Sunday, January 24, 2010
Iraq war was illegal, top lawyer will tell Chilcot inquiry
Foreign Office official's evidence the day before attorney general Lord Goldsmith appears will increase pressure on Tony Blair
Tony Blair's decision to take Britain to war in Iraq was illegal, the Foreign Office's former chief legal adviser will tell the Chilcot inquiry this week.
The Observer has been told that Sir Michael Wood, who was the FO's most senior lawyer, is ready to reveal that, in the run-up to war, he was of the opinion that the conflict would have been unlawful without a second UN resolution. This will provide an explosive backdrop to the former prime minister's appearance before the inquiry on Friday.
The evidence from Wood, who will appear before the committee on Tuesday, will provide the firmest proof to date of the bitter wranglings that divided the government in the countdown to war.
His testimony will come the day before the appearance of Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney general, who is said to have dropped his legal objections days before the invasion, following intense pressure from Blair and his closest advisers, and the US authorities.
A senior legal figure close to the discussions at the time told the Observer: "The advice that was given consistently in the Foreign Office [by Wood] was that war would be unlawful without a second resolution. The important thing is that Foreign Office advice was given consistently in one way, and then the attorney general, right at the end, gave advice to the contrary. That is what will come out."
It is also believed that the legal advice from Wood, who left the Foreign Office in 2006 and is now a barrister in private chambers in London, could be published for the first time by the inquiry.
The revelation is certain to inflame the already febrile atmosphere among the relatives of those killed in Iraq. More than 40 will sit in on the inquiry during Blair's appearance on Friday.
Last night there were signs that the families may stage some form of symbolic protest when the former PM takes the stage. They have written to the inquiry chairman, Sir John Chilcot, asking for a short private session with Blair in what one relative described as an opportunity to bring "closure".
Reg Keys, who stood against Blair in the 2005 election after his son Tom, a military policeman, was killed in Majar al-Kabir in 2003, said he had contacted the inquiry chairman asking for families to be offered "one final chance to share their concerns".
Blair will take his place amid intense security, with mass protests expected in Westminster. Sources close to Scotland Yard said Blair's appearance had been a major factor behind the government's decision to raise the terror threat level from "substantial" to "severe".
Intelligence operatives had picked up "domestic chatter" that had given them reason to believe his appearance before the inquiry required a higher state of alert. "We are gearing up for Blair," said the source."
His appearance will be crucial in determining the process by which the country went to war. He will face intense questioning on the way patchy intelligence evidence of Saddam Hussein's weapons programme in 2002 was translated into firm assertions that the threat was "growing" and "beyond doubt".
Tough questioning is expected, particularly from Sir Roderic Lyne, a former diplomat who is emerging as the most tenacious of Chilcot's inquisitors. The panel are also certain to question Blair on what he decided at key meetings with President George Bush in the run-up to war and whether more could have been done to equip soldiers for the conflict, in which 179 British service personnel have died.
But the question of the legality of war threatens to be the most damaging. Goldsmith is likely to be pressed on whether he was pushed into changing his mind by Blair and senior US officials. At the time, arguments raged on whether UN resolution 1441, which related to Iraq's ceasefire obligations from the first Gulf war, gave legal cover for military action. Because the consensus among lawyers was that it did not, desperate – and ultimately fruitless – attempts, led by Britain and the US, were mounted to win support for a second resolution that would have made the case watertight.
Whitehall sources have revealed that Goldsmith and Wood had worked closely on the issue of the legality of war. But in the days before invasion, Goldsmith abruptly changed his position, declaring that it would in fact be legal. "There was agreement. [Goldsmith] then went to talk to the Americans, the US State Department. And the Americans were very clear what they wanted and what they thought, and that is what changed his mind," said an FO source.
Wood's deputy at the time, former Foreign Office lawyer Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who resigned two days before the war because she believed the invasion was a "crime of aggression", will appear at the inquiry after Wood on Tuesday.
Tony Blair's decision to take Britain to war in Iraq was illegal, the Foreign Office's former chief legal adviser will tell the Chilcot inquiry this week.
The Observer has been told that Sir Michael Wood, who was the FO's most senior lawyer, is ready to reveal that, in the run-up to war, he was of the opinion that the conflict would have been unlawful without a second UN resolution. This will provide an explosive backdrop to the former prime minister's appearance before the inquiry on Friday.
The evidence from Wood, who will appear before the committee on Tuesday, will provide the firmest proof to date of the bitter wranglings that divided the government in the countdown to war.
His testimony will come the day before the appearance of Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney general, who is said to have dropped his legal objections days before the invasion, following intense pressure from Blair and his closest advisers, and the US authorities.
A senior legal figure close to the discussions at the time told the Observer: "The advice that was given consistently in the Foreign Office [by Wood] was that war would be unlawful without a second resolution. The important thing is that Foreign Office advice was given consistently in one way, and then the attorney general, right at the end, gave advice to the contrary. That is what will come out."
It is also believed that the legal advice from Wood, who left the Foreign Office in 2006 and is now a barrister in private chambers in London, could be published for the first time by the inquiry.
The revelation is certain to inflame the already febrile atmosphere among the relatives of those killed in Iraq. More than 40 will sit in on the inquiry during Blair's appearance on Friday.
Last night there were signs that the families may stage some form of symbolic protest when the former PM takes the stage. They have written to the inquiry chairman, Sir John Chilcot, asking for a short private session with Blair in what one relative described as an opportunity to bring "closure".
Reg Keys, who stood against Blair in the 2005 election after his son Tom, a military policeman, was killed in Majar al-Kabir in 2003, said he had contacted the inquiry chairman asking for families to be offered "one final chance to share their concerns".
Blair will take his place amid intense security, with mass protests expected in Westminster. Sources close to Scotland Yard said Blair's appearance had been a major factor behind the government's decision to raise the terror threat level from "substantial" to "severe".
Intelligence operatives had picked up "domestic chatter" that had given them reason to believe his appearance before the inquiry required a higher state of alert. "We are gearing up for Blair," said the source."
His appearance will be crucial in determining the process by which the country went to war. He will face intense questioning on the way patchy intelligence evidence of Saddam Hussein's weapons programme in 2002 was translated into firm assertions that the threat was "growing" and "beyond doubt".
Tough questioning is expected, particularly from Sir Roderic Lyne, a former diplomat who is emerging as the most tenacious of Chilcot's inquisitors. The panel are also certain to question Blair on what he decided at key meetings with President George Bush in the run-up to war and whether more could have been done to equip soldiers for the conflict, in which 179 British service personnel have died.
But the question of the legality of war threatens to be the most damaging. Goldsmith is likely to be pressed on whether he was pushed into changing his mind by Blair and senior US officials. At the time, arguments raged on whether UN resolution 1441, which related to Iraq's ceasefire obligations from the first Gulf war, gave legal cover for military action. Because the consensus among lawyers was that it did not, desperate – and ultimately fruitless – attempts, led by Britain and the US, were mounted to win support for a second resolution that would have made the case watertight.
Whitehall sources have revealed that Goldsmith and Wood had worked closely on the issue of the legality of war. But in the days before invasion, Goldsmith abruptly changed his position, declaring that it would in fact be legal. "There was agreement. [Goldsmith] then went to talk to the Americans, the US State Department. And the Americans were very clear what they wanted and what they thought, and that is what changed his mind," said an FO source.
Wood's deputy at the time, former Foreign Office lawyer Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who resigned two days before the war because she believed the invasion was a "crime of aggression", will appear at the inquiry after Wood on Tuesday.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
WMDs in 45 minutes claim 'was asking for trouble', admits Blair's security chief
WMDs in 45 minutes claim 'was asking for trouble', admits Blair's security chief
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...rity-chief.html
By Tim Shipman
Last updated at 12:29 AM on 21st January 2010
Tony Blair's intelligence chief told the Iraq Inquiry that if the public had been allowed to see all the intelligence on which Britain went to war, they would have said: 'Is that it?'
In a damning assessment of the way the evidence was spun into a case for war, former Cabinet Office Intelligence and Security Co-ordinator Sir David Omand denounced Mr Blair's Downing Street dossier as a 'big mistake'.
He said the claim that Iraq could fire weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes was 'asking for trouble'.
Sir David said spin doctor Alastair Campbell was not supposed to write the document and advised that a similar exercise should never be attempted again.
He said No10 officials compiling the dossier were 'pleading' with the intelligence agencies 'for anything more they can put in the dossier' and added: 'That's why people fell on the 45 minutes. That was something the secret service would allow to be used.
One can see with hindsight that adding a bit of local colour like that is asking for trouble.
'If the totality of the intelligence base had been revealed, I think the answer would have been, "Is that it?" '
Sir David said there had been a 'natural queasiness' in the intelligence community about the decision to produce the dossier.
And he admitted that the biggest problem was Mr Blair's foreword, which drew attention to the 45-minute claim.
He said the foreword was circulated to the spies 'fairly late in the day' and added: 'I didn't pay much attention to this bit of it, which was a mistake.
'I totally failed to spot the potential problem that would arise.'
Sir David gave evidence after Gordon Brown revealed he has written to the inquiry into the Iraq war to say that he is 'happy' to give evidence at any time.
The Prime Minister, who has come under mounting pressure to be quizzed by the panel before the General Election, said he had written to its chairman Sir John Chilcot.
Mr Brown said he had made the offer, in which Downing Street later confirmed was a new letter, and said he would take direction from Sir John about when to appear.
Demands have grown for the Premier to give evidence before an election, expected in May, after he was accused of starving the armed forces of vital funds for years.
Former defence secretary Geoff Hoon told the inquiry yesterday that he had experienced 'areas of difficulty' when asking the then Chancellor for more money.
And last week spin doctor Alistair Campbell made clear that Mr Brown was part of the 'inner circle' of ministers and advisers consulted in private by Tony Blair on Iraq.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...rity-chief.html
By Tim Shipman
Last updated at 12:29 AM on 21st January 2010
Tony Blair's intelligence chief told the Iraq Inquiry that if the public had been allowed to see all the intelligence on which Britain went to war, they would have said: 'Is that it?'
In a damning assessment of the way the evidence was spun into a case for war, former Cabinet Office Intelligence and Security Co-ordinator Sir David Omand denounced Mr Blair's Downing Street dossier as a 'big mistake'.
He said the claim that Iraq could fire weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes was 'asking for trouble'.
Sir David said spin doctor Alastair Campbell was not supposed to write the document and advised that a similar exercise should never be attempted again.
He said No10 officials compiling the dossier were 'pleading' with the intelligence agencies 'for anything more they can put in the dossier' and added: 'That's why people fell on the 45 minutes. That was something the secret service would allow to be used.
One can see with hindsight that adding a bit of local colour like that is asking for trouble.
'If the totality of the intelligence base had been revealed, I think the answer would have been, "Is that it?" '
Sir David said there had been a 'natural queasiness' in the intelligence community about the decision to produce the dossier.
And he admitted that the biggest problem was Mr Blair's foreword, which drew attention to the 45-minute claim.
He said the foreword was circulated to the spies 'fairly late in the day' and added: 'I didn't pay much attention to this bit of it, which was a mistake.
'I totally failed to spot the potential problem that would arise.'
Sir David gave evidence after Gordon Brown revealed he has written to the inquiry into the Iraq war to say that he is 'happy' to give evidence at any time.
The Prime Minister, who has come under mounting pressure to be quizzed by the panel before the General Election, said he had written to its chairman Sir John Chilcot.
Mr Brown said he had made the offer, in which Downing Street later confirmed was a new letter, and said he would take direction from Sir John about when to appear.
Demands have grown for the Premier to give evidence before an election, expected in May, after he was accused of starving the armed forces of vital funds for years.
Former defence secretary Geoff Hoon told the inquiry yesterday that he had experienced 'areas of difficulty' when asking the then Chancellor for more money.
And last week spin doctor Alistair Campbell made clear that Mr Brown was part of the 'inner circle' of ministers and advisers consulted in private by Tony Blair on Iraq.
U.S. to deploy missiles near Russia
U.S. to deploy missiles near Russia
http://washingtontimes.com/news/201...=home_headlines
By Nicholas Kralev
1/21/2010
President Obama sent two of his top national security officials to Moscow on Wednesday to clear the last hurdles to a new nuclear pact, but a revelation that U.S. missiles will soon be deployed near Russian territory could complicate the talks.
The White House said that National Security Adviser James L. Jones and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen will meet with Russian officials "primarily to discuss the remaining issues left to conclude" a follow-on to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which the U.S. ambassador to Moscow predicted will be completed within weeks.
"It's only a question of when, and I think the finish line is approaching in the very near future," Ambassador John R. Beyrle said in an interview with the Echo of Moscow radio.
Washington and Moscow began negotiating a new treaty last spring but failed to work out all their differences by the time START expired on Dec. 5.
Verification has been one of the main problems. Russia has insisted on monitoring U.S. missile-defense interceptors being deployed in Europe but has refused U.S. inspectors access to its data on new missile tests.
In an attempt to "reset" their relationship after tensions during the Bush administration, Mr. Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed in July to cut the number of deployed nuclear warheads on each side to between 1,500 and 1,675.
The missile defense issue is one of the most sensitive for the Russians, even after Mr. Obama decided in September to scrap plans by his predecessor, George W. Bush, to deploy a system in Eastern Europe to counter a growing threat from Iran.
In a consolation to Poland, which was to host one of the sites and was unhappy with Mr. Obama's decision, the administration agreed to deploy Patriot-type surface-to-air missiles in the country. On Dec. 11, the two NATO allies signed a prerequisite agreement on the status of U.S. troops in the former Soviet satellite ahead of the missile deployment.
However, the Patriot site was kept secret — until Wednesday, when Polish Defense Minister Bogdan Klich said it will be about 35 miles from a Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania that includes the city of Kaliningrad.
"Morag was chosen as the location long ago, but we didn't make it public," Mr. Klich was quoted as saying by Poland's PAP news agency.
He insisted that the choice of the site had "no political or strategic meaning — its good infrastructure is the only reason." He also said the missiles could arrive as soon as late March or early April at Morag, which is home to a Polish military base.
Moscow, which is protective of Kaliningrad because it is surrounded by two NATO members, is likely to react angrily to the news about Morag. That could complicate the START negotiations, though U.S. officials said it should not threaten them seriously.
"We believe it will still be conducted in good faith, and I would not think that complication will come into it," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters. "It is in the interest of Russia and the United States — and the world — to see the completion of and ratification of a follow-on START agreement."
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said the Patriot missiles "should be a nonissue for Russia" because "this system poses no threat to Russian defense forces, and it is a symbolic gesture of the existing U.S. security commitment to Poland."
"Russia is not and should not be looking for excuses to blow up the new treaty," he said. "Russia's longer-term concern is all about potential future numbers and locations of the SM-3 interceptors in Eastern Europe that were outlined as the Obama administration's new missile defense approach."
Ellen Tauscher, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said last week that the outstanding issues in the START negotiations included sharing of telemetry data — electronic signals sent from missile flight tests — as well as Russian demands that missile defenses be included in the new treaty.
Mr. Jones and Adm. Mullen are visiting Moscow a week after a trip by another senior U.S. official, William J. Burns, undersecretary of state for political affairs. Mr. Burns represents the United States in international negotiations on Iran's nuclear program, which also was discussed in his meetings and is expected to be part of the talks this week.
Washington and its Western allies want new sanctions on Iran for rejecting a proposal that would lift suspicion that it is developing a nuclear weapon under the cover of a civilian program. Russia has not been as opposed to sanctions as it has in the past, but China is resisting them, so U.S. officials hope Moscow could influence its friends in Beijing.
http://washingtontimes.com/news/201...=home_headlines
By Nicholas Kralev
1/21/2010
President Obama sent two of his top national security officials to Moscow on Wednesday to clear the last hurdles to a new nuclear pact, but a revelation that U.S. missiles will soon be deployed near Russian territory could complicate the talks.
The White House said that National Security Adviser James L. Jones and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen will meet with Russian officials "primarily to discuss the remaining issues left to conclude" a follow-on to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which the U.S. ambassador to Moscow predicted will be completed within weeks.
"It's only a question of when, and I think the finish line is approaching in the very near future," Ambassador John R. Beyrle said in an interview with the Echo of Moscow radio.
Washington and Moscow began negotiating a new treaty last spring but failed to work out all their differences by the time START expired on Dec. 5.
Verification has been one of the main problems. Russia has insisted on monitoring U.S. missile-defense interceptors being deployed in Europe but has refused U.S. inspectors access to its data on new missile tests.
In an attempt to "reset" their relationship after tensions during the Bush administration, Mr. Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed in July to cut the number of deployed nuclear warheads on each side to between 1,500 and 1,675.
The missile defense issue is one of the most sensitive for the Russians, even after Mr. Obama decided in September to scrap plans by his predecessor, George W. Bush, to deploy a system in Eastern Europe to counter a growing threat from Iran.
In a consolation to Poland, which was to host one of the sites and was unhappy with Mr. Obama's decision, the administration agreed to deploy Patriot-type surface-to-air missiles in the country. On Dec. 11, the two NATO allies signed a prerequisite agreement on the status of U.S. troops in the former Soviet satellite ahead of the missile deployment.
However, the Patriot site was kept secret — until Wednesday, when Polish Defense Minister Bogdan Klich said it will be about 35 miles from a Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania that includes the city of Kaliningrad.
"Morag was chosen as the location long ago, but we didn't make it public," Mr. Klich was quoted as saying by Poland's PAP news agency.
He insisted that the choice of the site had "no political or strategic meaning — its good infrastructure is the only reason." He also said the missiles could arrive as soon as late March or early April at Morag, which is home to a Polish military base.
Moscow, which is protective of Kaliningrad because it is surrounded by two NATO members, is likely to react angrily to the news about Morag. That could complicate the START negotiations, though U.S. officials said it should not threaten them seriously.
"We believe it will still be conducted in good faith, and I would not think that complication will come into it," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters. "It is in the interest of Russia and the United States — and the world — to see the completion of and ratification of a follow-on START agreement."
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said the Patriot missiles "should be a nonissue for Russia" because "this system poses no threat to Russian defense forces, and it is a symbolic gesture of the existing U.S. security commitment to Poland."
"Russia is not and should not be looking for excuses to blow up the new treaty," he said. "Russia's longer-term concern is all about potential future numbers and locations of the SM-3 interceptors in Eastern Europe that were outlined as the Obama administration's new missile defense approach."
Ellen Tauscher, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said last week that the outstanding issues in the START negotiations included sharing of telemetry data — electronic signals sent from missile flight tests — as well as Russian demands that missile defenses be included in the new treaty.
Mr. Jones and Adm. Mullen are visiting Moscow a week after a trip by another senior U.S. official, William J. Burns, undersecretary of state for political affairs. Mr. Burns represents the United States in international negotiations on Iran's nuclear program, which also was discussed in his meetings and is expected to be part of the talks this week.
Washington and its Western allies want new sanctions on Iran for rejecting a proposal that would lift suspicion that it is developing a nuclear weapon under the cover of a civilian program. Russia has not been as opposed to sanctions as it has in the past, but China is resisting them, so U.S. officials hope Moscow could influence its friends in Beijing.
Ron Paul: After ‘CIA coup,’ agency ‘runs military’
Ron Paul: After ‘CIA coup,’ agency ‘runs military’
http://rawstory.com/2010/01/ron-paul-cia/
By Raw Story
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 -- 6:10 pm
US House Rep. Ron Paul says the CIA has has in effect carried out a "coup" against the US government, and the intelligence agency needs to be "taken out."
Speaking to an audience of like-minded libertarians at a Campaign for Liberty regional conference in Atlanta this past weekend, the Texas Republican said:
There's been a coup, have you heard? It's the CIA coup. The CIA runs everything, they run the military. They're the ones who are over there lobbing missiles and bombs on countries. ... And of course the CIA is every bit as secretive as the Federal Reserve. ... And yet think of the harm they have done since they were established [after] World War II. They are a government unto themselves. They're in businesses, in drug businesses, they take out dictators ... We need to take out the CIA.
Paul's comments, made last weekend, were met with a loud round of applause, but they didn't gather attention until bloggers noticed a clip of the event at YouTube.
Paul appeared to be referring to news reports that the CIA is deeply involved in air strikes against Al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A suicide bombing late last year against Forward Operating Base Chapman in Afghanistan took the lives of seven of CIA operatives, including two contracted from Blackwater. The event highlighted the CIA's deep involvement in the war effort.
Paul's reference to the CIA being "in the drug business" refers to long-running allegations that the CIA has funded some of its covert operations with proceeds from drug-running. That claim was most famously made in a 1996 investigative report from the San Jose Mercury-News, which alleged that cocaine from the Contra-Sandinista civil war in Nicaragua was making its way to the streets of L.A. via the CIA.
The following video was uploaded to the Web by user TNSONSOFLIBERTY, Jan, 15, 2010.
Video At Source
http://rawstory.com/2010/01/ron-paul-cia/
By Raw Story
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 -- 6:10 pm
US House Rep. Ron Paul says the CIA has has in effect carried out a "coup" against the US government, and the intelligence agency needs to be "taken out."
Speaking to an audience of like-minded libertarians at a Campaign for Liberty regional conference in Atlanta this past weekend, the Texas Republican said:
There's been a coup, have you heard? It's the CIA coup. The CIA runs everything, they run the military. They're the ones who are over there lobbing missiles and bombs on countries. ... And of course the CIA is every bit as secretive as the Federal Reserve. ... And yet think of the harm they have done since they were established [after] World War II. They are a government unto themselves. They're in businesses, in drug businesses, they take out dictators ... We need to take out the CIA.
Paul's comments, made last weekend, were met with a loud round of applause, but they didn't gather attention until bloggers noticed a clip of the event at YouTube.
Paul appeared to be referring to news reports that the CIA is deeply involved in air strikes against Al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A suicide bombing late last year against Forward Operating Base Chapman in Afghanistan took the lives of seven of CIA operatives, including two contracted from Blackwater. The event highlighted the CIA's deep involvement in the war effort.
Paul's reference to the CIA being "in the drug business" refers to long-running allegations that the CIA has funded some of its covert operations with proceeds from drug-running. That claim was most famously made in a 1996 investigative report from the San Jose Mercury-News, which alleged that cocaine from the Contra-Sandinista civil war in Nicaragua was making its way to the streets of L.A. via the CIA.
The following video was uploaded to the Web by user TNSONSOFLIBERTY, Jan, 15, 2010.
Video At Source
Friday, January 8, 2010
Study: Threat of Muslim-American terrorism in U.S. exaggerated
Study: Threat of Muslim-American terrorism in U.S. exaggerated
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/01/0...lization.study/
January 6, 2010 -- Updated 2108 GMT (0508 HKT)
(CNN) -- The terrorist threat posed by radicalized Muslim- Americans has been exaggerated, according to a study released Wednesday by researchers at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
A small number of Muslim-Americans have undergone radicalization since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the study found. It compiled a list of 139 individuals it categorized as "Muslim-American terrorism offenders" who had become radicalized in the U.S. in that time -- a rate of 17 per year.
That level is "small compared to other violent crime in America, but not insignificant," according to the study, titled "Anti-Terror Lessons of Muslim-Americans."
To be included on the list, an offender had to have been wanted, arrested, convicted or killed in connection with terrorism-related activities since 9/11 -- and have lived in the United States, regardless of immigration status, for more than a year prior to arrest.
Of the 139 offenders, fewer than a third successfully executed a violent plan, according to a Duke University statement on the study, and most of those were overseas. Read the report:"Anti-Terror Lessons of Muslim-Americans"
"Muslim-American organizations and the vast majority of individuals that we interviewed firmly reject the radical extremist ideology that justifies the use of violence to achieve political ends," David Schanzer, an associate professor in Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy and director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, said in the statement.
In the aftermath of 9/11, however, as well as terrorist attacks elsewhere in the world, the possible radicalization of Muslim-Americans is a "key counterterrorism concern" -- magnified by heavy publicity that accompanies the arrests of Muslim-Americans, such as that seen in the wake of the November shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, in which 13 people were killed. Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan, a Muslim born in Virginia, is charged in connection with that incident.
Other high-profile incidents include the charging of eight Somali-American men on charges related to what authorities say are efforts to recruit youths from the Minneapolis, Minnesota, area to fight for al-Shabaab, a Somali guerrilla movement battling the African country's U.N.-backed transitional government. At least two young men from Minnesota have been killed in Somalia, including one who blew himself up in what is believed to have been the first suicide bombing carried out by a naturalized U.S. citizen.
In addition, five Americans were arrested last month in Pakistan, and police have said they are confident that they were planning terrorist attacks. A Pakistani court Monday gave police two weeks to prepare their case against the five; authorities have said they plan to prosecute the youths under the country's anti-terrorism act.
But it is the Muslim-American communities themselves who play a large role in keeping the number of radicalized members low through their own practices, according to the study. Leaders and Muslim-American organizations denounce violent acts, for instance, in messages that have weight within communities.
In addition, such communities often self-police -- confronting those who express radical ideology or support for terrorism and communicating concerns about radical individuals to authorities. Some Muslim-Americans have adopted programs for youth to help identify those who react inappropriately to controversial issues so they can undergo counseling and education, the researchers said.
"Muslim-American communities have been active in preventing radicalization," said Charles Kurzman, professor of sociology at UNC, in the statement. "This is one reason that Muslim-American terrorism has resulted in fewer than three dozen of the 136,000 murders committed in the United States since 9/11."
Muslim-American communities have been active in preventing radicalization.
However, "since 9/11, there has been increased tension among Muslim-Americans about their acceptance in mainstream American society," the study said. Muslim-Americans report feeling a stronger anti-Muslim bias from the media as well as from day-to-day interactions.
"While Muslim-Americans understand and support the need for enhanced security and counterterrorism initiatives, they believe that some of these efforts are discriminatory, and they are angered that innocent Muslim-Americans bear the brunt of the impact of these policies."
Steps can be taken to minimize radicalization among Muslim-Americans, the study said. The most important is encouraging political mobilization among Muslims, which helps prevent radicalization and also demonstrates to Muslims abroad "that grievances can be resolved through peaceful democratic means." Policymakers should include Muslim-Americans in their outreach efforts, and public officials should attend events at mosques, as they do churches and synagogues, the study recommended.
Also, Muslim-American communities should widely disseminate their condemnation of terrorism and violence, and those statements should be publicized, the study said. Law enforcement has a role to play as well, by making efforts to increase the level of trust and communication with such communities. This could include the cultivation of Muslim-American informants, the study suggested, a policy that could be developed and openly discussed with community leaders.
Governments can promote and encourage the building of strong Muslim-American communities and promote outreach by social services agencies, the study said. "Our research suggests that Muslim-American communities desire collaboration and outreach with the government beyond law enforcement, in areas such as public health, education and transportation."
And the Muslim-American community can promote enhanced education about its religion and beliefs, the study said. Increased civil rights enforcement can also be an important tool.
However, policies that alienate Muslims may increase the threat of homegrown terrorism rather than reducing it, the study said.
"Our research suggests that initiatives that treat Muslim-Americans as part of the solution to this problem are far more likely to be successful," said Schanzer.
Schanzer, Kurzman and Ebrahim Moosa, associate professor of religion at Duke, co-authored the study, which summarized two years of research involving interviews of more than 120 Muslims in four different communities nationwide -- Seattle, Washington; Houston, Texas; Buffalo, New York; and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. The study was funded by a grant from the Department of Justice.
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/01/0...lization.study/
January 6, 2010 -- Updated 2108 GMT (0508 HKT)
(CNN) -- The terrorist threat posed by radicalized Muslim- Americans has been exaggerated, according to a study released Wednesday by researchers at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
A small number of Muslim-Americans have undergone radicalization since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the study found. It compiled a list of 139 individuals it categorized as "Muslim-American terrorism offenders" who had become radicalized in the U.S. in that time -- a rate of 17 per year.
That level is "small compared to other violent crime in America, but not insignificant," according to the study, titled "Anti-Terror Lessons of Muslim-Americans."
To be included on the list, an offender had to have been wanted, arrested, convicted or killed in connection with terrorism-related activities since 9/11 -- and have lived in the United States, regardless of immigration status, for more than a year prior to arrest.
Of the 139 offenders, fewer than a third successfully executed a violent plan, according to a Duke University statement on the study, and most of those were overseas. Read the report:"Anti-Terror Lessons of Muslim-Americans"
"Muslim-American organizations and the vast majority of individuals that we interviewed firmly reject the radical extremist ideology that justifies the use of violence to achieve political ends," David Schanzer, an associate professor in Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy and director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, said in the statement.
In the aftermath of 9/11, however, as well as terrorist attacks elsewhere in the world, the possible radicalization of Muslim-Americans is a "key counterterrorism concern" -- magnified by heavy publicity that accompanies the arrests of Muslim-Americans, such as that seen in the wake of the November shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, in which 13 people were killed. Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan, a Muslim born in Virginia, is charged in connection with that incident.
Other high-profile incidents include the charging of eight Somali-American men on charges related to what authorities say are efforts to recruit youths from the Minneapolis, Minnesota, area to fight for al-Shabaab, a Somali guerrilla movement battling the African country's U.N.-backed transitional government. At least two young men from Minnesota have been killed in Somalia, including one who blew himself up in what is believed to have been the first suicide bombing carried out by a naturalized U.S. citizen.
In addition, five Americans were arrested last month in Pakistan, and police have said they are confident that they were planning terrorist attacks. A Pakistani court Monday gave police two weeks to prepare their case against the five; authorities have said they plan to prosecute the youths under the country's anti-terrorism act.
But it is the Muslim-American communities themselves who play a large role in keeping the number of radicalized members low through their own practices, according to the study. Leaders and Muslim-American organizations denounce violent acts, for instance, in messages that have weight within communities.
In addition, such communities often self-police -- confronting those who express radical ideology or support for terrorism and communicating concerns about radical individuals to authorities. Some Muslim-Americans have adopted programs for youth to help identify those who react inappropriately to controversial issues so they can undergo counseling and education, the researchers said.
"Muslim-American communities have been active in preventing radicalization," said Charles Kurzman, professor of sociology at UNC, in the statement. "This is one reason that Muslim-American terrorism has resulted in fewer than three dozen of the 136,000 murders committed in the United States since 9/11."
Muslim-American communities have been active in preventing radicalization.
However, "since 9/11, there has been increased tension among Muslim-Americans about their acceptance in mainstream American society," the study said. Muslim-Americans report feeling a stronger anti-Muslim bias from the media as well as from day-to-day interactions.
"While Muslim-Americans understand and support the need for enhanced security and counterterrorism initiatives, they believe that some of these efforts are discriminatory, and they are angered that innocent Muslim-Americans bear the brunt of the impact of these policies."
Steps can be taken to minimize radicalization among Muslim-Americans, the study said. The most important is encouraging political mobilization among Muslims, which helps prevent radicalization and also demonstrates to Muslims abroad "that grievances can be resolved through peaceful democratic means." Policymakers should include Muslim-Americans in their outreach efforts, and public officials should attend events at mosques, as they do churches and synagogues, the study recommended.
Also, Muslim-American communities should widely disseminate their condemnation of terrorism and violence, and those statements should be publicized, the study said. Law enforcement has a role to play as well, by making efforts to increase the level of trust and communication with such communities. This could include the cultivation of Muslim-American informants, the study suggested, a policy that could be developed and openly discussed with community leaders.
Governments can promote and encourage the building of strong Muslim-American communities and promote outreach by social services agencies, the study said. "Our research suggests that Muslim-American communities desire collaboration and outreach with the government beyond law enforcement, in areas such as public health, education and transportation."
And the Muslim-American community can promote enhanced education about its religion and beliefs, the study said. Increased civil rights enforcement can also be an important tool.
However, policies that alienate Muslims may increase the threat of homegrown terrorism rather than reducing it, the study said.
"Our research suggests that initiatives that treat Muslim-Americans as part of the solution to this problem are far more likely to be successful," said Schanzer.
Schanzer, Kurzman and Ebrahim Moosa, associate professor of religion at Duke, co-authored the study, which summarized two years of research involving interviews of more than 120 Muslims in four different communities nationwide -- Seattle, Washington; Houston, Texas; Buffalo, New York; and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. The study was funded by a grant from the Department of Justice.
Statement of September 11th Advocates In Response to 12/25 Terror Attempt
Statement of September 11th Advocates In Response to 12/25 Terror Attempt
For Immediate Release
January 8, 2010
It is with utter disbelief that we listen to the unfolding details of the attempted December 25, 2009 terrorist attack of Delta Flight 253.
Let us remind you, on September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists managed to evade all security measures, hijack four commercial airliners, slam them into three buildings and a field in Pennsylvania, killing 2,976 innocent people, including our husbands.
We responded by strenuously lobbying for an independent investigation to find out how on earth so many agencies could have failed in their duties to protect us, and our loved ones, from such an attack. We asked that they find and fix the loopholes that existed, in order to safeguard our nation.
After the 18-month 9/11 Commission investigation, countless systemic and human failures were uncovered, including: failure to analyze data, failure to share information, human error, failure to follow up, antiquated computer systems, too much information in the system, not enough information in the system, not enough time or people to analyze data, failure to watch list, failure to properly coordinate the watch list with other lists and visa issuance and monitoring failures. Despite all of this, the 9/11 Commissioners simplistically announced that it was a “failure of imagination” that caused the agencies to falter and allowed 9/11 to happen. Additionally, we were told that those in positions to protect us “could never have imagined this type of attack” and that “everyone is at fault, so no one is at fault.”
The 9/11 Commissioners would not assign any accountability nor did they recommend that incompetent people be fired. Additionally, there was no urgency by the Bush Administration and/or Congress to make sure that common sense changes were made from “lessons learned”. In response, we asked, “what will your excuse be the next time an attack occurs?” Apparently, the same excuses are being used again.
President Obama stated, “This was not a failure to collect intelligence … it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had…” With all due respect to President Obama, we have heard these words before.
Watching the press briefing on January 7, 2010 and reading the summary of the White House Review of the December 25 Attempted Terrorist Attack and The Corrective Actions, left us stunned. The desperate attempt by the current administration to convince us that these problems were somehow different from the ones faced prior to 9/11 was absurd. We can tell you without a doubt, these problems are not new at all.
It was reported that on 12/25/09, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (Mutallab), the Nigerian alleged terrorist, boarded a plane headed for the United States. Reportedly, he had no passport, no luggage and paid cash for his one-way ticket. As early as August 2009, the CIA was gathering information on a person of interest dubbed the “Nigerian”. The NSA was listening to discussions of a plot involving a Nigerian man. As with 9/11, the “system was blinking red”. Five weeks before this attempt, Mutallab’s father, a prominent Nigerian banker, walked into the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria and alerted the CIA Head of Station that he feared his son had become radicalized. Mutallab was reportedly put on a U.S. terror watch list. However, like the 9/11 hijackers, he held a valid U.S. visa and he was not put on the no-fly list.
Are we expected to believe that after spending billions of taxpayer dollars our agencies still do not have the ability to connect the dots – especially in light of the fact that post 9/11 (December 2004 to be exact) the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) was created, with special analysts that were trained to understand the details of exactly this type of threat? Are we supposed to accept that almost eight and a half years post 9/11 our visa department still has an antiquated computer system and is still not integrated with the rest of our intelligence community?
Currently, many of the members of Congress, as well as former Vice President Dick Cheney, are loudly criticizing the current administration for how they are handling this latest terrorist attempt. We would like to remind them that they were in office during the years post 9/11. We would like to tell them they should be ashamed and should be held accountable. It was during this time that existing loopholes that allowed 9/11 to happen were supposed to have been fixed.
It is utterly offensive and dangerous when politicians attempt to turn a national security issue into a partisan battle over who is the mightiest terror warrior. The safety of American citizens is not a schoolyard game.
Over the course of the last eight and a half years, America was taken into two wars, costing billions of dollars, further fueling the fires of those who might want to do us harm. During this time, extraordinary measures were implemented, including changing laws to enable wiretapping, torture and holding prisoners indefinitely in specially erected, secret prisons.
As with 9/11, none of these measures were necessary to stop this attack. If the INS, FBI, CIA, NSA, State Department, airline security and both the post-9/11 newly formed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the NCTC had been doing their jobs properly, this attempt could have been prevented. All the necessary dots of information were in the system ready to be connected and all the protocols already in place simply needing to be followed.
Throughout these past eight and a half years, we requested accountability for the individual failures that allowed 9/11 to happen. We insisted that without cleaning out the incompetence, the U.S. would remain a nation at risk. We reasoned that if the same people who failed to protect us on 9/11 remained in their jobs, they could ultimately fail us again.
President Obama has stated that he was less interested in passing out blame than in correcting mistakes, and he has made it clear that senior intelligence officials would be overseeing the reforms rather than looking for new jobs. However, it is clear that without accountability there is no impetus to prevent failures from recurring as is evidenced by this latest debacle.
Therefore, in spite of measures taken over the years reacting to whatever the latest threat (i.e. taking off shoes, allowing no liquids then allowing only four ounces of liquid), nothing has truly changed regarding air travel safety. Most importantly, nothing has changed in the way our multi-billion dollar intelligence apparatus works to protect the public. Washington continues to respond the way it always does, wasting tax dollars, this time proposing potential health-threatening, full body scanners in reaction to this last attack.
Post 9/11, billions of tax dollars have been thrown at programs and additional bureaucratic layers, such as the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), DHS and the NCTC. This wasteful spending only pretends to protect us. It does not fix what is really broken, which is the bloated bureaucracy that prevents people from properly doing their jobs and fails to fire those who are inept.
Enough is enough.
President Obama, said “The buck stops with me. I am responsible.”
Real accountability, from the top down is imperative. Unless people are fired for their incompetence, this statement is meaningless. Individuals who failed in their jobs need to be held accountable and fired, that’s what “the buck stops here” means.
This time it happened on President Obama’s watch and when the time comes, make no mistake, the American people will hold him accountable.
###
Patty Casazza
Monica Gabrielle
Mindy Kleinberg
Lorie Van Auken
For Immediate Release
January 8, 2010
It is with utter disbelief that we listen to the unfolding details of the attempted December 25, 2009 terrorist attack of Delta Flight 253.
Let us remind you, on September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists managed to evade all security measures, hijack four commercial airliners, slam them into three buildings and a field in Pennsylvania, killing 2,976 innocent people, including our husbands.
We responded by strenuously lobbying for an independent investigation to find out how on earth so many agencies could have failed in their duties to protect us, and our loved ones, from such an attack. We asked that they find and fix the loopholes that existed, in order to safeguard our nation.
After the 18-month 9/11 Commission investigation, countless systemic and human failures were uncovered, including: failure to analyze data, failure to share information, human error, failure to follow up, antiquated computer systems, too much information in the system, not enough information in the system, not enough time or people to analyze data, failure to watch list, failure to properly coordinate the watch list with other lists and visa issuance and monitoring failures. Despite all of this, the 9/11 Commissioners simplistically announced that it was a “failure of imagination” that caused the agencies to falter and allowed 9/11 to happen. Additionally, we were told that those in positions to protect us “could never have imagined this type of attack” and that “everyone is at fault, so no one is at fault.”
The 9/11 Commissioners would not assign any accountability nor did they recommend that incompetent people be fired. Additionally, there was no urgency by the Bush Administration and/or Congress to make sure that common sense changes were made from “lessons learned”. In response, we asked, “what will your excuse be the next time an attack occurs?” Apparently, the same excuses are being used again.
President Obama stated, “This was not a failure to collect intelligence … it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had…” With all due respect to President Obama, we have heard these words before.
Watching the press briefing on January 7, 2010 and reading the summary of the White House Review of the December 25 Attempted Terrorist Attack and The Corrective Actions, left us stunned. The desperate attempt by the current administration to convince us that these problems were somehow different from the ones faced prior to 9/11 was absurd. We can tell you without a doubt, these problems are not new at all.
It was reported that on 12/25/09, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (Mutallab), the Nigerian alleged terrorist, boarded a plane headed for the United States. Reportedly, he had no passport, no luggage and paid cash for his one-way ticket. As early as August 2009, the CIA was gathering information on a person of interest dubbed the “Nigerian”. The NSA was listening to discussions of a plot involving a Nigerian man. As with 9/11, the “system was blinking red”. Five weeks before this attempt, Mutallab’s father, a prominent Nigerian banker, walked into the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria and alerted the CIA Head of Station that he feared his son had become radicalized. Mutallab was reportedly put on a U.S. terror watch list. However, like the 9/11 hijackers, he held a valid U.S. visa and he was not put on the no-fly list.
Are we expected to believe that after spending billions of taxpayer dollars our agencies still do not have the ability to connect the dots – especially in light of the fact that post 9/11 (December 2004 to be exact) the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) was created, with special analysts that were trained to understand the details of exactly this type of threat? Are we supposed to accept that almost eight and a half years post 9/11 our visa department still has an antiquated computer system and is still not integrated with the rest of our intelligence community?
Currently, many of the members of Congress, as well as former Vice President Dick Cheney, are loudly criticizing the current administration for how they are handling this latest terrorist attempt. We would like to remind them that they were in office during the years post 9/11. We would like to tell them they should be ashamed and should be held accountable. It was during this time that existing loopholes that allowed 9/11 to happen were supposed to have been fixed.
It is utterly offensive and dangerous when politicians attempt to turn a national security issue into a partisan battle over who is the mightiest terror warrior. The safety of American citizens is not a schoolyard game.
Over the course of the last eight and a half years, America was taken into two wars, costing billions of dollars, further fueling the fires of those who might want to do us harm. During this time, extraordinary measures were implemented, including changing laws to enable wiretapping, torture and holding prisoners indefinitely in specially erected, secret prisons.
As with 9/11, none of these measures were necessary to stop this attack. If the INS, FBI, CIA, NSA, State Department, airline security and both the post-9/11 newly formed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the NCTC had been doing their jobs properly, this attempt could have been prevented. All the necessary dots of information were in the system ready to be connected and all the protocols already in place simply needing to be followed.
Throughout these past eight and a half years, we requested accountability for the individual failures that allowed 9/11 to happen. We insisted that without cleaning out the incompetence, the U.S. would remain a nation at risk. We reasoned that if the same people who failed to protect us on 9/11 remained in their jobs, they could ultimately fail us again.
President Obama has stated that he was less interested in passing out blame than in correcting mistakes, and he has made it clear that senior intelligence officials would be overseeing the reforms rather than looking for new jobs. However, it is clear that without accountability there is no impetus to prevent failures from recurring as is evidenced by this latest debacle.
Therefore, in spite of measures taken over the years reacting to whatever the latest threat (i.e. taking off shoes, allowing no liquids then allowing only four ounces of liquid), nothing has truly changed regarding air travel safety. Most importantly, nothing has changed in the way our multi-billion dollar intelligence apparatus works to protect the public. Washington continues to respond the way it always does, wasting tax dollars, this time proposing potential health-threatening, full body scanners in reaction to this last attack.
Post 9/11, billions of tax dollars have been thrown at programs and additional bureaucratic layers, such as the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), DHS and the NCTC. This wasteful spending only pretends to protect us. It does not fix what is really broken, which is the bloated bureaucracy that prevents people from properly doing their jobs and fails to fire those who are inept.
Enough is enough.
President Obama, said “The buck stops with me. I am responsible.”
Real accountability, from the top down is imperative. Unless people are fired for their incompetence, this statement is meaningless. Individuals who failed in their jobs need to be held accountable and fired, that’s what “the buck stops here” means.
This time it happened on President Obama’s watch and when the time comes, make no mistake, the American people will hold him accountable.
###
Patty Casazza
Monica Gabrielle
Mindy Kleinberg
Lorie Van Auken
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Are Presidents Afraid of the CIA?
Are Presidents Afraid of the CIA?
http://www.truthout.org/topstories/122909vh3
Ray McGovern
Tuesday 29 December 2009
In the past I have alluded to Panetta and the Seven Dwarfs. The reference is to CIA Director Leon Panetta and seven of his moral-dwarf predecessors—the ones who sent President Barack Obama a letter on Sept. 18 asking him to “reverse Attorney General Holder’s August 24 decision to re-open the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations.” http://tinyurl.com/my4jc5
Panetta reportedly was also dead set against reopening the investigation—as he was against release of the Justice Department’s “torture memoranda” of 2002, as he has been against releasing pretty much anything at all—the President’s pledges of a new era of openness, notwithstanding. Panetta is even older than I, and I am aware that hearing is among the first faculties to fail. Perhaps he heard “error” when the President said “era.”
As for the benighted seven, they are more to be pitied than scorned. No longer able to avail themselves of the services of clever Agency lawyers and wordsmiths, they put their names to a letter that reeked of self-interest—not to mention the inappropriateness of asking a President to interfere with an investigation already ordered by the Attorney General.
Three of the seven—George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden—were themselves involved, in one way or another, in planning, conducting, or covering up all manner of illegal actions, including torture, assassination, and illegal eavesdropping. In this light, the most transparent part of the letter may be the sentence in which they worry: “There is no reason to expect that the re-opened criminal investigation will remain narrowly focused.”
When asked about the letter on the Sunday TV talk shows on Sept. 20, Obama was careful always to respond first by expressing obligatory “respect” for the CIA and its directors. With Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation, though, Obama did allow himself a condescending quip. He commented, “I appreciate the former CIA directors wanting to look out for an institution that they helped to build.”
That quip was, sadly, the exception to the rule. While Obama keeps repeating the mantra that “nobody is above the law,” there is no real sign that he intends to face down Panetta and the Seven Dwarfs—no sign that anyone has breathed new life into federal prosecutor John Durham, to whom Holder gave the mandate for further “preliminary investigation.” What is generally forgotten is that it was former Attorney General Michael Mukasey who picked Durham two years ago to investigate CIA’s destruction of 91 tapes of the interrogation of “high-value detainees.”
Durham had scarcely been heard from when Holder added to Durham’s job-jar the task of conducting a preliminary investigation regarding the CIA torture specialists. These are the ones whose zeal led them to go beyond the already highly permissive Department of Justice guidelines for “harsh interrogation.”
Durham, clearly, is proceeding with all deliberate speed (emphasis on “deliberate”). Someone has even suggested—I trust, in jest—that he has been diverted to the search for the money and other assets that Bernie Maddow stashed away.
In any case, do not hold your breath for findings from Durham anytime soon. Holder appears in no hurry. And President Obama keeps giving off signals that he is afraid of getting crosswise with the CIA—that’s right, afraid.
Not Just Paranoia
In that fear, President Obama stands in the tradition of a dozen American presidents. Harry Truman and John Kennedy were the only ones to take on the CIA directly. Worst of all, evidence continues to build that the CIA was responsible, at least in part, for the assassination of President Kennedy.
Evidence new to me came in response to things I included in my article of Dec. 22, “Break the CIA in Two.” http://tinyurl.com/yl46gl5
What follows can be considered a sequel that is based on the kind of documentary evidence after which intelligence analysts positively lust.
Unfortunately for the CIA operatives who were involved in the past activities outlined below, the temptation to ask Panetta to put a SECRET stamp on the documentary evidence will not work. Nothing short of torching the Truman Library might conceivably help. But even that would be a largely feckless “covert action,” copy machines having long since done their thing.
In my article of Dec. 22, I referred to Harry Truman’s op-ed of exactly 46 years before, titled “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence,” in which the former President expressed dismay at what the Central Intelligence Agency had become just 16 years after he and Congress created it.
The Washington Post published the op-ed on December 22, 1963 in its early edition, but immediately excised it from later editions. Other media ignored it. The long hand of the CIA?
Truman wrote that he was “disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment” to keep the President promptly and fully informed and had become “an operational and at times policy-making arm of the government.”
The Truman Papers
Documents in the Truman Library show that nine days after Kennedy was assassinated, Truman sketched out in handwritten notes what he wanted to say in the op-ed. He noted, among other things, that the CIA had worked as he intended only “when I had control.”
In Truman’s view, misuse of the CIA began in February 1953, when his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, named Allen Dulles CIA Director. Dulles’ forte was overthrowing governments (in current parlance, “regime change”), and he was quite good at it. With coups in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954) under his belt, Dulles was riding high in the late Fifties and moved Cuba to the top of his to-do list.
Accustomed to the carte blanche given him by Eisenhower, Dulles was offended when young President Kennedy came on the scene and had the temerity to ask questions about the Bay of Pigs adventure, which had been set in motion under Eisenhower. When Kennedy made it clear he would NOT approve the use of U.S. combat forces, Dulles reacted with disdain and set out to mousetrap the new President.
Coffee-stained notes handwritten by Allen Dulles were discovered after his death and reported by historian Lucien S. Vandenbroucke. They show how Dulles drew Kennedy into a plan that was virtually certain to require the use of U.S. combat forces. In his notes Dulles explains that, “when the chips were down,” the new President would be forced by “the realities of the situation” to give whatever military support was necessary “rather than permit the enterprise to fail.”
Additional detail came from a March 2001 conference on the Bay of Pigs, which included CIA operatives, retired military commanders, scholars, and journalists. Daniel Schorr told National Public Radio that he had gained one new perception as a result of the “many hours of talk and heaps of declassified secret documents:”
“It was that the CIA overlords of the invasion, Director Allen Dulles and Deputy Richard Bissell had their own plan on how to bring the United States into the conflict…What they expected was that the invaders would establish a beachhead…and appeal for aid from the United States…
“The assumption was that President Kennedy, who had emphatically banned direct American involvement, would be forced by public opinion to come to the aid of the returning patriots. American forces, probably Marines, would come in to expand the beachhead.
“In fact, President Kennedy was the target of a CIA covert operation that collapsed when the invasion collapsed,” added Schorr.
The “enterprise” which Dulles said could not fail was, of course, the overthrow of Fidel Castro. After mounting several failed operations to assassinate him, this time Dulles meant to get his man, with little or no attention to what the Russians might do in reaction. Kennedy stuck to his guns, so to speak; fired Dulles and his co-conspirators a few months after the abortive invasion in April 1961; and told a friend that he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.”
The outrage was mutual, and when Kennedy himself was assassinated on November 22, 1963, it must have occurred to Truman that the disgraced Dulles and his outraged associates might not be above conspiring to get rid of a President they felt was soft on Communism—and, incidentally, get even.
In his op-ed of December 22, 1963 Truman warned: “The most important thing…was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions.” It is a safe bet that Truman had the Bay of Pigs fiasco uppermost in mind.
Truman called outright for CIA’s operational duties [to] be terminated or properly used elsewhere.” (This is as good a recommendation now as it was then, in my view.)
On December 27, retired Admiral Sidney Souers, whom Truman had appointed to lead his first central intelligence group, sent a “Dear Boss” letter applauding Truman’s outspokenness and blaming Dulles for making the CIA “a different animal than I tried to set up for you.” Souers specifically lambasted the attempt “to conduct a ‘war’ invading Cuba with a handful of men and without air cover.”
Souers also lamented the fact that the agency’s “principal effort” had evolved into causing “revolutions in smaller countries around the globe,” and added:
With so much emphasis on operations, it would not surprise me to find that the matter of collecting and processing intelligence has suffered some.”
Clearly, CIA’s operational tail was wagging the substantive dog—a serious problem that persists to this day. For example, CIA analysts are super-busy supporting operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan; no one seems to have told them that they need to hazard a guess as to where this is all leading and whether it makes any sense.
That is traditionally done in a National Intelligence Estimate. Can you believe there at this late date there is still no such Estimate? Instead, the President has chosen to rely on he advice of Gen. David Petraeus, who many believe will be Obama’s opponent in the 2012 presidential election.
Fox Guarding Henhouse?
In any case, the well-connected Dulles got himself appointed to the Warren Commission and took the lead in shaping the investigation of JFK’s assassination. Documents in the Truman Library show that he then mounted a targeted domestic covert action of his own to neutralize any future airing of Truman’s and Souers’ warnings about covert action.
So important was this to Dulles that he invented a pretext to get himself invited to visit Truman in Independence, Missouri. On the afternoon of April 17, 1964 he spent a half-hour trying to get the former President to retract what he had said in his op-ed. No dice, said Truman.
No problem, thought Dulles. Four days later, in a formal memo for his old buddy Lawrence Houston, CIA General Counsel from 1947 to 1973, Dulles fabricated a private retraction, claiming that Truman told him the Washington Post article was “all wrong,” and that Truman “seemed quite astounded at it.”
No doubt Dulles thought it might be handy to have such a memo in CIA files, just in case.
A fabricated retraction? It certainly seems so, because Truman did not change his tune. Far from it. In a June 10, 1964 letter to the managing editor of Look magazine, for example, Truman restated his critique of covert action, emphasizing that he never intended the CIA to get involved in “strange activities.”
Dulles and Dallas
Dulles could hardly have expected to get Truman to recant publicly. So why was it so important for Dulles to place in CIA files a fabricated retraction. My guess is that in early 1964 he was feeling a good bit of heat from those suggesting the CIA might have been involved somehow in the Kennedy assassination. Indeed, one or two not-yet-intimidated columnists were daring to ask how the truth could ever come out with Allen Dulles on the Warren Commission. Prescient.
Dulles feared, rightly, that Truman’s limited-edition op-ed might yet get some ink, and perhaps even airtime, and raise serious questions about covert action. Dulles would have wanted to be in position to flash the Truman “retraction,” with the hope that this would nip any serious questioning in the bud. The media had already shown how co-opted—er, I mean “cooperative”—it could be.
As the de facto head of the Warren Commission, Dulles was perfectly positioned to exculpate himself and any of his associates, were any commissioners or investigators—or journalists—tempted to question whether the killing in Dallas might have been a CIA covert action.
Did Allen Dulles and other “cloak-and-dagger” CIA operatives have a hand in killing President Kennedy and then covering it up? The most up-to-date—and, in my view, the best—dissection of the assassination appeared last year in James Douglass’ book, JFK and the Unspeakable. After updating and arraying the abundant evidence, and conducting still more interviews, Douglass concludes the answer is Yes.
http://www.truthout.org/topstories/122909vh3
Ray McGovern
Tuesday 29 December 2009
In the past I have alluded to Panetta and the Seven Dwarfs. The reference is to CIA Director Leon Panetta and seven of his moral-dwarf predecessors—the ones who sent President Barack Obama a letter on Sept. 18 asking him to “reverse Attorney General Holder’s August 24 decision to re-open the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations.” http://tinyurl.com/my4jc5
Panetta reportedly was also dead set against reopening the investigation—as he was against release of the Justice Department’s “torture memoranda” of 2002, as he has been against releasing pretty much anything at all—the President’s pledges of a new era of openness, notwithstanding. Panetta is even older than I, and I am aware that hearing is among the first faculties to fail. Perhaps he heard “error” when the President said “era.”
As for the benighted seven, they are more to be pitied than scorned. No longer able to avail themselves of the services of clever Agency lawyers and wordsmiths, they put their names to a letter that reeked of self-interest—not to mention the inappropriateness of asking a President to interfere with an investigation already ordered by the Attorney General.
Three of the seven—George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden—were themselves involved, in one way or another, in planning, conducting, or covering up all manner of illegal actions, including torture, assassination, and illegal eavesdropping. In this light, the most transparent part of the letter may be the sentence in which they worry: “There is no reason to expect that the re-opened criminal investigation will remain narrowly focused.”
When asked about the letter on the Sunday TV talk shows on Sept. 20, Obama was careful always to respond first by expressing obligatory “respect” for the CIA and its directors. With Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation, though, Obama did allow himself a condescending quip. He commented, “I appreciate the former CIA directors wanting to look out for an institution that they helped to build.”
That quip was, sadly, the exception to the rule. While Obama keeps repeating the mantra that “nobody is above the law,” there is no real sign that he intends to face down Panetta and the Seven Dwarfs—no sign that anyone has breathed new life into federal prosecutor John Durham, to whom Holder gave the mandate for further “preliminary investigation.” What is generally forgotten is that it was former Attorney General Michael Mukasey who picked Durham two years ago to investigate CIA’s destruction of 91 tapes of the interrogation of “high-value detainees.”
Durham had scarcely been heard from when Holder added to Durham’s job-jar the task of conducting a preliminary investigation regarding the CIA torture specialists. These are the ones whose zeal led them to go beyond the already highly permissive Department of Justice guidelines for “harsh interrogation.”
Durham, clearly, is proceeding with all deliberate speed (emphasis on “deliberate”). Someone has even suggested—I trust, in jest—that he has been diverted to the search for the money and other assets that Bernie Maddow stashed away.
In any case, do not hold your breath for findings from Durham anytime soon. Holder appears in no hurry. And President Obama keeps giving off signals that he is afraid of getting crosswise with the CIA—that’s right, afraid.
Not Just Paranoia
In that fear, President Obama stands in the tradition of a dozen American presidents. Harry Truman and John Kennedy were the only ones to take on the CIA directly. Worst of all, evidence continues to build that the CIA was responsible, at least in part, for the assassination of President Kennedy.
Evidence new to me came in response to things I included in my article of Dec. 22, “Break the CIA in Two.” http://tinyurl.com/yl46gl5
What follows can be considered a sequel that is based on the kind of documentary evidence after which intelligence analysts positively lust.
Unfortunately for the CIA operatives who were involved in the past activities outlined below, the temptation to ask Panetta to put a SECRET stamp on the documentary evidence will not work. Nothing short of torching the Truman Library might conceivably help. But even that would be a largely feckless “covert action,” copy machines having long since done their thing.
In my article of Dec. 22, I referred to Harry Truman’s op-ed of exactly 46 years before, titled “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence,” in which the former President expressed dismay at what the Central Intelligence Agency had become just 16 years after he and Congress created it.
The Washington Post published the op-ed on December 22, 1963 in its early edition, but immediately excised it from later editions. Other media ignored it. The long hand of the CIA?
Truman wrote that he was “disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment” to keep the President promptly and fully informed and had become “an operational and at times policy-making arm of the government.”
The Truman Papers
Documents in the Truman Library show that nine days after Kennedy was assassinated, Truman sketched out in handwritten notes what he wanted to say in the op-ed. He noted, among other things, that the CIA had worked as he intended only “when I had control.”
In Truman’s view, misuse of the CIA began in February 1953, when his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, named Allen Dulles CIA Director. Dulles’ forte was overthrowing governments (in current parlance, “regime change”), and he was quite good at it. With coups in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954) under his belt, Dulles was riding high in the late Fifties and moved Cuba to the top of his to-do list.
Accustomed to the carte blanche given him by Eisenhower, Dulles was offended when young President Kennedy came on the scene and had the temerity to ask questions about the Bay of Pigs adventure, which had been set in motion under Eisenhower. When Kennedy made it clear he would NOT approve the use of U.S. combat forces, Dulles reacted with disdain and set out to mousetrap the new President.
Coffee-stained notes handwritten by Allen Dulles were discovered after his death and reported by historian Lucien S. Vandenbroucke. They show how Dulles drew Kennedy into a plan that was virtually certain to require the use of U.S. combat forces. In his notes Dulles explains that, “when the chips were down,” the new President would be forced by “the realities of the situation” to give whatever military support was necessary “rather than permit the enterprise to fail.”
Additional detail came from a March 2001 conference on the Bay of Pigs, which included CIA operatives, retired military commanders, scholars, and journalists. Daniel Schorr told National Public Radio that he had gained one new perception as a result of the “many hours of talk and heaps of declassified secret documents:”
“It was that the CIA overlords of the invasion, Director Allen Dulles and Deputy Richard Bissell had their own plan on how to bring the United States into the conflict…What they expected was that the invaders would establish a beachhead…and appeal for aid from the United States…
“The assumption was that President Kennedy, who had emphatically banned direct American involvement, would be forced by public opinion to come to the aid of the returning patriots. American forces, probably Marines, would come in to expand the beachhead.
“In fact, President Kennedy was the target of a CIA covert operation that collapsed when the invasion collapsed,” added Schorr.
The “enterprise” which Dulles said could not fail was, of course, the overthrow of Fidel Castro. After mounting several failed operations to assassinate him, this time Dulles meant to get his man, with little or no attention to what the Russians might do in reaction. Kennedy stuck to his guns, so to speak; fired Dulles and his co-conspirators a few months after the abortive invasion in April 1961; and told a friend that he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.”
The outrage was mutual, and when Kennedy himself was assassinated on November 22, 1963, it must have occurred to Truman that the disgraced Dulles and his outraged associates might not be above conspiring to get rid of a President they felt was soft on Communism—and, incidentally, get even.
In his op-ed of December 22, 1963 Truman warned: “The most important thing…was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions.” It is a safe bet that Truman had the Bay of Pigs fiasco uppermost in mind.
Truman called outright for CIA’s operational duties [to] be terminated or properly used elsewhere.” (This is as good a recommendation now as it was then, in my view.)
On December 27, retired Admiral Sidney Souers, whom Truman had appointed to lead his first central intelligence group, sent a “Dear Boss” letter applauding Truman’s outspokenness and blaming Dulles for making the CIA “a different animal than I tried to set up for you.” Souers specifically lambasted the attempt “to conduct a ‘war’ invading Cuba with a handful of men and without air cover.”
Souers also lamented the fact that the agency’s “principal effort” had evolved into causing “revolutions in smaller countries around the globe,” and added:
With so much emphasis on operations, it would not surprise me to find that the matter of collecting and processing intelligence has suffered some.”
Clearly, CIA’s operational tail was wagging the substantive dog—a serious problem that persists to this day. For example, CIA analysts are super-busy supporting operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan; no one seems to have told them that they need to hazard a guess as to where this is all leading and whether it makes any sense.
That is traditionally done in a National Intelligence Estimate. Can you believe there at this late date there is still no such Estimate? Instead, the President has chosen to rely on he advice of Gen. David Petraeus, who many believe will be Obama’s opponent in the 2012 presidential election.
Fox Guarding Henhouse?
In any case, the well-connected Dulles got himself appointed to the Warren Commission and took the lead in shaping the investigation of JFK’s assassination. Documents in the Truman Library show that he then mounted a targeted domestic covert action of his own to neutralize any future airing of Truman’s and Souers’ warnings about covert action.
So important was this to Dulles that he invented a pretext to get himself invited to visit Truman in Independence, Missouri. On the afternoon of April 17, 1964 he spent a half-hour trying to get the former President to retract what he had said in his op-ed. No dice, said Truman.
No problem, thought Dulles. Four days later, in a formal memo for his old buddy Lawrence Houston, CIA General Counsel from 1947 to 1973, Dulles fabricated a private retraction, claiming that Truman told him the Washington Post article was “all wrong,” and that Truman “seemed quite astounded at it.”
No doubt Dulles thought it might be handy to have such a memo in CIA files, just in case.
A fabricated retraction? It certainly seems so, because Truman did not change his tune. Far from it. In a June 10, 1964 letter to the managing editor of Look magazine, for example, Truman restated his critique of covert action, emphasizing that he never intended the CIA to get involved in “strange activities.”
Dulles and Dallas
Dulles could hardly have expected to get Truman to recant publicly. So why was it so important for Dulles to place in CIA files a fabricated retraction. My guess is that in early 1964 he was feeling a good bit of heat from those suggesting the CIA might have been involved somehow in the Kennedy assassination. Indeed, one or two not-yet-intimidated columnists were daring to ask how the truth could ever come out with Allen Dulles on the Warren Commission. Prescient.
Dulles feared, rightly, that Truman’s limited-edition op-ed might yet get some ink, and perhaps even airtime, and raise serious questions about covert action. Dulles would have wanted to be in position to flash the Truman “retraction,” with the hope that this would nip any serious questioning in the bud. The media had already shown how co-opted—er, I mean “cooperative”—it could be.
As the de facto head of the Warren Commission, Dulles was perfectly positioned to exculpate himself and any of his associates, were any commissioners or investigators—or journalists—tempted to question whether the killing in Dallas might have been a CIA covert action.
Did Allen Dulles and other “cloak-and-dagger” CIA operatives have a hand in killing President Kennedy and then covering it up? The most up-to-date—and, in my view, the best—dissection of the assassination appeared last year in James Douglass’ book, JFK and the Unspeakable. After updating and arraying the abundant evidence, and conducting still more interviews, Douglass concludes the answer is Yes.
Iraq will help Blackwater victims sue
Iraq will help Blackwater victims sue
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/201...ictims-sue-firm
Reuters, Baghdad guardian.co.uk, Sunday 3 January 2010 21.50 GMT
Iraq will help victims of the 2007 shooting of civilians in Baghdad to file a lawsuit in the US against employees of security firm Blackwater, an incident that turned a spotlight on the United States' use of private contractors in war zones.
Last week, a US judge threw out charges against five guards accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, saying the defendants' constitutional rights had been violated.
Iraq called that decision "unacceptable and unjust" and, as well as supporting a lawsuit brought by Iraqis wounded in the shooting and families of those killed, it will ask the US justice department to review the criminal case, a government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said .
"The government will facilitate a lawsuit from Iraqi citizens to sue the guards and the company in a US court," he said.
The guards from Blackwater Worldwide, now known as Xe Services, say they shot across a crowded intersection in self-defence after hearing an explosion and gunfire. But an Iraqi whose young son was killed in the incident said they indiscriminately fired at cars.
The shooting strained relations between Washington and Baghdad and became a symbol for many Iraqis of foreigners' disregard for their lives.
Dabbagh said the court had "rejected the case on form, and not on its merits".
Following the invasion of Iraq in 2003, private guards protecting US personnel were given immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts. That ended with a bilateral agreement that took effect last year.The five guards were charged in a US federal court with 14 counts of manslaughter, 20 of attempting to commit manslaughter and one weapons violation. A sixth Blackwater guard pleaded guilty to charges of voluntary manslaughter and attempting to commit manslaughter, and agreed to co-operate with prosecutors.
Dabbagh said Iraq was conducting an investigation into whether current or former Blackwater employees were still operating in the country, including with other firms.
He said Iraq did not want them on its soil, but did not say whether they would be expelled.
"We do not want any member of this company, which committed more than one crime in Iraq, to work in Iraq."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/201...ictims-sue-firm
Reuters, Baghdad guardian.co.uk, Sunday 3 January 2010 21.50 GMT
Iraq will help victims of the 2007 shooting of civilians in Baghdad to file a lawsuit in the US against employees of security firm Blackwater, an incident that turned a spotlight on the United States' use of private contractors in war zones.
Last week, a US judge threw out charges against five guards accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, saying the defendants' constitutional rights had been violated.
Iraq called that decision "unacceptable and unjust" and, as well as supporting a lawsuit brought by Iraqis wounded in the shooting and families of those killed, it will ask the US justice department to review the criminal case, a government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said .
"The government will facilitate a lawsuit from Iraqi citizens to sue the guards and the company in a US court," he said.
The guards from Blackwater Worldwide, now known as Xe Services, say they shot across a crowded intersection in self-defence after hearing an explosion and gunfire. But an Iraqi whose young son was killed in the incident said they indiscriminately fired at cars.
The shooting strained relations between Washington and Baghdad and became a symbol for many Iraqis of foreigners' disregard for their lives.
Dabbagh said the court had "rejected the case on form, and not on its merits".
Following the invasion of Iraq in 2003, private guards protecting US personnel were given immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts. That ended with a bilateral agreement that took effect last year.The five guards were charged in a US federal court with 14 counts of manslaughter, 20 of attempting to commit manslaughter and one weapons violation. A sixth Blackwater guard pleaded guilty to charges of voluntary manslaughter and attempting to commit manslaughter, and agreed to co-operate with prosecutors.
Dabbagh said Iraq was conducting an investigation into whether current or former Blackwater employees were still operating in the country, including with other firms.
He said Iraq did not want them on its soil, but did not say whether they would be expelled.
"We do not want any member of this company, which committed more than one crime in Iraq, to work in Iraq."
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Call Congressman Frank Pallone's Office, And DEMAND That He Mark Up H.R. 847 IMMEDIATELY!!!
Call Congressman Frank Pallone's Office, And DEMAND That He Mark Up H.R. 847 IMMEDIATELY!!!
I just received this from 9/11 First Responder Charlie Giles...
"It has come to our attention that the reason that HR847 is being held up is due to Congressman Frank Pallone. He has not marked up the Bill in the House Energy & Commerce Committee. He promised it would be done by Nov. and still no response. 9/11 Responders are sick, tired & dying. We are now Demanding that this Bill get Marked Up & Passed. We the 9/11 Community need your help! Please call Congressman Frank Pallone's Office in New Jersey at 732-249-8892 and also his Washington DC office at 202-225-4671. Tell them you are Demanding that Frank Pallone keep his Promise & Mark Up the Bill Now! We are no longer asking, we are demanding! Please Call both offices & flood his phone lines till he does what is right for those who served when Our Country needed us! Thank You!"
Please call... Please call... Please call...
Thank you.
I just received this from 9/11 First Responder Charlie Giles...
"It has come to our attention that the reason that HR847 is being held up is due to Congressman Frank Pallone. He has not marked up the Bill in the House Energy & Commerce Committee. He promised it would be done by Nov. and still no response. 9/11 Responders are sick, tired & dying. We are now Demanding that this Bill get Marked Up & Passed. We the 9/11 Community need your help! Please call Congressman Frank Pallone's Office in New Jersey at 732-249-8892 and also his Washington DC office at 202-225-4671. Tell them you are Demanding that Frank Pallone keep his Promise & Mark Up the Bill Now! We are no longer asking, we are demanding! Please Call both offices & flood his phone lines till he does what is right for those who served when Our Country needed us! Thank You!"
Please call... Please call... Please call...
Thank you.
One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists
One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item...rists_20091228/
By Chris Hedges
Posted on Dec 28, 2009
Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Hashmi is a U.S. citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process. Hashmi would be a better person to tell you this, but he is not allowed to speak.
This corruption of our legal system, if history is any guide, will not be reserved by the state for suspected terrorists, or even Muslim Americans. In the coming turmoil and economic collapse, it will be used to silence all who are branded as disruptive or subversive. Hashmi endures what many others, who are not Muslim, will endure later. Radical activists in the environmental, globalization, anti-nuclear, sustainable agriculture and anarchist movements—who are already being placed by the state in special detention facilities with Muslims charged with terrorism—have discovered that his fate is their fate. Courageous groups have organized protests, including vigils outside the Manhattan detention facility. They can be found at www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org or www.freefahad.com. On Martin Luther King Day, this Jan. 18 at 6 p.m. EST, protesters will hold a large vigil in front of the MCC on 150 Park Row in Lower Manhattan to call for a return of our constitutional rights. Join them if you can.
The case against Hashmi, like most of the terrorist cases launched by the Bush administration, is appallingly weak and built on flimsy circumstantial evidence. This may be the reason the state has set up parallel legal and penal codes to railroad those it charges with links to terrorism. If it were a matter of evidence, activists like Hashmi, who is accused of facilitating the delivery of socks to al-Qaida, would probably never be brought to trial.
Hashmi, who if convicted could face up to 70 years in prison, has been held in solitary confinement for more than 2½ years. Special administrative measures, known as SAMs, have been imposed by the attorney general to prevent or severely restrict communication with other prisoners, attorneys, family, the media and people outside the jail. He also is denied access to the news and other reading material. Hashmi is not allowed to attend group prayer. He is subject to 24-hour electronic monitoring and 23-hour lockdown. He must shower and go to the bathroom on camera. He can write one letter a week to a single member of his family, but he cannot use more than three pieces of paper. He has no access to fresh air and must take his one hour of daily recreation in a cage. His “proclivity for violence” is cited as the reason for these measures although he has never been charged or convicted with committing an act of violence.
“My brother was an activist,” Hashmi’s brother, Faisal, told me by phone from his home in Queens. “He spoke out on Muslim issues, especially those dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His arrest and torture have nothing to do with providing ponchos and socks to al-Qaida, as has been charged, but the manipulation of the law to suppress activists and scare the Muslim American community. My brother is an example. His treatment is meant to show Muslims what will happen to them if they speak about the plight of Muslims. We have lost every single motion to preserve my brother’s humanity and remove the special administrative measures. These measures are designed solely to break the psyche of prisoners and terrorize the Muslim community. These measures exemplify the malice towards Muslims at home and the malice towards the millions of Muslims who are considered as non-humans in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The extreme sensory deprivation used on Hashmi is a form of psychological torture, far more effective in breaking and disorienting detainees. It is torture as science. In Germany, the Gestapo broke bones while its successor, the communist East German Stasi, broke souls. We are like the Stasi. We have refined the art of psychological disintegration and drag bewildered suspects into secretive courts when they no longer have the mental and psychological capability to defend themselves.
“Hashmi’s right to a fair trial has been abridged,” said Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Much of the evidence in the case has been classified under CIPA, and thus Hashmi has not been allowed to review it. The prosecution only recently turned over a significant portion of evidence to the defense. Hashmi may not communicate with the news media, either directly or through his attorneys. The conditions of his detention have impacted his mental state and ability to participate in his own defense.
“The prosecution’s case against Hashmi, an outspoken activist within the Muslim community, abridges his First Amendment rights and threatens the First Amendment rights of others,” Ratner added. “While Hashmi’s political and religious beliefs, speech and associations are constitutionally protected, the government has been given wide latitude by the court to use them as evidence of his frame of mind and, by extension, intent. The material support charges against him depend on criminalization of association. This could have a chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of others, particularly in activist and Muslim communities.”
Constitutionally protected statements, beliefs and associations can now become a crime. Dissidents, even those who break no laws, can be stripped of their rights and imprisoned without due process. It is the legal equivalent of preemptive war. The state can detain and prosecute people not for what they have done, or even for what they are planning to do, but for holding religious or political beliefs that the state deems seditious. The first of those targeted have been observant Muslims, but they will not be the last.
“Most of the evidence is classified,” Jeanne Theoharis, an associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College who taught Hashmi, told me, “but Hashmi is not allowed to see it. He is an American citizen. But in America you can now go to trial and all the evidence collected against you cannot be reviewed. You can spend 2½ years in solitary confinement before you are convicted of anything. There has been attention paid to extraordinary rendition, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib with this false idea that if people are tried in the United States things will be fair. But what allowed Guantánamo to happen was the devolution of the rule of law here at home, and this is not only happening to Hashmi.”
Hashmi was, like so many of those arrested during the Bush years, briefly a poster child in the “war on terror.” He was apprehended in Britain on June 6, 2006, on a U.S. warrant. His arrest was the top story on the CBS and NBC nightly news programs, which used graphics that read “Terror Trail” and “Web of Terror.” He was held for 11 months at Belmarsh Prison in London and then became the first U.S. citizen to be extradited by Britain. The year before his arrest, Hashmi, a graduate of Brooklyn College, had completed his master’s degree in international relations at London Metropolitan University. His case has no more substance than the one against the seven men arrested on suspicion of plotting to blow up the Sears Tower, a case where, even though there were five convictions after two mistrials, an FBI deputy director acknowledged that the plan was more “aspirational rather than operational.” And it mirrors the older case of the Palestinian activist Sami Al-Arian, now under house arrest in Virginia, who has been hounded by the Justice Department although he should legally have been freed. Judge Leonie Brinkema, currently handling the Al-Arian case, in early March, questioned the U.S. attorney’s actions in Al-Arian’s plea agreement saying curtly: “I think there’s something more important here, and that’s the integrity of the Justice Department.”
The case against Hashmi revolves around the testimony of Junaid Babar, also an American citizen. Babar, in early 2004, stayed with Hashmi at his London apartment for two weeks. In his luggage, the government alleges, Babar had raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks, which Babar later delivered to a member of al-Qaida in south Waziristan, Pakistan. It was alleged that Hashmi allowed Babar to use his cell phone to call conspirators in other terror plots.
“Hashmi grew up here, was well known here, was very outspoken, very charismatic and very political,” said Theoharis. “This is really a message being sent to American Muslims about the cost of being politically active. It is not about delivering alleged socks and ponchos and rain gear. Do you think al-Qaida can’t get socks and ponchos in Pakistan? The government is planning to introduce tapes of Hashmi’s political talks while he was at Brooklyn College at the trial. Why are we willing to let this happen? Is it because they are Muslims, and we think it will not affect us? People who care about First Amendment rights should be terrified. This is one of the crucial civil rights issues of our time. We ignore this at our own peril.”
Babar, who was arrested in 2004 and has pleaded guilty to five counts of material support for al-Qaida, also faces up to 70 years in prison. But he has agreed to serve as a government witness and has already testified for the government in terror trials in Britain and Canada. Babar will receive a reduced sentence for his services, and many speculate he will be set free after the Hashmi trial. Since there is very little evidence to link Hashmi to terrorist activity, the government will rely on Babar to prove intent. This intent will revolve around alleged conversations and statements Hashmi made in Babar’s presence. Hashmi, who was a member of the New York political group Al Muhajiroun as a student at Brooklyn College, has made provocative statements, including calling America “the biggest terrorist in the world,” but Al Muhajiroun is not defined by the government as a terrorist organization. Membership in the group is not illegal. And our complicity in acts of state terror is a historical fact.
There will be more Hashmis, and the Justice Department, planning for future detentions, set up in 2006 a segregated facility, the Communication Management Unit, at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. Nearly all the inmates transferred to Terre Haute are Muslims. A second facility has been set up at Marion, Ill., where the inmates again are mostly Muslim but also include a sprinkling of animal rights and environmental activists, among them Daniel McGowan, who was charged with two arsons at logging operations in Oregon. His sentence was given “terrorism enhancements” under the Patriot Act. Amnesty International has called the Marion prison facility “inhumane.” All calls and mail—although communication customarily is off-limits to prison officials—are monitored in these two Communication Management Units. Communication among prisoners is required to be only in English. The highest-level terrorists are housed at the Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, known as Supermax, in Florence, Colo., where prisoners have almost no human interaction, physical exercise or mental stimulation, replicating the conditions for most of those held at Guantánamo. If detainees are transferred from Guantánamo to the prison in Thomson, Ill., they will find little change. They will endure Guantánamo-like conditions in colder weather.
Our descent is the familiar disease of decaying empires. The tyranny we impose on others we finally impose on ourselves. The influx of non-Muslim American activists into these facilities is another ominous development. It presages the continued dismantling of the rule of law, the widening of a system where prisoners are psychologically broken by sensory deprivation, extreme isolation and secretive kangaroo courts where suspects are sentenced on rumors and innuendo and denied the right to view the evidence against them. Dissent is no longer the duty of the engaged citizen but is becoming an act of terrorism.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item...rists_20091228/
By Chris Hedges
Posted on Dec 28, 2009
Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Hashmi is a U.S. citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process. Hashmi would be a better person to tell you this, but he is not allowed to speak.
This corruption of our legal system, if history is any guide, will not be reserved by the state for suspected terrorists, or even Muslim Americans. In the coming turmoil and economic collapse, it will be used to silence all who are branded as disruptive or subversive. Hashmi endures what many others, who are not Muslim, will endure later. Radical activists in the environmental, globalization, anti-nuclear, sustainable agriculture and anarchist movements—who are already being placed by the state in special detention facilities with Muslims charged with terrorism—have discovered that his fate is their fate. Courageous groups have organized protests, including vigils outside the Manhattan detention facility. They can be found at www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org or www.freefahad.com. On Martin Luther King Day, this Jan. 18 at 6 p.m. EST, protesters will hold a large vigil in front of the MCC on 150 Park Row in Lower Manhattan to call for a return of our constitutional rights. Join them if you can.
The case against Hashmi, like most of the terrorist cases launched by the Bush administration, is appallingly weak and built on flimsy circumstantial evidence. This may be the reason the state has set up parallel legal and penal codes to railroad those it charges with links to terrorism. If it were a matter of evidence, activists like Hashmi, who is accused of facilitating the delivery of socks to al-Qaida, would probably never be brought to trial.
Hashmi, who if convicted could face up to 70 years in prison, has been held in solitary confinement for more than 2½ years. Special administrative measures, known as SAMs, have been imposed by the attorney general to prevent or severely restrict communication with other prisoners, attorneys, family, the media and people outside the jail. He also is denied access to the news and other reading material. Hashmi is not allowed to attend group prayer. He is subject to 24-hour electronic monitoring and 23-hour lockdown. He must shower and go to the bathroom on camera. He can write one letter a week to a single member of his family, but he cannot use more than three pieces of paper. He has no access to fresh air and must take his one hour of daily recreation in a cage. His “proclivity for violence” is cited as the reason for these measures although he has never been charged or convicted with committing an act of violence.
“My brother was an activist,” Hashmi’s brother, Faisal, told me by phone from his home in Queens. “He spoke out on Muslim issues, especially those dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His arrest and torture have nothing to do with providing ponchos and socks to al-Qaida, as has been charged, but the manipulation of the law to suppress activists and scare the Muslim American community. My brother is an example. His treatment is meant to show Muslims what will happen to them if they speak about the plight of Muslims. We have lost every single motion to preserve my brother’s humanity and remove the special administrative measures. These measures are designed solely to break the psyche of prisoners and terrorize the Muslim community. These measures exemplify the malice towards Muslims at home and the malice towards the millions of Muslims who are considered as non-humans in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The extreme sensory deprivation used on Hashmi is a form of psychological torture, far more effective in breaking and disorienting detainees. It is torture as science. In Germany, the Gestapo broke bones while its successor, the communist East German Stasi, broke souls. We are like the Stasi. We have refined the art of psychological disintegration and drag bewildered suspects into secretive courts when they no longer have the mental and psychological capability to defend themselves.
“Hashmi’s right to a fair trial has been abridged,” said Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Much of the evidence in the case has been classified under CIPA, and thus Hashmi has not been allowed to review it. The prosecution only recently turned over a significant portion of evidence to the defense. Hashmi may not communicate with the news media, either directly or through his attorneys. The conditions of his detention have impacted his mental state and ability to participate in his own defense.
“The prosecution’s case against Hashmi, an outspoken activist within the Muslim community, abridges his First Amendment rights and threatens the First Amendment rights of others,” Ratner added. “While Hashmi’s political and religious beliefs, speech and associations are constitutionally protected, the government has been given wide latitude by the court to use them as evidence of his frame of mind and, by extension, intent. The material support charges against him depend on criminalization of association. This could have a chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of others, particularly in activist and Muslim communities.”
Constitutionally protected statements, beliefs and associations can now become a crime. Dissidents, even those who break no laws, can be stripped of their rights and imprisoned without due process. It is the legal equivalent of preemptive war. The state can detain and prosecute people not for what they have done, or even for what they are planning to do, but for holding religious or political beliefs that the state deems seditious. The first of those targeted have been observant Muslims, but they will not be the last.
“Most of the evidence is classified,” Jeanne Theoharis, an associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College who taught Hashmi, told me, “but Hashmi is not allowed to see it. He is an American citizen. But in America you can now go to trial and all the evidence collected against you cannot be reviewed. You can spend 2½ years in solitary confinement before you are convicted of anything. There has been attention paid to extraordinary rendition, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib with this false idea that if people are tried in the United States things will be fair. But what allowed Guantánamo to happen was the devolution of the rule of law here at home, and this is not only happening to Hashmi.”
Hashmi was, like so many of those arrested during the Bush years, briefly a poster child in the “war on terror.” He was apprehended in Britain on June 6, 2006, on a U.S. warrant. His arrest was the top story on the CBS and NBC nightly news programs, which used graphics that read “Terror Trail” and “Web of Terror.” He was held for 11 months at Belmarsh Prison in London and then became the first U.S. citizen to be extradited by Britain. The year before his arrest, Hashmi, a graduate of Brooklyn College, had completed his master’s degree in international relations at London Metropolitan University. His case has no more substance than the one against the seven men arrested on suspicion of plotting to blow up the Sears Tower, a case where, even though there were five convictions after two mistrials, an FBI deputy director acknowledged that the plan was more “aspirational rather than operational.” And it mirrors the older case of the Palestinian activist Sami Al-Arian, now under house arrest in Virginia, who has been hounded by the Justice Department although he should legally have been freed. Judge Leonie Brinkema, currently handling the Al-Arian case, in early March, questioned the U.S. attorney’s actions in Al-Arian’s plea agreement saying curtly: “I think there’s something more important here, and that’s the integrity of the Justice Department.”
The case against Hashmi revolves around the testimony of Junaid Babar, also an American citizen. Babar, in early 2004, stayed with Hashmi at his London apartment for two weeks. In his luggage, the government alleges, Babar had raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks, which Babar later delivered to a member of al-Qaida in south Waziristan, Pakistan. It was alleged that Hashmi allowed Babar to use his cell phone to call conspirators in other terror plots.
“Hashmi grew up here, was well known here, was very outspoken, very charismatic and very political,” said Theoharis. “This is really a message being sent to American Muslims about the cost of being politically active. It is not about delivering alleged socks and ponchos and rain gear. Do you think al-Qaida can’t get socks and ponchos in Pakistan? The government is planning to introduce tapes of Hashmi’s political talks while he was at Brooklyn College at the trial. Why are we willing to let this happen? Is it because they are Muslims, and we think it will not affect us? People who care about First Amendment rights should be terrified. This is one of the crucial civil rights issues of our time. We ignore this at our own peril.”
Babar, who was arrested in 2004 and has pleaded guilty to five counts of material support for al-Qaida, also faces up to 70 years in prison. But he has agreed to serve as a government witness and has already testified for the government in terror trials in Britain and Canada. Babar will receive a reduced sentence for his services, and many speculate he will be set free after the Hashmi trial. Since there is very little evidence to link Hashmi to terrorist activity, the government will rely on Babar to prove intent. This intent will revolve around alleged conversations and statements Hashmi made in Babar’s presence. Hashmi, who was a member of the New York political group Al Muhajiroun as a student at Brooklyn College, has made provocative statements, including calling America “the biggest terrorist in the world,” but Al Muhajiroun is not defined by the government as a terrorist organization. Membership in the group is not illegal. And our complicity in acts of state terror is a historical fact.
There will be more Hashmis, and the Justice Department, planning for future detentions, set up in 2006 a segregated facility, the Communication Management Unit, at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. Nearly all the inmates transferred to Terre Haute are Muslims. A second facility has been set up at Marion, Ill., where the inmates again are mostly Muslim but also include a sprinkling of animal rights and environmental activists, among them Daniel McGowan, who was charged with two arsons at logging operations in Oregon. His sentence was given “terrorism enhancements” under the Patriot Act. Amnesty International has called the Marion prison facility “inhumane.” All calls and mail—although communication customarily is off-limits to prison officials—are monitored in these two Communication Management Units. Communication among prisoners is required to be only in English. The highest-level terrorists are housed at the Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, known as Supermax, in Florence, Colo., where prisoners have almost no human interaction, physical exercise or mental stimulation, replicating the conditions for most of those held at Guantánamo. If detainees are transferred from Guantánamo to the prison in Thomson, Ill., they will find little change. They will endure Guantánamo-like conditions in colder weather.
Our descent is the familiar disease of decaying empires. The tyranny we impose on others we finally impose on ourselves. The influx of non-Muslim American activists into these facilities is another ominous development. It presages the continued dismantling of the rule of law, the widening of a system where prisoners are psychologically broken by sensory deprivation, extreme isolation and secretive kangaroo courts where suspects are sentenced on rumors and innuendo and denied the right to view the evidence against them. Dissent is no longer the duty of the engaged citizen but is becoming an act of terrorism.
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