The Voice of the White House

Washington , D.C. , April 4, 2008 :  “George Bush is a petty, vindictive creep. If he can’t have his way, he immediately thinks of ways to annoy people. He knows his days are numbered in the Oval Office and that he has no legacy to contemplate and is aware people hate him. He knows that the Texas university that is planned to house his sacred library, where he wants to have an elegant office, has most of their faculty opposing his presence and he knows his approval rating is down almost to single figures.

And what does he do? He decided to let rancher kill wolves in spite of the stink that made, or probably because of it, He had dredged up a slate of appointees that the Mexican parliament would jib at and now the word around this Monkey Palace is that George, with the encouragement of Cheney, wants to put a huge crimp in social security payments, cut Medicare way back and most important, cut food stamp issuance back 60%! He is looking for some Yoo character to tell him it’s legal to do this and then he will.

Why cut these vital lifelines? Because it looks like Obama might make it and Bush does not like blacks. The old phrase;, ‘Welfare Queens’ can be heard now and then and if it can be done, Bush will do it, He is a mean man but I have a nice joke I have been telling around here which I will pass on to all of you:

When George was a little boy, he saw a program on ice fishing. He decided he wanted to ice fish. As his family were out of town, he got a folding stool, an axe, a fishing pole and tackle from his father and his usual bottle of Jim Beam and off he went. It was winter and George knew right where the ice was. He put the stool down and began to chop a hole in the ice. Suddenly, a voice boomed out, ‘There are no fish under that ice!” George then picked up his stool and gear and walked a few dozen yards away and put everything down again. And again, when he started chopping a hole in the ice, the same voice boomed out again, ‘There are no fish under that ice”! This time George got angry. ‘Is that you, God?’ he asked in a weak voice. ‘No!’ came the reply. ‘It’s the skating rink manager!’

Now that’s just a story but it is true that the Bush family wouldn’t let little George play in their outdoor sandbox because when he did, the neighbor’s  cats tried to cover him up.”

Behind the Scenes of Secret Surveillance and Its Public Unmasking

April 3, 2008

by Jeffrey Rosen

New York Times

Eric Lichtblau is used to being cast as a hero or a villain for his reporting about the war on terror. This year Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, predicted that “some Americans are going to die” because of the public debate that resulted when Mr. Lichtblau and his New York Times colleague James Risen disclosed the existence of the Bush administration’s secret surveillance program; for the same articles Mr. Lichtblau and Mr. Risen won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.

Now Mr. Lichtblau has produced a book about his experiences, “Bush’s Law.” It is a gripping account of Mr. Lichtblau’s efforts to expose various forms of secret surveillance and the Bush administration’s Nixonian efforts to retaliate against him and other critics: “All the President’s Men” for an age of terror. But this book offers much more than a journalist’s well-earned victory lap. Mr. Lichtblau also documents, with scrupulous detail, the broader costs of the Bush administration’s excesses for innocent victims and for the rule of law.

Mr. Lichtblau has especially memorable accounts of some of the 2,700 men locked up after 9/11 by American authorities; most of those men were never shown to have connections to terrorism.

There is Taj Bhatti, an elderly Pakistani doctor in Virginia whose house and computer discs were surreptitiously ransacked and who was secretly imprisoned in the county jail as a “material witness.” He was freed only after his son sent a press release to a local reporter; the federal magistrate who signed the arrest warrant (and prohibited Mr. Bhatti from talking about his imprisonment) then threatened the reporter with contempt.

There is Brandon Mayfield, the lawyer and former Army lieutenant from Kansas whose house was secretly searched and who was arrested after being linked to the Madrid bombings by an F.B.I. agent’s mistaken fingerprint match. (He got an apology and $2 million from the government.)

Mr. Lichtblau also describes the many innocent victims whose e-mail messages, phone calls and political activities were secretly surveilled. More than 180 peaceful groups opposed to the Iraq war ended up in the Pentagon’s Talon database, which was designed to collect leads that might be related to terrorism. (It included the names of people at antiwar rallies.) And by Mr. Lichtblau’s estimate “several thousand” people in the United States had their phone calls and e-mail messages secretly surveilled without warrants because of suspected ties to terrorism.

They included an Iranian-American doctor in Kentucky suspected of possibly helping Osama bin Laden with his kidney ailments simply because he was a nephrologist. Mr. Lichtblau identifies another possible victim: a teenage student at the Horace Mann School in New York who sent e-mail messages to India about parking spots in Manhattan , which led F.B.I. agents to show up at his door. (It turned out he wanted to rent the spots to out-of-towners.)

In addition to sweeping up innocent people in dragnets, the Bush administration, according to Mr. Lichtblau, was ruthless in retaliating against its critics, in and out of government. He describes the many government officials who committed “career suicide” by questioning President Bush’s policies, including James Ziglar, the commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, who questioned sweeps and arrests in Muslim neighborhoods in Dearborn, Mich., and an F.B.I. whistle-blower who was frozen out of government after complaining about a bungled terrorism investigation and ended up working for the American Civil Liberties Union. After reporting about the F.B.I.’s interest in antiwar demonstrators, Mr. Lichtblau himself saw his press pass canceled by the Justice Department’s director of public affairs.

That was just a warm-up for the titanic battle to come, pitting President Bush and his top advisers against the editors of The Times, as the journalists decided whether to publish the article by Mr. Lichtblau and Mr. Risen that disclosed the secret surveillance program. In a series of meetings that lasted 14 months, beginning weeks before the 2004 presidential elections, President Bush and 10 senior advisers made personal appeals to The Times not to run the article. In mid-December 2004 the editors initially decided not to run it because of concerns about national security.

But in the fall of 2005 Mr. Risen told the editors that he was thinking of including the story in his own forthcoming book, and they began to reconsider. It was now clear, Mr. Lichtblau writes, that the administration had lied to The Times in describing the scope of the program and in claiming that administration lawyers unanimously supported it. Mr. Lichtblau’s reporting revealed that there were deep divisions about the program’s legality at the highest levels of the administration. And when Mr. Lichtblau learned that administration officials had discussed seeking an injunction against The Times, just as President Richard M. Nixon had tried to enjoin the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the Nixonian tactic helped seal The Times’s decision to publish the article and to post it first on the Web, so that the presses literally couldn’t be stopped.

Mr. Lichtblau argues that the administration’s national security arguments were overblown. The government had already pledged to eavesdrop on Al Qaeda, he notes. Therefore it wasn’t news to anyone that it was making good on the pledge; the news was that it was refusing to get court orders to do so, despite President Bush’s public claims to the contrary.

Nevertheless, Jack Goldsmith, the conservative lawyer who led an internal revolt in the Bush Justice Department against the original warrantless wiretapping program, which he believed may have been illegal, has said that he agreed with President Bush that the disclosure of the program did “great harm to the nation.” More discussion of what those harms might possibly have involved would have strengthened Mr. Lichtblau’s argument that they were ultimately outweighed by the public interest in disclosure.

The public benefits are now obvious. Thanks to the reporting by Mr. Lichtblau and Mr. Risen we know that the president and his aides approved a secret eavesdropping program that many of his own top lawyers thought was illegal, lied about it to the press and the public and then attacked the journalists who disclosed it. Mr. Lichtblau also reveals that, because the program was on such shaky legal ground, administration officials feared it would taint other terrorist prosecutions. Far from disbanding the program after it was disclosed, as administration officials had initially threatened to do, they were forced instead to ask Congress to put it on sounder legal footing.

At a time when the press’s role in American democracy is being hotly contested, this book provides an inspiring example of reporters doing what they do best: checking claims of unlimited governmental power and protecting the public’s right to know.

Jeffrey Rosen is a law professor at George Washington University and legal affairs columnist for The New Republic .

ACLU accuses military of skirting the law to get citizens' Internet, banking, phone records

April 1, 2008

by Larry Neumeister

Associated Press

NEW YORK - The military is using the FBI to skirt legal restrictions on domestic surveillance to obtain private records of Americans' Internet service providers, financial institutions and telephone companies, the ACLU said Tuesday.

The American Civil Liberties Union based its conclusion on a review of more than 1,000 documents turned over by the Defense Department after it sued the agency last year for documents related to national security letters, or NSLs, investigative tools used to compel businesses to turn over customer information without a judge's order or grand jury subpoena.

"Newly unredacted documents released today reveal that the Department of Defense is using the FBI to circumvent legal limits on its own NSL power," said the ACLU, whose lawsuit was filed in Manhattan federal court.

ACLU lawyer Melissa Goodman said the documents the civil rights group studied "make us incredibly concerned." She said it would be understandable if the military relied on help from the FBI on joint investigations, but not when the FBI was not involved in a probe.

The FBI referred requests for comment Tuesday to the Defense Department. A department spokesman, Air Force Lt. Col. Patrick Ryder, said in an e-mail that the department had made "focused, limited and judicious" use of the letters since Congress extended the capability to investigatory entities other than the FBI in 2001.

He said the department had acted legally in using a necessary investigatory tool and noted that "unusual financial activity of people affiliated with DoD can be an indication of potential espionage or terrorist-related activity."

Ryder said the information in the ACLU claims came in part from an internal review of DoD's use of the letters.

"We have since developed training and provided it to the services for their use," he said.

He said that there was no law requiring it to track use of the letters but that the department had decided it was in its best interest to do so.

Goodman, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, said the military is allowed to demand financial and credit records in certain instances but does not have the authority to get e-mail and phone records or lists of Web sites that people have visited. That is the kind of information that the FBI can get by using a national security letter, she said.

"That's why we're particularly concerned. The DoD may be accessing the kinds of records they are not allowed to get," she said.

Goodman also noted that legal limits are placed on the Defense Department "because the military doing domestic investigations tends to make us leery."

In other allegations, the ACLU said:

- The Navy's use of the letters to demand domestic records has increased significantly since the Sept. 11 attacks.

- The military wrongly claimed its use of the letters was limited to investigating only Defense Department employees.

- The Defense Department has not kept track of how many national security letters the military issues or what information it obtained through the orders.

- The military provided misleading information to Congress and silenced letter recipients from speaking out about the records requests.

Goodman said Congress should provide stricter guidelines and meaningful oversight of how the military and FBI make national security letter requests.

"Any government agency's ability to demand these kinds of personal, financial or Internet records in the United States is an intrusive surveillance power," she said.

The Real 9/11 Truth

September 11 was a third-rate operation

March 28, 2008

by Bohdan Pilacinski

Asia Times

In late April of 2001, just five months before the September 11 attack date, Mohamed Atta was stopped for driving erratically late at night near Ft Lauderdale, Florida. By then, the pilots all had their licenses, final-phase planning must have been under way. Yet, here was Osama bin Laden's field commander for the entire operation, driving a red Pontiac (though 15 years old), with Arabic stickers, and no driver's license, or at least none he would show. a license, or a warrant would go out for his arrest. He got the license but failed to show. Ten weeks later, he was stopped for speeding, but unaccountably no computer coughed up a warrant. Now Florida has reciprocity; so at least in theory and for no good reason, the September 11 attack team functioned its last four months with an arrest warrant out for their leader in 50 states.

Having sorted out the contestants in their publicly touted "mastermind" of the month contest, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released this disclosure of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, (so successfully water-boarded in Pakistan ). Zacarias Moussaoui, who'd presumably attracted Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) attention by advising his flight instructor that he wasn't much interested in take-offs and landings [1], hadn't been a member of the 9/11 teams at all; he was being held in reserve. Why? Because he was a belligerent loud-mouth and hence a security risk. As he so proved.

Point is, any decent handler with minimal judgment and authority would have yanked Moussaoui out of the country within days of this assessment. But no, he was left scheming on his own, possibly with consequences for al-Qaeda more severe than we know ... such as forcing the attack date.

No license, sloppy driving, even Arabic stickers; worse, an unbalanced agent working solo. These aren't just lapses in the learning curve of an amateur operation; these are ludicrous standards for operational security in any clandestine organization.

In the orchestrated fear campaign pursuant to the attack, we were systematically inundated with extravagant claims for al-Qaeda's potency, reach, cohesion, dedication, vision and Satanic focus. Dr No on petrodollars! Everything Vladimir Lenin could wish he'd had or been! Of course much of this has since - in the jargon of the financial press - been "subject to downward revision"; yet, to this day, insistence on al-Qaeda as a formerly monolithic, then metastasized, demon pathology of epic capacity for terror and evil, has been virtually obligatory throughout the US media: left, right and center.

As late as June 2, 2006 , National Intelligence czar John Negroponte pronounced al-Qaeda as the biggest threat to America in the world today. Again, prima facia evidence to the contrary accumulated from day one. Why, if the enemy was so formidable, were a quarter of his assets hanging out over a hayfield in the middle of nowhere, an hour and a quarter past the initial strike on the North Tower ? Why were the hijacker's identities rumbled so quickly; why didn't they have identification documents with Anglicized, or Europeanized or Latinized names? And the big tracking question: If they're this good tactically, how good are they strategically?

Our first clue came in late December. Having scored perhaps the most spectacular guerrilla attack in the history of warfare, what did al-Qaeda do for an encore? Would-be trans-Atlantic airline bomber Richard Reid, who couldn't find the bathroom to blow up his shoes.

There are perfectly satisfactory answers to the above questions and others like them, but these matter less than what they spell out collectively. September 11 was a minimalist operation, funded at the cost of a modest San Francisco Bay Area condominium, by a small, weak opponent. At its height, al-Qaeda's external operations never mounted to better than a third-rate execution.

Beyond that, al-Qaeda's been an American-made myth: fear, credulity ... and hype.

The military and the intellectuals - the social elements with perspective - were not that impressed, (the FBI and terrorism professionals were hysterical). Al-Qaeda wasn't even the first suspect; the initial law enforcement sweep was scattershot, and rolled up a large Israeli spy ring along with all the Arab males and foreigners. [2] New York was wounded but sober. It was the American TV audience that was blown away.

On closer examination - all publicly available information - every Washington-generated myth about al-Qaeda erodes or vaporizes. Here are two.

Myth number one: A fanatical brotherhood of impenetrable loyalty. As early as 1995, Moroccan and British intelligence tried to turn an al-Qaeda pilot into a double agent. L'Housssaine Kherchtou returned from his flying duties in Africa to find his pregnant wife begging in the streets of Khartoum ( Sudan ) for money to fund a cesarean section. He petitioned al-Qaeda for US$500 to cover the procedure ... and was denied. His loyalties faded, but he refused to turn. (Bin Laden was away and the Saudis had confiscated his assets. Al-Qaeda was suddenly bankrupt. A series of defections ensued). In the end, Kherchtou became the star witness in the New York trial which convicted four al-Qaeda terrorists in the bombing of the two US embassies in Africa . No deals ... this of his own free will. He's now in witness protection.

On to middle management: Ramzi bin al-Shiba, would-be pilot and hijacker, but for a US entry visa, became instead the 9/11 liaison between the Hamburg cell and al-Qaeda central. Worth $25 million to the US . With his bodyguards dead, taken without resistance after a three-hour gun battle with Pakistani police.

Consider: This fount of information knew what he'd face and might reveal. With three hours to give orders that he's not to be taken alive and/or to prepare his own death, he gave himself up with predictable consequences. The gravest of which was a trail leading to the apprehension six months later of al-Qaeda's operational chief, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed (KSM).

On the run with just one guard, surprised asleep at 3 am , he got off a few rounds with his Kalashnikov before he was overpowered. His cell phones gave him up. Though he'd juggled 30 numbers, or maybe only 10, American and Pakistani intelligence had gotten enough of them to either triangulate his location or to trace his last call. Such, anyway, is the official story, which was extremely useful to both President George W Bush and President Pervez Musharraf for different reasons at the time. He's now at Guantanamo . [3].

I don't mean to imply in an abbreviated presentation that al-Qaeda's operatives caved like dominoes; they didn't. But the myth of impenetrability was likely a function of, and cover for, a debased post-Cold War CIA. As The Atlantic reported in February of 1998, the agency was running on bureaucratic rot. Their intelligence stank, their agents were bought, their case officers were self-promoting liars, and their division heads knew no languages. Nearly everyone with integrity had quit. [4]. As recently reported by Le Monde and belying Washington's post factum claims of impenetrability, well before 9/11 French intelligence had penetrated al-Qaeda's Afghan training camps from three directions, one of them "up to the command structures".

A specific alert to the CIA's Paris station, dated January 5, 2001 , of the certainty of al-Qaeda's commitment to hijack American planes, never reached the appropriate analysts within the agency and has left no trace in any American post 9/11 investigations. [5] And even as far back as the Afghan campaign, everything ran through Pakistan 's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), without which the Americans were lost.

Relatively speaking, the Hamburg cell was of exceptional quality and mostly self-motivated. As for the rest, for every half competent operative there's a glaring embarrassment. Reid, Moussaoui ... consider the 20th hijacker:

One short, al-Qaeda's aspirants kept getting turned away as potential economic migrants. The key to US entry was a Saudi passport. In August, with the attack plan on hold, al-Qaeda finally got a Saudi as far as Orlando (Disney World). He arrived on a one-way ticket, with no credit cards, and insufficient money to cover his one-week vacation. Then he couldn't keep his story straight. He never got past airport security. [6] Again, they send a bozo out on his own. Where's the handler on this?

On the last leg of the plan - a plan five years in the making - the embarrassments really stack up. Days before the attack, Atta et al got drunk and started a row in a Florida oyster bar. Then they left a pile of flight manuals in a motel room. Then they abandoned rental cars with more Arabic paraphernalia. And then Atta's idiotic suitcase, with that bizarre will, and a roadmap for an investigation. Why did that suitcase exist? Why wasn't it packed with generic clothes and toilet articles?

The trail up the East Coast was one a blind dog could follow; so thick the FBI believed the hijackers wanted to be known. Esprit de corps, we were told, they're weird that way. But the sloppiness went further. One small delay at the jetport in Portland , and Atta and Omari would have missed their flight in Boston .

It would have taken very little more: a reminder to stay cool in the oyster bar, cover tracks and pick up loose ends; return a rental car which was a credit card trail; very little extra to minimize exposure.

Did they want to be known? Al-Qaeda has never claimed its attacks. Bin Laden denied knowledge and responsibility for almost four years, by which time the whole world believed it his doing anyway. And was being known a tactical advantage or disadvantage to al-Qaeda?

The evidence argues there was an al-Qaeda infrastructure in Hamburg , in Afghanistan , in Pakistan . There was nothing on American soil. No handlers, no minders, no oversight. A near total absence of tradecraft and a minimal knowledge of terrain. (In San Diego , Nawaf al-Hamzi and Khalid al-Mihdhar actually rented a bedroom from a top FBI counterterrorism informant). [7] The one thing the hijackers did right was keep their mouths shut; but not a trained spook in the entire organization in so much as a consulting capacity; not even a fundamentalist moonlighting from the ISI. There was no depth.

No depth and no breadth ... this introduces Washington 's second al-Qaeda myth.

Myth number two: Al-Qaeda's deep threat with global reach. Traditionally, as any moviegoer knows, a top priority of a clandestine operation is to cover identities. Suppose the passenger lists on the four crashed planes hadn't revealed a quota of five Arabic names each (except for flight 93, which had four)? The evidence, after all, was going up in smoke; the hijackers all expected to incinerate themselves. From the site in New York , we don't even have a set of teeth.

Absent a pattern on the passenger lists, how would this have stretched the investigation? How long would it have been delayed? And when the FBI finally located 19 nonexistent passengers, ciphers all, what then? What effect might lengthened exposure to the unknown have had on the American public? What advantage, if any, might a lengthened and confused investigation have yielded al-Qaeda in Afghanistan ?

These begin as tactical questions but turn into strategic ones.

In September of 2001, in northern Afghanistan , the Taliban were about to finish off the Northern Alliance , which militarily was a spent force. On September 9, bin Laden's assassins got to Ahmad Shah Massoud, the alliance's brilliant commander and only figure capable of keeping the alliance together. Only because the "French TV journalists", with their cameras full of explosives, had been detained incommunicado waiting for their interview was the assassination three weeks late. But for that one turn of fate, by 9/11 the Taliban would have been mopping up America 's only available proxy ground force. The Americans would have had to invade in winter and do their own fighting - in the snow, and on the ground as in Iraq .

As Professor Michael Doran wrote in Political Science Quarterly, "Bin Laden engineered the decapitation of the Northern Alliance in order to throw it into such disarray that it would be useless to the United States as an instrument of retribution." [8] Which raises the question: Why crowd the planning so tightly, with no margin for error? Why 9/11? Why not 10/11, or just before winter? And if 9/11, why not delay American resolve by whatever means, including confusion; consolidate and maintain the initiative?

How difficult would it have been to use misleading identities? To procure them, then cover them with airfares? To smuggle a 20th hijacker across the border? Would it have justified the additional risks? The short answers are: Easily, fairly easily, fairly easily, and no. Al-Qaeda acted rationally within its limitations ... which were severe.

By 2001, America had won the Cold War, owned the future, had no enemies, and security was lax. That was then. Five years later, on August 1, 2006, the Associated Press reported that undercover investigators had entered the US using fake documents at nine border crossings on both the Mexican and Canadian borders repeatedly that year. Same in 2003 and 2004. On May 5, 2006 , on "All Things Considered", National Public Radio reported that very convincing fake IDs - driver's licenses and social security cards - could be had on any number of street corners in Los Angeles for $100. The Los Angeles Police Department vouched for the quality. Criminals including a murderer, "have walked out of police stations" with these.

The hijackers all boarded showing legitimate US driver's licenses, which deflected any potentially embarrassing lines of inquiry regarding country of origin. The pilots, of course, had licenses from living here. Two hijackers paid a Salvadoran in a convenience store parking lot $50 each to vouch for them as Virginia residents, which was all Virginia required; they then vouched in turn for five new arrivals - "muscle" in the plot. Keep it simple ...

Getting fake IDs might have been easy. Using them courted unforeseeable risks. Non-Arabic names call for non-Arabic language skills; 13 of the men were new arrivals, 12 of them Saudis. Dealing with unfamiliar criminal elements, especially outside one's own ethnic group, can also generate unforeseeable complications. And finally, paying for the tickets ... cash is a security tip-off; a convincing set of credit card trails would have required some finesse and the infrastructure wasn't there.

So the 9/11 teams didn't cover their identities and obliterate their trail because they couldn't. It was beyond their competence. But if al-Qaeda couldn't expect to stall American mobilization, why hadn't central command delayed the attack date to follow on the Taliban offensive? [9]

Assuming the CIA video found in Jalalabad , Afghanistan , is genuine [10], bin Laden was notified of the 9/11 attack date six days in advance. Stateside, attempted ticket purchases (though unsuccessful as they failed a credit check), began 33 days in advance. This would mean compartmentalization was so extreme that al-Qaeda central did not determine, control or know the attack date.

In fact, the record argues that bin Laden had long pressed for a much earlier attack, but Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Atta had resisted. So it seems that in the planning stage, the 9/11 plot was unrelated to ongoing events in Afghanistan , and in its final stage, was not strategically coordinated with the Taliban's offensive against the Northern Alliance .

Conversely, it's unlikely the Taliban leadership even suspected al-Qaeda's intent. The French intelligence documents referred to above maintain the Taliban leadership consented to the "tactical" hijacking of American commercial airliners; but as noted in follow-up commentary, hijacking an airplane prior to September 11 meant forcing it "to land at an airport to conduct negotiations" - for which there were standard procedures. [5] Peter Bergen, CNN's terrorism analyst, flatly states that Taliban leader Mullah Omar was not informed, certainly not of a plan to fire-bomb American targets, and would have vetoed such had he known. [11]

Was there a strategy behind 9/11? According to Abu Hafs, al-Qaeda's military commander and bin Laden's closest confederate, it was to provoke an American invasion of Afghanistan . [12] But an American invasion, of an exhausted and divided country, without the knowledge or consent of one's ally and host, expecting him to destroy the "second superpower" as the mujahideen had the first? With supply lines from where? Russia , which was crushing Chechnya ? Pakistan , where Musharraf was and is a balancing act? This is a strategy? It's a regional civil war or it's nothing.

The US overran Afghanistan , destroyed bin Laden's ally and his base, and garnered the sympathy of most of the Muslim world. Would it had stopped there. Bin Laden has succeeded not for his strategy, but because the US overreached and unmasked itself in Iraq .

In all the government and media hyperbole about the terrorist threat, the most hystericized has been al-Qaeda's imminent procurement of a nuclear weapon. They tried to buy one from the Russians, we're told. They were scammed in Sudan buying uranium and were probably scammed repeatedly thereafter. But they still want a nuclear weapon? The entire subject of terrorist nukes has been framed in nearly unrestrained speculation. Intent is far from capability.

Concretely, in narrative shorthand: Already under surveillance, KSM'S top in-house bomb maker (who was good), got himself busted because his lab caught fire. [13] Bin Laden's attempts to assemble a team of foreign scientists; to procure necessary materials, technologies and workable plans; let alone to establish production facilities, never got past the wishful thinking stage.

The proper question asked nowhere in the press is what, in the decade that Russia was on its knees, as the Russian army sold itself for food, as a Russian admiral sank his fleet in Vladivostok harbor for scrap, while Russia regressed to a barter economy and everything was for sale; in this decade of Russia's collapse and chaos and gangster capitalism, what did al-Qaeda with all its alleged petrodollars actually get?

Nothing. We already know they got no spooks. Weapons? All leftovers from America 's proxy war against the Red Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Sophisticated communications equipment? None. And well before 9/11, Russia was supplying the Northern Alliance .

And they got no intelligence. Neither al-Qaeda nor the Taliban was prepared for the American assault. It's unlikely anyone there even read Jane's Defence Weekly. That's your ... deep threat with global reach.

The American people have been far, far too impressed with a hole in the middle of New York City . Al-Qaeda's capability was to damage those buildings and to kill several hundred people; to trap or destroy the top 15 floors was the most that they hoped for. [14]. The collapse of the twin towers was entirely a function of their structural engineering.

Imagine a large zipper opening from the top. Three floors - crashed and weakened by fire - create a slider of some 15 floors above. On every floor, the outer sheath is held in tension to the tower's core by steel floor joists beneath a concrete tray. As the "slider" hits the floors, the joists give and pull the sheath in after them. With every floor, the "slider's" weight and speed increases, pulling the next floor in and down before it. Very clean, and unforeseen, and emphatically not al-Qaeda's doing.

The remaining loose thread in this narrative, the fate of flight 93 which crashed in Pennsylvania , again illustrates both the intelligence and the vulnerability of the plot.

It's self evident that minimum exposure maximizes odds of mission success in a surprise attack by a weak opponent on a strong one; and the plan was for a near synchronous takeoff. But flight 93 was delayed 40 minutes, and took off as the first plane crashed the North Tower . So - an hour and three quarters of hang time in red alert, but still doable; target approach would be from an unforeseen direction.

The hijacking was executed as late as possible, as the plane neared the north-south flight corridor of Detroit-Washington , DC , which dictated a sharp left turn. Had the takeoff been on time, this turn would have been executed before there'd been any reason for alarm on the ground; and with the transponder off, it might well have gone undetected. Instead, ground radar stayed on track despite losing the transponder signal (which is harder); and feedback from the ground leaked back onto the plane through cell phone conversations. [15].

That's it. That's how big and bad and deep al-Qaeda was. This is the platform for America 's "war on terror", which migrated so glibly onto the biggest remaining oil field in the Middle East . By comparison, Columbian drug cartels had secure routes for money, drugs and personnel; near untraceable money laundering operations; and one lost a half-built, 100- foot submarine to police in a suburb of Bogota . Russian documents were found at the site. [16].

Al-Qaeda's leadership was rolled up in fairly short order because it was few to begin with. The Economist now says, "Al-Qaeda probably never had more than a few hundred committed members." [17]. Ted Galen Carpenter of the libertarian Cato Institute tells us to get some perspective: "The closest historical analogy for the radical Islamic terrorist threat ... is the violence perpetrated by anarchist forces during the last third of the 19th century." [18].

Even the current official line, that al-Qaeda was a cohesive organization since gone to seed, is just half true. For example, Spanish police concluded there was no link between al-Qaeda and the Madrid bombings of 2004. Bin Laden never controlled Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or "al-Qaeda in Iraq ". [19]. After a four-year investigation, the LA Times' Terry McDermott concluded:

Al-Qaeda itself was never the huge organization its opponents sometimes portrayed. Its core was at most a couple hundred men. [It] sat at the center of ... a web of other like-minded organizations spread across the globe ... but was never in any sense in control of [them].

The tight, operational group around bin Laden was quite small. Then, McDermott's view on the brunt of this article:

One underappreciated aspect of al-Qaeda operations was how crude many of them were. Intelligence analysts sometimes cited the plans' complexity and sophistication, as if blowing up buildings or boats or vehicles was high-end science. In fact, many al-Qaeda plots have been marked by the haphazardness of their design and execution. Over the years, many of the plots seemed harebrained at worst, ill-conceived at best, pursued by ill-equipped and unprepared, inept men. Some were almost comical in their haplessness: boats sank, cars crashed, bombs blew up too soon. Some of the men virtually delivered themselves to police. The gross ineptitude of the execution often disguised the gravity of the intent, and hid, also, the steadfastness of the plotters. [20].

A threat, but not a danger, was the likely view of Western intelligence agencies. But the plot succeeded for one big reason which the American public holds in denial; it walked through a series of open doors. I'm not referring to the lax security and all the government has been faulted for. I'm referring to the atmosphere and attitude which then pervaded the country from top to bottom.

The plot encountered no resistance because America was in a frenzy of narcissistic triumphalism: every form of self- inflation and as arrogant as possible. Let's revisit that period.

The government's priorities were plundering the public trust and institutionalizing crony capitalism. The world was our casino. Cultural leadership had passed to the voice of the sewer. From frenzied corporate racketeering, to "in-your-face" aggression in

sports, to the spew of invective then called "rap", to the anger of youth for show ... at every social stratum America gloried in the liberation of the sociopath.

The codes which temper the power of the strong over the weak had so collapsed that the lionized National Football League "role models" routinely beat up, and occasionally murdered, their girlfriends; multiple-victim schoolyard shootings impelled by bullying were occurring in the white, suburban heartland every six months down to the junior high school level. In the fashion magazines, the models looked like they'd been raped, and want to know what happens next.

With no enemies, and on its own terms, this America was on a roll. Accountability to the outside world rated zip. Nobody, let alone an upstart like al-Qaeda, merited American attention, unless there was money to be made. Why should they, when the world consisted of us, and a planet full of wannabes?

But off stage the world's scorned realities persisted ...

The Palestinians were a nation crucified on the politics of oil, and Oslo had been a fraud. So? A generation of Iraqi children were stunted for malnutrition. "That's just the price we have to pay," said US secretary of state Madeleine Albright. [21] Both of these were explicitly proffered as a cause for war by bin Laden. [22]. And this may have gotten by you: the entire Muslim delegation virtually begged the US to send representation to a racism conference in Durban , South Africa ; top of the agenda was Israeli apartheid. The US blew them off in a manner just short of insulting.

America had lost its soul and never noticed the difference; but a champion rose up for Muslim victims in the form of bin Laden. He has yet to be acknowledged here as such, his enemy so base it offers only slanders. [23].

The terrorists attacked a great American symbol. Of what? Of multiculturalism, and internationalism and inclusiveness, which had hosted every kind of urban activity; "our way of life". [24] A symbol of course, is a munificent propaganda asset: it means what one wants it to mean, generates no feedback loops and is responsible for nothing. Within three months the media successfully obfuscated that the Twin Towers had been the thickest hive of finance capitalism on Earth, let alone what that might mean. [25]. Everyone was strenuously "innocent" ... and so remain.

And so it came to pass and the above is all it took.

- To lock in a propaganda culture.

- To generate a blank check for war.

- To destroy two countries, convert them into gangster states, and incite a civil war in the middle of the world's energy supplies.

- To earn the fear and hatred of much of the world.

- To bring a proto-police state out of the closet.

- To institutionalize torture.

- To ruin the US Army.

And the ramifications may take decades to play out ... because the people were afraid, and have been shunted around like a school of fish.

Notes

1. "Presumably" because the flight instructor, who's supposed to be the primary source for this assertion, denies it happened. Moussaoui was referred for a security check because of incongruities in his story and in how he presented himself. He was then detained for overstaying his visa as this was investigated. Moreover, prior to his arrest, he was only regarded as unstable; he deteriorated in custody. Of course the report of his expressed disinterest in take-offs and landings didn't fabricate itself. See: Seymour Hersh, Chain Of Command, 106, 110-112.

2. About 120 Mossad agents and trainees conducting a multi-tiered operation. This is a story in itself.

3. The official story is almost certainly a fabrication, but the likelier options don't affect the contention of this essay. See: Simon Denyer, "Pakistan Accused of Staging bin Laden Aide Arrest", Reuters, November 3, 2003 ; and the exhaustively annotated maze of media reports in Paul Thompson's "Is There More to the Capture of ..."; both via. In the latest version, as told by senior CIA officials to Ron Suskind (The One Percent Doctrine), Mohammed was turned in by an al-Qaeda defector, and not even for the money. Clearly, "healthy Islam turned him in", plays better than "we got him with our intrusive technology and coercive methods"; but who knows?

4. Edward Shirley (CIA officer, Directorate of Operations), "Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?" The Atlantic , February 1998, pp 45-. And the earlier CIA wasn't that impressive either. As Ward Churchill pointed out, with a quarter of a million people on its payroll, it couldn't predict the Tet Offensive.

5. Guillaume Dasquie, September 11, 2001 : "The French Knew Much About It," Le Monde, April 16, 2007 . Synopsis of a leaked, classified, 328 page DGSE (French secret services) al-Qaeda file.

6. Terry McDermott, Perfect Soldiers, 228 and 304 n 54.

7. McDermott, 191 and 304 n 51.

8. Quoted in Imperial Hubri Michael Scheuer 34.

9. Moussaoui's arrest was August 16. The first and unsuccessful attempt to purchase 9/11 tickets, was just over a week earlier, August 8. In a rushed book and on no real supporting data, terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna asserted that Moussaoui's arrest forced the advance of the 9/11 plot. (Inside Al Qaeda, 2002, p 109). After four years of researching 9/11, the LA Times' Terry McDermott concluded that "In the end, the Moussaoui arrest caused more upset than action". But his "disappearance would have been a powerful argument against" delaying the plot. (226 and 304 n 50

) 10. Theoretically, it could have been planted by either side. The grainy video shows a bin Laden character with his alleged lieutenants and a religious notable discussing the attack. The incriminating element is just several sentences on the voice track; easily spliced and inadmissible as evidence in an American court (and so received in the Arab world). So, were it a CIA plant, why not a stickier indictment than six days advance notice? If an al-Qaeda plant, why contradict Bin Laden's public position? And his mother said it wasn't him.

11. Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know, xxx (introduction).

12. Bergen , 255. Account of Ahmad Zaidan, al-Jazeera's bureau chief in Pakistan ; all the more credible as Abu Haf's claim followed the attack on the USS Cole, and predated 9/11 by nearly a year.

13. Ramzi Yousef, the Manila airline bomb plot of January 1995. For details, see McDermott, 144-154 and 287 n 49 and 50.

14. Transcript of above video: Bin Laden, "As regards the towers, we assumed [casualties] in the three or four floors the planes would crash into. That was all we estimated. I was the most optimistic. Due to the nature of my profession and work [construction], I figured that the fuel in the plane would raise the temperature in the steel to the point that it becomes red and loses its properties. So if the plane hits the building here [he gestured with his hands] the portion of the building above will collapse. That was the most we could hope for." This is the most convincing translation, by Ali al-Ahmed, used in Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, 370.

15. Quoting a NORAD source, McDermott writes that flight 93's transponder went off just before the turn; and implies that no fighter jets ever got near it. Lots of planes were scrambled, but only two F-16s from Langley were ever in position in time to defend a target, and they were chasing the ghost of Atta's flight 11, on the mistaken belief that it had passed New York and was headed toward Washington . It was that bad. (240 and 241).

16. BBC online, September 7, 2000 . The comparison is flawed insofar as domestic drug distribution is American, which qualifies the drug trade as a criminal joint venture. But the issue here is means and extent of external penetration of territorial security, and that comparison holds.

17. The Economist, September 2, 2006 , p 26.

18. Ted Galen Carpenter, "Keeping the al-Qaeda threat in perspective", San Jose Mercury News, October 9, 2006 , page 1.

19. Mary Anne Weaver, "Inventing al-Zarqawi," The Atlantic, July, 2006, pp 87-.

20. McDermott, 174.

21. Who now runs her own emerging markets hedge fund. Alan Abelson, Barron's, January 22, 2007, p 6.

22. "Crucified" in the literal Christian sense of the term. In Rene Girard's thesis, all civilizations have been and are, built on the cornerstone of the designated victim. Though the terms of occupation are Israel 's, the world at large assents because the Palestinians have been sacrificed to the global politics of oil.

23. Who bin Laden was is beyond the scope of this article, but if Che Guevara has legitimacy, then bin Laden has it in spades. Peter Bergen's summary assessment: "In my view, bin Laden is an intelligent political actor who is fighting a deeply felt religious war against the West." Bergen , 389. This corroborates Michael Scheuer's representation in Imperial Hubris, whose publication was sponsored by the CIA.

24. A Benetton commercial of global harmony and goodwill; this is standard. For its latest issue, see Lawrence Wright (staff writer for the New Yorker, Pulitzer Prize 2007), The Looming Tower, 2006, p 368. "Al-Qaeda had aimed ... at America , but it struck all of humanity."

25. Multiple sources, including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and CNN, posted a listing; CNN's included square footage (this is no longer on the website). Over 75% of the occupied space was some kind of financial institution; 83% including law firms and consultants. Morgan Stanley had 21 floors. "War on Wall Street" screamed that week's cover of Barron's.

(For an expansion of the theme implicit in this essay (that the "war on terror" is both a misconception and a fraud), at the elite levels of journalism, see William Pfaff, "A 'long war' designed to perpetuate itself", October 2, 2006, and Olivier Roy, June 9, 2006 at www.iht.com; the archives at www.williampfaff.com; and John Mueller, "Why al-Qaeda Hasn't Hit the US Again", Foreign Affairs, September/October, 2006, p 2.)

Bohdan Pilacinski claims no credentials whatsoever; the essay stands on its own merits.

Those Who Control Oil and Water Will Control The World

March 30, 2008

by John Gray

The Guardian/UK

History may not repeat itself, but, as Mark Twain observed, it can sometimes rhyme. The crises and conflicts of the past recur, recognisably similar even when altered by new conditions. At present, a race for the world’s resources is underway that resembles the Great Game that was played in the decades leading up to the First World War. Now, as then, the most coveted prize is oil and the risk is that as the contest heats up it will not always be peaceful. But this is no simple rerun of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, there are powerful new players and it is not only oil that is at stake.

It was Rudyard Kipling who brought the idea of the Great Game into the public mind in Kim, his cloak-and-dagger novel of espionage and imperial geopolitics in the time of the Raj. Then, the main players were Britain and Russia and the object of the game was control of central Asia ’s oil. Now, Britain hardly matters and India and China , which were subjugated countries during the last round of the game, have emerged as key players. The struggle is no longer focused mainly on central Asian oil. It stretches from the Persian Gulf to Africa , Latin America , even the polar caps, and it is also a struggle for water and depleting supplies of vital minerals. Above all, global warming is increasing the scarcity of natural resources. The Great Game that is afoot today is more intractable and more dangerous than the last.

The biggest new player in the game is China and it is there that the emerging pattern is clearest. China ’s rulers have staked everything on economic growth. Without improving living standards, there would be large-scale unrest, which could pose a threat to their power. Moreover, China is in the middle of the largest and fastest move from the countryside to the city in history, a process that cannot be stopped.

There is no alternative to continuing growth, but it comes with deadly side-effects. Overused in industry and agriculture, and under threat from the retreat of the Himalayan glaciers, water is becoming a non-renewable resource. Two-thirds of China ’s cities face shortages, while deserts are eating up arable land. Breakneck industrialisation is worsening this environmental breakdown, as many more power plants are being built and run on high-polluting coal that accelerates global warming. There is a vicious circle at work here and not only in China . Because ongoing growth requires massive inputs of energy and minerals, Chinese companies are scouring the world for supplies. The result is unstoppable rising demand for resources that are unalterably finite.

Although oil reserves may not have peaked in any literal sense, the days when conventional oil was cheap have gone forever. Countries are reacting by trying to secure the remaining reserves, not least those that are being opened up by climate change. Canada is building bases to counter Russian claims on the melting Arctic icecap, parts of which are also claimed by Norway , Denmark and the US . Britain is staking out claims on areas around the South Pole.

The scramble for energy is shaping many of the conflicts we can expect in the present century. The danger is not just another oil shock that impacts on industrial production, but a threat of famine. Without a drip feed of petroleum to highly mechanised farms, many of the food shelves in the supermarkets would be empty. Far from the world weaning itself off oil, it is more addicted to the stuff than ever. It is hardly surprising that powerful states are gearing up to seize their share.

This new round of the Great Game did not start yesterday. It began with the last big conflict of the 20th century, which was an oil war and nothing else. No one pretended the first Gulf War was fought to combat terrorism or spread democracy. As George Bush Snr and John Major admitted at the time, it was aimed at securing global oil supplies, pure and simple. Despite the denials of a less honest generation of politicians, there can be no doubt that controlling the country’s oil was one of the objectives of the later invasion of Iraq .

Oil remains at the heart of the game and, if anything, it is even more important than before. With their complex logistics and heavy reliance on air power, high-tech armies are extremely energy-intensive. According to a Pentagon report, the amount of petroleum needed for each soldier each day increased four times between the Second World War and the Gulf War and quadrupled again when the US invaded Iraq . Recent estimates suggest the amount used per soldier has jumped again in the five years since the invasion.

Whereas Western countries dominated the last round of the Great Game, this time they rely on increasingly self-assertive producer countries. Mr Putin’s well-honed contempt for world opinion might grate on European ears, but Europe is heavily dependent on his energy. Hugo Chávez might be an object of hate for George W Bush, but Venezuela still supplies around 10 per cent of America ’s imported oil. President Ahmadinejad is seen by some as the devil incarnate, but with oil at more than a $100 a barrel, any Western attempt to topple him would be horrendously risky.

While Western power declines, the rising powers are at odds with each other. China and India are rivals for oil and natural gas in central Asia . Taiwan , Vietnam , Malaysia and Indonesia have clashed over underwater oil reserves in the South China Sea . Saudi Arabia and Iran are rivals in the Gulf, while Iran and Turkey are eyeing Iraq . Greater international co-operation seems the obvious solution, but the reality is that as the resources crunch bites more deeply, the world is becoming steadily more fragmented and divided.

We are a long way from the fantasy world of only a decade ago, when fashionable gurus were talking sagely of the knowledge economy. Then, we were told material resources did not matter any more - it was ideas that drove economic development. The business cycle had been left behind and an era of endless growth had arrived. Actually, the knowledge economy was an illusion created by cheap oil and cheap money and everlasting booms always end in tears. This is not the end of the world or of global capitalism, just history as usual.

What is different this time is climate change. Rising sea levels reduce food and fresh-water supplies, which may trigger large-scale movements of refugees from Africa and Asia into Europe . Global warming threatens energy supplies. As the fossil fuels of the past become more expensive, others, such as tar sands, are becoming more economically viable, but these alternative fuels are also dirtier than conventional oil.

In this round of the Great Game, energy shortage and global warming are reinforcing each another. The result can only be a growing risk of conflict. There were around 1.65 billion people in the world when the last round was played out. At the start of the 21st century, there are four times as many, struggling to secure their future in a world being changed out of recognition by climate change. It would be wise to plan for some more of history’s rhymes.

John Gray is author of Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, published by Allen Lane in paperback on 24 April

The little administration that couldn't

March 29, 2008

by Tom Engelhardt

Asia Times

No one was prepared for the storm when it hit. The levees meant to protect us had long since been breached and key officials had already left town. The well-to-do were assured of rescue, but for everyone else trapped inside the Superdome in a fast-flooding region, there was no evacuation plan in sight. The George W Bush administration, of course, claimed that it was in control and the president was already assuring his key officials that they were doing a heck of a job.

No, I'm not talking about post-Katrina New Orleans . That was so then. I'm talking about the housing and credit crunches, as well as the Bear Stearns bailout, that have given the term "bear market" new meaning.

Now, don't get me wrong - when it comes to the arcane science of economics, like most Americans, I'd benefit from an "Economics for Dummies" course. What I do know something about, thoughis history, a subject that hasn't been on the Bush administration's course curriculum since the president turned out not to be Winston Churchill and conquered Iraq refused to morph into occupied Germany 'n Japan 1945.

History may not repeat itself, but the administration's repetitive acts these past seven years make an assessment of our economic situation possible, even if you are an economics dummy.

Just consider the record: administration officials proved incapable of rebuilding two countries that their military occupied and damaged. In Afghanistan and Iraq , while talking up the president's "freedom agenda", they were the equivalent of a natural disaster, a whirlwind of destruction.

In the case of Iraq , in disbanding its military, its government, and even its economy, they were literal nation-wreckers. On taking Baghdad , their first act of omission was to let the capital be looted. ("Stuff happens," commented secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld at the time.) Soon after, the administration's new viceroy in Baghdad , L Paul Bremer, promptly plunged the country into the equivalent of the Great Depression - without a Bear Stearns bailout in sight.

In the case of Afghanistan , only a staggering boom in opiate growing - the country now supplies an estimated 93% of the global market in illegal opiates, bringing about US$4 billion into the country - has slightly offset the disaster of "liberation". By just about any other measure, Afghanistan is a wreck.

In the case of New Orleans , the Bush administration not only couldn't rebuild an American city that nature (and the Army Corps of Engineers) damaged, but turned a natural disaster into a man-made catastrophe that has yet to end.

Despite a reputation for being the most disciplined, tough and focused administration in memory, Bush's men and women couldn't even secure their fondest inside-the-Beltway dream: constructing a generation-long Pax Republicana in Washington . In fact, it looks suspiciously as if Republicans in the House and Senate, fleeing Congress as if it were New Orleans - it's politely called "retirement", not cutting and running - could even be swept into minority status for a generation.

And now, with a mere 10 "lame-duck" months to go, comes the American economy ...

You don't faintly need to understand economics to grasp the immediate danger. The people overseeing the handling of this crisis have done little these last years but hand money over to the rich, while running American power into the dirt.

Let me review our history lesson for a moment: No to nation-rebuilding, no to city-rebuilding, no to Congressional majority-building ...

Who dares imagine that the people who brought you Iraq , the war, could begin the rebuilding of an economy, or even successfully caulk the cracks in the levees of a system that, in its complexity, puts Iraq 's feeble economy to shame?

In some ways, an administration - whatever its periodic changes of personnel - can be compared to an individual. At a certain age, its urges become predictable, its habits set, its limits largely known. While change may be possible, you wouldn't want to bet your house on it.

So what exactly has the Bush administration proven itself good at? The twin skills of destruction and looting would stand at the top of any list. Perhaps that's because it chose to put its "eggs" in only two baskets - those of the US military and crony corporations.

Awed by the shock-and-awe force of forces that fell into their hands, administration officials moved to transfer as many powers of civil governance as possible to the Pentagon. From diplomacy to disaster relief, nation-building to intelligence gathering, an organization built only to destroy was designated as the go-to outfit for activities normally associated with those who have building in mind.

At the same time, the government was being staffed, top-to-bottom, with ill-prepared political pals, while a small set of crony corporations, of which Halliburton is certainly the best known, was given the nod in every rebuilding situation. It really didn't matter where you looked, they were the ones camped out, making money, on the landscape of destruction. With their no-bid, cost-plus contracts, these companies ran up the hours and then tended to jump ship when the going got bad.

The same corporations that had essentially looted Iraq - it was labeled "reconstruction" - were the first ones called in when New Orleans went down. (Of the initial six contracts the Bush administration offered for the reconstruction of the city, five went to companies previously involved in Iraq 's reconstruction program.)

Unsurprisingly, the Bush administration has proved serially incapable of building anything, even - in the long run - their own machine. And, from the Enron moment to the Bear Stearns one, whenever it looked like the Titanic might have hit an iceberg, it was a lock that those passengers assigned to the limited places in the lifeboats wouldn't be from steerage (or be weighed down with subprime mortgages).

So rebuilding. No. Saving people who aren't already friends. No. Doing a heck of a job in a crisis. No. Now, our latest and greatest crisis is upon us, the sort that, in a matter of weeks, has sent media commentators and pundits from reluctant discussions of whether we might be heading into a recession straight to references to the "d" word, "1929," and the Great Depression. And they're not alone. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll indicates that a startling 59% of Americans already believe we're heading for a long-term depression, not a recession (and 79% are worried about the possibility). Leave the definitional details to the experts. Most Americans have undoubtedly assessed the Bush administration's proven incapacity in perilous times and drawn the logical conclusions.

Ten months is a long, long time when only their hands are near the pilot's wheel of the ship of state and water's already seeping through the hull. It's an eon for an administration capable of sinking New Orleans in a matter of days, and Iraq in little more than months. Or, thought of another way, it's plenty of time if your expertise happens to lie in deconstruction. After all, barring a miracle, you're talking about the little administration that couldn't, no matter how hard Ben Bernanke may try.

So, even if you, like me, know next to nothing about economics, you already know enough to be afraid, very afraid.

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of Victory Culture ( University of Massachusetts Press ), has been updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq .

SECRECY NEWS

from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy

Volume 2008, Issue No. 32

April 2, 2008

DNI ISSUES NEW INFORMATION SHARING STRATEGY

A new "Information Sharing Strategy" from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence warns that traditional security practices that restrict disclosure of information have become counterproductive.

"The Intelligence Community's 'need to know' culture, a necessity during the Cold War, is now a handicap that threatens our ability to uncover, respond, and protect against terrorism and other asymmetric threats," the document declares.

The new Strategy defines information sharing goals and as well as near-term and long-term implementation objectives. Goals include uniform government-wide information policies, improved connectivity, and increased inter-agency collaboration.

Notably absent from the document is any role for the public in information sharing. The DNI Strategy has no place for the notion of an engaged citizenry that has intelligence information needs of its own.

A copy of the new Strategy, which has not yet been released, was obtained by Secrecy News.

See " U.S. Intelligence Community Information Sharing Strategy," February 22, 2008 :

http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/iss.pdf

In December 2007, DNI McConnell issued Intelligence Community Policy Memorandum (ICPM) 2007-500-3 on "Intelligence Information Sharing." A copy of the document, which has not been publicly released, is here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/icpm/2007-500-3.pdf

Two related IC Policy Memoranda, which have been officially released, are these:

"Preparing Intelligence to Meet the Intelligence Community's 'Responsibility to Provide'," ICPM 2007-200-2, December 11, 2007 :

http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/icpm/2007-200-2.pdf

"Unevaluated Domestic Threat Tearline Reports," ICPM 007-500-1, November 19, 2007 :

http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/icpm/2007-500-1.pdf

2003 OLC MEMO ON INTERROGATION DECLASSIFIED

A 2003 memo from the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel that appears to authorize abusive interrogation of suspected unlawful combatants outside the United States was declassified this week.

The memo concludes that criminal statutes that would preclude torture and other forms of physical abuse "do not apply to properly-authorized interrogations of enemy combatants." The memo, authored by John Yoo, was subsequently rescinded, amidst widespread criticism.

From a secrecy policy point of view, the document itself exemplifies the political abuse of classification authority. Though it was classified at the Secret level, nothing in the document could possibly pose a threat to national security, particularly since it is presented as an interpretation of law rather than an operational plan. Instead, it seems self-evident that the legal memorandum was classified not to protect national security but to evade unwanted public controversy.

What is arguably worse is that for years there was no oversight mechanism, in Congress or elsewhere, that was capable of identifying and correcting this abuse of secrecy authority. (Had the ACLU not challenged the withholding of the document in court, it would undoubtedly remain inaccessible.) Consequently, one must assume similar abuses of classification are prevalent.

A copy of the 81-page memorandum on "Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United States," March 14, 2003 , is posted here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/olc-interrogation.pdf

OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTE SEEKS TRANSPARENCY PROGRAM DIRECTOR

The Open Society Institute, a philanthropic foundation founded by George Soros that works to promote democratic governance, is seeking to hire a program director for its work on transparency in the U.S. (Secrecy News has received funding from OSI.)

The OSI transparency program "will use a combination of grantmaking strategies and programmatic initiatives to ensure transparency and effective oversight of government and to protect the integrity of government institutions."

A description of the Program Director position and the desired skills and qualifications may be found here:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2008/04/osi.pdf

THE NORTH KOREAN ECONOMY, AND MORE FROM CRS

Noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service which have not been made readily available to the public include the following.

"The REAL ID Act of 2005: Legal, Regulatory, and Implementation Issues," April 1, 2008 :

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34430.pdf

"The Social Security Number: Legal Developments Affecting Its Collection, Disclosure, and Confidentiality," updated February 21, 2008 :

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL30318.pdf

"Congressional Authority To Limit U.S. Military Operations in Iraq ," updated February 27, 2008 :

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33837.pdf

" Taiwan 's 2008 Presidential Election," April 2, 2008 :

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RS22853.pdf

"The North Korean Economy: Leverage and Policy Analysis," updated March 4, 2008 :

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL32493.pdf

Volume 2008, Issue No. 31

April 1, 2008

A NEW INTELLIGENCE OVERSIGHT TASK FOR GAO

For the first time in six years, the Government Accountability Office has been asked by a congressional intelligence committee to perform an intelligence oversight-related function.

On March 11, Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), an intelligence subcommittee chairwoman, called upon the GAO to review security clearance processes in the intelligence community and to examine the DNI's pilot project on security clearance reform.

The new assignment potentially represents a breakthrough in the longstanding stalemate over GAO's role in intelligence oversight.  Opposition to GAO oversight in the intelligence community combined with resistance from the congressional committee leadership have effectively sidelined GAO since the intelligence committees submitted their last intelligence-related request to GAO in 2002.

Proponents of an increased intelligence oversight role for GAO (including FAS and GAO itself) have argued that not only does GAO possess relevant expertise, but that by sharing the oversight burden

GAO can free the intelligence committees to focus on more specialized oversight functions.

The new GAO assignment was described in a March 12 news release from Rep. Eshoo:

http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2008/03/eshoo.html

It was also noted by me in a letter to the editor of the Washington Post on "Extending the GAO's Reach," March 31:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/30/AR2008033001773.html

The potential role of the GAO in intelligence oversight was addressed in a February 29 hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee chaired by Senator Daniel Akaka.

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2008_hr/index.html#gao

AVOIDING A NUCLEAR ARMS RACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

The likely responses of Saudi Arabia , Egypt and Turkey to Iranian acquisition of a nuclear weapon were considered in a new staff report from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"How are these three countries responding today to the Iranian nuclear program? How would Riyadh , Cairo , and Ankara respond if Tehran were to cross the nuclear threshold and acquire nuclear weapons? Would they pursue nuclear weapons of their own? What factors would influence their decisions? What can the U.S. do now and over the coming years to discourage these countries from pursuing a nuclear weapon of their own?"

"Based on 5 months of research and interviews with hundreds of officials and scholars in the United States and seven Middle Eastern countries, this report attempts to answer these questions."

See "Chain Reaction: Avoiding a Nuclear Arms Race in the Middle East ," Senate Foreign Relations Committee print, February 2008:

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2008_rpt/chain.pdf

JUDICIAL SECRECY AND THE SUNSHINE IN LITIGATION ACT

"Far too often, court-approved secrecy agreements hide vital public health and safety information from the American public, putting lives at stake," observed Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI).

"The secrecy agreements even prevent government officials or consumer groups from learning about and protecting the public from defective and dangerous products."

"Legislation that I've introduced... seeks to restore the appropriate balance between secrecy and openness. Under our bill, the proponent of a protective order must demonstrate to the judge's satisfaction that the order would not restrict the disclosure of information relevant to public health and safety hazards."

Sen. Kohl's proposed remedy, the Sunshine in Litigation Act, was the subject of a recent Senate hearing that has just been published.

See "The Sunshine in Litigation Act: Does Court Secrecy Undermine Public Health and Safety?", Senate Judiciary Committee, December 11, 2007 :

http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2007/sunshine.pdf

MORE EMBLEMS FROM THE PENTAGON'S BLACK WORLD

In what might seem like an April Fool's Day indulgence but isn't, the New York Times today probed further into the emblems that circulate officially or unofficially around classified Defense Department programs (Secrecy News, March 24).

The emblems and patches, gathered by author Trevor Paglen, "reveal a bizarre mix of high and low culture where Latin and Greek mottos frame images of spooky demons and sexy warriors, of dragons dropping bombs and skunks firing laser beams." Several of them are featured in a Times graphic supplement.

See "Inside the Black Budget" by William J. Broad, New York Times, April 1:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01patc.html

Despite Huge Media Campaign, Facts Show Massive Failure In Iraq

‘Handed Over’ to a Government Called Sadr

by Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail

April 2, 2008

Inter Press Service

BAGHDAD - Despite the huge media campaign led by U.S. officials and a complicit corporate-controlled media to convince the world of U.S. success in Iraq , emerging facts on the ground show massive failure

The date March 25 of this year will be remembered as the day of truth through five years of occupation.

“Mehdi army militias controlled all Shia and mixed parts of Baghdad in no time,” a Baghdad police colonel, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. “Iraqi army and police forces as well as Badr and Dawa militias suddenly disappeared from the streets, leaving their armoured vehicles for Mehdi militiamen to drive around in joyful convoys that toured many parts of Baghdad before taking them to their stronghold of Sadr City in the east of Baghdad .”

The police colonel was speaking of the recent clashes between members of the Shia Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army, the largest militia in the country, and members of the Iraqi government forces, that are widely known to comprise members of a rival Shia militia, the Badr Organisation.

Dozens of militiamen from both sides were killed in clashes that broke out in Baghdad , Basra , Kut, Samawa, Hilla and most of the Iraqi Shia southern provinces between the Mehdi Army and other militias supported by the U.S. , Iran and the Iraqi government.

The Badr Organisation militia is headed by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who is also head of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) that dominates the government. The Dawa Party is headed by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

The number of civilians killed and injured in the clashes is still unknown. Iraqi government offices continue to keep largely silent about the events.

“Every resident of Basra knew the situation would explode any minute between these oil thieves, and that Basra would suffer another wave of militia war,” Salman Kathum, a doctor and former resident of Basra who fled for Baghdad last month told IPS.

For months now there has been a struggle between the Sadr Movement, the SIIC, and the al-Fadhila Party for control of the south, and particularly Basra .

Falah Shenshal, an MP allied to al-Sadr, told al-Jazeera Mar. 26 that al-Maliki was targeting political opponents. “They say they target outlaw gangs, but why do they start with the areas where the sons of the Sadr movement are located? This is a political battle…for the political interests of one party (al-Maliki’s Dawa party) because the local elections are coming soon (due later this year).”

The fighting came just as the U.S. military announced the death of their 4,000th soldier in Iraq , and on the heels of a carefully crafted PR campaign designed to show that the “surge” of U.S. troops in Iraq has successfully improved the situation on the ground.

“I wonder what lies General David Petraeus (the U.S. forces commander in Iraq ) will fabricate this time,” Malek Shakir, a journalist in Baghdad told IPS. “The 25th March events revealed the true failure of the U.S. occupation project in Iraq . More complications are expected in the coming days.”

Maliki has himself been in Basra to lead a surge against Mehdi Army militias while the U.S. sent forces to surround Sadr City in an attempt to support their Badr and Dawa allies.

News of limited clashes and air strikes have come from Sadr City , with unofficial reports of many casualties amongst civilians. Curfew in many parts of Baghdad and in four southern provinces had made life difficult already.

“This failure takes Iraq to point zero and even worse,” Brigadier-General Kathum Alwan of the Iraqi army told IPS in Baghdad . “We must admit that the formation of our forces was wrong, as we saw how our officers deserted their posts, leaving their vehicles for militias.”

Alwan added, “Not a single unit of our army and police stood for their duty in Baghdad , leaving us wondering what to do. Most of the officers who left their posts were members of Badr brigades and the Dawa Party, who should have been most faithful to Maliki’s government.”

The Green Zone of Baghdad where the U.S. embassy and the Iraqi government and parliament buildings are located, was hit by missiles. General Petraeus appeared at a press conference to accuse Iran of being behind the shelling of the zone that is supposed to be the safest area in Iraq . At least one U.S. citizen was killed in the attacks, and two others were injured.

“The Green Zone looked deserted as most U.S. and Iraqi personnel were ordered to take shelter deep underground,” an engineer who works for a foreign company in the zone told IPS. “It seemed that this area too was under curfew. No place in Iraq is safe any more.”

Further complicating matters for the occupiers of Iraq , the U.S.-backed Awakening groups, largely comprised of former resistance fighters, are now going on strike to demand overdue payment from the U.S. military.

Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who has reported extensively from Iraq and the Middle East