Check Now Starts Long Before You Fly

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/22/business/security-check-now-starts-long-bef...
The Transportation Security Administration is expanding its screening of passengers before they
arrive at the airport by searching a wide array of government and private databases that can
include records like car registrations and employment information. It is unclear precisely what
information the agency is relying upon to make these risk assessments, given the extensive range
of records it can access, including tax identification number, past travel itineraries, property
records, physical characteristics, and law enforcement or intelligence information. The measures
go beyond the background check the government has conducted for years, called Secure Flight, in
which a passengers name, gender and date of birth are compared with terrorist watch lists. Now,
the search includes using a travelers passport number, which is already used to screen people at
the border, and other identifiers to access a system of databases maintained by the Department of
Homeland Security. I think the best way to look at it is as a pre-crime assessment every time
you fly, said Edward Hasbrouck, a consultant to the Identity Project, one of the groups that
oppose the prescreening initiatives. The default will be the highest, most intrusive level of
search, and anything less will be conditioned on providing some additional information in
some fashion. Critics argue that the problem with what the agency calls an intelligence-driven,
risk-based analysis of passenger data is that secret computer rules, not humans, make these
determinations. Civil liberties groups have questioned whether the agency has the legal authority
to make these assessments.
The Real War on Reality

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/the-real-war-on-reality/
The modern American surveillance state is not really the stuff of paranoid fantasies; it has arrived.
The revelations about the National Security Agencys PRISM data collection program have raised
awareness ... about the reach and power of secret intelligence gatherers operating behind the
facades of government and business. But those revelations ... have been partial they primarily
focus on one government agency and on the surveillance end of intelligence work, purportedly
done in the interest of national security. What has received less attention is the fact that most
intelligence work today is not carried out by government agencies but by private
intelligence firms and that much of that work involves another common aspect of
intelligence work: deception. That is, it is involved not just with the concealment of reality,
but with the manufacture of it. Important insight into the world [of] these companies came from a
2010 hack by a group best known as LulzSec ... which targeted the private intelligence firm
HBGary Federal. That hack yielded 75,000 e-mails. Team Themis (a group that included HBGary
and the private intelligence and security firms Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies and
Endgame Systems) was effectively brought in to find a way to undermine the credibility of
WikiLeaks and the journalist Glenn Greenwald (who recently broke the story of Edward Snowdens
leak of the N.S.A.s Prism program), because of Greenwalds support for WikiLeaks. The plan
called for actions to sabotage or discredit the opposing organization including a plan to submit
fake documents and then call out the error.
Note: For more on the games intelligence agencies play, see the deeply revealing reports from
Washington gets explicit: its 'war on terror' is permanent

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/17/endless-war-on-terror-obama
On [May 16], the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on whether the statutory basis
for [the "Global War on Terror"] - the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) - should be
revised (meaning: expanded). Asked at a Senate hearing today how long the war on terrorism will
last, Michael Sheehan, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity
conflict, answered, 'At least 10 to 20 years.' The military historian Andrew Bacevich has spent
years warning that US policy planners have adopted an explicit doctrine of "endless war". Obama
officials, despite repeatedly boasting that they have delivered permanently crippling blows to alQaida, are now, as clearly as the English language permits, openly declaring this to be so. It is
hard to resist the conclusion that this war has no purpose other than its own eternal
perpetuation. This war is not a means to any end but rather is the end in itself. The "war on
terror" cannot and will not end on its own [because] the nation's most powerful political
and economic factions reap a bonanza of benefits from its continuation. The genius of
America's endless war machine is that, learning from the unpleasantness of the Vietnam war
protests, it has rendered the costs of war largely invisible.
Note: A top US general long ago exposed the corrupt roots of war in his penetrating book War is a
Racket. For a concise, two-page summary of this revealing book, click here. For deeply revealing
reports from reliable major media sources on the atrocities carried out by the US and UK in their
global wars of aggression, click here.
Boston chief: Wasn't told FBI got Tsarnaev warning

2013-05-09, Houston Chronicle/Associated Press
http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Boston-chief-Wasn-t-told-FBI-got-Tsar...
The FBI did not initially share with Boston police the warnings it had received from Russia
about one suspect in last month's marathon bombings, despite the work of four city police
representatives on a federal terrorism task force, Boston's police commissioner told
Congress on [May 9]. Boston police learned about the Russian security service warnings only
later. The congressional hearing was the first in a series to review the government's initial
response to the attacks, ask what information authorities received about Tsarnaev and his brother
before the bombings and consider whether everything was handled correctly. Some lawmakers
questioned whether Boston police could have more thoroughly investigated Tsarnaev after 2011,
based on Russia's vague warnings then to the FBI and CIA or the discovery by the Homeland
Security Department in 2012 that he was traveling to Russia for six months, and whether Justice
Department rules intended to protect civil liberties constrained the FBI's own inquiry. Led by the
FBI, Joint Terrorism Task Forces operate in many cities as a way to bring federal, state and local
officials together to share information. The model has existed for decades but, after 9/11, task
forces sprouted up in cities nationwide to ensure that police were not out of the loop on
investigations like the one the FBI conducted into Tsarnaev.
Note: For a powerful 11-minute video presenting undeniable evidence that the Boston bombers'
uncle was closely linked to both the CIA and terrorist organizations, click here. Many are
questioning whether the recent Boston bombing was a false flag operation. Though it is not
conclusive, you can find some very reliable evidence that this might be the case at this link and
this one. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the deceptions of
Why Julian Assange would target Henry Kissinger

2013-04-11, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22095116
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has released a database of diplomatic records by Henry
Kissinger, who ran American foreign policy under two presidents. Assange has compiled a
database of State Department cables that Kissinger signed during the 1970s. The documents were
not classified and had been available in national archives, which is where Wikileaks researchers
obtained them. Six years after Wikileaks was founded, Assange and his organisation are under
pressure. He worked on the database at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he is now
living. Critics deplore what Kissinger has done. They point out that after the US secretly bombed
Cambodia in 1970, Kissinger tried to control leaks of information about government
activities by setting up wiretaps at the homes of journalists. Critics also say Kissinger
encouraged the overthrow of Socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende, in 1973.
Because of his role in the wiretapping of Americans and his comments about Chile, among other
things, Kissinger has been the subject of intense scrutiny over the years. Kissinger would
"sanitise" official accounts of meetings, says Princeton University's Gary Bass, author of a
forthcoming book called The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide. "He
would tell his note-takers to leave out something, so we don't have a complete record."
Note: It is quite unusual that this article and very few media have reported on a key quote by
Kissinger that was released in these files. He says, The illegal we do immediately; the
unconstitutional takes a little longer." You can see an image of the document with this quote at
this link.
The blind theology of militarism

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/The-blind-theology-of-militarism-428639...
Drone war proponents are facing inconvenient truths. This month, for instance, they are facing a
new United Nations report showing that President Obama's escalation of the Afghanistan
War - in part by an escalation in drone air strikes - is killing hundreds of children "due
notably to reported lack of precautionary measures and indiscriminate use of force." Dronewar cheerleaders will no doubt find this news difficult to explain away. Sen. Angus King [justified]
the drone war earlier this month. "Drones are a lot more civilized than what we used to do," he told
a cable television audience. "I think it's actually a more humane weapon because it can be
targeted to specific enemies and specific people." Designed to obscure mounting civilian
casualties, King's phrase "humane weapon" is the crux of the larger argument. The idea is that an
intensifying drone war is necessary - and even humane! - because it is more surgical than violent
global ground war, which is supposedly America's only other option. In a country whose culture so
often (wrongly) portrays bloodshed as the most effective problem solver, many Americans hear
this now-ubiquitous drone-war argument and reflexively agree with its suppositions. By deliberately
ignoring any other less violent option, drone-war proponents who employ choice-narrowing
language are ... precluding America from making more prudent, informed and dispassionate
national security decisions - the kind that might stop us from repeating the worst mistakes of our
own history.
Note: For a revealing 27-minute documentary on drones which operate in swarms and pose
serious ethical questions in both peace and war, click here.
The co-author of Hubris on torture, secretsand what we still dont

know
2013-02-17, MSNBC
http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/02/17/the-co-author-of-hubris-on-torture-secrets-and...
NBC News National Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff co-authored the best-selling book
Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War with David Corn. Their
book is the basis for the new MSNBC documentary, "Hubris: Selling the Iraq War". The reporting ...
at a time when the movie "Zero Dark Thirty" has drawn attention to the issue, shows viewers the
role that torture played in intelligence-gathering after 9/11. The real-life role of torture in pre-Iraq
war intelligence, which is reported in Hubris, has far scarier implications than the Hollywood
version. MSNBC: What was the single most shocking thing you discovered? [Isikoff:] I still find the
Ibn Shaykh al-Libi story ... the most shocking of all. At first, hes questioned by the FBIthen
rendered by the CIA in early 2002 to Egypt, where he was subjected to torture: beatings [and] a
mock burial. He suddenly coughed up a storythat Iraq was training al-Qaida members in chemical
and biological weaponsthat nobody in the U.S. intelligence community really believed. The CIA
internally even wrote an assessment concluding that al-Libi was likely fabricating much of what he
told the Egyptians. Yet suddenly in September 2002, the White House starts using the claim
that Iraq is training al-Qaida in poisons and gasesa claim based entirely on al-Libi. After
the war, al-Libi is returned to U.S. custody and recants the whole thing, saying he made it
up because the Egyptians were torturing him. Anybody who saw "Zero Dark Thirty" and thinks
it vindicates waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques should watch "Hubris".
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on torture and other war
crimes committed by the US, click here.
Secrecy of Memo on Drone Killing Is Upheld

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/us/judge-rules-memo-on-targeted-killing-can...
A federal judge in Manhattan refused on [January 2] to require the Justice Department to disclose
a memorandum providing the legal justification for the targeted killing of a United States citizen,
Anwar al-Awlaki, who died in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011. The ruling, by Judge Colleen
McMahon, was marked by skepticism about the antiterrorist program that targeted him, and
frustration with her own role in keeping the legal rationale for it secret. I can find no way around
the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our
government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face
incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion
a secret, she wrote. The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me,
Judge McMahon wrote, adding that she was operating in a legal environment that amounted to a
veritable Catch-22. Judge McMahons opinion included an overview of what she called an
extensive public relations campaign by various government officials about the American role in
the killing of Mr. Awlaki and the circumstances under which the government considers targeted
killings, including of its citizens, to be lawful. The governments public comments were as a whole
cryptic and imprecise, Judge McMahon said. Even as she ruled against the plaintiffs, the judge
wrote that the public should be allowed to judge whether the administrations analysis holds water.
Note: For analysis of the significance of this reluctant court ruling upholding continued secrecy of
the drone assassinations, click here.
Lawmakers say CIA may have misled Zero Dark Thirty filmmakers on
harsh interrogation
http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/lawmakers-say-cia-may-have-misled...
Lawmakers accused the CIA of misleading the makers of the Osama bin Laden raid film Zero
Dark Thirty by allegedly telling them that harsh interrogation methods helped track down the
terrorist mastermind. The film shows waterboarding and similar techniques as important, if not key,
to finding bin Laden in Pakistan, where he was killed by Navy SEALs in 2011. A Senate
Intelligence Committee investigation into the CIAs detainee program found that such
methods produced no useful intelligence. In a letter to the CIA this week, Sens. Dianne
Feinstein, D-Calif., John McCain, R-Ariz., and others asked [the CIA] to share documents
showing what the filmmakers were told. The senators contend that that the CIA detainee who
provided the most accurate information about the courier who was tracked to bin Ladens hiding
place provided the information prior to being subjected to coercive interrogation techniques,
according to a statement ... from Feinstein. The CIA says it will cooperate.
Note: Note that this "critique" of the CIA by US Senators serves to maintain the claim that Osama
bin Laden was killed by the Navy SEALs raid in Pakistan in 2011. But there have been numerous
reports of bin Laden's death before the "official" killing. Click here and here for two intriguing BBC
reports on this. WantToKnow team member David Ray Griffin's book establishing the likelihood
that Osama bin Laden died in December 2001, Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?, is available
here.
'Zero Dark Thirty': Why the fabrication?

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/dec/23/opinion/la-oe-1223-mcdermott-torture-...
The new Kathryn Bigelow movie "Zero Dark Thirty" has renewed the debate on the efficacy of
torture. The film obliquely credits the discovery of the key piece of information in the search
for [Osama] Bin Laden to the torture of an Al Qaeda prisoner held by the CIA. This is at
odds with the facts as they have been recounted by journalists reporting on the manhunt, by
Obama administration intelligence officials and by legislative leaders. Bigelow and her writing
partner, Mark Boal, are promoting "Zero Dark Thirty" in part by stressing its basis in fact. It's
curious that they could have gotten this central, contentious point wrong. And because they
originally set out to make a movie about the frustrating failure to find Bin Laden, it's hard to believe
their aim was to celebrate torture. But that's in effect what they've done. It was Dick Cheney's idea
that the United States could solve complicated problems just by being brave enough, or tough
enough, or both. Despite the fact that the world doesn't seem to work that way, Cheney's argument
had a force and a tenor that fits with our national narrative of exceptionalism. It's satisfying. We are
willing to believe there is something heroic, justifiable about torture. There is not. The moral
objection ought to be obvious. We've had laws against torture for decades. We've had these laws
for the simplest of reasons we decided it was wrong. In almost no contemporary culture is it
presumed to be not wrong.
Note: There have been numerous reports of bin Laden's death before the "official" killing. Click
here and here for two intriguing BBC reports on this. WantToKnow team member David Ray
Griffin's book establishing the likelihood that Osama bin Laden died in December 2001, Osama bin
Laden: Dead or Alive?, is available here.
A CIA veteran transforms U.S. counterterrorism policy

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-veteran-john-brenna...
Presidential counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan is compiling the rules for a war the Obama
administration believes will far outlast its own time in office. The playbook, as Brennan calls it, will
... cover the selection and approval of targets from the disposition matrix, the designation of who
should pull the trigger when a killing is warranted, and the legal authorities the administration
thinks sanction its actions in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and beyond. Brennan is the principal
architect of a policy that has transformed counterterrorism from a conventional fight
centered in Afghanistan to a high-tech global effort to track down and eliminate perceived
enemies one by one. What was once a disparate collection of tactics ... has become a White
House-centered strategy with Brennan at its core. Brennan is leading efforts to curtail the CIAs
primary responsibility for targeted killings. Still, during Brennans tenure, the CIA has carried out
hundreds of drone strikes in Pakistan and opened a new base for armed drones in the Arabian
Peninsula. Brennan wields enormous power in shaping decisions on kill lists and the allocation of
armed drones, the wars signature weapon.
Note: Remember that these drones have been used to kill American citizens who were given no
rights or trial, including a 16-year-old American boy. Is this what is called justice? For deeply
revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the secret and illegal operations of the
Expert Panel Reports False Accounts of U.S. Political and Military

Leaders on 9/11
2012-06-05, MarketWatch (Part of the Wall Street Journal's digital network)
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/expert-panel-reports-false-accounts-of-us-po...
New evidence shows that the September 11th activities of former President George W. Bush, Vice
President Dick Cheney, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were falsely reported by official
sources. The 20-member 9/11 Consensus Panel analyzed evidence from press reports, FOIA
requests, and archived 9/11 Commission file documents to produce eight new studies, released
today. The international panel also [determined] that four massive aerial practice exercises
traditionally held in October were in full operation on 9/11. The largest, Global Guardian, held
annually by NORAD and the U.S. Strategic and Space Commands, had originally been scheduled
for October 22-31 but was moved, along with Vigilant Guardian, to early September. Although
senior officials claimed no one could have predicted [the use of] hijacked planes as weapons, the
military had been practicing similar exercises on 9/11 itself -- and for years before it. Official
sources claimed neither Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Joint Chiefs of Staff Acting Chairman
General Richard Myers (filling in for General Hugh Shelton), nor war-room chief General
Montague Winfield were available to take command until well after the Pentagon was struck
about 9:37. Yet emerging documents and memoirs show that top leaders were engaged earlier -and later discussed a shootdown of [United Airlines] Flight 93 before debris was scattered widely
around its alleged Shanksville, Pennsylvania crash site. Most intriguing is the mystery of who was
running the Pentagon's war-room during the critical early hours.
Note: To examine the evidence presented by the 9/11 Consensus Panel which refutes the
questionable accounts of the whereabouts and activities of key political and military leaders
provided by The 9/11 Commission Report, as well as the best evidence concerning other claims of
the official story of 9/11, click here.
9/11 defense attorneys call Guantnamo detention, trial rules unjust

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/06/2786539/911-defense-attorneys-call-guan...
The five men accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks used their weekend war court appearances
to stage peaceful resistance to an unjust system being used for political reasons, defense
lawyers said Sunday a day after the 9/11-accused turned the judges plans to hold a simple
arraignment into a 13-hour marathon of prayer and protest. The system is a rigged game to
prevent us from doing our jobs, argued criminal defense attorney David Nevin, accusing
the prison camp commander of making it impossible to learn from alleged mastermind
Khalid Sheik Mohammed how the CIA waterboarded him 183 times and used other sinceoutlawed techniques to break him. The government wants to kill Mr. Mohammed, Nevin said,
to extinguish the last eyewitness to his torture. Each of the accused steadfastly refused to
answer basic questions posed to them by Army Col. James L. Pohl, the war courts chief judge, on
whether they accepted their Pentagon-appointed attorneys. Instead, they periodically disrupted the
proceedings with demonstrations of Muslim prayer and protests of prison conditions. These men
have endured years of inhumane treatment and torture that will infect every aspect of this military
commission tribunal, attorney James Connell III warned.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on the destruction of civil liberties in the name of the
Where drones in Pakistan undermine U.S. interests

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/13/INLN1MNVED.DTL
The CIA's use of unmanned aircraft to kill ... began under President George W. Bush in 2004. The
covert operations became more frequent under the Obama administration, which viewed them as
a way ... to hit Taliban fighters headed to the Afghanistan battlefield from sanctuaries in Pakistan's
remote tribal areas. To Pakistanis, the drone strikes represent a brazen breach of their
nation's sovereignty and a callous disregard for the lives of civilians who are in the vicinity
of the so-called smart missiles. There is no precise count of casualties, but Pakistani
officials suggest the deaths have numbered in the hundreds, with thousands more
wounded. Opposition to the drone strikes is one of the rare issues that unites a country that is
riven with divisions of geography, class, culture and tribal affiliations. Because the drone
operations are covert, the Obama administration refuses to answer substantive questions about
their necessity or results. In a recent meeting with U.S. journalists, diplomats at the American
Embassy in Islamabad refused to discuss the program even on a background basis. Unlike the
Bush team, the Obama administration has refused to keep Pakistani military leaders in the loop.
Note: For lots more on the illegal methods employed by the CIA and Pentagon in its "endless war",
click here.
Feinstein detainee bill for citizens, residents

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/29/MN701NDUR3.DTL
Sen. Dianne Feinstein said [on February 29] that her legislation to roll back an antiterror law, which
allows the military to indefinitely detain people in the United States suspected of ties to al Qaeda or
"associated forces," would have to be limited to citizens and permanent legal residents. Her bill,
the Due Process Guarantee Act, ... would ensure that the detainee portions of last year's National
Defense Authorization Act, or any declaration of war or congressional authorization to use military
force, would not allow the military to imprison without trial citizens and green card holders living in
the United States. Rep. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove (Sacramento County) has introduced a
companion bill in the House. The detainee provisions of the law ... have generated a rare
combination of outrage from liberals and conservatives who say it violates constitutional
liberties and habeas corpus rights that provide an individual redress to unlawful
imprisonment by the state. Civil liberties groups have argued that the Constitution's Bill of Rights
extends to all people, regardless of their citizenship. Noncitizens include tourists, students and
business travelers as well as illegal immigrants. Feinstein said including noncitizens in her bill is
not politically feasible. Feinstein described her bill as a follow-on to the 1971 Non-Detention Act, a
response to the Japanese internment that was signed by former President Richard Nixon. The act
bars imprisonment of citizens suspected of sabotage without explicit congressional approval.
Note: The NDAA clearly violates the U.S. Bill of Rights, which clearly states in the fifth amendment
that no person shall be held to answer for a crime "without due process of law," and in the sixth
amendment which states that "the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial." It is
simply amazing that the American public is not loudly protesting this breach of the constitution.
Ten years later, Guantanamo still harms us all

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/10/ED2F1MNA60.DTL
It has been 10 years since Guantanamo Bay became a prison. Today, 171 men are still held there
with no real prospect of either trial or release. Bush administration officials have admitted ordering
torture against prisoners in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Iraq and secret sites in [other] countries, yet
no one has been held to account for violating U.S. law. Their illegal actions and the recent passage
- and signing by President Obama - of the National Defense Authorization Act have undermined
fundamental structures of law and morality that are our heritage as Americans. More than 80
percent of Americans self-identified as "religious" in a 2011 Pew poll. Today, 312 U.S. faith groups
are members of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. Organized in 2006, it is a
vehicle for people of faith seeking to denounce abusive practices by the United States. Under
President Obama, we have held no one accountable for torture. With the passage of the Defense
Act, indefinite detention without trial has become law ... including even American citizens
captured on U.S. soil, a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. The
loss of habeas corpus rights under the Defense Act now puts every ordinary person at risk
of indefinite detention. As citizens, it is our right and responsibility to demand that our
government investigate the U.S. torture program and uphold our constitutional rights. As a nation
of people of faith, this is our sacred duty.
Note: The author, Louise Specht, is the convener of the Bay Area Religious Campaign Against
Torture, the Northern California affiliate of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture.
How the world changed after 9/11

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/sep/12/9-11-symposium-charlie-skelton
I found myself at a conference on Walker Street called 'How The World Changed After 9/11'. It was
packed, but I managed to slide in at the back, to hear a guy called Webster Tarpley chant his own
list of names. The names of the 46 military exercises and hijack drills ... that were actually taking
place on the morning of September 11. "The greatest density of drills in US military history,"
Tarpley said. The drills, said Tarpley, were important, because not only did they weaken and
confuse US air defence, but there was also a military drill for each major component of the 9/11
attacks. The drills were cover, and the dummy threats were made real. September 11, he
argues, was a coup carried out by a rogue network within the US military and government.
A cabal of fascists, working with (and for) a banking oligarchy, "the old boys of Wall Street".
"You want to blame Saudi Arabia, or Israel, or Pakistan? You can't. There isn't the evidence." The
evidence, Tarpley says, points towards 9/11 as a false flag attack, carried out by a high level
clique, that forced a shocked and awestruck US public into a vast and still ongoing war. It was
America's very own Reichstag fire. What I heard, from speaker after speaker, was a heartfelt
desire to turn away from the path of destruction, militarism and lies that America has been set
upon after 9/11.
Note: For questions raised about the official story of 9/11 by hundreds of highly-respected citizens
from all walks of life, click here and here. For a four-minute invited commentary at PressTV (Iran)
by Tod Fletcher of WantToKnow on the falsity of the official account of 9/11, click here.
A decade after the 9/11 attacks, Americans live in an era of endless war
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/a-decade-after-the-911-...
This is the American era of endless war. Americas embrace of endless war [has unfolded] in the
10 years since Sept. 11, 2001. In previous decades, the military and the American public viewed
war as an aberration and peace as the norm. Most soldiers and Marines in todays military have
seen their entire careers consumed by combat. During last years 9/11 anniversary, Lt. Col.
Christopher M. Coglianese accompanied his second-grade daughter on her schools annual
Freedom Walk outside Fort Hood, Tex. Basically the whole student body walks around the
grounds of the school wearing patriotic garb and carrying signs about freedom, Coglianese
recalled in an e-mail from Iraq, where he is on his third tour. To be honest there was a certain
surrealism about it, Coglianese wrote. For this very small slice of American children this way of
life is completely normal. The long stretch of war has also isolated the U.S. military from
society. Top military officials fret that the troops are developing a troubling sense that they
are better than the society they serve. Todays Army, including its leadership, lives in a
bubble separate from society, wrote retired Lt. Gen. David Barno, who commanded U.S. forces
in Afghanistan, in an essay for the Web site of Foreign Policy magazine. This splendid military
isolation set in the midst of a largely adoring nation risks fostering a closed culture of
superiority and aloofness. This must change if the Army is to remain in, of, and with the everdiverse peoples of the United States.
Note: For lots more on all facets of America's endless war, click here.
UK's secret policy on torture revealed

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/aug/04/uk-allowed-interrogate-torture...
A top-secret document revealing how MI6 and MI5 officers were allowed to extract information
from prisoners being illegally tortured overseas has been seen by the Guardian. The interrogation
policy ... instructed senior intelligence officers to weigh the importance of the information being
sought against the amount of pain they expected a prisoner to suffer. It was operated by the British
government for almost a decade. The fact that the interrogation policy document and other
similar papers may not be made public during the inquiry into British complicity in torture
and rendition has led to human rights groups and lawyers refusing to give evidence or
attend any meetings with the inquiry team because it does not have "credibility or
transparency". The decision by 10 groups including Liberty, Reprieve and Amnesty International
follows the publication of the inquiry's protocols, which show the final decision on whether
material uncovered by the inquiry, led by Sir Peter Gibson, can be made public will rest with the
cabinet secretary. Some have criticised the appointment of Gibson, a retired judge, to head the
inquiry because he previously served as the intelligence services commissioner, overseeing
government ministers' use of a controversial power that permits them to "disapply" UK criminal and
civil law in order to offer a degree of protection to British intelligence officers committing crimes
overseas.
Note: Isn't it quite unusual for human rights organizations to refuse to participate in an inquiry into
government abuses of human rights? Evidently the conflicts of interest of the inquiry head Gibson
are so extreme that participation is simply impossible.
Chiquita sued over Colombian paramilitary payments

2011-05-30, Miami Herald/Associated Press
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/05/30/2242250/chiquita-sued-over-colombian-pa...
Each name is next to a number, in black type on a thick legal document. They are the mothers and
fathers, spouses, sisters and brothers of thousands of Colombians who were killed or vanished
during a bloody civil conflict between leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups whose
victims have largely been civilians. The list has at least 4,000 names, each one targeting
Chiquita Brands International in U.S. lawsuits, claiming the produce giant's payments and
other assistance to the paramilitary groups amounted to supporting terrorists. Cincinnatibased Chiquita in 2007 pleaded guilty to similar criminal charges brought by the Justice
Department and paid a $25 million fine. But if the lawsuits succeed, plaintiffs' lawyers estimate the
damages against Chiquita could reach into the billions. The cases filed around the country are
being consolidated before a South Florida federal judge who must decide whether to dismiss them
or let them proceed. Chiquita has long maintained it was essentially blackmailed into paying the
paramilitary groups - perpetrators of the majority of civilian deaths in Colombia's dirty war.
Note: For lots more on corporate corruption from reliable sources, click here.
Secret intelligence files show disarray at Gitmo

2011-04-24, Seattle Times/McClatchy News
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2014867539_gitmo25.html
U.S. officials set up a human-intelligence laboratory at Guantnamo that used interrogation and
detention practices they largely made up as they went along. The secret summaries, which were
obtained via WikiLeaks, help explain why in May 2009 President Obama, after ordering his own
review of wartime intelligence, called ... Guantnamo "quite simply a mess." The documents ...
show an intelligence operation that was tremendously dependent on informants both
prison-camp snitches repeating what they'd heard from fellow captives, and self-described,
at times self-aggrandizing, former al-Qaida insiders turned government witnesses who
Pentagon records show have since been released. Intelligence analysts are at odds with each
other over which informants to trust, at times drawing inferences from prisoner exercise habits.
They ordered DNA tests, tethered Taliban suspects to polygraphs and strung together tidbits in
ways that seemed to defy common sense. The documents also show that in the earliest years of
the prison camp's operation, the Pentagon permitted Chinese and Russian interrogators into the
camps information from those sessions are included in some captives' assessments
something American defense lawyers working free for the foreign prisoners have alleged and
protested for years.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on the prison at Guantanamo and other black sites
where torture and false allegations are the norm, click here.
Rights Are Curtailed for Terror Suspects

New rules allow investigators to hold domestic-terror suspects longer than others without giving
them a Miranda warning, significantly expanding exceptions to the instructions that have governed
the handling of criminal suspects for more than four decades. The move is one of the Obama
administration's most significant revisions to rules governing the investigation of terror
suspects in the U.S. The new rules give interrogators more latitude and flexibility to define
what counts as an appropriate circumstance to waive Miranda rights. The Justice
Department believes it has the authority to tinker with Miranda procedures. Making the change
administratively rather than through legislation in Congress, however, presents legal risks. Before
becoming president, Mr. Obama had criticized the Bush administration for going outside traditional
criminal procedures to deal with terror suspects, and for bypassing Congress in making rules to
handle detainees after 9/11. He has since embraced many of the same policies while devising
additional onesto the disappointment of civil-liberties groups that championed his election.
Note: For key reports from major media sources on government threats to civil liberties, click here.
Jose Padilla lawsuit against Pentagon thrown out in US

2011-02-17, BBC
A US judge has quashed a lawsuit by an American who said he was illegally detained and
repeatedly tortured for three years in a US navy jail. Jose Padilla was seeking to sue current US
Defence Secretary Robert Gates and his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, for violating the
constitution. Judge Richard Gergel ruled that US laws did not offer clear guidelines on the
detention of enemy combatants. Any trial, he wrote, would be "an international spectacle with
Padilla, a convicted terrorist, summoning America's present and former leaders to a federal
courthouse to answer his charges". Ben Wizner, the litigation director at the American Civil
Liberties Union, called Thursday's ruling "troubling". "The court today held that Donald Rumsfeld is
above the law and Jose Padilla is beneath it," he said in a statement. "But if the law does not
protect Jose Padilla, it protects none of us, and the executive branch can simply label
citizens enemies of the state and strip them of all rights, including the absolute right not to
be tortured."
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on government threats to civil liberties, click here.
Domestic use of aerial drones by law enforcement likely to prompt

privacy debate
The suspect's house, just west of this city, sat on a hilltop at the end of a steep, exposed driveway.
Agents with the Texas Department of Public Safety believed the man inside had a large stash of
drugs and a cache of weapons. The Texas agents did what no state or local law enforcement
agency had done before in a high-risk operation: They launched a drone. A bird-size device called
a Wasp floated hundreds of feet into the sky and instantly beamed live video to agents on the
ground. The SWAT team stormed the house and arrested the suspect. "The nice thing is it's
covert," said Bill C. Nabors Jr., chief pilot with the Texas DPS, "You don't hear it, and unless you
know what you're looking for, you can't see it." The drone technology that has revolutionized
warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan is entering the national airspace. The operation
outside Austin presaged what could prove to be one of the most far-reaching and
potentially controversial uses of drones: as a new and relatively cheap surveillance tool in
domestic law enforcement. By 2013, the FAA expects to have formulated new rules that would
allow police across the country to routinely fly lightweight, unarmed drones up to 400 feet above
the ground - high enough for them to be largely invisible eyes in the sky. Such technology could
allow police to record the activities of the public below with high-resolution, infrared and thermalimaging cameras.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on government and corporate threats to privacy, click
here.
An Assassinations Long Shadow

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/opinion/17hochschild.html
Today, millions of people on another continent are observing the 50th anniversary of an event few
Americans remember, the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. The 35-year-old Lumumba was the
first democratically chosen leader of the ... Democratic Republic of Congo. Thousands of Belgian
officials who lingered on did their best to sabotage things: their code word for Lumumba in military
radio transmissions was Satan. Shortly after he took office as prime minister, the C.I.A., with
White House approval, ordered his assassination and dispatched an undercover agent with
poison. The would-be poisoners could not get close enough to Lumumba to do the job, so instead
the United States and Belgium covertly funneled cash and aid to rival politicians who seized power
and arrested the prime minister. On Jan. 17, 1961, after being beaten and tortured, he was shot.
Stephen R. Weissman, a former staff director of the House Subcommittee on Africa,
recently pointed out that Lumumbas violent end foreshadowed todays American practice
of extraordinary rendition. The Congolese politicians who planned Lumumbas murder
checked all their major moves with their Belgian and American backers, and the local C.I.A.
station chief made no objection when they told him they were going to turn Lumumba over
render him, in todays parlance to the breakaway government of Katanga, which, everyone
knew, could be counted on to kill him.
Note: The author of this article, Adam Hochschild, is the author of King Leopolds Ghost: A Story
of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa and the forthcoming To End All Wars: A Story of
Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918.
WikiLeaks founder calls for Flanagan charge

2010-12-03, CBC (Canada's public broadcasting station)
http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/cbc-article.aspx?cp-documentid=26612022
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says Tom Flanagan a former senior adviser to the
[Canadian] prime minister should be charged with incitement to commit murder for calling for
Assange's assassination. "It is correct that Mr. Flanagan and the others seriously making these
statements should be charged with incitement to commit murder," Assange replied. During a panel
interview on the [CBC's "Power & Politics with Evan Solomon" show] Flanagan said U.S. President
Barack Obama "should put out a contract and maybe use a drone or something." Assange ...
disputed the contention of Flanagan and numerous governments that his organization's publishing
of secret U.S. diplomatic cables has put people's lives in danger. "WikiLeaks has a four-year
publishing history," Assange said. "During that time there has been no credible allegation,
even by organizations like the Pentagon, that even a single person has come to harm as a
result of our activities. This is despite much-attempted manipulation and spin trying to lead
people to a counter-factual conclusion. We do not expect any change in this regard."
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on government and corporate secrecy, click here.
WikiLeaks documents released by NYT, other media

2010-11-28, Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2815314120101128
U.S. State Department documents released by whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks provided candid
views of foreign leaders and sensitive information on terrorism and nuclear proliferation, The New
York Times reported on [November 28]. The documents show Saudi donors remain chief
financiers of militant groups like al Qaeda and that Chinese government operatives have
waged a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage targeting the United States and its allies,
according to a review of the WikiLeaks documents published in the Times.
Note: Why did so few major media mention this key fact about Saudi financing of Al Qaeda?
Australian trade union president claims 9/11 was a conspiracy

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/80...
A senior member of the Australian trade union movement has come under fire after he claimed
that the terrorist attacks on Sept 11, 2001 were part of an American conspiracy. Kevin Bracken,
who is the Victorian secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia and president of the Victorian
Trades Hall Council, [said] that "the official story doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny". Mr
Bracken [said] that Australia should instead hold an inquiry into the events of 9/11, claiming
that elements of the former Bush administration, US military and security services were
involved in the attacks and that the motive was related to a large insurance policy that had
been taken out on the Twin Towers. "There are so many unanswered questions," he said. "The
fact is that aviation fuel doesn't get hot enough to melt steel and no high rise steel frame building
before or after September 11 has ever collapsed due to fire. "I stick to scientific facts. In my mind
the buildings were imploded."
Note: Kevin Bracken is one among many highly credible people to question the official account of
9/11. For questions raised by many courageous professionals, click here and here.
Al Qaeda Leader Dined at the Pentagon Just Months After 9/11

2010-10-20, Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/10/20/al-qaeda-terror-leader-dined-pentagon-mo...
Anwar Al-Awlaki may be the first American on the CIA's kill or capture list, but he was also a lunch
guest of military brass at the Pentagon within months of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Documents exclusively obtained by Fox News ... state that Awlaki was taken to the Pentagon ... in
the immediate aftermath of the attacks. A current Defense Department employee ... came forward
and told investigators she helped arrange the meeting after she saw Awlaki speak in Alexandria,
Va. The employee "attended this talk and ... she recalls being impressed by this imam. He
condemned Al Qaeda and the terrorist attacks," reads one document. "After her vetting,
Aulaqi (Awlaki) was invited to and attended a luncheon at the Pentagon in the secretary of
the Army's Office of Government Counsel." Awlaki, a Yemeni-American who was born in Las
Cruces, N.M., was interviewed at least four times by the FBI in the first week after the attacks
because of his ties to the three [alleged] hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Hani
Hanjour. The three ... were all onboard Flight 77 that [allegedly] slammed into the Pentagon.
Note: This article certainly raises suspicions that the amazing connections of Awlaki to so many
recent terror incidents may not be unrelated to his now-established connections to the Pentagon
shortly after 9/11.
U.S. Tries to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/27wiretap.html
Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new
regulations for the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is
going dark as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone. Essentially,
officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications including encrypted
e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that
allows direct peer to peer messaging like Skype to be technically capable of complying if
served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble
encrypted messages. James X. Dempsey, vice president of the Center for Democracy and
Technology, an Internet policy group, said the proposal had huge implications and challenged
fundamental elements of the Internet revolution including its decentralized design. They are
really asking for the authority to redesign services that take advantage of the unique, and
now pervasive, architecture of the Internet, he said. They basically want to turn back the
clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to
function.
Note: For an analysis of this new government move to spy on US citizens, click here. For lots
more from reliable sources on disturbing government threats to privacy and civil liberties, click here
and here.
How the CIA ran a secret army of 3,000 assassins

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/how-the-cia-ran-a-secret-army-of...
The US Central Intelligence Agency is running and paying for a secret 3,000-strong army of
Afghan paramilitaries whose main aim is assassinating Taliban and al-Qa'ida operatives not
just in Afghanistan but across the border in neighbouring Pakistan's tribal areas. Although
the CIA has long been known to run clandestine militias in Afghanistan, including one from a base
it rents from the Afghan president Hamid Karzai's half-brother in the southern province of
Kandahar, the sheer number of militiamen directly under its control have never been publicly
revealed. [Bob] Woodward's [new] book, Obama's Wars, describes these forces as elite, welltrained units that conduct highly sensitive covert operations into Pakistan as part of a stepped-up
campaign against al-Qa'ida and Afghan Taliban havens there. The secret army is split into
"Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams", and is thought to be responsible for the deaths of many
Pakistani Taliban fighters who have crossed the border into Afghanistan to fight Nato and Afghan
government forces there. There are ever-increasing numbers of "kill-or-capture" missions
undertaken by US Special Forces against Afghan Taliban and foreign fighters, who hope to drive
rank-and-file Taliban towards the Afghan government's peace process by eliminating their leaders.
Note: For commentary on this report of the CIA's army of assassins, click here. For key reports on
the realities of the "global war on terror," click here.
Many migrant workers in UK are modern-day slaves, say investigators

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/aug/30/migrant-workers-modern-day-slavery
Thousands of foreign domestic workers are living as slaves in Britain, being abused sexually,
physically and psychologically by employers. More than 15,000 migrant workers come to Britain
every year to earn money to send back to their families. Many endure conditions that campaigners
say amount to modern-day slavery. Kalayaan, a charity based in west London that helps and
advises migrant domestic workers, registers around 350 new workers each year. About 20%
report being physically abused or assaulted, including being burnt with irons, threatened
with knives, and having boiling water thrown at them. "Two-thirds of the domestic workers
we see report being psychologically abused," said Jenny Moss, a community advocate for the
charity. "That means they've been threatened and humiliated, shouted at constantly and called
dog, donkey, stupid, illiterate." A similar proportion say they were not allowed out alone and have
never had a day off. Nearly three-quarters say they were paid less than 50 a week. "The first
thing to understand when we're talking about slavery is that we're not using a metaphor," said
Aidan McQuade from Anti-Slavery International. "Many of the instances of domestic servitude we
find in this country are forced labour a classification that includes retention of passports and
wages, threat of denunciation and restriction of movement and isolation."
Note: This phenomenon also happens in big cities in the US much more than people might
suspect.
U.S. Plans Cyber Shield for Utilities, Companies

The federal government is launching an expansive program dubbed "Perfect Citizen" to detect
cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure
as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants. The surveillance by the National Security Agency,
the government's chief eavesdropping agency, would rely on a set of sensors deployed in
computer networks for critical infrastructure that would be triggered by unusual activity suggesting
an impending cyber attack. Defense contractor Raytheon Corp. recently won a classified contract
for the initial phase of the surveillance effort valued at up to $100 million. Some industry and
government officials familiar with the program see Perfect Citizen as an intrusion by the
NSA into domestic affairs. One internal Raytheon email, the text of which was seen by The
Wall Street Journal [said,] "Perfect Citizen is Big Brother." Raytheon declined to comment on
this email. The information gathered by Perfect Citizen could also have applications beyond the
critical infrastructure sector, officials said, serving as a data bank that would also help companies
and agencies who call upon NSA for help with investigations of cyber attacks, as Google did when
it sustained a major attack late last year.
Note: For key reports of government and corporate surveillance from reliable sources, click here.
Secret document affirms U.S.-Israel nuclear partnership

2010-07-07, Ha'aretz (One of Israel's leading newspapers)
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/report-secret-document-affirms-...
Israel's Army Radio reported on [July 7] that the United States has sent Israel a secret document
committing to nuclear cooperation between the two countries. The U.S. has reportedly pledged
to sell Israel materials used to produce electricity, as well as nuclear technology and other
supplies, despite the fact that Israel is not a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty. Other countries have refused to cooperate with Israel on nuclear matters because it has
not signed the NPT, and there has been increasing international pressure for Israel to be more
transparent about its nuclear arsenal. Army Radio's diplomatic correspondent said the reported
offer could put Israel on a par with India, another NPT holdout which is openly nuclear-armed but
in 2008 secured a U.S.-led deal granting it civilian nuclear imports. Israel neither confirms nor
denies having nuclear weapons under an "ambiguity" strategy billed as warding off foes while
avoiding public provocations that can spark regional arms races. The official reticence, and its
toleration in Washington, has long aggrieved many Arabs and Iranians - especially given U.S.-led
pressure on Tehran to rein in its nuclear program.
Note: For many key reports on the government secrecy from reliable sources, click here.
Cases against soldiers have Israel wondering

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/07/world/la-fg-gaza-war-crimes-20100708
A short but growing list of criminal indictments and disciplinary actions stemming from Israel's
offensive in the Gaza Strip 18 months ago [supports] the conclusion last year by [a] United
Nations-appointed panel that Israel committed war crimes, targeted civilians and used
disproportionate force. The facts and findings were dismissed by the government as deeply
flawed, and [UN] panel chairman Richard Goldstone, a Jewish jurist from South Africa, was reviled
in Israel as a traitor and even anti-Semitic. But the military's own investigations during the last six
months have now verified some of the panel's findings. In seven cases disclosed so far, the
military found that a sniper "deliberately targeted" civilians; soldiers used Palestinians, including a
9-year-old boy, as human shields; and commanders authorized at least three separate bomb
attacks that killed and injured several dozen civilians who were taking refuge in a family home, a
U.N. compound and a mosque. "The military is finding out that some of what Goldstone said
is true, even though no one wants to admit it," said Gershon Baskin, a political consultant and
former Labor Party advisor. "This should indicate that there needs to be deeper
investigation."
Note: For many key reports on the horrific realities of the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia,
click here.
The hijacking of the truth: Film evidence 'destroyed'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-hijacking-of-the-trut...
Six days after the bloody assault that left nine foreign protesters, mainly Turks, dead, nobody can
recount with any conviction precisely what happened that night. The convoy of ships, whose
passengers included writers, politicians and journalists, had been expected for weeks, with
organisers loudly broadcasting their plans to run Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip and draw
international attention to the situation there. From the beginning, it was clear that Israeli forces
were concentrating in their largest numbers on the Marmara, a ship carrying some 550 peace
activists. The remaining five boats were much smaller and easily commandeered. After the
Marmara was subdued, the passengers silenced, and their recording equipment confiscated,
Israel disseminated a carefully choreographed account of the events that night that would
dominate the airwaves for the first 48 hours. Only as eyewitnesses, traumatised by their
experiences, started to return to their home countries, were serious questions raised about
the veracity of the Israeli version of events. Israeli commandos initiated the attack on the
Marmara with stun grenades, paintballs and rubber-cased steel bullets. Next, the helicopters
started their approach, hovering overhead as they tried to disgorge commandos.
Note: As revealed last week, Israeli commandos shot and killed the aid activists at close range,
execution-style. Note that these key reports are appearing in the UK but not the US mainstream
press.
Doctors Without Morals

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/opinion/01xenakis.html
After five years of investigation, the Justice Department has released its findings regarding the
government lawyers who authorized waterboarding and other forms of torture during the
interrogation of suspected terrorists at Guantnamo Bay and elsewhere. In contrast, the
government doctors and psychologists who participated in and authorized the torture of
detainees have escaped discipline, accountability or even internal investigation. It is hardly
news that medical staff at the C.I.A. and the Pentagon played a critical role in developing
and carrying out torture procedures. Psychologists and at least one doctor designed or
recommended coercive interrogation methods including sleep deprivation, stress positions,
isolation and waterboarding. The militarys Behavioral Science Consultation Teams evaluated
detainees, consulted their medical records to ascertain vulnerabilities and advised interrogators
when to push harder for intelligence information. Psychologists designed a program for new
arrivals at Guantnamo that kept them in isolation to enhance and exploit their disorientation
and disorganization.
Note: To learn about top doctors and psychiatrists who abused their positions to forward secret
government mind control programs, click here.
Blackwater Guards Tied to Secret C.I.A. Raids

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/us/politics/11blackwater.html
Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the C.I.A.s most
sensitive activities clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being
insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, according to former company
employees and intelligence officials. The raids against suspects occurred on an almost nightly
basis during the height of the Iraqi insurgency from 2004 to 2006, with Blackwater personnel
playing central roles in what company insiders called snatch and grab operations. Several former
Blackwater guards said that their involvement in the operations became so routine that the lines
supposedly dividing the Central Intelligence Agency, the military and Blackwater became blurred.
Instead of simply providing security for C.I.A. officers, they say, Blackwater personnel at times
became partners in missions to capture or kill militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, a practice that
raises questions about the use of guns for hire on the battlefield. The secret missions illuminate
a far deeper relationship between the spy agency and the private security company than
government officials had acknowledged. Blackwaters ties to the C.I.A. have emerged in recent
months, beginning with disclosures in The New York Times that the agency had hired the company
as part of a program to assassinate leaders of Al Qaeda and to assist in the C.I.A.s Predator
drone program in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Note: After this report was published, the CIA announced it had terminated contracts with
Blackwater. The reality is that many of Blackwater's services are provided under classified
contracts, with both the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command, so the denial of
"contracts" with Blackwater may be deceptive.
A list for those who complain

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/29/IN941APQS7.DTL
In spring 2007, as one of many American air travelers who were inconvenienced when our names
popped up on a federal "watch list," I never could get straight answers from my government. Was
this a mistake, or was I being flagged for some reason? How many Americans were on that watch
list? What were the criteria for getting on it? I filed my appeal with the Department of Homeland
Security's Travel Redress Inquiry Program (TRIP). The Department of Homeland Security received
75,315 requests for redress under the TRIP program as of Oct. 31. Of those requests, 49,826
have been adjudicated, 7,217 are under review, and 18,272 are awaiting supporting
documentation, according to the DHS. "Absolutely, the system didn't work as well as it should
have," said Suzanne Trevino, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration.
Once an airline receives a passenger's control number, along with full name, date of birth and
gender, that information is transmitted to the government for clearance. Fewer than 2,500 known
and suspected terrorists are actually on the "no fly" list, according to Trevino. And less than 10
percent of them are Americans. [Yet] the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center has acknowledged
that its watch list has more than 1 million entries of names and aliases representing about
400,000 people [with] with an average of 1,600 people who presented a "reasonable
suspicion" being added every day.
Note: For many revealing reports from major media sources on the worsening threats to civil
Report: Blackwater Sent $1M Bribe to Iraq

[Four] former top executives at Blackwater Worldwide say the U.S. security contractor sent
about $1 million to its Iraq office with the intention of paying off officials in the country who
were angry about the fatal shootings of 17 civilians by Blackwater employees. Iraqis had
long complained about ground operations by the North Carolina-based company, now known as
Xe Corp. Then the shooting by Blackwater guards in Baghdad's Nisoor Square in September 2007
left 17 civilians dead, further strained relations between Baghdad and Washington and led U.S.
prosecutors to bring charges against the Blackwater contractors involved. The State Department
has since turned to DynCorp and another private security firm, Triple Canopy, to handle diplomatic
protective services in the country. But Xe continues to provide security for diplomats in other
nations, most notably in Afghanistan. The former executives told the [New York Times] that the
payments were approved by the company's then-president, Gary Jackson. They did not know if he
came up with the idea. Any payments would have been illegal under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act, which bans bribes to foreign officials. Two of the former executives said they were
directly involved in discussions about paying Iraqi officials, and the other two said they were told
about the discussions by others at Blackwater.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on corporate corruption, click here.
Italy Convicts 23 Americans for C.I.A. Renditions

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/world/europe/05italy.html
In a landmark ruling, an Italian judge ... convicted a base chief for the Central Intelligence Agency
and 22 other Americans, almost all C.I.A. operatives, of kidnapping a Muslim cleric from the streets
of Milan in 2003. The case was a huge symbolic victory for Italian prosecutors, who drew the
first convictions involving the American practice of rendition, in which terrorism suspects
are captured in one country and taken for questioning in another, often one more open to
[torture]. The fact that Italy would actually convict intelligence agents of an allied country was
seen as a bold move that could set a precedent in other cases. Judge Oscar Magi handed an
eight-year sentence to Robert Seldon Lady, a former C.I.A. base chief in Milan, and five-year
sentences to the 22 other Americans, including an Air Force colonel and 21 C.I.A. operatives.
Three of the other high-ranking Americans were given diplomatic immunity, including Jeffrey
Castelli, a former C.I.A. station chief in Rome. Citing state secrecy, the judge did not convict five
high-ranking Italians charged in the abduction, including a former head of Italian military
intelligence, Nicol Pollari. All the Americans were tried in absentia and are considered fugitives.
Armando Spataro, the counterterrorism prosecutor who brought the case, said he was considering
asking the Italian government for an international arrest warrant for the fugitive Americans. Tom
Parker, Amnesty Internationals United States point man for terrorism issues, called on the Obama
administration to repudiate the unlawful practice of extraordinary rendition.
Note: The US government has refused to extradite to Italy the 23 Americans convicted in absentia
of kidnapping. Yet the US is pressing for the extradition of 76-year-old Roman Polanski for fleeing
the US after serious judicial malfeasance. For an analysis of these contradictions by US authorities
over extradition, click here.
Court to reconsider CIA torture flight ruling

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/28/BAMQ1AB9KF.DTL
A federal appeals court granted the Obama administration's request ... to rehear a case over a Bay
Area company's alleged participation in CIA torture flights, setting the stage for a critical test of
government claims of secrecy and national security. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San
Francisco had reinstated a suit in April by five men who accused the company, Jeppesen Dataplan
of San Jose, of taking part in the CIA's extraordinary rendition program that led to their
imprisonment and torture. The 3-0 ruling rejected arguments by the Bush and Obama
administrations that the case concerned secrets too sensitive to disclose in court. The full appeals
court set aside that ruling. President Obama criticized the practice [of extraordinary rendition] but
refused to disavow it, promising only that no prisoners would be tortured. Ben Wizner, an ACLU
attorney, said ... that he was "disappointed that the Obama administration continues to stand in the
way of torture victims having their day in court. This case is not about secrecy. It's about immunity
from accountability," Wizner said. In the April ruling reinstating the lawsuit, the three-judge appeals
court panel said the government and Jeppesen could take steps to protect national secrets as the
case proceeded. The panel said the administration's argument, if accepted, would "cordon
off all secret government actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the CIA and its
contractors from the demands and limits of the law."
Note: For many reports from major media sources of growing government threats to civil liberties,
click here.
Pittsburgh police used acoustic warfare during G-20 protests, drawing

legal groups' ire
Police ordered protesters to disperse at the Group of 20 summit last week with a device that can
beam earsplitting alarm tones and verbal instructions that the manufacturer likens to a "spotlight of
sound," but that legal groups called potentially dangerous. The device, called a Long Range
Acoustic Device, concentrates voice commands and a car alarm-like sound in a 30- or 60-degree
cone that can be heard nearly two miles away. The volume measures 140-150 decibels three feet
away louder than a jet engine. During the Pittsburgh protests, police used the device to
order demonstrators to disperse and to play a high-pitched "deterrent tone" designed to
drive people away. It was the first time the device was used in a riot-control situation on
U.S. soil. Those who heard it said ... the "deterrent tone" as unbearable. Joel Kupferman, who
was at Thursday's march as a legal observer for the National Lawyer's Guild, said he was
overwhelmed by the tone and called it "overkill." "When people were moving and they still
continued to use it, it was an excessive use of weaponry," Kupferman said. Witold "Vic" Walczak,
legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union in Pennsylvania, said the device is a military
weapon capable of producing permanent hearing loss, something he called "an invitation to an
excessive-force lawsuit." Catherine Palmer, director of audiology at the University of Pittsburgh
Medical Center, said 140 decibels can cause immediate hearing loss. ["Public safety"] officials said
the complaints prove the device worked as designed.
Note: To watch a disturbing 10-minute clip of the use of this weapon at the G-20 meeting, click
here. For many revealing reports from major media sources on increasing threats to civil liberties,
click here.
Rush for Clues Before Charges in Terror Case

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/nyregion/01terror.html
Federal prosecutors have said they possess a trove of evidence in their terrorism case against
Najibullah Zazi, a set of damning accusations laid out in a powerful narrative. But interviews with
people briefed on the case and an examination of court papers filed by prosecutors show
that a great deal of the evidence presented against Mr. Zazi was not the result of a lengthy
investigation. Instead, much of it was collected on the fly in the last two weeks, with hundreds of
F.B.I. agents, federal prosecutors and detectives rushing to fashion a mosaic of details into a case
that could be brought to court. The review of the governments presentation, which is largely
contained in a preliminary court document filed last week, suggests that many important facts
asserted by prosecutors were discovered after Mr. Zazi was told by a Queens imam on Sept. 10
that investigators were looking for him. Moreover, several crucial discoveries were made after Mr.
Zazi, a 24-year-old airport shuttle bus driver, had returned on Sept. 12 to Colorado, with his
mission, if he had one, aborted. Some store and hotel employees in the Denver area said F.B.I.
agents did not ask about Mr. Zazis purchases of beauty salon products that contained the
raw materials to make explosives or his stay in a hotel suite to mix them until Sept. 17, five
days after his return to Colorado. The lawyer who appeared beside him in Brooklyn, J. Michael
Dowling, said after the hearing that prosecutors could not secure a conviction of his client on the
conspiracy charge based solely on the evidence presented in the detention memorandum,
because it contained no proof that he conspired with anyone to commit a crime.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the highly dubious "evidence" presented by federal
authorities in their prosecutions of domestic "terror" cases, click here. For a powerful BBC
documentary which shows how cases like these are used by politicians to manipulate public
opinion to their advantage, click here.
An Incomplete State Secrets Fix

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/opinion/29tue1.html
One of the ways that the Bush administration tried to avoid accountability for its serious
misconduct in the name of fighting terrorism was the misuse of an evidentiary rule called the state
secrets privilege. The Obama administration has essentially embraced the Bush approach in
existing cases, trying to toss out important lawsuits alleging kidnapping, torture and unlawful
wiretapping without any evidence being presented. The other day, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr.
issued new guidelines for invoking the state secrets privilege in the future. They were a positive
step forward, on paper, but did not go nearly far enough. Mr. Holders much-anticipated reform
plan does not include any shift in the Obama administrations demand for blanket secrecy
in pending cases. Nor does it include support for legislation that would mandate thorough
court review of state secrets claims made by the executive branch. It remains to be seen
whether, and to what extent, the new regimen will succeed in avoiding flimsy claims of secrecy.
Much depends on how the rules are interpreted and enforced, and the Justice Departments
willingness to stand up to insistent intelligence agency demands. Since assuming office, Mr.
Holder has reviewed the administrations position in ongoing cases and has continued broad
secrecy claims of the sort that President Obama criticized when he was running for president.
Senator Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, noted that without a clear, permanent mandate for
independent court review of the administrations judgment calls, Mr. Holders policy still amounts
to an approach of just trust us.
Note: For more on the Obama administration's proposed rules, click here.
American embassy contractors in Kabul accused of ritual abuse

2009-09-02, Times of London (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6817921.ece
Security contractors at the giant US Embassy in Kabul were accused yesterday of fostering a
Lord of the Flies environment built on abuse and humiliating initiation rituals. The allegations,
made by the independent Project On Government Oversight, are contained in a report submitted
to Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State. The report is based on e-mails, some of which
describe the alleged abuse of Afghan nationals. Among those implicated are Britons employed by
ArmorGroup North America, the contractor providing security at the embassy, where nearly 1,000
diplomats and support staff work. The report quotes an e-mail from a guard currently working
for the contractor, describing scenes of guards and supervisors peeing on people, eating
potato chips out of [buttock] cracks and drinking vodka shots out of [buttock] cracks. In
another incident, a male Afghan caterer complained last month of being grabbed by a supervisor
and told: You are very good for f***ing. The supervisor, who was in only his underwear, also
brandished bottles of alcohol. The allegations at the Kabul embassy come in the wake of scandals
surrounding Blackwater, another security contractor, in Afghanistan and Iraq, where it has been
accused of fraud, abuse and involvement in civilian deaths.
Note: For lots more on the illegal activities of military contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq, click
here.
Steroids, drink and paranoia: the murky world of the private security
contractor
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/steroids-drink-and-parano...
Paranoid, competitive and fuelled by guns, alcohol and steroids. That is how one senior contractor
in Baghdad describes the private security industry operating in the city's Green Zone. It was the
world to which Danny Fitzsimons, a 29-year-old former soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress
disorder and paranoia, and with an extensive criminal past, returned three weeks ago. Despite
rules against alcohol, his ArmorGroup colleagues welcomed him with a drinking session. A fight
broke out and he shot and killed two of them a Briton, Paul McGuigan, and an Australian, Darren
Hoare then wounded an Iraqi, Arkhan Mahdi. He faces a premeditated murder charge and
execution if found guilty. Mr Fitzsimons's family is determined to save him and say he was
suffering from severe psychiatric problems after a brutal career in the Army and in the security
industry. But those on the ground hold little hope. They are already resigned to Mr Fitzsimons's
execution and say that he is a tiny pawn in a huge, expensive and vicious game of chess. They
say the private security business in Iraq is in a vice-like crush. The gold rush that began with the
conflict in 2003 is drying up. Contracts are not as lucrative, the trend is towards employing
Iraqis instead of Westerners and, crucially, the Iraqi authorities ... are clamping down. "We
are loathed out here. We are the single most hated entity in Iraq," said Ethan Madison, a
security contractor who has worked in Baghdad for five years.
Note: For lots more on the illegal activities of US military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, click
here.
A Window Into C.I.A.'s Embrace of Secret Jails

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/world/13foggo.html
In March 2003, two C.I.A. officials surprised Kyle D. Foggo, then the chief of the agency's main
European supply base, with an unusual request. They wanted his help building secret prisons to
hold some of the world's most threatening terrorists. Mr. Foggo, nicknamed Dusty, ... agreed to the
assignment. With that, Mr. Foggo went on to oversee construction of three detention centers, each
built to house about a half-dozen detainees. The existence of the network of prisons to detain and
interrogate [captives] has long been known, but details about them have been a closely guarded
secret. In recent interviews, though, several former intelligence officials have provided a fuller
account. Mr. Foggo acknowledged a role, which has never been previously reported. He pleaded
guilty last year to a fraud charge involving a contractor that equipped the C.I.A. jails and provided
other supplies to the agency, and he is now serving a three-year sentence in a Kentucky prison.
Eventually, the agency's network would encompass at least eight detention centers, including one
in the Middle East, one each in Iraq and Afghanistan and a maximum-security long-term site at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The C.I.A. has never officially disclosed the exact number of prisoners it
once held, but top officials have put the figure at fewer than 100. Mr. Foggo's success in Frankfurt,
including his work on the prisons, won him a promotion back in Washington. In November 2004,
he was named the C.I.A.'s executive director, in effect its day-to-day administrative chief. "It
was like taking a senior NCO and telling him he now runs the regiment," said A. B.
Krongard, the C.I.A.'s executive director from 2001 to 2004. "It popped people's eyes."
Note: Kyle "Dusty" Foggo's case is highly unusual. Very few high-level CIA officers have ever been
imprisoned for corruption. His predecessor as Executive Director of the CIA, quoted in the article
above, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, who held the office on 9/11, had been the chief executive of a
branch of the investment company which placed the still unexplained "put options" on American
and United Airlines stocks the week before the attacks, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars
of profits to "unknown" parties.
U.S. battling CIA rendition case in 3 courts

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/09/BAHQ195SJR.DTL
The Obama administration is fighting on multiple fronts - in courts in San Francisco,
Washington and London - to keep an official veil of secrecy over the treatment of a former
prisoner who says he was tortured at Guantanamo Bay. The administration has asked a
federal appeals court in San Francisco to reconsider its ruling allowing Binyam Mohamed and four
other former or current prisoners to sue a Bay Area company for allegedly flying them to overseas
torture chambers for the CIA. Most recently, a British government lawyer told her nation's High
Court last month that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had threatened to limit U.S.
intelligence-sharing with Great Britain if the court disclosed details of Mohamed's treatment in
Guantanamo. The British court declared in August 2008 that there was evidence Mohamed had
been tortured, but deleted the details from its public version of the ruling at the Bush
administration's insistence. Mohamed, 30, an Ethiopian refugee and British resident, ... and four
other men have sued Jeppesen Dataplan, a San Jose subsidiary of the Boeing Co., for its alleged
role in arranging their flights for the CIA. A Council of Europe report in 2007 described Jeppesen
as the CIA's aviation services provider. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco
reinstated the suit in April, rejecting arguments originally made by the Bush administration that the
case posed grave risks to national security. Obama administration lawyers endorsed those
arguments at a hearing in February and have asked the court for a rehearing. Mohamed's lawyers,
Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour of the British human-rights group Reprieve, were
threatened with jail after drafting a letter to Obama in February urging him to release the evidence
of their client's treatment in U.S. custody or to authorize Britain to do so.
Note: For many illuminating reports from major media sources on government secrecy, click here.
Torture, the painful truth

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ehrenreich15-2009jun15,0,512919.story
Perhaps we protest too much. Torture, after all, is a venerable American tradition. If not quite as
homespun as apple pie or lynching, it is at least as old as our imperial aspirations. We were
waterboarding captives in one of our earliest wars of occupation, the Philippine-American War,
which cost as many as 1 million civilian lives. In 1902, Teddy Roosevelt himself wrote with laconic
praise of "the old Filipino method." Other techniques, crude or sophisticated, have filled the war
bag since. CIA interrogation manuals from the 1960s, which lay out the basic stress-position and
sleep- and sensory-deprivation techniques later applied at Bagram and Guantanamo, have been
public since 1997. Despite our protestations, we have little to be surprised about. Now, when
President Obama vows that "the United States does not torture" and spars with the former vice
president over details, he crosses his fingers behind his back and saves himself a loophole. Via
"extraordinary rendition" -- a Clinton administration innovation -- our government is still
free to outsource torture and claim it doesn't know. The Obama administration has been
relying increasingly on foreign intelligence services to detain and interrogate our suspects
for us. Despite hundreds of front-page stories, we pretend we didn't know, that it was all somehow
kept secret from us. This blindness serves a function. By declaring torture anomalous, by pushing
it once again to the margins of legality, we can preserve a vision of U.S. military power -- and of
American empire -- that is essentially benevolent. [But] maintaining military and economic
hegemony over the planet remains an inherently bloody affair. Empire is a synonym for
subjugation, and hence for violence on a massive scale.
Note: For a retired Marine Corps general's understanding of the real reasons behind both torture
and mass slaughter of civilian populations by the US military, click here.
Informer's Role in Bombing Plot

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/nyregion/23informant.html
Everyone called the stranger with all the money "Maqsood." He would sit in his Mercedes, waiting
in the parking lot of the mosque in Newburgh, N.Y., until the Friday prayer was over. Then,
according to members of the mosque, the Masjid al-Ikhlas, he approached the young men. The
man, a Pakistani, occasionally approached the assistant imam of the mosque. In time, many of the
mosque's older members had made the man for a government informant, according to mosque
leaders. They said that he seemed to focus most of his attention on younger black members and
visitors. "It's easy to influence someone with the dollar," said Mr. Muhammed, a longtime member
of the mosque. "Especially these guys coming out of prison." The members of the mosque now
believe that Maqsood was the government informant at the center of the case involving four men
from Newburgh arrested and charged this week with having plotted to explode bombs at Jewish
centers in New York City. The government case revolves significantly around the work of an
informant who facilitated the men's desire to mount a terrorist attack. The role of
informants has been a constant in the terror cases made by federal and local authorities
since 9/11. And just as constant have been the attempts by lawyers for those charged to portray
their clients as dupes, people who would not have committed to do harm without the provocation of
the informants. The informant was not identified in court papers unsealed on Wednesday in
Manhattan. But according to a person briefed on the case, the informant is Shahed Hussain, the
central prosecution witness in a 2004 federal sting focusing on a pizzeria owner and an imam at an
Albany mosque.
Justice Dept. Finds Flaws in F.B.I. Terror List

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/us/07terror.html
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has incorrectly kept nearly 24,000 people on a terrorist watch
list on the basis of outdated or sometimes irrelevant information. By the beginning of 2009, the
report said, this consolidated government watch list comprised about 400,000 people, recorded as
1.1 million names and aliases, an exponential growth from the days before the attacks of Sept. 11,
2001. The new report, by the office of the Justice Departments inspector general, provides the
most authoritative statistical account to date of the problems connected with the list. An earlier
report by the inspector general, released in March 2008, looked mainly at flaws in the system,
without an emphasis on the number of people caught up in it. The list has long been a target of
public criticism, particularly after well-publicized errors in which politicians including Senator
Edward M. Kennedy and Representative John Lewis showed up on it. People with names similar
to actual terrorists have complained that it can take months to be removed from the list, and civil
liberties advocates charge that antiwar protesters, Muslim activists and others have been listed for
political reasons. One of the biggest problems identified in the report was the use of outdated
information, or material unconnected to terrorism, to keep people on the bureaus own terror watch
list, which is incorporated in the consolidated list. The report, examining nearly 69,000 referrals
to the F.B.I. list that were either brought or processed by the bureau, found that 35 percent
of those people, both Americans and foreigners, remained on the list despite inadequate
justification.
Note: For many detailed reports from reliable sources indicating the "war on terror" isn't really what
it's claimed to be, click here.
Hints That Detainees May Be Held on U.S. Soil

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/us/politics/01gitmo.html
As many as 100 detainees at the prison at Guantnamo Bay, Cuba, could end up held without trial
on American soil, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates suggested Thursday, a situation that he
acknowledged would create widespread if not unanimous opposition in Congress. The estimate
was the most specific yet from the Obama administration about how many of the 241 prisoners at
Guantnamo could not be safely released, sent to other countries or appropriately tried in
American courts. Mr. Gates said discussions had started this week with the Justice Department
about determining how many of the Guantnamo detainees could not be sent to other countries or
tried in courts. He did not say which detainees might be in that group, but independent experts
have said it probably would include terrorism suspects whom the military has not yet brought
charges against, among them detainees from Yemen and the Qaeda figure Abu Zubaydah, who
was subjected to brutal interrogation in secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency. He
did not say ... under what law they would be held. The Obama administration is debating how
to establish a legal basis for incarcerating detainees deemed too dangerous to be released
but not appropriate to be tried because of potential problems posed by their harsh
interrogations, the evidence against them or other issues. Mr. Gates said he had asked for
$50 million in supplemental financing in case a facility needed to be built quickly for the detainees.
Note: Ironically, it would seem from these plans revealed by Gates that closing the prison in
Guantanamo is going to be used as the pretext to establish indefinite detention, without the right of
habeas corpus, on American soil. But the reason for the widespread demand to close the prison is
precisely to end such detentions! Do they think no one will notice? For many revealing reports from
reliable sources on government attempts to erode civil liberties, click here.
Waterboarding, Interrogations: The CIA's $1,000 a Day Specialists

2009-04-30, ABC News
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=7471217
According to current and former government officials, the CIA's secret waterboarding program was
designed and assured to be safe by two well-paid psychologists now working out of an unmarked
office building in Spokane, Washington. Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell, former military officers,
together founded Mitchell Jessen and Associates. Both men declined to speak to ABC News citing
non-disclosure agreements with the CIA. But sources say Jessen and Mitchell together designed
and implemented the CIA's interrogation program. "It's clear that these psychologists had an
important role in developing what became the CIA's torture program," said Jameel Jaffer, an
attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. Former U.S. officials say the two men were
essentially the architects of the CIA's 10-step interrogation plan that culminated in waterboarding.
Associates say the two made good money doing it, boasting of being paid a $1,000 a day by
the CIA to oversee the use of the techniques on top al Qaeda suspects at CIA secret sites.
Both Mitchell and Jessen were previously involved in the U.S. military program to train pilots how
to survive behind enemy lines and resist brutal tactics if captured. But it turns out neither Mitchell
nor Jessen had any experience in conducting actual interrogations before the CIA hired them. The
new documents show the CIA later came to learn that the two psychologists' waterboarding
"expertise" was probably "misrepresented" and thus, there was no reason to believe it was
"medically safe" or effective. The waterboarding used on al Qaeda detainees was far more intense
than the brief sessions used on U.S. military personnel in the training classes.
Note: For lots more on CIA torture and other recent government attacks on civil liberties, click
here.
Pentagon to Release Detainee Photos

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/25/us/politics/24web-prison.html?partner=rss&e...
The Pentagon has agreed to release dozens of previously undisclosed photographs depicting the
abuse by American military personnel of captives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The pictures, showing
incidents at a half-dozen prisons in addition to the notorious Abu Ghraib installation in Iraq, will be
made available by May 28, the Defense Department and the American Civil Liberties Union said.
These photographs provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel was not
aberrational but widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib, said Amrit Singh, a
staff attorney with the A.C.L.U., which sued for release of the pictures under the Freedom of
Information Act. There were early reports that at least some of the new pictures show detainees
being intimidated by American soldiers, sometimes at gunpoint, but Ms. Singh said it is not yet
clear what kinds of scenes were captured, and by whose cameras. Disclosure of the latest
pictures is critical for helping the public understand the scope and scale of prisoner abuse
as well as for holding senior officials accountable for authorizing or permitting such
abuse, said Ms. Singh, who argued the case before the United States Court of Appeals for the
Second Circuit, in Manhattan. The Pentagons decision to release the pictures came after the
A.C.L.U. prevailed at the Federal District Court level and before a panel of the Second Circuit. The
Pentagon had fought the release of the photographs, connected with investigations
between 2003 and 2006, on the grounds that the release could endanger American military
personnel overseas and that the privacy of detainees would be violated.
Note: For many revealing reports on the horrific realities of the US wars on Iraq and Afghanistan,
click here.
Former Gitmo guard recalls abuse, climate of fear

Army Pvt. Brandon Neely was scared when he took Guantanamo's first shackled detainees
off a bus. Told to expect vicious terrorists, he grabbed a trembling, elderly detainee and
ground his face into the cement -- the first of a range of humiliations he says he
participated in and witnessed as the prison was opening for business. Neely has now come
forward in this final year of the detention center's existence, saying he wants to publicly air his
feelings of guilt and shame about how some soldiers behaved as the military scrambled to handle
the first alleged al-Qaida and Taliban members arriving at the isolated U.S. Navy base. His
account, one of the first by a former guard describing abuses at Guantanamo, describes a chaotic
time when soldiers lacked clear rules for dealing with detainees who were denied many basic
comforts. He says the circumstances changed quickly once monitors from the International
Committee of the Red Cross arrived. As Neely put it in an interview with The Associated Press this
week, "The stuff I did and the stuff I saw was just wrong." Neely, a ... Texan who served for a year
in Iraq after his six months at Guantanamo, received an honorable discharge last year ... and now
works as a law enforcement officer in the Houston area. He is also president of the local chapter of
Iraq Veterans Against the War. An urge to tell his story led him to the University of California at
Davis' Guantanamo Testimonials Project, an effort to document accounts of prisoner abuse.
Note: For lots more on the realities of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, click here.
Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-rendition1-2009feb...
The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And
Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern
corner of Cuba. But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally
controversial counter-terrorism tool. Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still
has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of
prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States. Current and former U.S.
intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded
role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism -- aside from Predator
missile strikes -- for taking suspected terrorists off the street. The rendition program became
a source of embarrassment for the CIA, and a target of international scorn, as details emerged in
recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned
over to countries where they were tortured. The European Parliament condemned renditions as
"an illegal instrument used by the United States." Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the
CIA as well as a Boeing Co. subsidiary accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition
flights. But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was
one component of the Bush administration's war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard. The
decision underscores the fact that the [War on Terror] is far from over.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities of the War on Terror, click here.
I'm Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq

I should have felt triumphant when I returned from Iraq in August 2006. Instead, I was worried and
exhausted. My mind was consumed with the unfinished business of our mission: fixing the deeply
flawed, ineffective and un-American way the U.S. military conducts interrogations in Iraq. I'm still
alarmed about that today. I'm not some ivory-tower type; I served for 14 years in the U.S. Air
Force, began my career as a Special Operations pilot flying helicopters, saw combat in Bosnia and
Kosovo, became an Air Force counterintelligence agent, then volunteered to go to Iraq to work as
a senior interrogator. What I saw in Iraq still rattles me -- both because it betrays our traditions and
because it just doesn't work. What I soon discovered about our methods astonished me. The Army
was still conducting interrogations according to the Guantanamo Bay model: Interrogators were
nominally using the methods outlined in the U.S. Army Field Manual, the interrogators' bible, but
they were pushing in every way possible to bend the rules -- and often break them.These
interrogations were based on fear and control; they often resulted in torture and abuse. I
refused to participate in such practices, and a month later, I extended that prohibition to the
team of interrogators I was assigned to lead. I personally conducted more than 300
interrogations, and I supervised more than 1,000. The methods my team used are not classified ...
but the way we used them was, I like to think, unique. We got to know our enemies, we learned to
negotiate with them, and we adapted criminal investigative techniques to our work.
Note: For revealing reports from reliable and verifiable sources on the realities of the Iraq and
Afghan wars, click here.
Documents: Ivins Bragged He Knew Anthrax Killer

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/24/ap/cabstatepent/main4476351.shtml
Bruce Ivins, the Army scientist accused of masterminding the 2001 anthrax attacks, e-mailed
himself last year saying he knew who the killer was, according to court documents unsealed
Wednesday. "Yes! Yes! Yes!!!!!!! I finally know who mailed the anthrax letters in the fall of 2001. I've
pieced it together!" Ivins wrote in the e-mail dated Sept. 7, 2007, according to an FBI affidavit. "I'm
not looking forward to everybody getting dragged through the mud, but at least it will all be
over," Ivins allegedly wrote. "Finally! I should have it TOTALLY nailed down within the
month. I should have been a private eye!!!!" The e-mail did not say who Ivins thought was the
anthrax killer. Ivins committed suicide in July as prosecutors prepared to charge him in the
mailings that killed five people and sickened 17 others. The e-mail was signed "bruce" and sent
from an America Online address by the name of "KingBadger7." Authorities said it was one of at
least six e-mail addresses registered to Ivins. The FBI affidavit was included in the final batch of
court documents to be released by the government that shows how prosecutors built their case
against Ivins. Ivins' lawyer, Paul Kemp, has maintained that Ivins was innocent and has predicted
the scientist would have been cleared if the case had gone to trial. It was not unusual for Ivins to email himself, according to the FBI document. "In addition, Ivins has sent at least one other e-mail
to himself that details his opinion of who may have been the anthrax mailer," the affidavit states.
Note: Isn't it strange that the man the FBI accused of being the anthrax killer would send himself
an e-mail saying he knew who the killer was? For many strange deaths of microbiologists that
occurred shortly after the anthrax scare, click here.
Lockerbie evidence not disclosed

2008-08-28, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/south_of_scotland/7573244.stm
Scottish police had information that might have changed the outcome of the Lockerbie
bombing trial, a BBC TV programme has learned. The information could have affected the
credibility of key evidence, but was not passed to the defence team. Libyan national
Abdelbaset ali Mohmed al-Megrahi is serving life for killing 270 people in the 1988 bombing. A
prosecution witness had seen a picture linking al-Megrahi to the bombing before he identified him.
Al-Megrahi, 56, who maintains he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice, has been granted leave
to appeal against his conviction for a second time. Tony Gauci, who picked al-Megrahi out in a lineup, had looked at a magazine photograph of him just four days before he made the identification.
BBC TV programme The Conspiracy Files: Lockerbie has now seen documentary evidence that
Scottish police knew this was the case. That information should have been passed to the defence,
but the disclosure did not take place. There have always been doubts expressed about who was
behind the bombing and what was their motivation. In June last year the Scottish Criminal Cases
Review Commission (SCCRC), which has been investigating the case, concluded that al-Megrahi
could have suffered a miscarriage of justice and recommended that he should be granted a
second appeal.
Note: For a revealing documentary showing a major cover-up involving the Lockerbie bombing,
click here.
Gov't says FBI agents can't testify about 9/11

2008-06-19, International Herald Tribune/Associated Press
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/06/19/america/Sept-11-Lawsuits.php
Government lawyers say the ongoing investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks could be compromised
if the airline industry is allowed to seek more information from the FBI to defend itself against
lawsuits brought by terrorism victims. The government urged a judge to block aviation
companies from interviewing five FBI employees who the companies say will help them
prove the government withheld key information before the 2001 attacks. The lawyers said it
would be impossible to interview the employees without disclosing classified or privileged material
that could "cause serious damage to national security and interfere with pending law enforcement
proceedings." The largest investigation in FBI history has resulted in 167,000 interviews and more
than 155,000 pieces of evidence and involved the pursuit of 500,000 investigative leads, the
lawyers wrote. The airlines and aviation companies are defending themselves against lawsuits
seeking billions of dollars in damages for injuries, fatalities, property damage and business losses
related to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The companies filed separate lawsuits against the CIA and
the FBI last August to force terrorism investigators to tell whether the aviation industry was to
blame for the Sept. 11 attacks. Meanwhile, lawyers for the victims of the attacks ... recounted in
court papers numerous hijackings and attacks aboard planes before Sept. 11 that they said should
have put the airline industry on notice that a disastrous attack could occur.
Note: For a two-page overview of many unanswered questions about what really happened on
9/11, click here.
Bush Aware of Advisers' Interrogation Talks

2008-04-11, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/Story?id=4635175
President Bush says he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific
details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence
Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News. "Well, we started to connect the dots
in order to protect the American people," Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha
Raddatz. "And yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved." As
first reported by ABC News, the most senior Bush administration officials repeatedly discussed
and approved specific details of exactly how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated
by the CIA. The president had earlier confirmed the existence of the interrogation program run by
the CIA in a speech in 2006. But before [ABC's original] report, the extraordinary level of
involvement by the most senior advisers in repeatedly approving specific interrogation plans -down to the number of times the CIA could use a certain tactic on a specific al Qaeda prisoner -had never been disclosed. Critics at home and abroad have harshly criticized the interrogation
program, which pushed the limits of international law and, they say, condoned torture. In the
interview with ABC News, Bush defended the waterboarding technique used against KSM.
"We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it," Bush said. "And no, I didn't have any
problem at all trying to find out what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed knew." The president said, "I
think it's very important for the American people to understand who Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
was. He was the person who ordered the suicide attack -- I mean, the 9/11 attacks."
Note: For a transcript of the interview with President Bush on the Washington Post website, click
here. For a powerful two-page summary of many unanswered questions about who really ordered
the 9/11 attacks, click here.
Cheney, Rice Approved Use of Waterboarding, Other Tactics

2008-04-11, FOX News/Associated Press
Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney on down signed off on using harsh
interrogation techniques against [captives] after asking the Justice Department to endorse their
legality, The Associated Press has learned. The officials also took care to insulate President Bush
from a series of meetings where CIA interrogation methods, including waterboarding, ... were
discussed and ultimately approved. A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the
meetings ... spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss
the issue. Between 2002 and 2003, the Justice Department issued several memos from its Office
of Legal Counsel that justified using the interrogation tactics, including ones that critics call torture.
"If you looked at the timing of the meetings and the memos you'd see a correlation," the former
intelligence official said. The meetings were held in the White House Situation Room in the years
immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks. Attending the sessions were Cheney, then-Bush aides
Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. The American Civil Liberties Union called on
Congress to investigate. "With each new revelation, it is beginning to look like the torture
operation was managed and directed out of the White House," ACLU legislative director
Caroline Fredrickson said. "This is what we suspected all along." The former intelligence official
described Cheney and the top national security officials as deeply immersed in developing the
CIA's interrogation program during months of discussions over which methods should be used and
when."
Was Bin Laden's last video faked?

2007-10-29, MSNBC
When [the] first Osama Bin Laden video in nearly three years [appeared], most of the media
attention was focused on Bin Laden's beard. It appeared either dyed or perhaps even pasted
on. He was ridiculed and a variety of theories were offered to explain it. But now, there is a running
debate among video analysts about whether, rather than being new, the September 7 [video] may
have been something recorded at the same time as [the] last video in October 2004 (and then
released with new audio). Of the 25 minutes of video tape, only three and a half minutes, were
moving video. The rest was covered by a still image or a frozen still. Moreover, the still
covered the only time references on the 25 minutes of tape references to political
developments in Iraq, Britain and France. This led to the suspicion that the video is not new, but
disguised to appear as new. The leading proponent of the theory is computer scientist ... Dr. Neal
Krawetz of Colorado ... who [says] that the similarities between the October 29, 2004 tape and the
September 7, 2007 tape are too great to be coincidental. Here is Bin Laden in the same clothing,
same studio, same studio setup, and same desk three years later, [said] Krawetz ... in an
interview with NBC News. In fact, [the] papers that he reads are moved between the exact same
stacks. What are the chances of nothing changing (except his beard) in three years? Virtually zero.
The clips appear to have been recorded three years ago. I am saying the two videos were likely
made either on the same day or within days of each other. The CIA will not say what it thinks
about the possibility, but a senior U.S. intelligence official tells NBC News the U.S. believes the
tape is new. He would not discuss the reasons why intelligence analysts feel that way.
Note: For a succinct summary of many reports from major media sources that suggest the US
government's explanation of what happened on 9/11 cannot be true, click here.
Vital Lockerbie evidence 'was tampered with'

2007-09-02, Guardian (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/libya/story/0,,2160713,00.html
The key piece of material evidence used by prosecutors to implicate Libya in the Lockerbie
bombing has emerged as a probable fake. Allegations of international political intrigue and
shoddy investigative work are being levelled at the British government, the FBI and the
Scottish police as one of the crucial witnesses, Swiss engineer Ulrich Lumpert, has
apparently confessed that he lied about the origins of a crucial 'timer' - evidence that helped
tie the man convicted of the bombing to the crime. At a trial in the Netherlands in 2001, former
Libyan agent Abdulbaset al-Megrahi was jailed for life. Later this month the Scottish Court of
Appeal is expected to hear Megrahi's case, after [a ruling] in June that there was enough evidence
to suggest a miscarriage of justice. Lumpert's confession, which was given to police in his home
city of Zurich last week, will strengthen Megrahi's appeal. Swiss businessman Edwin Bollier, who
has spent nearly two decades trying to clear his company's name, is as eager for the appeal as is
Megrahi. Bollier's now bankrupt company, Mebo, manufactured the timer switch that prosecutors
used to implicate Libya after they said that fragments of it had been found on a Scottish hillside. 'I
was shown fragments of a brown circuit board which matched our prototype. But when the MST-13
went into production, the timers contained green boards. I knew that the timers sold to Libya had
green boards. I told the investigators this.' In 2001, Bollier spent five days in the witness box at the
Lockerbie trial ... in the Netherlands. 'I was a defence witness, but the trial was so skewed to prove
Libyan involvement that the details of what I had to say [were] ignored." Few people apart from
conspiracy theorists and investigative journalists working on the case were prepared to believe
Bollier until the end of last month, when Lumpert ... walked into a Zurich police station and asked
to swear an affidavit before a notary.
Note: For a revealing documentary showing a major cover-up involving the Lockerbie bombing,
click here.
Telecom Firms Helped With Government's Warrantless Wiretaps

The Bush administration acknowledged for the first time that telecommunications companies
assisted the government's warrantless surveillance program and were being sued as a result, an
admission some legal experts say could complicate the government's bid to halt numerous
lawsuits challenging the program's legality. "[U]nder the president's program, the terrorist
surveillance program, the private sector had assisted us," Director of National Intelligence Mike
McConnell said in an interview with the El Paso Times. His statement could help plaintiffs in
dozens of lawsuits against the telecom companies, which allege that the companies participated in
a wiretapping program that violated Americans' privacy rights. David Kris, a former Justice
Department official, ... said McConnell's admission makes it difficult to argue that the phone
companies' cooperation with the government is a state secret. "It's going to be tough to
continue to call it 'alleged' when he's just admitted it," Kris said. McConnell has just added
to "the list of publicly available facts that are no longer state secrets," increasing the
plaintiffs' chances that their cases can proceed, Kris said. McConnell's statement "does
serious damage to the government's state secrets claims that are at the heart of its defenses," said
Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Bruce Fein, an
associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration, said that McConnell's disclosure
shows that "an important element of a program can be discussed publicly and openly without
endangering the nation. These Cassandran cries that the earth is going to fall every time you have
a discussion simply are not borne out by the facts," he said.
Bush Signs Law to Widen Legal Reach for Wiretapping

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/washington/06nsa.html?ex=1344052800&en=5e75...
President Bush signed into law ... legislation that broadly [expands] the governments authority to
eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without
warrants. The law [goes] far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were
needed to gather information about foreign terrorists [and will] sharply alter the legal limits on the
governments ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the
United States. The new law for the first time [provides] a legal framework for much of the
surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency
and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate
the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens. This more
or less legalizes the N.S.A. program, said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security
Studies in Washington. Previously, the government needed search warrants approved by a special
intelligence court to eavesdrop on ... electronic communications between individuals inside the
United States and people overseas. The new law gives the attorney general and the director
of national intelligence the power to approve the international surveillance, rather than the
special intelligence court. The law also gave the administration greater power to force
telecommunications companies to cooperate with such spying operations. The companies
can now be compelled to cooperate by orders from the attorney general and the director of
national intelligence.
In Intelligence World, A Mute Watchdog

An independent oversight board created to identify intelligence abuses after the CIA scandals of
the 1970s did not send any reports to the attorney general of legal violations during the first 5 1/2
years of the Bush administration's counterterrorism effort, the Justice Department has told
Congress. The President's Intelligence Oversight Board -- the principal civilian watchdog of the
intelligence community -- is obligated under a 26-year-old executive order to tell the attorney
general and the president about any intelligence activities it believes "may be unlawful." The board
was vacant for the first two years of the Bush administration. The board's mandate is to provide
independent oversight, so the absence of such communications has prompted critics to question
whether the board was doing its job. "It's now apparent that the IOB was not actively employed in
the early part of the administration. And it was a crucial period when its counsel would seem to
have been needed the most," said Anthony Harrington, who served as the board's chairman for
most of the Clinton administration. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick J. Leahy (DVt.) added: "It is deeply disturbing that this administration seems to spend so much of its
energy and resources trying to find ways to ignore any check and balance on its authority
and avoid accountability to Congress and the American public."
White House of Mirrors

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/24/opinion/24sun1.html?ex=1340337600&en=2b456e...
President Bush has turned the executive branch into a two-way mirror. They get to see everything
Americans do: our telephone calls, e-mail, and all manner of personal information. And we get to
see nothing about what they do. Everyone knows this administration has disdained openness and
accountability since its first days. That is about the only thing it does not hide. But recent weeks
have produced disturbing disclosures about just how far Mr. Bushs team is willing to go to keep
lawmakers and the public in the dark. That applies to big issues like the C.I.A.s secret prisons
and to things that would seem too small-bore to order up a cover-up. Vice President Dick
Cheney sets the gold standard, placing himself not just above Congress and the courts but above
Mr. Bush himself. For the last four years, he has been defying a presidential order requiring
executive branch agencies to account for the classified information they handle. When the
agency that enforces this rule tried to do its job, Mr. Cheney proposed abolishing the
agency. Since the 9/11 attacks, Mr. Bush has tried to excuse his administrations obsession with
secrecy by saying that dangerous times require greater discretion. He rammed the Patriot Act
through Congress with a promise that national security agencies would make sure the new powers
were not abused. But on June 14, The Washington Post reported that the [FBI] potentially broke
the law or its own rules several thousand times over the past five years when it used the Patriot
Act to snoop on domestic phone calls, e-mail and financial transactions of ordinary Americans.
White House revises post-disaster protocol

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/06/02/white_house_...
The Bush administration is writing a new plan to maintain governmental control in the wake of an
apocalyptic terrorist attack or overwhelming natural disaster, moving such doomsday planning for
the first time from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to officials inside the White House.
Discussion among legal specialists, homeland security experts and Internet commentators
[includes] concerns that the policy may [make] it too easy to invoke emergency presidential powers
such as martial law. The ... new "National Continuity Policy" contains few details about how
surviving officials would invoke emergency powers, or when emergency powers should be deemed
to be no longer necessary. The unanswered questions have provoked anxiety across ideological
lines. The conservative commentator Jerome Corsi [wrote] that the directive looked like a
recipe for allowing the office of the presidency to seize "dictatorial powers" because the
policy does not discuss consulting Congress about when to invoke emergency powers -- or
when to turn them off. Some specialists say that the White House should be more specific about
its worst-case scenario plans, pointing out two unanswered questions: what circumstances would
trigger implementation of the plan and what legal limits the White House recognizes on its own
emergency powers. The policy ... does not contain a direct reference to statutes in which Congress
has imposed checks and balances on the president's power to impose martial law or other
extraordinary measures, [nor does it] explicitly acknowledge the National Emergencies Act, [a] law
that gives Congress the right to override the president's determination that a national emergency
still exists.
The FBI ... has turned its back on thousands of white-collar crimes
2007-04-11, Seattle Post-Intelligencer (One of Seattle's two leading newspapers)
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/311046_fbiterror11.html
Thousands of white-collar criminals across the country are no longer being prosecuted in
federal court -- and, in many cases, not at all -- leaving a trail of frustrated victims and
potentially billions of dollars in fraud and theft losses. It is the untold story of the Bush
administration's massive restructuring of the FBI after the terrorism attacks of 9/11. Five-and-a-half
years later, the White House and the Justice Department have failed to replace at least 2,400
agents transferred to counterterrorism squads, leaving far fewer agents on the trail of identity
thieves, con artists, hatemongers and other criminals. The hidden cost: a dramatic plunge in FBI
investigations and case referrals in many of the crimes that the bureau has traditionally fought,
including sophisticated fraud, embezzlement schemes and civil rights violations. In 2005, the
bureau brought slightly more than 20,000 cases to federal prosecutors, compared with about
31,000 in 2000 -- a 34 percent drop. White-collar crime investigations by the bureau have
plummeted in recent years. In 2005, the FBI sent prosecutors 3,500 cases -- a fraction of the more
than 10,000 cases assigned to agents in 2000. Civil rights investigations, which include hate
crimes and police abuse, have continued a steady decline since the late 1990s. FBI agents
pursued 65 percent fewer cases in 2005 than they did in 2000. Large numbers of FBI agents also
were transferred out of violent-crime programs. The gaps created by the Bush administration's war
on terrorism are troubling to criminal justice experts, police chiefs -- even many current and former
FBI officials and agents.
Note: For an article on how the FBI knowingly allowed innocent people to be sentenced to death,
click here.
Afghan opium 'hits record output'

2007-03-01, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6410263.stm
Opium production in Afghanistan reached record levels last year, the United States has said. The
US State Department's annual report on narcotics also said the flourishing drugs trade was
undermining the fight against the Taleban. Poppy production rose 25% in 2006, a figure US
Assistant Secretary of State Ann Patterson described as alarming. Four years after the US and its
British allies began combating poppy production, Afghanistan still accounts for 90% of the world's
opium trade.
Note: Isn't it interesting that though the Taliban had eradicated over 90% of the opium crop in
2001, it has not only come back to previous level, but far surpassed them after Afghanistan was
"liberated." Could it be that the military forces are turning a blind eye or even involved? For
information from a DEA insider on this, click here.
Italy indicts 31 in alleged CIA kidnapping

A judge Friday indicted 26 Americans and five Italians in the abduction of an Egyptian terror
suspect on a Milan street in what would be the first criminal trial stemming from the CIAs
extraordinary rendition program. Prosecutors allege that five Italian intelligence officials worked
with the Americans to seize Muslim cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr on Feb. 17, 2003. Nasr
was allegedly transferred by vehicle to the Aviano Air Force base near Venice, then by air to the
Ramstein Air Base in Germany, and on to Egypt, where his lawyer says he was tortured. Nasr was
freed earlier this week by an Egyptian court that found his four years of detention in Egypt
unfounded. All but one of the Americans have been identified as CIA agents, including the former
Milan station chief Robert Seldon Lady and former Rome station chief Jeffrey Castelli. Among the
Italians indicted by Judge Caterina Interlandi was the former chief of military intelligence, Nicolo
Pollari, and his former deputy, Marco Mancini. The CIA has refused to comment on the case,
which has put an uncomfortable spotlight on its operations. Prosecutors are pressing the Italian
government to seek the extradition of the Americans. In Italy, defendants can be tried in absentia.
Prosecutors elsewhere in Europe are moving ahead with cases aimed at the CIA program. A
Munich prosecutor recently issued arrest warrants for 13 people in another alleged CIAorchestrated kidnapping, that of a German citizen who says he was seized in December 2003 at
the Serbian-Macedonia border and flown to Afghanistan.
Note: At long last, the CIA is beginning to be held accountable for flagrantly breaking laws
resulting in torture.
Ex-employee says FAA warned before 9/11

2006-11-24, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-11-23-whistle-blower-faa_x.htm
From 1995 to 2001, Bogdan Dzakovic served as a team leader on the Federal Aviation
Administration's Red Team. Set up by Congress to help the FAA ... the elite squad tested airport
security systems. In the years leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Dzakovic says,
the team was able to breach security about 90% of the time, sneaking bombs and submachine
guns past airport screeners. Expensive new bomb detection machines consistently failed. The
team repeatedly warned the FAA of the potential for security breaches and hijackings but
was told to cover up its findings. Eventually, the FAA began notifying airports in advance
when the Red Team would be doing its undercover testing. He and other Red Team members
approached the Department of Transportation's Office of the Inspector General, the General
Accounting Office and members of Congress about the FAA's alleged misconduct. No one did
anything. "Immediately (after 9/11), numerous government officials from FAA as well as other
government agencies made defensive statements such as, 'How could we have known this was
going to happen?' " Dzakovic testified later before the 9/11 Commission. After filing [a] complaint,
Dzakovic was removed from his Red Team leadership position. He now works for the
Transportation Security Administration. His primary assignments include tasks such as holepunching, updating agency phonebooks and "thumb-twiddling." At least he hasn't received a pay
cut, he says. He makes about $110,000 a year for what he describes as "entry-level idiot work."
Seeing isn't believing

http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,,1806794,00.html
A year on from 7/7, wild rumours are circulating about who planted the bombs and why. On the
morning of 7/7 a former Scotland Yard anti-terrorism branch official had been staging a training
exercise based on bombs going off simultaneously at precisely the stations that had been
targeted. [Bridget] Dunne was confused by the conflicting reports. "I have only one reason for
starting this blog," she wrote. "It is to ascertain the facts behind the events in London on...July 7
2005. That the times of trains were totally absent from the public domain was one of the factors
which led to my suspicions that what we were being told happened was not what actually
happened." The Home Office [claimed] that on July 7 the quartet boarded a 7.40am Thameslink
train to King's Cross. According to Dunne, when an independent researcher visited Luton and
demanded a train schedule from Thameslink, he was told that the 7.40am had never run and that
the next available train, the 7.48, had arrived at King's Cross at 8.42...too late for the bombers to
have boarded the three tube trains. The next problem is the CCTV picture. If you look closely
at the image...you will see that the railings behind Khan, the man in the white baseball cap,
appear to run in front of his left arm while another rail appears to slice through his head.
Some people believe the image was faked in Photoshop. This theory is bolstered by the fact that
police have never released the further CCTV footage showing the four emerging on to the
concourse at King's Cross where, according to the home office narrative, they are seen hugging
and appear "euphoric".
Note: For more serious evidence of complicity in the London Bombings, click here. See also the
excellent information on the July 7th Truth Campaign at http://www.julyseventh.co.uk.
The Dark Side

2006-06-20, PBS Frontline
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/#press
Amid daily revelations about prewar intelligence and a growing scandal surrounding the indictment
of the vice president's chief of staff and presidential adviser, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, FRONTLINE
goes behind the headlines to investigate the internal war that was waged between the intelligence
community and Richard Bruce Cheney, the most powerful vice president in the nation's history. "A
lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion,
using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies," Cheney told
Americans just after 9/11. He warned the public that the government would have to operate
on the "dark side." In The Dark Side, airing June 20, 2006, at 9 P.M. on PBS...FRONTLINE tells
the story of the vice president's role as the chief architect of the war on terror and his battle with
Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet for control of the "dark side." Drawing on more than
40 interviews and thousands of documents, the film provides a step-by-step examination of what
happened inside the councils of war. After the attacks on 9/11, Cheney seized the initiative and
pushed for expanding presidential power, transforming America's intelligence agencies, and
bringing the war on terror to Iraq. In the initial stages of the war on terror, Tenet's CIA was rising to
prominence as the lead agency in the Afghanistan war. But when Tenet insisted in his personal
meetings with the president that there was no connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq,
Cheney and Rumsfeld initiated a secret program to re-examine the evidence and
marginalize the agency and Tenet.
Kicked out of Gitmo

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-williams18jun18,0,339329...
Covering Guantanamo means wrangling with...logistics so nonsensical that they turn two hours of
reporting into an 18-hour day...with hostile escorts who seem to think you're in league with Al
Qaeda...a Pentagon power play that muzzles already reluctant sources and an unceremonious
expulsion to Miami on a military plane, safety-belted onto whatever seat is available. In this case,
that seat was the toilet. I ended up on that plane, on that seat, because...the only three newspaper
reporters who managed to surmount Pentagon obstacles to covering the first deaths at
Guantanamo were ordered off the base. When unexpected news breaks, like the suicides, the
Pentagon's knee-jerk reflex to thwart coverage reminds me of how Communist officials used to
organize Cold War-era propaganda trips for Moscow correspondents but then pull the plug when
embarrassing realities intruded. What little we learn often comes to light by accident. During my
first visit in January 2005...I asked...if the facility had ever been at or near capacity. "Only
during the mass-hanging incident," the Navy doctor replied, provoking audible gasps and
horrified expressions among the public affairs minders...none of whom were particularly
pleased with the disclosure that 23 prisoners had attempted simultaneously to hang
themselves with torn bed sheets in late 2003. Under ground rules we must agree to if we want
access to the base, journalists may not have any contact with detainees, who are removed from
sight at all but one camp during media tours.
CIA Gave Iran Bomb Plans, Book Says

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-intel4jan04,0,6972451.story
In a clumsy effort to sabotage Iran's nuclear program, the CIA in 2004 intentionally handed Tehran
some top-secret bomb designs laced with a hidden flaw that U.S. officials hoped would doom any
weapon made from them. But the Iranians were tipped to the scheme by the Russian defector
hired by the CIA to deliver the plans and may have gleaned scientific information useful for
designing a bomb, writes New York Times reporter James Risen in "State of War." Two nuclear
weapons experts...added that a deliberate flaw in the plans could have been easily found by
the Iranians. The New York Times delayed for a year publication of its article on the NSA's
domestic spying, in part because of personal requests from the president. Critics have questioned
whether the paper could have published the information before last year's presidential election if it
had decided against a delay. Newspaper officials have refused to comment on reasons for the
delay or on the exact timing. Top New York Times officials also refused to publish a news article
about the reported CIA plot to give intentionally flawed nuclear plans to Iran, according to a person
briefed on the newspaper's conversations by one of the participants. That person said the New
York Times withheld publication at the request of the White House and former CIA Director George
J. Tenet.
Ex-CIA boss: Cheney is 'vice president for torture'

2005-11-18, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/11/18/torture.vp
Former CIA chief Stansfield Turner lashed out at Dick Cheney on Thursday, calling him a "vice
president for torture" that is out of touch with the American people. Turner's condemnation...comes
amid an effort by Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, to pass legislation forbidding any U.S. authority
from torturing a prisoner. McCain was tortured as a Vietnam prisoner of war. Cheney has lobbied
against the legislation, prompting Turner to say he's "embarrassed that the United State[s] has a
vice president for torture. I think it is just reprehensible." Turner...scoffed at assertions that
challenging the administration's strategy aided the terrorists' propaganda efforts. "It's the vice
president who is out there advocating torture. He's the one who has made himself the vice
president in favor of torture," said Turner, who from 1972 to 1974 was president of the Naval War
College, a think tank for strategic and national security policy. "We military people don't want
future military people who are taken prisoner by other countries to be subjected to torture
in the name of doing just what the United States does," he said.
More British memos on prewar concerns

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8207731
It started during British Prime Minister Tony Blair's re-election campaign last month, when details
leaked about a top-secret memo, written in July 2002 -- eight months before the Iraq war. In the
memo, British officials just back from Washington reported that prewar "intelligence and facts were
being fixed around the policy" to invade Iraq. Just last week, both President George W. Bush and
Blair vigorously denied that war was inevitable. No, the facts were not being fixed, in any shape or
form at all, said Blair at a White House news conference with the president on June 7. But now,
war critics have come up with seven more memos, verified by NBC News. Current and
former diplomats tell NBC News they understood from the beginning the Bush policy to be
that Saddam had to be removed -- one way or the other. The only question was when and
how.
Cuba 'plane bomber' was CIA agent

2005-05-11, BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4535661.stm
Declassified US government documents show that a man suspected of involvement in the
bombing of a Cuban passenger plane worked for the CIA. Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban-born
Venezuelan and anti-Castro dissident, was an agent and informer. The papers also reveal that an
FBI informer "all but admitted" that Mr Posada was one of those behind the 1976 bombing that
killed 73 people. Mr Posada, who denies any involvement, is said to be seeking asylum in the US.
His lawyer says his client, thought to be in hiding in the Miami area, deserves US protection
because of his long years of service to the country. The documents, released by George
Washington University's National Security Archive, show that Mr Posada, now in his 70s,
was on the CIA payroll from the 1960s until mid-1976. Mr Posada once boasted of being
responsible for a series of bomb attacks on Havana tourist spots in the 1990s.
Note: Why did the U.S. media fail to pick up this astounding story?
Secret at the heart of Putin's rise to power

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/1456763/Secret-at-the...
More than 240 [Russians died in the autumn of 1999] in a wave of bombings that destroyed three
blocks of flats, two in Moscow and one in the town of Volgodonsk. The Russian authorities were
swift to lay the blame at the door of Chechen separatists. But no supporting evidence has
emerged. Two men from the Caucasus were convicted of involvement after a closed trial this year,
but it was widely denounced as a charade. Instead a growing body of proof has surfaced that links
the bombings ... to the FSB - the revamped KGB. Independent investigators, including several
MPs, who have sought to look into the case have been intimidated, arrested or beaten. Analysts
and investigators claim that President Vladimir Putin, who was FSB chief until August of that year
and subsequently prime minister, must know the truth. Lilia Shevtsova, a senior associate with the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said: "He would know not just what happened but
who the suspects were. The truth will not damage him because it won't be told until after he is
gone." The 1999 bombings proved to be Mr Putin's political making. He positioned himself
as a strongman who would crush the Chechen rebels and restore order to the ailing
country. Riding a wave of nationalist fervour, in eight months he went from being a virtual political
unknown to winning the presidency by an easy margin.
Note: For an excellent overview of false-flag operations, click here.
CIA's License To Kill

2002-12-04, CBS News
American citizens working for al Qaeda overseas can legally be targeted and killed by the
CIA under President Bush's rules for the war on terrorism. The authority to kill U.S. citizens
is granted under a secret finding signed by the president after the Sept. 11 attacks. The CIA
already has killed one American under this authority, although U.S. officials maintain he wasn't the
target. On Nov. 3, a CIA-operated Predator drone fired a missile that destroyed a carload of
suspected al Qaeda operatives in Yemen. The target of the attack ... was the top al Qaeda
operative in that country. But the CIA didn't know a U.S. citizen, Yemeni-American Kamal Derwish,
was in the car. The Bush administration said the killing of an American in this fashion was legal.
The Bush administration and al Qaeda together have defined the entire world as a battlefield
meaning the attack on ... Derwish was tantamount to an air strike in a combat zone. According to
CBS Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen, this is legal because the President and his lawyers say so. "I
can assure you that no constitutional questions are raised here. There are authorities that the
president can give to officials," said Condoleezza Rice. Previously, the government's authority to
kill a citizen outside of the judicial process has been generally restricted to when the American is
directly threatening the lives of other Americans or their allies. The CIA declines comment on
covert actions and the authorities it operates under. Scott L. Silliman, director of Duke University's
Center on Law, Ethics and National Securit [asks], "could you put a Hellfire missile into a car in
Washington, D.C., under the same theory? The answer is yes, you could."
U.S. sought attack on al-Qaida

President Bush was expected to sign detailed plans for a worldwide war against al-Qaida two days
before Sept. 11 but did not have the chance before the terrorist attacks in New York and
Washington, U.S. and foreign sources told NBC News. The document, a formal National Security
Presidential Directive, amounted to a game plan to remove al-Qaida from the face of the earth,
one of the sources told NBC News Jim Miklaszewski. In many respects, the directive ... outlined
essentially the same war plan that the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon put into
action after the Sept. 11 attacks. Officials did not believe that Bush had had the opportunity to
closely review the document in the two days between its submission and the Sept. 11 attacks. But
it had been submitted to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, and the officials said Bush
knew about it and had been expected to sign it. The couching of the plans as a formal security
directive is significant, Miklaszewski reported, because it indicates that the United States intended
a full-scale assault on al-Qaida even if the Sept. 11 attacks had not occurred.
Note: Why was this kept secret? Why is it still being kept secret?
Deep Support in Washington for C.I.A.s Drone Missions

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/us/politics/deep-support-in-washington-for-...
About once a month, staff members of the congressional intelligence committees drive across the
Potomac River to C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., and watch ... footage of drone strikes. The
screenings have provided a veneer of congressional oversight. The C.I.A.s killing missions are ...
unlikely to change significantly despite President Obamas announcement on Thursday that a
drone strike accidentally killed two innocent hostages, an American and an Italian. Michael
DAndrea ... was chief of operations during the birth of the agencys detention and interrogation
program and then, as head of the C.I.A. Counterterrorism Center, became an architect of the
targeted killing program. He presided over the growth of C.I.A. drone operations and hundreds of
strikes. Mr. DAndrea was a forceful advocate for the drone program. He was particularly effective
in winning the support of Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who was chairwoman
of the Senate Intelligence Committee until January. The confidence Ms. Feinstein and other
Democrats express about the drone program ... stands in sharp contrast to the criticism
among lawmakers of the now defunct C.I.A. program to capture and interrogate Qaeda
suspects in secret prisons. When Ms. Feinstein was asked in a meeting with reporters in 2013
why she was so sure she was getting the truth about the drone program while she accused the
C.I.A. of lying to her about torture, she seemed surprised. Thats a good question, actually.
Note: The CIA has been aware that drone strikes are ineffective since at least 2009. If drones help
terrorists, almost always miss their intended targets, and may be used to target people in the US in
the future, what are the real reasons for the US government's drone program?
Man Arrested, Ordered To Keep The Peace On Suspicion He May

Commit Terrorism
2015-03-25, Huffington Post/Canadian Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/03/25/man-arrested-ordered-to-_n_6938124.html
The RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] have arrested a man after a peace bond was
ordered against him based on allegations he might commit a terrorism offence. Police say
Amir Raisolsadat was released on unspecified conditions and ordered to return to court on April
20. No other information about the man, including where he is from, was released by the RCMP,
citing the fact there is an ongoing criminal investigation in the case. Radio station Toronto 680
News says the man was arrested in Prince Edward Island, but a spokeswoman for the Mounties in
that province would not comment, referring questions about the case to RCMP national
headquarters in Ottawa. The RCMP in Ottawa issued a news release on the arrest, but declined to
answer any questions. The news release says police may pursue an application for an order
requiring someone to keep the peace and be of good behaviour under the Criminal Code if they
believe that person may commit a terrorism offence.
Note: The US can now brand someone a terrorist based on a single, uncorroborated piece of
evidence like a Facebook post. Is Canada now jumping on the terrorism fear-mongering
bandwagon?
CIA: No more vaccination campaigns in spy operations

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-no-more-vaccination...
Three years after the CIA used an immunization survey as a cover in its hunt for Osama bin
Laden, the White House has promised that the agency will never again use a vaccination
campaign in its operations. Responding to a letter from the deans of 12 U.S. public health schools,
Lisa Monaco, the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, informed
them last week that the CIA will no longer conduct such campaigns, White House spokeswoman
Caitlin Hayden said. The deans wrote to President Obama in January 2013 to protest the
precedent set when the CIA used Shakil Afridi, a Pakistani surgeon, to seek information ... under
the guise of conducting a hepatitis immunization survey. This disguising of an intelligencegathering effort as a humanitarian public health service has resulted in serious collateral
consequences that affect the public health community, the deans wrote. International aid
organizations were forced to move some of their staff members out of Pakistan, and some
health workers were killed in a backlash against a polio vaccination effort. Attacks have
continued sporadically. Last year, 83 new polio cases were reported in Pakistan, more than in
Afghanistan or Nigeria, the other countries where it is endemic.
Inside the FBIs secret relationship with the militarys special operations
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/inside-the-fbis-secret-...
The FBIs transformation from a crime-fighting agency to a counterterrorism organization in the
wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been well documented. Less widely known has been the
bureaus role in secret operations against al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Iraq and Afghanistan,
among other locations around the world. With the war in Afghanistan ending, FBI officials have
become more willing to discuss a little-known alliance between the bureau and the Joint Special
Operations Command (JSOC) that allowed agents to participate in hundreds of raids in Iraq and
Afghanistan. The relationship benefited both sides. JSOC used the FBIs expertise in exploiting
digital media and other materials to locate insurgents and detect plots, including any
against the United States. The bureaus agents, in turn, could preserve evidence and
maintain a chain of custody should any suspect be transferred to the United States for trial.
In early 2003, two senior FBI counterterrorism officials traveled to Afghanistan to meet with the
Joint Special Operations Commands deputy commander at Bagram air base. The pace of activity
in Afghanistan was slow at first. An FBI official said there was less than a handful of [Hostage and
Rescue Team] deployments to Afghanistan in those early months; the units primarily worked with
the SEALs as they hunted top al-Qaeda targets. The tempo quickened with the U.S.-led invasion
of Iraq in 2003. At first, the HRTs mission was mainly to protect other FBI agents when they left
the Green Zone, former FBI officials said. In 2005, all of the HRT members in Iraq began to work
under JSOC.
The David Miranda judgment has chilling implications for press

freedom, race relations and basic justice
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/19/david-miranda-press-free...
One person's freedom fighter may be another's terrorist, but David Miranda is very clearly neither.
Yet he was detained at Heathrow airport for nine hours under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act
2000. That the high court has now found his detention to be lawful is disappointing, to say the
least. If someone travelling as part of journalistic work can be lawfully detained like this
questioned for hours without a lawyer present, his electronic equipment confiscated and
cloned and all without the merest suspicion of wrongdoing required then clearly
something has gone wrong with the law. Schedule 7 suffers the same glaring flaws as the old
section 44 counter-terrorism power that also allowed stop and search without suspicion. Such laws
leave themselves wide open to discriminatory misuse: section 44 never once led to a terrorism
conviction but was used to stop people like journalist Pennie Quinton. In a significant victory,
Liberty took her case to the European court of human rights and the power was declared unlawful.
Liberty and other organisations intervened in [Miranda's] case on just this point, arguing that the
detention violated article 10 of the European convention, the right to freedom of expression. Our
riled security services' transparent intimidation and interference with Miranda is shocking. But it's
also important that we use his case to shed light on the murky everyday reality of schedule 7.
Note: For more on threats to civil liberties, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major
The FBI COINTELPRO Program and the Fred Hampton Assassination

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/g-flint-taylor/the-fbi-cointelpro-progra_b_4375...
On December 4th it [was exactly] 44 years since a select unit of 14 Chicago Police officers, on
special assignment to Cook County State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan, executed a pre-dawn raid
on a west side apartment that left Illinois Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark
Clark dead, several other young Panthers wounded, and the seven raid survivors arrested on
bogus attempted murder charges. The physical evidence soon exposed the claims of a
"shootout" that were made by Hanrahan and his men to be blatant lies, and that the
murderous reality was that the police fired nearly 100 shots while the Panthers fired but
one. But those lies were only the first layer of a massive cover-up that was dismantled and
exposed over the next eight years -- a cover-up designed to suppress the central role of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation and its COINTELPRO program in the assassination. The first
documentation [of the operation and its cover-up] surfaced in March of 1971 when the Citizens
Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into a small FBI office in Media Pennsylvania and
expropriated over 1000 FBI documents. These documents exposed the FBI's super-secret and
profoundly illegal COINTELPRO program and its focus in the 1960s on the black liberation
movement and its leaders. Citing the assassinated Malcolm X as an example, Hoover directed all
of the Bureau's Offices to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and otherwise neutralize" African
American organizations and leaders.
Note: For more on the realities of intelligence agency activity, see the deeply revealing reports
Programmed to act
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Programmed-to-act-4793122.php
Over decades and diverse administrations, justifications for the use of force - limited and full scale
- have constantly revolved around weapons of mass destruction. Protection against them, real and
imaginary, has served [as] justification for government excess and a curtailment of our freedoms.
We stop everything because it is WMD and we fret about the consequences of both action and
inaction because it is WMD. We do so because of a little known and little understood entity that
truly drives American national security practices: It's called the Program. Founded in the darkest
days of nuclear threat during the Eisenhower administration, the Program began as a limited
system given responsibility for survival of the government. The nuclear arms race ended, but the
Program never completely went away. And since 9/11, like everything else about national
security, its mission and focus have expanded. The Program exists through a system of
sealed envelopes - four dozen formal Presidential Emergency Action Documents more
secret than anything that has been revealed about the National Security Agency of late,
arrangements that instruct a surviving entity of what to do if a nation-destroying calamity befalls
Washington or the United States. Because Doomsday is now thought by the experts in
government to be any day, and because the potential battlefield is anyplace and every place, the
work of the Program, and its power, have dramatically expanded. A survival apparatus operates
behind the scenes as if survival is perpetually and instantly at stake.
Note: The author of this analysis, William M. Arkin, has written American Coup: How a Terrified
Government is Destroying the Constitution, and is co-author of the best-selling book and
newspaper series Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State.
Graham: FBI report raises questions about who helped 9/11 terrorists
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/18/3349829/graham-fbi-report-raises-questi...
New FBI records connecting Saudis who lived in Sarasota before 9/11 to individuals associated
with the terrorist attacks [have been] released. The FBI records provide new information about
an investigation into what occurred prior to 9/11 at the upscale home of Abdulaziz al-Hijji
and his family in the gated community of Prestancia. Information in the records contradicts
prior FBI statements that no evidence was found connecting the al-Hijjis to 9/11. Agents
determined the al-Hijjis fled their home on August 27, 2001 two weeks before the attacks
leaving behind three cars, furniture, clothing, toys, food and other items. Further investigation of
the [name deleted] family revealed many connections between the [name deleted] and individuals
associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001, says an April 16, 2002 FBI report. The report
lists three of those individuals. Two, including one described as a family member, were described
as students at the nearby Venice airport flight school where suicide hijackers Mohamed Atta and
Marwan al-Shehhi trained. The third person lived with some flight students, the report says. A
counterintelligence officer speaking on condition of anonymity said an FBI examination of
gatehouse log books and photos of license tags revealed that vehicles linked to the future
hijackers visited al-Hijjis residence. Much remains unclear. Chunks of the released reports are
blanked out for national security and other reasons. Four pages were withheld in their entirety.
Note: For powerful evidence reported in the major media the several of the 9/11 hijackers trained
at U.S. military bases, click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources
questioning the official story of the 9/11 attacks, click here.
Three key lessons from the Obama administration's drone lies

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/11/three-lessons-obama-drone...
For years, senior Obama officials, including the president himself, have been making public claims
about their drone program that have just been proven to be categorically false. McClatchy's
national security reporter, Jonathan Landay, obtained top-secret intelligence documents showing
that "contrary to assurances it has deployed US drones only against known senior leaders of alQaida and allied groups, the Obama administration has targeted and killed hundreds of suspected
lower-level Afghan, Pakistani and unidentified 'other' militants in scores of strikes in Pakistan's
rugged tribal area." That article quotes drone expert Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign
Relations as saying that "McClatchy's findings indicate that the administration is 'misleading the
public about the scope of who can legitimately be targeted.'" In his own must-read article at
Foreign Policy about these disclosures, Zenko writes - under the headline: "Finally, proof that the
United States has lied in the drone wars" - that "it turns out that the Obama administration has not
been honest about who the CIA has been targeting with drones in Pakistan" and that the
McClatchy article "plainly demonstrates that the claim repeatedly made by President Obama
and his senior aides - that targeted killings are limited only to officials, members, and
affiliates of al-Qaida who pose an imminent threat of attack on the US homeland - is false."
Zenko explains that these now-disproven claims may very well make the drone strikes illegal since
assertions about who is being targeted were "essential to the legal foundations on which the
strikes are ultimately based."
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the lies and crimes
committed by the US and UK in their global wars of aggression, click here.
Jorge Bergoglio: Who is the new pope?

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57574147/jorge-bergoglio-who-is-the-new-pope
Jorge Mario Bergoglio - who will be now known as Pope Francis - has spent nearly his entire
career at home in Argentina, overseeing churches and shoe-leather priests. The 76-year-old
archbishop of Buenos Aires ... is the first Jesuit to be elected pope. In a lifetime of teaching and
leading priests in Latin America, which has the largest share of the world's Catholics, Bergoglio
has shown a keen political sensibility. Bergoglio is known to be conservative on spiritual issues. He
opposes abortion, same-sex marriage and supports celibacy. Bergoglio's legacy as cardinal
includes his efforts to repair the reputation of a church that lost many followers by failing to openly
challenge Argentina's murderous 1976-83 dictatorship. Many Argentines remain angry over the
church's acknowledged failure to openly confront a regime that was kidnapping and killing
thousands of people as it sought to eliminate "subversive elements" in society. Bergoglio twice
invoked his right under Argentine law to refuse to appear in open court, and when he eventually
did testify in 2010, his answers were evasive, human rights attorney Myriam Bregman said.
Bergoglio's own statements proved church officials knew from early on that the junta was
torturing and killing its citizens, and yet publicly endorsed the dictators. The dictatorship
could not have operated this way without this key support," [Bregman said.]
Note: An entire edition of Democracy Now! was devoted to the record of Bergoglio, including an
interview with the Argentine journalist Horacio Verbitsky. For more analysis, click here, here and
here.
CIA to exempt strikes on Pakistan from drones codification

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/20/cia-pakistan-drone-strikes-codifi...
John Brennan, the counter-terrorism adviser nominated by President Obama to be the next head
of the CIA, has reportedly agreed to exempt agency strikes in Pakistan from a new set of rules that
attempts to justify and codify the use of drones to assassinate leaders of al-Qaida and other
terrorist groups around the world, including US citizens. The dispensation to allow so-called
targeted killing to continue without restrictions in Pakistan removes from the new set of guidelines
the most important and controversial target of drone strikes. In the past few weeks the frequency
of US strikes in the tribal areas of northern Pakistan ... has been stepped up. The pass would allow
the US to sustain heavy bombardments of the tribal regions via drones launched from bases in
Afghanistan for another year or two, ahead of the withdrawal of most American forces from that
country in 2014. The decision to give the US targeted-killing programme the appearance of
legal propriety by codifying it, and now the temporary exemption granted from that
codification to Pakistan, were both taken by Brennan. A counter-terrorism expert with 25 years
experience in the CIA, his nomination to run the agency has raised eyebrows among civil liberties
groups because of his senior role in the CIA under George W Bush at a time when torture was
used on terror suspects and because of his fondness for drone strikes. The UK-based Bureau of
Investigative Journalism estimates that there have been 362 drone strikes in the country since
2004 310 of them launched on Obama's watch. The strikes have killed up to 3,461 people.
Note: Imagine the uproar if another country killed innocent civilians in the US while using drones to
kill terrorists in the country. Visit the Living Under Drones website here. For more analysis click
here.
Abu Ghraib torture lawsuit settled

2013-01-08, San Francisco Chronicle/Associated Press
http://www.sfgate.com/world/article/Abu-Ghraib-torture-lawsuit-settled-417799...
A defense contractor whose subsidiary was accused in a lawsuit of conspiring to torture detainees
at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has paid $5.28 million to 71 former inmates held there
and at other U.S.-run detention sites between 2003 and 2007. The settlement in the case involving
Engility Holdings Inc. of Chantilly, Va., marks the first successful effort by lawyers for former
prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers to collect money from a U.S. defense
contractor in lawsuits alleging torture. Another contractor, CACI, is expected to go to trial over
similar allegations this summer. The defendant in the lawsuit, L-3 Services Inc., now an Engility
subsidiary, provided translators to the U.S. military in Iraq. The former detainees filed the lawsuit in
federal court in Greenbelt, Md., in 2008. L-3 Services "permitted scores of its employees to
participate in torturing and abusing prisoners over an extended period of time throughout
Iraq," the lawsuit stated. The company "willfully failed to report L-3 employees' repeated
assaults and other criminal conduct by its employees to the United States or Iraq
authorities." A military investigation in 2004 identified 44 alleged incidents of detainee abuse at

Abu Ghraib. No employee from L-3 Services was charged with a crime in investigations by the
U.S. Justice Department.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corporate corruption,
click here.
GOP and Feinstein join to fulfill Obama's demand for renewed

warrantless eavesdropping
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/28/fisa-feinstein-obama-demo...
The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 did much more than shield lawbreaking telecoms from all
forms of legal accountability. It also legalized vast new, sweeping and almost certainly
unconstitutional forms of warrantless government eavesdropping. [The] 2008 law gutted the 30year-old FISA statute that had [barred] the government from eavesdropping on the
communications of Americans without first obtaining a warrant from a court. Worst of all, the 2008
law legalized ... the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program secretly implemented by George
Bush after the 9/11 attack. The 2008 FISA law provided that it would expire in four years unless
renewed. Yesterday, the Senate debated its renewal. Several Senators - Democrats Jeff Merkley
and Ron Wyden of Oregon along with Kentucky GOP Senator Rand Paul - each attempted to
attach amendments to the law simply to provide some modest amounts of transparency and
oversight to ensure that the government's warrantless eavesdropping powers were constrained
and checked from abuse. The Democratic Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne
Feinstein ... demanded renewal of the FISA law without any reforms. And then predictably,
in virtually identical 37-54 votes, Feinstein and her conservative-Democratic comrades
joined with virtually the entire GOP caucus ... to reject each one of the proposed
amendments and thus give Obama exactly what he demanded: reform-free renewal of the law.
Note: For analysis of this Senate vote, click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major
media sources on government assaults on privacy, click here.
Former marine held involuntarily over Facebook posts now plans to sue
FBI
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/29/former-marine-facebook-sue-fbi
A former US marine who was taken from his home and involuntarily detained for psychiatric
evaluation for posting controversial song lyrics and conspiracy theories on Facebook is to file a
civil lawsuit against the FBI and police. Speaking for the first time since his release, after a judge
ruled there was insufficient evidence to detain him, Brandon Raub said his experience was
frightening and that it sent a "extremely alarming" message to Americans. Raub, 26, a former
combat engineer who has served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was taken forcibly from his home in
Chesterfield County, Virginia, by two FBI agents and police on 16 August. He was not charged with
any crime. He was handcuffed and detained in a psychiatric hospital for seven days before a
judge ruled on 23 August that there was not sufficient evidence to keep him there. In an interview
... Raub said: "It made me scared for my country. The idea that a man can be snatched off
his property without being read his rights I think should be extremely alarming to all
Americans." He said that Americans needed to educate themselves about government intrusions
into the lives of citizens, and he urged people to do so. Raub's mother, Cathleen Thomas, told
reporters that her son ... is "concerned about all the wars we've experienced" and believes the US
government was complicit in the September 11 terrorist attacks. One of his Facebook posts, she
said, pictured the gaping hole in the Pentagon and asked "where's the plane?
Judge blocks indefinite military detention provision

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-security-lawsuitbre84f1hs-20...
A judge on [May 16] blocked enforcement of a recently enacted law's provision that authorizes
indefinite military detention for those deemed to have "substantially supported" al Qaeda, the
Taliban or "associated forces." District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan ruled in favor of a
group of civilian activists and journalists who said they feared being detained under a section of
the law, which was signed by President Barack Obama in December 2011. "In the face of what
could be indeterminate military detention, due process requires more," the judge said. She
added that it was in the public interest to reconsider the law so that "ordinary citizens are
able to understand the scope of conduct that could subject them to indefinite military
detention." By issuing a preliminary injunction, the judge prevents the U.S. government from
enforcing section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act's "Homeland Battlefield"
provisions. During day-long oral arguments in March, Forrest heard lawyers for former New York
Times war correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges and others argue that the law
would have a "chilling effect" on their work. The judge said she worried at the government's
reluctance ... to specify whether examples of the plaintiffs' activities ... would fall under the scope
of the provision. "Failure to be able to make such a representation... requires the court to assume
that, in fact, the government takes the position that a wide swath of expressive and associational
conduct is in fact encompassed by 1021," the judge wrote.
Note: For more on the courageous journalist behind this lawsuit, Chris Hedges, see his excellent
columns at this link. For reports from major media sources on governmental threats to civil
Europe Bans Airport X-Ray Scanners that U.S. Still Uses

http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/11/17/europe-bans-airport-x-ray-scanners-that-u...
The European Commission adopted new rules Nov. 14 regarding X-ray, or backscatter, body
scanners at all airports in Europe. A press release ordered members of the European Union to
remove X-ray scanners from its airports to avoid risking citizens health and safety. The news
[brings] into question the continued use of the very same X-ray scanners in U.S. airports. While the
Transportation Security Administration also employs millimeter-wave scanners in U.S. airports, Xray scanners are the ones that have received more criticism from public-safety advocates. While ...
the amount of radiation exposure from X-ray machines is very low, several studies have shown
that a small number of cancer cases could result from scanning millions of passengers
every year. Some critics of the scanners say that any small amount of cancer is too much to
tolerate. Although the TSA doesnt show signs of budging on the use of X-ray scanners, Europe
will instead use machines that rely on radio frequency waves, which have not been linked to
cancer.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on government and corporate threats to privacy, click
here.
Where child sacrifice is a business

2011-10-11, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15255357
The villages and farming communities that surround Uganda's capital, Kampala, are gripped by
fear. Schoolchildren are closely watched by teachers and parents as they make their way home
from school. In playgrounds and on the roadside are posters warning of the danger of abduction by
witch doctors for the purpose of child sacrifice. The ritual, which some believe brings wealth and
good health, was almost unheard of in the country until about three years ago, but it has reemerged, seemingly alongside a boom in the country's economy. The mutilated bodies of children
have been discovered at roadsides, the victims of an apparently growing belief in the power of
human sacrifice. Many believe that members of the country's new elite are paying witch doctors
vast sums of money for the sacrifices in a bid to increase their wealth. At the Kyampisi Childcare
Ministries church, Pastor Peter Sewakiryanga is teaching local children a song called Heal Our
Land, End Child Sacrifice. "Child sacrifice has risen because people have become lovers of
money. They want to get richer," the pastor says. "They have a belief that when you sacrifice
a child you get wealth, and there are people who are willing to buy these children for a
price. So they have become a commodity of exchange, child sacrifice has become a
commercial business."
N.Y. billing dispute reveals details of secret CIA rendition flights

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/ny-billing-dispute-reve...
Details of shadowy CIA [rendition flights] have emerged in a ... New York courthouse in a billing
dispute between contractors. The court documents offer a rare glimpse of the costs and operations
of the controversial rendition program. For all the secrecy that once surrounded the CIA program, a
significant part of its operation was entrusted to very small aviation companies whose previous
experience involved flying sports teams across the country. In the process, the costs and
itineraries of numerous CIA flights became part of the court record. The more than 1,500 pages
from the trial and appeals court files appear to include sensitive material, such as logs of air-toground phone calls made from the plane. These logs show multiple calls to CIA headquarters; to
the cell- and home phones of a senior CIA official involved in the rendition program; and to a
government contractor, Falls Church-based DynCorp, that worked for the CIA. Attorneys for a
London-based legal charity, Reprieve, which has been investigating the CIA program, discovered
the Columbia County case and brought the court records to the attention of The Washington Post.
This new evidence tells a chilling story, from the CIAs efforts to disguise its illegal
activities to the price it paid to ferry prisoners to torture chambers across the world, said
Cori Crider, Reprieves legal director.
Norway police investigating 2nd suspect in spree

2011-07-22, 13-WTHR TV (Indianapolis NBC affiliate)/Associated Press
http://www.wthr.com/story/15129480/explosion-in-oslo-damages-buildings
Norway's national news agency says police are investigating whether a second suspect was
involved in a shooting spree on an island where 84 people were killed. Police have arrested one
man on preliminary charges in the massacre and a bombing in Oslo hours earlier. NTB is
reporting Saturday that witnesses told police two people were involved in the shooting on
Utoya island. The agency says police are looking into it. The agency says that the second
man apparently wasn't disguised in police uniform. The man under arrest was wearing a
sweater with a police emblem on it. In total, 91 people were killed in the two attacks. Police say
at least 84 people were killed in a shooting spree at the youth camp of Norway's Labor Party.
Police say a suspect in the shooting has been arrested. Norway's national broadcaster NRK has
named the suspect in the Oslo bombing and youth camp shooting spree as Anders Behring
Breivik. National police chief Sveinung Sponheim [said] seven people were killed by the blast in
downtown Oslo, four of whom have been identified, and that nine or 10 people were seriously
injured.
Note: Early reports of a second shooter in the Norway attacks, based on claims by surviving
witnesses, are already disappearing from the web. Why would this occur?
New Documents Cast Doubt on Federal Anthrax Case

2011-07-18, PBS Frontline/McClatchy News
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/2011/07/new-documents-cast-doubt-on-f...
The Justice Department has called into question a key pillar of the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins,
the Army scientist accused of mailing the anthrax-laced letters that killed five people and terrorized
Congress a decade ago. Shortly after Ivins committed suicide in 2008, federal investigators
announced that they had identified him as the mass murderer who sent the letters to members of
Congress and the media. The case was circumstantial, with federal officials arguing that the
scientist had the means, motive and opportunity to make the deadly powder at a U.S. Army
research facility at Fort Detrick, in Frederick, Md. On July 15, however, Justice Department
lawyers acknowledged in court papers that the sealed area in Ivins' lab -- the so-called hot
suite -- did not contain the equipment needed to turn liquid anthrax into the refined powder
that floated through congressional buildings and post offices in the fall of 2001. The
government's statements deepen the questions about the case against Ivins. Searches of his car
and home in 2007 found no anthrax spores, and the FBI's eight-year, $100 million investigation
never proved he mailed the letters or identified another location where he might have secretly
dried the anthrax into an easily inhaled powder.
Note: For more doubts on the FBI's case against Ivins, click here. For a detailed analysis of the
anthrax attacks by Prof. Graeme MacQueen of McMaster University, showing that it was an
integral part, with the 9/11 attacks, of a larger operation to launch two wars, click here.
US doctors 'hid signs of torture' at Guantanamo

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-doctors-hid-signs-of-tort...
US government doctors who cared for the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay deliberately concealed or
ignored evidence that their patients were being tortured, the first official study of its kind has found.
A detailed review of the medical records and case files of nine Guantanamo inmates has
concluded that medical personnel at the US detention centre were complicit in suppressing
evidence that would demonstrate systematic torture of the inmates. The review is published in an
online scientific journal, PLoS Medicine, and is the first peer-reviewed study analysing the
behaviour of the doctors in charge of Guantanamo inmates who were subjected to "enhanced
interrogation" techniques that a decade ago had been classed by the US government as torture.
[The report] concluded that no doctor could have failed to notice the medical signs and
symptoms of the extreme interrogation techniques and unauthorised assaults that other
physicians would recognise as torture, such as severe beatings resulting in bone fractures,
sexual assaults, mock executions, and simulated drowning by "waterboarding". Many of the
prisoners said they were also subjected to unauthorised abuses resulting in severe and prolonged
physical and mental pain.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on torture committed by US forces and approved
by the highest levels of government, click here.
American who sparked diplomatic crisis over Lahore shooting was CIA
spy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/20/us-raymond-davis-lahore-cia
The American who shot dead two men in Lahore, triggering a diplomatic crisis between Pakistan
and the US, is a CIA agent who was on assignment at the time. Raymond Davis has been the
subject of widespread speculation since he opened fire with a semi-automatic Glock pistol on the
two men who had pulled up in front of his car at a red light on 25 January. Pakistani authorities
charged him with murder, but the Obama administration has insisted he is an "administrative and
technical official" attached to its Lahore consulate and has diplomatic immunity. Based on
interviews in the US and Pakistan, the Guardian can confirm that the 36-year-old former special
forces soldier is employed by the CIA. "It's beyond a shadow of a doubt," said a senior Pakistani
intelligence official. Washington's case is hobbled by its resounding silence on Davis's role. He
served in the US special forces for 10 years before leaving in 2003 to become a security
contractor. A senior Pakistani official said he believed Davis had worked with Xe, the firm
formerly known as Blackwater. Pakistani suspicions about Davis's role were stoked by the
equipment police confiscated from his car: an unlicensed pistol, a long-range radio, a GPS
device, an infrared torch and a camera with pictures of buildings around Lahore.
Note: For further details on Raymond Davis' work for the CIA and Blackwater Corp., click here.
Discussing the two Pakistanis killed by Davis, an ABC News blog states, "Pakistani government
officials have told ABC News that the two were working for that country's intelligence agency, InterService Intelligence, and were also conducting surveillance." Click here for that article.
Icelandic MP fights US demand for her Twitter account details

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/08/us-twitter-hand-icelandic-wikilea...
A member of parliament in Iceland who is also a former WikiLeaks volunteer says the US justice
department has ordered Twitter to hand over her private messages. Birgitta Jonsdottir, an MP for
the Movement in Iceland, said last night on Twitter that the "USA government wants to know about
all my tweets and more since november 1st 2009. Do they realize I am a member of parliament in
Iceland?" She said she was starting a legal fight to stop the US getting hold of her messages, after
being told by Twitter that a subpoena had been issued. She added that the US authorities had
requested personal information from Twitter as well as her private messages and that she was
now assessing her legal position. "It's not just about my information. It's a warning for anyone
who had anything to do with WikiLeaks. It is completely unacceptable for the US justice
department to flex its muscles like this. I am lucky, I'm a representative in parliament. But
what of other people? It's my duty to do whatever I can to stop this abuse."
Note: For a New York Times article with more on this, click here.
Indefinite detention for suspects at Guantanamo Bay

The Obama administration is preparing an executive order that would formalize indefinite detention
without trial for some detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba ..., U.S.
officials said. Some civil liberties groups oppose any form of indefinite detention. "Indefinite
detention without charge or trial is wrong, whether it comes from Congress or the president's pen,"
said Laura W. Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington legislative
office. "Our Constitution requires that we charge and prosecute people who are accused of
crimes. You cannot sell an indefinite detention scheme by attaching a few due-process
baubles and expect that to restore the rule of law. That is bad for America and is not the form
of justice we want other nations to emulate." Legislation supported by some Republicans ... would
create a system of indefinite detention not only for some Guantanamo detainees but also for future
terrorism suspects seized overseas.
Note: Why are so few people speaking out about indefinite detention, when it is done in a way that
gives the person detained virtually no legal rights or recourse? This clearly violates the sixth
amendment to the US Constitution which states, "the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and
public trial."
Air Force Blocks Sites That Posted Secret Cables

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/15/us/15wiki.html
The Air Force is barring its personnel from using work computers to view the Web sites of The
New York Times and more than 25 other news organizations and blogs that have posted secret
cables obtained by WikiLeaks, Air Force officials said. When Air Force personnel on the services
computer network try to view the Web sites of The Times, the British newspaper The Guardian, the
German magazine Der Spiegel, the Spanish newspaper El Pas and the French newspaper Le
Monde, as well as other sites that posted full confidential cables, the screen says Access Denied:
Internet usage is logged and monitored, according to an Air Force official whose access was
blocked and who shared the screen warning with The Times. Violators are warned that they face
punishment if they try to view classified material from unauthorized Web sites. Some Air Force
officials acknowledged that the steps taken might be in vain since many military personnel
could gain access to the documents from home computers, despite admonishments from
superiors not to read the cables without proper clearances.
Note: For key reports from major media sources on government secrecy, click here.
L.A. officials plan to use heat-beam ray in jail

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38873550/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts
A device designed to control unruly inmates by blasting them with a beam of intense energy that
causes a burning sensation is drawing heat from civil rights groups who fear it could cause serious
injury and is "tantamount to torture." The mechanism, known as an "Assault Intervention Device,"
is a stripped-down version of a military gadget that sends highly focused beams of energy at
people and makes them feel as though they are burning. The Los Angeles County sheriff's
department plans to install the device by Labor Day, making it the first time in the world the
technology has been deployed in such a capacity. The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern
California criticized Sheriff Lee Baca's decision ..., saying that the technology amounts to a ray
gun at a county jail. The ACLU said the weapon was "tantamount to torture," noting that
early military versions resulted in five airmen suffering lasting burns. It requested a meeting
with Baca, who declined the invitation. [ACLU attorney Peter Eliasberg noted that] the sheriff was
creating a dangerous environment with "a weapon that can cause serious injury, that is being put
into a place where there is a long history of abuse of prisoners. That is a toxic combination."
Note: For revealing and reliable reports on so-called "non-lethal" weapons used by police and
military, click here.
Secret U.S. War Widens on Two Continents

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/world/15shadowwar.html
In roughly a dozen countries from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to
former Soviet republics crippled by ethnic and religious strife the United States has significantly
increased military and intelligence operations, ... using robotic drones and commando teams,
paying contractors to spy and training local operatives. The White House has intensified the
Central Intelligence Agencys drone missile campaign in Pakistan, approved raids ... in Somalia
and launched clandestine operations from Kenya. The administration has worked with European
allies ... in North Africa, efforts that include a recent French strike in Algeria. And the Pentagon
tapped a network of private contractors to gather intelligence ... in Pakistan. While the stealth war
began in the Bush administration, it has expanded under President Obama, who rose to
prominence in part for his early opposition to the invasion of Iraq. Virtually none of the
newly aggressive steps undertaken by the United States government have been publicly
acknowledged. In contrast with the troop buildup in Afghanistan, which came after months of
robust debate, for example, the American military campaign in Yemen began without notice in
December and has never been officially confirmed.
Note: For many revealing reports on the secret operations of the US military and intelligence
services in its "global war on terrorism", click here.
Breaking a Promise on Surveillance

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/opinion/30fri1.html
It is just a technical matter, the Obama administration says: We just need to make a slight change
in a law to make clear that we have the right to see the names of anyones e-mail correspondents
and their Web browsing history without the messy complication of asking a judge for permission. It
is far more than a technical change. The administrations request, reported [on July 29] in The
Washington Post, is an unnecessary and disappointing step backward toward more intrusive
surveillance from a president who promised something very different during the 2008 campaign. To
get this information, the F.B.I. simply has to ask for it in the form of a national security letter, which
is an administrative request that does not require a judges signature. The F.B.I. used these
letters hundreds of thousands of times to demand records of phone calls and other
communications, and the Pentagon used them to get records from banks and consumer
credit agencies. Internal investigations of both agencies found widespread misuse of the
power, and little oversight into how it was wielded. President Obama campaigned for office on an
explicit promise to rein in these abuses. But instead of implementing reasonable civil liberties
protections, like taking requests for e-mail surveillance before a judge, the administration is
proposing changes to the law that would allow huge numbers of new electronic communications to
be examined with no judicial oversight.
Note: For key reports on the growing government and corporate threats to privacy, click here.
Iraq: Terror or corruption? Central Bank attack is probed

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/07/iraq-terror-or-corrupti...
Iraqi authorities are investigating a fire that destroyed sensitive documents during an apparent Al
Qaeda in Iraq attack against the Central Bank of Iraq, amid suspicions that the fire may have been
set to destroy evidence in a potentially huge corruption case, officials say. Investigators became
suspicious ... after they discovered that the fire was not caused by [the attack] but rather appeared
to have been started deliberately in a second-floor room that is used by the inspector general
responsible for investigating corruption cases, said Sabah Saadi, who heads the Integrity
Committee in Iraq's parliament, charged with monitoring corruption. According to Saadi, the fire
destroyed documents stored in the room that pertained to a particularly sensitive case involving a
series of fraudulent checks drawn against accounts held by different companies with state-owned
banks. At least $711 million had been found to be missing in the scheme, and two bank managers
had been detained as part of an investigation before the fire, he said. But Saadi suspects that the
scam may have been much larger and could have involved many more people. The
investigation into the fire raises tantalizing questions about the nature of the attack, the
role of Al Qaeda in Iraq and the extent of corruption in the country.
Note: This highly visible attack by "terrorists" masking the destruction of evidence of government
corruption parallels the attacks of 9/11, in which the destruction (likely by controlled demolition) of
WTC 7 served to destroy massive evidence of government and corporate fraud in SEC cases
under investigation.
Disturbing story of Fallujah's birth defects

2010-03-04, BBC News
Six years after the intense fighting began in the Iraqi town of Fallujah between US forces and
Sunni insurgents, there is a disturbingly large number of cases of birth defects in the town. Fallujah
is less than 40 miles (65km) from Baghdad, but it can still be dangerous to get to. As a result,
there has been no authoritative medical investigation, certainly by any Western team, into
the allegations that the weapons used by the Americans are still causing serious problems.
The Iraqi government line is that there are only one or two extra cases of birth defects per year in
Fallujah, compared with the national average. But in the ... Fallujah General Hospital ... we found a
paediatric specialist, Dr Samira al-Ani, who told us that she saw two or three new cases every day.
Most of them, she said, exhibited cardiac problems. The specialist, like other medical staff at the
hospital, seemed nervous about talking too openly about the problem. But it is impossible, as a
visitor, not to be struck by the terrible number of cases of birth defects there. We heard many times
that officials in Fallujah had warned women that they should not have children. We went to a clinic
for the disabled, and were given details of dozens upon dozens of cases of children with serious
birth defects.
Note: There is strong evidence that the US military was experimenting with dangerous weapons
like white phosphorus in Fallujah. For more on this, click here.
Justice Dept. Reveals More Missing E-Mail Files

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/us/27justice.html
Large batches of e-mail records from the Justice Department lawyers who worked on the 2002
legal opinions justifying the Bush administrations brutal interrogation techniques are missing. At a
Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who leads
the panel, angrily demanded to know what had happened to the e-mail files, and he noted that the
destruction of government records, including official e-mail messages, was a criminal offense. He
said the records gap called into question the completeness of the departments internal reviews of
the work done by the lawyers in the Bush years. The Justice Departments Office of Professional
Responsibility, which spent more than four years investigating the handling of the legal opinions
about interrogation policies after the Sept. 11 attacks, pushed to get access to a range of e-mail
records and other internal documents from the Justice Department to aid in its investigation. But it
discovered that many e-mail messages to and from John C. Yoo, who wrote the bulk of the
legal opinions for the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel, were missing. Also
deleted were a months worth of e-mail files from the summer of 2002 for Patrick Philbin, another
Justice Department lawyer who worked on the interrogation opinions.
Note: For powerful exposures from reliable sources of growing government secrecy, click here.
U.S. data about Guantanamo detainee's treatment is revealed in Britain

The British government [has] disclosed once-secret details of the United States' harsh treatment of
a former Guantanamo Bay detainee after losing a lengthy legal battle to suppress the information.
According to the information, from a judge's summary of a classified CIA report to British
authorities, Binyam Mohamed was subjected to "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment during
interrogations in Pakistan in 2002, including being shackled and deprived of sleep while
interrogators played upon "his fears of being removed from United States custody and
'disappearing.' " Mohamed, 31, was born in Ethiopia and lives in Britain. Arrested in Pakistan in
2002, he says he was tortured by American authorities and others under U.S. instruction there and
in Morocco. He says he was beaten with a leather strap, subjected to a mock execution and sliced
with a scalpel on his chest and penis. Mohamed says Britain knew about his treatment because
information used during his questioning could have come only from British intelligence. He spent
seven years in detention, four of them at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Reprieve, a legal organization representing Mohamed in a lawsuit against the British government,
said in a statement that the disclosures show that "the U.S. documented their efforts to
abuse Mr. Mohamed" and that British authorities "knew he was being abused and did
nothing about it."
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the illegal actions undertaken by the US and UK in
the prosecution of the fraudulent "war on terror," click here.
Pentagon to Increase Stock of High-Altitude Drones

2010-02-05, BusinessWeek/Bloomberg News
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-05/pentagon-to-increase-stock-of-hig...
The U.S. military plans to more than triple its inventory of high-altitude, armed and unarmed
drones capable of 24-hour patrols. The long-range aviation plan delivered to Congress Feb.
2 calls for 800 high-altitude drones, up from 220 currently. We cant get enough drones,
General David Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command, which includes the Afghanistan and
Iraq war theaters, said in a speech Jan. 19. Of the militarys 6,819 unmanned aircraft, only the
high- altitude long-endurance drones can provide ground commanders wide-ranging, round-theclock surveillance and the opportunity for instant strike. The new planes will include Global Hawks
built by Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp. and Predator and Reaper drones. The Air
Force uses those three model drones in Iraq and Afghanistan. Northrop also will build its new
broad-area surveillance aircraft for the Navy. The U.S. military currently flies about 39 combat-air
patrols for 24 hours each over Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Air Force Lieutenant General
David Deptula. The Pentagon has said it would increase the patrols to 50 a day in the next two
years and 65 by 2013.
Note: For key reports from media sources on new weapons development by the Pentagon, click
here and here.
Ex-Homeland Security chief head said to abuse public trust by touting

body scanners
Since the attempted bombing of a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day, former Homeland Security
secretary Michael Chertoff has given dozens of media interviews touting the need for the federal
government to buy more full-body scanners for airports. What he has made little mention of is that
the Chertoff Group, his security consulting agency, includes a client that manufactures the
machines. An airport passengers' rights group ... criticized Chertoff, who left office less than a year
ago, for using his former government credentials to advocate for a product that benefits his clients.
"Mr. Chertoff should not be allowed to ... privately gain from the sale of full-body scanners
under the pretense that the scanners would have detected this particular type of
explosive," said Kate Hanni, founder of FlyersRights.org, which opposes the use of the scanners.
Chertoff's advocacy for the technology dates back to his time in the Bush administration. In 2005,
Homeland Security ordered the government's first batch of the scanners. Today, 40 body scanners
are in use at 19 U.S. airports. The number is expected to skyrocket at least in part because of the
Christmas Day incident. The Transportation Security Administration this week said it will order 300
more machines.
Note: For lots more on the profiteering that underlies "the war on terror," click here.
Police expect Mumbai-style terror attack on City of London

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6962867.ece
Scotland Yard has warned businesses in London to expect a Mumbai-style attack on the capital. In
a briefing in the City of London ... a senior detective from SO15, the Metropolitan police counterterrorism command, said: Mumbai is coming to London. The detective said companies should
anticipate a shooting and hostage-taking raid involving a small number of gunmen with handguns
and improvised explosive devices. The warning the bluntest issued by police has underlined
an assessment that a terrorist cell may be preparing an attack on London early next year. It was
issued by the Met through its network of security forums, which provide business leaders, local
government and the emergency services with counter-terrorism advice. Officials now report an
increase in intelligence chatter communications captured by electronic eavesdropping
agencies. One senior security adviser said the police warnings had intensified and become much
more specific in the past fortnight. Before, there has been speculation. Now we are getting
what appears to be a definite plot to carry out a firearms attack on London, he said. Earlier
this year, police, military and intelligence services held an exercise in Kent to see whether
they could defeat a commando raid in London by terrorists.
Note: How can police "expect" a terror attack? Why wouldn't they be able to thwart it if they have
enough information to expect it? With profound questions about the reality of the Mumbai attacks
and "terrorism" still unanswered, this prediction of similar attacks in London raises suspicions that
the reality may be quite different from what the police are saying. For many other reports from
reliable sources that raise profound questions about the official accounts of "terrorist incidents,"
click here.
Afghans Detail Detention in Black Jail at U.S. Base

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/world/asia/29bagram.html
An American military detention camp in Afghanistan is still holding inmates ... without access to the
International Committee of the Red Cross. The site, known to detainees as the black jail, consists
of individual windowless concrete cells, each illuminated by a single light bulb glowing 24 hours a
day. Former detainees said that their only human contact was at twice-daily interrogation sessions.
While Mr. Obama signed an order to eliminate so-called black sites run by the [CIA] in
January, it did not also close this jail, which is run by military Special Operations forces.
Military officials said as recently as this summer that the Afghanistan jail and another like it at the
Balad Air Base in Iraq were being used to interrogate high-value detainees. And officials said
recently that there were no plans to close the jails. All three former detainees interviewed by
The New York Times complained of being held for months after the intensive interrogations were
over without being told why. Human rights researchers say they worry that the jail remains in the
shadows and largely inaccessible both to the Red Cross and the Afghan Independent Human
Rights Commission.
Note: For many revealing reports from major media sources on the worsening threats to civil
Brother of Afghan Leader Said to Be Paid by C.I.A.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/world/asia/28intel.html
Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the countrys
booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has
for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials. The C.I.A.s
practices ... suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out
the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban. The relationship
between Mr. Karzai and the C.I.A. is wide ranging. He helps the C.I.A. operate a paramilitary
group, the Kandahar Strike Force, that is used for raids against suspected insurgents. On at least
one occasion, the strike force has been accused of mounting an unauthorized operation against an
official of the Afghan government. Mr. Karzai is also paid for allowing the C.I.A. and American
Special Operations troops to rent a large compound outside the city. Hes our landlord, a senior
American official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. A former C.I.A. officer with
experience in Afghanistan said the agency relied heavily on Ahmed Wali Karzai, and often based
covert operatives at compounds he owned.
Note: To read an analysis of these revelations, which argues that there is a much bigger story of
"heavy dependence by U.S. and NATO counterinsurgency forces on Afghan warlords for security",
click here.
Report Reveals CIA Conducted Mock Executions

A long-suppressed report by the Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general to be released
next week reveals that CIA interrogators staged mock executions as part of the agency's post-9/11
program to detain and question terror suspects, NEWSWEEK has learned. The report describes
how one detainee, suspected USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was threatened with a
gun and a power drill during the course of CIA interrogation. Nashiri's interrogators brandished the
gun in an effort to convince him that he was going to be shot. Interrogators also turned on a power
drill and held it near him. "The purpose was to scare him into giving [information] up," said
one [source]. A federal law banning the use of torture expressly forbids threatening a detainee
with "imminent death." The report also says ... that a mock execution was staged in a room
next to a detainee, during which a gunshot was fired in an effort to make the suspect
believe that another prisoner had been killed. The inspector general's report alludes to more
than one mock execution. Before leaving office, Bush administration officials confirmed that Nashiri
was one of three CIA detainees subjected to waterboarding. They also acknowledged that Nashiri
was one of two Al Qaeda detainees whose detentions and interrogations were documented at
length in CIA videotapes. But senior officials of the agency's undercover operations branch, the
National Clandestine Service, ordered that the tapes be destroyed, an action that has been under
investigation for more than a year by a federal prosecutor. The new revelations are contained in a
lengthy report on the CIA interrogation program completed by the agency's inspector general in
May 2004.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the illegal methods used by the CIA and US military
in its wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, click here.
C.I.A. Sought Blackwaters Help to Kill Jihadists

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/us/20intel.html
The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security
contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of
Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials. Executives from Blackwater ...
helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The C.I.A. spent several million
dollars on the program, which did not successfully capture or kill any terrorist suspects. It is
unclear whether the C.I.A. had planned to use the contractors to actually capture or kill Qaeda
operatives, or just to help with training and surveillance in the program. American spy agencies
have in recent years outsourced some highly controversial work, including the interrogation of
prisoners. But government officials said that bringing outsiders into a program with lethal authority
raised deep concerns about accountability in covert operations. Officials said the C.I.A. did not
have a formal contract with Blackwater for this program but instead had individual agreements with
top company officials, including the founder, Erik D. Prince, a politically connected former member
of the Navy Seals and the heir to a family fortune. Over the years, Blackwater has hired several
former top C.I.A. officials, including Cofer Black, who ran the C.I.A. counterterrorism center
immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks. C.I.A. operatives also regularly use the companys
training complex in North Carolina. The complex includes a shooting range used for sniper
training.
Note: For many revealing reports from major media sources on the frequent use of assassinations
to advance state objectives, click here.
2 U.S. Architects of Harsh Tactics in 9/11's Wake

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/us/12psychs.html
Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were military retirees and psychologists, on the lookout for
business opportunities. They found an excellent customer in the Central Intelligence Agency,
where in 2002 they became the architects of the most important interrogation program in the
history of American counterterrorism. They had never carried out a real interrogation, only
mock sessions in the military training they had overseen. They had no relevant
scholarship; their Ph.D. dissertations were on high blood pressure and family therapy. They
had no language skills and no expertise on Al Qaeda. But they had psychology credentials.
Seven months after President Obama ordered the C.I.A. interrogation program closed, its fallout
still commands attention. In the next few weeks, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is expected to
decide whether to begin a criminal torture investigation, in which the psychologists' role is likely to
come under scrutiny. The Justice Department ethics office is expected to complete a report on the
lawyers who pronounced the methods legal. And the C.I.A. will soon release a highly critical 2004
report on the program by the agency's inspector general. The psychologists' ... fall from official
grace has been as swift as their rise in 2002. With a possible criminal inquiry looming, Dr. Mitchell
and Dr. Jessen have retained a well-known defense lawyer, Henry F. Schuelke III. Mr. Schuelke
said they would not comment for this article.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the torture employed by the CIA and US military in
"the war on terror," click here.
Power Shifts in Plan for Capital Calamity

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/us/politics/28continuity.html
A shift in authority has given military officials at the White House a bigger operational role in
creating a backup government if the nations capital were decapitated by a terrorist attack or
other calamity, according to current and former officials involved in the decision. The move ... was
made in the closing weeks of the administration of President George W. Bush. Officials said the
Obama administration had left the plan essentially intact. Under the revamped structure, the
White House Military Office, which reports to the office of the White House chief of staff,
has assumed a more central role in setting up a temporary shadow government in a
crisis. And the office, a 2,300-person outfit best known for flying Air Force One, has taken on
added responsibilities as the lead agent in shepherding government leaders to a secure site at
Mount Weather in rural Virginia, keeping classified lists of successors and maintaining computer
systems, among other operational duties. Many of these types of tasks were previously handled by
civilians at other agencies, led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Officials at other
agencies that have traditionally played critical roles expressed concern that the new structure
placed too much power in the hands of too few people inside the White House. They also saw the
move as part of the Bush administrations broader efforts to enhance the power of the White
House. Though the office reports to the White House, many of its employees are uniformed
soldiers, and it has sometimes been led by a military officer. While Obama administration officials
would not discuss details of their continuity plan, they said the current policy was settled, and
they drew no distance between their own policies and those left behind by the Bush administration.
Note: For more on the Shadow Government, click here. For lots more on government secrecy
from major media sources, click here.
Assassinations anyone? CIA claims of cancelled campaign are hogwash

2009-07-19, Toronto Sun
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/eric_margolis/2009/07/19/1018410...
CIA director Leon Panetta just told Congress he cancelled a secret operation to assassinate alQaida leaders. The CIA campaign, authorized in 2001, had not yet become operational, claimed
Panetta. His claim is humbug. The U.S. has been trying to kill al-Qaida personnel (real and
imagined) since the Clinton administration. These efforts continue under President Barack Obama.
Claims by Congress it was never informed are hogwash. The CIA and Pentagon have been in the
assassination business since the early 1950s, using American hit teams or third parties.
Assassination was outlawed in the U.S. in 1976, but that did not stop attempts by its last three
administrations to emulate Israel's Mossad in the "targeted killing" of enemies. The George W.
Bush administration, and now the Obama White House, sidestepped American law by
saying the U.S. was at war, and thus legally killing "enemy combatants." But Congress
never declared war. Washington is buzzing about a secret death squad run by Dick Cheney when
he was vice-president and his protege, the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley
McChrystal. This gung-ho general led the Pentagon's super secret Special Operations Command,
which has become a major rival to the CIA in the business of "wet affairs" (as the KGB used to call
assassinations) and covert raids. America is hardly alone in trying to rub out enemies or those who
thwart its designs. Britain's MI-6 and France's SDECE were notorious for sending out assassins.
U.S. assassins are still at work. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, U.S. drones are killing tribesmen
almost daily. Over 90% are civilians. Americans have a curious notion that killing people from the
air is not murder or even a crime, but somehow clean.
Note: For more revealing information on this, click here. For more on assassination as a tool of
state, click here.
White House Weighs Order on Detention

Obama administration officials ... are crafting language for an executive order that would
reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to
three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations. Such an
order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be
detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. In a May speech, President Obama
broached the need for a system of long-term detention and suggested that it would include
congressional and judicial oversight. "We must recognize that these detention policies cannot be
unbounded. They can't be based simply on what I or the executive branch decide alone," he said.
A senior Republican [Congressional] staff member said that senators have yet to see "a
comprehensive, detailed policy" on long-term detention from the administration. "They can do it
without congressional backing, but I think there would be very strong concerns," the staff member
said, adding that "Congress could cut off funding" for any detention system established in the
United States. Concerns are growing among Obama's advisers that Congress may try to assert
too much control over the process. "Legislation could kill Obama's plans," said one government
official involved. The official said an executive order could be the best option for the president at
this juncture. Under one White House draft that was being discussed this month, according to
administration officials, detainees would be imprisoned at a military facility on U.S. soil, but their
ongoing detention would be subject to annual presidential review.
Note: Again the Obama administration is following in the footsteps of the Bush administration,
despite prior promises not to do so. For more on threats to civil liberties from reliable sources, click
here.
Somali pirates guided by London intelligence team, report says

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/11/somali-pirates-london-intelligence
The Somali pirates attacking shipping in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean are directed to their
targets by a "consultant" team in London, according to a European military intelligence document
obtained by a Spanish radio station. The document, obtained by Cadena SER radio, says the team
and the pirates remain in contact by satellite telephone. It says that pirate groups have "wellplaced informers" in London who are in regular contact with control centres in Somalia where
decisions on which vessels to attack are made. These London-based "consultants" help the
pirates select targets, providing information on the ships' cargoes and courses. In at least one
case the pirates have remained in contact with their London informants from the hijacked ship,
according to one targeted shipping company. "The information that merchant ships sailing through
the area volunteer to various international organisations is ending up in the pirates' hands,"
Cadena SER reported the report as saying. This enables the more organised pirate groups to
study their targets in advance, even spending several days training teams for specific hijacks.
Senior pirates then join the vessel once it has been sailed close to Somalia. Captains of attacked
ships have found that pirates know everything from the layout of the vessel to its ports of
call. The national flag of a ship is also taken into account when choosing a target, with
British vessels being increasingly avoided, according to the report.
Note: The remarkable capability described here -- knowledge of all the details of cargo, ship
layout, nationality, and especially position and course -- is one that only national intelligence
agencies are likely to have. The positional information would require real-time satellite or drone
aircraft surveillance data. Could MI6, the British C.I.A., be running the Somali pirate operations,
which have so suddenly spiked up just as the Pentagon's new AFRICOM gets underway?
'Maverick' DHS Office Issues Glossary of Domestic Extremist Groups

2009-05-05, Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/05/maverick-dhs-office-issues-diction...
The Department of Homeland Security is reining in a "maverick" division of the agency following
criticism of a report it issued that details domestic "extremists" ranging from anti-tax movements to
pro-environment groups, a DHS official told FOX News on Tuesday. The report, released in March
... was on top of a controversial document the same office produced last month that said U.S.
veterans were ripe for recruitment by terrorist groups. The quickly withdrawn report, titled the
"Domestic Extremism Lexicon," comes from the department's Office of Intelligence and Analysis,
the same unit that produced the report on right-wing extremists recruiting vets. The document, first
uncovered by The Washington Times, uses a broad brush to define terms used when analyzing
dozens of supposedly extremist ideologies inside the United States. They cover: Jewish
extremists, animal rights extremists, Christian identity extremists, black separatism extremists,
anti-abortion extremists, anti-immigration extremists, anti-technology extremists, Cuban
independence extremists and tax resistance extremists, to name a few. In addition to the report
on right-wing threats issued last month -- for which DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano
apologized -- DHS detailed left-wing threats in a similar report released in January. The
"Domestic Extremism Lexicon" covers ideologies across the spectrum. The top of the
document also defines "alternative media" as something sinister -- though the term is commonly
used to describe blogs and popular publications like New York's Village Voice.
Note: How strange that Fox News posted this report, yet other major media largely ignored this
important news. Click here to read the extremism report.
Report Gives New Detail on Approval of Brutal Techniques

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/politics/22report.html?partner=rss&emc=r...
A newly declassified Congressional report released Tuesday outlined the most detailed evidence
yet that the militarys use of harsh interrogation methods on terrorism suspects was approved at
high levels of the Bush administration. The report focused solely on interrogations carried out by
the military, not those conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency at its secret prisons overseas.
It rejected claims by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others that Pentagon
policies played no role in harsh treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq or other military
facilities. The 232-page report, the product of an 18-month inquiry, was approved on Nov. 20 by
the Senate Armed Services Committee, but has since been under Pentagon review for
declassification. Some of the findings were made public in a Dec. 12 article in The New York
Times. The Senate report documented how some of the techniques used by the military at
prisons in Afghanistan and at the naval base in Guantnamo Bay, Cuba, as well as in Iraq
stripping detainees, placing them in stress positions or depriving them of sleep
originated in a military program known as Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape, or
SERE. According to the Senate investigation, a military behavioral scientist and a colleague who
had witnessed SERE training proposed its use at Guantnamo in October 2002, as pressure was
rising to get tougher with detainee interrogations. Officers there sought authorization, and Mr.
Rumsfeld approved 15 interrogation techniques.
Note: For many revealing reports on the horrific realities of the US wars on Iraq and Afghanistan,
click here.
Bush's 'War' On Terror Comes to a Sudden End

President Obama yesterday eliminated the most controversial tools employed by his predecessor
against terrorism suspects. While Obama says he has no plans to diminish counterterrorism
operations abroad, the notion that a president can circumvent long-standing U.S. laws simply by
declaring war was halted by executive order in the Oval Office. Key components of the secret
structure developed under Bush are being swept away: The military's Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
facility, where the rights of habeas corpus and due process had been denied detainees, will close,
and the CIA is now prohibited from maintaining its own overseas prisons. And in a broad
swipe at the Bush administration's lawyers, Obama nullified every legal order and opinion
on interrogations issued by any lawyer in the executive branch after Sept. 11, 2001. The CIA
... set up their first interrogation center in a compound walled off by black canvas at Bagram air
base in Afghanistan, and more at tiny bases throughout that country, where detainees could be
questioned outside military rules and the protocols of the Geneva Conventions, which lay out the
standards for treatment of prisoners of war. As the CIA recruited young case officers, polygraphers
and medical personnel to work on interrogation teams, the agency's leaders asked its allies in
Thailand and Eastern Europe to set up secret prisons where people ... could be held in isolation
and subjected to extreme sleep and sensory deprivation, waterboarding and sexual humiliation.
These tactics are not permitted under military rules or the Geneva Conventions.
Note: For many reports from reliable sources on the realities underlying the War on Terror, click
here.
How Technology May Soon "Read" Your Mind

2009-01-04, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/31/60minutes/main4694713.shtml
The content of our thoughts is our own - private, secret, and unknowable by anyone else. [But]
neuroscience research into how we think and what we're thinking is advancing at a stunning rate,
making it possible for the first time in human history to peer directly into the brain to read out the
physical make-up of our thoughts, some would say to read our minds. The technology that is
transforming what once was science fiction into just plain science is a specialized use of
MRI scanning called "functional MRI," fMRI for short. "I always tell my students that there is
no science fiction anymore," [said] Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Center for Ethics at Emory
University in Atlanta. What [researchers] ... have done is combine fMRI's ability to look at the brain
in action with computer science's new power to sort through massive amounts of data. "There are
some other technologies that are being developed that may be able to be used covertly and even
remotely. They're trying to develop now a beam of light that would be projected onto your
forehead. It would go a couple of millimeters into your frontal cortex, and then receptors would get
the reflection of that light. And [there are] some studies that suggest that we could use that as a lie
detection device. If you were sitting there in the airport and being questioned, they could beam that
on your forehead without your knowledge. We can't do that yet, but they're working on it," [Wolpe
said].
Note: Remember that classified military technology is usually at least 10 years ahead of anything
in the public realm. For more mind-altering information on this key topic, click here and here.
Pentagon to Detail Troops to Bolster Domestic Security

The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011
trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic
catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials. Critics of the change, in the military and among
civil liberties groups and libertarians ... express concern that the new homeland emphasis
threatens to ... undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting
the military's role in domestic law enforcement. The Pentagon's plan calls for three rapidreaction forces to be ready for emergency response by September 2011. The first 4,700-person
unit, built around an active-duty combat brigade based at Fort Stewart, Ga., was available as of
Oct. 1, said Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., commander of the U.S. Northern Command. Two additional
teams will join nearly 80 smaller National Guard and reserve units made up of about 6,000 troops
in supporting local and state officials nationwide. All would be trained to respond to a domestic
chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or high-yield explosive attack, or CBRNE event, as the
military calls it. In 2005, a new Pentagon homeland defense strategy emphasized "preparing for
multiple, simultaneous mass casualty incidents." In late 2007, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon
England signed a directive approving more than $556 million over five years to set up the three
response teams, known as CBRNE Consequence Management Response Forces [CCMRF].
Note: For many reports from major media sources of increasing threats to civil liberties, click here.
Biden to Supporters: "Gird Your Loins"

2008-10-20, ABC News
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/10/biden-to-suppor.html
Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., on Sunday guaranteed that if elected, Sen. Barack Obama., D-Ill., will be
tested by an international crisis within his first six months in power and he will need supporters to
stand by him as he makes tough, and possibly unpopular, decisions. "Mark my words," the
Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers.
"Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're
gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. And
he's gonna need help. He's gonna need you ... to use your influence, your influence within
the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially ... that we're
right. Gird your loins," Biden told the crowd. "We're gonna win, but this is not gonna be an easy
ride. The next president is gonna be left with the most significant task. It's like cleaning the Augean
stables, man. He's gonna need your help. Because I promise you, you all are gonna be sitting here
a year from now going, 'Oh my God, why are they there in the polls? Why is the polling so down?
Why is this thing so tough?' We're gonna have to make some incredibly tough decisions in the first
two years. So I'm asking you now ... [to] be prepared to stick with us. There are gonna be a lot of
you who want to go, 'Whoa, wait a minute, yo, whoa, whoa, I don't know about that decision',"
Biden continued. "Because if you think the decision is sound when they're made, which I believe
you will, they're not likely to be as popular as they are sound. Because if they're popular, they're
probably not sound."
Note: This remarkable warning from Joe Biden of a near-term "generated crisis" is notable as well
for its anti-democratic sentiments. Gen. Colin Powell, in endorsing Barack Obama for president on
"Meet the Press" on Oct. 19 (the same day as Biden's speech), also said "there's going to be a
crisis come along [on] the 21st or 22nd of January that we don't even know about right now."
Beyond the timing, what do these key insiders know that the public doesn't? And what country has
the demonstrated capability to "generate" a crisis at will?
Army combat unit to deploy within U.S.

2008-10-03, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/03/army.unit/index.html
The United States military's Northern Command [NORTHCOM], formed in the wake of the
September 11 terrorist attacks, is dedicating a combat infantry team to deal with catastrophes in
the U.S., including terrorist attacks and natural disasters. The 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd
Infantry, which was first into Baghdad, Iraq, in 2003, started its controversial assignment [on
October 1]. The First Raiders will spend 2009 as the first active-duty military unit attached to the
U.S. Northern Command since it was created. They will be based in Fort Stewart, Georgia, and
focus primarily on logistics and support for local police and rescue personnel, the Army says. The
plan is drawing skepticism from some observers who are concerned that the unit has been
training with equipment generally used in law enforcement, including beanbag bullets,
Tasers, spike strips and roadblocks. That kind of training seems a bit out of line for the unit's
designated role as Northern Command's CCMRF (Sea Smurf), or CBRNE Consequence
Management Response Force. CBRNE stands for chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and
high-yield explosive incidents. Use of active-duty military as a domestic police force has been
severely limited since passage of the Posse Comitatus Act following the Civil War. Bloggers are
criticizing the new force, saying that because it has been training in law enforcement tactics it
could be be used for domestic law enforcement.
Note: Naomi Wolf, author of Give Me Liberty and The End of America, considers this domestic
deployment of combat troops to be a coup d'etat with frightening implications.
Feds give customs agents free hand to seize travelers' documents

2008-09-24, Feds give customs agents free hand to seize travelers' documents
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/23/BA9P133LEA.DTL
The Bush administration has overturned a 22-year-old policy and now allows customs agents to
seize, read and copy documents from travelers at airports and borders without suspicion of
wrongdoing, civil rights lawyers in San Francisco said Tuesday in releasing records obtained in a
lawsuit. The records also indicate that the government gives customs agents unlimited authority to
question travelers about their religious beliefs and political opinions, said lawyers from the Asian
Law Caucus and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They said they had asked the Department of
Homeland Security for details of any policy that would guide or limit such questioning and received
no reply. "We're concerned that people of South Asian or Muslim-looking background are being
targeted inappropriately" for questioning and searches, said Asian Law Caucus attorney Shirin
Sinnar. The Bay Area legal groups filed a Freedom of Information Act suit against the government
in February, seeking documents on the policies that govern searches and questioning of
international travelers. The organizations said they had received more than 20 complaints in the
previous year, mostly from South Asians and Muslims. The travelers said customs agents
regularly singled them out when they returned from abroad, looked at their papers and
laptop computers, and asked them such questions as whom they had seen on their trips,
whether they attended mosques and whether they hated the U.S. government.
Note: For many reports from major media sources of rising threats to civil liberties, click here.
Bush Seeks to Affirm a Continuing War on Terror

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/washington/30terror.htm
Tucked deep into a recent proposal from the Bush administration is a provision that has received
almost no public attention: an affirmation that the United States is still at war with Al Qaeda. The
language, part of a proposal for hearing legal appeals from detainees at the United States naval
base at Guantnamo Bay, Cuba, goes beyond political symbolism. Echoing a measure that
Congress passed just days after the Sept. 11 attacks, it carries significant legal and public policy
implications for Mr. Bush, and potentially his successor, to claim the imprimatur of Congress to use
the tools of war, including detention, interrogation and surveillance, against the enemy, legal and
political analysts say. Some lawmakers are concerned that the administrations effort to declare
anew a war footing is an 11th-hour maneuver to re-establish its broad interpretation of the
presidents wartime powers, even in the face of challenges from the Supreme Court and
Congress. The proposal is also the latest step that the administration, in its waning months,
has taken to make permanent important aspects of its long war against terrorism. From a
new wiretapping law approved by Congress to a rewriting of intelligence procedures and F.B.I.
investigative techniques, the administration is moving to institutionalize by law, regulation or order
a wide variety of antiterrorism tactics. This seems like a final push by the administration before
they go out the door, said Suzanne Spaulding, a former lawyer for the Central Intelligence Agency
and an expert on national security law.
Note: For many revealing reports from reliable sources of the realities behind the "war on terror,"
click here.
Scientists Question FBI Probe On Anthrax

For nearly seven years, scientist Bruce E. Ivins and a small circle of fellow anthrax specialists at
Fort Detrick's Army medical lab lived in a curious limbo: They served as occasional consultants for
the FBI in the investigation of the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks, yet they were all potential suspects.
Over lunch in the bacteriology division, nervous scientists would share stories about their latest
unpleasant encounters with the FBI and ponder whether they should hire criminal defense lawyers.
In tactics that the researchers considered heavy-handed and often threatening, they were
interviewed and polygraphed as early as 2002, and reinterviewed numerous times. Their labs were
searched, and their computers and equipment carted away. The FBI eventually focused on Ivins,
whom federal prosecutors were planning to indict when he committed suicide last week.
Colleagues and friends of the vaccine specialist remained convinced that Ivins was
innocent: They contended that he had neither the motive nor the means to create the fine,
lethal powder that was sent by mail to news outlets and congressional offices in the late
summer and fall of 2001. Mindful of previous FBI mistakes in fingering others in the case, many
are deeply skeptical that the bureau has gotten it right this time. "I really don't think he's the guy. I
say to the FBI, 'Show me your evidence,' " said Jeffrey J. Adamovicz, former director of the
bacteriology division at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, or
USAMRIID. "A lot of the tactics they used were designed to isolate him from his support. The FBI
just continued to push his buttons."
Note: For revealing insights into the realities behind the war on terror, click here.
More scrutiny, secrecy at Justice Department

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-opr6-2008jul06,0,7756465...
The [DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility] that polices [DOJ] lawyers' conduct has been
operating under a growing shroud of secrecy. It is taking on some of the weightiest issues in
government -- examining the role Justice's lawyers played in formulating administration
interrogation policies for suspected terrorists and in endorsing a National Security Agency program
of warrantless electronic surveillance. It has ... the task of deciding whether department lawyers
engaged in selective prosecution of Democratic political figures. It also is looking into lawyers'
involvement in a decision ... to deport a Canadian citizen to Syria, where he was imprisoned and
tortured. But officials have declined to say whether even one government lawyer has been
found to have engaged in professional misconduct in connection with the war on terrorism
-- despite often fierce criticism from civil liberties groups, defense lawyers and judges. The
[unit] has exonerated department lawyers in at least two high-profile terrorism-related
investigations. The office found that department lawyers had not engaged in misconduct in
connection with ... using special warrants to round up and incarcerate men after Sept. 11. The
OPR also exonerated department lawyers in ... the case of Brandon Mayfield, a Muslim attorney in
Portland, Ore., who was detained when the FBI erroneously linked his fingerprints to ... the March
2004 Madrid train bombings. But the resolution of most matters investigated by the OPR remains
closely guarded, even in cases where courts have found evidence of serious prosecutorial
misconduct.
Note: For lots more on government secrecy, click here.
US academic deported and banned for criticising Israel

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/26/israelandthepalestinians.usa
Norman Finkelstein, the controversial Jewish American academic and fierce critic of Israel, has
been deported from the country and banned from the Jewish state for 10 years, it emerged
yesterday. Finkelstein, the son of a Holocaust survivor who has accused Israel of using the
genocidal Nazi campaign against Jews to justify its actions against the Palestinians, was detained
by the Israeli security service, Shin Bet, when he landed at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport on Friday.
Shin Bet interrogated him for around 24 hours. "I did my best to provide absolutely candid and
comprehensive answers to all the questions put to me," [he said.] "I have nothing to hide. Apart
from my political views, and the supporting scholarship, there isn't much more to say for myself:
alas, no suicide missions or secret rendezvous with terrorist organisations." Finkelstein is one of
several scholars rejected by Israel in the increasingly bitter divide in academic circles,
between those who support and those who criticise its treatment of Palestinians.
Finkelstein was also refused tenure last year at Chicago's DePaul University. The
Association for Civil Rights in Israel said the deportation of Finkelstein was an assault on free
speech. "The decision to prevent someone from voicing their opinions by arresting and deporting
them is typical of a totalitarian regime," said the association's lawyer, Oded Peler. "A democratic
state, where freedom of expression is the highest principle, does not shut out criticism or ideas just
because they are uncomfortable for its authorities to hear. It confronts those ideas in public
debate."
Unmarked chopper patrols New York City from above

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/23/ap/national/main4123912.shtml
On a cloudless spring day, the NYPD helicopter soars over the city, its sights set on the Statue of
Liberty. A dramatic close-up of Lady Liberty's frozen gaze fills one of three flat-screen computer
monitors mounted on a console. Hundreds of sightseers below are oblivious to the fact that a
helicopter is peering down on them from a mile and a half away. "They don't even know we're
here," said crew chief John Diaz, speaking into a headset over the din of the aircraft's engine. The
helicopter's unmarked paint job belies what's inside: an arsenal of sophisticated
surveillance and tracking equipment powerful enough to read license plates or scan
pedestrians' faces from high above the nation's largest metropolis. "It looks like just
another helicopter in the sky," said Assistant Police Chief Charles Kammerdener, who oversees
the department's aviation unit. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has said that no other U.S.
law enforcement agency "has anything that comes close" to the surveillance chopper, which was
designed by engineers at Bell Helicopter and computer technicians based on NYPD specifications.
The $10 million helicopter is just part of the department's efforts to adopt cutting-edge technology
for its [surveillance] operations. The NYPD also plans to spend tens of millions of dollars
strengthening security in the lower Manhattan business district with a network of closed-circuit
television cameras and license-plate readers posted at bridges, tunnels and other entry points.
Civil rights advocates are skeptical about the push for more surveillance, arguing it reflects the
NYPD's evolution into ad hoc spy agency.
Note: For many important reports on disturbing threats to privacy, click here.
Domestic spying far outpaces terrorism prosecutions

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-justice12-2008may12,0,43...
The number of Americans being secretly wiretapped or having their financial and other records
reviewed by the government has continued to increase as officials aggressively use powers
approved after the Sept. 11 attacks. But the number of terrorism prosecutions ending up in court -one measure of the effectiveness of such sleuthing -- has continued to decline, in some cases
precipitously. The trends, visible in new government data and a private analysis of Justice
Department records, are worrisome to civil liberties groups and some legal scholars. They say it is
further evidence that the government has compromised the privacy rights of ordinary citizens
without much to show for it. The Bush administration has been seeking to expand its ability to
gather intelligence without prior court approval. The [Justice] department ... reported a sharp rise in
the use of national security letters by the FBI -- from 9,254 in 2005 to 12,583 in 2006, the latest
data available. The letters seek customer information from banks, Internet providers and phone
companies. They have caused a stir because consumers do not have a right to know that their
information is being disclosed and the letters are issued without court oversight. Civil liberties
groups say the new data reveal a disturbing consequence of the government's post-Sept. 11
expanded surveillance capabilities. "The number of Americans being investigated dwarfs any
legitimate number of actual terrorism prosecutions, and that is extremely troubling," said
Lisa Graves, deputy director of the Center for National Security Studies, a Washington-based civil
liberties group.
Note: For many reports from major media sources that question the reality of the "terror" threat,
click here.
Torture Memo Gave White House Broad Powers

2008-04-02, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/DOJ/story?id=4569746&page=1
The Justice Department's newly declassified torture memo outlined the broad legal authority its
lawyers gave to the Bush White House on matters of torture and presidential authority during times
of war. The March 14, 2003 memorandum ... provided legal "guidance" for military interrogations of
"alien unlawful combatants," and concluded that the president's authority during wartime took
precedence over the individual rights of enemies captured in the field. The memo ... determined
that amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which in part protect rights of individuals charged with
crimes, do not apply equally to enemy combatants. "The Fifth Amendment due process clause
does not apply to the president's conduct of a war," the memo noted. It also asserted, "The
detention of enemy combatants can in no sense be deemed 'punishment' for purposes of the
Eighth Amendment," which prohibits "cruel and unusual" forms of punishment. The memo was
drafted by John Yoo, who was at the time the deputy assistant attorney general for the
Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Former aides to John Ashcroft say the thenattorney general privately dubbed Yoo "Dr. Yes" for being so closely aligned with lawyers at
the White House. The memo also provided an argument in defense of government interrogators
who used harsh tactics in their line of work. The memo also laid out a defense against the authority
of the U.N. Convention Against Torture, or CAT. Jack Goldsmith who headed OLC from October
2003 to July 2004, and worked at the Pentagon before coming to the department ... described the
problems he had reviewing and standing by Yoo's work. "My first [reaction] was disbelief that
programs of this importance could be supported by legal opinions that were this flawed."
FBI Found to Misuse Security Letters

The FBI has increasingly used administrative orders to obtain the personal records of U.S. citizens
rather than foreigners implicated in terrorism or counterintelligence investigations, and at least
once it relied on such orders to obtain records that a special intelligence-gathering court had
deemed protected by the First Amendment, according to two government audits released
yesterday. The episode was outlined in a Justice Department report that concluded the FBI had
abused its intelligence-gathering privileges by issuing inadequately documented "national security
letters" from 2003 to 2006. The report makes it clear that the abuses persisted in 2006 and
disclosed that 60 percent of the nearly 50,000 security letters issued that year by the FBI targeted
Americans. Because U.S. citizens enjoy constitutional protections against unreasonable searches
and seizures, judicial warrants are ordinarily required for government surveillance. But national
security letters are approved only by FBI officials and are not subject to judicial approval; they
routinely demand certain types of personal data, such as telephone, e-mail and financial records,
while barring the recipient from disclosing that the information was requested or supplied. "The
fact that these are being used against U.S. citizens, and being used so aggressively, should
call into question the claim that these powers are about terrorists and not just about
collecting information on all kinds of people," said Jameel Jaffer, national security director at
the American Civil Liberties Union. "They're basically using national security letters to evade
legal requirements that would be enforced if there were judicial oversight."
Note: For many key reports from major media sources on increasing threats to civil liberties, click
here.
Justice Official Defends Rough CIA Interrogations

The Bush administration allowed CIA interrogators to use tactics that were "quite distressing,
uncomfortable, even frightening," as long as they did not cause enough severe and lasting pain to
constitute illegal torture, a senior Justice Department official said last week. In testimony before a
House subcommittee, Steven G. Bradbury, the acting chief of the Justice Department's Office of
Legal Counsel, spelled out how the administration regulated the CIA's use of rough tactics and
offered new details of how [waterboarding] was used to compel disclosures by prisoners. Bradbury
indicated that no water entered the lungs of the three prisoners who were subjected to the
practice, lending credence to previous accounts that the noses and mouths of CIA captives were
covered in cloth or cellophane. Cellophane could pose a serious asphyxiation risk, torture experts
said. Bradbury's unusually frank testimony ... stunned many civil liberties advocates and outside
legal scholars who have long criticized the Bush administration's secretive and aggressive
interrogation policies. Martin S. Lederman, a former Office of Legal Counsel official who teaches
law at Georgetown University, called Bradbury's testimony "chilling." Lederman said that "to say
that this is not severe physical suffering -- is not torture -- is absurd. And to invoke the
defense that what the Spanish Inquisition did was worse and that we use a more benign,
non-torture form of waterboarding . . . is obscene." Bradbury wrote two secret memos in 2005
that authorized waterboarding, head-slapping and other harsh tactics by the CIA. As a result of
that and other issues, Senate Democrats have repeatedly blocked Bradbury's nomination to head
the legal counsel's office permanently.
Inquisition at JPL
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rutten16jan16,0,2608869.story
For the last four years, two robot rovers operated from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada
Flintridge have been moving across the surface of Mars, taking photographs and collecting
information. It's an epic event in the history of exploration, one of many for which JPL's 7,000
civilian scientists and engineers are responsible -- when they're not fending off the U.S.
government's attempts to conduct an intimidating and probably illegal inquisition into the intimate
details of their lives. The problem began -- as so many have -- in the security mania that gripped
the Bush administration after 9/11. Presidential Directive No. 12, issued by the Department of
Homeland Security, directed federal agencies to adopt a uniform badge that could be used by
employees and contractors to gain access to government facilities. NASA Administrator Michael
Griffin ... directed Caltech, which has a contract to run JPL for NASA, to make sure all of the lab's
employees complied. The government demanded that the scientists, in order to get the badges, fill
out questionnaires on their personal lives and waive the privacy of their financial, medical and
psychiatric records. The government also wanted permission to gather information about them by
interviewing third parties. Twenty-eight of JPL's senior scientists sued in federal court to stop
the government and Caltech from forcing them to agree to the background checks as the
price of keeping their jobs. They point out that Griffin is one of those who remain skeptical that
human actions contribute to global warming, and that some of JPL's near-Earth science has
played a critical role in establishing the empirical case to the contrary. They see the background
checks as the first step toward establishing a system of intimidation that might be used to
silence inconvenient science.
Note: For many disturbing reports on threats to our civil liberties, click here.
The Presidents Coming-Out Party

2007-12-15, Harper's magazine
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/12/hbc-90001917
This has been an important week in the torture debate in America. It has been the week of the
Presidents coming-out party. This week, a CIA agent, John Kiriakou, appeared, first on ABC News
and then in an interview with NBCs Matt Lauer, and explained just how the system works. When
we want to torture someone (and it is torture he said; no one involved with these techniques would
ever think anything different), we have to write it up. The team leader of the torture team proposes
what torture techniques will be used and when. He sends it to the Deputy Chief of Operations at
the CIA. And there it is reviewed by the hierarchy of the Company. Then the proposal is passed to
the Justice Department to be reviewed, blessed, and it is passed to the National Security Council
in the White House, to be reviewed and approved. The NSC is chaired, of course, by George W.
Bush, whose personal authority is invoked for each and every instance of torture
authorized. And, according to Kiriakou as well as others, Bushs answer is never no. He
has never found a case where he didnt find torture was appropriate. Heres a key piece of
the Kiriakou statement: LAUER: "Was the White House involved in that decision?" KIRIAKOU:
"Absolutely, this isnt something done willy nilly. Its not something that an agency officer just wakes
up in the morning and decides hes going to carry out an enhanced technique on a prisoner. This
was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and
Justice Department." He then goes into the process in considerable detail. Watch the video here.
So now the process can be fully diagrammed, and the cast of characters is stunning. The torture
system involves the operations division of the CIA on the implementation side. The Justice
Department is right in the thick of it. And finally the White House. David Addington, Dick Cheney,
Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadleythese are all names we can now link directly to the
torture system. They decided who would be tortured and how.
Houston Police Drone Aircraft

2007-11-23, CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0711/23/sitroom.02.html
Transcript: [Suzanne] MALVEAUX: A Texas mystery solved -- at least partially. We now know
Houston police are going to start using unmanned drone aircraft. But the question remains, well,
for what? Stephen Dean of CNN affiliate KPRC has got an exclusive look. STEPHEN DEAN,
KPRC CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): HPD [Houston Police Dept.], the federal Department of
Homeland Security and other invited guests all watching to see how this drone could be used for
police work in and around Houston. We tracked that drone from News Chopper 2. And that drone
was able to use a high-powered camera to track us. Those cameras can actually look into people's
homes or even follow them in moving cars -- which raises all sorts of new questions. HPD quickly
hustled together a news conference when it realized our cameras were there for the entire secret
test. Executive Assistant Chief Martha Mantabo admits that could mean covert police action. But
she says it's too early to tell what else HPD will do with the aircraft. We asked, are these drones
headed for ticketing speeders from the sky? MONTALVO: I'm not ruling anything out. DEAN: Back
at the secret test site, police helicopter pilots claimed the entire air space was restricted and
even threatened our local 2 Investigates pilot with action from the FAA if we didn't leave.
But we checked with FAA several times and there never was a flight restriction. That leaves
some to wonder whether the police are now ready to use terrorism fears since 911 to push
the envelope further into our private lives.
Note: To watch the video of secret police work in action, click here.
Strict Visa Regulations Discourage Visiting Artists

The Halle Orchestra, one of Great Britain's oldest symphony orchestras, has not toured the United
States in more than a decade, so spirits were high when the group secured dates at Lincoln
Center and in Upstate New York for performances last winter. But when the orchestra learned
that to get their entry visas, all 85 musicians -- every last cellist, oboist and piccolo player -would have to travel from their Manchester headquarters to the U.S. Embassy in London for
personal interviews, electronic fingerprinting and facial-recognition scans, it scrapped the
trip. Budgeting for airfare and travel costs to New York was one thing, but simply getting everyone
to the embassy at the same time, along with hotel bills and fees for the visas themselves, would
have cost an additional $80,000, said marketing director Andy Ryans. "It was very simply money
that we didn't have," Ryans explained. "We were desperate to go to the States, but our hands were
absolutely tied." Theirs aren't the only ones. To perform in this country, foreign artists of all stripes - punk rockers, ballet dancers, folk musicians, acrobats -- are funneled through a one-size-fits-all
"nonimmigrant" visa process whose costs and complications have become prohibitive, according
to booking agents, managers and presenters, such as the Kennedy Center, who program and
market the performers. Visiting businesspeople face similar security hurdles put in place since
Sept. 11, 2001. But artists' visa petitions also require substantial documentation to satisfy the
"sustained international recognition" requirement for the type of visa (called a "P-1") issued to
many performing artists. Arts organizations say they have become reluctant to book foreign
performers because of the risk of bureaucratic snags. Soon after Sept. 11, the State Department
rolled out its Biometric Visa Program, requiring all applicants to undergo fingerprinting and have
photographs taken at the nearest U.S. consulate each time they apply.
Former CEO Says U.S. Punished Phone Firm

A former Qwest Communications International executive, appealing a conviction for insider trading,
has alleged that the government withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of
dollars after Qwest refused to participate in an unidentified National Security Agency program that
the company thought might be illegal. Former chief executive Joseph P. Nacchio, convicted in April
of 19 counts of insider trading, said the NSA approached Qwest more than six months before the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks ... about participating in a warrantless surveillance program to gather
information about Americans' phone records. In the court filings disclosed this week, Nacchio
suggests that Qwest's refusal to take part in that program led the government to cancel a
separate, lucrative contract with the NSA in retribution. He is using the allegation to try to show
why his stock sale should not have been considered improper. He has claimed in court papers that
he had been optimistic that Qwest would overcome weak sales because of the expected topsecret contract with the government. Nacchio's account, which places the NSA proposal at a
meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, suggests that the Bush administration was seeking to enlist
telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks
on New York and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 attacks have been cited by the government as
the main impetus for its warrantless surveillance efforts. In May 2006, USA Today reported
that the NSA had been secretly collecting the phone-call records of tens of millions of Americans,
using data provided by major telecom firms. Qwest, it reported, declined to participate because of
fears that the program lacked legal standing.
Note: The Bush Administration has claimed that the NSA surveillance of the American public was
a necessary response to the attacks of 9/11. But this story reveals that the surveillance began
before 9/11, shortly after Bush took office. The obvious question is, why? For many other reliable,
verifiable reports that suggest the official explanation of the events of 9/11 is false, click here.
DeFazio asks, but he's denied access

2007-07-20, The Oregonian (Oregon's leading newspaper)
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/118489654058910...
Oregonians called Peter DeFazio's office, worried there was a conspiracy buried in the classified
portion of a White House plan for operating the government after a terrorist attack. As a member of
the U.S. House on the Homeland Security Committee, DeFazio, D-Ore., is permitted to enter a
secure "bubbleroom" in the Capitol and examine classified material. So he asked the White House
to see the secret documents. On Wednesday, DeFazio got his answer: DENIED. "I just can't
believe they're going to deny a member of Congress the right of reviewing how they plan to
conduct the government of the United States after a significant terrorist attack," DeFazio
says. Homeland Security Committee staffers told his office that the White House initially approved
his request, but it was later quashed. DeFazio doesn't know who did it or why. "We're talking about
the continuity of the government of the United States of America," DeFazio says. "I would think
that would be relevant to any member of Congress, let alone a member of the Homeland Security
Committee." Bush administration spokesman Trey Bohn declined to say why DeFazio was denied
access: "We do not comment through the press on the process that this access entails. It is
important to keep in mind that much of the information related to the continuity of government is
highly sensitive." Norm Ornstein, a legal scholar who studies government continuity at the
conservative American Enterprise Institute, said he "cannot think of one good reason" to deny
access to a member of Congress who serves on the Homeland Security Committee. This is the
first time DeFazio has been denied access to documents. "Maybe the people who think there's
a conspiracy out there are right," DeFazio said.
Bush Changes Continuity Plan

2007-05-10, The Washington Post
President Bush issued a formal national security directive yesterday ordering agencies to
prepare contingency plans for a surprise, "decapitating" attack on the federal government,
and assigned responsibility for coordinating such plans to the White House. The prospect of
a nuclear bomb being detonated in Washington without warning ... has been cited by many
security analysts as a rising concern since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The order makes explicit
that the focus of federal worst-case planning involves a covert nuclear attack against the nation's
capital. "Adequate warning of potential emergencies that could pose a significant risk to the
homeland might not be available, and therefore all continuity planning shall be based on the
assumption that no such warning will be received," states the 72-paragraph order. The statement
added, "Emphasis will be placed upon geographic dispersion of leadership, staff, and infrastructure
in order to increase survivability and maintain uninterrupted Government Functions." After the
2001 attacks, Bush assigned about 100 senior civilian managers to rotate secretly to locations
outside of Washington for weeks or months at a time [forming] a shadow government that evolved
based on long-standing "continuity of operations plans." Since then, other agencies including the
Pentagon, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA have taken steps to
relocate facilities or key functions outside of Washington for their own reasons, citing factors such
as economics or the importance of avoiding Beltway "group-think."
Note: Why isn't Congress making these absolutely vital decisions? What gives these organizations
authority to determine what will happen in the case of a major attack?
Ex-C.I.A. Chief, in Book, Assails Cheney on Iraq

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/washington/27intel.html?ex=1335326400&en=e6...
George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has lashed out against Vice President
Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in a new book, saying they pushed the country
to war in Iraq without ever conducting a serious debate about whether Saddam Hussein posed
an imminent threat. [His book] is the first detailed account by a member of the presidents inner
circle of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the decision to invade Iraq and the failure to find the
unconventional weapons that were a major justification for the war. There was never a serious
debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat, Mr.
Tenet writes in a devastating judgment. Nor, he adds, was there ever a significant discussion
about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion. Mr. Tenet ... makes clear his bitter view
that the administration made him a scapegoat for the Iraq war. As violence in Iraq spiraled
beginning in late 2003, Mr. Tenet writes, rather than acknowledge responsibility, the
administrations message was: Dont blame us. George Tenet and the C.I.A. got us into this mess.
Mr. Tenet takes blame for the flawed 2002 National Intelligence Estimate about Iraqs weapons
programs, calling the episode one of the lowest moments of my seven-year tenure. Mr. Tenet
largely endorses the view of administration critics that Mr. Cheney and a handful of Pentagon
officials, including Paul D. Wolfowitz and Douglas J. Feith, were focused on Iraq as a threat in late
2001 and 2002 even as Mr. Tenet and the C.I.A. concentrated mostly on Al Qaeda. Mr. Tenet has
spoken rarely in public, and never so caustically, since stepping down in July 2004.
Note: Was the Iraq war based largely on lies and deception? Now that Hussein is gone and there
are no weapons of mass destruction, who is the enemy in Iraq? For the comments of a top U.S.
general, click here.
Can Rumi save us now?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/04/01/...
The Persian poet Rumi was surrounded by news of terrorism. Mass murders from war -- what
today would be called genocide and ethnic cleansing -- were a routine part of Rumi's 13th-century
world. So, where's the bloodshed in Rumi's writing? Rumi, a man so advanced in Islamic training
that he could issue fatwas, divorced himself from talk of revenge, retribution and eye-for-an-eye
killings. Like Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., Rumi insisted violence was an unsatisfying
way of resolving issues. Sentiments like that have turned Rumi into one of America's best-selling
poets -- someone whose thoughts on love and other matters are revered by hundreds of
thousands of readers. Interest in the mystic from Persia (now Iran) -- in his all-inclusive message
that the faithful of all religions have a common humanity -- has mushroomed in the past six years.
Go to Borders, Barnes & Noble or any neighborhood bookstore, and you're likely to find many
more Rumi titles than books by Robert Frost or Walt Whitman. So, who is Rumi? He was a mystic
and a scholar. He was an adherent of religious Islam ... who, in the later part of his life, famously
said, "I am not a Jew nor a Christian, not a Zoroastrian nor a Moslem." The love and longing that
Rumi felt was everywhere, including his soul. "Keep in mind that the holy Quran states there is no
force in religion," says Naini, a Rumi expert who has lectured on the poet at the United Nations.
"Rumi wants to remind us that we are all children and the creation of God, regardless of
religion, race, color, nationality, etc." In the current climate of war and warmongering ... Rumi's
biggest gift to readers today may be his emphasis on the power of love and tolerance.
US is top purveyor on weapons sales list

http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2006/11/13/us_is_top_purveyor_on_we...
The United States last year provided nearly half of the weapons sold to militaries in the developing
world, as major arms sales to the most unstable regions -- many already engaged in conflict -grew to the highest level in eight years, new US government figures show. The United States
supplied $8.1 billion worth of weapons to developing countries in 2005 -- 45.8 percent of the total.
The figures underscore how the largely unchecked arms trade to the developing world has
become a major staple of the American weapons industry, even though introducing many of the
weapons risks fueling conflicts rather than aiding long-term US interests. [The U.S.] also signed an
estimated $6.2 billion worth of new deals last year to sell attack helicopters, missiles, and other
armaments to developing nations such as the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, India, Israel, Egypt,
Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. There is growing evidence that the sales are increasingly more
about dollars and cents for the US military-industrial complex. A UN panel [recently] voted to
study whether a new treaty might be possible to regulate the sale of conventional arms. The
United States was the only country out of 166 to vote no. A study last year by the progressive
World Policy Institute found that the United States transferred weaponry to 18 of the 25 countries
involved in an ongoing war. More than half of the countries buying US arms...were defined as
undemocratic by the State Department's annual Human Rights Report, including top
recipients Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan.
Police spies chosen to lead war protest

2006-07-28, San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/28/SURVEILLANCE.TMP
Two Oakland police officers working undercover at an anti-war protest in May 2003 got themselves
elected to leadership positions in an effort to influence [a] demonstration. The department
assigned the officers to join activists protesting the U.S. war in Iraq ... a police official said last year
in a sworn deposition. [At the] demonstration, police fired nonlethal bullets and bean bags at
demonstrators who blocked the Port of Oakland's entrance in a protest. Dozens of activists and
longshoremen on their way to work suffered injuries ranging from welts to broken bones and have
won nearly $2 million in legal settlements from the city. In a deposition related to a lawsuit filed by
protesters, Deputy Police Chief Howard Jordan said activists had elected the undercover officers
to "plan the route of the march and decide I guess where it would end up and some of the places
that it would go." Oakland police had also monitored online postings by the longshoremen's union
regarding its opposition to the war. The documents ... were released Thursday by the American
Civil Liberties Union, as part of a report criticizing government surveillance of political activists
since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Jordan ... noted that "two of our officers were
elected leaders within an hour on May 12." The idea was "to gather the information and
maybe even direct them to do something that we want them to do." The ACLU said the
Oakland case was one of several instances in which police agencies had spied on legitimate
political activity since 2001.
Countdown with Keith Olbermann: Terror Alert Timing

2005-10-06, MSNBC
Let's call in Craig Crawford, MSNBC analyst and author of Attack the Messenger. Good evening,
Craig. CRAWFORD: Hi, there. You're sounding a bit skeptical tonight. OLBERMANN: Yes, and I'm
going to raise this question as skeptically and bluntly as I can. It's not a question that doubts the
existence of terror, nor the threat of terrorism. But we've cobbled together in the last couple of
hours a list of at least 13 occasions...on which -- whenever there has been news that
significantly impacted the White House negatively, there has been some sudden credible
terror threat somewhere in this country. How could the coincidence be so consistent?
CRAWFORD: It is a pattern. One of the most memorable was just after the Democratic Convention
in the 2004 election, when they talked about the threat to New York and even the...World Bank,
and it turned out that was based on intelligence that was three years old.
Note: For more on the suspicious timing of terror alerts on the CBS website:
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2005/10/07/publiceye/entry924555.shtml
Suit claims CIA hindering bin Laden book

2005-07-28, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/07/28/cia.book.ap/
The CIA is squelching publication of a new book detailing events leading up to Osama bin Laden's
escape from his Tora Bora mountain stronghold during the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, says a
former CIA officer who led much of the fighting. In a story he says he resigned from the agency to
tell, Gary Berntsen recounts the attacks he coordinated at the peak of the fighting in eastern
Afghanistan in late 2001, including how U.S. commanders knew bin Laden was in the rugged
mountains near the Pakistani border and the al Qaeda leader's much-discussed getaway.
During the 2004 election, President Bush and other senior administration officials
repeatedly said that commanders did not know whether bin Laden was at Tora Bora when
U.S. and allied Afghan forces attacked there in 2001. A Republican and avid Bush supporter,
Berntsen, 48, retired in June and hasn't spoken publicly before. Berntsen's book is one of a
handful written recently by former CIA officers who have wrestled with the agency over what could
be published.
What drives support for this torturer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1484631,00.html
Oil and gas ensure that the US backs the Uzbek dictator to the hilt. The bodies of hundreds of
pro-democracy protesters in Uzbekistan are scarcely cold, and already the White House is looking
for ways to dismiss them. The conviction rate in criminal and political trials in Uzbekistan is over
99% - in President Karimov's torture chambers, everyone confesses. Karimov is very much
George Bush's man in central Asia. There is not a senior member of the US administration who is
not on record saying warm words about Karimov. There is not a single word recorded by any of
them calling for free elections in Uzbekistan.
Note: The above article is particularly revealing in that it is written by the UK's former ambassador
to Uzbekistan.
The Secret Downing Street Memo

"This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to
those with a genuine need to know its contents. John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and
latest JIC assessment. Saddam's regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to
overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action. C reported on his recent talks in
Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable.
Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism
and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no
patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's
record."
Uncovering an Israeli jail that specializes in nightmares

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5251751
What [Israeli historian Gad] Kroizer had discovered and later footnoted in an academic paper ...
was the location of an ultrasecret jail where Israel has held Arabs in total seclusion for years,
barred visits by the Red Cross and allegedly tortured inmates. Known as 1391, the facility is used
as an interrogation center by a storied unit of Israel's military intelligence, whose members-all
Arabic speakers-are trained to wring confessions from the toughest militants. Some of the methods
are reminiscent of Abu Ghraib: nudity as a humiliation tactic, compromising photographs, sleep
deprivation. In a few cases, at least, interrogators at 1391 appear to have gone beyond Israel's
own hair-splitting distinction between torture and what a state commission referred to in 1987 as
"moderate physical pressure." But the nightmare for those in 1391 is the isolation and the fear that
no one knows where you are. The location of the compound is so hush-hush that a court this
year banned a visit by an Israeli legislator. Prisoners describe being hooded everywhere at the
facility except in their cells. Hassan Rawajbeh ... a member of the nearly disbanded Palestinian
Preventive Security force ... was picked up by soldiers in Nablus 18 months ago. He was hooded,
handcuffed and thrown on the floor of a van. When the hood was removed, he was in a tiny,
windowless cell. The chamber contained no toilet, only a bucket in the corner, which ... his jailers
would empty once every few weeks. A low buzzing droned constantly. For nearly four months,
Rawajbeh saw no one but his interrogators, who kept him naked for days at a time and prevented
him from going to the bathroom.
Who killed Nick Berg?

2004-05-29, Sydney Morning Herald
Iraq in flames, Washington an object of disgust. What to do? At this pivotal moment, CNN and Fox
News are tipped off to a clip of an American citizen being beheaded. The victim is ... Nick
Berg.The vile deed is deemed the work of al-Qaeda. The timing of the video was brilliant for the
West. Media pundits judged the crime a deeper evil than the systemic torture of innocent Iraqis.
But some people sensed a rat. But if it was not al-Qaeda, who? While this video shows a human
body having its head chopped off, it does not necessarily portray an act of murder. A month
before the discovery of [his] corpse, Berg had been released from custody. But whose custody?
Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt ... claimed he was in the custody of Iraqi police. However, the Iraqi
police chief [stated] "the Iraqi police never arrested the slain American". Berg's family are certain
his jailers were the US military. His father, Michael, had been told so by the FBI. He has produced
an email from a US consular official ... confirming that his son was in the hands of the US. In his
final moments on screen Berg is wearing an orange jumpsuit of the kind familiar from Guantanamo
Bay. His white chair is identical to those in the photographs of the Abu Ghraib prison tortures.
During the decapitation, starting at the front of the throat, there is little sign of blood. The scream is
wildly out of sync, sounds female, and is obviously dubbed. Dr John Simpson, executive director
for surgical affairs at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons ... agrees with other experts who
find it highly probable that Berg had died before his decapitation. There's something fishy about
this video. In the end, the question is: who killed Nick Berg, and why?
Note: If the above link fails, click here. For a CNN article raising other serious questions on Berg,
click here. For more reliable information on how government can control and manipulate public
perception, click here.
Mousepox 'Superbug' Test Riles

A research team backed by a federal grant has created a genetically engineered mousepox
virus designed to evade vaccines, underscoring biotechnology's deadly potential and stirring
debate over whether such research plays into the hands of terrorists. The team at Saint Louis
University, led by Mark Buller, created the superbug to figure out how to defeat it. Buller spliced a
gene known to suppress the immune system into the mousepox virus, then injected the combined
strand into vaccinated mice. All of them died. The research highlights a contentious discussion
among scientists and security experts: Does publication of such work help or hinder the
biodefense effort? Should such studies be conducted at all? When Buller presented his results last
week at an international biodefense conference, it prompted debate. Some feared that publication
of such information, regardless of whether scientists' intentions are altruistic, could help terrorists
create biological weapons laced with genetically modified superbugs. Such germs are created by
splicing drug-resistant genes in viruses normally defeated by vaccines. Alibek, a director of George
Mason University's National Center for Biodefense, believes Buller's work and similar research
should be confidential to impede terrorists and rogue nations from acquiring knowledge about
genetically engineered bioweapons. Buller counters that publicizing such work will deter terrorists
by showing that scientists can build defenses against souped-up bioweapons. Buller also believes
scientists must genetically engineer pathogens to understand how to defeat them.
How Saudi Arabia's harsh legal punishments compare to the Islamic

State's
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/01/21/how-saudi-arabia...
Following the lashing of blogger Raif Badawi and leaked footage that showed the public execution
of a woman accused of beating her daughter, Saudi Arabia's harsh interpretation of sharia law
and its use of capital punishment have come under international scrutiny. For many, the
Saudi justice system sounds not unlike that of the Islamic State, the extremist Islamist
group which has struck fear in much of the Middle East. This week, Middle East Eye, a Web site
that focuses on news from the region and is frequently critical of Saudi Arabia, contrasted a set of
legal punishments recently announced by the Islamic State with the corresponding punishments in
Saudi Arabia. One key difference between the Islamic State and Saudi Arabia, of course, is that
the latter is a key U.S. ally in the region and a member of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the
Islamic State. Some experts argue that the fundamentalist brand of Islam practiced by both has
theological links, however, and Riyadh's recent crackdown has been interpreted as an act of
appeasement for Saudi hard-liners. Saudi Arabia's own concern about the Islamic State is likely
genuine (plans to build an enormous wall along its border with Iraq are a good sign of that), but for
many Americans, the extremist group's rise is also bringing with it a renewed skepticism about
American allies in the region.
Note: Here is the diagram that compares Saudi justice with I.S. justice, and here is a diagram of
the big, expensive security wall mentioned above. Is Saudi Arabia concerned that the Islamic State
is less aligned with Saudi interests than other popular Islamic terrorist groups have been?
Saudi Arabia's Rights Crackdown Linked to War on Terror

2015-01-20, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/saudi-arabias-rights-crackdown-...
A man is given 50 lashes in a public square for "insulting Islam" on a liberal blog. Another is
arrested for filming and uploading a woman's public beheading. Two females are imprisoned and
put on trial for writing on Twitter in support of women driving. The cases are part of a sweeping
clampdown on dissent. Acts that offend the country's religious hard-liners or open up the kingdom
to criticism like the video of the execution of a woman convicted of murdering her stepdaughter
have landed people in jail as a warning to others. The case of Raif Badawi, a 31-year-old
father of three who was flogged this month, has attracted the most attention in recent days,
particularly in the aftermath of the deadly attack in Paris. Badawi was arrested in 2012 after writing
articles critical of Saudi Arabia's clerics on his Free Saudi Liberals blog. He was sentenced in May
to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes and was fined $266,000. Just days after the attacks in
Paris, Saudi Arabia's minister of state for foreign affairs took part in the huge march that
was held there to support free speech and honor the victims. Two days earlier, Badawi was
flogged [for "insulting Islam" on his blog]. Critics of the crackdown on dissent point out that
public beheadings are also practiced by al-Qaida and IS.
Note: Saudi Arabia continues to be a key ally of the US. Is this really what we want to support?
For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about civil
liberties from reliable major media sources.
Documents reveal NSAs extensive involvement in targeted killing

program
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/documents-reveal-nsas-e...
It was an innocuous e-mail, one of millions sent every day by spouses with updates on the
situation at home. But this one was of particular interest to the National Security Agency and
contained clues that put the senders husband in the crosshairs of a CIA drone. Days later, Hassan
Ghul ... was killed by a drone strike in Pakistans tribal belt. Documents provided ... by former NSA
contractor Edward Snowden confirm his demise in October 2012 and reveal the agencys
extensive involvement in the targeted killing program that has served as a centerpiece of President
Obamas counterterrorism strategy. The documents provide the most detailed account of the
intricate collaboration between the CIA and the NSA in the drone campaign. [The] collection of
records in the Snowden trove [make] clear that the drone campaign often depicted as the CIAs
exclusive domain relies heavily on the NSAs ability to vacuum up enormous quantities of email, phone calls and other fragments of signals intelligence, or SIGINT. To handle the expanding
workload, the NSA created a secret unit known as the Counter-Terrorism Mission Aligned
Cell, or CT MAC, to concentrate the agencys vast resources on hard-to-find [targets].
Former CIA officials said the files are an accurate reflection of the NSAs contribution to
finding targets in a campaign that has killed more than 3,000 people [in] Pakistan.
Note: For more on the use of drones to kill abroad and spy at home, see the deeply revealing
U.S. Air Force stops reporting data on Afghan drone strikes

2013-03-10, NBC News/Reuters
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/51122184/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia
With debate intensifying in the United States over the use of drone aircraft, the U.S. military
said ... that it had removed data about air strikes carried out by unmanned planes in
Afghanistan from its monthly air power summaries. U.S. President Barack Obama's
administration has increasingly used drones to target against ... militants overseas. The debate
was intensified by Obama's decision to nominate his chief counter-terrorism adviser John
Brennan, an architect of the drone campaign, as the new director of the CIA. Brennan was sworn
into office on [March 8] following a protracted confirmation battle that saw Senator Rand Paul
attempt to block a vote on the nomination with a technical maneuver called a filibuster, in which he
tried to prevent a vote by talking continuously. Paul held the Senate floor for more than 12 hours
while talking mainly about drones, expressing concern that Obama's administration might use the
aircraft to target U.S. citizens on home soil.
Note: For a disturbing report on the massive expansion of drones over US skies, click here.
CIA rendition: more than a quarter of countries 'offered covert support'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/05/cia-rendition-countries-covert-su...
The full extent of the CIA's extraordinary rendition programme has been laid bare with the
publication of a report showing there is evidence that more than a quarter of the world's
governments covertly offered support. A 213-page report compiled by the Open Society Justice
Initiative (OSJI), a New York-based human rights organisation, says that at least 54 countries cooperated with the global kidnap, detention and torture operation that was mounted after 9/11, many
of them in Europe. So widespread and extensive was the participation of governments across the
world that it is now clear the CIA could not have operated its programme without their support,
according to the OSJI. "Responsibility for these violations does not end with the United States.
Secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations, designed to be conducted outside
the United States under cover of secrecy, could not have been implemented without the
active participation of foreign governments. These governments too must be held
accountable." The states identified by the OSJI include those such as Pakistan, Afghanistan,
Egypt and Jordan where the existence of secret prisons and the use of torture has been well
documented for many years. But the OSJI's rendition list also includes states such as Ireland,
Iceland and Cyprus, which are accused of granting covert support for the programme by permitting
the use of airspace and airports by aircraft involved in rendition flights. Iran and Syria are identified
by the OSJI as having participated in the rendition programme.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the illegal operations that
comprise the 'global war on terror', click here.
German spy chief quits in neo-Nazi files scandal

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48041852#.T_hrRpH4KNU
The head of Germany's domestic intelligence service resigned on [July 2] after admitting that his
agency had shredded files on a neo-Nazi cell whose killing spree targeting immigrants rocked the
country late last year. Heinz Fromm's resignation is the latest in a series of embarrassing setbacks
for Germany's security services over their handling of the "National Socialist Underground" (NSU),
which went undetected for more than a decade despite its murder of 10 people, mostly ethnic
Turkish immigrants. German lawmakers said there was no suggestion that Fromm had ordered the
destruction of the files but that he was taking responsibility for others' failures. German media
have said an official working in the intelligence agency is suspected of having destroyed
files on an operation to recruit far-right informants just one day after the involvement of the
NSU in the murders became public. Fromm told the Spiegel weekly that the shredding of files in
the case had done "grave damage to the reputation" of his agency, known in Germany as the
Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Germans, burdened by their Nazi past, were
mortified by last year's news that three neo-Nazis had been behind the killings of eight ethnic
Turks, an ethnic Greek and a police officer in a period running from 2000 to 2007. The NSU cell's
culpability only came to light after two of the neo-Nazis committed suicide following a botched bank
robbery last autumn.
Note: For insightful reports from reliable major media articles on the dark operations of intelligence
agencies, click here.
Drones, computers new weapons of US shadow wars

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47842756/ns/technology_and_science-security/t/dro...
Drone aircraft spy on and attack terrorists with no pilot in harm's way. Small teams of special
operations troops quietly train and advise foreign forces. Viruses sent from computers to foreign
networks strike silently, with no American fingerprint. It's war in the shadows, with the U.S. public
largely in the dark. The high-tech warfare allows Obama to target what the administration sees as
the greatest threats to U.S. security, without the cost and liabilities of sending a swarm of ground
troops to capture territory; some of them almost certainly would come home maimed or dead. But
it also raises questions about accountability and the implications for international norms regarding
the use of force outside of traditional armed conflict. "Congressional oversight of these
operations appears to be cursory and insufficient," said Steven Aftergood, an expert on
government secrecy issues for the Federation of American Scientists, a private group. "It is
Congress' responsibility to declare war under the Constitution, but instead it appears to
have adopted a largely passive role while the executive takes the initiative in war fighting,"
Aftergood said in an interview. That's partly because lawmakers relinquished their authority by
passing a law just after the Sept. 11 [attacks]. In this shroud of secrecy, leaks to the news media of
classified details about certain covert operations have led to charges that the White House
orchestrated the revelations to bolster Obama's national security credentials and thereby improve
his re-election chances.
Note: For deeper analysis of the threats posed to American citizens by military and police drones
in the skies, click here. For information on a federal recent law compelling the Federal Aviation
Administration to allow drones to fly in US skies, click here. For more information on the use of
drones by police in the US, click here. For lots more from reliable sources on surveillance in the
US, click here.
Three NATO protesters face terrorism charges as global summit nears

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/three-nato-protesters-face-terrorism-char...
As NATO protesters marched by the hundreds to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuels house, three
others were in court Saturday facing terrorism charges for allegedly planning to bomb the mayors
residence, police stations and Obamas campaign headquarters during the upcoming summit.
Three men who had been arrested in a raid Wednesday appeared before a Cook County judge,
charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism, possession of an explosive device and providing
material support for terrorism. The men ... are being held on $1.5 million bond. Prosecutors alleged
they had made Molotov cocktails and had discussed using other weapons, including swords and
knives. Lawyers for the suspects disputed those claims. There are a lot of sensational
allegations being made, said Kris Hermes, a spokesman for the National Lawyers Guild.
This is obviously an effort to chill dissent ahead of the NATO demonstrations. As darkness
fell, the crowds of protesters who gathered to show support to the terror suspects swelled to nearly
1,000, and there were several tense scuffles with police. At least 10 more protesters were
detained, Hermes said.
Note: This entire article contains almost nothing about the trumped up charges against these
protestors. You can learn more about police provocation of the group at this link.
Why Is President Obama Keeping a Journalist in Prison in Yemen?

2012-03-13, The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/article/166757/why-president-obama-keeping-journalis...
On February 2, 2011, President Obama called Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The two
discussed counterterrorism cooperation and the battle against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
At the end of the call, according to a White House read-out, Obama expressed concern over the
release of a man named Abdulelah Haider Shaye, whom Obama said had been sentenced to five
years in prison for his association with AQAP. It turned out that Shaye had not yet been released
at the time of the call, but Saleh did have a pardon for him prepared and was ready to sign it. But
... Abdulelah Haider Shaye is not an Islamist militant or an Al Qaeda operative. He is a journalist.
Shaye risked his life to travel to areas controlled by Al Qaeda and to interview its leaders. He also
conducted several interviews with the radical cleric Anwar al Awlaki. Shaye did the last
known interview with Awlaki just before it was revealed that Awlaki, a US citizen, was on a
CIA/JSOC hit list. We were only exposed to Western media and Arab media funded by the West,
which depicts only one image of Al Qaeda, recalls his best friend Kamal Sharaf, a well-known
dissident Yemeni political cartoonist. But Abdulelah brought a different viewpoint. Shaye had no
reverence for Al Qaeda, but viewed the group as an important story, according to Sharaf.
Note: We generally avoid using sources with a strong bias like The Nation, but as none of the
other major media have touched this most important story, we're including it here. For more on this
revealing story, click here and here
After Struggle on Detainees, Obama Signs Defense Bill

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/us/politics/obama-signs-military-spending-b...
President Obama, after objecting to provisions of a military spending bill that would have forced
him to try terrorism suspects in military courts ... signed the bill on [New Year's Eve]. The White
House had said that the legislation could lead to an improper military role in overseeing detention
and court proceedings and could infringe on the presidents authority in dealing with terrorism
suspects. But it said that Mr. Obama could interpret the statute in a way that would preserve
his authority. The president, for example, said that he would never authorize the indefinite
military detention of American citizens, because doing so would break with our most
important traditions and values as a nation. He also said he would reject a rigid across-theboard requirement that suspects be tried in military courts rather than civilian courts. Congress
dropped a provision in the House version of the bill that would have banned using civilian courts to
prosecute those suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda. It also dropped a new authorization to use
military force against Al Qaeda and its allies. Civil liberties groups, including the American Civil
Liberties Union, still oppose the law, in part because of its authorization of military detention camps
overseas.
Note: This New York Times article amazingly fails to mention that civil liberties groups oppose this
law primarily because it eliminates habeus corpus, Posse Comitatus and Bill of Rights protections,
and enables the military to arrest and imprison American citizens on American soil and subject
them to military tribunals without due judicial process. These protections are what Pres. Obama
was referring to when he mentioned "our most important traditions and values as a nation." Is his
statement that he will not use the new powers the law gives him sufficiently reassuring?
U.S. Settles Suit Over Anthrax Attacks

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/us/anthrax-victims-family-to-receive-2-5-mi...
The federal government has agreed to pay $2.5 million to the widow and children of the first
person killed in the anthrax letter attacks of 2001, settling a lawsuit claiming that the Army did
not adequately secure its supply of the deadly pathogen. The settlement with the family of Robert
Stevens, a tabloid photo editor in Florida, follows an eight-year legal battle that exposed slack
rules and sloppy recordkeeping at the Armys biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick, in Frederick,
Md. As part of the agreement, Justice Department lawyers are seeking to have many
documents that were uncovered in the litigation kept under court seal or destroyed. Mr.
Stevenss widow, Maureen, filed suit against the government in 2003, as evidence accumulated
that the anthrax powder in the lethal letters had come from an Army laboratory. Mr. Stevens, 62,
died on Oct. 5, 2001, days after inhaling anthrax powder at work.
Note: Why would the government want these documents destroyed? Remember that these
attacks, which happened within weeks of the 9/11 attacks, were at first attributed to terrorists. Now
it is fully acknowledged they were the responsibility of someone in government. Hmmmmm.
SWAT team's shooting of Marine draws outrage

2011-11-27, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
http://www.startribune.com/nation/134558988.html
Jose Guerena Ortiz was sleeping after an exhausting 12-hour night shift at a copper mine. His
wife, Vanessa, had begun breakfast. Their 4-year-old son, Joel, asked to watch cartoons. An
ordinary morning was unfolding in the middle-class Tucson neighborhood until an armored
vehicle pulled into the family's driveway and men wearing heavy body armor and helmets climbed
out, weapons ready. They were a sheriff's department SWAT team who had come to execute a
search warrant. But Vanessa Guerena insisted she had no idea, when she heard a "boom" and
saw a dark-suited man pass by a window, that it was police outside her home. She shook her
husband awake and told him someone was firing a gun outside. A U.S. Marine veteran of the Iraq
war, he was only trying to defend his family, she said, when he grabbed his own gun an AR-15
assault rifle. What happened next was captured on video after a member of the SWAT team
activated a helmet-mounted camera. The officers four of whom carried .40-caliber handguns
while another had an AR-15 moved to the door, briefly sounding a siren, then shouting "Police!"
in English and Spanish. With a thrust of a battering ram, they broke the door open. Eight
seconds passed before they opened fire into the house. And 10 seconds later, Guerena lay
dying in a hallway 20-feet from the front door. The SWAT team fired 71 rounds, riddling his
body 22 times, while his wife and child cowered in a closet.
Note: For a survey of the decade-long trend toward militarization of police forces in the US, click
here. For analyses of the militaristic police responses to the Occupy movement, click here and
here.
Multiple missteps led to drone killing U.S. troops in Afghanistan

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-drone-attack-20111106,0,5...
Thirty-one seconds after the pilot reported muzzle flashes, the Marines at Alcatraz ordered
that the Predator be prepared to strike if the shooters could be confirmed as hostile. At 8:49
a.m., 29 minutes after the ambush began, they authorized the pilot to fire. In minutes, two
Americans would be dead. The decision to fire a missile from one of the growing fleet of U.S.
unmanned aircraft is the result of work by ground commanders, pilots and analysts at far-flung
military installations, who analyze video and data feeds and communicate by a system of voice
and text messages. In addition to the platoon taking fire that morning in Helmand province's Upper
Sangin Valley, the mission involved Marine Corps and Air Force personnel at four locations:
Marines of the 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion at Alcatraz, the drone crew in Nevada, the analyst in
Indiana and a mission intelligence coordinator at March Air Reserve Base in California. Senior
officers say drone technology has vastly improved their ability to tell friend from foe in the
confusion of battle. But the video can also prompt commanders to make decisions before they fully
understand what they're seeing. In February 2009, a crew operating a drone over Afghanistan
misidentified a civilian convoy as an enemy force. The Predator pilot and the Army captain who
called in the airstrike disregarded warnings from Air Force analysts who had observed children in
the convoy. At least 15 people were killed.
Note: For key reports from major media sources on the illegal and immoral prosecution of the
global "war on terror" by the US military and NATO, click here.
Japan unearths site linked to human experiments

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/21/japan-excavates-site-human-experi...
Authorities in Japan have begun excavating the former site of a medical school that may contain
the remains of victims of the country's wartime biological warfare programme. The school has links
to Unit 731, a branch of the imperial Japanese army that conducted lethal experiments on
prisoners as part of efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. The Japanese government
has previously acknowledged the unit's existence but refused to discuss its activities, despite
testimony from former members and growing documentary evidence. Unit 731, based in Harbin in
northern China, conducted experiments on tens of thousands of mostly Chinese and Korean
prisoners, and a small number of Allied prisoners of war. Some historians estimate up to 250,000
people were subjected to experiments. According to historical accounts, male and female
prisoners, named "logs" by their torturers, were subjected to vivisection without
anaesthesia after they had been deliberately infected with diseases such as typhus and
cholera. Some had limbs amputated or organs removed. Leading members of the unit were
secretly granted immunity from prosecution in return for giving US occupation forces
access to years of biological warfare research. Some went on to occupy prestigious positions
in the pharmaceutical industry, health ministry and academia.
Note: The US granted immunity to both German and Japanese researchers involved in highly
cruel medical experiments which tortured and murdered victims in order to perfect mind control
and more. For powerful documentation on this, see our two-page summary available here, and lots
more at this link.
Attempted Plane Attack: Trial Date Set for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
2011-01-25, WJBK-TV (Detroit Fox affiliate)
http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news/local/attempted-plane-attack-trial-date-...
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the man accused of trying to blow up an airplane over metro Detroit
on Christmas Day 2009, appeared in federal court [on January 25]. A trial date has now been set.
A couple of the passengers [who] showed up at court ... had an interesting theory about what really
happened. "The U.S. government escorted them through security without a passport and, we
believe, gave him an intentionally defective bomb," said Kurt Haskell. It's a startling allegation from
two local attorneys [who] were on-board the 2009 Christmas Day flight to Detroit when
Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to blow up a bomb hidden in his underwear. Kurt and Lori Haskell
think the U.S. government was behind the whole thing. "It was intentional that it went this far to
further the war on terror, to get body scanners in the airports, to increase the TSA's budget,
to renew the Patriot Act and whatever other reasons you want to list," Kurt Haskell told FOX
2. The Haskells say in Amsterdam before boarding the flight to Detroit, they witnessed
Abdulmutallab arguing with a ticket agent at the gate because he didn't have a passport when a
man in a tan suit with an American accent intervened. They next saw Abdulmutallab on-board the
plane when they saw fire and people screaming.
Note: For lots more powerful, verifiable information that this key incident was manipulated by
powerful outsiders, click here.
Cables Portray Expanded Reach of Drug Agency

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/world/26wikidrugs.html
The Drug Enforcement Administration has been transformed into a global intelligence organization
with a reach that extends far beyond narcotics, and an eavesdropping operation so expansive it
has to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies, according to
secret diplomatic cables. The cables, from the cache obtained by WikiLeaks [offer glimpses of
drug agents] in places where it can be hard to tell the politicians from the traffickers, and where
drug rings are themselves mini-states whose wealth and violence permit them to run roughshod
over struggling governments. Officials of the D.E.A. and the State Department declined to discuss
what they said was information that should never have been made public. The D.E.A. now has 87
offices in 63 countries and close partnerships with governments that keep the [CIA] at
arms length. Created in 1973, the D.E.A. has steadily built its international turf. Since the 2001
terrorist attacks, the agencys leaders have cited what they describe as an expanding nexus
between drugs and terrorism in further building its overseas presence.
Note: Isn't it odd that this report fails to mention the recent revelation in The New York Times itself
that the American accused of masterminding the Mumbai attacks, David C. Headley, was a DEA
agent while attending a "terrorism training camp" in Pakistan in the years before the attacks?
Israeli spies wooing U.S. Muslims, sources say

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/09/israeli_spies_pitching_us_mus...
Israels undercover operations here, including missions to steal U.S. secrets, are hardly a secret at
the FBI, CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. From time to time, in fact, the FBI has called
Israeli officials on the carpet to complain about a particularly brazen effort to collect classified or
other sensitive information, in particular U.S. technical and industrial secrets. The most notorious
operation employed Jonathan Pollard, the naval intelligence analyst convicted in 1987 and
sentenced to life in prison for stealing tens of thousands of classified documents for Israel. One of
Israels major interests, of course, is keeping track of Muslims who might be allied with Hamas,
which rules the Gaza Strip, or Iran-backed Hezbollah, based in Lebanon. As tensions with Iran
escalate, according to former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, Israeli agents have become more
aggressive in targeting Muslims living in the United States as well as in operating against
critics. There have been a number of cases reported to the FBI about Mossad officers who
have approached leaders in Arab-American communities and have falsely represented
themselves as U.S. intelligence, Giraldi wrote recently in American Conservative magazine.
Because few Muslims would assist an Israeli, this is done to increase the likelihood that the target
will cooperate. Its referred to as a false flag operation.
Note: For an excellent overview of "false-flag" operations, click here.
Charges for Soldier Accused of Leak

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/world/middleeast/07wikileaks.html
An American soldier in Iraq who was arrested on charges of leaking a video of a deadly
American helicopter attack [in Baghdad] in 2007 has also been charged with downloading
more than 150,000 highly classified diplomatic cables that could, if made public, reveal the
inner workings of American embassies around the world. The full contents of the cables
remain unclear. The charges cited only one cable by name, Reykjavik 13, which appeared to be
one made public by WikiLeaks.org, a whistle-blowing Web site devoted to disclosing the secrets of
governments and corporations. In the cable, dated Jan. 13, the American deputy chief of mission,
Sam Watson, detailed private discussions he held with Icelands leaders over a referendum on
whether to repay losses from a bank failure, including a frank assessment that Iceland could
default in 2011. WikiLeaks ... disclosed a second cable from the nation in March profiling its
leaders, including Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir. The cable [reveals] a complaint over the
alleged use of Icelandic airspace by C.I.A.-operated planes by the Icelandic ambassador to the
United States, Albert Jonsson.
Note: For lots more on government secrecy from reliable sources, click here.
C.I.A. Abuse Cases Detailed in Report on Detainees

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/us/politics/25detain.html
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. named a veteran federal prosecutor on Monday to examine
abuse of prisoners held by the Central Intelligence Agency, after the Justice Department released
a long-secret report showing interrogators choked a prisoner repeatedly and threatened to kill
another detainees children. Mr. Holder chose John H. Durham, a prosecutor from Connecticut
who has been investigating the C.I.A.s destruction of interrogation videotapes, to determine
whether a full criminal investigation of the conduct of agency employees or contractors was
warranted. The attorney general said his decision to order an inquiry was based in part on the
recommendation of the Justice Departments ethics office, which called for a new review of several
interrogation cases. He said he was also influenced by a 2004 report by the C.I.A. inspector
general at the time, John L. Helgerson, on the agencys interrogations. The report was released
Monday under a court order in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Although large portions of
the 109-page report are blacked out, it gives new details about a variety of abuses inside
the C.I.A.s overseas prisons, including suggestions about sexually assaulting members of
a detainees family, staging mock executions, intimidation with a handgun and power drill,
and blowing cigar and cigarette smoke into prisoners faces to make them vomit. The
inspector generals review raised broad questions about the legality, political acceptability and
effectiveness of the harshest of the C.I.A.s methods, including some not authorized by the Justice
Department and others that were approved, like the near-drowning technique of waterboarding.
Note: And what do you think might have been in the blacked out portions of the report? For lots
more on the use of illegal methods by the CIA and US military in their prosecution of the "war on
terror," click here.
U.S. Relies More on Aid of Allies in Terror Cases

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/world/24intel.html
The United States is now relying heavily on foreign intelligence services to capture, interrogate and
detain all but the highest-level terrorist suspects seized outside the battlefields of Iraq and
Afghanistan, according to current and former American government officials. Pakistan's
intelligence and security services captured a Saudi suspect and a Yemeni suspect this year with
the help of American intelligence and logistical support, Pakistani officials said. They are still being
held by Pakistan, which has shared information from their interrogations with the United States, the
official said. The current approach, which began in the last two years of the Bush administration
and has gained momentum under Mr. Obama, is driven in part by court rulings and policy changes
that have closed the secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency, and all but ended the
transfer of prisoners from outside Iraq and Afghanistan to American military prisons. Human
rights advocates say that relying on foreign governments to hold and question [captives]
could increase the potential for abuse at the hands of foreign interrogators. The fate of
many ... whom the Bush administration sent to foreign countries remains uncertain. One
suspect, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured by the C.I.A. in late 2001 and sent to Libya, was
recently reported to have died there in Libyan custody. In the last years of the Bush administration
and now on Mr. Obama's watch, the balance has shifted toward leaving all but the most high-level
terrorist suspects in foreign rather than American custody.
Note: It appears that the US government is simply avoiding bringing any of its captives under
official US control. After the fanfare surrounding the closure of some of its "secret" prisons abroad,
the government is moving detainees into prisons run by the governments of foreign countries.
Could this be for the purpose of continuing the same torture and indefinite detention that it can no
longer carry out in US-controlled prisons? For lots more on the "war on terror" from reliable
sources, click here.
Military tribunals not the same as U.S. courts

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/23/MN9Q17OTTB.DTL
President Obama says his proposed reforms to the military commissions his predecessor
established to try suspected terrorists will bring the tribunals "in line with the rule of law." But it isn't
the same law that applies in U.S. courts. Pentagon officials appoint the judges and can remove
them. Military commanders choose the jurors, who can convict defendants by non-unanimous
votes, except in death penalty cases. The military can monitor defense lawyers' conversations with
their clients. Prosecutors can also present evidence that would never pass muster in civilian
courts. Confessions made under physical or mental pressure could be admissible, despite
Obama's disavowal of torture and coercion. There's no ban on evidence from illegal searches. And
defendants may be convicted on the basis of hearsay - a second hand report of an out-of-court
accusation by another person, perhaps a fellow suspect, whom the defense never gets to see or
question. Civil-liberties advocates and legal organizations defending prisoners who may be tried
before the commissions say the system is an invitation to abuse and differs little from the tribunals
established by President George W. Bush. "The system is designed to ensure the outcome
they want ... convictions in every case," said Ben Wizner, an American Civil Liberties Union
attorney who has attended proceedings for prisoners at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba. "This suggests that the much-heralded improvements to the Bush military
commission system are largely cosmetic."
The Torture Debate: The Missing Voices

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/opinion/07thu1.html
Last months release of memos prepared by the Bush Justice Department and the disclosure of a
report by the International Committee of the Red Cross on the brutal treatment of detainees
expanded public knowledge of an ignominious chapter in the nations history. But these and other
related disclosures do not provide a complete record of the governments abuse of detainees. One
missing element is the words of those prisoners subjected to waterboarding and other brutality.
Those voices remain muffled by a combination of Bush-era resistance to a reasonable Freedom of
Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union, and the gag order imposed on
lawyers representing Guantnamo detainees. For two years, the A.C.L.U. has been seeking
complete transcripts of the hearings at Guantnamo for 14 men who were previously in C.I.A.
custody, including Abu Zubaydah, who has been described as an operative of Al Qaeda and was
waterboarded at least 83 times. But the publicly released version of these transcripts deleted all
detainee statements about their ordeals. The Bush teams national security claim always had
the odor of a cover-up. The interrogation program it was protecting has been discontinued,
and crucial details are known. It is unsupportable to blank out grim details. The same
considerations apply to the protective order that prohibits lawyers for Guantnamo detainees from
speaking publicly about their clients treatment unless they receive the governments permission or
the information otherwise becomes public. Disclosure of the torture memos and the Red Cross
report gives detainee lawyers more leeway, but they should not have to parse their words under a
threat of prosecution.
Note: For many reports from major media sources detailing the disturbing government threats to
civil liberties, click here.
Judge rejects bid to derail wiretap challenge

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/17/MN6O174O7E.DTL
A San Francisco federal judge rejected on Friday the Obama administration's attempt to
derail a challenge to former President George W. Bush's electronic surveillance program by
withholding a critical wiretap document. President Obama's Justice Department had appeared
to defy a previous order by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker to allow lawyers for an Islamic
organization to see the classified document, which reportedly showed that the group had been
wiretapped. The document, which the government accidentally sent to the Al-Haramain Islamic
Foundation, could establish its right to sue over the legality of the program. Justice Department
lawyers told Walker in February that he had no power to enforce his order, and indicated they
would remove the document from his files if he planned to disclose it to Al-Haramain's lawyers. But
after a federal appeals court denied the department's request to intervene, Walker told the
government Friday to cooperate. "The United States should now comply with the court's orders,"
the judge said. He told lawyers for the administration and Al-Haramain to work out a protective
order by May 8 that would maintain the document's secrecy after it had been shown to the Islamic
group's lawyers. If the two sides can't agree, Walker said, he will issue his own protective order
"under which this case may resume forward progress." The case is one of two before Walker
challenging the constitutionality of the program that Bush secretly authorized in 2001 to intercept
phone calls and e-mails between Americans and suspected foreign terrorists without seeking a
court warrant, as required by a 1978 law.
Note: For more reports on government secrecy from reliable sources, click here.
'Global War On Terror' Is Given New Name

The Obama administration appears to be backing away from the phrase "global war on terror," a
signature rhetorical legacy of its predecessor. In a memo e-mailed this week to Pentagon staff
members, the Defense Department's office of security review noted that "this
administration prefers to avoid using the term 'Long War' or 'Global War on Terror' [GWOT.]
Please use 'Overseas Contingency Operation.' " Senior administration officials had been
publicly using the phrase "overseas contingency operations" in a war context for roughly a month
before the e-mail was sent. The Bush administration adopted the phrase ["Global War on Terror"]
soon after the Sept. 11, 2001. But critics abroad and at home, including some within the U.S.
military, said the terminology mischaracterized the nature of the enemy and its abilities. Some
military officers said, for example, that classifying al-Qaeda and other anti-American militant
groups as part of a single movement overstated their strength. Last month, the International
Commission of Jurists urged the Obama administration to drop the phrase "war on terror." The
commission said the term had given the Bush administration "spurious justification to a range of
human rights and humanitarian law violations," including detention practices and interrogation
methods that the International Committee of the Red Cross has described as torture.
U.S. Wont Label Terror Suspects as Combatants

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/14/us/politics/14gitmo.html?partner=rss&emc=rs...
The Obama administration said Friday that it would abandon the Bush administrations term
enemy combatant as it argues in court for the continued detention of prisoners at Guantnamo
Bay, Cuba, in a move that seemed intended to symbolically separate the new administration from
Bush detention policies. But in a much anticipated court filing, the Justice Department argued that
the president has the authority to detain terrorism suspects there without criminal charges, much
as the Bush administration had asserted. It provided a broad definition of those who can be held,
which was not significantly different from the one used by the Bush administration. The filing
signaled that, as long as Guantnamo remains open, the new administration will aggressively
defend its ability to hold some detainees there. The filing, in Federal District Court in Washington,
was meant to provide a definition of those detainees who can be held and bitterly disappointed
critics of Guantnamo, who said it seemed to continue the policies they have criticized for
more than seven years. It was the latest example of the Obama administrations taking
ownership of Guantnamo, even after having announced it would close the prison, where
241 men remain. This seems fundamentally consistent with the positions of the prior
administration, said Steven A. Engel, who was a senior lawyer responsible for detainee issues in
the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel until the final day of the Bush administration.
Note: For lots more on the "war on terrorism", click here.
Wiretap lawsuit defense challenged in court

2008-10-18, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/18/BATN13JVOG.DTL
Civil liberties groups started a legal challenge ... to the new federal law designed to dismiss their
wiretapping suits against telecommunications companies, saying the statute violates phone
customers' constitutional rights and tramples on judicial authority. The law ... granted retroactive
protection to AT&T, Verizon and other companies against lawsuits accusing them of illegally
sharing their telephone and e-mail networks and millions of customer records with the National
Security Agency. Almost 40 such suits from around the nation are pending before Chief U.S.
District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco. The law requires him to dismiss the cases if the
Justice Department tells him the companies had cooperated in a surveillance program authorized
by President Bush. Details of the department's filing and the judge's dismissal order are to be kept
secret. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation attacked the
secrecy requirements and argued that Congress and President Bush lack authority to order courts
to whitewash constitutional violations. "If Congress can give the executive the power to
exclude the judiciary from considering the constitutional claims of millions of Americans ...
then the judiciary will no longer be functioning as a coequal branch of government," Cindy
Cohn, the foundation's legal director, said in court papers. She said the law's secrecy makes the
proceedings one-sided. "Due process requires more than the chance to shadow-box with the
government," Cohn wrote.
Note: For many reports from reliable, verifiable sources on threats to civil liberties, click here.
The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/10/09/DI20081009...
By exploring the current, post-9/11 operations of the NSA [National Security Agency, James]
Bamford ... goes where congressional oversight committees and investigative journalists still
struggle to go. [When] the Bush administration declared its ... global war on terror, Congress
agreed to most of the White House's demands. According to Bamford, the NSA's expanded
powers and resources enabled it to collect communications both inside and outside the United
States. He quotes a former NSA employee as a witness to the agency's spying on the
conversations of Americans who have no connection to terrorism. After suing the NSA for
documents, [Bamford] obtained considerable evidence that telecommunication companies (with
the notable exception of Qwest) knowingly violated U.S. law by cooperating with the NSA to tap
fiber optic lines. In impressive detail, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the
Eavesdropping on America tells how private contractors, including some little-known entities with
foreign owners, have done the sensitive work of storing and processing the voices and written data
of Americans and non-Americans alike. In the book, he offers new revelations about the National
Security Agency's counterterrorism tactics, including its controversial domestic surveillance
programs. Bamford warns of worse to come: 'There is now the capacity to make tyranny
total in America. Only law ensures that we never fall into that abyss -- the abyss from which
there is no return.'"
Note: Bamford is the author of two other books on the NSA: Body of Secrets and The Puzzle
Palace.
Appeals court blocks release of Guantanamo detainees

2008-10-08, McClatchy Newspapers
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/53677.html
A federal appeals court temporarily blocked the release of 17 Chinese-born Muslims detained at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a day after a landmark decision required them to be shipped to the U.S.
The move Wednesday night by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sets
the stage for a protracted court battle over the fate of the men, who've been held for nearly seven
years despite being cleared for release by the U.S. military. Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Ricardo
Urbina had ordered the Bush administration to transfer the men to the U.S. by Friday. The Justice
Department had launched a down-to-the wire effort to stop the release of the men from the ethnic
Uighur minority by seeking an emergency delay of the ruling. If the court had refused to act, the
Bush administration had threatened to ask the Supreme Court to intervene. Attorneys for the
group, however, reacted with disappointment. "Seventeen men were told yesterday that they
were going to be released after nearly seven years of wrongful detention," said Emi
MacLean, an attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which coordinates the
representation of detainees including the Uighurs. "Now, they have to be told that their
detention will continue to be indefinite." Urbina's decision marked the first time a court had
ordered the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. and could have prompted the release of
others who've been cleared by the military. Urbina declared the continued detention of the Uighurs
to be "unlawful" and said the government could no longer detain them after conceding they weren't
enemy combatants.
Note: For many reports on the Bush/Cheney administration's unlawful denials of civil liberties, click
here.
ACLU: U.S. Treasury stymies war court defense attorneys

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has pledged to cover costs of civilian lawyers defending
alleged terrorists, is in a struggle with the U.S. Treasury Department over a permit to pay $250-anhour fees and other expenses to attorneys who have been shuttling to [the] U.S. Navy base [at
Guantanamo]. The Treasury division, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, is the same unit that
polices American citizens' travel to Cuba. Its authority to license defense costs at the war courts
here, called military commissions, comes from anti-terror legislation. ACLU director Anthony
Romero accused the Bush administration of foot-dragging, noting civilian defense lawyers were
slow to receive security clearances to meet accused terrorists held for years without access to
attorneys. "Now the government is stonewalling again by not allowing Americans' private
dollars to be paid to American lawyers to defend civil liberties," he said. He called the slow
licensing an "obstruction of justice" at a time when "the Bush administration insists on
moving ahead with the prosecutions." The program is called the John Adams Project,
sponsored by the ACLU and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Under it,
attorneys will be paid for travel, expenses, research and copying as well as $250 an hour to
defend men ... now facing death penalty prosecutions at the war court. Top criminal defense
lawyers typically charge at least $550 an hour.
Note: For important reports on threats to civil liberties from major media sources, click here.
'Curveball' speaks, and a reputation as a disinformation agent remains
intact
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-curveball18-2008jun18,0,...
Rafid Ahmed Alwan hoped for an easier life when he came [to Nuremberg, Germany] from Iraq
nine years ago. He also hoped for a reward for his cooperation with German intelligence officers.
"For what I've done, I should be treated like a king," he said outside a cramped, low-rent apartment
he shares with his family. Instead, the Iraqi informant code-named Curveball has flipped burgers at
McDonald's and Burger King, washed dishes in a Chinese restaurant and baked pretzels in an allnight bakery. He also has faced withering international scorn for peddling discredited intelligence
that helped spur an invasion of his native country. It was intelligence attributed to Alwan -- as
Curveball -- that the White House used in making its case that Saddam Hussein possessed
weapons of mass destruction. He described what turned out to be fictional mobile germ
factories. The CIA belatedly branded him a liar. After Curveball's role in the pre-invasion
intelligence fiasco was disclosed by the Los Angeles Times four years ago, the con man behind
the code name remained in the shadows. His security was protected and his identity concealed by
the BND, Germany's Federal Intelligence Service. Along with confirmation of Curveball's identity,
however, have come fresh disclosures raising doubts about his honesty -- much of that new detail
coming from friends, associates and past employers. And records reveal that when Alwan fled to
Germany, one step ahead of the Iraq Justice Ministry, an arrest warrant had been issued alleging
that he sold filched camera equipment on the Baghdad black market.
Note: For much more information on the CIA's "disinformant" Curveball, click here. The lies he told
were peddled by US media, including the major television networks and The New York Times and
Washington Post, in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq. For a powerful summary of major media
cover-ups, click here.
Lawmakers Urge Special Counsel Probe of Harsh Interrogation Tactics

Nearly 60 House Democrats yesterday urged the Justice Department to appoint a special
counsel to examine whether top Bush administration officials may have committed crimes
in authorizing the use of harsh interrogation tactics against suspected terrorists. In a letter
to Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, the lawmakers cited what they said is "mounting
evidence" that senior officials personally sanctioned the use of waterboarding and other
aggressive tactics against detainees in U.S.-run prisons overseas. An independent investigation is
needed to determine whether such actions violated U.S or international law, the letter stated. "This
information indicates that the Bush administration may have systematically implemented, from the
top down, detainee interrogation policies that constitute torture or otherwise violate the law," it said.
The letter was signed by 56 House Democrats, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman
John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and House Intelligence Committee members Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.)
and Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y). The request was prompted in part by new disclosures of high-level
discussions within the Bush administration that reportedly focused on specific interrogation
practices. Some of the new detail was contained in a report last month by the Justice Department's
inspector general, which described a series of White House meetings in which the controversial
tactics were vigorously debated. Conyers, whose committee already is looking into the role played
by administration lawyers in authorizing aggressive measures, said a broader probe is now
needed.
Colorado Proposes Tough Law on Executive Accountability

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/business/01fraud.html?ex=1364702400&en=6a78...
For 30 years, Lew Ellingson loved being a telephone man. His job splicing phone cables was one
that he says gave him a true sense of accomplishment, first for Northwestern Bell, then US West
and finally Qwest Communications International. But by the time Mr. Ellingson retired from Qwest
last year at 52, he had grown angry. An insider trading scandal had damaged the companys
reputation, and the life savings of former colleagues had evaporated in the face of Qwests stock
troubles. It was a good place, he said wistfully. And then something like this happened. Now,
Mr. Ellingson is the public face of a proposed ballot measure in Colorado that seeks to create what
supporters hope will be the nations toughest corporate fraud law. Buttressed by local advocacy
groups and criticized by a Colorado business organization, the measure would make business
executives criminally responsible if their companies run afoul of the law. It would also permit any
Colorado resident to sue the executives under such circumstances. Proceeds from successful
suits would go to the state. If passed by voters in November, the proposal would leave top
business officers [with] unprecedented individual accountability, said Mr. Ellingson. If
nothing else, these folks in charge of the corporations and companies will think twice about
cutting corners to make themselves look more profitable than they really are, he said. The
plight of Mr. Ellingsons former employer, Qwest, based in Denver, was a motivation for the
proposal. Last April, a jury in Denver convicted Qwests former chief executive, Joseph P. Nacchio,
of 19 of 42 counts of insider trading. Mr. Nacchio was sentenced to six years in prison and ordered
to pay a fine of $19 million and forfeit $52 million in money he earned from stock sales in 2001.
Note: As reported in the Washington Post, Joseph P. Nacchio, the former Qwest CEO, has
claimed that he was singled out for prosecution because he refused to cooperate with the National
Security Agency's electronic surveillance of American citizens, which began before 9/11.
Like FBI, CIA Has Used Secret 'Letters'

For three years, the Bush administration has drawn fire from civil liberties groups over its use of
national security letters, a kind of administrative subpoena that compels private businesses such
as telecommunications companies to turn over information to the government. After the 2001 USA
Patriot Act loosened the guidelines, the FBI issued tens of thousands of such requests, something
critics say amounts to warrantless spying on Americans who have not been charged with crimes.
Now, newly released documents shed light on the use of the letters by the CIA. The spy agency
has employed them to obtain financial information about U.S. residents and does so under
extraordinary secrecy, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained copies of
CIA letters under the Freedom of Information Act. The CIA's requests for financial records
come with "gag orders" on the recipients, said ACLU lawyer Melissa Goodman. In many
cases, she said, the recipient is not allowed to keep a copy of the letter or even take notes
about the information turned over to the CIA. The ACLU posted copies of some of the letters
on its Web site. In most cases, nearly all the text had been redacted by CIA censors.
Note: For many powerful reports on the growing threats to civil liberties, click here.
Dragonfly or Insect Spy? Scientists at Work on Robobugs

Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month. "I
heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,' " the college senior from New York recalled. "I
look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked kind of like dragonflies or little
helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects." Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them,
too. "I'd never seen anything like it in my life," the Washington lawyer said. "They were large
for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechanical, or is that alive?' " Some suspect the insectlike
drones are high-tech surveillance tools, perhaps deployed by the Department of Homeland
Security. No agency admits to having deployed insect-size spy drones. But a number of U.S.
government and private entities acknowledge they are trying. So what was seen by Crane, Alarcon
and a handful of others at the D.C. march -- and as far back as 2004, during the Republican
National Convention in New York, when one observant ... peace-march participant described on
the Web "a jet-black dragonfly hovering about 10 feet off the ground, precisely in the middle of 7th
Avenue . . . watching us?" Three people at the D.C. event independently described a row of
spheres, the size of small berries, attached along the tails of the big dragonflies -- an accoutrement
that [Jerry Louton, an entomologist at the National Museum of Natural History,] could not explain.
And all reported seeing at least three maneuvering in unison. "Dragonflies never fly in a pack," he
said. Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice said her group is investigating
witness reports and has filed Freedom of Information Act requests with several federal agencies. If
such devices are being used to spy on political activists, she said, "it would be a significant
violation of people's civil rights."
Note: To read further reliable reports of threats to our civil liberties, click here.
Spy Satellites Turned on the U.S.

2007-09-06, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=3567635
Traditionally, powerful spy satellites have been used to search for strategic threats overseas. But
now the Department of Homeland Security has developed a new office to use the satellites to
[monitor the US itself]. [DHS] officials ... faced extensive criticism [in Congress] about the privacy
and civil liberty concerns of the new office, called the National Applications Office. [House
Homeland Security] Committee members expressed concern about abuse of the satellite imagery,
charging that Homeland Security had not informed the oversight committee about the program.
"What's most disturbing is learning about it from The Wall Street Journal," said Committee
Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. The lawmakers also expressed concern about using
military capabilities for U.S. law enforcement and Homeland Security operations, potentially a
violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the military from serving as a law enforcement
body within the United States. Committee members said that in addition to not being informed
about the National Applications Office program, they had not yet been provided with documents
defining the limits and legal guidance about the program. [They] sent a letter to Homeland Security
saying, "We are so concerned that ... we are calling for a moratorium on the program.
Today's testimony made clear that there is effectively no legal framework governing the
domestic use of satellite imagery for the various purposes envisioned by the department."
Bush administration defends spy law

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-intel7aug07,0,1631228.story
The Bush administration rushed to defend new espionage legislation Monday amid growing
concern that the changes could lead to increased spying by U.S. intelligence agencies on
American citizens. But officials declined to provide details about how the new capabilities might be
used by the National Security Agency and other spy services. And in many cases, they could point
only to internal monitoring mechanisms to prevent abuse of the new rules that appear to give the
government greater authority to tap into the traffic flowing across U.S. telecommunications
networks. Officials rejected assertions that the new capabilities would enable the government to
cast electronic "drift nets" that might ensnare U.S. citizens [and] that the new legislation would
amount to the expansion of a controversial and critics contend unconstitutional warrantless
wiretapping program that President Bush authorized after the 9/11 attacks. Intelligence experts
said there were an array of provisions in the new legislation that appeared to make it possible for
the government to engage in intelligence-collection activities that the Bush administration officials
were discounting. "They are trying to shift the terms of the debate to their intentions and
away from the meaning of the new law," said Steven Aftergood, an intelligence policy analyst at
the Federation of American Scientists. "The new law gives them authority to do far more than
simply surveil foreign communications abroad," he said. "It expands the surveillance program
beyond terrorism to encompass foreign intelligence. It permits the monitoring of communications of
a U.S. person as long as he or she is not the primary target. And it effectively removes judicial
supervision of the surveillance process."
It's time to check the balance of power

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/07/29/ING0UR6C1D1.DTL
Since 9/11, President Bush's repeated assaults on the Constitution and celebration of international
lawlessness ... have needlessly made Americans less safe. The president, for example, has
flouted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in intercepting the conversations and e-mails of
American citizens on American soil on his say-so alone. He has claimed authority to break into and
enter our homes, open our mail and commit torture. He has insisted that the entire United States is
a battlefield -- even pizza parlors -- where lethal military force may be employed to kill ... suspects
with bombs or missiles. He has detained citizens and noncitizens alike as enemy combatants
based on secret evidence. And he has insisted that he is constitutionally empowered to keep U.S.
troops in Iraq indefinitely. Congress should restore the Constitution's checks and balances and
protections against government abuses. The most frightening of Bush's abuses travels under
the banner of "extraordinary rendition." In its name, Bush has kidnapped, secretly
imprisoned, and tortured. The practice is what would be expected of dictators such as the
Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin or Iraq's Saddam Hussein. The detainees are held
incommunicado without accusation or trial. No judge reviews the allegedly incriminating evidence.
No law restricts interrogation methods or the conditions of confinement. And the innocent are left
without recourse as "collateral damage" in Bush's ... global [war on terrorism].
Note: The author, Bruce Fein, served as Associate Attorney General under President Reagan.
FBI Proposes Building Network of U.S. Informants

2007-07-25, ABC News blog
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/07/fbi-proposes-bu.html
The FBI is taking cues from the CIA to recruit thousands of covert informants in the United
States as part of a sprawling effort to boost its intelligence capabilities. According to a recent
unclassified report to Congress, the FBI expects its informants to provide secrets about possible
terrorists and foreign spies, although some may also be expected to aid with criminal
investigations, in the tradition of law enforcement confidential informants. The FBI said the push
was driven by a 2004 directive from President Bush ordering the bureau to improve its
counterterrorism efforts by boosting its human intelligence capabilities. The aggressive push for
more secret informants appears to be part of a new effort to grow its intelligence and
counterterrorism efforts. Other recent proposals include expanding its collection and analysis
of data on U.S. persons, retaining years' worth of Americans' phone records and even
increasing so-called "black bag" secret entry operations. To handle the increase in so-called
human sources, the FBI also plans to overhaul its database system, so it can manage records and
verify the accuracy of information from "more than 15,000" informants, according to the document.
The bureau has arranged to use elements of CIA training to teach FBI agents about "Source
Targeting and Development," the report states. The courses will train FBI special agents on the
"comprehensive tradecraft" needed to identify, recruit and manage these "confidential human
sources."
In Iraq's four-year looting frenzy, the allies have become the vandals
2007-06-08, The Guardian (one of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/heritage/story/0,,2098275,00.html
Fly into the American air base of Tallil outside Nasiriya in central Iraq and the flight path is over the
great ziggurat of Ur, reputedly the earliest city on earth. Ur is safe within the base compound. But
its walls are pockmarked with wartime shrapnel and a blockhouse is being built over an adjacent
archaeological site. When the head of Iraq's supposedly sovereign board of antiquities and
heritage, Abbas al-Hussaini, tried to inspect the site recently, the Americans refused him access to
his own most important monument. Under Saddam you were likely to be tortured and shot if you
let someone steal an antiquity; in today's Iraq you are likely to be tortured and shot if you don't.
The tragic fate of the national museum in Baghdad in April 2003 was as if federal troops had
invaded New York city, sacked the police and told the criminal community that the Metropolitan
was at their disposal. The local tank commander was told specifically not to protect the
museum for a full two weeks after the invasion. Even the Nazis protected the Louvre.
America [has converted] Nebuchadnezzar's great city of Babylon into the hanging gardens
of Halliburton. In the process the 2,500-year-old brick pavement to the Ishtar Gate was smashed
by tanks and the gate itself damaged. Babylon is being rendered archaeologically barren. Outside
the capital some 10,000 sites of incomparable importance to the history of western civilisation,
barely 20% yet excavated, are being looted as systematically as was the museum in 2003. When
[archeologists] tried to remove vulnerable carvings from the ancient city of Umma to Baghdad,
[they] found gangs of looters already in place with bulldozers, dump trucks and AK47s.
Officers: Ex-CIA chief Tenet a 'failed' leader

2007-04-27, CNN News
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/04/29/tenet.letter/index.html
In a letter written Saturday to former CIA Director George Tenet, six former CIA officers described
their former boss as "the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community," and called his book "an
admission of failed leadership." The letter, signed by Phil Giraldi, Ray McGovern, Larry Johnson,
Jim Marcinkowski, Vince Cannistraro and David MacMichael, said Tenet should have resigned in
protest rather than take part in the administration's buildup to the war. (Read the full letter)
Johnson is a former CIA intelligence official and registered Republican who voted for Bush in 2000.
Cannistraro is former head of the CIA's counterterrorism division. The writers said ... "your lament
that you are a victim in a process you helped direct is self-serving. You were not a victim. You were
a willing participant in a poorly considered policy to start an unnecessary war. CIA field
operatives produced solid intelligence in September 2002 that stated clearly there was no
stockpile of any kind of WMD in Iraq. This intelligence was ignored and later misused." The
letter said CIA officers learned later that month Iraq had no contact with Osama bin Laden and that
then-President Saddam Hussein considered the al Qaeda leader to be an enemy. Still, Tenet "went
before Congress in February 2003 and testified that Iraq did indeed have links to al Qaeda. "You
helped set the bar very low for reporting that supported favored White House positions, while
raising the bar astronomically high when it came to raw intelligence that did not support the case
for war. You betrayed the CIA officers who collected the intelligence. Most importantly and
tragically, you failed to meet your obligations to the people of the United States."
Bush's legacy: The president who cried wolf

Only this president, only in this time, only with this dangerous, even messianic certitude,
could answer a country demanding an exit strategy from Iraq, by offering an entrance
strategy for Iran. Only this president could look out over a vista of 3,008 dead and 22,834
wounded in Iraq, and finally say, Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with
me only to follow that by proposing to repeat the identical mistake ... in Iran. Without any
authorization from the public, which spoke so loudly and clearly to you in Novembers elections
without any consultation with a Congress ... you seem to be ready to make an open-ended
commitment (on Americas behalf) to do whatever you want, in Iran. Our military, Mr. Bush, is
already stretched so thin by this bogus adventure in Iraq that even a majority of serving personnel
are willing to tell pollsters that they are dissatisfied with your prosecution of the war. You, sir, have
become the president who cried wolf. Many of us are as inclined to believe you just shuffled the
director of national intelligence over to the State Department because he thought you were wrong
about Iran. Many of us are as inclined to believe you just put a pilot in charge of ground wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan because he would be truly useful in an air war next door in Iran. Your
assurances ... that we trust you have lost all shape and texture. You have lost the military. You
have lost the Congress to the Democrats. You have lost many of the Republicans. You are losing
the credibility, not just of your presidency, but more importantly of the office itself. And most
imperatively, you are guaranteeing that more American troops will be losing their lives, and more
families their loved ones.
Note: For powerful information from a highly decorated U.S. General on the real reasons behind
war, click here.
Iraqi Refugee's Tale of Abuse Dissolves Upon Later Scrutiny

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20C11FC3A5C0C728EDDA80894DD40...
Testifying before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July 2003 about the rebuilding of
Iraq, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the story of Jumana Michael Hanna, an Iraqi
woman...with a tale of her horrific torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime. Hanna's tale -
more than two years of imprisonment that included being subjected to electric shocks, repeatedly
raped and sexually assaulted - was unusual in that she was willing to name the Iraqi police officials
who participated in her torture, "information that is helping us to root out Baathist policemen who
routinely tortured and killed prisoners," Wolfowitz said. But Hanna's story, which 10 days before
Wolfowitz's testimony had been the subject of a front-page article in the Washington Post, appears
to have unraveled. Esquire magazine, in this month's issue, published a lengthy article, by a writer
who was hired to help Hanna produce a memoir, saying that her account had all but fallen apart.
Report cites warnings before 9/11

2002-09-19, CNN
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/18/intelligence.hearings/
U.S. intelligence officials had several warnings that terrorists might attack the United States
on its home soil -- even using airplanes as weapons -- well before the September 11, 2001
attacks, two congressional committees said in a report. In 1998, U.S. intelligence had
information that a group of unidentified Arabs planned to fly an explosives-laden airplane into the
World Trade Center, according to a joint inquiry of the House and Senate intelligence committees.
However, the Federal Aviation Administration found the plot "highly unlikely given the state of that
foreign country's aviation program," and believed a flight originating outside the United States
would be detected before it reached its target inside the country, the report said. "The FBI's New
York office took no action on the information," it said. Another alert came just a month before the
attacks, the report said, when the CIA sent a message to the FAA warning of a possible hijacking
"or an act of sabotage against a commercial airliner." The information was linked to a group of
Pakistanis based in South America. That warning did not mention using an airliner as a weapon
and, the report said, "there was apparently little, if any, effort by intelligence community analysts to
produce any strategic assessments of terrorists using aircraft as weapons."
Note: For many unanswered questions about the official account of 9/11 asked by highlyrespected professors and officials, click here and here.
New analysis of rocket used in Syria chemical attack undercuts U.S.

claims
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/01/15/3873228/new-analysis-of-rocket-used-in....
A series of revelations about the rocket believed to have delivered poison sarin gas to a Damascus
suburb last summer are challenging American intelligence assumptions about that attack and
suggest that the case U.S. officials initially made for retaliatory military action was flawed. A team
of security and arms experts, meeting this week in Washington to discuss the matter, has
concluded that the range of the rocket that delivered sarin in the largest attack that night was too
short for the device to have been fired from the Syrian government positions where the Obama
administration insists they originated. The authors of a report released Wednesday said that their
study of the rockets design, its likely payload and its possible trajectories show that it would have
been impossible for the rocket to have been fired from inside areas controlled by the government
of Syrian President Bashar Assad. In the report, titled Possible Implications of Faulty U.S.
Technical Intelligence, Richard Lloyd, a former United Nations weapons inspector, and Theodore
Postol, a professor of science, technology and national security policy at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, argue that the question about the rockets range indicates a major
weakness in the case for military action initially pressed by Obama administration officials. Postol
said that a basic analysis of the weapon ... would have shown that it wasnt capable of
flying the 6 miles from the center of the Syrian government-controlled part of Damascus to
the point of impact in the suburbs, or even the 3.6 miles from the edges of governmentcontrolled ground.
Note: For more on government lies designed to start wars, see the deeply revealing reports from
9/11 a 'staged event'

2012-06-28, New Straits Times (Malaysia's leading English-language newspaper)
http://www.nst.com.my/nation/general/9-11-a-staged-event-1.99101
Malaysia is brave to organise a war crimes tribunal and to recognise former United States
president George W. Bush and his associates as war criminals. In a public forum entitled "9/11 and
the Ecological Crisis", renowned theologian, scholar and author Professor David Ray Griffin
praised Malaysia for having the courage to bring these prominent figures to justice and to
expose their crimes to the international community. "Someone has to get started
somewhere, and this is a good start, Malaysia is ideally placed in this aspect and hopefully
the international community will take notice," he said. In his lecture, Griffin also explained his
theory on the Sept 11 attacks, claiming that it was a "staged event" and could not have been the
work of Muslim terrorists. He explained that the rigid steel columns of the (World Trade Center)
twin towers made it impossible for them to crumble unless they had been rigged with explosives.
Griffin added that the fires could not have come within 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit of the
temperature needed to melt steel. He also alleged that the hijackers had minimal competence to
fly single-engine aircraft, let alone be able to handle commercial jets. Griffin noted that more than
any others, Muslims have paid the greatest price as a result of 9/11 that later launched the war on
terrorism. "We have started something called Consensus 9/11 where we have gathered several
experts to provide the world with a clear statement, based on expert independent opinion, of some
of the best evidence opposing the official narrative about 9/11."
Note: The New Straits Times is Malaysia's oldest newspaper, founded in 1845. This article is a
rare example of objective mainstream press coverage of alternative interpretations of the 9/11
events. WantToKnow team member Prof. David Ray Griffin's most recent book on 9/11 is 9/11 Ten
Years Later.
Pentagon establishes Defense Clandestine Service, new espionage unit

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-creates-new-es...
The Pentagon is planning to ramp up its spying operations against high-priority targets such as
Iran under an intelligence reorganization aimed at expanding on the militarys espionage efforts
beyond war zones. The newly created Defense Clandestine Service would work closely with the
CIA ... in an effort to bolster espionage operations overseas at a time when the missions of the
agency and the military increasingly converge. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, who signed off
on the newly created service last week, served as CIA director at a time when the agency relied
extensively on military hardware, including armed drones. Michael Vickers, the undersecretary
of defense for intelligence and the main force behind the changes, is best known as one of
the architects of the CIAs program to arm Islamist militants to oust the Soviets from
Afghanistan in the 1980s. He is also a former member of U.S. Special Operations forces.
Despite the potentially provocative name for the new service, the official played down concerns
that the Pentagon was seeking to usurp the role of the CIA or its National Clandestine Service. The
new service fits into a broader convergence trend. U.S. Special Operations forces are increasingly
engaged in intelligence collection overseas and have collaborated with the CIA on missions. The
blurring is also evident in the organizations upper ranks. Panetta previously served as CIA
director.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the activities of government intelligence
agencies, click here.
Democratic Senators Issue Strong Warning About Use of the Patriot Act
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/us/politics/democratic-senators-warn-about-...
For more than two years, a handful of Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee have
warned that the government is secretly interpreting its surveillance powers under the Patriot Act in
a way that would be alarming if the public or even others in Congress knew about it. On
[March 15], two of those senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado went
further. They said a top-secret intelligence operation that is based on that secret legal theory is not
as crucial to national security as executive branch officials have maintained. The Justice
Department has argued that disclosing information about its interpretation of the Patriot Act could
alert adversaries to how the government collects certain intelligence. It is seeking the dismissal of
two Freedom of Information Act lawsuits by The New York Times and by the American Civil
Liberties Union related to how the Patriot Act has been interpreted. The dispute centers on
what the government thinks it is allowed to do under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, under
which agents may obtain a secret order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
allowing them to get access to any tangible things like business records that are
deemed relevant to a terrorism or espionage investigation. The interpretation of Section 215
that authorizes this secret surveillance operation is apparently not obvious from a plain text
reading of the provision, and was developed through a series of classified rulings by the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Note: For key reports from major media sources on surveillance and other government restrictions
of basic civil liberties, click here.
Government by death panel

2011-10-15, Denver Post (Denver's leading newspaper)
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_19115979
Last week we learned from Reuters that fellow countrymen labeled "militants" by the Obama
administration are now unilaterally placed on a "kill list" by "a secretive panel of senior government
officials. "This is a real-life death panel inside the highest governmental office in the land -and, according to Reuters, it acts without "any law establishing its existence or setting out
the rules by which it is supposed to operate." This neo-Star Chamber is wholly
unprecedented in its willful violations of the U.S. Constitution's due-process provisions -and our Congress' refusal to even question it is utterly detestable. However, it reminds us that
government death panels in general are anything but rare; they are all around us, making bloodcurdling decisions to kill people all the time. For example, at the state level, the death panel
commonly called the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles recently opted to execute Troy Davis,
despite compelling evidence calling his conviction into question. Likewise ... the death panel
known as the U.S. House Agriculture Appropriations Committee [is] considering cuts to food
stamps at a time when Louisiana State University researchers report that between 2,000 and
3,000 elderly Americans are already dying of malnutrition every year.
Note: For key reports on government corruption from major media sources, click here.
FBI lab reports on anthrax attacks suggest another miscue

2011-05-19, Miami Herald/McClatchy News
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/05/19/2225013/fbi-lab-reports-on-anthrax-atta...
Buried in FBI laboratory reports about the anthrax mail attacks that killed five people in 2001 are
data suggesting that a chemical may have been added to try to heighten the powder's potency, a
move that some experts say exceeded the expertise of the presumed killer. The lab data,
contained in more than 9,000 pages of files that emerged a year after the Justice Department
closed its inquiry and condemned the late Army microbiologist Bruce Ivins as the perpetrator,
shows unusual levels of silicon and tin in anthrax powder from two of the five letters. Those
elements are found in compounds that could be used to weaponize the anthrax, enabling the lethal
spores to float easily so they could be readily inhaled by the intended victims, scientists say. The
existence of the silicon-tin chemical signature offered investigators the possibility of tracing
purchases of the more than 100 such chemical products available before the attacks, which might
have produced hard evidence against Ivins or led the agency to the real culprit. But the FBI lab
reports released in late February give no hint that bureau agents tried to find the buyers of
additives such as tin-catalyzed silicone polymers. The apparent failure of the FBI to pursue
this avenue of investigation raises the ominous possibility that the killer is still on the
loose.
Note: For key articles from reliable sources on government corruption, click here.
Obama creates indefinite detention system for prisoners at Guantanamo

Bay
President Obama signed an executive order Monday that will create a formal system of indefinite
detention for those held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who continue to
pose a significant threat to national security. The administration also said it will start new military
commission trials for detainees there. The announcements, coming more than two years after
Obama vowed in another executive order to close the detention center, all but cements
Guantanamo Bay's continuing role in U.S. counterterrorism policy. The executive order recognizes
the reality that some Guantanamo Bay detainees will remain in U.S. custody for many years, if not
for life. Activists on either end of the debate over closing the prison cast the announcement as a
reversal. "It is virtually impossible to imagine how one closes Guantanamo in light of this
executive order," said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties
Union. "In a little over two years, the Obama administration has done a complete aboutface." Recent legislation now makes it extremely difficult to transfer any detainee out of
Guantanamo Bay even if he is believed to be no threat.
Note: President Obama has repeatedly reversed his position on key elements of his election
campaign, like Guantanamo, which brought him to power. To understand how members of the
power elite of our world can exert tremendous pressure on anyone who becomes president, read
revealing major media reports on secret societies composed of the power elite of our world at this
link.
Ex-Minn. governor sues over body scans, pat-downs

Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura is suing the Department of Homeland Security and
the Transportation Security Administration, saying full-body scans and pat-downs at airport
checkpoints are violating his rights. Ventura filed his lawsuit [on January 24] in federal court in
Minnesota. He says the new security measures violate his right to be free from unreasonable
searches and seizures. He's asking a federal court to order officials to stop subjecting him to these
searches. Ventura was governor of Minnesota from 1999 through 2002. He now hosts the
television program "Conspiracy Theory." The lawsuit says Ventura had a hip replacement in 2008,
and his titanium implant sets off metal detectors.
Note: Jesse Ventura is one of the heros of our time. Do a video search on his name to watch
episodes of his amazingly revealing "Conspiracy Theory" programs.
Britain Opens Public Inquest Into 2005 London Terrorist Attacks

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/world/europe/12britain.html
After more than five years of delay that have angered and frustrated the victims families, an
inquest opened on [October 11] into the [attacks] on the London transit system on July 7, 2005,
that killed 52 people and the four bombers, and wounded more than 700 others. The inquest ...
began with the presiding judge, Lady Heather Hallett, ... pledging in her opening remarks that she
would undertake to keep the inquest as open as possible while protecting Britains national
security. Lady Hallett said she would go as far as she could to meet the demand of the victims
families to know why the countrys security and intelligence services did not act to prevent
the bombings on the basis of what they knew about the attackers beforehand. The families
demands have echoed those of victims relatives after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the
United States, but they have been amplified by the lengthy delay in holding the London inquest,
which is the first comprehensive public inquiry into what have become known in Britain as the 7/7
attacks. The delay in opening the inquest has been officially explained as necessary to allow the
police and other security agencies to complete their own investigations. As with the last inquest in
Britain to become a focus of attention on a similar scale, the long-delayed investigation into the
1997 death in a Paris car crash of Diana, Princess of Wales, top officials of Britains major police
and security agencies, Scotland Yard, MI5 and MI6, are expected to be called as witnesses.
Note: For powerful, reliable information that the 7/7 bombing was manipulated, click here. For
analysis of the many unanswered questions surrounding the London bombing on 7/7, click here.
Contractors Tied to Effort to Track and Kill Militants

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/world/asia/15contractors.html
Under the cover of a benign government information-gathering program, a Defense Department
official set up a network of private contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan to help track and kill
suspected militants. The official, Michael D. Furlong, hired contractors from private security
companies that employed former C.I.A. and Special Forces operatives. The contractors, in turn,
gathered intelligence on the whereabouts of suspected militants and the location of insurgent
camps, and the information was then sent to military units and intelligence officials for possible
lethal action in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some American officials say they became troubled that
Mr. Furlong seemed to be running an off-the-books spy operation. It is generally considered

illegal for the military to hire contractors to act as covert spies. Officials said Mr. Furlongs
secret network might have been improperly financed by diverting money from a program
designed to merely gather information about the region. Moreover, in Pakistan, where Qaeda
and Taliban leaders are believed to be hiding, the secret use of private contractors may be seen as
an attempt to get around the Pakistani governments prohibition of American military personnels
operating in the country.
Note: More details of the secret war in Afghanistan and Pakistan continue to leak out steadily. As
this article indicates, secret privatized death squad operations go on in the dark while the
Pentagon and the press announce a scaling back of "Special Operations" out of concern for
"civilian casualties."
Justice Official Clears Bush Lawyers in Torture Memo Probe

2010-01-29, Newsweek magazine blog
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/archive/2010/01/29/holder-under-f...
An upcoming Justice Department report from its ethics-watchdog unit, the Office of
Professional Responsibility (OPR), clears the Bush administration lawyers who authored
the torture memos of professional-misconduct allegations. NEWSWEEK has learned that a
senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding.
Previously, the report concluded that two key authors Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court
judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor violated their professional obligations as lawyers
when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics. But the reviewer,
career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed poor judgment,
say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional
misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar
associations for potential disciplinary actionwhich, in Bybees case, could have led to an
impeachment inquiry.
Note: The Obama administration continues to uphold the illegal policies introduced by the
Bush/Cheney regime. For lots more on the realities of the fraudulent "war on terrorism", click here.
A National Disgrace
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/opinion/11wed1.html
Two courts, one in Italy and one in the United States, ruled recently on the Bush administrations
practice of extraordinary rendition, which is the kidnapping of people and sending them to other
countries for interrogation and torture. The Italian court got it right. The American court got it
miserably wrong. In Italy, a judge ruled that a station chief for the Central Intelligence Agency and
22 other Americans broke the law in the 2003 abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, a
Muslim cleric who ended up in Egypt, where he said he was tortured. Two days earlier, a federal
appeals court in Manhattan brushed off a lawsuit by Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen
who was seized in an American airport by federal agents acting on bad information from Canadian
officials. He was held incommunicado and harshly interrogated before being sent to Syria, where
he was tortured. He spent almost a year in a grave-size underground cell before the Syrians let
him go. It has long been established that Mr. Arar was not guilty of anything. Canada admitted that
it had supplied false information to American authorities, and in 2007, it apologized and offered Mr.
Arar $10 million in damages. Written by Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs, the 59-page majority opinion
held that no civil damages remedy exists for the horrors visited on Mr. Arar. The ruling distorts
precedent and the Constitutional separation of powers to deny justice to Mr. Arar and give
officials a pass for egregious misconduct. The overt disregard for the central role of judges
in policing executive branch excesses has frightening implications for safeguarding civil
liberties, as four judges suggested in dissenting opinions.
Note: For many reports from major media sources of growing government threats to civil liberties,
click here.
CIA doctors face human experimentation claims

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/02/cia-usa
Doctors and psychologists the CIA employed to monitor its "enhanced interrogation" of terror
suspects came close to, and may even have committed, unlawful human experimentation, a
medical ethics watchdog has alleged. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), a not-for-profit group
that has investigated the role of medical personnel in alleged incidents of torture at Guantnamo,
Abu Ghraib, Bagram and other US detention sites, accuses doctors of being far more involved
than hitherto understood. PHR says health professionals participated at every stage in the
development, implementation and legal justification of what it calls the CIA's secret "torture
programme". The most incendiary accusation of PHR's latest report, Aiding Torture, is that doctors
actively monitored the CIA's interrogation techniques with a view to determining their effectiveness,
using detainees as human subjects without their consent. The report concludes that such data
gathering was "a practice that approaches unlawful experimentation". Human
experimentation without consent has been prohibited in any setting since 1947 [with] the
Nuremberg Code, which resulted from the prosecution of Nazi doctors. In April, a leaked
report from the International Committee of the Red Cross found that medical staff employed by the
CIA had been present during waterboarding, and had even used what appeared to be a pulse
oxymeter, placed on the prisoner's finger to monitor his oxygen saturation during the procedure.
PHR is calling for an official investigation into the role of doctors in the CIA's now widely
discredited programme. It wants to know exactly how many doctors participated, what they did,
what records they kept and the science that they applied.
Note: To watch a video of a Democracy Now! segment on the PHR report, click here. For
astounding information on how MDs participated in the CIA's mind control experiments in the past,
click here.
Judge: CIA interrogations not relevant to 9/11 accused's sanity

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/guantanamo/story/1179756.html
U.S. military defense lawyers for accused 9/11 conspirator Ramzi bin al Shibh cannot learn what
interrogation techniques CIA agents used on the Yemeni before he was moved to Guantnamo to
be tried as a terrorist, an Army judge has ruled. Bin al Shibh, 37, is one of five men charged in a
complex death penalty prosecution by military commission currently under review by the Obama
administration. But his lawyers say he suffers a "delusional disorder," and hallucinations in his cell
at Guantnamo may leave him neither sane enough to act as his own attorney nor to stand trial.
Prison camp doctors treat him with psychotropic drugs. Army Col. Stephen Henley, the military
judge on the case, has scheduled a competency hearing for mid-September. Meantime, the judge
ruled on Aug. 6 that "evidence of specific techniques employed by various governmental agencies
to interrogate the accused is . . . not essential to a fair resolution of the incompetence
determination hearing in this case." Prosecutors had invoked a national security privilege in
seeking to shield the details from defense lawyers. Many of the techniques used on the
men have already been made public. They included waterboarding, sleep deprivation and
sexual humiliation methods meant to break a captive's will. But Navy Cmdr. Suzanne
Lachelier, the Yemeni's Pentagon appointed defense attorney, said court-approved mental health
experts -- as well as the judge -- need to know the specifics to assess her client's mental illness. If
he suffers post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his CIA interrogations, there may be PTSD
treatments that could make him competent.
Note: For many reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities of "the war on terror," click
here.
In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Look at Past Use

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/politics/22detain.html?partner=rss&emc=r...
The program began with Central Intelligence Agency leaders in the grip of an alluring idea: They
could get tough in terrorist interrogations without risking legal trouble by adopting a set of methods
used on Americans during military training. How could that be torture? In a series of high-level
meetings in 2002, without a single dissent from cabinet members or lawmakers, the United States
for the first time officially embraced the brutal methods of interrogation it had always condemned.
This extraordinary consensus was possible, an examination by The New York Times shows,
largely because no one involved not the top two C.I.A. officials who were pushing the
program, not the senior aides to President George W. Bush, not the leaders of the Senate
and House Intelligence Committees investigated the gruesome origins of the techniques
they were approving with little debate. According to several former top officials involved in the
discussions seven years ago, they did not know that the military training program, called SERE, for
Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, had been created decades earlier to give American
pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War,
methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans. Even George J. Tenet, the C.I.A.
director who insisted that the agency had thoroughly researched its proposal and pressed it on
other officials, did not examine the history of the most shocking method, the near-drowning
technique known as waterboarding.
Note: For powerful revelations of the realities behind the fake "war on terror", click here.
Terrorist threat 'exploited to curb civil liberties'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/terrorist-threat-exploited-to-c...
Britain and America have led other countries in "actively undermining" the rule of law and
"threatening civil liberties" in the guise of fighting terrorism, international jurists have charged in a
report published yesterday. The three-year study calls for urgent measures to stop the erosion of
individual freedom by states and [for] the abandoning of draconian measures brought on with the
"War on Terror". The legal framework which broadly existed in democratic countries before 9/11
was "sufficiently robust to meet current threats" said the International Commission of Jurists.
Instead, a series of security measures were brought in, many of which were illegal. One worrying
development ... was that liberal democracies such as the UK and US have been at the forefront of
advocating the new aggressive policies and that has given totalitarian regimes the excuse to bring
in their own repressive laws. The ICJ panel, which included Mary Robinson, the former Irish
president and United Nations Human Rights Commissioner and Arthur Chaskelson, the former
president of the South African constitutional court, gathered their evidence from 40 countries. They
took testimony from government officials, ministers, and people in prison for alleged terrorist
offences. The actions of the US [have] immense influence on the behaviour of other
countries, the study maintained, and the jurists called on President Barack Obama to repeal
policies which came with the "war on terror paradigm" and were inconsistent with
international human rights law.
Note: To read the ICJ Eminent Jurists Panel's full Report on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism and
Human Rights, click here. For many disturbing reports from major media sources on the increasing
threats from states to civil liberties under the pretext of fighting terrorism, click here.
Detainee Tortured, Says U.S. Official

The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay
detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national ... interrogating him
with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged
exposure to cold, leaving him in a "life-threatening condition." "We tortured [Mohammed al]Qahtani," said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of
military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. "His treatment met
the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution. Military
prosecutors said in November that they would seek to refile charges against Qahtani, 30, based on
subsequent interrogations that did not employ harsh techniques. But Crawford, who dismissed war
crimes charges against him in May 2008, said in the interview that she would not allow the
prosecution to go forward. The interrogation ... was so intense that Qahtani had to be
hospitalized twice at Guantanamo with bradycardia, a condition in which the heart rate falls
below 60 beats a minute and which in extreme cases can lead to heart failure and death. At
one point Qahtani's heart rate dropped to 35 beats per minute, the record shows.
Note: For many revealing reports on torture and other war crimes committed in the War on
Terrorism and in Iraq and Afghanistan, click here.
U.S. Air Force investigates Gitmo war court director

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/breaking-news/story/741796.html
The Air Force is investigating a top official in the Guantnamo war crimes trials following
complaints that he inappropriately sought to influence the prosecution of cases. Defense lawyers
and human rights groups have accused Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, who supervised
the prosecution of enemy combatants at Guantnamo Bay until he was reassigned last month, of
lacking neutrality and pushing for premature prosecutions to rally public support for the tribunals.
Air Force Maj. David Frakt, a military defense lawyer who has represented several Guantnamo
detainees, said the probe was launched after he and others alerted authorities about possible
ethical violations by Hartmann. Frakt said that he informed his superiors in July of concerns
regarding Hartmann's "unprofessional conduct" and "lack of candor," and that the investigation
could result in professional sanctions and might give some detainees grounds to challenge actions
that Hartmann took in cases against them. Hartmann was removed as legal adviser for the
Guantnamo trials in September. He continues to oversee the tribunals in his new post, but is not
directly involved with prosecutors. Military judges have already barred him from participating
in three Guantnamo trials, saying he lacked impartiality and aligned himself too closely
with prosecutors. The investigation is proof that serious questions remain about the
tribunals' fairness, said Jennifer Daskal, a lawyer for Human Rights Watch, which has lobbied on
behalf of the detainees. "The Department of Defense has absolutely refused to clean house."
Note: For many disturbing reports on threats to civil liberties from major media sources, click here.
Book Cites Secret Red Cross Report of C.I.A. Torture of Qaeda Captives
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/11/washington/11detain.html?partner=rssuserlan...
Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence
Agencys interrogation methods for high-level Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and
could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes,
according to a new book on counterterrorism efforts since 2001. The book says that the
International Committee of the Red Cross declared in the report, given to the C.I.A. last year, that
the methods used on Abu Zubaydah, the first major Qaeda figure the United States captured, were
"categorically" torture, which is illegal under both American and international law. The book says
Abu Zubaydah was confined in a box "so small ... he had to double up his limbs in the fetal
position" and was one of several prisoners to be "slammed against the walls," according to the
Red Cross report. The C.I.A. has admitted that Abu Zubaydah and two other prisoners were
waterboarded, a practice in which water is poured in the nose and mouth to [cause near]
suffocation and drowning. The book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror
Turned Into a War on American Ideals, by Jane Mayer ... offers new details of the agencys secret
detention program, as well as the bitter debates in the administration over interrogation methods.
Citing unnamed "sources familiar with the report," Ms. Mayer wrote that the Red Cross document
"warned that the abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the U.S. government
in jeopardy of being prosecuted."
Note: For lots more on war and war crimes, click here.
Justices Rule Terror Suspects Can Appeal in Civilian Courts

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/washington/13scotus.html?partner=rssuserlan...
The Supreme Court ... delivered its third consecutive rebuff to the Bush administrations handling
of the detainees at Guantnamo Bay, ruling 5 to 4 that the prisoners there have a constitutional
right to go to federal court to challenge their continued detention. The court declared
unconstitutional a provision of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that ... stripped the federal
courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from the detainees seeking to challenge their
designation as enemy combatants. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the
truncated review procedure provided by a previous law, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, falls
short of being a constitutionally adequate substitute because it failed to offer the fundamental
procedural protections of habeas corpus. Justice Kennedy declared: The laws and Constitution
are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. The decision, which was
joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen G.
Breyer, was categorical in its rejection of the administrations basic arguments. Indeed, the court
repudiated the fundamental legal basis for the administrations strategy, adopted in the
immediate aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, of housing prisoners captured in
Afghanistan and elsewhere at the United States naval base in Cuba, where Justice
Department lawyers advised the White House that domestic law would never reach.
Note: For many disturbing reports on threats to civil liberties from major media sources, click here.
Detainees Now Have Access to Federal Court

Defense attorneys for the 270 detainees at Guantanamo Bay said the Supreme Court decision
yesterday that granted detainees habeas corpus rights was a watershed moment that will allow the
men, some held for as long as 6 1/2 years, to challenge their detentions before a civilian judge.
The court's ruling immediately gives the detainees access to a federal court in Washington, where
lawyers will seek to have judges order the men released from indefinite detention. Legal experts
said it is unclear how the hearings will proceed, but the government could be compelled to
present highly classified evidence, and detainees could for the first time be able to publicly
call witnesses, present evidence of abuse and rebut terrorism allegations. The decision
could force the U.S. government to show why individual detainees must be held, something
U.S. officials have fought for years. As many as 130 detainees have been deemed dangerous but
are unlikely to ever face criminal charges, according to prosecutors, and now government officials
could have to argue for indefinite detention even if the evidence is flimsy or nonexistent. "We're
going to see a high number of people the government is going to have to release," said Michael
Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has represented Guantanamo Bay
detainees since 2002. It is unclear how the Boumediene v. Bush decision will affect military
commissions trials at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where 20 detainees, including ... Khalid Sheik
Mohammed, have been charged with war crimes.
Artist Trevor Paglen has his eye on satellites

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/30/DD6R10US53.DTL
For four decades, the United States has been filling the outer reaches of our atmosphere with 189
reconnaissance satellites. And for several years, artist-geographer Trevor Paglen has been
keeping his eye on them. "The Other Night Sky," ... at the Berkeley Art Museum, is a result of
Paglen's nocturnal efforts. "When you look at the number of satellites, what they're doing and what
they represent, it is really a vision of trying to have the world in your clutches," says Paglen in his
disheveled office in UC Berkeley's geography department. "[T]his project is trying to think about
what ... looking at the night sky in search of truth means today." "The Other Night Sky" is not
Paglen's first foray into extended studies of secret military projects. Six years ago - while working
on a project about the California penal system that involved examining satellite photos of prisons he stumbled on some classified military sites. At the time, the war on terror was in full bloom and a
number of rumors about secret sites had begun to circulate. "We knew the CIA had to be
running secret prisons around the world," Paglen says. "It was not in the news, but you
could tell - people were being rounded up but were not being put in our jails. These hidden
military sites I stumbled upon seemed really relevant to the idea that the state was
disappearing people." Through numerous information requests at the national and state levels,
he generated reams of knowledge about the United States' secret rendition program that was not
then making news. That he had time to pursue it gave Paglen a sense of moral responsibility.
Note: Trevor Paglen's new book, I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by
Me: Emblems from the Pentagon's Black World presents peculiar shoulder patches created for the
weird and top secret programs funded by the Pentagon's black budget. His 2006 book, Torture
Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights, was the first to focus on extraordinary rendition -when the CIA takes captives to countries where they can be tortured or jailed without due process.
The FBI Deputizes Business

2008-02-07, Common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/07/6918/
Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and
the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called
InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does -- and, at least on one
occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government,
which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who
showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to "shoot to kill" in the event
of martial law. In November 2001, InfraGard had around 1,700 members. As of late January,
InfraGard had 23,682 members, according to its website, www.infragard.net, which adds that "350
of our nation's Fortune 500 have a representative in InfraGard." FBI Director Robert Mueller
addressed an InfraGard convention on August 9, 2005. He urged InfraGard members to contact
the FBI if they "note suspicious activity or an unusual event." And he said they could sic the FBI on
"disgruntled employees who will use knowledge gained on the job against their employers."
Note: We don't normally use Common Dreams as a news source, but as this news is so important
and the major media failed to report it, we decided to include this article here. For a revealing
report by the ACLU on this key topic, click here. For important reports from major media sources
on threats to civil liberties, click here.
Spies' Battleground Turns Virtual

U.S. intelligence officials are [now claiming] that popular Internet services that enable computer
users to adopt cartoon-like personas in three-dimensional online spaces also are creating security
vulnerabilities by opening novel ways ... to move money, organize and conduct corporate
espionage. Over the last few years, "virtual worlds" such as Second Life and other role-playing
games have become home to millions of computer-generated personas known as avatars. By
directing their avatars, people can take on alternate personalities, socialize, explore and earn and
spend money across uncharted online landscapes. Nascent economies have sprung to life in
these 3-D worlds, complete with currency, banks and shopping malls. Corporations and
government agencies have opened animated virtual offices, and a growing number of
organizations hold meetings where avatars gather and converse in newly minted conference
centers. Intelligence officials ... say they're convinced that the qualities that many computer
users find so attractive about virtual worlds -- including anonymity, global access and the
expanded ability to make financial transfers outside normal channels -- have turned them
into seedbeds for transnational threats. The government's growing concern seems likely to
make virtual worlds the next battlefield in the struggle over the proper limits on the government's
quest to [expand] data collection and analysis and the surveillance of commercial computer
systems. Virtual worlds could also become an actual battlefield. The intelligence community has
begun contemplating how to use Second Life and other such communities as platforms for cyber
weapons.
Time Runs Out for an Afghan Held by the U.S.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/world/asia/05gitmo.html?ex=1359867600&en=19...
Abdul Razzaq Hekmati was regarded here as a war hero, famous for ... a daring prison break he
organized for three opponents of the Taliban government in 1999. But in 2003, Mr. Hekmati was
arrested by American forces in southern Afghanistan when, senior Afghan officials ... contend, he
was falsely accused by his enemies of being a Taliban commander himself. For the next five years
he was held at the American military base in Guantnamo Bay, Cuba, where he died of cancer on
Dec. 30. The fate of Mr. Hekmati, the first detainee to die of natural causes at Guantnamo ...
demonstrates the enduring problems of the tribunals at Guantnamo. Afghan officials, and some
Americans, complain that detainees are effectively thwarted from calling witnesses in their
defense, and that the Afghan government is never consulted on the detention cases, even when it
may be able to help. Mr. Hekmatis case, officials who knew him said, shows that sometimes the
Americans do not seem to know whom they are holding. In a report in February 2006 ...
researchers at Seton Hall University School of Law ... concluded that no outside witnesses had
ever been called to appear at Guantnamo. Lt. Col. Stephen E. Abraham ... stepped forward last
June to criticize the tribunals. In a submission to the Supreme Court, he condemned them for
relying on generalized evidence that would have been dismissed by any competent court,
and as being devised to rubber-stamp the administrations assertion that the detainees had
been correctly designated enemy combatants when they were captured and that they
could be held indefinitely.
Tip-off thwarted nuclear spy ring probe

2008-01-27, Sunday Times (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
An investigation into the illicit sale of American nuclear secrets was compromised by a senior
official in the State Department, a former FBI employee has claimed. The official is said to have
tipped off a foreign contact about a bogus CIA company used to investigate the sale of
nuclear secrets. The firm, Brewster Jennings & Associates, was a front for Valerie Plame,
the former CIA agent. Her public outing two years later in 2003 by White House officials
became a cause clbre. The claims that a State Department official blew the investigation into a
nuclear smuggling ring have been made by Sibel Edmonds, 38, a former Turkish language
translator in the FBIs Washington field office. Plame, then 38, was the ... wife of a former US
ambassador, Joe Wilson. She travelled widely for her work, often claiming to be an oil consultant.
In fact she was a career CIA agent who was part of a small team investigating the same
procurement network that the State Department official is alleged to have aided. Brewster
Jennings was one of a number of covert enterprises set up to infiltrate the nuclear ring. [Edmonds
said the State Department official] "found out about the arrangement . . . and he contacted one of
the foreign targets and said . . . you need to stay away from Brewster Jennings because they are a
cover for the government. Phillip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, said: Its pretty clear Plame was
targeting the Turks. If indeed that [State Department] official was working with the Turks to violate
US law on nuclear exports, it would have been in his interest to alert them to the fact that this
womans company was affiliated to the CIA. I dont know if thats treason legally but many people
would consider it to be.
Note: To read former CIA agent Philip Giraldi's analysis of Edmonds' claims, in which he identifies
the unnamed State Department official as Marc Grossman, click here. And to read an interview
with Edmonds on the series of articles about her revelations appearing in the Sunday Times and
media censorship elsewhere, click here.
Pentagon Review Faults Bank Record Demands

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/washington/14letter.html?ex=1350014400&en=b...
An internal Pentagon review this year found systemic problems ... in the militarys efforts to obtain
records from American banks and consumer credit agencies in terrorism and espionage
investigations, according to Pentagon documents. The newly disclosed documents, totaling more
than 1,000 pages, provide additional confirmation of the militarys expanding use of what are
known as national security letters under powers claimed under the Patriot Act. The documents
show that the military has issued at least 270 of the letters since 2005, and about 500 in all since
2001. The documents were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by two private
advocacy groups, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The
New York Times first disclosed the militarys use of the letters in January, and senior members of
Congress and civil liberties groups criticized the practice on grounds that it seemed to conflict with
traditional Pentagon rules against domestic law enforcement operations. The documents raise a
number of apparent discrepancies between the Defense Departments internal practices and what
officials have said publicly and to Congress about their use of the letters. The documents suggest,
for instance, that military officials used the F.B.I. to collect records for what started as purely
military investigations. And the documents also leave open the possibility that records could be
gathered on nonmilitary personnel in the course of the investigations. Civil liberties advocates
said recent controversy over the Department of Defenses collection of information on
antiwar protesters made them suspicious of the assertion that the letters had been used
exclusively to focus on military personnel. We are very skeptical that the D.O.D. is
voluntarily limiting its own surveillance power, said Melissa Goodman, a staff attorney for the
A.C.L.U..
Supreme Disgrace
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/opinion/11thu1.html?ex=1349755200&en=fc1bca...
Somehow, the [Supreme Court] could not muster the four votes needed to grant review in the case
of an innocent German citizen of Lebanese descent who was kidnapped, detained and tortured in
a secret overseas prison as part of the Bush administrations ... anti-terrorism program. The victim,
Khaled el-Masri, was denied justice by lower federal courts, which dismissed his civil suit in a
reflexive bow to a flimsy government claim that allowing the case to go forward would put national
security secrets at risk. Those rulings ... represented a major distortion of the state secrets
doctrine, a rule ... that was originally intended to shield specific evidence in a lawsuit filed against
the government. It was never designed to dictate dismissal of an entire case before any evidence
is produced. The Masri case ... is being actively discussed all over the world. The only place it
cannot be discussed, it seems, is in a United States courtroom. In effect, the Supreme Court has
granted the government immunity for subjecting Mr. Masri to extraordinary rendition, the
morally and legally unsupportable United States practice of transporting foreign nationals
to be interrogated in other countries known to use torture and lacking basic legal
protections. Its hard to imagine what, at this point, needs to be kept secret, other than the ways
in which the administration behaved, ... quite possibly illegally, in the Masri case. The Supreme
Court has left an innocent person without any remedy for his wrongful imprisonment and torture. It
has ... established [itself] as Supreme Enabler of the Bush administrations efforts to avoid
accountability for its actions. These are not accomplishments to be proud of.
Case Dismissed?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20884696/site/newsweek/from/ET/
The nations biggest telecommunications companies, working closely with the White
House, have mounted a secretive lobbying campaign to get Congress to quickly approve a
measure wiping out all private lawsuits against them for assisting the U.S. intelligence
communitys warrantless surveillance programs. The campaign which involves some of
Washington's most prominent lobbying and law firms has taken on new urgency in recent
weeks because of fears that a U.S. appellate court in San Francisco is poised to rule that the
lawsuits should be allowed to proceed. If that happens, the telecom companies say, they may be
forced to terminate their cooperation with the U.S. intelligence community or risk potentially
crippling damage awards for allegedly turning over personal information about their customers to
the government without a judicial warrant. But critics say the language proposed by the White
House drafted in close cooperation with the industry officials is so extraordinarily broad that it
would provide retroactive immunity for all past telecom actions related to the surveillance program.
Its practical effect, they argue, would be to shut down any independent judicial or state inquires
into how the companies have assisted the government in eavesdropping on the telephone calls
and e-mails of U.S. residents in the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks. Its clear the
goal is to kill our case," said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
[which] filed the main lawsuit against the telecoms after The New York Times first disclosed, in
December 2005, that President Bush had approved a secret program to monitor the phone
conversations of U.S. residents without first seeking judicial warrants. I find it a little shocking that
Congress would participate in the covering up of what has been going on," added Cohn.
Source Disclosure Ordered in Anthrax Suit

Five reporters must reveal their government sources for stories they wrote about Steven J. Hatfill
and investigators' suspicions that the former Army scientist was behind the deadly anthrax attacks
of 2001, a federal judge ruled. The ruling is a victory for Hatfill, a bioterrorism expert who has
argued in a civil suit that the government violated his privacy rights and ruined his chances at a job
by unfairly leaking information about the probe. He has not been charged in the attacks that killed
five people and sickened 17 others, and he has denied wrongdoing. Hatfill's suit, filed in 2003,
accuses the government of waging a "coordinated smear campaign." To succeed, Hatfill and his
attorneys have been seeking the identities of FBI and Justice Department officials who disclosed
disparaging information about him to the media. In lengthy depositions in the case, reporters have
identified 100 instances when Justice or FBI sources provided them with information about the
investigation of Hatfill and the techniques used to probe his possible role in anthrax-laced mailings.
But the reporters have refused to name the individuals. In 2002, then-Attorney General John D.
Ashcroft called Hatfill, who had formerly worked at the Army's infectious diseases lab in
Fort Detrick in Frederick County, a "person of interest" in the anthrax case. Authorities
have not made any arrests in the investigation. Hatfill's search for government leakers is
"strikingly similar" to the civil suit filed by Wen Ho Lee, a nuclear scientist who became the subject
of a flurry of media stories identifying him as a chief suspect in a nuclear-secrets spy case. Those
stories also relied on anonymous sources. Lee was never charged with espionage.
Note: For more reliable information about the anthrax attacks that followed closely after 9/11 and
the mysterious deaths of over a dozen renowned microbiologists shortly thereafter, click here.
Airlines Sue FBI, CIA Over Sept. 11

2007-08-07, Associated Press
http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/airlines-sue-fbi-cia-over-sept-11/n2007...
Airlines and aviation-related companies sued the CIA and the FBI on Tuesday to force terrorism
investigators to tell whether the aviation industry was to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks. The two
lawsuits in U.S. District Court in Manhattan sought court orders for depositions as the aviation
entities build their defenses against lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages for injuries,
fatalities, property damage and business losses related to Sept. 11, 2001. The aviation
companies said the agencies in a series of boilerplate letters had refused to let them
depose two secret agents, including the 2001 head of the CIA's special Osama bin Laden unit,
and six FBI agents with key information about al-Qaida and bin Laden. The [plaintiffs] said they
were entitled to present evidence to show the terrorist attacks did not depend upon
negligence by any aviation defendants and that there were other causes of the attacks. In
the CIA lawsuit, companies ... asked to interview the deputy chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit in
2001 and an FBI agent assigned to the unit at that time. The names of both are secret. In the FBI
lawsuit, the companies asked to interview five former and current FBI employees who had
participated in investigations of al-Qaida and al-Qaida operatives before and after Sept. 11. Those
individuals included Coleen M. Rowley, the former top FBI lawyer in its Minneapolis office, who
sent a scathing letter to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller in May 2002 complaining that a supervisor
in Washington interfered with the Minnesota investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui weeks before the
Sept. 11 attacks. Requests to interview the agents were rejected as not sufficiently explained,
burdensome or protected by investigative or attorney-client privilege, the lawsuits said.
Note: For a concise summary of reliable, verifiable information on the 9/11 coverup, click here.
Bush Approves New CIA Methods

President Bush set broad legal boundaries for the CIA's harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects
yesterday, allowing the intelligence agency to resume a program that was suspended last year
after criticism that it violated U.S. and international law. In an executive order lacking any details
about actual interrogation techniques, Bush said the CIA program will now comply with a Geneva
Conventions prohibition against "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and
degrading treatment." Two administration officials said that suspects now in U.S. custody could be
moved immediately into the "enhanced interrogation" program and subjected to techniques that go
beyond those allowed by the U.S. military. Rights activists criticized Bush's order for failing to
spell out which techniques are now approved or prohibited. "All the order really does is to
have the president say, 'Everything in that other document that I'm not showing you is legal
-- trust me,' " said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. The CIA interrogation guidelines are
contained in a classified document. A senior intelligence official, asked whether this list includes
such widely criticized methods as the simulated drowning known as "waterboarding," declined to
discuss specifics but said "it would be very wrong to assume that the program of the past would
move into the future unchanged." CIA detainees have also alleged they were left naked in cells for
prolonged periods, subjected to sensory and sleep deprivation and extreme heat and cold, and
sexually taunted. A senior administration official briefing reporters yesterday said that any future
use of "extremes of heat and cold" would be subject to a "reasonable interpretation . . . we're not
talking about forcibly induced hypothermia."
FBI Finds It Frequently Overstepped in Collecting Data

An internal FBI audit has found that the bureau potentially violated the law or agency rules more
than 1,000 times while collecting data about domestic phone calls, e-mails and financial
transactions in recent years, far more than was documented in a Justice Department report in
March that ignited bipartisan congressional criticism. The new audit covers just 10 percent of the
bureau's national security investigations since 2002. The vast majority of the new violations were
instances in which telephone companies and Internet providers gave agents phone and e-mail
records the agents did not request and were not authorized to collect. The agents retained the
information anyway in their files. Two dozen of the newly-discovered violations involved agents'
requests for information that U.S. law did not allow them to have. The results confirmed what ...
critics feared, namely that many agents did not ... follow the required legal procedures and
paperwork requirements when collecting personal information with one of the most sensitive and
powerful intelligence-gathering tools of the post-Sept. 11 era -- the National Security Letter,
or NSL. Such letters are uniformly secret and amount to nonnegotiable demands for
personal information -- demands that are not reviewed in advance by a judge. After the 2001
terrorist attacks, Congress substantially eased the rules for issuing NSLs, [leading] to an explosive
growth in the use of the letters. More than 19,000 such letters were issued in 2005 seeking 47,000
pieces of information, mostly from telecommunications companies.
Audit finds U.S. anti-terror statistics inflated

Federal prosecutors counted immigration violations, marriage fraud and drug trafficking
among anti-terror cases in the four years after 9/11 even though no evidence linked them to
terror activity, a Justice Department audit said Tuesday. Overall, nearly all of the terrorism-related
statistics on investigations, referrals and cases examined by department Inspector General Glenn
A. Fine were either diminished or inflated. Only two of 26 sets of department data reported
between 2001 and 2005 were accurate, the audit found. It found that data from the Executive
Office of U.S. Attorneys were the most severely flawed. Auditors said the office, which compiles
statistics from the 94 federal prosecutors' districts nationwide, both under- and over-counted the
number of terror-related cases during a four-year period. The numbers, used to monitor the
department's progress in battling terrorists, are reported to Congress and the public and help, in
part, shape the department's budget. Other examples, according to the audit, included: charges
against a marriage-broker for being paid to arrange six fraudulent marriages between Tunisians
and U.S. citizens, prosecution of a Mexican citizen who falsely identified himself as another person
in a passport application, [and] charges against a suspect for dealing firearms without a license.
Note: To read the report by the Justice Department, click here.
Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi

[April 10, 2006] The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the
leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents. The effort has raised his
profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have...helped the Bush
administration tie the war to...Sept. 11. Although Zarqawi and other foreign insurgents in Iraq have
conducted deadly bombing attacks, they remain "a very small part of the actual numbers," [said]
Col. Derek Harvey, who...was one of the top officers handling Iraq intelligence issues on the staff
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature...made him
more important than he really is." One briefing slide about U.S. "strategic communications" in
Iraq, prepared for Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq,
describes the "home audience" as one of six major targets of the American side of the war.
There were direct military efforts to use the U.S. media to affect views of the war. One slide
in the same briefing, for example, noted that a "selective leak" about Zarqawi was made to Dexter
Filkins, a New York Times reporter. Filkins's resulting article...ran on the Times front page. U.S.
propaganda efforts in Iraq in 2004 cost $24 million. "Villainize Zarqawi" one U.S. military briefing
from 2004 stated. It listed..."PSYOP," the U.S. military term for propaganda work. One internal
briefing, produced by the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq, said..."The Zarqawi PSYOP program
is the most successful information campaign to date."
Papers show Mitterrand approved Rainbow Warrior bombing

2005-07-10, New Zealand Herald
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10335095
The sabotage of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior 20 years ago in Auckland was
carried out with the "personal authorisation" of France's late president Francois Mitterrand,
documents showed today. Le Monde newspaper published extracts in its Saturday edition of a
1986 account written by Pierre Lacoste, the former head of France's DGSE foreign intelligence
service, giving the clearest demonstration yet of Mitterrand's direct involvement in the sinking of
the campaign vessel. Portuguese photographer Fernando Pereira died in the attack on the ship
that was leading Greenpeace's campaign against French nuclear tests on the Mururoa Atoll in the
Pacific. "I asked the president if he gave me permission to put into action the neutralisation plan
that I had studied on the request of Monsieur (Charles) Hernu," Lacoste wrote. Hernu was defence
minister at the time. "He gave me his agreement while stressing the importance he placed on the
nuclear tests.
UK film: terror fears exaggerated

2005-05-14, CNN/Reuters
http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Movies/05/14/film.cannes.terrorfears.reut
CANNES, France (Reuters) -- A British documentary arguing U.S. neo-conservatives have
exaggerated the terror threat is set to rock the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday, the way
"Fahrenheit 9/11" stirred emotions here a year ago. At a screening late on Friday ahead of its gala
on Saturday, "The Power of Nightmares" by filmmaker and senior BBC producer Adam
Curtis kept an audience of journalists and film buyers glued to their seats and taking notes
for a full 2-1/2 hours. The film, a non-competition entry, argues that the fear of terrorism has
come to pervade politics in the United States and Britain even though much of that angst is
based on carefully nurtured illusions.
Note: To view this excellent film online free, click here.
Brigadier shocks and awes: there is no war on terrorism

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Brigadier-shocks-and-awes-there-is-no-war...
The so-called global war on terrorism does not exist, a high-ranking army officer has declared in a
speech that challenges the conventional political wisdom. In a frank speech, Brigadier Justin Kelly
dismissed several of the central tenets of the Iraq war and the war on terrorism, saying the "war"
part is all about politics and terrorism is merely a tactic. Speaking at a conference on future
warfighting, Brigadier Kelly, the director-general of future land warfare, also suggested that the
"proposition you can bomb someone into thinking as we do has been found to be untrue".
Berg's encounter with 'terrorist' revealed
2004-05-14, CNN News

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/Northeast/05/13/berg.encounter/
When Nicholas Berg took an Oklahoma bus to a remote college campus a few years ago, the
American recently beheaded by terrorists allowed a man with terrorist connections to use his
laptop computer, according to his father. Michael Berg said the FBI investigated the matter more
than a year ago. He stressed that his son was in no way connected to the terrorists who captured
and killed him. Government sources told CNN that the encounter involved an acquaintance
of Zacarias Moussaoui -- the only person publicly charged in the United States in
connection with the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. According to Berg, his son was taking
a course a few years ago at a remote campus of the University of Oklahoma near an airport. He
described how on one particular day, his son met "some terrorist people -- who no one knew were
terrorists at the time." At one point during the bus ride, Berg said, the man sitting next to his son
asked if he could use Nick's laptop computer. Government sources said Berg gave the man his
password, which was later used by Moussaoui, the sources said. The sources said the man who
used Berg's e-mail knew Moussaoui. But the sources would not disclose details of how the men
were connected.
Note: Other major media articles have pointed out a number of other strange "coincidences"
connecting the man allegedgly beheaded and those accused of involvement in 9/11. How can that
be? For lots more, click here.
French buy into 9/11 conspiracy

2002-06-26, CNN News
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/06/26/france.book
Throughout the spring, and into this summer, a leading bestseller in France has not been some
great work of French literature but a $17-dollar paperback called the "Horrifying Fraud." The
book casts doubt on the official version of the events of September 11, substituting an
elaborate conspiracy concocted by America's military-industrial complex in order to increase U.S.
military budgets. It has sold more than 200,000 copies here. Thierry Meyssan, author of "The
Horrifying Fraud"...insists, among other things, that it was not a hijacked American Airlines 757
that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11 but a missile fired by the military itself. Meyssan said: "The
official version is incomplete and on certain points is wrong. In addition to selling hundreds of
thousands of copies of his first book, Meyssan's follow-up sold 15,000 copies two days after
launch and is now number seven on one bestseller list.
Note: Though this article is almost four years old, we only recently received the above link to the
article on the CNN website from a supporter. If you want to be educated on this extremely
important topic, I cannot recommend highly enough the Google video "Loose Change," which is
filled
with
verifiable
information
on
9/11
at
http://video.google.com/videoplay?
docid=-8260059923762628848. I urge to watch even just the first 10 or 15 minutes of this highly
educational documentary. By educating ourselves, we can work more effectively to build a build a
better world.
Obama to remove Cuba from state sponsor of terror list

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-removes-cuba-from-state-sponsor-...
President Barack Obama will remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, the
White House announced Tuesday, a key step in his bid to normalize relations between the
two countries. The U.S. has long since stopped actively accusing Cuba of supporting terrorism.
When Obama and [Cuban President Raul] Castro announced a thaw in relations in December, the
U.S. president expressed his willingness to remove Cuba from that list. Removing Cuba from the
terror list could pave the way for the opening of a U.S. Embassy in Havana and other steps. Cuba
was designated a state sponsor of terror in 1982 because of what the White House said was its
efforts to promote armed revolution by organizations that used terrorism. Cuba renounced its
direct support for foreign militants years ago. The terror list has been a particularly charged
issue for Cuba because of what the government there sees as the U.S. history of supporting exile
groups responsible for attacks on the island, including the 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger
flight from Barbados that killed 73 people aboard. The attack was linked to Cuban exiles with ties
to U.S.-backed anti-Castro groups. Both men accused of masterminding the crime took shelter in
Florida, where one, Luis Posada Carriles, lives to this day.
Note: Read about WantToKnow.info founder Fred Burks' bizarre encounter with the US legal
system after a visit to Cuba in this Los Angeles Times article and this editorial in the Oakland
Tribune.
A professor in U.S. is telling Liberians that the Defense Department

manufactured Ebola
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/09/26/an-american-prof...
Last week, President Obama announced an ambitious and expensive plan. In an effort that
could cost as much as $750 million in the next six months, he assigned up to 3,000 military
personnel to West Africa to combat and contain what officials call an extraordinarily serious
epidemic. As those military doctors and officials begin ... among the challenges they face are
rumors that spread fear fear of Ebola, fear of quarantine measures and fear of doctors. Already,
several medical workers have been murdered in Guinea. Six Red Cross volunteers were attacked
earlier this week. And now ... a major Liberian newspaper, the Daily Observer, has published an
article by a Liberian-born faculty member of a U.S. university implying the epidemic is the result of
bioterrorism experiments conducted by the United States Department of Defense, among others.
Reports narrate stories of the US Department of Defense (DoD) funding Ebola trials on humans,
trials which started just weeks before the Ebola outbreak in Guinea and Sierra Leone, wrote
Delaware State University associate professor Cyril Broderick. Broderick declined to answer
whether he is concerned his article ... would convince locals that Western doctors are trying to
harm them. I refer you to the articles and reports published, he said. Across Liberia and Sierra
Leone, where the CDC fears Ebola could eventually infect 1.4 million people, there is such distrust
of the medical community that some dont even think Ebola exists.
Note: Read a Veterans Today article and an article by father of Reaganomics Paul Craig Roberts
revealing that there may be a hidden agenda in the ebola epidemic. For other verifiable information
on health corruption, see the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Health Information
Center.
Senate Asks C.I.A. to Share Its Report on Interrogations

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/18/us/politics/senators-ask-to-see-internal-ci...
The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the C.I.A. for an internal study done by the agency
that lawmakers believe is broadly critical of the C.I.A.s detention and interrogation program but
was withheld from congressional oversight committees. The committees request comes in the
midst of a yearlong battle with the C.I.A. over the release of the panels own exhaustive report
about the program, one of the most controversial policies of the post-Sept. 11 era. The Senate
report, totaling more than 6,000 pages, was completed last December but has yet to be
declassified. According to people who have read the study, it is unsparing in its criticism of
the now-defunct interrogation program and presents a chronicle of C.I.A. officials
repeatedly misleading the White House, Congress and the public about the value of brutal
methods that, in the end, produced little valuable intelligence. Senator Mark Udall, Democrat
of Colorado, disclosed the existence of the internal C.I.A. report during an Intelligence Committee
hearing on Tuesday. He said he believed it was begun several years ago and is consistent with
the Intelligences Committees report although it conflicts with the official C.I.A. response to the
committees report. If this is true, Mr. Udall said ... this raises fundamental questions about why
a review the C.I.A. conducted internally years ago and never provided to the committee is so
different from the C.I.A.s formal response to the committee study.
European Court of Human Rights hears evidence on secret CIA prisons

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/european-court-of-human-rights-hears-evid...
Europes human rights court shone a rare public light [December 3] on the secret network of
European prisons that the CIA used to interrogate terrorism suspects, reviving questions about the
extraordinary renditions that angered many on this continent. At [the] hearing, attorneys for two
terrorism suspects currently held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, accused Poland
of human rights abuses. The lawyers say the suspects fell victim to the CIAs rendition program, in
which terrorism suspects were kidnapped and transferred to third countries; they allege that the
two were tortured in a remote Polish prison. All the prisons were closed by May 2006.
Interrogations at sea have replaced CIA black sites as the U.S. governments preferred
method for holding terrorism suspects and questioning them without access to lawyers.
One of the cases heard [concerns] 48-year-old Saudi national Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who faces
U.S. terrorism charges for allegedly orchestrating the al-Qaeda attack on the USS Cole in 2000, a
bombing in the Yemeni port of Aden that killed 17 sailors. The second case involves 42-year-old
Abu Zubaida, a Palestinian also held in Guantanamo who has never been charged with a crime.
Both men say they were brought in December 2002 to Poland, where they were detained and
subjected to harsh questioning at a Polish military installation in Stare Kiejkuty, a village in the
countrys remote northeast. There they were subject to mock executions, waterboarding and other
tortures, including being told their families would be arrested and sexually abused, said Amrit
Singh, a lawyer representing Nashiri.
Note: For more on war crimes by the US and UK in the "global war on terror", see the deeply
revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Today is Guantnamo's 12th anniversary, and there's no end in sight

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/13/guantanamo-still-open-12...
Twelve years ago, on 13 November 2001, President George W Bush signed an order authorizing
the detention of suspected al-Qaida members and supporters, and the creation of military
commissions. A total of seven detainees out of the 779 men ever held at Guantnamo have been
convicted and sentenced. Five of the seven are no longer at Guantnamo creating a paradox: you
have to lose to win. Those lucky enough to get charged and convicted of a war crime have good
odds of getting out of Guantnamo, but those who are never charged could spend the rest of their
lives in prison. Since nearly all of the men held at Guantnamo have been there since long before
2006 and most were at best low-level flunkies, the government's inability to charge them with
providing material support for terrorism means they likely will never face a military commission for
a trial that might have enabled them to find a way out of Guantnamo. In September 2006, 14
high-value detainees held in CIA black sites were transferred to military custody at Guantnamo.
Only one has been tried and convicted. The law that has evolved from Guantnamo has been
a black eye for the country: from the Supreme Court ruling that President Bush's military
commissions were illegal to the Washington DC circuit ruling [that] all of the men convicted
in military commissions were charged with an offense that was not a legitimate war crime.
America's enemies and allies alike, in their criticism of US war on terrorism practices, cite
Guantnamo as an example of failed leadership.
Note: For more on military corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media
sources available here.
Guantanamo Bay prison's future divides Senate panel

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-guantanamo-hearing-20130...
Sharp disagreement over the future of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp dominated the first
Senate hearing on the issue in four years. The meeting [on July 24] of a Senate Judiciary
Committee subcommittee, held in the wake of a high-profile hunger strike by inmates ... made
clear that deep partisan divisions remain over whether keeping the prison open is a threat to
national security or a necessity. Opened at a U.S. Navy base in Cuba in the months after the Sept.
11, 2001, terrorist attack, Guantanamo was established by President George W. Bush to hold
detainees suspected of connections to global terrorism organizations. Allegations of abuse and
torture of inmates have led to repeated calls for Guantanamo's closure, and Obama has
campaigned twice on the issue, though Congress has passed repeated measures to keep the
prison open. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), who is chairman of the panel, urged Congress to
support Obama's efforts, which would end the indefinite detention of prisoners without trial and
either release them or charge them in American courts. "The risk of keeping it open far outranks
the risk of closing it." Retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, who trained the Iraqi armed
forces from 2003 to 2004, testified that by continuing to violate human rights and American
law, the practices at Guantanamo proved more harmful to the U.S. national security
interests. "Guantanamo is a terrorist-creating organization," he said to a reporter after the
hearing. "It's a terrific recruiting tool."
Note: Whether or not detainees were truly terrorists before they were imprisoned at Guantanamo,
how do you think they feel about the US government after years there? You have to wonder if this
isn't being done to create terrorists, just as many prisons become training grounds for criminals.
Russia alerted US repeatedly about suspect, senators say

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/04/23/brothers-suspected-marathon-bombi...
Russian authorities contacted the US government with concerns about Tamerlan Tsarnaev
not once but "multiple" times, including an alert it sent after he was first investigated by FBI
agents in Boston, raising new questions about whether the FBI should have paid more attention
to the suspected Boston Marathon bomber. The FBI has previously said it interviewed Tsarnaev in
early 2011 after it was initially contacted by the Russians. Following a closed briefing of the Senate
Intelligence Committee Tuesday, Senator Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, said he
believed that Russia alerted the United States about Tsarnaev in multiple contacts, including at
least once since October 2011. Warnings raised by Russia have loomed large in the investigation
of how Tsarnaev, a Kyrgyzstan national, and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, a naturalized US
citizen, allegedly prepared for the bombing. US officials have faced tough questions for not
tracking the older brothers travels to the Russian provinces of Dagestan and Chechnya, where he
spent more than half of 2012 and may have interacted with militant groups or individuals. Senator
Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said ... that the FBI told him it was not aware of
the older Tsarnaevs travels because his name had been misspelled on an airliner
passenger list. US Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano confirmed the misspelling
during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee ... but she said Homeland Security
nonetheless was aware of his trip.
Note: For powerful evidence from a respected researcher that the uncle of the Boston bombers
was a top CIA official, click here.
Combat school must disclose trainees

http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Combat-school-must-disclose-trainees-445...
A federal judge in Oakland says the government must release the names of Latin American
military leaders it has trained at the installation formerly known as the School of the
Americas, where protesters say the United States has nurtured some of the hemisphere's
worst human rights abusers. The Defense Department facility at Fort Benning, Ga., now called
the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, provides training in combat and
counterinsurgency techniques. The U.S. government, starting in 1994, released the names and
military units of trainees who had attended the school since 1946. The list contained more than
60,000 names when disclosure was ended by President George W. Bush's administration in 2004.
The Obama administration has defended its predecessor's action in court. But U.S. District Judge
Phyllis Hamilton ruled ... that members of SOA Watch, which has protested at the school for more
than two decades, were entitled to the names under [FOIA]. She said there was no evidence that
any trainees had ever been promised anonymity or had been harmed by the pre-2004 practice of
public identification. If Hamilton's decision stands, it will restore an important public safeguard, said
Judith Liteky of San Francisco, a plaintiff in the suit and a participant in the protest movement
since 1990. Liteky's husband, Charlie Liteky, was awarded the Medal of Honor as an Army
chaplain in Vietnam and has served two jail sentences for protests at the Georgia school. Judith
Liteky described the school as "an affront to our democracy," saying the opposition movement
has compiled more than 500 names of human rights abusers among the graduates.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government corruption,
click here.
UN Adopts Treaty to Regulate Global Arms Trade

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/adopts-treaty-regulate-global-arms-trade-1...
The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved the first international treaty regulating the
multibillion-dollar global arms trade [on April 2], after a more than decade-long campaign. The final
vote: 154 in favor, 3 against and 23 abstentions. "This is a victory for the world's people," U.N.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. "The Arms Trade Treaty will make it more difficult for deadly
weapons to be diverted into the illicit market. ... It will be a powerful new tool in our efforts to
prevent grave human rights abuses or violations of international humanitarian law." Never before
has there been a treaty regulating the global arms trade, which is estimated to be worth $60 billion.
Frank Jannuzi, deputy executive director of Amnesty International USA [said,] "The voices of
reason triumphed over skeptics, treaty opponents and dealers in death to establish a
revolutionary treaty that constitutes a major step toward keeping assault rifles, rocketpropelled grenades and other weapons out of the hands of despots and warlords who use
them to kill and maim civilians, recruit child soldiers and commit other serious abuses."
What impact the treaty will actually have remains to be seen. It will take effect 90 days after 50
countries ratify it, and a lot will depend on which ones ratify and which ones don't, and how
stringently it is implemented. As for its chances of being ratified by the U.S., the powerful National
Rifle Association has vehemently opposed it, and it is likely to face stiff resistance from
conservatives in the Senate, where it needs two-thirds to win ratification.
Judge: FBI gag orders unconstitutional

http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Judge-FBI-gag-orders-unconstitutional-...
In a blow against government secrecy, a federal judge ruled [on March 15] that the tens of
thousands of "national security letters" the FBI sends each year demanding customer
records from phone companies, banks and others, are unconstitutional because they forbid
recipients from revealing that the letters exist. A gag order that makes it a crime to disclose
one has received such a letter "restrains ... speech about government conduct" with little
opportunity for judicial review, said U.S. District Judge Susan Illston of San Francisco. She
directed the FBI to stop issuing national security letters that contain gag orders, but put her ruling
on hold during an expected government appeal. Attorney Matt Zimmerman of the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, which filed the suit in May 2011 on behalf of an unnamed telecommunications
company, said [that] the gag orders "have truncated the public debate on these controversial
surveillance tools." The USA Patriot Act, passed in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks, authorized the FBI to issue national security letters on its own for information that it
considers relevant to an investigation of international terrorism or spying. Virtually all of the letters
include a permanent gag order. In 2008, a federal appeals court in New York found the gag orders
constitutionally defective. Congress amended the law in 2006 to allow recipients to challenge
national security letters on constitutional grounds, but left the government with near-total power
over the gag orders, Illston said.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on illegal activities of
Revealed: Pentagon's link to Iraqi torture centres

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/06/pentagon-iraqi-torture-centres-link
The Pentagon sent a US veteran of the "dirty wars" in Central America to oversee sectarian police
commando units in Iraq that set up secret detention and torture centres to get information from
insurgents. These units conducted some of the worst acts of torture during the US occupation and
accelerated the country's descent into full-scale civil war. Colonel James Steele was a 58-year-old
retired special forces veteran when he was nominated by Donald Rumsfeld to help organise the
paramilitaries in an attempt to quell a Sunni insurgency. After the Pentagon lifted a ban on Shia
militias joining the security forces, the Special Police Commando (SPC) membership was
increasingly drawn from ... Shia groups such as the Badr brigades. A second special adviser,
retired Colonel James H Coffman, worked alongside Steele in detention centres that were set up
with millions of dollars of US funding. Coffman reported directly to General David Petraeus, sent to
Iraq in June 2004 to organise and train the new Iraqi security forces. Steele, who was in Iraq from
2003 to 2005, and returned to the country in 2006, reported directly to Rumsfeld. The allegations,
made by US and Iraqi witnesses in the Guardian/BBC documentary ["James Steele:
America's Mystery Man in Iraq"], implicate US advisers for the first time in the human rights
abuses committed by the commandos. It is also the first time that Petraeus who last
November was forced to resign as director of the CIA after a sex scandal has been linked
through an adviser to this abuse.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on war crimes committed by
the US and UK in their post-9/11 wars of aggression, click here.
Former airline pilot and conspiracy theorist 'shot dead his two teenage
children and his dog before turning the gun on himself'
2013-02-07, Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2275258/Phillip-Marshall-Former-airli...
A pilot who wrote a conspiracy theory book about 9/11 is dead after he shot his two teenage
children and family dog before turning the gun on himself. Relatives and friends of Phillip Marshall
were stunned by the violent crime which took place in Calaveras County on [Feb. 2]. The tragedy
came as a shock for those living in the small town. The former airline pilot's controversial
conspiracy book The Big Bamboozle: 9/11 and the War on Terror was released last year.
While he was writing it, Marshall believed that his life was in danger because of the
allegations involved. According to [the] Santa Barbara View, during the editing and pre-marketing
process of Marshalls book, he expressed some degree of paranoia because the nonfiction work
accused the George W. Bush administration of being in cahoots with the Saudi intelligence
community in training the hijackers who died in the planes used in the attacks. Amazon says about
Philip Marshall: 'A veteran airline captain and former government "special activities" contract pilot,
he has authored three books on "Top Secret America," a group presently conducting business as
the United States Intelligence Community. Marshall has studied and written [about] covert
government special activities and the revolving door of Wall Street tricksters, media moguls, and
their well funded politicians. He is the leading aviation expert on the September 11th attack.'
Note: Does something smell fishy here? Don't miss the even more revealing article written in a
local newspaper at this link which questions whether Marshall might have been killed because of
his 9/11 conspiracy views.
TSA removing 'virtual strip search' body scanners

2013-01-19, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/18/travel/tsa-body-scanners/index.html
Airport body scanners that produce graphic images of travelers' bodies will be removed
from checkpoints by June, the Transportation Security Administration says, ending what
critics called "virtual strip searches." Passengers will continue to pass through machines that
display a generic outline of the human body, raising fewer privacy concerns. The TSA move came
after Rapiscan, the manufacturer of the 174 so-called "backscatter" machines, acknowledged it
could not meet a congressional-ordered deadline to install privacy software on the machines. "It is
big news," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "It
removes the concern that people are being viewed naked by the TSA screener." Currently, the TSA
uses the 174 backscatter machines in 30 airports, and has another 76 units in storage. It uses
millimeter wave machines in 170 airports. The decision to remove the backscatter machine will
make moot, at least temporarily, travelers' concerns about the health effects of the machines.
Backscatter machines use X-rays, while millimeter wave machines use radio waves. The TSA has
long maintained both machines are safe, but recently signed an agreement with the National
Academy of Sciences to study the scanners. The study will continue even though the machines
are being pulled, the TSA said, because they could be reintroduced in the future.
Note: Each of those machines cost $175,000. Someone sure made a lot of money on these
machines which had a very short lifespan.
Guantnamo Bay's other anniversary: 110 years of a legal black hole

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/28/guantanamo-bay-usa
Why is Guantnamo so hard to close? Because it's been an integral part of American politics and
policy for over a century. Gitmo's "legal black hole" opened in 1903 with a peculiar lease that
affirmed Cuba's total sovereignty over Guantnamo Bay, but gave the US "complete jurisdiction
and control", creat[ing] a space where neither nation's laws clearly applied. Gitmo's generations of
detainees have been inextricable, if often invisible, parts of America's deepest conflicts: over
immigration, public health, human rights, and national security. The Guantnamo Public Memory
Project involves historians, archivists, activists, military personnel, and over a dozen universities in
raising public awareness of Gitmo's long history and foster dialogue on the future of this place, its
people, and its policies. Gitmo will be with us for years to come. The lease with Cuba is
perpetual. Today, even as 166 men remain detained, the base is readying itself for its next
opening. Facilities to house 25,000 potential refugees were recently completed. Our
responsibility is to remember Guantnamo: to learn from its past, listen to the stories of all of its
people, and always keep it in our sights.
Eleven enduring mysteries of 9/11

2012-09-11, Russia Today
http://rt.com/politics/columns/bridge-too/nine-eleven-terror-investigation/
Today, as the world pauses to remember the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks on the
United States, it is also important to remember the inexplicable things that happened and
didnt happen that tragic day. After all, 9/11 is solely responsible for diminishing hardfought US civil rights, as well as triggering wars around the world. Here are 11 well
documented mysteries of 9/11 that warrant an investigation into the two hours that changed
the course of world history. 1. Why did the Bush administration allow numerous Saudi nationals,
and, more importantly, the family of Osama bin Laden to leave the United States in the days
following the events of 9/11? 2. How can we explain the huge increase in trading on airline stocks
in the days before 9/11? 3. Why was there no disciplinary action taken against the individuals who
were responsible for protecting America from attack? 4. Why was the Bush administration so
adamantly opposed to conducting any sort of investigation into the events of 9/11? 5. Vanishing
Act: WTC 7 6. Why was the US Air Force missing in action? 7. Why were President George W.
Bush and his Vice President, Dick Cheney permitted to provide testimony to the 9/11 Commission
on the condition that they present it in private and together? 8. No sign of crashed planes at the
Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. 9. Pentagon videos missing in action. 10. Black Boxes
missing in action. 11. Hijackers ... alive and well?
Note: For many more questions raised about the official account of 9/11 by highly credible people,
click here and here.
No, really: Govt warns of 'zombie apocalypse'

"The zombies are coming!" the Homeland Security Department says. Tongue firmly in cheek, the
government urged citizens ... to prepare for a zombie apocalypse, part of a public health campaign
to encourage better preparation for genuine disasters and emergencies. The theory: If you're
prepared for a zombie attack, the same preparations will help during a hurricane, pandemic,
earthquake or terrorist attack. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year
first launched a zombie apocalypse social media campaign for the same purposes. Emergency
planners were encouraged to use the threat of zombies - the flesh-hungry, walking dead - to
encourage citizens to prepare for disasters. A few of the government's suggestions tracked
closely with some of the 33 rules for dealing with zombies popularized in the 2009 movie
"Zombieland," which included "always carry a change of underwear" and "when in doubt, know
your way out."
Note: Very high strangeness...
Shades of Nuremberg
2012-06-02, The Hindu (One of India's leading newspapers)
http://www.frontline.in/stories/20120615291105800.htm
The Kuala Lumpur Tribunal's indictment of President George W. Bush and his deputies for war
crimes sets a new precedent. The [tribunal] ruled in the second week of May that George W. Bush,
former President of the United States, and six members of his administration were guilty of war
crimes. The tribunal, after recording eyewitness accounts of torture victims in a trial that lasted five
days, pronounced that Bush, his Vice-President, Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld and five senior officials who had sought to provide legal cover for the [invasions of
Afghanistan and Iraq] were guilty of war crimes. The American invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan
has resulted in the death of more than a million people.. Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of
International Law at Princeton University, observed that [only] leaders from countries that
opposed the interests of the West were held accountable to international criminal law. He
pointed out that the ICC's Special Court on Sierra Leone had been financed by the U.S.,
Canada, the U.K. and the Netherlands. Companies from these countries have big interests
in the diamond trade. With Taylor now out of the scene, Western companies are back in the
lucrative diamond trade. Falk ... observed that the U.S., more than any other country in the world,
holds itself self-righteously aloof from accountability on the main ground that any judicial process
might be tainted by political motivations. The U.S. has signed with over 100 countries agreements
that prohibit the handing over of any U.S. citizen to the ICC.
Note: For an insightful analysis of the cooptation of the ICC by imperial powers, click here.
U.S. drone base in Ethiopia is operational

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-drone-base-in-ethiop...
The Air Force has been secretly flying Reaper drones on counterterrorism missions from a remote
civilian airport in southern Ethiopia as part of a rapidly expanding U.S.-led proxy war ... in East
Africa, U.S. military officials said. The Reapers began flying missions earlier this year over
neighboring Somalia. The United States has relied on lethal drone attacks, a burgeoning CIA
presence in Mogadishu and small-scale missions carried out by U.S. Special Forces. The
Washington Post reported last month that the Obama administration is building a constellation
of secret drone bases in the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa. The location of the
Ethiopian base and the fact that it became operational this year, however, have not been
previously disclosed. Some bases in the region also have been used to carry out operations ... in
Yemen. The U.S. military deploys drones on attack and surveillance missions over Somalia from a
number of bases in the region. The Air Force operates a small fleet of Reapers from the
Seychelles, a tropical archipelago in the Indian Ocean, about 800 miles from the Somali coast. The
U.S. military also operates drones both armed versions and models used strictly for surveillance
from Djibouti, a tiny African nation that abuts northwest Somalia at the junction of the Red Sea
and the Gulf of Aden.
Note: For more from reliable sources on war manipulations and the expanding use of drones
worldwide, click here.
Is Homeland Security spending paying off?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-911-homeland-money-20110...
A decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, federal
and state governments are spending about $75 billion a year on domestic security, setting up
sophisticated radio networks, upgrading emergency medical response equipment, installing
surveillance cameras and bombproof walls, and outfitting airport screeners to detect an everevolving list of mobile explosives. But how effective has that 10-year spending spree been? "The
number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes,
is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It's basically the same number of people who
die drowning in the bathtub each year," said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor
who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting
terrorism. "So if your chance of being killed by a terrorist in the United States is 1 in 3.5 million, the
question is, how much do you want to spend to get that down to 1 in 4.5 million?" he said. The vast
network of Homeland Security spyware, concrete barricades and high-tech identity screening is
here to stay. The Department of Homeland Security, a collection of agencies ranging from border
control to airport security sewn quickly together after Sept. 11, is the third-largest Cabinet
department and with almost no lawmaker willing to render the U.S. less prepared for a terrorist
attack one of those least to fall victim to budget cuts.
Note: For a powerful article that goes much deeper into huge sums of money wasted in the war on
terror by journalist Glenn Greenwald, click here.
Vaccination Ruse Used in Pursuit of Bin Laden

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/world/asia/12dna.html
In the months before Osama bin Laden was [allegedly] killed, the Central Intelligence Agency ran a
phony vaccination program in Abbottabad, Pakistan, as a ruse to obtain DNA evidence from
members of Bin Ladens family thought to be holed up in an expansive compound there, according
to an American official. The vaccination program ... adds a new twist to the months of spy games
that preceded the nighttime raid in early May. It has also aggravated already strained tensions
between the United States and Pakistan. The operation was run by a Pakistan doctor, Shakil Afridi,
whom Pakistani spies have since arrested for his suspected collaboration with the Americans. Dr.
Afridi remains in Pakistani custody, the American official said. Obama administration officials
have said publicly they were not sure whether Bin Laden was in Abbottabad when dozens
of Navy Seals commandos stormed the house in May. Pakistani military and intelligence
operatives were furious about the American raid ... and relations between the United States and
Pakistan have only plummeted since. Pakistani officials have suggested that they might use troops
to repel another incursion into Pakistan.
Note: For WantToKnow team member David Ray Griffin's book, Osama bin Laden: Dead of Alive?,
demonstrating the high likelihood that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001, click here. For a four-minute
leaked Pentagon video revealing plans to use vaccines to secretly modify behavior, click here.
Pakistan Tells U.S. It Must Sharply Cut C.I.A. Activities

2011-04-12, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/New York Times
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11102/1138765-82.stm?cmpid=news.xml
Pakistan has demanded that the United States steeply reduce the number of Central
Intelligence Agency operatives and Special Operations forces working in Pakistan, and that
it halt C.I.A. drone strikes aimed at militants in northwest Pakistan. The request was a sign
of the near collapse of cooperation between the two testy allies. Pakistani and American
officials said in interviews that the demand that the United States scale back its presence was the
immediate fallout from the arrest in Pakistan of Raymond A. Davis, a C.I.A. security officer who
killed two men in January. In all, about 335 American personnel -- C.I.A. officers and contractors
and Special Operations forces -- were being asked to leave the country, said a Pakistani official
closely involved in the decision. It was not clear how many C.I.A. personnel that would leave
behind; the total number in Pakistan has not been disclosed. But the cuts demanded by the
Pakistanis amounted to 25 to 40 percent of United States Special Operations forces in the country,
the officials said. The number also included the removal of all the American contractors used by
the C.I.A. in Pakistan. In addition to the withdrawal of all C.I.A. contractors, Pakistan is demanding
the removal of C.I.A. operatives involved in "unilateral" assignments like Mr. Davis's that the
Pakistani intelligence agency did not know about, the Pakistani official said.
Note: For further reports from major media sources on the long history of relations between the
CIA and the Pakistani secret service, and their joint creation of and support for the Taliban, click
here.
'Guantanamo North': Inside Secretive U.S. Prisons

2011-03-03, NPR
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/03/134168714/guantanamo-north-inside-u-s-secretive...
Reports about what life is like inside the military prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay
are not uncommon. But very little is reported about two secretive units for convicted terrorists and
other inmates who get 24-hour surveillance, right here in the U.S. For the first time, an NPR
investigation has identified 86 of the more than 100 men who have lived in the special units
that some people are calling "Guantanamo North." The Communications Management Units
[CMU] in Terre Haute, Ind., and Marion, Ill., are mostly filled with Muslims. About two-thirds of
the inmates identified by NPR are U.S. citizens. Prison officials opened the first CMU with no
public notice four years ago, something inmates say they had no right to do under the federal law
known as the Administrative Procedures Act. The units' population has included men convicted in
well-known post-Sept. 11 cases, as well as defendants from the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing, the 1999 "millennium" plot ... and hijacking cases in 1976, 1985 and 1996. When the
Terre Haute unit opened in December 2006, 15 of the first 17 inmates were Muslim. As word got
out that the special units were disproportionately Muslim ... the Bureau of Prisons started moving
in non-Muslims. Guards and cameras watch the CMU inmates' every move. Every word they
speak is picked up by a counterterrorism team that eavesdrops from West Virginia. [Several]
inmates have been suing the Federal Bureau of Prisons. They say the special units were set up
outside the law and raise serious due process issues. Unlike prisoners who are convicted of
serious crimes and sent to a federal supermax facility, CMU inmates have no way to review the
evidence that sent them there or to challenge that evidence to get out.
Note: For other major media articles exposing excessive secrecy in government and elsewhere,
click here.
Britain can push democracy or weapons but not both

2011-02-22, The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/22/britain-push-democracy-we...
The present British government, like its predecessor, claims to pursue a policy of "liberal
interventionism", seeking the downfall of undemocratic regimes round the globe, notably in the
Muslim world. The same British government, again like its predecessor, sends these undemocratic
regimes copious weapons to suppress the only plausible means of the said downfall, popular
insurrection. The contradiction is glaring. Downing Street is clearly embarrassed by Egypt, Bahrain
and Libya having had the impertinence to rebel just as David Cameron was embarking on an
important arms-sales trip to the Gulf, not an area much addicted to democracy. Fifty British arms
makers were present at last year's sickening Libyan arms fair, while the resulting weapons are
reportedly prominent in gunning down this week's rioters. Cameron reads from the Foreign Office
[FO] script, claiming that all guns, tanks, armoured vehicles, stun grenades, tear gas and riotcontrol equipment are "covered by assurances that they would not be used in human rights
repression". He must know this is absurd. What did the FO think Colonel Gaddafi meant to do
with sniper rifles and tear-gas grenades go mole hunting? Sales to dictators are covered
by the usual excuse: "If we do not sell to them someone else will." If we choose to make the
Arabs' path harder by arming their oppressors, fine, but we should not proclaim "liberal
interventionism". If we proclaim interventionism, we should not sell weapons. Meddling in other
people's business is rarely wise. Two-faced meddling is hypocrisy.
Note: For a top US general's revelations on how war is largely a racket run by bankers and
wealthy businessmen, click here. And for lots more revealing information on war manipulations,
see our War Information Center at this link.
War veteran, 71, dragged out for staging silent protest during Hilary
Clinton address... on freedom of speech
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1358475/Protest-Egypt-America-message...
A 71-year-old war veteran today claimed he was left 'bruised and bloodied' after being violently
dragged out of a speech by Hilary Clinton. Ray McGovern, who was a CIA analyst for 27 years,
staged a 'silent protest' during the Secretary of State's talk on the importance of freedom of speech
in the internet age yesterday. In it she referred to the uprising in Egypt and commented on how
people should be allowed to protest in peace without fear of threat or violence. She also
condemned governments who arrest protesters and do not allow free expression. But during the
speech at George Washington university, Mr McGovern claims his silent protest was met with just
that - threats and violence. Wearing a 'Veterans for Peace' t-shirt, the 71-year-old stood up
and turned around to face the back of the room, when two men grabbed him and dragged
him out of the room. He said he was 'roughed up' by police for his actions and needed
medical attention. The veteran said he was protesting the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
and the fact that 'these people are pursuing policies which make people suffer and die, particularly
in the Middle East'. As well as a former CIA analyst, Mr McGovern also carried out the daily
intelligence briefing for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.
Note: We don't usually consider the UK's Daily Mail a reliable source, but as they were the only
media source we could find which covered this sad occurence, we've used them here. See the link
above for photos of bruises Mr. McGovern suffered at the hands of police. For more on the
courageous Mr. McGovern, click here.
Mystery Over Detained American Angers Pakistan

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/world/asia/09pakistan.html
The case of Raymond A. Davis, a former United States Special Forces soldier who is being held in
connection with the deaths of two Pakistanis, has stirred a diplomatic furor, sending the precarious
relationship between the United States and Pakistan to a new low, both sides say. Mr. Davis, 36,
was driving in dense traffic [when] two Pakistani men on a motorcycle tried to rob him. He shot and
killed both and was arrested immediately afterward by police officers who say he was carrying a
Glock handgun, a flashlight that attached to a headband and a pocket telescope. The mystery
about what Mr. Davis was doing with this inventory of gadgets has touched directly on Pakistani
resentments that members of the large American security presence here roam the country freely
and are not answerable to the Pakistani authorities. The United States has warned Pakistan that if
Mr. Davis is not released ... badly needed financial assistance could be cut. The public furor
increased Sunday when the 18-year-old wife of one of the men Mr. Davis shot committed suicide,
after saying she believed that the American would be unfairly freed. At the heart of the public
outcry seems to be uncertainty over the nature of Mr. Daviss work, and questions about
why his camera, according to police investigators, had pictures of buildings in Pakistani
cities. One of the identification cards confiscated by the police after his arrest ... said he was a
Defense Department contractor. Another ... said he was attached to the consulate in Peshawar,
which contradicts an initial American Embassy statement on the day of the shooting that described
Mr. Davis as a staff member of the consulate in Lahore.
Note: There is likely much more to this than meets the eye.
UN human rights official claims 9/11 was US plot

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8281125/UN-human-r...
A UN human rights official has been roundly condemned for suggesting that the US government
may have orchestrated the September 11 terrorist attacks. Richard Falk, a retired professor from
Princeton University, wrote on his blog that there had been an "apparent cover up" by American
authorities. He added that most media were "unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced
doubts about the official version of the events" on 9/11, despite it containing "gaps and
contradictions". And he described David Ray Griffin, a conspiracy theorist highly regarded
in the so-called "9/11 truth" movement, as a "scholar of high integrity" whose book on the
subject was "authoritative". UN Watch, a pressure group that monitors the organisation, has
called for Prof Falk to be sacked. Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary-General, described the
comments as "preposterous" and "an affront to the memory of the more than 3,000 people who
died in the attack." But Mr Ban said that it was not for him to decide whether Prof Falk, who serves
the organisation as a special investigator into human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories,
should be fired by the UN. Vijay Nambiar, Mr Ban's chief of staff, said this was up to the human
rights council, a 47-nation body based in Geneva, Switzerland, that was created by the UN in
2006.
Note: Although the title of this article distorts the facts and its tone is dismissive, The Telegraph's
quotes from Falk's blog are accurate. For excerpts from his remarks, click here. Richard Falk is
only one of many highly-respected scholars and professionals who have raised such questions
about the official account of 9/11. For examples of others, click here and here.
Building a network to hit militants

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/01/05/ap-exclusive-building-network-hit-milita...
The Obama administration has ramped up its secret ["war on terror"] with a new military targeting
center to oversee the growing use of special operations strikes against suspected militants in hot
spots around the world, according to current and former U.S. officials. Run by the U.S. Joint
Special Operations Command, the new center [is] a significant step in streamlining targeting
operations ... giving elite military officials closer access to Washington decision-makers. The center
aims to speed the sharing of information and shorten the time between targeting and military
action. The creation of the center comes as part of the administration's increasing reliance on
clandestine and covert action. The White House has more than doubled the numbers of special
operations forces in Afghanistan alone, as well as doubling the CIA's use of missile strikes from
unmanned drones in Pakistan. The center is staffed with at least 100 [operatives] fusing the
military's special operations elite with analysts, intelligence and law enforcement officials from the
FBI, Homeland Security and other agencies. Its targeting advice will largely direct elite special
operations forces in both commando raids and missile strikes overseas. The data also
could be used at times to advise domestic law enforcement in dealing with suspected
terrorists inside the U.S., the officials said.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on the expanding secret war carried out worldwide by
the US, click here.
In a Computer Worm, a Possible Biblical Clue

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/world/middleeast/30worm.html
Deep inside the computer worm that some specialists suspect is aimed at slowing Irans race for a
nuclear weapon lies what could be a fleeting reference to the Book of Esther, the Old Testament
tale in which the Jews pre-empt a Persian plot to destroy them. That use of the word Myrtus
which can be read as an allusion to Esther to name a file inside the code is one of several
murky clues that have emerged as computer experts try to trace the origin and purpose of the
rogue Stuxnet program, which seeks out a specific kind of command module for industrial
equipment. Not surprisingly, the Israelis are not saying whether Stuxnet has any connection to the
secretive cyberwar unit it has built inside Israels intelligence service. Nor is the Obama
administration, which while talking about cyberdefenses has also rapidly ramped up a broad covert
program, inherited from the Bush administration, to undermine Irans nuclear program. The
difficulty experts have had in figuring out the origin of Stuxnet points to both the appeal and the
danger of computer attacks in a new age of cyberwar. For intelligence agencies they are an almost
irresistible weapon, free of fingerprints. Israel has poured huge resources into Unit 8200, its
secretive cyberwar operation, and the United States has built its capacity inside the
National Security Agency and inside the military, which just opened a Cyber Command.
Note: For many key reports from reliable sources on the ever-expanding "global war on terror,"
click here.
Flotilla Raid Illegal, U.N. Panel Finds

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/world/middleeast/23briefs-Flotilla.html
A report released in Geneva by three United Nations-appointed human rights experts said [on
September 22] that Israeli forces violated international law when they raided a Gaza-bound aid
flotilla in May, killing nine activists. The United Nations Human Rights Councils fact-finding
mission concluded that Israels naval blockade of Gaza was unlawful because of the
humanitarian crisis there, and that the military raid on the flotilla was brutal and
disproportionate. The Israeli Foreign Ministry responded by saying the Human Rights Council
had a biased, politicized and extremist approach. The Palestinian group Hamas, which controls
Gaza, praised the report and called for those involved in the raid to be tried. Israel refused to
cooperate with the panel, but is working with a separate United Nations group that is examining
the incident.
What Kind Of Top-Secret Assassination Tech Does $58 Billion Buy?

2010-09-09, Popular Science magazine
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-08/anyone-anywhere-anytime
Not since the end of the Cold War has the Pentagon spent so much to develop and deploy
secret weapons. But now military researchers have turned their attention from mass
destruction to a far more precise challenge: finding, tracking, and killing individuals. Every
year, tens of billions of Pentagon dollars go missing. The money vanishes not because of fraud,
waste or abuse, but because U.S. military planners have appropriated it to secretly develop
advanced weapons and fund clandestine operations. Next year, this so-called black budget will be
even larger than it was in the Cold War days of 1987, when the leading black-budget watchdog,
the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), began gathering reliable estimates.
The current total is staggering: $58 billionenough to pay for two complete Manhattan Projects.
Note: For other detailed reports on Pentagon weapons development, click here and here.
Secret services 'must be made more transparent'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/secret-services-must-be-made-m...
The secret services must become more transparent if they are to halt the spread of damaging
conspiracy theories and increase trust in the Government, claims a leading think tank. A Demos
report published today, "The Power of Unreason", argues that secrecy surrounding the
investigation of events such as the 9/11 New York attacks and the 7/7 bombings in London
merely adds weight to ... claims that they were "inside jobs". It ... recommends the
Government fight back by infiltrating internet sites to dispute these theories. The Royal
United Services Institute warned last week that the UK may soon face a new wave of home-grown
terrorists, when criminals who have been targeted by jihadists while in prison are released.
Note: The report cited in this article advocates UK government infiltration of "conspiracist"
organizations and websites. In the US the same recommendation has been made by Obama
appointee Cass Sunstein, whose article "Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures" has just been
fully dissected by WantToKnow team member David Ray Griffin in his new book Cognitive
Infiltration: An Obama Appointee's Plan to Undermine the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory.
Six cities to train mail carriers to dispense anti-terror drugs

2010-08-02, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-08-02-postal02_ST_N.htm
The Postal Service is ready to deliver lifesaving drugs to about a quarter of the residents of
Minneapolis-St. Paul, the only metropolitan area in the nation where letter carriers have been
trained to dispense medication after a large-scale terrorist attack involving biological weapons.
Efforts are underway in six cities to train workers to deliver the drugs needed to counter
anthrax or other potentially deadly agents, the White House says. The White House won't
name the six cities, and Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Amy Kudwa says she
can't talk about whether more cities are interested in the voluntary program. With a model in place,
the White House says it is working to expand the voluntary program to cities across the country.
Minneapolis postal worker Chris Wittenburg of the National Association of Letter Carriers says
setting up the program is complicated. First, letter carriers have to volunteer, undergo medical
tests to make sure they can take the antibiotics, be fitted for masks (no facial hair allowed) and be
trained. Routes have to be combined, and systems set up to suspend regular mail delivery in an
instant, call postal workers in and send them out carrying boxes of drugs and fliers telling people
what to do. About 60% of the city's letter carriers volunteered for the program, which was given a
trial run in May.
Note: For lots more on the bogus "war on terror" and the anthrax attacks which helped to launch it,
click here. For a recent key story on the many unanswered questions about the attacks, click here.
Report: Pakistani Spy Agency Arms, Trains Taliban

2010-06-13, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=10900484
Pakistan's main spy agency continues to arm and train the Taliban and is even represented
on the group's leadership council despite U.S. pressure to sever ties and billions in aid to
combat the militants, a research report concluded. U.S. officials have suggested in the past
that current or former members of Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI,
have maintained links to the Taliban despite the government's decision to denounce the group in
2001 under U.S. pressure. The report issued [on June 13] by the London School of Economics
offered one of the strongest cases that assistance to the group is official ISI policy, and even
extends to the highest levels of the Pakistani government. The report ... was based on interviews
with Taliban commanders, former Taliban officials, Western diplomats and many others. "Without a
change in Pakistani behavior it will be difficult, if not impossible, for international forces and the
Afghan government to make progress against the insurgency," said the report, written by Matt
Waldman, a fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Note: For lots more powerful information suggestion Pakistani involvement with terrorism and
9/11, watch the highly insightful documentary available here.
Loosening of F.B.I. Rules Stirs Privacy Concerns

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/us/29manual.html
After a Somali-American teenager from Minneapolis committed a suicide bombing in Africa in
October 2008, the Federal Bureau of Investigation began investigating whether a Somali Islamist
group had recruited him on United States soil. Instead of collecting information only on people
about whom they had a tip or links to the teenager, agents fanned out to scrutinize Somali
communities. The operation unfolded as the Bush administration was relaxing some domestic
intelligence-gathering rules. The F.B.I.s interpretation of those rules was recently made public
when it released, in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit, its Domestic Investigations and
Operations Guide. The disclosure of the manual has opened the widest window yet onto how
agents have been given greater power in the post-Sept. 11 era. But the manuals details have
alarmed privacy advocates. It raises fundamental questions about whether a domestic
intelligence agency can protect civil liberties if they feel they have a right to collect broad
personal information about people they dont even suspect of wrongdoing, said Mike
German, a former F.B.I. agent who now works for the American Civil Liberties Union. The manual
authorizes agents to open an assessment to proactively seek information about whether people
or organizations are involved in national security threats. Assessments permit agents to use
potentially intrusive techniques, like sending confidential informants to infiltrate organizations and
following and photographing targets in public. When selecting targets, agents are permitted to
consider political speech or religion as one criterion.
Note: To read the FBI's recently-released and redacted new "Domestic Investigations and
Operation Guide", described by the New York Times as giving "F.B.I. agents the most power in
national security matters that they have had since the post-Watergate era," click here.
Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib ... Bagram?

2009-07-11, Sunday Herald (One of Scotland's leading newspapers)
http://www.sundayherald.com/international/shinternational/display.var.2518245...
Noor Habib's hands shake as he draws a picture of how he says he was abused. He claims that
he was taken to a small, darkened cell where his arms were tied to the ceiling and he was made to
stand in waist-deep water for six hours at a time. He says he was beaten, threatened with dogs,
and deprived of sleep. Habib was an inmate at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility, an
American military detention centre outside Kabul. Over a period of more than two months, we
tracked down 27 former detainees. There were others, but they were afraid to speak or had been
warned not to. Many allegations of ill-treatment appear repeatedly in the interviews; physical
abuse, the use of stress positions, excessive heat or cold, unbearably loud noise, being
forced to remove clothes in front of female soldiers and in four cases, being threatened
with death at gunpoint. All the men who spoke to us were interviewed in isolation and they were
all asked the same questions. They were held at times between 2002 and 2008 and they were all
accused of belonging to or helping al-Qaeda or the Taliban. None of the inmates were charged
with any offence or put on trial. The camp has held thousands of people over the last eight years.
Most of the inmates are Afghans but some were captured abroad and brought here under a
process known as "extraordinary rendition", including at least two Britons. The Obama
administration says they are dangerous men and it classifies them as "terrorist suspects" and
"enemy combatants" rather than "prisoners of war". It is a legal classification that critics say
deliberately denies inmates access to lawyers or the right to appeal or even complain about their
treatment.
Note: For more revelations from reliable, verifiable sources of the horrific abuses carried out under
US direction at secret prisons worldwide, click here.
Israelis intercept Gaza aid ship

2009-06-30, BBC News
Israeli forces have boarded a ship trying to carry aid and pro-Palestinian activists to the Gaza Strip
in defiance of Israel's blockade of the territory. The 20 passengers include former US
congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and Nobel Prize winner Mairead Maguire. Ms McKinney
described it as "an outrageous violation of international law", as the boat was on a humanitarian
mission and was not in Israeli waters. The US-based Free Gaza Movement has breached the
blockade five times since August 2008. Two other attempts by the activist group were stopped by
Israeli warships during Israel's three-week military offensive in Gaza in December and January.
The mission is the latest by the Free Gaza Movement, which has renamed the ferry Spirit of
Humanity. "This is an outrageous violation of international law against us. Our boat was not in
Israeli waters, and we were on a human rights mission to the Gaza Strip," said Ms McKinney in a
statement. "President [Barack] Obama just told Israel to let in humanitarian and
reconstruction supplies, and that's exactly what we tried to do. We're asking the
international community to demand our release so we can resume our journey." On Monday,
a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross described the 1.5 million Palestinians
living in Gaza as people "trapped in despair", unable to rebuild their lives after Israel's offensive.
Donors have pledged $4.5 billion for reconstruction and rehabilitation in Gaza following the 22-day
offensive which left more than 50,000 homes, 800 industrial properties and 200 schools damaged
or destroyed, as well as 39 mosques and two churches.
Note: A similar boat was rammed by the Israeli military about six months ago. To watch a 3-minute
CNN interview on this, click here.
'If I didn't confess to 7/7 bombings MI5 officers would rape my wife,'
claims torture victim
2009-06-25, Daily Mail (a popular U.K. newspaper)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1195484/If-I-didnt-confess-7-7-bombin...
A British man spoke publicly for the first time yesterday to accuse MI5 officers of forcing him to
confess to masterminding the July 7 bombings. Jamil Rahman claims UK security officers were
behind his arrest in 2005 in Bangladesh. He says he was beaten repeatedly by local officials who
also threatened to rape him and his wife. Mr Rahman, who is suing the Home Office, said a pair of
MI5 officers who attended his torture and interrogation would leave the room while he was beaten.
He claims when he told the pair he had been tortured they merely answered: 'They haven't done a
very good job on you.' Mr Rahman told the BBC: 'They threatened my family. They go to me,
"In the UK, gas leaks happen, if your family house had a gas leak and everyone got burnt,
there's no problems, we can do that easily".' He says he eventually made a false confession
of involvement in the July 7 bomb plots. The extraordinary allegations will add to pressure on
UK ministers to come clean over the way Britain's intelligence agencies have been allowed to
gather evidence around the world in the eight years since the September 11 attacks. Jamil
Rahman, a former civil servant from south Wales, is a British citizen who moved to Bangladesh in
2005 and married a woman he met there. He returned to the UK last year. He said: 'It was all to do
with the British. Jamil Rahman is one of a number of former detainees who accuse the British
Government colluded in their torture abroad. His account echoes that of former Guantanamo Bay
detainee Binyam Mohamed, who said he was tortured in Pakistan and Morocco with MI5's
knowledge. The 30-year-old Ethiopian says he was beaten and deprived of sleep to try to make
him confess to an Al Qaeda 'dirty bomb' plot, and his treatment is now the subject of an
unprecedented police investigation into MI5's conduct.
Note: For lots more on the hidden strategies used to maintain the "war on terror", click here.
Network of Wi-Fi-Enabled Cyborg Insects Hunts Down WMDs

2009-06-07, Popular Science magazine
http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-06/insect-wifi...
In its attempts to quash weapons of mass destruction, the Pentagon has been trying novel ways to
track down dangerous materiel. For years, DARPA [the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency] has been trying to train insects and bugs to sniff out toxic substances, providing
more sensitive detection, as well as access that conventional sensors might not have. The
newest twist on this concept is a plan to link up armies of the cyborg bugs in a peer-to-peer, or
insect-to-insect, network that will allow them to communicate with each other and with their human
masters. This next approach will implant insects with a chip that reads certain muscle twitches,
which correspond to the presence of certain chemicals. The chips will then modify the chirps of
insects like cicadas or crickets into an electronic signal that could be transmitted to other chipped
insects in the area. Information about detected weaponized chemicals could bounce around this
mobile insect network, and then be picked up by humans. The idea of creating a decentralized
communication network between free-roaming insects could radically increase the bugs' range of
detection.
Note: For a video and more on this, see the New Scientist article at this link.
They May Not Want The Bomb

Everything you know about Iran is wrong, or at least more complicated than you think. Take the
bomb. The regime wants to be a nuclear power but could well be happy with a peaceful civilian
program. Over the last five years, senior Iranian officials at every level have repeatedly asserted
that they do not intend to build nuclear weapons. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has quoted
the regime's founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who asserted that such weapons were
"un-Islamic." The country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa in 2004
describing the use of nuclear weapons as immoral. In a subsequent sermon, he declared that
"developing, producing or stockpiling nuclear weapons is forbidden under Islam." Last year
Khamenei reiterated all these points after meeting with the head of the International Atomic Energy
Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei. Now, of course, they could all be lying. But it seems odd for a
regime that derives its legitimacy from its fidelity to Islam to declare constantly that these
weapons are un-Islamic if it intends to develop them. It would be far shrewder to stop
reminding people of Khomeini's statements and stop issuing new fatwas against nukes.
Following a civilian nuclear strategy has big benefits. The country would remain within international
law, simply asserting its rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a position that has much
support across the world. That would make comprehensive sanctions against Iran impossible. And
if Tehran's aim is to expand its regional influence, it doesn't need a bomb to do so.
How 07 ABC Interview Tilted a Torture Debate

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/business/media/28abc.html?partner=rss&emc=r...
In late 2007, there was the first crack of daylight into the governments use of waterboarding during
interrogations of Al Qaeda detainees. On Dec. 10, John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer who had
participated in the capture of the suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in 2002, appeared
on ABC News to say that while he considered waterboarding a form of torture, the technique
worked and yielded results very quickly. Mr. Zubaydah started to cooperate after being
waterboarded for probably 30, 35 seconds, Mr. Kiriakou told the ABC reporter Brian Ross. From
that day on he answered every question. His claims unverified at the time, but repeated by
dozens of broadcasts, blogs and newspapers have been sharply contradicted by a newly
declassified Justice Department memo that said waterboarding had been used on Mr. Zubaydah
at least 83 times. Some critics say that the now-discredited information shared by Mr.
Kiriakou and other sources heightened the public perception of waterboarding as an
effective interrogation technique. I think it was sanitized by the way it was described in
press accounts, said John Sifton, a former lawyer for Human Rights Watch. On World News,
ABC included only a caveat that Mr. Kiriakou himself never carried out any of the waterboarding.
Still, he told ABC that the actions had disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks. A
video of the interview was no longer on ABC's website.
Note: For the transcript of the original ABC interview of John Kiriakou, click here. To watch a video
of the interview which ABC News removed from its website, click here.
US authorites divert Air France flight carrying 'no-fly' journalist to

Mexico
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5217186/US-authori...
American authorities reportedly refused an Air France flight from Paris to Mexico entry into US
airspace because a left-wing journalist writing a book on the CIA was on board. Hernando Calvo
Ospina, who works for Le Monde Diplomatique and has written on revolutionary movements in
Cuba and Colombia , figured on the US authorities' "no-fly list". A spokesman for Mr Ospina's
French publisher, Le Temps des Cerises, said: "Hernando, who was heading to Nicaragua to
research a report, thus found out that he is on a 'no-fly list' that bans a number of people from
flying to or even over the United States." Some 50,000 people are said to be on the list set up
under George W. Bush, the former US president. The publisher accused the Central
Intelligence Agency of being behind Mr Ospina's blacklisting, pointing out that the
journalist was currently researching a book about the spy agency. "It shows to what degree
its paranoia (has reached)," it said. Critics claim that [the list] has been abusively extended to
peaceful critics of US policy.
Note: For many disturbing reports from major media sources on the increasing threats to civil
liberties under the pretext of the "war on terrorism," click here.
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh describes 'executive

assassination ring'
2009-03-11, Minnesota Post
http://www.minnpost.com/ericblackblog/2009/03/11/7310/investigative_reporter_...
[Pulitzer prize winning] investigative reporter Seymour Hersh may have made a little more news
than he intended by talking about new alleged instances of domestic spying by the CIA, and about
an ongoing covert military operation that he called an executive assassination ring. [In reply to a
question, Hersh said] "After 9/11 ... the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in
domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state, without any legal
authority for it. Today, there was a story in the New York Times that ... mentioned something
known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC its called. They reported directly to the
Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert]
Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to [Cheney]. ... Congress has no oversight
of it. Its an executive assassination ring essentially, and its been going on and on. Theyve
been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and
finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. Thats been going on, in the name
of all of us." He added that both the press and the public let down their guard in the aftermath of
9/11. The major newspapers joined the [Bush] team, Hersh said. Top editors passed the
message to investigative reporters not to pick holes in what Bush was doing.
Note: For further revelations of the excesses committed in the name of the "war on terror", click
here.
Obama's NSC Will Get New Power

President Obama plans to order a sweeping overhaul of the National Security Council, expanding
its membership and increasing its authority to set strategy across a wide spectrum of international
and domestic issues. The result will be a "dramatically different" NSC from that of the Bush
administration or any of its predecessors since the forum was established after World War II ...
according to national security adviser James L. Jones, who described the changes in an interview.
Jones, a retired Marine general, made it clear that he will run the process and be the
primary conduit of national security advice to Obama. The new structure ... will expand the
NSC's reach far beyond the range of traditional foreign policy issues. New NSC directorates
will deal with such department-spanning 21st-century issues as cybersecurity, energy, climate
change, nation-building and infrastructure. Many of the functions of the Homeland Security
Council, established as a separate White House entity by President Bush after the terrorist attacks
of Sept. 11, 2001, may be subsumed into the expanded NSC, although it is still undetermined
whether elements of the HSC will remain as a separate body within the White House. Over the
next 50 days, John O. Brennan, a CIA veteran who serves as presidential adviser for
counterterrorism and homeland security and is Jones's deputy, will review options for the
homeland council, including its responsibility for preparing for and responding to natural and
terrorism-related domestic disasters.
Judge Orders 17 Detainees at Guantnamo Freed

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/washington/08detain.html?partner=rssuserlan...
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Bush administration to release 17 detainees at
Guantnamo Bay by the end of the week, the first such ruling in nearly seven years of legal
disputes over the administrations detention policies. The judge, Ricardo M. Urbina of Federal
District Court, ordered that the 17 men be brought to his courtroom on Friday from the prison at
Guantnamo Bay, Cuba, where they have been held since 2002. He indicated that he would
release the men, members of the restive Uighur Muslim minority in western China, into the care of
supporters in the United States, initially in the Washington area. I think the moment has arrived
for the court to shine the light of constitutionality on the reasons for detention, Judge
Urbina said. Saying the men had never fought the United States and were not a security
threat, he tersely rejected Bush administration claims that he lacked the power to order the
men set free in the United States and government requests that he stay his order to permit an
immediate appeal. The ruling was a sharp setback for the administration, which has waged a long
legal battle to defend its policies of detention at the naval base at Guantnamo Bay, arguing a
broad executive power in waging war. Federal courts up to the Supreme Court have waded
through detention questions and in several major cases the courts have rejected administration
contentions. The government recently conceded that it would no longer try to prove that the
Uighurs were enemy combatants, the classification it uses to detain people at Guantnamo, where
255 men are now held.
Note: For many disturbing reports from reliable, verifiable sources on threats to civil liberties, click
here.
9/11 Rumors That Become Conventional Wisdom

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/world/africa/09cairo.html
Seven years later, it remains conventional wisdom [in Cairo] that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda
could not have been solely responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and that the United
States and Israel had to have been involved in their planning, if not their execution, too. Look, I
dont believe what your governments and press say. It just cant be true, said Ahmed Issab, 26, a
Syrian engineer who lives and works in the United Arab Emirates. Why would they tell the truth? I
think the U.S. organized this so that they had an excuse to invade Iraq for the oil. Again and
again, people said they simply did not believe that a group of Arabs like themselves could
possibly have waged such a successful operation against a superpower like the United States. But
they also said that Washingtons post-9/11 foreign policy proved that the United States and
Israel were behind the attacks, especially with the invasion of Iraq. Maybe people who
executed the operation were Arabs, but the brains? No way, said Mohammed Ibrahim, 36, a
clothing-store owner in the Bulaq neighborhood of Cairo. It was organized by other people, the
United States or the Israelis. Zein al-Abdin, 42, an electrician, [said] What happened in Iraq
confirms that it has nothing to do with bin Laden or Qaeda. They went against Arabs and against
Islam to serve Israel, thats why.
Note: For a two-page summary of many reports from reliable, verifiable sources that highlight
unanswered questions about what really happened on 9/11, click here.
A New Rush to Spy

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/opinion/22fri2.html?partner=rssuserland&emc...
There is apparently no limit to the Bush administrations desire to invade Americans privacy in the
name of national security. According to members of Congress, Attorney General Michael Mukasey
is preparing to give the F.B.I. broad new authority to investigate Americans without any clear
basis for suspicion that they are committing a crime. Opening the door to sweeping
investigations of this kind would be an invitation to the government to spy on people based
on their race, religion or political activities. Mr. Mukasey has not revealed the new guidelines.
But according to senators whose staff have been given limited briefings, the rules may also
authorize the F.B.I. to use an array of problematic investigative techniques. Among these are
pretext interviews, in which agents do not honestly represent themselves while questioning a
subjects neighbors and work colleagues. The F.B.I. has a long history of abusing its authority to
spy on domestic groups, including civil rights and anti-war activists, and there is a real danger that
the new rules would revive those dark days. Clearly, the Bush administration cannot be trusted to
get the balance between law enforcement and civil liberties right. It has repeatedly engaged in
improper and illegal domestic spying notably in the National Security Agencys warrantless
eavesdropping program. The F.B.I. and the White House no doubt want to push the changes
through before a new president is elected. There is no reason to rush to adopt rules that have such
important civil liberties implications.
Travelers' Laptops May Be Detained At Border: No Suspicion Required

Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site
location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border
search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed. Also, officials may share
copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation,
data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS
agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"The policies . . . are truly alarming," said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who is probing the
government's border search practices. He said he intends to introduce legislation soon that would
require reasonable suspicion for border searches, as well as prohibit profiling on race, religion or
national origin. DHS officials said the newly disclosed policies ... apply to anyone entering the
country, including U.S. citizens. Civil liberties and business travel groups have pressed the
government to disclose its procedures as an increasing number of international travelers have
reported that their laptops, cellphones and other digital devices had been taken -- for months, in at
least one case -- and their contents examined. The policies cover "any device capable of
storing information in digital or analog form," including hard drives, flash drives,
cellphones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover "all papers
and other written documentation," including books, pamphlets and "written materials commonly
referred to as 'pocket trash' or 'pocket litter.' "
Note: For many reports from reliable, verifiable sources on threats to privacy, click here.
A History of Abuse in the War on Terror

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/books/22schuessler.html?partner=rssuserland...
The Dark Side, Jane Mayers gripping new account of the war on terror, is really the story of two
wars: the far-flung battle against Islamic radicalism, and the bitter, closed-doors domestic struggle
over whether the president should have limitless power to wage it. The war on terror, according to
Ms. Mayer, ... was a "political battle cloaked in legal strategy, an ideological trench war" waged by
a small group of true believers whose expansive views of executive power she traces from the
Nixon administration through the Iran-contra scandal to the panicked days after 9/11. Ms. Mayers
prime movers and main villains are Vice President Dick Cheney and his legal counsel (now chief of
staff) David Addington, who after the terrorist attacks moved to establish "a policy of deliberate
cruelty that wouldve been unthinkable on Sept. 10." As the leader of the self-styled "war
council," a group of lawyers who took the lead in making the rules for the war on terror, Mr.
Addington startled many colleagues with the depth of his fervor and the reach of his power.
The war council settled on a "pre-emptive criminal model," in which suspects would be used
more or less indefinitely to gather evidence of future crimes rather than held accountable for
previous ones. There would be minimal oversight from Congress. The C.I.A. would take the lead,
developing aggressive new interrogation methods that would be described as enhanced,
robust, special. What they were not, a series of secret memos issued by John Yoo and others
at the Office of Legal Council would attempt to certify, was torture.
Note: For lots more on the realities behind the "war on terror", click here.
Doubts emerge about 'daring' rescue

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4270844.ece
The former Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt returned to what she called her "other family" in
France today as doubt was cast on the apparently daring rescue that won her freedom. While she
was still in the air, the Swiss radio station RSR broadcast a report questioning the official version of
the operation to free Ms Betancourt and 14 other hostages -- saying that money, not cunning, had
clinched their freedom. RSR said that the 15 hostages "were in reality ransomed for a high
price, and the whole operation afterwards was a set-up". Citing a source "close to the
events, reliable and tested many times in recent years", it said that the United States -which had three citizens among those freed -- was behind the deal and put the price at $20
million. The Colombian Foreign Ministry furiously denied the allegations, with a spokesman calling
them "completely false." He added: "They are lies". General Freddy Padilla, head of the Colombian
military, categorically denied they had paid "a single peso" to Farc. The French Foreign Ministry
denied any involvement in any deal. The US has not responded to the [allegations].
Officer calls Sept. 11 cases tainted

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-tribunal5-2008jun05,0,79...
When Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his alleged collaborators in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks
appear before the war crimes tribunal here today, ousted chief prosecutor Col. Morris D. Davis will
not be celebrating. Davis, who has spent half of his life in the military justice system, still considers
it "the most ethical process in the world." But the Pentagon's push to prosecute the so-called
9/11 Five is tainted, in his view, by political intrusions, illegal influence applied by moresenior officers and reliance on evidence obtained through coercion or torture. Davis drew
the wrath of many in the Pentagon hierarchy when he objected last fall to pressures from Bush
administration political appointees to prosecute Mohammed, known in intelligence circles as KSM,
ahead of other war crimes suspects whose cases were already researched and on whom vital
evidence was declassified. Unless the evidence prosecutors have against Mohammed and his
codefendants is declassified, much of their prosecution will be conducted behind closed doors,
depriving the American media and public of a clear view of the proceedings, he says. Davis ran
afoul of superiors ... when he advised his prosecutors against relying on evidence obtained
through waterboarding and other interrogation techniques that have been deemed coercive or
tantamount to torture. Davis resigned after political appointees at the Pentagon rejected his
judgment on the choice of cases to be tried in the months leading up to this November's election,
as well as his advice against building prosecutions on coerced and potentially unreliable
confessions.
General Clears Army Officer of Crime in Abu Ghraib Case

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/washington/11abuse.html?ex=1357707600&en=b9...
The only United States Army officer to face a court-martial over the scandal at Iraqs Abu Ghraib
prison has been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing in the case. A court-martial convicted Lt. Col.
Steven Jordan in August of disobeying an order not to discuss the investigation of abuse at the jail
and issued him a criminal reprimand as penalty. But Maj. Gen. Richard Rowe, commanding officer
for the Army Military District of Washington, disapproved of both the conviction and the reprimand.
The decision by General Rowe wipes Colonel Jordans record clean of any criminal responsibility.
Colonel Jordan had once faced a maximum punishment of five years in prison and dismissal from
the Army over the Abu Ghraib scandal, which unleashed a wave of global condemnation against
the United States when images of abused prisoners surfaced in 2004. The photos included scenes
of naked detainees stacked in a pyramid and other inmates cowering in front of snarling dogs.
Colonel Jordan, who was in charge of an Abu Ghraib interrogation center, said he had played no
part in the abuse and complained that the military was trying to make him a scapegoat. His
defense team also argued that he held no command authority at the prison. The judicial panel of
10 officers that convicted him in August of disobeying the order also acquitted him of any
responsibility for the cruel treatment of Abu Ghraib detainees. Eleven lower-ranking soldiers
have been convicted in military courts in connection with the physical abuse and sexual
humiliation of Abu Ghraib detainees. Two other officers have been disciplined by the Army,
but neither faced criminal charges or dismissal.
CIA whistle-blower Philip Agee dies in Cuba

2008-01-09, Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN0959077820080109
Philip Agee, a former CIA agent who exposed its undercover operations in Latin America in a 1975
book, died in Havana ... on Monday night. Agee worked for the CIA for 12 years in Washington,
Ecuador, Uruguay and Mexico. He resigned in 1968 in disagreement with U.S. support for military
dictatorships in Latin America and became one of the first to blow the whistle on the CIA's
activities around the world. His expos Inside the Company: CIA Diary revealed the names of
dozens of agents working undercover in Latin America and elsewhere in the world. It was
published in 27 languages. The CIA declined to comment on his death. Florida-born Agee said
working as a case officer in South America opened his eyes to the CIA's ... goal in the region: to
prop up traditional elites against perceived leftist threats through political repression and torture. "It
was a time in the '70s when the worst imaginable horrors were going on in Latin America -Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Guatemala, El Salvador -- they were military
dictatorships with death squads, all with the backing of the CIA and the U.S. government,"
he told the British newspaper The Guardian in an interview published last year. "That was what
motivated me to name all the names and work with journalists who were interested in knowing just
who the CIA were in their countries," he said. Barbara Bush, the wife of former U.S. President
George H.W. Bush, who was CIA director in 1976, blamed Agee in her memoirs for the murder of
the Athens station chief, Richard Welch, in 1975. Agee denied any connection and sued her for $4
million, forcing her to revise the book to settle the libel case. In his autobiography On the Run,
Agee detailed how he was hounded from five NATO countries, including the Netherlands, France
and West Germany, after incurring the CIA's wrath.
Note: Philip Agee's CIA whistleblowing is documented in the excellent documentary "Secret of the
CIA," available for viewing at this link.
Slave labour that shames America

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3263500.ece
Three Florida fruit-pickers, held captive and brutalised by their employer for more than a year,
finally broke free of their bonds by punching their way through the ventilator hatch of the van in
which they were imprisoned. Once outside, they dashed for freedom. When they found sanctuary
one recent Sunday morning, all bore the marks of heavy beatings to the head and body. One of
the pickers had a nasty, untreated knife wound on his arm. Police would learn later that another
man had his hands chained behind his back every night to prevent him escaping, leaving his wrists
swollen. The migrants were not only forced to work in sub-human conditions but mistreated and
forced into debt. They were locked up at night and had to pay for sub-standard food. If they took a
shower with a garden hose or bucket, it cost them $5. Their story of slavery and abuse in the fruit
fields of sub-tropical Florida threatens to lift the lid on some appalling human rights abuses in
America today. Between December and May, Florida produces virtually the entire US crop of fieldgrown fresh tomatoes. Fruit picked here in the winter months ends up on the shelves of
supermarkets and is also served in the country's top restaurants and in tens of thousands of fastfood outlets. But conditions in the state's fruit-picking industry range from straightforward
exploitation to forced labour. Tens of thousands of men, women and children excluded from
the protection of America's employment laws and banned from unionising work their fingers to
the bone for rates of pay which have hardly budged in 30 years. Until now, even appeals
from the former president Jimmy Carter to help raise the wages of fruit-pickers have gone
unheeded. Fruit-pickers, who typically earn about $200 (100) a week, are part of an unregulated
system designed to keep food prices low and the plates of America's overweight families piled
high.
U.S. Secretly Aids Pakistan in Guarding Nuclear Arms

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/washington/18nuke.html?ex=1353042000&en=1cc...
Over the past six years, the Bush administration has spent almost $100 million on a highly
classified program to help Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistans president, secure his countrys
nuclear weapons. The aid, buried in secret portions of the federal budget, paid for the training of
Pakistani personnel in the United States and the construction of a nuclear security training center
in Pakistan, a facility that American officials say is nowhere near completion, even though it was
supposed to be in operation this year. A raft of equipment from helicopters to night-vision

goggles to nuclear detection equipment was given to Pakistan to help secure its nuclear
material, its warheads, and the laboratories that were the site of the worst known case of nuclear
proliferation in the atomic age. While American officials say that they believe the arsenal is safe at
the moment, and that they take at face value Pakistani assurances that security is vastly improved,
in many cases the Pakistani government has been reluctant to show American officials how or
where the gear is actually used. That is because the Pakistanis do not want to reveal the
locations of their weapons or the amount or type of new bomb-grade fuel the country is
now producing. In addition, the Pakistanis were suspicious that any American-made
technology in their warheads could include a secret kill switch, enabling the Americans
to turn off their weapons. While Pakistan is formally considered a major non-NATO ally, the
program has been hindered by a deep suspicion among Pakistans military that the secret goal of
the United States was to gather intelligence about how to locate and, if necessary, disable
Pakistans arsenal, which is the pride of the country.
Note: Isn't it interesting that the U.S. administration has so fervently attacked Iraq and Iran for
developing nuclear weapons, yet they seem unconcerned about Pakistan, which is known to have
supported terrorist groups.
Immunity for Telecoms May Set Bad Precedent, Legal Scholars Say
When previous Republican administrations were accused of illegality in the FBI and CIA spying
abuses of the 1970s or the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, Democrats in Congress launched
investigations or pushed for legislative reforms. But last week, faced with admissions by several
telecommunication companies that they assisted the Bush administration in warrantless spying on
Americans, leaders of the Senate intelligence committee took a much different tack -- proposing
legislation that would grant those companies retroactive immunity from prosecution or lawsuits.
The proposal marks the second time in recent years that Congress has moved toward providing
legal immunity for past actions that may have been illegal. The Military Commissions Act, passed
by a GOP-led Congress in September 2006, provided retroactive immunity for CIA interrogators
who could have been accused of war crimes for mistreating detainees. Legal experts say the
granting of such retroactive immunity by Congress is unusual, particularly in a case involving
private companies. "It's particularly unusual in the case of the telecoms because you don't really
know what you're immunizing," said Louis Fisher, a specialist in constitutional law with the Law
Library of the Library of Congress. Civil liberties groups and many academics argue that
Congress is allowing the government to cover up possible wrongdoing and is
inappropriately interfering in disputes that the courts should decide. The American Civil
Liberties Union [said] in a news release Friday that "the administration is trying to cover its
tracks."
The Good Germans Among Us

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/opinion/14rich2.html?ex=1350014400&en=83a8b...
Bush lies doesnt cut it anymore. Its time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to
ourselves. By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are
practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged
from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader,
observed last weekend in The Sunday Times of London, Americas enhanced interrogation
techniques have a grotesque provenance: Verschrfte Vernehmung, enhanced or
intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what
became known as the third degree. It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress
positions and long-time sleep deprivation. We must ... examine our own responsibility for the
hideous acts committed in our name in a war where we have now fought longer than we did in the
one that put Verschrfte Vernehmung on the map. The war was sold by a ... fear-fueled White
House propaganda campaign designed to stampede a nation still shellshocked by 9/11. Both
Congress and the press the powerful institutions that should have provided the checks,
balances and due diligence of the administrations case failed to do their job. Had they done so,
more Americans might have raised more objections. This perfect storm of democratic failure began
at the top. [But] as the war has dragged on, it is hard to give Americans en masse a pass. We are
too slow to notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin. Our humanity
has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by
while they do so, the more we resemble those good Germans who professed ignorance of their
own Gestapo.
Save the Gnostics

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/opinion/06deutsch.html?ex=1349409600&en=19a...
The [US] didnt set out to eradicate the Mandeans, one of the oldest, smallest and least
understood of the many minorities in Iraq. This extinction in the making has simply been another
unfortunate ... consequence of our invasion of Iraq though that will be of little comfort to the
Mandeans, whose 2,000-year-old culture is in grave danger of disappearing from the face of the
earth. The Mandeans are the only surviving Gnostics from antiquity, cousins of the people who
produced the ... Gospel of Thomas, a work that sheds invaluable light on the many ways in which
Jesus was perceived in the early Christian period. The Mandeans have their own language ... an
impressive body of literature, and a treasury of cultural and religious traditions amassed over two
millennia of living in the southern marshes of present-day Iraq and Iran. Practitioners of a religion
at least as old as Christianity, the Mandeans have witnessed the rise of Islam; the Mongol
invasion; the arrival of Europeans, who mistakenly identified them as Christians of St. John,
because of their veneration of John the Baptist; and, most recently, the oppressive regime of
Saddam Hussein. They have withstood everything until now. Like their ancestors, contemporary
Mandeans were able to survive as a community because of the delicate balance achieved among
Iraqs many peoples over centuries of cohabitation. But our reckless prosecution of the war
destroyed this balance, and the Mandeans, whose pacifist religion prohibits them from
carrying weapons even for self-defense, found themselves victims of kidnappings,
extortion, rapes, beatings, murders and forced conversions carried out by radical Islamic
groups and common criminals. When American forces invaded in 2003, there were probably
60,000 Mandeans in Iraq; today, fewer than 5,000 remain.
Note: A fascinating introduction to the culture and history of this ancient people is Edmondo
Lupieri's The Mandaeans: the Last Gnostics.
The Padilla Conviction

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/17/opinion/17fri1.html?ex=1345003200&en=b04dde...
It would be a mistake to see [the verdict against Jose Padilla] as a vindication for the Bush
administrations serial abuse of the American legal system in the name of fighting terrorism. On the
way to this verdict, the government repeatedly trampled on the Constitution, and its prosecution of
Mr. Padilla was so cynical ... that the crime he was convicted of conspiracy to commit terrorism
overseas bears no relation to the ambitious plot to wreak mass destruction inside the United
States which the Justice Department first loudly proclaimed. When Mr. Padilla was arrested in
2002, the government said he was an Al Qaeda operative who had plotted to detonate a
radioactive dirty bomb inside the United States. Mr. Padilla, who is an American citizen, should
have been charged as a criminal and put on trial in a civilian court. Instead, President Bush
declared him an enemy combatant and kept him in a Navy brig for more than three years.
The administrations insistence that it had the right to hold Mr. Padilla indefinitely simply
on the presidents word was its first outrageous act in the case, but hardly its last. Mr.
Padilla was kept in a small isolation cell, and when he left that cell he was blindfolded and his ears
were covered. He was denied access to a lawyer even when he was being questioned. It was only
after the Supreme Court appeared poised last year to use Mr. Padillas case to decide whether
indefinite detention of an American citizen violates the Constitution, that the White House suddenly
decided to give him a civilian trial. He will likely never be brought to trial on the dirty-bomb plot. The
administration did everything it could to keep Mr. Padilla away from a jury and deny him impartial
justice.
The Fear of Fear Itself

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/opinion/07tue1.html?ex=1344139200&en=69538e...
It was appalling to watch over the last few days as Congress now led by Democrats caved in
to yet another unnecessary and dangerous expansion of President Bushs powers, this time to spy
on Americans in violation of basic constitutional rights. Many of the 16 Democrats in the Senate
and 41 in the House who voted for the bill said that they had acted in the name of national security,
but the only security at play was their job security. What [do] the Democrats ... plan to do
with their majority in Congress if they are too scared of Republican campaign ads to use it
to protect the Constitution and restrain an out-of-control president[?] The White House and
its allies on Capitol Hill railroaded Congress into voting a vast expansion of the presidents powers.
They gave the director of national intelligence and the attorney general authority to intercept
without warrant, court supervision or accountability any telephone call or e-mail message that
moves in, out of or through the United States as long as there is a reasonable belief that one
party is not in the United States. While serving little purpose, the new law has real dangers. It
would allow the government to intercept, without a warrant, every communication into or out of any
country, including the United States. The Democratic majority has made strides on other issues
like childrens health insurance against White House opposition. As important as these measures
are, they do not excuse the Democrats from remedying the damage Mr. Bush has done to civil
liberties and the Bill of Rights. That is their most important duty.
Abu Ghraib whistleblower's ordeal

2007-08-05, BBC
When Joe Darby saw the horrific photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison he was stunned. So
stunned that he walked out into the hot Baghdad night and smoked half a dozen cigarettes and
agonised over what he should do. Darby was a ... soldier with US forces at Abu Ghraib prison
when he stumbled across those images which would eventually shock the world in 2004. They
were photographs of his colleagues, some of them men and women he had known since high
school -- torturing and abusing Iraqi prisoners. His decision to hand them over rather than keep
quiet changed his life forever. He fears for the safety of his family. Joe Darby knew what he saw
was wrong, but it took him three weeks to decide to hand those photographs in. When he finally
did, he was promised anonymity and hoped he would hear no more about it. But he was
scared of the repercussions. And then he was sitting in a crowded Iraqi canteen with
hundreds of soldiers and Donald Rumsfeld came on the television to thank Joe Darby by
name for handing in the photographs. "I don't think it was an accident because those things are
pretty much scripted," Mr Darby says. "I really find it hard to believe that the secretary of defence
of the United States has no idea about the star witness for a criminal case being anonymous."
Rather than turn on him for betraying colleagues, most of the soldiers in his unit shook his hand. It
was at home where the real trouble started. His wife ...had to flee to her sister's house which was
then vandalised with graffiti. Many in his home town called him a traitor. But he does not see
himself as a hero, or a traitor. Just "a soldier who did his job - no more, no less. I've never
regretted for one second what I did when I was in Iraq, to turn those pictures in," he says.
Ruling Limited Spying Efforts

A federal intelligence court judge earlier this year secretly declared a key element of the
Bush administration's wiretapping efforts illegal, according to a lawmaker and government
sources, providing a previously unstated rationale for fevered efforts by congressional lawmakers
this week to expand the president's spying powers. House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (ROhio) disclosed elements of the court's decision in remarks ... to Fox News as he was promoting
the administration-backed wiretapping legislation. The judge, whose name could not be learned,
concluded early this year that the government had overstepped its authority in attempting to
broadly surveil communications between two locations overseas that are passed through routing
stations in the United States. The decision was both a political and practical blow to the
administration, which had long held that all of the National Security Agency's enhanced
surveillance efforts since 2001 were legal. The administration for years had declined to subject
those efforts to the jurisdiction of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and after it finally did
so in January the court ruled that the administration's legal judgment was at least partly wrong.
The practical effect has been to block the NSA's efforts to collect information from a large volume
of foreign calls and e-mails that passes through U.S. communications nodes clustered around New
York and California. Both Democrats and Republicans have signaled they are eager to fix that
problem through amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). An unstated
facet of the program is that anyone the foreigner is calling inside the United States, as long
as that person is not the primary target, would also be wiretapped.
A Push to Rewrite Wiretap Law

The Bush administration is pressing Congress this week for the authority to intercept, without a
court order, any international phone call or e-mail between a surveillance target outside the United
States and any person in the United States. It would also give the attorney general sole authority
to order the interception of communications for up to one year as long as he certifies that the
surveillance is directed at a person outside the United States. Civil liberties and privacy groups
have denounced the administration's proposal, which they say would effectively allow the National
Security Agency to revive a warrantless surveillance program conducted in secret from 2001 until
late 2005. They say it would also give the government authority to force carriers to turn over any
international communications into and out of the United States without a court order. An unstated
facet of the program is that anyone the foreigner is calling inside the United States, as long as that
person is not the primary target, would also be wiretapped. Caroline Fredrickson, director of the
ACLU's Washington legislative office [said], "What the administration is really going after is the
Americans. Even if the primary target is overseas, they want to be able to wiretap
Americans without a warrant." The proposal would also allow the NSA to ... have access to the
entire stream of communications without the phone company sorting, said Kate Martin, director of
the Center for National Security Studies. "It's a 'trust us' system," she said. "Give us access
and trust us."
FBI Plans Initiative To Profile Terrorists

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is developing a computer-profiling system that would enable
investigators to target possible terror suspects. The System to Assess Risk, or STAR, assigns risk
scores to possible suspects based on a variety of information, similar to the way a credit bureau
assigns a rating based on a consumer's spending behavior and debt. The program focuses on
foreign suspects but also includes data about some U.S. residents. Some lawmakers said ... that
the report raises new questions about the government's power to use personal information and
intelligence without accountability. "The Bush administration has expanded the use of this
technology, often in secret, to collect and sift through Americans' most sensitive personal
information," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The use of data mining in the war on terror has sparked criticism. An airplane-passenger screening
program called CAPPS II was revamped and renamed because of civil liberty concerns. An effort
to collect Americans' personal and financial data called Total Information Awareness was killed.
Law enforcement and national security officials have continued working on other programs to use
computers to sift through information for signs of threats. The Department of Homeland Security,
for example, flags travelers entering and leaving the United States who may be potential suspects
through a risk-assessment program called the Automated Targeting System.
Nations Use Fear to Distract From Rights Abuses, Group Says

Powerful governments and armed groups are spreading fear to divert attention from human rights
abuses ... Amnesty International said yesterday in its annual assessment of rights worldwide. "The
politics of fear is fueling a downward spiral of human rights abuse in which no right is sacrosanct
and no person is safe," said Irene Khan, secretary general of the human rights watchdog.
Governments are undermining the rule of law and human rights with "short-sighted fear-mongering
and divisive policies." The United States is "the leading country using fear to justify the
unjustifiable," said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA. "The U.S.
used to be in a position to speak out effectively against torture and military tribunals. We can't do
that now because we are carrying out some of the same practices," he said. The organization
urged the new U.S. Congress to take the lead in restoring respect for humane standards and
practices at home and abroad. Citizens in many countries are being manipulated by fear, the group
said. Amnesty applauded civil society for its "courage and commitment" in the face of abuses.
Marches, petitions, blogs and armbands "may not seem much by themselves," the report said, "but
by bringing people together they unleash an energy for change that should not be underestimated.
People power will change the face of human rights in the 21st century."
Contingencies for nuclear terrorist attack

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/11/MNG2OPP22R1.DTL
Senior government and military officials and other experts, organized by a joint Stanford-Harvard
program called the Preventive Defense Project, met behind closed doors in Washington for a daylong workshop called "The Day After." The organizers of the nonpartisan project, Stanford's
William Perry, a secretary of defense in the Clinton administration, and Harvard's Ashton Carter, a
senior Defense Department official during the Clinton years, assumed the detonation of a bomb
similar in size to the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima in World War II. A paper [they] are writing ...
urges local governments and individuals to build underground bomb shelters; encourages
authorities who survive to prevent evacuation of at least some of the areas attacked for three days
... and proposes suspending regulations on radiation exposure so that first responders would be
able to act, even if that caused higher cancer rates. "The public at large will expect that their
government had thought through this possibility and to have planned for it," Carter said in an
interview. "This kind of an event would be unprecedented. We have had glimpses of something like
this with Hiroshima, and glimpses with 9/11 and with Katrina. But those are only glimpses. If one
bomb goes off, there are likely to be more to follow," Carter said. "This fact, that nuclear
terrorism will appear as a syndrome rather than a single episode, has major
consequences." It would, he added, require powerful government intervention to force
people to do something many may resist -- staying put.
Note: Ashton Carter was co-author, with Philip Zelikow (later Executive Director of the 9/11
Commission) and John Deutch (former CIA Director), of a 1998 Foreign Affairs article,
"Catastrophic Terrorism: Tackling the New Danger," which warned of a possible catastrophic attack
on the World Trade Center and accurately described the governmental aftermath of 9/11.
Rwandan Genocide Survivor Recalls Horror

2006-11-30, CBS News
The genocide in Rwanda 12 years ago was the most efficient ever carried out. 800,000 people
were slaughtered in 100 days. One incredible and inspiring survivors tale has come to light only
recently. It took Immaculee Ilibagiza, a college-educated young woman from a remote village,
many years before she could confront the horrors she lived through. She is speaking out now, she
says, to prevent further atrocities. It was extremely low tech ... just machetes, spears and knives,
wielded by Hutus, the majority tribe as they tried to wipe out the minority Tutsis. [They] were
slaughtered in their tracks, wherever they were found. When it was over, three out of every four
Tutsis in Rwanda had been killed. When it began, Immaculee's father told her to run to a ministers
house three miles away, and to beg him to hide her. The minister was a Hutu. [He] put Immaculee
and six other women in a tiny, rarely used bathroom in a remote corner of the house. Seven
women were huddled in a bathroom measuring three feet by four feet, for 91 days. They
took turns standing and stretching. "They were searching. They were there all the time,"
Immaculee remembers. She lost 40 pounds one third of herself. What prompted the genocide?
The Hutus had long-standing resentments against the Tutsis, who formed the nation's elite. There
are things you can point to, but ... what could possibly explain what happened? Immaculee knows
Rwandans can never forget but believes they must forgive. Revenge ... only prolongs the pain.
Now she's a woman on a mission to spread the story ... hoping it can prevent future atrocities. She
has giving lectures; she has written a book; and she is determined to stop the inevitable
revisionists who claim the genocide never happened.
Note: An intense video clip of this story is available at the CBS link above. This article fails to
mention the key fact that top officials in developing nations knew very well of the mass murder as it
was happening, yet refused to send help. This is graphically portrayed in the powerful movie Hotel
Rwanda. Immacullee's amazing book, Left to Tell, has been an huge inspiration to many people
around the world.
The terrorists who aren't in the news

2006-10-08, Newsday
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-oppoz084922734oct08,0,27561.story
On Sept. 11, 2006, the fifth anniversary of the terror attacks that devastated our nation, a man
crashed his car into a building in Davenport, Iowa, hoping to blow it up and kill himself in the fire.
No national newspaper, magazine or network newscast reported this attempted suicide bombing,
though an AP wire story was available. Cable news (save for MSNBC's Keith Olbermann) was
silent about this latest act of terrorism in America. Had the criminal, David McMenemy, been
Arab or Muslim, this would have been headline news for weeks. But since his target was the
Edgerton Women's Health Center...media have not called this terrorism - even after three decades
of extreme violence by anti-abortion fanatics. Abortion providers and activists received 77 letters
threatening anthrax attacks before 9/11, yet the media never considered anthrax threats as
terrorism until after 9/11, when such letters were delivered to journalists' offices and members of
Congress. Is McMenemy a lone nutcase, or a member of that network of violent extremists? We
don't know, because journalists haven't investigated. Nor have they reported that just last year,
nearly one in five abortion clinics experienced gunfire, arson, bombings, chemical attacks,
assaults, stalking, death threats and blockades. The feds have taken over McMenemy's case,
charging him with arson against a business affecting interstate commerce. Yet as of Oct. 5, no
news outlet on Nexis reported this, despite a second AP story. As we continue national debates on
how to keep America safe from terrorism, journalists do us...no good pretending that the threats
come only from radical Muslims outside our borders.
Note: MSNBC's prime time news anchor Keith Olbermann recently received a threatening letter
with white powder, yet this received virtually no coverage. Could it be because Olbermann has
been quite critical of the current administration lately? For one of the very few articles on this, click
here. For MSNBC article, click here
Failures of Imagination
2006-09-01, September/October 2006 Issue Columbia Journalism Review
http://www.cjr.org/issues/2006/5/Umansky.asp
It was early December 2002. [Carlotta] Gall, the Afghanistan correspondent for The New York
Times, had just seen a press release from the U.S. military announcing the death of a prisoner at
its Bagram Air Base. Soon thereafter the military issued a second release about another detainee
death at Bagram. Gall: I just wanted to know more. And I came up against a blank wall." The body
of one of the detainees had been returned, a young taxi driver known as Dilawar. Gall met with
Dilawars family, and his brother handed Gall a death certificate...that the military had issued. It
said, homicide. The press release announcing Dilawars death stated...heart attack, a conclusion
repeated by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. But the death certificate, the authenticity of
which the military later confirmed to Gall, stated that Dilawar who was just twenty-two years old
died as a result of blunt force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery
disease. Gall filed a story. It sat for a month. I very rarely have to wait long for a story to run.
Galls story...had been at the center of an editorial fight. Roger Cohen, then the Timess foreign
editor: I pitched it, I dont know, four times at page-one meetings, with increasing urgency and
frustration. My single greatest frustration as foreign editor was my inability to get that story on page
one. The story ran on page fourteen under the headline "U.S.Military Investigating Death of
Afghan in Custody." The Times also reported that officers who had overseen the Bagram
prison at the time were promoted; another, who had lied to investigators, was transferred to
help oversee interrogations at Abu Ghraib and awarded a Bronze Star.
Note: Why does it take a university journal to ask the hard questions? Again and again, news that
should be front-page headlines is buried on insignificant pages or not reported at all. This key
article from one of the most respected schools of journalism in the world tells it all about the
unreported and underreported violent abuse of prisoners condoned by elements of the U.S.
military. Don't miss reading this most powerful story in its entirety.
Times Blocks Article to U.K. Web Readers

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=2371151
The New York Times' Web site is blocking British readers from a news article detailing the
investigation into the recent airline terror plot. "We had clear legal advice that publication in the
U.K. might run afoul of their law," Times spokeswoman Diane McNulty said Tuesday. "It's a country
that doesn't have the First Amendment, but it does have the free press. We felt we should respect
their country's law." Visitors who click on a link to the article, published Monday, instead got a
notice explaining that British law "prohibits publication of prejudicial information about the
defendants prior to trial." The blocked article reveals evidence authorities have in the alleged plot
to use liquid explosives to down U.S. airliners over the Atlantic. The Times also blocked U.K.
access to an audio summary of the top Times stories, which included the article in question. British
readers could find excerpts posted on Web journals and other unblocked sites. In fact, the Daily
Mail of London published an article on the case, attributing details to the Times. The Times also is
keeping the article out of printed editions published in the U.K. or mailed to U.K. subscribers.
Note: To see the blocked article, click here. The more likely reason for blocking the article is that it
makes clear that the threat was significantly exaggerated by authorities and that experts on the
case were unsure "whether any of the suspects was technically capable of assembling and
detonating liquid explosives." Clearly, there are those who want to keep us in fear in order to gain
ever greater control.
Former Scotland Yard Official Peter Power on London Bombings

2005-07-07, Global Research/BBC Radio
http://globalresearch.ca/audiovideo/070705londonterrorexercise.mp3
POWER: At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company
of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at
the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of
my neck standing up right now. HOST: To get this quite straight, you were running an exercise
to see how you would cope with this, and it happened while you were running the exercise?
POWER: Precisely, and it was about half past nine this morning. We planned this for a company,
and for obvious reasons I don't want to reveal their name but they're listening and they'll know it.
And we had a room full of crisis managers for the first time they'd met. And so within five minutes
we made a pretty rapid decision that this is the real one, and so we went through the correct drills
of activating crisis management procedures to jump from slow time to quick time thinking.
Note: For Mr. Power's comments on CBC radio, Canada's PBS, click here. For many more serious
questions raised around the London bombings, click here and here. For a very similar
"coincidence" on 9/11, click here.
The hidden history of the CIAs prison in Poland

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-hidden-history-of-t...
In early 2003, two senior CIA officers arrived at the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw to pick up a pair of
large cardboard boxes. Inside were bundles of cash totaling $15 million that had been flown from
Germany via diplomatic pouch. The Americans and Poles then sealed an agreement that over the
previous weeks had allowed the CIA the use of a secret prison a remote villa in the Polish lake
district to interrogate al-Qaeda suspects. The Polish intelligence service received the money,
and the CIA had a solid location for its newest covert operation, according to former agency
officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the interrogation program, including
previously unreported details about the creation of the CIAs black sites, or secret prisons. The
CIA prison in Poland was arguably the most important of all the black sites created by the agency
after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It was the first of a trio in Europe that housed the initial wave of
accused Sept. 11 conspirators, and it was where Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-declared
mastermind of the attacks, was waterboarded 183 times after his capture. In December, the
European Court of Human Rights heard arguments that Poland violated international law
and participated in torture by accommodating its American ally. In the face of Polish and
United States efforts to draw a veil over these abuses, the European Court of Human Rights
now has an opportunity to break this conspiracy of silence and uphold the rule of law, said
Amrit Singh, a lawyer with the Open Society Justice Initiative.
Note: For more on the realities of intelligence agency activities, see the deeply revealing reports
Stampeding Congress, Again

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/03/opinion/03fri1.html?ex=1343793600&en=269721...
Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration has repeatedly demonstrated that it does
not feel bound by the law or the Constitution. It cannot even be trusted to properly use the
enhanced powers it was legally granted after the attacks. Yet, once again, President Bush has
been trying to stampede Congress into a completely unnecessary expansion of his power to spy
on Americans. The fight is over the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the
government to obtain a warrant before eavesdropping on electronic communications that involve
someone in the United States. Mr. Bush decided after 9/11 that he was no longer going to obey
that law. He authorized the National Security Agency to intercept international telephone calls and
e-mail messages of Americans and other residents of this country without a court order. He told
the public nothing and Congress next to nothing about what he was doing, until The Times
disclosed the spying in December 2005. Ever since, the White House has tried to pressure
Congress into legalizing Mr. Bushs rogue operation. The administration and its ... supporters in
Congress argue that American intelligence is blinded by FISA and have seized on neatly timed
warnings of heightened terrorist activity to scare everyone. It is vital for Americans,
especially lawmakers, to resist that argument. It is pure propaganda. [The question at issue
is] whether we are a nation ruled by law, or the whims of men in power.
Documents Shed Light on C.I.A.'s Use of Ex-Nazis

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/06/washington/06cnd-nazi.html?ex=1307246400&en...
The Central Intelligence Agency took no action after learning the pseudonym and whereabouts of
the fugitive Holocaust overseer Adolf Eichmann in 1958, according to C.I.A. documents that shed
new light on the spy agency's use of former Nazis as informers after World War II. The United
States government...had no policy at the time of pursuing Nazi war criminals. The
documents show the C.I.A. "failed to lift a finger" to hunt Eichmann and "forced us to
confront not only the moral harm but the practical harm" of relying on intelligence from exNazis. As head of the Gestapo's Jewish affairs office during the war, Eichmann implemented the
policy of extermination of European Jewry, promoting the use of gas chambers and having a hand
in the murder of millions of Jews. The Eichmann papers are among 27,000 newly declassified
pages released by the C.I.A. to the National Archives under Congressional pressure to make
public files about former officials of Hitler's regime later used as American agents. The material
reinforces the view that most former Nazis gave American intelligence little of value and in some
cases proved to be damaging double agents for the Soviet K.G.B. Since Congress passed the
Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act in 1998, the Interagency Working Group has persuaded the
government to declassify more than 8 million pages of documents. But the group ran into
resistance starting in 2002 from the C.I.A., which sought to withhold operational files from the
1940's and 50's.
Note: For more on clandestine government use of Nazi scientists in developing top-secret mind
control programs with links for verification, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/mindcontrol10pg
Judges liken terror laws to Nazi Germany

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article320005.ece
A powerful coalition of judges, senior lawyers and politicians has warned that the
Government is undermining freedoms citizens have taken for granted for centuries and that
Britain risks drifting towards a police state. One of the country's most eminent judges has said
that undermining the independence of the courts has frightening parallels with Nazi Germany.
Senior legal figures are worried that "inalienable rights" could swiftly disappear unless Tony Blair
ceases attacking the judiciary and freedoms enshrined in the Human Rights Act.
Administration Seeks to Keep Terror Watch-List Data Secret

The Obama administration wants to maintain the secrecy of terrorist watch-list information it
routinely shares with federal, state and local agencies, a move that rights groups say would make
it difficult for people who have been improperly included on such lists to challenge the government.
Intelligence officials in the administration are pressing for legislation that would exempt "terrorist
identity information" from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. Such information -which includes names, aliases, fingerprints and other biometric identifiers -- is widely shared with
law enforcement agencies and intelligence "fusion centers," which combine state and federal
counterterrorism resources. Advocates for civil liberties and open government argue that the
administration has not proved the secrecy is necessary and that the proposed changes could
make the government less accountable for errors on watch lists. The proposed FOIA exemption
has been included in pending House and Senate intelligence authorization bills at the
administration's request. "Instead of enhancing accountability, this would remove

accountability one or two steps further away," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation
of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy. David Sobel, senior counsel for the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group, said the government has successfully
used existing FOIA exemptions to deny requests for watch-list records. Rather than expanding the
list of FOIA exemptions, Congress should pay more attention to improving the procedures for
helping people who have been improperly included on the watch list, Sobel said. "There's a
serious redress problem," he said. "That's the issue that needs to be addressed."
Note: For lots more on government secrecy from reliable, verifiable sources, click here.
Pentagon to Consult Academics on Security

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/arts/18minerva.html?partner=rssuserland&emc...
The Pentagon has started an ambitious and unusual program to recruit social scientists and direct
the nations brainpower to combating security threats like the Chinese military, Iraq, terrorism and
religious fundamentalism. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has compared the initiative
named Minerva, after the Roman goddess of wisdom (and warriors) to the governments effort
to pump up its intellectual capital during the cold war after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in
1957. Although the Pentagon regularly finances science and engineering research, systematic
support for the social sciences and humanities has been rare. But if the uncustomary push to
engage the nations evolutionary psychologists, demographers, sociologists, historians and
anthropologists in security research as well as the prospect of new financial support in lean
times has generated excitement among some scholars, it has also aroused opposition from
others, who worry that the Defense Department and the academy are getting too cozy.
Cooperation between universities and the Pentagon has long been a contentious issue. The
Pentagon put out its first requests for proposals last week. Minerva will award $50 million over five
years. Another set of grants administered by the National Science Foundation is expected to be
announced by the end of this month. [Gates] contacted Robert M. Berdahl, [former chancellor of
the University of California, Berkeley and] the president of the Association of American Universities
which represents 60 of the top research universities in the country in December to help
design Minerva.
Note: For many revealing reports on government corruption from reliable sources, click here.
Prisons to Restore Purged Religious Books

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/washington/27prison.html?ex=1348545600&en=0...
Facing pressure from religious groups, civil libertarians and members of Congress, the federal
Bureau of Prisons has decided to return religious materials that had been purged from prison
chapel libraries because they were not on the bureaus lists of approved resources. After the
details of the removal became widely known this month, Republican lawmakers, liberal Christians
and evangelical talk shows all criticized the government for creating a list of acceptable religious
books. In an e-mail message Wednesday, the bureau said: In response to concerns expressed by
members of several religious communities, the Bureau of Prisons has decided to alter its planned
course of action with respect to the Chapel Library Project. The bureau will begin immediately to
return to chapel libraries materials that were removed in June 2007, with the exception of any
publications that have been found to be inappropriate, such as material that could be radicalizing
or incite violence. The review of all materials in chapel libraries will be completed by the end of
January 2008. Only a week ago the bureau said it was not reconsidering the library policy. But
critics of the bureaus program said it appeared that the bureau had bowed to widespread outrage.
Certainly putting the books back on the shelves is a major victory, and it shows the outcry
from all over the country was heard, said Moses Silverman, a lawyer for three prisoners who
are suing the bureau over the program. But regarding what they do after they put them back
... I remain concerned that the criteria for returning the books will be constitutional and
lawful.
Prisons Purging Books on Faith From Libraries

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/us/10prison.html?ex=1347076800&en=8aca150d6...
Behind the walls of federal prisons nationwide, chaplains have been quietly carrying out a
systematic purge of religious books and materials that were once available to prisoners in
chapel libraries. The chaplains were directed by the Bureau of Prisons to clear the shelves
of any books, tapes, CDs and videos that are not on a list of approved resources. In some
prisons, the chaplains have recently dismantled libraries that had thousands of texts collected over
decades, bought by the prisons, or donated by churches and religious groups. Some inmates are
outraged. Two of them, a Christian and an Orthodox Jew, in a federal prison camp in upstate New
York, filed a class-action lawsuit last month claiming the bureaus actions violate their rights to the
free exercise of religion as guaranteed by the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom
Restoration Act. The bureau, an agency of the Justice Department, defended its effort, which it
calls the Standardized Chapel Library Project, as a way of barring access to materials that could,
in its words, discriminate, disparage, advocate violence or radicalize. Its swatting a fly with a
sledgehammer, said Mark Earley, president of Prison Fellowship, a Christian group. Theres no
need to get rid of literally hundreds of thousands of books that are fine simply because you have a
problem with an isolated book or piece of literature that presents extremism. A chaplain who has
worked more than 15 years in the prison system, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he
is a bureau employee, said: At some of the penitentiaries, guys have been studying and reading
for 20 years, and now they are told that this material doesnt meet some kind of criteria. It doesnt
make sense to them."
Charges dropped for Cuban militant

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/05/10/MNGAMPO4IS1.DTL
In a case that critics say demonstrates a U.S. double standard on terrorism, a federal judge
has dismissed all charges against Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative who has
been accused of masterminding a 1976 bombing of a Cuban civilian airplane that killed 73
people and a series of 1997 bombings in Havana. Posada, 79, is expected to return soon to his
home in Miami as a hero of that city's anti-Castro right wing, despite U.S. government documents
made public recently that have tied him to terrorist acts. [In 1959, Posada] began a long
association with the CIA, receiving training in sabotage and explosives at the U.S. School of the
Americas for the 1961 invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. He also was involved in a 1965 attempt
to overthrow the Guatemalan government. On Oct. 6, 1976, a Cubana jet was blown up in midair
after leaving Barbados for Havana. CIA documents released in 2005 indicate that the agency had
prior knowledge of the plot, and a recently declassified FBI document placed Posada at two
meetings where the bombing was planned. "The CIA taught us everything," Posada said in a 1998
interview with the New York Times. "They taught us explosives, how to kill, bomb, trained us in
acts of sabotage." In 1997, Posada was linked to a series of bombings of hotels, restaurants and
night clubs in Havana. In August 2003 ... the Miami bureau of the FBI made the unexpected
decision to close its terrorism case on Posada. Subsequently, according to FBI officials, five boxes
of evidence were removed from the bureau's evidence room and destroyed.
Note: Why is the U.S. government releasing a suspected terrorist who has stacks of evidence
against him? And why is the CIA training terrorists? Read this article and click here for some
possible answers.
FBI surprise on top domestic terror threat

2005-05-19, MSNBC/AP
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7908466/
Environmental and animal rights extremists who have turned to arson and explosives are
the nations top domestic terrorism threat, the FBI has told lawmakers. Groups such as the
Animal Liberation Front, the Earth Liberation Front and the Britain-based SHAC, or Stop
Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, are way out in front in terms of damage and number of crimes, John
Lewis, the FBIs deputy assistant director for counterterrorism, told a Senate hearing Wednesday.
Just like al-Qaida or any other terrorist organization, ELF and ALF cannot accomplish their goals
without money, membership and the media, Inhofe said. The FBI said 35 of its offices have 150
open investigations, and activists are claiming responsibility for 1,200 crimes between 1990 and
mid-2004.
De Silva report on Finucane case turns spotlight on MI5
2012-12-13, BBC News

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-20708070
The prime minister says a public inquiry into the state's involvement in the assassination of
solicitor Pat Finucane would not produce a fuller picture "of what happened and what went wrong"
than the review he commissioned from Sir Desmond de Silva QC. But by publishing on Thursday
the review containing hundreds of secret and confidential documents, Mr Cameron seems
unwittingly to have strengthened the campaign by the Finucane family and others for a public
inquiry. The scale of collusion is quite shocking: 85% of intelligence that the [Ulster Defence
Association] used to target people for murder originated from army and police sources
270 separate instances of security force leaks to the UDA between January 1987 and
September 1989 Agents working for MI5, [Royal Ulster Constabulary] Special Branch and
Military Intelligence were participating in criminality, presumably including murder. Neither
a proper legal framework nor even guidelines to control the criminality of what are known as these
"participating agents". The Northern Ireland Office was "not overly enthusiastic" about attempts
by senior RUC and MI5 officers to introduce guidelines "despite representations at the highest
levels." This issue was also considered extensively at cabinet level and ministers were clearly
aware that the agents were being run without guidelines. The director general of the MI5 raised it
with the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1988. All this was a "wilful and abject failure by
successive Governments" to run agents lawfully.
Note: Patrick Finucane (1949 12 February 1989) was a Belfast solicitor killed by UDA loyalist
paramilitaries. Two public investigations concluded that elements of the British security forces
colluded in Finucane's murder and there have been high-profile calls for a public inquiry. A review,
led by Desmond Lorenz de Silva, released a report in December 2012 acknowledging that the
case entailed "a wilful and abject failure by successive Governments"; however, Finucane's family
called the De Silva report a "sham."
Doctors Who Aid Torture

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/opinion/08tue1.html
Disturbing new questions have been raised about the role of doctors and other medical
professionals in helping the Central Intelligence Agency subject terrorism suspects to harsh
treatment, abuse and torture. The Red Cross previously documented, from interviews with
high-value prisoners, that medical personnel helped facilitate abuses in the C.I.A.s
enhanced interrogation program during the Bush administration. Now Physicians for Human
Rights has suggested that the medical professionals may also have violated national and
international laws setting limits on what research can be performed on humans. The groups
report focused particularly on a few issues where medical personnel played an important role
determining how far a harsh interrogation could go, providing legal cover against prosecution and
designing future interrogation procedures. In the case of waterboarding, a technique in which
prisoners are brought to the edge of drowning, health professionals were required to monitor the
practice and keep detailed medical records. Their findings led to several changes, including a
switch to saline solution as the near-drowning agent instead of water, ostensibly to protect
the health of detainees who ingest large volumes of liquid but also, the group says, to allow
repeated use of waterboarding on the same subject.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the unlawful actions of US intelligence and military
forces in the "global war on terror," click here.
Catastrophic Terrorism: Tackling the New Danger

1998-11-01, Foreign Affairs, (the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations)
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19981101faessay1434/ashton-carter-john-deutch-%...
A successful attack with weapons of mass destruction could certainly take thousands, or tens of
thousands, of lives. If the device that exploded in 1993 under the World Trade Center had been
nuclear, or had effectively dispersed a deadly pathogen, the resulting horror and chaos would have
exceeded our ability to describe it. Such an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed
event in American history. It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime
and undermine America's fundamental sense of security, as did the Soviet atomic bomb test in
1949. Like Pearl Harbor, this event would divide our past and future into a before and after.
The United States might respond with draconian measures, scaling back civil liberties,
allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects, and use of deadly force.
Note: Is this not a remarkable statement? This 1998 article was written by Philip Zelikow (who
later was Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission!!!), John Deutch (former CIA Director), and
Ashton Carter (former deputy secretary of defense). Dr. David Ray Griffin, an esteemed WTK team
member, asks in his new book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking, "Would it not be interesting if we were
to learn that those who orchestrated the attacks of 9/11 were able to put one of their own -someone who at least had foreknowledge of the attacks -- in charge of carrying out the official
investigation into these attacks?" To view the full article, click here.
Death Of A General
2006-04-09, CBS News
How far should a soldier go when interrogating a prisoner? Is torture OK? What if the
prisoner knew where Saddam Hussein was hiding? How far is too far? That was the dilemma
facing Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer while interrogating an Iraqi major general, among the
most important prisoners of the time. During interrogation, the general died. Welshofer says he
thought Mowhoush might know where Saddam was hiding. Welshofer questioned Mowhoush,
didnt lay a hand on him, and got nothing out of him. So...Welshofer got creative. He remembered
that years before...he helped stuff American soldiers into oil drums to induce claustrophobia and
panic. In Iraq, Welshofer did much the same thing, this time, with a sleeping bag. Mowhoush...was
56 years old and not in good shape. Welshofer took an electrical cord, wrapped it around
Mowhoushs middle to hold the bag in place. Then he straddled him. But when Mowhoush didnt
give him the answers he was looking for, Welshofer says he put his hand over his mouth. "I saw
that the water pooled in his mouth, and it was at that point that I realized...the generals
dead," Welshofer recalls. It happened in Abu Ghraib. It happened in Afghanistan. It happened in
Guantanamo Bay. When you see this across three different arenas and in many different places, it
is no longer just a few guys got it in their head to do this. It is coming from somewhere else. And
its got to come from above.
Greatest Threat to Free Speech Comes Not From Terrorism, But From
Those Claiming to Fight It
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/13/greatest-threat-free-speech-com...
We learned recently from Paris that the Western world is deeply and passionately committed to
free expression and ready to march and fight against attempts to suppress it. Thats a really good
thing, since there are all sorts of severe suppression efforts underway in the West perpetrated
not by The Terrorists but by the Western politicians claiming to fight them. One of the most
alarming examples comes, not at all surprisingly, from the U.K. government, which is currently
agitating for new counterterrorism powers, including plans for extremism disruption orders
designed to restrict those trying to radicalize young people. Advocating any ideas or working for
any political outcomes regarded by British politicians as extremist will not only be a crime, but
can be physically banned in advance. Prime Minister David Cameron unleashed this Orwellian
decree to explain why new Thought Police powers are needed: For too long, we have been a
passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens as long as you obey the law, we will leave you
alone. Its not enough for British subjects merely to obey the law; they must refrain from
believing in or expressing ideas which Her Majestys Government dislikes. Threats to free
speech can come from lots of places. But right now, the greatest threat by far in the West to ideals
of free expression is coming not from radical Muslims, but from the very Western governments
claiming to fight them.
the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.
Canada, At War For 13 Years, Shocked That A Terrorist Attacked Its

Soldiers
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/22/canada-proclaiming-war-12-years...
In Quebec on Monday, two Canadian soldiers were hit by a car driven by Martin Couture-Rouleau,
a 25-year-old Canadian who, as The Globe and Mail reported, converted to Islam recently. One
of the soldiers died, as did Couture-Rouleau when he was shot by police. Canadas Public Safety
Minister Steven Blaney pronounced the incident clearly linked to terrorist ideology." Every
time one of these attacks occurs from 9/11 on down Western governments pretend that it
was just some sort of unprovoked ... act of violence caused by primitive, irrational, savage religious
extremism inexplicably aimed at a country innocently minding its own business. In this case in
Canada, it wasnt civilians who were targeted. The driver waited two hours until he saw a soldier in
uniform. He seems to have deliberately avoided attacking civilians, and targeted a soldier instead
a member of a military that is currently fighting a war. Targeting soldiers who are part of a
military fighting an active war is completely inconsistent with the common usage of the
word terrorism, and yet it is reflexively applied by government officials and media outlets
to this incident in Canada (and others like it in the UK and the US). The term terrorism has
become nothing more than a rhetorical weapon for legitimizing all violence by Western countries,
and delegitimizing all violence against them. This ... is central to how the west propagandizes its
citizenries; the manipulative use of the terrorism term lies at heart of that.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing stories about
manipulation of mass media and terrorism from reliable sources.
Judge orders FBI to investigate witness tampering

http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/08/25/4308448/judge-orders-fbi-to-investigate...
A federal judge has ordered the FBI to scrutinize allegations that the agency pressured a witness
not to testify in a trial about videos related to the Oklahoma City bombing. U.S. District Judge Clark
Waddoups said the agency needs to get to the bottom of the claims from Utah lawyer Jesse
Trentadue, who said that the FBI threatened to cut off a former government operative's benefits if
he appeared in court. Waddoups decided the lawyer's report raises disturbing questions, and he
wanted evidence that the agency has thoroughly investigated the matter. Waddoups ordered the
attorneys to present the results of the witness-tampering investigation on Nov. 13. The
hearing is the latest in a case that reignited questions about whether others were involved
in the bombing that killed 168 people. Trentadue argues surveillance videos from 1995
show Timothy McVeigh had an accomplice. The agency says its investigators have done a
reasonable search and found no evidence of additional unreleased videos. [John] Matthews was
supposed to testify during a late July bench trial, but Trentadue argued that he backed out at the
last minute because the FBI threatened to cut off his veteran's and disability benefits. Trentadue
said Matthews was part of a stealth government operation before the Oklahoma City bombing
tracking militia movements of which McVeigh was a part, and his testimony could support the idea
that there was a second suspect. Matthews told him and a colleague that he had been pressured
in phone calls just before and after he was supposed to testify, the lawyer said.
Note: Many aspects of the Oklahoma City bombing were covered up. For a compilation of media
videos showing without doubt that there were other bombs in the building which later were
completely ignored, click here. For other major media articles showing major manipulation, click
here click here, here, and here.
Trying to Salvage Remains of Blackwater Case

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/12/us/trying-to-salvage-remains-of-blackwater-...
Whether it concerns bankers after the crisis in 2008 or the shooting of innocent civilians by
American contractors in Iraq, the prosecution does not seem to be up to the task. [The fatal]
shooting [of 17 people by Blackwater Worldwide mercenaries] in Nisour Square [Baghdad in Oct.
2007] became a signature moment in the Iraq war. Five Blackwater security guards were indicted
on manslaughter and weapons charges, and a sixth entered a plea deal to testify against his
former colleagues. But over the years, a case that once seemed so clear-cut has been repeatedly
undermined by the governments own mistakes. Prosecutors are trying to hold together what is left
of it. But charges against one contractor were dropped last year because of a lack of evidence.
And the government suffered another self-inflicted setback in April when a federal appeals court
ruled that the prosecution had missed a deadline and allowed the statute of limitations to expire
against a second contractor. The [episode inflamed] anti-American sentiment abroad and helped
cement the image of Blackwater, whose security guards were involved in scores of shootings, as a
trigger-happy company that operated with impunity because of its lucrative contracts with the
American government. As citizens, we need to ask why our government fails to achieve any
accountability for such blatant wrongdoing, said Susan Burke, a lawyer who represented
Iraqi victims of the Nisour Square shooting in a lawsuit that Blackwater settled by paying an
undisclosed amount. The ongoing delays and mistakes undermine any confidence in the
system.
Note: For more on government corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major
US criticised by UN for human rights failings on NSA, guns and drones

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/13/us-un-human-rights-abuses-nsa-dr...
The US came under sharp criticism at the UN human rights committee in Geneva on [March
13] for a long list of human rights abuses that included everything from detention without
charge at Guantnamo, drone strikes and NSA surveillance, to the death penalty, rampant
gun violence and endemic racial inequality. The experts raised questions about the National
Security Agencys surveillance of digital communications in the wake of Edward Snowdens
revelations. The committees 18 experts [are] charged with upholding the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a UN treaty that the US ratified in 1992. The US came under
sustained criticism for its global counter-terrorism tactics, including the use of unmanned drones to
kill al-Qaida suspects, and its transfer of detainees to third countries that might practice torture,
such as Algeria. Committee members also highlighted the Obama administrations failure to
prosecute any of the officials responsible for permitting waterboarding and other enhanced
interrogation techniques under the previous administration. Walter Klin, a Swiss international
human rights lawyer who sits on the committee, attacked the US governments refusal to
recognise the conventions mandate over its actions beyond its own borders. The US has asserted
since 1995 that the ICCPR does not apply to US actions beyond its borders - and has used that
extra-territoriality claim to justify its actions in Guantnamo and in conflict zones.
Note: How sad that it appears this news was not reported in any major US media.
DARPA's 'Hydra' would be an undersea drone carrier

2013-07-23, NBC News
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/darpas-hydra-would-be-undersea-drone-carrie...
Unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, are in the news constantly, but what about unmanned
underwater vehicles? They could also be important in both war and peace, which is why the
Defense Department's research arm, DARPA, is looking into a mobile submarine base from which
to launch drones. The project, still in the earliest stages, is called "Hydra," after the mythical beast
whose heads multiplied upon being cut off. The idea is to create a sort of underwater version of an
aircraft carrier. The Hydra, itself an unmanned underwater vehicle, would be stocked with
drones of various kinds and capacities: circling overhead, scouting underwater for mines,
or listening on the surface.
Note: For more on the US military and police use of drones both abroad and in the US, see the
Despair Drives Guantnamo Detainees to Revolt

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/us/guantanamo-prison-revolt-driven-by-inmat...
A hunger strike is now in its third month [at Guantnamo prison], with 93 prisoners considered to
be participating more than half the inmates. Both military officials and lawyers for the detainees
agree about the underlying cause of the turmoil: a growing sense among many prisoners, some of
whom have been held without trial for more than 11 years, that they will never go home. While
President Obama made closing the prison a top priority when he entered the White House, he put
that effort on the back burner in the face of Congressional opposition to his plan to move the
detainees to a Supermax facility inside the United States. The prisoners had great optimism that
Guantnamo would be closed, Gen. John F. Kelly, who oversees the prison as head of the United
States Southern Command, recently told Congress. They were devastated when the president
backed off ... of closing the facility. That disappointment was heightened by Mr. Obamas decision
in January 2011 to sign legislation to restrict the transfers of prisoners. More than half the inmates
were designated three years ago for transfer to another country if security conditions could be met,
but the transfers dried up. President Obama has publicly and privately abandoned his
promise to close Guantnamo, said Carlos Warner, a lawyer who represents one of 17 hunger
strikers being kept alive by force-feeding through nasal tubes. His tragic political decision has
caused the men to lose all hope. Thus, many innocent men have chosen death over a life of
unjust indefinite detention.
Federal court rejects CIA's denial of drone strikes as 'fiction'

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-court-cia-drone-20130315,0,1257923...
A federal appeals court said [on March 15] that it will no longer accept the fiction from the Obama
administrations lawyers that the CIA has no interest in or documents that describe drone strikes.
It is neither logical nor plausible for the CIA to maintain that it would reveal anything not already in
the public domain to say the Agency at least has an intelligence interest in such strikes, said Chief
Judge Merrick Garland. The defendant is, after all, the Central Intelligence Agency. The decision
gave a partial victory to the American Civil Liberties Union in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit
that seeks documents on the governments still-secret policy on drone strikes. The three judges ...
rejected the administrations position that it could simply refuse to confirm or deny that it had any
such documents. A federal judge had rejected the ACLUs suit entirely, but the three-judge appeals
court revived the suit. The agencys non-response does not pass the straight face test,
Garland concluded. He cited public statements from President Obama, new CIA Director
John Brennan and former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that discussed the use of drone
strikes abroad. In this case, the CIA has asked the courts ... to give their imprimatur to a
fiction of deniability that no reasonable person would regard as plausible, Garland wrote in
ACLU vs. CIA. ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer called the decision a victory. It requires the
government to retire the absurd claim that the CIAs interest in targeted killing is a secret, he said.
It also means that the CIA will have to explain what records it is withholding and on what grounds
it is withholding them."
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the lies required to
sustain the illegal US/UK wars of aggression in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, click here.
I did it to make the world a better place: Manning

2013-03-01, Sydney Morning Herald/New York Times
http://www.smh.com.au/world/i-did-it-to-make-the-world-a-better-place-manning...
Bradley Manning has confessed in open court to providing vast archives of military and diplomatic
files to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks, saying he wanted the information to become public "to
make the world a better place". Appearing before a military judge for more than an hour on [Feb.
28], Private Manning read a statement recounting how he joined the military, became an
intelligence analyst in Iraq, decided that certain documents should become known to the
American public to prompt a wider debate about the Iraq War, and ultimately uploaded them
to WikiLeaks. Before reading the statement, he pleaded guilty to 10 criminal counts in connection
with the leak, which included videos of airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan in which civilians were
killed, logs of military incident reports, assessment files of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, and 250,000 diplomatic cables. The guilty pleas exposed him to up to 20 years in prison.
But the case against the slightly built, bespectacled 25-year-old who has become a folk hero
among antiwar and whistleblower advocacy groups is not over. In a riveting personal history,
Private Manning portrayed himself as thinking carefully about the categories of information he was
divulging, excluding the sort that would harm the United States. He said he was initially concerned
about diplomatic cables in particular, but after doing research learned that the most sensitive ones
were not placed into the database to which he had access, and he concluded that those might
prove "embarrassing" but would not cause harm.
Remote U.S. base at core of secret operations

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/remote-us-base-at-core-...
Around the clock, about 16 times a day, drones take off or land at a U.S. military base [in Djibouti],
the combat hub for the Obama administrations ... wars in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East.
Some of the unmanned aircraft are bound for Somalia. Most of the armed drones, however, veer
north across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen. Camp Lemonnier began as a temporary staging ground
for U.S. Marines looking for a foothold in the region a decade ago. Over the past two years, the
U.S. military has clandestinely transformed it into the busiest Predator drone base outside the
Afghan war zone. The Obama administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal
the legal and operational details of its targeted-killing program. Increasingly, the orders to
find, track or kill [targeted] people are delivered to Camp Lemonnier. Secrecy blankets most
of the [500-acre] camps activities. In August, the Defense Department delivered a master plan
to Congress detailing how the camp will be used over the next quarter-century. About $1.4 billion
in construction projects are on the drawing board, including a huge new compound that could
house up to 1,100 Special Operations forces, more than triple the current number. Drones will
continue to be in the forefront. Today, Camp Lemonnier is the centerpiece of an expanding
constellation of half a dozen U.S. drone and surveillance bases in Africa ... from Mali to Libya to
the Central African Republic. The U.S. military also flies drones from small civilian airports in
Ethiopia and the Seychelles, but those operations pale in comparison to what is unfolding in
Djibouti.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the secret and illegal
operations of the "global war on terror," click here.
Watch a Confessed Terrorist Scramble to Save Himself

2011-10-20, PBS
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/afghanistan-pakistan/david-headley/wa...
After years of criminality and deception that included scouting targets for the 2008 Mumbai terrorist
attacks a slaughter that left 166 people dead Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley
was arrested by U.S. authorities in October 2009. Facing the death penalty and possible
extradition overseas, he chose to cooperate. A federal judge yesterday ordered federal
prosecutors to make public two video clips of the FBIs interrogation of Headley shortly after he
was arrested. The tapes show Headley ... trying to make the kind of deal that had won his freedom
twice before. His first success came in 1988, when his cooperation with the Drug Enforcement
Agency (DEA) shrunk an eight-year sentence for importing heroin down to four years.
When he was arrested again on heroin charges in 1997, he again cooperated with the DEA,
becoming an informant and even traveling to Pakistan on the agencys behalf. He served 15
months in prison, when he had been looking at nine years. From these experiences, Headley knew
the more information he gave, the sweeter the deal. Once again, Headley succeeded in getting
himself a deal. His plea agreement saved him from extradition and the death penalty, but his
cooperation included testifying against his childhood best friend, Tahawwur Rana, who in June was
found guilty of conspiring with Headley to attack a Danish newspaper. During Ranas trial, the
defense played these two clips of Headleys interrogation in court.
Note: Videos of Headley's manipulations are available at the link above. For deeply revealing
reports from reliable major media sources on government corruption, click here.
The Informants
2011-09-01, Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/fbi-terrorist-informants
Ever since 9/11, counterterrorism has been the FBI's No. 1 priority, consuming the lion's share of
its budget$3.3 billion, compared to $2.6 billion for organized crimeand much of the attention of
field agents and a massive, nationwide network of informants. After years of emphasizing
informant recruiting as a key task for its agents, the bureau now maintains a roster of 15,000 spies
many of them tasked ... with infiltrating Muslim communities in the United States. In addition, for
every informant officially listed in the bureau's records, there are as many as three unofficial ones,
according to one former high-level FBI official, known in bureau parlance as "hip pockets." The
bureau now maintains a roster of 15,000 spies, some paid as much as $100,000 per case,
many of them tasked with infiltrating Muslim communities in the United States. The FBI
regularly taps all of them as part of a domestic intelligence apparatus whose only historical
peer might be COINTELPRO, the program the bureau ran from the '50s to the '70s to discredit
and marginalize organizations ranging from the Ku Klux Klan to civil-rights and protest groups.
Throughout the FBIs history, informant numbers have been closely guarded secrets. Periodically,
however, the bureau has released those figures. A Senate oversight committee in 1975 found the
FBI had 1,500 informants. In 1980, officials disclosed there were 2,800. Six years later, following
the FBIs push into drugs and organized crime, the number of bureau informants ballooned to
6,000, the Los Angeles Times reported in 1986. And according to the FBI, the number grew
significantly after 9/11.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the realities of
intelligence agency operations, click here.
US contractor can sue Donald Rumsfeld for alleged Iraq torture, judge
rules
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/04/american-sues-donald-rumsfeld-ira...
An American former military contractor who claims he was imprisoned and tortured by the US
army in Iraq has been allowed by a judge to sue the former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld
personally for damages. The man, an army veteran whose identity has been withheld, worked as a
translator for the US Marines in the volatile Anbar province when he was detained for nine months
at Camp Cropper, a US military facility near Baghdad airport dedicated to holding "high-value"
detainees. He was never charged with a crime. Court papers filed on his behalf say he was
repeatedly abused, then released without explanation in August 2006. Two years later, he
filed a suit in Washington arguing that Rumsfeld personally approved torturous
interrogation techniques on a case-by-case basis and controlled his detention without
access to the courts in violation of his constitutional rights. The Obama administration has
represented Rumsfeld through the justice department and argued that he could not be sued
personally for official conduct. It also argued that a judge could not review wartime decisions which
are the constitutional responsibility of Congress and the president. District judge James Gwin
rejected those arguments and said US citizens were protected by the constitution at home or
abroad during wartime.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the illegal prosecution of the US "global war on
terror", click here.
Former Gov. Jesse Ventura sues TSA over pat-downs

2011-07-22, St. Paul Pioneer Press (One of Minneapolis' leading newspapers)
http://www.twincities.com/ci_18533113?nclick_check=1
It started with Jesse Ventura's titanium hip and turned into a fight over the Bill of Rights. In federal
court in St. Paul on Friday, a lawyer for the former governor argued that rules implemented by the
Transportation Security Administration - which subject Ventura to pat-down body searches when
he flies - violate his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable and unwarranted searches.
The TSA's rules were "issued in secret, (were) never published (and) can be changed at any time,
in secret," attorney David Bradley Olsen told U.S. District Judge Susan Rogers Nelson. Silent
throughout the hearing, [Ventura] went up to Tamara Ulrich, the Justice Department lawyer from
Washington who had argued for dismissal, and told her TSA's airport screenings were unAmerican. "In a free country, you should never feel comfortable being searched," he told
her. "This is not the country I was born in. We're a fascist nation now." He turned 60 this
month and now hosts "Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura" on cable's truTV. His lawsuit, filed
in January, stems from the fact the show requires him to fly two or three times a week. Since [the
fall of 2010], whenever his hip sets off the walk-through detector, TSA screeners pull him aside for
a more detailed check, and he contends it is unconstitutional. Ventura and Olsen maintain that
challenging the TSA's actual procedures is difficult because they are considered "Sensitive
Security Information" and aren't made public.
Note: Jesse Ventura is just one of many former highly-placed government officials to publicly raise
strong questions about the official account of the 9/11 attacks, events which provided the pretext
for the increasingly totalitarian controls on travel. For a vitally important analysis of the plans of the
Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to carry out its agency motto, "Dominate. Intimidate.
Control.", click here.
'Prince of Mercenaries' who wreaked havoc in Iraq turns up in Somalia

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/prince-of-mercenaries-who-wrea...
Erik Prince, the American founder of the private security firm Blackwater Worldwide, has cropped
up at the centre of a controversial scheme to establish a new mercenary force to crack down on
piracy ... in the war-torn East African country of Somalia. The project, which emerged yesterday
when an intelligence report was leaked to media in the United States, requires Mr Prince to help
train a private army of 2,000 Somali troops that will be loyal to the country's United Nations-backed
government. Several neighbouring states, including the United Arab Emirates, will pay the bills. Mr
Prince is working in Somalia alongside Saracen International, a murky South African firm
which is run by a former officer from the Civil Co-operation Bureau, an apartheid-era force
notorious for killing opponents of the white minority government. News of his latest project
has alarmed, though hardly surprised, critics of Blackwater. The firm made hundreds of millions of
dollars from the "war on terror", but was severely tarnished by a string of incidents in post-invasion
Iraq, in which its employees were accused of committing dozens of unlawful killings. Mr Prince ...
remains entangled in a string of lawsuits pertaining to the alleged recklessness of the firm. For
most of the past year, he has been living in Abu Dhabi, where he has close relations with the
government and feels better positioned to dodge lawsuits.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources exposing the crimes carried out by corporations and
the military in the "Global War on Terrorism", click here.
Rethinking the OSS and CIA

2011-01-20, Washington Post blog
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2011/01/rethinking_the_oss_and_cia....
It doesn't seem all that long ago that *le tout Washington* was crying for the CIA to be demolished
and replaced by an updated version of the OSS, our World War II spying and dirty tricks service.
The idea, accelerated by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was that the CIA had grown too bloated,
comfortable and cautious over the 40 years since it moved into its new headquarters in Langley,
Va. The challenge thrown down by al-Qaeda, it was said, called for a far smaller, nimble, can-do
organization, as presidential candidate John McCain put it, that would fight terrorist subversion
across the world and in cyberspace. But a few hours spent with Douglas Waller's forthcoming and
lively new book, Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American
Espionage, should cure that. As Waller and a number of other authors before him have
discovered, the forerunner of the CIA was every bit as bewitched, beleaguered and befogged
for much of its brief existence as [the CIA]. Even in Waller's balanced hands, there's no
glossing over the record that the OSS's contribution to the glorious victories over Germany,
and especially Japan, was marginal. From the invasion of North Africa through the Italian
campaign, to the invasion of occupied France and the final push into Germany, the OSS mostly
muddled through.
Plain-clothes officers 'were deployed at G20 demo'

2011-01-19, BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-12232936
Scotland Yard has admitted giving MPs inaccurate information by denying "covert officers" were
deployed at London's G20 protests in April 2009. In a statement, the Metropolitan Police said it
had established that covert officers had been deployed to the protests. The letter came after ... the
unmasking of undercover policeman Mark Kennedy, who attended many demonstrations during
seven years living as a spy among green activists. Giving evidence at the select committee in
2009, Commander Bob Broadhurst told MPs then: "The only officers we deploy for intelligence
purposes at public order are forward intelligence team officers who are wearing full police uniforms
with a yellow jacket with blue shoulders. There were no plain clothes officers deployed at all." The
Met statement released on Wednesday said: "Having made thorough checks on the back of recent
media reporting we have now established that covert officers were deployed during the G20
protests. Therefore the information that was given by Commander Bob Broadhurst to the
Home Affairs Select Committee saying that 'We had no plain-clothes officers deployed
within the crowd' was not accurate."
Note: For lots more on the police provocateur Mark Kennedy, click here.
Growing backlash against TSA body scanners, pat-downs

2010-11-13, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/11/12/travel.screening/index.html
A growing pilot and passenger revolt over full-body scans and what many consider intrusive patdowns couldn't have come at a worse time for the nation's air travel system. Thanksgiving, the
busiest travel time of the year, is less than two weeks away. Grassroots groups are urging
travelers to either not fly or to protest by opting out of the full-body scanners and undergo
time-consuming pat-downs instead. Some pilots, passengers and flight attendants have
chosen to opt out of the revealing scans. One online group, National Opt Out Day calls for a
day of protest against the scanners on Wednesday, November 24, the busiest travel day of the
year. Another group argues the TSA should remove the scanners from all airports. The Electronic
Privacy Information Center (EPIC)... is taking legal action. Pilots' unions for US Airways and
American Airlines are urging their members to avoid full-body scanning at airport security
checkpoints, citing health risks and concerns about intrusiveness and security officer behavior.
"Pilots should NOT submit to AIT (Advanced Imaging Technology) screening," wrote Capt. Mike
Cleary, president of the U.S. Airline Pilots Association. "Frequent exposure to TSA-operated
scanner devices may subject pilots to significant health risks," Cleary wrote. The website We Won't
Fly urgers travelers to "Act now. Travel with Dignity."
Note: For a powerful, one-minute video showing just how invasive these searches are, click here.
Angry in America: Inside Alex Jones' World

2010-09-02, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/alex-jones-day-life-libertarian-radio-host/st...
"Good old Uncle Sam will stage attacks ... that's how they keep the slaves in line," the libertarian
radio host says during a rant on his show. "We have to wake up and face the fact that we have a
criminal government." The criminal government is just one of many conspiracy theories [Alex]
Jones espouses -- although he thinks that term belittles his reporting. He also believes that the
Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center were an inside job ... and that the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) runs concentration camps. "They [FEMA] have designat[ed] sports
stadiums," he said matter-of-factly, "They have designated fields, they have designated closed
down prisoner of war camps for the American people during a civil uprising." His six-day-a-week
radio show and webcast reach an estimated one million people a day. On YouTube and
elsewhere, Jones estimates 200 million people have seen his various documentaries, like
"The Fall of the Republic," "Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement" and "The Obama
Deception." "I've got to report the information I see and what I believe is happening," he said. "I
have a responsibility to put out."
Note: It's extremely rare that a major media outlet such as ABC News will cover the work of a
prominent member of the 9/11 truth movement. It is likely due to the growing groundswell of
demands for a genuine investigation into the events. On September 9, two days before the ninth
anniversary of 9/11, three new professional organizations held joint press conferences in New York
City and Los Angeles: Scientists for 9/11 Truth, Military Officers for 9/11 Truth, and Actors and
Artists for 9/11 Truth, calling for such an investigation.
WikiLeaks releases 'CIA report'

2010-08-26, CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/08/25/wikileaks.cia.release/#fbid=2AOzOD4MGB-&...
The whistle-blower website WikiLeaks on [August 25] posted what it said was an internal CIA
report into the perception that the United States exports terrorism. The three-page document,
dated February 2, 2010, asks, "What If Foreigners See the United States as an 'Exporter of
Terrorism?'" The founder and editor of the website, Julian Assange, was arrested in absentia last
week in Sweden on charges of rape, but the warrant was revoked less than a day later by Chief
Prosecutor Eva Finne. Separately on [August 24], the attorney for the alleged victims told CNN
rumors that the Pentagon or CIA was somehow involved in the sex crime accusations
against Assange are "complete nonsense."
U.S. Is Still Using Private Spy Ring, Despite Doubts

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/world/16contractors.html
Top military officials have continued to rely on a secret network of private spies who have
produced hundreds of reports from deep inside Afghanistan and Pakistan. Earlier this year,
government officials admitted that the military had sent a group of former Central Intelligence
Agency officers and retired Special Operations troops into the region to collect information
some of which was used to track and kill people suspected of being militants. Many portrayed it as
a rogue operation that had been hastily shut down once an investigation began. But interviews
with more than a dozen current and former government officials and businessmen, and an
examination of government documents, tell a different a story. Not only are the networks still
operating, their detailed reports on subjects like the workings of the Taliban leadership in
Pakistan and the movements of enemy fighters in southern Afghanistan are also submitted
almost daily to top commanders and have become an important source of intelligence.
Pentagon officials said that ... the supervisor who set up the contractor network, Michael D.
Furlong, was now under investigation. But a review of the program by The New York Times found
that Mr. Furlongs operatives were still providing information using the same intelligence gathering
methods as before.
Note: For revealing reports on the secret and extra-legal operations of the US military in
Afghanistan and Iraq, click here.
Bagram prison in Afghanistan may become the new Guantnamo

The American detention centre at Bagram in Afghanistan could be expanded into a Guantnamostyle prison for terrorist suspects detained around the world. This is one of the options being
considered as US officials try to find an alternative to Guantnamo Bay. A decision to send alQaeda suspects detained in countries such as Yemen and Somalia to Bagram, which is located
north of Kabul, would be highly controversial. Bagram is synonymous in Afghan eyes with past
human rights abuses, although the old prison has been replaced by a new facility at the large US
airbase. The other alternative of using a special prison in the US is seen as less
practical because the detainees would have to be put through the American justice system,
and some of the suspects considered by the US as the most dangerous would be difficult
to prosecute because of the lack of sufficient evidence. Congress would also oppose such a
move. Bagram currently houses about 800 detainees, including a small number of foreign fighters
who were not arrested in Afghanistan. They were taken there under the Administration of George
W. Bush.
Note: Isn't it amazing that this article simply asserts that "lack of sufficient evidence" to prosecute
is a reason to hold captives indefinitely?
Spanish MP's photo used for Osama Bin Laden poster

2010-01-16, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8463657.stm
A Spanish politician has said he was shocked to find out the FBI had used his photo for a digitallyaltered image showing how Osama Bin Laden might look. Gaspar Llamazares said he would no
longer feel safe travelling to the US after his hair and parts of his face appeared on a most-wanted
poster. He said the use of a real person for the mocked-up image was "shameless". The FBI
admitted a forensic artist had obtained certain facial features "from a photograph he found
on the internet". The digitally-altered photos of the al-Qaeda leader, showing how he might
look now, aged 52, were published on the state department's Rewards for Justice website.
Officials said they had adapted a 1998 file image to take account of a decade's worth of ageing,
and possible changes to facial hair. Mr Llamazares said it showed the "low level" of US intelligence
services and could cause problems if he was wrongly identified as the Saudi. "Bin Laden's safety
is not threatened by this but mine certainly is," he said, adding that he was considering taking legal
action.
Note: Now the FBI has admitted that it is doctoring images of Osama bin Laden, and doing so
quite ineptly. For WantToKnow team member David Ray Griffin's powerful analysis of the highly
suspect series of audio and video "messages from bin Laden" claimed by US authorities, click
here.
Israeli Robots Remake Battlefield

Israel is developing an army of robotic fighting machines that offers a window onto the potential
future of warfare. Sixty years of near-constant war ... and its high-tech industry have long made
Israel one of the world's leading innovators of military robotics. "We're trying to get to unmanned
vehicles everywhere on the battlefield for each platoon in the field," says Lt. Col. Oren
Berebbi, head of the Israel Defense Forces' technology branch. "We can do more and more
missions without putting a soldier at risk." Among the recently deployed technologies that set
Israel ahead of the curve is the Guardium unmanned ground vehicle, [which] is essentially an
armored off-road golf cart with a suite of optical sensors and surveillance gear. In the Gaza conflict
in January 2009, Israel unveiled remote-controlled bulldozers. Israel pioneered the use of aerial
drones. Within the next year, Israeli engineers expect to deploy the voice-commanded, sixwheeled Rex robot, capable of carrying 550 pounds of gear alongside advancing infantry. The
Protector SV [is] an unmanned, heavily armed speedboat that today makes up a growing part of
the Israeli naval fleet.
Note: For many revealing reports from reliable sources on war manipulations and advanced
weapons developments often being used against civilians, click here.
'Liberation was just a big lie'

2009-11-19, Toronto Star (One of Canada's leading newspapers)
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/afghanmission/article/727873---liberation-...
She sleeps in safe houses, with a rotating squad of bodyguards securing the doors. She goes out
only in a billowing burqa. Even her wedding was held in secret. Elected the youngest member of
the Afghan parliament and suspended for her outspoken criticism of the country's top
officials Malalai Joya has been labelled the bravest woman in Afghanistan. Small, softspoken and now 31, she has survived at least four assassination attempts. "Canada should
pull its troops out now," she said in Toronto, where she was promoting her book A Woman Among
Warlords, co-written with Canadian peace activist Derrick O'Keefe. And, she says, U.S. President
Barack Obama, who is considering a surge in troop levels to battle Al Qaeda and the Taliban,
should think again. "The United States should go, too. As long as foreign troops are in the country
we will be fighting two enemies instead of one." Yes, she says, there is a risk of civil war ... but it
would still be better than "night raids, torture and aerial bombardment" that killed hundreds of
Afghan civilians while the Taliban made steady gains. "Liberation was just a big lie." Joya believes
Afghans are now better prepared to battle the Taliban alone. "resistance has increased, and
people are becoming more aware of democracy and human rights. They need humanitarian and
educational support." But not, she adds, at the point of a gun. "It will be a long struggle," she
wrote. "A river is made drop by drop ... you can kill me, but you can never kill my spirit."
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the realities of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, click
here.
Big business and security

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/sep/25/eu-security
The European security research programme (ESRP) has a 1.4bn EU budget and its twin
objectives are to enhance European security and foster the growth of a globally competitive
security industry in Europe. Unfortunately, in its haste to cash-in on the homeland security boom,
the EU has effectively outsourced the design of its security research agenda to some of the
corporations that have the most to gain from its implementation. It has created bodies outside
the formal structure of the EU, beyond parliamentary scrutiny and democratic control. The
result is a public research programme designed by lobbyists, for lobbyists, with
corporations invited to shape the objectives and annual priorities, and then apply for the
money on offer. ESRP was the brainchild of the "group of personalities", an EU advisory body
convened in 2003 that included some of Europe's largest defence and IT contractors alongside the
likes of NATO, the EU military committee and the Rand Corporation. The group's primary concern
was the scale of the US government's investment in homeland security R&D, which meant that the
US was "taking a lead" in the development of security "technologies and equipment which could
meet a number of Europe's needs", putting US multinationals in "a very strong competitive
position".
Note: The author of this article, Ben Hayes, has written a detailed report, NeoConOpticon: the EU
Security-Industrial Complex published by Statewatch and the Transnational Institute.
Ministers must explain destruction of 'torture flight' papers, says panel

of MPs
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/09/diego-garcia-flights-mps-documents
Ministers must explain why crucial documents relating to CIA "torture flights" that stopped on
sovereign British territory were destroyed, a panel of MPs has said. In particular, the MPs ... call for
an explanation for the missing papers, which might explain the role of Diego Garcia, the British
overseas territory, in the US's "extraordinary rendition" programme. The report says: "We
recommend that the government discloses how, why and by whom the records relating to flights
through Diego Garcia since the start of 2002 were destroyed." Foreign secretary David Miliband
admitted 18 months ago that two US planes refuelled on the Indian Ocean island. The committee
now wants a detailed account of the record-keeping and disposal policy regarding flights through
the territory and "elsewhere through UK airspace". It also criticises the government's inability to
offer assurances that ships anchored outside Diego Garcia's waters were not involved in the
rendition programme. "The government must address the use of UK airspace for empty flights that
may be part of a rendition circuit," says the report. Amnesty International said the MPs' verdict
underlined the need for a full, independent inquiry into the UK's involvement in "war on
terror" and human rights abuses. The committee also voiced disquiet over claims that
British intelligence officers were complicit in the torture of detainees held overseas.
According to documents revealed by the high court last month, an MI5 officer visited Morocco
three times during the time British resident Binyam Mohamed claims he was secretly interrogated
and tortured there.
Note: For many reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities of "the war on terror," click
here.
To Critics, New Policy on Terror Looks Old

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/us/02gitmo.html
Civil libertarians recently accused President Obama of acting like former President George W.
Bush, citing reports about Mr. Obamas plans to detain terrorism suspects without trials on
domestic soil after he closes the Guantnamo prison. It was only the latest instance in which
critics have argued that Mr. Obama has failed to live up to his campaign pledge to restore
our Constitution and the rule of law and raised a pointed question: Has he, on issues
related to fighting terrorism, turned out to be little different from his predecessor? Mr.
Obamas critics say that ... the core problem with Mr. Bushs approach ... was that it trammeled
individual rights. And they say Mr. Obamas policies have not changed that. President Obama
may mouth very different rhetoric, said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American
Civil Liberties Union. He may have a more complicated process with members of Congress. But in
the end, there is no substantive break from the policies of the Bush administration. Mr. Obama
has also drawn fire from human rights advocates for fighting to prevent detainees in Afghanistan
from having habeas corpus rights. Mr. Obama has also continued other Bush-era policies ... like
the C.I.A.s extraordinary rendition program ... and the invocation of the state secrets privilege
to shut down some lawsuits. Jack Balkin, a Yale Law School professor, said Mr. Obamas
ratification of the basic outlines of the surveillance and detention policies he inherited would
reverberate for generations. By bestowing bipartisan acceptance on them, Mr. Balkin said, Mr.
Obama is consolidating them as entrenched features of government. What we are watching, Mr.
Balkin said, is a liberal, centrist, Democratic version of the construction of these same governing
practices.
Note: For revealing media articles from reliable sources on the hidden realities of never-ending
"war on terror", click here.
Global economic crisis called biggest U.S. security threat

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-security-threat13-2009fe...
The nation's new intelligence chief [has warned] that the global economic crisis is the most serious
security peril facing the United States, threatening to topple governments [and] trigger waves of
refugees. The economic collapse "already looms as the most serious one in decades, if not in
centuries," said Dennis C. Blair, director of national intelligence, in [testimony before the Senate
Intelligence Committee]. Blair's focus on the economic meltdown represents a sharp contrast
from the testimony of his predecessors in recent years, who devoted most of their attention
in the annual threat assessment hearing to the issues of terrorism and the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. "Time is probably our greatest threat," Blair said. "The longer it takes for
the recovery to begin, the greater the likelihood of serious damage to U.S. strategic interests." He
said that one-quarter of the world's nations had already experienced low-level instability attributed
to the economic downturn, including shifts in power. He cited anti-government demonstrations in
Europe and Russia, and he warned that much of Latin America and the former Soviet satellite
states lacked sufficient cash to cope with the spreading crisis. "Countries will not be able to export
their way out of this one because of the global nature" of the crisis, Blair said. U.S. intelligence
analysts fear there could be a backlash against American efforts to promote free markets because
the crisis was triggered by the United States. "We're generally held to be responsible," Blair said.
Note: For the complete text of Blair's testimony, click here. For an excellent analysis, click here.
For more on the realities behind the economic crisis, click here.
Under Obama, same stance on rendition suit

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/09/BAGS15QB5B.DTL
President Obama's Justice Department signaled in a San Francisco courtroom Monday that the
change in administrations has not changed the government's position on secrecy and the rights of
foreign prisoners - and that lawsuits by alleged victims of CIA kidnappings and torture must be
dismissed on national security grounds. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco
... is considering a suit accusing a San Jose company, Jeppesen Dataplan, of arranging so-called
extraordinary rendition flights for the CIA. Although Obama has issued orders banning torture
and closing secret CIA prisons, his administration has sent mixed signals on extraordinary
rendition and the legitimacy of court challenges. Obama's nominee for CIA director, Leon
Panetta, said last week that he approved of rendition for foreign prosecution or brief CIA
detention. The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents five men suing Jeppesen for
allegedly flying them to foreign torture chambers, said this case is the new administration's chance
to live up to its promises. ACLU attorney Ben Wizner told the court that the supposedly ultra-secret
rendition program is widely known. He noted that Sweden recently awarded $450,000 in damages
to one of the plaintiffs, Ahmed Agiza, for helping the CIA transport him to Egypt, where he is still
being held and allegedly has been tortured. "The notion that you have to close your eyes and ears
to what the whole world knows is absurd," Wizner said.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the disturbing trend toward ever-greater
restrictions on civil liberties and due process, click here.
General Says Shoot Dealers in Afghanistan

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/31/world/asia/31nato.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&...
NATOs senior military commander has proposed that the alliances soldiers in Afghanistan shoot
drug traffickers without waiting for proof of their involvement with the Taliban insurgency, according
to a report in the online edition of Der Spiegel magazine. The commander, Gen. John Craddock of
the United States, floated the idea in a confidential letter on Jan. 5 to Gen. Egon Ramms, a
German officer who heads the NATO command center responsible for Afghanistan. General
Craddock wrote that it was no longer necessary to produce intelligence or other evidence
that each particular drug trafficker or narcotics facility in Afghanistan meets the criteria of
being a military objective." A NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed
the wording of the letter. The proposal was widely criticized, with politicians [in Berlin] saying that
it would flout international law and alter NATOs mission in Afghanistan. Such an order, they said,
would signal a major shift in how the alliance intended to deal with the Afghan insurgency, along
with the opium trade that finances the Taliban and other militant groups. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer,
NATOs secretary general, has ordered an investigation into how the generals letter was obtained
by Spiegel Online.
Note: The Times failed to mention the rift this has created in NATO and more. Click here for a
revealing article about this in one of Germany's top publications.
Cheney was key in clearing CIA interrogation tactics

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-cheney16-2008dec16...
Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he was directly involved in approving severe
interrogation methods used by the CIA, and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should
remain open indefinitely. Cheney's comments ... mark the first time that he has acknowledged
playing a central role in clearing the CIA's use of an array of controversial interrogation
tactics, including a ... method known as waterboarding. "I was aware of the program,
certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared," Cheney said in an interview with
ABC News. Asked whether he still believes it was appropriate to use the waterboarding method on
terrorism suspects, Cheney said: "I do." His comments come on the heels of disclosures by a
Senate committee showing that high-level officials in the Bush administration were intimately
involved in reviewing and approving interrogation methods that have since been explicitly outlawed
and that have been condemned internationally as torture. Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney
said, the CIA "in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do. And they
talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it."
Waterboarding involves strapping a prisoner to a tilted surface, covering his face with a towel and
dousing it to simulate the sensation of drowning. CIA Director Michael V. Hayden has said that the
agency used the technique on three Al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003. Cheney has long
defended the technique. But he has not previously disclosed his role in pushing to give the CIA
such authority.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on US torture and other war crimes committed in
the Iraq and Afghan wars, click here.
U.N. Rights Investigator Expelled by Israel

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/world/middleeast/16mideast.html?partner=rss...
Israeli authorities on Monday expelled Richard Falk, a United Nations investigator of human rights
in the Palestinian territories, saying he was unwelcome because of what the government has
regarded as his hostile position toward Israel. Mr. Falk, an American, arrived in Israel on Sunday.
He was held [overnight] at the airport and placed on the first available flight back to Geneva, his
point of departure. Mr. Falk, a professor of international law at Princeton, has the title of United
Nations Human Rights Council special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories. He has long been
criticized in Israel for what many Israelis say are unfair and unpalatable views. He has compared
Israels treatment of the Palestinians to Nazi atrocities and has called for more serious
examination of the conspiracy theories surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks. Pointing to
discrepancies between the official version of events and other versions, he recently wrote that
only willful ignorance can maintain that the 9/11 narrative should be treated as a closed
book. In his capacity as a United Nations investigator, Mr. Falk issued a statement this month
describing Israels embargo on Gaza ... as a crime against humanity. Regardless of Mr. Falks
views, some Israelis questioned the wisdom of banning him, noting that it would hardly make his
reports more sympathetic. Jessica Montell, the executive director of BTselem, an Israeli group that
monitors human rights in the occupied territories, said that ... barring his entry was an act
unbefitting of democracy.
Note: Israel quite explicitly raised the issue of Falk's call for a genuine investigation of the 9/11
attacks in its explanation of his deportation. Why would the state of Israel oppose such an
investigation? For information from major media sources on this and many other questions about
what really happened on 9/11, click here.
US controls bird flu vaccines over bioweapon fears

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-10-11-3349819523_x.htm
Deep inside an 86-page supplement to United States export regulations is a single sentence that
bars U.S. exports of vaccines for avian bird flu and dozens of other viruses to five countries
designated "state sponsors of terrorism." The reason: Fear that they will be used for biological
warfare. Under this little-known policy, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Syria and Sudan may not get the
vaccines unless they apply for special export licenses, which would be given or refused according
to the discretion and timing of the U.S. Three of those nations -- Iran, Cuba and Sudan -- also are
subject to a ban on all human pandemic influenza vaccines as part of a general U.S. embargo.
The regulations, which cover vaccines for everything from Dengue fever to the Ebola virus, have
raised concern within the medical and scientific communities. Officials from the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said
they were not even aware of the policies until contacted by The Associated Press ... and
privately expressed alarm. They make "no scientific sense," said Peter Palese, chairman of
the microbiology department at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Some experts say
the idea of using vaccines for bioweapons is far-fetched.
Despite Ruling, Detainee Cases Facing Delays

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/us/05gitmo.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss...
When the Supreme Court ruled in June that detainees at Guantnamo had the right to challenge
their detention in federal court, the justices said that after more than six years of legal wrangling
the prisoners should have their cases heard quickly because the costs of delay can no longer be
borne by those who are held in custody. But nearly four months later, as the Bush administration
has opened a new defense of its detention policies in federal court, none of the scores of cases
brought by detainees have been resolved by any judge. Since the Supreme Court issued its ruling,
lawyers for most of the 255 detainees in Guantnamo Bay, Cuba, have pressed ahead with
habeas corpus lawsuits, yet most of those cases have been delayed by battles over issues like
whether some court sessions will be held in secret, whether detainees can attend and what level of
proof will justify detention. Some of the arguments made by the Justice Department appear to
challenge the Supreme Courts conclusion that the federal courts have a role in deciding
the fate of the detainees. Officials and lawyers inside and outside of the government say the new
legal confrontation suggests that the Bush administration will most likely continue its defense of the
detention camp until the end of President Bushs term and is not likely to close the camp, as
administration officials have said they would like to do. Detainees advocates say that the
administration is using the legal battle to delay judicial review of its evidence.
Note: For many disturbing reports from reliable, verifiable sources on threats to civil liberties, click
here.
U.S. deserter feared torture orders

2008-09-06, Toronto Star (One of Canadas leading newspapers)
http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/491933
Peter Jemley is unique among the growing ranks of war resisters who have sought refuge in
Canada. He wants Canada to accept him as a refugee because he's opposed to torture. Jemley
argues that as one of only a small number of Arabic linguists with top security clearance, he could
be forced to violate international law by participating in the interrogations of terrorism suspects. It
was something he hadn't considered when he enlisted in 2005 and was handpicked to undergo
two years of intense training due to his adeptness with languages. Only last February did he
discover that his government had sanctioned new rules on how terrorism suspects could be
interrogated. He believes it's torture and when he realized he might be asked to be a part of
it, he fled. "It's a soldier's obligation to say 'no' if their commander is doing things that are
criminally complicit," Jemley, now 42, said in a recent interview in Toronto. "I think everyone is
agreeing now that torture is really what has been going on ... I have every reason to believe that
I'd be ordered to do such things." Detainees held at Guantanamo Bay and the undisclosed CIA
prisons around the world have claimed widespread abuse. The CIA has admitted to using 'coercive
techniques' during interrogations, such as waterboarding, a process whereby agents simulate
drownings. Much of the legal community considers this treatment torture and point to international
laws such as the Geneva Conventions, which were established after WWII to impose legal
restrictions on the barbarity of war.
U.S. town turned into an open-air prison

2008-08-15, National Post (Canada)
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?id=726632
The town of Postville, Iowa, population 2,000, has been turned into an open-air prison. On May 12,
immigration officials swooped in to arrest 400 undocumented workers from Mexico and Guatemala
at the local meat-packing plant, a raid described as the biggest such action at a single site in U.S.
history. The raid left 43 women, wives of the men who were taken away, and their 150 children
without status or a means of support. The women cannot leave the town, and to make sure they
do not they have been outfitted with leg monitoring bracelets. "The women are effectively
prisoners," said Father Paul Ouderkirk at St. Bridget's Roman Catholic Church. "What kind of a
government makes prisoners of 43 mothers who all have children and then says, You can't
work, you can't leave and can't stay?' That boggles the imagination." Since the raid, St.
Bridget's, with a staff of four, has raised $500,000 to pay for rent, clothing, food and other
necessities of life. The men were taken to the National Cattle Congress building in Waterloo, Iowa,
where immigration judges were on hand. They were charged and then sent to nine different
prisons around the state. Fr. Ouderkirk said some of the men were deported and others are
serving five-month prison terms for violating immigration laws - but he said no one ever explained
why some were held and others sent home. The men were all working at Agriprocessors, believed
to be the largest kosher meat-packing plant in the world. Fr. Ouderkirk and others have said the
plant was a disgrace that abused workers who had little understanding of their rights.
Note: For many disturbing reports on increasing threats to civil liberties from reliable sources, click
here.
Justice Dept. OKs harsh interrogation tactics

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/washington/27intel.html?ex=1366948800&en=68...
The Justice Department has told Congress that American intelligence operatives attempting to
thwart terrorist attacks can legally use interrogation methods that might otherwise be prohibited
under international law. The legal interpretation, outlined in recent letters, sheds new light on the
still-secret rules for interrogations by the Central Intelligence Agency. It shows that the
administration is arguing that the boundaries for interrogations should be subject to some latitude,
even under an executive order issued last summer that President Bush said meant that the C.I.A.
would comply with international strictures against harsh treatment of detainees. While the Geneva
Conventions prohibit outrages upon personal dignity, a letter sent by the Justice Department to
Congress on March 5 makes clear that the administration has not drawn a precise line in deciding
which interrogation methods would violate that standard, and is reserving the right to make caseby-case judgments. The new documents provide more details about how the administration
intends to determine whether a specific technique would be legal, depending on the circumstances
involved. Some legal experts critical of the Justice Department interpretation said the department
seemed to be arguing that the prospect of thwarting a terror attack could be used to justify
interrogation methods that would otherwise be illegal. What they are saying is that if my intent
is to defend the United States rather than to humiliate you, than I have not committed an
offense, said Scott L. Silliman, who teaches national security law at Duke University. The
humiliating and degrading treatment of prisoners is prohibited by Common Article 3 of the Geneva
Conventions.
Note: For many disturbing reports of increasing threats to civil liberties, click here.
Bush Lawyer Won't Say if Congress can Limit President's Power

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/24/MNAI10AKM0.DTL
A Bush administration lawyer resisted a San Francisco federal judge's attempts Wednesday to get
him to say whether Congress can limit the president's wiretap authority in terrorism and espionage
cases, calling the question simplistic. "You can't possibly make that judgment on the public record"
without knowing the still-secret details of the electronic surveillance program that President Bush
approved in 2001, Justice Department attorney Anthony Coppolino said at a crucial hearing in a
wiretapping lawsuit. Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker didn't rule immediately on the
government's request to dismiss the suit by an Islamic charity in Oregon, which says a document
that federal authorities accidentally released showed it was wiretapped. But Walker, in an
extensive exchange with Coppolino, said Congress had spoken clearly in a 1978 law that
required the government to obtain a warrant from a secret court before it could conduct
electronic surveillance of suspected foreign terrorists or spies. "The president is obliged to
follow what Congress has mandated," Walker said. The case may determine whether any U.S.
court can judge the legality of Bush's covert order to the National Security Agency to intercept
phone calls and e-mails between Americans and suspected foreign terrorists without seeking
judicial approval. After Bush acknowledged the existence of the program, Congress temporarily
extended it in August and now is debating whether to protect telecommunications companies from
lawsuits for their past cooperation. Most lawsuits challenging the program have been dismissed
because the plaintiffs were unable to show that they had been wiretapped.
Note: For many disturbing reports of increasing threats to civil liberties, click here.
ACLU: Military using FBI to skirt restrictions

The military is using the FBI to skirt legal restrictions on domestic surveillance to obtain
private records of Americans' Internet service providers, financial institutions and
telephone companies, the ACLU said Tuesday. The American Civil Liberties Union based its
conclusion on a review of more than 1,000 documents turned over by the Defense Department
after it sued the agency last year for documents related to national security letters. The letters are
investigative tools used to compel businesses to turn over customer information without a judge's
order or grand jury subpoena. ACLU lawyer Melissa Goodman said the documents the civil rights
group studied "make us incredibly concerned that the FBI and DoD might be collaborating to
evade limits" placed on the Defense Department's use of the letters. Goodman, a staff attorney
with the ACLU National Security Project, said the military is allowed to demand financial and credit
records in certain instances but does not have the authority to get e-mail and phone records or
lists of Web sites that people have visited. That is the kind of information that the FBI can get by
using a national security letter, she said. "That's why we're particularly concerned. The DoD may
be accessing the kinds of records they are not allowed to get," she said. Goodman also noted that
legal limits are placed on the Defense Department "because the military doing domestic
investigations tends to make us leery.
Head Injury Killed Bhutto, Report Said to Find

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/world/asia/08bhutto.html?ex=1360126800&en=1...
Investigators from Scotland Yard have concluded that Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani opposition
leader, died after hitting her head as she was tossed by the force of a suicide blast, not from an
assassins bullet, officials who have been briefed on the inquiry said Thursday. The findings
support the Pakistani governments explanation of Ms. Bhuttos death in December, an
account that had been greeted with disbelief by Ms. Bhuttos supporters, other Pakistanis and
medical experts. It is unclear how the Scotland Yard investigators reached such conclusive
findings absent autopsy results or other potentially important evidence that was washed
away by cleanup crews in the immediate aftermath of the blast. The British inquiry also
determined that a lone gunman, whose image was captured in numerous photographs at the
scene, also caused the explosion. Pakistani authorities originally said there were two assailants,
based partly on photographs splashed across the front pages of the nations leading
newspapers. Scotland Yard said through a spokesman in London that it would have no comment
on the Bhutto report until after it was made public. The findings are certain to be met with
widespread skepticism, especially from Mrs. Bhuttos supporters who ... say they believe she
was shot, as do people who were riding with Ms. Bhutto when she died on Dec. 27. The doctors
who treated Ms. Bhutto told a member of the hospital board, an eminent lawyer, Athar Minallah,
that she had most likely been shot.
Note: Why is it that offficial investigations into assassinations of major political figures always
come up with "Lone Gunman" theories? For many revealing reports on assassinations from
reliable sources, click here.
Schweitzer seeks other governors to oppose REAL ID

http://www.kptm.com/Global/story.asp?S=7745822&nav=menu606_2_4
Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer is urging a third of the nation's governors to join him in
opposing the implementation of a national identification card, saying they can force Congress to
change it. Schweitzer, who last year said "no, nope, no way, hell no" to the federal plan
calling for national driver's licenses under the REAL ID Act, sent a letter yesterday to 17
other governors asking them to oppose a Department of Homeland Security effort to
penalize states that have not adopted the mandate. Homeland Security has said recently that
travelers from states that have not adopted the license will have to use a passport or certain types
of federal border-crossing cards if they want to avoid a vigorous secondary screening at airport
security.
New rules on licenses pit states against feds

2008-01-11, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/01/11/real.id.ap/index.html
Residents of at least 17 states are suddenly stuck in the middle of a fight between the Bush
administration and state governments over post-September 11 security rules for driver's licenses -a dispute that, by May, could leave millions of people unable to use their licenses to board planes
or enter federal buildings. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who unveiled final
details of the REAL ID Act's rules on Friday, said that if states want their licenses to remain valid
for air travel after May 2008, those states must seek a waiver indicating they want more time to
comply with the legislation. Chertoff said that in instances where a particular state doesn't seek a
waiver, its residents will have to use a passport or a newly created federal passport card if they
want to avoid a vigorous secondary screening at airport security. Chertoff spoke as he discussed
the details of the administration's plan to improve security for driver's licenses in all 50 states -- an
effort delayed due to opposition from states worried about the cost and civil libertarians upset
about what they believe are invasions of privacy. Under the rules announced Friday, Americans
born after Dec. 1, 1964, will have to get more secure driver's licenses in the next six years. The
American Civil Liberties Union has fiercely objected to the effort, particularly the sharing of
personal data among government agencies. In its written objection to the law, the ACLU
claims REAL ID amounts to the "first-ever national identity card system," which "would
irreparably damage the fabric of American life."
AP Chief Slams Case Against Photographer

2007-11-24, San Francisco Examiner/Associated Press
http://www.examiner.com/a-1066320~AP_Chief_Slams_Case_Against_Photographer.html
The U.S. military is making a mockery of American democratic principles by bringing a criminal
case against an Associated Press photographer in Iraq without disclosing the charges against him,
AP President and CEO Tom Curley said Saturday. "This is a poor example - and not the first of its
kind - of the way our government honors the democratic principles and values it says it wants to
share with the Iraqi people," Curley wrote in an opinion piece in The Washington Post. The U.S.
military notified the AP last weekend that it intended to submit a written complaint against Bilal
Hussein that would bring the case into the Iraqi justice system as early as Nov. 29. Military officials
have refused to disclose the content of the complaint to the AP, despite repeated requests.
Hussein's lawyer will enter the case "blind," with no idea of the evidence or charges, Curley wrote.
"In the 19 months since he was picked up, Bilal has not been charged with any crime, although the
military has sent out a flurry of ever-changing claims. Every claim we've checked out has proved to
be false, overblown or microscopic in significance," said Curley. Hussein, a 36-year-old native of
Fallujah, was part of the AP's Pulitzer Prize-winning photo team in 2005. He was detained in
Ramadi on April 12, 2006. "We believe Bilal's crime was taking photographs the U.S.
government did not want its citizens to see. That he was part of a team of AP
photographers who had just won a Pulitzer Prize for work in Iraq may have made Bilal even
more of a marked man," Curley wrote. Curley said the military has refused to answer questions
from Hussein's attorney, former federal prosecutor Paul Gardephe, since announcing its intentions
to seek a case against him. The military has leaked baseless allegations against Hussein to
friendly media outlets, Curley wrote, but it will not even share the exact date of the hearing with the
AP.
Note: For a powerful summary of a former Marine general's view of war, "War is a Racket", click
here.
Marine says beatings urged in Iraq

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-marines15jul15,0,7740534....
A Marine corporal, testifying Saturday at the murder trial of a buddy, said that Marines in his unit
began routinely beating Iraqis after being ordered by officers to "crank up the violence level." Cpl.
Saul H. Lopezromo said Marines in his platoon, including the defendant, Cpl. Trent D. Thomas,
were angry when officers criticized them as not being as tough as other Marine platoons. "We're all
hard-chargers, we're not there to mess around, so we took it as an insult," Lopezromo said. Within
weeks of allegedly being scolded, seven Marines and a Navy corpsman went out late one night to
find and kill a suspected insurgent in the village of Hamandiya near the Abu Ghraib prison. Unable
to find their target, the Marines and corpsman dragged another man from his house, fatally shot
him, and then planted an AK-47 assault rifle near the body to make it look like he had been killed
in a shootout, according to court testimony. "We were told to crank up the violence level," said
Lopezromo, who testified for the defense. He indicated that during daily patrols the Marines
became much rougher with Iraqis. Asked by a juror to explain, he said, "We beat people,
sir." Lopezromo said he believed that officers knew of the beatings, and ... said he saw nothing
wrong in what Thomas and the others did. "I don't see it as an execution, sir," he told the judge. "I
see it as killing the enemy." He added that Marines, in effect, consider all Iraqi men as part of the
insurgency. Prosecution witnesses testified that Thomas shot the 52-year-old Iraq at point-blank
range after he had already been shot by other Marines and was lying on the ground. Lopezromo
said a procedure called "dead-checking" was routine. Marines are taught "dead-checking" in boot
camp ... he said.
FBI Would Skirt the Law With Proposed Phone Record Program, Experts
Say
2007-07-10, ABC News blog
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/07/fbi-would-skirt.html
A proposed new FBI program would skirt federal laws by paying private companies to hold millions
of phone and Internet records which the bureau is barred from keeping itself, experts say. The $5
million project would apparently pay private firms to store at least two years' worth of telephone
and Internet activity by millions of Americans, few of whom would ever be considered a suspect in
any terrorism, intelligence or criminal matter. The FBI is barred by law from collecting and storing
such data if it has no connection to a specific investigation or intelligence matter. In recent years
the bureau has tried to encourage telecommunications firms to voluntarily store such information,
but corporations have balked at the cost of keeping records they don't need. "The government isn't
allowed to warehouse the information, and the companies don't want to, so this creates a business
incentive for the companies to warehouse it, so the government can access it later," said Mike
German, a policy expert on national security and privacy issues for the American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU). "It's a public-private partnership that puts civil liberties to the test." In March, an
FBI official identified the companies as Verizon, MCI and AT&T. Even the bureau's own top
lawyer said she found the [FBI's] behavior "disturbing," noting that when requesting access
to phone company records, it repeatedly referenced "emergency" situations that did not
exist, falsely claimed grand juries had subpoenaed information and failed to keep records
on much of its own activity.
Senators Want CIA to Release 9 / 11 Report

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-CIA-Sept-11-Probe.html
A bipartisan group of senators is pushing legislation that would force the CIA to release an
inspector general's report on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The CIA has spent more than
20 months weighing requests under the Freedom of Information Act for its internal
investigation of the attacks but has yet to release any portion of it. The agency is the only
federal office involved in counterterrorism operations that has not made at least a version
of its internal 9/11 investigation public. The law requires agencies to respond to requests within
20 days. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and two other intelligence committee leaders -- chairman Jay
Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and senior Republican Kit Bond of Missouri -- are pushing legislation that
would require the agency to declassify the executive summary of the review within one month and
submit a report to Congress explaining why any material was withheld. "It's amazing the efforts the
administration is going to stonewall this,'' Wyden said. "The American people have a right to know
what the Central Intelligence Agency was doing in those critical months before 9/11.'' Completed in
June 2005, the inspector general's report examined the personal responsibility of individuals at the
CIA before and after the attacks. The CIA has not released any documents to The Associated
Press or other organizations that began requesting the information at least 20 months ago. Groups
including the National Security Archive have clashed with the agency over its FOIA policies. Last
year, the archive gave the CIA its prize for the agency with the worst FOIA record. ''CIA has for
three decades been one of the worst FOIA agencies,'' archive Director Thomas Blanton said this
week.
Note: For more reliable information on what US intelligence agencies knew about the coming
attacks, click here.
Israel developing anti-militant "bionic hornet"

2006-11-17, ABC News/Reuters
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=2660621
Israel is using nanotechnology to try to create a robot no bigger than a hornet that would
be able to chase, photograph and kill its targets, an Israeli newspaper reported on Friday. The
flying robot, nicknamed the "bionic hornet," would be able to navigate its way down narrow
alleyways to target otherwise unreachable enemies such as rocket launchers. It is one of several
weapons being developed by scientists to combat militants. Others include super gloves that
would give the user the strength of a "bionic man" and miniature sensors to detect suicide
bombers. Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres [said] "The war in Lebanon proved that we need
smaller weaponry. It's illogical to send a plane worth $100 million against a suicidal terrorist. So we
are building futuristic weapons." Prototypes for the new weapons are expected within three years,
he said.
U.S. War Prisons Legal Vacuum for 14,000

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2456625
The U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons...keeping 14,000 detainees
beyond the reach of established law. Disclosures of torture and long-term arbitrary detentions have
won rebuke from leading voices including the U.N. secretary-general and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Tens of thousands now have passed through U.S. detention. Many say they were caught up in
U.S. military sweeps, often interrogated around the clock, then released months or years later
without apology, compensation or any word on why they were taken. Seventy to 90 percent of the
Iraq detentions in 2003 were "mistakes," U.S. officers once told the international Red Cross. The
detention system often is unjust and hurts the war on terror by inflaming anti-Americanism in Iraq
and elsewhere. Human rights groups count dozens of detainee deaths for which no one has been
punished or that were never explained. The new manual banning torture doesn't cover CIA
interrogators. Thousands of people still languish in a limbo, deprived of one of common law's
oldest rights, habeas corpus, the right to know why you are imprisoned. The U.S. government has
contended it can hold detainees until the "war on terror" ends. [Inmates] have been held without
charge for three to four years. [Guantanamo's] population today...stands at 455. Only 10 of the
Guantanamo inmates have been charged with crimes. In only 14 of 34 cases has anyone
been punished for the confirmed or suspected killings of detainees. The stiffest sentence in
a torture-related death has been five months in jail. In almost half of 98 detainee deaths, the
cause was either never announced or reported as undetermined.
US helped Israel plan Lebanon offensive

2006-08-14, Christian Science Monitor/New Yorker
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0814/dailyUpdate.html
A special report in The New Yorker says the Bush administration was closely involved in the
planning of Israel's retaliatory attacks against Hizbullah in Lebanon, and US officials hoped
that by helping Israel destroy or disarm the militant Islamic group, it would make it easier
for the US to launch a preemptive attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. The report, written by
investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who also helped break the story about abuses at the Abu
Ghraib prison and in the 70s broke the story of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, alleges Israeli
officials travelled to Washington to talk to US officials, in particular Vice President Dick Cheney,
about the plan. A Pentagon consultant said that the Bush White House "has been agitating for
some time to find a reason for a pre-emptive blow against Hezbollah." CBS News reports that
Israeli officials "fiercely denied" that it had sought a "greenlight" from Washington, and that it had
no advance plan to attack Hizbullah. Yesterday Mr Hersh told CNN: "July was a pretext for a major
offensive that had been in the works for a long time. They really want to go after Iran." Last month
the San Francisco Chronicle reported that "Israel's military response...was unfolding according to a
plan finalized more than a year ago". The report said that a senior Israeli army officer had been
briefing diplomats, journalists and think-tanks for more than a year about the plan. It quoted Gerald
Steinberg, professor of political science at [Israel's] Bar-Ilan University, who said: "Of all of Israel's
wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared."
Declassified papers show U.S. atrocities went far beyond My Lai

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-vietnam6aug06,0,92368...
Kill anything that moves. Moments later, the 19 villagers lay dead or dying. Back home in
California, Henry published an account of the slaughter. Yet he and other Vietnam veterans who
spoke out about war crimes were branded traitors and fabricators. No one was ever prosecuted.
Now, nearly 40 years later, declassified Army files show that Henry was telling the truth. The files
are part of a once-secret archive ... that shows that confirmed atrocities by U.S. forces in Vietnam
were more extensive than was previously known. The Times...obtained copies of about 3,000
pages -- about a third of the total -- before government officials removed them from the public
shelves, saying they contained personal information that was exempt from the Freedom of
Information Act. The documents detail 320 alleged incidents that were substantiated by Army
investigators. Many war crimes did not make it into the archive. The archive ... includes
investigative files, sworn statements by witnesses and status reports for top military brass. The
records describe recurrent attacks on ordinary Vietnamese. Hundreds of soldiers ... described a
violent minority who murdered, raped and tortured with impunity. Abuses ... were uncovered in
every Army division that operated in Vietnam. Ultimately, 57 [soldiers] were court-martialed and
just ... fourteen received prison sentences ranging from six months to 20 years, but most won
significant reductions on appeal. The stiffest sentence went to a military intelligence
interrogator. He served seven months of a 20-year term. Many substantiated cases were
closed with a letter of reprimand, a fine or, in more than half the cases, no action at all.
C.I.A. Closes Unit Focused on Capture of bin Laden

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/washington/04intel.html?ex=1309665600&en=3f...
The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting
Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, intelligence officials confirmed Monday. The unit, known
as Alec Station, was disbanded late last year and its analysts reassigned within the C.I.A.
Counterterrorist Center, the officials said. The decision is a milestone for the agency, which formed
the unit before Osama bin Laden became a household name and bolstered its ranks after the
Sept. 11 attacks, when President Bush pledged to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice "dead or alive."
"The efforts to find Osama bin Laden are as strong as ever," said Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, a C.I.A.
spokeswoman. "This is an agile agency, and the decision was made to ensure greater reach
and focus." Michael Scheuer, a former senior C.I.A. official who was the first head of the unit, said
the move reflected a view within the agency that Mr. bin Laden was no longer the threat he once
was. Mr. Scheuer said that view was mistaken. "This will clearly denigrate our operations against
Al Qaeda," he said.
Note: They disband the unit to capture the man on the most wanted list? What's up with that?
Informed Consent Waived in Public Crisis

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/08/ap/health/mainD8I3MMRO0.shtml
In a public health emergency, suspected victims would no longer have to give permission
before experimental tests could be run to determine why they're sick, under a federal rule
published Wednesday. Privacy experts called the exception unnecessary, ripe for abuse and an
override of state informed-consent laws. Health care workers will be free to run experimental tests
on blood and other samples taken from people who have fallen sick as a result of a bioterrorist
attack, bird flu outbreak, detonation of a dirty bomb or any other life-threatening public health
emergency, according to the rule issued by the Food and Drug Administration. The rule took effect
Wednesday but remains subject to public comment until Aug. 7. The FDA said it published the rule
without first seeking comments because it would hinder the response to an outbreak of bird flu or
other public health emergency.
Spies
2006-05-14, Sunday Times (London Times Sunday edition)
MI5 is being accused of a cover-up for failing to disclose to a parliamentary watchdog that it
bugged the leader of the July 7 suicide bombers discussing the building of a bomb months before
the London attacks. MI5 had secret tape recordings of Mohammad Sidique Khan, the gang
leader, talking about how to build the device and then leave the country because there
would be a lot of police activity. However, despite the recordings, MI5 allowed him to
escape the net. Transcripts of the tapes were never shown to the parliamentary intelligence and
security committee (ISC), which investigated the attacks. The new evidence shows MI5 monitored
Khan when he met suspects allegedly planning another, separate attack; that he had knowledge of
the "late-stage discussions" of this plot; and that he was recorded having discussions with them
about making a bomb and leaving the country. The disclosures will increase pressure for a public
inquiry into the atrocity, with greater powers to demand evidence and interrogate witnesses.
The deadly terror lurking around the corner may not be such a big,
ominous threat after all
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/19/INGDDH8E2V1.DTL
Americans receive a steady stream of warnings and alarms about new and horrific perils that await
them. Pandemics, dirty bombs, cyber attacks, bioterror and other exotic threats are always on the
verge of being unleashed onto a shamefully unprepared republic. Yet, judging from statistics on
life expectancy, violent deaths and war, we live in much less perilous times than any
generation before us. Avian flu, for example. We are cautioned that a pandemic...is only months
away. One World Health Organization estimate says 2 million to 7 million people will die in the next
pandemic. But it is not 1918. The WHO reports that since 2003, there have been 152 cases of
avian flu, resulting in 83 deaths. A flu pandemic has been regularly predicted since 1997 and
(knock on wood) it has never arrived. Dirty bombs -- conventional explosives mixed with
radioactive material -- present another example of overreaction. In 2004, experts warned in the
normally staid Wall Street Journal that a terrorist attack with a dirty bomb was an imminent
certainty. They announced: "Shame on our leaders and on us if the lamentations of the next blueribbon panel will be intoned over the graves of hundreds of thousands of Americans, the collapse
of our economy, and perhaps a fatal blow to our way of life." But the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission says a dirty bomb would contaminate "up to several city blocks." The commission's
advice, if one goes off, is to walk away and take a shower.
Note: This informative article, by a program director of the Center for Strategic and International
Studies in Washington, demonstrates clearly how the hype and fear around terror is much more
damaging than terrorism itself. For more on this from both BBC and my own experience as a
presidential interpreter, click here.
Palace Revolt
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11079547/site/newsweek/
They were loyal conservatives and Bush appointees. They fought a quiet battle to rein in the
president's power in the war on terror. And they paid a price for it. James Comey...resigned as
deputy attorney general in the summer of 2005. Comey's farewell speech...contained...an unusual
passage. Comey thanked "people who came to my office, or my home, or called my cell phone late
at night, to quietly tell me when I was about to make a mistake; they were the people committed to
getting it right....Some of them did pay a price for their commitment to right, but they wouldn't have
it any other way." These Justice Department lawyers, backed by their intrepid boss Comey,
had stood up to the hard-liners, centered in the office of the vice president, who wanted to
give the president virtually unlimited powers in the war on terror. Demanding that the White
House stop using what they saw as farfetched rationales for riding rough-shod over the law and
the Constitution, [they] fought to bring government spying and interrogation methods within the
law. These government attorneys did not always succeed, but their efforts went a long way toward
vindicating the principle of a nation of laws and not men. They did not see the struggle in terms of
black and white but in shades of gray -- as painfully close calls with unavoidable pitfalls. They
worried deeply about whether their principles might put Americans at home and abroad at risk.
Their story...is a quietly dramatic profile in courage.
Note: If you want to understand the complexities involved behind the scenes at the top levels of
US politics, I most highly recommend reading this entire article. It is five webpages in length.
Fear destroys what bin Laden could not

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/columnists/13487511.htm
One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn't win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. If,
back in 2001, anyone had told me that...our president would invade a country and kill 30,000 of its
people claiming a threat that never, in fact, existed, then admit he would have invaded even if he
had known there was no threat...I would have thought our nation's sensibilities and honor had
been eviscerated. If I had been informed that our nation's leaders would embrace torture as a
legitimate tool of warfare, hold prisoners for years without charges and operate secret
prisons overseas -- and call such procedures necessary for the nation's security -- I would
have laughed at the folly of protecting human rights by destroying them. If someone had
predicted the president's staff would out a CIA agent as revenge against a critic, defy a law against
domestic propaganda by bankrolling supposedly independent journalists and commentators, and
ridicule a 37-year Marine Corps veteran for questioning U.S. military policy...I would have called
the prediction an absurd fantasy. Never would I have expected this nation -- which emerged
stronger from a civil war and a civil rights movement, won two world wars, endured the
Depression, recovered from a disastrous campaign in Southeast Asia and still managed to lead
the world in the principles of liberty -- would cower behind anyone just for promising to "protect us."
Bush Renews Sept. 11 Emergency Declaration

President Bush on Thursday renewed the national emergency he declared after the Sept. 11,
2001, terrorist attacks. In a letter to Congress, Bush said the nation is still under the terrorist threat
that led him to declare a national emergency three days after the attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon. The president's declaration allows for the mobilization of reserve
military forces and other steps. By law, a national emergency declaration automatically expires
on the anniversary date of its declaration unless the president renews it. Bush's action will renew
the declaration for another year.
Secret FBI Report Questions Al Qaeda Capabilities

2005-03-09, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=566425&page=1
No 'True' Al Qaeda Sleeper Agents Have Been Found in U.S. A secret FBI report obtained by ABC
News concludes that while there is no doubt al Qaeda wants to hit the United States, its capability
to do so is unclear. The 32-page assessment says flatly, "To date, we have not identified any true
'sleeper' agents in the US," seemingly contradicting the "sleeper cell" description prosecutors
assigned to seven men in Lackawanna, N.Y., in 2002. It also differs from testimony given by FBI
Director Robert Mueller, who warned in the past that several sleeper cells were probably in place.
In Iraq, a human life is worth $2,500; in Manhattan, $1.8 million

What is the value of a human life? This came to mind recently, thanks to U.S. Marines, who, in
early March, went on a killing rampage near Jalalabad in Afghanistan. A platoon of elite Marine
Special Operations troops was ambushed by a suicide bomber in a minivan and one was
wounded. Initially, it was reported that as many as 10 Afghans were killed and 34 wounded as the
platoon fled the site. Later, it was admitted that the Marines had wielded "excessive force" after the
ambush had ended. The Marines were reported to have murdered "12 people -- including a 4year-old girl, a 1-year-old boy and three elderly villagers.'' According to a report by Carlotta Gall of
the New York Times, a "16-year-old newly married girl was cut down while she was carrying a
bundle of grass to her family's farmhouse." After much protest in Afghanistan, Col. John Nicholson
met with the families of the Afghans who had been killed and wounded by the Marines. He offered
this official apology: "I stand before you today, deeply, deeply ashamed and terribly sorry
that Americans have killed and wounded innocent Afghan people." And then he paid about
$2,000 per death to family members. The military calls these "condolence payments." We also
know something about how the U.S. government evaluated the worth of the lives of slaughtered
American innocents after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The family or spouse of a loved one
murdered that day was also given a monetary value -- $1.8 million. The U.S. government has
indeed offered the world an evaluation of what price slaughter should exact in the deaths of
innocents: The value of a civilian slaughtered ... on Sept. 11: $1.8 million. The value of a civilian
slaughtered by U.S. Marines near Jalalabad, Afghanistan: $2,000.
Note: For more astonishing information on how the military mishandles your tax dollars, click here.
Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran

Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Irans uranium enrichment facilities with tactical
nuclear weapons. Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using
low-yield nuclear bunker-busters, according to several Israeli military sources. The attack would
be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic
bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to
one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb. Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would
open tunnels into the targets. Mini-nukes would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz,
exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout. As soon as the green light is
given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished, said
one of the sources. Israeli and American officials have met several times to consider military
action. Military analysts said the disclosure of the plans could be intended to put pressure on
Tehran to halt enrichment, cajole America into action or soften up world opinion in advance of an
Israeli attack. Some analysts warned that Iranian retaliation for such a strike could range from
disruption of oil supplies to the West to terrorist attacks against Jewish targets around the world.
Robert Gates, the new US defence secretary, has described military action against Iran as a last
resort, leading Israeli officials to conclude that it will be left to them to strike.
Note: The fact that this is being announced in the press is quite peculiar. For more on war, click
here.
Toying With Terror Alerts?

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1211369,00.html
In these perilous days, we must be ready to think the unthinkable. I'm talking about...the quite
reasonable suspicion that the Bush Administration orchestrates its terror alerts and arrests
to goose the GOP's poll numbers. The 18 months prior to the 2004 presidential election
witnessed a barrage of those ridiculous color-coded terror alerts, quashed-plot headlines and
breathless press conferences from Administration officials. Warnings of terror attacks over the
Christmas 2003 holidays, warnings over summer terror attacks at the 2004 political conventions,
then a whole slew of warnings of terror attacks to disrupt the election itself. Even the timing of the
alerts seemed to fall with odd regularity right on the heels of major political events. One of
Department of Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge's terror warnings came two days after John
Kerry picked John Edwards as his running mate; another came three days after the end of the
Democratic convention. So it went right through the 2004 election. And then not long after the
[elections], terror alerts seemed to go out of style. With the exception of one warning about masstransit facilities in response to the London bombing on July 7, 2005, that was pretty much it until
this summer. Can I prove any of this was politically motivated? Of course not. All the key facts are
veiled in secrecy, as they must be. So it's impossible to know from the outside whether it's on the
level or not. But with another election looming, it seems we're about to get a bunch of new
chances to wonder.
No Trials for Key Players

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-legal4may04,0,2472327.story
Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person prosecuted in connection with the worst terrorist attack in
American history, did not get the death penalty because some jurors concluded that he had little to
do with Sept. 11. Yet two presumed key planners of the Al Qaeda [9/11] plot, Khalid Shaikh
Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, have not been charged, though they have been in U.S.
custody for more than three years. A central contradiction in the Bush administration's
fight against terrorism is that bit players often have been put on trial, while those thought to
have orchestrated the plots have been held in secret for questioning. Current and former
intelligence officials have said that the CIA has used aggressive interrogation techniques -including "waterboarding," which makes a suspect feel as if he is drowning -- on captured Al
Qaeda leaders. As a result, many legal experts say it may be too late to try Mohammed and
Binalshibh in a regular court of law. "They cannot be prosecuted because of the way they have
been interrogated," said University of Maryland law professor Michael Greenberger. "They have
been subjected to very aggressive questioning, and any statements they made now can't be used
against them." An open trial for the Al Qaeda leaders could reveal that U.S. agents used harsh
methods, even torture, to extract information, he added. "We have prosecuted a marginal
character who appeared unmoored from reality, while the real planners of the crime will not be
brought before justice in the United States," Greenberger said.
Note: The powerful 9/11 documentary "Loose Change" was listed in the top ten of Google's most
popular videos every day for the month of April 2006 (see http://video.google.com/videoranking).
People are waking up all over. Tell your friends and colleagues about this history-making
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Navy Shows Off Anti-Terror Dolphins

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-04-13-anti-terror-dolphins_N.htm
About 75 dolphins and 25 sea lions are housed at Naval Base Point Loma in San Diego Harbor as
part of a Navy program to teach them to detect terrorists and mines underwater. The base briefly
opened its doors to the media Thursday for the first time since the start of the war in Iraq. The
display came a few weeks after the Navy announced plans to send up to 30 dolphins and sea lions
to patrol the waters of Washington state's Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, which is home to nuclear
submarines, ships and laboratories. Both species can find mines and spot swimmers in murky
waters. Working in unison, the dolphins can drop a flashing light near a mine or a swimmer. The
sea lions carry in their mouths a cable and a handcuff-like device that clamps onto a terrorist's leg.
Sailors can then use the cable to reel in the terrorist. The Navy's sea mammal program started
in the late 1950s and grew to comprise 140 animals during the Cold War.
Note: Yet the navy's sophisticated new sonar systems are killing dolphins and whales around the
globe. For more on this, click here. And what if the dolphins and sea lions go on strike for better
wages? ;o)
CNN tours Gitmo prison camp

2005-07-07, CNN News
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/07/06/gitmo.tour/index.html
Military rules prevent crew from getting full picture. President Bush himself challenged reporters to
visit the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay amid allegations that American troops mistreated
suspected Islamic terrorists held there, so CNN took him up on the offer. "These people are being
treated humanely. Very few prison systems around the world have seen such scrutiny as this one,"
Bush said Wednesday. "And for those of you who are here and have doubt, I suggest buying an
airplane ticket and going down and look -- take a look for yourself." But military ground rules -including censoring video shot at the facility -- made it nearly impossible for a CNN crew
that visited the prison the same day to get a full picture of the prison. A lawyer for some of
the detainees called press tours of the camp "one big charade." CNN employees who visited the
prison were not allowed to speak to the prisoners.
Gitmo detainees denied witnesses: Lawyer calls legal proceedings

shams
The U.S. military called no witnesses, withheld evidence from detainees and usually
reached a decision within a day as it determined that hundreds of men detained at
Guantanamo Bay were enemy combatants, according to a new report. The analysis of
transcripts and records...found that hearings that determined whether a prisoner should remain in
custody gave the accused little opportunity to contest allegations against him. These were not
hearings. These were shams, said Mark Denbeaux, an attorney and Seton Hall University law
professor who along with his son, Joshua, is the author of the report. The military held Combatant
Status Review Tribunals for 558 detainees...between July 2004 and January 2005 and found all
but 38 were enemy combatants. Handcuffed detainees appeared before a panel of three officers
with no defense attorney, only a military personal representative. Representatives said nothing in
the hearings 14 percent of the time and made no substantive comments in 30 percent. In 74
percent of the cases, the government denied requests to call witnesses who were detained at the
prison. The report is based on transcripts...released earlier this year in response to a Freedom of
Information Act lawsuit... The Military Commissions Act, which President Bush signed on Oct. 17,
strips all non-U.S. citizens held under suspicion of being an enemy combatant of their right to
challenge their detention in civilian courts with petitions of habeas corpus.
Animal rights activists face trial under terror law

2005-06-04, ABC/Reuters
New Jersey is using an anti-terrorism law for the first time to try six animal rights activists
charged with harassing and vandalizing a company that made use of animals to test its
drugs. Prosecutors say the activists, who will stand trial next week, used threats, intimidation and
cyber attacks against employees of Huntingdon Life Sciences, a British company with operations
in East Millstone, New Jersey, with the intention of driving it out of business. The six, members of a
group called Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), are charged under the Animal Enterprise
Protection Act, amended in 2002 to include "animal enterprise terrorism," which outlaws disrupting
firms like Huntingdon. The list of potential defense witnesses includes actress Kim Basinger, who
joined a protest outside a Huntingdon laboratory in Franklin, New Jersey to try to stop such
companies using animals to test their pharmaceutical products.
Author, filmmakers fight over adaptation of 9/11 expose

2006-08-18, Miami Herald (Miami's leading newspaper)
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/entertainment/television/15308882.htm
What was already expected to be a controversial documentary that charges that Osama bin
Laden's top spy infiltrated three different branches of U.S. national security has gotten even hotter.
Veteran investigative reporter Peter Lance call[ed] the TV documentary based on his book a
whitewash. The documentary, Triple Cross, is scheduled to air on the National Geographic
Channel Aug. 28, with Lance's book of the same name set for publication a few weeks later. But
their accounts of the way bin Laden's master spy Ali A. Mohamed outwitted the CIA, the FBI and
the U.S. Army may be overshadowed by the acrimonious war of words. National Geographic's
producers at one point held back transcripts of interviews they were supposed to share with Lance,
and still won't let him see the final documentary unless he signs what they call a "nondisparagment agreement." Mohamed turned up in FBI surveillance photos as early as 1989,
training radical Muslims who would go on to...detonate a truck bomb at the World Trade Center. He
not only avoided arrest, but managed to become an FBI informant at the same time he was
smuggling bin Laden in and out of Afghanistan, writing most of the al Qaeda terrorist
manual and helping plan attacks on American troops in Somalia and U.S. embassies in
Africa. Finally arrested in 1998, Mohamed cut a deal with the Justice Department. His
whereabouts remain shrouded in official secrecy. Lance, an Emmy winner who spent nine years as
a producer-reporter at ABC, was one of the first journalists on the trail of the Mohamed story. "The
FBI allowed the chief spy for al Qaeda to...plan the bombings of the embassies in Africa right
under their noses.''
Panel Weighs Whistleblower Law Changes

Five government whistleblowers said Tuesday they had faced retaliation for calling
attention to alleged government wrongs. They told their stories to the House Government
Reform Committee's national security subcommittee, whose chairman, Rep. Chris Shays, R-
Conn., indicated an interest in altering the law to better protect national-security whistleblowers.
Army Spc. Samuel Provance laid out what he considers to be a pattern of systemic abuses at
Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. He said his rank was reduced for disobeying orders not to speak about
mistreatment he saw at the prison. Russ Tice, a former NSA analyst, has called attention to
possible constitutional abuses and security breaches at NSA. He said he was given psychological
evaluations deeming him mentally unstable, and his clearance was revoked. He's now
unemployed. Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer says the Defense Intelligence Agency has made a series of
allegations against him since he disclosed information about a program known as Able Danger. He
says the program identified four Sept. 11 hijackers before the attack. Richard Levernier, a retired
Energy Department nuclear security specialist, said he lost his security clearance and effectively
his job for giving the media an unclassified report about shortfalls in nuclear security.
Iowa Muslim leader: Law enforcement betrayed us

2012-02-03, CNN blog
http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/03/iowa-muslim-leader-law-enforcement-...
The Muslim community in Des Moines, Iowa ... is diverse. The members of the four mosques here
are from Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Bangladesh, among other nations. [But] the community is
a tight-knit group. Thats why what happened at their mosques here is alarming to so many of its
members. That was really surprising, very sad that ... the FBI or Homeland Security would send
somebody here to pretend to be Muslim and try to find out what goes on here. I feel there is no
need for that, said Dr. Hamed Baig, president of the Islamic Center of Des Moines. Baig is talking
about 42 year-old Arvinder Singh. Baid says he saw Singh a couple of times at his mosque. But it
wasnt until recently that members of the community discovered that Singh, who was raised a Sikh,
was allegedly sent into their mosques to spy for the FBI. Singh told CNN that the FBI told him,
"'You look Middle Eastern, and we need your help for the war against terror.'" Singh says
the FBI came to him with a simple tradeoff: Well help you get your citizenship if you help
us get some terrorists. Singh says he assumed a Muslim identity - Rafik Alvi -- and went into
the mosques pretending to be interested in converting. He says he frequented mosques all over
the state but attended the four in Des Moines regularly for seven years. He says sometimes the
FBI gave him pictures of persons of interest and he would confirm that they were at the mosque.
On a few occasions, Singh says he taped his conversations with congregants.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the clandestine operations of the FBI and other
Ron Paul: US could target journalists for killing

http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2011/10/05/ron_paul_u...
Republican presidential contender Ron Paul on [October 5] suggested that the United States could
assassinate journalists the same way it targeted Americans with ties to al-Qaida. The Texas
congressman again criticized President Barack Obama for approving last week's drone strikes in
Yemen against a U.S. citizen who was tracked and executed based on secret intelligence.
[Another American citizen] also died in the bombing. Escalating his criticism, Paul told a National
Press Club luncheon that if citizens do not protest the deaths, the country will start adding
reporters to its list of threats that must be taken out. "Can you imagine being put on a list
because you're a threat? What's going to happen when they come to the media? What if the
media becomes a threat? ... This is the way this works. It's incrementalism," Paul said. Paul,
making his second run for the Republican presidential nomination, has built a die-hard following
among the GOP's libertarian wing and has worked to court anti-war conservatives.
Note: For key reports on government corruption from major media sources, click here.
CIA Director Leon Panetta Warns of Possible Cyber-Pearl Harbor

2011-02-11, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/News/cia-director-leon-panetta-warns-cyber-pearl-harbor...
Top U.S. intelligence officials have raised concerns about the growing vulnerability the United
States faces from cyberwarfare threats and malicious computer activity that CIA Director Leon
Panetta said "represents the battleground for the future." "The potential for the next Pearl
Harbor could very well be a cyber-attack," he testified on Capitol Hill [on February 10] before
the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Panetta provided a stark assessment for
the intelligence committee. "If you have a cyber-attack that brings down our power-grid
system, brings down our financial system, brings down our government systems, you
could paralyze this country," he said. U.S officials from the National Security Agency,
Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have actively been working the emerging
cybersecurity threats. The military activated U.S. Cyber Command last year to coordinate the
military's cyberspace resources.
Note: For more articles from reliable sources on the construction of a total surveillance state, click
here.
George W Bush cancels trip to Switzerland over torture claims

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/switzerland/8307733/George-W...
Mr Bush was the keynote speaker at Keren Hayesod's annual dinner on Feb 12 in Geneva. But
pressure has been building on the Swiss government to arrest him and open a criminal
investigation into the torture allegations if he enters the country. Criminal complaints against Mr
Bush have been lodged in Geneva and several human rights groups signalled that they are
poised to take further legal action this week. Swiss officials have said that Mr Bush would still
enjoy a certain diplomatic immunity as a former head of state. But Keren Hayesod organisers felt
the atmosphere had become too threatening, fearing that protests organised to coincide with his
visit could descend into riots.
Interrogating the Arizona Killings from a Safe Distance

2011-01-13, Foreign Policy Journal
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/01/13/interrogating-the-arizona-kill...
Governments (ab)use their authority to treat awkward knowledge as a matter of state secrets, and
criminalise those who are brave enough to believe that the citizenry needs to know the crimes that
their government is committing with their trust and their tax dollars. The arguments swirling around
the 9/11 attacks are emblematic of these issues. What fuels suspicions of conspiracy is the
reluctance to address the sort of awkward gaps and contradictions in the official
explanations that [WantToKnow team member] David Ray Griffin (and other devoted
scholars of high integrity) have been documenting in book after book ever since his
authoritative The New Pearl Harbor in 2004 (updated in 2008). This brings me to the Arizona
shootings. The most insistent immediate responses have come from the opposite ends of the
political spectrum, both proceeding on presuppositions rather than awaiting evidence. If we want to
be responsible in our assessments, we must restrain our political predispositions, and obtain the
evidence. Let us remember that what seems most disturbing about the 9/11 controversy is the
widespread aversion of government and media to the evidence that suggests, at the very least, the
need for an independent investigation that proceeds with no holds barred.
Note: The author of this article, Richard Falk, is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of
International Law at Princeton University, and since March, 2008 has served as UN Special
Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied territories of Palestine. The publication of this article
mentioning the questioning of the official account of 9/11 by highly-credible and respected
individuals has been the pretext for a campaign calling for his dismissal from his UN post, brought
by the organization UN Watch, a pro-Israel lobby group. Isn't such a demand an attempt at
censorship of questioning of the official account of 9/11?
U.S. drones to watch entire Mexico border from September 1

The U.S. government will have unmanned surveillance aircraft monitoring the whole southwest
border with Mexico from September 1, as it ramps up border security in this election year.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said U.S. Customs and Border Protection would
begin flying a Predator B drone out of Corpus Christi, Texas, on [that date], extending the reach of
the agency's unmanned surveillance aircraft across the length of the nearly 2,000 mile border with
Mexico. "With the deployment of the Predator in Texas, we will now be able to cover the southwest
border from the El Centro sector in California all the way to the Gulf of Mexico in Texas, providing
critical aerial surveillance assistance to personnel on the ground," Napolitano said during a
conference call. Earlier this month, President Barack Obama signed a $600 million bill that
would fund some 1,500 new Border Patrol agents, customs inspectors and other law
enforcement officials along the border, as well as paying for two more unmanned drones.
The Predator B drones are made by defense contractor General Atomics. They carry equipment
including sophisticated day and night vision cameras that operators use to detect drug and human
smugglers, and can stay aloft for up to 30 hours at a time.
Note: How long will it be before aerial surveillance drones, now positioned over the southern
border of the US, are deployed in other parts of the country?
Cuba's Fidel Castro claims al-Qaida leader Osama bin laden is a US

agent
2010-08-27, Minneapolis Star-Tribune/Associated Press
http://www.startribune.com/world/101653038.html?page=1&c=y
Fidel Castro says al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is a bought-and-paid-for CIA agent who
always popped up when former President George W. Bush needed to scare the world,
arguing that documents recently posted on the Internet prove it. "Any time Bush would stir up
fear and make a big speech, bin Laden would appear threatening people with a story about what
he was going to do," Castro told state media during a meeting with a Lithuanian-born writer known
for advancing conspiracy theories about world domination. "Bush never lacked for bin Laden's
support. He was a subordinate." Castro said documents posted on WikiLeaks.org a website that
recently released thousands of pages of classified documents from the Afghan war "effectively
proved he was a CIA agent." Last week, he began highlighting the work of Daniel Estulin, who
wrote a trilogy of books highlighting the Bilderberg Club, whose prominent members meet once a
year behind closed doors. During the meeting, Estulin told Castro that the real voice of bin Laden
was last heard in late 2001, not long after the Sept. 11 attacks. He said the person heard making
warnings about terror attacks after that was a "bad actor."
Note: WantToKnow team member David Ray Griffin has analyzed the evidence for bin Laden's
likely death in December 2001 in his important book Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive?. For key
reports from major media sources on secret societies such as the Bilderberg Club, click here.
Medical Ethics Lapses Cited in Interrogations

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/world/07doctors.html
Medical professionals who were involved in the Central Intelligence Agencys interrogations of
terrorism suspects engaged in forms of human research and experimentation in violation of
medical ethics and domestic and international law, according to a new report from a human rights
organization. Doctors, psychologists and other professionals assigned to monitor the C.I.A.
s use of waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other enhanced interrogation

techniques gathered and collected data on the impact of the interrogations on the
detainees in order to refine those techniques. But, by doing so, the medical professionals
turned the detainees into research subjects, according to the report ... published on [June 7] by
Physicians for Human Rights. There was no therapeutic purpose or intent to monitor and
collect this data, said Jonathan D. Moreno, a professor of medical ethics at the University of
Pennsylvania. You cant use people as laboratories.
Note: To read the full report from Physicians for Human Rights, "Experiments in Torture: Human
Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the Enhanced Interrogation
Program", click here.
CIA Secret 'Torture' Prison Found at Fancy Horseback Riding Academy

2009-11-18, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cia-secret-prison-found/story?id=9115978
The CIA built one of its secret European prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside
Vilnius, Lithuania, a current Lithuanian government official and a former U.S. intelligence official
[said]. Where affluent Lithuanians once rode show horses and sipped coffee at a caf, the CIA
installed a concrete structure where it could use harsh tactics to interrogate up to eight suspected
al-Qaeda terrorists at a time. Lithuanian officials provided ABC News with the documents of what
they called a CIA front company, Elite LLC, which purchased the property and built the "black site"
in 2004. Lithuania agreed to allow the CIA prison after President George W. Bush visited the
country in 2002 and pledged support for Lithuania's efforts to join NATO. "The new members of
NATO were so grateful for the U.S. role in getting them into that organization that they
would do anything the U.S. asked for during that period," said former White House
counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke. "They were eager to please and eager to be cooperative
on security and on intelligence matters." Lithuania was one of three eastern European
countries, along with Poland and Romania, where the CIA secretly interrogated suspected highvalue al-Qaeda terrorists, but until now the precise site had not been confirmed.
Note: For many revealing articles exposing the hidden realities of the "war on terror", click here.
'For Afghans, there is no refuge'

2009-11-18, Toronto Star (One of Toronto's leading newspapers)
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/afghanistan/article/727230---for-afghans-th...
For most of her life, the young Afghan woman was fleeing war. But everywhere she went it stalked
her. "She was very quiet and shy, and you could barely hear her speak," said Ashley Jackson of
Oxfam. "When the civil war began in the early 1990s, she left Kabul and went to the border. But
her son was killed by a rocket attack. She went to Pakistan and lived in a refugee settlement, and
her daughter was taken by a man who wanted her. When the Taliban fell and the family finally got
back to Kabul, her husband was killed. For Afghans, there is no refuge." The story of the Afghan
woman is one of 700 that form a shocking pattern of abuse, trauma and death suffered by Afghans
caught in three decades of war misery that did not end with the defeat of the Taliban and entry of
thousands of Canadian and international troops. Their stories are detailed in a study, The Cost of
War, published ... by Oxfam, the Afghan Civil Society Forum, ... and five other humanitarian
groups that spent months travelling through the country's 14 provinces to collect the experiences
of ordinary people. It shows Afghans blame poverty and corruption more than the Taliban for
the continuing conflict. Seventy per cent of interviewees believe poverty is driving the
conflict; 48 per cent blame the corruption of the Afghan government; and 36 per cent blame
the Taliban. Eighteen per cent hold international forces responsible, and 17 per cent blame lack of
world support. "People have been driven from their homes multiple times, arrested, tortured and
abused," said Jackson, the study's author. "The numbers are startling."
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the realities of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, click
here.
Obama administration defending Bush secrets

Despite President Barack Obama's vow to open government more than ever, the Justice
Department is defending Bush administration decisions to keep secret many documents about
domestic wiretapping, data collection on travelers and U.S. citizens, and interrogation of suspected
terrorists. "The signs in the last few days are not ... encouraging," said Jameel Jaffer, an attorney
for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed several lawsuits seeking the Bush
administration's legal rationales for warrantless domestic wiretapping and for its treatment of
terrorism detainees. The documents sought in these lawsuits "are in many cases the
documents that the public most needs to see," Jaffer said. "It makes no sense to say that
these documents are somehow exempt from President Obama's directives." Groups that
advocate open government, civil liberties and privacy were overjoyed that Obama on his first day
in office reversed the FOIA policy imposed by Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft. Obama
pledged "an unprecedented level of openness in government" and ordered new FOIA guidelines
written with a "presumption in favor of disclosure." But Justice's actions in courts since then have
cast doubt on how far the new administration will go. "This is not change," said ACLU executive
director Anthony Romero. "President Obama's Justice Department has disappointingly reneged"
on his promise to end "abuse of state secrets."
Note: For lots more on state secrecy from reliable, verifiable sources, click here.
Intelligence Agencies' Databases Set to Be Linked

U.S. spy agencies' sensitive data should soon be linked by Google-like search systems. Director of
National Intelligence Mike McConnell has launched a sweeping technology program to knit
together the thousands of databases across all 16 spy agencies. After years of bureaucratic
snafus, intelligence analysts will be able to search through secret intelligence files the same way
they can search public data on the Internet. Linking up the 16 agencies is the challenge at the
heart of the job of director of national intelligence, created after 9/11. The new information
program also is designed to include Facebook-like social-networking programs and
classified news feeds. It includes enhanced security measures to ensure that only appropriately
cleared people can access the network. The price tag is expected to be in the billions of dollars.
The impact for analysts, Mr. McConnell says, "will be staggering." Not only will analysts have
vastly more data to examine, potentially inaccurate intelligence will stand out more clearly, he said.
Today, an analyst's query might scan only 5% of the total intelligence data in the U.S. government,
said a senior intelligence official. Even when analysts find documents, they sometimes can't read
them without protracted negotiations to gain access. Under the new system, an analyst would
likely search about 95% of the data, the official said.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities of the War on Terror, click here.
Intelligence Policy to Stay Largely Intact

President-elect Barack Obama is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush
administration intelligence policies, advisers say, an approach that is almost certain to
create tension within the Democratic Party. Mr. Obama is being advised largely by a group
of intelligence professionals ... who have supported Republicans. The intelligence-transition
team is led by former National Counterterrorism Center chief John Brennan and former CIA
intelligence-analysis director Jami Miscik, say officials close to the matter. Mr. Brennan is viewed
as a potential candidate for a top intelligence post. Ms. Miscik left amid a slew of departures from
the CIA under then-Director Porter Goss. Mr. Brennan is a leading contender for one of the two
jobs, say some advisers. He declined to comment. Gen. James L. Jones, a former North Atlantic
Treaty Organization commander; Thomas Fingar, the chief of analysis for the intelligence director;
Joan A. Dempsey, who served in top intelligence and Pentagon posts; former Rep. Tim Roemer of
Indiana, who served on the 9/11 Commission; and [Rep. Jane] Harman have also been mentioned.
Ms. Harman has also been cited as a potential secretary of homeland security.
Note: According to the New York Times, John O. Brennan, president-elect Obama's intelligencetransition leader and a top candidate for director of national intelligence or the CIA in the Obama
administration, "[was] a senior adviser to [CIA Director George] Tenet in 2002 [and] was present at
the creation of the C.I.A.s controversial detention and interrogation program." Jane Harman has
been the principal Congressional proponent of the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown
Terrorism Prevention Act, with its McCarthyesque provisions for criminalizing political thought. For
more on increasing threats to civil liberties from reliable sources, click here.
Helping people at home may become a permanent part of the active

Army
2008-09-08, Army Times
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/
The 3rd Infantry Divisions 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq
patrolling in full battle rattle. Now theyre training for the same mission with a twist at home.
Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army
North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force
for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters. This new mission marks the first time an
active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command
established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts
and coordinate defense support of civil authorities. The mission will be a permanent one.
They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially
horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological,
radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack. The 1st BCTs soldiers also will
learn how to use the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded, 1st BCT commander
Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons
designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them. Its a new modular
package of nonlethal capabilities that theyre fielding. Theyve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but
this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because
of this mission were undertaking we were the first to get it.
Note: Positioning military troops in country to deal with internal matters violates the posse
comitatus act, though the administration will argue that there is a national emergency allowing this.
New Unit of DIA Will Take the Offensive On Counterintelligence

The Defense Intelligence Agency's newly created Defense Counterintelligence and Human
Intelligence Center is going to have an office authorized for the first time to carry out
"strategic offensive counterintelligence operations," according to Mike Pick, who will direct the
program. Such covert offensive operations are carried out at home and abroad against people
known or suspected to be foreign intelligence officers or connected to foreign intelligence or
international terrorist activities. The investigative branches of the three services -- the Army's
Counterintelligence Corps, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and the Naval Criminal
Investigative Service -- have done secret offensive counterintelligence operations for years, and
now DIA has been given the authority. Two years ago, the DIA asked then-Undersecretary of
Defense Stephen A. Cambone for authority to run offensive operations along with a newer
Pentagon intelligence agency, the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA). Cambone agreed to a
two-year trial. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates recently approved the merger of CIFA into the
new DIA center. Senior Defense Department officials and the combat commanders overseas will
now decide what to do with the DIA's new offensive operational authority.
Note: For penetrating reports on the realities of the "war on terror" from major media sources, click
here.
'Doomsday' Vault Opens to Protect Seeds

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jRw_99fcIqca5u6uzuVRuiogts2gD8V1HNK80
It's been dubbed a Noah's Ark for plant life and built to withstand an earthquake or a nuclear
attack. Dug deep into the permafrost of a remote Arctic mountain, the "doomsday" vault is
designed by Norway to protect the world's seeds from global catastrophe. The Svalbard Global
Seed Vault, a backup to the world's 1,400 other seed banks, was to be officially inaugurated in a
ceremony Tuesday on the northern rim of civilization attended by about 150 guests from 33
countries. The frozen vault has the capacity to store 4.5 million seed samples from around
the globe, shielding them from climate change, war, natural disasters and other threats.
Norway's government owns the vault in Svalbard, a frigid archipelago 620 miles from the North
Pole. The Nordic country paid $9.1 million for construction, which took less than a year. Other
countries can deposit seeds for free and reserve the right to withdraw them upon need. Giant air
conditioning units have chilled the vault to just below zero, a temperature at which experts
say many seeds could survive for 1,000 years. Inside the concrete entrance ... a roughly 400foot-long tunnel of steel and concrete leads to three separate 32-by-88-foot chambers where the
seeds will be stored. The first 600 boxes with 12 tons of seeds already have arrived from 20 seed
banks around the world, Norwegian Agriculture Minister Terje Riis-Johansen said. Each chamber
can hold 1.5 million packets holding all types of crop seeds, from carrots to wheat.
NSA Spying Part of Broader Effort

The Bush administration's chief intelligence official said yesterday that President Bush authorized
a series of secret surveillance activities under a single executive order in late 2001. The disclosure
makes clear that a controversial National Security Agency program was part of a much broader
operation than the president previously described. The disclosure by Mike McConnell [is] the first
time that the administration has publicly acknowledged that Bush's order included undisclosed
activities beyond the warrantless surveillance of e-mails and phone calls that Bush confirmed in
December 2005. McConnell [disclosed] that the executive order following the Sept. 11, 2001
attacks included "a number of . . . intelligence activities" and that a name routinely used by the
administration -- the Terrorist Surveillance Program -- applied only to "one particular aspect of
these activities, and nothing more. This is the only aspect of the NSA activities that can be
discussed publicly, because it is the only aspect of those various activities whose existence has
been officially acknowledged." News reports ... have detailed a range of activities linked to the
program, including the use of data mining to identify surveillance targets and the participation of
telecommunication companies in turning over millions of phone records. Kate Martin ... of the
Center for National Security Studies, said the new disclosures show that ... administration officials
have "repeatedly misled the Congress and the American public" about the extent of NSA
surveillance efforts. "They have repeatedly tried to give the false impression that the
surveillance was narrow and justified," Martin said. "Why did it take accusations of perjury
before the DNI disclosed that there is indeed other, presumably broader and more
questionable, surveillance?"
US college rejects Jewish professor over anti-Israel stance

2007-06-11, The Guardian (one of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2100590,00.html
One of the most rancorous disputes in American academia has ended with a prominent political
scientist ... being denied tenure at one of the country's top-10 private universities. Norman
Finkelstein, author of The Holocaust Industry, [is a professor at] the political sciences department
of DePaul University in Chicago. Mr Finkelstein has argued in his books that claims of antisemitism are used to dampen down criticism of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians and that the
Holocaust is exploited by some Jewish institutions for their own gain. His outspoken position as a
Jewish intellectual critical of Israel and of some elites within the Jewish community has prompted
passionate debate. Prominent intellectuals such as [Noam Chomsky] have spoken out in Mr
Finkelstein's favour, but others have decried him. His most bitter opponent is Alan Dershowitz, a
Harvard law professor, who campaigned heavily to prevent tenure being granted. Soon after Mr
Finkelstein applied for it, Mr Dershowitz sent DePaul faculty members a dossier of what he
categorised as the "most egregious academic sins, outright lies, misquotations, and distortions" of
the political scientist. The dispute has roots that go deeper still, with Mr Finkelstein devoting much
of his most recent book, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of
History, to an attack on Mr Dershowitz's own work. Mr Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust
survivors, has responded to the decision ... by condemning the vote as an act of political
aggression. "I met the standards of tenure DePaul required, but it wasn't enough to
overcome the political opposition to my speaking out on the Israel-Palestine conflict."
I blame myself for our downfall in Iraq

2007-06-06, The Telegraph (one of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/10/wirq110.xml
A former American army torturer has laid bare the traumatic effects of American interrogation
techniques in Iraq - on their victims and on the perpetrators themselves. Tony Lagouranis
conducted mock executions, forced men and boys into agonising stress positions, kept suspects
awake for weeks on end, used dogs to terrify detainees and subjected others to hypothermia. But
he confesses that he was deeply scarred by the realisation that what he did has contributed to the
downfall of American forces in Iraq. Mr Lagouranis, 37, suffered nightmares and anxiety attacks on
his return to Chicago. Between January 2004 and January 2005, he tortured suspects, most of
whom he says turned out to be innocent. He says that he realised he had entered a moral
dungeon when he found himself reading a Holocaust memoir, hoping to pick up torture tips
from the Nazis. "When I first got back I had a lot of anxiety. I had a personal crisis because I felt I
had done immoral things and I didn't see a way to cope with that. I saw a psychologist. I had a lot
to work through." He says that helped prevent him becoming "a totally broken human being". Mr
Lagouranis has written a recently published book about his experiences, Fear Up Harsh, a term for
intimidating a detainee by shouting at him. He makes clear that torture has cost America its moral
authority in Iraq by detaining innocent people and treating them badly. He writes: "My actions,
combined with the actions of the arresting infantry who left bruises on their prisoners, and the
actions of the officers who wanted to get promotions, repeated in microcosm all over this country,
had a cumulative effect. I could blame Bush and Rumsfeld, but I would always have to also blame
myself."
Note: For a top US general's comments on the psychological abuse soldiers suffer as a result of
war, click here.
Soldiers Tell True Stories of Their War

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/12/INGTTM4TKU1.DTL
Justin LeHew, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment...Recipient of Navy Cross: There was black
smoke billowing out...and I went to pull a Marine out of the back. As I was pulling him, his upper
torso separated from his bottom torso, and all I had in my hands was his upper body. I handed Doc
half of a Marine and said, "Put this in the back of the Humvee because Marines don't leave our
dead and wounded on the battlefield." Jeff Englehart, 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division: The body
parts ... I don't know. It's not a video game. It's very real. But you think about -- this was a little girl.
She was obviously innocent. No way you could accuse a child that young of being guilty. Her life
was snuffed out in a second just from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There's
no way to get emotional about it. You're just numb to it. A lot of soldiers joke about it. Look at
that little foot and the bastard child that got blown up, but I guarantee that soldier thinks about it a
little bit more deeper than that. Daniel B. Cotnoir, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force...Marine Corps
Times "Marine of the Year": We recovered bodies out of a burnt helicopter that literally were just
cremated. The only reason we knew we had two was because we counted the vertebrae and there
were too many vertebrae to be one. The sad part is it's someone's son and that's all you've got left.
Garett Reppenhagen, cavalry scout/snipe, 2-63 Armored Battalion, 1st Infantry Division: Some of
the guys were laughing about it. It was their first time in combat and they were excited about it
because they felt like they went through some rite of passage. I'm just thinking, You guys are f -idiots. We just killed a bunch of f -- dudes who were on our side! I asked one of them, "Would you
be so happy if they were Americans?"
Note: For a top general's revealing description of how soldiers suffer more than all others, click
here.
Can the 20th hijacker of Sept. 11 stand trial?

2006-10-24, MSNBC
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. That much is known. These details were among the
findings of the U.S. Armys 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...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. 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.
Soldiers in murder case claim order to 'kill all military age males'
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-07-21-soldiers-statements_x.htm
Four U.S. soldiers accused of murdering suspected insurgents during a raid in Iraq said they were
under orders to "kill all military age males," according to sworn statements obtained by The
Associated Press. "The ROE (rule of engagement) was to kill all military age males on
Objective Murray," Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard told investigators, referring to the target
by its code name. That target, an island on a canal in the northern Salhuddin province, was
believed to be an al-Qaeda training camp. The soldiers said officers in their chain of command
gave them the order and explained that special forces had tried before to target the island and had
come under fire from insurgents. Girouard, Spc. William B. Hunsaker, Pfc. Corey R. Clagett, and
Spc. Juston R. Graber are charged with murder and other offenses in the shooting deaths of three
of the men during the May 9 raid. Girouard, Hunsaker and Clagett are also charged with
obstruction of justice for allegedly threatening to kill another soldier if he told authorities what
happened.
Strangers at the Door

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/23/opinion/23ervin.html?ex=1298350800&en=ef2eb...
Who could have imagined that, in the post-9/11 world, the United States government would
approve a deal giving control over six major American ports to a country with ties to terrorism? But
this is exactly what the secretive Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has done.
Since 1999, the ports of New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia and other cities have been operated by
a British concern, P & O Ports, which has now been bought by Dubai Ports World, a company
controlled by the government of the United Arab Emirates. While the United Arab Emirates is
deemed by the Bush administration to be an ally in the war on terrorism...two of the 9/11
hijackers were citizens of the emirates, and some of the money for the attacks came from
there. It was one of only three countries in the world that recognized the Taliban regime.
And Dubai was an important transshipment point for the smuggling network of Abdul Qadeer
Khan, the Pakistani scientist who supplied Libya, Iran and North Korea with equipment for making
nuclear weapons. Most terrorism experts agree that the likeliest way for a weapon of mass
destruction to be smuggled into our country would be through a port. After all, some 95 percent of
all goods from abroad arrive in the United States by sea, and yet only about 6 percent of incoming
cargo containers are inspected for security threats.
Pakistan: A Problematic Ally

2007-03-29, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/29/terror/main2623620.shtml
Ever since the 9/11 attacks, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has doggedly made the case
to Washington that he is the finger in the dike holding back a wave of Islamic extremism. Having
successfully argued his own indispensability, General Musharraf has reaped billions of dollars in
economic aid and arms sales while encountering little challenge from Washington over his
backsliding from steps toward democratic rule. Military aid to Pakistan grew from under $10
million in the three years prior to 9/11 to more than $4 billion in the three years after. But
now it is political protest, fueled by Musharraf's steps to consolidate and extend his power, that is
washing over Pakistan. That is presenting the U.S. with a classic dilemma of the war on terrorism:
Does a key leader's security value outweigh his authoritarian practices? Earlier this month,
Musharraf suspended the country's Supreme Court chief justice. Ever since, Pakistan's middle
classes one of the chief beneficiaries of the military leader's eight-year rule have taken to the
streets. Also fueling the uproar are suspicions that Musharraf is paving the way to another term as
both president and chief military leader. Musharraf cited "abuse of power" when he suspended
Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammed Chaudhry on March 9. Chaudhry had also expressed his view
that it was not legal under the constitution for Musharraf to seek another presidential term while
remaining the Army chief. The Bush administration has ... has expressed concern over some
clashes that have turned violent but has reiterated support for Musharraf as a valuable ally in the
war on terror.
Note: Once again security triumphs over democracy as the U.S. pours billions of tax dollars into
this dictatorship which has been known to harbor terrorists.
Surging and Purging

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/01/19/opinion/19krugman.html
Last month, Bud Cummins, the U.S. attorney (federal prosecutor) for the Eastern District of
Arkansas, received a call on his cellphone while hiking in the woods with his son. He was informed
that he had just been replaced by J. Timothy Griffin, a Republican political operative who has spent
the last few years working as an opposition researcher for Karl Rove. Mr. Cumminss case isnt
unique. Since the middle of last month, the Bush administration has pushed out at least four
U.S. attorneys, and possibly as many as seven, without explanation. The list includes Carol
Lam, the U.S. attorney for San Diego, who successfully prosecuted Duke Cunningham, a
Republican congressman, on major corruption charges. The top F.B.I. official in San Diego
told The San Diego Union-Tribune that Ms. Lams dismissal would undermine multiple continuing
investigations. In Senate testimony yesterday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refused to say
how many other attorneys have been asked to resign, calling it a personnel matter. Such a
wholesale firing of prosecutors midway through an administration isnt normal. U.S. attorneys, The
Wall Street Journal recently pointed out, typically are appointed at the beginning of a new
presidents term, and serve throughout that term. Why, then, are prosecutors that the Bush
administration itself appointed suddenly being pushed out? For the first time the administration is
really worried about where corruption investigations might lead. The purge of U.S. attorneys looks
like a pre-emptive strike against the gathering forces of justice.
U.S. attorney was forced out, Feinstein says

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/19/BAGE1NLGHJ1.DTL
U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan, who announced his resignation Tuesday after 4 1/2 years as the top
federal prosecutor in coastal Northern California, actually was fired by the Bush administration,
Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Thursday. [She] made her assertion at a Senate Judiciary Committee
hearing while questioning Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about federal prosecutors who have
been recently removed by President Bush. Two federal prosecutors in California have been "asked
to resign ... from major jurisdictions, with major cases ongoing, with substantially good records as
prosecutors," Feinstein said. She said four more have been asked to resign in other states. U.S.
attorneys are appointed by the president to four-year terms. Being "asked to resign" amounts to
being fired. "I am very concerned, because technically under the Patriot Act, you can
appoint someone without confirmation for the remainder of the president's term," Feinstein
said. Feinstein introduced legislation last week to repeal a provision of the USA Patriot Act that
allows Bush to choose replacement prosecutors to serve until his term expires, without Senate
confirmation. Her legislation would restore a previous law that limited an interim U.S. attorney
chosen by the president to 120 days in office. Gonzales defended the Patriot Act's expansion of
presidential appointment power. The Justice Department has not denied that Bush had sought the
departure of Lam, who led the corruption prosecution of Republican Rep. Randy "Duke"
Cunningham.
Judge dismisses New York Times libel suit

2007-01-12, MSNBC News/Associate Press
A federal judge on Friday dismissed a libel lawsuit filed against The New York Times by a former
Army scientist once identified as a person of interest in the 2001 anthrax attacks. U.S. District
Judge Claude Hilton in Alexandria dismissed the case a week after lawyers for the Times argued
that Steven Hatfill should be considered a public figure under libel law, which makes it much more
difficult for a public figure to win a judgment than a private citizen. The judge did not explain his
ruling in the order issued Friday. Hatfill had claimed that a series of columns falsely implicated him
as the culprit in the anthrax attacks. Kristof said all along that he never intended to accuse
Hatfill but simply wanted to prod a dawdling FBI investigation. He initially referred to Hatfill in
his columns only as Mr. X, and identified him by name only after Hatfill held a news conference to
denounce rumors that had been swirling around him. Hatfill argued that the columns contained
enough information about him that people could deduce his identity. Five people were killed and 17
sickened by anthrax that had been mailed to lawmakers on Capitol Hill and members of the news
media in New York and Florida just weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The case
remains unsolved.
Note: There is much more here than meets the eye. This article fails to mention some key facts.
As reported by the highly respected Federation of American Scientists, "the New York Times
invoked the 'state secrets' doctrine last month in a motion to dismiss the libel suit brought against it
by Steven J. Hatfill." What secrets would be divulged? Could this have anything to do with the
many microbiologists who were murdered or died under mysterious circumstances within months
of the anthrax scares? For more, click here.
Keith Alexander Unplugged: on Bush/Obama, 1.7 million stolen

documents
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/05/08/keith-alexander-unplugged-busho...
Back in December, 60 Minutes broadcast a now-notorious segment of pure access journalism in
which they gullibly disseminated one false NSA claim after the next. The program claimed that
Snowden is believed to still have access to 1.5 million classified documents he has not leaked.
Ever since then, that Snowden stole 1.7 or 1.8 million documents from the NSA has been
repeated over and over again by US media outlets as verified fact. The Washington Posts Walter
Pincus, citing an anonymous official source, purported to tell readers that among the roughly 1.7
million documents he walked away with the vast majority of which have not been made public
are highly sensitive, specific intelligence reports. Reuters frequently includes in its reports the
unchallenged assertion that Snowden was believed to have taken 1.7 million computerized
documents. In fact, that number is and always has been a pure fabrication, as even Keith
Alexander admits. The claimed number has changed more times than one can count: always
magically morphing into randomly chosen higher and scarier numbers. The reality, in the words
of the General, is that the US Government really [doesn't know] what he actually took with
him and they dont have an accurate way of counting. All they know is how many
documents he accessed in his entire career at NSA, which is a radically different question
from how many documents he took. But that hasnt stopped American media outlets from
repeatedly affirming the inflammatory evidence-free claim that Snowden took 1.7 million
documents.
US expands its drone war to Somalia

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-expands-its-drone-war-in-...
The CIA is reported to have used unmanned drones to target ... Somalia for the first time, attacks
coinciding with the unveiling of a new US counterterrorism strategy shifting the war on terror away
from costly battlefields and toward expanded covert operations. The strikes in Somalia ... bring to
six the number of countries where the missile-armed drones have been deployed: Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and Iraq, and now [Somalia]. US officials quoted by The Washington Post
yesterday claimed the two individuals targeted had "direct ties" to Anwar al-Awlaki, the US-born
cleric now based in Yemen. In May, al-Alwaki himself was targeted by a drone attack, but managed
to escape. If confirmed, the strikes in Somalia would fit the new approach set out in the 19page "National Strategy for Counterterrorism" released this week by the White House, and
presented by John Brennan, President Barack Obama's top anti-terrorism adviser. There is
no mention of the Bush era "global war on terror". In this campaign, America's main tools
would be intelligence and Special Operations forces, backed up by the rapid deployment of what
he called "unique assets", a reference to the drones that are becoming smaller and deadlier.
Note: Could it be that high-level members of the Obama administration believe that if they do not
use the "global war on terror" slogan, the public will not perceive the continuation of the Bush
administration's policies and methods by Pres. Obama? For critical reports from major media
sources on the illegal and unjustified "global war on terror", click here.
FEMA, FCC launching new alert system early in D.C. and NYC
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/fema_fcc_launching_new_alert_system_ea...
Federal officials and leaders of the nations largest wireless telephone companies are set to
announce ... that theyre launching a new mobile telephone emergency alert system by the end of
the year in Washington and New York. The Personal Localized Alerting Network, or PLAN, wont
be available across the rest of the country until April, but top executives from AT&T, Sprint, TMobile and Verizon are scheduled to join Federal Communications Commission. Authorities plan
to continue broadcasting messages across the Emergency Alert System on radio and television.
Mobile users who currently own or plan to buy newer smart phones and cell phones sold
by the four wireless companies would be able to receive the free, text-like messages that
would flash across a telephones screen and trigger a special vibration. Once operational,
participating federal, state and local agencies would be able to send information regarding only the
most serious alerts including warnings about natural disasters, terrorist attacks or AMBER
Alerts.
Note: Though clearly with some benefit in the case of mobilizing people during disasters, this
system also has the potential for manipulation by spreading fear messages and mobilizing the
public when it might not be necessary.
Long-range Taser raises fears of shock and injury

2009-11-02, New Scientist
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427325.600-longrange-taser-raises-fea...
A Pentagon project to perfect a projectile capable of delivering an electric shock to
incapacitate a person tens of metres away [is now in its final stages]. It will be fired from a
standard 40-millimetre grenade launcher. The projectile, being developed by Taser International
under a $2.5 million contract, is known as a Human Electro-Muscular Incapacitation or HEMI
device. Taser will deliver the first prototypes for testing and evaluation early next year. The ...
cartridges should be able to hit targets 60 metres [200 feet] away. However, the impact force of the
projectile remains a worry. "There is a known risk of severe injury from impact projectiles,
either from blunt force at short ranges or from hitting a sensitive part of the body," says
security researcher Neil Davison, who has recently written a book on non-lethal weapons. The
duration of the shock which the HEMI will deliver to its target has also raised concerns. Marksmen
will need time to reach the incapacitated target, and because the weapon is designed for longrange use this could be considerable. "We should be worried about undesirable effects if people
are going to be subjected to bouts of prolonged incapacitation," says Steve Wright, a specialist in
non-lethal weapons at Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK.
Note: For lots more on "non-lethal weapons" from major media sources, click here.
Torture Memos Will Not Result in Prosecutions

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/us/politics/06inquire.html
An internal Justice Department inquiry has concluded that Bush administration lawyers committed
serious lapses of judgment in writing secret memorandums authorizing brutal interrogations but
that they should not be prosecuted, according to government officials briefed on its findings. The
report by the Office of Professional Responsibility, an internal ethics unit within the Justice
Department, is also likely to ask state bar associations to consider possible disciplinary action,
which could include reprimands or even disbarment, for some of the lawyers involved in writing the
legal opinions, the officials said. The findings, growing out of an inquiry that started in 2004,
would represent a stinging rebuke of the lawyers and their legal arguments. But they would
stop short of the criminal referral sought by some human rights advocates, who have
suggested that the lawyers could be prosecuted as part of a criminal conspiracy to violate
the anti-torture statute. President Obama has said the Justice Department would have to decide
whether the lawyers who authorized the interrogation methods should face charges, while pledging
that interrogators would not be investigated or prosecuted for using techniques that the lawyers
said were legal. The draft report is described as very detailed, tracing e-mail messages between
the Justice Department lawyers and officials at the White House and the Central Intelligence
Agency. Among the questions it is expected to consider is whether the memos were an
independent judgment of the limits of the federal anti-torture statute or were deliberately skewed to
justify the use of techniques proposed by the C.I.A.
Note: For lots more on government corruption from reliable sources, click here.
Citizens' U.S. Border Crossings Tracked

The federal government has been using its system of border checkpoints to greatly expand
a database on travelers entering the country by collecting information on all U.S. citizens
crossing by land, compiling data that will be stored for 15 years and may be used in
criminal and intelligence investigations. The Border Crossing Information system, disclosed
last month by the Department of Homeland Security in a Federal Register notice, ... reflects the
growing number of government systems containing personal information on Americans that can be
shared for a broad range of law enforcement and intelligence purposes, some of which are exempt
from some Privacy Act protections. While international air passenger data has long been captured
this way, Customs and Border Protection agents only this year began to log the arrivals of all U.S.
citizens across land borders, through which about three-quarters of border entries occur. The
volume of people entering the country by land prevented compiling such a database until recently.
But the advent of machine-readable identification documents, which the government mandates
eventually for everyone crossing the border, has made gathering the information more feasible.
Critics say the moves exemplify efforts by the Bush administration in its final months to cement an
unprecedented expansion of data gathering for national security and intelligence purposes. The
data could be used beyond determining whether a person may enter the United States. For
instance, information may be shared with foreign agencies when relevant to their hiring or
contracting decisions.
Centers Tap Into Personal Databases

Intelligence centers run by states across the country have access to personal information about
millions of Americans, including unlisted cellphone numbers, insurance claims, driver's license
photographs and credit reports, according to a document obtained by The Washington Post. One
center also has access to top-secret data systems at the CIA, the document shows, though it's not
clear what information those systems contain. Dozens of the organizations known as fusion
centers were created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The centers use law
enforcement analysts and sophisticated computer systems to compile, or fuse, disparate tips and
clues and pass along the refined information to other agencies. Though officials have publicly
discussed the fusion centers' importance to national security, they have generally declined to
elaborate on the centers' activities. But a document that lists resources used by the fusion centers
shows how a dozen of the organizations in the northeastern United States rely far more on access
to commercial and government databases than had previously been disclosed. The list of
information resources was part of a survey conducted last year, officials familiar with the effort
said. It shows that, like most police agencies, the fusion centers have subscriptions to private
information-broker services that keep records about Americans' locations, financial
holdings, associates, relatives, firearms licenses and the like. "Fusion centers have grown,
really, off the radar screen of public accountability," said Jim Dempsey, vice president for public
policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonpartisan watchdog group in the District.
"Congress and the state legislatures need to get a handle over what is going on at all these fusion
centers."
Note: For further disturbing reports on threats to privacy, click here.
Clarity Sought on Electronics Searches

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Asian Law Caucus, two civil liberties groups in San
Francisco, [have filed] a lawsuit to force the government to disclose its policies on border
searches, including which rules govern the seizing and copying of the contents of electronic
devices. They also want to know the boundaries for asking travelers about their political views,
religious practices and other activities potentially protected by the First Amendment. The lawsuit
was inspired by two dozen cases, 15 of which involved searches of cellphones, laptops, MP3
players and other electronics. Almost all involved travelers of Muslim, Middle Eastern or South
Asian background. "It's one thing to say it's reasonable for government agents to open your
luggage," said David D. Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University. "It's another thing
to say it's reasonable for them to read your mind and everything you have thought over the
last year. What a laptop records is as personal as a diary but much more extensive. It
records every Web site you have searched. Every e-mail you have sent. It's as if you're crossing
the border with your home in your suitcase." Mark Rasch, a technology security expert with FTI
Consulting and a former federal prosecutor, [said] "Your kid can be arrested because they can't
prove the songs they downloaded to their iPod were legally downloaded," he said. "Lawyers run
the risk of exposing sensitive information about their client. Trade secrets can be exposed to
customs agents with no limit on what they can do with it. Journalists can expose sources, all
because they have the audacity to cross an invisible line."
Note: For many recent stories on threats to our civil liberties, click here.
Librarians Say Surveillance Bills Lack Adequate Oversight

A little-remarked feature of pending legislation on domestic surveillance has provoked alarm
among university and public librarians who say it could allow federal intelligence-gathering on
library patrons without sufficient court oversight. Draft House and Senate bills would allow the
government to compel any "communications service provider" to provide access to e-mails and
other electronic information within the United States. The Justice Department has previously said
that "providers" may include libraries, causing three major university and library groups to worry
that the government's ability to monitor people targeted for surveillance without a warrant would
chill students' and faculty members' online research activities. "It is fundamental that when a
user enters the library, physically or electronically," said Jim Neal, the head librarian at
Columbia University, "their use of the collections, print or electronic, their communications
on library servers and computers, is not going to be subjected to surveillance unless the
courts have authorized it." The librarians said their concern about such monitoring is rooted in
recent history. In the summer of 2005, FBI agents handed an administrative subpoena called a
national security letter (NSL) to a Connecticut librarian, and demanded subscriber, billing and other
information on patrons who used a specific computer at a branch library. NSLs can be approved by
certain FBI agents without court approval. The agents ordered the librarian to keep the demand
secret. But he refused to produce the records, and his employer filed suit, challenging the gag
order. A federal judge in September 2005 declared the gag order unconstitutional. The Association
of Research Libraries, ... the American Library Association ... and the Association of American
Universities ... each say they seek to amend the draft bills to make clear that the term
"communications provider" does not include libraries.
Note: For more eye-opening reports from major media sources on the erosion of civil liberties,
click here.
Collecting of Details on Travelers Documented

The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans
who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan
to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have
carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by
government officials. The personal travel records are meant to be stored for as long as 15 years,
[by] the Department of Homeland Security's ... Automated Targeting System. But new details about
the information being retained suggest that the government is monitoring the personal habits of
travelers more closely than it has previously acknowledged. The details were learned when a
group of activists requested copies of official records on their own travel. Those records
included a description of a book on marijuana that one of them carried and small flashlights
bearing the symbol of a marijuana leaf. Civil liberties advocates have alleged that the type of
information preserved by the department raises alarms about the government's ability to intrude
into the lives of ordinary people. The millions of travelers whose records are kept by the
government are generally unaware of what their records say, and the government has not created
an effective mechanism for reviewing the data and correcting any errors, activists said. The
activists alleged that the data collection effort, as carried out now, violates the Privacy Act, which
bars the gathering of data related to Americans' exercise of their First Amendment rights, such as
their choice of reading material or persons with whom to associate. They also expressed concern
that such personal data could one day be used to impede their right to travel.
Leader of Al Qaeda group in Iraq was fictional, U.S. military says

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/world/africa/18iht-iraq.4.6718200.html?_r=0
The leader of one the most notorious insurgent groups in Iraq was said to be a mysterious Iraqi
named Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi. As the titular head of the Islamic State in Iraq, an
organization publicly backed by Al Qaeda, Baghdadi issued a steady stream of incendiary
pronouncements. Despite claims by Iraqi officials that he had been killed in May, Baghdadi
appeared to have persevered unscathed. On Wednesday, a senior American military spokesman
provided a new explanation for Baghdadi's ability to escape attack: He never existed. Brigadier
General Kevin Bergner, the chief American military spokesman, said the elusive Baghdadi was
actually a fictional character whose audio-taped declarations were provided by an elderly actor
named Abu Adullah al-Naima. The ploy was to invent Baghdadi, a figure whose very name
establishes his Iraqi pedigree, [and] install him as the head of a front organization called
the Islamic State of Iraq. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, sought to reinforce the
deception by referring to Baghdadi in his video and Internet statements. Bruce Riedel, a former
CIA official and a Middle East expert ... suggested that the disclosures made Wednesday
might not be the final word on Baghdadi and the leaders of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. "First,
they say we have killed him," Riedel said, referring to the statements by some Iraqi government
officials. "Then we heard him after his death and now they are saying he never existed. That
suggests that our intelligence on Al Qaeda in Iraq is not what we want it to be."
Note: The above was written in 2007. More recently, the current Islamic State caliph Abu Bakr alBaghdadi was reported in Newsweek to have been held alongside Al Qaeda militants by U.S.
forces at Camp Bucca, a "virtual terrorist University" in Iraq.
NRA opposes bill to stop gun sales to terror suspects

2007-05-04, CNN/Associated Press
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/04/nra.terror.ap
The National Rifle Association is urging the Bush administration to withdraw its support of a bill
that would prohibit suspected terrorists from buying firearms. Backed by the Justice Department,
the measure would give the attorney general the discretion to block gun sales, licenses or permits
to terror suspects. In a letter this week to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, NRA executive
director Chris Cox said the bill, offered last week by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-New Jersey, "would
allow arbitrary denial of Second Amendment rights based on mere 'suspicions' of a terrorist
threat." A 2005 study by the Government Accountability Office found that 35 of 44 firearm
purchase attempts over a five-month period made by known or suspected terrorists were
approved by the federal law enforcement officials. "When I tell people that you can be on a
terrorist watch list and still be allowed to buy as many guns as you want, they are shocked," said
Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which supports Lautenberg's
bill.
Olbermann: Threatening letter no joke

2006-09-27, MSNBC
The Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper, The New York Post, may have just impeded an FBI
investigation into terroristic threats. I know this because I was a recipient. The Bureau asked
us not to report any of the details so that the person or persons responsible would not know any of
the threats had been received by any of the targets -- and we of course complied. I still cannot
confirm many of the specifics -- again in order to make the jobs of the FBI and the New York Police
Department a little easier. But I find it necessary to respond to the genuinely shocking tone with
which Murdoch's paper reported the event, and the string of factual errors they made either
through negligence or a premeditated disregard for the truth. Powder Puff Spooks Keith," reads
the headline. The article then gives the details of the event which we were asked not to divulge.
Also, a New York Post reporter attempted to gain access to me by falsely identifying herself as a
friend of mine. And, most relevantly, the New York Post never called NBC News or MSNBC
seeking any comment. They would have been told that the FBI had requested we try to keep this
quiet. But of course that would have interfered with the New York Post making fun of a terror
threat. It's almost melodramatic to ask why the New York Post would choose the side of domestic
terrorism, rather than choose the side of the FBI. It's interesting too that Murdoch's paper was able
to get a jump on this story so quickly -- nearly as quickly, as if they'd known it was coming.
Note: MSNBC's prime time news anchor Keith Olbermann is one of the very few in the media who
have had the courage to report some of the major cover-ups going on with elections, 9/11 and
more. Isn't it interesting that he would be the target of an anthrax threat and that no media made a
serious attempt to report any of this?
Alerts aid terror goals, study finds

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/06/MNG52L01KC1.DTL
Three things can be expected from Bush's speech, according to a new study by three Columbia
University researchers: The media will repeat the president's remarks. Public fear of terrorism will
increase. And the president's poll numbers will rise. Those have been the effects of presidential
pronouncements on terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks, according to political scientists. "These
are interesting findings, and confirm what many of us had suspected," said Mark Juergensmeyer,
director of Global and International Studies at UC Santa Barbara. "This public panic benefits the
terrorists whose work is made easier by an overactive government response that magnifies their
efforts. In an odd way this puts the government and the terrorists in league with one another," he
said. "The main loser, alas, is the terrified public." [The study's author said terrorists] "want to
intimidate, they want to spread fear and anxiety." Larry Beutler, director of the National Center on
the Psychology of Terrorism in Palo Alto, who reviewed the Columbia team's research
[commented] "There are findings suggesting that the administration's use of the alert
system increased inordinately before the election and each time it did, Bush's numbers
went up about 5 percent." The research is also a "damning indictment of the media's bloodlust,"
said Matthew T. Felling, media director for the Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington.
Grenades 'caused Beslan tragedy'

2006-08-29, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5294548.stm
A Russian investigator has said grenades fired by surrounding Russian forces could have
triggered the Beslan school bloodbath in September 2004. Yuri Savelyev's conclusions
contradict the official view that bombs planted by the hostage-takers in the school gym went off
just before the gun battle. Mr Savelyev is a member of the Russian parliamentary commission
investigating the siege, in which 331 people died. Mr Savelyev, a weapons and explosives expert,
said that during the investigation, he "discovered that the consequences of those blasts could not
at all be explained by the explosions of the home-made devices installed by the rebels". The head
of the commission, Stanislav Kesayev, said he had confidence in Mr Savelyev's conclusions. "He
had more resources than our commission. He relied on his own knowledge as a weapons
specialist and mathematician," Mr Kesayev told the radio. For weeks after the siege Russian
officials had denied the use of flamethrowers.
Note: The Russian school bombing is very likely one of many examples of a false-flag operation -a terrorist act staged secretly by a government and blamed on another group or government in
order to achieve a certain agenda. To understand more about that agenda, see
http://www.WantToKnow.info/brighterfuture. To see Terrorstorm, an excellent, free documentary on
false flag operations, click here.
The Nexus of Politics and Terror

2006-08-14, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9665308/#051012a
The term we employ is the 'Nexus of Politics and Terror.' It does not imply that there is no terror.
But it also does not deny that there is politics, and it refuses to assume that counterterror
measures in this country are not being influenced by politics. [Here are] remarks made on May 10,
2005 by [former Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge] discussing the old color-coded terror
threat warning system. 'Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. There were
times when some people were really aggressive about raising it. And we said, "For that?" In the
light of those remarks...it is imperative that we examine each of the coincidences of timing
since 2002, including the one last week, in which excoriating comments by leading
Republicans about leading Democrats just happened to precede arrests in a vast purported
terror plot, arrests that we now know were carried out on a time line requested not by the
British, nor necessitated by the evidence, but requested by this government. We introduce
these coincidences to you exactly as we did when we first compiled this top 10 list after the
revelation that the announced threats New York's subway system, last October, had been wildly
overblown. [See either of the two links above for the 10 highly suspicious coincidences, or view the
broadcast at the links below.]
Note: To view this highly revealing broadcast, see http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm or click
here
Risk to U.S. of withering terrorist hit is overblown

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/19/INGDDH8E2T1.DTL
Conventional wisdom says that none of us is safe from terrorism. The truth is that almost all of us
are. In most years allergic reactions to peanuts, deer in the road and lightning have all killed about
the same number of Americans as terrorism. In 2001, their banner year, terrorists killed...one
fifteenth the number killed by car accidents. And if something far worse than Sept. 11 does occur,
the country will recover. A disaster of biblical proportions visited New Orleans. The Republic has
not crumbled. The terrorist risk to the United States is serious, but far from existential. Human
psychology leads us to overestimate the likelihood of dangers that are novel and uncontrollable.
The news media and social interaction reinforce these common errors. People overestimate
terrorism's risk and demand excessive protection from it. From government bureaucrats seeking
larger budgets, to contractors hawking technology, to congressmen campaigning, danger sells. It
delivers money and votes. It also sells newspapers. Careerist think tank and academic analysts
learn that grants, invitations to Capitol Hill and jobs are more likely to go to those who
trumpet threats and defenses against them than those who tell Americans to worry less.
America tends to exaggerate national security dangers. Victory is persuading...regular Americans
not to be afraid. Conventional pundits of homeland security worry that the public will become
complacent. We should worry that it won't.
Health Officials Vigilant for Illness After Sensors Detect Bacteria on Mall
Federal health officials are still testing the samples from air sensors on the Mall and in downtown
Washington that collected a small amount of the tularemia agent. Health officials in the
Washington area were notified Friday that the filters on biohazard sensors that make up the
BioWatch network detected the bacteria Sept. 24, when tens of thousands of people were on the
Mall for antiwar demonstrations. The naturally-occurring biological agent -- which is on the "A list"
of the Department of Homeland Security's biohazards, along with anthrax, plague and smallpox -was detected in small amounts. Detection of the bacteria turned into an incident with
nationwide implications, because thousands of protesters had come from throughout the
country. Police said that more than 100,000 people attended the rally; organizers put the figure at
300,000.
Note: Isn't it interesting that this very rare occurrence coincided perfectly with a huge antiwar
demonstration?
Ridge reveals clashes on alerts

2005-05-10, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-05-10-ridge-alerts_x.htm?POE=NEW...
The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though
then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising
the threat level, Ridge now says. Ridge, who resigned Feb. 1, said Tuesday that he often
disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or
"high" risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled. Ridge said he wanted to "debunk the myth"
that his agency was responsible for repeatedly raising the alert under a color-coded system he
unveiled in 2002.
Man's Claims May Be a Look at Dark Side of War on Terror

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-masri12apr12,0,904030.sto...
ULM, Germany -- Khaled el-Masri says his strange and violent trip into the void began with a bus
ride on New Year's Eve 2003. When he returned to this city five months later, his friends didn't
believe the odyssey he recounted. Masri said he was kidnapped in Macedonia, beaten by masked
men, blindfolded, injected with drugs and flown to Afghanistan, where he was imprisoned and
interrogated by U.S. intelligence agents. He said he was finally dumped in the mountains of
Albania. A Munich prosecutor has launched an investigation and is intent on questioning U.S.
officials about the unemployed car salesman's claim that he was wrongly targeted as an Islamic
militant. Masri's story, if true, would offer a rare firsthand look at one man's disappearance into a
hidden dimension of the Bush administration's war on terrorism. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S.
authorities have used overseas detention centers and jails to hold or interrogate suspected
terrorists, such as at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Many of the estimated 9,000 prisoners in U.S.
military custody were captured in Iraq, but others, like Masri, were allegedly picked up in another
country and delivered to U.S. authorities in Afghanistan or elsewhere for months of confinement.
Note: If the above link fails, click here.
Spy network putrid, army man tells PM

A high-ranking military analyst has accused the Federal Government of systematically putting
foreign policy objectives ahead of intelligence, seriously undermining the work of its own spies. A
saga that has wracked the military for six years has culminated in General Peter Cosgrove's senior
intelligence analyst during the East Timor conflict, Lieutenant-Colonel Lance Collins, writing to the
Prime Minster demanding a Royal Commission into the spy services. The letter says there has
been a litany of intelligence failures. "I strongly urge you, Prime Minister, to appoint an
impartial and wide-ranging Royal Commission into intelligence," the letter says. "To do
otherwise would merely cultivate an artificial scab over the putrefaction beneath". A navy
lawyer, Captain Martin Toohey, conducted a review of Colonel Collins's grievances and found his
intelligence on Timor was blocked at high levels in the DIO. Captain Toohey said the DIO reported
what "the government wants to hear" on East Timor. He found it vindictively and unfairly placed
Colonel Collins's name on an Australian Federal Police search warrant looking for leaked
intelligence documents, effectively ending his career as an intelligence officer. The Herald can
reveal the DIO shut down an intelligence-sharing network at the height of the East Timor operation
and ordered, in early 2000, that no more intelligence be gathered from West Timor, where
atrocities against East Timorese refugees occurred.
Five Years After 9/11, Fear Finally Strikes Out

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/opinion/20rich.html
The results are in for the White House's latest effort to exploit terrorism for political gain: the era of
Americans' fearing fear itself is over. By crying wolf about terrorism way too often, usually
when a distraction is needed from bad news in Iraq, [President Bush] and his
administration have long since become comedy fodder. June's scenario was particularly
choice: as Baghdad imploded, Alberto Gonzales breathlessly unmasked a Miami terror cell plotting
a "full ground war" and the destruction of the Sears Tower, even though the alleged cell had no
concrete plans, no contacts with terrorist networks and no equipment, including boots. Dick
Cheney...will always be the man who told us that Iraqis would greet our troops as liberators and
that the insurgency was in its last throes in May 2005. The administration's constant refrain that
Iraq is the "central front" in the war on terror is not only false but has now also backfired politically:
only 9 percent in the CBS poll felt that our involvement in Iraq was helping decrease terrorism. As
its fifth anniversary arrives, 9/11 itself has been dwarfed by the mayhem in Iraq, where more
civilians are now killed per month than died in the attack on America. This country remains a
country of the center, and opposition to the war in Iraq is now the center and...even the center
right. It's hard to ignore the tragic reality that...botched American policy has strengthened Iran and
Hezbollah and undermined Israel, and that our Department of Homeland Security is as ill-equipped
now to prevent explosives (liquid or otherwise) in cargo as it was on 9/11.
Searching Passengers' Faces For Subtle Cues to Terror

Looking for signs of "stress, fear and deception" among the hundreds of passengers shuffling past
him at Orlando International Airport one day last month, security screener Edgar Medina
immediately focused on four casually dressed men trying to catch a flight to Minneapolis. One of
the men, in particular, was giving obvious signs of trying to hide something, Medina said. After
obtaining the passengers' ID cards and boarding passes, the Transportation Security
Administration officer quickly determined the men were illegal immigrants traveling with fake
Florida driver's licenses. They were detained. The otherwise mundane arrests Aug. 13 illustrated
an increasingly popular tactic in the government's effort to fight terrorism: detecting lawbreakers or
potential terrorists by their behavior. The TSA has embraced the strategy, training 600 of its
screeners ... in detection techniques. The TSA's teams are the most publicly acknowledged effort
by the government or the private sector to come up with strategies and technology to detect
lawbreakers or terrorists before they commit a crime. Other technologies under development or
being deployed include machines that detect stress in voices and software that scans video
images to match the faces of passengers with those of known terrorists. The government is testing
other technology that can see through clothing with ... electromagnetic waves. TSA's growing
reliance on detecting behavior and the close study of passengers' expressions concerns
civil liberties groups and members of Congress. "The problem is behavioral characteristics
will be found where you look for them," said John Reinstein, legal director of the American Civil
Liberties Union of Massachusetts.
When Computers Attack

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/24/weekinreview/24schwartz.html?ex=1340337600&...
Anyone who follows technology or military affairs has heard the predictions for more than a
decade. Cyberwar is coming. Although the long-announced, long-awaited computer-based conflict
has yet to occur, the forecast grows more ominous with every telling: an onslaught is brought by a
warring nation, backed by its brains and computing resources; banks and other businesses in the
enemy states are destroyed; governments grind to a halt; telephones disconnect. Industrial
remote-control technologies known as Scada systems, for Supervisory Control and Data
Acquisition ... allow remote monitoring and control of operations like manufacturing production
lines and civil works projects like dams. So security experts envision terrorists at a keyboard
remotely shutting down factory floors or opening a dams floodgates to devastate cities
downstream. But how bad would a cyberwar really be especially when compared with the
blood-and-guts genuine article? And is there really a chance it would happen at all?
Whatever the answer, governments are readying themselves for the Big One. The United States is
arming up. Robert Elder, commander of the Air Force Cyberspace Command, told reporters ... that
his newly formed command, which defends military data, communications and control networks, is
learning how to disable an opponents computer networks and crash its databases. We want to go
in and knock them out in the first round, he said, as reported on Military.com.
White House proposes retroactive war crimes protection

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/08/10/white_house_...
The Bush administration drafted amendments to the War Crimes Act that would retroactively
protect policy makers from possible criminal charges for authorizing any humiliating and degrading
treatment of detainees, according to lawyers who have seen the proposal. At issue are
interrogations carried out by the CIA and the degree to which harsh tactics such as water-boarding
were authorized by administration officials. When interrogators engage in waterboarding, prisoners
are strapped to a plank and dunked in water until nearly drowning. One section of the draft would
outlaw torture and inhuman or cruel treatment, but it does not contain prohibitions from Article 3 of
the Geneva Conventions against "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and
degrading treatment." Another section would apply the legislation retroactively. The initiative is "not
just protection of political appointees, but also CIA personnel who led interrogations."
Interrogation practices "follow from policies that were formed at the highest levels of the
administration."
House overwhelmingly backs Israel in vote

2006-07-20, Houston Chronicle/Associated Press
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/politics/4060793.html
The House, displaying a foreign affairs solidarity lacking on issues like Iraq, voted overwhelmingly
Thursday to support Israel in its confrontation with Hezbollah guerrillas. The resolution, which
was passed on a 410-8 vote, also condemns enemies of the Jewish state. House Republican
leader John Boehner cited Israel's "unique relationship" with the United States as a reason for his
colleagues to swiftly go on record supporting Israel in the latest flare-up of violence in the Mideast.
Yet as Republican and Democratic leaders rally behind the measure in rare bipartisan fashion, a
handful of lawmakers have quietly expressed reservations that the resolution was too much the
result of a powerful lobbying force and attempts to court Jewish voters.
Note: It's interesting to note that very few major media picked up this revealing story.
Kissinger warns of energy conflict

2005-06-02, MSNBC
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.asp?Feed=FT&Date=20...
Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state, on Wednesday warned that the global battle for
control of energy resources could become the modern equivalent of the 19th century "great game"
the conflict between the UK and Tsarist Russia for supremacy in central Asia. "The great game is
developing again," he told a meeting of the US-India Business Council. "The amount of energy is
finite, up to now in relation to demand, and competition for access to energy can become the life
and death for many societies. It would be ironic if the direction of pipelines and locations become
the modern equivalent of the colonial disputes of the 19th century." The two nuclear superpowers,
the US and Soviet Union, navigated the cold war because they made "the same calculations", Mr
Kissinger said. "When nuclear weapons spread to 30 or 40 countries and each conducts a
calculation, with less experience and different value systems, we will have a world of
permanent imminent catastrophe."
Note: Here is one of the key power players, openly promoting their plan: keep people polarized
and in a state of perpetual fear (you must believe the world is in a state of permanent imminent
catastrophe). For an excellent summary of the plans of the power elite and what we can do about
it, click here.
White House wants suit against Yoo dismissed

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/08/MN061AVC89.DTL
The Obama administration has asked an appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing
former Bush administration attorney John Yoo of authorizing the torture of a terrorism
suspect, saying federal law does not allow damage claims against lawyers who advise the
president on national security issues. Yoo, a UC Berkeley law professor, worked for the Justice
Department from 2001 to 2003. He was the author of a 2002 memo that said rough treatment of
captives amounts to torture only if it causes the same level of pain as "organ failure, impairment of
bodily function or even death." The memo also said the president may have the power to authorize
torture of enemy combatants. In the current lawsuit, Jose Padilla, now serving a 17-year sentence
for conspiring to aid Islamic extremist groups, accuses Yoo of devising legal theories that justified
what he claims was his illegal detention and abusive interrogation. The Justice Department
represented Yoo until June, when a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that the suit could
proceed. The department then bowed out, citing unspecified conflicts, and was replaced by a
government-paid private lawyer. Padilla, a U.S. citizen, was ... held for three years and eight
months in a Navy brig, where, according to his suit, he was subjected to sleep deprivation, sensory
deprivation and stress positions, kept for lengthy periods in darkness and blinding light, and
threatened with death to himself and his family.
Note: For lots more on government attacks on civil liberties, click here.
Report: Feds Refusing FBI Terror Cases

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/06/ap/national/mainD8L77N501.shtml
The Justice Department increasingly has refused to prosecute FBI cases targeting suspected
terrorists over the past five years, according to private researchers who reviewed department
records. The report being released Monday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
at Syracuse University raises questions about the quality of the FBI's investigations. Prosecutors
declined to bring charges in 131 of 150, or 87 percent, of international terrorist case referrals from
the FBI between October 2005 and June 2006. That number marks the peak of generally steady
increases from the 2001 budget year, when prosecutors rejected 33 percent of such cases from
the FBI. The data "raise troubling questions about the bureau's investigation of criminal matters
involving individuals the government has identified as international terrorists," the report said. It
noted that prosecutions in traditional FBI investigations since 2001including drug cases,
white collar crimes and organized crimeshave decreased while the number of agents and
other employees has risen. "So with more special agents, many more intelligence analysts, and
many fewer prosecutions the question must be asked: What is the FBI doing?" the report said.
Note: With the current administration's frequent claims to be tough on terrorism, does this make
any sense? Could it be that some of the accused are being protected from prosecution?
Five myths about war and terrorism

2006-11-01, Ode Magazine (Wonderfully inspiring magazine), Nov. 2006 Issue
http://www.odemagazine.com/article.php?aID=4372
If we believe what we see in the media, the world is on fire. The impression we get is that conflicts
are increasing all around the globe while the stockpile of deadly weapons constantly expands. All
this is very troublingand quite untrue. The exhaustive Human Security Report offers a very
different picture of our world. The 2005 report finds clear evidence that the world is becoming
a more peaceful place. Myth 1: War is spreading. Yes, the number of armed conflicts increased
sharply after World War II, but has just as sharply declined since 1991. In the last 15 years...the
number of armed conflicts and wars actually fell at least 40 percent. The number of genocides and
political murders declined by no less than 80 percent. In 1950, the average conflict claimed the
lives of 38,000 people, while in 2002 that figure was 600, a decline of 98 percent. Myth 2: The
weapons arsenal is increasing. International arms trade fell 33 percent between 1990 and 2000,
and as a percentage of the value of the world economy, defence spending declined from 4.2 to 2.7
percent. Myth 3: Civilians are the vast majority of war victims. In the most recent wars, civilians
account for somewhere between 30 and 60 percent of deaths. Myth 4: Women are the primary
victims of war. War continues to be waged by men, against men. Ninety percent of the victims are
men. Myth 5: Terrorism is the biggest threat in the world. Over the past 30 years, an average of
slightly less than 3,000 people have died at the hands of terrorists each year. The chance of being
a victim of terrorism remains exceptionally small. Between alleged and real threats, there is often
little correlation.
Unlikely Terrorists On No-Fly List

2006-10-05, CBS News
60 Minutes, in collaboration with the National Security News Service, has obtained the secret list
used to screen airline passengers for terrorists and discovered it includes names of people not
likely to cause terror, including the president of Bolivia, people who are dead and names so
common, they are shared by thousands of innocent fliers. The "data dump" of names from the files
of several government agencies, including the CIA, fed into the computer compiling the list
contained many unlikely terrorists. These include...Nabih Berri, Lebanon's parliamentary
speaker, and Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia. It also includes the names of 14 of the
19 dead 9/11 hijackers. But the names of some of the most dangerous living terrorists or
suspects are kept off the list. The 11 British suspects recently charged with plotting to blow up
airliners with liquid explosives were not on it, despite the fact they were under surveillance for
more than a year. Even if the list is made more accurate, it won't help thousands of innocent
travelers who share a common name on the list and who get detained, sometimes for hours, when
they attempt to fly. Gary Smith, John Williams and Robert Johnson are some of those names.
Worried CIA Officers Buy Legal Insurance

CIA counterterrorism officers have signed up in growing numbers for a government-reimbursed,

private insurance plan that would pay their civil judgments and legal expenses if they are sued or
charged with criminal wrongdoing. The new enrollments reflect heightened anxiety at the CIA that
officers may be vulnerable to accusations they were involved in abuse, torture, human rights
violations and other misconduct, including wrongdoing related to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The
anxieties stem partly from public controversy about a system of secret CIA prisons in which
detainees were subjected to harsh interrogation methods, including temperature extremes and
simulated drowning. The White House contends the methods were legal, but some CIA officers
have worried privately that they may have violated international law. Bush last week called for
Congress to approve legislation drafted by the White House that would exempt CIA officers and
other federal civilian officials from prosecution for humiliating and degrading terrorism suspects.
Agency officials said that interest has been stoked over the years by the $2 million legal bill
incurred by CIA officer Clair George before his 1992 conviction for lying to Congress about the
Iran-contra arms sales; by the Justice Department's lengthy investigation of CIA officers for
allegedly lying to Congress about the agency's role in shooting down a civilian aircraft in 2001 in
Peru; and by other events. One former intelligence official said CIA officers have recently
expressed concern that lawsuits will erupt if details of the agency's internal probe of
wrongdoing related to the September 2001 attacks become public.
U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/world/middleeast/22military.html?ex=1311220...
The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested
the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in
Lebanon, American officials said Friday. The decision to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was
made with relatively little debate within the Bush administration. Israel's request for expedited
delivery of the satellite and laser-guided bombs was described as unusual by some military
officers, and as an indication that Israel still had a long list of targets in Lebanon to strike. The new
American arms shipment to Israel has not been announced publicly, and the officials who
described the administration's decision to rush the munitions to Israel would discuss it
only after being promised anonymity. Pentagon and military officials declined to describe in
detail the size and contents of the shipment to Israel.
Government Scare Tactics

The latest "let's scare everyone" campaign is in full swing now, because the president's approval
ratings go up every time the threat level reaches red. With the enthusiastic cooperation of the
media, the government has managed to convince us that we are surrounded on every side
by crazed bomb throwers and that we must at all times be vigilant and allow the
government "to do its job," which is code for "anything it wants." Here's a headline from the
Houston Chronicle: "Latest terror scares show airport threat lingers." That's like saying, "Latest
false alarms show fire threat lingers." Since the object of terrorism is to spread terror, the "latest
terror scares" demonstrate only that the government is abetting the work of terrorists. Here's my
favorite story, as reported by the Associated Press: "A United Airlines flight...was delayed because
a small boy said something inappropriate, according to a government official speaking on condition
of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information. 'He didn't want to fly,' the official said." I
hope that small boys do not hear about this. Mad at Mommy? You can turn her airplane around!
Listen to the people interviewed at airports. "It's worth it," they say, patiently standing in line. Is it
worth it to, say, raise taxes to pay for better veterans benefits? Maybe it's easier to be afraid.
Maybe it's easier to blame the shadowy forces of international terrorism for everything that's scary
or evil or mean. Maybe it's easier than saying that poverty has killed more people than the
terrorists have; that preventable diseases have killed more children than the terrorists have; that
the rights we don't fight for are the rights we lose.
Custom-Built Pathogens Raise Bioterror Fears

In 2002, [a] German-born molecular geneticist startled the scientific world by creating the first live,
fully artificial virus in the lab. It was a variation of the bug that causes polio. The virus was made
wholly from nonliving parts, using equipment and chemicals on hand. The most crucial part, the
genetic code, was picked up for free on the Internet. The new technology opens the door to
new tools for defeating disease and saving lives. But today, in hundreds of labs worldwide,
it is also possible to transform common intestinal microbes into killers. Or to resurrect
bygone killers, such the 1918 influenza. New techniques...allow the creation of synthetic viruses in
mere days. Hardware unveiled last year by a Harvard genetics professor can churn out synthetic
genes by the thousands, for a few pennies each. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention has declined so far to police the booming gene-synthesis industry. "It would be possible
-- fully legal -- for a person to produce full-length 1918 influenza virus or Ebola virus genomes,"
said Richard H. Ebright, a biochemist and professor at Rutgers University. "It is also possible to
advertise and to sell the product." Five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the federal government
budgets nearly $8 billion annually -- an 18-fold increase since 2001 -- for the defense of civilians
against biological attack. Billions have been spent to develop and stockpile new drugs, most of
them each tied to a single, well-known bioterrorism threat, such as anthrax. If successful, [each]
drug is a solution for just one disease threat out of a list that is rapidly expanding to include manmade varieties.
Note: The government research lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, has been secretly developing this
technology for decades. For serious questions on the role of secret government projects in deadly
disease creation and dissemination, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/resources#emerging or click
here.
US in secret gun deal

http://www.guardian.co.uk/armstrade/story/0,,1773106,00.html
The Pentagon has secretly shipped tens of thousands of small arms from Bosnia to Iraq in the past
two years, using a web of private companies, at least one of which is a noted arms smuggler
blacklisted by Washington and the UN. The US government arranged for the delivery of at least
200,000 Kalashnikov machine guns from Bosnia to Iraq in 2004-05. But though the weaponry was
said to be for arming the fledgling Iraqi military, there is no evidence of the guns reaching their
recipient. The command force in Iraq...and the overseeing US general, had claimed "not to have ...
received any weapons from Bosnia." A Nato official.. told Amnesty: "There is no tracking
mechanism to ensure they do not fall into the wrong hands." The Moldovan air firm which flew the
cargo out of a US air base at Tuzla, north-east Bosnia, was flying without a licence. The firm,
Aerocom, [was] named in a 2003 UN investigation of the diamonds-for-guns trade in Liberia and
Sierra Leone. Some of the firms used in the Pentagon sponsored deals were also engaged
in illegal arms shipments from Serbia and Bosnia to Liberia and to Saddam Hussein four
years ago. The Pentagon commissioned the US security firms Taos and CACI - which is known
for its involvement in the Abu Ghraib prison controversy in Iraq - to orchestrate the arms purchases
and shipments.
Possible police role in 2002 Bali attack

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Possible-police-role-in-2002-Bali-attack/...
Indonesian police or military officers may have played a role in the 2002 Bali bombing, the
country's former president, Abdurrahman Wahid says. In an interview with SBS's Dateline
program, on the third anniversary of the bombing that killed 202 people, Mr Wahid says he
has grave concerns about links between Indonesian authorities and terrorist groups. While
he believed terrorists were involved in planting one of the Kuta night club bombs, the second,
which destroyed Bali's Sari Club, had been organised by authorities. Asked who he thought
planted the second bomb, Mr Wahid said: "The orders...came from within our armed forces not
from the fundamentalist people." Timsar Zubil, who set off three bombs in Sumatra in 1978, told
the program intelligence agents had given his group a provocative name - Komando Jihad - and
encouraged members to commit illegal acts. "We may have deliberately been allowed to grow," he
said. Another terrorism expert, George Aditjondro, said a bombing in May this year that killed 23
people...had been organised by senior military and police officers.
Note: This information strengthens the whistleblower testimony of WantToKnow.info founder Fred
Burks in a Jakarta terror trial last January reported in the international press. For more, click here.
Robertson: U.S. should assassinate Venezuela's Chavez

2005-08-23, CNN/AP
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/23/robertson.chavez/
Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson has called for the United States to assassinate Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez, calling him "a terrific danger" bent on exporting Communism and Islamic
extremism across the Americas. "If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really
ought to go ahead and do it," Robertson told viewers. "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war."
[Watch video of Robertson's comments at link above] Robertson, a contender for the Republican
presidential nomination in 1988, called Chavez "a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a
huge pool of oil, that could hurt us badly." "We have the ability to take him out, and I think the
time has come that we exercise that ability." Robertson accused Chavez, a left-wing populist
with close ties to Cuban President Fidel Castro, of trying to make Venezuela "a launching pad for
Communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent." "This is in our sphere of
influence, so we can't let this happen," he said.
Note: If a prominent Muslim calls for the assassination of a Western leader, he is almost certain to
be labeled a terrorist and placed on the most wanted list.
Bush Acknowledges Secret CIA Prisons

President Bush on Wednesday acknowledged previously secret CIA prisons around the world. The
announcement from Bush was the first time the administration had acknowledged the
existence of CIA prisons, which have been a source of friction between Washington and
some allies in Europe. European Union lawmakers said the CIA was conducting clandestine
flights in Europe to take terror suspects to countries where they could face torture.
CIA agents 'refused to operate' at secret jails

2006-09-20, MSNBC/Financial Times
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14927851/
The Bush administration had to empty its secret prisons and transfer terror suspects to the militaryrun detention centre at Guantnamo this month in part because CIA interrogators had refused to
carry out further interrogations and run the secret facilities. When Mr Bush announced the
suspension of the secret prison programme in a speech before the fifth anniversary of the
September 11 terror attacks, some analysts thought he was trying to gain political momentum
before the November midterm congressional elections. Former CIA officials said Mr Bush's
hand was forced because interrogators had refused to continue their work until the legal
situation was clarified because they were concerned they could be prosecuted for using
illegal techniques. One intelligence source also said the CIA had refused to keep the secret
prisons going.
GOP to Air Ad Warning of Terror Attacks

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2588960
The Republican Party will begin airing a hard-hitting ad this weekend that warns of more
cataclysmic terror attacks against the U.S. homeland. The ad portrays Osama bin Laden and
quotes his threats against America dating to February 1998. "These are the stakes," the ad
concludes. "Vote November 7." The ad displays an array of quotes from bin Laden and his top
lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahri, that include bin Laden's Dec. 26, 2001 vow that "what is yet to come
will be even greater." The ad also cites al-Zawahri's claim to have obtained "some suitcase
bombs," followed by a scene that appears to show a nuclear explosion. Despite al-Zawahri's
claim, portable nuclear devices are believed to be particularly difficult to produce and
elusive to rogue regimes and terror groups.
Note: Promoting fear is the easiest way to cause people to feel powerless and surrender their
freedoms and tax dollars to those in power. Click here for more.
Father of beheaded man blames Bush, not Zarqawi

2006-06-08, ABC News/Reuters
Michael Berg, whose son Nick was beheaded in Iraq in 2004, said on Thursday he felt no sense of
relief at the killing of the al Qaeda leader in Iraq and blamed President Bush for his son's death.
The United States said its aircraft killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the insurgent leader who
masterminded the death of hundreds in suicide bombings and was blamed for the videotaped
beheading of Nick Berg, a U.S. contractor, and other captives. "I don't think that Zarqawi is himself
responsible for the killings of hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq," Berg said in a combative
television interview with the U.S. Fox News network. Berg said Bush was to blame for the torture
of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. "Yeah, like George Bush
didn't OK the torture and death and rape of people in the Abu Ghraib prison for which my son was
killed in retaliation?" Zarqawi's organization took responsibility for the execution of Nick Berg in
May 2004. The video was published with a caption saying: "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi slaughtering an
American." When an Islamist Web site showed the video of a man severing Berg's head, the CIA
said Zarqawi was probably the one wielding the knife. The father said he was not convinced. "I
have been lied to by my own government," he told Reuters on Thursday.
Note: There are many very strange circumstances surrounding the beheading of Nick Berg. For a
report from Australia's leading newspaper on this, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/nickberg
Rights group leader says U.S. has secret jails

2005-06-06, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/06/05/amnesty.detainee/
The chief of Amnesty International USA alleged Sunday that the Guantanamo Bay detention
camp is part of a worldwide network of U.S. jails, some of them secret, where prisoners are
mistreated and even killed. "The U.S. is maintaining an archipelago of prisons around the world,
many of them secret prisons, into which people are being literally disappeared, held in indefinite,
incommunicado detention without access to lawyers or a judicial system or to their families,"
Schulz said. "And in some cases, at least, we know they are being mistreated, abused, tortured
and even killed." A high-ranking Republican senator said Sunday that hearings on abuse
allegations at Guantanamo Bay might be appropriate, and a top Democratic senator suggested
closing down the prison. "Look, it's very difficult to run a perfect prison," Majority Whip Mitch
McConnell of Kentucky said on CNN's "Late Edition." "But we have an open country. We have
hearings on a whole lot of different subjects. We might well have hearings on this."
Swearing-in of Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating AntiSemitism

2006-05-26, U.S. Department of State
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/66672.htm
SECRETARY RICE: Thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be here to swear in Dr. Gregg
Rickman as our Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism. Greg is going to
serve as our first Anti-Semitism Special Envoy and this is a position that was created by the
Global Anti-Semitism Review Act. I want to recognize the seminal role of Congress in creating
this position. President Bush has said that defending freedom also means disrupting the evil of
anti-Semitism. Today ethnic and religious differences are still viewed by some as a license to kill.
And we are reminded of the sad history of humankind when prejudice and hatred turn violent
against those who are simply different.
Note: Why not have a special envoy for monitoring and combating racism and prejudice?
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on
several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing
news articles ever published.

Terrorism News Articles - COMPLETE ARCHIVE

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Terrorism News Articles - COMPLETE ARCHIVE

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Excerpts of Key Terrorism News Articles in Media

U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba

[9/11] Hijack 'suspects' alive and well

US plans to fight the net revealed

Alleged [9/11] Hijackers May Have Trained At U.S. Bases

When Seeing and Hearing Isn't Believing

Terrorist Plots, Hatched by the F.B.I.

FAA Received Alert About 9/11 Hijacker

Is Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?

The 9/11 Secret in the CIA's Back Pocket

Connections And Then Some

Defence redefined means securing cheap energy

Pipeline politics taint U.S. war

'We've Hit The Targets'

INTELLIGENCE: Of Dart Guns and Poisons

How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and

Admiral: 'Destroy' photos of Osama bin Laden's corpse

Agent: I was ordered to let U.S. guns into Mexico

Why I Resigned From the CIA

Brainwash victims win cash claims

FAA Managers Destroyed 9/11 Tape

Transcript: Rice's Testimony on 9/11 (for 9/11 Commissioner Lehman)

Senators: State Department Had Key to Stopping 9/11 Attacks

Federal agency planned plane-crashing-into-building drill [on] Sept. 11

Whistleblower Complains of FBI Obstruction

Has someone been sitting on the FBI?

Resentful west spurned Sudan's key terror files

2nd Witness Arrested; 25 Held for Questioning

2001-09-16, Washington Post

The US government can brand you a terrorist based on a Facebook post

Inquiry by C.I.A. Affirms It Spied on Senate Panel

Government agents 'directly involved' in most high-profile US terror

The 9/11 Phone Calls: Disturbing Irregularities Uncovered in the Calls

The 'war on terror' - by design - can never end

Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy

Cleveland anarchist bomb plot aided and abetted by the FBI

Informant: NYPD Paid Me to 'Bait' Muslims

The Deafness Before the Storm

Expert Group Rejects World Trade Center Reports

Investigating the Investigation

Pentagon says it has no records of bin Laden's death; CIA hasn't

10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free

Top Secret America: A look at the militarys Joint Special Operations

The nagging questions that refuse to go away

US 'fails to account' for Iraq reconstruction billions

A hidden world, growing beyond control

Obama gives order to kill American imam

Leaked U.S. video shows deaths of Reuters' Iraqi staffers

Terror suspect allowed to keep visa by intelligence officials

David Kelly death evidence 'to be kept secret for 70 years'

Meet Mikey, 8: U.S. Has Him on Watch List

Is Osama Bin Laden dead or alive?

The Lies They Told

Material missing from Oklahoma bombing tapes, lawyer says

Pentagon sets sights on public opinion

Whistleblower exposes spying on Americans

BAE: secret papers reveal threats from Saudi prince

Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto: Osama bin Laden is Dead

Terrorized by 'War on Terror'

The 9/11 conspiracy movement

500 Conspiracy Buffs Meet to Seek the Truth of 9/11

Losing bin Laden