Donle’s Daily Dispatches
Volume 1 Issue 134 Today’s News and Views Thursday, May 11, 2006
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Volume 1 Issue 134 Today’s News and Views Thursday, May 11, 2006
Donle's Daily Dispatches RSS News Feeds Latest news and opinion headlines from NPR, BBC, NY Times, etc. |
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See the cost in your community
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Update of US Casualties in Iraq: 2432 Update of US Casualties in Afghanistan: 295 Figures provided by the Iraq Coalition Causality website |
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Rep. Louise Slaughter's report "America for Sale" (pdf document) |
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Click on Play, then place cursor on Player and right click, select play in Theatre Mode. this is a one hour and thirty-nine minute long movie and well worth watching. - Harold, ed. |
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Listen to Air America Radio while reading today's news and views |
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Sign the ACLU's Petition against torture! We demand our country back. |
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The Not Your Soldier Project gives youth the tools we need to stop the military invasion of our schools and our communities. Not Your Soldier Action Camps bring together young people who are heavily targeted by military recruitment. At the camps, youth learn how to take action to fight military recruitment, the poverty draft, and the corporations that profit off of war. In 2006, Not Your Soldier will be hosting a national camp for youth and adult allies. >>Go to the Pick a Camp section to find out more! If you're interested in hosting a regional Not Your Soldier gathering, find out more here. Not Your Soldier National Days of Action are coordinated days of creative, non-violent direct action where youth take leadership and tell recruiters, "We are Not Your Soldiers!" >>Sign up for our action alert e-mail list! Parents: have questions? Check out Info for Parents, and our FAQ's to find out what the camps will be like. copyright 2005 Not Your Soldier. |
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TUNE IN THIS SUNDAY!
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Tune in Sunday
night for a rare TV experience: Someone talking straight about working people in this country. SEIU President Andy Stern will be on 60 Minutes taking the fight to “make work pay” directly to America's living rooms. Watch this Sunday! Read More... |
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Today's News and Views |
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CREW SUES SECRET SERVICE OVER ABRAMOFF-RELATED VISITOR RECORDSSecret Service Refuses to Hand Over Docs To Ethics OrgWashington, DC – Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in
Washington (CREW) has sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today
for its failure to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on
documents detailing Abramoff-related visits to the White House, the
executive office buildings and the Vice President’s house. Copyright 2006, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics
in Washington |
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GLOBE EDITORIAL Bush's CIA takeoverBECAUSE PRESIDENT Bush's nominee to head the Central Intelligence Agency, Air Force General Michael Hayden, ran the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping on Americans and has publicly defended that evasion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, he carries a heavy burden entering Senate confirmation hearings. Some have voiced concern about Hayden's military background. But this should be less of a hindrance than his cavalier disregard for the law. Other military officers have headed the CIA without compromising that civilian agency's independence from the Pentagon. Hayden has demonstrated his own readiness to stand up to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the most telling way. In 2004, when Congress was creating the Office of National Intelligence to oversee 16 intelligence agencies, Hayden testified that the branch of military intelligence he led, the NSA, should report to the new director of national intelligence rather than the Defense Department. In the give-no-quarter world of Washington power struggles, this amounted to a secessionist rebellion against the secretary of defense by the chief of an agency that commands a major share of the intelligence budget. And Rumsfeld made his displeasure known to Hayden. Even if they are satisfied that Hayden will not make the CIA just one more branch of a Pentagon that controls 80 percent of the intelligence budget, senators do need to come down hard on his responsibility for wiretapping Americans without obtaining a warrant from a judge on the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court. Those judges hardly ever refuse to issue such a warrant, and if intelligence officials feel they must intercept a phone conversation or an e-mail immediately, under the law they may do so -- provided only that they obtain a warrant after 72 hours. It is not enough for Hayden to say, as he has in the past, that the NSA's warrantless taps on Americans are not the result of indiscriminate data-mining but are strictly ''targeted and focused" on terrorist suspects. He must explain why the 72-hour grace period is not sufficient, why he thought the NSA could simply ignore the law, and why he did not ask Bush to ask Congress to change the law if it hindered efforts to prevent another Sept. 11. A CIA director should be someone who will obey the law, will not turn the powers of his foreign intelligence agency on Americans, and will resist any temptation to tailor the intelligence ''product" to suit the policy preferences of a president, a powerful vice president, or any other policy maker. Integrity in the leader of the CIA means, above all, having the backbone to resist pressure from the White House to politicize intelligence. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are not the only occupants of the White House who have wanted the CIA director to produce intelligence that suit their policy intentions. But they have taken the practice to an extreme. Indeed, the CIA's reduced role in the past couple of years is traceable less to any failure to foresee Sept. 11 than to the enmity of neoconservatives who have long resented the refusal of agency analysts to verify the neoconservatives' notions about an active nuclear weapons program in Saddam Hussein's Iraq or operational collaboration between Hussein and Al Qaeda. Because of that resentment, many CIA veterans have been nudged into retirement and the president's crucial daily intelligence briefing is no longer given to him by the CIA director but by the national intelligence director, John Negroponte. Bush has now nominated Negroponte's deputy director of national intelligence to run the CIA. The Senate must not let the agency, which has already lost its roles as chief provider of analysis and coordinator of cooperation with foreign intelligence services, also lose its very independence. The new CIA director should be independent of policy makers who want their intelligence cut to suit the fashion of the day, but must not be independent of laws passed by Congress. © Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company |
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| One of those, Robert J. Stein Jr., a former
American occupation official in Hilla, pleaded guilty in February to five
counts of bribery, conspiracy and other charges, and could serve up to 30
years in prison. Mr. Stein disbursed the cash to Ms. Holland and Mr. Zangas
and was involved in accounting for it after their deaths.
The name of another American arrested in the corruption case, Philip H. Bloom, a businessman who was working in Iraq, appeared in contracting documents involving changes in Ms. Holland's projects after her death. He pleaded guilty to three counts of conspiracy, bribery and money laundering last month. Two Army Reserve officers, Lt. Col. Debra Harrison and Lt. Col. Michael Wheeler, who oversaw projects in Hilla, have been arrested and charged with accepting bribes. A lawyer for Mr. Bloom, John N. Nassikas III, declined to comment. Lawyers for Mr. Stein, Colonel Harrison and Colonel Wheeler did not return telephone calls requesting comment. At the core of the corruption case, prosecutors say, was a scheme in which Mr. Stein and other officials had steered at least $8.6 million in reconstruction contracts to companies controlled by Mr. Bloom, in exchange for millions of dollars in bribes, jewelry and other favors. Mr. Stein also pleaded guilty to federal weapons charges for having used the money to buy submachine guns, grenade launchers and other weapons in the United States. Investigators tracing the flow of the cash to Ms. Holland and Mr. Zangas are looking at the possibility that Mr. Stein and others took advantage of the deaths to steal additional money, according to the officials familiar with the investigation. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, which is investigating corruption in Hilla, provided copies of some of the documents tracing the cash, and described others, after a reporter for The New York Times asked about a paragraph in one of the office's published reports, about the mishandling of cash recovered "from the office of a paying agent who was killed in the field." That unidentified agent was Ms. Holland, and the documents indicate that Mr. Stein and Colonel Harrison were in charge of recovering the cash. One of those documents is a "memorandum for record" signed by Mr. Stein and Colonel Harrison saying that $71,099 was missing from Ms. Holland's office after her death. But that is only part of the hundreds of thousands of dollars that cannot be accounted for. Through press officers in both the United States and Iraq, the F.B.I. declined to comment on the case. No suspicion for the missing money has fallen on Ms. Holland or Mr. Zangas. And those who knew and worked with Ms. Holland, whose efforts on behalf of women had won her recognition, said it defied belief that she could have lost track of so much money. Adly Hassanein, an Egyptian-American official for the Coalition Provisional Authority who routinely worked with Ms. Holland in Hilla, said it was also unthinkable that she would have been carrying that amount of money with her. "She would never do that, because there was no need," said Mr. Hassanein, who recalled that Mr. Stein had directed the recovery of money from Ms. Holland's room and office after she died. As for Mr. Stein's memorandum asserting that money was gone, Mr. Hassanein said: "He's trying to say, 'I'm a victim.' " Four people close to Ms. Holland said they have been questioned by investigators from either the F.B.I. or the special inspector general's office. They include Stephen Rodolf, a lawyer in Tulsa who is a friend of the Holland family; R. Richard Love III, a lawyer for the family; Rachel Roe, who knew Ms. Holland in Iraq and worked in a related capacity there; and Ms. Holland's sister Viola Holland. Ms. Roe said that an investigator asked her whether Ms. Holland would have been carrying tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars around in her car when she was killed — possibly explaining a big shortfall. Ms. Roe said that she told the investigator: "No way — Fern was not a dummy." But according to the paperwork, she was granted a sizable amount of money in the weeks leading up to her death. On Feb. 7, Mr. Stein approved a request by Ms. Holland for $200,000 for a training program in Jordan on democracy, governance and human rights for 120 Iraqis. A set of papers indicate that by Feb. 25, Ms. Holland had received the money — $199,044 was the precise amount — although her signature never appears on the documents, raising further suspicions among investigators. Mr. Stein controlled the disbursement of nearly all government cash in Hilla. So much was available, often in shrink-wrapped stacks of $100 bills known as "bricks," that it was stashed all over the compound, the inspector general said in earlier reports. Millions were held in filing cabinets, a footlocker, even a safe in a bathroom, investigators found. But the main lode was in a narrow, heavily built safe in the basement of the Babylon Hotel, which served as the American occupation government's headquarters in Hilla. Mr. Stein, who personally paid out the cash for contracts, indicated in the paperwork that he was giving the money to Ms. Holland on Feb. 25 for the democracy and human rights training program. Meanwhile, between March 3 and March 7, records indicate, Mr. Stein paid Mr. Zangas more than $120,000 for television equipment and training for the Iraqi news media programs that he was running. All of that money appears to have vanished without a trace, since none of the paperwork recovered by the inspector general's office indicates that it had been spent for those programs before the slayings in the late afternoon of March 9. Another piece of paper that has caught the investigators' attention is the "memorandum for record" signed by Mr. Stein and Colonel Harrison. Written on June 23, 2004, as both were leaving Iraq at the end of their tours of duty with the provisional authority, the memo has as its subject line "Recovered Funds From Fern Holland (deceased)." The memo says that Colonel Harrison and another woman entered Ms. Holland's office on the day after her death (which the colonel incorrectly recalls as March 11). "In her office we recovered a box filled with what appeared to be a large sum of money consisting mostly of $100 bills and some smaller bills," the memo says. The memo said that the box was found to contain $125,035. But it says, "According to Robert Stein, Fern Holland signed for and withdrew $196,044," referring to the payment that Ms. Holland had not, in fact, signed for. The memo's inference is that missing money is indicated by the difference between what was found and what Mr. Stein said he had paid out. "These funds ($71,099) cannot be accounted for," the memo concludes. Even that was not the end of the story, the inspector general found. Mr. Stein failed to properly account for the money in his records, according to the inspector general's report, leaving it unclear exactly where the $125,035 ended up. |
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Letter fails to improve US-Iran ties By Frances Harrison News that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had written a letter to his US counterpart George W Bush has triggered short-lived optimism in Iran that a diplomatic breakthrough could be in the offing. That was until the letter was swiftly dismissed by the Americans. Before the letter was rejected, much of the Iranian press hailed the letter as the "beginning of a new phase in Iranian foreign policy" and "a turning point in Iranian-American relations" that could "lead to direct talks between the two sides" and "showed the cleverness and dignity of the Islamic Republic". Only some hardline papers criticised the letter, saying its contents should not have been kept secret. There was a brief spurt of euphoria that Iran's troubled relations with the West might change. Most Iranians know that the relationship with the US is at the root cause of their problems and that to be solved the nuclear issue needs direct talks with America. Bazaar's reaction That an Iranian leader directly communicated with the US president after 27 years was in itself a sign for hope. But traders in Tehran's main bazaar were unhappy with the development, because their customers started trying to return their purchases in the hope prices would fall on good news from abroad. Retailers in other cities saw that oil and gold prices started to fall on Monday after the news of the letter. They hoped that would bring wholesale commodity process down so they informed the transport companies not to send goods they had ordered. 'Lies' President Ahmadinejad now says he is waiting for a reply from Mr Bush before deciding what to do next. It will be interesting to see if there is a reply, because Mr Ahmadinejad's 18-page letter seems to have been a searing attack on America's foreign policy. He complained "lies were told in the Iraqi matter" about the presence of weapons of mass destruction. He said there was no way to rationalise or explain the creation of the state of Israel. And he even questioned why the American intelligence services did not do more to stop the 11 September attacks - asking: "Why have various aspects of the attacks been kept secret?" This is hardly ingratiating stuff and there is no mention of any concession on the nuclear issue. 'Messianic tone' But the letter is the first in a series to heads of states to mark what Iran has declared as the year of the Prophet Muhammad. As such it calls on President Bush to join the increasing number of people around the world who are flocking towards Almighty God. Mr Ahmadinejad writes approvingly that he has been told George Bush "follows the teachings of Jesus and believes in the divine promise of the rule of the righteous on earth". The messianic tone of the letter was picked up on by one hardline Iranian newspaper which said it was similar to invitations by the Prophet Muhammad to pagan leaders asking them to convert to Islam - hardly a flattering comparison for Mr Bush. Diplomatic trick? There were also analysts who thought the approach was an attempt to sow disunity among the international community as it struggles to reach consensus on the nuclear issue. Many believed this was a way of increasing the doubts of Russia and China about a UN resolution against Iran. That might explain the speedy rejection by the US of the letter just as they are trying to bring Russia and China on board. Now in Iran there is a sense of disappointment that America did not pick up on this opportunity to start a dialogue. Just as many here felt Iran's announcement in March that it was willing to hold talks with the US on the issue of Iraq could have helped rapprochement had the Americans been more enthusiastic. But there is also some disappointment that the letter did not do more to bridge the gap with the US. Story from BBC NEWS: |
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Katherine "Kate" Harris - Parody News Cartoon
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E.J. Dionne, Jr. - Washington Post Writers Group 05.09.06 - WASHINGTON -- It came as something of a shock to have to agree with Vice President Cheney, but what he said last week about human rights in Vladimir Putin's Russia was accurate, even laudable. Then Cheney went to Kazakhstan and you wondered if it was the same guy talking. Speaking to Eastern European leaders gathered in Lithuania, Cheney made the essential point about Putin's government: that “opponents of reform are seeking to reverse the gains of the last decade.” “In many areas of civil society, from religion and the news media to advocacy groups and political parties,” Cheney said, “the government has unfairly and improperly restricted the rights of her people.” Amen to that. Cheney also accused Russia of using its energy resources to push around its neighbors. “No legitimate interest is served when oil and gas become tools of intimidation or blackmail,” he said in an obvious reference to the games Putin has played with Ukraine over natural gas deliveries. It's good for leaders of our government to tell the truth -- they might even consider making it a habit. Cheney's comments were a vast improvement on President Bush's claims five years ago of spiritual affinity with a Putin who was already showing his authoritarian streak. “I looked the man in the eye,” Bush said on June 16, 2001. “I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul, a man deeply committed to his country.” Comparing the Bush of 2001 with the Cheney of 2006 calls into question our president's talent for reading souls, and makes you wonder: Who lost Russia? If Cheney had left matters there, he might have won the gratitude of human rights advocates everywhere. But just one day later, he went to Kazakhstan, whose president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, won re-election last December with 91 percent of the vote. Call me judgmental, but national elections in which incumbents get 91 percent are rarely honest. Our own State Department's report on Kazakhstan released this March noted that “observers criticized that election as falling short of a number of international standards.” More ominously, the report noted that that “members of the security forces committed human rights abuses” and that the “government's human rights record remained poor.” Recent legislation, the State Department added, “seriously eroded legal protections for human rights and expanded the powers of the executive branch to regulate and control civil society.” Sounds like Putin, doesn't it? Indeed, Nazarbayev, who has been in power for 15 years, is a former Communist Party hack who has been accused of large-scale corruption. Writing in the Financial Times last week, Isabel Gorst summarized the situation compactly: “Kazakhstan's judiciary is corrupt. The independent media is stifled.” But did Cheney challenge the Kazakh government? On the contrary, the vice president said of Nazarbayev that “we met some years ago and I consider him my friend.” How nice. Kazakhstan itself, Cheney said, “has become a good friend and strategic partner of the United States” for help in Afghanistan and Iraq and “cooperating with us in the global war on terror.” When pressed by reporters about Kazakhstan's record on democratic reform, Cheney replied: “Well, I have previously expressed my admiration for what has transpired here in Kazakhstan over the last 15 years. Both in terms of economic development, as well as political development, I think the record speaks for itself.” Indeed it does. OK, foreign relations are a complicated business and the United States often has to work with unsavory regimes. Kazakhstan has energy we need and could provide a way of bypassing Russia in shipping gas to the West. But this administration has made the large claim that promoting democracy is a central element of its foreign policy. Did Cheney have to offer his “friend” Nazarbayev such a warm embrace? Did anyone in our government consider that what Cheney said in Kazakhstan could undercut what he said about Russia? Is it too much to ask the administration that it avoid such neck-snapping cognitive dissonance? There is a great danger in getting power politics and human rights campaigning confused with each other. It's hard to be a shining idealist on a Thursday and a hard core realist on Friday. The United States shouldn't back away from its commitment to democracy in the world. It should take that commitment more seriously. And anyone who doubts that our flawed energy policies are forcing us to pursue a contorted foreign policy should spend some time with the transcripts documenting this Tale of Two Cheneys. (c) 2006, Washington Post Writers Group |
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[UPDATED] The FBI Busts Goss, Wilkes, and the GOP Domestic Spy Industryby leveymgSun May 07, 2006 at 06:39:32 AM PDTDomestic Spying: GOP and private NSA-CIA Contractors In his column yesterday, Josh Marshall just hints at this, but a lot more is going to come out about the relationship of private intelligence and defense contractors and how the GOP has used them to carry out covert domestic political spying and all variety of dirty-tricks operations. MORE below the fold . . .
[UPDATE: ANOTHER GOSS AIDE IDENTIFIED IN FORNIGATE http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000578.php The Mafia-esque moniker has attracted attention and jokes -- but little new information, until now: Newsweek magazine is the first to identify Nine Fingers as Brant Bassett, whom they also say is "a former Goss aide." He may be a more central character in our story than the SDUT made him out to be. Bassett is reported to have been a case officer with the CIA's Directorate of Operations, where Foggo worked. Their paths crossed a number of times over the years and they became friendly, I'm told, which isn't a stretch, given that two publications now put Bassett in poker games with Foggo and Wilkes. An enduring mystery to this fiasco is why Porter Goss promoted "Dusty" Foggo to the very top of the CIA. Now, informed sources are speculating that Bassett may be the link that explains that mystery, at least in part. Bassett, a counsel and staff director for the Human Intelligence panel of Goss' House Intelligence Committee, had ample opportunity to introduce Goss and his close aide Patrick Murray to Foggo.] The surveillance mechanism of privatized intel agencies, along with allied foreign intelligence operations inside the U.S., have been used for domestic partisan advantage and private gain. In return, GOP-allied contractors have been massively enriched by inflated defense and counter-terrorism spending. This is a criminal conspiracy that the FBI is only now beginning to break up after years of obstruction by the GOP. It's a criminal subversion of the political process that threatens the constitutional basis of the American republic. The career CIA, DIA and FBI have known about this conspiracy for years, but have been muzzled and sidetracked by GOP flacks and hacks. This investigation, along with Plamegate and the OSP-AIPAC cases, show the good guys are fighting back. Josh Marshall writes: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/... SNIP "Wilkes has deep ties into the CIA. The focal point of those ties is to Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, the man Porter Goss appointed to the #3 position at CIA when he took over the Agency last year. Remember, Wilkes' scam was getting corrupt contracts deep in the 'black' world of intelligence and defense appropriations, where there's little or no oversight. Foggo was in the contracting and procurement field at the CIA. So you can see how he and Wilkes, who have been friends since high school, had plenty to talk about. "The CIA wasn't the only place Wilkes and his protege Wade plied their corrupt trade. There were also in the mix contracting on the Bush Pentagon's extra-constitutional spying operations. And I am told that senior appointees at the DOD knew about their corruption but overlooked it. "Now, since the Cunningham scandal got under, and particularly of late, there's been a big tug of war between federal law enforcement and the CIA over whether to really go after Wilkes. Probably a little more specificity is in order there, folks at CIA in the orbit of Foggo and presumably Goss." For more info on how the GOP has misused privatized intelligence agencies and allied foreign intelligence services for political gain, see: 1) It's the entrepreneurial offspring of the commercialization of intelligence. We now see private contractors bribing Congressmen, operating spy agencies, and staffing the commissions charged with investigating their own abuses. Behold, the one-stop shop for political dirty-tricks. It has emerged in recent years amidst the mania for gov't outsourcing of counter-terrorism, particularly information technology services related to electronic surveillance. Private DoD and Homeland Security contractors have a vested interest in locating and amplifying "threats". This creates a monetary temptation for tailoring the intelligence product to match the expectations of government clients, including the outright falsification of intelligence. Take, for instance, Wade Mitchell's MZM, a corrupt defense contracting firm tied in with the Cunningham bribery scandal, which recieved millions to develop surveillance technologies for the Pentagon's new domestic spy agencies. TPM Muckraker reports the following disturbing developments: MORE below leveymg's diary :: :: A source cited by Rozen identified MZM as the private contractor cited for support of an errant CIA Iraq WMD assessment used to justify the Bush Administration's argument for war. An MZM analysis erroneously concluded that aluminum tubes ordered by Saddam Hussein were intended for use in a clandestine nuclear fuel enrichment progam that didn't exist. Now, Rosen comes up with the extraordinary find that consultants working for MZM and other intelligence contractors staffed the Robb-Silberman Commission that investigated the faulty Iraq WMD findings. SNIP 2) A response to today's Diary by "Daisy Cutter", Is Bush Spying on His Political Opponents? caught my eye. http://www.dailykos.com/.... "Wary" reminds us of an example of Republican political spying that was kept so quiet by the mass media that you probably never heard about it. In November 2003, GOP staff to Senator Hatch, then the Chair of the Judiciary Committee, intercepted and leaked the e-mails of Democratic members. For reasons that weren't made clear, Hatch gave up that powerful post and Arlen Specter took over the Chair. In addition to fact that this tawdry incident of political spying was all but ignored by most papers, there is a very familiar side to the story -- Robert Novak picked up the story, and spun it in his November 29, 2003 column. There is a persistent M.O. to these GOP dirty-tricks. Plamegate wasn't the first hack and leak attack, and since passage of Patriot-2 gives the White House even more power to conduct warrantless surveillance, it likely won't be the last. MORE Below . . . leveymg's diary :: :: In considering extension of the Patriot Act, the GOP argued that there is little or no evidence of illegal political spying on U.S. Citizens, except warrantless NSA surveillance on "a few thousand" Muslims suspected of communicating with al-Qaeda abroad. The Bush Administration and the GOP Congressional leadership said, trust us, our hands are clean. There was practically no challenge to that heard, and the law was renewed with even more leeway for unwarranted domestic spying by the White House. But, Republicans DID conduct political eavesdropping, and the target was Senate Democrats. In November 2003, a Republican staffer in Chairman Hatch's office illegally intercepted the communications of Democratic Senators -- thousands of them, including strategy memos -- and selectively leaked them. Robert Novak, still a force to be reckoned with in pre-Fitzgerald Washington, spun the story on its head. To read Bob's column, the Democrats had set up a "Plummer's unit", and this Democratic plot had forced the release of confidential GOP e-mails. Does anyone else see a pattern here? Here's how the matter was reported by AP in one of the few accounts that appeared at the time: SNIP 3)
http://www.dailykos.com/... Rawstory carried a link yesterday to reports that lobbyists working on behalf of Pakistan had persuaded the 9/11 Commission to drop key references to the link between that country's military and intelligence services with the network that financed al-Qaeda. Newspapers in India and Pakistan published these reports earlier this week.(see, *links below) If true, this would NOT be the first time the 9/11 Commission deleted information embarrassing to countries accused of harboring and financing terrorists. At the time of the publication of the Commission's report in 2004, the panel was widely criticized for the 27-page gap that was redacted from the public version. That section reportedly dealt with Saudi funding sources for the 9/11 attack. According to the new reports, similar types of information about Pakistani links to the hijacking were omitted from the final report. leveymg's diary :: :: If these reports are confirmed, it may prompt a reexamination of the files related to 9/11 and would force an official inquiry into the work of the Commissioners, who have been under question for their refusal to incorporate any reference to a Pentagon surveillance program codenamed Able Danger. Officers assigned to that DoD project claim they identified at least four of the 9/11 hijackers months before the attacks occurred. Commission Co-Chairs Lee Hamilton and Tom Keane defended the decision to omit reference to that program, dismissing the Able Danger findings as "historically insignificant." The covert funding and technology flows to Pakistan's nuclear program, and its international proliferation under A..Q. Khan, are particularly sensitive issues to both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. had that nuclear program under surveillance for decades, and during that time, certain American policy-makers appear to have acted in complicity with some aspects of the program. It has been widely known within U.S. intelligence that the same international financial network that funded Khan's nuclear proliferation was also a funding source for al-Qaeda. (*LINKS - http://www.telegraphindia.com/.... ; http://www.thefridaytimes.com/ (story available on string at another site, do edit-find for Did Pakistan Influence 9/11 Report : http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/.... ) THE ABRAMOFF FACTOR These articles come at time that the work of Washington lobbyists is under close scrutiny. Jack Abramoff and associates have been indicted for running a vast scheme to funnel illegal contributions -- a considerable portion of which is foreign sourced -- to leading GOP lawmakers in order to influence votes, and allegations of influence peddling within the Bush White House. A similar scandal involving defense contractors and Republican Congressman has resulted in the conviction of California Congressmen Randall Cunningham. In 2002, shortly after he took control over Perfect Wave, LLC, a CA defense contractor, Wade hired Alexander Associates, a Georgetown lobbying firm, run by Ed Buckham, Jack Abramoff's former former lobbying partner and former Chief of Staff to GOP Majority Leader Tom DeLay. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10454543/ During the mid-1990s, Buckham and Abramoff had been lobbying partners at Preston Gates & Ellis, a large Seattle-based firm, before Buckham took over Alexander Associates and Abramoff became the chief lobbyist of a key Republican lawfirm, Greenberg Traurig. According to The Washington Post, however, Buckham and Abramoff continued to work closely together, sharing clients and staff, while acting as a funding and influence peddling conduit for key GOP lawmakers: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/09/AR2006010901996.html "Buckham's firm employed DeLay's wife, Christine, for four years. It also benefited by working closely with Abramoff. Abramoff's plea agreement mentioned his close ties to Tony C. Rudy, one of Buckham's colleagues at ASG, identified in the court papers as 'Staffer A.' "Rudy, a former DeLay aide, worked for Abramoff before joining ASG. According to the plea document, a political consulting firm run by Rudy's wife allegedly received $50,000 in exchange for official actions Rudy took while working for DeLay. SNIP "The firm's collapse also coincides with DeLay's announcement that he will not attempt to regain his former post as House majority leader. DeLay has been indicted on money-laundering charges in his home state and, by House rule, had to give up his leadership position, at least temporarily. "The end of DeLay's leadership role was a major blow to the lobbying firm. Former DeLay associates have said that ASG and Buckham were key gatekeepers for DeLay with outsiders including lobbyists and their corporate clients. SNIP ASG, based in Georgetown, lobbies for an A-list of about 70 companies and organizations, including Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Microsoft, and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. ASG ranked No. 21 on National Journal's 2005 lobbying list with $8 million in revenue, a 34 percent jump over the previous year. SNIP Financial disclosure forms show that ASG employed Christine DeLay from 1998 to 2002. Lobby filings also show that Buckham hired Julie Doolittle, wife of Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.), to do bookkeeping for a nonprofit group he created called the Korea-U.S. Exchange Council. A year ago, Julie Doolittle and her firm received a subpoena from the grand jury investigating Abramoff, according to her lawyer. Former lobbying associates have said that Abramoff shared some high-paying clients with ASG, including Malaysian interests, the Mississippi Choctaw Indian tribe and online gambling firms. Federal investigators have questioned some former Abramoff associates about whether those referrals were related to Christine DeLay's employment there, sources said. The Post reported in November that a federal task force was investigating Abramoff's connections to ASG . . ." In addition to acting as a conduit for corrupt defense contractors, Abramoff was the registered lobbyist for Pakistan. In 1997, he is alleged to have arranged the travel of a Congressional delegation to Pakistan without informing the members of his relationship with the government of that country. Pakistan had retained the services of Abramoff's lobbying group, Preston Gates & Ellis in 1995, after Congress imposed human rights sanctions and stopped arm shipments during the period of increasing tensions leading up to the first test explosions of Pakistan's nuclear weapons in May, 1998. According to a New York Times, the trip to Pakistan arranged by Abramoff was sponsored by the National Security Caucus Foundation, a group that claimed to have very prominent figures on its Board, including former Secretaries of State, George Shultz and Henry Kissinger. When the scandal broke, both promptly disclaimed any knowledge of the foundation and the junket SNIP 4) (Pt. 1, http://www.dailykos.com/...) While Jack Abramoff's scandalous rip-off of Indian tribes is well know, his role as a GOP fixer for NSA and CIA contractors has gone virtually under the radar screen. Abramoff's lobbying activities raise serious questions about the role of his corporate and foreign clients in compromising highly sensitive NSA and Capitol Hill communications networks, in domestic spying and in other illegal national security-related activities. leveymg's diary :: :: Yesterday, we reported that Verizon (dba Qwest Wireless), is the focus of an NSA contracting scandal and a little-noticed trial of executives for cooking company books. Attorneys for Qwest's CEO, Joseph Nacchio, raised knowledge of classified government contracts anticipated by Qwest in 2001 as "one of the key elements to his defense." http://www.democraticunderground.com/.... ; also, see, http://today.reuters.com/.... That trial reveals something far more important about the corruption scandal that is gripping top GOP lawmakers. Abramoff and his associates manueuvered his clients -- including now bankrupt Enron, Global Crossing and Tyco International -- into federal contracts that gave them leverage over strategic U.S. markets, a role in framing foreign policy options, or unprecedented private-sector access to operating classified government data networks. This has resulted in the gravest constitutional crisis since Watergate, as well as a massive damage to U.S. national security. The 2001 Contract to Privatize NSA's Surveillance Systems In 2001 Verizon, along with CACI (a defense contractor shepherded by Abramoff that heavily contributed to the GOP), was awarded part of a multi-billion dollar NSA contract to privatize the NSA's information technology systems, capabilities that were then used by the Bush Administration to carry out illegal domestic spying. This massive privatization of NSA was managed by its Director at the time, Gen. Michael Hayden. As part of that ten-year program, code-named Project Groundbreaker, NSA surveillance systems continue to be developed, operated and maintained by private sector IT companies. See, http://lists.jammed.com/.... SNIP When asked point-blank recently whether the data being funneled into this privatized surveillance system was being used for domestic partisan purposes, Gen. Hayden refused to answer. At a question and answer session following an address at the National Press Club on January 23, 2006, Hayden was asked whether the Bush Administration was wiretapping its domestic political enemies. When Hayden dodged the question, the questioner repeated, "No, I asked, are you targeting us and people who politically oppose the Bush government, the Bush administration? Not a fishing net, but are you targeting specifically political opponents of the Bush administration?" Hayden looked at the questioner, and after a silence called on a different questioner. (Hayden National Press Club remarks, 1/23/06)http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2006/01/hayden012306.html CONCLUSION As is normally the case with matters involving covert operations that become embarassingly public, there are at least three layers to the NSA and CIA spy scandals, all of which prominently feature General Michael Hayden in various roles. These cover stories are meant to mask the offensive odor of political espionage being conducted by GOP-allied contractors who have been privatizing NSA and CIA operations during the past six years, which coincides with Gen. Hayden's watch at NSA and the tenure of the Bush Administration. The outer layer of the onion is the lie repeated by Administration spokesmen to the public -- essentially a denial that the NSA is spying on anyone other than al-Qaeda's international communications. The second cover story is the one which is available through open sources to better-informed consumers, such as intelligence beat journalists, bloggers, and middle-level intelligence community personnel -- that acknowledges the obvious fact that, as the Robb-Silberman Commission termed it, a "gross failure" of intelligence system occurred related to pre-Iraq war intelligence, and that certain, limited number of private contractors and officials (MZM and the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center) were the source of massive and pervasive "errors". The middle cover story has some sex appeal, a scandal involving hookers and Congressmen and a corrupt defense-intel contractor, and the sudden resignation of the CIA's Nos. 1 and 3. The gist of that middle cover story is best captured by an old, inside pages story with a bland headline in The Washington Post, in this case by Walter Pincus, "Intelligence Center, Contractor MZM on Cozy Terms"; Sunday, July 17, 2005; Page A07; http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/16/AR2005071601018.html?nav=rss_nation, which portrays Gen. Hayden leading an emergency inter-agency investigation and repair effort. Finally, we come to the heart of the matter. The inescapable fact -- and this is the "inner-secret" -- is that Hayden has been in charge of the transformation of NSA from a government spy agency tasked with monitoring threats from foreign states that uses technology provided by the private sector into a publicly-funded, privately operated domestic spy conglomerate whose primary mission is to suck up every byte of electronic data produced by every U.S. citizen so that it can analyzed by private corporations using highly classified proprietary algorithms that nobody except their owners, who are virtually uniformly GOP supporters, understand and utilize. After all that has happened to NSA on his watch since 2000, we are now supposed to just simply trust him to be neutral and objective as he similarly takes over and transforms the human intelligence side at CIA. No. 2006. Mark G. Levey |
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ELECTIONS
Stephen Goldstein May 10, 2006 Wake
up, Florida voters: Because of our history of hitches, glitches, pitches and
switches at the polls, your ballot may still be ditched this fall. We
were bushwhacked in 2000 and in 2004. And it may be déjà vu all over again
in 2006, unless you help implement the single most important way to
restore trust in our elections.
Stephen L. Goldstein's commentaries appear on alternate Wednesdays. E-mail him at trendsman@aol.com. Copyright © 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel |
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For many of
them, daily life is but a patient waiting game for the resurrection of
Christ (although there are difference beliefs as to how and when he will
appear). They view the world differently because this life is just a
right of passage to the splendors of meeting up with Christ in soulful
bliss, as the expendable earth and our temporal bodies are left behind. This is the parallel universe that they inhabit, and they believe it is their duty to control the government. Rather chilling isn't it? And Bush has appointed many of these people to policy making positions in Washington. And then there are variations on the theme, such as Bush himself, Scalia (of the Catholic Opus Dei variety), and our former Attorney General, John Ashcroft. Goldberg appeals, in her conclusion, for non-fundamentalists to unite against the tyranny of the belief systems of religious zealots, whether they be Islamic, Christian or of any other religion. "At a time when religious extremism seems everywhere ascendant," Goldberg writes, "I see a different struggle, one between modernity, humanism, reason and progress on one hand, and fundamentalism, tribalism, Puritanism, and obscurantism on the other. Liberals the world over are fighting religious tyranny." Islamic fundamentalists and Christian fundamentalists are in broad agreement on many issues: sexual issues (anti-gay, pro-abstinence, anti-abortion); family issues (patriarchal structure); the role of women (anti-feminist); science (the explanation for life is in the holy book and nowhere else); and so on. The difference, in large part, is only in the God they worship. The values of their belief systems are really quite similar, particularly in believing that their belief system is the only one ordained by God. As Goldberg writes, "the things so many Islamic fundamentalists hate about the West -- its sexual openness, its art, the possibilities it offers for escaping the bonds of family and religion, for inventing one own's life -- are what the Christian Nationalists hate as well." One part of the Republican Party, the Cheney wing, is trying to conquer the Middle East for oil. The other part of the GOP, the Bush wing, is trying to conquer the Middle East for Christ. It's a shame when George really has so much in common with the president of Iran. They both are fighting for the same thing, just for different Gods. BUZZFLASH REVIEWS © BuzzFlash. |
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Who's Crazy Now? By Paul Krugman The New York Times Published: May 8, 2006 Some people say that bizarre conspiracy theories play a disturbingly large role in current American political discourse. And they're right. For example, many conservative politicians and pundits seem to agree with James Inhofe, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, who has declared that "man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." Of more immediate political relevance is the claim that the reason we hear mainly bad news from Iraq is that the media, for political reasons, are conspiring to suppress the good news. As Bill O'Reilly put it a few months ago, "a good part of the American media wants to undermine the Bush administration." But these examples, of course, aren't what people are usually referring to when they denounce crazy conspiracy theories. For the last few years, the term "conspiracy theory" has been used primarily to belittle critics of the Bush administration — in particular, anyone suggesting that the Bush administration used 9/11 as an excuse to fight an unrelated war in Iraq. Now here's the thing: suppose that we didn't have abundant evidence that senior officials in the Bush administration wanted a war, cherry-picked intelligence to make a case for that war, and in some cases suppressed inconvenient evidence contradicting that case. Even so, it would be an abuse of the English language to call the claim that the administration misled us into war a conspiracy theory. A conspiracy theory, says Wikipedia, "attempts to explain the cause of an event as a secret, and often deceptive, plot by a covert alliance." Claims that global warming is a hoax and that the liberal media are suppressing the good news from Iraq meet that definition. In each case, to accept the claim you have to believe that people working for many different organizations — scientists at universities and research facilities around the world, reporters for dozens of different news organizations — are secretly coordinating their actions. But the administration officials who told us that Saddam had an active nuclear program and insinuated that he was responsible for 9/11 weren't part of a covert alliance; they all worked for President Bush. The claim that these officials hyped the case for war isn't a conspiracy theory; it's simply an assertion that people in a position of power abused that position. And that assertion only seems wildly implausible if you take it as axiomatic that Mr. Bush and those around him wouldn't do such a thing. The truth is that many of the people who throw around terms like "loopy conspiracy theories" are lazy bullies who, as Zachary Roth put it on CJR Daily, The Columbia Journalism Review's Web site, want to "confer instant illegitimacy on any argument with which they disagree." Instead of facing up to hard questions, they try to suggest that anyone who asks those questions is crazy. Indeed, right-wing pundits have consistently questioned the sanity of Bush critics; "It looks as if Al Gore has gone off his lithium again," said Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post columnist, after Mr. Gore gave a perfectly sensible if hard-hitting speech. Even moderates have tended to dismiss the administration's harsh critics as victims of irrational Bush hatred. But now those harsh critics have been vindicated. And it turns out that many of the administration supporters can't handle the truth. They won't admit that they built a personality cult around a man who has proved almost pathetically unequal to the job. Nor will they admit that opponents of the Iraq war, whom they called traitors for warning that invading Iraq was a mistake, have been proved right. So they have taken refuge in the belief that a vast conspiracy of America-haters in the media is hiding the good news from the public. Unlike the crazy conspiracy theories of the left — which do exist, but are supported only by a tiny fringe — the crazy conspiracy theories of the right are supported by important people: powerful politicians, television personalities with large audiences. And we can safely predict that these people will never concede that they were wrong. When the Iraq venture comes to a bad end, they won't blame those who led us into the quagmire; they'll claim that it was all the fault of the liberal media, which stabbed our troops in the back. Fair Use Notice: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, economic, democratic, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. |
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Clarity vs. Celebrity By Bob Herbert The New York Times Published: May 8, 2006 Few people have ever heard of Jonathan Tasini. He's a low-key labor organizer and writer from Upper Manhattan who is trying to piece together a primary challenge to the re-election bid of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, primarily because of her stance on the Iraq war. Mr. Tasini is against the war and wants American troops pulled out of Iraq forthwith. Senator Clinton's position is — well, that's a problem. It's not at all clear what Senator Clinton's position is. And for a Democratic Party that has suffered a succession of brutal defeats with excessively cautious candidates, Mrs. Clinton's indecisiveness on the war may be a hint of yet another disaster in the making. Mr. Tasini is not so deluded that he thinks he can hijack the Democratic Senate nomination from Mrs. Clinton. He said, "People often ask me, 'Don't you think this race is impossible?' My answer is, 'Of course! You're dealing with someone who has enormous name recognition and celebrity.' " But celebrity, he said, is no substitute for an honest and vigorous debate on a matter as fundamentally important as war. Mr. Tasini favors a withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq as quickly as possible, within several months at most. What is more important than whether his timetable is feasible is his insistence that the Democratic Party needs to come to grips with this war. "What makes us different from Republicans?" he asked. "Where is the soul of the Democratic Party if we do not stand against immoral, illegal wars? Pre-emptive wars." After more than three years of fighting and more than 2,400 American deaths, you still need a magnifying glass to locate the differences between Mrs. Clinton and the Bush administration on the war. It's true, as the senator argues, that she has been a frequent and sometimes harsh critic of the way the war has been conducted. In a letter to constituents last fall she wrote, "I have continually raised doubts about the president's claims, lack of planning and execution of the war, while standing firmly in support of our troops." But in terms of overall policy, she seems to be right there with Bush, Cheney, Condi et al. She does not regret her vote to authorize the invasion, and still believes the war can be won. Her view of the ultimate goal in Iraq, as her staffers reiterated last week, is the establishment of a viable government capable of handling its own security, thus enabling the U.S. to reduce its military presence and eventually leave. That sounds pretty much the same as President Bush's mantra: "Our strategy in Iraq is that as the Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down." What that means is that there is no end to the war in sight. Other prominent Democrats have belatedly changed their tune on Iraq. Senator John Kerry has called for a complete withdrawal of American combat troops by the end of the year. His running mate in the 2004 presidential election, former Senator John Edwards, declared last fall that "it was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002." But as yet there is no full-throated public debate, much less anything approaching a consensus, within the party on Iraq. Democrats are still paranoid about being perceived as soft on national security. With superhawk Republicans like John McCain and Rudy Giuliani making their way toward the starting gate for the 2008 White House run, the terminally timid Democrats continue to obsess about what they ought to be saying, neurotically analyzing every syllable they hesitantly utter, as opposed to simply saying what they really believe. Aides who are close to Mrs. Clinton suggested last week that she might be holding her fire, waiting until a new Iraqi government is established before speaking more openly and candidly about the war. That remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the dying continues. As I was wrapping up the last of the interviews for this column on Friday, word came in that three more American soldiers had been killed in Iraq. As a member of the Armed Services Committee and the early front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, Mrs. Clinton has a special obligation to Democratic voters. They deserve much better leadership than they've been getting from their party on President Bush's mindless trillion-dollar tragedy in Iraq. Fair Use Notice: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, economic, democratic, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. |
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How to Keep
Democrats From
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