Infinite Unknown

From the article:

“Shaffer was previously known for alleging before the 9/11 Commission and Congress that a covert Pentagon task force called “Able Danger” had identified Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks, before the assaults on New York and the Pentagon. Shaffer’s claim was later rejected by congressional investigators, among others. But he repeats the assertion in the book.”

The Defense Department is attempting to buy the entire first printing - 10,000 copies - of a memoir by a controversial former Defense Intelligence Agency officer so that the book can be destroyed, according to military and other sources.

“Operation Dark Heart,” which was scheduled to be published this month by St. Martin’s Press, recounts the adventures and frustrations of an Army reservist, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, who served in Afghanistan in 2003, a moment when the attention of Washington and the military had shifted to Iraq.

Shaffer, who is now a senior fellow at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies in Washington, describes a number of planned covert operations, including an aborted cross-border surveillance operation using sophisticated eavesdropping technology that targeted high-level al-Qaeda operatives based in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

The operation was shut down by military officials concerned about offending Pakistan, according to Shaffer’s account.

Shaffer’s book was reviewed and cleared in writing by the Army Reserve earlier this year, but this summer the Defense Intelligence Agency objected to the use of the names of American intelligence officers, among other issues.

A senior Pentagon official said that the DIA obtained a copy of the manuscript in mid-July, adding that the agency “did a quick review” and found “some issues we were very concerned with.” The agency then referred the matter to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which distributed the manuscript to other agencies, presumably including the CIA, “all of whom had major objections to things in the book,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The official said the Defense Department “sent up a team to talk with the publisher some time ago,” and has been negotiating an agreement that might allow the Pentagon to purchase already printed copies of the book and permit a subsequent version to go forward as long as it complies with U.S. government requests.

Both sides now appear to have agreed on the contents of the second printing, but negotiations are focused on what to with the 10,000 copies already published.

The Pentagon is now negotiating with Shaffer’s publisher to buy the entire first print run, according to a source familiar with the negotiations. The Pentagon’s plan to destroy all 10,000 copies of the initial printing was first reported Thursday night by the New York Times.

Continue reading »

Tags: 9/11, Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Anthony Shaffer, CIA, Department of Defense, globla news, Government, Pakistan, Pentagon, Politics, Terrorism, Terrorists, U.S.

More transparency we can believe in!

In a 6-5 ruling issued this afternoon, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals handed the Obama administration a major victory in its efforts to shield Bush crimes from judicial review, when the court upheld the Obama DOJ’s argument that Bush’s rendition program, used to send victims to be tortured, are “state secrets” and its legality thus cannot be adjudicated by courts.

The Obama DOJ had appealed to the full 9th Circuit from last year’s ruling by a 3-judge panel which rejected the “state secrets” argument and held that it cannot be used as a weapon to shield the Executive Branch from allegations in this case that it broke the law.

I’ve written multiple times about this case, brought by torture/rendition victim Binyam Mohamed and several others against the Boeing subsidiary which, at the behest of the Bush administration, rendered them to be tortured.

Flu permitting, I’ll have much more to say about this decision tomorrow, but for the moment, I wanted to highlight the first paragraph from The New York Times article on this ruling, written by Charlie Savage.  Just marvel, in particular, at the last sentence:

“The ruling handed a major victory to the Obama administration in its effort to advance a sweeping view of executive secrecy power.”  That says it all.

The distorted, radical use of the state secret privilege — as a broad-based immunity weapon for compelling the dismissal of entire cases alleging Executive lawbreaking, rather than a narrow discovery tool for suppressing the use of specific classified documents — is exactly what the Bush administration did to such extreme controversy.  To see how true that is, just look at this article from Talking Points Memo, from April of last year, in which Zachary Roth consulted with numerous legal experts about my argument that Obama was abusing this weapon in exactly the same way Bush did.  His findings were encapsulated in the TPM headline:

Roth wrote:

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald wrote that the move “demonstrates that the Obama DOJ plans to invoke the exact radical doctrines of executive secrecy which Bush used.” MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann called it “deja vu all over again”.

Not having Greenwald’s training in constitutional law (and perhaps lacking Olbermann’s all-conquering self-confidence), we wanted to get a sense from a few independent experts as to how to assess the administration’s position on the case. Does it represent a continuation of the Bushies’ obsession with putting secrecy and executive power above basic constitutional rights? Is it a sweeping power grab by the executive branch, that sets set a broad and dangerous precedent for future cases by asserting that the government has the right to get lawsuits dismissed merely by claiming that state secrets are at stake, without giving judges any discretion whatsoever?

In a word, yes.

Suffice to say — with great understatement — Obama’s doing this doesn’t trigger the same level of outrage and objection as when Bush did it, at least not in most circles.  And I do so fondly recall the days back in the Spring of last year when civil libertarians who were vigorously objecting to Obama’s Bush-replicating legal positions were told by vocal Obama supporters that Obama was only doing this in order to ensure that Bush’s extremist legal theories were rejected by courts and thus we were all generously showered with the Magnanimous Gift of Good Precedent.  Again with great understatement, Obama’s appealing the 9th Circuit’s rejection of the Bush/Obama “state secrets” argument to the full court — and thus securing one of the most harmful judicial endorsements ever of this radical secrecy doctrine — is not exactly consistent with that Obama-justifying rationale. Continue reading »

Tags: Barack Obama, Bush administration, CIA, George Bush, Government, Interrogation, Obama administration, Politics, Torture, U.S.

Oh, sure!

Again:

“The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaeda. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the ‘devil’ only in order to drive the TV watcher to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US.”
- Robin Cook, Former British Foreign Secretary

About Wikileaks:

- F. William Engdahl: Something stinks about Wikileaks …

… and the stench is already unbearable.

About Al Qaeda:

- Al Qaeda Doesn’t Exist or How The US Created Al Qaeda (Documentary)

Wonder where all those TRILLIONS of dollars really went and for what reasons all these soldiers had to die?

Remember that Donald Rumsfeld admitted the day before 9/11 on CBS NEWS that the Pentagon Cannot Account For 2,3 TRILLION Dollars ???

After these elite criminals will have bankrupted and destroyed America they will propose the New World Order as the one and only solution to all the problems that they have created in the first place.

A classified CIA memo discussing the United States as a possible “exporter of terrorism” because of al-Qaeda recruitment in America has been posted on website, Wikileaks.

U.S. Marines and British soldiers on patrol in Musa Qala Photo: REUTERS

The three-page document addressed the hypothetical question of the impact on the United States if Americans were found to be operating abroad to carry out acts of terrorism.

The CIA memo, produced by the agency’s Red Cell ‘think tank’ set up after the September 11 attacks, does not appear to expose any state secrets and was dismissed by one government official as hardly a “blockbuster.”

It is the latest classified memo to be published by the whistle-blowing website, which last month released more than 70,000 secret military documents on the allied war in Afghanistan, prompting an FBI investigation.

It has threatened to release some 15,000 more, despite criticism that the leaks endangered the lives of sources and exposed sensitive intelligence gathering methods to enemy fighters.

The latest memo said the United States could lose leverage over allies to co-operate on terrorism, particularly on “extra-judicial activities”.

“Primarily we have been concerned about al Qaeda infiltrating operatives into the United States to conduct terrorist attacks, but AQ may be increasingly looking for Americans to operate overseas,” the document proposes.

“Undoubtedly al Qaeda and other terrorist groups recognise that Americans can be great assets in terrorist operations overseas.”

It said US citizens are valuable to terrorist organisations because they are harder to detect. They don’t fit the typical Arab-Muslim profile and can easily communicate with leaders through their “unfettered” access to the internet and other methods, the report said.

Continue reading »

Tags: Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, CIA, Government, Military, Politics, Terrorism, Terrorists, U.S., WIKILEAKS

The truth is:

“The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaeda. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the ‘devil’ only in order to drive the TV watcher to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US.”
- Robin Cook, Former British Foreign Secretary

Skip the introduction.

Introduction:

1 of 1:

2 of 2:

Tags: Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Barack Obama, Bush administration, CIA, Cold War, Documentary, Drugs, Global News, Government, heroin, ISI, Jimmy Carter, Military, Mujahideen, Obama administration, Operation Cyclone, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan, Politics, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Taliban, Terrorism, Terrorists, U.S., War, Zbigniew Brzezinski

The film about war crimes using microwave weapons to neutralize and kill political activists and whistleblowers.

The author has interviewed 200 targets who have been turned into human guinea pigs to perfect electromagnetic weapons and the science of behavior modification. ( 2hrs and 15 minutes.)

Tags: Abuse, assassination, Children, CIA, Cults, Drugs, FBI, Government, Iran, Iraq, Laser, Manhatten Project, Microwave, Military, Mind-Control, MKULTRA, Nazi Germany, Nazis, Pedophile, Politics, Rape, Remote Viewing, Satanism, Science, Scientists, Sex, Society, Technology, U.S., Vietnam, War, War Crimes, Weapons

By ADAM COHEN

Adam Cohen, a lawyer, is a former TIME writer and a former member of the New York Times editorial board.

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway - and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre - and scary - rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants - with no need for a search warrant. (See a TIME photoessay on Cannabis Culture.)

It is a dangerous decision - one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.

Continue reading »

Tags: 1984, Big Brother, CIA, Constitution, DEA, Fourth Amendment, George Orwell, Global News, Government, GPS, Law, New World Order, Politics, Privacy, Society, Surveillance, U.S.

The CIA has admitted to having videotapes of interrogations in a secret Moroccan prison of 9/11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh.

An explosion rips through the South Tower of the World Trade Towers after the hijacked United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into it Photo: AP

Discovered in a box under a desk at the Central Intelligence Agency, the tapes could reveal how foreign governments aided the United States in holding and interrogating suspects. And they could complicate US efforts to prosecute Binalshibh, who has been described as one of the “key plot facilitators” in the 2001 attacks.

Apparently the tapes do not show harsh treatment - unlike videos the agency has destroyed of the questioning of other suspected terrorists.

The two videotapes and one audiotape are believed to be the only existing recordings made within the clandestine prison system and could offer a revealing glimpse into a four-year global odyssey that ranged from Pakistan to Romania to Guantanamo Bay.

The tapes depict Binalshibh’s interrogation sessions in 2002 at a Moroccan-run facility the CIA used near Rabat, according to several current and former US officials. Continue reading »

Tags: ACLU, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, CIA, Government, Guantánamo, Interrogation, Morocco, Politics, Terrorism, U.S.

Israel: Former CIA and military officials tell Obama Israel is preparing to attack Iran this month

A group of former CIA and military officials have written to President Obama to say they believe Israel is preparing to attack Iran this month. The group explained that Israel wants to launch a war suddenly, and make it politically untenable for Obama to do anything other than offer full US military support. RT’s Anissa Naouai talks to one of the people behind the memo, former US army colonel Ann Wright.

Saturday, August 07, 2010
Source: Mike Hitchen Online

Iran has not attacked another country for over 200 years!

Even if Iran would be able to built one nuclear weapon, would Iran use it just to get potentially 200 Israeli nuclear weapons - not to mention the US nuclear weapon arsenal here - fired back at them???

The US elite puppet government is also preparing for war with Iran.

WW III for a change?

- Admiral Mike Mullen: US has plan to attack Iran (if needed)

- Preparing for World War III, Targeting Iran (Part I: Global Warfare)

- Third US carrier, 4,000 Marines augment US armada opposite Iran

- Italy’s PM Berlusconi: G-8 ‘believe absolutely’ that Israel will attack Iran

- Israel stations nuclear missile submarines off Iran

- US Begins Massive Military Build Up Around Iran, Sending Up To 4 New Carrier Groups In Region

- Russia Sells Its S-300 Missile System to Iran

- US shipping hundreds of powerful bunker buster bombs for coming attack on Iran

- Israel Threatening To Use Nuclear Weapons On Iran! (FOX NEWS)

- President Obama raises stakes on Iran by sending in ships and missiles

Tags: Barack Obama, CIA, Global News, Government, Israel, Military, Obama administration, Politics, U.S.

Humanity is at a dangerous crossroads. War preparations to attack Iran are in “an advanced state of readiness”. Hi tech weapons systems including nuclear warheads are fully deployed.

This military adventure has been on the Pentagon’s drawing board since the mid-1990s. First Iraq, then Iran according to a declassified 1995 US Central Command document.

Escalation is part of the military agenda. While Iran, is the next target together with Syria and Lebanon, this strategic military deployment also threatens North Korea, China and Russia.

Since 2005, the US and its allies, including America’s NATO partners and Israel, have been involved in the extensive deployment and stockpiling of advanced weapons systems. The air defense systems of the US, NATO member countries and Israel are fully integrated.

This is a coordinated endeavor of the Pentagon, NATO, Israel’s Defense Force (IDF), with the active military involvement of several non-NATO partner countries including the frontline Arab states (members of NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative), Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia, among others. (NATO consists of 28 NATO member states Another 21 countries are members of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC), The Mediterranean Dialogue and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative include ten Arab countries plus Israel.)

The roles of Egypt, the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia (within the extended military alliance) is of particular relevance. Egypt controls the transit of war ships and oil tankers through the Suez Canal. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States occupy the South Western coastlines of the Persian Gulf, the Straits of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman. In early June, “Egypt reportedly allowed one Israeli and eleven U.S. ships to pass through the Suez Canal in ….an apparent signal to Iran. … On June 12, regional press outlets reported that the Saudis had granted Israel the right to fly over its airspace…” (Muriel Mirak Weissbach,  Israel’s Insane War on Iran Must Be Prevented., Global Research, July 31, 2010)

Continue reading »

Tags: Barack Obama, China, CIA, Egypt, George Tenet, Global News, Government, Iran, Israel, Middle East, Military, NATO, Pentagon, Politics, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism, U.N., U.S., War, WWW III

Shorter version of the video with simultaneous translation:

- Iranian nuclear scientist: ‘US and Saudi agents abducted me’ (Guardian)

Shahram Amiri returns to Tehran from the US where he claims he was interrogated by CIA agents after being kidnapped in Saudi Arabia

Added: 15. Juli 2010

Tags: CIA, Global News, Government, Iran, nuclear, Politics, Saudi Arabia, Scientists, U.S.