Bush Administration Defends Spying Program
By TONI LOCY, Associated Press Writer


The Bush administration formally defended its domestic spying program in a letter to Congress late Thursday saying the nation's security outweighs privacy concerns of individuals who are monitored.

In a letter to the chairs of the House and Senate intelligence committees, the Justice Department said President Bush authorized electronic surveillance without first obtaining a warrant in an effort to thwart terrorist acts against the United States.

"There is undeniably an important and legitimate privacy interest at stake with respect to the activities described by the president," wrote Assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella. "That must be balanced, however, against the government's compelling interest in the security of the nation."

President Bush has acknowledged he authorized such surveillance and repeatedly has defended it in recent days.

But Moschella's letter was the administration's first public notice to Congress about the program in which electronic surveillance was conducted without the approval of a secret court created to examine requests for wiretaps and searches in the most sensitive terrorism and espionage cases.

Moschella maintained that Bush acted legally when he authorized the National Security Agency to go around the court to conduct electronic surveillance of international communications into and out of the United States by suspects tied to al-Qaida or its affiliates.

Moschella relied on a Sept. 18, 2001, congressional resolution, known as the Authorization to Use Military Force, as primary legal justification for Bush's creation of a domestic spying program. He said Bush's powers as commander-in-chief give the president "the responsibility to protect the nation."

The resolution "clearly contemplates action within the United States," Moschella wrote, and acknowledges Bush's power to prevent terrorism against the United States.

Congress adopted the resolution in the chaotic days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, authorizing the president to wage war against al-Qaida and other terrorist groups that pose a threat to the United States.

Moschella said the president's constitutional authority also includes power to order warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance inside the United States. He said that power has been affirmed by federal courts, including the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. The FISA court was created in 1978 after public outcry over government spying on anti-war and civil rights protesters.

The administration deliberately bypassed the FISA court, which requires the government to provide evidence that a terrorism or espionage suspect is "an agent of a foreign power." The foreign intelligence law makes it a crime for anyone who "intentionally intercepts" a communication without a warrant.

Moschella said Bush's action was legal because the foreign intelligence law provides a "broad" exception if the spying is authorized by another statute. In this case, he said, Congress' authorization provided such authority.

The resolution didn't limit the president to going after al-Qaida only in Afghanistan, Moschella wrote.

Moschella also maintained the NSA program is "consistent" with the Fourth Amendment — which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures — and civil liberties.

For searches to be reasonable under law, a warrant is needed, Moschella said. But, outside criminal investigations, he said, the Supreme Court has created exceptions where warrants are not needed, finding that the "reasonableness of a search" depends on "the totality of the circumstances."

"Foreign intelligence collection, especially in the midst of an armed conflict in which the adversary has already launched catastrophic attacks within the United States, fits squarely within the 'special needs' exception to the warrant requirement," Moschella wrote.

"Intercepting communications into and out of the United States of persons linked to al-Qaida in order to detect and prevent a catastrophic attack is clearly reasonable."




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Warrantless Wiretapping: Why It Seriously Imperils the Separation of Powers, And Continues the Executive's Sapping of Power From Congress and the Courts
By EDWARD LAZARUS
----
Thursday, Dec. 22, 2005

Not so long ago, the debate over the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers in this country was a matter of fine distinctions.

In 1989, for instance, some worried that Congress' decision to have the executive put a few members of the judicial branch on the U.S. Sentencing Commission raised a separation of powers issue. These executive-appointed judges, after all, would arguably act as legislators - in that the Commission drafts the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, for Congress' approval.



The Supreme Court, in Mistretta v. United States, approved the arrangement despite the separation-of-powers objection. But critics still worried. Yale Law Professor Stephen Carter eloquently explained why: Although permitting a few judicial officers to accept executive appointment to a non-judicial commission might not look too ominous, the Constitution's separation of powers was the nation's primary defense against tyranny. And tyranny, Carter concluded in an oft-quoted line, does not overwhelm a nation in an instant. No, he wrote, "tyranny creeps."

Lately, though, tyranny runs like a cheetah. How quaint concerns such as those of Mistretta's critics seem after the events of the last few years.

How quaint they seem, especially, after last's week revelation that President Bush has spent the last four years authorizing and re-authorizing the warrantless wiretapping of domestically originating phone calls made by American citizens, even though Congress appears to have made such wiretapping a criminal offense when it passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in the 1970s.

How a Bloated Executive Has Sapped Power From Congress and The Federal Courts

Over the past four years, the executive has repeatedly tried to make sure the federal courts and the legislative branch have no oversight at all as to whom it detains, on what ground, for how long, and under what conditions -- including conditions of extreme torture such as waterboarding.

The Bush Administration took power from the courts by spuriously arguing that Guantanamo detainees had no access to the Great Writ of habeas corpus - a contention that the Supreme Court handily rejected, but that kept the issue tied up in litigation for years. It would have been more honest for the Administration to suspend habeas corpus for these prisoners, and accept the brunt of public criticism for doing so.

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The Bush Administration has also tried to moot cases before courts can rule on crucial issues of detention -- allowing the supposedly dangerous American citizen Yaser Hamdi to go live in Saudi Arabia, and indicting American citizen Jose Padilla on charges very different from the "dirty bomb" allegations that supposedly justified detaining him for years.

And the Bush Administration took power from Congress by acting as if the Congressionally-ratified Geneva Convention does not apply. Meanwhile, its CIA has reportedly administered a network of secret foreign prisons -- unbeknownst to the courts and, it seems, to Congress (or much of it).

Now, once again, the President has bypassed the federal courts and Congress entirely - with the Executive refusing even to avail itself of the separate, secret FISA court convened by Congress as the only entity with the power to authorize clandestine surveillance of espionage or terrorism suspects.

Importantly, the question now before the country is not some marginal blurring of lines between the three departments of government. The question is whether the Executive department will overwhelmingly dominate the other two - and, especially, the federal courts. President Bush claims Congressional leaders, at least, knew of his warrantless wiretapping, but no court was told.

The Bush Administration has taken the position that it has inherent constitutional authority to exempt itself from all legal constraint when the President invokes his commander-in-chief authority to respond to external national security threats. Surely, this position is wrong.

The Executive's Tactics: "Paper," Conceal, Trot Out the Paper

The Administration's M.O. in all such initiatives seems to be consistent. Within the Executive Branch, it uses the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel - which used to serve as a neutral arbiter on questions of Executive power - as a veritable department of justification: a place where Executive Branch ideologues concoct defenses, no matter how one-sided or incomplete, for every act the President would like to undertake. It is from OLC, for instance, that the notorious torture memos came - and now, the justification for warrantless wiretaps.

In this way, the President can always claim that he was acting within his legal authority as the Justice Department itself defined it. But as the attorneys currently staffing OLC are not inclined to see any constitutional constraint on Presidential power at all, it is absurd to rely on their supposedly drawing the boundaries of the authority within which the President can operate.

In their view, there are no such boundaries. Yet they have produced lengthy analyses to "paper" this simple, incredible view, which might have been expressed in a single naked, unpersuasive sentence.

Next, the Administration shrouds its conduct in a thick veil of secrecy so that not only us ordinary folk, but even high-ranking Congressional officials will have no idea what power the President is actually exercising. And of course, the Administration has terrified potential whistleblowers through threats of investigation and prosecution. That means two more potential groups who might have argued for, or set, boundaries are silenced: Members of Congress, and the small group of those last few conscientious persons within the Administration who still believe it ought to comply with the Constitution, and are willing to say so.

Then, when the Administration's actions finally come to light, its officials trot out whatever legal justifications its lawyers have cooked up. In the past, these justifications have either been rejected by the courts (as when the Supreme Court emphatically rejected the Administration's view of its authority over enemy combatants) or exposed as astonishingly weak (as with the notorious "torture memos"). But OLC did, at least, give the Administration some paper to wave around, with lawyers' names on top.

These "legal" explanations are also invariably accompanied by an insistence that everything the Administration is doing is a necessary component of the amorphous war on terror, and that the American people can and should trust their President to do the right thing. But this argument simply can't justify the Executive's usurpation of power: After all, America has faced crises before without deciding to revert to monarchy.

The Wiretapping: Different Issue, Same Modus Operandi

This latest episode - of warrantless wiretapping - exhibits the same m.o. The Administration is not yet releasing its internal legal analysis for why the President could flout Congress's scheme for authorizing secret surveillance of terrorism suspects. But the contours of this analysis are becoming clearer.

As a first line of defense, the Administration is claiming that Congress, when it enacted its Authorization of the Use of Military Force (AUMF) in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, gave the President a free pass to end-run the FISA court.

This argument is risible. As a general matter, the law strongly disfavors such implied repeals of existing statutes: If a law is meant to decimate prior law, it ought to say that's what it's doing, and generally, it does. And especially when the prior law relates to constitutional rights - here, Fourth Amendment rights - its repeal ought to be crystal clear, so that repeal can immediately be challenged in court.

In addition, nothing in the debate over AUMF suggests that Congress had anything like the NSA surveillance program in mind when it gave Bush the go-ahead to attack Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. After all, that decision was a no-brainer, at the time. What Congressperson was gaming out what would happen years ahead? And again, where in the silence is authorization found?

By this logic, the Administration could invoke the AUMF to override pretty much any federal statute. And that's surely wrong.

Moreover, on a more specific level, Congress purposefully limited the AUMF to the use of force against persons directly connected to Al Qaeda. From what has emerged, the Administration's secret wiretapping program appears to cover a multitude of persons who would not qualify as targets under the AUMF - and, thus, the AUMF rationale falls of its own weight.

The President's real argument, however, is not based on the AUMF, but - once again -- on what he claims is his inherent constitutional powers as commander-in-chief. Here, the President's claim seems breathtaking in scope. He appears to be claiming that the President may disregard every law as he - in his own discretion - deems necessary, to fight a war on terror that has no clearly defined scope, nor any clearly defined foe, nor any knowable end point.

Furthermore, under this theory, it would appear that Congress has no power to curb the President's authority -- because the President alone has the power to define the terrorist threat and the means necessary to combat it.

This is not a constitutional design I recognize. Wasn't one of the Framers' primary concerns to avoid the concentration of such power in a king-like chief executive? Didn't the Framers believe that such a concentration of power was deeply corrupting? And hasn't history only reinforced those lessons?

Revision of the Law May Be Necessary, but Ignoring and Circumventing It Was Not

This issue, it's important to note, is not a political one, and should not be divisive. It may be that this country needs to revise its laws to respond effectively to terrorist threats - and that is the policy issue on which right and left will predictably differ, just as they have on the USA Patriot Act.

But what we all should be able to agree on, is that the Executive's simply opting to act illegally -- without even asking its own same-party Congress to change the law - is wrong.

Perhaps FISA needs to be revamped. Notably, it already contains exceptions for emergencies and the FISA court has a long history of working cooperatively with the intelligence agencies, But some say that the kind of "data mining" the government absolutely must do won't pass muster under current FISA court standards, and that therefore, FISA must be amended.

I don't know whether these claims are true; I'm willing to hear arguments on both sides. It's the missing debate on this, that is the national shame here.

Unilateral Executive Power Is Tyranny, Plain and Simple

I might even accept, for the purposes of argument, that, in the panicky aftermath of 9/11, it was understandable for the President to act unilaterally to protect against a potential second-wave attack, regardless of constitutional limits.

But over four years have passed, and there has been copious time for deliberation and, if necessary, Congressional action. In this context, it simply cannot be that the President, acting alone, has the permanent authority he now claims to override a carefully-wrought congressional scheme for fighting terrorism, and enact his own set of secret rules.

Naturally, such a scheme implicates civil liberties, as enshrined in our Constitution. It is not the President's job, alone, to make the nation's trade-offs between security and privacy. Congress ought to legislate, and if it goes too far, the Supreme Court ought to make sure its legislation stays within constitutional bounds.

But even worse, such a scheme threatens basic democratic principles. This Administration wants virtually unlimited power with essentially no accountability. I might almost be able to stomach Bush's "just trust me" claims of Executive power, if the President could be made truly accountable for his decisions down the road. But Bush wants the power with no public debate and a minimum of public disclosure.

I wouldn't trust any Administration with such a blank check. And this isn't just any Administration. It's an Administration with a deeply troubling history of mistakes and obfuscation, an Administration that seems to expand its definition of terrorism however it finds convenient, an Administration that brooks none of the internal dissent that might check authoritarian impulses.

Against that backdrop, the new revelations of warrantless wiretapping, and the Administration's latest set of explanations, sound less like a plan to fight terror than like tyranny's engines, raring to go.

GOP Blocks Action on Senate Intelligence Authorization Bill

By Dafna Linzer

Senate Republicans late Wednesday blocked the authorization bill that guides the country's intelligence programs. It was the first time in 27 years that the bill had failed to pass before the end of the calendar year.

The Republican "hold" on the bill blocked what was a planned adoption by unanimous consent. The bill will now wait for Congress to return from its winter recess in late January. "An anonymous Republican placed a hold on the bill and prevented the Senate from working its will," Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said yesterday in a statement on the floor. "As a result, the bill can't go forward."

Reid said the delay meant that "vital intelligence operations are on hold while the bill languishes." But congressional and intelligence community sources said it would not affect current intelligence programs, which are also guided by defense authorizations and appropriations.

Democrats were informed last week that Republicans would clear the bill if three amendments, two by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and one by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), would be stripped from the consent agreement.

But Democrats balked because Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), the chairman of the Senate intelligence panel, had agreed to the amendments. Roberts's staff did not return calls for comment yesterday.

Kerry's amendment would require the director of national intelligence to give the intelligence panels information on secret CIA prisons in several Eastern European democracies and in Asia.

Kennedy's amendments would require the White House to turn over copies of daily intelligence briefs that President Bush and former President Bill Clinton reviewed on Iraq.

Democrats have accused administration officials of exaggerating Iraq's weapons capabilities and terrorism ties to win public support for the war. No weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.

Bush has argued that Congress and the Clinton administration had access to the same intelligence that he pointed to in the run-up to the March 2003 invasion. A congressional report made public last week concluded that Bush and his inner circle had access to more intelligence and reviewed more sensitive material than what was shared with Congress.


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Judge Issues Warrants for CIA Operatives Forbes
An Italian judge has issued European arrest warrants for 22 purported CIA operatives wanted for the alleged kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric, a prosecutor said Friday. Prosecutor Armando Spataro said the warrants allowed for the arrest of the suspects in any of the 25 European Union member countries. Italy issued warrants for the arrest of the 22 suspects within its own borders earlier this month. Prosecutors are seeking the suspects' extradition for their alleged involvement in the abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr from a Milan street in February 2003. The suspects are all described as U.S. citizens. Prosecutors have identified one of them as Robert Seldon Lady, a former CIA station chief in Milan who has since returned to the United States. The whereabouts of the others are unknown. Lady's attorney, Daria Pesce, said the new warrants meant the alleged operatives could no longer travel to Europe without risking arrest. "That's the only problem," she said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. Italian Justice Minister Roberto Castelli has sought more court documentation on the case before deciding whether to forward an extradition request to Washington, Spataro said. Premier Silvio Berlusconi, a top U.S. ally, suggested earlier this week that the government may not push the request, saying, "I don't think there is any basis in the case." Pesce said that even if the extradition request was forwarded the U.S. would "never" allow the suspects to be extradited. Pesce previously sought to have the Italian arrest warrant for Lady revoked, contending that her client should be protected by diplomatic immunity. That appeal was turned down by a Milan judge, who said Lady lost his immunity when he left his post in 2004, and that consular officials could be prosecuted for grave crimes in any case. Prosecutors allege that Nasr, a cleric believed to belong to an Islamic terror group, was flown from Italy to a military base in Germany before being put on a flight to Egypt, where he was tortured. The alleged abduction was purportedly part of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program, in which terrorism suspects are transferred to third countries without court approval. Prosecutors say the abduction was a serious violation of Italian sovereignty that has hindered Italian terrorism investigations. The Italian government has vigorously denied any prior knowledge of the alleged abduction and U.S. authorities have consistently declined to comment. A spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment on the warrants Friday. Several European countries are investigating claims that the CIA shipped prisoners through European airports to secret detention centers, in breach of international and national laws. Earlier this month, Berlusconi said Italy had no evidence of illegal CIA activity on its territory.
Italy court issues EU arrest warrant for CIA team Reuters
CIA men wanted on EU warrants ANSA
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CIA’s Goss Reportedly Warned Ankara Of Iranian Threat

Cumhuriyet - During his recent visit to Ankara, CIA Director Porter Goss reportedly brought three dossiers on Iran to Ankara.
Goss is said to have asked for Turkey’s support for Washington’s policy against Iran’s nuclear activities, charging that Tehran had supported terrorism and taken part in activities against Turkey.

Goss also asked Ankara to be ready for a possible US air operation against Iran and Syria.

Goss, who came to Ankara just after FBI Director Robert Mueller’s visit, brought up Iran’s alleged attempts to develop nuclear weapons. It was said that Goss first told Ankara that Iran has nuclear weapons and this situation was creating a huge threat for both Turkey and other states in the region. Diplomatic sources say that Washington wants Turkey to coordinate with its Iran policies. The second dossier is about Iran’s stance on terrorism. The CIA argued that Iran was supporting terrorism, the PKK and al-Qaeda. The third had to do with Iran’s alleged stance against Ankara. Goss said that Tehran sees Turkey as an enemy and would try to “export its regime.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

December 24, 2005
Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.

The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said.

As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.

The government's collection and analysis of phone and Internet traffic have raised questions among some law enforcement and judicial officials familiar with the program. One issue of concern to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has reviewed some separate warrant applications growing out of the N.S.A.'s surveillance program, is whether the court has legal authority over calls outside the United States that happen to pass through American-based telephonic "switches," according to officials familiar with the matter.

"There was a lot of discussion about the switches" in conversations with the court, a Justice Department official said, referring to the gateways through which much of the communications traffic flows. "You're talking about access to such a vast amount of communications, and the question was, How do you minimize something that's on a switch that's carrying such large volumes of traffic? The court was very, very concerned about that."

Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to Al Qaeda.

What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.

The current and former government officials who discussed the program were granted anonymity because it remains classified.

Bush administration officials declined to comment on Friday on the technical aspects of the operation and the N.S.A.'s use of broad searches to look for clues on terrorists. Because the program is highly classified, many details of how the N.S.A. is conducting it remain unknown, and members of Congress who have pressed for a full Congressional inquiry say they are eager to learn more about the program's operational details, as well as its legality.

Officials in the government and the telecommunications industry who have knowledge of parts of the program say the N.S.A. has sought to analyze communications patterns to glean clues from details like who is calling whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, and the origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages. Calls to and from Afghanistan, for instance, are known to have been of particular interest to the N.S.A. since the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials said.

This so-called "pattern analysis" on calls within the United States would, in many circumstances, require a court warrant if the government wanted to trace who calls whom.

The use of similar data-mining operations by the Bush administration in other contexts has raised strong objections, most notably in connection with the Total Information Awareness system, developed by the Pentagon for tracking terror suspects, and the Department of Homeland Security's Capps program for screening airline passengers. Both programs were ultimately scrapped after public outcries over possible threats to privacy and civil liberties.

But the Bush administration regards the N.S.A.'s ability to trace and analyze large volumes of data as critical to its expanded mission to detect terrorist plots before they can be carried out, officials familiar with the program say. Administration officials maintain that the system set up by Congress in 1978 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not give them the speed and flexibility to respond fully to terrorist threats at home.

A former technology manager at a major telecommunications company said that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the leading companies in the industry have been storing information on calling patterns and giving it to the federal government to aid in tracking possible terrorists.

"All that data is mined with the cooperation of the government and shared with them, and since 9/11, there's been much more active involvement in that area," said the former manager, a telecommunications expert who did not want his name or that of his former company used because of concern about revealing trade secrets.

Such information often proves just as valuable to the government as eavesdropping on the calls themselves, the former manager said.

"If they get content, that's useful to them too, but the real plum is going to be the transaction data and the traffic analysis," he said. "Massive amounts of traffic analysis information - who is calling whom, who is in Osama Bin Laden's circle of family and friends - is used to identify lines of communication that are then given closer scrutiny."

Several officials said that after President Bush's order authorizing the N.S.A. program, senior government officials arranged with officials of some of the nation's largest telecommunications companies to gain access to switches that act as gateways at the borders between the United States' communications networks and international networks. The identities of the corporations involved could not be determined.

The switches are some of the main arteries for moving voice and some Internet traffic into and out of the United States, and, with the globalization of the telecommunications industry in recent years, many international-to-international calls are also routed through such American switches.

One outside expert on communications privacy who previously worked at the N.S.A. said that to exploit its technological capabilities, the American government had in the last few years been quietly encouraging the telecommunications industry to increase the amount of international traffic that is routed through American-based switches.

The growth of that transit traffic had become a major issue for the intelligence community, officials say, because it had not been fully addressed by 1970's-era laws and regulations governing the N.S.A. Now that foreign calls were being routed through switches on American soil, some judges and law enforcement officials regarded eavesdropping on those calls as a possible violation of those decades-old restrictions, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court-approved warrants for domestic surveillance.

Historically, the American intelligence community has had close relationships with many communications and computer firms and related technical industries. But the N.S.A.'s backdoor access to major telecommunications switches on American soil with the cooperation of major corporations represents a significant expansion of the agency's operational capability, according to current and former government officials.

Phil Karn, a computer engineer and technology expert at a major West Coast telecommunications company, said access to such switches would be significant. "If the government is gaining access to the switches like this, what you're really talking about is the capability of an enormous vacuum operation to sweep up data," he said.



Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

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NSA, the Agency That Could Be Big Brother
By James Bamford
The New York Times

Sunday 25 December 2005

Washington - Deep in a remote, fog-layered hollow near Sugar Grove, W.Va., hidden by fortress-like mountains, sits the country's largest eavesdropping bug. Located in a "radio quiet" zone, the station's large parabolic dishes secretly and silently sweep in millions of private telephone calls and e-mail messages an hour.

Run by the ultrasecret National Security Agency, the listening post intercepts all international communications entering the eastern United States. Another NSA listening post, in Yakima,Wash., eavesdrops on the western half of the country.

A hundred miles or so north of Sugar Grove, in Washington, the NSA has suddenly taken center stage in a political firestorm. The controversy over whether the president broke the law when he secretly ordered the NSA to bypass a special court and conduct warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens has even provoked some Democrats to call for his impeachment.

According to John E. McLaughlin, who as the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the fall of 2001 was among the first briefed on the program, this eavesdropping was the most secret operation in the entire intelligence network, complete with its own code word - which itself is secret.

Jokingly referred to as "No Such Agency," the NSA was created in absolute secrecy in 1952 by President Harry S. Truman. Today, it is the largest intelligence agency. It is also the most important, providing far more insight on foreign countries than the CIA and other spy organizations.

But the agency is still struggling to adjust to the war on terror, in which its job is not to monitor states, but individuals or small cells hidden all over the world. To accomplish this, the NSA has developed ever more sophisticated technology that mines vast amounts of data. But this technology may be of limited use abroad. And at home, it increases pressure on the agency to bypass civil liberties and skirt formal legal channels of criminal investigation. Originally created to spy on foreign adversaries, the NSA was never supposed to be turned inward. Thirty years ago, Senator Frank Church, the Idaho Democrat who was then chairman of the select committee on intelligence, investigated the agency and came away stunned.

"That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people," he said in 1975, "and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide."

He added that if a dictator ever took over, the NSA "could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back."

At the time, the agency had the ability to listen to only what people said over the telephone or wrote in an occasional telegram; they had no access to private letters. But today, with people expressing their innermost thoughts in e-mail messages, exposing their medical and financial records to the Internet, and chatting constantly on cellphones, the agency virtually has the ability to get inside a person's mind.

The NSA's original target had been the Communist bloc. The agency wrapped the Soviet Union and its satellite nations in an electronic cocoon. Anytime an aircraft, ship or military unit moved, the NSA would know. And from 22,300 miles in orbit, satellites with super-thin, football-field-sized antennas eavesdropped on Soviet communications and weapons signals.

Today, instead of eavesdropping on an enormous country that was always chattering and never moved, the NSA is trying to find small numbers of individuals who operate in closed cells, seldom communicate electronically (and when they do, use untraceable calling cards or disposable cellphones) and are constantly traveling from country to country.

During the cold war, the agency could depend on a constant flow of American-born Russian linguists from the many universities around the country with Soviet studies programs. Now the government is forced to search ethnic communities to find people who can speak Dari, Urdu or Lingala - and also pass a security clearance that frowns on people with relatives in their, or their parents', former countries.

According to an interview last year with Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then the NSA's director, intercepting calls during the war on terrorism has become a much more complex endeavor. On Sept. 10, 2001, for example, the NSA intercepted two messages. The first warned, "The match begins tomorrow," and the second said, "Tomorrow is zero hour." But even though they came from suspected al Qaeda locations in Afghanistan, the messages were never translated until after the attack on Sept. 11, and not distributed until Sept. 12.

What made the intercepts particularly difficult, General Hayden said, was that they were not "targeted" but intercepted randomly from Afghan pay phones.

This makes identification of the caller extremely difficult and slow. "Know how many international calls are made out of Afghanistan on a given day? Thousands." General Hayden said.

Still, the NSA doesn't have to go to the courts to use its electronic monitoring to snare al Qaeda members in Afghanistan. For the agency to snoop domestically on American citizens suspected of having terrorist ties, it first must to go to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISA, make a showing of probable cause that the target is linked to a terrorist group, and obtain a warrant.

The court rarely turns the government down. Since it was established in 1978, the court has granted about 19,000 warrants; it has only rejected five. And even in those cases the government has the right to appeal to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, which in 27 years has only heard one case. And should the appeals court also reject the warrant request, the government could then appeal immediately to a closed session of the Supreme Court.

Before the Sept. 11 attacks, the NSA normally eavesdropped on a small number of American citizens or resident aliens, often a dozen or less, while the FBI, whose low-tech wiretapping was far less intrusive, requested most of the warrants from FISA.

Despite the low odds of having a request turned down, President Bush established a secret program in which the NSA would bypass the FISA court and begin eavesdropping without warrant on Americans. This decision seems to have been based on a new concept of monitoring by the agency, a way, according to the administration, to effectively handle all the data and new information.

At the time, the buzzword in national security circles was data mining: digging deep into piles of information to come up with some pattern or clue to what might happen next. Rather than monitoring a dozen or so people for months at a time, as had been the practice, the decision was made to begin secretly eavesdropping on hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people for just a few days or a week at a time in order to determine who posed potential threats.

Those deemed innocent would quickly be eliminated from the watch list, while those thought suspicious would be submitted to the FISA court for a warrant.

In essence, NSA seemed to be on a classic fishing expedition, precisely the type of abuse the FISA court was put in place to stop.At a news conference, President Bush himself seemed to acknowledge this new tactic. "FISA is for long-term monitoring," he said. "There's a difference between detecting so we can prevent, and monitoring."

This eavesdropping is not the Bush administration's only attempt to expand the boundaries of what is legally permissible.

In 2002, it was revealed that the Pentagon had launched Total Information Awareness, a data mining program led by John Poindexter, a retired rear admiral who had served as national security adviser under Ronald Reagan and helped devise the plan to sell arms to Iran and illegally divert the proceeds to rebels in Nicaragua.

Total Information Awareness, known as TIA, was intended to search through vast data bases, promising to "increase the information coverage by an order-of-magnitude." According to a 2002 article in The New York Times, the program "would permit intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials to mount a vast dragnet through electronic transaction data ranging from credit card information to veterinary records, in the United States and internationally, to hunt for terrorists." After press reports, the Pentagon shut it down, and Mr. Poindexter eventually left the government.

But according to a 2004 General Accounting Office report, the Bush administration and the Pentagon continued to rely heavily on data-mining techniques. "Our survey of 128 federal departments and agencies on their use of data mining," the report said, "shows that 52 agencies are using or are planning to use data mining. These departments and agencies reported 199 data-mining efforts, of which 68 are planned and 131 are operational." Of these uses, the report continued, "the Department of Defense reported the largest number of efforts."

The administration says it needs this technology to effectively combat terrorism. But the effect on privacy has worried a number of politicians.

After he was briefed on President Bush's secret operation in 2003, Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Democratic vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, sent a letter to Vice President Dick Cheney.

"As I reflected on the meeting today and the future we face," he wrote, "John Poindexter's TIA project sprung to mind, exacerbating my concern regarding the direction the administration is moving with regard to security, technology, and surveillance."

Senator Rockefeller sounds a lot like Senator Frank Church.

"I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge," Senator Church said. "I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."



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James Bamford is the author of Puzzle Palace and Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency.

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2005/12/...stic-spying.php


Op-eds on legal news by law professors and JURIST special guests...

Not Authorized By Law: Domestic Spying and Congressional Consent


JURIST Guest Columnist Jordan Paust of the University of Houston Law Center says that contrary to assertions by President Bush and the US Department of Justice, post-9/11 Congressional legislation on the use of military force against terrorists does not authorize domestic spying...

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George W. Bush and US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claim that domestic spying in manifest violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was authorized by Congress in broad language in the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) regarding persons responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Similar claims have been made in a December 22 letter from Assistant Attorney General William Moschella to the leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. The claims are patently false.

First, there is no persuasive evidence that when passing the AUMF Congress intended to override either criminal or other provisions of the FISA requiring Executive compliance with the FISA process for foreign intelligence surveillance. Second, the AUMF contains no express or implied authorization concerning intelligence surveillance either abroad or within the United States. With respect to Executive action against certain persons, the purpose of the AUMF is clearly contained in the authorization to use merely “necessary and appropriate force” against those “nations, organizations, or persons” that “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the 9/11 terrorist attacks as such or that “harbored such ... persons.” The authorization of appropriate “force” is not an authorization to torture or to use cruel, inhuman, degrading, or humiliating treatment against any human being; it is not an authorization to create military commissions that are otherwise without jurisdiction under constitutional and international law and violate due process; and it is certainly not an authorization to spy on persons within the United States. Moreover, Congress has only authorized use of “appropriate” force. The word “appropriate” creates a statutory limitation that necessarily requires Executive compliance with relevant constitutional, international, and other federal laws, especially since Supreme Court opinions have long recognized that relevant international law and prior federal statutes are a necessary background more generally for interpretation of newer federal statutes.

Indeed, under Article II, Section 3 of our Constitution the President has an express and unavoidable duty to faithfully execute the “Laws” and has no power to violate them. As Richard Nixon learned, presidential authorizations to violate the law are, in the words of the House Judiciary Committee, “subversive of constitutional government.” Additionally, since 1800 Supreme Court opinions have recognized the power of Congress to limit certain Commander in Chief powers during actual war (see, e.g., 43 Colum. J. Transnat’l L. 811, 842 n.114 (2005)), such as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the Commander in Chief power does not apply outside of an actual war and the United States cannot be at “war” with al Qaeda as such (see, e.g., 28 Yale J. Int’l L. 325, 326-28 (2003)). In his letter Assistant Attorney General Moschella seriously misread the Prize Cases (1863) by ignoring the fact that the Supreme Court expressly referred to two early federal statutes that “authorized ... [and] bound” the President, demonstrating another instance of congressional power to regulate portions of the Commander-in-Chief power even during actual war. Moreover, any so-called inherent presidential authority to spy on Americans at home (perhaps of the kind denounced in Youngstown (1952) and which no strict constructionist should pretend to recognize), has been clearly limited in the FISA in 18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(f) and 50 U.S.C. § 1809(a)(1), as supplemented by the criminal provisions in 18 U.S.C. § 2511(1).

Third, whatever authorizations exist in the AUMF to use force, it is evident that they are restricted in two important respects. The first restriction is recognizable in language reflecting past events. The words “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” refer to the past and more specifically merely to the events of 9/11. The word “harbored” is also oriented in the past. Congress may have neglected certain future dangers to the United States, but neither the President nor the courts have constitutional authority to rewrite congressional legislation. The second restriction is more significant. With respect to the persons against whom appropriate force can be directed, the authorization is expressly and unavoidably tied to those who “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the 9/11 attacks as such or who “harbored such ... persons.” What is not covered by the language of the AUMF is use of appropriate force against those who merely have, in the President’s words, “known links” with al Qaeda and in Assistant Attorney General Moschella’s words, links with “an affiliated terrorist organization” (whatever the Orwellian limits of those phrases might imply). Also not covered are misguided persons who merely sympathize with the 9/11 terrorists, all persons who pose “a threat of future terrorist attacks,” or persons who simply communicate with them.

The FISA provides an appropriate national security tool for spying on transnational communications with the 9/11 and other terrorists. The AUMF does not do so and offers no aid for presidents and others who undertake domestic spying - or for that matter torture or unconstitutional military commissions - in violation of the laws of the United States:
No man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No officer of the law may set that law at defiance with impunity. All the officers of the government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law, and are bound to obey it. It is the only supreme power in our system of government....
United States v. Lee (1882).


Jordan Paust is the Mike & Teresa Baker Law Center Professor at the University of Houston and a former Captain, U.S. Army JAGC and member of the faculty at the Judge Advocate General’s School (1969-1973). He is also Co-Chair of the American Society of International Law International Criminal Interest Group.

December 23, 2005

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December 25, 2005
Officials Want to Expand Review of Domestic Spying
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, Dec. 24 - Congressional officials said Saturday that they wanted to investigate the disclosure that the National Security Agency had gained access to some of the country's main telephone arteries to glean data on possible terrorists.

"As far as Congressional investigations are concerned," said Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, "these new revelations can only multiply and intensify the growing list of questions and concerns about the warrantless surveillance of Americans."

Members of the Judiciary Committee have already indicated that they intend to conduct oversight hearings into the president's legal authority to order domestic eavesdropping on terrorist suspects without a warrant.

But Congressional officials said Saturday that they would probably seek to expand the review to include the disclosure that the security agency, using its access to giant phone "switches," had also traced and analyzed phone and Internet traffic in much larger volumes than what the Bush administration had acknowledged.

"We want to look at the entire program, an in-depth review, and this new data-mining issue is certainly a part of the whole picture," said a Republican Congressional aide, who asked not to be identified because no decisions had been made on how hearings might be structured.

Current and former government officials say that the security agency, as part of its domestic surveillance program, has gained the cooperation of some of the country's biggest telecommunications companies to obtain access to large volumes of international phone and Internet traffic flowing in and out of the United States.

The agency has traced and analyzed the traffic flow - looking at who is calling whom, where calls originate and end, and other patterns - to gather clues on possible terrorist activities. In cases where security agency supervisors believe they can show a link to Al Qaeda, President Bush has authorized eavesdropping on calls without a warrant within the United States, so long as one end of the phone or e-mail conversation takes place outside the country.

The White House declined to comment Saturday on the security agency program or the use of data-mining, saying it would not discuss intelligence operations.

"The administration will aggressively fight the war on terror in an effort to protect the American people while at the same time upholding the civil liberties of the American people," said Allen Abney, a White House spokesman. "The president is doing both of these things and will continue to do both of these things."

Defenders of the program within the federal government say that the security agency's broad analytical searches and data-mining, combined with actual eavesdropping, are an essential part of detecting and preventing terror attacks.

And they say the president is well within his legal authority to order such programs, because of his inherent constitutional power and because of Congressional authorization in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that permitted him to use "all necessary and appropriate force" to fight terrorism.

But civil rights and privacy advocates voiced concerns Saturday about the expanded role of the security agency, which historically has focused almost exclusively on foreign powers in mining for data on American phone lines.

"To the extent that the N.S.A. is collecting information on people who are suspected of no wrongdoing whatsoever, it presents some very critical privacy concerns," said Marcia Hofmann, who leads the government oversight section at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a group that lobbies for greater privacy rights. "And it shows the need for Congress to put in place real safeguards to prevent the government from abusing this information."

Lisa Graves, senior counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, said, "There's no data-mining loophole in the Fourth Amendment." Ms. Graves added, "We're seeing an administration that's engaging in a lot of legal hair-splitting to justify behavior that's not authorized by the law."



Copyright 2005The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top

http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml...27/ixworld.html


US ambassador corrects slip-up over sending suspects to Syria
By Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor
(Filed: 27/12/2005)

The American ambassador to London has been forced to retract his categorical denial that the US had sent any terrorism suspects to Syria, a country that routinely practises torture.


Robert Tuttle: ‘I don't think there is any evidence that there have been any renditions carried out in Syria’

It was the second embarrassment for Robert Tuttle, a millionaire car dealer and art collector, who last month vehemently denied that US forces had used white phosphorus as a weapon - only to be contradicted by the Pentagon a day later.

Mr Tuttle's latest mishap came during a radio interview in which he defended America's controversial policy of "extraordinary rendition" - secret operations to capture and move terrorist suspects to US custody.

It is alleged that America has secret prisons in eastern Europe.

Asked about suspects being "dumped" in Syria, Mr Tuttle told Radio 4's Today programme: "I don't think there is any evidence that there have been any renditions carried out in the country of Syria. There is no evidence of that. I think we have to take what the Secretary [Condoleezza Rice] says at face value.

"It is something very important. It is done very carefully and she has said we do not authorise, condone torture in any way, shape or form."

The interview was recorded last Thursday and broadcast yesterday. But on Friday the US embassy sent a clarification that was broadcast at the end of the interview.

The statement said: "The ambassador recognised that there had been a media report of a rendition to Syria but reiterated that the United States is not in a position to comment on specific allegations of intelligence activities that appear in the press."

The spokesman added: "The President and Secretary Rice have made clear that even in today's circumstances, where we are confronting a new kind of threat, the United States does not condone torture.

"Its officials do not participate in such activities anywhere, and we do not hand over anyone in our custody to anywhere where we believe that they will be tortured - full stop.

We take our actions in the fight against terrorism with full respect for our international obligations and with full respect for the sovereignty of our partners."

The correction appears to be a reference to the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian software engineer who also holds Syrian citizenship, who says he was arrested by US officials in 2002 while switching flights in New York during a trip from Damascus to Ottawa.

He claims to have been tortured for 10 months by the Syrians, before being released without charge. Mr Arar is suing the US government. In its last annual report, Amnesty International said torture, including of children, was "widely reported" in Syria.

Mr Tuttle, who had served in the White House under Ronald Reagan, was appointed to London this year after a lacklustre performance by his predecessor, William Farish, a horse breeder who largely stayed out of the limelight.

On the Today programme, Mr Tuttle admitted being wrong over white phosphorus. "When that happens the thing to do is to speak up, and say a mistake was made and you regret it."

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washingt...crutiny?mode=PF
NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Bush's counsel on spying now under close scrutiny
By Peter S. Canellos, Globe Columnist | December 27, 2005

WASHINGTON -- When President Bush sought to reassure the country that his authorization of spying on Americans without warrants was a reasonable exercise of his power, he emphasized that his orders were always reviewed by the attorney general and the White House counsel.

''Each review is based on a fresh intelligence assessment of terrorist threats to continuity of our government and the threat of catastrophic damage to our homeland," Bush said in his Dec. 17 radio address. ''The review includes approval by our nation's top legal officials, including the attorney general and the counsel to the president."

The current occupants of those jobs are Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and White House counsel Harriet E. Miers. Prior to 2005, Gonzales was White House counsel and John Ashcroft was attorney general.

The current dispute over whether the president had the authority to order domestic spying without warrants, despite a law against it, has put new focus on the legal officials who have guided Bush. And the qualifications of Ashcroft, Gonzales, and Miers could become a focus of the upcoming Senate hearings on the spying decision.

Legal advice given to the president in national security matters can hardly be of greater importance. Telling Bush that he lacks the authority to make a particular move could leave the country vulnerable to attack; assuring him that he has the power to override civil liberties could consign innocent suspects to imprisonment, abuse, or disappearance to secret holding areas in other countries.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, Bush's legal advisers have cleared the way for him to hold enemy combatants without trials; eavesdrop on overseas telephone calls and e-mails; place ever-greater numbers of government documents under a veil of secrecy; imprison a US citizen indefinitely on the suspicion of terrorist links; and, according to The Washington Post, operate a secret CIA prison in an Eastern European country.

In each case, the legal official responsible for assessing the extent of Bush's powers was Ashcroft, Gonzales, or Miers.

Defining the president's powers -- when he can act alone, when he's constrained by treaties, when he must seek congressional authorization -- is extremely difficult. If there's one area of the law where the framers of the Constitution relied on the good faith of the men and women in government, it's in adhering to a system of divided powers. Nonetheless, presidents and members of Congress have often disagreed on their respective powers, and the Supreme Court has approached such cases warily, fearful of upsetting the constitutional balance of power.

The determinations of Ashcroft, Gonzales, and Miers have had great weight because they effectively cut Congress out of the decision-making, at least until the Supreme Court could weigh in. But in spying cases especially, the targets weren't aware that they were being monitored, and thus could not challenge Bush in court.

By the standards of past attorneys general, Ashcroft and Gonzales were well qualified for the job. Still, neither of them had much occasion to consider the legal limits of presidential power before they took office. Ashcroft taught business law and later became attorney general of Missouri. He then spent 14 years as a governor and senator before becoming Bush's first-term AG. Gonzales was a partner at a corporate law firm before Bush became governor of Texas. He served as a legal adviser to the governor, and was briefly Texas secretary of state and a justice of the Texas Supreme Court.

By the standards of past White House counsels, both Gonzales and Miers were lightly qualified, since neither of them had Washington experience before guiding the president. By contrast, two of President Clinton's White House counsels, Lloyd Cutler and Abner Mikva, were eminent attorneys with decades of experience in assessing the limits of federal power.

During her ill-fated Supreme Court nomination, Miers was castigated by conservatives for her lack of qualifications. But her years as a partner in a corporate firm would have been more useful on the Supreme Court, which hears dozens of business cases a year, than in her current job reviewing the legality of Bush's actions.

To be sure, Gonzales and Miers -- like Ashcroft before them -- have many excellent lawyers working beneath them. But as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. can attest from their own days in the Justice Department, junior lawyers are usually restricted to coming up with justifications for the decisions made by their bosses.

And in these cases, the boss's decisions have literally been matters of life and death.

Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1227/p09s02-codc.html

The war on terror should not supersede the laws of the land

By Dante Chinni

WASHINGTON – In the process of declaring war on terrorism and terrorists and, of course, terror in general, the Bush administration has, inadvertently or not, declared war on the other two branches of government and they are not amused. So expect a contentious and argumentative 2006.
The revelation that the administration, without the court's approval, ordered the National Security Agency (NSA) to tap phone calls and monitor e-mails going in and out of the country has led to a revolt by the judiciary and the Congress.

The most vexing fallout for the White House at the moment is the extremely short-term renewal of the Patriot Act in the Congress. The law will be open for discussion again in five weeks, which is when the Hill will begin to debate the NSA phone-tapping, and the mood will almost certainly grow sourer as the revelations continue to drip out.

But another potentially bigger issue arose last week in Richmond, Va. There, a three-judge panel smacked down a legal maneuver by the Bush administration.

The case stems from the detainment of Jose Padilla, the alleged would-be dirty bomber from Chicago. Mr. Padilla was being held without a trial as an enemy combatant, a move his lawyers said was unconstitutional. Padilla's case has made it all the way to the Supreme Court and, just as the case was about to be heard, the White House suddenly changed gears and decided they wanted Padilla charged as a civilian - hoping such a move would mean the high court would no longer be involved.

But the Richmond court not only denied the administration's request to move the case, it said the request to move him after demanding he be held without trial came at "substantial cost to the government's credibility."

If that wasn't enough of a rebuke, consider that it came from the same Richmond court that sided with the administration in September, when it agreed Padilla could be held without a trial. Want more? How about the fact that the Richmond court's opinion was written by Michael Luttig, the judge Bush recently considered to fill an empty seat on the Supreme Court.

In other words, a lot of people in Congress and the courts aren't exactly celebrating the White House's prosecution of the "war on terror."

None of this should be unexpected. There are, according to the Constitution, three coequal branches of government in the United States and when one of them starts stepping on the others' toes, there are going to be problems.

Immediately after 9/11 a lot of concessions were made to the executive branch, but times change, the norm reasserts itself and people begin to have second thoughts - in both parties there's nothing saying the next president will be a Republican and that is almost certainly weighing on GOP minds.

Of course, it is a time of war, and in times of war the executive branch usually cites the need for special powers to keep the country safe. The inevitable parallels have already been drawn between the "war on terror" and other conflicts - World War I, World War II, the Civil War - but there are some notable differences in this war and they mean the usual claims of special powers, and particularly extraordinary ones, will be a hard sell.

The US is at war with no country or government this time around. There is no "front" in the traditional sense. There will be no peace treaty signed when the battle is done. And it is unclear whether we'll even know when the battle is actually done. The "war on terror" will go on for years, likely decades.

And all of that means the extension of any special powers could become largely permanent if they are not challenged. Congress and the courts aren't happy about signing over powers for any amount of time, but indefinitely? Not likely.

On top of all this, there's the substance of the administration's moves, particularly where the NSA eavesdropping is concerned. There was already a system and a court in place to handle the requests for domestic surveillance. In emergency cases, agents can eavesdrop for 72 hours before getting a warrant retroactively. And when they need a warrant, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has been more than compliant.

The FISC has received about 19,000 eavesdropping requests since it was created in 1978. It has denied a handful. In 2004, there were more than 1,700 requests. How many were denied? None.

Still, the White House says it's not enough. The executive branch needs superspecial powers for this on-going war. The FISC and the system around it aren't good enough because they come from pre-9/11 thinking.

That's true, of course, but that argument can easily become a slippery slope. Speed limits, fuel- efficiency standards, Miranda rules, - probably 99 percent of the laws in this country - are the result of what we have come to call pre-9/11 thinking.

In fact, one could well make that argument about the US Constitution.

• Dante Chinni writes a twice-monthly political column for the Monitor.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial...toolbox?mode=PF
GLOBE EDITORIAL
Bush's Cold-War toolbox
December 27, 2005

WHO WOULD have thought that Dick Cheney, back when he was an aide in Gerald Ford's White House 30 years ago, worried that the president's powers were being eroded by disclosures of domestic snooping by the CIA and the FBI during the Cold War? But apparently Cheney held on to those feelings, and after the terrorists struck on Sept. 11, 2001, he and the rest of the Bush administration vowed to restore the old ways.

''I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it," Cheney said last week. ''I would argue that the actions that we've taken there are totally appropriate and consistent with the constitutional authority of the president." Cheney added pointedly: ''You know, it's not an accident that we haven't been hit in four years."

It impossible to refute that latter claim, short of obtaining information the administration keeps under wraps. But the danger of another terrorism attack should not obscure a continuing peril to American democracy: the expanded power given to the FBI, the National Security Agency, and other intelligence agencies by the Bush administration to delve into the activities of American citizens.

In Cheney's view, the president has broad powers to authorize the wiretapping of citizens when they make calls overseas. But that goes against a law passed by Congress in 1978 that prohibit listening to Americans' phone conversations unless authorized by a federal court. Congress approved the law after it got an education from a committee headed by Senator Frank Church on widespread, unregulated surveillance conducted by the FBI and CIA. Cheney apparently would rather have had Congress ignore this pattern of government abuse.

The powers of the presidency were diminished a bit by the 1970s reforms, but it did not prevent the United States from winning the Cold War, and it will not keep the United States from defeating terrorists, a very different threat than the Soviet Union. The administration is wrong to open this dusty toolbox of snooping and dirty tricks.

Church, an Idaho Democrat who died in 1984, began his investigation in 1975 just as the fall of Saigon ended the Vietnam War. Intelligence agencies had been enlarging their powers within the United States for the previous 30 years in response to fears of a communist threat, culminating with the FBI surveillance of groups opposed to the war. Following the Watergate break-in, a rogue intelligence mission with its roots in the campaign against dissidents, Congress finally decided to end the erosion of liberty.

''Domestic intelligence activity has threatened and undermined the constitutional rights of Americans to free speech, association, and privacy," the Church committee found. ''It has done so primarily because the constitutional system for checking abuse of power has not been applied."

The committee was particularly concerned that the FBI was assembling dossiers on people who were conducting legitimate political protests. President Ford's attorney general, Edward Levi, adopted guidelines to stop this surveillance unless it was part of a criminal investigation. Attorney General John Ashcroft loosened the guidelines in 2002, and this week, the ACLU accused the FBI of gathering data on members of the Catholic Workers Movement and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

An FBI spokesman denied that it was doing anything wrong and said that the data might have been compiled as a byproduct of a legitimate investigation of suspected terrorists. The government should not be gathering intelligence on legitimate political activities. It can too easily be used to harass the activists if whatever they are doing -- whether it's protesting war, poverty, or a fur coat -- is unacceptable to people in power.

The Church committee also criticized the CIA practice of opening mail of people who sent letters to the Soviet Union. There's no worry about the Soviet threat today, but members of Congress are rightly concerned about the NSA snooping on the phone calls of American citizens to foreign countries, without a warrant from a special federal court. Not surprisingly, The New York Times reported last week that the NSA had intercepted strictly domestic calls by mistake. This surveillance erodes the zone of privacy that ought to protect phone calls made by US citizens, unless a judge finds there is enough suspicion of a crime to warrant a wiretap.

''At the end of the Nixon administration, you had the nadir of the modern presidency in terms of authority and legitimacy," Cheney lamented last week. Nixon was forced to resign, and the presidency had its power diminished, because the president overstepped his constitutional authority. Protection of individual rights and strict adherence to due process ensure that the leadership of the nation will not be tempted to overreach again.

CIA watchdog looks into ‘erroneous renditions’
Inspector general investigates cases of people mistaken as terror suspects

Thomas Kienzle / AP
Khaled al-Masri, a German of Lebanese descent, says he was taken into custody by U.S. agents in Macedonia in December 2003, beaten by captors in Afghanistan before finally being released in Albania. He is suing the U.S. government.


Updated: 5:29 p.m. ET Dec. 27, 2005
WASHINGTON - The CIA’s independent watchdog is investigating fewer than 10 cases where terrorist suspects may have been mistakenly swept away to foreign countries by the spy agency, a figure lower than published reports but enough to raise some concerns.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush gave the CIA authority to conduct the now-controversial operations, called “renditions,” and permitted the agency to act without case-by-case approval from the White House or other administration offices.

The highly classified practice involves grabbing suspects off the street of one country and flying them to their home country or another where they are wanted for a crime or questioning.

Some 100 to 150 people have been snatched up since 9/11. Government officials say the action is reserved for those considered by the CIA to be the most serious terrorist suspects.

Bush has said that these transfers to other countries — with assurances the terrorist suspects won’t be tortured — are a way to protect the United States and its allies from attack. “That was the charge we have been given,” he said in March.

But some operations are being questioned.

The CIA’s inspector general, John Helgerson, is looking into fewer than 10 cases of potentially “erroneous renditions,” according to a current intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigations are classified. Others in the agency believe it to be much fewer, the official added.

Some see judicial evasion
For instance, someone may be grabbed wrongly or, after further investigation, may not be as directly linked to terrorism as initially believed.

Human rights groups consider the practice of rendition an end run around the judicial processes that the United States has long championed. Experts with those groups and congressional committees familiar with intelligence programs say errors should be extremely rare because one vivid anecdote can do significant damage.

“I am glad the CIA is investigating the cases that they are aware of,” said Tom Malinowski, Washington office director of Human Rights Watch. “But by definition, you are not going to be aware of all such cases, when you have a process designed to avoid judicial safeguards.”

He said there is no guarantee that Egypt, Uzbekistan or Syria will release people handed over to them if they turn out to be innocent, and he distrusts promises the U.S. receives that the individuals will not be tortured.

Bush: ‘We don’t believe in torture’
Bush and his aides have said the United States seeks those assurances — and follows up on them. “We do believe in protecting ourselves. We don’t believe in torture,” he said.

In the last 18 months, his administration has come under fire for its policies and regulations governing detentions and interrogations in the war on terrorism. At facilities run by the CIA and the U.S. military, graphic images of abuse and at least 26 deaths investigated as criminal homicides have raised questions about how authorities handle foreign fighters and terrorist suspects in U.S. custody.

Fact file A history of renditions

1997
CIA and FBI officials grab Mir Aimal Kasi in his native Pakistan in June, and eventually bring him to the United States for trial. He was convicted of the 1993 killing two CIA employees outside the agency and put to death in 2002.

2000
In February, then CIA Director George Tenet testifies to Congress: “Since July 1998, working with foreign governments worldwide, we have helped to render more than two dozen terrorists to justice. More than half were associates of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida organization.”
2001
After September 11, President Bush signs a secret directive allowing the CIA to conduct rendition operations without case-by-case approval from the White House and other offices. Renditions are broadened not only to bring serious, wanted suspects to justice, but also to capture suspected terrorists before they act.

2002
In December, CIA Director Tenet tells an audience that, working with the FBI, the CIA has rendered 70 terrorists to justice. “Al-Qaida might have been able to operate freely in Afghanistan, but the terrorists knew they were fair game elsewhere.”

2003
February: Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, aka Abu Omar, is grabbed by CIA operatives in Milan, Italy. He’s allegedly taken to U.S. air base at Aviano, Italy, and later to Germany and Egypt. He may now be in Egypt, but his status is unclear. An Italian court has requested extradition of 22 CIA operatives to stand trial.
December: Khaled al-Masri was taken into custody in Macedonia. He says he was taken to Afghanistan and released after five months on a hill in Albania. He is suing the U.S. government.


2005
In March, President Bush was asked to explain why he expanded the use of rendition. “The United States must make sure we protect our people and our friends from attack,” he said. “And one way to do so is to arrest people and send them back to their country of origin with the promise that they won’t be tortured.”

Senior administration officials have sought to assure critics that that the cases are isolated instances among the more than 80,000 prisoners held since 9/11. Yet much remains unknown about the CIA’s highly classified detention and interrogation practices, particularly when it grabs foreigners and spirits them away to other countries.

Agency is target of lawsuit
With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, has sued the CIA for arbitrarily detaining him and other alleged violations after he was captured in Macedonia in December 2003 and taken to Afghanistan by a team of covert operatives in an apparent case of mistaken identity.

Speaking to reporters by video hookup from Germany this month, al-Masri said he was “dragged off the plane and thrown into the trunk of a car” and beaten by his captors in Afghanistan. Five months later, his complaint says, he was dropped off on a hill in Albania.

Mamdouh Habib, an Egyptian-born Australian, was arrested near the Pakistani-Afghan border shortly after 9/11 and flown to Cairo. He says for six months he was tortured there and was later transported to Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In 2005, he was released without charge and allowed to return to Sydney.

Before 9/11, renditions were ordered to bring wanted criminals to justice. But the purpose was broadened after the attacks to get terrorists off the streets.

Renditions represent just a fraction of the captures handled by the CIA and its allies. More than 3,000 foreigners have been detained in operations involving the CIA and friendly intelligence services since 9/11, according to the intelligence official. Sometimes the United States may merely be providing information, training or equipment for the operations.

Middle Eastern countries involved
Countries including Jordan and Egypt are believed to cooperate with the operations. Although Saudi Arabia is thought to be involved, its ambassador to the United States has denied accepting any cases at the United States’ request.

The spotlight on the issue has called attention to how the CIA does its work, causing consternation among some agency officials who prefer to operate in the shadows.

For instance, planes operated by CIA front companies are often used to move the suspects from one country to another, bringing scrutiny to a secret agency fleet that’s traveled in the United States, Spain, Germany, Afghanistan, Poland, Romania and elsewhere.

Intelligence officials said the planes are more likely to be carrying staff, supplies or Director Porter Goss on his way to a foreign visit.

© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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CIA prisoner 'rendition' program began under Clinton: ex-agent Wed Dec 28,11:11 AM ET



The CIA's controversial "rendition" program to have terror suspects captured and questioned on foreign soil was launched under US president Bill Clinton, a former US counterterrorism agent told a German newspaper.

Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA who resigned from the agency in 2004, told Thursday's issue of the newsweekly Die Zeit that the US administration had been looking in the mid-1990s for a way to combat the terrorist threat and circumvent the cumbersome US legal system.

"President Clinton, his national security advisor Sandy Berger and his terrorism advisor Richard Clark ordered the CIA in the autumn of 1995 to destroy Al-Qaeda," Scheuer said, in comments published in German.

"We asked the president what we should do with the people we capture. Clinton said 'That's up to you'."

Scheuer, who headed the CIA unit that tracked Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from 1996 to 1999, said that he developed and led the "renditions" program, which he said included moving prisoners without due legal process to countries without strict human rights protections.

"In Cairo, people are not treated like they are in Milwaukee. The Clinton administration asked us if we believed that the prisoners were being treated in accordance with local law. And we answered, yes, we're fairly sure."

At the time, he said, the CIA did not arrest or imprison anyone itself.

"That was done by the local police or secret services," he said, adding that the prisoners were never taken to US soil. "President Clinton did not want that."

He said the program changed under Clinton's successor, President George W. Bush, after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

"We started putting people in our own institutions -- in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo. The Bush administration wanted to capture people itself but made the same mistake as the Clinton administration by not treating these people as prisoners of war."

He accused Europeans of being hypocritical in criticizing the US administration for its anti-terror tactics while benefiting from them.

"All the information we received from interrogations and documents, everything that had to do with Spain, Italy, Germany, France, England was passed on," he said.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended renditions on a trip to Europe this month as a "vital tool" for fighting international terrorism but insisted that Washington does not condone torture.




Copyright © 2005 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.


Copyright © 2005 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

A Brief History of Renditions By The Associated Press
Tue Dec 27, 2:15 PM ET



A look what U.S. officials say about "renditions," and some high-profile cases where the CIA has grabbed a terror suspect off the street of one country and taken the person to another where he was wanted for a crime or questioning:

• June 1997: CIA and FBI officials grab Mir Aimal Kasi in his native Pakistan and eventually bring him to the United States for trial. He was convicted of the 1993 killing two CIA employees outside the agency and put to death in 2002.

• February 2000: Then CIA Director George Tenet testifies to Congress: "Since July 1998, working with foreign governments worldwide, we have helped to render more than two dozen terrorists to justice. More than half were associates of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida organization."

• September 2001: President Bush signs a secret directive allowing the CIA to conduct rendition operations without case-by-case approval from the White House and other offices. Renditions are broadened not only to bring serious, wanted suspects to justice, but also to capture suspected terrorists before they act.

• December 2002: Tenet tells an audience at the Nixon Center that, working with the FBI, the CIA has rendered 70 terrorists to justice. "Al-Qaida might have been able to operate freely in Afghanistan, but the terrorists knew they were fair game elsewhere."

• February 2003: Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, aka Abu Omar, is grabbed by CIA operatives in Milan, Italy, Feb. 2003. He's allegedly taken to U.S. air base at Aviano, Italy, and later to Germany and Egypt. He may now be in Egypt, but his status is unclear. An Italian court has requested extradition of 22 CIA operatives to stand trial.

• Khaled al-Masri was taken into custody in Macedonia in December 2003. He says he was taken to Afghanistan and released after five months on a hill in Albania. He is suing the U.S. government.

• In March, President Bush was asked to explain why he expanded the use of rendition. "The United States must make sure we protect our people and our friends from attack," he said. "And one way to do so is to arrest people and send them back to their country of origin with the promise that they won't be tortured."




Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


Copyright © 2005 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americ...ticle335477.ece

Terrorism cases in US may be reopened after wiretap scandal
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Published: 29 December 2005
Defence lawyers in several terrorism cases in the United States are planning to appeal against the convictions of their clients on the ground that evidence may have been garnered from illegal wiretapping by a federal government surveillance agency.

The threat is the latest repercussion of the disclosure two weeks ago that the Bush administration had used the National Security Agency (NSA) - supposed to go after foreign targets - to conduct electronic surveillance without warrants inside the US, and against American citizens.

Among the cases is that of Ali al-Timimi, a Muslim scholar, who is serving a life sentence for involvement with an alleged "Virginia jihad" cell, and for inciting his students to wage war overseas against the US.

Edward McMahon, Timimi's lawyer, told The New York Times he always had doubts about the explanation offered by federal investigators of how they came to suspect his client of links with terrorism. "The case against a lot of these guys just came out of nowhere because they were really nobodies. It makes you wonder whether they were being tapped."

The focus of the appeals would be on whether prosecutors misled the courts about the source of some evidence, and whether the authorities held back other NSA wiretaps suggesting that individuals charged might be innocent.

The NSA programme was revealed by The New York Times. Opponents said it was a blatant violation of civil liberties, but the White House insisted it was an essential tool in the fight against terrorism.

President George Bush has defended the wiretaps and said that the leak concerning their use was "shameful".

The debate is set to continue in the new year - assuming that Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, goes ahead with his threat to hold hearings on the eavesdropping when Congress reconvenes next month.

Not only Democrats but several senior Republicans have expressed unease at the way the NSA has been used to bypass a federal court set up in 1978 to authorise warrants for clandestine wiretaps. One of the court's 10 judges resigned in protest, while its chief has demanded a full briefing from the administration on why it had been cut out of the process.

The affair has complicated Bush administration efforts to extend the Patriot Act, the anti-terror law passed by Congress in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Key provisions of the Act that were to expire at the end of 2005 have been granted only a one-month extension, despite angry complaints from Mr Bush.

The White House maintains that speed is of the essence in combating terrorism, and that NSA domestic surveillance had been sparingly used. It was "designed to monitor calls from very bad people to very bad people," an official told The New York Times.

But for many Americans, the very notion of intelligence agencies eavesdropping on domestic targets raises the spectre of Watergate, "dirty tricks," and how Richard Nixon used the CIA to snoop on his political opponents.

There are also profound constitutional implications. Many experts see the episode as more proof of how Mr Bush, urged on by Vice-President Dick Cheney, is relentlessly expanding the power of the executive, freeing it from the fetters of Congress. For that reason, reopening the cases could be very difficult, some analysts say - even in cases where mistakes have been made.

The victim of one such error was Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon lawyer who was wrongly arrested in connection with the March 2004 Madrid train bombings before being released. Mr Mayfield is now suing the government and is likely to raise the NSA wiretapping issue.

Meanwhile, the independent watchdog body that oversees the CIA is investigating up to 10 cases where suspected terrorists may have been handed over in error by the agency to foreign governments, under the contested "rendition" programme. The practice pre-dates 11 September 2001, but after the attacks on New York and Washington, President Bush gave the CIA authority to act without case-by-case approval by the government. Some 100 to 150 people have been targets, either arrested in the US or snatched from the streets of a foreign city and handed back to their home country for questioning - frequently, it is said, for torture.

Defence lawyers in several terrorism cases in the United States are planning to appeal against the convictions of their clients on the ground that evidence may have been garnered from illegal wiretapping by a federal government surveillance agency.

The threat is the latest repercussion of the disclosure two weeks ago that the Bush administration had used the National Security Agency (NSA) - supposed to go after foreign targets - to conduct electronic surveillance without warrants inside the US, and against American citizens.

Among the cases is that of Ali al-Timimi, a Muslim scholar, who is serving a life sentence for involvement with an alleged "Virginia jihad" cell, and for inciting his students to wage war overseas against the US.

Edward McMahon, Timimi's lawyer, told The New York Times he always had doubts about the explanation offered by federal investigators of how they came to suspect his client of links with terrorism. "The case against a lot of these guys just came out of nowhere because they were really nobodies. It makes you wonder whether they were being tapped."

The focus of the appeals would be on whether prosecutors misled the courts about the source of some evidence, and whether the authorities held back other NSA wiretaps suggesting that individuals charged might be innocent.

The NSA programme was revealed by The New York Times. Opponents said it was a blatant violation of civil liberties, but the White House insisted it was an essential tool in the fight against terrorism.

President George Bush has defended the wiretaps and said that the leak concerning their use was "shameful".

The debate is set to continue in the new year - assuming that Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, goes ahead with his threat to hold hearings on the eavesdropping when Congress reconvenes next month.

Not only Democrats but several senior Republicans have expressed unease at the way the NSA has been used to bypass a federal court set up in 1978 to authorise warrants for clandestine wiretaps. One of the court's 10 judges resigned in protest, while its chief has demanded a full briefing from the administration on why it had been cut out of the process.
The affair has complicated Bush administration efforts to extend the Patriot Act, the anti-terror law passed by Congress in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Key provisions of the Act that were to expire at the end of 2005 have been granted only a one-month extension, despite angry complaints from Mr Bush.

The White House maintains that speed is of the essence in combating terrorism, and that NSA domestic surveillance had been sparingly used. It was "designed to monitor calls from very bad people to very bad people," an official told The New York Times.

But for many Americans, the very notion of intelligence agencies eavesdropping on domestic targets raises the spectre of Watergate, "dirty tricks," and how Richard Nixon used the CIA to snoop on his political opponents.

There are also profound constitutional implications. Many experts see the episode as more proof of how Mr Bush, urged on by Vice-President Dick Cheney, is relentlessly expanding the power of the executive, freeing it from the fetters of Congress. For that reason, reopening the cases could be very difficult, some analysts say - even in cases where mistakes have been made.

The victim of one such error was Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon lawyer who was wrongly arrested in connection with the March 2004 Madrid train bombings before being released. Mr Mayfield is now suing the government and is likely to raise the NSA wiretapping issue.

Meanwhile, the independent watchdog body that oversees the CIA is investigating up to 10 cases where suspected terrorists may have been handed over in error by the agency to foreign governments, under the contested "rendition" programme. The practice pre-dates 11 September 2001, but after the attacks on New York and Washington, President Bush gave the CIA authority to act without case-by-case approval by the government. Some 100 to 150 people have been targets, either arrested in the US or snatched from the streets of a foreign city and handed back to their home country for questioning - frequently, it is said, for torture.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

December 29, 2005
Spy Agency Removes Illegal Tracking Files
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
By The Associated Press The National Security Agency's Internet site has been placing files on visitors' computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict federal rules banning most files of that type.

The files, known as cookies, disappeared after a privacy activist complained and The Associated Press made inquiries this week. Agency officials acknowledged yesterday that they had made a mistake.

Nonetheless, the issue raised questions about privacy at the agency, which is on the defensive over reports of an eavesdropping program.

"Considering the surveillance power the N.S.A. has, cookies are not exactly a major concern," said Ari Schwartz, associate director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a privacy advocacy group in Washington. "But it does show a general lack of understanding about privacy rules when they are not even following the government's very basic rules for Web privacy."

Until Tuesday, the N.S.A. site created two cookie files that do not expire until 2035.

Don Weber, an agency spokesman, said in a statement yesterday that the use of the so-called persistent cookies resulted from a recent software upgrade.

Normally, Mr. Weber said, the site uses temporary cookies that are automatically deleted when users close their Web browsers, which is legally permissible. But he said the software in use was shipped with the persistent cookies turned on.

"After being tipped to the issue, we immediately disabled the cookies," Mr. Weber said.

Cookies are widely used at commercial Web sites and can make Internet browsing more convenient by letting sites remember user preferences. For example, visitors would not have to repeatedly enter passwords at sites that require them.

Privacy advocates point out that cookies can also track Web surfing, even if no personal information is collected.

In a 2003 memorandum, the Office of Management and Budget at the White House prohibited federal agencies from using persistent cookies - those that are not automatically deleted right away - unless there is a "compelling need."

A senior official must sign off on any such use, and an agency that uses them must disclose and detail their use in its privacy policy.

Peter Swire, a Clinton administration official who had drafted an earlier version of the cookie guidelines, said that clear notice was a must, and that "vague assertions of national security, such as exist in the N.S.A. policy, are not sufficient."

Daniel Brandt, a privacy activist who discovered the N.S.A. cookies, said mistakes happen, "but in any case, it's illegal."

Richard M. Smith, a security consultant in Cambridge, Mass., questioned whether persistent cookies would even be of much use to the security agency. They are great for news sites and others with repeat visitors, Mr. Smith said, but the agency's site does not appear to have enough fresh content to warrant more than occasional visits.

The government first issued strict rules on cookies in 2000 after disclosures that the White House drug policy office had used them to track computer users viewing its online antidrug advertising. Even a year later, a Congressional study found 300 cookies still on the Web sites of 23 agencies.

In 2002, the C.I.A. removed cookies it had inadvertently placed at one of its sites after Mr. Brandt called it to the agency's attention.



Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

December 29, 2005
NSA Web Site Puts 'Cookies' on Computers
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:11 a.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- The National Security Agency's Internet site has been placing files on visitors' computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict federal rules banning most of them.

These files, known as ''cookies,'' disappeared after a privacy activist complained and The Associated Press made inquiries this week, and agency officials acknowledged Wednesday they had made a mistake. Nonetheless, the issue raises questions about privacy at a spy agency already on the defensive amid reports of a secretive eavesdropping program in the United States.

''Considering the surveillance power the NSA has, cookies are not exactly a major concern,'' said Ari Schwartz, associate director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a privacy advocacy group in Washington, D.C. ''But it does show a general lack of understanding about privacy rules when they are not even following the government's very basic rules for Web privacy.''

Until Tuesday, the NSA site created two cookie files that do not expire until 2035 -- likely beyond the life of any computer in use today.

Don Weber, an NSA spokesman, said in a statement Wednesday that the cookie use resulted from a recent software upgrade. Normally, the site uses temporary, permissible cookies that are automatically deleted when users close their Web browsers, he said, but the software in use shipped with persistent cookies already on.

''After being tipped to the issue, we immediately disabled the cookies,'' he said.

Cookies are widely used at commercial Web sites and can make Internet browsing more convenient by letting sites remember user preferences. For instance, visitors would not have to repeatedly enter passwords at sites that require them.

But privacy advocates complain that cookies can also track Web surfing, even if no personal information is actually collected.

In a 2003 memo, the White House's Office of Management and Budget prohibits federal agencies from using persistent cookies -- those that aren't automatically deleted right away -- unless there is a ''compelling need.''

A senior official must sign off on any such use, and an agency that uses them must disclose and detail their use in its privacy policy.

Peter Swire, a Clinton administration official who had drafted an earlier version of the cookie guidelines, said clear notice is a must, and `vague assertions of national security, such as exist in the NSA policy, are not sufficient.''

Daniel Brandt, a privacy activist who discovered the NSA cookies, said mistakes happen, ''but in any case, it's illegal. The (guideline) doesn't say anything about doing it accidentally.''

The Bush administration has come under fire recently over reports it authorized NSA to secretly spy on e-mail and phone calls without court orders.

Since The New York Times disclosed the domestic spying program earlier this month, President Bush has stressed that his executive order allowing the eavesdropping was limited to people with known links to al-Qaida.

But on its Web site Friday, the Times reported that the NSA, with help from American telecommunications companies, obtained broader access to streams of domestic and international communications.

The NSA's cookie use is unrelated, and Weber said it was strictly to improve the surfing experience ''and not to collect personal user data.''

Richard M. Smith, a security consultant in Cambridge, Mass., questions whether persistent cookies would even be of much use to the NSA. They are great for news and other sites with repeat visitors, he said, but the NSA's site does not appear to have enough fresh content to warrant more than occasional visits.

The government first issued strict rules on cookies in 2000 after disclosures that the White House drug policy office had used the technology to track computer users viewing its online anti-drug advertising. Even a year later, a congressional study found 300 cookies still on the Web sites of 23 agencies.

In 2002, the CIA removed cookies it had inadvertently placed at one of its sites after Brandt called it to the agency's attention.



Copyright 2005 The Associated Press

December 28, 2005 -- BREAKING NEWS.

NSA spied on its own employees, other U.S. intelligence personnel, and their journalist and congressional contacts. WMR has learned that the National Security Agency (NSA), on the orders of the Bush administration, eavesdropped on the private conversations and e-mail of its own employees, employees of other U.S. intelligence agencies -- including the CIA and DIA -- and their contacts in the media, Congress, and oversight agencies and offices.

The journalist surveillance program, code named "Firstfruits," was part of a Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) program that was maintained at least until October 2004 and was authorized by then-DCI Porter Goss. Firstfruits was authorized as part of a DCI "Countering Denial and Deception" program responsible to an entity known as the Foreign Denial and Deception Committee (FDDC). Since the intelligence community's reorganization, the DCI has been replaced by the Director of National Intelligence headed by John Negroponte and his deputy, former NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden.

Firstfruits was a database that contained both the articles and the transcripts of telephone and other communications of particular Washington journalists known to report on sensitive U.S. intelligence activities, particularly those involving NSA. According to NSA sources, the targeted journalists included author James Bamford, the New York Times' James Risen, the Washington Post's Vernon Loeb, the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, the Washington Times' Bill Gertz, UPI's John C. K. Daly, and this editor [Wayne Madsen], who has written about NSA for The Village Voice, CAQ, Intelligence Online, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).


In addition, beginning in 2001 but before the 9-11 attacks, NSA began to target anyone in the U.S. intelligence community who was deemed a "disgruntled employee." According to NSA sources, this surveillance was a violation of United States Signals Intelligence Directive (USSID) 18 and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The surveillance of U.S. intelligence personnel by other intelligence personnel in the United States and abroad was conducted without any warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The targeted U.S. intelligence agency personnel included those who made contact with members of the media, including the journalists targeted by Firstfruits, as well as members of Congress, Inspectors General, and other oversight agencies. Those discovered to have spoken to journalists and oversight personnel were subjected to sudden clearance revocation and termination as "security risks."

In 2001, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court rejected a number of FISA wiretap applications from Michael Resnick, the FBI supervisor in charge of counter-terrorism surveillance. The court said that some 75 warrant requests from the FBI were erroneous and that the FBI, under Louis Freeh and Robert Mueller, had misled the court and misused the FISA law on dozens of occasions. In a May 17, 2002 opinion, the presiding FISA Judge, Royce C. Lamberth (a Texan appointed by Ronald Reagan), barred Resnick from ever appearing before the court again. The ruling, released by Lamberth's successor, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelley, stated in extremely strong terms, "In virtually every instance, the government's misstatements and omissions in FISA applications and violations of the Court's orders involved information sharing and unauthorized disseminations to criminal investigators and prosecutors . . . How these misrepresentations occurred remains unexplained to the court."

After the Justice Department appealed the FISC decision, the FISA Review court met for the first time in its history. The three-member review court, composed of Ralph Guy of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Edward Leavy of the 9th Circuit, and Laurence Silberman [of the Robb-Silberman Commission on 911 "intelligence failures"] of the D.C. Circuit, overturned the FISC decision on the Bush administration's wiretap requests.

Based on recent disclosures that the Bush administration has been using the NSA to conduct illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens, it is now becoming apparent what vexed the FISC to the point that it rejected, in an unprecedented manner, numerous wiretap requests and sanctioned Resnick.

http://waynemadsenreport.com/

Covert CIA Program Withstands New Furor

By Dana Priest

The effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fight al Qaeda has grown into the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growing outcry at home and abroad over its clandestine tactics, according to... One...

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...er=emailarticle

http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp12302005.html

Goss Builds the Case for Turkey-Based Attacks
Targeting Iran and Syria
By GARY LEUPP

Another year over, and we still haven't seen the widely-predicted U.S. (or U.S.-Israeli) attacks on Syria and Iran. But keep paying attention. The Turkish press reports that in a December trip to Turkey, CIA Director Porter Goss "asked Ankara to be ready for a possible US air operation against Iran and Syria." Coming hot on the heels of FBI Director Robert Mueller, he brought with him a large delegation and three dossiers laying out the case against Iran. The first purportedly documents the existence of Iranian nuclear weapons, the second of Iranian ties to al-Qaeda and the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), and the third depicts Iran as a mortal enemy of the secular Turkish state. Apparently the PKK issue was central to the discussions. This account follows Philip Giraldi's report in the American Conservative last July that Vice President Cheney has asked the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) to draw up concrete, short term contingency plans for an attack on Iran, to involve "a large-scale air assault employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons." This would occur in the aftermath of a terror attack on the U.S. which, whatever its origins, would be politically used to justify an attack on Iran, just as the al-Qaeda attack was used to justify the attack on Iraq. Cheney has also declared matter-of-factly that if the U.S. doesn't attack Iran, Israel might do so. James Petras persuasively documents Israeli intentions.

As Kurt Nimmo notes, the full import of the Turkish story hasn't been echoed in the U.S. press. http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=164 But inquiring journalistic minds should be asking, "What does it mean for Turkey to be ready for U.S. actions against two more Muslim states?" In March 2003 the Turkish legislature refused to allow the deployment of U.S. troops from Turkey to Iraq in advance of the invasion. The then Prime Minister Abdullah Gul was on board the program, but the parliamentarians backed up by public opinion narrowly voted against it. Goss must have met with current Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a bid to avoid more embarrassment in future. Are Turkish rulers being asked to support air strikes from Incirlik Air Force Base? To contain mass protests as the Terror War widens? Are they being offered carrots in return for cooperation, such as a green light to operate against the PKK in Iran, as the German news agency DPP has claimed? Or in Syria and northern Iraq? Are they buying the arguments for attacks?

Turkey seems a country of vital significance to the neocons, as it is for Israel. An overwhelmingly Muslim but secularist state, with strong military and political ties to Israel, it has received two neocon U.S. ambassadors in recent years (former State Department official Marc Grossman and "Scooter" Libby deputy Eric Edelman). It's been suggested that Valerie Plame was outed to impede her investigation of links between the neocons, the American-Turkish Council, and a Turkish nuclear program. As the only Muslim NATO country, supportive of U.S. policy in Afghanistan if not Iraq, it could play a key role in the planned attacks on Iran and Syria. The CIA, more inclined than before to "fix the intelligence around policy" naturally gets sent to show the Turks that there are multiple reasons to support an expansion of the American war in its part of the world. (This is the CIA headed by Goss, who once pronounced himself unsuitable for the agency chief post, and who a top outgoing CIA official, Robert Richer, told a Senate committee is out of touch with reality.) His argument to the Turks seems to have hinged on the Kurdish issue.

The Turkish regime fears its large (20%?) Kurdish minority, and the Kurds' kindred in Iraq, Syria and Iran. The Kurds are the largest stateless people in the world and have been oppressed historically in all these nations. A key reason Turkey opposed war on Iraq was the prospect of confronting an autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan on its border that might encourage its own Kurds to demand independence. So naturally the Bush administration argues that Iran is helping both the universal demon al-Qaeda (which in point of fact hates Iran's Shiite regime) and the totally different, secular, quasi-Marxist PKK. The appeal seems terribly primitive, a repeat of the ridiculous linkages that the neocons drew before attacking Iraq. The charges of al-Qaeda-Iranian cooperation echo the charges about al-Qaeda operatives training at Salman Pak in Iraq, or those about high-level meetings between Saddam or his intelligence agents with al-Qaeda promoted by the neocons before and after the attack on Iraq. All discredited, to anyone paying attention. So too the charges about Iraq's nuclear program, eerily similar to tales of laptop designs for nuclear missile attacks and satellite "proofs" of nuclear weapons facilities effectively dissected by Nimmo and Gordon Prather and others who may some months from now have to say, "Told you so."

Links between the PKK and Iran? Maybe, at points in the past. But its leftist ideology doesn't jibe very well with Shiite Islamism, and in 2003 Iran listed the PKK as a "terrorist organization." Last summer Erdogan and then-Iranian President Mohammad Khatami signed a series of strategic accords, including one directed against both the PKK and the Iraq-based Iranian opposition movement, the Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK). (The latter, while listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization, is favored by the neocons in the U.S. as a tool to use against the Iranian regime.) In recent years the PKK seems to have received more cooperation from Syria, where captured Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan has reportedly told Turkish prosecutors (under who knows what circumstances) the PKK owns property. But Abdullah Gul, currently Foreign Minister, describes Turkey's relations with Syria as "excellent," adding "we don't want any new war in the region... all of us have been harmed by Iraqi war."

The U.S. response seems to be, "You don't know what's in your own best interest. You'll be more harmed by not respecting your commitment to the NATO alliance, not showing appreciation for our aid all these years and our support for your EU entry. We plan to remake the whole region, damn it, and so you'd best get on board the program. We and our Israeli friends are using the Iraqi Kurds for our own purposes, while trying to keep your Kurds in the border areas from attacking you. It's in your interest to work with us and our good Kurds against your bad Kurds who-believe us-are being supported by the big bad Syrians and Iranians. Now's your chance to kick some butt, and when we're finished we'll all be happy."

I don't know how this cowboy logic might go down in Ankara, as neighboring Iraq becomes a "democratically""established Shiite Islamist state aligned with Iran but also friendly with Iran-allied secular Baathist Syria. Ali Topez, a leader of the opposition Republican People's Party, charges that the Goss and Mueller visits were intended to "soften up" Turkey and make it accept Washington's demands. But he argues, "If they want to end terrorism, they should catch" the PKK forces in northern Iraq. The neocons all along have relied upon lies, shifting rationales, fear-mongering and essentialist portraits of "terrorism" to manipulate American public opinion and to cow foreign leaders into cooperation as they pursue their New American Century goals. They've done better on the first score, although the U.S. public has lost trust in the administration and the corporate press has become somewhat more inclined to raise questions. On the other hand it has scored significant successes in obtaining the unprincipled September IAEA vote against Iran and (with much French assistance) building the case for UN sanctions against Syria. Maybe such "diplomatic" activity including the Mueller and Goss visits to Turkey will pay off with the expanded war Gul says the Turks don't want.

Nimmo plausibly describes the likely outcome of strikes against Iran and Syria. Intensified Hizbollah attacks on Israel; Iranian attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, utterly justified by the U.S. act of war; the collapse of Shiite Iraqi support at low ebb as it is for continued U.S. military presence in their country; the Yugoslav-like fracturing of Iraq into an Iranian-aligned Shiite state, a Sunni state, and a Kurdish state. Over this last, the interests of the U.S., Israel and Turkey might converge. Seymour Hersh has reported that Israel, disillusioned by the U.S. failure to produce an Israel-friendly regime in Baghdad, now feels itself best served by an Israel-friendly Kurdistan sharing its own antipathy to Arab Muslims. The warmongers play a complex game, and just as things haven't gone entirely as they hoped so far, they may careen way off the charted path in the hear future. "That'll serve them right," one might want to say. But how much suffering for Arabs, Kurds, Persians, Turks and others must occur before rational Americans (and Israelis) take firm measures to stay the hands of those calmly planning more attacks?


* * *

Some people have emailed me asking if, now that the UM-Dartmouth Mao-book story has been exposed as a hoax, I will "retract" my piece posted December 19. Some have ridiculed it, the original Standard-Times article by Aaron Nicodemus, a Boston Globe op-ed by Sen. Edward Kennedy, and other published references to the story, and accused all who credited it as gullible fools. But no, actually, I have nothing to retract, having merely trusted Nicodemus, and the student's two quoted professors, and specifically doubted a general effort to intimidate Mao-readers. "I can't see the feds," I wrote, "really interviewing everybody who checks out Mao's works published in Beijing or anywhere from the library. They might keep some record, but surely they have other priorities."

I noted that the article mentioned the student having spent time in foreign countries and speculated: "One way this story might start to make a little bit of sense (from the agents' point of view) is if the student's 'significant time abroad' was spent in a country with a significant Maoist insurgency, like Nepal, the Philippines, or India." That was, I submit, a rational response to the newspaper story in this country with its COINTELPRO history, governed by people who view Maoists as terrorists, and with a fascist element that would indeed like to criminalize dissent. (I noted on one blog someone drawing attention to my mention of owning the book myself, as though this was inherently damning.) The story, hoax that it was, was unfortunately not incredible.

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.

He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu

Covert CIA Program Withstands New Furor
Anti-Terror Effort Continues to Grow

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 30, 2005; A01



The effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fight al Qaeda has grown into the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growing outcry at home and abroad over its clandestine tactics, according to former and current intelligence officials and congressional and administration sources.

The broad-based effort, known within the agency by the initials GST, is compartmentalized into dozens of highly classified individual programs, details of which are known mainly to those directly involved.

GST includes programs allowing the CIA to capture al Qaeda suspects with help from foreign intelligence services, to maintain secret prisons abroad, to use interrogation techniques that some lawyers say violate international treaties, and to maintain a fleet of aircraft to move detainees around the globe. Other compartments within GST give the CIA enhanced ability to mine international financial records and eavesdrop on suspects anywhere in the world.

Over the past two years, as aspects of this umbrella effort have burst into public view, the revelations have prompted protests and official investigations in countries that work with the United States, as well as condemnation by international human rights activists and criticism by members of Congress.

Still, virtually all the programs continue to operate largely as they were set up, according to current and former officials. These sources say Bush's personal commitment to maintaining the GST program and his belief in its legality have been key to resisting any pressure to change course.

"In the past, presidents set up buffers to distance themselves from covert action," said A. John Radsan, assistant general counsel at the CIA from 2002 to 2004. "But this president, who is breaking down the boundaries between covert action and conventional war, seems to relish the secret findings and the dirty details of operations."

The administration's decisions to rely on a small circle of lawyers for legal interpretations that justify the CIA's covert programs and not to consult widely with Congress on them have also helped insulate the efforts from the growing furor, said several sources who have been involved.

Bush has never publicly confirmed the existence of a covert program, but he was recently forced to defend the approach in general terms, citing his wartime responsibilities to protect the nation. In November, responding to questions about the CIA's clandestine prisons, he said the nation must defend against an enemy that "lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again."

This month he went into more detail, defending the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping within the United States. That program is separate from the GST program, but three lawyers involved said the legal rationale for the NSA program is essentially the same one used to support GST, which is an abbreviation of a classified code name for the umbrella covert action program.

The administration contends it is still acting in self-defense after the Sept. 11 attacks, that the battlefield is worldwide, and that everything it has approved is consistent with the demands made by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001, when it passed a resolution authorizing "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks."

"Everything is done in the name of self-defense, so they can do anything because nothing is forbidden in the war powers act," said one official who was briefed on the CIA's original cover program and who is skeptical of its legal underpinnings. "It's an amazing legal justification that allows them to do anything," said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issues.

The interpretation undergirds the administration's determination not to waver under public protests or the threat of legislative action. For example, after The Washington Post disclosed the existence of secret prisons in several Eastern European democracies, the CIA closed them down because of an uproar in Europe. But the detainees were moved elsewhere to similar CIA prisons, referred to as "black sites" in classified documents.

The CIA has stuck with its overall approaches, defending and in some cases refining them. The agency is working to establish procedures in the event a prisoner dies in custody. One proposal circulating among mid-level officers calls for rushing in a CIA pathologist to perform an autopsy and then quickly burning the body, according to two sources.

In June, the CIA temporarily suspended its interrogation program after a controversy over the disclosure of an Aug. 1, 2002, memorandum from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel that defined torture in an unconventional way. The White House withdrew and replaced the memo. But the hold on the CIA's interrogation activities was eventually removed, several intelligence officials said.

The authorized techniques include "waterboarding" and "water dousing," both meant to make prisoners think they are drowning; hard slapping; isolation; sleep deprivation; liquid diets; and stress positions -- often used, intelligence officials say, in combination to enhance the effect.

Behind the scenes, CIA Director Porter J. Goss -- until last year the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee -- has gathered ammunition to defend the program.

After a CIA inspector general's report in the spring of 2004 stated that some authorized interrogation techniques violated international law, Goss asked two national security experts to study the program's effectiveness.

Gardner Peckham, an adviser to then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), concluded that the interrogation techniques had been effective, said an intelligence official familiar with the result. John J. Hamre, deputy defense secretary under President Bill Clinton, offered a more ambiguous conclusion. Both declined to comment.

The only apparent roadblock that could yet prompt significant change in the CIA's approach is a law passed this month prohibiting torture and cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody, including in CIA hands.

It is still unclear how the law, sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), will be implemented. But two intelligence experts said the CIA will be required to draw up clear guidelines and to get all special interrogation techniques approved by a wider range of government lawyers who hold a more conventional interpretation of international treaty obligations.

"The executive branch will not pull back unless it has to," said a former Justice Department lawyer involved in the initial discussions on executive power. "Because if it pulls back unilaterally and another attack occurs, it will get blamed."

The Origins

The top-secret presidential finding Bush signed six days after the Sept. 11 attacks empowered the intelligence agencies in a way not seen since World War II, and it ordered them to create what would become the GST program.

Written findings are required by the National Security Act of 1947 before the CIA can undertake a covert action. A covert action may not violate the Constitution or any U.S. law. But such actions can, and often do, violate laws of the foreign countries in which they take place, said intelligence experts.

The CIA faced the day after the 2001 attacks with few al Qaeda informants, a tiny paramilitary division and no interrogators, much less a system for transporting terrorism suspects and keeping them hidden for interrogation.

Besides fighting the war in Afghanistan, the agency set about to put in place an intelligence-gathering network that relies heavily on foreign security services and their deeper knowledge of local terrorist groups. With billions of dollars appropriated each year by Congress, the CIA has established joint counterterrorism intelligence centers in more than two dozen countries, and it has enlisted at least eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe, to allow secret prisons on their soil.

Working behind the scenes, the CIA has gained approval from foreign governments to whisk terrorism suspects off the streets or out of police custody into a clandestine prison system that includes the CIA's black sites and facilities run by intelligence agencies in other countries.

The presidential finding also permitted the CIA to create paramilitary teams to hunt and kill designated individuals anywhere in the world, according to a dozen current and former intelligence officials and congressional and executive branch sources.

In four years, the GST has become larger than the CIA's covert action programs in Afghanistan and Central America in the 1980s, according to current and former intelligence officials. Indeed, the CIA, working with foreign counterparts, has been responsible for virtually all of the success the United States has had in capturing or killing al Qaeda leaders since Sept. 11, 2001.

Bush delegated much of the day-to-day decision-making and the creation of individual components to then-CIA Director George J. Tenet, according to congressional and intelligence officials who were briefed on the finding at the time.

"George could decide, even on killings," one of these officials said, referring to Tenet. "That was pushed down to him. George had the authority on who was going to get it."

The Lawyers

Tenet, according to half a dozen former intelligence officials, delegated most of the decision making on lethal action to the CIA's Counterterrorist Center. Killing an al Qaeda leader with a Hellfire missile fired from a remote-controlled drone might have been considered assassination in a prior era and therefore banned by law.

But after Sept. 11, four former government lawyers said, it was classified as an act of self-defense and therefore was not an assassination. "If it was an al Qaeda person, it wouldn't be an assassination," said one lawyer involved.

This month, Pakistani intelligence sources said, Hamza Rabia, a top operational planner for al Qaeda, was killed along with four others by a missile fired by U.S. operatives using an unmanned Predator drone, although there were conflicting reports on whether a missile was used. In May, another al Qaeda member, Haitham Yemeni, was reported killed by a Predator drone missile in northwest Pakistan.

Refining what constitutes an assassination was just one of many legal interpretations made by Bush administration lawyers. Time and again, the administration asked government lawyers to draw up new rules and reinterpret old ones to approve activities once banned or discouraged under the congressional reforms beginning in the 1970s, according to these officials and seven lawyers who once worked on these matters.

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, deputy director of national intelligence, has described the administration's philosophy in public and private meetings, including a session with human rights groups.

"We're going to live on the edge," Hayden told the groups, according to notes taken by Human Rights Watch and confirmed by Hayden's office. "My spikes will have chalk on them. . . . We're pretty aggressive within the law. As a professional, I'm troubled if I'm not using the full authority allowed by law."

Not stopping another attack not only will be a professional failure, he argued, but also "will move the line" again on acceptable legal limits to counterterrorism.

When the CIA wanted new rules for interrogating important terrorism suspects the White House gave the task to a small group of lawyers within the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel who believed in an aggressive interpretation of presidential power.

The White House tightened the circle of participants involved in these most sensitive new areas. It initially cut out the State Department's general counsel, most of the judge advocates general of the military services and the Justice Department's criminal division, which traditionally dealt with international terrorism.

"The Bush administration did not seek a broad debate on whether commander-in-chief powers can trump international conventions and domestic statutes in our struggle against terrorism," said Radsan, the former CIA lawyer, who is a professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minn. "They could have separated the big question from classified details to operations and had an open debate. Instead, an inner circle of lawyers and advisers worked around the dissenters in the administration and one-upped each other with extreme arguments."

At the CIA, the White House allowed the general counsel's job, traditionally filled from outside the CIA by someone who functioned in a sort of oversight role, to be held by John Rizzo, a career CIA lawyer with a fondness for flashy suits and ties who worked for years in the Directorate of Operations, or D.O.

"John Rizzo is a classic D.O. lawyer. He understands the culture, the intelligence business," Radsan said. "He admires the case officers. And they trust him to work out tough issues in the gray with them. He is like a corporate lawyer who knows how to make the deal happen."

These lawyers have written legal justifications for holding suspects picked up outside Afghanistan without a court order, without granting traditional legal rights and without giving them access to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

CIA and Office of Legal Counsel lawyers also determined that it was legal for suspects to be secretly detained in one country and transferred to another for the purposes of interrogation and detention -- a process known as "rendition."

Lawyers involved in the decision making acknowledge the uncharted nature of their work. "I did what I thought the best reading of the law was," one lawyer said. "These lines are not obvious. It was a judgment."

Credit and Blame

One way the White House limited debate over its program was to virtually shut out Congress during the early years. Congress, for its part, raised only weak and sporadic protests. The administration sometimes refused to give the committees charged with overseeing intelligence agencies the details they requested. It also cut the number of members of Congress routinely briefed on these matters, usually to four members -- the chairmen and ranking Democratic members of the House and Senate intelligence panels.

John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, complained in a 2003 letter to Vice President Cheney that his briefing on the NSA eavesdropping was unsatisfactory. "Given the security restrictions associated with this information, and my inability to consult staff or counsel on my own, I feel unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse, these activities," he wrote.

Rockefeller made similar complaints about the CIA's refusal to allow the full committee to see the backup material supporting a skeptical report by the CIA inspector general in 2004 on detentions and interrogations that questioned the legal basis for renditions.

Some former CIA officers now worry that the agency alone will be held responsible for actions authorized by Bush and approved by the White House's lawyers.

Attacking the CIA is common when covert programs are exposed and controversial, said Gerald Haines, a former CIA historian who is a scholar in residence at the University of Virginia. "It seems to me the agency is taking the brunt of all the recent criticism."

Duane R. "Dewey" Clarridge, who directed the CIA's covert efforts to support the Nicaraguan contras in the 1980s, said the nature of CIA work overseas is, and should be, risky and sometimes ugly. "You have a spy agency because the spy agency is going to break laws overseas. If you don't want it to do those dastardly things, don't have it. You can have the State Department."

But a former CIA officer said the agency "lost its way" after Sept. 11, rarely refusing or questioning an administration request. The unorthodox measures "have got to be flushed out of the system," the former officer said. "That's how it works in this country."

Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CIA covert action program biggest since Cold War
Bush authorized all-out effort against al Qaeda after 9/11
- Dana Priest, Washington Post
Friday, December 30, 2005


Washington -- The effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fight al Qaeda has grown into the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growing outcry at home and abroad over its clandestine tactics, according to former and current intelligence officials and congressional and administration sources.

The broad-based effort, known within the agency by the initials GST, is compartmentalized into dozens of highly classified individual programs, details of which are known mainly to those directly involved.

GST includes programs allowing the CIA to capture al Qaeda suspects with help from foreign intelligence services, to maintain secret prisons abroad, to use interrogation techniques that some lawyers say violate international treaties and to maintain a fleet of aircraft to move detainees around the globe. Other compartments within GST give the CIA enhanced ability to mine international financial records and eavesdrop on suspects anywhere in the world.

Over the past two years, as aspects of this umbrella effort have burst into public view, the revelations have prompted protests and official investigations in countries that work with the United States, as well as condemnation by international human rights activists and criticism by members of Congress.

Still, virtually all the programs continue to operate largely as they were set up, according to current and former officials. These sources say Bush's personal commitment to maintaining the GST program and his belief in its legality have been key to resisting any pressure to change course.

"In the past, presidents set up buffers to distance themselves from covert action," said A. John Radsan, assistant general counsel at the CIA from 2002 to 2004. "But this president, who is breaking down the boundaries between covert action and conventional war, seems to relish the secret findings and the dirty details of operations."

The administration's decisions to rely on a small circle of lawyers for legal interpretations that justify the CIA's covert programs and not to consult widely with Congress on them have also helped insulate the efforts from the growing furor, said several sources who have been involved.

Bush has never publicly confirmed the existence of a covert program, but he was recently forced to defend the approach in general terms, citing his wartime responsibilities to protect the nation. In November, responding to questions about the CIA's clandestine prisons, he said the nation must defend against an enemy that "lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again."

This month he went into more detail, defending the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping within the United States. That program is separate from the GST program, but three lawyers involved said the legal rationale for the NSA program was essentially the same one used to support GST, which is an abbreviation of a classified code name for the umbrella covert action program.

The administration contends that it is still acting in self-defense after the Sept. 11 attacks, that the battlefield is worldwide and that everything it has approved is consistent with the demands made by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001, when it passed a resolution authorizing "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons (the president) determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks."

"Everything is done in the name of self-defense, so they can do anything because nothing is forbidden in the War Powers Act," said one official who was briefed on the CIA's original cover program and who is skeptical of its legal underpinnings. "It's an amazing legal justification that allows them to do anything," said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issues.

The interpretation undergirds the administration's determination not to waver under public protest or the threat of legislative action. For example, after the Washington Post disclosed the existence of secret prisons in several Eastern European democracies, the CIA closed them down because of an uproar in Europe. But the detainees were moved elsewhere to similar CIA prisons, referred to as "black sites" in classified documents.

The CIA has stuck with its overall approaches, defending and in some cases refining them. The agency is working to establish procedures in the event a prisoner dies in custody. One proposal circulating among mid-level officers calls for rushing in a CIA pathologist to perform an autopsy and then quickly burning the body, according to two sources.

In June, the CIA temporarily suspended its interrogation program after a controversy over disclosure of an Aug. 1, 2002, memorandum from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel that defined torture in an unconventional way. The White House withdrew and replaced the memo. But the hold on the CIA's interrogation activities was eventually removed, several intelligence officials said.

The authorized techniques include "waterboarding" and "water dousing," both meant to make prisoners think they are drowning; hard slapping; isolation; sleep deprivation; liquid diets; and stress positions -- often used, intelligence officials say, in combination to enhance the effect.

Behind the scenes, CIA Director Porter Goss -- until last year the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee -- has gathered ammunition to defend the program.

After a CIA inspector general's report in the spring of 2004 found that some authorized interrogation techniques violated international law, Goss asked two national security experts to study the program's effectiveness.

Gardner Peckham, an adviser to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., concluded that the interrogation techniques had been effective, said an intelligence official familiar with the result. John Hamre, deputy defense secretary under President Bill Clinton, offered a more ambiguous conclusion. Both declined to comment.

The only apparent roadblock that could yet prompt significant change in the CIA's approach is a law passed this month prohibiting torture and cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody, including in CIA hands.

It is still unclear how the law, sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., will be implemented. But two intelligence experts said the CIA would be required to draw up clear guidelines and to get all special interrogation techniques approved by a wider range of government lawyers who hold a more conventional interpretation of international treaty obligations.

"The executive branch will not pull back unless it has to," said a former Justice Department lawyer involved in the initial discussions on executive power. "Because if it pulls back unilaterally, and another attack occurs, it will get blamed."

Page A - 6
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file...MNGVDGF5S91.DTL

New Book Reveals Secret War Operations Mon Jan 2, 5:19 PM ET



A new book on the government's secret anti-terrorism operations describes how the CIA recruited an Iraqi-American anesthesiologist in 2002 to obtain information from her brother, who was a figure in Saddam Hussein's nuclear program.

Dr. Sawsan Alhaddad of Cleveland made the dangerous trip to Iraq on the CIA's behalf. The book said her brother was stunned by her questions about the nuclear program because — he said — it had been dead for a decade.

New York Times reporter James Risen uses the anecdote to illustrate how the CIA ignored information that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction. His book, "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration" describes secret operations of the Bush administration's war on terrorism.

The major revelation in the book has already been the subject of extensive reporting by Risen's newspaper: the National Security Agency's eavesdropping of Americans' conversations without obtaining warrants from a special court.

The book said Dr. Alhaddad flew home in mid-September 2002 and had a series of meetings with CIA analysts. She relayed her brother's information that there was no nuclear program.

A CIA operative later told Dr. Alhaddad's husband that the agency believed her brother was lying. In all, the book says, some 30 family members of Iraqis made trips to their native country to contact Iraqi weapons scientists, and all of them reported that the programs had been abandoned.

In October 2002, a month after the doctor's trip to Baghdad, the U.S intelligence community issued a National Intelligence Estimate that concluded Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program.

In the book, which quotes extensively from anonymous sources, Risen said the NSA spying program was launched in 2002 after the CIA began to capture high-ranking al-Qaida operatives overseas, and took their computers, cell phones and personal phone directories.

The CIA turned the telephone numbers and e-mail addresses from the material over to the NSA, which then began monitoring the phone numbers — in addition to anyone in contact with the telephone subscribers, the book said, saying this led to an expansion of the monitoring, both overseas and in the United States.

The book said the NSA does not need approval from the White House, the Justice Department or anyone else in the Bush administration before it begins eavesdropping on a specific phone line in the United States.

In another chapter on a "rogue operation," the book said a CIA officer mistakenly sent one of its Iranian agents information that could be used to identify virtually every spy the agency had in Iran. The book said the Iranian was a double agent who turned over the data to Iranian security officials.

The book said the information severely damaged the CIA's Iranian network, and quoted CIA sources as saying several of the U.S. agents were arrested and jailed.




Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

Book: CIA Ignored Info Iraq Had No WMD
A new book on the government's secret anti-terrorism operations describes how the CIA recruited an Iraqi-American anesthesiologist in 2002 to obtain information from her brother, who was a figure in Saddam Hussein's nuclear program.

Dr. Sawsan Alhaddad of Cleveland made the dangerous trip to Iraq on the CIA's behalf. The book said her brother was stunned by her questions about the nuclear program because — he said — it had been dead for a decade.

New York Times reporter James Risen uses the anecdote to illustrate how the CIA ignored information that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction. His book, "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration" describes secret operations of the Bush administration's war on terrorism.

The major revelation in the book has already been the subject of extensive reporting by Risen's newspaper: the National Security Agency's eavesdropping of Americans' conversations without obtaining warrants from a special court.

The book said Dr. Alhaddad flew home in mid-September 2002 and had a series of meetings with CIA analysts. She relayed her brother's information that there was no nuclear program.

A CIA operative later told Dr. Alhaddad's husband that the agency believed her brother was lying. In all, the book says, some 30 family members of Iraqis made trips to their native country to contact Iraqi weapons scientists, and all of them reported that the programs had been abandoned.

In October 2002, a month after the doctor's trip to Baghdad, the U.S intelligence community issued a National Intelligence Estimate that concluded Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program.

In the book, which quotes extensively from anonymous sources, Risen said the NSA spying program was launched in 2002 after the CIA began to capture high-ranking al-Qaida operatives overseas, and took their computers, cell phones and personal phone directories.

The CIA turned the telephone numbers and e-mail addresses from the material over to the NSA, which then began monitoring the phone numbers — in addition to anyone in contact with the telephone subscribers, the book said, saying this led to an expansion of the monitoring, both overseas and in the United States.

The book said the NSA does not need approval from the White House, the Justice Department or anyone else in the Bush administration before it begins eavesdropping on a specific phone line in the United States.

In another chapter on a "rogue operation," the book said a CIA officer mistakenly sent one of its Iranian agents information that could be used to identify virtually every spy the agency had in Iran. The book said the Iranian was a double agent who turned over the data to Iranian security officials.

The book said the information severely damaged the CIA's Iranian network, and quoted CIA sources as saying several of the U.S. agents were arrested and jailed.




Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

Jim Risen's new book State of War was the source of the NYT's revelations about the NSA. More details are contained in the following article from the current issue of Time
Tuesday, Jan. 03, 2006
The Book Behind the Bombshell
By ROMESH RATNESAR

In the abstruse world of espionage, it's not always easy to know when you are in on a secret. So when intelligence sources approached New York Times reporter James Risen in late 2004 with evidence that the Bush Administration was running a covert domestic-spying program, Risen says he "wasn't sure what to believe." As Risen and Times colleague Eric Lichtblau looked into the story, more whistle-blowers came forward, convincing the reporters that the eavesdropping claims were credible. At that point Risen asked a few "very senior" government officials what they knew about the spying program. "They would look at me with these blank expressions, and say, 'No--that can't be going on,'" Risen told TIME. That's when Risen knew he was sitting on a major scoop.
But it took Risen more than a year to get the story into print--and not before President Bush personally implored Times editors not to publish Risen and Lichtblau's account of how Bush authorized the National Security Agency to wiretap telephone and e-mail communications inside the U.S. without court-sanctioned warrants. The Times ran the article on Dec. 16, touching off a blogospheric scrum: conservatives accuse the Times of aiding terrorists by revealing secrets of U.S. spycraft while liberals say the paper caved to White House pressure by not dropping the bombshell sooner. At the center of the article's backstory is Risen, who unsuccessfully pushed to publish the wiretap report last year, then took a leave to write a book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. It now appears he may pay a price for the disclosure: last Friday the Justice Department opened an investigation into who leaked the existence of the NSA program to the Times, raising the prospect of Risen's being compelled to reveal the identities of the "nearly dozen" current and former officials who spoke to him about the program or face jail time for contempt of court.
In an interview, Risen said the Times' choice to run the wiretap story when it did was "not my decision and had nothing to do with me." But he said the paper "has performed a great public service by printing it, because this policy is something the nation should debate." State of War provides an account of the origins and scope of the wiretap program that basically repeats the revelations contained in Risen and Lichtblau's stories in the Times. But the book also argues that the NSA's eavesdropping policy shows the extent to which the war on terrorism has spurred the intelligence community to flout legal conventions at home and abroad. Risen's chief target is the CIA, where, he argues, institutional dysfunction and feckless leadership after 9/11 led to intelligence breakdowns that continue to haunt the U.S. Though much of State of War covers ground that is broadly familiar, the book is punctuated with a wealth of previously unreported tidbits about covert meetings, aborted CIA operations and Oval Office outbursts. The result is a brisk, if dispiriting, chronicle of how, since 9/11, the "most covert tools of national-security policy have been misused."
State of War doesn't follow a clear narrative arc. The action kick-starts midway through the first chapter, in March 2002: days after the arrest of Abu Zubaydah, at the time the highest-ranking al-Qaeda operative in U.S. custody, Bush summoned CIA director George Tenet to the White House to ask what intelligence Abu Zubaydah had provided his captors. According to Risen's source, Tenet told Bush that Abu Zubaydah, badly wounded during his capture, was too groggy from painkillers to talk coherently. In response, Bush asked, "Who authorized putting him on pain medication?" Risen makes the leap that the Bush episode may represent the "most direct link yet between Bush and the harsh treatment of prisoners by both the CIA and the U.S. military"--but deflates that claim by acknowledging that some former senior Tenet lieutenants don't believe the story is true.
Risen writes that with the White House's anything-goes mandate in place, everything went. While the NSA began monitoring communications of some Americans suspected of links to al-Qaeda--snooping on "millions of telephone calls and e-mail messages on American soil" in the process--the CIA set up a network of secret prisons around the world in which interrogators employed techniques that violated established international norms. Meanwhile, Tenet's desire to earn the favor of Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld led him to abandon the agency's traditional role as a nonpartisan arbiter of intelligence. That fostered a climate in which officials were discouraged from sending Bush inconvenient information--such as doubts about the quality of intelligence on Iraq's program for weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Tenet is no stranger to opprobrium (his reputation will never recover from his telling Bush that the evidence on WMD was a "slam dunk"), but the verdict of his subordinates in State of War is particularly withering. "George Tenet liked to talk about how he was a tough Greek from Queens," a former Tenet aide tells Risen before going on to use a vulgar word for wimp to describe him instead. "He just wanted people to like him."
Risen's book provides fresh details about how agency officials ignored warnings from their sources in Iraq about WMD and the potency of the insurgency after the U.S. invasion. Risen devotes a chapter to Sawsan Alhaddad, an Iraqi American recruited by the CIA as part of a "Hail Mary" prewar effort to gain intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons program by tapping the relatives of Iraqi scientists. Alhaddad was one of at least 30 Iraqi expatriates who risked their lives to travel to Iraq to ask their relatives about Saddam's arsenal. According to Risen, all of them reported that Iraq had abandoned its WMD program--but the CIA never informed the White House. Among the other intelligence foibles described in the book: the U.S. discovered Western-style ATM cards on Abu Zubaydah after his capture, but "there is little evidence that an aggressive investigation" into the bank accounts was ever made, and a gaffe by a CIA officer in Washington last year blew the cover of spies in Iran and enabled Tehran to "roll up" the CIA's network of agents there. (A CIA representative denies both stories.)
Risen's reporting isn't bulletproof. Like most intelligence reporters, he relies heavily on anonymous sources, and several anecdotes in State of War are attributed to a lone leaker. That makes some of the book's claims difficult to verify, while leaving Risen open to charges that he is being used by partisan ax grinders. Risen, who is contesting a court order to reveal the identities of sources he quoted in a series of disputed articles about the nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, admits that the book requires readers to make a "leap of faith" and accept the credibility of his sources. But the number of intelligence officials willing to risk their careers and come forward convinced Risen that their critiques have merit. "I got to these people at a good time," he says. "The frustration over the way things have been going in the Bush Administration had built up within the government. There were a lot of people who were increasingly uncomfortable with what was going on."
What State of War lacks is a prescription for what to do about it. Despite the intelligence failures documented in the book, Risen concludes that as a result of the U.S.'s counterterrorist efforts, "al-Qaeda now seems to lack the power to conduct another 9/11." The question facing policymakers is how to balance that apparent gain in security with its attendant costs--to the military in Iraq, to civil liberties at home and to the U.S.'s standing in the world. State of War ends too hastily to tackle such dilemmas. The book sheds welcome light on the conduct of the war on terrorism so far, but it leaves readers in the dark about where we go from here.


Copyright © 2006 Time Inc. All rights reserved.
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CIA gave Iran nuclear design in botched plot : new book Wed Jan 4, 4:26 PM ET



The CIA, using a double-agent Russian scientist, may have handed a blueprint for a nuclear bomb to Iran, according to a new book which has ruffled the US national security establishment.

"State of War" by James Risen, the New York Times reporter who exposed the Bush administration's controversial domestic spying operation, claims the plans contained fatal flaws designed to derail Tehran's nuclear drive.

But the deliberate errors were so rudimentary they would have been easily fixed by sophisticated Russian nuclear scientists, the book said.

The operation, which took place during the Clinton administration in early 2000, was code-named Operation Merlin and "may have been one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA," according to Risen.

It called for the unnamed scientist, a defector from the Soviet nuclear program, to offer Iran the blueprint for a "firing set" -- the intricate mechanism which triggers the chain reaction needed for a nuclear explosion.

According to Risen's book, the agent, posing as a greedy Russian scientist keen to steel secrets, delivered to plans as instructed by the CIA to Iran's mission to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna.

He had been told by CIA officers that the Iranians already had the technology detailed in the plans -- and that the ruse was simply an attempt by the agency to find out the full scope of Tehran's nuclear knowledge.

But, contrary to orders not to open the packet, he added a note which made it clear he could help fix the flaws -- for money.

The CIA declined to comment in detail on the book's claims on Iran -- but issued a vigorous condemnation of Risen's work and methods.

"Readers deserve to know that every chapter of State of War contains serious inaccuracies," said Jennifer Millerwise, CIA Director of Public Affairs.

"The author's reliance on anonymous sources begs the reader to trust that these are knowledgeable people. As this book demonstrates, anonymous sources are often unreliable.

"It is most alarming that the author discloses information that he believes to be ongoing intelligence operations, including actions as critical as stopping dangerous nations from acquiring nuclear weapons.

"Setting aside whether what he wrote is accurate or inaccurate, it demonstrates an unfathomable and sad disregard for US national security and those who take life-threatening risks to ensure it."

In the same chapter, Risen also claimed that a CIA officer once mistakenly sent a message to an agent, who turned out to be a turncoat, in Iran exposing the US spy network in the country.




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http://www.zaman.com/?bl=international&alt...060106&hn=28299
CIA Warns Turkey of Al-Qaeda's Action Plan
By Sedat Gunec, Ankara
Published: Thursday, January 05, 2006
zaman.com


The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) warned Turkey that the terrorist network, al-Qaeda plans to attack the country with high rate radiation-nuclear materials.

CIA Director Porter Goss held top-level meetings with the National Intelligence Organization (MIT), and visited the General Security Directorate during his three day-visit to the Turkish capital Ankara recently.

Goss mentioned terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda and the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) could easily be destroyed with the help of shared intelligence, and steps to further share information were undertaken upon his return to the United States.

CIA sent the MIT a secret al-Qaeda cryptic message last week, in which reportedly the terror organization will send nuclear materials including high rate-radiation to selected targets by using international cargo companies such as UPS and FedEx.

Turkey’s Intelligence Undersecretary warned the Security Directorate about the CIA’s coded message.

MIT and the General Security Directorate investigated the cargo packages sent to Turkey through international transport companies.

Top-level security precautions were taken in the cargo departments of international airports such as Istanbul Ataturk, Sabiha Gokcen, Ankara Esenboga, Izmir Adnan Menderes and Antalya.

Al-Qaeda is claimed to have developed such action plans in order to not lose members.

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Group: Third EU Nation May Have CIA Prisons By JAN SLIVA, Associated Press Writer
Wed Jan 4, 8:11 PM ET



A U.S.-based human rights group said Wednesday it suspects the CIA had a secret prison in a third European country and it plans to investigate.

Human Rights Watch did not identify the third country but said it was one of the 25 members of the European Union. Previously, the group identified Poland and Romania as sites of possible secret detention centers run by the United States.

"We do have one other individual allegation of a country, a country that is a member of the European Union," Lotte Leicht, director of the group's Brussels-based office, told the European Parliament's Subcommittee on Human Rights on Wednesday. "We are trying to conduct a surprise visit there."

Leicht refused to give more details, fearing it would compromise the investigation. But she told The Associated Press the New York-based human rights watchdog considered its source "very credible."

"We have lots of information from intelligence sources that are so far not willing to go public. We know that if they do, they will ... lose their jobs," Leicht told the committee.

Allegations that the CIA hid and interrogated key al-Qaida suspects at Soviet-era compounds in Eastern Europe were first reported Nov. 2 in The Washington Post. After the report appeared, Human Rights Watch said it had circumstantial evidence indicating the CIA transported suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan to Poland and Romania.

Both countries have repeatedly denied any involvement and EU officials say nothing has been proven. Poland said last week it had closed its investigation into allegations that the country may have hosted secret CIA prisons, but did not release any findings.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has refused to address questions about clandestine CIA detention centers, but says the United States acts within the law.

Leicht urged the European Parliament to pressure member governments to help obtain details from secret services on the alleged detention centers.

"Getting information from those sources is almost impossible," she said.

The EU plans to launch its own probe into the issue later this month.




Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


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Missing intel bill would break 27-year run
By SHAUN WATERMAN
UPI Homeland and National Security Editor

WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 (UPI) -- For the first time in 27 years, congressional officials fear there will not be an Intelligence Authorization Act passed this session of Congress.

According to lawmakers and staff from both parties, the bill was blocked in the Senate before the holiday recess by a single Republican lawmaker in a dispute over amendments requiring reports to Congress on secret detention facilities for terror suspects and access to pre-war presidential intelligence briefings on Iraq.

Now some fear that further efforts to pass the will become embroiled in the controversy about the Bush administration's secret use of warrantless national security wiretaps.

"I think we might have missed an opportunity at the end of last year," said one Democratic Senate aide who deals with intelligence issues, adding that "the window might have closed by now."

Republicans and administration officials said they would try and bring the bill up when Congress reconvenes later this year.

The 2006 Intelligence Authorization Bill, S1803, was voted out unanimously by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in October 2005; the House had already passed its version of the law back in June.

The annual bill -- which has passed every year since the establishment of the House and Senate committees on intelligence in 1978 -- provides the legislative framework within which the nation's intelligence agencies carry out their missions and spend the money Congress appropriates for them.

Money for the sprawling and fractious collection of agencies referred to as the intelligence community is contained in the classified "black" budget of the Pentagon, and funded through the secret annexes to the defense appropriations bill.

Congressional officials say that if the intelligence authorization bill does not pass this year, U.S. intelligence agencies will still be able to spend the money Congress appropriated for them, but several important reforms, improvements and innovations will be left in limbo.

Its authors say this year's Senate bill would set up an inspector general for the new director of national intelligence; strengthen counter-terrorism information-sharing by temporarily suspending parts of the Privacy Act; and make the directors of the three biggest-spending military intelligence agencies subject to Senate confirmation.

If the Senate bill does not pass, the House version will also die. Following long-standing concern from lawmakers of both parties, the House bill reduced or eliminated funding for a small number of hugely expensive satellite programs.

House committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., told United Press International at the time that the programs were on a "disastrous path" owing to poor management and "sloppy performance."

"When you put a marker down that says 'The House does not authorize any more money to be put into this program,' or 'X amount of dollars are going to fenced off until certain things happen' that is a marker in the sand that somebody has to respond to," he said.

The annual intelligence bill typically includes classified annexes running to hundreds of pages, packed with these kinds of detailed efforts to restrain, guide or direct spending and policy, according to congressional staff.

"This bill is what Congress uses to guide the intelligence (agencies)," said the Democratic Senate aide, "It deals in detail with a large number of big programs."

"One of the criticisms that's been leveled by observers is that congressional oversight (of intelligence) is weak," the aide continued. "This (failure to pass the bill) is indicative of the terrible weakness of our oversight."

The Senate bill was blocked by a Republican who exercised his/her right to remain anonymous, according to GOP staff.

Because of the way the Senate's rules are designed to ensure that debate is difficult to curtail, moving a bill through the chamber expeditiously requires a parliamentary procedure known as unanimous consent. A single objection can force Senate leaders to contemplate a lengthy floor debate, and effectively preclude consideration of a bill altogether if managers believe the legislative agenda is already too crowded.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., the senior-most Democrat on the intelligence committee, said in a floor statement just before the recess that blocking the bill was designed to prevent the passage of three amendments added to it with the consent of the GOP committee Chairman Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas.

"I am informed that one or more Republican Senators object to the inclusion of (these) amendments," said Rockefeller, "even though Chairman Roberts has accepted those amendments -- and those amendments were agreed to by the full committee."

"They told the Democratic leader's staff, 'We can't clear this with those amendments,'" explained the Democratic Senate staffer.

Two of the amendments require reports to Congress about the network of secret detention facilities reportedly operated by the CIA outside the United States. The classified reports -- from Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte about the facilities and from intelligence agency inspectors general about the welfare of individual detainees -- would be submitted to the intelligence committees of both chambers.

The third, submitted by former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, requires the White House to give the two committees copies of Presidential Daily Briefing items about Iraq from Jan. 20, 1997 -- the beginning of President Clinton's second term -- to March 19, 2003 -- the date of the U.S. invasion.

A Senate Republican staffer familiar with the issue told UPI that Roberts' main concern had been to get the bill to the floor before the recess. "To do that," the staffer said, "the chairman was prepared not to object to those amendments so that the bill could get to conference."

The staffer added just because the hold on the bill was placed by a single objector did not mean that they were alone in their views. "I'm sure there are a lot of Republican Senators who disagree with one or more of those amendments."

The staffer said that Roberts nevertheless hoped to see the bill brought up when Congress resumes work, adding that without it, "There is no guidance to the intelligence community from Congress."

White House Spokeswoman Dana Perino told UPI the administration still hoped to see the bill made law. "We will continue to work with Congress as (it) goes through the legislative process," she said.

But some observers now believe that any effort to bring the legislation to the Senate floor will inevitably become embroiled in the gathering storm of controversy over the National Security Agency's program of warrantless wiretaps on Americans calling or being called by foreign phone numbers thought linked to al-Qaida.

"There will be people (on both sides of the aisle) now who will want to (use the bill to) deal with this (NSA) issue," said the Democratic staffer, predicting that this would likely stymie efforts to pass it.






© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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CIA to step up efforts to plug leaks Sun Jan 8, 3:05 PM ET



CIA director Porter Goss is redoubling efforts to prevent agents from divulging the spy agency's secrets to the media, and also plans to clamp down on former spies publishing books about their covert careers, a US magazine reported.

Citing an anonymous former senior Central Intelligence Agency official, Time magazine, in a report to hit newsstands this week, said on its website that CIA officials told employees during a meeting last week that leaking had gotten out of control and needed to stop.

The reported added that a new clampdown on leakers had been launched, supported by a team of "mostly retired" agents contracted to scan the news media for possible leaks of classified material and to try to find the leakers responsible.

The internal crackdown follows recent media reports about the CIA's secret prison network for terror suspects and last month's disclosure in The New York Times that US President George W. Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the telephone calls of some Americans without court warrants.

The report said Goss also is worried about the potential impact of the leaks and insider books on the agency's security and clandestine operations.

"You don't want people who sit down with an (intelligence) officer in confidence to be concerned it will end up in the guy's memoirs in a year or two," one anonymous intelligence official told Time.




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January 7 / 8, 2006

An Interview with Michael Scheuer
The Origins of the Rendition Program: Does the CIA Have the Right to Break Any Law?
By THOMAS KLEINE-BROCKHOFF

Michael Scheuer left the CIA in November 2005 after 22 years of service. Between 1995 and 1999 he was responsible for a unit in charge of tracking down Osama bin Laden. Since 2000 he had been one of the principal anti-terrorism agents within the CIA. While he was still in service, he already wrote an essay criticizing the American anti-terrorism politics ("Imperial Hubris"). Within the CIA, Michael Scheuer is considered as being a detractor. He lives in Virginia with his family.This interview was conducted by the German newspaper Die Zeit.

Die Zeit: You have participated within the CIA in developing a system called « renditions » in the course of which presumed terrorists were abducted to foreign countries and handed over to third countries. Would you say that from the point of view of the CIA these "extraordinary renditions" were a successful undertaking?

Michael Scheuer: Absolutely. For ten years it had been the most successful anti-terrorism program in the USA.

Die Zeit: Why?

Michael Scheuer: Because its aims were clearly defined. First of all, we wanted to identify and put behind bars members and contact persons of the terrorist group Al-Qaida, particularly those having participated in an attack against the USA or an allied state or those who might be planning such an attack. The second goal was the confiscation of documents and electronic devices. The media affirms that we have arrested and abducted persons on the basis of presumptions in order to interrogate them. But this is not true.

Die Zeit: You thus did not wish to interrogate them?

Michael Scheuer: If we had the occasion to do so it was like the cherry on the cake. Basically, we only wished to arrest the person and confiscate his or her documents.

Die Zeit: Why?

Michael Scheuer: Our experience is that aggressive questioning bordering on torture does not achieve results. Persons interrogated in this way tell the agent anything he wishes to hear. Either they lie or they give us precise but obsolete information.

Die Zeit: Who invented the "extraordinary renditions" system?

Michael Scheuer: President Clinton, his security counsellor Sandy Berger and his terrorism counsellor Richard Clarke instructed the CIA in autumn 1995 to destroy Al-Qaida. We asked the president what we should do with the arrested persons? Clinton replied that this was our problem. The CIA indicated that they are not jailors. It was then suggested we find any solution whatsoever to this problem. And this is what we did, we established a procedure and I myself was part of this working group. We concentrated on those members of Al-Qaida who were wanted by the police in their respective countries of origin or those who had already been convicted during their absence.

Die Zeit: How did you take the decision as to who should be arrested?

Michael Scheuer: We had to present quite a lot of accusatory material to a group of lawyers.

Die Zeit: Lawyers? Within the secret services?

Michael Scheuer: Yes, there are lawyers everywhere, within the CIA, the Ministry of Justice, the National Security Councill. We have established a list of targets under their surveillance. We then had to find the person and this in a country ready to cooperate with us. Additionally, the person's country of origin had to be willing to take the person back. It is a very complicated procedure aimed at a very restricted target group.

Die Zeit: Why would countries wish to cooperate with you on their own territory? They could have done all the work themselves?

Michael Scheuer: They thought that only the USA was under threat. And that they would only become the target of terrorist attacks once they start arresting suspects. If we had not started the process, nobody would have done it.

Die Zeit: Your partner countries thus wanted to pass on the work to the CIA?

Michael Scheuer: Yes, but they did not want the persons to remain on their territory. The CIA did not arrest or imprison anybody themselves.

Die Zeit: I beg your pardon?

Michael Scheuer: The local police or the local secret services took care of that. We always stayed in the background. The American government is full of cowards. They do not permit the CIA to work independently.

Die Zeit: Did the interrogations take place in the target country?

Michael Scheuer: We always submitted our questions in writing.

Die Zeit: The CIA never really took part in the interrogations?

Michael Scheuer: I have never heard of anything like that. The lawyers enjoined us from doing so.

Die Zeit: Did you not have doubts concerning the use of torture in these countries?

Michael Scheuer: No, my job was to protect American citizens by arresting members of Al-Qaida. The executive power of our government has to decide whether it considers this hypocritical or not. 90% of this operation was successful and only 10% could be considered as disastrous.

Die Zeit: Which part was the disaster?

Michael Scheuer: The fact that everything was made public. From now on the Europeans will diminish their assistance because they fear reading about it in the Washington Post. And then there is this troublemaker in the Senate, Senator John McCain, who virtually confessed, wrongly of course, that the CIA uses torture. And that is how the program will be destroyed.

Die Zeit: Why did you transfer the persons to their countries of origin instead of transferring them to the USA? Could you not have imprisoned them there much more safely?

Michael Scheuer: The crimes they had committed were always acts of violence. We did not have the slightest doubts that those people would be released by their countries. And president Clinton did not want them to be transferred to the USA.

Die Zeit: Why not?

Michael Scheuer: Our leaders did not wish us to treat them like prisoners of war but rather like common criminals. Additionally, they feared that they would never be able to assemble sufficient proof in order to defend the case before our law courts.

Die Zeit: Is it that difficult?

Michael Scheuer: In order to obtain a judgement against someone in the USA, an American law officer has to read him the Miranda rights when arresting him. This is impossible to do in a foreign country. Secondly, the investigators have to confirm the authenticity of the documents to the court. Should nobody be able to do so, the court automatically presumes that the documents have been tampered with. Thus it is almost impossible to obtain a judgement.

Die Zeit: How can it be possible not to dispose of enough forensic proof but nevertheless be convinced enough to arrest someone in a foreign country? Does the operation not automatically become illegal and illegitimate?

Michael Scheuer: No, since arrest warrants against most of these persons had already been issued in their countries of origin. Even though we do not appreciate the Egyptian or Jordanian system of justice, it nevertheless remains a system of justice. We simply assist in transferring these persons to their countries of origin in order for them to be tried for crimes committed abroad.

Die Zeit: The CIA considered itself as a planetary police?

Michael Scheuer: No, we are an American government agency aiming to protect American citizens. We would have preferred to transfer these persons to the USA as prisoners of war. As a matter of fact, Osama bin Laden declared war against us twice, once in 1996, then in 1998. But President Clinton did not want that. And neither does President Bush. They both thought that this would somehow legitimate Al-Qaida members if we treated them like prisoners of war. But that is not true. Bin Laden and his agents are heroes in the Islamic world. Nothing we do could legitimate them more than they already are. Furthermore, it is easier to let the Jordanians or the Egyptians do the dirty work.

Die Zeit: Human rights were not that important then for the Clinton government?

Michael Scheuer: The CIA has asked this question. It is a fact that in Cairo people are not treated the same as they are in Milwaukee. The Clinton government asked us: Do you think the prisoners are treated there according to the stipulations of the applicable local jurisdiction? And we replied: Yes we are convinced about that.

Die Zeit: The Clinton government did not show much interest in the way things were run on the spot either?

Michael Scheuer: Exactly. The members in charge of the CIA have been convinced from the beginning that in the end we will be considered as being the guilty ones. And you can ascertain it yourself: Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger or Richard Clarke have not yet commented on this.

Die Zeit: Which laws have been broken?

Michael Scheuer: I really don,t know. No American law, that,s for sure. The CIA may break any law except for American law just as any secret service. And abroad we have always acted upon approval of the local authorities.

Die Zeit: The head of the anti-terrorism section of the CIA, Cofer Black, said after the attacks of September 11 that they would stop playing "Mr. Nice Guy". What effects did this have on internal CIA procedures?

Michael Scheuer: There was much more pressure to succeed. And we started to place people in specialized institutions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo. The Bush government wanted to arrest the people itself but it made the same mistake as the Clinton government by not treating them as prisoners of war.

Die Zeit: How many people have you arrested?

Michael Scheuer: I couldn't say exactly. Right after the 2001 attacks, the director of the CIA George Tenet told Congress that until then it were approximately 100 persons. The operations that I was in charge of concerned approximately 40 people at that time. The number 100 seems much too high to me.

Die Zeit: And since then?

Michael Scheuer: Most countries do not wish to take back this kind of person. That is the reason why most of them are in the hands of the Americans. Therefore, the number of arrested people is higher, a few hundred maybe, but certainly not thousands.

Die Zeit: One of your former colleagues has designated these "extraordinary renditions" as "atrocities".

Michael Scheuer: If defending the USA is an atrocity, this critic would feel quite at home within the left wing of the Democratic Party. I believe that this shows only a lack of courage to do the dirty work oneself.

Die Zeit: Critics within the agency affirm that the program got out of control after 2001.

Michael Scheuer: Until today it remains very difficult to obtain the lawyers' consent for an operation. The Europeans should not underestimate the paralysing nature of the American administrative system.

Die Zeit: Which legal changes have taken place since 2001?

Michael Scheuer: We have stopped being such Pharisees as we now imprison the persons ourselves. At least one can say in favour of the Bush government that it behaves more manly and that it takes care of the dirty work itself. And in the media I read that they now apply "improved interrogation techniques", probably meaning that a little bit more force can be used now than before.

Die Zeit: How do you explain people dying during their detention period by the CIA?

Michael Scheuer: I do not know anything about that. I have only read about that in the papers.

Die Zeit: There are reports of persons being seriously abused and there are even pictures to prove that.

Michael Scheuer: My understanding of the new interrogation methods is that none of them should be fatal. If deaths really occurred, then I presume there must have been excesses. And this, of course, is not acceptable.

Die Zeit: Apparently, hundreds of CIA flights have been crossing Europe, what for?

Michael Scheuer: (laughs) It's just that all that is a bit surreal, that's all. The CIA acts everywhere in the world. We transport persons, equipment and funds all over the world. If we wish to supply provisions to the CIA in Iraq, we have to cross Europe on our way and stock up our plane with kerosene. This does not mean, however, that each of these planes has a "bad guy" on board.

Die Zeit: Do you find the excitement in Europe amusing?

Michael Scheuer: Yes, quite amusing indeed.

Die Zeit: Why do you need prisons in Eastern Europe?

Michael Scheuer: I am not sure that there really are prisons over there. I would be surprised if there were.

Die Zeit: I hoped that you would tell me where they are.

Michael Scheuer: (laughs) I will reply by citing Franklin D. Roosevelt: I think they are in Shangri-la. No really, I do not know why we should need such prisons. We have enough capacities elsewhere, particularly in Iraq and Cuba. I did not know anything about prisons in Eastern Europe while I was still working. This, however, does not mean anything. Maybe I did not need to know. And if they existed, I suppose our European allies were convinced that the operation would protect them as much as it protected us.

Die Zeit: How did the cooperation with the European allies work, especially with Germany?

Michael Scheuer: In the best of cases one could say that the efficiency of the cooperation was very unsteady before 2001. I do not think Germany is among our best allies. The Italians have always been good allies and the Brits do their best. The principal problem in Europe is more essential: The immigration legislation and asylum rights have helped to establish a hard-core of terrorists, convicted elsewhere, and who have now become European citizens. Additionally, nobody can be deported to a country applying the death penalty.

Die Zeit: The position concerning the death penalty hampers the cooperation?

Michael Scheuer: It's much more than that. It is like a roadblock. In principle, we have not been working in Europe. Agreements have been made during the Cold War according to which we do not undertake operations ourselves in Europe and the CIA still has to observe the stipulations of these agreements. Thus, we worked in places where the system would allow it. It would be insane to bash one's head against a wall.

Die Zeit: Why else was the cooperation unsteady besides the death penalty problem?

Michael Scheuer: Churchill once said at the end of the thirties: The Europeans always hope that the alligator will eat them last. As long as the USA were the terrorists, target many Europeans wondered why they should expose themselves to danger and get involved alongside the Americans.
Die Zeit: How did you try to obtain the information you needed from your German colleagues for example?

Michael Scheuer: Sometimes we simply did not receive a reply; on other occasions we only received a partial reply. Sometimes we were told: we do not have much information but here is what we,ve got. Everything went very slowly.

Die Zeit: Has this changed since the 2001 attacks?

Michael Scheuer: Oh yes, indeed. But in Europe they still believe that even after the attacks on New York, Madrid and London that one should not get too involved. They believe that they are only in danger if they support the Americans.

Die Zeit: The number of partisans of this thesis has increased after the Iraq invasion.

Michael Scheuer: The Iraq invasion has without a doubt broken our spine and also discredited our anti-terrorism operation. In the long run this war will certainly cause the return to Europe of a second generation of well-trained European Muslim and convert fighters. The first generation arrived in the 90's from the Balkans and Chechnya.

Die Zeit: I'll cite the case of the German/Syrian Mohammed Haydar Zammer who had a connection with the so-called Hamburg cell having prepared the attacks on the World Trade Center. German justice could not prove anything against him. The CIA arrested the man in Morocco and transferred him to Syria. How should I imagine the cooperation with the Germans in this specific case?

Michael Scheuer: I would be surprised if nobody within the German secret services had been updated on this operation, even if it may have been done retroactively. Critics from Europe are very much feared in Washington. This may come as a surprise, especially in view of our current president, but that remains nevertheless true.

Die Zeit: Could the contrary not be the case? Notably that the German secret services have informed you beforehand of the man's destination as he left Germany?

Michael Scheuer: Nothing is impossible, but I have no reason to presume something like this.

Die Zeit: The new German Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble has informed us that the interrogations of Zammar in Syria have been satisfactory. Is this true?

Michael Scheuer: That is true with regards to the "extraordinary renditions" program. I believe it to be dishonest on the part of the Europeans to criticize this operation that intensely because we have transmitted all information obtained concerning them during the interrogations to the Spanish, Italian, German, French and English services. And if you asked these services, they would reply: The information obtained thanks to the "extraordinary renditions" program of the CIA has been very useful.

Die Zeit: The Germans thus have profited from your methods?

Michael Scheuer: Of course.

Die Zeit: The German Minister of the Interior has told the Parliament of three cases where German agents have attended interrogations of German citizens in prisons abroad. Would it be exaggerated to say that the CIA did the dirty work for us Germans?

Michael Scheuer: As I already said, sometimes the criticism borders on hypocrisy in my view.

Die Zeit: Can you be sure that there have been no errors and that no one was falsely transferred?

Michael Scheuer: I am sure that errors have been committed. Clausewitz has spoken of the fogs of war and we are right in the middle of that fog. If errors have been committed, the concerned persons have to be indemnified.

Die Zeit: One of these cases seems to be the one concerning the German citizen Khaled El-Masri who was arrested in the Balkans, then transferred to Afghanistan and released several months later in the Balkans.

Michael Scheuer: This is one of the symbols for the confusion in times of war. He surely would not have been arrested, had there not existed alarming information against him.

Die Zeit: This case seems more likely to be a symbol showing that we should rather entrust such cases to public prosecution, to law courts and to the police instead of to the CIA.

Michael Scheuer: If you prefer Al-Qaida being subject to prosecution and wait until we have lost the case, then you are surely right. We are, however, at war and the quicker we succeed in treating this kind of thing outside the framework of the prosecution and in treating them according to the rules of the Geneva Convention, the better it will be for the USA, Europe and also for Germany. If these people are considered as prisoners of war, there is no legal means to be used against them.

Die Zeit: Mr. El-Masri indicates that he was tortured. He was detained in a CIA prison in Afghanistan.

Michael Scheuer: If he was detained in a CIA prison, he was not tortured. Full stop.

Die Zeit: But this is what he says.

Michael Scheuer: That does not surprise me. Maybe he wants to obtain money. That,s what they all want.

Die Zeit: He also says that he was interrogated in Afghanistan by a German. How can that be possible?

Michael Scheuer: I don't know if this is true but it is possible. Our government and our secret services try to help NATO's allies. If German agents have indeed interrogated him, this means that they too hoped to obtain information from him.

Die Zeit: How many of such cases involving European Muslims are there?

Michael Scheuer: Not many, because in most cases the Europeans do not cooperate. Thus, we try to get hold of these people as soon as they leave European territory.

Die Zeit: El-Masri wondered why the American agents who interrogated him knew details of his daily life. They could only have obtained these details from the German secret services, unless of course the CIA spies in Germany itself?

Michael Scheuer: I am sure that this information did not come from our services. If we disposed of information about El-Masri's activities in Germany, these were provided by one of the German services. And this also suggests that he was arrested based not on a simple rumor or on a supposition.

Die Zeit: What will become of the "extraordinary renditions"?

Michael Scheuer: The program is probably dead because of the leaks, the publications and the criticisms. The result is disillusioning for those in charge within the secret services: Not one of those who had given us the orders to act as we did admits today to have done so.

Translated from German into English by Eva, a member of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity (transtlaxcala@yahoo.com).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

January 9, 2006
Books of the Times | 'State of War'
Where Spying Starts and Stops: Tracking an Embattled C.I.A. and a President at War
By JAMES BAMFORD
Shortly before Christmas, The New York Times disclosed an enormous domestic spying operation. More revelations followed almost daily, including reports of the National Security Agency's widespread eavesdropping on the phone calls and electronic messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands of American citizens. The justification given was that it was a time of war and that we were facing a ruthless enemy and that rules had to be broken. The public was outraged, and Congress vowed to begin an investigation.

That was three decades ago, in December 1974.

Then, in December 2005, Americans again woke to a New York Times headline about domestic spying. This time the article was written by Eric Lichtblau and James Risen. The operation is also covered in Mr. Risen's new book, "State of War: The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration," published Tuesday. "For the first time since the Watergate-era abuses, the N.S.A. is spying on Americans again, and on a large scale," Mr. Risen writes in his book. "The Bush administration has swept aside nearly 30 years of rules and regulations and has secretly brought the N.S.A. back into the business of domestic espionage."

While Mr. Risen's revelations about the N.S.A. take up only a chapter in "State of War," they are the dramatic high point in an illuminating and disturbing book focusing on the Bush administration's use - and perhaps misuse - of power over the past four years. It is a record, Mr. Risen says, that has even caused protests by Mr. Bush's father, former President George H. W. Bush. Mr. Risen writes of a conversation between the two in 2003 in which the current president "angrily hung up the telephone." "George Herbert Walker Bush," Mr. Risen writes, "was disturbed that his son was allowing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a cadre of neoconservative ideologues to exert broad influence over foreign policy, particularly concerning Iraq."

Among the unanswered questions concerning the domestic spying story is why, if Mr. Risen and The Times had first come upon the explosive information a year earlier, the paper waited until just a few weeks before release of the book to inform its readers. But in the end, the news articles largely scooped the book's N.S.A. chapter, leaving little that had not already been published.

Nevertheless, the book has much more to offer. In looking at the C.I.A.'s possible involvement in torture, Mr. Risen found evidence of "a secret agreement among very senior administration officials to insulate Bush and to give him deniability" regarding the harsh new interrogation tactics. And despite the critical need for intelligence on Iran, Mr. Risen says, a C.I.A. communications officer accidentally sent detailed information to the wrong indigenous agent in Tehran that outlined the agency's entire network. "The Iranian who received the download was actually a double agent," Mr. Risen writes. The mistake enabled the Iranians "to 'roll up' the C.I.A.'s agent network throughout Iran," says Mr. Risen, although the details are disputed by the C.I.A.

But while "State of War" has interesting and important new details, it also has almost no named sources - not even the comments of former intelligence or government officials, who might provide perspective, context and credibility. It is an unusual move for someone writing about such an important subject.

Nevertheless, obtaining details on an eavesdropping program as secret as the one discussed in "State of War" is a monumental job of reporting - especially when it is later confirmed by the president himself.

The book also provides a close look at how George J. Tenet, then the tough-talking, cigar-chomping C.I.A. director, had to decide between the counsel of many of his middle-level analysts and station chiefs who advised caution when it came to Iraq, and the Pentagon's hawks and neoconservatives who were hungry for war. "George Tenet liked to talk about how he was a tough Greek from Queens," Mr. Risen quotes a former Tenet lieutenant as saying. But the former official added that in reality, "he just wanted people to like him."

With regard to Iraq, Mr. Risen writes, it was the hard-line Israelis that Mr. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, were listening to, not the cautious C.I.A. "Israeli intelligence officials frequently traveled to Washington to brief top American officials," he writes, "but C.I.A. analysts were often skeptical of Israeli intelligence reports, knowing that Mossad had very strong - even transparent - biases about the Arab world." After their visits, C.I.A. officials would often discount much of what the Israelis had provided. "Wolfowitz and other conservatives at the Pentagon became enraged by this practice," Mr. Risen writes.

With Mr. Tenet now on their side, and no more roadblocks in the way, Mr. Risen says, the path was clear for the Bush hard-liners to press ahead with their plans for a form of kidnapping known as extraordinary renditions, alleged torture, hidden foreign prisons, widespread N.S.A. eavesdropping and numerous other practices, many of which Mr. Risen outlines in subsequent chapters.

But the N.S.A. is at the heart of "State of War." Founded in 1952, the N.S.A. for many years considered itself above the law, controlled not by federal statutes but by top-secret presidential orders known as National Security Council Intelligence Directives. One directive even said the N.S.A. could disregard the law when it came to its powerful and highly secret form of eavesdropping, known as signals intelligence - a vacuum-cleaner approach that sucks in millions of communications an hour. Later, during the Watergate period, President Richard M. Nixon ordered the N.S.A. to turn its giant ear inward and begin eavesdropping on thousands of Americans, like Vietnam War protesters.

What makes the N.S.A.'s current secret domestic eavesdropping program far more of a threat, in Mr. Risen's view, is the explosion in digital telecommunications. In the 1970's, most written communication took the form of letters dropped in mailboxes, to which the N.S.A. had no access. There were no e-mail messages or cellphones. "Today, industry experts estimate that approximately nine trillion e-mails are sent in the United States each year," Mr. Risen writes. "Americans make nearly a billion cellphone calls and well over a billion landline calls each day."

Remembering the bad old days, a number of officials with knowledge of the new N.S.A. operation told Mr. Risen they were deeply troubled by it and believed "that an investigation should be launched into the way the Bush administration has turned the intelligence community's most powerful tools against the American people." But so far, rather than investigate the possible violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Justice Department has opened an investigation into who leaked news of the operation to Mr. Risen.

Faced with similar charges against the N.S.A. 30 years ago, the Justice Department began an extraordinarily secret criminal investigation that lasted more than a year. Although the Justice lawyers uncovered 23 different categories of questionable activities, in the end, because of the extreme secrecy of the agency's activities and the lack of established law, they declined to prosecute. Instead they recommended that Congress explore the creation of new legislation outlawing this type of abuse. A year later, Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Now, if it has been violated by the Bush administration, the question is what will happen this time around.

James Bamford is the author of two books on the National Security Agency, "The Puzzle Palace" and "Body of Secrets." His most recent book is "A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies."



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Swiss claim proof that CIA ran Europe jails :

European investigators looking into allegations of secret CIA-run prisons in Europe said yesterday that an Egyptian government message naming countries where such prisons existed could amount to indirect proof of the claims.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1682961,00.html

===
CIA faces new secret jails claim:

The CIA kept 23 people in a secret prison in Romania and maintained similar facilities in Bulgaria, Ukraine, Macedonia and Kosovo, according to allegations contained in a leaked Swiss intelligence report
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11525.htm

New York Times





January 9, 2006
Books of the Times | 'State of War'
Where Spying Starts and Stops: Tracking an Embattled C.I.A. and a President at War

By JAMES BAMFORD
Shortly before Christmas, The New York Times disclosed an enormous domestic spying operation. More revelations followed almost daily, including reports of the National Security Agency's widespread eavesdropping on the phone calls and electronic messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands of American citizens. The justification given was that it was a time of war and that we were facing a ruthless enemy and that rules had to be broken. The public was outraged, and Congress vowed to begin an investigation.

That was three decades ago, in December 1974.

Then, in December 2005, Americans again woke to a New York Times headline about domestic spying. This time the article was written by Eric Lichtblau and James Risen. The operation is also covered in Mr. Risen's new book, "State of War: The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration," published Tuesday. "For the first time since the Watergate-era abuses, the N.S.A. is spying on Americans again, and on a large scale," Mr. Risen writes in his book. "The Bush administration has swept aside nearly 30 years of rules and regulations and has secretly brought the N.S.A. back into the business of domestic espionage."

While Mr. Risen's revelations about the N.S.A. take up only a chapter in "State of War," they are the dramatic high point in an illuminating and disturbing book focusing on the Bush administration's use - and perhaps misuse - of power over the past four years. It is a record, Mr. Risen says, that has even caused protests by Mr. Bush's father, former President George H. W. Bush. Mr. Risen writes of a conversation between the two in 2003 in which the current president "angrily hung up the telephone." "George Herbert Walker Bush," Mr. Risen writes, "was disturbed that his son was allowing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a cadre of neoconservative ideologues to exert broad influence over foreign policy, particularly concerning Iraq."

Among the unanswered questions concerning the domestic spying story is why, if Mr. Risen and The Times had first come upon the explosive information a year earlier, the paper waited until just a few weeks before release of the book to inform its readers. But in the end, the news articles largely scooped the book's N.S.A. chapter, leaving little that had not already been published.

Nevertheless, the book has much more to offer. In looking at the C.I.A.'s possible involvement in torture, Mr. Risen found evidence of "a secret agreement among very senior administration officials to insulate Bush and to give him deniability" regarding the harsh new interrogation tactics. And despite the critical need for intelligence on Iran, Mr. Risen says, a C.I.A. communications officer accidentally sent detailed information to the wrong indigenous agent in Tehran that outlined the agency's entire network. "The Iranian who received the download was actually a double agent," Mr. Risen writes. The mistake enabled the Iranians "to 'roll up' the C.I.A.'s agent network throughout Iran," says Mr. Risen, although the details are disputed by the C.I.A.

But while "State of War" has interesting and important new details, it also has almost no named sources - not even the comments of former intelligence or government officials, who might provide perspective, context and credibility. It is an unusual move for someone writing about such an important subject.

Nevertheless, obtaining details on an eavesdropping program as secret as the one discussed in "State of War" is a monumental job of reporting - especially when it is later confirmed by the president himself.

The book also provides a close look at how George J. Tenet, then the tough-talking, cigar-chomping C.I.A. director, had to decide between the counsel of many of his middle-level analysts and station chiefs who advised caution when it came to Iraq, and the Pentagon's hawks and neoconservatives who were hungry for war. "George Tenet liked to talk about how he was a tough Greek from Queens," Mr. Risen quotes a former Tenet lieutenant as saying. But the former official added that in reality, "he just wanted people to like him."

With regard to Iraq, Mr. Risen writes, it was the hard-line Israelis that Mr. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, were listening to, not the cautious C.I.A. "Israeli intelligence officials frequently traveled to Washington to brief top American officials," he writes, "but C.I.A. analysts were often skeptical of Israeli intelligence reports, knowing that Mossad had very strong - even transparent - biases about the Arab world." After their visits, C.I.A. officials would often discount much of what the Israelis had provided. "Wolfowitz and other conservatives at the Pentagon became enraged by this practice," Mr. Risen writes.

With Mr. Tenet now on their side, and no more roadblocks in the way, Mr. Risen says, the path was clear for the Bush hard-liners to press ahead with their plans for a form of kidnapping known as extraordinary renditions, alleged torture, hidden foreign prisons, widespread N.S.A. eavesdropping and numerous other practices, many of which Mr. Risen outlines in subsequent chapters.

But the N.S.A. is at the heart of "State of War." Founded in 1952, the N.S.A. for many years considered itself above the law, controlled not by federal statutes but by top-secret presidential orders known as National Security Council Intelligence Directives. One directive even said the N.S.A. could disregard the law when it came to its powerful and highly secret form of eavesdropping, known as signals intelligence - a vacuum-cleaner approach that sucks in millions of communications an hour. Later, during the Watergate period, President Richard M. Nixon ordered the N.S.A. to turn its giant ear inward and begin eavesdropping on thousands of Americans, like Vietnam War protesters.

What makes the N.S.A.'s current secret domestic eavesdropping program far more of a threat, in Mr. Risen's view, is the explosion in digital telecommunications. In the 1970's, most written communication took the form of letters dropped in mailboxes, to which the N.S.A. had no access. There were no e-mail messages or cellphones. "Today, industry experts estimate that approximately nine trillion e-mails are sent in the United States each year," Mr. Risen writes. "Americans make nearly a billion cellphone calls and well over a billion landline calls each day."

Remembering the bad old days, a number of officials with knowledge of the new N.S.A. operation told Mr. Risen they were deeply troubled by it and believed "that an investigation should be launched into the way the Bush administration has turned the intelligence community's most powerful tools against the American people." But so far, rather than investigate the possible violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Justice Department has opened an investigation into who leaked news of the operation to Mr. Risen.

Faced with similar charges against the N.S.A. 30 years ago, the Justice Department began an extraordinarily secret criminal investigation that lasted more than a year. Although the Justice lawyers uncovered 23 different categories of questionable activities, in the end, because of the extreme secrecy of the agency's activities and the lack of established law, they declined to prosecute. Instead they recommended that Congress explore the creation of new legislation outlawing this type of abuse. A year later, Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Now, if it has been violated by the Bush administration, the question is what will happen this time around.

James Bamford is the author of two books on the National Security Agency, "The Puzzle Palace" and "Body of Secrets." His most recent book is "A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies."



Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

January 10, 2006
Swiss Inquiry Says C.I.A. Jails Document Must Be Followed Up
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:31 p.m. ET

BRUSSELS, Jan. 10 (AP) -- The head of a European investigation into alleged CIA prisons in Europe said Tuesday the purported Egyptian government document naming countries where such prisons existed is a new lead which must be followed up.

But Dick Marty, a Swiss senator leading the probe on behalf of the Council of Europe, said it still wasn't clear whether the document - a fax reportedly sent by satellite transmission from Egypt's Foreign Ministry to its embassy in London - was genuine.

The document's existence was reported Sunday by the Swiss weekly SonnstagsBlick. The fax, intercepted Nov. 15 by Swiss intelligence, reportedly said Egypt had confirmed through its own sources that the U.S. intelligence agency had held 23 terrorist suspects from Iraq and Afghanistan at a military base in Romania.

It also said there were similar U.S. detention centers in Ukraine, Kosovo, Macedonia and Bulgaria, according to the Swiss newspaper, which printed a copy of a Swiss summary of the fax.

Marty also said he wondered how Swiss intelligence intercepted a fax allegedly sent from Egypt to London. "It's the first time these allegations come directly from an Arab country," he said.

The Strasbourg, France-based Council of Europe began its investigation after allegations surfaced in November that U.S. agents interrogated key al-Qaida suspects at clandestine prisons in Eastern Europe and transported some suspects to other countries via Europe.

New York-based Human Rights Watch identified Romania and Poland as possible sites of secret U.S.-run detention facilities. Both countries have denied involvement.

European officials say secret prisons would violate the continent's human rights laws. Marty is to present his findings to the council's parliamentary assembly later this month.

In Bern, The Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office on Tuesday opened an investigation into the leak.

The Federal Prosecutor's Office is investigating a possible breach of official secrets by the editor of SonntagsBlick as well as two journalists at the newspaper, Prosecutor's spokesman Hansjuerg Mark Wiedmer told The Associated Press.

Publishing a secret document can be a violation of Swiss law punishable by a fine or imprisonment. Switzerland's Defense Ministry has already launched an investigation into the leak.



Copyright 2006 The Associated Press

Spurious attempt to tie Iran, Iraq to nuclear arms plot bypassed U.S. intelligence channels
Larisa Alexandrovna
Published: January 11, 2006

Update: Retired Paris CIA station chief Bill Murray confirms and corrects.

Several U.S. and foreign intelligence sources, along with investigators, say an Iranian exile with ties to Iran-Contra peddled a bizarre tale of stolen uranium to governments on both sides of the Atlantic in the spring and summer of 2003.

The story that was peddled -- which detailed how an Iranian intelligence team infiltrated Iraq prior to the start of the war in March of 2003, and stole enriched uranium to use in their own nuclear weapons program -- was part of an attempt to implicate both countries in a WMD plot. It later emerged that the Iranian exile was trying to collect money for his tales, sources say.

By all credible accounts, the source of this dubious tale was Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms dealer who used middle-men and cut-outs to create the appearance of several sources. Ghorbanifar played a key role in the Iran-Contra scandal that threatened to take down the Reagan administration, in which the U.S. sold arms to Iran and diverted the proceeds to Nicaraguan militants.

While the various threads of the larger story of Ghorbanifar and his intelligence peddling began in December of 2001, meetings in Paris in 2003 are far more important in illustrating -- as a microcosm -- the larger difficulties faced in untangling the facts relating to global intelligence trafficking.

Tall Tale of Uranium

During the spring and summer of 2003, Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) made several visits to Paris to meet with a source believed to have important military intelligence information.

Unbeknownst to Weldon, the informant, who he would dub simply "Ali," was already peddling a tale of stolen uranium traveling between Iraq and Iran that had been deemed false by most intelligence agencies.

As reported by American Prospect and confirmed by intelligence sources, Ali is a pseudonym used to identify a former minister in the Shah's Iran, Fereidoun Mahdavi. Mahdavi himself is a secretary to Ghorbanifar, the originating source of the uranium fable.

The American Prospect's reporters wrote, "'Ali' is actually a cipher for Manucher Ghorbanifar, the notorious Iranian arms dealer and accused intelligence fabricator -- and the potential instrument of another potentially dangerous manipulation of American policy in the Persian Gulf region."

The Washington Post discusses Ali as follows: "'These secrets,' he says, come from 'an impeccable clandestine source,' whom Weldon code-names 'Ali,' an Iranian exile living in Paris who is a close associate of Manucher Gorbanifar. Gorbanifar is a well-known Iranian exile whom the CIA branded as a fabricator during the 1980s but who was used by the Reagan White House as a middleman for the arms-for-hostages deal with Iran."

According to several intelligence sources on both sides of the Atlantic, the tale that "Ali" tells Weldon and others was as intricate as it was false.

"Ali provided information that indicated Iranian intelligence had sent a team to Baghdad to extract highly enriched uranium (weapons grade) from a stockpile hidden by Saddam Hussein," one intelligence source said.

Ali asserted that an Iranian intelligence team had infiltrated Iraq prior to the start of the war and stole enriched uranium to use in their own nuclear weapons program, sources say.

Ghorbanifar said "the team successfully extracted the stockpile but on the way back to Iran contracted radiation poisoning," one source remarked.

Upon learning this information Weldon says that he immediately notified then-CIA director George Tenet.

"Tenet appeared interested, even enthusiastic about evaluating Ali and establishing a working relationship with him," Weldon wrote in his book, Countdown to Terror. "He agreed to send his top spy, Stephen Kappes, the deputy director of operations, along with me to Paris for another debriefing of Ali.

"On the day of our scheduled second meeting with Ali in Paris, Kappes bowed out, claiming that "other commitments" compelled him to cancel," Weldon continued. "Later, the CIA claimed to have met with Ali independently. But I discovered this to be untrue... Incredibly, I learned that the CIA had apparently asked French intelligence to silence Ali."

But according to the Prospect and several sources in intelligence abroad, the CIA did investigate, as did the Department of Defense. According to the Post, the agency tasked then-Paris station chief Bill Murray with investigating the claim, who ultimately found Ali to be a "fabricator."

The CIA, understanding Ali to be Ghorbanifar, did not think him a credible source.

Intelligence sources and a source close to the UN Security Council tell RAW STORY Murray took Ali (either Ghorbanifar or his agent) to Iraq in order to retrace the footsteps of the alleged mission in which the uranium was stolen from Saddam's own stockpile and taken back to Iran. In the end, sources say, the entire event proved a wild goose chase because Ali's earlier clarity all but evaporated.

"Soon it became apparent that Ali and his sources were fabricators and were trying to extract large sums of money," one intelligence source said.

Murray says he did meet with the source, but was not part of a trip to Iraq.

"I did not make any such trip," Murray said. "I met with the source, found that he was not credible, forwarded the information he gave us to Washington, where it was thoroughly analyzed by many people and found not to add anything new to what we knew about Iran. The sensational charges that the source made could not be substantiated."

Weldon's office declined to comment for the record after several extended conversations. RAW STORY delayed the article for a day to give Weldon's office a chance to comment.

The neoconservative movement has long expressed an inherent distrust of the CIA. Many neoconservatives note that the agency undercounted Russia's nuclear stockpile in the waning days of the Soviet Union, and believe that it routinely underestimates foreign threats.

Weldon, who had been led to believe the CIA never opened an investigation into the information he provided, took his case directly to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld then pressured the CIA to investigate further.

"CIA reluctantly, after pressure from Rumsfeld, followed up by detaching one of their weapons experts from the team that was hunting WMD in Iraq," one former CIA officer who asked to remain anonymous said.

Sources say that this second investigation resulted in another wild goose chase. The question of motive, however, seems to either have been entirely missed or simply glossed over.

Weldon seen caught in web

By all accounts, Weldon seems to be more of an innocent bystander taken in by an internationally known con-man and the lure of spook-like activities than an inside player with an agenda or material participant in these events.

The Ali composite seems to have used Weldon as a conduit by which to provide the CIA with information.

There was good reason to be cautious of Manucher Ghorbanifahr, who, along with his secretary, made up the "cipher" of Ali.

The CIA had already had issued two burn notices against Ghorbanifahr as early as 1984 and his role in Iran-Contra as a middleman between the hardline neoconservative and another Iran-Contra figure, Michael Ledeen.

In his book, Weldon said he met Ghorbanifahr after being approached by a Democratic congressman.

"On March 7, 2003, a former Democratic member of Congress and my good friend Ron Klink called and asked to meet with me. . . . The source was Ali. My contacts with him were at first by telephone. Subsequently, Ali sent faxes to my home on a regular basis from different hotels in Paris, where he lives in exile. Eventually, as the information became more detailed and critical, I decided on a face-to-face meeting." (Countdown to Terror, p. 4).
Why such highly important information would be provided to Klink and then Weldon as opposed to the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee remains unclear.

Neoconservative Leeden explains meetings

Ghorbanifahr has strong ties to Michael Ledeen, and both of them were involved in a controversial meeting in Rome of 2001. That meeting, whose purpose is unknown, included high level officials in Italian intelligence, Iranian nationals and Larry Franklin, a former Defense Department analyst who current pled guilty to charges of passing classified information to Israel and Iran. Also in attendance was Middle East expert Harold Rhode, also under investigation for charges of passing classified information to Israel and Iran. Both Rhode and Franklin worked for Feith in the Office of Special plans.

Ledeen was consulting for OSP when all three were dispatched to Rome in 2001. He says the meetings had nothing to do with Iraq.

"The Rome meetings had nothing whatsoever to do with Iraq, but with Iran and Afghanistan," Ledeen wrote in an email. "I don't think a single word was pronounced, by anyone, on Iraq."

Later, in a phone conversation, Ledeen explained that the Rome meeting had to do with what his sources told him was going on on the ground in Afghanistan, namely that Iran was allegedly fueling the Afghan insurgency.

"I reported this back," Ledeen said. "This information saved American lives."

According to James Risen's New York Times article dated December of 2003, Ledeen was a paid consultant to the National Security Council at the time of the meeting. Risen reports that National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley was informed of the plans for the meeting and that Hadley expressed reservations given Ledeen and Ghorbanifahr's background.

The Office of Special Plans, however, authorized the meeting without notifying any other agency, violating protocol. They did not notify the Rome CIA station chief or the U.S. Ambassador to Italy, Mel Sembler.

Ledeen, however, says that Hadley had authorized the trip. This would also implicate Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, then-National Security Advisor.

"Hadley authorized it and he could not have done so without reporting it to his direct superior," said Ledeen.

Ledeen also denies that he had anything to do beyond that first meeting in December of 2001.

"I was involved in one meeting, in Rome, in December 2001," Leeden said. "Period."

Paris, Again

The uranium story peddled to Weldon is strikingly similar to the story told to Ledeen.

"I approached a variety of government officials, lots of them, and told them that I had a reliable source that told me about how and where the Iranians stole enriched uranium from Iraq," Ledeen said.

Ledeen says his source then went on to explain that the "stash" was buried in an underground facility and recounted, much like Weldon did, that neither the CIA, the Defense Department or the State Department would listen to his concerns.

Asked if his source was Ghorbanifahr, Ledeen said "No," but was unable to tell the identity of his source for fear said source might be "put in danger."

Who arranged the meetings and their ultimate purpose remains unclear. One intelligence official, however, described the series of events and the market of intelligence trafficking as follows: "If you were going to launder intel to make up a war, you could easily send some fool on an errand."

U.S. creates 'managers' for Iran and North Korea
By Douglas Jehl The New York Times

THURSDAY, JANUARY 12, 2006


WASHINGTON The director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, has created new "mission managers" for Iran and North Korea, adding those two countries to a short list of top-priority challenges for American intelligence agencies.

Iran and North Korea join counterterrorism and nuclear counterproliferation as areas of focus for senior management posts that were recommended last year by a high-level presidential commission.

The new managers for Iran and North Korea will be responsible, among other things, for identifying and filling gaps in intelligence on those two countries, Negroponte's office said Wednesday in announcing the appointments. Joseph DeTrani, who has served most recently as the American special envoy to the six-party talks on North Korea, has been given the rank of ambassador and is taking on the North Korea portfolio; S. Leslie Ireland, a career intelligence officer and Middle East specialist, is to become mission manager for Iran.

DeTrani and Ireland are to provide strategic leadership over American intelligence agencies' work on North Korea and Iran, whose nuclear weapons programs remain a major concern of the Bush administration, in part because so little is known about them. In its report last year, the Robb-Silberman commission, an independent panel appointed by President Bush, described American intelligence on Iran and North Korea as woefully inadequate. The other two mission managers appointed by Negroponte to focus on counterterrorism and counterproliferation have already assumed their roles .

Negroponte has said that the mission managers have his full proxy and should be expected to play the same role that he would if he could devote his full attention to a single issue.

DeTrani spent a number of years in East Asia and the Middle East during a career that included senior assignments at the Central Intelligence Agency, according to his official biography. At the CIA, his posts included director of European operations, director of the crime and narcotics center and director of East Asia operations.

Ireland was most recently the executive assistant to Porter Goss, the CIA director. According to her official biography, she has, over a 20-year career, served as deputy chief for Arab-Israeli issues and special adviser for Iranian issues. She was also country director for Iran and Kuwait in the office of the Secretary of Defense.

WASHINGTON The director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, has created new "mission managers" for Iran and North Korea, adding those two countries to a short list of top-priority challenges for American intelligence agencies.

Iran and North Korea join counterterrorism and nuclear counterproliferation as areas of focus for senior management posts that were recommended last year by a high-level presidential commission.

The new managers for Iran and North Korea will be responsible, among other things, for identifying and filling gaps in intelligence on those two countries, Negroponte's office said Wednesday in announcing the appointments. Joseph DeTrani, who has served most recently as the American special envoy to the six-party talks on North Korea, has been given the rank of ambassador and is taking on the North Korea portfolio; S. Leslie Ireland, a career intelligence officer and Middle East specialist, is to become mission manager for Iran.

DeTrani and Ireland are to provide strategic leadership over American intelligence agencies' work on North Korea and Iran, whose nuclear weapons programs remain a major concern of the Bush administration, in part because so little is known about them. In its report last year, the Robb-Silberman commission, an independent panel appointed by President Bush, described American intelligence on Iran and North Korea as woefully inadequate. The other two mission managers appointed by Negroponte to focus on counterterrorism and counterproliferation have already assumed their roles .

Negroponte has said that the mission managers have his full proxy and should be expected to play the same role that he would if he could devote his full attention to a single issue.

DeTrani spent a number of years in East Asia and the Middle East during a career that included senior assignments at the Central Intelligence Agency, according to his official biography. At the CIA, his posts included director of European operations, director of the crime and narcotics center and director of East Asia operations.

Ireland was most recently the executive assistant to Porter Goss, the CIA director. According to her official biography, she has, over a 20-year career, served as deputy chief for Arab-Israeli issues and special adviser for Iranian issues. She was also country director for Iran and Kuwait in the office of the Secretary of Defense.

WASHINGTON The director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, has created new "mission managers" for Iran and North Korea, adding those two countries to a short list of top-priority challenges for American intelligence agencies.

Iran and North Korea join counterterrorism and nuclear counterproliferation as areas of focus for senior management posts that were recommended last year by a high-level presidential commission.

The new managers for Iran and North Korea will be responsible, among other things, for identifying and filling gaps in intelligence on those two countries, Negroponte's office said Wednesday in announcing the appointments. Joseph DeTrani, who has served most recently as the American special envoy to the six-party talks on North Korea, has been given the rank of ambassador and is taking on the North Korea portfolio; S. Leslie Ireland, a career intelligence officer and Middle East specialist, is to become mission manager for Iran.

DeTrani and Ireland are to provide strategic leadership over American intelligence agencies' work on North Korea and Iran, whose nuclear weapons programs remain a major concern of the Bush administration, in part because so little is known about them. In its report last year, the Robb-Silberman commission, an independent panel appointed by President Bush, described American intelligence on Iran and North Korea as woefully inadequate. The other two mission managers appointed by Negroponte to focus on counterterrorism and counterproliferation have already assumed their roles .

Negroponte has said that the mission managers have his full proxy and should be expected to play the same role that he would if he could devote his full attention to a single issue.

DeTrani spent a number of years in East Asia and the Middle East during a career that included senior assignments at the Central Intelligence Agency, according to his official biography. At the CIA, his posts included director of European operations, director of the crime and narcotics center and director of East Asia operations.

Ireland was most recently the executive assistant to Porter Goss, the CIA director. According to her official biography, she has, over a 20-year career, served as deputy chief for Arab-Israeli issues and special adviser for Iranian issues. She was also country director for Iran and Kuwait in the office of the Secretary of Defense.

WASHINGTON The director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, has created new "mission managers" for Iran and North Korea, adding those two countries to a short list of top-priority challenges for American intelligence agencies.

Iran and North Korea join counterterrorism and nuclear counterproliferation as areas of focus for senior management posts that were recommended last year by a high-level presidential commission.

The new managers for Iran and North Korea will be responsible, among other things, for identifying and filling gaps in intelligence on those two countries, Negroponte's office said Wednesday in announcing the appointments. Joseph DeTrani, who has served most recently as the American special envoy to the six-party talks on North Korea, has been given the rank of ambassador and is taking on the North Korea portfolio; S. Leslie Ireland, a career intelligence officer and Middle East specialist, is to become mission manager for Iran.

DeTrani and Ireland are to provide strategic leadership over American intelligence agencies' work on North Korea and Iran, whose nuclear weapons programs remain a major concern of the Bush administration, in part because so little is known about them. In its report last year, the Robb-Silberman commission, an independent panel appointed by President Bush, described American intelligence on Iran and North Korea as woefully inadequate. The other two mission managers appointed by Negroponte to focus on counterterrorism and counterproliferation have already assumed their roles .

Negroponte has said that the mission managers have his full proxy and should be expected to play the same role that he would if he could devote his full attention to a single issue.

DeTrani spent a number of years in East Asia and the Middle East during a career that included senior assignments at the Central Intelligence Agency, according to his official biography. At the CIA, his posts included director of European operations, director of the crime and narcotics center and director of East Asia operations.

Ireland was most recently the executive assistant to Porter Goss, the CIA director. According to her official biography, she has, over a 20-year career, served as deputy chief for Arab-Israeli issues and special adviser for Iranian issues. She was also country director for Iran and Kuwait in the office of the Secretary of Defense.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Former_CIA_g...House_0112.html


Former CIA general counsel tells House Intelligence Bush didn't have wiretap authority
RAW STORY
Published: January 12, 2006

Former CIA general counsel Jeff Smith has issued a memo to the House Intelligence Committee concluding that Authority for Use of Military Force did not give President George W. Bush the right to order domestic wiretaps without a court order.

In the memo, Smith discusses court precedent, as well as civil liberties outlined in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Smith further concludes that Bush's secondary argument, that he has authority under the constitution to order such wiretaps, is "seriously undermined" by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which allows for similar surveillance only with a warrant. He further characterizes a president's constitutional power while acting against an existing statute as being at its "lowest ebb".


The 14-page memo can be read in its entirety here.http://www.rawstory.com/exclusives/nsaspymemo.pdf


Smith is scheduled to attend Democrat-led hearings on NSA warrantless surveillance hearings later this month.

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Proof Bush Deceived America
Ray McGovern
January 13, 2006


Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour. A 27-year veteran of the CIA’s analysis ranks, he is now on the steering group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

James Risen’s State of War: the Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, may hold bigger secrets than the disclosure that President George W. Bush authorized warrantless eavesdropping on Americans.

Risen’s book also confirms the most damning element of the British Cabinet Office memos popularly called the “Downing Street memos;” namely, that “the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy.” The result is that it is no longer credible to maintain that the failures in the Iraqi intelligence were the product of a broken intelligence community. The Bush administration deliberately fabricated the case against Iraq, lying to Congress and the American people along the way.

Risen, a senior reporter for The New York Times, reports that British Prime Minister Tony Blair had an urgent need in the summer of 2002 to get the equivalent of a “second opinion” regarding Bush’s plans for war in Iraq—insight independent of his own telephone conversations with the president and independent of what Blair was hearing from his own foreign office.

During his April 2002 visit to Crawford, Blair had gone out on a limb in pledging to support war on Iraq. The following months saw him getting nervous. So he chose what intelligence parlance calls a “back channel,” and sent the chief of British intelligence, Richard Dearlove, to Washington to sound out his counterpart: the garrulous CIA director George Tenet, who he knew to be very close to the president.

The highly revealing Downing Street memo contained the minutes of Dearlove's briefing of Blair and his top advisers upon his return from Washington on July 23. But what the memo left unanswered was the question of who gave Dearlove the confidence to say this to his prime minister:

Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy.

When the Sunday Times published the minutes of that key briefing on May 1, 2005, it seemed a safe bet that Dearlove’s source was Tenet, and I said so.

Now we have the confirmation. Risen writes that George Tenet was reluctant to receive Dearlove, but acquiesced when the British made clear that Blair considered the back-channel meeting urgent. Tenet then rose to the occasion—with a vengeance. Risen, quoting a former senior CIA official who helped host the British for a session that lasted most of Saturday, July 20, 2002, reports that Tenet and Dearlove had a 90-minute one-on-one conversation, during which Tenet was “very candid.”

Risen adds that by the time of this “intelligence summit,” senior CIA officials had concluded that “the quality of the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction didn’t really matter,” since war was inevitable. That perverse attitude certainly prevailed two months later, when the fabricated National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq and WMD was produced by Tenet’s National Intelligence Council in a successful attempt to deceive Congress into voting for war.

A former CIA official told Risen that after the conversation with Tenet, Richard Dearlove could certainly “figure out what was going on; plus, the MI6 station chief in Washington was in CIA headquarters all the time, with just about complete access to everything.” In any case, we now know that Blair got what he wanted out of the visit—the inside scoop from someone enjoying the complete trust of, and daily access to, President Bush.

The president now says that he does not want his political opposition to dwell on how he lied to Congress and the American people in order to invade a country and kill tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and more than 2,200 U. S. troops—not to mention the many thousands maimed for life. Perhaps he knows that Risen's book could do as much damage to his administration by calling renewed attention to the Downing Street memos as is likely to be done by the revelations of the secret NSA wiretapping.

One world leader recognizes the extreme danger of official lies told to a nation in the service of an aggressive war. He also happens to be a leader who survived the horrors of fascism in the last century. In a Jan. 1 address to the world, Pope Benedict XVI spoke about the consequences of lies such as these, in what can only be a thinly veiled reference to the president of the United States:

…Sacred Scripture, in its very first book, Genesis, points to the lie told at the very beginning of history by the animal with a forked tongue, whom the Evangelist John calls ''the father of lies'' (Jn 8:44). Lying is also one of the sins spoken of in the final chapter of the last book of the Bible, Revelation, which bars liars from the heavenly Jerusalem: ''outside are... all who love falsehood'' (22:15). Lying is linked to the tragedy of sin and its perverse consequences, which have had, and continue to have, devastating effects on the lives of individuals and nations. We need but think of the events of the past century, when aberrant ideological and political systems wilfully twisted the truth and brought about the exploitation and murder of an appalling number of men and women, wiping out entire families and communities. After experiences like these, how can we fail to be seriously concerned about lies in our own time, lies which are the framework for menacing scenarios of death in many parts of the world.

The ethos of the Central Intelligence Agency in which my contemporaries and I worked was chiseled into the marble at the entrance of CIA headquarters: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Sadly, the agency has come a long way.
© 2006 TomPaine.com ( A Project of The Institute for America's Future ) | Privacy Policy | Contact Us | About Us |

Specter Vows a Close Look at Spy Program New York Times
Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said Sunday that Republicans would not grant President Bush "a blank check" in seeking to determine whether the domestic eavesdropping program that Mr. Bush authorized after the Sept. 11 attacks violated the law. "Just because we're of the same party doesn't mean we're not going to look at this closely," Mr. Specter said in an appearance on "This Week" on ABC. Mr. Specter is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which plans to hold hearings on the matter next month, with witnesses to include Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. The program authorized by Mr. Bush bypassed a special federal court whose approval is required under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for domestic eavesdropping operations. Mr. Specter has said he does not agree with the White House view that Congress effectively authorized the surveillance, which was carried out by the National Security Agency, in a resolution passed shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Specter said Sunday that he was still considering the question of whether a president might possess special powers under wartime that would have allowed Mr. Bush to circumvent the surveillance act. He said that if Mr. Bush were found to have acted illegally, he would most likely face "a political price" rather than a more severe sanction, in part because of broad support of the administration's antiterrorism efforts. "I don't see any talk about impeachment here," Mr. Specter said. "I don't think anybody doubts that the president is making a good faith effort here, that he sees a real problem, as we all do, and he's acting in a way that he feels he must." The timing and scope for any Congressional inquiry into the eavesdropping remains unclear. Mr. Specter is the only chairman who has publicly promised to hold hearings, but he has said his panel will focus on legal questions, not the more highly classified details of the operation. A date for the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings has not yet been set. In both the Senate and House, the Intelligence Committees are also considering whether to call witnesses to talk about the eavesdropping program.
Specter skeptical of administration's defense of domestic spying San Jose Mercury News
Specter Questions Legality of Secret Eavesdropping Program Bloomberg
Detroit Free Press - Khaleej Times - International Herald Tribune - Reuters - all 226 related »

January 13, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Back When Spies Played by the Rules

By DAVID KAHN
PRESIDENT Bush's ordering the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants contradicts a long evolution toward the secrecy of communications. Centuries ago, people in England, France and the German states fought for the right to send letters without their being opened by the "black chambers" of absolutist monarchs. Martin Luther, whose letters had been opened by the Duke of Saxony, raged that "a thief is a thief, whether he is a money thief or a letter thief."

Regulations called for postal secrecy in 1532 and 1573 in Austria's Tyrol, in Prussia in 1685, in the oath of succession taken in 1690 by the Holy Roman emperor Joseph I and in his postal regulation of 1698. Rulers ignored them. Like Britain's Oliver Cromwell, who saw the post as "the best means to discover and prevent many dangerous and wicked designs against the Commonwealth," they justified letter-opening.

It sometimes worked. In 1723, Bishop Francis Atterbury was exiled, partly on the basis of intercepted letters, for trying to put a pretender on Britain's throne. Monarchs got information from their "black chambers" - secret rooms in post offices in main cities into which the mail was brought for opening.

London's was in Abchurch Lane, near St. Paul's. Black chambers resembled laboratories. Kettles spouted steam to soften wax seals. Experts took impressions of seals with a soft amalgam to make new ones in case they broke the originals while sliding hot wires under them. Specialists slid thin batons with a long slit into envelopes and twirled letters around them so they could be extracted without breaking the seals.

Austria's black chamber was reputed to be the most efficient. Sacks of diplomatic mail arrived at 7 a.m., the letters unsealed and read, the important parts copied, sometimes by dictation, the letters replaced and resealed and sent to the embassies by 9:30. The employees sometimes erred, however. When the British ambassador in Austria complained that he was getting copies instead of originals, the prime minister, Metternich, coolly replied, "How clumsy these people are!"

But the public knew about the letter-opening and hated it. The pre-revolutionary French assembly, the Estates-General, received complaints from all regions of France and from all classes of society about this invasion of their thoughts. A month after the fall of the Bastille, Article 11 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man held that citizens may write with freedom - in effect nullifying the right of the government to read letters. In the United States, the 1792 law establishing the Post Office forbade its agents from illegally opening the mail entrusted to it. This grew out of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment, prohibiting unreasonable searches. Of course, judges could issue warrants to read letters, just as they could allow law officials to enter a house.

Curiously, an absolutist monarchy was the first state to enact a law specifically punishing letter-opening. "Whoever opens the letter of another without his will and without special permission faces three to 14 days of prison," read Article 1370 of Prussia's General Law of 1794. Other states of Germany and elsewhere in Europe followed.

British laws in 1711 and 1837 empowered the government to issue warrants to read mail. Then, in 1844, the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini, during a stay in England, learned that his letters had been opened without a proper warrant. Parliament exploded. The great historian Macauley defied the government to differentiate "between a letter of his being taken from him when in the post office and a letter taken out of his desk." Britons, he said, "would rather take the risk of great crimes being committed, than owe their security to that system or those means, which would destroy the manly spirit of the people, on which more reliance could be placed than all the schemes and decrees that could be invented for maintaining their greatness and independence as a nation." The uproar was channeled into a long report, and the liberal winds of the 1840's blew down the black chambers in Britain and most of the Continent.

Throughout the 20th century, many nations (including the United States) continued to intercept diplomats' messages, but most seem to have stopped reading their citizens' mail. Not totalitarian governments, though. Article 128 of the 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union guaranteed the privacy of correspondence, but the Soviet government read private mail. And although Germany's Weimar Constitution declared in Article 117 that "Privacy of correspondence, of mail ... are inviolable," Hermann Göring's intelligence bureau eavesdropped on conversations from a converted Berlin apartment house whose basement housed ranks of clattering teletypewriters.

After World War II, nations paid at least lip service to letter secrecy. Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed by many countries, holds that "no one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his ... correspondence." Not all keep their word.

David Kahn is the author of "The Codebreakers" and "The Reader of Gentlemen's Mail," a biography of the cryptologist Herbert O. Yardley.



Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Secret fax on CIA sites not a secret, Egypt says
By Doreen Carvajal International Herald Tribune

TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2006


PARIS In the week since a Swiss newspaper published a secret Egyptian fax about clandestine CIA detention centers, the revelation has ignited a diplomatic uproar, two special criminal investigations and a round of finger-pointing in the Swiss government about the source of the leak.

But on Tuesday, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry insisted that the fax was nothing more than a tempest in a fondue pot - a mundane press summary of dated news.

"This is a very ridiculous story," said Fatma Al Zahra' Atman, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman in Cairo. "In any ministry, the embassy sends every day the most important articles written in newspapers. This is just a press fax, containing the most important news that we have read abroad."

"We don't do any exceptional procedures," she said in a phone interview. "We just sent this by fax. Anybody could intercept it. Nothing is secret."

Since the news of the memo broke on Jan. 8 in the weekly SonntagsBlick, Swiss diplomats have been trying to repair the damage from the leak of the one-page fax, which was intercepted by Swiss intelligence in November as a satellite transmission being sent from the Egyptian Foreign Ministry in Cairo to its embassy in London.

The version published in SonntagsBlick was a summary translated into French from Swiss intelligence. It alleged that "the Egyptians have sources confirming the presence of secret American prisons," including that "23 Iraqis and Afghanis were interrogated at the Mikhail Kogalniceau base at Constanza on the Black Sea" in Romania. The memo also referred to similar detention centers in Kosovo, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Ukraine.

All the countries named in the memo have since been contacted by the Swiss foreign minister, Micheline Calmy-Rey, who has also publicly complained about the leak and has argued that the information was not new and that the government lacked any other evidence backing its allegations.

"The document is not spectacular. It is no scoop," she told the conservative daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung, adding, "The reports of the organization, Human Rights Watch, which states the same information," are "accessible on the Internet."

A Human Rights Watch statement appeared on its Web site in early November before the Egyptian fax was intercepted. That statement included the same reference to 23 suspects held secretly by U.S. personnel.

But John Sifton, a terrorism and counterterrorism researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the debate about the contents of the fax should not distract from a more pressing issue: the difficulty of obtaining evidence about detention centers, the existence of which the CIA neither confirms nor denies.

Investigators for the Council of Europe, a human rights watchdog, are preparing to issue a preliminary report next week on the question of CIA detention centers but, according to a council spokeswoman, are not getting information they requested, including flight records.

PARIS In the week since a Swiss newspaper published a secret Egyptian fax about clandestine CIA detention centers, the revelation has ignited a diplomatic uproar, two special criminal investigations and a round of finger-pointing in the Swiss government about the source of the leak.

But on Tuesday, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry insisted that the fax was nothing more than a tempest in a fondue pot - a mundane press summary of dated news.

"This is a very ridiculous story," said Fatma Al Zahra' Atman, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman in Cairo. "In any ministry, the embassy sends every day the most important articles written in newspapers. This is just a press fax, containing the most important news that we have read abroad."

"We don't do any exceptional procedures," she said in a phone interview. "We just sent this by fax. Anybody could intercept it. Nothing is secret."

Since the news of the memo broke on Jan. 8 in the weekly SonntagsBlick, Swiss diplomats have been trying to repair the damage from the leak of the one-page fax, which was intercepted by Swiss intelligence in November as a satellite transmission being sent from the Egyptian Foreign Ministry in Cairo to its embassy in London.

The version published in SonntagsBlick was a summary translated into French from Swiss intelligence. It alleged that "the Egyptians have sources confirming the presence of secret American prisons," including that "23 Iraqis and Afghanis were interrogated at the Mikhail Kogalniceau base at Constanza on the Black Sea" in Romania. The memo also referred to similar detention centers in Kosovo, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Ukraine.

All the countries named in the memo have since been contacted by the Swiss foreign minister, Micheline Calmy-Rey, who has also publicly complained about the leak and has argued that the information was not new and that the government lacked any other evidence backing its allegations.

"The document is not spectacular. It is no scoop," she told the conservative daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung, adding, "The reports of the organization, Human Rights Watch, which states the same information," are "accessible on the Internet."

A Human Rights Watch statement appeared on its Web site in early November before the Egyptian fax was intercepted. That statement included the same reference to 23 suspects held secretly by U.S. personnel.

But John Sifton, a terrorism and counterterrorism researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the debate about the contents of the fax should not distract from a more pressing issue: the difficulty of obtaining evidence about detention centers, the existence of which the CIA neither confirms nor denies.

Investigators for the Council of Europe, a human rights watchdog, are preparing to issue a preliminary report next week on the question of CIA detention centers but, according to a council spokeswoman, are not getting information they requested, including flight records.

PARIS In the week since a Swiss newspaper published a secret Egyptian fax about clandestine CIA detention centers, the revelation has ignited a diplomatic uproar, two special criminal investigations and a round of finger-pointing in the Swiss government about the source of the leak.

But on Tuesday, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry insisted that the fax was nothing more than a tempest in a fondue pot - a mundane press summary of dated news.

"This is a very ridiculous story," said Fatma Al Zahra' Atman, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman in Cairo. "In any ministry, the embassy sends every day the most important articles written in newspapers. This is just a press fax, containing the most important news that we have read abroad."

"We don't do any exceptional procedures," she said in a phone interview. "We just sent this by fax. Anybody could intercept it. Nothing is secret."

Since the news of the memo broke on Jan. 8 in the weekly SonntagsBlick, Swiss diplomats have been trying to repair the damage from the leak of the one-page fax, which was intercepted by Swiss intelligence in November as a satellite transmission being sent from the Egyptian Foreign Ministry in Cairo to its embassy in London.

The version published in SonntagsBlick was a summary translated into French from Swiss intelligence. It alleged that "the Egyptians have sources confirming the presence of secret American prisons," including that "23 Iraqis and Afghanis were interrogated at the Mikhail Kogalniceau base at Constanza on the Black Sea" in Romania. The memo also referred to similar detention centers in Kosovo, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Ukraine.

All the countries named in the memo have since been contacted by the Swiss foreign minister, Micheline Calmy-Rey, who has also publicly complained about the leak and has argued that the information was not new and that the government lacked any other evidence backing its allegations.

"The document is not spectacular. It is no scoop," she told the conservative daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung, adding, "The reports of the organization, Human Rights Watch, which states the same information," are "accessible on the Internet."

A Human Rights Watch statement appeared on its Web site in early November before the Egyptian fax was intercepted. That statement included the same reference to 23 suspects held secretly by U.S. personnel.

But John Sifton, a terrorism and counterterrorism researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the debate about the contents of the fax should not distract from a more pressing issue: the difficulty of obtaining evidence about detention centers, the existence of which the CIA neither confirms nor denies.

Investigators for the Council of Europe, a human rights watchdog, are preparing to issue a preliminary report next week on the question of CIA detention centers but, according to a council spokeswoman, are not getting information they requested, including flight records.

PARIS In the week since a Swiss newspaper published a secret Egyptian fax about clandestine CIA detention centers, the revelation has ignited a diplomatic uproar, two special criminal investigations and a round of finger-pointing in the Swiss government about the source of the leak.

But on Tuesday, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry insisted that the fax was nothing more than a tempest in a fondue pot - a mundane press summary of dated news.

"This is a very ridiculous story," said Fatma Al Zahra' Atman, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman in Cairo. "In any ministry, the embassy sends every day the most important articles written in newspapers. This is just a press fax, containing the most important news that we have read abroad."

"We don't do any exceptional procedures," she said in a phone interview. "We just sent this by fax. Anybody could intercept it. Nothing is secret."

Since the news of the memo broke on Jan. 8 in the weekly SonntagsBlick, Swiss diplomats have been trying to repair the damage from the leak of the one-page fax, which was intercepted by Swiss intelligence in November as a satellite transmission being sent from the Egyptian Foreign Ministry in Cairo to its embassy in London.

The version published in SonntagsBlick was a summary translated into French from Swiss intelligence. It alleged that "the Egyptians have sources confirming the presence of secret American prisons," including that "23 Iraqis and Afghanis were interrogated at the Mikhail Kogalniceau base at Constanza on the Black Sea" in Romania. The memo also referred to similar detention centers in Kosovo, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Ukraine.

All the countries named in the memo have since been contacted by the Swiss foreign minister, Micheline Calmy-Rey, who has also publicly complained about the leak and has argued that the information was not new and that the government lacked any other evidence backing its allegations.

"The document is not spectacular. It is no scoop," she told the conservative daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung, adding, "The reports of the organization, Human Rights Watch, which states the same information," are "accessible on the Internet."

A Human Rights Watch statement appeared on its Web site in early November before the Egyptian fax was intercepted. That statement included the same reference to 23 suspects held secretly by U.S. personnel.

But John Sifton, a terrorism and counterterrorism researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the debate about the contents of the fax should not distract from a more pressing issue: the difficulty of obtaining evidence about detention centers, the existence of which the CIA neither confirms nor denies.

Investigators for the Council of Europe, a human rights watchdog, are preparing to issue a preliminary report next week on the question of CIA detention centers but, according to a council spokeswoman, are not getting information they requested, including flight records.

January 18, 2006
2002 Memo Doubted Uranium Sale Claim
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 - A high-level intelligence assessment by the Bush administration concluded in early 2002 that the sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq was "unlikely" because of a host of economic, diplomatic and logistical obstacles, according to a secret memo that was recently declassified by the State Department.

Among other problems that made such a sale improbable, the assessment by the State Department's intelligence analysts concluded, was that it would have required Niger to send "25 hard-to-conceal 10-ton tractor-trailers" filled with uranium across 1,000 miles and at least one international border.

The analysts' doubts were registered nearly a year before President Bush, in what became known as the infamous "16 words" in his 2003 State of the Union address, said that Saddam Hussein had sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

The White House later acknowledged that the charge, which played a part in the decision to invade Iraq in the belief that Baghdad was reconstituting its nuclear program, relied on faulty intelligence and should not have been included in the speech. Two months ago, Italian intelligence officials concluded that a set of documents at the center of the supposed Iraq-Niger link had been forged by an occasional Italian spy.

A handful of news reports, along with the Robb-Silberman report last year on intelligence failures in Iraq, have previously made reference to the early doubts expressed by the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research in 2002 concerning the reliability of the Iraq-Niger uranium link.

But the intelligence assessment itself - including the analysts' full arguments in raising wide-ranging doubts about the credence of the uranium claim - was only recently declassified as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group that has sought access to government documents on terrorism and intelligence matters. The group, which received a copy of the 2002 memo among several hundred pages of other documents, provided a copy of the memo to The New York Times.

The White House declined to discuss details of the declassified memo, saying the Niger question had already been explored at length since the president's State of the Union address.

"This matter was examined fully by the bipartisan Silberman-Robb commission, and the president acted on their broad recommendations to reform our intelligence apparatus," said Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

The public release of the State Department assessment, with some sections blacked out, adds another level of detail to an episode that was central not only to the debate over the invasion of Iraq, but also in the perjury indictment of I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

In early 2002, the Central Intelligence Agency sent the former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV to Niger to investigate possible attempts to sell uranium to Iraq. The next year, after Mr. Wilson became a vocal critic of the Bush administration's Iraqi intelligence, the identity of his wife, Valerie Wilson, a C.I.A. officer who suggested him for the Niger trip, was made public. The investigation into the leak led to criminal charges in October against Mr. Libby, who is accused of misleading investigators and a grand jury.

The review by the State Department's intelligence bureau was one of a number of reviews undertaken in early 2002 at the State Department in response to secret intelligence pointing to the possibility that Iraq was seeking to buy yellowcake, a processed uranium ore, from Niger to reconstitute its nuclear program.

A four-star general, Carlton W. Fulford Jr., was also sent to Niger to investigate the claims of a uranium purchase. He, too, came away with doubts about the reliability of the report and believed Niger's yellowcake supply to be secure. But the State Department's review, which looked at the political, economic and logistical factors in such a purchase, seems to have produced wider-ranging doubts than other reviews about the likelihood that Niger would try to sell uranium to Baghdad.

The review concluded that Niger was "probably not planning to sell uranium to Iraq," in part because France controlled the uranium industry in the country and could block such a sale. It also cast doubt on an intelligence report indicating that Niger's president, Mamadou Tandja, might have negotiated a sales agreement with Iraq in 2000. Mr. Tandja and his government were reluctant to do anything to endanger their foreign aid from the United States and other allies, the review concluded. The State Department review also cast doubt on the logistics of Niger being able to deliver 500 tons of uranium even if the sale were attempted. "Moving such a quantity secretly over such a distance would be very difficult, particularly because the French would be indisposed to approve or cloak this arrangement," the review said.

Chris Farrell, the director of investigations at Judicial Watch and a former military intelligence officer, said he found the State Department's analysis to be "a very strong, well-thought-out argument that looks at the whole playing field in Niger, and it makes a compelling case for why the uranium sale was so unlikely."

The memo, dated March 4, 2002, was distributed at senior levels by the office of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

A Bush administration official, who requested anonymity because the issue involved partly classified documents, would not say whether President Bush had seen the State Department's memo before his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 2003.

But the official added: "The White House is not an intelligence-gathering operation. The president based his remarks in the State of the Union address on the intelligence that was presented to him by the intelligence community and cleared by the intelligence community. The president has said the intelligence was wrong, and we have reorganized our intelligence agencies so we can do better in the future."

Mr. Wilson said in an interview that he did not remember ever seeing the memo but that its analysis should raise further questions about why the White House remained convinced for so long that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa.

"All the people understood that there was documentary evidence" suggesting that the intelligence about the sale was faulty, he said.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

January 19, 2006
C.I.A. Confirms Voice on Tape Was Al Qaeda's Leader
By HASSAN FATTAH
and CHRISTINE HAUSER
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Jan. 19 - The Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera broadcast an audiotape today that it attributed to Osama bin Laden, in which he said that more attacks against the United States were being prepared, while offering the possibility of a truce under unspecified conditions.

It was not immediately clear when the tape was made, but it was the first tape believed to be directly from the leader of Al Qaeda to be released in about a year, and its release came after the United States launched an airstrike in a Pakistani village aimed at Mr. bin Laden's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Mr. Zawahiri was not at the site, Pakistani officials later said, but the American attack on Jan. 13 killed 18 civilians and four or five foreign militants in the village of Damadola.

The voice sounded short-winded on the tape and lacked the charismatic tone typical of Mr. bin Laden's past recordings. Al Jazeera carried excerpts from the audiotape on its Web site, www.aljazeera.net. According to the tape, Mr. bin Laden threatened the United States with attacks inside the country, saying preparations for them were under way. He also offered a conditional "long-term truce."

The last time that Mr. bin Laden was heard from in a taped message was in December 2004, in which he called for Iraqis to boycott the elections in January 2005. After that tape was broadcast, President Bush took the unusual step of responding to one of the Al Qaeda leader's messages, declaring that the call by Mr. bin Laden made the stakes in the Iraqi elections clear.

Mr. Bush's comments at the time were unusual because, after having declared soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that he wanted Mr. bin Laden "dead or alive," the president has usually avoided mentioning him. Mr. Bush's aides have said it would be a strategic error to respond to every one of Mr. bin Laden's threats or to seem to elevate his status by putting him in a long-distance debate with the president.

But Mr. Bush has previously used the Al Qaeda leader's remarks to make the case that the world is still a dangerous place and that Mr. bin Laden should continue to be pursued.

On Wednesday, Pakistan's prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, said that nobody knows where the top two leaders of Al Qaeda are.

"The simple answer is that nobody has a clue," he said in an interview in New York City.

Mr. bin Laden has also previously turned his attention to his Saudi homeland, accusing the ruling al-Saud dynasty of being the "agents of infidels" in a tape in December 2004 and applauding an attack last week against the United States Consulate in Jidda.

Hassan Fattah reported from Dubai for this article, and Christine Hauserfrom New York



Copyright 2006The New York Times

With Osama Bin Laden making new threats via Al Jazeera and Henry "Hank" Crumpton, the newly-appointed head of counter-terrorism at the State Department, telling a British newspaper it is only a matter of time before terrorists use WMD against the US, these are unsettling times. The analysis of Mike Scheuer adds an extra chill.

Zawahiri: Foreshadowing Attacks on Israel and America?

Michael Scheuer



The last three months have been a busy media season for al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. He has released a number of lengthy statements addressing the earthquake in Pakistan, the perfidy of President Musharraf‘s government, elections in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, and the military situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The core of the two most recent statements, however, seems more ominous. Released on January 6 and 7, 2006, the statements focus on three items: the coming mujahideen victory in Iraq, a new warning to the American people and an updated version of a warning to Americans first issued in 2002.



January 6 Statement



Zawahiri's January 6 video statement—which was produced by al-Qaeda's as-Sahab for Media Production in December 2005—covers a variety of subjects, but hones in on rallying Islamists on the basis of the Bush Administration's recent public discussion of the likelihood of some U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq in 2006. "I said to you over a year ago," Zawahiri reminds his audience, "that the Americans' departure form Iraq has become a matter of time and nothing else" [1].



"I will congratulate it [the Islamic nation] today on the victory of Islam in Iraq.…Bush the liar was forced to announce in late November [2005] that he would withdraw his troops from Iraq. However, being addicted to lying, his justified his withdrawal by saying that the Iraqi troops have reached a good level and that he would not announce a timetable for withdrawal.



O liar and imposter: You have not stopped making yourself a laughingstock of the world. If your troops—with their aircraft, missiles, tanks, and fleets—are moaning, bleeding, and seeking a way out of Iraq....Bush: You have to admit that you have been defeated in Iraq, that you are being defeated in Afghanistan, and that you will be defeated in Palestine soon, with God's help and strength" [2].



In an interesting and apparently first-time occurrence, al-Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, on January 8, 2006, issued nearly simultaneous statements on the internet that complemented Zarwahiri's. "Since the start of mujahideen operations after the fall of the Baathist regime until today," Zarqawi said of the coming victory in Iraq, "nearly 800 martyr operations aimed at crusader targets and military convoys have been carried out....America has been defeated and it is just a matter of how bad the defeat will end up to be. I am not in a hurry for the Americans to leave, for the mujahideen enjoy slaughtering them….O nation of Islam, America today is drawing its last breath" [3]. Zarqawi also followed Zawahiri's lead on directly threatening Israel, saying that his group's recent "Rocket Expedition" against Israel was done on the "instructions of the sheikh of the mujahideen, Osama bin Laden…." Zarqawi said that the rocket attack "was only the start of a blessed in-depth strike against the Zionist enemy" [4].



In the statement of January 6, 2006, Zawahiri again goes out of his way to warn Americans that another al-Qaeda attack in the United States is inevitable if they do not listen to al-Qaeda's statements and begin to understand that the mujahideen's motivation is based on U.S. actions in the Muslim world. "People of the Crusader Alliance: Do you know the reason for your defeat in Iraq and losses in Afghanistan and Palestine?" Zawahiri asked.



"Simply, the basic reason is that you refuse to admit the truth. You follow illusions….The reality you refuse to admit is that the Islamic nation will not allow you to treat it as you treat slaves and animals. Unless you deal with the Islamic nation on the basis of understanding and respect, you will continue to face one disaster after another. Your disasters will not end unless you leave our homelands, stop stealing our wealth, and stop corrupting leaders in our countries" [5].



January 7 Statement



The January 7, 2006 Zawahiri video appears to be unique in the history of statements by al-Zawahiri and bin Laden. The substance and much of the wording of the message— entitled "The Letter to the Americans: Why We Fight and Resist You"—was originally issued as a letter from Osama bin Laden in the 2002-2003 period. In the January 7 broadcast, however, Zawahiri is—without explanation—identified as the author. Adding to uniqueness of the video is that while a still photograph of al-Zawahiri remains visible throughout the reading of the statement, the text is read in English by Azzam al-Amriki— "Azzam the American"—and English subtitles are also shown on the screen; Azzam previously has issued statements of his own warning Americans of the coming al-Qaeda attack on their country. The use of Azzam speaking English is likely meant to impress the urgency of the warning; in essence al-Qaeda has an American speaking to and warning his own countrymen. This scenario is reminiscent of bin Laden's October 31, 2004 warning to the American people in which he used basic Arabic and very few Koranic quotes or allusions to Islamic history in an effort to make sure he was understood and taken seriously by Americans [6].



Reading the words formerly attributed to bin Laden, Azzam emphatically underscores the warning to Americans issued by Zawahiri is his new January 6 video.



"You [the American people] might argue that none of the above justifies attacking civilians for crimes they did not commit or participate in. But such an argument flies in the face of your constant refrain that your land is the Land of Liberty and you are freedom's standard-bearers in this world. Thus, the American people chose the American government with their own free wills on the basis of their agreement with its policies. Accordingly, the American people have chosen and agreed to America's backing of Israel's rape and occupation of Palestine. Conversely, the American people could, if they wished, reject the policies of their government…For these reasons, it is not possible that the American people are innocent of all the crimes the Americans and Jews have committed against us. Allah has made Qisas [retribution] an observed law. So it is our right to attack whoever attacks us, and destroy the towns and villages of those who destroy ours, and destroy the economy of those who plunder our wealth, and kill the civilians of the country that kills our civilians" [7].



Conclusion



At this point in their conflict with America, Zawahiri and bin Laden primarily aim their statements toward Muslim audiences. While their statements are genuine warnings to Americans, they have long since given up any hope of persuading U.S. leaders of either political party to understand that the motivation of al-Qaeda and its allies pivots off what America does in the Muslim world, and not off American freedoms and liberties. In this context, the January 6 and 7 Zawahiri videos—and al-Zarqawi's supporting statement—are truly meant to warn Americans. Yet, more importantly, they are also meant to remind Muslims that since the 9/11 attacks al-Qaeda has done everything in its power to fulfill the Prophet Muhammad's demand that Muslims thoroughly warn their enemies before attacking them. The use of Azzam al-Amriki speaking in English, and accompanied by English subtitles, is, from al-Qaeda's perspective, irrefutable evidence for Muslims that al-Qaeda has gone more than the extra mile to urge Americans to change their policies before they are again attacked.

Notes



1. Zawahiri Statement, al-Jazeera TV, January 6, 2006.

2. Ibid.

3. Habib Trabelsi, "Zarqawi: America is drawing its last breath," www.middle-east-online.com, January 9, 2006.

4. Ibid., and Ashraf al-Iraqi, "Zarqawi Issues Revealing Statement Titled ‘But Allah Will Suffice You Against Them,'" www.jihadunspun.com, January 9, 2006.

5. Zawahiri Statement, al-Jazeera TV, January 6, 2006.

6. Osama bin Laden, "Statement to the American People," al-Jazeera TV, October 31, 2004.

7. Zawahiri Statement, al-Jazeera TV, January 7, 2006.

- Foreign Office Memo Fuels CIA 'Torture Flights' Row
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Foreign_Of...lights_Row.html

London (UPI) Jan 19, 2006 - The British government knew the United States may have used its territory for secret flights carrying prisoners abroad for interrogation and deliberately impeded investigations into the allegations, a leaked memo published Thursday indicates.

White House Insiders Reports That "Osama bin Laden" Tape Was A Fake

TBRNews.org

January 20, 2006:



“Yet again, our grossly incompetent CIA, in conjunction with the prevaricating manipulators in the White House, have produced another faked “bin Ladin tape” threatening to attack the United States but “offering a truce.” The CIA has produced at least ten “original terrorist” tapes in the past three years. A man named Morton Weil, working for the CIA out of Waco, Texas, puts these together using someone fluent in Arabic. The documents are produced in Langley, sent to the NSC for vetting and, if approved as written, sent by courier to Waco, Texas where they are translated (from the English) into Arabic and then recorded by a person, as yet unnamed, fluent in that language .

I lunch twice a week with an Arab diplomat who, obviously, is an educated man and fluent in his native tongue. He not only knew bin Laden but has heard him speak a number of times. His opinion? Fake.

His reasoning?

Bush is presently doing so badly in the domestic (and foreign) opinion polls, yet did so well as “The Great Protector of America” after 911, that he seeks to recapture his permanently lost glory by first posing a threat to the US and then stepping forward again, shield and sword in hand, to defend the American people against foreign (and non-Christian) terrorists.

He and Rove feel that his poll numbers will rise once again. The problem is that very few people believe these rigged and seemingly never-consummated terrorist “warnings” and so once again, the boy cried “Wolf” in vain.

I also know someone on the NSC and they told me this morning that they really wished the CIA would be a little more accomplished in their fakes.

His reasoning?

It has been known, officially, that bin Laden died of kidney failure in a Pakistani hospital in August of 2002 and obviously isn’t making any tapes now. A live bin Laden, however, is a good boogyman with which to terrify the American public into slavishly believing our government is trying to protect them. Secondly, there is no reference to the Koran in the message, something always found in original, period, bin Laden announcements. Thirdly, the fake bin Laden does not make any references, as original messages have, to past Western atrocities against Muslims and, finally, the tape is far too short.

What is this source’s reasoning? That the CIA’s blunder in killing 17-25 perfectly innocent Pakistani civilians in a badly botched rocket attack against a bin Laden supporter has caused an uproar in Pakistan, (and elsewhere) an ally, albeit a very dicey one. First, the CIA “revealed,” through paid Pakistani stooges, that “many top terrorists” were killed in the attack although the sole victims were women and children and two sets of grandparents. Their logic is that while the intended target was “mysteriously absent” at the time of the attack, the slaughter of the innocents was justified because “many top terrorists” were eradicated.

Typical high-level bald-faced lies.

This latest taped fake is designed both to give Bush increased stature to a disbelieving American public and to justify any future actions against more generally completely innocent civilians.

The Bush Administration is drawing an enormous bill that is going to have to be paid by the American people, hopefully for the criminals, long after they are out of office and living in tax-payer supported safe (and non-extraditable) retirement in the south of France or Tahiti.

Something needs to be done about all of this murderous corruption.

When Patrick Henry, addressing the Virginia House of Burgesses, made a negative reference to their King George, some stooge shouted “Treason!” at him.

His reply, and one we all ought to contemplate?

“If this be treason, Sir, why make the most of it!”

CIA LIMITS WEB PUBLICATION OF CRITICAL REPORTS

The Central Intelligence Agency has selectively declined to publish
on its web site at least three unclassified reports produced by the
Center for the Study of Intelligence that present an unflattering
picture of the Agency, US News reported this week.

See "A Tangled Web Woven," by David E. Kaplan, US News and World
Report, January 30, 2006:

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060130/30cia.htm