A former horse riding academy located in Antavilia, Lithuania has been identified as a ‘black site’ for suspected terrorists detained by the CIA says Russia Today. The property which is located in a forest, 20 kilometers northeast of the capital Vilnius, was owned by a local family until March 2004, when it was bought by Elite LLC, a CIA front, registered in Delaware, Panama and Washington, DC.

News first broke at ABC which stated that the Lithuania authorities agreed to this arrangement after a visit by President George W. Bush to that country in 2002 with pledge of US support for its membership to the NATO Alliance. Richard Clarke, an ABC News consultant, and former US counterterrorism czar, noted that “the new members of NATO were so grateful for the U.S. role in getting them into that organization that they would do anything the U.S. asked for during that period. They were eager to please and eager to be cooperative on security and on intelligence matters,” he said. Lithuania, Poland, and Romania were believed to be three eastern European countries where the CIA secretly interrogated suspected high-value al-Qaeda terrorists, using questionable techniques. Read ABC report here.

In Lithuania, over a period of months, tight-lipped contractors from the US converted the riding stables into a large two story building without windows, ringed with metal fences and security cameras. The site may have held as many as eight high valued suspects for more than a year.

The CIA closed that door in 2005, after public disclosure of the black sites program. The “stable” is now owned by the Lithuania Secret Police who refused to allow the networks to visit inside its iron gates. One Lithuanian says she is not particularly proud of her country’s participation in this matter.

So, McAfee have released their fifth Virtual Criminology Report for 2009, Virtually Here: The Age of Cyber Warfare [pdf]. It’s kicking up a huge stink across the wires, largely because of the ‘age of cyberwar is here!’ headlines just begging to be used by editors and screaming bloggers everywhere.

It’s not a big report but it’s not a bad one either. It manages to steer a level-headed line through the discursive melee that is anything to do with cybersecurity these days. It’s core mission is to ‘encourage and frame a global dialogue on protecting our digital resources from the scourge of cyber war’. That last clause is a little dramatic as the report makes it clear that the ’scourge’ is purely a potential one at present, despite its possible precursors in Estonia, Georgia, etc. Its global remit is fulfilled by its contributors, drawn from the US, China, Japan, Australia, UK and South America.

It makes some sensible points about using criminal laws to pursue and prosecute offenders but acknowledges those limits. It addresses the problems with deterrence regimes and international treaties governing use of ‘cyber weapons’, and attempts to parse some of the difficulties in determining between cyber espionage and warfare. Whilst there is an implicit focus on business interests, these are linked to the economic case for cybersecurity. It makes a curious statement about proactive cybersecurity measures avoiding ‘the need for governments to ever contemplate a Big Brother appraoch to cyber security’. I’d rather they just came out straight with saying that was a priori a bad idea.

The central theme is to encourage cross-sector dialogue, particularly in public. It is critical of the current behind-closed-doors mentality, as am I. I don’t hold out much hope for it achieving that goal but it’s one I support.

Don’t read too much into the cover. Cooling towers in a wintry landscape: is that smoke meant to be there? The nuclear accident overtones are fairly clear, although you have to ask what else they could have put on the cover. The infrastructure meltdown theme is continued on page 2 as handsome control-systems-man covers his face with his hand, presumably in despair as the latest SCADA hack releases noxious effluent upon a previously green-and-pleasant land, or some such nasty side-effect of poor cybersecurity. Anyway, that’s just the visuals and I’m not going to criticise them, as there’s not a mushroom cloud anywhere in the report.

In fact, the whole thing’s quite restrained. This is a bit of a surprise, given it was funded by McAfee – huge security vendor – and written by Good Harbor – big consultancy player. I’m sure people better-informed than me will find points to challenge but it’s not a bad document in my view.

Image from Wiki

A commenter asked if I had a source that listed Jim Dahlman as one of Seth Bullock’s Cowboy Brigade, that attended Teddy Roosevelt’s inauguration. I did some searching over the weekend, and found one source, which is noted in the post. NOTE: They incorrectly listed his given name as Bill, rather than Jim.

***

ROUGH RIDERS AND COWBOYS THERE

National Capitol Filled by Throngs for the Inauguration.

QUITE COSMOPOLITAN CROWD

Governors and Staffs in Gold Braided Uniforms, Indians in Blankets and Filipinos Mingle With the Gathering of the Plain People.
[excerpt]

Seth Bullock’s cowboys, fifty-one strong, arrived yesterday afternoon, very tired and thirsty after a thirty-hour ride. The rangers were attired in the conventional cowboy costume. Those in the crowd who expected them to carry six-shooters were not disappointed. Each of Seth’s boys wore a leather bolster, in which was a formidable looking, long barrel gun. Buckskin trousers, gayly decorated shirts and broad-rimmed sombreros composed the uniform in which they were attired.

Cowboys Have a Frolic.

When the contingent got to the nearby hotel, at which they were corraled, all hands washed up and then scattered in twos or threes to see the town. Three of them found the stable where their mounts are being cared for, and getting astride of their horses, started out for a frolic on Pennsylvania avenue. For the edification of the crowd they did a little rope throwing, each man tossing his noose over the head of one of his companions. But this became tiresome after a while and a few exhibition throws were given to the delight of the crowds and the alarm of the diminutive negroes who were invariably the targets.

Last night most of the cowboy company called on Captain Seth at the Shor?ham hotel. They liked the looks of the place and some of them spent the evening there.

The cowboys will be the guest of Senator Kittredge of South Dakota at 9 o’clock breakfast Sunday and in the afternoon will be taken around the city in automobiles. No set programme has been arranged in the meantime, but the whole town is anxious to do them honor and everything is free whenever the cowboys appear in cafes.

The Syracuse Herald (Syracuse, New York) Mar 3, 1905

I saved this picture above, but forgot to note the source, and now I can’t find it again. This lists 40 of the 60 cowboys, and the picture appears to be cut off on the sides, so maybe the rest of them (including Jim Dahlman, who is NOT listed) were off to the side.

By Seth Bullock.

First Sheriff of Deadwood, S.D., Chief of the Black Hills Forest Rangers, Commanding the Cowboy Brigade in the Inaugural Procession.

Washington, Friday — Looking at it from the top of a cayuse, this inauguration appears mighty significant to me. President Roosevelt has already put his mark on the country. Al the end of another four years the Roosevelt brand will be so clear it won’t wear off for many moons.

The crowds in Washington today show the Roosevelt spirit. The people are mostly bright and energetic, typical of the President. It’s just like it is on the range. IF the owner of a ranch is an active, honest, hard-working man, you can tell his cowboys as far as you can see the outfit, by the vigorous way they work. If the owner is dissolute, dishonest or lazy, the cowboys are likely to be the same way.

Now, long before most of us in Dakota knew Roosevelt we used to hear about him.

Cowboys riding down to our country from 150 miles away used to say:

“That fellow Roosevelt up there on the Little Missouri is dead square. He don’t maverick anybody else’s calves. He don’t ask a man to ride a horse he don’t ride, and he don’t make any man stand a watch on the roundup that he ain’t ready to stand himself.”

That is the kind of reputation Roosevelt had in the cattle country, where the things a man does and not what he talks about makes his reputation. He’s no fair weather sailor, and our boys out West know it. That’s the reason sixty boys have come down here with me. Nearly all of them have ridden on the range, and a good many of them used to know Theodore, and they are all strong for him. They have to sell their ponies to get back, all because they wanted to see one of their own people, or rather, a man who had lived with them, and is as much or more a Westerner than Easterner, inaugurated as President.

With Roosevelt in the White House this talk of sectionalism is going to be stamped out. The way this inauguration has brought together Westerners and Easterners and

Northerners and Southerners means a lot to the future of this country.
It looks to me like the people who were coming to this inauguration were the kind who like the man who does real stunts and don’t delay. That’s the reason the cowpunchers like him.

We haven’t any fear of him being too impetuous. You don’t hear any of that talk about him on the range. The boys there just say he has keen and accurate instinct.

The sixty boys with me are not Rough Riders; they are not Black Hills rangers; they are not dime novel heroes or stage robbers. They are cowboys, and as such are the real article, and the reason they are here is because this is the first inauguration of a man who knows them and whom they know as square in the White House as he was on the range.

One of the boys rode 120 miles in twenty-four hours to get his horse on the train before it left Deadwood. We have all ages in the company.

Henry Roberts, who is fifteen, was born on the range, and as good a rider as any one. There are men who have been cowboys for thirty years. Two of the boys belong to the Black Hills Forest Rangers, whose business it is to protect the trees in the Black Hills forest reserve. Most of the rest are from South Dakota and Wyoming.

Theodore has asked the boys to come back to the White House after the procession has passed the reviewing stand. They will ride up to the steps under the porte cochere, where he will stand and shake hands with each man.

Now, that is a mighty nice thing, for some of the boys are bashful and would be lost if the President invited them to the reception. But they are never bashful in the saddle. Every one of them appreciates the chance to shake Theodore’s hand.

I’m willing to bet he will remember each man that he knew when he lived in Dakota. His memory for faces and the names that go with them is certainly wonderful. Blaine’s memory for faces, some persons say, was largely bluff, but it is straight goods with the President.

I remember when he made his last Western trip the boys on the South Dakota range rode to meet him whenever the train stopped at the water tank. OUt of crowds he would single out men whom he had not laid eyes on for twenty years. He would remember exactly where he had last seen them. On that trip he would alwys go out to see the cowboys who rode to meet the train.

“Why,” said he, “those boys have never seen a President of the United States. They have ridden a long way to this train. It’s my duty to go out and speak to them.”

There is a horse with a Maltese cross brand running on the range now, and I tried to get one of the boys to bring it down here, but it could not be arranged. The Roosevelt brand was a Maltese cross., and he branded that horse.

We from out West don’t know all the full made over the questions or precedence. It was necessary for me to go to Mr. Warner’s headquarters today. He is the head of the civic division, and talking to him was a man wearing a uniform that looked like the morning after the Fourth of July. Honest, it would make a cowboy jump over the monument. He was making a great row because his marching club, which had been in every inauguration since the Lord knows when, had been given a place behind the Roosevelt Club of Minneapolis, which had never marched at any inauguration.

“I’ll see what I can do about it,” siad Mr. Warner.

Then I took the uniformed man by the arm. “Don’t kick,” I told him. ‘If you try to change your position, every one else will want to change theirs, and the whole parade will go to smash. We are going to ride wherever we are placed. Anyway, wherever the cowboys are, that is the head of the procession for us. Don’t kick.”

Here is our official poem, by the official poet, Bob Carr:

Us punchers sling no haughty style,
Nor go we much on manners;
We look on dudelets out this way
As only fit for “canners;”
And that is why you hear us cry
We’re always glad and ready
To throw our hats and let a yell
In honor of our Teddy.

The boys are having a first-rate time in Washington. We have no rules except these.

Rule 1. Don’t kick.
Rule 2. Don’t knock.
Rule 3. Neither kick nor knock.
***

Seth Bullock and Teddy Roosevelt

Washington — Say, we found ourselves among a lot of friendly Indians today. The boys like the way the crowd, all the way from Capitol Butte to by White Ranch House, put out their hand.

Not one is sorry he came, especially after the way Theodore met us after we had ranged up past the reviewing stand. He had the boys ride up to the door of the ranch house and shook hands with each, and remembered every one he knew nineteen years ago on the Little Missouri, when he had the Maltese Cross outfit.

Every cowboy in the brigade was mightily impressed with the ceremony today. A lot of them have never been east of the Missouri River, and, although they are as keen as can be found anywhere, this visit to Washington is just the thing they needed to show them what a great country this is.

As far as that goes, I think no one can come to Washington from any part of the United States without being struck by the almighty bigness of the Government. They get an idea, too, what their Representatives are doing for them, and it is a lot. Neither of our Senators from South Dakota nor our Representatives can make his expenses out of his salary.

There is a lot of patriotism in this country, and it certainly stuck out all over this town today.

I saw millionaires waving flags and yelling themselves hoarse for the President, and when we cowboys came along there in front of his reviewing stand we got the glad hand from the President more than any one else we saw.

Compared with the noise made by the plug-hat-and-boiled-shirt political clubs, the cowboy brigade was Quakerish and decorous. To the President it made no difference where a club came from, or whether or not it represented a lot of cash. If the people in the organization were good, clean-cut, likely appearing Americans the President would lean over the rail and wave his hat to them.

Every man in the thirty thousand marching today ought to know, unless he is plumb locoed, that the boy who is now in the White House is game, and will do just what he says — give a square deal to every man. That is the reason the cowboys who are with me came down here. They want to show their appreciation of having one of their own kind of men in the saddle ready to brand every proposition according to his merits, and to rope any job that comes its way, and not ask any man to do anything he isn’t willing to do himself.

A man who is big enough to build the Panama Canal and put irrigation ditches all through the West and make it blossom like a rose and insist on a navy large enough to keep the door open in China is the man for us.

The cowboys in this brigade are a clean cut, sober, industrious lot, and when you find sixty such men who are agreed that the President is O.K. you can just mark it down that their verdict is straight goods.

It meant a lot to us to see those hundreds of thousands of people rounded up in Washington to watch Theodore become President on his own responsibility. It is all right to talk about the splendor of the durbars in India, but they are not to be compared with this. The durbar is an outfit of people who ride and do other stunts because they are ordered to. The people who attend the inaugural do it because they want to. Of course, some of the army and navy are ordered to Washington, but if they were not they would like to come independently.

I am a great believer in the flag and the effect it has on gatherings like these. The best thing for this country would be for every man and woman to get a chance to come to Washington and rub up against people from other ranges.

Some of the boys are pretty much impressed with the number of white people in the East.

They put us pretty well back in the procession, but we did not care, for our rules are, “Don’t kick, don’t knock; neither kick nor knock.”

We were formed down near the Capitol and the critters stood the waiting pretty well. They are used to brilliant Western sunsets, but that was the only thing that saved them from bolting when these gold lace Governors’ staffs went loping by.

We are going to have an auction on Monday, and all the cayuses will be knocked down to the highest bidder. They will make mighty good polo ponies, although their past work has been mostly chasing wayward, stray cattle, instead of a little white ball. They have to be sold so the boys will have enough money to get home on. Then some of them want a little cash to blow in over in New York, where they are going before they start back to the range.

These boys can go some if necessary, but there are not likely to be any fireworks from them in New York. They just want to learn the difference between the taste of salt water and prairie hay.

We will all be gone from Washington pretty soon. It has been a great round-up — about the most successful ever held, I guess. Theodore certainly did make good medicine.

The Galveston Daily News (Galveston, Texas) Mar 8, 1905

Alexander O. Brodie (Image from www.arlingtoncemetery.net)

BRODIE AND BULLOCK

Fine Types of the American Western Frontiersman.

BOTH FRIENDS OF PRESIDENT.

Brodie Has Been Regular Army Officer, Indian Fighter, Civil Engineer, Rough Rider, and Territorial Governor — Seth Bullock, Sheriff, Cowpuncher, and an All-around “Good ‘Bad Man.’”

A notable figure in the escort accompanying President Roosevelt from the White House to the Capitol yesterday and again in the grand parade which later swept up the Avenue was that of Col. Alexander O. Brodie at the head of the Rough Riders, President Roosevelt’s old Spanish war regiment. Col. Brodie and his men were recognized at every point along the route and greeted with generous applause.

Col. Brodie is a typical frontiersman, but he is much more than that. He has been cadet at West Point, officer in the regular army, Indian fighter, civil and mining engineer, major and lieutenant in the Rough Riders under Col. Roosevelt, and until recently governor of the Territory of Arizona. He came to Washington about ten days ago and was sworn in as major in the regular army and was assigned to be assistant to the military secretary, United States army.

Col. Brodie was graduated from West Point in 1870 and assigned immediately to the First United States Cavalry. With that regiment he saw stirring service on the frontier for seven years’ fighting Indians all over the Western border. He was in the hard campaign against the White Mountain Indians in 1871, with Gen. Brooke in all of that gallant officer’s fights in 1872 and 1873, and in the fierce Nez Perce campaign of 1877. Then he resigned from the army, and for twenty years practiced civil and mining engineering in the West.

When the Rough Rider regiment was organized at the beginning of the Spanish war in 1898, Brodie jumped to the front, and was commissioned major, and upon the promotion of Col. Wood and Lieut. Col. Roosevelt, he was advanced to the position of second in command, an office he held when the regiment was mustered out at the close of the war.

Col. Brodie enjoys the personal friendship of President Roosevelt. They were very “chummy” during the campaign in Cuba. It is not strange that President Roosevelt should have desired that a detachment of his old command should have a position of honor in the inaugural parade, nor that he should have selected Col. Brodie to lead it.

Seth Bullock’s Cowboys.

Another feature of the parade was Seth Bullock’s cowboys,, seventy-five in number mounted on their Western bronchos and headed by the redoubtable Seth himself. Sheriff Bullock is the sheriff of Deadwood, S.D., and he is what might be termed “a good ‘bad man.’” He is the idol of all the South Dakota cow-punchers and has the reputation of having “rounded up” more truly “bad men” than any other official in all the wild West. Like Col. Brodie, he enjoys the personal friendship of President Roosevelt. In line with Seth Bullock’s “bunch” were cow-punchers of no less renown than “Deadwood Dick” Clarke, the once famous scout, bandit, hunter, and leader of the shotgun men who guarded the old Wells-Fargo treasure coaches from Deadwood to civilization more than a quarter of a century ago. “Tex” Burgess, the king of the cowboys on the big Hyannis range in Nebraska, was another prominent figure in the unique organization. Seth Bullock, “Deadwood Dick,” Clarke and “Tex” Burgess are all men of types that with the advance of civilization are fast disappearing from the Western plains and will soon have passed away altogether. The once famous “Deadwood Dick,” the hero of the dime novels of twenty-five years ago, and the man who in pioneer days was the terror of evildoers in Dakota, and performed miraculous feats of daring, is now a workman in plain blue overalls in the railway yards at Lead, a town not far from Deadwood.

Richard Clarke (aka Deadwood Dick)

Lots of great pictures at FARWEST.IT, which is where I found the  above picture. The website is in Spanish.

“Deadwood Dick” Praises President.

When “Deadwood Dick” was asked by Seth Bullock to come along to Washington to help inaugurate President Roosevelt he wrote back, saying:

“Sure, I’ll go down to Washington to see Teddy inaugurated. We old Westerners feel that he is one of us and shall be glad to help give him a send-off. I reckon the cowpunchers will cut quite a figure when they get down there, but they will be no novelty to the President, for he used to be one of them himself, you know. But a good many other folks will look on ‘em with a good deal of interest and curiosity. I think he is doin’ the right thing in invitin’ the boys to take part in the show. It tickles ‘em nearly to death to know that he wants ‘em to ride their cayuses in the parade. Some of the boys used to know ‘Teddy’ when he was a rancher out West, and they all have a mighty warm spot in their hearts for him.”

Tex Burgess

The above picture (I cropped it) can be found in the book, The Overland Monthly (Google Books,) which contains the essay/article, A Cowboy Carnival: A Veracious Chronicle of a Stirring Incident by Ella Thorngate; pgs 50-60. The article includes other names, such as Doc Middleton, who is also in the uncropped picture.

Texas Burgess’ Comments.

“Tex” Burgess, who rode his pony all the way from Hyannis, Neb., to Belle Fourche, S.D., to join the cowboys on the trip to Washington, said, when he was invited to join the expedition:

“You just bet I’m goin’. I wouldn’t miss it for $1,000. We all want to go, but Capt. Bullock says he can’t accommodate all of us, so some of us will have to stay at home. Most of those who are goin’ are from the Black Hills. Only a few will come from the Hyannis and other ranges in Nebraska. I wished to go, and Capt. Bullock has promised to take me. ‘Billy’ Binder and ‘Doc’ Williams, and some of the others of the more noted riders in this region want to go, too, but I don’t know whether they will. We are mighty pleased at the invitation to take part in the show.”

Washington Post, The (Washington, D.C.) Mar 5, 1905

Image from http://4simpsons.files.wordpress.com

**This is the article mentioned at the beginning of the post, which names Dahlman as one of the “cowboys” who attended the inauguration. **Note: They got his first name wrong.

WASHINGTON, AFLUTTER, DONNING GALA ATTIRE

Imposing Court of Honor in Pennsylvania Avenue.

INAUGURATION GAYETY BEGUN

Glee Clubs Parade and Serenade and Cowboys Make Things Lively —

Scenes in the Streets.

Special to The New York Times. [excerpt]

Seth Bullock’s cowboys have started in on the time of their lives. They are sixty strong, and have brought two carloads of the best bronchos and cayuse ponies they could find in Nebraska and the Black Hills.

It would be absolutely impossible to pick a matched pair in the lot. Every color known in the Western cowboy horse stock is represented. They are dun, gray, calico, mouse-colored, bay, black, white, chestnut, piebald, and even the much loved blue bronco type is there. The blue bronco is the toughest horse ever made. The cowboys brought numerous saddles and abundance of trappings.
Cowboys “Feel of” the Asphalt.

To-day they geared up and went out to “feel of” the asphalt, of which they had been warned. It has happened at inaugurations that cavorting horses have slipped and thrown their riders. On one occasion an officer suffered a broken leg. On another Gen. Miles fell with his horse in the plaza in front of the Capitol Hotel.

The negro stableboys have been struck with wonder at the antics of the Westerners. The fun began when Bill [Jim] Dahlman, the boon friend of William J. Bryan, whirled out into the street from the corral where the cowboys keep their ponies, and with a yell said “Good-bye.”

The next moment there was another yell, this time from a colored boy standing by, who had been swiftly roped by Dahlman.

From that time on it was touch and go with a score or two of cowboys and the negroes standing around. The cowboys, some of whom are bankers, State officials, and lawyers who have at some time or other followed the range, wore their chaps and spurs and their tailor-made coats and overcoats and derby hats. This they will do when riding for practice or to get the hang of the town, but they have come with their full regalia, including lariats, quirts, chaps, ladigoes, twenty-ounce hats, and big red neckerchiefs, and will wear the whole outfit on Saturday, and when they get down to business of paying their respects to the town.

They had a job to-day shoeing their ponies. Thirty of them had never been shod and were unused to the etiquette of Mike McCormick’s blacksmith shop, where the operation was performed. They boys stayed by and it was a jolly scene. Some of the ponies had to be thrown, and with two men sitting on them Mike went ahead with the work as best he could.

A squad of cowboys during the afternoon rode the length of Pennsylvania Avenue, cutting in and out between street cars and passing vehicles with wonderful skill and at high speed. They roped colored boys again, and now and then a peanut vendor or a dog, and wound up by roping each other and getting all tied up in a bunch, in which manner they rode home and disentangled and unsaddled for the night.

Monday they will put the whole lot of horses up at auction for polo ponies, hoping to get what they cost and possibly the expense of transportation out of them.

The New York Times, Mar 3, 1905

Link to the actual news article is HERE. (PDF)

BULLOCK’S BOYS SELL PONIES.

Cow Punchers’ Exhibition Takes on a Commercial Aspect.

Capt. Seth Bullock’s cowboys sold their wild Western broncos at the Seventh street baseball park yesterday afternoon, but because of the rain and the soft condit on the ground the “stunts” which a large crowd of people went out to see were postponed until to-day at the same hour. No steers were tied — there were no steers — and there were no races. As it was, the ponies cut up the diamond and the outfield with their hoofs while the cowboys were showing off their points and a steam roller will probably be in demand before the ball season opens.

The spectators in spite of the cold rain were enthusiastic. They stood ankle deep in mud and slush and were spattered with mud with good grace while watching the little riding which the bronco busters performed in order to show how gentle their horses were. The ponies brought from $45 to $90, but only five were sold. One or two of the best animals were held at $100 by their owners, and the cowboys expect to dispose of these before they go to their homes in the West.

Capt. Bullock directed the sale and under his supervision the boys put their ponies through the paces, ran them and walked them past the buyers while the cowboys themselves alternated as auctioneers and knocked the beasts down to the highest bidders. Some of the purchasers looked at their newly-acquired horses with misgiving, looked them in the teeth, so to speak. Most of the horses were stripped of them cowboy saddles and sent off to livery stables to be clipped and Easternized. A few of the bolder buyers tried their ponies out on the spot and the cowboys had a lot of fun seeing the city chaps in derbys and overcoats scampering across the park range, clinging to the pommels, and scattering lead pencils and other belongings at every jump.

The exhibition postponed from yesterday will be given to day, rain or shine. It is the special wish of those in charge of the inauguration exercises that the cowboys receive the hearty co-operation of the citizens, as they came a long distance and have added so much to the entertainment of the people, as well as showing the type of man who spends his life on the plains of the far West.

Capt. Bullock took great care in selecting this company of men and each is a splendid specimen of manhood and all are adept in some particular accomplishment, which will add to the enjoyment of the exhibit. The programme is replete with thrilling and amusing events, and will positively take place to day at 2:30 p.m.

Washington Post, The (Washington, D.C.) Mar 8, 1905

Lt. Gen. Retired Hamid Gul

by Jeremy R. Hammond

[Note for WoP readers: Gen. Hamid Gul, the former head of Pakistan’s ISI, has been a key player of once the US-Pakistani covert operations in Afghanistan. At that time all three actors on the Afghan stage, the US, Pakistan and the Mujahideen, were all united against the Soviets.

Gen. Hamid Gul’s views on US involvement in Afghanistan during the Afghan resistance, the Pakistani support to the Mujahideen, the 9/11 tragedy (which he quite frequently refers to “as an inside job”) are already well known. We covered his two previous sessions, one with Alex Jones (here, here, here and the other with Ahmed Quraishi already in our issues of April and June 2009.

The most startling part, however, of his current interview to Jeremy R. Hammond of Foreign Policy Journal is his disclosure on record production of opium in today’s Afghanistan, right under the nose of US and NATO forces as well as the puppet regime of Hamid Karzai, all going unchecked!

When he describes the involvement of President’s brother Ahmad Wali Karzai, who is also the governor of Kandahar province, his wheeling dealing in poppy trade, one cannot overlook the role of White House staffers in propping up a regime that from head to toe is smeared in the sleaze of Afghanistan’s narco trade.

Another sensation is his statement that heroin is being smuggled out of Afghanistan in jet aircrafts as well. Now this is a very serious issue; not even a warlord or a narco smuggler would dare or afford to indulge in such an operation. Obviously this can happen only under the protection and or with the connivance of the regime in power. Question now arises: who benefits from this large scale production and smuggling of poppy thing from Afghanistan, the Taliban or the regime or the forces that oppose them? Go through the following post and you will get the answer from none else than General Gul himself. Nayyar]

In his current interview with Foreign Policy Journal, retired Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul responds to charges that he supports terrorism, discusses 9/11 and ulterior motives for the war on Afghanistan, claims that the U.S., Israel, and India are behind efforts to destabilize Pakistan, and charges the U.S. and its allies with responsibility for the lucrative Afghan drug trade.

Retired Lieutenant General Hamid Gul was the Director General of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) from 1987 to 1989, during which time he worked closely with the CIA to provide support for the mujahedeen fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Though once deemed a close ally of the United States, in more recent years his name has been the subject of considerable controversy. He has been outspoken with the claim that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were an “inside job”. He has been called “the most dangerous man in Pakistan”, and the U.S. government has accused him of supporting the Taliban, even recommending him to the United Nations Security Council for inclusion on the list of international terrorists.

In an exclusive interview with Foreign Policy Journal, I asked the former ISI chief what his response was to these allegations. He replied, “Well, it’s laughable I would say, because I’ve worked with the CIA and I know they were never so bad as they are now.” He said this was “a pity for the American people” since the CIA is supposed to act “as the eyes and ears” of the country. As for the charge of him supporting the Taliban, “it is utterly baseless. I have no contact with the Taliban, nor with Osama bin Laden and his colleagues.” He added, “I have no means, I have no way that I could support them, that I could help them.”

After the Clinton administration’s failed attempt to assassinate Osama bin Laden in 1998, some U.S. officials alleged that bin Laden had been tipped off by someone in Pakistan to the fact that the U.S. was able to track his movements through his satellite phone. Counter-terrorism advisor to the National Security Council Richard Clarke said, “I have reason to believe that a retired head of the ISI was able to pass information along to Al Qaeda that the attack was coming.” And some have speculated that this “retired head of the ISI” was none other than Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul.

When I put this charge to him, General Gul pointed out to me that he had retired from the ISI on June 1, 1989, and from the army in January, 1992. “Did you share this information with the ISI?” he asked. “And why haven’t you taken the ISI to task for parting this information to its ex-head?” The U.S. had not informed the Pakistan army chief, Jehangir Karamat, of its intentions, he said. So how could he have learned of the plan to be able to warn bin Laden? “Do I have a mole in the CIA? If that is the case, then they should look into the CIA to carry out a probe, find out the mole, rather than trying to charge me. I think these are all baseless charges, and there’s no truth in it…. And if they feel that their failures are to be rubbed off on somebody else, then I think they’re the ones who are guilty, not me.”

General Gul turned our conversation to the subject of 9/11 and the war on Afghanistan. “You know, my position is very clear,” he said. “It’s a moral position that I have taken. And I say that America has launched this aggression without sufficient reasons. They haven’t even proved the case that 9/11 was done by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.” He argued that “There are many unanswered questions about 9/11,” citing examples such as the failure to intercept any of the four planes after it had become clear that they had been hijacked. He questioned how Mohammed Atta, “who had had training on a light aircraft in Miami for six months” could have maneuvered a jumbo jet “so accurately” to hit his target (Atta was reportedly the hijacker in control of American Airlines Flight 11, which was the first plane to hit its target, striking the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 am). And he made reference to the flight that hit the Pentagon and the maneuver its pilot had performed, dropping thousands of feet while doing a near 360 degree turn before plowing into its target. “And then, above all,” he added, “why have no heads been rolled? The FBI, the CIA, the air traffic control — why have they not been put to question, put to task?” Describing the 9/11 Commission as a “cover up”, the general added, “I think the American people have been made fools of. I have my sympathies with them. I like Americans. I like America. I appreciate them. I’ve gone there several times.”

At this point in our discussion, General Gul explained how both the U.S. and United Kingdom stopped granting him an entry visa. He said after he was banned from the U.K., “I wrote a letter to the British government, through the High Commissioner here in Islamabad, asking ‘Why do you think that — if I’m a security risk, then it is paradoxical that you should exclude me from your jurisdiction. You should rather nab me, interrogate me, haul me up, take me to the court, whatever you like. I mean, why are you excluding me from the U.K., it’s not understandable.’ I did not receive a reply to that.” He says he sent a second letter inviting the U.K. to send someone to question him in Pakistan, if they had questions about him they wanted to know. If the U.S. wants to include him on the list of international terrorists, Gul reasons, “I am still prepared to let them grant me the visa. And I will go…. If they think that there is something very seriously wrong with me, why don’t you give me the visa and catch me then?”

They lack character’

I turned to the war in Afghanistan, observing that the ostensible purpose for the war was to bring the accused mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, to justice. And yet there were plans to overthrow the Taliban regime that predated 9/11. The FBI does not include the 9/11 attacks among the crimes for which bin Laden is wanted. After the war began, General Tommy Franks responded to a question about capturing him by saying, “We have not said that Osama bin Laden is a target of this effort.” The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers, similarly said afterward, “Our goal has never been to get bin Laden.” And President George W. Bush himself said, “I truly am not that concerned about him.” These are self-serving statements, obviously, considering the failure to capture bin Laden. But what, I asked General Gul, in his view, were the true reasons for the invasion of Afghanistan, and why the U.S. is still there?

“A very good question,” he responded. “I think you have reached the point precisely.”It is a “principle of war,” he said, “that you never mix objectives. Because when you mix objectives then you end up with egg on your face. You face defeat. And here was a case where the objectives were mixed up. Ostensibly, it was to disperse al Qaeda, to get Osama bin Laden. But latently, the reasons for the offensive, for the attack on Afghanistan, were quite different.”

First, he says, the U.S. wanted to “reach out to the Central Asian oilfields” and “open the door there”, which “was a requirement of corporate America, because the Taliban had not complied with their desire to allow an oil and gas pipeline to pass through Afghanistan. UNOCAL is a case in point. They wanted to keep the Chinese out. They wanted to give a wider security shield to the state of Israel, and they wanted to include this region into that shield. And that’s why they were talking at that time very hotly about ‘greater Middle East’. They were redrawing the map.”

Second, the war “was to undo the Taliban regime because they had enforced Shariah”, or Islamic law, which, “in the spirit of that system, if it is implemented anywhere, would mean an alternative socio-monetary system. And that they would never approve.”

Third, it was “to go for Pakistan’s nuclear capability”, something that used to be talked about “under their lip”, “but now they are openly talking about”. This was the reason the U.S. “signed this strategic deal with India, and this was brokered by Israel. So there is a nexus now between Washington, Tel Aviv, and New Delhi.”

While achieving some of these aims, “there are many things which are still left undone,” he continued, “because they are not winning on the battlefield. And no matter what maps you draw in your mind, no matter what plans you make, if you cannot win on the battlefield, then it comes to naught. And that is what is happening to America.”

“Besides, the American generals, I have a professional cudgel with them,” Gul added. “They lack character. They know that a job cannot be done, because they know —I cannot believe that they didn’t realize that the objectives are being mixed up here — they could not stand up to men like Rumsfeld and to Dick Cheney. They could not tell them. I think they cheated the American nation, the American people. This is where I have a problem with the American generals, because a general must show character. He must say that his job cannot be done. He must stand up to the politicians. But these generals did not stand up to them.”

As a further example of the lack of character in the U.S. military leadership, the General Gul cited the “victory” in Iraq. “George Bush said that it was a victory. That means the generals must have told him ‘We have won!’ They had never won. This was all bunkum, this was all bullshit.”

Segueing back to Afghanistan, he continued: “And if they are now saying that with 17,000 more troops they can win in Afghanistan — or even double that figure if you like — they cannot. Now this is a professional opinion I am giving. And I will give this sound opinion for the good of the American people, because I am a friend of the American people and that is why I always say that your policies are flawed. This is not the way to go.” Furthermore, the war is “widely perceived as a war against Islam. And George Bush even used the word ‘Crusade.’” This is an incorrect view, he insisted. “You talk about clash of civilizations. We say the civilizations should meet.”

Alluding once more to the U.S. charges against him, he added, “And if they think that my criticism is tantamount to opposition to America, this is totally wrong, because there are lots of Americans themselves who are not in line with the American policies.” He had warned early on, he informed me, including in an interview with Rod Nordland in Newsweek immediately following the 9/11 attacks, that the U.S. would be making a mistake to go to war. “So, if you tell somebody, ‘Don’t jump into the well!’ and that somebody thinks you are his enemy, then what is it that you can say about him?”

‘This state of anger is being fueled’

I turned the conversation towards the consequences of the war in Afghanistan on Pakistan, and the increased extremist militant activities within his own country’s borders, where the Pakistani government has been at war with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP, or Pakistan Taliban). I observed that the TTP seemed well funded and supplied and asked Gul how the group obtains financing and arms.

And here comes the RAMA…

He responded without hesitation. “Yeah, of course they are getting it from across the Durand line, from Afghanistan. And the Mossad is sitting there, RAW is sitting there — the Indian intelligence agency — they have the umbrella of the U.S. And now they have created another organization which is called RAMA. It may be news to you that very soon this intelligence agency — of course, they have decided to keep it covert — but it is Research and Analysis Milli Afghanistan. That’s the name. The Indians have helped create this organization, and its job is mainly to destabilize Pakistan.”

General Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, former Deputy Minister of Defense of the Northern Alliance under Ahmad Shah Massoud and the Chief of Staff of the Afghan National Army since 2002 — “whom I know very well”, General Gul told me — “had gone to India a few days back, and he has offered bases to India, five of them: three on the border, the eastern border with Pakistan, from Asadabad, Jalalabad, and Kandhar; one in Shindand, which is near Herat; and the fifth one is near Mazar-e Sharif. So these bases are being offered for a new game unfolding there.” This is why, he asserted, the Indians, despite a shrinking economy, have continued to raise their defense budget, by 20 percent last year and an additional 34 percent this year.

He also cited as evidence of these designs to destabilize Pakistan the U.S. Predator drone attacks in Waziristan, which have “angered the Pathan people of that tribal belt. And this state of anger is being fueled. It is that fire that has been lit, is being fueled, by the Indian intelligence from across the border. Of course, Mossad is right behind them. They have no reason to be sitting there, and there’s a lot of evidence. I hope the Pakistan government will soon be providing some of the evidence against the Indians.”

Several days after I had first spoken with General Gul, the news hit the headlines that the leader of the TTP, Baitullah Mehsud, had been killed by a CIA drone strike. So I followed up with him and asked him to comment about this development. “When Baitullah Mehsud and his suicide bombers were attacking Pakistan armed forces and various institutions,” he said, “at that time, Pakistan intelligence were telling the Americans that Baitullah Mehsud was here, there. Three times, it has been written by the Western press, by the American press — three times the Pakistan intelligence tipped off America, but they did not attack him. Why have they now announced — they had money on him — and now attacked and killed him, supposedly? Because there were some secret talks going on between Baitullah Mehsud and the Pakistani military establishment. They wanted to reach a peace agreement, and if you recall there is a long history of our tribal areas, whenever a tribal militant has reached a peace agreement with the government of Pakistan, Americans have without any hesitation struck that target.” Among other examples, the former ISI chief said “an agreement in Bajaur was about to take place” when, on October 30, 2006, a drone struck a madrassa in the area, an attack “in which 82 children were killed”.

‘Very, very disturbing indeed’

Turning the focus of our discussion to the Afghan drug problem, I noted that the U.S. mainstream corporate media routinely suggest that the Taliban is in control of the opium trade. However, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Anti-Government Elements (or AGEs), which include but are not limited to the Taliban, account for a relatively small percentage of the profits from the drug trade. Two of the U.S.’s own intelligence agencies, the CIA and the DIA, estimate that the Taliban receives about $70 million a year from the drugs trade. That may seem at first glance like a significant amount of money, but it’s only about two percent of the total estimated profits from the drug trade, a figure placed at $3.4 billion by the UNODC last year.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has just announced its new strategy for combating the drug problem: placing drug traffickers with ties to insurgents —and only drug lords with ties to insurgents — on a list to be eliminated. The vast majority of drug lords, in other words, are explicitly excluded as targets under the new strategy. Or, to put it yet another way, the U.S. will be assisting to eliminate the competition for drug lords allied with occupying forces or the Afghan government and helping them to further corner the market.

[Right, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. During his tenure, opium production has gone higher by 150 percent than it used to be inthe  pre-Taliban years. Taliban had brougt it down from 4500 tons to just 50 tons, which has now reached 6200 tons, says Gen. Gul]

I pointed out to the former ISI chief that Afghan opium finds its way into Europe via Pakistan, via Iran and Turkey, and via the former Soviet republics. According to the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, convoys under General Rashid Dostum — who was reappointed last month to his government position as Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Afghan National Army by President Hamid Karzai — would truck the drugs over the border. And President Karzai’s own brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, has been accused of being a major drug lord. So I asked General Gul who was really responsible for the Afghan drug trade.

[Left, Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of President Hamid Karzai, is himself known as a big drug lord of Afghanistan]

“Now, let me give you the history of the drug trade in Afghanistan,” his answer began. “Before the Taliban stepped into it, in 1994 — in fact, before they captured Kabul in September 1996 — the drugs, the opium production volume was 4,500 tons a year. Then gradually the Taliban came down hard upon the poppy growing. It was reduced to around 50 tons in the last year of the Taliban. That was the year 2001. Nearly 50 tons of opium produced. 50. Five-zero tons. Now last year the volume was at 6,200 tons. That means it has really gone one and a half times more than it used to be before the Taliban era.” He pointed out, correctly, that the U.S. had actually awarded the Taliban for its effective reduction of the drug trade. On top of $125 million the U.S. gave to the Taliban ostensibly as humanitarian aid, the State Department awarded the Taliban $43 million for its anti-drug efforts. “Of course, they made their mistakes,” General Gul continued. “But on the whole, they were doing fairly good. If they had been engaged in meaningful, fruitful, constructive talks, I think it would have been very good for Afghanistan.”

Referring to the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, General Gul told me in a later conversation that Taliban leader “Mullah Omar was all the time telling that, look, I am prepared to hand over Osama bin Laden to a third country for a trial under Shariah. Now that is where — he said [it] twice — and they rejected this. Because the Taliban ambassador here in Islamabad, he came to me, and I asked him, ‘Why don’t you study this issue, because America is threatening to attack you. So you should do something.’ He said, ‘We have done everything possible.’ He said, ‘I was summoned by the American ambassador in Islamabad’ — I think Milam was the ambassador at that time — and he told me that ‘I said, “Look, produce the evidence.” But he did not show me anything other than cuttings from the newspapers.’ He said, ‘Look, we can’t accept this as evidence, because it has to stand in a court of law. You are prepared to put him on trial. You can try him in the United Nations compound in Kabul, but it has to be a Shariah court because he’s a citizen under Shariah law. Therefore, we will not accept that he should be immediately handed over to America, because George Bush has already said that he wants him “dead or alive”, so he’s passed the punishment, literally, against him.” Referring to the U.S. rejection of the Taliban offer to try bin Laden in Afghanistan or hand him over to a third country, General Gul added, “I think this is a great opportunity that they missed.”

Returning to the drug trade, General Gul named the brother of President Karzai, Abdul Wali Karzai. “Abdul Wali Karzai is the biggest drug baron of Afghanistan,” he stated bluntly. He added that the drug lords are also involved in arms trafficking, which is “a flourishing trade” in Afghanistan. “But what is most disturbing from my point of view is that the military aircraft, American military aircraft are also being used. You said very rightly that the drug routes are northward through the Central Asia republics and through some of the Russian territory, and then into Europe and beyond. But some of it is going directly. That is by the military aircraft. I have so many times in my interviews said, ‘Please listen to this information, because I am an aware person.’ We have Afghans still in Pakistan, and they sometimes contact and pass on the stories to me. And some of them are very authentic. I can judge that. So they are saying that the American military aircraft are being used for this purpose. So, if that is true, it is very, very disturbing indeed.”

Jeremy R. Hammond is the Editor of Foreign Policy Journal, an online source for news, critical analysis, and opinion commentary on U.S. foreign policy. His articles have been featured and cited in numerous other print and online publications around the world. He has appeared in interviews on the GCN radio network, Talk Nation Radio, and Press TV’s Middle East Today program.

Courtesy: Global Research Posted: August 20, 2009 Title Photo: rediff.com

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the ‘Wonders of Pakistan’. The contents of this article too are the sole responsibility of the author(s). WoP will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this post.

YOUR COMMENT IS IMPORTANT

DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF YOUR COMMENT

Noor Huda Ismail, Direktur Lembaga Internasional untuk Perdamaian (17/7) mengatakan bahwa SBY terlalu dini menyimpulkan aksi bom Hotel JW Marriott dan Ritz Carlton di Jakarta terkait Pilpres 2009. Dan bukan kebetulan jika tulisannya bersama koleganya, Carl Ungerer, Direktur National Security Project dari Australian Strategic Policy Institure, yang dimuat The Australian edisi 17.07.2009 ; mengingatkan kita semua bahwa anggota KJI (Kelompok Jemaah Islamiyah) masih merancang aksi teror.

Keduanya meyakini, KJI sekarang tidak seperti dulu. Para pemimpinnya dipenjara atau diawasi. Meskipun ada beberapa upaya, anggota garis keras dalam JI, semisal Noordin M. Top, tapi tidak bisa mengulangi teror berskala besar seperti antara 2002 dan 2005.  Dengan demikian sebagian besar analis percaya bahwa ancaman JI berkurang dan aksi pemboman skala besar yang mahal tampaknya sulit dilakukan.

Tapi Noor Huda dan Ungerer mengingatkan, ada dua perkembangan termutakhir yang bisa mengubah penilaian sebagian besar analis itu. Pertama, memang kepemimpinan JI sedang kacau, terbelah menjadi beberapa faksi, dan tidak memiliki rencana yang jelas. Sementara, pembebasan beberapa narapidana anggota JI sekitar 100 orang, termasuk beberapa yang menolak rehabilitasi, mungkin sedang mengisi kembali semangatnya untuk melakukan teror. Beberapa diantara mereka adalah Abu Tholut, bekas komandan wilayah dan pelatih militer di Kamp Hudaibiyah, Mindanao, Filipina Selatan dan Sunarto bin Kartodiharjo alias Adung, bekas pemimpin JI yang menolak upaya untuk mengubah haluannya. Mereka yang berhaluan keras inilah yang sekarang didukung penuh oleh kelompok-kelompok baru yang lebih muda.

Kedua, para aktifis baru ini tidak lagi merasa perlu untuk menunggu fatwa ulama berpengaruh, melainkan mencari pembenaran atas tindakannya melalui internet. Namun dalam perekrutan, mereka masih menggunakan metode tradisional seperti di sekolah-sekolah, jaringan kekeluargaan, pertemanan dan kelompok kecil diskusi. Kelompok kecil diskusi ini terdiri dari enam sampai 10 orang, bertemu teratur untuk kegiatan sosial dan keagamaan. Kelompok baru ini memanfaatkan TI seperti DVD, e-mail, laman, SMS dan forum yang terlindungi sandi. Sehingga menyulitkan aparat untuk mencegah potensi kekerasan dari aksi mereka.

Bagaimana mengatasi perkembangan baru ini ? Noor Huda dan Ungerer punya resep. Yaitu keduanya mengusulkan, selain tetap harus mengidentifikasi dan menetralkan kelompok-kelompok tersebut, pemerintah juga mesti mengatasi masalah pengangguran, kemiskinan, dan korupsi yang ternyata berperan besar menjalarkan ideologi kekerasan. Sebuah konperensi di Singapura merekomendasikan agar pemerintah bekerja sama dengan Ormas Islam seperti Muhammadiyah dan Nadhlatul Ulama (NU) untuk melawan ideologi radikal. Kendati bisa saja hasilnya kecil, sebab kelompok sempalan ini tidak sudi mendengarkan Ormas Islam besar. Di sisi lain Ormas Islam besar juga tidak memahami sepenuhnya watak dasar dan dinamika kelompok sempalan ini.  Jadi cara yang terbaik menurut Noor Huda dan Ungerer adalah memberdayakan mantan pemimpin militan, semisal para veteran Perang Afghanistan dan Filipina, yang masih dipercaya oleh kelompok-kelompok baru ini.

Apa yang diungkapkan Noor Huda dan Ungerer diatas, tampaknya juga sejalan dengan pendapat Step Vaesen, koresponden Al Jazeera ; yang memiliki kontak dengan KJI, menyatakan bahwa KJI sama sekali tidak terlibat dalam serangan di Jakarta.

Sementara pada sisi lainnya, seperti pengamat isu terorisme Rohan Gunaratna dari S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapura dan Richard Clarke, mantan Kepala Kontraterorisme Gedung Putih yang sekarang menjadi konsultan ABC News, berpendapat bahwa tetap peledakan yang terjadi mengindikasikan keterlibatan Noordin M. Top alias para pemain lama. Untuk hal ini disetujui oleh Clive Williams dari Pusat Studi dan Pertahanan di Canberra, Australia.

Terlepas dari semuanya, Senior Advisor untuk Program Asia International Crisis Group Sydney Jones, belum bisa memastikan pelaku pemboman. Hanya, jika analisis tentang bom bunuh diri berdasarkan fakta ditemukannya kepala yang terpisah dari tubuhnya itu benar, bisa jadi pelakunya mengarah pada kelompok lama. Hanya apakah pengeboman itu terkait pilpres atau kedatangan MU (Manchester United), Sydney lebih meyakini, jika mengacu pada pola yang lalu, pengeboman sudah direncanakan dua – tiga bulan sebelumnya. Hanya ia tidak tahu kenapa peristiwa terjadinya saat ini. Tapi satu hal tentunya yang menentukan saat dan waktu pengeboman adalah kesiapan dari para pelaku sendiri.

Sumber  :  Kompas dan Surya, 18.07.2009

Richard Clarke wrote a piece in the Washington Post  that apparently touched a sore spot for Dick Cheney.

Speaking at the National Press Club on 06/01/2009, Dick Cheney with a straight face suggests that Dick Clarke ‘missed it’ in reference to the attacks on 9/11 (at 2:45 in this clip):

“You know, Dick Clarke. Dick Clarke, who was the head of the counterrorism program in the run-up to 9/11. He obviously missed it.”

here’s a sample of emails that Clarke sent the Bush administration regarding al qaeda:

“Bin Ladin Public Profile May Presage Attack” (May 3)

“Terrorist Groups Said Co-operating on US Hostage Plot” (May 23)

“Bin Ladin’s Networks’ Plans Advancing” (May 26)

“Bin Ladin Attacks May Be Imminent” (June 23)

“Bin Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats” (June 25)

“Bin Ladin Planning High-Profile Attacks” (June 30)

“Planning for Bin Ladin Attacks Continues, Despite Delays” (July 2)

(source)

richard clarke:

Yes, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice may have been surprised by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — but it was because they had not listened. And their surprise led them to adopt extreme counterterrorism techniques — but it was because they rejected, without analysis, the tactics the Clinton administration had used. The measures they uncritically adopted, which they simply assumed were the best available, were in fact unnecessary and counterproductive.

“I’ll freely admit that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities,” Cheney said in his recent speech. But this defense does not stand up. The Bush administration’s response actually undermined the principles and values America has always stood for in the world, values that should have survived this traumatic event. The White House thought that 9/11 changed everything. It may have changed many things, but it did not change the Constitution, which the vice president, the national security adviser and all of us who were in the White House that tragic day had pledged to protect and preserve.

iraq wiretaps torture add up to thirst for monarchial power (righting of watergate pussifying) over issues of my safety. how history will remember hoss.

It has become apparent that Dick Cheney has no morals when it comes to his beliefs and the power he once wielded. His contention that it is his opinion and only his opinion that counts runs contrary to everything that America stands for. Isn’t there an undisclosed location that he could inhabit for the next 20 or so years? Of course, this would mean that he won’t be held accountable for the torture program he pushed for and the war crimes he committed. I would prefer a nice cozy jail cell in the Hague instead of the undisclosed location but either one would work for me. I am getting pretty sick of his shit.

Richard Clarke has had his fill of Dick Cheney as well. A recent op-ed pretty much destroys the fantasy world that Cheney has pushed on the public since 9/11 and especially since he left office. (Clarke is the former national coordinator for security and counterterrorism for Clinton and Bush in case you forgot.) There are many parts to the Cheney fantasy that most people haven’t realized yet. Let’s destroy the illusions and the lies once and for all, shall we?

1. Cheney claims we were caught unawares on 9/11. Only the clueless NeoCons running the country were caught with their pants down because they ignored the warnings from the CIA and the NSC staff that al qaeda was planning attacks against the United States. These NeoCons did not believe that a bunch of cave dwelling fundamentalists could manage the scale of attacks that the warning briefs were signaling so they went on vacation. 

2. Cheney claims that all appropriate measures were taken after the attacks to make sure we were not attacked again. Again, not true. The measures they took were extreme, poorly thought out, and often illegal. They were in panic mode because they did not want to be held accountable in case of a second attack took place on their watch. Illegal wiretaps, the Patriot Act, waterboarding, extraordinary renditions, secret CIA prisons, and outright torture were the measures the Bushies took in response. None of these had the desired effect of keeping us safer. All they did was infuriate our citizens, our allies, and our enemies once they were made public.

3. Iraq and Saddam Hussein helped al qaeda to plan 9/11. This is the NeoCon fantasy supreme because they refused to believe that Osama bin Laden could have pulled this off by himself. Torture was approved to try and establish a non-existent link between the two. Despite Cheney’s claims to the contrary, no such link has ever been found.

4. Torture of detainees saved lives.  Torture does not work because the information that results is unreliable. The most famous example is that of John McCain in Viet Nam. He was tortured and he broke. His captors wanted names of his battalion leaders so he gave them the starting offensive line of the Green Bay Packers and they were never the wiser. Cheney is now claiming that two memos would prove they got viable intel from tortured detainees but Senator Carl Levin has seen those secret memos and he says they do no such thing. Every example that Bush and Cheney have used to justify torture have been disproven by the facts already known.

5. Torture was made legal because of the Office of Legal Counsel’s memos. Were it only that easy. International law prohibits torture, a law we agreed to. US law prohibits torture. We have prosecuted torturers in our recent past. Dick Cheney seems to think that circumventing the law is as easy as saying, “We think differently about torture” and then putting that sentiment in writing. all they have done is givin any future prosecutions the smoking gun evidence to convict the whole bunch of them of war crimes.

6. Detention without trials was the best way to deal with suspected terrorists. Ignoring the fact that the Clinton administration had convicted and locked up every terrorist prior to 9/11, the Bush people thought they could go one better with their plan for indefinite detention. Not only did our abandonment of our national ideals show the hypocrisy of this move this tactic meant we were stuck guarding these people forever. A number of detainees were innocent but only after years of imprisonment were any of them released. Abandoning trials was a huge mistake, one we pay for in damaged reputation for decades.

7. Tested interrogation techniques were abandoned in favor of harsher methods which worked better. This is the biggest lie of all. Incident after incident that has come to light shows that regular police style interrogation worked to illicit viable intel from suspects and when subjected to torture techniques no viable intel was gathered. In addition to being illegal, they simply did not work.

8. Wiretapping gained valuable intel but it meant bypassing FISA. Then it no longer is wire tapping. It is illegal wire tapping. Breaking the law in a land of laws cannot be justified even by the president of the United States. No one is above the law. No proof was ever offered that viable intel came from any of the illegal wiretaps.

9. Extraordinary measures are needed to fight terrorists and terrorism. This does not mean illegal methods can be employed or that our standards have to be discarded. That route only puts us on par with the very terrorists we are trying to defeat.  You cannot enforce American values by ignoring them or abandoning them. This is a point lost on the NeoCon Cheney crowd time and time again.

10. Repeating a lie a thousand times does not make it true. If it did, Dick Cheney would be known as the most moral man in America but he very clearly is not. His complicity in torture, illegal wire tapping and other compromises of American law just make him the most immoral man in America. Lying about it and trying to justify illegal actions cannot stand the test of time or the court of public opinion.

Shameful.

link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/29/AR2009052901560.html

Say what you will about Dick Cheney, at least he’s consistent. While he was in office, the Vice President made a practice of exploiting the fear and loss wrought by the 9/11 attacks to advance his own political agenda–and he’s still doing it now. During his speech at the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday, according to Dana Milbank’s calculations in the Washington Post, “Cheney used the word ‘attack’ 19 times, ‘danger’ and ‘threat’ six times apiece, and 9/11 an impressive 27 times.”

In this putative rebuttal to Obama speech on national security, Cheney described how he spent the morning of 9/11 “in a fortified White House command post,” receiving “the reports and images that so many Americans remember from that day,” and then declared:

In the years since, I’ve heard occasional speculation that I’m a different man after 9/11. I wouldn’t say that. But I’ll freely admit that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities.

Since he’s evoking his experience as a rationalization for torture, this might be a good time to review exactly what it was that Cheney was doing in the bunker on that terrible day. Here again, consistency is the rule: A preponderance of evidence points to the fact that Dick Cheney spent the morning of September 11, 2001, violating the Constitution of the United States.

I wrote about the subject in my 2005 book The Five Unanswered Questions About 9/11. Based on the 9/11 Commission Report and a number of other sources (all of them public), I offered an account of how Cheney swept aside the Constitution, the laws governing military action, and a host of expert advisors, in the atmosphere of a palace coup. While President Bush was being shuttled around on Air Force One, the Vice President took charge of the country. Here’s an excerpt from the book:

Presidential power is supposed to reside not in the Oval Office, but with the man, wherever he happens to be–whether in a remote military bunker or an elementary school classroom, or in the skies aboard Air Force One. But if any locus of government power existed on 9/11, it was not with President Bush, but rather in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), the bunker beneath the East Wing of the White House, where Vice President Dick Cheney arrived, by his own account, shortly before 10:00 a.m.

Cheney was not alone in the PEOC, but his companions appear to have remained largely silent, deferring in all things to the Vice President. Secretary of Transportation Norman Minetta, who had oversight of the Federal Aviation Administration, made his way to the bunker but didn’t do much there. (He later told the 9/11 Commission that he had ordered all planes grounded at 9:45–but this decision was actually made independently by FAA National Operations Manager Ben Sliney, who was in his first day on the job.) National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, always highly political and extremely deferential, remained low-key during what should have been a pivotal moment for her office. 

The others who joined Cheney in the PEOC were not experts on terrorism, national security, civilian aviation, or military tactics, but a group of key right-wing political operatives. They included conservative media celebrity and then White House “counselor” Mary Matalin and longtime Bush campaign crony and White House Communications Director Karen Hughes, as well as Cheney’s Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, a leading neocon foreign policy strategist, and Cheney’s wife, Lynne, a powerful conservative ideologue in her own right, who was escorted to her husband’s side by the Secret Service.

Dick Cheney in the White House bunker, speaking to administration officials including (from left) Joshua Bolten, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, Condoleezza Rice and I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby. Source: David Bohrer / White House

According to “counterterrorism czar” Richard Clarke, a lone holdover from the previous administration, the PEOC was connected by telephone to a videoconference going on in the West Wing’s Situation Room. This conference, at various points, included high-ranking officials from the Defense and State Departments, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Attorney General’s office, CIA, FBI, and FAA. Within half an hour of the second WTC attack, teleconferences had also been established by the FAA and the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center (NMCC).

But the the far more political group in the East Wing’s PEOC seems to have had little use for Clarke’s gathering of experts. In his book Against All Enemies, Clarke reports that someone in the PEOC later told him that attempts to listen in on the West Wing videoconference on speakerphone were impeded “because Mrs. Cheney keeps turning down the volume on you so she can hear CNN . . . and the Vice President keeps hanging up the open line to you.”

The central decision faced by whoever took command that day, after the WTC attacks were a known fact, was a momentous one: Should the United States military be ordered to shoot down commercial airplanes full of civilian passengers, so that they, too, would not be used as missiles–most likely, it appeared, against targets in Washington, D.C.?

Under the law, in this or any other crisis requiring a military response, the decision to engage the military must be made by the President, as Commander-in-Chief. He gives his orders to the Secretary of Defense, who is supposed to implement these orders by passing them on to the relevant battle commands. In this chain of command, the Vice President has no place whatsoever. According to the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, crafted following the Kennedy assassination, the Vice President could claim such a place only if the President were for some reason “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office”–and even then, only with the support of the cabinet and concurrence of the Congress.

Even if he’d never read the Constitution, Dick Cheney could not have been ignorant of these rules. The military chain of command is not some remote or obscure formula. Long on the books, it was reinforced and clarified in the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, debated and passed while Cheney was a member of Congress. Cheney also served as Secretary of Defense under the first George Bush–and surely would have paled at the thought of Vice President Dan Quayle giving out orders to shoot down planes.

But Vice President Cheney did, in fact, issue orders for military fighters to shoot down commercial jets on the morning of September 11. He told the 9/11 Commission, and has repeatedly told others, that he was authorized by the President in advance to give these orders. Evidence of this prior authorization is unsubstantiated and contradictory. At their own insistence, Cheney and Bush spoke to the 9/11 Commission together, in private session, and not under oath. And the Commission itself was often timid and circumspect when it came to challenging the administration or getting to the bottom of things. But even the carefully worded account in the 9/11 Commission Report, while it stops short of any conclusions or accusations, nonetheless leaves ample room for doubt.

According to the report, Bush and Cheney kept in touch that morning “not by an open line of communication, but through a series of calls.” The report says Bush told the Commission he was “frustrated with poor communications that morning. He could not reach key officials, including Secretary Rumsfeld, for a period of time. The line to the White House shelter conference room–and the Vice President–kept cutting off.”

Cheney told the Commission that he placed a call to Bush just before 10 a.m., when he arrived in the PEOC bunker. He said that the Air Force was trying to set up a combat air patrol (CAP) over Washington, and that he called to establish the rules of engagement for the CAP. Cheney reported telling Bush that the pilots would need authority “to shoot if the plane did not divert.” The report continues: “He said the President signed off on that concept. The President said he remembered such a conversation, and that it reminded him of when he had been an interceptor pilot. The President emphasized to us that he had authorized the shootdown of hijacked aircraft.”

Press accounts have also quoted Bush’s later recollections of the conversation. After Cheney recommended that he authorize the shootdowns, Bush declared, “I said, ‘You bet.’ There was a little discussion, but not much.”

The only person who remembers hearing the Vice President speak to the President at that time is the ever-faithful Condoleeza Rice. She testified to the Commission that she “remembered hearing him inform the President, ‘Sir, the CAPS are up. Sir, they’re going to want to know what to do.’ Then she recalled hearing him say, ‘Yes, Sir.’”

The Commission delicately concluded: “Among the sources that reflect other important events of that morning, there is no documentary evidence for this call, but the relevant sources are incomplete.” They added that others surrounding the Vice President, including his Chief of Staff and his wife, “did not note a call between the President and Vice President” at that time. According to one report in Newsweek, some of the Commission’s staff “flat out didn’t believe the call ever took place,” and expressed their skepticism in an early draft of their staff report. And one staff member said that pressure from the White House had led to the report being “watered down.”

Shortly after 10:10 a.m., the bunker began receiving reports of a plane headed for Washington. These reports came from the Secret Service, which was getting information directly from the FAA–incorrect information, as it turned out, since the aircraft in question was Flight 93, which at that moment was wobbling through the skies over Western Pennsylvania as its passengers fought their hijackers for control. An aide told Cheney it was only 80 miles away from Washington, and asked him to authorize a shootdown.

According to the 9/11 Report, Cheney’s “reaction was described by Scooter Libby as quick and decisive, ‘in about the time it takes a batter to decide to swing.’” Cheney repeated the shootdown order a few minutes later, after hearing that the plane was now 60 miles out.

The only recorded challenge of any kind to Cheney’s conduct came from Joshua Bolton, then the White House Deputy Chief of Staff. Bolton told the Commission that he “watched the exchanges and, after what he called ‘a quiet moment,’ suggested that the Vice President get in touch with the President and confirm the engage order. Bolton told us he wanted to make sure the President was told that the Vice President had executed the order. He said he had not heard any prior discussion on the subject with the President.” Cheney put through the call at 10:18. This call, made after the order had already been given, is well documented, unlike earlier communications. Bush, of course, concurred with Cheney’s decision.

Due to various communication problems, Cheney’s orders were never received by the pilots over Washington. This is perhaps just as well: Shortly after this episode, at about 10:30, Cheney got word of another plane just five miles away, and immediately gave orders to “take it out.” The Vice President, as it later turned out, had commanded military fighter jets to shoot down a low-flying Medevac helicopter.

In any case, the orders were moot. By the time they were issued, the passengers on Flight 93 had already done what their government failed to do: As their leaders hunkered down in safety, this handful of ordinary Americans had wrestled their plane to a crash landing, sacrificing their own lives in order to protect their nation’s capital and their compatriots on the ground.

Ray McGovern

www.consortiumnewscom, April 14, 2009

The prose of the recently leaked report of the International Committee of the Red Cross on torture seems colorless. It is at the same time obscene — almost pornographic.

The 41-page ICRC report depicts scenes of prisoners forced to remain naked for long periods, sometimes in the presence of women, often with their hands shackled over their heads in “stress positions” as they are left to soil themselves.

The report’s images of sadism also include prisoners slammed against walls, locked in tiny boxes, and strapped to a bench and subjected to the drowning sensation of waterboarding.

How could it be that we Americans tolerate the kind of leaders who would subject others to systematic torture — yes, that’s what the official report of the international body charged with monitoring the Geneva agreements on the treatment of prisoners concludes — torture.

Over the past week I have been asked to explain how this could have happened; who authorized the torture in our name? The Red Cross report lacks the earmarks of rogues or “rotten apples” at the bottom of some barrel.

This is what I have been telling those who ask:

Rather than Harry Truman’s famous motto on his Oval Office desk, “The Buck Stops Here,” this was a case of “The Buck Starts Here.” President George W. Bush set the tone and created the framework, with strong support from Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The first hints of what was in store came from the President himself in the White House bunker late on Sept. 11, 2001, at a meeting with his closest national security advisers after his TV address to the nation about the terrorist attacks that morning.

The vengeful bunker mentality prevailing at that meeting comes through clearly in the report of one of the participants, Richard Clarke in his book, Against All Enemies. Describing the President as confident, determined, forceful, Clarke provides the following account of what President Bush said:

“We are at war.… Nothing else matters. … Any barriers in your way, they’re gone.”

When, later in the discussion, Secretary Rumsfeld noted that international law allowed the use of force only to prevent future attacks and not for retribution, Bush nearly bit his head off.

“No,” the President yelled in the narrow conference room, “I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass.”

‘Taking the Gloves Off’

In the weeks that followed, the air in Washington hung heavy with demons of retribution. Afghanistan was invaded in October 2001, and during a prisoner uprising on Nov. 25, a CIA officer was killed there.

A young American citizen, John Walker Lindh, was discovered among the prisoners in the area. There was not the slightest evidence that Lindh had anything to do with the killing.

But documents show that U.S. Joint Special Operations troops were told that the office of the Defense Secretary’s counsel (William J. Haynes II, was Pentagon general counsel at the time) had authorized an Army intelligence officer “to take the gloves off and ask whatever he wanted” of Lindh.

Despite urgent intervention by Justice Department ethics attorney Jesselyn Radack, Lindh was not properly read his rights. Instead, the FBI agent on the scene ad-libbed in an offhand way, “You have the right to an attorney. But there are no attorneys here in Afghanistan.”

Lindh had been seriously wounded in the leg. Despite that, U.S. troops put a hood over him, stripped him naked, duct-taped him to a stretcher for days in an unheated and unlit shipping container, and threatened him with death.

Parts of his humiliating ordeal were captured on film (a practice that became tragically familiar with the photos of Abu Ghraib).

In her book, Canary in the Coalmine: Blowing the Whistle in the Case of John Walker Lindh, attorney Radack comments that official documents pertaining to this case provide “the earliest known evidence that the Bush Administration was willing to push the envelope on how far it could go to extract information from suspected terrorists.”

(Because she protested, Radack was fired as Justice Department legal ethics advisor, put under criminal investigation, and even added to the “no-fly” list.)

End-Run Around Geneva

But the Bush administration was just getting started.

On Jan. 18, 2002, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales advised the President that the Justice Department had issued a formal legal opinion concluding that the Geneva Convention III on the Treatment of Prisoners of War (GPW) does not apply with respect to al Qaeda.

Gonzales added that he understood that Bush had “decided that GPW does not apply and, accordingly, that al Qaeda and Taliban detainees are not prisoners of war under the GPW.”

On Jan. 19, 2002, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld told combat commanders that the President had “determined that al-Qaeda and Taliban individuals under the control of the Department of Defense are not entitled to prisoner of war status for purposes of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.”

Secretary of State Colin Powell asked the President to reconsider his decision and to conclude, instead, that the GPW does apply to both al Qaeda and the Taliban. But Powell’s protest was couched in bureaucratic politeness, rather than in anger and outrage. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Cowardice in the Time of Torture.”]

The next step took the form of the fateful memorandum of Jan. 25, 2002, signed by Alberto Gonzales but drafted by counsel to the Vice President David Addington. That memo outlined for the President “the ramifications of your decision and the Secretary’s [Powell’s] request for reconsideration.”

It described a “new paradigm” that, the writers claimed “renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners, and renders quaint some of its provisions.”

Gonzales and Addington urged the President to disregard Powell’s misgivings and move ahead. But they cloaked their argument in lawyerly language that obscured what was to come.

The lawyers argued that it was “appropriate” and “consistent with military necessity” to waive Geneva regarding the treatment of al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, but they inserted assurances that the prisoners would be treated “humanely” and “in a manner consistent with the principles of GPW.”

Powell Rebuffed

Brushing aside Powell’s objections, President Bush adopted the Gonzales/Addington language and signed a memorandum to that effect on Feb. 7, 2002. The memo went to Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Powell, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Chief of Staff to the President Andrew Card, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Condoleezza Rice, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers.

The memo amounted to an executive order, although it was not labeled as such. In it, the President alludes fulsomely to Justice Department opinions and recommendations, as well as “facts” supplied by the Defense Department.

Bush then takes clear responsibility for the decision to spurn Geneva: “I determine that common Article 3 of Geneva does not apply to either al Qaeda or Taliban detainees. … I determine that Taliban detainees … do not qualify as prisoners of war under Article 4 of Geneva … and that al Qaeda detainees also do not qualify as prisoners of war.”

The Feb. 7, 2002, memo bears the Orwellian title “Humane Treatment of al Qaeda and Taliban Detainees.” In it, Bush lifts verbatim the language from the Gonzales/Addington memo of Jan. 25, 2002, and makes it his own.

Bush claimed, for example, “the war against terrorism ushers in a new paradigm [that] requires new thinking in the law of war.”

Bush then tries to square a circle, directing (twice in the two-page memo) that “detainees be treated humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of GPW.”

Smell Smoke?

The smoking-gun memorandum of Feb. 7, 2002, was released to the media, together with other documents, by Gonzales on June 22, 2004, but it did not receive the attention it deserved until recently.

On Dec. 11, 2008, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, and Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, ranking members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, released, without dissent, the summary of their committee’s report on the abuse of detainees.

The report’s first subhead was: Presidential Order Opens Door to Considering Aggressive Techniques, and the first words of the first sentence of the first paragraph were, “On Feb. 7, 2002, President Bush signed a memorandum stating…”

Referring to the “President’s order,” the first paragraph adds that “the decision to replace well-established military doctrine, i.e., legal compliance with the Geneva Conventions, with a policy subject to interpretation, impacted the treatment of detainees.”

“Conclusion Number One” of the Senate Armed Services Committee report states: “Following the President’s determination [of Feb. 7, 2002], techniques such as waterboarding, nudity, and stress positions … were authorized for use in interrogations of detainees in U.S. custody.”

Once Bush had opened the door with his Feb. 7, 2002, memo, other actions followed to implement the President’s “new paradigm.”

White House lawyers worked with Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo of the Office of Legal Counsel to develop constitutional theories about expansive presidential powers that effectively let Bush operate beyond the law.

The OLC traditionally is the office that tells presidents the limits of their constitutional authorities. However, in this case, Yoo collaborated with Gonzales, Addington and other White House lawyers in hammering out arguments that the administration could use to implement harsh interrogations of al Qaeda suspects.

On Aug. 1, 2002, Yoo and his OLC superior, Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, issued an opinion that so narrowly defined “torture” that it cleared the way for a variety of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” including waterboarding, which creates a near-drowning experience.

Top-Down Torture

As the legal framework for Bush’s torture policies took shape, senior officers and lower-level participants in the interrogations understood that the basis for the newly permitted harsh tactics stemmed from a presidential decision.

In a report on Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses, former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger indicated that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top commander in Iraq, instituted a “dozen interrogation methods beyond” the Army’s standard practice under the Geneva Convention.

Sanchez said he based his decision on “the President’s memorandum,” which he said allowed for “additional, tougher measures” against detainees, according to the Schlesinger report.

An FBI e-mail of May 22, 2004, from a senior FBI agent in Iraq stated that President Bush had signed an Executive Order approving the use of military dogs, sleep deprivation and other tactics to intimidate Iraqi detainees.

The FBI official sought guidance in confronting an unwelcome dilemma. He asked if FBI personnel in Iraq were required to report the U.S. military’s harsh interrogation of detainees when such treatment violated Bureau standards but fit within the guidelines of a presidential Executive Order.

In sum, abundant evidence indicates that the torture techniques applied in the jail cells and interrogation chambers — the “alternative set of procedures” about which Bush boasted publicly on Sept. 6, 2006 — resulted directly from Bush’s Feb. 7, 2002, memo and implementing actions by his administration.

Interrogators also were egged on by comments from Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld regarding the “tough” treatments they favored.

One fig leaf left covering the otherwise exposed role of Bush and his top aides remains the clever inclusion of the word “humane” in the memo that made possible what the International Committee of the Red Cross condemned as “inhuman” treatment of terror suspects in U.S. custody.

There’s also the-Justice-Department-told-me-it-was-legal excuse, though the evidence is now clear that the Bush administration essentially stage-managed the Yoo-Bybee opinions.

For instance, when the Yoo-Bybee opinions were withdrawn by Bybee’s OLC successor, Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith, Addington and other administration officials successfully pressured Goldsmith to resign and then welcomed a new OLC chief, Steven Bradbury, who reinstated the key opinions in May 2005.

And – as the evidence built of illegal torture in 2006 – the Bush administration pushed the “Military Commissions Act” through the Republican-controlled Congress with phrasing that granted a degree of retroactive immunity.

The law states that “no person may invoke the Geneva Conventions or any protocols thereto in any habeas corpus or other civil action or proceeding to which the United States, or a current or former officer, employee, member of the Armed Forces, or other agent of the United States is a party as a source of rights in any court of the United States or its States or territories.”

That provision was interpreted as a broad amnesty for U.S. officials, including President Bush and other senior executives who may have authorized torture, murder or other violations of human rights.

The law also granted Bush the authority “to interpret the meaning and the application of the Geneva Conventions.” [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Shame on Us All.”]

However, there remain legal questions about whether the law’s language would prevent prosecutions under pre-existing anti-torture laws.

The sudden appearance of the damning report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, initially given to the CIA’s acting general counsel on Feb. 14, 2007, greatly complicates any rotten-apples-at-the-bottom-of-the-barrel-type disingenuousness.

In a departure from the usual diplomatic parlance, the ICRC minces not a word in referring to those who authorized torture. In the report itself, the Red Cross calls on current U.S. authorities “to punish the perpetrators, where appropriate, to prevent such abuses from happening again.”

What do you suppose is holding Attorney General Eric Holder back from appointing an independent prosecutor to investigate, with a view toward rubbing out, once and for all, this shameful stain on our collective conscience?

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. An Army officer and CIA analyst for almost 30 years, he now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

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Late last night, according to the Washington Post, the State Department announced that Dennis Ross will be the “special adviser to Secretary of State Clinton responsible for developing a strategy for engaging Iran.”

The State Department, in fact, has yet to specifically cite Iran in Ross’s title. Dennis Ross will be “adviser to the secretary of state for the Gulf and Southwest Asia.” State Department officials, the Washington Post reports, said the title is a euphemism for Iran.

For months many concerns have been raised over the prospect of a Ross appointment as a special envoy to or an adviser on Iran. To assign the former diplomat who actively supports not only coercive actions against Iran, but the policy option of a preventive military attack seems counterintuitive to the need for trust in this highly sensitive relationship.

In 2007 and 2008 Dennis Ross, working on the Presidential Task Force for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), convened the report “How to Deepen the U.S.-Israel Cooperation on the Iranian Nuclear Challenge.”

This task force met numerous times including a two-day retreat in Virginia with ten Israeli counterparts. In an effort to bring aboard those who had the ear of the major presidential candidates at the time, signatories included Richard Clarke, Anthony Lake, Susan Rice, Vin Weber and James Woolsey.

The report focused on halting Iran’s nuclear program and indicated that it’s not just a bomb they are worried about but also Iran having influence in the region. It criticized the November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that found that Iran had halted the weaponization component of its nuclear program in 2003 for “reducing the sense of urgency for additional pressure.” It added that “Israeli intelligence analysts have doubts about both the facts and duration of Iran’s suspension of weaponization efforts.”

The first section of the report titled “The Importance of Prevention” raises concerns that the U.S. might favor deterrence over prevention. Prevention in this case would be the act of a preventive military strike against Iran. It points out that “Americans should recognize that deterrence is, in Israeli eyes, an unattractive alternative to prevention, because if deterrence fails, Israel would suffer terribly.” The result of this, they explain, would be that Israel may decide to act independently against Iran.

While this may be a valid concern, it raises the question of whether the United States should support preventive military action simply because Israel might do it first. The report criticizes Iran for not abiding by UN Security Council resolutions calling on it to suspend its enrichment program, but Ross and his fellow signatories show little concern for the UN Charter that requires that member nations refrain from the threat or use of force and that if a dispute is not settled it shall be referred to the Security Council which will make recommendations. While the Charter allows for military action in self-defense, no strong case for even an imminent attack currently exists.

The United States has been down this preventive route before most recently in March 2003. That Dennis Ross and the folks on this task force don’t seem to take into account the disastrous effects of the preventive attack on Iraq and would consider this option with Iran is at the minimum an unsettling notion.

Interestingly, after recognizing the “abiding commitment” the United States has to Israel, they make a point of stating that “critics who argue that Israel has manipulated the U.S. government to act counter to the American national interest, which – if properly understood – would see Israel as a liability.” “We reject that critique,” reads the report.

The task force recommends four policy options when dealing with Iran. The first two involve diplomatic engagement and political and economic pressure. It advises that Israel be brought in “as a full partner in planning discussions regarding initiatives involving the UN Security Council; and U.S-EU, U.S.-Arab, and other relevant forums.”

The other two policy options include “coercive options such as an embargo on Iran’s sale of oil or import of refined petroleum products, and preventive military action.”

Before signing off, the report revisits the issue of the relationship with Israel and the United States. It calls for the president to use the “bully pulpit” to educate the American public that Iran poses a direct threat to the United States quickly adding, “The central argument is that preventing Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability is not special pleading for America’s ally Israel – it is vital to America’s own security.”

When considering that Dennis Ross will be “responsible for developing a strategy for engaging Iran,” it is important to note that the blueprint for this strategy from Ross’s perspective is deeply rooted in WINEPs presidential task force that endorses the policy option of a preventive strike and included not just American statesmen, diplomats and scholars, but ten anonymous Israeli counterparts.

While the State Department continues to use vague language about the connection between Dennis Ross and Iran, WINEP’s presidential task force makes clear that Ross will not be alone at the table.

Marjorie Cohn, Jurist Legal News and Research. Posted February 16, 2009.

www.alternet.org

Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian residing in Britain, said he was tortured after being sent to Morocco and Afghanistan in 2002 by the U.S. government. Mohamed was transferred to Guantánamo in 2004 and all terrorism charges against him were dismissed last year. Mohamed was a victim of extraordinary rendition, in which a person is abducted without any legal proceedings and transferred to a foreign country for detention and interrogation, often tortured.

Mohamed and four other plaintiffs are accusing Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. of flying them to other countries and secret CIA camps where they were tortured. In Mohamed’s case, two British justices accused the Bush administration of pressuring the British government to block the release of evidence that was “relevant to allegations of torture” of Mohamed.

Twenty-five lines edited out of the court documents included details about how Mohamed’s genitals were sliced with a scalpel as well as other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding “is very far down the list of things they did,” according to a British official quoted by the Telegraph (UK).

The plaintiffs’ complaint quotes a former Jeppesen employee as saying, “We do all of the extraordinary rendition flights – you know, the torture flights.” A senior company official also apparently admitted the company transported people to countries where they would be tortured.

Obama’s Justice Department appeared before a three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Monday in the Jeppesen lawsuit. But instead of making a clean break with the dark policies of the Bush years, the Obama administration claimed the same “state secrets” privilege that Bush used to block inquiry into his policies of torture and illegal surveillance. Claiming that the extraordinary rendition program is a state secret is disingenuous since it is has been extensively documented in the media.

“This was an opportunity for the new administration to act on its condemnation of torture and rendition, but instead it has chosen to stay the course,” said the ACLU’s Ben Wizner, counsel for the five men.

If the judges accept Obama’s state secrets claim, these men will be denied their day in court and precluded from any recovery for the damages they suffered as a result of extraordinary rendition.

Two and a half weeks before Obama’s representative appeared in the Jeppesen case, the new President had signed Executive Order 13491. It established a special task force “to study and evaluate the practices of transferring individuals to other nations in order to ensure that such practices comply with the domestic laws, international obligations, and policies of the United States and do not result in the transfer of individuals to other nations to face torture or otherwise for the purpose, or with the effect, of undermining or circumventing the commitments or obligations of the United States to ensure the humane treatment of individuals in its custody or control.”

This order prohibits extraordinary rendition. It also ensures humane treatment of persons in U.S. custody or control. But it doesn’t specifically guarantee that prisoners the United States renders to other countries will be free from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment that doesn’t amount to torture. It does, however, aim to ensure that our government’s practices of transferring people to other countries complies with U.S. laws and policies, including our obligations under international law.

One of those laws is the International Covenant on Civil Political Rights (ICCPR), a treaty the United States ratified in 1992. Article 7 of the ICCPR prohibits the States Parties from subjecting persons “to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.” The UN Human Rights Committee, which is the body that monitors the ICCPR, has interpreted that prohibition to forbid States Parties from exposing “individuals to the danger of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment upon return to another country by way of their extradition, expulsion or refoulement.”

Order 13491 also mandates, “The CIA shall close as expeditiously as possible any detention facilities that it currently operates and shall not operate any such detention facility in the future.” The order does not define “expeditiously” and the definitional section of the order says that the terms ‘detention facilities’ and ‘detention facility’ “do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis.” Once again, “short term” and “transitory” are not defined.

In his confirmation hearing, Attorney General Eric Holder categorically stated that the United States should not turn over an individual to a country where we have reason to believe he will be tortured. Leon Panetta, nominee for CIA director, went further last week and interpreted Order 13491 as forbidding “that kind of extraordinary rendition, where we send someone for the purposes of torture or for actions by another country that violate our human values.”

But alarmingly, Panetta appeared to champion the same standard used by the Bush administration, which reportedly engaged in extraordinary rendition 100 to 150 times as of March 2005. After September 11, 2001, President Bush issued a classified directive that expanded the CIA’s authority to render terrorist suspects to other States. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the CIA and the State Department received assurances that prisoners will be treated humanely. “I will seek the same kinds of assurances that they will not be treated inhumanely,” Panetta told the senators.

Gonzales had admitted, however, “We can’t fully control what that country might do. We obviously expect a country to whom we have rendered a detainee to comply with their representations to us . . . If you’re asking me, ‘Does a country always comply?’ I don’t have an answer to that.”

The answer is no. Binyam Mohamed’s case is apparently the tip of the iceberg. Maher Arar, a Canadian born in Syria, was apprehended by U.S. authorities in New York on September 26, 2002, and transported to Syria, where he was brutally tortured for months. Arar used an Arabic expression to describe the pain he experienced: “you forget the milk that you have been fed from the breast of your mother.” The Canadian government later exonerated Arar of any terrorist ties. In another instance, thirteen CIA operatives were arrested in Italy for kidnapping an Egyptian, Abu Omar, in Milan and transporting him to Cairo where he was tortured.

Panetta made clear that the CIA will continue to engage in rendition to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects and transfer them to other countries. “If we capture a high-value prisoner,” he said, “I believe we have the right to hold that individual temporarily to be able to debrief that individual and make sure that individual is properly incarcerated.” No clarification of how long is “temporarily” or what “debrief” would mean.

When Sen. Christopher Bond (R-Mo.) asked about the Clinton administration’s use of the CIA to transfer prisoners to countries where they were later executed, Panetta replied, “I think that is an appropriate use of rendition.” Jane Mayer, columnist for the New Yorker, has documented numerous instances of extraordinary rendition during the Clinton administration, including cases in which suspects were executed in the country to which the United States had rendered them. Once when Richard Clarke, President Clinton’s chief counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council, “proposed a snatch,” Vice-President Al Gore said, “That’s a no-brainer. Of course it’s a violation of international law, that’s why it’s a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass.”

There is a slippery slope between ordinary rendition and extraordinary rendition. “Rendition has to end,” Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, recently told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!: “Rendition is a violation of sovereignty. It’s a kidnapping. It’s force and violence.” Ratner queried whether Cuba could enter the United States and take Luis Posada, the man responsible for blowing up a commercial Cuban airline in 1976 and killing 73 people. Or whether the United States could go down to Cuba and kidnap Assata Shakur, who escaped a murder charge in New Jersey.

Moreover, “renditions for the most part weren’t very productive,” a former CIA official told the Los Angeles Times. After a prisoner was turned over to authorities in Egypt, Jordan or another country, the CIA had very little influence over how prisoners were treated and whether they were ultimately released.

The U.S. government should disclose the identities, fate, and current whereabouts of all persons detained by the CIA or rendered to foreign custody by the CIA since 2001. Those who ordered renditions should be prosecuted. And the special task force should recommend, and Obama should agree to, an end to all renditions.

Former counter terrorism adviser, Richard Clarke, offers solace to Obama critics on both sides of the political spectrum.

From The Boston Globe, 29 January 2009 post, by Richard Clarke:

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S order to close the Guantanamo prison provoked comments from the right about the risks of bringing terrorist prisoners to the United States. His order banning torture, but not outlawing “extraordinary renditions,” caused some on the left to complain. Both groups of critics, though, either overlook relevant parts of recent history or simply get that history wrong.

Before George W. Bush, there was no real question about what the United States should do with people who broke American anti-terror laws…

read more | digg story

Vice President Dick Cheney said that the prizes won by the New York Times for uncovering the Bush administration were “aggravating” to him, and cautioned the incoming administration on the lessons he’s learned in office.

Cheney said the domestic spying program “really worked” and provided valuable intelligence. “But then it became public,” Cheney said during an interview on conservative radio host Bill Bennett’s show. “The New York Times broke the story I think in December of ‘05, won the Pulitzer for it, which always aggravated me.”

Aggravated him so much that he sent the DOJ after Risen in a classic example of using threats and intimidation to silence press criticism  (see here: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/01/doj_still_hounding_wiretap_whistleblower.php 0

…Cheney cautioned that former Clinton administration officials, who he called “honorable,” who would rejoin the White House during the Obama administration should not assume they can pick up where they left off eight years ago.

“The fact is the world has changed in major ways since January of ‘01 when we took over,” Cheney said. “And that break in service of some eight years I think they will find has been a period of time when the threat to the nation has changed in fairly dramatic ways.”

http://briefingroom.thehill.com/2009/01/13/cheney-nyt-pulitzers-for-spying-stories-aggravating/

Or, to put this another way, Cheney might have suggested that the Obama administration doesn’t make the sort of tragic ideological mistake Cheney and his people made which, quite arguably, resulted in a 9/11 plot succeeding where it might have been prevented had Cheney and his people not screwed up.  As Richard Clarke detailed in his book (and in his testimony before congress) the Bush administration came into office with a cold-war frame of reference and proceeded to ignore the warnings about bin Laden and his operation (including, of course, the famous “bin Laden planning to attack inside America” briefing).

Former Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke told a leading expert on internet free speech, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, that there was going to be an “i-9/11″, in other words, an electronic terrorist act, and an “i-Patriot Act” to crack down on freedoms on the Internet under the guise of protecting against such threats:

(See also: Patriot Act – The War on Civil Liberties)

There’s going to be an i-9/11 event. Which doesn’t necessarily mean an Al Qaeda attack, it means an event where the instability or the insecurity of the internet becomes manifest during a malicious event which then inspires the government into a response. You’ve got to remember that after 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed.

The Patriot Act is huge and I remember someone asking a Justice Department official how did they write such a large statute so quickly, and of course the answer was that it has been sitting in the drawers of the Justice Department for the last 20 years waiting for the event where they would pull it out.

Of course, the Patriot Act is filled with all sorts of insanity about changing the way civil rights are protected, or not protected in this instance. So I was having dinner with Richard Clarke and I asked him if there is an equivalent, is there an i-Patriot Act just sitting waiting for some substantial event as an excuse to radically change the way the internet works. He said “of course there is”.

(4.30 into this video).

We may have just had our i-911.

Specifically, the government is claiming that hackers defaced Army and NATO websites, writing things like:

“Stop attacks u Israel and USA ! you cursed nations ! one day Muslims will clean the world from you ! “

This sounds a lot like the notes which were sent with the killer anthrax.

If we did just have our i-911, watch out for military spokesmen, politicians and talking heads pushing for an i-Patriot Act . . . as a way to crush free speech on the web.

08 January 2009

George Bush, still President, is engaging in a legacy tour of media outlets. This comes despite his earlier having said he did not know how history would judge the Iraq war “because we’ll all be dead.”

    Actually, many people are already dead because of Bush, and that is the point to keep in mind when he talks about his legacy.

    Among the themes Bush is striking are that through action at home and fighting “them” over there, not over here, his administration stopped terrorist attacks and prevented another 9/11. There is a surface plausibility to those claims, as there has often been with the messaging served up by the Karl Rove spin machine. But let’s look beneath the surface of the assertions.

    Bush stopped terrorist attacks? Yes, some of the many alleged plots cited by the White House probably would have matured into attacks had not the U.S. intelligence community acted. Many were more aspirational than operational, and others were the pure inventions of FBI informants. (In the Miami Liberty City case, an FBI informant apparently bribed people who previously had no interest in Al Qaeda. When they swore the oath to Osama Bin Laden, they were then arrested for doing so.)

    But even if taken on its face as true, should having stopped terrorist attacks earn this President a Harry Truman-like reassessment down the road? I can attest from firsthand knowledge that the Clinton administration stopped numerous terrorist operations that would have resulted in American deaths. Yet I don’t hear Bill Clinton running around boasting about that. Clinton has other things to lay claim to – a balanced budget, huge job growth and eight years without a major war. If you don’t think the Clinton administration stopped a major terrorist attack in New York City, you might want to talk with the blind sheik, who was involved in a plot to blow up the United Nations, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the George Washington Bridge and a federal building housing the FBI. But that would be tough to do because Omar Abdel-Rahman is in solitary in a federal prison in Colorado.

    There wasn’t a second 9/11? That’s obviously true, but it misses the point. First, we must remember that Al Qaeda terrorists are patient, deliberate planners who often wait years between strikes. Second, there was the first 9/11 – and it happened on Bush’s watch. Without rehashing the entire 9/11 Commission Report, the historical record is pretty clear by now that Bush did virtually nothing about the repeated warnings to him that those cataclysmic attacks were coming. Unfortunately, I can personally attest to that as well.

    Bush saved American lives? Tell that to the families of the 4,200 U.S. military personnel who have perished in the needless war in Iraq. While they served heroically and deserve the great thanks of the American people, the tragic truth is that they were engaged in a war we should not have been fighting and which was sold to the Congress, the media and American people with exaggerated and even false claims.

    Beyond the needless American deaths that are Bush’s legacy, there are the Iraqis we almost never think about. Iraq Body Count is an ongoing human security project that claims to maintain “the world’s largest public database of violent civilian deaths during and since the 2003 invasion.” They say their data “encompasses noncombatants killed by military or paramilitary action and the breakdown in civil security following the invasion.” Currently, their estimate – conservative when put alongside other totals – is that between 90,253 and 98,521 Iraqis were killed because George Bush invaded that country. That’s thirty 9/11s.

    Let George Bush keep pushing the buttons on the spin machine. That cannot change the facts. His administration’s actions on terrorism, including Iraq, killed many more Americans than U.S. intelligence agencies saved in the past eight years.

    ———-

    Clarke was a counterterrorism adviser to former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He is the author of “Against All Enemies” and “Your Government Failed You.”

Yesterday’s New York Times brought us the opinion of Reuel Marc Gerecht (pictured) on the matter of “extraordinary rendition”of terrorist suspects…

Mr. Obama will soon face the same awful choices that confronted George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and he could well be forced to accept a central feature of their anti-terrorist methods: extraordinary rendition. If the choice is between non-deniable aggressive questioning conducted by Americans and deniable torturous interrogations by foreigners acting on behalf of the United States, it is almost certain that as president Mr. Obama will choose the latter.

Of course, he and his senior officials seem to believe now that they don’t have to make this choice. For them there is a better way to combat terrorism, by using physically non-coercive questioning of suspects and civilian courts or military courts-martial to try and punish jihadists.

But this third way, which is essentially where America was before the Clinton administration embraced rendition, is plausible only if Mr. Obama is lucky.

Gerecht repeated the same lie (or half-truth at the very least) twice that I’d better refute right now; as noted here…

Although the practice of “extraordinary rendition” did not originate under Bush, after Sept 11 “the program expanded beyond recognition—becoming, according to a former C.I.A. official, “an abomination.” What began as a program aimed at a small, discrete set of suspects—people against whom there were outstanding foreign arrest warrants—came to include a wide and ill-defined population that the Administration terms “illegal enemy combatants.”

And as Jane Mayer of The New Yorker tells us here…

“It was begun in desperation” (Michael Scheuer, a former C.I.A. counter-terrorism expert who began the process of rendition) told me. At the time, he was the head of the C.I.A.’s Islamic-militant unit, whose job was to “detect, disrupt, and dismantle” terrorist operations. His unit spent much of 1996 studying how Al Qaeda operated; by the next year, Scheuer said, its mission was to try to capture bin Laden and his associates. He recalled, “We went to the White House”—which was then occupied by the Clinton Administration—“and they said, ‘Do it.’ ” He added that Richard Clarke, who was in charge of counter-terrorism for the National Security Council, offered no advice. “He told me, ‘Figure it out by yourselves,’ ” Scheuer said. (Clarke did not respond to a request for comment.)

Here’s some more interesting fiction from Gerecht in his column, by the way…

…if we’d gotten our hands on a senior member of Al Qaeda before 9/11, and knew that an attack likely to kill thousands of Americans was imminent, wouldn’t waterboarding, or taking advantage of the skills of our Jordanian friends, have been the sensible, moral thing to do with a holy warrior who didn’t fear death but might have feared pain?

Ugh – as noted here…

A (2002) Senate report on intelligence failures before Sept. 11 has concluded that ignorance and ineptitude of F.B.I. supervisors and lawyers in Washington blocked field agents around the country from pursuing evidence that might have helped provide the bureau with what one of the authors of the report called a ”veritable blueprint for 9/11.”

The report by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is expected to be made public next month and is the result of an investigation that began shortly after the terrorist attacks, focuses on the mishandling of the case against Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged with involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks.

The report suggests that while the Moussaoui case was particularly egregious, it may be indicative of the bureau’s bungling of other sensitive counterterrorism cases before Sept. 11.

By the way, Moussaoui pled guilty to conspiracy charges and is currently serving at a maximum security prison in Florence, CO.

And as noted here…

A group of 15 former U.S. interrogation and intelligence officers repudiated the use of torture as a way to extract information from detained terrorists in a statement of principles yesterday.

“Torture and other inhumane and abusive interview techniques are unlawful, ineffective and counterproductive,” said the document signed by each officer. “We reject them unconditionally.”

Of course, I don’t expect a typical neocon suspect like Gerecht (PNAC, AEI, The Weekly Standard, etc., etc.) to separate fact from fiction; as noted here, he asked (in response to the abuses at Abu Ghraib), “Have the chances of democracy in the Middle East really been set back because sexually sensitive Muslims are so revolted that they won’t embrace representative government?”

However, I DO expect the New York Times to know not to give a wingnut a platform from which he can spew his bilious garbage in the guise of informed editorial commentary.

Ten young men land a small boat at a quay in a city of 18 million people. Within minutes of setting ashore, they are throwing grenades and raking crowds with automatic weapons fire. Days later, almost 200 people are dead, more are wounded, the financial capital of a nation of a billion people has ground to a halt, and the world is riveted.

To most of the world, the Mumbai massacre seems inexplicable and random, like the periodic devastation caused by typhoons or tornadoes, or simply pointless, just killing for killing’s sake. But the attack was neither random nor pointless. The carnage in Mumbai was goal-oriented, an attempt to advance an overall strategy that is being ruthlessly pursued by the Islamist radical network… 

continue reading here  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/05/AR2008120502606.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

April 5, 2004

It’s hard to recall a moment when journalistic custom figured quite so prominently, and was exploited so cunningly, in political intrigue. We now have two high-stakes Beltway controversies that hinge in critical respects on the confidentiality a journalist promises to a source. Taken together they expose the way that this practice, which can shield the innocent so they can speak the truth without fear, has been twisted into a contrivance that turns journalists into political lackeys.

First, the Robert Novak affair. Bush administration officials, angered by public disclosures by ex-career diplomat Joseph Wilson that challenged the president’s story of Iraq’s pre-war arms ambitions, privately told columnist Novak that Wilson’s wife is a U.S. spy.

Although identifying a spy is illegal, the two officials who exposed Valerie Plame are safe from being named by Novak. He’s an administration soul-mate, and besides, he believes himself honor-bound to keep his source secret. So Justice Department investigators looking into this security breach must do without the assistance of the one person who unquestionably knows the names of the breachers.

Here, the administration’s heavy-handed response to a critic depends on a reporter standing firm in defense of journalist-source confidentiality.

The second situation is the polar opposite. Richard Clarke, the former anti-terrorism chief, electrified the country and shocked the administration by pummeling the Bush team for supposedly ignoring warnings in the months leading up to Sept. 11, 2001.

Clarke’s testimony before the 9/11 commission was, however, a different story from the one he told when he was working for the White House. In an August 2002 briefing to selected reporters he had forcefully defended the Bush team’s anti-terrorism record. The inconsistency might help undermine Clarke’s credibility.

Problem. Clarke had given his 2002 briefing on a “background” basis. That’s a device to enable officials to get their version of things into circulation without being linked to it. Journalists could report what Clarke told them, but they were forbidden to name him as its source.

Normally, anyway. In this case, Fox News reporter Jim Angle had recorded that briefing, and now asked the White House if it would waive that confidentiality agreement and permit him to identify Clarke as the briefing official. The White House, eager to discredit Clarke, said sure.

But the notion that the White House might be entitled to rescind the confidentiality deal — and expose Clarke — is nuts, as Brian Montopoli noted in a thoughtful analysis for the Columbia Journalism Review online. The White House couldn’t void the deal because it wasn’t a party to it. Clarke was.

Empowering the White House to waive confidentiality would be like telling a company that was the target of a whistle-blower’s anonymous leaks that it could release a reporter from his or her promise to protect the whistle-blower.

Besides, as long as the White House is overriding Clarke’s anonymity, it might as well do the same with the flunkies who broke the law by naming Valerie Plame as a spy. Just tell Novak the agreement is null and void. Then he’d be free to identify the officials who compromised national security.

If it isn’t careful the administration will stumble on its own illogic when it comes to abusing anonymity agreements.

But that’s the trouble, really. Confidentiality deals have become nothing more than an information management tool for insiders.

Sure, from time to time they open a channel through which honest, frightened whistleblowers can disclose information of public importance, assured that the reporters they’re confiding in will protect them from exposure.

But such heroism is rare. Far more often confidentiality is a routine device to enable bureaucratic concealment and enhance public confusion. Hence, we swallow “Washington believes,” or “the Congressional leadership is convinced,” or “defense officials insist,” or “a senior administration official said,” or any number of absurd usages that hide more than they reveal about the fractured realities out of which policy flows.

Meanwhile officialdom stays hunkered down, miles away from its own words, while reporters test the waters, float the trial balloons and fire the warning shots.

And whistle-blowers? The crowning irony is that the current cases suggest that confidentiality is more likely to serve as a way to punish them than to ensure them a voice.