Chiefs Demoted in Pentagon Succession Line By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer
Thu Dec 29, 3:52 AM ET

Heading a military service isn't quite the position of power it used to be. In a Bush administration revision of plans for Pentagon succession in a doomsday scenario, three of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's most loyal advisers moved ahead of the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force.

A little-noticed holiday week executive order from President Bush moved the Pentagon's intelligence chief to the No. 3 spot in the succession hierarchy behind Rumsfeld. The second spot would be the deputy secretary of defense, but that position currently is vacant. The Army secretary, which long held the No. 3 spot, was dropped to sixth.

The changes, announced last week, are the second in six months and reflect the administration's new emphasis on intelligence gathering versus combat in 21st century war fighting.

Technically, the line of succession is assigned to specific positions, rather than the current individuals holding those jobs.

But in its current incarnation, the doomsday plan moves to near the top three undersecretaries who are Rumsfeld loyalists and who previously worked for Vice President Dick Cheney when he was defense secretary.

The changes were recommended, said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, because the three undersecretaries have "a broad knowledge and perspective of overall Defense Department operations." The service leaders are more focused on training, equipping and leading a particular military service, said Whitman.

Thomas Donnelly, a defense expert with the American Enterprise Institute, said the changes make it easier for the administration to assert political control and could lead to more narrow-minded decisions.

"It continues to devalue the services as institutions," said Donnelly, saying it will centralize power and shift it away from the services, where there is generally more military expertise.

Under the new plan, Rumsfeld ally Stephen Cambone, the undersecretary for intelligence, moved up to the third spot. Former Ambassador Eric Edelman, the policy undersecretary, and Kenneth Krieg, the undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, hold the fourth and fifth positions.

The first to succeed Rumsfeld remains the deputy secretary, a position currently vacant because the Senate has not confirmed Bush's nominee — current Navy Secretary Gordon England.

Senators have already approved Donald Winter to be England's replacement as Navy chief, and it is expected that Bush will eventually move England into the No. 2 Pentagon job without congressional approval through a recess appointment.

The new succession order bumps the Navy secretary to near the bottom of the line of succession — eighth behind the deputy, the three Pentagon undersecretaries and the Army and Air Force secretaries.

The Army secretary historically has been third in line, right behind the deputy secretary.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, intelligence gathering has taken center stage. Earlier this year, Bush named former ambassador John Negroponte as the country's first director of national intelligence, charged with overseeing the government's 15 highly competitive spy agencies.

In spring 2003, Rumsfeld installed Cambone — one of his closest aides — in the new job of intelligence undersecretary.




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Audit: FEMA Woes Just One Problem at DHS
by LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer

Weaknesses in FEMA's response system during Hurricane Katrina were just one symptom of major management challenges at the Homeland Security Department, an internal report issued Wednesday concludes.

The report by the department's inspector general also questions Homeland Security's ability to properly oversee billions of dollars worth of contracts it awards annually.

The inspector general's findings were issued as the nearly three-year-old department struggles to revamp its programs and resources to prioritize top risks.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, an arm of the Homeland Security Department, was singled out as a top concern by investigators who pointed to the agency's "overburdened resources and infrastructure" in dealing with the double-whammy of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Investigators found that several key FEMA programs — distributing aid to disaster victims, emergency response information systems, modernizing flood maps and managing contracts and grants — remain inadequate.

"Based on our work related to prior emergency response efforts, we have raised concerns regarding weaknesses" within those programs, the audit by Homeland Security Inspector General Richard L. Skinner said.

Moreover, "when one considers that FEMA's programs are largely administered through grants and contracts, the circumstances created by hurricanes Katrina and Rita provide an unprecedented opportunity for fraud, waste and abuse," the report found.

"While DHS is taking several steps to manage and control spending under Katrina, the sheer size of the response and recovery efforts will create an unprecedented need for oversight," the report said.

Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, followed by Rita on Sept. 24.

Department officials responded to the audit with an 11-page point-by-point analysis, acknowledging and explaining shortcomings in some areas and defending actions in others.

Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said Wednesday the department is working to make programs more efficient and effective. He also called changes to FEMA "one of our greatest and most urgent priorities."

"The American public will be hearing from us, in short order, about how we intend to build the capability of FEMA into a 21st century agency, focusing on the agencys core response and recovery mission," Knocke said.

As of last week, the most recent data available, Homeland Security had awarded $4.1 billion in Katrina-related contracts — mostly for construction and housing. By comparison, the department awarded nearly $10 billion in contracts on all projects last year, the audit found.

In its response, the department said it has created a procurement office to give strict oversight to the hurricane contracts process, and has brought in outside advisers to help.

The findings were part of an audit by Skinner's office, which is tasked with assessing Homeland Security's management challenges each year.

Homeland Security, the third-largest Cabinet-level federal department, has made progress since it was created in 2003 by merging 22 disparate agencies, the audit found.

However, "it still has much to do to establish a cohesive, efficient and effective organization."

Other areas of concern, as reviewed in the report, include:

_Financial reporting problems, especially at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which failed to properly maintain its accounting records.

_Delays in creating and installing a new personnel system that replaced salaries based on workers' seniority with a merit pay system. The delays were caused, in part, by a federal lawsuit challenging the proposed regulations.

_Poor coordination between border patrol officers and immigration investigators, contributing to security vulnerabilities at borders. Earlier this year, Skinner recommended merging the two entities to improve coordination, but Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has rejected that idea.

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NSA Web Site Places 'Cookies' on Computers By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer

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.



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The Year in Review: Law and Religion in 2005,
From "Intelligent Design," to the Ten Commandments, to Supreme Court Staffing Changes, to Clergy Child Abuse Developments
By MARCI HAMILTON
hamilton02@aol.com
----
Thursday, Dec. 29, 2005

Over this past year, the intersection of law and religion (and politics) took center stage in the United States. In this column, I've provided what I think are the top ten "highlights," in no particular order.

Interestingly, one thing the list shows is that despite the proven ability of conservative Christians to set the public agenda for debate, they have not been terribly successful in ultimately altering the law to fit their world view.



Highlight Number One: The movement to introduce "intelligent design" into the public school science curriculum failed when a federal judge in Dover, Pennsylvania, ruled that it was not science, but merely a re-introduction of creationism -- and that it was, therefore, a straightforward violation of the Establishment Clause.

The opinion, by a conservative Bush appointee, is well-reasoned and sound: Among other points, it chastised the school board for its transparent move to get Christian teachings into the public school curriculum. (Meanwhile, on the political side, the pro-intelligent-design members of the relevant school board also lost their jobs in the November elections, apparently on this very topic.)

Highlight Number Two: The United States Supreme Court ruled, in McCreary County v. ACLU, that when the Ten Commandments are posted in a courthouse with an accompanying pro-Christian resolution, the posting constitutes an official endorsement of religion and is therefore unconstitutional.

Yet at the same time, in Van Orden v. Perry, the Court held that the display of a Ten Commandments monument at a state capitol - when the monument had been donated by a philanthropic group, and when there was no overt government endorsement of religion - was constitutional. Surprisingly, the swing vote was Justice Breyer, not Justice O'Connor.

Highlight Number Three: In Cutter v. Wilkinson, the Supreme Court upheld the institutionalized persons provisions of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), which subject prison regulations to strict scrutiny if there is a substantial burden on a prisoner's religious exercise. This case would have been a blockbuster in the Establishment Clause arena, because the accommodation is blind in the sense that it covers scores of regulations never even contemplated by Congress. But the decision, in the end, meant very little, because it mandated, on the basis of legislative history, that Congress intended the courts to defer to prison authorities' expertise and asserted interests. The Court's interpretation meant that RLUIPA mandated a standard of review with considerably less bite than strict scrutiny in the constitutional context, as I discussed in a prior column, and, the accommodation was de minimis.

Highlight Number Four: Judge Williams, the federal bankruptcy judge in Spokane, Washington, who is presiding over the Spokane Diocese's bankruptcy, issued a landmark opinion in which she held that the First Amendment did not permit the Diocese to determine property ownership solely according to canon law. Instead, she ruled, religious entities filing for federal bankruptcy, like all others, must have the issue of property ownership determined by neutral, generally applicable property laws. The question arose because the Diocese was attempting to reduce the size of the estate available to clergy abuse victims.

Highlight Number Five: The Supreme Court heard oral argument in the O Centro case, involving the question whether a South American-based religious group, the UDV for short, could use the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to avoid the federal Controlled Substances Act. The UDV wanted to follow its practice of using an illegal drug, DMT, in their religious ceremonies, without fear of prosecution. As I discussed in another column, the religious group's arguments do not seem as strong as those on the other side.

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(On the political side, Jewish and conservative Christian groups filed briefs in favor of the UDV's use of illegal drugs. Illustrating once again the knee-jerk preference for accommodation in this society, and the concomitant abandonment of the public good, which I document in my recent book, God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law, these groups did not ask the obvious question whether this group permits children to take the drugs during services - a factor that would seem to cut strongly in favor of enforcement of the law here. Adherents in South America, via email, informed me that children do, indeed, take the drug during services.)

Highlight Number Six: Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement for family reasons, a move that opened the door for the President to attempt to push the Court to shift directions with respect to abortion and the Establishment Clause. Within hours of O'Connor's resignation, the Becket Fund issued a press release expressing its delight that she would be stepping down, because of her views on the Establishment Clause.

O'Connor, for whom I served as a law clerk, was the swing vote on many cases and introduced what is in my view -- and that of many other commentators -- the best modern innovation in the area, the "endorsement test," which prohibits the government from endorsing any one religious viewpoint, because endorsement excludes other citizens. This element of the doctrine takes into account the tremendous diversity among religious faiths in the United State.

But if Judge Samuel Alito, nominated to fill her position, is confirmed to the Court, he is likely to push the Court away from any meaningful separation of church and state, and toward what I would call the equality theory, which requires that religious groups are treated at least as well as other groups and in favor of government expression that supports Christianity. There is a clear choice: inclusion of all believers or exclusion, and Alito may well push the jurisprudence toward the latter. That would mean reversing some of the progress for which O'Connor deserves credit in this area.

Highlight Number Seven: Now-Chief Justice John Roberts replaced Chief Justice Rehnquist, for whom he clerked. The net result in the religion cases will likely be minimal - for Roberts's votes and positions are likely to track Rehnquist's closely.


Highlight Number Eight: In the Melanie H. case, a federal court in San Diego upheld California law 340.1, which opened a one-year window in 2003 for clergy abuse victims to sue institutions that caused their harm - for instance, dioceses that recklessly or knowingly hid the identity of a pedophile and assigned that pedophile to positions with easy access to children.

The Catholic Church had argued that the law specially targeted the Church, in violation of the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses, because it was passed in the wake of the revelations that the Church had covered up child abuse by its priests in many cases. That argument, however, had no merit: The law is, in fact, neutral and generally applicable, and applies to any organization contributing to child abuse, from day care centers, to the Boy Scouts, to any religious organization.

Accordingly, the court rightly held that the law passed muster under the Free Exercise Clause. (Moreover, the court also held, again correctly, that the Church's actions regarding child abuse were not based in religious belief or practice and, therefore, the Religion Clauses simply did not apply.)

Highlight Number Nine: The beat went on in other major church/state cases. Cities continued to be pelted with claims under the land use provisions of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which gives special privileges to religious landowners to overcome the land use laws that govern everyone else, as I have discussed in previous columns such as this recent one. And a district court in the Ninth Circuit held that "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional in the classroom, but not at a school board meeting.

Highlight Number 10: Conservative Christian organizations successfully pressured Congress and the President to enact legislation for the parents of Terri Schiavo, so that they could continue to challenge the many decisions in the Florida state courts holding that her feeding tube could be removed, as I discuss in a previous column. Despite the politicians' willingness to cater publicly to their cause, the resulting legislation was toothless, and the court's order permitting the removal of the feeding tube was carried out.

It will remain to be seen whether a newly configured Supreme Court will alter Religion Clause jurisprudence dramatically. What is for certain, is that the culture wars over religion are far from over.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle....ISEN.xml&rpc=23

Hurricane insurance losses $57.6 bln: Advisen
Tue Dec 27, 2005 11:09 AM ET



NEW YORK (Reuters) - Advisen Ltd. on Tuesday estimated worldwide insurance and reinsurance losses related to the three major hurricanes that hit the United States this year would amount to $57.6 billion, making the cumulative catastrophe losses the largest on record.

By predicting unreported losses from State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., the largest personal lines insurer, as well as unreported and unfiled losses elsewhere, Advisen projects pre-tax insured losses per hurricane to be $40.4 billion for Katrina, $6.4 billion for Rita, and $10.8 billion for Wilma.

The losses amount to more than twice the annual total for other U.S. natural disasters and one-and-a-half times the losses from the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

Several variables could prompt Advisen's estimates to increase dramatically, the company warned. Flood losses could elevate Advisen's estimates by billions of dollars if lawsuits to force insurers to cover flood damage related to Hurricane Katrina are successful.

Also, hurricane-related pollution lawsuits could add hundreds to Advisen's totals, it said.

Advisen provides analytics and market information to the commercial insurance industry.



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December 29, 2005
News Analysis
Enron Figure May Testify, but What Will He Say?
By KURT EICHENWALD
At a top-level Enron management meeting in September 2001, a red-faced Richard A. Causey, the chief accounting officer, pounded the table after hearing his colleagues label the company's accounting practices as "aggressive." According to executives in the room, Mr. Causey fumed that he considered such criticism a personal affront, adding that he would stake his career on the propriety of Enron's accounting.

Yesterday, more than four years later, Mr. Causey entered a Houston courtroom and pleaded guilty to a single count of securities fraud, admitting that the way Enron accounted for its financial performance presented a false portrait to investors for at least two years. [Page C1.]

This tale of two Richards - one steadfastly defending Enron's accounting decisions, the other admitting criminal liability in a fraud - is at the heart of the prosecution of Enron's former chief executives, Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling. And in this dichotomy lies the issues and evidence that could determine whether the two remaining defendants go free or spend much of the rest of their lives in prison.

At this point, no one, not even the lawyers involved in the case, can be sure which of the two Richards may appear on the stand - or even if a third may appear, one who admits limited criminal liability but continues to deny broader allegations. That partly explains why, even as prosecutors were heralding Mr. Causey's admission of guilt, lawyers for the remaining defendants continued to hold him close by celebrating his integrity.

"He is one of the most honest and decent men you can ever get to know," said Daniel Petrocelli, Mr. Skilling's lead lawyer. The prosecutors, Mr. Petrocelli added, "broke an innocent man."

Mr. Causey has never been a top-billed player in the Enron drama. But despite his low profile, the government and the defense always considered him someone who could play the role of a major witness once the top officers go to court. That is because Mr. Causey, as chief accounting officer, attended many of the top-level meetings where decisions were made that are at the center of the criminal case.

Moreover, unlike other former executives who are government witnesses, Mr. Causey walks into the courtroom with little excess baggage. Some of the government's star witnesses, including Andrew S. Fastow, the former chief financial officer, and Ben Glisan, the former treasurer, are weighed down by having defrauded Enron of millions of dollars for their personal gain.

Not so with Mr. Causey; there are no secret bank accounts, no hidden streams of cash flowing from company coffers into his pockets. Where Mr. Fastow was roundly detested within Enron for his sharp tongue and elbows, Mr. Causey was widely liked, often referred to as a friendly, teddy bear of a man.

Indeed, Mr. Causey seems an unlikely character type to be playing such a profound role in a major fraud case. Friends and associates describe him as a devoutly religious man who is devoted to his wife and children, with little in his life reflecting the fast-paced, reckless image now part of the Enron legacy.

Creating part of the uncertainty is the limited nature of the admissions made by Mr. Causey in an affidavit filed as a result of his plea agreement. In the document, Mr. Causey states generally that he participated with "others in Enron senior management" to defraud the investing public by misleading them about the company's true financial performance. In support of that statement, Mr. Causey cites two examples.

What is most interesting about those examples is what they are not. They do not involve some of the broader accounting allegations related to off-books entities, with esoteric names like the Raptors and LJM2, that Enron used to burnish its financial picture. They make no reference to secret handshake deals involving promises to return money provided by outsiders.

Prosecutors contend such deals allowed Enron to present loans as investments, which because of the intricacies of the accounting rules had the effect of transforming the company's financial reports.

Rather, the crimes admitted to by Mr. Causey involve one-time deals that, while significant in their effect on Enron's finances, do not lock him into the prosecution's portrait of the company's senior management as being engaged in a nearly continuous conspiracy to defraud investors during the final years of its existence.

The allegations admitted by Mr. Causey occurred in the first quarters of 2000 and 2001.

In the first instance, Mr. Causey and other executives knew that positive news was about to push up the company's stock price. To profit from that, they removed a hedge from a partnership that the company partly owned and that held Enron stock. With the hedge, if Enron's stock price went up, the value of a related investment would go down. After the hedge was removed, Enron reported the stock price increase as recurring profits.

The second allegation that Mr. Causey admitted to involved a transaction relating to the company's retail electricity business. In the first quarter of 2001, the retail business, known as Enron Energy Services, had hundreds of millions of dollars in trading losses, far exceeding the unit's expected income for the year. To deal with that, Enron shifted the division's trading books into a separate, highly profitable unit, avoiding direct reporting of the losses.

Another curious element of the deal is the fact that Mr. Causey is not obligated to cooperate with the government; rather, his sentence of seven years could be reduced to five should prosecutors determine that he has provided substantial assistance to their case.

Even though that gives him plenty of motivation to make prosecutors happy, without a cooperation agreement, Mr. Causey, who is 45, cannot be threatened with the loss of his deal if he fails to impress the government.

None of this means the government has obtained a bad deal from Mr. Causey - far from it. With his admission to the two underlying criminal acts, Mr. Causey has become a witness on charges brought against Mr. Skilling related to the same two transactions.

And while Mr. Causey's admissions do not involve any of the charges against Mr. Lay, the former chief accounting officer was a primary participant with him in at least one meeting in October 2001 that the government contends was part of an effort to deceive Enron's accountants at Arthur Andersen.

Moreover, because of his motivation to cooperate and reduce his sentence to five years, from seven, Mr. Causey could well prove to be an important prosecution witness on other transactions in which he was involved. Those dealings are reflected in charges that the company manipulated its income through the off-books partnerships, the bogus revaluation of a significant asset, the stashing away of excess profits for use in another year, and others.

His defection to the government is likely to rob Mr. Skilling and Mr. Lay of what could have been a central defense: that, in making their judgment about accounting decisions, they relied on Mr. Causey's expertise.

For months, Mr. Causey has been working with lawyers for his co-defendants, taking them through each deal and explaining his justification for every accounting decision. Should the second, or even the third, Richard appear on the witness stand, those statements are sure to be raised by the defense lawyers as they try to undermine the credibility of yet another witness against their clients.



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December 29, 2005
Enron's Top Accountant Will Help Prosecutors
By SIMON ROMERO and VIKAS BAJAJ
HOUSTON, Dec. 28 - The former chief accounting officer of Enron agreed on Wednesday to cooperate with the government in its case against the two leading executives in the scandal over the company's collapse, significantly shifting the dynamics of a trial that is scheduled to start late next month.

In exchange for a guilty plea to a single felony charge of securities fraud and for help in prosecuting Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling, both former chief executives at Enron, the accounting officer, Richard A. Causey, will face a sentence of seven years. That sentence could be reduced by as much as two years, depending on his cooperation at the trial. Mr. Causey did not specifically agree to testify, leaving open that possibility as the trial gets under way.

After Mr. Causey entered his plea, Judge Sim Lake of the Federal District Court here accepted a motion by defense lawyers to delay the start of the trial of Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling to Jan. 30 to give the defense more time to prepare. Originally, Mr. Causey was to have gone on trial with them on Jan. 17. Mr. Causey also agreed to pay a $1.25 million fine out of financial assets that were frozen since his legal troubles began.

"Guilty, your honor," Mr. Causey said in court, occasionally looking down at the floor, as he softly responded to Judge Lake's questions as to whether he deceived investors. Mr. Causey, 45, declined to comment further on his plea as he exited the courtroom accompanied by lawyers and his wife, who was sobbing.

"All the while, and for the remainder of his life, he will regret the damage and the hurt that so many people suffered as a result of this tragedy," Reid H. Weingarten, Mr. Causey's lawyer, said outside the courthouse.

The defense will seek to limit the damage that Mr. Causey could inflict as a witness for the prosecution by arguing that portions of his testimony are derived from the knowledge he obtained as a joint defendant and thus should not be allowed. "He was a man we worked side-by-side, shoulder-by-shoulder with for months," said Michael Ramsey, a lawyer for Mr. Lay.

Indeed, lawyers for the defendants quickly sought to discredit Mr. Causey's plea agreement, claiming it resulted from desperation over the depletion of his finances and concern over what might potentially be a lengthy sentence. Daniel Petrocelli, the lead trial lawyer for Mr. Skilling, said federal prosecutors "broke an innocent man."

The deal that Mr. Causey and his lawyer reached with prosecutors is more generous than the agreement prosecutors reached with Andrew S. Fastow, the former chief financial officer of Enron, who faces 10 years in prison after agreeing to plead guilty. Mr. Causey first spoke to prosecutors about a plea deal about a year ago, but those discussions stalled until about a week ago, lawyers in the case said.

"Typically, the deals get worse over time, not better," said Robert A. Mintz, a former prosecutor who is now with McCarter & English and is not involved in the case.

The indication that federal prosecutors are still willing to strike a fairly reasonable plea deal, lawyers not involved in the case said, is a sign that they are still weaving a web around the defendants. It suggests that there is no limit to the number of insiders they are willing to bring on board to try to ensure a conviction of Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling, by far the most prominent figures involved with Enron's collapse.

In Mr. Causey, prosecutors obtained access to another top former Enron executive who was involved in high-level discussions of numerous off-balance-sheet transactions and creative accounting entries that led to the company's downfall.

For instance, Mr. Causey was one of two participants in an Oct. 21, 2001, meeting with Mr. Lay that is the basis of one of the seven charges against Mr. Lay. At that time, Enron was nearing internal disarray as investors began to lose confidence in its accounting practices.

Enron filed for bankruptcy protection in early December of that year, setting off its rapid disintegration and the loss of about 4,000 jobs.

For Mr. Causey, who had previously pleaded not guilty to more than 30 counts of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading and other charges, the deal guarantees him a much shorter stay in federal prison than he would have faced had he been convicted at trial. Mr. Causey faced the possibility of 35 to 40 years in prison without parole.

The deal also offers the possibility of an even shorter sentence if he performs ably, in the opinion of prosecutors, against his former bosses. He will be the 16th person with ties to Enron who has admitted in court to committing crimes. Judge Lake set formal sentencing for April 21, though he said that could be delayed.

"Every client has a different kind of mettle," said Marc Powers, a lawyer with Baker & Hostetler who represented Douglas Faneuil, a former stockbroker's assistant who cooperated in the government's case against Martha Stewart. "Some look at the situation and think: 'Yes, this is my Waterloo.' Others are more willing to roll the dice."

While potentially damaging for Mr. Skilling and Mr. Lay, Mr. Causey's plea deal could also form the basis of a renewed appeal by their lawyers for a change of venue. Mr. Ramsey, the lawyer for Mr. Lay, said he would ask Judge Lake next week to consider moving the trial outside of Houston, where many residents still have painful memories of Enron's collapse.

"Currently, we're finding that about 75 percent of potential jurors have anger or deep-seated hatred toward anyone associated with Enron," Mr. Ramsey said.

Judge Lake previously rejected motions to move the trial away from Houston; on Wednesday he showed reluctance even to delay the start of the trial by two weeks, saying, "It's been a long, difficult and expensive process for the taxpayers." Judge Lake chided lawyers on both sides, claiming that it did not take "a rocket scientist or a graduate of Texas A&M" to prepare for the trial.

But lawyers say the defense will have new grounds to ask for a change because people in the Houston area who have been notified that they could be jurors will be subject to renewed publicity about Mr. Causey and the case.

"It provides a reasonable basis to renew that motion and they may well do it," said Daniel R. Alonso, a former federal prosecutor who has followed the case but is not involved.

In a reflection of how the plea agreement might affect Mr. Skilling and Mr. Lay differently, Mr. Petrocelli, Mr. Skilling's lawyer, said the deal had significantly complicated preparations for the trial. He said that the two-week delay in its start was not sufficient time to construct a radically new strategy. By contrast, Mr. Ramsey, representing Mr. Lay, said the short delay was ample time for the defense.

That schism might indicate that Mr. Causey's plea agreement is potentially more damaging to Mr. Skilling. Whatever the balance, prosecutors made clear that they intended to do everything possible to encourage Mr. Causey to be fully cooperative in their efforts to build a stronger case against both men.

"The government is going to have to tread carefully through the minefield here in trying to extract useful and admissible evidence from Mr. Causey," said Mr. Mintz, the former prosecutor.

Simon Romero reported from Houston for this article and Vikas Bajaj from New York.



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Pentagon Calls Its Pro-U.S. Websites Legal
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An internal review finds that efforts aimed at the Balkans, northern Africa break no laws. But a Defense official says they might backfire.

By Mark Mazzetti
Times Staff Writer

December 29 2005

WASHINGTON; U.S. military websites that pay journalists to write articles and commentary supporting military activities in Europe and Africa do not violate U.S. law or Pentagon policies, a review by the Pentagon's chief investigator has concluded. But a senior Defense Department official said this week that the websites could still be shut down to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...0,2874690.story

December 30, 2005
Op-Ed Columnist
Heck of a Job, Bushie
By PAUL KRUGMAN
A year ago, everyone expected President Bush to get his way on Social Security. Pundits warned Democrats that they were making a big political mistake by opposing plans to divert payroll taxes into private accounts.

A year ago, everyone thought Congress would make Mr. Bush's tax cuts permanent, in spite of projections showing that doing so would lead to budget deficits as far as the eye can see. But Congress hasn't acted, and most of the cuts are still scheduled to expire by the end of 2010.

A year ago, Mr. Bush made many Americans feel safe, because they believed that he would be decisive and effective in an emergency. But Mr. Bush was apparently oblivious to the first major domestic emergency since 9/11. According to Newsweek, aides to Mr. Bush finally decided, days after Hurricane Katrina struck, that they had to show him a DVD of TV newscasts to get him to appreciate the seriousness of the situation.

A year ago, before "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" became a national punch line, the rising tide of cronyism in government agencies and the rapid replacement of competent professionals with unqualified political appointees attracted hardly any national attention.

A year ago, hardly anyone outside Washington had heard of Jack Abramoff, and Tom DeLay's position as House majority leader seemed unassailable.

A year ago, Dick Cheney, who repeatedly cited discredited evidence linking Saddam to 9/11, and promised that invading Americans would be welcomed as liberators - although he hadn't yet declared that the Iraq insurgency was in its "last throes" - was widely admired for his "gravitas."

A year ago, Howard Dean - who was among the very few prominent figures to question Colin Powell's prewar presentation to the United Nations, and who warned, while hawks were still celebrating the fall of Baghdad, that the occupation of Iraq would be much more difficult than the initial invasion - was considered flaky and unsound.

A year ago, it was clear that before the Iraq war, the administration suppressed information suggesting that Iraq was not, in fact, trying to build nuclear weapons. Yet few people in Washington or in the news media were willing to say that the nation was deliberately misled into war until polls showed that most Americans already believed it.

A year ago, the Washington establishment treated Ayad Allawi as if he were Nelson Mandela. Mr. Allawi's triumphant tour of Washington, back in September 2004, provided a crucial boost to the Bush-Cheney campaign. So did his claim that the insurgents were "desperate." But Mr. Allawi turned out to be another Ahmad Chalabi, a hero of Washington conference rooms and cocktail parties who had few supporters where it mattered, in Iraq.

A year ago, when everyone respectable agreed that we must "stay the course," only a handful of war critics suggested that the U.S. presence in Iraq might be making the violence worse, not better. It would have been hard to imagine the top U.S. commander in Iraq saying, as Gen. George Casey recently did, that a smaller foreign force is better "because it doesn't feed the notion of occupation."

A year ago, Mr. Bush hadn't yet openly reneged on Scott McClellan's 2003 pledge that "if anyone in this administration was involved" in the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity, that person "would no longer be in this administration." Of course, some suspect that Mr. Bush has always known who was involved.

A year ago, we didn't know that Mr. Bush was lying, or at least being deceptive, when he said at an April 2004 event promoting the Patriot Act that "a wiretap requires a court order. ...When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."

A year ago, most Americans thought Mr. Bush was honest.

A year ago, we didn't know for sure that almost all the politicians and pundits who thundered, during the Lewinsky affair, that even the president isn't above the law have changed their minds. But now we know when it comes to presidents who break the law, it's O.K. if you're a Republican.

Thomas L. Friedman is on vacation.



Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

Pace: U.S. to Launch Phased Iraq Pullout
By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer

The U.S. will carry out planned withdrawals of American troops in Iraq only from regions where Iraqi forces can maintain security against the insurgents, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said Thursday.

Gen. Peter Pace said the current force of 160,000 would drop to below 138,000 by March, then U.S. commanders on the ground would work with the Iraqi government to determine the pace of future pullbacks in areas that have been secured by local security forces.

"The bottom line will be that the Iraqi army and the Iraqi police will gain in competence, that they will be able to take on more and more of the territory, whether or not there are still insurgents in that area," he said in an interview with a small group of reporters, including The Associated Press, aboard a military plane en route to the United Arab Emirates.

Amid congressional pressure and growing public opposition to the war, the Bush administration last week announced plans to reduce U.S. combat troops in Iraq to below the 138,000 level that prevailed most of this year.

The number of American forces in Iraq was raised to about 160,000 to provide extra security during the October referendum and December parliamentary elections, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said those extra troops would be leaving soon.

The exact size of the additional troops cuts has not been announced, but senior Pentagon officials have said the number of American troops in Iraq could drop to about 100,000 by next fall.

The decision where to cut troops "will be based on the Iraqi units in that area and the threat that exists in that area," Pace said earlier at a news conference in Bahrain.

The key, he stressed, "is the Iraqis' ability to control that area."

Pace has said American units will steadily hand off more security duties in the coming months to Iraqi forces and stressed the U.S. military needs to be flexible, but his comments offered a detailed glimpse of the administration's plans.

Pace's tour of the region came two weeks after Dec. 15 Iraqi parliament elections, which the United States considered a key step toward stability that could allow a drawdown of troops.

But violence has not stopped in Iraq. On Thursday, gunmen killed 12 members of an extended Shiite Family south off Baghdad and a suicide bomber killed a policeman in the capital.

Complaints by Sunni Arab and secular Shiite groups of widespread fraud and intimidation during the vote also have threatened to spark a serious crisis that could set back hopes for a broad-based government that could have the legitimacy necessary to diminish the insurgency — a key part of any U.S. military exit strategy from Iraq.

Pace said efforts were under way to recruit Sunnis into the Iraqi security forces, "especially on the officers' side."

Pace, who was making his first official visit to the region since becoming the first Marine to be named chairman of the joint chiefs of staff three months ago, said the withdrawals of two brigades in the coming months would provide a test for the decision to pull out troops.

"We are going to have to watch how these drawdowns go to see if we have judged it properly," he said.

Pace, who was traveling with his wife, Lynne, and a group of entertainers to offer holiday cheer to U.S. troops in the region, began his weeklong trip Wednesday in Qatar. He also planned stops in Iraq, Afghanistan and the East African nation of Djibouti.




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.

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

The Year in Bad News

By David Ignatius

At year-end, I usually like to offer readers a lighthearted collection of imaginary headlines, but 2005 somehow didn't seem very funny.

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

My '05 Hits and Misses

By David S. Broder

When I sat down to review the past year's columns for my annual accounting of errors and misjudgments, I realized that the politicians I cover had set an impossibly high standard in 2005.

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

Windows Security Flaw Is 'Severe'
PCs Vulnerable to Spyware, Viruses

By Brian Krebs
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, December 30, 2005; Page D01

A previously unknown flaw in Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system is leaving computer users vulnerable to spyware, viruses and other programs that could overtake their machines and has sent the company scrambling to come up with a fix.

Microsoft said in a statement yesterday that it is investigating the vulnerability and plans to issue a software patch to fix the problem. The company could not say how soon that patch would be available.



A clerk in Seoul with a box of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows software. Microsoft is trying to repair a flaw in the product. (By Seokyong Lee -- Bloomberg News)

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Mike Reavey, operations manager for Microsoft's Security Response Center, called the flaw "a very serious issue."

Security researchers revealed the flaw on Tuesday and posted instructions online that showed how would-be attackers could exploit the flaw. Within hours, computer virus and spyware authors were using the flaw to distribute malicious programs that could allow them to take over and remotely control afflicted computers.

Unlike with previously revealed vulnerabilities, computers can be infected simply by visiting one of the Web sites or viewing an infected image in an e-mail through the preview pane in older versions of Microsoft Outlook, even if users did not click on anything or open any files. Operating system versions ranging from the current Windows XP to Windows 98 are affected.

An estimated 90 percent of personal computers run on Microsoft Windows operating systems. Microsoft has found itself under attack on several instances and has been forced to issue a number of patches to keep computers running Windows safe. Mac and Linux computer users are not at risk with this attack, even if their computers run Microsoft programs such as Office or the Internet Explorer Web browser.

Reavey encouraged users to update their anti-virus software, ensure all Windows security patches are installed, avoid visiting unfamiliar Web sites, and refrain from clicking on links that arrive via e-mail or instant message.

"The problem with this attack is that it is so hard to defend against for the average user," said Johannes Ullrich, chief research officer for the SANS Internet Storm Center in Bethesda.

At first, the vulnerability was exploited by just a few dozen Web sites. Programming code embedded in these pages would install a program that warned victims their machines were infested with spyware, then prompted them to pay $40 to remove the supposed pests.

Since then, however, hundreds of sites have begun using the flaw to install a broad range of malicious software. SANS has received several reports of attackers blasting out spam e-mails containing links that lead to malicious sites exploiting the new flaw, Ullrich said.

Dean Turner, a senior manager at anti-virus firm Symantec Corp. of Cupertino, Calif., said the company has seen the vulnerability exploited to install software that intercepts personal and financial information when users of infected computers enter the data at certain banking or e-commerce sites.

Eric Sites, vice president of research and development for anti-spyware firm Sunbelt Software, said he has spotted spyware being downloaded to a user's machine by online banner advertisements.

"Pretty much all of the spyware guys who normally use other techniques for pushing this stuff down to your machine are now picking this exploit up," Sites said.

Because the vulnerability exists within a faulty Windows component, security experts warn that Windows users who eschew Internet Explorer in favor of alternative Web browsers, such as older versions of Firefox and Opera, can still get their PCs infected if they agree to download a file from a site taking advantage of the flaw.

Richard M. Smith, a Boston security and privacy consultant, said he was particularly worried that the vulnerability could soon be used to power a fast-spreading e-mail worm.

"We could see the mother of all worms here," Smith said. "My big fear is we're going to wake up in the next week or two and have people warning users not to read their e-mail because something is going around that's extremely virulent."

Brian Krebs is a washingtonpost.com reporter.

Not Much Remains for Texans in Path of Fire New York Times
Standing in the ashes of the home they had shared as newlyweds for five months, Johnny and ReNetha Bellew looked in vain Thursday for traces f the Christmas presents they had just exchanged - a new suit, a Texas Aggie T-shirt, Nike sneakers and ceramic collectibles. Nothing was left. But with 7,000 acres of Callahan County ravaged by 60-foot-high walls of flame that erupted Tuesday afternoon, destroying more than 100 homes and claiming two lives in this small town southeast of Abilene, the Bellews at least were spared. "When I saw the flames at the end of the street, I knew we had to go," said Mr. Bellew, 21, a bank teller.

Brian Harkin for The New York Times - Crystal McDaniel and relatives in what remained of her sister ReNetha Bellew's home in Cross Plains, Tex.
At least four people have died and nearly 200 homes burned this week in grass fires throughout Texas and Oklahoma in the region's worst drought in 50 years. With weather conditions still right for outbreaks, local officials are so worried about New Year's weekend that they are stringently enforcing a ban on open, outdoor fires and fireworks and declaring some disaster areas. Officials plan to use electronic road signs to alert drivers to the dangerous conditions and the ban. They are also warning residents that in some areas breaking the ban can result in hefty fines or jail time. "These fires were all in one way or another human caused," said a Texas Forest Service spokesman, Traci Weaver. "The absolute best option is not to have the fire start in the first place. We lost 15,000 acres and 150 structures in Texas in a 24-hour period. That's devastating." Fires throughout parts of Texas have erupted from fireworks, welding and burning trash in barrels. The fire that engulfed a third of this ranching town about 150 miles west of Dallas began on the side of a road, leading officials to suspect it was ignited by a cigarette thrown out a window or by a spark from a car's catalytic converter, Ms. Weaver said. The Cross Plains Volunteer Fire Department responded quickly to the fire and had it under control for a while. But the wind shifted and picked up, and the fire moved to an area heavy with dry brush of juniper and scrub oaks, an area that was "a tinderbox ready to ignite," said Sparky Dean, a senior trooper and spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety in Abilene. At the peak, 31 fire departments fought the blaze, which changed direction with the wind three times, officials said. "It's one of those things, it just happens once in a while," Mr. Dean said. "I'm sure the experts can sit down at some point and figure out if there is something we can do to avoid this, but I don't know. I put this in same category as tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes and volcanoes. There's not a whole lot you can do." Gov. Rick Perry visited Cross Plains on Thursday, meeting with residents who lost homes and comforting those who lost family members. He said the state had sought a federal declaration of disaster. Blair Jones, a White House spokesman, said assistance was being provided by the Forest Service and the Department of Interior. In Fort Worth, Judge Tom Vandergriff declared Tarrant County a disaster area on Thursday. The county has had numerous grass fires. "Our motivation was to try to warn everyone of the dangers that are involved here and to try to limit any activity that might prevent problems for us," said Judge Vandergriff, the chief executive of the county. "We thought public action of this nature would cause everybody to pay attention to the repercussions of carelessness. We just must forgo some of the traditional activity associated with the New Year celebration this year." Though fire has destroyed homes and property in Texas and Oklahoma, the prairie land it has scorched is far from ruined, ecologists with the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife say. "The land itself will be renewed and restored," said John Davis, an ecologist with the department. "If and when we do get rain again, those pastures will respond better than ever."
US grass fires leave at least five people dead Taipei Times
Fires Reflect Wider Disaster: Drought Los Angeles Times
KHON2 - San Francisco Chronicle - CNN - Houston Chronicle - all 2,064 related »

Soldier on leave in NY charged in shooting death CNN
Random shot killed young mother at window of apartment. A US soldier on leave from the Army was arrested Thursday for allegedly firing into the air and killing a young mother as she looked out her fifth floor apartment window, authorities said. U.S. Army Pvt. Danny Carpio, 23, is accused of randomly firing a gun in Queens late Wednesday. One bullet struck 28-year-old Selina Akthel in the head, killing her instantly, said Kevin Ryan, the spokesman for Queens District Attorney Richard Brown. Akthel's husband and two young children were in the apartment when she was killed. "Whoever did it destroyed the family of my kids -- my life," her husband, Golam Maola, told CNN affiliate WABC. Carpio is to be arraigned in Queens Criminal Court Friday on one charge of second-degree manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon, Ryan said. Each count carries a maximum 15-year sentence. "There may be additional charges," Ryan said. He said Carpio, who had joined the Army about six months ago, was stationed in Fort Hood, Texas, and had been on leave in New York to pick up his wife and return with her to Texas. Ryan said Carpio had been drinking and was standing outside on the sidewalk with friends when he allegedly fired a gun the air about three or four times. Akthel was "standing at her apartment window" when she was struck, Ryan said. A police report said Akthel was dead when emergency personnel arrived. Carpio was being held at a police precinct in Queens and is assisting police in trying to locate the gun, Ryan said. "As a soldier trained in the safety and handling of weapons both on and off the battlefield, the defendant should have known better than to aimlessly fire a gun in a crowded residential area," District Attorney Brown said in a written statement. "As a result of this thoughtless action, a young woman is now dead and two little children must face the difficult and heartbreaking chore of adjusting to a life empty of their mother's presence. Sadly, this case is a grim lesson -- especially during this holiday season -- why guns and drinking are a lethal mixture."
Stray bullet kills S Asian expat BBC News
'I've lost my wife, New York Daily News
CBC News - Los Angeles Times - New York Times - Newsday - all 200 related »

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/fe...ml?id=110007734

FISA vs. the Constitution
Congress can't usurp the president's power to spy on America's enemies.

BY ROBERT F. TURNER
Wednesday, December 28, 2005 12:01 a.m.

In the continuing saga of the surveillance "scandal," with some congressional Democrats denouncing President Bush as a lawbreaker and even suggesting that impeachment hearings may be in order, it is important to step back and put things in historical context. First of all, the Founding Fathers knew from experience that Congress could not keep secrets. In 1776, Benjamin Franklin and his four colleagues on the Committee of Secret Correspondence unanimously concluded that they could not tell the Continental Congress about covert assistance being provided by France to the American Revolution, because "we find by fatal experience that Congress consists of too many members to keep secrets."
When the Constitution was being ratified, John Jay--America's most experienced diplomat and George Washington's first choice to be secretary of state--wrote in Federalist No. 64 that there would be cases in which "the most useful intelligence" may be obtained if foreign sources could be "relieved from apprehensions of discovery," and noted there were many "who would rely on the secrecy of the president, but who would not confide in that of the Senate." He then praised the new Constitution for so distributing foreign-affairs powers that the president would be able "to manage the business of intelligence in such manner as prudence may suggest."

In 1790, when the first session of the First Congress appropriated money for foreign intercourse, the statute expressly required that the president "account specifically for all such expenditures of the said money as in his judgment may be made public, and also for the amount of such expenditures as he may think it advisable not to specify." They made no demand that President Washington share intelligence secrets with them. And in 1818, when a dispute arose over a reported diplomatic mission to South America, the legendary Henry Clay told his House colleagues that if the mission had been provided for from the president's contingent fund, it would not be "a proper subject for inquiry" by Congress.





For nearly 200 years it was understood by all three branches that intelligence collection--especially in wartime--was an exclusive presidential prerogative vested in the president by Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution. Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, John Marshall and many others recognized that the grant of "executive power" to the president included control over intelligence gathering. It was not by chance that there was no provision for congressional oversight of intelligence matters in the National Security Act of 1947.
Space does not permit a discussion here of the congressional lawbreaking that took place in the wake of the Vietnam War. It is enough to observe that the Constitution is the highest law of the land, and when Congress attempts to usurp powers granted to the president, its members betray their oath of office. In certain cases, such as the War Powers Resolution and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, it might well have crossed that line.

Keep in mind that while the Carter administration asked Congress to enact the FISA statute in 1978, Attorney General Griffin Bell emphasized that the law "does not take away the power of the president under the Constitution." And in 1994, when the Clinton administration invited Congress to expand FISA to cover physical as well as electronic searches, the associate attorney general testified: "Our seeking legislation in no way should suggest that we do not believe we have inherent authority" under the Constitution. "We do," she concluded.

I'm not saying that what the president authorized was unquestionably lawful. The Supreme Court in the 1972 "Keith case" held that a warrant was required for national security wiretaps involving purely domestic targets, but expressly distinguished the case from one involving wiretapping "foreign powers" or their agents in this country. In the 1980 Truong case, the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the warrantless surveillance of a foreign power, its agent or collaborators (including U.S. citizens) when the "primary purpose" of the intercepts was for "foreign intelligence" rather than law enforcement purposes. Every court of appeals that has considered the issue has upheld an inherent presidential power to conduct warrantless foreign intelligence searches; and in 2002 the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, created by the FISA statute, accepted that "the president does have that authority" and noted "FISA could not encroach on the president's constitutional power."

For constitutional purposes, the joint resolution passed with but a single dissenting vote by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001, was the equivalent of a formal declaration of war. The Supreme Court held in 1800 (Bas v. Tingy), and again in 1801 (Talbot v. Seamen), that Congress could formally authorize war by joint resolution without passing a formal declaration of war; and in the post-U.N. Charter era no state has issued a formal declaration of war. Such declarations, in fact, have become as much an anachronism as the power of Congress to issue letters of marque and reprisal (outlawed by treaty in 1856). Formal declarations were historically only required when a state was initiating an aggressive war, which today is unlawful.

Section 1811 of the FISA statute recognizes that during a period of authorized war the president must have some authority to engage in electronic surveillance "without a court order." The question is whether Congress had the power to limit such authorizations to a 15-day period, which I think highly doubtful. It would be akin to Congress telling the president during wartime that he could attack a particular enemy stronghold for a maximum of 15 days.





America is at war with a dangerous enemy. Since 9/11, the president, our intelligence services and our military forces have done a truly extraordinary job--taking the war to our enemies and keeping them from conducting a single attack within this country (so far). But we are still very much at risk, and those who seek partisan political advantage by portraying efforts to monitor communications between suspected foreign terrorists and (often unknown) Americans as being akin to Nixon's "enemies lists" are serving neither their party nor their country. The leakers of this sensitive national security activity and their Capitol Hill supporters seem determined to guarantee al Qaeda a secure communications channel into this country so long as they remember to include one sympathetic permanent resident alien not previously identified by NSA or the FBI as a foreign agent on their distribution list.
Ultimately, as the courts have noted, the test is whether the legitimate government interest involved--in this instance, discovering and preventing new terrorist attacks that may endanger tens of thousands of American lives--outweighs the privacy interests of individuals who are communicating with al Qaeda terrorists. And just as those of us who fly on airplanes have accepted intrusive government searches of our luggage and person without the slightest showing of probable cause, those of us who communicate (knowingly or otherwise) with foreign terrorists will have to accept the fact that Uncle Sam may be listening.

Our Constitution is the supreme law, and it cannot be amended by a simple statute like the FISA law. Every modern president and every court of appeals that has considered this issue has upheld the independent power of the president to collect foreign intelligence without a warrant. The Supreme Court may ultimately clarify the competing claims; but until then, the president is right to continue monitoring the communications of our nation's declared enemies, even when they elect to communicate with people within our country.

Mr. Turner, co-founder of the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, served as counsel to the President's Intelligence Oversight Board, 1982-84.


Copyright © 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

--------------------
How Bedrock Promises Of Security Have Fractured Across America
--------------------

Companies are discarding traditional pensions -- or making government foot the bill. Delphi workers struggle with the changing landscape.

By Peter G. Gosselin
Times Staff Writer

December 30 2005

For more than two decades, Lowell Seibert made a living driving piles and erecting machinery across the industrial Midwest.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...=la-home-nation

Justice Dept. Probing Domestic Spying Leak
By TONI LOCY, Associated Press Writer

The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the leak of classified information about President Bush's secret domestic spying program, Justice officials said Friday.

The officials, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe, said the inquiry will focus on disclosures to The New York Times about warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The Times revealed the existence of the program two weeks ago in a front-page story that acknowledged the news had been withheld from publication for a year, partly at the request of the administration and partly because the newspaper wanted more time to confirm various aspects of the program.

Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for The Times, said the paper will not comment on the investigation.

Revelation of the secret spying program unleashed a firestorm of criticism of the administration. Some critics accused the president of breaking the law by authorizing intercepts of conversations — without prior court approval or oversight — of people inside the United States and abroad who had suspected ties to al-Qaida or its affiliates.

The surveillance program, which Bush acknowledged authorizing, bypassed a nearly 30-year-old secret court established to oversee highly sensitive investigations involving espionage and terrorism.

Administration officials insisted that Bush has the power to conduct the warrantless surveillance under the Constitution's war powers provision. They also argued that Congress gave Bush the power to conduct such a secret program when it authorized the use of military force against terrorism in a resolution adopted within days of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Justice Department's investigation was being initiated after the agency received a request for the probe from the NSA.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has been conducting a separate leak investigation to determine who in the administration leaked CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to the media in 2003.

Several reporters have been called to testify before a grand jury or to give depositions. New York Times reporter Judith Miller spent 85 days in jail, refusing to reveal her source, before testifying in the probe.

The administration's legal interpretation of the president's powers allowed the government to avoid requirements under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in conducting the warrantless surveillance.

The act established procedures that an 11-member court used in 2004 to oversee nearly 1,800 government applications for secret surveillance or searches of foreigners and U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism or espionage.

Congressional leaders have said they were not briefed four years ago, when the secret program began, as thoroughly as the administration has since contended.

Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said in an article printed last week on the op-ed page of The Washington Post that Congress explicitly denied a White House request for war-making authority in the United States.

"This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas ... but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens," Daschle wrote.

Daschle was Senate Democratic leader at the time of the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington. He is now a fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington think tank.

The administration formally defended its domestic spying program in a letter to Congress last week, 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 Bush authorized conducting electronic surveillance without first obtaining a warrant in an effort to thwart terrorist acts against the United States.

Assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella acknowledged "legitimate" privacy interests. But he said those interests "must be balanced" against national security.



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.


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http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/23288prs20051230.html

ACLU Slams DOJ Investigation of NSA Whistleblower, Says Government Must Independently Investigate Violation of Wiretap Laws (12/30/2005)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Media@aclu.org

NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union today sharply criticized a Justice Department investigation into the disclosure of an illegal National Security Agency domestic eavesdropping operation approved by President George W. Bush.

In a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as well as two full-page advertisements in the New York Times, the ACLU has called for the appointment of a special counsel to determine whether President Bush violated federal wiretapping laws by authorizing illegal surveillance of domestic targets.

The following statement can be attributed to ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero:

"President Bush broke the law and lied to the American people when he unilaterally authorized secret wiretaps of U.S. citizens. But rather than focus on this constitutional crisis, Attorney General Gonzales is cracking down on critics of his friend and boss. Our nation is strengthened, not weakened, by those whistleblowers who are courageous enough to speak out on violations of the law."

"To avoid further charges of cronyism, Attorney General Gonzales should call off the investigation. Better yet, Mr. Gonzales ought to fulfill his own oath of office and appoint a special counsel to determine whether federal laws were violated."

Leaked torture documents published here

The UK Government are trying to block these documents from publication under the Official Secrets Act

These are some more documents that the UK Government are trying to suppress with the threat of prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. They detail our use of intelligence extracted by torture, and legal advice the Foreign Office received on the subject, and we need to make people aware of their existence.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11407.htm

Bush signs 5-week extension of anti-terrorism law By Tabassum Zakaria

President George W. Bush on Friday signed legislation extending key provisions of the anti-terrorism USA Patriot Act until February 3, despite earlier objecting to anything short of a permanent renewal.

He also signed a $453.3 billion defense spending bill that included a measure banning cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners, the White House said.

Bush had initially threatened to veto legislation that contained that provision, but backed off after congressional votes showed overwhelming support for the amendment pushed by Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), an Arizona Republican who was a former prisoner of war in the Vietnam conflict.

On the Patriot Act, Bush had strongly pushed for a permanent renewal, but Congress passed a temporary extension to allow more time to consider civil liberties protections.

The Patriot Act was a response to the September 11 attacks and expanded the authority of the federal government to conduct secret searches, obtain private records, intercept telephone calls, among other activities, to hunt for suspected terrorists.

"Our law enforcement community needs this, he's not satisfied with a one-month extension. But we've got to get that in place, and we've got to work with them to get it permanently re-extended," White House spokesman Trent Duffy said.

The debate over whether some of the provisions infringe too much on civil liberties became more heated after the revelation that Bush authorized the National Security Agency to conduct a domestic eavesdropping operation on Americans with suspected terrorism ties without seeking court approval.

Among the civil liberties being debated in Congress are rules for "roving" wiretaps of suspects who use multiple telephones and court orders for records for businesses, libraries, bookstores and even personal medical records.

The Patriot Act extension and Defense spending legislation were among several bills signed into law by Bush while on vacation at his Texas ranch.

The defense spending bill included $50 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan until Congress acts on another emergency war supplemental next year, which lawmakers expect to be between $80 billion and $100 billion.

The defense spending bill also provides $29 billion to rebuild levees, schools, roads and other infrastructure destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

And it contains nearly $3.8 billion to begin preparations for a possible avian flu pandemic.

Bush also signed into law legislation authorizing space exploration programs for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and a spending bill for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education.




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Oil Prices End 2005 40 Percent Higher
By BRAD FOSS, AP Business Writer
Fri Dec 30, 2:45 PM ET



Oil futures settled above $61 a barrel Friday and finished 40 percent higher than they started in 2005, capping a tough year for energy consumers but a great one for the petroleum industry as prices soared amid strong demand and tight supplies.

For similar reasons, there was an even sharper advance in 2005 in the price of natural gas, which surged more than 80 percent, making it extra expensive to produce electricity, manufacture goods and heat homes.

Many analysts believe the average price of oil will be below $60 in 2006, but not by much as U.S. and Chinese economic growth continues and OPEC members express growing interest in a production cut, perhaps as early as the first quarter.

"Because of China, oil is never going to go to the $18 to $22 level again in our lifetime," said Mike Fitzpatrick, a broker at Fimat USA in New York. "But it certainly doesn't have to be $60."

Fitzpatrick believes average oil prices will be closer to $50 a barrel in 2006, an outlook predicated on a slowdown in economic growth in the second half of the year — because of high energy prices. "At some point, this has to have a deleterious economic effect," said Fitzpatrick, whose price outlook is more bearish than many of his peers.

While unthinkable just a few years ago, a price near $50 a barrel would actually be welcome news to energy-intensive industries such as airlines and trucking companies, who have retooled their operations to use fuel more efficiently.

There are signs that some homeowners and motorists are also making small changes to keep their energy consumption in check, though analysts say demand is still on the rise and that the tight supply of refining capacity in the U.S. is likely to boost the country's dependence on imports and keep pump prices high.

Average retail gasoline prices in the U.S. surged to record territory above $3 a gallon after Hurricane Katrina, which knocked out refineries and caused power outages that disabled pipelines that carry motor fuel from the Gulf Coast to the Northeast and Midwest. Now, the average retail price of gasoline nationwide is $2.19 a gallon, or 41 cents higher than a year ago, but analysts say the $3 level could be within reach again by summer.

The high price of fuel was a boon to major oil companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP Plc. Their rising profits and stock prices caught the attention of Congress, which held hearings to implore the industry to boost production.

But oil analysts agree that the world's largest petroleum producers are pumping as much as they can to take advantage of the high price, leaving little excess production capacity available if there is a prolonged supply disruption. The mere threat of lost output, whether because of geopolitical strife in Nigeria or Iraq, or a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, will be enough to keep the market on edge in 2006.

"It won't take much to up the price again next year," said London-based oil analyst John Hall of John Hall Associates.

"My guess is that OPEC is quote committed to holding up the price" at present levels, Hall said.

Hall also focused on Iraq, Iran and Nigeria as potential problem countries, saying output snags and increasing political tensions could drive prices upward.

Oil analyst Jamal Qureshi of PFC Energy in Washington said "next year's average price is going to be pretty close to this year's."

In 2005, Nymex oil futures averaged $56.70, an increase of 37 percent from 2004, when they averaged $41.47.

On Friday, light sweet crude for February delivery rose 72 cents to settle at $61.04 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, which closed at 1 p.m. in a shortened session ahead of the New Year's holiday weekend. Nymex trading will resume Jan. 3.

With the Northern Hemisphere winter only a week old, traders remain focused on the weather in the United States, the world's largest energy market.

Natural gas, which briefly topped $15 per 1,000 cubic feet earlier this month, has been under pressure lately amid forecasts of mild weather in much of the United States.

On Friday, natural gas futures inched 0.2 cent higher to settle at $11.225, up 83 percent on the year. On Thursday, the Energy Department said domestic storage of natural gas stood at 2.64 trillion cubic feet on Dec. 23. That is 8 percent below year-ago levels and 1 percent above the five-year average for this time of year.

Heating oil futures rose 2.51 cents to $1.728 per gallon (3.8 liters), while gasoline futures gained 5.76 cents to $1.71 a gallon.

On the ICE Futures exchange in London, Brent crude rose 90 cents to settle at $58.97 a barrel.

The price of Nymex crude is about 14 percent below its Aug. 30 high of $70.85. Oil prices remained above $60 a barrel for months after Katrina disrupted Gulf of Mexico oil and natural-gas output. About one-quarter of the region's daily oil production, and one-fifth of its natural gas production, remains offline, because of damage to offshore platforms, underwater pipelines and onshore processing plants.

___

Associated Press Writer George Jahn in Vienna contributed to this report.



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White House denies calling for probe
From correspondents in Crawford
31dec05

THE White House said overnight it had no role in the Justice Department's decision to investigate the leaking of classified information indicating that President George W. Bush authorised a secret government wiretap program.

"The Justice Department undertook this action on its own, which is the way it should be," White House spokesman Trent Duffy said in Crawford, Texas, where the President was enjoying a year-end vacation on his ranch.
But he added: "The White House was informed of the decision, as was the president."

Mr Duffy stressed that "the leaking of classified information is a serious issue." And he defended the use of wiretaps, warning that "Al-Qaeda's playbook is not printed on page one, and when America's is, it has serious ramifications."

The probe was opened after Mr Bush earlier this month urged a "full investigation" into who leaked information about the secret government wiretap program.

It is unknown who was behind the leak revealing the secret program, although media reports have suggested that some agents were concerned about the program's legality.

The president's call for a probe came after US media reported that Mr Bush had authorised the National Security Agency (NSA) to engage in an operation to monitor massive volumes of telephone and Internet communications.

Domestic spying is a sensitive issue for many Americans who are proud of their civil liberties. Similar revelations about domestic spying led to legislation in the 1970s that allows wiretapping but requires government agencies to obtain a special court warrant for it.

The President's order enabled the NSA to monitor, without a warrant, international telephone calls and electronic mail of US citizens with suspected ties to Al-Qaeda.



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After 5 Years, White House Core Intact
By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer

Loyalty and continuity have marked the Bush White House since early on. After two wars, devastating strikes by terrorists and hurricanes, a bruising re-election and countless legislative battles, President Bush's team is continuing the trend — defying history and shakeup rumors to remain almost entirely intact five years in.

"They've been there long enough to qualify for the Medicare prescription drug benefit," quipped Paul Light, a professor of organizational studies at New York University.

The big question is how much longer Bush's inner circle can hold together.

Only a handful of the president's most senior aides have departed since Bush came to Washington in 2001. Though some have shifted roles, it's a familiar cast of characters at the president's side: Vice President Dick Cheney, chief of staff Andy Card, political guru Karl Rove, deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin, counselor Dan Bartlett, budget chief Josh Bolten, White House counsel Harriet Miers and press secretary Scott McClellan among them.

Most of those who left the White House remain within easy reach. Bush's first national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is secretary of state. Longtime communications adviser Karen Hughes is in charge of reversing anti-American sentiment abroad from a high-level State Department job. Former White House domestic policy chief Margaret Spellings heads the Education Department. Former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales is attorney general. One-time White House political director Ken Mehlman chairs the national Republican Party.

The few who have left the fold entirely were never household names to begin with, including Larry Lindsey, ousted in 2002 as part of an economic team shakeup; two chief Capitol Hill liaisons, and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who was Bush's first budget chief.

Bush's Cabinet has seen more turnover than his top-level White House staff. Still, a third of the 21 Cabinet-rank positions are held by the same person as when Bush came to Washington.

"I don't think there's any other president in the modern era that has seen this kind of stability," said David Gergen, who served in the administrations of Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton.

It does have advantages. The president has a group of highly experienced aides who have earned his trust and work well together because of their familiarity — a hardy few even are holdovers from Bush's days as Texas governor. The Bush crowd also benefits from its trademark loyalty, both to the president personally and to his ideology, and from a shortage of the backstabbing that bedeviled the Clinton White House and many others before it.

But 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is known for generating high stress and quick burnout, even in good times.

And the lack of change has contributed to criticism of Bush as governing from inside a bubble that isolates him from smart dissent, healthy competition, fresh ideas and bad news.

"If people stay that long, group-think can set in, and that's dangerous for a president," Gergen said.

"He's surrounded by people who agree with him," said Light.

Bartlett disputed the notion that Bush is out of touch. "The people around the president are humble enough to not think that we know everything," he said. "We do reach out to people outside."

That view is not widely shared, said Gergen: "This is a team that may ask you questions but doesn't necessarily listen to the answers."

Such criticism grew louder through the fall. A CIA leak case that resulted in the indictment of a top Cheney aide capped a period in which opposition to the Iraq war mounted, Miers' nomination to the Supreme Court imploded, gas prices hit record highs and Hurricane Katrina exposed governmental ineptitude. With Bush's poll numbers hovering at record lows, advisers within and outside a usually tightlipped White House began saying that a wholesale change in his staff was crucial to charting a comeback.

Those calls are hardly heard these days. Now observers predict the first of the year will bring no orchestrated shakeup.

"I don't expect a lot that are forced by the president," said Norm Ornstein, a resident scholar with the American Enterprise Institute.

There will no doubt be a few departures, as people give in to fatigue or the temptation of the high-paying private sector. A small group may head out closer to spring, before campaigning for the November congressional elections begins in earnest. But most expect any larger exodus to wait until after those elections.

Card has held his post longer than anyone in half a century and recently said he was "ready, willing and able" to make a change, even as he tamped out the rumor he was assuming Treasury Secretary John Snow's job. It is telling that those considered contenders to succeed Card are other Bush inner circle-types: Hughes, Bolten, former commerce secretary and close Bush friend Don Evans, and Marc Racicot, chairman of Bush's 2004 re-election campaign.

Cheney and Rove, meanwhile, both the subject of speculation they might be on the outs because of their connections to the CIA leak case, have received hearty public endorsements from Bush.

There was never much evidence that the president intended a major housecleaning.

Mostly, the White House was banking on good news and a rejuvenated agenda for 2006 to help lift them out of difficult days.

And there are signs they've made some progress. Bush's still-low poll numbers have improved in the wake of an aggressive defense of his Iraq policies and high-profile attention to the revived economy.

___

On the Net:

White House: http://whitehouse.gov



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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."

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White House Crumbles a Cookie

White House denies security specialist's claim that its web site issues cookies in possible violation of government policy.
December 30, 2005

The White House on Friday denied allegations by an Internet security specialist that it issues legally dubious cookies to the computers of web surfers who visit its web site.

The charge came from Richard M. Smith, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based software security specialist, who also has reported that National Security Agency web software is serving long-term cookies to surfers’ computers (see NSA Caught Serving Cookies).

Since his report on the NSA, Mr. Smith and the Associated Press have taken off on a kind of “doorknob-testing” mission to discover which arms of the U.S. government may not be living up to the rules and regulations pertaining to the use of cookies.

On Thursday, Mr. Smith and the AP informed the White House that its web site has been issuing cookies in a manner that most likely contravened an Office of Management and Budget ban on the use of such technology. The White House agreed to investigate the matter.

On Friday afternoon, David Almacy, the White House Internet director, said Mr. Smith's claims were "entirely false." He blamed the software being used by Mr. Smith, which is called a packet-sniffer, for misidentifying cookies that originated from Web Trends, a web analytics firm that serves as a contractor to the White House site.

"What was happening was that users that visited other WebTrends sites picked up WebTrends cookies from other sites," he said.

Neither Mr. Smith nor the investigators for the AP could be reached immediately to comment on the White House's response.

According to Mr. Almacy, Mr. Smith's software "assumed that because we use WebTrends, our site placed the cookies on his hard drive."

He said that if visitors delete the WebTrends cookies from their hard drive, and then visit the White House site, they would find no cookies. RedHerring.com confirmed that was true as of Friday afternoon.

A spokesman for WebTrends, based in Portland, Oregon, affirmed Mr. Almacy's account.

Cookie Monsters

Cookies are small files placed on computers by web programs residing on sites visited by those computers. They were originally designed to hold identifying information to make web surfing easier and faster.

Today cookies are used to store all kinds of information, including the content of a web surfer’s electronic shopping cart. Many web surfers are concerned about the lack of privacy involved in the surreptitious placement of cookies on their computer hard drives.

They are helpful, for the most part, but they carry the potential for abuse because they can monitor and document the activities of web surfers.



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December 31, 2005
Criminal Inquiry Opens Into Spying Leak
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 - The Justice Department said on Friday that it had opened a criminal investigation into the disclosure of classified information about a secret National Security Agency program under which President Bush authorized eavesdropping on people in the United States without court warrants.

The investigation began in recent days after a formal referral from the security agency regarding the leak, federal officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the investigation.

The program, whose existence was revealed in an article in The New York Times on Dec. 16, has provoked sharp criticism from civil liberties groups, some members of Congress and some former intelligence officials who believe that it circumvents the law governing national security eavesdropping.

President Bush and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales have vigorously defended the program as a legal, critical defense against terrorism that has helped prevent attacks in this country. They say Mr. Bush's executive order authorizing the program is constitutional as part of his powers as commander in chief and under the resolution passed by Congress days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. That resolution authorized the use of force against terrorists.

The White House said on Friday that it had played no role in the Justice Department's decision. But in Crawford, Tex., where Mr. Bush has been all week, a spokesman was sent to talk to reporters with a prepared statement about the decision.

"The leaking of classified information is a serious issue," said the spokesman, Trent Duffy.

"The fact is that Al Qaeda's playbook is not printed on Page 1, and when America's is, it has serious ramifications. You don't need to be Sun Tzu to understand that," he said, referring to the Chinese warrior who wrote "The Art of War."

The president last week denounced in strong language the leaking of information about the agency's program, saying: "My personal opinion is it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy."

Privacy advocates on Friday said the leak investigation should be set aside, at least for now, in favor of an investigation of the warrantless eavesdropping itself.

"President Bush broke the law and lied to the American people when he unilaterally authorized secret wiretaps of U.S. citizens," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "But rather than focus on this constitutional crisis, Attorney General Gonzales is cracking down on critics of his friend and boss. Our nation is strengthened, not weakened, by those whistle-blowers who are courageous enough to speak out on violations of the law."

Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, said his group believed "the priority at this point for the Department of Justice should be the appointment of an independent prosecutor to determine whether federal wiretap laws were violated" by the security agency program, not the leak inquiry.

The administration has been sensitive about leaks of closely held information, classified or not, and the Justice Department is also investigating the recent disclosure by The Washington Post that the Central Intelligence Agency operated secret prisons for terrorist suspects in Eastern Europe.

But the most prominent leak investigation during President Bush's five years in office has been the one conducted by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, an independent prosecutor, into the disclosure in 2003 of the secret C.I.A. employment of Valerie Wilson, a covert agency officer. That inquiry resulted in the indictment in October for perjury and obstruction of justice of I. Lewis Libby Jr., then chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

The Fitzgerald investigation also produced subpoenas for several journalists who were asked to testify about their sources. Judith Miller, then a New York Times reporter, served 85 days in jail for initially refusing to discuss her sources.

There are several laws that can be invoked against a government employee who knowingly reveals classified information. One statute applies specifically to the N.S.A., a mammoth code-breaking and eavesdropping agency based at Fort Meade, Md., prohibiting the disclosure of information about "communications intelligence activities" that is "in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States."

Tom Devine, legal director of the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit law firm that defends whistle-blowers, said his group would not object to a limited investigation of the leak of classified information. "But if they do a blanket witch hunt, which I fear," he said, "it would trample all over good government laws" intended to protect government workers who expose wrongdoing.

"The whole reason we have whistle-blower laws is so that government workers can act as the public's eyes and ears to expose illegality or abuse of power," Mr. Devine said.

The administration first learned that The New York Times had obtained information about the secret eavesdropping program more than a year ago and expressed concern to editors that its disclosure could jeopardize terrorism investigations. The newspaper withheld the article at the time, and the government did not open a leak investigation at that time, presumably because such an inquiry might itself disclose the program.

The newspaper did additional reporting and eventually decided to publish the article despite the continuing objections of President Bush and other top officials.

While President Bush has focused his ire on whoever leaked the information, Vice President Cheney, in remarks to reporters on Dec. 20, was critical of The Times as well. Reiterating that the administration had asked the newspaper not to publish the article, Mr. Cheney said: "Eventually they ran it. I think that's unfortunate. I think it damages national security."

A Justice Department official, asked whether the investigation would examine the newspaper's publication of the information in addition to any government employees who might have leaked it, said he could not comment on any aspect of the investigation.

Bill Keller, the newspaper's executive editor, declined to comment on the leak investigation.

Earlier this week, a top F.B.I. official sent a letter to agents working in counterterrorism and intelligence to warn them that despite the public acknowledgment of the spy agency's program by the president and other high officials, it remained classified and should not be discussed.

John Miller, a spokesman for the bureau, said the letter was sent by Gary M. Bald, executive assistant director for counterterrorism and counterintelligence, after agents received inquiries from local officials and others and sought guidance on how to respond.

David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Crawford, Tex., for this article.



Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

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December 31, 2005
Lobbyist Is Given Deadline to Take Deal or Go to Trial
By ANNE E. KORNBLUT
WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 - The indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff must decide by Tuesday whether he will accept a plea or stand trial on fraud charges in a Florida case, a judge in Federal District Court told Mr. Abramoff's lawyers and prosecutors in a court hearing on Friday.

In a conference call, Judge Paul C. Huck of Miami told the two sides to inform the court about their plans and set a hearing for 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

If no agreement is reached, Mr. Abramoff will stand trial in Miami on Jan. 9.

Mr. Abramoff, once an enormously successful Republican lobbyist, is at the heart of a broad federal investigation in Washington into whether lawmakers have been accepting gifts and trips in exchange for legislative favors. But according to people involved in the case, who requested anonymity because the judge has asked them not to talk about it in the news media, prosecutors first began scrutinizing Mr. Abramoff in connection with his business dealings in Florida in 2001, after he bought a casino boat line that was heading into bankruptcy.

Shortly after the purchase, the original owner of the line, Konstantinos Boulis, who still held a minority share, was shot to death in Fort Lauderdale.

Around that time, prosecutors began examining what they viewed as unusual financial arrangements in the case, an inquiry that led them to Washington, where Mr. Abramoff was building up his lobbying practice. Soon he was under investigation in both places, with prosecutors in Washington who specialize in public corruption investigating whether his overtures to elected officials were efforts to bribe them. A Senate investigation also looked into his relationship with Indian casino clients, who paid Mr. Abramoff and a business partner, Michael Scanlon, about $82 million for lobbying work.

Meanwhile, in Florida, prosecutors ultimately concluded that Mr. Abramoff and his business partner there, Adam Kidan, had lied about their financing as they were buying SunCruz casinos. The men were indicted in August on five counts each of fraud and one count of conspiracy, for which they faced up to 30 years in prison. Mr. Kidan pleaded guilty several weeks ago and agreed to testify in exchange for a reduced sentence, as has Mr. Scanlon, putting pressure on Mr. Abramoff to strike his own deal.

Mr. Abramoff has been in negotiations with Justice Department officials about a plea agreement for both the Florida charges and any possible indictment related to his lobbying work, participants in the case said. The split structure of the investigations has complicated the talks, participants have said.

Mr. Abramoff's lawyers declined to comment, and Justice Department officials did not return calls.



Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

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December 31, 2005
Padilla Lawyers Urge Supreme Court to Block Transfer
By NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 - Lawyers for Jose Padilla told the Supreme Court on Friday that it should not grant the government's emergency request to have him transferred from a military brig to civilian custody to face terrorism charges in a civil court.

The lawyers acknowledged that Mr. Padilla would prefer to be in civilian custody eventually. But they said it appeared that the only reason for the government's rush to move him was to bolster the administration's efforts to discourage the Supreme Court from reviewing the crucial underlying issue of whether President Bush had the authority to detain Mr. Padilla, an American citizen, as an enemy combatant for more than three years.

"The government had the power to transfer Padilla from physical military custody for more than three years, yet only now does it deem swift transfer imperative," Mr. Padilla's lawyers argued in their brief filed Friday.

They noted that the justices are scheduled to consider whether to review Mr. Padilla's case at their private conference on Jan. 13. After that, the lawyers said, it would be acceptable to move Mr. Padilla.

When Mr. Padilla (pronounced puh-DILL-ah) was first arrested in Chicago at O'Hare Airport in May 2002, the authorities said he was considering a plot to explode a radioactive "dirty bomb" in some American city. But in the criminal indictment issued in November, the government made no mention of the dirty bomb plot and instead charged him with fighting against American forces alongside members of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

The issue of Mr. Padilla's transfer is the latest development in what has become a complicated and extraordinary legal battle, not only between the government and Mr. Padilla, but also between the Justice Department and a federal appeals court that has usually been a reliable supporter of Mr. Bush's authority in the fight against terrorism.

A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit provided Mr. Bush with a sweeping victory in September, saying he had the power to detain Mr. Padilla, a former Chicago gang member who allied himself with radical Islamists, as an enemy combatant.

But the Bush administration said in November that it no longer needed that authority because it had decided to charge Mr. Padilla in a civilian court. In addition, the Justice Department urged the Supreme Court to drop its review of the power of Mr. Bush to declare a citizen an enemy combatant, saying the Padilla case was now moot. The appeals panel refused to agree to transfer Mr. Padilla from military custody to civilian.

Judge J. Michael Luttig wrote in the opinion declining the transfer that the administration appeared to be trying to manipulate the case to avoid a Supreme Court review of the September ruling. Judge Luttig also warned that the administration's behavior in the case could jeopardize its credibility before the courts in other terrorism cases.

The Justice Department, in a strongly worded application to the Supreme Court earlier this week, said the appeals court panel had overstepped its bounds in denying Mr. Bush's request to transfer Mr. Padilla and asked the justices to order an immediate transfer. The department asserted that Mr. Padilla was agreeable to the transfer. On Friday, his lawyers made it clear that they felt the government mischaracterized their views regarding the transfer.



Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

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December 31, 2005
Citigroup Expected to Land China Deal
By DAVID BARBOZA
and ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
SANYA, China, Saturday, Dec. 31 - A group of investors led by Citigroup has emerged as the top bidder in an auction for about 85 percent of the Guangdong Development Bank, a state-owned Chinese bank, for about $3 billion, according to people briefed on the deal.

By making the top bid, the consortium won the right to negotiate with the bank to buy the stake.

The deal also requires final approval by the Chinese government, but if concluded, it would be one of the largest outside investments ever made in a Chinese bank and also be the first time a foreign company had gained majority control of a Chinese state-owned bank. That control might allow Citigroup to install new management and have some control over the bank's future.

The huge Citigroup-led bid comes after a wave of large foreign investments have been made in China's troubled but potentially lucrative state-owned banking sector.

Foreign investors from some of the world's biggest banks and financial institutions have for much of the last year been aggressively competing to acquire minority stakes in some of China's biggest state-owned banks ahead of initial public offerings.

Bank of America, for instance, paid about $3 billion to acquire a 9 percent stake in the China Construction Bank, which went public in Hong Kong in late October in one of the biggest public stock offerings of the year.

Goldman Sachs along with Allianz of Germany and American Express have also been negotiating to invest about $3 billion in China's largest state-owned bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. UBS has agreed to invest $500 million for a small stake in the Bank of China, which is set to go public in 2006.

And in August, a group of investors led by the Royal Bank of Scotland and Merrill Lynch, two of the world's biggest financial institutions, agreed to pay $3.1 billion to acquire a 10 percent stake in the Bank of China.

Citigroup has trailed other large foreign banks like Bank of America and HSBC in making investments in China. And its investment banking arm has fallen far behind Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs in taking Chinese companies public and advising them on mergers and acquisitions.

But Citigroup now appears likely to be the first foreign company to gain control of a Chinese state-run bank. Still, Citigroup and its partners, which include several Chinese state-owned companies like the China National Cereals, Oils and Foodstuffs Corporation and another foreign investor who has not been identified, are believed to be paying a high price for Guangdong Development Bank, a troubled medium-size lender based in one of China's most prosperous coastal provinces.

A spokeswoman for Citigroup in Shanghai declined to comment today on a possible deal, which was first reported by Reuters. Officials at Guangdong Development Bank could not be reached for comment.

But people briefed on the bidding process say that Citigroup recently beat out ABN-AMRO, Société Générale and Ping An Insurance of China to win the right to take control of the Bank, which has about $40 billion in assets.

This week, Citigroup also said that it would increase its stake in another Chinese lender, the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, to about 19.9 percent from about 4.6 percent in a deal that could cost Citibank another $800 million.

When Citigroup initially invested in Pudong Development Bank, it agreed not to invest in a second Chinese lender; Pudong has now agreed to allow Citigroup to go ahead with another investment.

The banking deals this year are striking because China's banking sector has been plagued by corruption scandals, bad loans and mismanagement. The Chinese government has, however, spent billions of dollars over the last few years to rid the biggest banks of their troubled loans. And with the Chinese economy growing at a rapid clip and the banking sector showing signs of strength, there has been a rush by foreign companies to get a stake or form alliances that could yield huge returns in the coming years.

While each deal seems to cost even more to secure, some Chinese government officials have complained that the nation's state-owned banks have been sold too cheaply, suggesting that prices could go even higher.

With Guangdong Development Bank, Citigroup could be winning control of one of the most destitute of China's big banks. Guangdong Development, like so many other big banks here, has followed poor lending practices and been overrun by bad loans. Citigroup and its partners now may have extraordinary control over how the bank deals with its loan problems and future expansion.

All the other large foreign banks and institutions have tiny minority stakes in much bigger Chinese banks and seem unlikely to have ultimate control over how those banks operate or to appoint top-level managers.

The Chinese government generally does not allow foreign institutions to own more than 20 percent of a state-owned bank but may be making an exception for Guangdong Development because of its huge liabilities and its status as a medium-size lender without the influence or history of the big four state-owned banks: the Bank of China, China Construction Bank, the Agricultural Bank of China and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

David Barboza reported from Sanya, China,for this article, and Andrew Ross Sorkin from New York.



Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

ACLU Slams DOJ Investigation of NSA Whistleblower, Says Government Must Independently Investigate Violation of Wiretap Laws (12/30/2005)


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Media@aclu.org

NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union today sharply criticized a Justice Department investigation into the disclosure of an illegal National Security Agency domestic eavesdropping operation approved by President George W. Bush.


In a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as well as two full-page advertisements in the New York Times, the ACLU has called for the appointment of a special counsel to determine whether President Bush violated federal wiretapping laws by authorizing illegal surveillance of domestic targets.


The following statement can be attributed to ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero:


"President Bush broke the law and lied to the American people when he unilaterally authorized secret wiretaps of U.S. citizens. But rather than focus on this constitutional crisis, Attorney General Gonzales is cracking down on critics of his friend and boss. Our nation is strengthened, not weakened, by those whistleblowers who are courageous enough to speak out on violations of the law."


"To avoid further charges of cronyism, Attorney General Gonzales should call off the investigation. Better yet, Mr. Gonzales ought to fulfill his own oath of office and appoint a special counsel to determine whether federal laws were violated."


The ACLU's December 29 advertisement is online at:
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/spying/23271res20051229.html




The ACLU's December 22 advertisement is online at:
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/spying/23203res20051222.html




The ACLU's December 21 letter to Attorney General Gonzales is online at:
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/23184leg20051221.html




The ACLU's December 20 Freedom of Information Act request seeking information about the NSA's program of warrantless spying on Americans is online at:
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/spying/23150prs20051220.html

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US government warns it's running out of cash Fri Dec 30,12:21 PM ET



Treasury Secretary John Snow has warned that unless Congress raises the national debt limit, the US government will run out of cash to finance its daily work in two months.

In a letter to Senate leaders Thursday, Snow said the statutory debt limit imposed by Congress of 8.184 trillion dollars would be reached in mid-February and the government would then lose its borrowing power.

"At that time, unless the debt limit is raised or the Treasury Department takes authorized extraordinary actions, we will be unable to continue to finance government operations," said the letter, seen by AFP.

Snow warned that even if the Treasury took "all available prudent and legal actions" to avoid breaching the ceiling, "we anticipate that we can finance government operations no longer than mid-March".

"Accordingly, I am writing to request that Congress raise the statutory debt limit as soon as possible."

The Republican-led Congress last voted to increase the debt limit in mid-November 2004, despite opposition from Democrats who demanded the free-spending federal government tighten its belt instead.

The US debt limit sparked bitter partisan battles in the mid-1990s between a Republican-dominated Congress and the Democratic administration of president Bill Clinton, leading to shutdowns of the federal government.

Once the US government hits the ceiling, it comes under threat of defaulting on its debts and can lose the ability to raise future credit on the capital markets.

Snow underlined that the "full faith and credit of the United States" was a unique selling point on the markets.

"A failure to increase the debt limit in a timely manner would threaten this unique and important position," he wrote in his letter.




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December 31, 2005
Diplomatic Rout

by Gordon Prather
To the consternation of Bush, Cheney, and Rice, at the end of 2004, Iran concluded a $70 billion agreement with China, wherein state-owned Sinopec contracted to buy 250 million tons of LNG, help Iran develop its giant Yadavaran field and construct related oil, gas and petrochemical facilities, including a 220-mile pipeline to link up with the partially completed Sino-Russo state-owned Asian pipeline network, which will deliver more than 200,000 bpd next year – and more than a million bpd when completed – of Iranian-Kazakstani-Russian oil to China.

To the consternation of Bush, Cheney, and Rice, at the end of 2005, Iran was finalizing an agreement with India and Pakistan to construct – perhaps with the assistance of Russia’s Gazprom – a multi-billion dollar natural gas pipeline to deliver Iranian natural gas to Pakistan and India.

To the consternation of Bush, Cheney, and Rice, the Russians and Chinese continued to support throughout 2005 Iran’s "inalienable right" – guaranteed by the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons – to enjoy "without discrimination," nuclear energy, for peaceful purposes.

In November, 2003, International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Mohamed Elbaradei had reported that "to date, there is no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear material and activities … were related to a nuclear weapons program."

In November, 2004, ElBaradei reported that "all the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for, and therefore such material is not diverted to prohibited activities."

In spite of those certifications by ElBaradei, Bush, Cheney, and Rice continued to insist throughout 2005 that Iran was – and had been for years – developing nuclear weapons. Bush, Cheney, and Rice continued throughout 2005 to invoke sanctions on US, European, Chinese and Russian entities who did business with Iran, particularly in the energy sector.

Bush, Cheney, and Rice continued to insist throughout 2005 that it was incumbent upon the IAEA Board of Governors to refer Iran’s "failure" to comply with its "international obligations" to the UN Security Council for "possible action."

What "international obligations" were these neo-crazies talking about?

Last year, Iran voluntarily entered into negotiations with the British, French, and Germans [E3], who purported to be negotiating on behalf of the European Union. Iran voluntarily suspended for the duration of the negotiations all uranium-enrichment activities.

The so-called Paris Agreement to negotiate explicitly stated that the EU/E3 recognized "that this suspension is a voluntary confidence building measure and not a legal obligation."

Iranian officials made it clear (a) at the IAEA Board of Governors meetings in March and June, ( at the Seventh Review Conference of the Treaty in April, and © in their Note Verbale to the IAEA of August 1st that any attempt by the EU/E3 to turn their voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment activities into a cessation or long term suspension would be "incompatible with the letter and spirit of the Paris Agreement and therefore unacceptable to Iran."

Bush, Cheney, and Rice strong-armed the EU/E3 into not only demanding that the voluntary suspension of uranium-enrichment activities be made permanent, but that Iran renounce almost totally its "inalienable right" – guaranteed by the NPT, the Iranian Safeguards Agreement and the Paris Agreement – to virtually all elements of the nuclear fuel cycle.

Iran promptly resumed some IAEA safeguarded enrichment related activities voluntarily suspended.

How did Bush, Cheney, and Rice respond?

Well, according to the Iranians:

"Regrettably, the EU3, pressed by the United States, adopted a path of confrontation in the September 2005 IAEA Board of Governors meeting.

"In clear violation of their October 2003 and November 2004 commitments, the EU3 moved a politically motivated and factually and legally flawed resolution in the IAEA Board of Governors, and together with the United States … imposed it on the Board.

"As the IAEA Board of Governors had underlined in its past and current resolution, suspension "is a voluntary, non-legal binding confidence building measure." When the Board itself explicitly recognizes that suspension is "not a legally-binding obligation," no wording by the Board can turn this voluntary measure into an essential element for anything.

"In fact the Board of Governors has no factual or legal ground, nor any statutory power, to make or enforce such a demand, or impose ramifications as a consequence of it."

The majority of the Board apparently agrees with the Iranians and it now appears unlikely that the Board will ever refer this alleged failure to comply with its "international obligations" to the Security Council.

Bush, Cheney, and Rice "diplomatic" strong-armed tactics also failed to prevent development of the Sino-Russian oil-gas pipeline network in Asia.

Now, Russia’s Gazprom is threatening to shut down its natural gas pipeline – which transits Ukraine on its way to Europe – on New Year’s Day unless the anti-Russian Bush, Cheney, and Rice supported government in Ukraine shapes up.

Happy New Year, EU/E3.

U.S. Death Toll in Iraq Nears 2004 Level By PATRICK QUINN, Associated Press Writer

Two more U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq as the year wound down Friday, putting the American military death toll at 841 so far — just five short of 2004's lost lives despite political progress and dogged efforts to quash the insurgency.

Violence continued on Saturday with gunmen raiding a house near Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad, and killing five members of a Sunni family, army Col. Hussein Sheyaa said. A roadside bomb also exploded in Baghdad, killing five policemen, 1st Lt. Nadum Nuaman said.

In addition, five members of the Iraqi Islamic party died when a roadside bomb exploded near their headquarters in Al-Khalis, 10 miles east of Baqouba, police said.

In Baghdad, hundreds of cars lined up at gas stations as word spread that Iraq's largest oil refinery shut down two weeks ago because of threats of insurgent attacks. Nearly three years after the U.S.-led invasion, a fuel crisis again threatens to cripple a country with the world's third-largest proven oil reserves.

At least 17 people were killed in shootings, mortar attacks and a suicide car bombing in Baghdad on Friday. In the most serious incident, police said nine people were killed in a drive-by shooting — apparently because they were drinking alcohol in public. Two Iraqi army captains were also gunned down in the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad, as they drove home.

A senior Sudanese diplomat said his country closed its embassy in Baghdad in an effort to win the release of six kidnapped employees — including one diplomat.

"A statement was issued by the Sudanese government to close the embassy in Iraq to win the release of our kidnapped citizens," Charge d'affairs Mohamed Ahmed Khalil told The Associated Press. He added that the embassy's 12 employees would leave Monday.

Al-Qaida in Iraq had threatened Thursday to kill five Sudanese on Saturday unless the country removed its diplomatic mission from Iraq.

The Sudanese Foreign Ministry reported on Dec. 24 that six of its embassy employees were kidnapped — including the mission's second secretary, Abdel Moneam Mohammad Tom. It was not clear if the al-Qaida statement was referring to the same group.

The two new deaths of U.S. military personnel were announced Friday by the American military. A bomb killed one soldier when it struck his vehicle in Baghdad on Friday, while the second soldier was shot and killed in the western city of Fallujah.

Their deaths brought the number of U.S. military members killed so far in 2005 to 841, of whom 64 died in December. A total of 846 troops died in 2004 and 485 in 2003. The worst month in 2005 was January with 106 fatalities, followed by November with 96 and August with 85.

The United States hopes that as more Iraqi police and army forces are trained, they will slowly take over responsibility for security from American troops. Much of that expectation hinges on the ability of Iraq's ethnic and sectarian groups to form a broad-based government that will have the legitimacy to deflate the Sunni Arab-led insurgency.

In Beiji, some 155 miles north of Baghdad and near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, the deteriorating security situation led authorities to shut down Iraq's largest oil refinery Dec. 18, former oil minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum told the AP.

Al-Uloum said the facility "is considered one of the vital refineries in Iraq" and produces about 2 million gallons of gas a day.

As word of the shutdown spread through the country, abut 1,000 vehicles waited at one of Baghdad's biggest gas stations, known as the Jindi al-Majhoul, or Unknown Soldier station.

Ahmed Khalaf, 33, said he left his home at dawn and was still in line at noon. He expected to wait a few more hours before getting fuel.

"After the rise in gas prices, now we have a gas shortage," he said. "I left my work early, and I don't think I will have the opportunity to return to work today because of this long line. Dark will come soon and I cannot work at night."

Ali Moussa, a 51-year-old tanker truck driver, said he and his colleagues were working in a dangerous situation.

"We demand that the government provide security and protection," he said. "The Beiji storage tanks are full and there isn't any shortage of gas there. The problem is that drivers are too afraid to go there unless they are protected."

Baghdad in particular has been suffering from a shortage of refined fuel, much of which is already imported because of the country's diminished refining capacity. A number of demonstrations have already been held around Iraq because of a Dec. 19 increase in gas prices.

At the time, the price of imported and super gasoline was raised from about 13 cents a gallon to about 65 cents a gallon.

The oil crisis has already cost one job, that of al-Uloum, the oil minister, who was given a 30-day vacation last Wednesday and replaced with Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi. Al-Uloum had opposed a recent decision to raise prices for fuel and cooking oil as much as ninefold.

Iraq's proven oil reserves, estimated at about 110 billion barrels, are the world's third largest after Saudi Arabia and Canada. Analysts have predicted that Iraq's oil production will average about 1.8 million barrels per day this year, about 10 percent less than 2004 levels of about 2 million barrels — and just over half the 1990 level. One reason is frequent insurgent attacks on pipelines and refineries.

___

Associated Press reporter Sinan Salahheddin and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed to this report.



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The Year in Death

IN 2005, 60 PEOPLE were executed in the United States -- a tiny increase from the 59 people put to death in 2004. This figure represents at least a temporary leveling off of the precipitous decline of capital punishment in the United States since 1999, when the states executed 98 people. Yet...

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

The DeLay-Abramoff Money Trail

By R. Jeffrey Smith

The U.S. Family Network, a public advocacy group that operated in the 1990s with close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay and claimed to be a nationwide grass-roots organization, was funded almost entirely by corporations linked to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to tax records and former associates...

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

Leak in Domestic Spy Program Investigated Los Angeles Times
The Justice Department disclosed Friday that it was investigating who had leaked classified information about President Bush's top-secret domestic spying program
Justice Department Investigates NSA Spying Leak The Moderate Voice
Inquiry opens into leak of domestic spying program CNN International
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Dems Seek New Federal Budget in New Year By ELISABETH GOODRIDGE, Associated Press Writer
10 minutes ago



Reconsidering the federal budget should be one of Congress' first priorities in the new year, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Saturday in the Democrats' weekly radio address.

"Today as Americans are making New Year's resolutions, our Democratic New Year's resolution is to renew America's promise," the California congresswoman said.

A budget that addresses issues such as health care and education would create a better future for the American people, she said, but the current Republican spending plan fails to do so.

"The federal budget should be a statement of our national values," Pelosi said. "Sadly, the Republican budget fails that test."

Pelosi drew on several religious references during her address. She also mentioned a December rally of religious leaders who traveled to Washington to protest the proposed budget.

"Religious leaders told Congress that they are drawing a moral line in the sand against the Republican budget's misplaced priorities."

The budget proposed by the Democrats protects the middle class, reduces the deficit and reflects our American values, Pelosi said.

With this plan, she said, the government could wisely invest in issues that are important to Americans, such as education, health care and keeping energy costs down. Proposed spending cuts for these programs has drawn fiery debate in Congress in recent weeks.

"We must draw a fiscal line in the sand. And we must join the religious community in drawing a moral line in the sand," Pelosi said. "Nothing less is at stake than the well-being of America's children, the strength and soundness of our economy, and the respect that America commands in the world."




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Republican: Trump May Run for N.Y. Gov.

Donald Trump is considering running for governor, a leading Republican said Friday. Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno on Thursday suggested that a big-name candidate could be flirting with entering the 2006 contest. On Friday, he confirmed to News Channel 10 in Albany that he had been referring to Trump.

Bruno told the station he had spoken to the real estate developer and TV personality about a possible run.

Trump's office in New York had no immediate comment. State GOP Executive Director Ryan Moses said neither he nor state party Chairman Stephen Minarik have had discussions with Trump about running.

Said Frank MacKay, state chairman of the Independence Party: "(Trump) is a formidable candidate for anything he decides to run for. We would love to see him run for president of the United States in 2008 as a third-party candidate. I'd do what I could to help give him a strong base here in New York and everywhere else in the country."

Trump flirted with a run for president on the Reform Party ticket in 2000. He has given money to Republicans and Democrats in state races.

Republicans are looking for a candidate with name recognition and money to take on the only announced Democratic candidate, state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer is far ahead of all candidates for governor in the early polls.

Spitzer won an endorsement Friday from former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, who cited his fellow Democrat's record as a corporate reformer.

"As attorney general, he demonstrated a real commitment to reforming institutions from Wall Street to Main Street, and I look forward to watching him work on reforming state government," Koch said at a news conference.

Koch, a Democrat, endorsed Republican Gov. George E. Pataki for re-election in 2002. Pataki has announced he will not seek a fourth term.

Spitzer is the lone Democrat in the race, although some Democrats say Thomas Suozzi, executive of Nassau County on Long Island, is considering entering the race.

Announced Republican candidates include former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, former Assemblyman John Faso, former Secretary of State Randy Daniels and Assemblyman Patrick Manning.




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Iraq, Economy Highlight Bush Radio Address
By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer

To President Bush, 2005 was a year in which America grew more prosperous, advanced the cause of freedom abroad and enhanced its security at home. "Our duties continue in the new year," he said.

In his weekly radio address Saturday, Bush lauded political developments in Iraq and Afghanistan and offered Americans reassurance that progress was being made.

"This year, we watched the Iraqi people defy the terrorists and suicide bombers and hold three successful elections, voting to choose the only constitutional, democratic government in the Arab world," Bush said in the New Year's Eve broadcast, taped at his Texas ranch.

"We also saw the people of Afghanistan elect a democratic parliament in a nation that only a few years ago was ruled by the Taliban."

In the new year, the president said, U.S. troops will find and clear the enemy out of Iraqi cities and towns, transfer more control to Iraqi units and bolster security forces so they can take the lead in securing the nation. He said his administration also would help the Iraqis build political institutions and a stronger economy.

"Our coalition is overcoming earlier setbacks and moving forward with a reconstruction plan to rebuild Iraq's economy and infrastructure," Bush said. "As we help Iraq build a peaceful and stable democracy, the United States will gain an ally in the war on terror, inspire reformers across the Middle East and make the American people more secure."

On the homefront, Bush stressed improvements in the U.S. economy and the push to make tax cuts permanent and expand trade. He plans to deliver a speech on the economy Friday after visiting the Chicago Board of Trade.

The administration can point to the creation of 1.8 million new jobs in the past year, and the economy grew at a lively 4.3 percent pace in the third quarter — the best showing in more than a year.

The performance offered fresh testimony that the country's overall economic health managed to improve despite the destructive force of Gulf Coast hurricanes.

And although there are concerns about federal budget deficits, Republicans hope that touting improvements in the economy will blunt Democrats' attempts to use it as an issue in next year's elections and help shift public attention away from casualties in Iraq.

"Inflation is low, productivity is high and small businesses are flourishing," Bush said. "Real disposable income is up. Consumers are confident, and early reports suggest good retail sales this holiday season."

The president also applauded the House and Senate for voting before the holiday recess to cut mandatory spending by nearly $40 billion. "This will be the first reduction of entitlement spending in nearly a decade," he said.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has warned that U.S. deficits are set to soar with the impending retirement of 78 million baby boomers and has suggested that Congress consider trimming Social Security and Medicare benefits.

If something isn't done to trim benefit costs, the resulting budget deficits would "cast an ever-larger shadow" over the future living standards of Americans, the outgoing Fed chairman said earlier this month.




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Bush resolves to stay on the offensive in Iraq in 2006

US President George W. Bush has resolved to remain "on the offense" in the new year to install a stable and independent democracy in Iraq.

"The United States has a vital interest in the success of a free Iraq, so in the year ahead, we will continue to pursue the comprehensive strategy for victory," Bush said Saturday in his last weekly radio address of the year, from his Texas ranch.

"Our coalition is staying on the offense, finding and clearing the enemy out of Iraqi cities, towns and villages, transferring more control to Iraqi units, and building up the Iraqi security forces so they can increasingly lead the fight to secure their country," Bush said.

Speaking of Iraq's political and economic reconstruction and elections there and in Afghanistan, Bush stressed: "These are amazing achievements in the history of liberty."

He did not address the issue of reducing US troop levels, nor did he discuss his strategy for Iraq, which has increasingly come under fire.

But the president did mention US economic priorities and deficit reduction.

"During 2005, thanks to our tax relief, spending restraint and the hard work of the American people, our economy remained the envy of the world," Bush said, citing growth and new jobs as well as low inflation.

"To keep our economy moving forward, we must continue to pursue sound policies in Washington and be wise with taxpayers' money," he said. "In the new year, we must also make permanent the tax relief that has kept our economy growing.

"We will work to expand free and fair trade, so America's farmers, workers and businesses can enjoy the opportunities the global economy offers," Bush added.




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Dec 31, 7:49 AM EST

Sign Tallying Military Deaths Upsets Army

By PATRICK CONDON
Associated Press Writer

DULUTH, Minn. (AP) -- Scott Cameron never imagined his modest memorial to American troops in Iraq would transform a quiet street here into the latest front of the nation's tense debate about the war in Iraq.

His sign tallying the war's dead and wounded rests feet from the local Army recruiting office, and Cameron's refusal to take it down despite Army requests has drawn national attention. The fuss is giving the Vietnam veteran a chance to air a view he wishes he'd expressed long ago.

"The way veterans have been treated in this country is shameful," Cameron said this week.

His tribute has irritated the military recruiters next door, who dislike the daily reminder of friends lost. Staff Sgt. Gary Capan, the post's commander, requested that the sign come down for his colleagues' benefit.

"They're saying, 'Why should we have to look at that? We lost people over there,'" said Staff Sgt. Gary Capan, the post's commander. "It's not just a number to them."

Some of Cameron's supporters believe the sign will hurt recruiting.

"You're a young kid and you see those stark numbers, you might realize there's a cost you didn't consider," said Gary Tonkin, a Vietnam veteran.

It all started a month ago, when Cameron, a volunteer for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Steve Kelley, posted a sign in the window of the campaign's local office. It reads, "Remember the Fallen Heroes," and contains three tallies: the number of American troops killed in Iraq, the number wounded and the days passed since the war began.
"The sacrifices our troops and their families are making are an important part of Minnesotans' lives right now," said Kelley, one of several Democrats seeking to unseat Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty next year. "If this draws attention to that, it's all to the good as far as I'm concerned."

As of Friday, the sign reported 2,177 troops had been killed and 16,155 injured, after 1,017 days in Iraq. Capan said the sign hasn't hurt recruiting: "We had three people sign up just today," he said earlier this week.

It's not the first dust-up over the U.S. military's continued presence in Iraq. Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed there, camped outside President Bush's Texas ranch for weeks.

Duluth seems an unlikely location for the latest flare-up. The city of brick mansions and steep hills rising off Lake Superior in northeastern Minnesota is a stronghold of blue-collar progressivism mixed with old-fashioned Midwestern patriotism.

Many residents seem uncomfortable with the controversy.

"This really shouldn't be that big a deal," Sam Johnson said. His companion, Lisa Whitestone, said, "I think it's a fair thing to be reminded that there's a cost for us to be over there."

Cameron said he never intended to discourage recruiting efforts - but he's not particularly concerned if it does.

A native of Spokane, Wash., he went to Vietnam at 19. He was injured when AK-47 fire ripped through the floor of a helicopter he was riding in, hitting his spine and collapsing his left lung.

He's had nearly four dozen surgeries since then, he said, and supports himself with his disability pension.

Cameron said he's always regretted not speaking out against Vietnam after his injury. He's hoping to steer media attention over the sign toward veterans' problems. He wants Congress to pass legislation that would prevent future cuts in benefits.

He said he's contacted several manufacturers to produce and market a line of signs like his that war opponents could post on their lawns or elsewhere. A portion of the profits would go to veterans organizations.

"I'm in awe of what's happening here," Cameron said. "If that sign can be used as a force for good, then it's worth it."

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January 1, 2006
Officials at U.N. Seek Fast Action on Rights Panel
By WARREN HOGE
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 31 - Officials of the United Nations, which has struggled through a period of scandal and mismanagement, have decided they must act within weeks to produce an alternative to its widely discredited Human Rights Commission to maintain hope of redeeming the United Nations' credibility in 2006.

The commission, which is based in Geneva, has been a persistent embarrassment to the United Nations because participation has been open to countries like Cuba, Sudan and Zimbabwe, current members who are themselves accused of gross rights abuses. Libya held the panel's chairmanship in 2003.

"The reason highly abusive governments flock to the commission is to prevent condemnation of themselves and their kind, and most of the time they succeed," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "If you're a thug, you want to be on the committee that tries to condemn thugs."

Mark Malloch Brown, chief of staff to Secretary General Kofi Annan, noted that with two other crucial steps toward reform in place - a new Peacebuilding Commission to help countries emerging from war, and a biennial budget under an arrangement laying the groundwork for major management change by June - the rights commission had taken center stage.

"For the great global public, the performance or nonperformance of the Human Rights Commission has become the litmus test of U.N. renewal," he said. "We can't overestimate getting a clear win on this in January."

Mr. Annan begins his last year in office with a mandate to bring fundamental and lasting change to the beleaguered institution. Negotiators have been struggling for months over the terms of a new Human Rights Council that he proposed in the spring to replace the commission. A hoped-for agreement in December did not materialize.

Negotiators resume talks on Jan. 11 and must settle on a resolution for the new council soon after to have it in place by March, when the commission reconvenes in Geneva. "The commission should hold that meeting with the understanding that it is going to be its last meeting," said Ricardo Arias, the ambassador of Panama, who is one of the leaders of the working group drawing up the new Human Rights Council.

The current commission has 53 members serving staggered three-year terms and elected from closed slates put forward by regional groups. It meets each year in Geneva for six weeks.

The proposed council would exist year-round, be free to act when rights violations are discovered, conduct periodic reviews of every country's human rights performance and meet more frequently throughout the year.

Still in dispute are the council's size, the procedures for citing individual countries, how often the panel would meet, a possible two-term limit for membership and whether members would be chosen based on agreed criteria of human rights performance or by a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly as a way of weeding out notorious rights violators.

The proposal envisions votes on each candidate for membership rather than on regional slates. As with most of the changes being proposed at the United Nations, the rights council has drawn suspicion from the poorer and less developed nations of the 191-member General Assembly. They say they fear the new council may be yet another way for wealthier and more powerful nations to intrude in their affairs.

Abdallah Baali, the ambassador of Algeria, said the main concern of objecting nations was "whether or not this council will impose both its measures and its views on a member state or will it seek their cooperation in order to improve their human rights records. " He said Algeria supported the proposed council.

Diplomats at the United Nations singled out Egypt and Pakistan as countries that were leading the resistance to the proposed council.

In introducing his recommendation for a new council in March, Mr. Annan cited the flaws in the current commission and the consequences for the United Nations of not reforming it. The commission had been undermined, he argued, by allowing participation of countries whose purpose was "not to strengthen human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticize others."

"As a result," he said, "a credibility deficit has developed, which casts a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole."

Mr. Roth of Human Rights Watch was blunter. "If the governments of the world cannot get together on human rights at the U.N., then it is a shameful act for the entire organization," he said.

Peggy Hicks, the global advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, said that having rights abusers on the panel had a broadly debilitating effect on its work. "In the case of Sudan, the Sudanese government's presence on the commission meant that African states and others watered down language that human rights groups around the world thought appropriate to address crimes against humanity," she said.

She said Zimbabwe's presence on the commission was an important factor in the panel's decision to take no action this year against the government of Robert Mugabe despite widespread accusations of abuse against Zimbabwe's own citizens.

"In general," Ms. Hicks said, "what the presence of abusive countries on the commission means is that much of its energy is taken up with the blocking actions and delaying tactics that end up weakening action on human rights abuses worldwide. Yes, they delay action on their own internal situations, but they have a vested interest in seeing that the overall ability is as weak as possible."

Kristen Silverberg, assistant secretary of state for international organizations, said the United States' priorities were "to improve the membership so that countries like Zimbabwe and Sudan were not eligible" and "to make sure the council can act."

"We don't need more theatrics and discussion in Geneva," she said. "We need concerted action."

"Some countries have argued that it's better for the council to stay away from anything that would embarrass a country, but we think the council needs to be prepared to take action in serious cases like Darfur and Burma," she said in an interview, referring to the country that now calls itself Myanmar.

Mr. Arias said that "a lot of emphasis has been placed on the matter of cooperation to improve human rights, not just passing resolutions against a country which is in violation but on making an effort to increase the capacity to improve human rights in the long term."

Mr. Roth said the United States and the European Union were strong supporters of the proposed council but needed to become more aggressive in building the case for it with reluctant countries.

Ms. Silverberg said that she and the State Department's adviser on United Nations reform, Ambassador Sharin Tahir-Kheli, had pressed the case for the human rights council and management reform on trips to capitals in Latin America and South Asia and that she was going to the Middle East for the same purpose next month. She noted that Ms. Tahir-Kheli had visited Cairo and Islamabad, among other capitals.

Prince Zeid Raad al-Hussein, the ambassador of Jordan, said that while his country supported the proposed council, it was concerned that condemning the current commission outright would be to ignore that it had sometimes proved effective.

"What we are concerned about is about 20 percent of its work, while the rest seems to be working quite well," said the prince, a former United Nations peacekeeper in Bosnia. "Look at all the rapporteurs in the field putting together their reports, often with good cooperation with governments. This must be encouraged and continued."

This year the commission established a special rapporteur, or investigator, on human rights and counterterrorism that drew the support of 80 United Nations members, including Russia and the United States. It also passed a resolution establishing a human rights monitoring operation in Nepal where both the government and Maoist insurgents have been accused of abuses.

In November, Mr. Arias and the other leader of the working group, Dumisani Kumalo, the South African ambassador, accompanied Jan Eliasson, the Swedish diplomat who is the General Assembly president, to Geneva on a mission to calm concerns there over plans for the council.

"There was a good deal of suspicion, and it's important that you don't develop an antagonistic relationship between Geneva and New York," Mr. Eliasson said in a telephone interview from Stockholm.

"It was important to pick up the best practices and good things the Human Rights Commission has been doing," he said, "and many people in Geneva felt that aspect was being disregarded."



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January 1, 2006
The Army, Faced With Its Limits
By FRED KAPLAN
ONE million men and women serve in the United States Army, so why is it proving nearly impossible to keep a mere 150,000 of them in Iraq?

The Pentagon expects to face many Iraq-type conflicts in the coming years, wars that involve battling insurgents and restoring stability. As a result, a debate is beginning to churn in defense policy circles: Should the government enlarge the military so it can more easily fight these wars? Or should the government alter its policies, so as not to fight such wars as often, at least not alone?

Senior Pentagon officials argue that neither shift is necessary, that reorganizing the Army's existing combat units into stronger, faster and more flexible brigades will have the same effect as adding more soldiers. But some analysts doubt these adjustments alone will go far enough.

Lawrence Korb, who was assistant secretary of defense for manpower and reserve affairs in the Reagan administration, states the issue baldly: "We cannot fight a long, sustained war without a larger ground force." He defines a "long war" as lasting two years or more. The Iraq war has gone on now for nearly three.

The claim may seem strange, until you peel apart the numbers. Of the Army's one million soldiers, fewer than 400,000 are combat troops (the rest are support personnel). Only about 150,000 of those combat troops are on active duty; the rest are in the National Guard and Reserves.

Then there is the matter of rotation. Combat units, at least in an all-volunteer force, cannot be deployed for much longer than a year. (To do otherwise would risk exhaustion and demoralization.) Replacements come while the battle-weary go out for rest, retraining and resupply. Therefore, to sustain one active brigade (about 3,500 troops) in a war zone, one or two additional brigades must be ready to replace it.

Finally, Iraq isn't the only foreign country where American combat troops are stationed.

In a study published in October, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office calculated that given all these factors the military could not sustain more than 123,000 troops in Iraq for much longer.

Additional forces, the budget office concluded, would require the United States to "increase the size of the land forces, terminate some other commitment or rotate forces to Iraq at more demanding rates." In the past year, the Pentagon has already stretched the rotation cycle in Iraq, for both active and reserve forces; and it has redeployed one brigade from Bosnia and another from South Korea. "There isn't much more leeway for simply moving people around," Mr. Korb said.

That leaves the other option: adding more land forces overall. How many? James Dobbins and James Quinlivan, military analysts at the RAND Corporation, have analyzed historical data on the numbers of foreign troops in various occupations after a war. They found that all the successful missions involved troop levels totaling at least 2 percent of the occupied country's population.

Taking that figure as a rough rule of thumb, securing Iraq, which has 25 million people, would require 500,000 foreign troops. American and coalition forces now total about 180,000.

Gen. Eric Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff, drew on similar historical studies when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee in February 2003, a month before the war started, that "several hundred thousand troops" would be needed to restore order after the fighting (a claim that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, at the time, vigorously disputed).

A force that large probably could have been mobilized to Iraq for some period, maybe for a year. In 2003-2004, before the insurgency got seriously under way, that may have been enough to impose order. But now, it is generally recognized that it's not possible to send any more troops from the Army as it stands.

When Representative John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat, advocated withdrawing troops from Iraq in November, he said he did so in part because senior military officers had told him the Army could not sustain even the existing troop levels.

As a way to do more with less, the Army has begun to reorganize its forces, so that each brigade has more combat troops and fewer support personnel. John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, an independent clearinghouse for military information, estimates that this shift, if it's fully carried out, will let the military "sustain its current level of effort in Iraq indefinitely."

Top Pentagon officials are also seriously thinking about ways to improve the strategies for waging counterinsurgency wars. In December, Gordon England, the No. 2 official at the Defense Department, issued a directive declaring that "stability operations are a core U.S. military mission" and "should be given priority comparable to combat operations."

BUT the 11-page directive notes that carrying out the policy would require not just reshuffling but expanding the armed forces. And the Army's plan for more combat-heavy brigades requires at least keeping the same numbers of troops. Yet in the face of budgetary pressures, Mr. Rumsfeld is reportedly preparing to order cuts in military manpower.

The Army's recruitment and retention rates are declining, in any case. This has led many experts to wonder if the United States, which has relied entirely on volunteer troops since 1973, should bring back the draft.

The presidential commission that proposed ending the draft back in 1970 wrote in its report that an all-volunteer force, which it otherwise strongly endorsed, would be good only for short wars. For longer wars, the National Guard and Reserves would be called on for "the first stage in the expansion of effective forces." If war went on still longer and required more manpower, civilians would have to be brought in, if necessary, "by conscription." For this reason, the report recommended, and presidents have retained, mandatory draft registration.

Few believe Congress will reactivate the draft, short of a threat to national survival or a conflict on the order of World War II. Nor do many senior military officers want to revive conscription. They regard the all-volunteer forces as smarter, more disciplined and more skillful than the draftees of the Vietnam era.

If the Bush administration lacks the resources to meet its expansive military goals, some experts say, maybe the goals should be contracted to meet the resources.

"After the occupations of Bosnia and Kosovo, people said, 'Look how good we are at this,' " recalls Barry Posen, professor of security studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "They forget those places are small. Bosnia has four million people, Kosovo two million. It's just hard to impose your will on a larger country, unless you want to be savage about it. It's always been hard."

Professor Posen adds, "If you do need to go in and occupy some place, you should want everybody and his cousin to go in with you." This would mean a renewed emphasis on multilateralism, alliances and diplomacy - stemming not from moral qualms about the use of force, but from simple arithmetic. "Given the limits on our resources," he says, "it just seems impossible to do it any other way."

Fred Kaplan is national security columnist for Slate.



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January 1, 2006
Death Toll for the American Military in Iraq in 2005 Is 844
By DEXTER FILKINS
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 31 - At least 844 American service members were killed in Iraq in 2005, nearly matching 2004's total of 848, according to information released by the United States government and a nonprofit organization that tracks casualties in Iraq.

The deaths of two Americans announced by the United States military on Friday - a marine killed by gunfire in Falluja and a soldier killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad - brought the total killed since the war in Iraq began in March 2003 to 2,178. The total wounded since the war began is 15,955.

From Jan. 1, 2005 to Dec. 3, 2005, the most recent date for which numbers are available, the number of Americans military personnel wounded in Iraq was 5,557. The total wounded in 2004 was 7,989.

In 2005, the single bloodiest month for American soldiers and marines was January, when 107 were killed and nearly 500 were wounded. At the time, American forces were conducting numerous operations to secure the country for the elections on Jan. 30. The second worst month was October, when 96 Americans were killed and 603 wounded.

More than half of all 2005 American military deaths, 427, were caused by homemade bombs, most planted along roadsides and detonated as vehicles passed. American commanders have said that roadside bombs, the leading cause of death in Iraq, have grown larger and more sophisticated. Many are set off by remote detonators and are powerful enough to destroy heavily armored tanks and troop carriers.

The totals were compiled by Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, a nonprofit group that tracks American service members killed and wounded in Iraq. The Associated Press, which keeps its own statistics, reported the year's death toll as slightly lower, saying that 841 had been killed.

Death totals for Iraqis have been more difficult to estimate, and vary widely. Iraq Body Count, an independent media-monitoring group, estimates that about 30,000 Iraqis have died since the war began in 2003.

On Saturday, violence flared across Iraq. In Khalis, north of Baghdad, a bomb killed five members of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni political party that defied insurgent threats and fielded candidates in the Dec. 15 election. Since 2003, at least 75 party members have been killed.

In central Baghdad, a roadside bomb struck an Iraqi police patrol, killing two officers.

At Camp Victory, the American military headquarters just outside Baghdad, Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, urged Iraqi political leaders on Saturday to form a new government as quickly as possible to avoid the kind of delay that stalled the political momentum after the vote last January.

"Clearly, the sooner that they're able to come to agreement on who their leaders are going to be, the sooner that those leaders then can act to appoint the rest of the country's key leadership," General Pace told reporters traveling with him on a troop visit.

In historical terms, the number of casualties in Iraq is still relatively small. At the height of the Vietnam War, the American military was sustaining 500 killed and wounded each week. At the Battle of the Somme in 1916, about 58,000 British soldiers were killed or wounded on the first day.

In interviews, American commanders have said the relatively unchanging number of deaths in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 belies the progress that had been made here against the guerrilla insurgency and in setting up democratic institutions. Three nationwide votes were held this year.

Although the number of attacks against American and Iraqi forces in and around Baghdad has grown over the past year - to about 28 per day now from about 22 a year ago - only about 10 percent of those attacks inflict casualties, said Maj. Gen. William G. Webster Jr., the commander of American forces in and around Baghdad.

A year ago, about 25 percent of attacks inflicted casualties.

More than 400 car and suicide bombs struck the country in 2005, although the number has dropped sharply in recent months. In April, for instance, there were 66 suicide and car bomb attacks, compared with 28 in November.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Camp Victory, Iraq, for this article, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed from Baghdad.



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December 31, 2005
Government Prepares for Next Big Disaster
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:46 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Before the next big hurricane's winds howl ashore, Homeland Security officials want an emergency communications network operating, emergency medical facilities treating patients, and teams dispatched to search for victims at the likely ground zero.

In the wake of congressional hearings that exposed the breathtaking failures of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration is retooling its disaster plan to react more quickly to the next catastrophe.

Michael Brown, now the ex-chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, became the public face of Katrina's failure. But the administration is reviewing how other leaders also failed last August to execute a playbook approved just eight months earlier to handle such a disaster.

For example, Brown's boss -- Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff -- did not invoke special powers in the National Response Plan that would have rushed federal aid to New Orleans when state and local officials said they were swamped.

The department rejected the authority, concluding that it should be invoked only for sudden catastrophic events that offer no time for preparation and not for slow-approaching hurricanes.

That will not happen next time, according to officials who described to The Associated Press some of the changes in the administration's evolving disaster response plan.

''There has to be a way to apply federal resources when state and local resources are overwhelmed,'' said Joel Bagnal, a special assistant to the president for homeland security who is involved in the administration's lessons-learned review.

Chief among the changes to the original 426-page plan are several ideas for rushing federal resources to a stricken area. They include:

--Dropping small military or civilian vehicles, packed with communications gear, into a disaster zone by helicopter or driving them from nearby staging areas.

--Setting up portable hospitals with federal emergency medical teams to augment local facilities.

--Helping local and state police catch looters and snipers by providing federal law enforcement officers if requested.

White House spokesman Trent Duffy said Friday that the revamped National Response Plan is expected to be finalized in the coming weeks after meetings with hundreds of federal, state and government officials and individuals outside the government.

The union representative for FEMA headquarters workers worries about how well the agency will respond next time. FEMA reacted quickly to big disasters when it operated independently, he said, but fell short in its first big test as a member of the massive Homeland Security Department.

''You broke your toy and now it doesn't work,'' said Leo Bosner, himself a veteran FEMA disaster specialist.

Those on the front lines hope to have a unified philosophy that values flexibility and quick thinking to adapt solutions to a rapidly unfolding human disaster.

''When you have a disaster, nothing goes by any kind of plan,'' said Dr. Arthur Wallace, leader of the Oklahoma 1 FEMA medical team that was dispatched from its staging area too late to beat Katrina to New Orleans.

The administration officials and responders interviewed by the AP offered a few of their own horror stories that they do not want repeated. They also help illustrate changes in the evolving plan.

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MEDICAL TEAMS: 36 HOURS LATE

Dr. Wallace's 34-member medical team from Oklahoma left its Houston staging area Aug. 28 after receiving a request from Louisiana officials to head for the Superdome.

Katrina made landfall in Louisiana just after 6 a.m. on Aug. 29, but the team did not arrive until that night. It did not receive its first patients until dawn on Aug. 30.

That was 36 hours after FEMA began reporting grave medical problems in the stadium, such as 400 people with special needs, 45 to 50 patients in need of hospitalization, and a dwindling supply of oxygen.

Wallace's team made it only as far as Baton Rouge the night before the storm came ashore because wind gusts had already made it impossible to reach the Superdome. The sick evacuees had to wait.

''The winds were buffeting the trucks pretty bad'' when the team halted in the state capital, Wallace recalled.

In the future, the administration wants medical teams in position before the storm strikes.

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EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS, COMMAND AND CONTROL

U.S. military communications with Louisiana and Mississippi officials were so poor that commanders were forced to use couriers to transmit messages, said Paul McHale, the assistant defense secretary for homeland defense.

FEMA's ''Red October'' mobile command center rode out the storm at Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, La., six hours from New Orleans. The oversize trailer can establish communications in a stricken area and serve as the nerve center for directing emergency relief. But it did not arrive in the city until several days after Katrina had struck.

Bagnal said the administration wants to replace the ''clunky'' FEMA vehicles with smaller ones that could be kept nearby and either driven or flown to where they are needed.

The lack of equipment was not the only problem. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said it took 10 to 12 days before a fully staffed, multi-agency field office for coordinating the response was operating at Katrina's ground zero. Even then, she said, the staff was thrown together with responders who hadn't worked with each other.

''Going forward, we definitely need a more capable, rapidly deployed and experienced staff that works together on a routine basis -- in noncrisis situations as well as catastrophic incidents,'' Perino said.

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QUICKER DEPLOYMENT OF ACTIVE DUTY MILITARY FORCES

For several days, thousands of people at the New Orleans convention center had no food, water or medical help. National Guard forces were preoccupied with rooftop rescues and lacked the manpower to feed or assist hungry refugees.

''Every single resource we had from Tuesday (Aug. 30) through Thursday (Sept. 1) was committed to picking people off of rooftops and saving people,'' recalled Louisiana National Guard Lt. Col. Jacques Thibodeaux, a deputy U.S. marshal in civilian life.

It wasn't until Friday, Sept. 2, that Thibodeaux was told to lead a rescue mission to the convention center. He cobbled together a force of 1,000 from diverse units representing five states.

''We took 30 minutes to secure the area. In three hours we began feeding people. In 30 hours, we had evacuated 19,000,'' Thibodeaux said.

The first active duty soldiers did not reach New Orleans until he evening of Sept. 3.

The U.S. Northern Command, in Colorado Springs, Colo., had been tracking Katrina before the storm made landfall and could have tapped active duty assets. But the lone request the command received from federal officials during Katrina's first day was for six helicopters, spokesman Michael Kucharek said.

The White House is pressing Congress to establish the exact circumstances and legal authority that would determine when the active military should take over a disaster.

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HELP FOR STATE AND LOCAL POLICE

The 18-member, Dallas-based Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms special response team had the very skills needed to cope with looters and snipers, but its members did not arrive in New Orleans until Sept. 2.

''By the time we got here, it wasn't as bad as the first nights after the storm,'' team leader Charles Smith said.

The team was trained in serving arrest warrants and executing search warrants, hostage situations, rescues, and riot and crowd control. And Smith brought an additional asset -- he was raised and once stationed in New Orleans.

The team showed its capabilities two nights after arriving when gunshots were reported in a neighborhood. Smith dispatched agents with night-vision goggles and, as a helicopter appeared overhead, the team observed a shooter in a four-unit housing project. Smith personally talked two men out of the building and arrested one without firing a shot.

In the future, the administration wants such teams ready to move as soon as local law enforcement needs assistance.

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COMMUNICATING WITH THE PUBLIC

Before Katrina struck, FEMA had dispatched a sizable public affairs contingent to Louisiana. Their mission, according to the National Response Plan, was ''to coordinate a message,'' said Jeff Karonis, a Homeland Security public affairs specialist.

''Several were experienced communicators in hurricanes of the past. They know what the issues are,'' he said.

But the messages to the public often were confusing, leaving vital questions unanswered. When would buses rescue people from the Superdome? When would rescuers arrive at the convention center? Was crime rampant?

Russ Knocke, the chief spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, said the specialists were hampered by ''a significant amount of inaccurate reporting'' that ''added confusion and added fuel to the fire.''

Louisiana officials said the federal experts didn't coordinate with them. ''I don't think there was ever a meeting about message. It wasn't a partnership,'' said Denise Bottcher, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco's spokeswoman.

In the future, Knocke said, Homeland Security is ''deeply committed to working and communicating with state and local officials.''



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January 1, 2006
Justice Deputy Resisted Parts of Spy Program
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 - A top Justice Department official objected in 2004 to aspects of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and refused to sign on to its continued use amid concerns about its legality and oversight, according to officials with knowledge of the tense internal debate. The concerns appear to have played a part in the temporary suspension of the secret program.

The concerns prompted two of President Bush's most senior aides - Andrew H. Card Jr., his chief of staff, and Alberto R. Gonzales, then White House counsel and now attorney general - to make an emergency visit to a Washington hospital in March 2004 to discuss the program's future and try to win the needed approval from Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was hospitalized for gallbladder surgery, the officials said.

The unusual meeting was prompted because Mr. Ashcroft's top deputy, James B. Comey, who was acting as attorney general in his absence, had indicated he was unwilling to give his approval to certifying central aspects of the program, as required under the White House procedures set up to oversee it.

With Mr. Comey unwilling to sign off on the program, the White House went to Mr. Ashcroft - who had been in the intensive care unit at George Washington University Hospital with pancreatitis and was housed under unusually tight security - because "they needed him for certification," according to an official briefed on the episode. The official, like others who discussed the issue, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the program.

Mr. Comey declined to comment, and Mr. Gonzales could not be reached.

Accounts differed as to exactly what was said at the hospital meeting between Mr. Ashcroft and the White House advisers. But some officials said that Mr. Ashcroft, like his deputy, appeared reluctant to give Mr. Card and Mr. Gonzales his authorization to continue with aspects of the program in light of concerns among some senior government officials about whether the proper oversight was in place at the security agency and whether the president had the legal and constitutional authority to conduct such an operation.

It is unclear whether the White House ultimately persuaded Mr. Ashcroft to give his approval to the program after the meeting or moved ahead without it.

The White House and Mr. Ashcroft, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment Saturday on the hospital meeting. A White House spokeswoman, Jeannie Mamo, said she could not discuss any aspect of the meeting or the internal debate surrounding it, but said: "As the president has stated, the intelligence activities that have been under way to prevent future terrorist attacks have been approved at the highest levels of the Justice Department."

The domestic eavesdropping program was publicly disclosed in mid-December by The New York Times. President Bush, in acknowledging the existence of the program in a televised appearance two weeks ago, said that tight controls had been imposed over the surveillance operation and that the program was reviewed every 45 days by top government officials, including at the Justice Department.

"The review includes approval by our nation's top legal officials, including the attorney general and the counsel to the president," Mr. Bush said, adding that he had personally reauthorized the program's use more than 30 times since it began. He gave no indication of any internal dissent over the reauthorization.

Questions about the surveillance operation are likely to be central to a Congressional hearing planned by Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who heads the Judiciary Committee. Mr. Specter, like some other Republicans and many Democrats in Congress, has voiced deep concerns about the program and Mr. Bush's legal authority to bypass the courts to order domestic wiretaps without warrants.

What is known is that in early 2004, about the time of the hospital visit, the White House suspended parts of the program for several months and moved ahead with more stringent requirements on the security agency on how the program was used, in part to guard against abuses.

The concerns within the Justice Department appear to have led, at least in part, to the decision to suspend and revamp the program, officials said. The Justice Department then oversaw a secret audit of the surveillance program.

The audit examined a selection of cases to see how the security agency was running the program. Among other things, it looked at how agency officials went about determining that they had probable cause to believe that people in the United States, including American citizens, had sufficient ties to Al Qaeda to justify eavesdropping on their phone calls and e-mail messages without a court warrant. That review is not known to have found any instances of abuses.

The warrantless domestic eavesdropping program was first authorized by President Bush in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, officials said. Initially, it was focused on communications into and out of Afghanistan, including calls between Afghanistan and the United States, people familiar with the operation said. But the program quickly expanded.

Several senior government officials have said that when the special operation first began, there were few controls on it. Some agency officials wanted nothing to do with it, apparently fearful of participating in an illegal operation, officials have said.

At its outset in 2002, the surveillance operation was so highly classified that even Larry Thompson, the deputy attorney general to Mr. Ashcroft, who was active in most of the government's most classified counterterrorism operations, was not given access to the program.

That led to uncertainties about the chain of command in overseeing law enforcement activities connected to the program, officials said, and it appears to have spurred concerns within the Justice Department over its use. Mr. Thompson's successor, Mr. Comey, was eventually authorized to take part in the program and to review intelligence material that grew out of it, and officials said he played a part in overseeing the reforms that were put in place in 2004.

But even after the imposition of the new restrictions last year, the agency maintained the authority to choose its eavesdropping targets and did not have to get specific approval from the Justice Department or other Bush officials before it began surveillance on phone calls or e-mail messages. The decision on whether someone is believed to be linked to Al Qaeda and should be monitored is left to a shift supervisor at the agency, the White House has said.

The White House has vigorously defended the legality and value of the domestic surveillance program, saying it has saved many American lives by allowing the government to respond more quickly and flexibly to threats. The Justice Department, meanwhile, said Friday that it had opened a criminal investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of the existence of the program.



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NSA Gave Other U.S. Agencies Information From Surveillance

By Walter Pincus

Information captured by the National Security Agency's secret eavesdropping on communications between the United States and overseas has been passed on to other government agencies, which cross-check the information with tips and information collected in other databases, current and former...

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The DeLay-Abramoff Money Trail

By R. Jeffrey Smith

The U.S. Family Network, a public advocacy group that operated in the 1990s with close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay and claimed to be a nationwide grass-roots organization, was funded almost entirely by corporations linked to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to tax records and former......

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