The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said yesterday that the September 11 "hijackers could have been stopped" had U.S. officials acted on intelligence information available before the terrorist attacks.
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, in an interview that aired yesterday on CNN, called September 11 the "worst example of what happens when information is not shared and is not acted upon."
"There was plenty of information available before September 11. I think historians are going to find, tragically, that, had it been acted upon, the hijackers could have been stopped," Mr. Leahy said on CNN's "Novak, Hunt & Shields."
The Democratic chairman, whose committee is holding public hearings examining the failure of top FBI officials to take seriously leads given to them by field agents about the possibility of hijackings and planes being flown into the World Trade Center, joins at least two others on the Judiciary panel who have said they believe the September 11 attacks could have been prevented, given the clues that were available.
Tuesday, June 11, 2002
(CBS) The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Sunday "significant numbers of people" from inside the government were coming forward with new information on U.S. intelligence failures related to the Sept. 11 attacks on America.
Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat, said some of those offering information to the joint investigation of the Senate and House intelligence committees were emboldened by the recent disclosures of FBI whistle-blower Coleen Rowley. He also said it was becoming clear "there are some people who deserve to get sanctions as a result of what they were doing before Sept. 11."
"We are already getting significant numbers of people coming to us, either in person or with materials that hadn't previously been known," Graham told CBS' "Face the Nation" program. "I think the testimony of Ms. Rowley has given encouragement to folks" inside the federal bureaucracy.
Sen. Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said such failures extended beyond the FBI and CIA to the super-secret National Security Agency and elsewhere.
Shelby also said the sweeping plan for a new Department of Homeland Security proposed last week by President
Bush did not effectively address the failures of intelligence-gathering uncovered so far.
In a stinging letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller, Rowley questioned his handling of information and accused FBI headquarters of hampering field agents from fully investigating Zacarias Moussaoui, the man officials now believe intended to become the 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks.
June 4, 2002—Don't know about you, but all this who-knew-what-when pre-9/11 stuff is mighty confusing. So once again, I head to that all-purpose reference series for some comprehensible answers.
Q. I've heard all these reports about the government knowing weeks and months in advance of 9/11 that airliners were going to be hijacked and flown into buildings, and yet the Bush administration apparently did nothing and denied they did anything wrong. They claimed the fault lay in the intelligence agencies "not connecting the dots," or that it was the "FBI culture" that failed. Can you explain?
A. Most of the "it's-the-fault-of-the-system" spin is designed to deflect attention from the real situation. Bush and his spokesmen may well be correct in saying they had no idea as to the specifics—they may not have known the exact details of the attacks—but it is more and more apparent that they knew a great deal more than they're letting on, including the possible targets.
Q. You're not just going leave that hanging out there, are you? Just bash Bush with no evidence to back it up?
A. There's no need to bash anybody. There is more than enough documentation to establish that the Bush administration was fully aware that a major attack was coming from Al-Qaeda, by air, aimed at symbolic structures on the U.S. mainland, and that among mentioned targets were the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the White House, the Congress, Statue of Liberty. (According to Richard Clarke, the White House's National Coordinator for Anti-Terrorism, the intelligence community was convinced 10 weeks before 9/11 that an Al-Qaeda attack on U.S. soil was imminent.)
Q. If they knew in advance that the, or at least an, attack was coming, why did the Bush administration do nothing to prepare the country in advance: get photos of suspected terrorists out to airlines, have fighter jets put on emergency-standby status or even in the air as deterrents, get word out to the border police to stop these "watch-list" terrorists, put surface-to-air missiles around the White House and Pentagon, etc.?
A. The explanation preferred by the government is to admit, eight months late, to absolute and horrendous incompetence, up and down the line (although Bush&Co., surprise!, prefer to focus the blame lower down, letting the FBI be the fall guy). But let's try an alternate explanation. Think about it for a moment. If their key goal was to mobilize the country behind the Bush administration, get their political/business agenda through, have a reason to move unilaterally around the globe, and defang the Democrats and other critics at home—what better way to do all that than to have Bush be the take-charge leader after a diabolic "sneak attack"?
June 10, 2002—If you think the war in Afghanistan has anything to do with 'terrorism" you had better be able to explain the following "strange coincidences."
The Russians got into their Vietnam (Afghanistan) right after we got out of ours. Isn't that strange?
We supported Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban for years, and viewed them as freedom fighters against the Russians. Isn't that strange?
As late as 1998 the US was paying the salary of every single Taliban official in Afghanistan. Isn't that strange?
There is more oil and gas in the Caspian Sea area than in Saudi Arabia, but you need a pipeline through Afghanistan to get the oil out. Isn't that strange?
Unocal, a giant American oil conglomerate, wanted to build a 1,040-mile long pipeline from the Caspian Sea through Afghanistan to the Arabian Sea. Isn't that strange?
Unocal spent $10-$15 million on geological surveys for pipeline construction, and very nicely courted the Taliban in for their support in allowing the construction to begin. Isn't that strange?
All the leading Taliban officials were in Texas negotiating with Unocal in 1998. Isn't that strange?
June 10, 2002—The outrage is out there. It is silent and intimidated by the expert manipulations of the Bushista and media spin machines. Nevertheless, among those outraged at the Bush regime are a significant group of individuals, and when they gain their spine and sense of solidarity, and furthermore, when they find their voice–watch out!
Though the press and their surrealistic "approval rating" polls would have us believe otherwise, the dissenting liberals and the progressives have an impressive array of allies, both actual and potential.
To begin, as we all know but too easily forget, Bush lost the popular vote, after which he won the only vote allowed to count: five to four in the Supreme Court.
Which leads directly to the first class of the outraged: the lawyers and legal scholars.
Three days after the Supreme Court gave the Presidency to George Bush, 306 law professors published a letter stating in part that "by taking power from the voters, the Supreme Court has tarnished its own legitimacy. As teachers whose lives have been dedicated to the rule of law, we protest." Numerous practicing lawyers, most notably Vincent Bugliosi, have voiced their agreement. A year and a half later, they have not forgotten this assault on the rule of law. The outrage remains. Rest assured that it is being widely expressed in law schools throughout the land.
Similarly, in February, 2001, 409 historians signed the following statement:
For two hundred and thirteen years, against formidable obstacles, democracy in American has expanded. We opened up the right to vote, securing the popular election of US senators and presidential electors, securing voting rights for the poor, women, and blacks. Now, in an act no less reprehensible than the partisan resolution of the election of 1876, a narrow majority of the Supreme Court has pulled the nation backward. . . . We are outraged and saddened at this wound inflicted upon American democracy. We call upon our fellow citizens, Republicans, Democrats and independents, to join us in dedicating ourselves to reform the electoral system so that the democratic will of the people is never again violated in an American election.
What can be done?
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpation's, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security . . ." US Declaration of Independence—1776
A "dirty bomb" is not to be confused with a nuclear explosion, but experts say such a device could release relatively small amounts of radiation over several city blocks and have its most devastating effect in the panic it probably would create.
For that reason, it has been called an ideal terrorist weapon.
A dirty bomb also is relatively easy to fashion. It can use a conventional explosive to disperse radioactive material.
Last month, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission disclosed that it receives an average of 300 reports a year of small amounts of radioactive materials missing from construction sites, hospitals and other users of these radioisotopes.
NRC officials said they have no evidence of anyone collecting this material to have enough for a dirty bomb. But critics say no one is sure of that.
The NRC has acknowledged that even a small amount of radioactive material, if properly milled into fine particles and dispersed by a conventional explosive, could spread radioactive particles over an area of several blocks.
After escaping serious damage in the early stages of the high-tech wreck, venture capitalists suffered even deeper financial wounds than stock market investors last year, according to industry figures released Monday.
Venture capital funds plunged by an average of 27.8 percent in 2001, a gruesome about-face from the prior year when the average fund gained 28.6 percent, according to statistics complied by Thomson Financial/Venture Economics for the National Venture Capital Association, an industry trade group.
It marked the industry's first calendar-year loss since the trade group began tracking fund returns in 1980. Before 2001, venture capitalists' worst single-year performance came in 1984 when the average fund inched up by 1.3 percent.
The venture capital community's setback was even more severe than the Nasdaq composite index, the most popular benchmark for measuring the performance of publicly held tech stocks. The Nasdaq index fell by 21 percent during 2001, coming off a 39 percent loss in 2000.
Israel yesterday began erecting a security fence around parts of the West Bank, just hours after United States President George Bush expressed strong support for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Construction work was under way on the outskirts of the Palestinian-ruled town of Jenin, the scene of fierce fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen earlier this year.
The move comes amid continuing violence yesterday during which at least three Israelis were wounded by an explosion outside the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, near the divided city of Hebron, in the West Bank.
A municipal official said it appeared a bus had driven over a roadside bomb outside the town.
The construction of the fence, aimed at preventing Palestinians from crossing into Israel to launch attacks, indicates that both sides have lost hope in resolving their conflict in the near future through negotiations.
Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein warned Tuesday that the new International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague which begins work in July, may indict Israelis moving into settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip for war crimes.
Justice Ministry officials said Tuesday that a special team has been established to prepare for the new court, headed by the deputy state prosecutor Rachel Sukar, which includes Foreign Ministry and Military Court officials.
Rubinstein, speaking at a Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee meeting on the authorities of the international court regarding Israelis, said that the tribunal may also discuss the indictments of IDF soldiers and officers over their involvement during Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin and other Palestinian-controlled areas.
"We believe in the purity of arms of IDF troops," Rubinstein said. He added that soldiers have been indicted by Israel in extreme cases: since the outbreak of the Al Aqsa Intifada, 140 soldiers have been accused of looting and some of them have been indicted.
MADISON, Wis. (Reuters) - Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites) on Saturday criticized President Bush (news - web sites) for refusing to accept a federal agency report that blames humans for global warming (news - web sites).
The recently released Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) (EPA) report appeared to back the view of many scientists who believe global warming is caused mainly by emissions from automobiles, power plants, and oil refineries.
Bush appeared to dismiss the report, calling it a product of bureaucracy, and said he would continue to press for voluntary efforts and financial incentives for U.S. companies to reduce emissions.
Gore, the 2000 Democratic presidential nominee and a champion of environmental protection as vice president, said the president had succumbed to powerful interests that run the Republican Party and rejected the report rather than accept it and do something about global warming.
"That's not a moral choice," Gore said. "I don't want to hear from this bunch: 'We didn't know'."
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration will now keep secret key information on its missile defense program, a blow to opponents who have relied on such data to challenge the technology as error-prone and not ready for deployment.
Administration officials said they will withhold the data, which concerns flight tests of the program's most advanced long-range system, to prevent U.S. adversaries from gaining secrets about hardware intended to shield the nation from nuclear attack. Critics of the program, including some influential lawmakers, say the move is an attempt to stifle criticism and allow the administration to control the debate on the system's future.
"They're attempting to avoid the usual oversight by Congress, the media ... and the larger scientific community," said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services subcommittee that oversees the project. "There's an attitude of 'we know best, don't bother us.'"
Who is the most powerful woman in America? It's a toss-up between Condoleezza Rice and Lynne V Cheney. One (the national security adviser) works behind the scenes. The other (Mrs Vice-President) is the administration's junkyard bitch. Immediately after the September outrage, Cheney went into attack mode. Bush and his advisers have taken to heart the lesson of the Vietnam defeat: if you make war overseas, neutralise the campus enemy at home first.
When, with Clinton's victory, she was ousted from her position as tyrannical chair of the National Endowment of the Humanities, Cheney founded the American Council of Trustees and Academics. Acta exists to deplore, oppose and undermine the incorrigibly liberal tendency of American higher education. Two months after 9/11 her council issued a rabid tract: "Defending Civilisation: How our Universities are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It". What could be done was to name names: 40 professors - including the president of Wellesley College - were anathematised.
Do Your Job
In the aftermath of September 11, Dan Rather publicly shed patriotic tears on David Letterman’s show, demonstrating that he was in as much pain as any American and as loyal to the national cause. At the same time, TV news programs across the country were wrapping themselves in stars-and-stripes graphics as news outlets of all kinds rushed to associate themselves, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, with the nation’s surge of patriotic emotion.
Flag-waving is not surprising in the aftermath of a full-scale attack on American civilians. As individuals, we are all part of a severely traumatized body politic. But it is precisely during the most trying periods that journalists must distance themselves from their emotions if they are to do their best work. And it is also imperative to distinguish between patriotism, love of one’s country, and nationalism — the exalting of one’s nation and its culture and interests above all others. If patriotism is a kind of affection, nationalism is its dark side. Nationalistic pressure also makes it hard for journalists to do their job. Even today, eight months after the events, many journalists are troubled by a sense that we have failed an important test, that we have allowed certain kinds of honest reporting to be portrayed as somehow disloyal.
Breaking bread with a room full of Post reporters and editors probably doesn't rank very high on FBI Director Robert Mueller's list of 100 most desirable things to do while in Washington. But there he was in our dining room on Wednesday, gamely fending off questions about FBI failures and having his say about tracking terrorists and reorganizing his beleaguered agency.
In response to one questioner's concerns, Mueller offered reassurances that on his watch, FBI agents will remain firmly within the constitutional scheme, even as they use their new investigative powers to keep the homeland safe.
At the time, it all sounded pretty good to me.
But then I went back to my desk and read the fact sheet on the attorney general's newly issued guidelines for detecting and preventing terrorist attacks.
Now, despite promises in the Ashcroft guidelines to preserve constitutional and statutory limits, I find myself longing to once more hear the director's comforting words about the bureau's steadfast devotion to the restraints of the Bill of Rights.
Sorry to be such a worrywart, but there's a whiff of something in the guidelines that brings back the odor of another time in America.
The new guidelines direct the FBI to "detect and neutralize" suspected terrorists before they can commit a crime. At first reading, it sounds great. But the language also calls to mind an era when the FBI, in the name of protecting the nation, also set out to "expose, disrupt, and otherwise neutralize" activities of domestic groups whose conduct was nowhere near the stage of prosecutable acts. It was called COINTELPRO. And the Constitution took a beating.
Bureau's campus operations involved Reagan, CIA
Under the guise of protecting national security, the FBI conducted wide-ranging and unlawful intelligence operations concerning the University of California that at different points involved the head of the CIA and then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, The Chronicle has learned.
According to thousands of pages of FBI records obtained by The Chronicle after a 17-year legal fight, the FBI unlawfully schemed with the head of the CIA to harass students, faculty and members of the Board of Regents, and mounted a concerted campaign to destroy the career of UC President Clark Kerr, which included sending the White House derogatory allegations about him that the bureau knew were false.
The FBI, in contrast, developed a "close and cordial" relationship with Reagan, who made campus unrest a major issue and vowed to fire Kerr during his 1966 gubernatorial campaign.
And after he was elected, the FBI failed to report that Reagan falsely stated on a federal security clearance form that he never had been a member of any group officially deemed subversive, an omission that could have been prosecuted as a felony.
There may come a time to boot Robert Mueller III as F.B.I. director, if Congressional and other investigations eventually prove that his removal is warranted. For now, he is in the difficult position of both defending and reforming an agency left in exceptionally poor condition by Louis Freeh, the former director whose amazing immunity from public criticism soon seems likely to end. Although the current director is responsible for the bureaucratic butt-covering since last September’s disaster, he doesn’t deserve blame for the interagency bungling that occurred before his watch began.
Yet in Washington’s ritualistic bloodletting style, Mr. Mueller is plainly being set up for sacrifice. The Wall Street Journal editorial page calls upon him to resign; right-wing pundit Robert Novak reports that "he is becoming a candidate for the first head to roll." This is premature and patently unfair—and ill-advised at a time when national law enforcement is already in turmoil.
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court agreed Monday to referee a congressional boundary dispute from Mississippi, a victory for Democrats who are contesting a plan that helps Republicans.
The case will be the first reviewed by the court over boundaries drawn using 2000 census data. Plans by many other states are also being contested.
The court did not intervene in time to affect this year's election, however. Primaries were held last week in districts favorable to Republicans approved by a federal panel earlier this year.
Mississippi is losing one of its five congressional seats because of sluggish population growth in the 1990s, and incumbents Chip Pickering and Ronnie Shows are competing for one seat.
Hello,
Was reading through Fox News website (gotta keep track of what they're up to) and went through a poll they had posted as of 6-6. Mostly the usual spin, Bush is God, etc. (gag) and then I came upon the following qustion:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Residents of the United States must pass a test to obtain a driver's license before being allowed to drive a motor vehicle. Do you think residents should also be required to pass a test before being allowed to:
23. Buy a gun? Yes 77% No 18 NS 5
24. Become a parent? Yes 37% No 54 NS 9
25. Register to vote? Yes 47% No 48 NS 5 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, the first thing that jumped out at me was that we, the people, were now being referred to as "residents," not citizens. There was no mention of aliens, legal or otherwise, or foreign visitors, but "residents," which could only mean you and I. (Perhaps we must prove our citizenship before the regime before we are recognized?)
Then question 25. Should "residents" be required to pass a "test" before being allowed to vote?
What!???!!!
Pass a test before we are "allowed" to vote???!!!
"ALLOWED"???!!!
To VOTE???!!!
MANILA - There appears to be a dispute over the United States' role in the botched rescue operation of hostages, with Manila insisting that the US had prior knowledge.
However, Washington has maintained that it first learned of the operation after it was informed of the death of an American missionary.
Philippines Defence Secretary Angelo Reyes said that US forces helped plan the operation in the southern Philippines that ended in the death of the missionary and a Filipina captive.
Contradicting the Pentagon's version of Friday's bloody rescue attempt, Mr Reyes said the Americans 'participated in the planning and the execution in terms of advice and intelligence reports, and in the training of our soldiers' who carried out the mission.
Washington -- President Bush wants to change the Department of Defense back into a War Department.
No longer are the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines to defend America and American vital interests. In his speech at West Point last weekend, the president showcased a war agenda that included fighting for 'human liberty' against "terrorists and tyrants" and for "free and open societies on every continent."
Who is this guy, Napoleon?
Some months ago an academic colleague — a man with strong Democratic connections — urged me to write a couple of columns praising the Bush administration. "What should I praise?" I asked.
There was a long pause — funny, isn't it, how "balance" becomes a goal in itself? — but eventually he came up with something: "How about its commitment to free trade?"
Ahem. In fact, George W. Bush has turned out to be quite protectionist. The steel tariff and the farm bill attracted the most attention, but they are part of a broader picture that includes the punitive (and almost completely unjustified) tariff on Canadian softwood lumber and the revocation of Caribbean trade privileges. When it comes to free trade, the Bush administration is all for it — unless there is some political cost, however small, to honoring its alleged principles.
Which brings me to the story that has Washington's political groupies twittering: that Esquire article in which the White House chief of staff, Andy Card, frets that with the moderating influence of Karen Hughes gone, the hard-liner Karl Rove will run the show. If the past 18 months have been what policy looks like with Mr. Rove only partly in control, one shudders to think what comes next.
For the most distinctive feature of Mr. Rove's modus operandi is not his conservatism; it's his view that the administration should do whatever gives it a political advantage. This includes, of course, exploiting the war on terrorism — something Mr. Rove has actually boasted about. But it also includes coddling special interests.
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said Thursday he would advise President Bush to veto any legislation creating a congressionally authorized Office of Homeland Security if Congress approves a bill this year.
"I'd probably recommend he veto it," Ridge told a National Journal Group editorial board meeting. In the past, Ridge has asked Congress to hold off on the legislation.
Today's comments were the first time Ridge has said he would recommend a presidential veto. Ridge said presidents should be "entitled to a few advisers" who owe their loyalty solely to the president.
"I believe that the president and future presidents always would be well served having an adviser coordinating the actions among [the] multiple agencies" charged with protecting homeland security. "I don't think you get that if you are accountable to Congress," Ridge said.
While the Homeland Security director should be "accountable" to the president, he or she should be "accessible" to Congress, he said. Ridge said he has visited Capitol Hill 50 times since Sept. 11 to brief legislators on the Bush administration's efforts to head off future terrorist attacks.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Leading lawmakers on intelligence issues said Sunday that President Bush ( news - web sites)'s proposed domestic security agency does not address flaws in the FBI ( news - web sites) and CIA ( news - web sites) and is just the start of the changes needed in response to Sept. 11-related failures.
"If the administration takes the stonewall position that every word in their plan is biblical and if you change it you're unpatriotic, I think that will be a very serious error," said Sen. Bob Graham ( news, bio, voting record), D-Fla., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Sen. Richard Shelby ( news, bio, voting record), the committee's top Republican, said Congress must review carefully what Bush's plan does and does not do. For example, he said, it fails to address problems with the FBI and CIA that Congress' intelligence committees are reviewing.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Despite the continuing shuttle diplomacy that aims to defuse tensions between India and Pakistan, it's not difficult to imagine how war on the Indian subcontinent would begin--and, more frightening, how it would end.
India might launch punitive airstrikes and commando raids on the camps of Kashmiri and Pakistani militants based in Azad, or Pakistani Kashmir. Pakistan, in turn, could retaliate, hitting army bases in Indian Kashmir. After weeks of fighting, with neither side able to claim an advantage in the mountainous terrain despite raids and counter-raids across the disputed Line of Control, one side might attempt to break the logjam by crossing the international border and invading the other. Or India's navy might blockade Pakistan's only artery to the outside world, the port of Karachi.
You’d think there’d be high-fives in FBI field offices across the country. When Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller granted broad new powers to federal agents pursuing terrorists, the White House and many members of Congress praised the move as an important advance in the fight against Osama bin Laden. Gumshoes can now trail suspicious people in public places and monitor them on Web sites and public databases, even if there’s no evidence that they’ve committed a crime.
INDIA extended a tentative hand of goodwill to Pakistan yesterday when it lifted restrictions banning Pakistani aircraft from its airspace.
Delhi’s Foreign Ministry said that the move, the most significant sign that tensions are easing between the two countries, was being taken in response to a measured drop in the number of Pakistani militants crossing into Indian-administered Kashmir and it hinted at further concessions if the trend continues.
“We are engaged in a very detailed assessment of the situation on the ground. We have decided that there has been some improvement,” Nirupama Rao, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said. “We’ve decided to make this announcement in reaction to that. There has been some fall in infiltration, but the trend is not generally established yet.”
PRESIDENT BUSH is preparing to present to Congress his new “strike-first” policy against terrorists and rogue states armed with weapons of mass destruction, in a radical shift in strategy that could cause alarm among America’s Nato allies.
Under the President’s expected security change, the United States would reserve the right to launch “nowarning” pre-emptive action against terrorist states or groups suspected of plotting to use weapons of mass destruction against American targets.
(CBS) U.S. officials are backing away from assertions that a man arrested last month in Chicago was plotting a 'dirty' bomb attack on the United States, CBS Correspondent Jim Stewart reports.
U.S. officials now admit they're not sure what American-born Abdullah al Muhajir's plans were when he returned to the U.S. last month. And any plot, including possibly exploding a radiation bomb in Washington D.C., was in the "initial planning stages." But given what he'd trained for in Afghanistan, they expected the worst.
Saturday, June 08, 2002
In early 1971, the FBI's domestic counterintelligence program (code named "COINTELPRO") was brought to light when a "Citizens Committee to Investigate the FBI" removed secret files from an FBI office in Media, PA and released them to the press. Agents began to resign from the Bureau and blow the whistle on covert operations. That same year, publication of the Pentagon Papers, the Pentagon's top-secret history of the Vietnam War, exposed years of systematic official lies about the war.
Soon after, it was discovered that a clandestine squad of White House "plumbers" broke into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in an effort to smear the former Pentagon staffer who leaked the top-secret papers to the press. The same "plumbers" were later caught burglarizing the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee. By the mid-1970's Senate and House committees launched formal and lengthy inquiries into government intelligence and covert activities. These investigations revealed extensive covert and illegal counterintelligence programs involving the FBI, CIA, U.S. Army intelligence, the White House, the Attorney General, and even local and state law enforcement, directed against opponents of government domestic and foreign policy. Since then, many more instances of these "dirty tricks" have been revealed.
When congressional investigations, political trials and other traditional legal methods of repression failed to counter the growing movements of the 1950s, '60s and '70s, and even helped fuel them, the FBI and police moved outside the law. They used secret and systematic methods of fraud and force, far beyond mere surveillance, to sabotage constitutionally protected political activity. The purpose of the program was, in FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's own words, to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit and otherwise neutralize" specific groups and individuals. Its targets in this period included the American Indian Movement, the Communist Party, the Socialist Worker's Party, Black Nationalist groups, and many members of the New Left (SDS, and a broad range of anti-war, anti-racist, feminist, lesbian and gay, environmentalist and other groups). Many other groups and individuals seeking racial, gender and class justice were targets who came under attack, including Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, the NAACP, the National Lawyer's Guild, SANE-Freeze, American Friends Service Committee, and many, many others.
Friday, June 07, 2002
Republicans expressed shock yesterday at reports that White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. discussed internal dissent within the Bush administration in a magazine interview.
The White House has been remarkably leak-proof during President Bush's first 17 months in office, and Mr. Card's comments in the July issue of Esquire are the first major breach in what some have called the administration's "wall of silence" about internal disagreements over policy.
"The idea that Andy Card would talk about these things in such a goofy way doesn't make sense," said Grover Norquist, a conservative activist and confidant of White House chief political strategist Karl Rove.
Mr. Card told Esquire that the expected departure of presidential adviser and longtime Bush confidante Karen P. Hughes would leave Mr. Rove as the sole remaining powerhouse among those who have the ear of President Bush.
That's bad, Mr. Card suggested, because Mr. Rove is more conservative than the pragmatic Mrs. Hughes, who plans to return to Texas this summer to spend more time with her family.
In October, press reports revealed that White House staff had been on a regimen of the powerful antibiotic Cipro since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Judicial Watch wants to know why White House workers, including President Bush, began taking the drug nearly a month before anthrax was detected on Capitol Hill.
"The American people deserve a full accounting from the Bush administration, the FBI and other agencies concerning the anthrax attacks," Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel Larry Klayman said in a statement. "The FBI's investigation seems to have dead-ended, and frankly, that is not very reassuring given their performance with the Sept. 11 hijackers. One doesn't simply start taking a powerful antibiotic for no good reason. The American people are entitled to know what the White House staffers knew nine months ago."
The United States Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has baffled journalists in Brussels by explaining the greatest threat to Western civilisation may lurk in what he has termed "unknown unknowns".
Mr Rumsfeld says he told a meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) defence ministers that even US intelligence agencies can often only see the tip of the iceberg when looking for terrorist threats.
But this is how he explained it at a media conference.
"There are no knowns," Mr Rumsfeld.
"There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns - that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know but there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know," Mr Rumsfeld said.
"So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns.
"And each year we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns."
Whether or not George W. Bush wants to admit it, he owes the news media a lot. On issue after issue -- increased government secrecy, tax cuts for the wealthy, broken promises on issues like the environment and Social Security -- the media has largely given Bush a pass by failing to challenge the official administration line. Even with Enron and the possible botched opportunities to prevent Sept. 11, the press, after brief initial feeding frenzies, quickly redirected the stories away from Bush.
If we are to judge journalism by the Washington press elite, it would appear that the art of honest-to-God investigative journalism is in retreat -- and has been for some time.
AZA, June 5 — If there is one thing that the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad does not fear, one of its leaders said today, it is the repressive force of Yasir Arafat and his Palestinian Authority.
"The Palestinian Authority is broken; its institutions are destroyed," the leader, Sheik Abdallah al-Shami, said calmly as he sat in the living room of his home here. "How can the Palestinian Authority assure the security of the Israelis when it cannot even protect its own people?"
On the other side of Israel, at Mr. Arafat's headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, some of his aides were insisting that if they confirmed Islamic Jihad's involvement in the deadly attack on an Israeli intercity bus this morning, they would begin rounding up its members.
In an interview today, Mr. Shami offered such confirmation proudly. Other Islamic Jihad officials later said one of their militants from the West Bank town of Jenin, Hamzi Samudi, had pulled alongside the bus with his car and detonated his bomb, killing 17 passengers and injuring dozens.
We Americans have conjured so specific a vision of terrorists — swarthy, glowering Muslims mumbling fanatically about Allah — that we're missing the threat from home-grown nuts, people like David Burgert.
Mr. Burgert, a 38-year-old who last made a living renting out snowmobiles here in this spectacularly beautiful nook of northwestern Montana, had a terror plan that made Osama bin Laden's look rinky-dink. Not content merely to kill a few thousand people, Mr. Burgert's nine-member militia was planning a violent revolution and civil war to overthrow the entire United States government.
The plan, according to Sheriff James Dupont, was for the militia to use its machine guns, pipe bombs and 30,000 rounds of ammunition to assassinate 26 local officials (including Mr. Dupont), and then wipe out the National Guard when it arrived. After the panicked authorities sent in NATO troops, true American patriots would rise up, a ferocious war would ensue, and the U.S. would end up back in the hands of white Christians.
"The good thing is that most of the people who would do it are so stupid that they would kill themselves first," said Sheriff Dupont, who runs the law here in rugged Flathead County, which is bigger than all of Connecticut and has lots more grizzly bears.
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - Israeli troops stormed Yasser Arafat (news - web sites)'s headquarters early Thursday, blew up three buildings in the sprawling compound and shelled the Palestinian leader's living area in response to a Palestinian suicide attack on an Israeli bus that killed 17 passengers.
A tank shell hit about 5 feet from Arafat's bed, punching a hole into the wall dividing his bedroom and an adjacent bathroom.
Pointing to his dust-covered bed, broken bedroom mirror and shattered bathroom tiles, Arafat suggested Israel was trying to kill him. "I was supposed to sleep here last night but I had some work downstairs," he said. "Of course they (the Israelis) knew where I was. Everybody knows this is my bedroom."
Florida may get less federal money than expected to help high-poverty schools in the coming year because the federal government found that state spending on schools decreased during Gov. Jeb Bush's first budget.
Under a complex formula used by the U.S. Department of Education, Florida effectively is being penalized for a slight drop in per pupil spending in the 1999-2000 budget year. At stake are millions of dollars in the federal Title I program, which provides money to high-poverty schools.
Florida stood out nationally that year, with school spending dropping by 1.05 percent while the national average was up 5.66 percent, according to federal figures. Florida was the only state with a decrease in per pupil expenditures that year.
By
The Bush administration has acknowledged that the U.S. will experience far-reaching and, in some cases, devastating environmental consequences as a result of global warming. But it does not plan to do much about it.
The administration has been so poor when it comes to climate change that this odd bit of news was initially seen as some sort of progress. It was thought, momentarily, that the president might be starting to pull his head out of the increasingly hot sand on this issue.
The administration's interagency report, which was compiled by the Environmental Protection Agency, notes that the warming of the U.S. is expected to be greater in the 21st century than in the 20th, and will affect nearly every region of the country. Seas are expected to rise, causing an additional loss of coastal wetlands. Storm surges will pose a greater threat to coastal communities. We'll have to endure more stifling heat waves, and the disruption of snow-fed water supplies. Some treasured ecosystems, such as the Rocky Mountain meadows and certain coral reefs and barrier islands, are likely to disappear entirely.
In addition to acknowledging that the earth is already sizzling, the report made it clear that human activity — the burning of fossil fuels that release heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere — was the primary culprit.
NO SOONER had the Bush administration grudgingly reported for the first time that manmade sources of greenhouse gases are major contributors to global warming than President Bush dismissed the report by his own the Environmental Protection Agency. While the report made it clear that the administration will still not take serious steps to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the principal contributor to global warming, Bush's disdainful reference yesterday to ''the report put out by the bureaucracy'' strikingly demonstrates how isolated the administration's environmental specialists are from its policy makers.
As the head of this ''bureaucracy,'' EPA chief Christie Todd Whitman should stand by her staff and use its report to urge the president to bring policy in line with science.
As it is, the report is hardly a bold step forward in dealing with climate change. While it clearly states that human beings are the likely cause of much recent global warming, it advances no new measures to reduce heat-trapping gases. Instead, the report talks about making accommodations to the changes that global warming will bring.
But apparently the report writers incurred the disfavor of the president by pointing to industrial society's burning of fossil fuels as the chief cause of the recent buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This reflects the conclusion of a National Academy of Sciences report last year but is squarely at odds with the position of many in the coal, petroleum, utility, and auto industries, who say the evidence is still inconclusive.
While there isn't enough known about the size and strength of the present nuclear arsenal maintained by India or Pakistan to make accurate estimates, studies of the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan during the World War II and the meltdown of Chernobyl's reactor in the 1980s have provided researchers with information suggesting what may happen to victims and how far the radiation will reach.
Distance is a crucial factor, and for those living as far away as the United States negative health effects of fallout from these past events have not been noted.
"We didn't see any remote effects on populations from the Hiroshima or Nagasaki detonations [and while] the Chernobyl incident reached through much of Europe, there aren't any recorded consequences in terms of health effects that are outside of the immediate areas," says Dr. A. Bertrand Brill, research professor of radiology and radiological sciences and research professor of physics at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tenn.
"If there are substantial amounts of radioactive material that are injected into the atmosphere, we likely will be able to measure that in the United States," says Kenneth Mossman, professor of health physics and director in the Office of Radiation Safety at Arizona State University in Tempe. "Will it have a significant health impact in the United States? Not likely. However, individuals who live in the region where the detonations could occur will have substantial health impacts."
"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." ~ George W. Bush, December 18, 2000
To every time there is a season and right now we are experiencing the winter of souls. Nuclear weapons are waving their ugly heads from the Capitol of the United States to the mountains of Kashmir. Rogue nations are ruffling feathers in the Bush Whitehouse, while the Bush administration has shown that it can exercise no discretion in its war-hyped rhetoric. Continuing to push its unilateralist agenda down the globe's throat has produced the frigid cold war climate that it sought. Behind the scenes they have rewarded movers and shakers from the Carlyle Group.
The spirit of Joseph McCarthy glows jealously at the powers that our strutting Attorney General John Ashcroft has achieved. While John slyly implies that any who question his motives is a closet terrorist, he hides his inner glee that his bullying tactics cover his complete ineptitude and incompetence or worse.
After seeing how handily Robert Mueller's self-effacing apology and mea culpas deflected the questioning spotlight of his inability to rise above the political posturing and butt-covering in the wake of Colleen Rowley's exposure of his naked stupidity in understanding national security, J. Edgar Hoover's transvestite soul is probably raising his skirts attempting to lure some attention to his bedraggled reputation.
If the United States were a person, would he or she be so mad as to:
Hand to everyone in the neighborhood planes, bombs and guns that easily may be used against us and our friends? The United States does. It is the world's largest arms merchant.
Embargo trade with a midget, Cuba, while welcoming trade with our largest potential adversary, China? The United States does.
Let one of seven of our family struggle without health care, housing, education, transportation and dignity while we wallow in surplus wealth? We do.
Pay total attention to a single threat--terrorism--while disease, drugs, corruption, crime, poor education and environmental degradation threaten us every day? That's us.
Waffle on whether public accounting firms should be dependable auditors of the companies we work for or invest in? Congress does.
Choose court judges to propagate religious dogma instead of law? We do.
Are we sane? Do we care that we appear to be mad?
PARIS -- "How did he ever get to be president?" asked a French reporter watching George W. Bush in a joint press conference with the president of France, Jacques Chirac, in the splendor of the Elysee Palace last week.
"Just like that," was the appropriate answer from an American reporter. At the end of his first trip to the major capitals of old Europe, Bush was obviously exhausted and perhaps confused, too. "That's the fraternity boy we covered in the 2000 campaign," said the American reporter. Bush was slow, forgetful, smirky and downright nasty -- as he often was as a candidate. It was as if Sept. 11, 2001, and all the wars since had never happened.
Chirac was amused, at least on the surface. When Bush could not put together an answer to a complicated question, the Texan, as they like to call him here, smiled and said: "That's what happens when you're over 55." He turned to Chirac and said, "You know what I mean?" This time Chirac, who is 69 years old, did not seem amused at all.
Then David Gregory of NBC News, who speaks French, asked a question of Bush in English and added that he would like "Monsieur le President Chirac ..." to answer as well.
For some reason, that made Bush mad, and he said, more or less to Chirac, who spoke in French but understands English: "The guy memorizes four words, and he plays like he's intercontinental! ... Well, que bueno -- now I'm literate in two languages."
Of all the ways we know the FBI bungled the case of Sept. 11 before it happened, failure to snoop on people at prayer wasn't one of them.
The inability to "connect the dots" did not stem from a lack of dots. There was no shortage of FBI agents searching for dots, nor a civil liberties' straightjacket that prevented them from finding dots in the first place.
"The issues are fundamentally ones of INTEGRITY and go to the heart of the FBI's law enforcement mission and mandate," wrote Coleen Rowley, the senior agent in Minneapolis who blew the whistle on headquarters' incompetence after the higher-ups had been alerted early on that Zacarias Moussaoui - now charged as the "20th hijacker" - was quite possibly a terrorist. The capital letters are Rowley's own.
Everybody knows that President Junior doesn't write his own speeches. Given his embarrassing performances
of late, however, it's an open question whether Bush even comprehends the speeches he reads. Consider his
recent European foray, for example, where the president's ignorance was matched only by his petulance.
The German newspaper Der Spiegel reports that at a diplomatic reception Bush astonished the president
of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, by asking, "Do you have blacks too?" Noticing the Brazilian delegation's
consternation, national security advisor Condoleeza Rice rescued her boss. "Mr. President, Brazil has probably
more blacks than the USA," she said, "It is the country with most blacks outside of Africa." Cardoso diplomatically
told Der Spiegel that Bush is "still in training" on Latin America.
Oh well, what's Brazil got to do with anything? In keeping with what I call the "Tinkerbell Effect," after the animated
sprite in Disney's "Peter Pan," the American press ignored the incident. See, if we all just close our eyes and make
believe, we can be confident that when Bush makes sweeping historical pronouncements like those in his bellicose
West Point speech last weekend, he has the first bleeping idea what he's talking about.
The following is the letter to the editor written by Lt. Col. Steve Butler who was serving as vice chancellor for student affairs at the Defense Language Institute when he wrote the letter, published in The Herald on May 26.
Butler was suspended from his duties at the Monterey language school following publication of his letter, which could constitute a violation of Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Article 88 bars any commissioned officer from using "contemptuous words" about the president, Congress and various other officials. The matter, which is now attracting national attention, is under investigation by the Air Force.
The letter follows as originally published:
It's about time conservative idiots like Steve Kelly and Rod Musgrove got a dose of reality. Of course President Bush knew about the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism. His daddy had Saddam and he needed Osama.
His presidency was going nowhere. He wasn't elected by the American people, but placed into the Oval Office by the conservative supreme court. The economy was sliding into the usual Republican pits and he needed something on which to hang his presidency.
For them to accuse Democrats of being "sleazy" is laughable. Isn't it ironic that Kelly begins his inane babble with a reference to Monica Lewinsky? How many people died because of Monica Lewinsky? And for Musgrove to call the assertions "contemptible" is another joke. Funny how he manages to make disparaging remarks about President Clinton, as well.
Face it people, Bill Clinton was a great president. This guy is a joke. What is sleazy and contemptible is the President of the United States not telling the American people what he knows for political gain. The Democrats asking pertinent questions is their duty as public servants.
Steve Butler
Thursday, June 06, 2002
"Ideas Have Consequences" was written by the young conservative scholar Richard Weaver, after he had witnessed the carnage World War II had visited upon his civilization. And if we look about the borderlands of Islam – Chechnya, Kashmir, the West Bank – we see the consequences of ideas advanced by two Americans whose influence is hard to overstate.
"All governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," wrote Thomas Jefferson. "There is the revolutionary slogan, coming from the pen of a young, erudite, Virginia slave-holder," said historian D. W. Brogan. "The Revolution was on the march from that moment. It still is." With the triumph of the American Revolution, the handwriting was on the wall for every empire on earth.
In 1919, an even greater gravedigger of empire arrived in Paris preaching a doctrine of "self-determination" for all peoples. Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State Robert Lansing realized Wilson had let the genie out of the bottle. "The phrase (self-determination) is simply loaded with dynamite. It will raise hopes which can never be realized. ... What a calamity that the phrase was ever uttered! What misery it will cause!"
Thirty-five years to the hour of the outbreak of a war that Israelis hoped would end all Mideast wars, a bomb-hauling Islamic Jihad suicide driver incinerated a crowded commuter bus Wednesday near the traditional site of the end of the world, killing at least 16 people and fueling fears of a Palestinian "megaterror" attack still in the works.
But with few tangible signs of progress in CIA Director George Tenet's mission to persuade Yasser Arafat to reform his security services into structures that could block attacks on Israelis, there were signs that Washington might relax its restraints on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government, with a new IDF onslaught in the territories a possible consequence.
Israel's chief of military intelligence said on the eve of the suicide car bombing that militant Palestinian groups were planning "megaterror" attacks to raise the ante of attacks within the Jewish state.
There are those who wrongly believe that the debate over civil liberties in this country breaks along ideological grounds. It's an easy mistake to make: Especially when Attorney General John Ashcroft, a certified -- and, arguably, certifiable -- conservative is treating the Constitution like it was a threat to America.
JERUSALEM (AP) - A Palestinian human rights organization on Monday accused the Israeli military of concocting a story about a suicide bomber to cover up the shooting of a Palestinian youth.
On May 8, Israel police said a Palestinian bomber standing at a busy Israeli highway junction exploded, possibly prematurely, injuring only himself. Photos and video footage of the alleged bomber being dragged by a police bomb inspection robot were broadcast worldwide.
Palestinian human rights association Addameer said Zeidan Zeidan, 20, from the West Bank town of Jenin, was carrying goods to sell in villages inside Israel when soldiers fired at him, wounding him in the stomach.
Israeli police spokesman Gil Kleiman said Zeidan was definitely carrying a bomb. "An explosion did occur, and the bag that the bomber was carrying blew up," Kleiman said. The incident took place at the Megiddo junction in Israel's north.
Kleiman said there was only partial detonation of the explosive device, and most of it did not blow up. Kleiman said shots were fired, but he did not know if Zeidan was injured by gunfire.
Photos and video footage filmed shortly after the explosion show the bomber lying semiconscious near a bus stop. No explosive device is visible. The Palestinian does not appear to be badly wounded.
A defiant Yasser Arafat emerged from his Ramallah compound Thursday, after the IDF staged a six-hour incursion, during which six buildings were destroyed and a member of the Palestinian Authority chairman's presidential guard was killed.
"No-one can defeat the Palestinian people," said Arafat.
Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said Thursday that the operation was designed to demonstrate to Arafat that Israel holds the Palestinian Authority - and Arafat personally - responsible for terror attacks against Israeli citizens. Ben-Eliezer added that Arafat and the PA are doing nothing to halt the current wave of terror attacks.
Ben-Eliezer also hinted that similar operations would be carried out in ther future. "We cannot turn a blind eye to these terror attacks, and the security forces and the IDF will take every step to end the terror."
Consider the following eyewitness accounts from distraught villagers in Bandi Temur, Afghanistan. As reported in the May 27, 2002 edition of the New York Times: "They shot my husband, Abdullah, and they beat me and bound my hands and eyes." From a wailing mother came the cry: "They shot my son, Muhammad Sadiq. He was 35. They shot him in the legs." Most distressing was the story of another mother whose 3 year old daughter ran in fear from the soldiers. "They were shooting....I could not see anything but she was running. We only found her the next day. She was in the well, she was dead."
Were these soldiers part of another in the all-too-frequent conflicts between rival Afghan warlords that render life outside of Kabul dangerous and deadly? No, this was another lethal raid in recent actions by US troops that have outraged Afghan villagers. Among the other egregious violence in this attack was the brutal death by "a blow from a rifle butt" of the 100 year old village chief. As General Akram, the regional head of police, explained: "The villagers really respected him, that's why they are so angry." Angry enough, according to the General, to view such raids of the American-led coalition forces as similar to the Soviet activities of the 1980's.
Tuesday, June 04, 2002
FORT MEADE, Md. (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites) expressed concern on Tuesday that congressional probes into the Sept. 11 attacks might take government experts away from their central job of preventing another attack.
"What I am concerned about is tying up valuable assets and time and possibly jeopardizing sources of intelligence," Bush said as congressional hearings were beginning on Capitol Hill into the failure of U.S. intelligence to thwart the attacks.
Bush made the comment to reporters as he toured the headquarters of the top-secret National Security Agency, a massive intelligence-gathering operation that essentially eavesdrops on the world.
The NSA is located at the Fort Meade Army base, a sprawling and heavily guarded military facility between Washington and Baltimore.
Bush gave a pep talk to employees that was closed to the press. The NSA work force represents an unusual combination of specialties: analysts, engineers, physicists, mathematicians, linguists, computer scientists and researchers.
Bush told reporters it was clear the FBI (news - web sites) and the CIA (news - web sites) were not communicating properly before Sept. 11 but that the two agencies are now in much closer contact. One of the main criticisms of the U.S. security agencies has been that they failed to share intelligence.
WASHINGTON
Under the police powers it operated under last year, and with the lawful cooperation of a better-managed C.I.A., an efficiently run F.B.I. might well have prevented the catastrophe of Sept. 11. That is the dismaying probability that Congressional oversight (it should be called undersight) will begin to show this week.
To fabricate an alibi for his nonfeasance, and to cover up his department's embarrassing cut of the counterterrorism budget last year, Attorney General John Ashcroft — working with his hand-picked aide, F.B.I. Director "J. Edgar" Mueller III — has gutted guidelines put in place a generation ago to prevent the abuse of police power by the federal government.
They have done this deed by executive fiat: no public discussion, no Congressional action, no judicial guidance. If we had only had these new powers last year, goes their posterior-covering pretense, we could have stopped terrorism cold.
Not so. They had the power to collect the intelligence, but lacked the intellect to analyze the data the agencies collected. The F.B.I.'s failure to absorb the Phoenix and Minneapolis memos was compounded by the C.I.A.'s failure to share information it had about two of the Arab terrorists in the U.S. who would become hijackers (as revealed by Newsweek today).
Of course, Ashcroft still occupies his office at the Department of Justice. But in recent weeks, the formerly ubiquitous A.G. -- mad-dog scourge of civil libertarians -- has become the Bush administration's Invisible Man.
With each new revelation about who knew what both before and after September 11, the buck stops with disturbing frequency at Ashcroft's desk. The result: The attorney general suddenly labors under a self-evident gag order. Ashcroft's last appearance on Capitol Hill was May 3. In the weeks since, as one Cabinet officer after another -- Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld -- has taken turns on Sunday talk shows to warn of new terrorist threats, Ashcroft has been nowhere to be found on the airwaves. He emerged this week just long enough to announce a massive ramping up of the FBI's anti-terrorist efforts. The plan centralizes authority under the very Washington officials most responsible for the September 11 failures and seems unlikely to stop the questions.
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 3, 2002--The law firm of Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach LLP announces that a class action lawsuit was filed on June 3, 2002, on behalf of purchasers of the securities of Halliburton Company ("Halliburton" or the "Company") (NYSE: HAL - News) between July 22, 1999 and May 28, 2002 inclusive (the "Class Period").
A copy of the complaint filed in this action is available from the Court, or can be viewed on Milberg Weiss' website at: http://www.milberg.com/cases/halliburton/
The action, numbered 3-02CV-1152-L, is pending in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, located at 1100 Commerce Street, Dallas, TX 75242 against defendant Halliburton. The Honorable Sam A. Lindsay is the Judge presiding over the case.
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada said on Monday that a man who was suspected of helping fund Osama bin Laden will not be extradited to the United States, a decision U.S. officials immediately branded a mistake.
Canada's Justice Ministry said in a statement that it was discontinuing proceedings against Somali-born Liban Hussein, named by both the United States and Canada on a list of companies and people with supposed links to bin Laden.
"Based on a full and thorough investigation collected in relation to the extradition proceedings, the government of Canada has concluded there are no reasonable grounds to believe Mr. Hussein is connected to any terrorist activities," it said.
It added that the U.S. Department of Justice had not objected to the decision but the U.S. embassy in Ottawa denied this was the case.
"We have not said we don't object. We have shared evidence of terrorist financing with Canadian authorities," spokesman Buck Shinkman told Reuters.
NEW DELHI AND WASHINGTON – Officially, at least, both India and Pakistan say that chances of their current tensions escalating into a possible nuclear war are "unthinkable," "unlikely," and in the words of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, "insanity."
WASHINGTON - A nuclear war between Pakistan and India could dwarf any catastrophe in world history, killing up to 12 million people in South Asia.
But the radioactive fallout probably would not harm Americans half a world away. In fact, because of the combined effects of distance, dispersion, and dilution, the increased amount of radiation in US air would be barely measurable, health specialists say.
''As concerned as we need to be for the Indian and Pakistani populations, the concern for ourselves here is not proportionate to the risk,'' said Cham Dallas, a University of Georgia toxicologist.
Dallas, who is helping the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention coordinate medical response to possible nuclear attacks on the United States, said, ''The effects here in the United States will be minimal.''
Washington, June 4 (AFP) The CIA has created a new super secret paramilitary unit to target known terrorists and their leaders abroad, a US government official said.
The CIA already has several paramilitary units trained for the conduct of covert operations, according to the official.
But the new hit team will operate directly under the command of the agency's counter terrorism centre, the brain trust of the US-led war on terror that seeks to eradicate terrorist cells around the world.
"It will really be a more counter terrorist paramilitary force that will focus on terrorists," the official said yesterday.
The number of people in the team, its weaponry and the location of its home base remain highly classified.
HEBRON: The Israeli Army on Tuesday entered the centre of the Palestinian autonomous area of Hebron, the largest city in the southern West Bank, imposing a curfew and closing down shops, according to reports.
The Army fired stun grenades as its forces moved into the Palestinian zone shortly after two Israelis were wounded, one seriously, when their truck overturned after being attacked by Palestinians near the city.
The people frantically ran but I tried to walk calmly so as not to loose my place after waiting for an hour... I ended up inhaling too much tear gas and almost lost my breath
By Nizar Farsakh
I had to go Bethlehem one way or the other, so early morning I went to the checkpoint and there was a long line.. it was 7:00 a.m. and the israeli soldiers were letting people in one by one very slowly...
I waited in line for half an hour when new people started going out of the line and stood in front of the earth mound next to the start of the line... as much as we protested to them that they should stay in line, they did not listen. They said that they had been trying to get to Ramallah from another place since 5:00 a.m. but the Israeli soldiers were firing at them, so they weren't willing to wait two more hours in a new line.. anyway, the Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint kept threatening those who were not standing in line that they will shoot at them.
So those people would go back for a while only to come back to the front again, and the soldiers threatening again, and so on and so forth, until the soldiers did throw a shock bomb (only sound) so the people dispersed and the line got disorganized, but I managed to keep pretty much the same place I was in.
If it’s spin to back up your arguments with bogus facts and statistics, and to dismiss numbers that don’t fit in with your preconceptions, then Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News Channel show isn’t, as he repeatedly claims, a "no-spin zone"-- it’s Spin City.
During an interview with National Organization for Women president Kim Gandy (O’Reilly Factor, 2/5/02), O’Reilly claimed that "58 percent of single-mom homes are on welfare." When Gandy questioned that figure, O’Reilly held firm: "You can’t say no, Miss Gandy. That’s the stat. You can’t just dismiss it. . . . It’s 58 percent. That’s what it is from the federal government."
But by the next broadcast (2/6/02), O’Reilly was revising his accounting: "At this point, we have this from Washington, and it’s bad. 52 percent of families receiving public assistance are headed by a single mother, 52 percent." Not only is that a different number, it’s the reverse of the statistic he offered the previous night-- not the percentage of households headed by single mothers that receive welfare, but the percentage of families receiving public assistance headed by single mothers. That’s a distinction that O’Reilly did not attempt to clarify; he seemed unapologetic about emphatically putting forward an inaccurate statistic the night before.
The following night (2/7/02), O’Reilly came up with more solid figures, but they bore no resemblance to his original numbers: About 14 percent of single mothers receive federal welfare benefits, he now said-- less than one-fourth of his earlier claim. (He suggested that food stamps ought to be considered a kind of welfare, but that only gets him to 33 percent-- still 25 percentage points short.) O’Reilly explained that "it’s really hard to get a stat to say how many single moms percentage-wise get government assistance," though he’d found it easy enough to pull one out of the air just three nights earlier.
You're not getting the news:
Because "the news" is no longer the news--it's soundbites and headlines
Because you're letting TV, radio, and newspapers feed you spin (biased opinion) and babble
Before 9/11--and the Bush administration's attacks on constitutional freedoms following that disaster--American citizens had the option of whether or not to inform themselves.
But Bush's attacks on our civil liberties now constitutes such a CRISIS that Americans must either inform themselves or they will soon find themselves without basic freedoms.
If you're going to become an informed citizen, you're going to have to inform yourself! The so-called TV "news" shows don't even pretend to provide a balanced presentation of varying points of view. A Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) study of ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News in the year 2001 shows that 92 percent of all U.S. sources interviewed were white, 85 percent were male and, where party affiliation was identifiable, 75 percent were Republican. FAIR's exposé of the Bill O'Reilly program reveals the ugly visage of bigotry and egomania. TV only provides DIS-information and inane entertainment which it calls "news."
OTTAWA -- Pilots from the U.S. fighter squadron that mistakenly bombed Canadian troops in Afghanistan had told their commanders shortly before the fatal accident that they were exhausted and needed more rest between missions.
The informal meeting between pilots of the 183rd Fighter Wing and their commanding officers was convened after the unit misidentified a bombing target during a previous mission over Iraq. The 183rd, an Air National Guard unit currently stationed in Kuwait, was flying patrol missions in the no-fly zone in Southern Iraq as well as sorties over Afghanistan.
In the meeting, held in the week before Canadian soldiers were shelled by American bombs in Afghanistan, at least one F-16 pilot complained that requirements for crew rest were not being observed and that many of the pilots were overtired. The pilot was told, however, that further questions about crew rest would not be looked on favourably by the wing command.
Instead, pilots were advised to speak to a flight surgeon about so-called "go/no pills" -- amphetamines used to help stay awake on long missions, and sedatives to help sleep.
WITH public expectations wound up to breaking point on both sides of the Kashmir border, India and Pakistan cannot risk appearing weak to their own populations by making the first concession.
Over the weekend President Musharraf tempered his war rhetoric and adopted a more conciliatory tone, repeating to CNN in more forceful terms his earlier promise to fight “militancy in all its forms” and offering to sign a “no war pact” with India.
General Musharraf appears to have finally decided to rein in the militants under intense international pressure and threat of war by India. But his insistence that there has to be reciprocal “movement forward in addressing and initiating a process of dialogue on the Kashmir issue” shows that he needs something in return.
Most observers agree that General Musharraf’s standing in Delhi is “almost zero”. India’s leaders insist they want to see results on the ground.
However, there appears to be a wide gap between what India’s leaders demand and what most analysts believe General Musharraf can deliver. While the general sincerely wants to prevent a war, he does not want to be seen as a leader who retreated on his country’s “sacred” cause, Kashmir.
Poor warhawks. They're so frustrated. For more than a decade they have been trying to get you and Congress to let them resume the Gulf War. But there are these maddening distractions. Afghanistan. Palestine. Kashmir.
How can they ever get you to believe they've got to go kill Saddam, this very day, lest he nuke you, tonight, in your jammies?
Actually, depending upon the rationale the warhawks use, your chances of getting nuked in your jammies may be increased – rather than decreased – if the warhawks violate the terms and conditions of the cease-fire between Iraq and the "the coalition of Member States cooperating with Kuwait."
You see, for years the warhawks claimed that Saddam would nuke you with his own home-made nukes. But, the International Atomic Energy Agency – acting pursuant to the Gulf War cease-fire resolution – certified that the Iraqi nuke infrastructure has been completely destroyed and, as of December 1998, was not being rebuilt.
Don't let them fool you, folks: They knew.
They might have been surprised by the ferocity of the attacks, but the highest-ranking members of the George W. Bush administration knew before Sept. 11 that something terrible was going to happen soon.
Bush knew something was going to happen involving airplanes. He just didn't know what or exactly when. His attorney general, John Ashcroft, knew. His national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, knew. They all knew.
And, in spite of its apparent ineptness, the FBI knew, too.
Not only did they all know, but they told us. Obliquely. And we didn't pay attention. Why would we? Then, as now, terrorist threats were a dime a dozen.
Is this my opinion? No, it's published fact.
Apart from the surprise of Attorney General John Ashcroft's scrapping 26-year-old restraints on the FBI, what really stunned Washington was the process. The Justice Department gave Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, just two hours notice.
Furthermore, he was notified--not consulted. Whether or not that suggested arrogance by the Bush administration, it surely confirmed ignorance. Sensenbrenner, a conservative Republican from Menomonee Falls, Wis., serving his 24th year in Congress, never will win the Mr. Congeniality award on Capitol Hill, but he is one of the smartest and most effective lawmakers.
He also proudly upholds prerogatives of the House of Representatives and the Judiciary Committee. Less than 24 hours after Ashcroft's announcement, Sensenbrenner said in an interview taped for CNN: ''I believe that the Justice Department has gone too far in changing the domestic spying regulations.''
The botched handling of a very important congressman reveals Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller are running scared. In denial about obvious shortcomings since Sept. 11, they now face unprecedented criticism that hardly anything has really changed in the way the 93-year-old bureau functions.
Unless urgent measures are taken, the Russian army, currently wallowing in a mire of theft and corruption, will soon lose its combat efficiency, declared the chief of the Russian Defence Ministry’s General Staff Anatoly Kvashnin. He was speaking ahead of the Security Council’s Friday session dedicated to the prospects of army development for the period 2003-2010.
The sweeping statement made by the head of the General Staff was perceived by many as his response to the dressing-down Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov gave the General Staff earlier this month. Addressing a gathering of Russia’s top military command, held at the Defence Ministry in Moscow earlier this month, Ivanov publicly accused the General Staff, and in particular, Anatoly Kvashnin, of disrupting the winter military training season. ''The insufficient level of skills, lack of initiative and purposefulness in the actions of many representatives of army command on various levels have prevented us from making consistent progress,'' Ivanov claimed then.
There's NewsMax the web site, NewsMax the magazine and NewsMax the infomercial. Are you ready for NewsMax the IPO?
It's coming. NewsMax Media Inc., the parent company of all things NewsMax, filed its intention with the Securites and Exchange Commission in March to issue 1 million shares of stock to the public with the intention of raising about $5.7 million assuming an proposed offering price of $7 a share.
In the past, NewsMax has been tight-lipped about its ownership and finances. But doing an IPO requires all sorts of filings with SEC, all the way down to building leases and employment contracts. The most interesting of these documents by far is the preliminary prospectus on file that details, among other things, NewsMax's finances and ownership.
TEHRAN: By labelling Iran part of an "axis of evil", the United States is losing its few friends in the Islamic republic, with President Mohammad Khatami the latest to join the camp of adversaries. Khatami, who made a dramatic overture towards "arch foe America" after his 1997 election, drew the curtain on rapprochement last week, calling on his allies in parliament to abandon a quest for better relations with Washington.
"When a big power uses a militant, humiliating and threatening tone to speak to us, our nation will refuse to negotiate or show any flexibility," he said. US President George W. Bush has repeatedly called Iran part of an "axis of evil" along with Iraq and North Korea for its alleged support of "terrorism" and efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
Iran denies the latter charge and insists its weapons programme is strictly conventional and meant for deterrence. Khatami's allies say his new tough line does not reflect a change in his desire for better relations and that he would soften his tone if Washington did the same.
"Khatami has not changed his position. He is offended by Bush's humiliating tone. He feels he has to defend his nation's integrity," said Mohammad Ali Abtahi, vice president and a Khatami confidante. "No leader is ready to negotiate when he and his nation are being insulted," he told Reuters. "Khatami used a very civilised tone talking to the Americans and see what he gets in return."
NABLUS, West Bank, Jun 03, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Israeli troops raided a West Bank refugee camp Monday and rounded up about 400 Palestinians, as CIA chief George Tenet was en route to the West Bank for talks on restructuring the Palestinian security services.
In Israel's Cabinet, meanwhile, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon clashed with the head of the Shin Bet security services, Avi Dichter, over army tactics, media reports said. Dichter told ministers Sunday that Israeli troops should remain in Palestinian areas until a buffer zone between Israel and the West Bank has been built. Sharon said Israel's policy of quick incursions into Palestinian towns would continue.
In Monday's raid, tanks surrounded the Ain Beit Ilma refugee camp near the West Bank city of Nablus, as jeeps and armored personnel carriers drove through the main street. Troops using loudspeakers called on all males between the ages of 15 and 50 to come out of their homes. About 400 men were taken away in four buses and two trucks to be questioned at a nearby army base, witnesses said.
BAGRAM, Afghanistan –– U.S. troops swept onto a mountain ridge near the Pakistani border, ready to face perhaps dozens of al-Qaida or Taliban fighters. But they found only caves and buildings that had not been lived in for weeks.
The search left soldiers who returned Monday to Bagram air base wondering if there is anyone left to fight in the field in eastern Afghanistan.
"We were at least hoping to find, if not people there, at least information about people or some of their equipment," Cpl. Sam Watkins said. "Something to show that we did something."
Within a month of 9-11, the SEC, acting in concert with the Department of Justice, distributed a target list of 38 stocks to securities firms around the world looking for information about who might have profited by at least apparent pre-knowledge of the aerial attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. To date there has not been a public word from any agency as to whether they have snagged anyone.
According to market analysts, the investment of choice by someone with pre-knowledge of the catastrophe would be a type of market speculation involving so-called "put” options. Simplified, a put is a bet that a particular stock will go down.
The two most obvious stocks for such speculation by anyone with "insider” dope on the attacks are American and United airlines, the two hapless carriers that had planes hijacked and used as aerial bombs.
IT IS A regrettable fact of life around here that self-criticism and confession of error are options, not imperatives.
That is a generic reason for remaining skeptical about FBI director Robert Mueller's tardy and modified mea culpa on the bureau's and his pre- and post-Sept. 11 behavior.
A more direct reason may be found in Colleen Rowley's remarkable letter of May 21, in which the Minneapolis field office's legal counsel notes with dry wit that this is the director's third public position on the FBI's relationship to the tragedy, not exactly a credibility booster.
The first line, she notes, emerged almost immediately after the attacks. The assertion was made that if only the FBI had some form of warning, it might have been able to take preventive action.
The United States refused Iraqi offers to hand over a suspect in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Iraq's foreign minister says.
Tariq Aziz told the American news programme 60 Minutes that Iraq had twice offered to hand over Abdul Rahman Yasin, who is in prison in Iraq and is on the FBI's list of most-wanted terrorists.
And Mr Yasin himself told 60 Minutes that the FBI let him go after interrogating him in the days following the 1993 bombing - even driving him home.
The CBS television show, broadcast on Sunday, said neither the White House nor the State Department would comment on Mr Aziz's statements.
ALMATY, Kazakhstan, June 4 — At an Asian summit aimed at promoting regional stability, India and Pakistan failed to come together for face-to-face talks over the disputed Kashmir region, though Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, sat down at the same table for the first time in six months. The two nuclear-armed foes continued to blame the other for instigating violence in Kashmir, as border violence between both armies again flared.
CAIRO, June 3 — Egyptian intelligence warned American officials about a week before Sept. 11 that Osama bin Laden's network was in the advance stages of executing a significant operation against an American target, President Hosni Mubarak said in an interview on Sunday.
Using a secret agent they had recruited who was in close contact with the bin Laden organization, Mr. Mubarak said, his intelligence chiefs tried unsuccessfully to halt the operation.
Mr. Mubarak said his intelligence officials had no indication what the target would be and had no idea of the magnitude of the coming attack.
"We didn't know that such a thing could take place," he said, referring to the Sept. 11 attacks. "We thought it was an embassy, an airplane, something, the usual thing."