What's he thinking?
The U.S. invasion of non-nuclear Iraq showed Iran it needed a bomb to stay safe

BY SAID AMIR ARJOMAND
Said Amir Arjomand is professor of sociology at Stony Brook University, and president of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies.

January 22, 2006

President George W. Bush's unprincipled linking of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction in his open-ended war on terror, and the justification of the invasion of Iraq on the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, have had at least one unnoted disastrous consequence. The Iranians, in a state of heightened alert for their national security, drew the only conclusion that was rational: The United States invaded Iraq because it knew Saddam did not have any weapons of mass destruction and therefore seemed an easy target. For its own preservation, Iran had to have the nuclear bomb.

Hardliners in the Iranian military and security apparatus had always argued that Iran needed the bomb for national security, and they initiated a secret nuclear program in the 1990s. But they were reined in by Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, the supreme leader, and in 2003, with the reformist government of President Mohammad Khatami in power, Iran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment activities and sign the additional protocol of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

But once the urbane Khatami was toppled by the unsavory Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the presidential elections of 2005, the hardliners, who daily had been increasing their influence and involvement in the politics of Iraq, regained the upper hand in Iran itself. The decision to resume Iran's nuclear fuel program followed naturally, leaving permanent members of the UN Security Council scrambling to find a way to stop it. Last week French, German and British negotiators, with U.S. backing, rejected Iran's call for talks.

Bush warns that a nuclear-armed Iran would be "a grave threat to the security of the world," but there is a good deal of method in President Ahmadinejad's perceived madness. Unlike his obsession with the return of the Mahdi - the Shia Muslim version of the Messiah - which does not strike a popular chord - his insistence on Iran's nuclear "rights" is popular with the Iranian masses. This is the one factor that unfortunately makes the nuclear issue especially intractable.



Ahmadinejad's policy of championing Iran's national right to nuclear energy (for peaceful purposes), carefully promoted by government-controlled television and other media, comes close to a stroke of evil genius. It serves to divert attention from the regime's violations of human rights and civil liberties by appealing to long frustrated nationalist sentiment - at a time of widespread disillusionment with Islam, revolution and reform. Nationwide enthusiasm for the reform movement had gradually eroded under President Khatami because of his unwillingness to stand up to the supreme leader and prevent the repeated closure of reformist newspapers, violent repression of student protests and jailing of reformist deputies.

Now, the portrayal of Iran being bullied by an America armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, and threatening to invade it while preventing its development of nuclear energy, has been quite effective in arousing popular indignation and demands for the assertion of Iran's national rights and dignity. Iranians were scared by Bush's "axis of evil" State of the Union speech in 2002 and haven't forgotten it, even though Iraq was the country picked for invasion.

Ahmadinejad's nuclear policy also serves the professional interests of an influential segment of the Iranian educated middle class - a highly privileged group of scientists who are flush with money for computers and sophisticated equipment. This powerful elite is behind the nuclear policy and significantly broadens the base of the president's support beyond the urban poor and the revolutionary veterans who overthrew the shah and took Americans hostage.

With all this steam behind him, can Ahmadinejad be stopped? Parliament has little power against the clerical establishment. The only one who can stop him - and relatively easily since his authority does not depend on the nationalist sentiment that Ahmadinejad appeals to - is the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.

Khamenei, not satisfied with his enormous constitutional authority - which includes command of the armed forces and the power to dismiss the president - has been augmenting his extra-constitutional powers by promoting the hardliners, who had positions in the security and military apparatus but no social base. He considered them his men and gave them sensitive appointments or facilitated their election, to create a system of personal power against the clerical establishment. He knows, however, that he cannot weaken the clerics without eroding the foundations of the regime, which is a theocracy after all.



If Khamanei decides that the balance of power has tilted too much in favor of the president's security-military faction and against the clerical establishment, he can act on the nuclear issue and reach an agreement with the UN and International Atomic Energy Agency.

On Jan. 18, the ayatollah stated, "The West knows very well that we are not seeking to build nuclear weapons," which are "against our political and economic interests and Islamic beliefs." An optimist can only hope that the supreme religious leader means what he says.
Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?Stor...22-084516-6676r

Pentagon's domestic spying may go too far
WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 (UPI) -- Some Pentagon leaders say its domestic spying program may have gone too far.

A Pentagon memo obtained by Newsweek shows that some reports gathered for the top-secret Counterintelligence Field Activity program may have contained information on U.S. citizens and groups that never should have been retained.

The CIFA was created by the Defense Department in 2003 to track threats and terrorist plots against military installations and personnel inside the United States.

In May 2003, Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy Defense secretary, authorized a fact-gathering operation code-named TALON -- short for Threat and Local Observation Notice -- that would collect "raw information" about "suspicious incidents," Newsweek said. The data would be fed to CIFA to help the Pentagon's "terrorism threat warning process."

The number of reports with names of U.S. persons could be in the thousands, a senior Pentagon official told Newsweek. Officials acknowledge some of the information may violate regulations.

It isn't clear how many groups and individuals were snagged by CIFA's dragnet, Newsweek said, though they include Quakers and students.

Vice President Dick Cheney last week called the program "vital" to the country's defense against al-Qaida. "Either we are serious about fighting this war on terror or not," he said in a speech to the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.





© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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January 22, 2006
Plant Closings, Job Cuts Loom at Ford
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:13 p.m. ET

DETROIT (AP) -- Ford Motor Co., hurt by falling sales of sport utility vehicles, is expected to close plants and cut thousands of jobs in North America as part of a restructuring program to be announced Monday.

Ford has refused to release details of the plan, dubbed the ''Way Forward,'' which also is expected to include product changes and cuts to Ford's salaried ranks. Ford has about 87,000 hourly workers and 35,000 salaried workers in North America.

''It's going to be painful for some people,'' Ford Chairman and CEO Bill Ford said earlier this month at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

The assembly plants believed to be most at risk for closure are in St. Louis; St. Paul, Minn.; Atlanta; Wixom, Mich.; St. Thomas, Ontario; and Cuatitlan, Mexico. Those plants could be targeted because of their age, the products they make, their lack of flexibility or other factors.

States were scrambling to offer tax credits and other incentives to keep Ford from closing their facilities.

Earlier this month, Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt and other state officials flew to Ford's headquarters in Dearborn for a meeting with Ford executives. Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said she outlined a package of incentives to Ford last week. Granholm wouldn't disclose the details of the package and said she wasn't given any assurance that Michigan plants would be spared.

Ford is expected to report a worldwide profit for 2005 when it releases earnings Monday. But it lost more than $1.4 billion in its North American operations in the first nine months of last year.

The No. 2 U.S. automaker has been hurt by falling sales of its profitable sport utility vehicles, growing health care and materials costs and labor contracts that have limited its ability to close plants and cut jobs. The United Auto Workers union will have to agree to some of the changes Ford wants to make.

''We don't like to see any jobs go away,'' UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said last week. ''We're always in hope that down the road we'll be able to reverse some of those decisions.''

Ford also has seen its U.S. market share slide as a result of increasing competition from foreign rivals. The company suffered its tenth straight year of market share losses in the United States in 2005, and for the first time in 19 years, Ford lost its crown as America's best-selling brand to GM's Chevrolet. Ford sold about 2.9 million vehicles for a market share of 17.4 percent in 2005, down from 18.3 percent the year before and 24 percent in 1990.

The restructuring is Ford's second in four years. Under the first plan, Ford closed five plants and cut 35,000 jobs, but its North American operations failed to turn around.

Ford used just 79 percent of its North American plant capacity in 2005, down from 86 percent in 2004, according to preliminary numbers released last week by Harbour Consulting Inc., a firm that measures plant productivity. By contrast, rival Toyota Motor Corp. was operating at full capacity.

------

On the Net:

Ford Motor Co.: http://www.ford.com



Copyright 2006 The Associated Press

The Author Who Got A Big Boost From bin Laden
Historian 'Glad' of Mention As Sales of Book Skyrocket

By David Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 21, 2006; Page C01

Twenty-four hours after Osama bin Laden told the world that the American people should read the work of a little-known Washington historian, William Blum was still adjusting.

Blum, who at 72 is accustomed to laboring in relative left-wing obscurity, checked his emotions and pronounced himself shocked and, well, pleased.

"This is almost as good as being an Oprah book," he said yesterday between telephone calls from the world media and bites of a bagel. "I'm glad." Overnight, his 2000 work, "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower," had become an Osama book.

In gray slacks, plaid shirt and black slippers, Blum padded around his one-bedroom apartment on Connecticut Avenue. A portrait of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the '50s hung on his kitchen wall. Bookshelves bowed under the weight of secret histories of the CIA. The cord on his prehistoric phone let him roam across the living room. He'd already done CNN and MSNBC. A guy from the New York Post knocked on the door to take pictures. The BBC rang, then Reuters and Pacifica Radio stations on both coasts.

From Blum's end of the conversations, you could tell the reporters were expecting him to express some kind of discomfort, remorse, maybe even shame. Blum refused to acknowledge feelings he did not have.

"I was not turned off by such an endorsement," he informed a New York radio station. "I'm not repulsed, and I'm not going to pretend I am." He patiently reiterated the thesis of his foreign-policy critique -- that American interventions abroad create enemies.

You could almost hear the ticking of a stopwatch. These were Blum's 15 American minutes, brought to him by a murderous zealot on the other side of the world who had named him to a kind of Terrorists Book-of-the-Month Club. The CIA duly verified the audiotape from bin Laden, and there it was: Blum had a bona fide book blurb from the evil one.

Now it was time for the soft-spoken, bespectacled radical son of Brooklyn to look thoughtful for the cameras -- "I don't have a good smile" -- and sound pithy for the microphones. Better known in radical circles and on the college lecture circuit than he is among most readers of American history, Blum is a former underground journalist who specializes in sharp critiques of foreign policy. Published by a small outfit in Maine, he also sells his books over the Internet and issues a free monthly e-mail newsletter called the Anti-Empire Report.

What bin Laden said was this, as translated from Arabic by the Associated Press:

"And if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book 'Rogue State,' which states in its introduction: 'If I were president, I would stop the attacks on the United States: First, I would give an apology to all the widows and orphans and those who were tortured. Then I would announce that American interference in the nations of the world has ended once and for all.' "

By last night, "Rogue State" shot up from 205,763 to 26 on Amazon.com's index of the most-ordered books.

"I'm calling it the book review of the decade," said Sam Smith, editor of the Progressive Review in Washington and a fan of Blum's work. Smith, too, has blurbed the book ("an especially well-documented encyclopedia of malfeasance") as has Gore Vidal.

Chortled Smith yesterday, "Neither Vidal nor Smith came close to lifting 'Rogue State' into the double digits" on Amazon.

Since Amazon's delivery service, while comprehensive, would not seem to extend to faraway caves, how might bin Laden have gotten his hands on Blum's work?

Says William Blum of Osama: "I'm not repulsed by his embrace of my book." (By Lois Raimondo -- The Washington Post)

The author noted "Rogue State" had been published in Arabic in Egypt and Lebanon. And perhaps bin Laden owns the entire Blum canon, because the quote he cited actually is not in "Rogue State," but on the back cover of a collection of Blum essays, "Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire." (That book is languishing on Amazon, while two other books titled "Rogue State" have enjoyed a spike in ranking.)

Blum's exact words? "If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize -- very publicly and very sincerely -- to all the widows and orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism."

Yesterday, he made clear that he deplores the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But he argues, as many other essayists have, that they were an understandable retaliation against U.S. foreign policy. "The thesis in my books and my writing is that anti-American terrorism arises from the behavior of U.S. foreign policy," he said. "It is what the U.S. government does which angers people all over the world."

"I am totally against what they did. But we cannot view that as totally the acts of a bunch of madmen. If we do . . . we will continue making the same mistakes, and the so-called war on terror will be as doomed to fail as the war on drugs."

In a chapter called "Why Do Terrorists Keep Picking on the United States?" Blum lists as possible reasons everything from support of Middle East dictators, including the Shah of Iran and Saudi rulers, to occupying military bases in the region, to favoring the Israelis over the Palestinians.

"I think bin Laden shares that view, and that is why I'm not repulsed by his embrace of my book, because that is one of my major themes," Blum said.

When it is pointed out that terrorists target innocent civilians, which is not U.S. policy, he replies that U.S. tactics in Iraq have led to the deaths of thousands of civilians. "We bomb homes and these people have families, and the U.S. refuses to apologize for these civilian deaths," Blum said. "The absence of concern makes their actions almost equal to a deliberate targeting of civilians."

Until now, the mainstream media have paid virtually no attention to Blum. His books rarely are reviewed. But Noam Chomsky has praised his work, and Blum is right there along with Steve Earle, Jane Fonda and Barbara Ehrenreich as a signer of a full-page ad in the New York Times in the fall of 2002 against the military buildup for war in Iraq.

His publisher, Common Courage Press, yesterday could not provide estimates of his sales. Blum says "Rogue State" and "Killing Hope" together have sold more than 100,000 copies, plus an additional 50,000 in a dozen foreign languages. He said he supports himself with his writing and speaking engagements on college campuses.

The son of Polish immigrants, Blum said he studied accounting in college, then landed a low-level computer-related position at the State Department in the mid-1960s. An anti-communist with dreams of becoming a foreign service officer, he said he became disillusioned by the Vietnam War, so he resigned from State and helped found the Washington Free Press, an underground paper. Separated from his German wife, with whom he said he is on good terms, and the father of a 24-year-old son, he lives alone and writes at home.

"He's an alternative journalist, a researcher type," said Smith, who uses Blum's work as a reference when he wants to find, say, a list of dictators the United States has supported in Latin America and the Middle East. "What Bill Blum has basically done is what a historian does, which is to compile the available record and organize it in a way that is useful."

Blum said his life's mission has been this: "If not ending, at least slowing down the American Empire. At least injuring the beast. It's causing so much suffering around the world."

And if he is happy to accept bin Laden's plug, he certainly doesn't want to meet his terrorist fan.

"If he would contact me," said Blum, "then I would be scared."

SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2006, Issue No. 9
January 23, 2006


** CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT IN THEORY AND IN PRACTICE
** PATRIOT ACT REAUTHORIZATION: A LEGAL ANALYSIS (CRS)
** KINETIC ENERGY KILL FOR BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE (CRS)
** PROTECTION OF CLASSIFIED INFORMATION BY CONGRESS (CRS)
** CIA LIMITS WEB PUBLICATION OF CRITICAL REPORTS


CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT IN THEORY AND IN PRACTICE

The rudiments of Congressional oversight -- its legal basis, its
functions, and the diverse forms it takes -- are concisely described
in a newly updated report from the Congressional Research Service.

"Congressional oversight refers to the review, monitoring, and
supervision of federal agencies, programs, activities, and policy
implementation.... Congress's oversight authority derives from its
'implied' powers in the Constitution, public laws, and House and
Senate rules. It is an integral part of the American system of
checks and balances."

See "Congressional Oversight," updated January 3, 2006:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/97-936.pdf

Integral though it may be, there is a widespread perception that
congressional oversight has atrophied in recent years.

"Everyone recognizes that the failure of congressional oversight was
one of the reasons why we have some of the problems in the
intelligence community today," said Sen. John McCain on NBC Meet the
Press on November 21, 2004.

"We really don't have, still don't have, meaningful congressional
oversight," McCain said.

Last week, Rep. Henry Waxman released two reports that compare
Congress' relentless probing of the Clinton Administration with the
anemic oversight of the present Administration.

"On issue after issue, the Congress has failed to conduct meaningful
investigations of significant allegations of wrongdoing by the Bush
Administration," Rep Waxman wrote. "This approach stands in stark
contrast to the breadth and intrusiveness of congressional
investigations of the Clinton Administration."

See "Congress' Abdication of Oversight," January 17, 2006:

http://www.democrats.reform.house.gov/story.asp?ID=990


PATRIOT ACT REAUTHORIZATION: A LEGAL ANALYSIS (CRS)

The existing controversy over reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act
-- portions of which will "sunset" if they are not renewed --
acquired a new dimension with the disclosure last month of an NSA
domestic surveillance operation.

Some now argue that the Patriot Act should not be reauthorized before
the Bush Administration's claims of inherent presidential authority
to conduct domestic intelligence surveillance outside of the
framework of law (FISA) are confronted and clarified.

"The extensive new powers requested by the executive branch in its
proposal to extend and enlarge the Patriot Act should under no
circumstances be granted unless and until there are adequate and
enforceable safeguards to protect the Constitution and the rights of
the American people against the kinds of abuses that have so
recently been revealed," said former Vice President Al Gore in a
January 16, 2006 speech.

Much of the Patriot Act is unobjectionable to anyone, and some of it
is positively sensible. But it also has controversial provisions on
"national security letters" as well as several totally extraneous
provisions inserted by House Republicans.

A detailed assessment of the entire piece of legislation was prepared
by the Congressional Research Service. A copy was obtained by
Secrecy News.

See "USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 (H.R.
3199): A Legal Analysis of the Conference Bill," January 17, 2006:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/RL33239.pdf


KINETIC ENERGY KILL FOR BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE (CRS)

A new report from the Congressional Research Service presents a
skeptical overview of the development of kinetic energy interceptors
-- anti-missile missiles -- for defense against incoming ballistic
missiles.

"The data on the U.S. flight test effort to develop a national
missile defense (NMD) system are mixed and ambiguous. There is no
recognizable pattern to explain this record nor is there conclusive
evidence of a learning curve over more than two decades of
developmental testing."

A copy of the new CRS report was obtained by Secrecy News.

See "Kinetic Energy Kill for Ballistic Missile Defense: A Status
Overview," January 18, 2006:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RL33240.pdf


PROTECTION OF CLASSIFIED INFORMATION BY CONGRESS (CRS)

The rules and procedures for protecting classified information in
Congress -- which differ in the House and the Senate -- are
described in another new CRS report.

See "Protection of Classified Information by Congress: Practices and
Proposals," updated January 11, 2006:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RS20748.pdf


CIA LIMITS WEB PUBLICATION OF CRITICAL REPORTS

The Central Intelligence Agency has selectively declined to publish
on its web site at least three unclassified reports produced by the
Center for the Study of Intelligence that present an unflattering
picture of the Agency, US News reported this week.

See "A Tangled Web Woven," by David E. Kaplan, US News and World
Report, January 30, 2006:

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060130/30cia.htm




_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.

Yahoo's Social Circle - BusinessWeek
In a bid to challenge search giant Google, the Web's most-used portal is betting on the wisdom of crowds
Yahoo! is on a quiet acquisitions tear. First, it snapped up photo-sharing site Flickr in March. In December, it acquired del.icio.us, a service that bookmarks and shares users' favorite Web sites. And on Jan. 6, Yahoo purchased WebJay, a site for creating and sharing music playlists. Over 10 months, Yahoo has acquired at least five fledgling Internet companies, all pursuing a similar goal: to build communities of Internet users that interact with one another over the Web. What's afoot? These deals are key building blocks in one of Yahoo's biggest bets. By cultivating online communities -- and encouraging people to tap into the collective knowledge of these groups -- Yahoo is hoping to change the way people find information online. Known in industry parlance as "social search," it presents a significant departure from Google's main approach, which relies on complicated mathematical models to help users find sites. Done right, the new method could help Yahoo take back share ceded to Google in search (see BW Online, 10/21/05, "Google and Yahoo!: Rolling in It"). Google snared 46% of U.S. searches in November, compared with 23% for Yahoo, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

BOOKMARKS AND LINKS. Search technology has improved dramatically over the past several years (see BW, 1/23/06, "Math Will Rock Your World"), but computer algorithms can only go so far in divining the intent of the user. That's because your typical Web user taps just a couple of words into the search box. Someone searching for "Mozart," for instance, could be looking for CDs, sheet music, history of the composer, or even the music-notation software that bears his name. Social search tries to fill this information gap by gleaning input and preferences from the communities with which the searcher is associated. Someone seeking "Mexican restaurants," for instance, would arguably be better served by results reflecting preferences of people in the same neighborhood. Or a person searching for "scary movies" might prefer the suggestions of his or her circle of friends over those from whole Internet. It could represent a monumental shift in search technology. All major engines analyze the link structure of the Web as a key ingredient in determining what pages are most relevant -- a breakthrough that Google championed when it launched in 1998. A Web page that has a lot of other sites linking to it will rank higher, figuring more prominently in a given search, than one with only a few incoming links. Social search aims to shift power from Web publishers, who create these links, to everyday Internet users by examining their bookmarks or giving them tools to express their opinions.

TIME-CONSUMING PASSION. Current technology "delegates to Webmasters to decide what is important for the rest of us," says Bradley Horowitz, director of technology development at Yahoo. "Social search is about democratizing this power." It sounds great, but there are plenty of skeptics. Most Internet users haven't even heard of Flickr or del.icio.us, let alone spent time sharing photos online or posting bookmarks of their favorite sites. Alexa Internet ranks del.icio.us as the 364,886th most trafficked Web site. Google is ranked third by the researcher. Some question whether enough Internet users will spend the time on these sites needed to make them effective. The idea is to turn Web search from a passive activity to an interactive one, and the first major effort involves selecting a circle of friends. That means e-mailing people, inviting them to join a network, and responding to requests from others. After that, the more users interact with content, the more power social search will have. But that could involve more time-consuming online activities, from simple bookmarking to labeling and reviewing Web sites. It's not clear users will make that kind of investment. Others doubt the wisdom of crowds will offer much of an upgrade over the feats of raw computing power. "It really adds very little value to what is available now," says Raul Valdes-Perez, CEO of Vivisimo, which provides search technology to enterprises. "The best description of a document is the document itself."

MORE PLAYERS. Google, by most appearances, is also tepid on the prospects of social search. Sure, the search giant has developed and acquired social-networking sites, such as Orkut and Dodgeball. But it has done far less than Yahoo in the arena of online community building. Analysts take that to mean Google's long-term bet remains on personalization -- using its mammoth computing horsepower to sort through data and better discern what users are thinking. Google declined to comment. Yahoo didn't invent social search. The idea of tapping the collective wisdom of communities has floated around academia for years. Startup Eurekster hit the market first with its social search technology in early 2004. Since then, several other upstarts have jumped in with different twists on the general concept, including Jeteye Technologies and Kaboodle. But Yahoo represents its greatest opportunity for traction, due to its hefty $4 billion war chest and 200 million active registered users. If Yahoo can begin to entice its legions of visitors to try some of its community offerings, be it sharing photos on Flickr or listing favorite blogs via blo.gs, it can begin to apply social search on a wider scale.

LONG WAY TO GO. Currently, Yahoo is applying social search on a limited basis in its My Web 2.0 beta product. Users can save pages, as well as "tag" particular sites with descriptors such as "funny" or "research." These bookmarks and tags can be shared with others within a network of friends and contacts. Yahoo won't disclose the number of people using the service, but the site says that there have been 614,000 pages saved and 141,000 tags authored. As with all community sites, the benefits grow with the size and activity of the group. That means Yahoo's social-search trial, still in its infancy, could take months or years before reaching its potential. "Social search is not one of these things that will take off overnight," says Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li. "It will take a lot of time to build." Although far from a slam dunk, it appears a technology gamble worth the wait. Meantime, Yahoo -- with its unique vision for the future of search -- can at least relish the chance to emerge from Google's shadow.

U.S. faces severe worker shortage in future - USA Today
The United States faces a severe worker shortage in the near future, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said Wednesday in advocating better education for Americans and changes in immigration law to allow in more foreign workers. Chamber President and CEO Thomas Donohue, at a news conference outlining business prospects in 2006, said the country is ill-prepared to deal with the impending retirement of 77 million baby boomers. "We have yet to secure an adequate supply of working taxpayers to run a growing economy and support an explosion of retirees," he said in his organization's report on the state of U.S. business. Donohue said that working to pass new immigration law that includes a guest worker program will be among the Chamber's top legislative priorities in the new year. He said the Chamber opposed a bill passed by the House in December, which tightens border security and requires employers to verify the legal status of workers but does not address the guest worker issue. He dismissed as a "crummy argument" criticisms that the business community wants a guest worker program to secure access to cheap labor. "What American companies want is labor, and we are going to be significantly without it," Donohue said. The Senate is expected to take up the immigration issue next month, and Donohue said his group will be "working to obtain a bill that provides the workers and is in keeping without our legacy as a welcoming nation." Donohue said the Chamber has traditionally stayed out of school reform at the state and local level, but has changed its thinking in a global environment where China graduates eight times, and India five times, as many engineers as the United States. He said the Chamber plans to measure and rank the performance of state school systems, with the aim of helping businesses decide where to locate. The Chamber is also working with other business organizations to double the number of math, science and engineering graduates by 2015. Donohue said that among the business group's other legislative goals this year will be passing legislation to shore up pension plans, finding a solution to the asbestos litigation crisis, promoting health savings accounts and other new approaches to reducing the number of those without health insurance, and opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf to environmentally sound oil and gas exploration.

World > Terrorism & Security
posted January 23, 2006 at 11:00 a.m.

Immigration grows as security issue

California departments differ over role of local police in enforcing federal immigration laws.

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

A move by two Orange County, California, police agencies to have their officers receive special training in order to enforce federal immigration laws has opened up a rift with the City of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The Costa Mesa Police Department and the Orange County's Sheriff's Department are among the first in the nation to seek this training. Officials from both departments say their actions have generated many requests for information from across the country.

"Dozens of jurisdictions have reached out to us and asked us for copies of this policy," said Jon Fleischman, a spokesman for the Sheriff's Department. "Like with any instrument that provides a resource to find criminals, departments are looking at this to see if this will help fight crime."
But some other officials say that such a policy will ultimately have a detrimental effect on the Orange County forces' ability to fight crime.
The two top police officials in neighboring Los Angeles County – Sheriff Lee Baca and police chief William Bratton – repeated publicly that they do not support such actions, which they say damage the local forces' hard-won ties with immigrant communities. They say immigration enforcement should be left with the federal Department of Homeland Security, where it belongs.

"The Orange County talk is cheap," Baca said. "I want to see how arresting a young 18-year-old girl trying to get a job goes down when robbery and burglary calls for service aren't being responded to. The public will say, 'We've had enough of this.' Let the federal government do its job."
The Christian Science Monitor reports that concerns about terrorism, identity theft, and the national methamphetamine epidemic (fueled by Hispanic gangs from Mexico) have pushed the issue of illegal immigration onto the front burner of the nation's politics. Currently there are 11 million illegal immigrants in the US, with about 500,000 more arriving each year. Most come for work. The Center for Immigration Studies says that there are 35 million immigrants living the US, both legal and illegal, a total of 12 percent of the overall population.

Reaction against the influx of immigrants has sometimes resulted in violence against them.
In some areas, the rise in extreme anti-immigrant sentiment has resulted in attacks on Hispanic men, and conspiracy theories. One theory warns of "la reconquista," the invasion of the US southwest by Mexicans determined to take back territory lost in the 19th century.
Movement across the US-Mexico border has gone on for centuries, says Jean Rosenfeld, of the UCLA Center for the Study of Religion. But today, says Dr. Rosenfeld, "The nativist narrative ... signals a high tide of resurgent xenophobia."

The Associated Press reports that some state lawmakers have considered taking actions against the employers of illegal immigrants. Georgia has seen a surge in illegal immigration as people come to the state to work in the Atlanta area. Bills before the Georgia House would prevent business that hire illegal labor from being eligible for government contracts, while another would prevent businesses from declaring wages paid to illegal workers as business expenses.
"If you need to violate the law to stay in business, you need to look into another business," said Sen. Chip Rogers, R-Woodstock, who has introduced two of the bills.
But immigrant advocates and scholars point out that one reason so many enter the country illegally is that there are "not enough legal ways to fill the US economy’s labor needs." Also, some employers who use illegal labor often lower their wages in order to get business, so that it hurts other employers who follow the rules in bringing labor into the country.
Immigration laws are also increasingly being used against Muslims, a move that some say will make it harder for the government to gain cooperation in the fight against terrorism in the US.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that Abu Abrahim Sheik Mohamed, the leader of a Rainier Valley mosque, is to appear before an immigration judge today to be charged with giving false information to immigration officials in order to gain entry into the US. The paper reports that federal officials believe the imam has no connections to any terrorist organization. But as the scrutiny of all immigrants increases in the US, there are accusations that some people are using the government's new focus on illegal immigration to settle old scores.

"Do not use my name because I will be a target," said the member of Seattle's Somali community. "We killed each other in Somalia, and then we came here. It was tribalism there. What makes me sad is tribalism is still working in America, too. Sheik Abrahim is a victim of tribalism. We don't want anyone arrested because of tribalism.
"He is a very peaceful man. He is not a terrorist. What we think is that some people gave the wrong information (to federal agents). We think people of one tribe, they make propaganda against Sheik Abrahim."

The Boston Globe reports that the US government will also change its citizenship exam to remove what it considers "trivial questions," such as what colors are on the US flag, and replace them with questions about what it means to be an American.
Finally, an editorial in the Los Angeles Times looks at the opening of a new Home Depot in Burbank that some people had threatened to turn into a showdown over illegal immigration. The new store also includes a workers' center in a corner of its parking lot where people can hire laborers, many of whom are probably in the United States illegally. But despite the threats, nothing much actually happened, to the relief of community members who would like to avoid such a confrontation.

By lunchtime, the workers had gone. If anybody from Home Depot was concerned about the ethical or legal implications of supporting an operation that would place undocumented workers, he didn't show it. A company spokesperson had already left the premises. The store had filled up with shoppers. Orange carts floated like buoys among the cars in the parking lot.
Sometimes, as the saying goes, no news really is good news.

/aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20060123073509990044&ncid=NWS00010000000001

War Vets Ready for New Battle
At Least 10 Post-Sept. 11 Veterans Run for Congress

By Andrea Stone, USA TODAY


(Jan. 23) -

Brian Kersey, AP
Tammy Duckworth lost both legs while serving in Iraq. After more than a year in rehab, she's aiming for Congress.


"Hi! I'm Tammy Duckworth, the Iraq war veteran running for Congress. You might have heard of me?" she says, extending her mangled right arm to shake hands.

Indeed, many here in Chicago's western suburbs have already heard of the Illinois National Guard helicopter pilot who lost both legs and full use of her right arm when a rocket-propelled grenade hit her Blackhawk in a 2004 attack in Iraq.

Maj. Ladda "Tammy" Duckworth, 37, spent nearly a year at Washington's Walter Reed Army Hospital, and her rehabilitation has been chronicled in national media, including USA TODAY.

Duckworth is the only seriously wounded combat veteran running this year for Congress, whose ranks of members with military experience are at their lowest since World War II, according to Congressional Quarterly.

But at least nine other veterans who served in the post-Sept. 11 military have announced House bids. All but one - Republican Van Taylor in Texas - are Democrats who have criticized the Bush administration's conduct of the war. They join dozens of older veterans from both parties touting military credentials as U.S. troops head into a fourth year in Iraq.

Veterans have long returned from battle to continue their public service in politics, but the current field of candidates with military experience may be the largest since World War II.


Why Run?


''If I suck you in here because of my legs, that's great. Now let's talk about the really important stuff to people in my district.''

-- Veteran and House candidate Tammy Duckworth, insisting she's not a single issue candidate

The new candidates reflect their times. Support for the war, and the Republican administration behind it, is at its lowest: 61% disapprove of President Bush's handling of Iraq, according to a mid-December USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll.

Duckworth says it was "a bad decision" to invade Iraq. So, she is competing on another field of battle: politics. She hopes to succeed retiring Rep. Henry Hyde, a Republican who has held a House seat for more than 30 years. The political neophyte must first beat two other Democrats in a primary and then take on Peter Roskam, a Republican state senator in the GOP-leaning district.

Duckworth says politics doesn't compare to what she's already overcome. She recalled the "nightmare" of Nov. 12, 2004, when crewmates struggled to carry her maimed body to safety, dropping her because her gushing blood made her too slippery.

"They gave me a second chance at life," she said, choking back tears, during an interview. "I've just got do something - just to be more."

John Szeliga, 29, a salesman here, is the kind of voter Duckworth and her fellow veterans-turned-candidates hope to attract. "Her story is pretty cool," he said. "Being a veteran, crashing a helicopter, now running for Congress. Not too many people do that."

At least not lately. One in four House members and fewer than one in three senators have served in the military, Congressional Quarterly says. In the USA, 12% are veterans, the Census Bureau says.

After World War II, future presidents John Kennedy and Richard Nixon were among veterans who ran for Congress almost as soon as they got home. It took more than a decade for Vietnam veterans, many of whom were reviled for their role in the unpopular war, to get into national politics. Today, their ranks include Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and John Kerry, D-Mass.

Republicans tried in 1992 to recruit Persian Gulf War veterans to challenge Democrats who opposed ousting Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. Few answered the call.

Today, Democrats are leading the recruiting drive, focusing on GOP-majority districts where being strong on defense plays well.

Most Troops Lean Republican

The numbers of veterans running as Democrats are all the more remarkable given a Military Times Poll late last year that found 56% of active-duty troops consider themselves Republicans and only 13% are Democrats.

"Since Vietnam, the Democratic Party has been viewed as the weaker on national security issues," University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato says. "Who better to make the case than veterans of the war? It's hard to accuse them of a lack of patriotism."

Democrats thought they inoculated themselves when they nominated Kerry, a Vietnam combat veteran, for president in 2004, only to see his military record picked apart over his later anti-war activities.

Just being a veteran isn't enough, says Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the independent Rothenberg Political Report.He says some Democrats have rallied around political novices with military experience after they couldn't attract more experienced candidates.

"A strategy based merely on recruiting veterans, even Iraq war veterans, overemphasizes a single credential," Rothenberg says.

Carl Forti, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, agrees. "You also have to be a good candidate," he says.

Still, some Democrats took heart from a special House election in August, when Iraq combat veteran Paul Hackett lost by fewer than 4,000 votes in an Ohio district that went 64% for Bush in 2004.

The Republican who beat him, Jean Schmidt, helped rally Democrats again in November during a heated House floor speech. She said a constituent asked her to tell Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa., a decorated veteran who has called for troop withdrawals in Iraq, that "cowards cut and run, Marines never do."

"When Schmidt called Jack Murtha a coward, she called each and every one of us a coward," says Eric Massa, a former military aide to Gen. Wesley Clark, who is challenging Rep. Randy Kuhl, R-N.Y.

'Fighting Democrats'

Massa and Duckworth are among the "Fighting Democrats" party leaders hope will help recapture the House after 12 years of GOP rule. Some have formed a political action committee, bandofbrothers2006.org, to support veteran-candidates and fight back against conservative campaigns like the ones that targeted former senator Max Cleland. The Georgia Democrat, who lost three limbs in Vietnam, was defeated in 2002 by Republican Saxby Chambliss, who ran ads picturing Cleland with Osama bin Laden.

Cleland says there is "a disquiet in the gut" of returning veterans. "They want to come back and tell the truth about Iraq," he says.

The Democratic veterans differ on domestic issues but contend that the Bush administration failed to provide enough troops, armor and planning in Iraq and now has no strategy to get out. Some, like Duckworth, say troops should be withdrawn gradually. Others, like Patrick Murphy, a military lawyer who served in Baghdad and is challenging Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., favor a timeline for withdrawal. "They can't give us a snow job," says Murphy, 32. "We've seen with our own eyes."

The candidates insist they are not one-issue politicians. Chris Carney, a Naval reservist who served as a special adviser at the Pentagon two years ago, says he decided to run against Rep. Don Sherwood, R-Pa., last March at the height of the right-to-die controversy over Terri Schiavo. "I didn't think it was Congress' business" to get involved with the brain-damaged woman's fate, he says. "That was the final straw of politics at the extreme."

It was no accident, either, that Duckworth's first campaign speech was on a subject of great interest in her upper-middle-class district: taxes targeting the affluent. "If I suck you in here because of my legs, that's great," she said. "Now let's talk about the really important stuff to people in my district."

Rothenberg calls Duckworth "one of the stronger" veterans running. Her story and charismatic personality first caught Democrats' attention soon after she arrived at the Army rehab hospital in Washington. It was there that Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Democrats' No. 2 leader, first met her and invited her to attend last year's State of the Union address.

"Seeing the pageantry of what I had just given up my legs for was very emotional," she recalls. Duckworth returned to Capitol Hill in March to testify about veterans' care and was struck by "the need to have more people serving in Congress who've been there."

When Durbin asked her to run last summer, she thought, "It's my generation's turn to step forward."

Initially, Little Enthusiasm

The national party's enthusiasm for Duckworth wasn't matched, at least initially, among local Democrats, who noted she lives three miles outside the district. The Constitution requires only that representatives live in the state, and Duckworth says she is "emotionally attached" to her house, which was modified for her wheelchair.

Before Duckworth got in the race, local Democrats had backed Christine Cegelis, a computer consultant who won 44% of the vote against Hyde in 2004. But Cegelis has raised little money and lacks Duckworth's "star power," University of Illinois-Springfield political scientist Kent Redfield says.

Wheaton College professor Lindy Scott is also running in the primary.

Roskam says that after "knocking on 3,500 doors," he believes Iraq isn't a "resonant theme" for voters.

But at a recent Schaumburg meeting, Democratic activists sat raptly as Duckworth rattled off stories about Iraq, including how U.S. forces gave body armor to Iraqi troops just before missions so they wouldn't sell it to insurgents.

The next day, even Cegelis admitted Duckworth's war stories were "extremely compelling," noting they opened her eyes to what is happening in Iraq. Still, she says the move to field veterans instead of more liberal candidates who she believes would appeal to the party's base is "about symbols and that's very disappointing."

Democratic committeeman Rocco Terranova says that while many "were a little disenchanted" when Duckworth was drafted into the race, they've adjusted.

"She's a war hero," he says, "and the war's on everybody's mind."

How life's lessons tend to de-polarize the issue TIME
I watched the demonstrations this weekend marking the 33rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade and wonder at their familiarity; the candlelight vigil in front of the Supreme Court, the masses on the mall and in cities across the country, the urgent hope that protesters express as they see the fight breaking in their favor: John Roberts. Sam Alito. New laws in multiple states that are bound to wind up being challenged, so that the next battle is bound to be waged before a more sympathetic High Court. It strikes me mainly because as visible and volatile as the issue is, the transforming events have already occurred, to an extent that makes the legal fight less practically relevant. It's not just that abortion is already unavailable in the vast majority of communities across the country, and would remain available in some states even if Roe were overturned.It's the personal changes that stand out as I talk to women of the post-Roe generation, those of us who came of age with the assumption that the abortion question was, for our purposes, settled. When I graduated from college in 1982 abortion was not a matter of debate among women I knew. We didn't tug and pull at the ethical implications of it, or stay up late debating the legal logic underlying the Roe decision. It was just there, a safety net, the kind of right we hoped we'd never to have to exercise, but were grateful to have just in case.
Emotion builds for new battle on Roe Miami Herald
Demonstrators Mark Roe V. Wade Anniversary ABC News
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Decline In Auto Industry Undermines Well-Paid Jobs
for African Americans


For Immediate Release:
Wednesday, January 23, 2006

Contact:
Lynn Erskine 202-293-5380 x115


Washington, DC - The sharp decline in the auto manufacturing sector in the last 20 years has hit African Americans particularly hard, according to a new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Ford Motor Company's decision to implement another round of layoffs is bad news for Ford workers, but especially for African Americans. Since the end of World War II, manufacturing jobs, particularly unionized jobs in the auto industry, have been an important source of well-paid employment for African Americans.

The study, "The Decline in African-American Representation in Unions and Auto Manufacturing, 1979-2004," details the sharp decline in African-American employment in auto manufacturing and the even sharper decline in African-American union membership rates for the population as a whole. The report, by CEPR researchers Dr. John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer, analyzed data from the Current Population Survey from 1979 through 2004.

"African Americans have been hit especially hard hit by the loss of jobs in the auto industry. Ford's layoffs will have a disproportionate effect on the African-American workforce," said economist John Schmitt.

The analysis found that:

- From 1983 to 2004, union membership rates among African Americans fell 15.1 percentage points (from 31.7 percent to 16.6 percent). This compares to a drop of 8.3 percentage points among whites (from 22.2 percent to 13.9 percent) and 12.8 percentage points among Hispanics (from 24.2 percent to 11.4 percent).

- The drop in unionization rates for African Americans has coincided with a 13.3 percentage point decrease in the share of African-American workers employed in manufacturing (from 23.9 percent to 10.6 percent). This compares with a drop of 11.4 percentage points among whites (from 23.5 percent to 12.1 percent). African Americans are now somewhat under-represented among manufacturing workers.

- In 1979, 2.1 percent of all African-American workers were employed in automobile manufacturing. By 2004, this share had fallen by more than one-third to 1.3 percent. By contrast, the share of white workers employed in auto manufacturing fell just 0.2 percentage points from 1.3 percent to 1.1 percent. The share of Hispanic workers also fell by 0.2 percentage points, from 0.8 percent to 0.6 percent.

To read the report, see: http://www.cepr.net/publications/african_a...ing_2006_01.pdf

###

The Center for Economic and Policy Research is an independent, nonpartisan think tank that was established to promote democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people's lives.

1611 Connecticut Ave., NW Suite 400 Washington, DC 20009
Tel: 202-293-5380 | Fax: 202-588-1356 | www.cepr.net

Hunger strikers close to death

By Sarah Baxter

DESPITE force feeding by the American military, several hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay may be close to death, according to lawyers acting for the detainees.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11644.htm

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

January 23, 2006
White House Begins New Effort to Defend Surveillance Program
By DAVID E. SANGER and JOHN O'NEIL
MANHATTAN, Kan., Jan. 23 - President Bush today opened what amounts to a weeklong media blitz against criticism of the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping program, calling it a "terrorist surveillance program" that had saved lives.

Mr. Bush hotly denied charges that he had done anything illegal by authorizing the warrantless eavesdropping program. "If I wanted to break the law," he told an audience at Kansas State University, "why was I briefing Congress?"

Earlier in the day, in Washington, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who led the National Security Agency when it began the warrantless wiretaps, vigorously defended the program , though he acknowledged that it depended on a lower standard of evidence than required by courts.

"The trigger is quicker and a bit softer," said General Hayden, an Air Force officer who is now the principal deputy director of the new national intelligence agency, "but the intrusion into privacy is also limited: only international calls and only those we have a reasonable basis to believe involve Al Qaeda or one of its affiliates."

The standard laid out by General Hayden - a "reasonable basis to believe" - is lower than "probable cause," the standard used by the special court created by Congress to handle surveillance involving foreign intelligence.

General Hayden said that warrantless searches are conducted when one of a "handful" of senior officers at the security agency determines that there is a "reasonable belief" that one party to a call between someone in America and someone overseas has a link to Al Qaeda.

The session, at the National Press Club, was remarkable in that it featured a former director of the super-secret N.S.A. discussing at length what administration officials say is probably the most highly classified program in the government.

In his speech this afternoon, President Bush, who was accompanied by the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, also said that decisions to begin wiretaps without court approval were based on a reasonable belief of a link to terrorists.

The intercepts were made, he said, on calls involving "somebody inside the United States and outside the United States, and one of the numbers would be reasonably suspected to be an Al Qaeda link or affiliate."

"If they're making a phone call in the United States, it seems like to me we want to know why," Mr. Bush said.

He also cited a recent Supreme Court decision, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, to bolster his argument that bypassing the courts fell within presidential power during a time when the country is fighting terrorism.

In that case, the administration asserted that a Congressional resolution passed after the 9/11 attacks authorizing the use of force in tracking down those responsible, gave the president the right to hold American citizens indefinitely without trial as enemy combatants.

The Supreme Court agreed that Mr. Hamdi's capture was authorized by the Congressional resolution, but rejected the administration's more sweeping claims. Mr. Bush's point today was that in its ruling, the court had recognized that the resolution gave the president "additional authority."

"It means Congress gave me the authority to use necessary force to protect the American people, but it didn't prescribe the tactics," the president said.

Since the wiretapping program was disclosed last month, members of the Bush administration have emphasized the need for speed in explaining why the program bypassed the process set out in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that set up the special court.

But General Hayden said today that the difference in legal standards also played an important role in determining whether to go to the FISA court.

The 1978 law allows the agency to seek a warrant up to 72 hours after wiretapping begins when speed is of the essence. But even in an emergency, General Hayden said, the law requires that the attorney general approve a wiretap before it can begin.

However, "the attorney general's standard," he said, "is a body of evidence equal to that which he would present to the court," meaning that an emergency application would also have to show probable cause.

Despite a degree of candor unusual for a senior intelligence official discussing classified operations, the general stopped short of explaining how the N.S.A. decides that a communication is linked to Al Qaeda.

"Let me make this clear," he said. "When you're talking to your daughter at state college, this program cannot intercept your conversations. And when she takes a semester abroad to complete her Arabic studies, this program will not intercept your communications."

He also asserted that any conversations purely within the United States that are accidentally intercepted - as The New York Times has reported happened in at least a small number of cases - are immediately destroyed.

Some Republicans as well as many Democrats have questioned the program's legal and Constitutional basis.

General Hayden defended the program's constitutionality. He said the lower, "reasonable belief" standard conformed to the wording of the Fourth Amendment, asserting that it does not mention probable cause, but instead forbids "unreasonable" searches and seizures.

"The constitutional standard is reasonable," he said. "I am convinced that we are lawful, because what it is we're doing is reasonable," he said.

The Fourth Amendment, however, reads: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

General Hayden also called the program critical to the war on terror in a time when the tools of surveillance were changing rapidly.

"Had this program been in effect prior to 9/11," he said, "it is my professional judgment that we would have detected some of the 9/11 Al Qaeda operatives in the United States, and we would have identified them as such."

General Hayden defended the program's safeguards, saying that it "is actively overseen by the most intense oversight regime in the history of the National Security Agency."

At some points, General Hayden appeared exasperated by criticism that he said was based largely on misinformation or misunderstandings of the program.

"It is not a driftnet over Dearborn or Lackawanna" or other areas with many Arab-American residents, he said. "This is hot pursuit of communications entering or leaving America involving someone we believe is associated with Al Qaeda."

General Hayden also described two separate programs for expanded wiretaps after 9/11. He said that shortly after the attacks he had broadened the criteria used to determine who was a person of "inherent foreign intelligence value," something he described as a routine exercise of his own authority.

"The standard of what was relevant and valuable - and therefore, what was reasonable - would, understandably, change, I think, as smoke billowed from two American cities and a Pennsylvania farm field."

For those wiretaps, the agency continued to seek FISA warrants, he said.

Without giving numbers, he said the wiretaps conducted without warrants under presidential authority had been "a steady producer" of good information, while the amount of information gathered under FISA had risen more sharply.

"FISA has been increasingly effective," he said.

General Hayden said that immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks "we also turned on the spigot of N.S.A. reporting to F.B.I. in, frankly, an unprecedented way."

"We recognized it almost immediately, a question of weeks," he said, the agency curtailed the flow. "We found that we were giving them too much data in too raw form."

Since the disclosure of the warrantless wiretapping program, some F.B.I. officials have said the program produced a flood of unimportant information and bogged down agents assigned to check them out.

But General Hayden discounted those complaints, and pointed out that the 9/11 commission had called for both more surveillance and better sharing of information between agencies.

When asked what level of certainty was needed in determining that someone was connected to Al Qaeda before a warrantless wiretap was conducted, General Hayden acknowledged that the decision involved "both art and science." But he compared it to intelligence given to the military for battlefield decisions.

The methods the agency uses to determine if an intercept "is an Al Qaeda communication are the same tools, techniques, tactics and procedures we use to tell America's armed forces that you can go ahead and put a 500-pound bomb on that target," he said. "It's the same art and science."

David E. Sanger reported from Manhattan, Kan., and John O'Neil reported from New York. Eric Lichtblau contributed reporting from Washington.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

January 23, 2006
Justices Ask Court to Reconsider Campaign Finance Case
By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 - The Supreme Court signaled a willingness today to revisit its landmark 2003 decision on the use of money in political campaigns, directing a lower court to reconsider a ruling against a Wisconsin anti-abortion group and perhaps opening the door to new challenges to campaign-finance restrictions.

In a unanimous, unsigned opinion only three pages long, the justices told a three-judge federal court panel in Washington to take another look at the suit brought by the group, the Wisconsin Right to Life organization. The justices said that the 2003 decision "did not purport to resolve" all future challenges to how campaign-finance legislation is applied.

The justices' decision, coming only a week after they heard the case, could indicate that the issue of campaign finance will soon be back before them as the Supreme Court goes through a period of transition.

At issue is a section of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, more familiarly known as the McCain-Feingold law, after its main sponsors, Senators John S. McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin.

The law was a reaction to at least three decades worth of heated debate over how money, sometimes called "the mother's milk of politics," should be raised and spent during political campaigns. Underlying the debate were charges that money has often been a corrupting influence in the political process - and counter-arguments that restrictions on campaign spending and advertising violated First Amendment rights of free speech and association.

On Dec. 11, 2003, the Supreme Court ruled, 5 to 4, that the core of the McCain-Feingold law was constitutional. Part of the law established a new category of "electioneering communications," or television ads that refer to specific candidates for federal office and that are broadcast in the relevant market within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days of a general election.

The law specifies that corporations and labor unions may not pay for such advertisements from their general treasuries, but must instead use money from their political action committees, which are subject to limits on campaign contributions.

Wisconsin Right to Life ran ads in 2004 urging viewers to contact the state's two senators, Mr. Feingold and Herb Kohl, also a Democrat, and urge them to oppose efforts to block President Bush's nominees for federal judgeships. Not coincidentally, Mr. Feingold was running for re-election (successfully, as it turned out).

A lower federal court ruled that the ads were "electioneering," and thus subject to disclosure requirements and spending limits spelled out in the McCain-Feingold law. But Wisconsin Right to Life argued that its ads were not really "electioneering" but instead amounted to "grass-roots lobbying," and under that definition should not be subject to the same curbs as "electioneering."

When the case was argued before the Supreme Court last week, there was considerable agreement that it can be very difficult to distinguish between ads meant to lobby and ads meant to influence an election - especially since many ads try to do both.

Senator Feingold told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel after the arguments that he hoped the Supreme Court would rule against the right-to-life group. "The court cannot uphold the challenge brought by Wisconsin right to Life without ignoring the precedent it set when it upheld the issue-ad provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act two years ago," he said.

Richard Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School of Los Angeles who specializes in election law, told The Associated Press that today's Supreme Court ruling "could be an important first step toward undermining" the 2003 ruling without overruling it.

"Wisconsin Right to Life is elated," the group's executive director, Barbara Lyons, said today. "We welcome with great excitement a proper review of the merits of our appeal and are optimistic that free speech will once again be recognized in the United States."

Since the 2003 ruling, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has succeeded William H. Rehnquist, who voted in the minority on most provisions of the McCain-Feingold law. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was in the majority. Now that she is retiring, to be succeeded by Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., if he is confirmed this week, there is likely to be intense speculation on what might happen if and when the McCain-Feingold law goes before the tribunal again.

James Bopp Jr., the lawyer who argued on behalf of Wisconsin Right to Life, told The A.P. he hoped the courts would move quickly "so that now, not only we will know, everyone will know what type of lobbying ads are permitted."



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

National security vs. whistle-blowing
Protections are eroding for those who allege governmental wrongdoing -
especially if going public risks state secrets. By Alexandra Marks
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0124/p02s01-uspo.html?s=hns

- OBL Tape May Be Attack Prelude
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/OBL_Tape_M...ck_Prelude.html

Washington (UPI) Jan 24, 2006 - Lawmakers who have been briefed by U.S. intelligence officials warned Sunday that the threats against America made by Osama bin Laden in his latest audiotape should be taken very seriously, and might be the precursor to a new attack by his al-Qaida network inside the United States.

January 24, 2006
Judge Orders U.S. to Supply Prisoner Names
By JULIA PRESTON
A federal judge has ordered the Pentagon to release the names and nationalities of hundreds of prisoners detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, rejecting the government's argument that it would be a violation of their privacy and expose them to retaliation by terrorist groups.

The ruling, issued yesterday by Judge Jed S. Rakoff of Federal District Court in Manhattan, came in a lawsuit brought by The Associated Press in April 2005 under the Freedom of Information Act. The suit sought to force the Pentagon to release transcripts of military tribunal hearings held to determine whether the detainees at Guantánamo had been properly categorized as "enemy combatants."

Last year, the Pentagon released the transcripts of 558 tribunals but blacked out the names and other basic identifying information about the prisoners. In his new ruling, which he described as "final," Judge Rakoff ordered the Defense Department to turn over "unredacted copies" of the transcripts to the news agency.

In August, Judge Rakoff ordered the military to ask the prisoners whether they consented to having their names published. Of 317 detainees who received a form with this question, 63 checked yes, 17 checked no, 35 returned the form without answering and 202 did not return the form, the judge said in a ruling on Jan. 4. He concluded that the small number of negative answers did not justify withholding all the names.

In his January ruling, Judge Rakoff barred the Pentagon from evoking an exemption in the Freedom of Information Act that allows information to be withheld if publishing it would be an unwarranted violation of personal privacy. He also said the Defense Department had offered only "thin and conclusory speculation" to support its claims that terrorist groups might attack the prisoners or their families.

Pentagon lawyers asked the judge to reconsider that ruling, arguing that publishing the prisoners' names would violate the privacy of their families. In his opinion yesterday, Judge Rakoff rejected that argument.

He gave the Pentagon until tomorrow to file an appeal.

The prisoners being held in the military detention camp at Guantánamo have been classified as "enemy combatants" and have not been brought before American courts.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Norfolk spared in Ford cuts Richmond Times Dispatch
Ford Motor Co.'s assembly plant in Norfolk will remain open despite the automaker's plans to close some plants around the country, an expert on the company said in Richmond yesterday. "This is a pretty bulletproof plant because it was completely redone," said George Hoffer, an economics professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who serves as a consultant for Ford. "It's always been a plant that Ford has protected because it has a good work force." The Norfolk plant underwent a $375 million expansion three years ago so it could make the new F-150 line of pickups. At the time, Ford Chairman and CEO Bill Ford Jr. drove the first redesigned 2004 F-150 off the assembly line. Ford, the nation's second-largest automaker, said yesterday that it will cut 25,000 to 30,000 jobs and close 14 facilities by 2012 as part of a restructuring designed to reverse a $1.6 billion loss last year in its North American operations.
Ford Motor Co. to close 14 plants in North America, cut up to ... CBC News
Hertz sale lifts Ford profit Toronto Star
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US anti-abortion rally draws Bush's strong support Monsters and Critics.com
Washington - Anti-abortion protesters took their cause to the US capital Monday and got an enthusiastic message of support from President George W. Bush, who praised their 'noble cause.'. Thousands of activists, some carrying placards saying 'I Regret my Abortion,' marched through Washington to the US Capitol and the Supreme Court to press the high court to overturn a 33-year-old ruling that legalised abortion. Abortion rights supporters held up signs saying 'Keep Abortion Legal' and mingled with the anti-abortion crowd in front of the Supreme Court. Police said there was no trouble between the protesters. Bush, in a message piped in to the annual March for Life rally by telephone, stopped short of backing a reversal of the 1973 decision, but insisted 'there's more work done' in protecting 'unborn life' in the US. 'You believe, as I do, that every human life has value (and) that the strong have a duty to protect the weak,' said Bush, speaking from a speech-making trip to Kansas.
Abortion opponents rally to mark anniversary of Roe Houston Chronicle
Bush To Anti-Abortion Activists: "We Will Prevail" About - News & Issues
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W.Va. Lawmakers Approve Mine Safety Rules Forbes
West Virginia lawmakers approved a wide raft of measures aimed at improving safety in the mine shafts beneath the nation's second-largest coal producing state, an overhaul triggered by the deaths of 14 miners in two accidents this month. In a span of eight hours Monday, the state Legislature reviewed and passed Gov. Joe Manchin's proposals to better track miners underground, prompt faster emergency responses and stockpile oxygen for stranded miners. "These 14 miners have not died in vain," Manchin said afterward. "No miner's family is going to have to endure what we all endured for 90 hours over the past three weeks."
Senators rip mine watchdog Boston Globe
Senators Say Budget Cuts Have Left Mines Unsafe Washington Post
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US Senate committee set to vote on Alito Washington Post
Conservative federal appeals judge Samuel Alito appeared likely on Tuesday to move a step closer toward Senate confirmation to the US Supreme Court, which he could end up pushing to the right. The Senate Judiciary Committee was expected to split along party lines, 10-8, in urging approval by the Republican-led Senate of President George W. Bush's 55-year-old candidate. The full 100-member Senate was to begin debate on Wednesday, with a confirmation vote anticipated before Bush's state of the union address to Congress next Tuesday. If confirmed, Alito would replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a moderate conservative who often has been the swing vote on the nine-member court on abortion, civil rights and other social issues. Public support for confirmation of Alito, a federal appeals judge since 1990, grew slightly to 54 percent after his Senate hearing this month by the Judiciary Committee, a poll released on Monday showed.
Legal commentary: Alito would lean toward business interests Monroe Street Journal
Replacing O'Connor puts court's protections in play USA Today
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January 24, 2006
White House Was Told Hurricane Posed Danger
By ERIC LIPTON
WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 - The White House was told in the hours before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans that the city would probably soon be inundated with floodwater, forcing the long-term relocation of hundreds of thousands of people, documents to be released Tuesday by Senate investigators show.

A Homeland Security Department report submitted to the White House at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29, hours before the storm hit, said, "Any storm rated Category 4 or greater will likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching."

The internal department documents, which were forwarded to the White House, contradict statements by President Bush and the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, that no one expected the storm protection system in New Orleans to be breached.

"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," Mr. Bush said in a television interview on Sept. 1. "Now we're having to deal with it, and will."

Other documents to be released Tuesday show that the weekend before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Homeland Security Department officials predicted that its impact would be worse than a doomsday-like emergency planning exercise conducted in Louisiana in July 2004.

In that drill, held because of common knowledge that New Orleans was susceptible to hurricane-driven flooding, emergency planners predicted that in a Category 3 storm, one million people would be forced to move away, 17 percent of the nation's oil refining capacity would be knocked out and as many as 60,000 lives might be lost.

"Exercise projection is exceeded by Hurricane Katrina real-life impacts," the Aug. 27 department report said, two days before the storm hit New Orleans.

The loss of life in Hurricane Katrina was far less - at least 1,350 deaths have been confirmed so far - but the estimated number of dislocated residents was not far off.

A White House spokesman, asked about the seeming contradiction between Mr. Bush's statement on Sept. 1 and the warning as the storm approached, said the president meant to say that once the storm passed and it initially looked as if New Orleans had gotten through the hurricane without catastrophic damage, no one anticipated at that point that the levees would be breached.

The Senate investigators have also found evidence that at least some federal and state officials were aware last summer that the hurricane evacuation planning in the New Orleans area was incomplete.

"We're at less than 10 percent done with this trans planning when you consider the buses and the people," said a summary of a July briefing held with local, state and federal officials regarding a possible hurricane in Louisiana and referring to transportation planning. "If you think soup lines in the Depression were long, wait til you see the lines at these collection points," the summary said, referring to buses that were supposed to help pick up people to evacuate New Orleans.

Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, who is chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said that despite such evidence, officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency had told investigators that leading up to Hurricane Katrina they believed that local and state governments could handle the evacuation on their own.

"It is another example of a lack of coordination and planning and a disconnect between what the FEMA officials' perception was and what the reality was facing state and local officials," Ms. Collins said.

Separately Monday, a Democrat on the House committee that is also investigating Hurricane Katrina urged Representative Thomas M. Davis III, Republican of Virginia, who is the chairman of the House inquiry, to enforce a subpoena presented to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld for documents related to the storm.

The Democrat, Representative Charlie Melancon of Louisiana, said in a letter that recent interviews by House investigators had produced evidence that "the Defense Department frustrated FEMA's attempts to get this aid delivered to the stricken region," and that the documents from the Pentagon were necessary to address the accusations.

A Defense Department spokesman declined to comment on the letter.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

January 24, 2006
Supreme Court Refuses Review in BlackBerry Patent Dispute
By IAN AUSTEN
OTTAWA, Jan. 23 - The United States Supreme Court on Monday rejected a bid by Research in Motion, the Canadian maker of BlackBerry e-mail devices, to review its patent dispute with the holding company NTP.

The court's decision means that the case is now back in the hands of Judge James R. Spencer of Federal District Court in Richmond, Va. He is considering a request from NTP to impose an injunction banning the sale and use of most BlackBerry hand-held devices in the United States.

An injunction could come as soon as next month. It is possible that the two companies could reach an out-of-court settlement before then, which they have tried but failed to do in the past. R.I.M. is also trying to overturn NTP's patent claims through a separate United States patent office review.

R.I.M. has acknowledged that the Supreme Court rarely hears patent cases. The company had hoped, however, that the justices would explore its argument that the wireless e-mail patents held by NTP, an intellectual property holding company based in Arlington, Va., did not extend beyond the borders of the United States.

In its court submissions, R.I.M. said that the software at the heart of the dispute exists only on servers near its headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario. Because NTP does not hold any patents in Canada, R.I.M. argued that the company had no valid claim on the BlackBerry.

"We're happy that the Supreme Court rejected R.I.M.'s efforts to create a huge loophole in the patent law," Kevin Anderson, a lawyer for NTP, said.

In an e-mail message, Mark Guibert, R.I.M.'s vice president for corporate marketing, said that the company still believed that it had several options to block the injunction as well as the imposition of the terms of NTP's court victory in 2002. In that ruling, the federal court issued an injunction banning BlackBerry sales in the United States, but stayed the injunction pending the outcome of the appeal. It also ordered R.I.M. to pay NTP millions in royalties. There are now no further avenues for R.I.M. to appeal that ruling.

"The patent office continues its re-examinations with special dispatch," Mr. Guibert wrote., "R.I.M.'s legal arguments for the district court remain strong and our software workaround designs remain a solid contingency." While it has not offered full details, R.I.M. has said that it has prepared a workaround - an alternative BlackBerry system - that it believes does not violate NTP's patents.

NTP has asked Judge Spencer to impose an injunction he granted in 2002 but suspended to permit R.I.M.'s appeals. The court is expected to announce a hearing date for NTP's case as early as this week.

At R.I.M.'s request, the United States Patent and Trademark Office is reviewing NTP's claims. It has said that it expects to issue a final ruling rejecting all of them. NTP will still have two avenues of appeal for that decision. It is not clear, though, how Judge Spencer would respond to any action by the patent office.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Bush commits US to defence of Israel in face of Iran threat

· President issues warning over Tehran nuclear plans
· Pressure rises for referral to UN Security Council

Julian Borger in Washington
Tuesday January 24, 2006
The Guardian


George Bush yesterday committed the US to the defence of Israel against threats from Iran, saying he would not allow the world to be "blackmailed" by an Iranian nuclear weapon.
The US president's warning, issued in an exchange with students in Kansas, came at a tense time in relations with Iran, after Tehran vowed to restart nuclear research. The US is leading a diplomatic attempt to persuade other countries to refer Iran to the UN security council for failure to cooperate with United Nations inspectors. Tehran insists it is interested only in a civilian nuclear energy programme, and has threatened to return to full-scale production of nuclear fuel if it is referred to the UN.

"I am deeply concerned about Iran, as should a lot of people be concerned about Iran. I am concerned when the country of Iran's president announces his desire to see that Israel gets destroyed," Mr Bush said, referring to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's threat to "wipe Israel off the map".
He added: "Israel's our ally. We're committed to the safety of Israel, and it's a commitment we will keep.

"Secondly, I'm concerned about a nontransparent society's desire to develop a nuclear weapon. The world cannot be put in a position where we can be blackmailed by a nuclear weapon. I believe it is very important for the Iranian government to hear loud and clear from not only the United States, but also from other nations around the world."

The president's appearance in Kansas took the form of a short speech followed by an unscripted question-and-answer session of the kind being tried out by Mr Bush's handlers as a means of showing him at his most relaxed and responsive.

He defended his decision to allow wiretaps on telephone calls and emails between American residents and foreigners without court warrants, insisting it was legal. "I'm mindful of your civil liberties and so I had all kinds of lawyers review the process," he told his audience of about 9,000 mostly students and soldiers at Kansas State University.

The president paid tribute to Tony Blair, after being asked by a British questioner whether he had talked to the prime minister about the common perception of him in Britain as Mr Bush's "yes man".

"I'm sorry that his relationship with me causes him political problems at home. You know, sometimes I can be little allergic for people overseas, if you know what I mean," the president said to laughter from a mostly supportive crowd.

"I'm aware that that is a criticism of Tony, and I just strongly disagree with that. He's an independent thinker. He and I share this interesting moment in history together, and we also share this deep belief that liberty will transform the world or can transform the world. That's what we believe. In other words, there is a philosophical core of Tony Blair, core beliefs that Tony and I share."

The president listed the issues on which he disagreed with Mr Blair, including the Kyoto accord on climate change and the international criminal court, both of which are opposed by Mr Bush. But, the president went on, they agreed "strategically, and that's what's important". He said they tried to talk once a week.

"And it's a really interesting way to share, just thoughts and concerns," Mr Bush said. "And the British-US relationship is unique. It's been unique in the past. It is unique today. And I'm convinced it will be unique in the future, for the good of the world."

Former NSA Chief Says Surveillance Limited
By KATHRYN SHRADER, Associated Press Writer

In a wide-ranging defense of the National Security Agency's controversial surveillance program, the government's No. 2 intelligence official said Monday that the spy agency's operations are not a drift net over U.S. communities.

Gen. Michael Hayden, the former NSA director, described the 4-year-old program as narrowly targeted, using the same tools and techniques employed to decide whether to drop a 500-pound bomb on a terrorist target.

Hayden now holds the second-ranking job in the Office of the National Intelligence Director, John Negroponte.

"Had this program been in effect prior to 9/11, it is my professional judgment that we would have detected some of the al-Qaida operatives in the United States," Hayden said in an appearance at the National Press Club.

Hayden's comments came as the Bush administration kicked off three days of public events aimed at defending the highly classified surveillance program.

First disclosed last month, the program approved by President Bush allowed the NSA to eavesdrop, without warrants, on communications of individuals within the continental United States, whose calls and e-mails were believed to have involved al-Qaida.




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


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January 24, 2006
Senate Panel Votes Along Party Lines to Endorse Alito
By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 - The Senate Judiciary Committee voted strictly along party lines today to endorse Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. for a seat on the Supreme Court, sending the nomination to the full Senate, where confirmation is all but certain.

The 10-to-8 committee vote cleared the way for the Senate to act on President Bush's nominee as soon as Friday. Since Republicans have 55 seats in the Senate, Judge Alito's prospects are excellent, even if most Democrats oppose him, as expected.

Judge Alito, who has sat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, would replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Since he is 55 years old and apparently in good health, he could sit on the high court for many years and, in the opinion of many who follow the court, tilt it considerably to the right.

Republicans and Democrats on the committee offered starkly different views of the nominee today, with Republicans calling him superbly qualified in terms of intellect and integrity - "a towering legal figure," as Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, put it - and Democrats describing him as a jurist who favors governmental power over individual rights and big business over working-class people.

The nominee is a jurist "with achievements of the highest order," Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the committee, said before casting his vote. Mr. Specter said that contrary to the complaints of committee Democrats, the judge answered questions "as far as he could go" during three day of hearings.

Senator Specter is one of only a few Senate Republicans who support abortion rights, but he said Judge Alito had convinced him that he does indeed regard the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision as "settled law" not easily overturned.

The eight committee Democrats argued that, despite his intellectual credentials, he does not belong on the Supreme Court. They said his decisions in 15 years as a judge and his paperwork as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration signal that he would try to overturn abortion rights and be unsympathetic to civil liberties in general.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, said that if a person favors a woman's right to an abortion, "one cannot vote for Judge Alito. It's really that simple."

Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the panel's ranking Democrat, said Judge Alito had been deliberately vague in answering questions from committee members and had said nothing to indicate he would be an "effective constitutional check on the presidency." Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, agreed. The nominee, he said, had offered committee members only "artful evasions and pleasant banalities."

Mr. Leahy was one of three committee Democrats who voted for Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to be chief justice of the United States. The others were Russell D. Feingold and Herb Kohl, both of Wisconsin. Mr. Feingold said he had "grave concerns" that Judge Alito would not stand for the Bill of Rights and against government intrusion, while Mr. Kohl said that to vote for Judge Alito would be "to gamble with our liberties."

Republicans and Democrats almost seemed to be describing different people as they gave their reasons for voting "yes" or "no."

Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, said Judge Alito deserves a seat on the high court "by any reasonable standard." Another Republican, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, agreed and said the judge's opponents had done their best to distort the nominee's record. And Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, said Judge Alito was one of the most qualified nominees in decades.

But Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said Judge Alito's record portrays a jurist who favors a "sweeping expansion of presidential power" at the expense of personal liberties, and one who would do little to address the "inequalities and injustices in our society."

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, cited Justice O'Connor's much-quoted statement, in a ruling that upheld the right of detainees to challenge the basis of their detention, that a state of war was not "a blank check" for presidential powers. He said he feared that Judge Alito did not share Justice O'Connor's philosophy.

Abortion was perhaps the most polarizing issue during the committee hearing on Judge Alito's nomination. Two Republicans, Sam Brownback of Kansas and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, were as ardent in their opposition to abortion as Senator Feinstein was in her support of abortion rights. Mr. Brownback said today he hopes that Roe v. Wade will be overturned one day, so that the issue of abortion will be returned to the states. Perhaps then, he said, society will no longer "violate the dignity of the unborn."

The other members of the Judiciary Committee are Mike DeWine of Ohio and John Cornyn of Texas, Republicans, and Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois.

The committee outcome today portends a vote in the full Senate much closer than that which made John Roberts chief justice. Half the Senate's 44 Democrats (and independent James Jeffords of Vermont) voted in favor of Judge Roberts, who was confirmed by 78 to 22. But only one Democrat, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, has pledged to vote for Judge Alito.

One committee Republican, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said he was saddened that the vote today was strictly according to party and that Judge Alito was likely to get only a handful of Democratic votes in the full Senate. "What did you expect President Bush to do when he won?" Mr. Graham asked rhetorically.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

January 24, 2006
Administration Continues Eavesdropping Defense
By JOHN O'NEIL
Stepping up the Bush administration's defense of the National Security Agency's eavesdropping program, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales today cited a long history of military surveillance conducted without warrants, going back to George Washington's reading of captured mail between the British and Americans during the Revolutionary War.

In a speech at Georgetown University, Mr. Gonzales also said that it was crucial for the president to be able to act quickly using the professional judgment of intelligence experts to gather information on potential plots.

As President Bush had in a speech on Monday, Mr. Gonzales asserted that the wiretaps were not a domestic surveillance program. The wiretaps only involved calls or e-mail between someone in the United States and someone in a foreign country "when experienced intelligence experts have reason to believe that one party to the communication is a member of Al Qaeda or has an affiliation with it," Mr. Gonzales said.

President Bush, during the speech he delivered at Kansas State University, had labeled the wiretaps a "terrorist surveillance program."

The Bush administration has a launched a large-scale effort to fend off criticism of the secret program, whose existence was disclosed last month. Earlier Monday, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the nation's second-ranking intelligence official, laid out new operational details about the program in a speech in Washington, including the destruction of "accidental" interceptions and the security agency's line of command in approving wiretaps without warrants. And on Wednesday Mr. Bush is to visit the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Md., to discuss the program.

Democrats and some Republicans have attacked the program as illegal and unconstitutional, and an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has strongly questioned its legal underpinnings and the limited briefings that Congressional leaders were given about it.

Mr. Gonzales's speech today went over four different legal justifications for the secret program, all of which had been set forth in a Justice Department white paper issued last week.

The attorney general said the program fell well within the president's inherent powers under the Constitution to protect the country. "There is no other public official - no mayor, no governor, not member of Congress - charged with the primary duty of protecting all Americans," he said. "The Constitution gives the president all the authority necessary to fulfill this solemn duty."

Mr. Gonzales said that presidents had long exercised this authority in similar ways. Along with Washington's spy program during the Revolutionary War, he cited the interception of telegrams during the Civil War, and orders by Woodrow Wilson during World War I and Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II to intercept communications between foreign countries and the United States. "All these were without warrants," Mr. Gonzales said.

The attorney general's second argument involved cited the resolution Congress passed just after the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 that authorizing the use of force in Afghanistan and against people elsewhere involved in the plot.

He quoted from a Supreme Court ruling written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, in the case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, that dealt with the powers conferred by the resolution.

Justice O'Connor wrote that the even though the resolution did not spell out a right to detain Taliban fighters, the vote had implicitly given Mr. Bush the power to do so because such detentions are "so fundamental and accepted an incident to war."

Mr. Gonzalez argued that by extension, the resolution also permitted military surveillance, in this case of terrorists linked to Al Qaeda, without "cataloguing the actions it would authorize."

On Monday, President Bush also cited the Hamdi case, saying that the ruling showed that the resolution gave him "additional powers."

Thirdly, Mr. Gonzalez said that the secret wiretapping program was not in conflict with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law setting up a special court to hear requests for intelligence wiretapping warrants. He said the law could not encroach upon the president's inherent military powers, and that it explicitly allowed for exceptions made by other statutes - in this case, he argued, the resolution passed after the terrorist attacks. Even the law's emergency procedure for retroactive approval by the courts was too cumbersome, he said.

"We have to remember that we're talking about a wartime foreign intelligence program," he said. "The optimal way to achieve the necessary speed and agility is to leave the decisions about particular intercepts to the judgment of professional intelligence officers, based on the best available intelligence information."

Finally, Mr. Gonzales argued that the program is not in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against "unreasonable" search and seizure and forbids warrants issued without probable cause, a higher standard of evidence than has been used in the wiretapping program.

Mr. Gonzales pointed out that searches were allowed without warrants in many situations, like boarding a plane or at border crossings, because their "circumstances make such a search reasonable even without a warrant."

"The key question under the Fourth Amendment is not whether there is a warrant, but whether a search is reasonable," he said.

"It's hard to imagine a president, any president, who wouldn't use these tools in defense of the American people," he said, adding that not doing so would be "irresponsible."

In contrast to Mr. Gonzales' discussion of the legal side to the issue, General Hayden, who led the security agency at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks and who has been Mr. Bush's point man on the eavesdropping program, gave a highly unusual look into some aspect of its operational side.

General Hayden refused to say in the face of often sharp questioning exactly how the agency determined that an American's phone call or e-mail message might "involve Al Qaeda" before eavesdropping on it.

"Clearly not every lead pans out from this or any other source," the general said, "but this program has given us information that we would not otherwise have been able to get. It's impossible for me to talk about this any more in a public way without alerting our enemies to our tactics or what we have learned. I can't give details without increasing the danger to Americans. On one level, believe me, I wish that I could. But I can't."

Leading Democrats said on Monday that they found the White House's latest line of defense to be unpersuasive, with Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate Democratic leader, saying Mr. Bush's speech reflected a refusal to "come clean" with the public.

"I am eager for the Bush administration to level with the American people and participate fully and openly in upcoming Congressional hearings," scheduled for Feb. 6 in the Senate, Mr. Reid said. "We can be strong and operate under the rule of law."

But the White House, framing the controversy from the perspective of the country's will to fight terrorism, sought on Monday to recast the very language surrounding the debate.

Mr. Bush's choice of the phrase "terrorist surveillance program" was meant to convey that only members of Al Qaeda and their associates were falling into the net of the security agency.

General Hayden took issue with the many news reports that have referred to a "domestic spying" program. Saying the program is not really domestic in nature, he emphasized that it was limited to calls and e-mail in which one end of the communication was outside the United States and which "we have a reasonable basis to believe involve Al Qaeda or one of its affiliates."

At the same time, General Hayden acknowledged that some purely domestic communications might be accidentally intercepted. The New York Times reported last month that this appeared to have happened in a small number of cases because of the difficulties posed by globalized communications in determining whether a phone call or e-mail message was truly "international."

"If there were ever an anomaly, and we discovered that there had been an inadvertent intercept of a domestic-to-domestic call, that intercept would be destroyed and not reported," General Hayden said.

John O'Neil reported from New York for this article. David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Manhattan, Kan., and Eric Lichtblau from Washington.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Gonzales Says NSA Criticism Misleading
By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defended the Bush administration's domestic spying program Tuesday and suggested that some critics and news reports have misled Americans about the breadth of the National Security Agency's surveillance.

Gonzales said the warrantless surveillance is critical to prevent another terrorist attack within the United States and falls within President Bush's constitutional authority and the powers granted by Congress immediately following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

At a Georgetown Law School Forum, Gonzales said the nation needs "to remember that ... it's imperative for national security reasons that we can detect reliably, immediately and without delay" any al-Qaida related communication entering or leaving the United States.

As he spoke, more than a dozen students stood silently with their backs turned to the attorney general. Outside the classroom where Gonzales was to speak, a pair of protesters held up a sheet that said, "Don't torture the Constitution."

Gonzales cautioned his listeners about critics and journalists who have mischaracterized details about the program. "Unfortunately, they have caused concern over the potential breadth of what the President has actually authorized," he said.

The attorney general's appearance at the law school is part of a campaign by the Bush administration to overcome criticism, often by attempting to redefine the program.

On Monday at Kansas State University, Bush said the program should be termed a "terrorist surveillance program" and contended it has the backing of legal experts, key lawmakers and the Supreme Court.

But some members of Congress from both parties have questioned whether the warrantless snooping is legal. And many Democrats along with a number of legal experts say flatly that Bush has broken the law and has committed an impeachable offense.

Last week, Gonzales sent leaders of Congress a 42-page legal defense of warrantless eavesdropping which suggests that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is unconstitutional if it prevents the NSA's warrantless eavesdropping.

The National Security Agency program bypassed the special FISA court Congress established in 1978 to approve or reject secret surveillance or searches of foreigners and U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism or espionage.




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


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http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/ne...t_id=1001883620

Defending Spy Program, General Reveals Shaky Grip on 4th Amendment

By E&P Staff

Published: January 23, 2006 10:05 PM ET

NEW YORK The former national director of the National Security Agency, in an appearance today before the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., today, appeared to be unfamiliar with the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution when pressed by a reporter with Knight Ridder's Washington office -- despite his claims that he was actually something of an expert on it.

General Michael Hayden, principal deputy director of National Intelligence with the Office of National Intelligence, talked with reporters about the current controversy surrounding the National Security Agency's warrantless monitoring of communications of suspected al Qaeda terrorists. Hayden has been in this position since last April, but was NSA director when the NSA monitoring program began in 2001.

As the last journalist to get in a question, Jonathan Landay, a well-regarded investigative reporter for Knight Ridder, noted that Gen. Hayden repeatedly referred to the Fourth Amendment's search standard of "reasonableness" without mentioning that it also demands "probable cause." Hayden seemed to deny that the amendment included any such thing, or was simply ignoring it.

Here is the exchange, along with the entire Fourth Amendment at the end.

***

QUESTION: Jonathan Landay with Knight Ridder. I'd like to stay on the same issue, and that had to do with the standard by which you use to target your wiretaps. I'm no lawyer, but my understanding is that the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution specifies that you must have probable cause to be able to do a search that does not violate an American's right against unlawful searches and seizures. Do you use --

GEN. HAYDEN: No, actually -- the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: But the --

GEN. HAYDEN: That's what it says.

QUESTION: But the measure is probable cause, I believe.

GEN. HAYDEN: The amendment says unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: But does it not say probable --

GEN. HAYDEN: No. The amendment says --

QUESTION: The court standard, the legal standard --

GEN. HAYDEN: -- unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: The legal standard is probable cause, General. You used the terms just a few minutes ago, "We reasonably believe." And a FISA court, my understanding is, would not give you a warrant if you went before them and say "we reasonably believe"; you have to go to the FISA court, or the attorney general has to go to the FISA court and say, "we have probable cause."

And so what many people believe -- and I'd like you to respond to this -- is that what you've actually done is crafted a detour around the FISA court by creating a new standard of "reasonably believe" in place of probable cause because the FISA court will not give you a warrant based on reasonable belief, you have to show probable cause. Could you respond to that, please?

GEN. HAYDEN: Sure. I didn't craft the authorization. I am responding to a lawful order. All right? The attorney general has averred to the lawfulness of the order.

Just to be very clear -- and believe me, if there's any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it's the Fourth. And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment. And so what you've raised to me -- and I'm not a lawyer, and don't want to become one -- what you've raised to me is, in terms of quoting the Fourth Amendment, is an issue of the Constitution. The constitutional standard is "reasonable." And we believe -- I am convinced that we are lawful because what it is we're doing is reasonable.

***

Here's the Fourth Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. "

A new Gallup poll released Monday showed that 51% of Americans said the administration was wrong to intercept conversations involving a party inside the U.S. without a warrant. In response to another question, 58% said they support the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the program.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
E&P Staff (letters@editorandpublisher.com)

Bush says sees risk of Iranian nuclear blackmail By Steve Holland

U.S. President George W. Bush said on Monday he was concerned a future nuclear-armed Iran could blackmail the world.

But in a setback for U.S.-European Union efforts to crack down on Iran over its disputed nuclear program, the U.N. nuclear watchdog chief ruled out advancing a wide-ranging report on the issue in time for a February 2 crisis meeting of his agency.

In remarks at Kansas State University, Bush cited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's expressed wish for Israel to be wiped off the map as a sign that Iran sought a nuclear arsenal.

"The world cannot be put in a position where we can be blackmailed by a nuclear weapon," he said.

He also had a message for the Iranian people, saying "we have no beef with you," and expressing hope that Iraq's fledgling democracy could serve as an example for nearby Iran.

Bush said "the next logical step" in dealing with Iran was for the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation governing board to refer the Islamic republic to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.

Earlier, Iranian officials said they did not fear Western threats over their atomic energy drive and vowed to pursue uranium enrichment even if sent to the Security Council.

But Tehran, which denies Western suspicions that it seeks to build atomic bombs, also urged more dialogue with the European Union to resolve a standoff that is jacking up world oil prices.

Western powers have urged IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei to make a broad accounting of Tehran's nuclear project to the special IAEA meeting they called for February, rather than wait for a regularly scheduled March 6 session.

U.S. and EU officials believe a full report would help them persuade skeptical Russia, China and developing states on the IAEA board to vote at the February gathering for referral.

But ElBaradei, replying to U.S., EU and Australian letters, said he had given Iran until the March meeting to answer questions in IAEA inquiries into its nuclear project, which it concealed from U.N. inspectors for almost two decades.

"Due process, therefore, must take its course before (we are) able to submit a detailed report," he said in a letter to the U.S., British, French and Australian envoys to the IAEA, distributed to all board members and seen by Reuters.

LIMITED REPORT EXPECTED

But he said his deputy for safeguards issues would brief the February meeting about Iran's announced resumption on January 9 of nuclear fuel research and limited uranium-enrichment work, which broke a deal with EU negotiators and dismayed the West.

ElBaradei, giving other reasons for not accelerating a full report, said a fresh IAEA verification mission was due in Iran shortly and that he had only last week sent extra questions to Iran based on what diplomats called newly released intelligence.

Diplomats close to the IAEA say ElBaradei disagrees with the Western thrust for referral now, believing further direct talks with Iran and IAEA investigations could still rein in Tehran before a volatile showdown in the Security Council.

Iran has threatened to end IAEA snap inspections and, as the world's No. 4 oil exporter, hinted it would cut back crude exports if sent to the Council -- scenarios that have made many countries leery of pursuing sanctions against Tehran.

To bridge divisions over what to do about Iran, Russia has suggested the IAEA board next month authorize a Security Council debate but leave any referral action, which would open the way to sanctions, at least until the March meeting, diplomats say.

A British-French letter to ElBaradei requested a "short progress report" on the period since the last IAEA board in November, covering verification of Iranian declarations and monitoring of Iran's voluntary halt to uranium purification.

It also asked ElBaradei to explain to board members the significance of a document Iran gave to IAEA inspectors last year containing what some Western diplomats said were the instructions for making the core of a nuclear bomb.

Iran denies accusations that it is seeking nuclear weapons under the guise of a civilian atomic energy program, saying it aims only to generate electricity for a growing economy.

"We are not going to yield to pressure to abandon our rights, and we have the necessary tools to protect ourselves," Ahmadinejad said after meeting the Qatari foreign minister.

"We still believe talks are the best way to solve the issue," he was quoted as saying by ISNA news agency.

EU powers Germany, Britain and France have rejected Iran's requests for more negotiations until it reinstates a moratorium on uranium enrichment and other sensitive nuclear work.

Washington says Iran's enthusiasm for dialogue is part of what one official called a "diplomatic fog machine" to buy time.

Bubbling tensions over Iran and other global supply worries have driven up oil prices more than $10 since late December.

(Additional reporting by Mark Heinrich in Vienna, Peter Griffiths and Madeline Chambers in London, Oleg Shchedrov in Moscow)



Copyright © 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.


Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

http://news.findlaw.com/ap/o/632/01-24-200...123d805bbb.html


Report: $13M Spent on Gay Marriage Fight
By ROBERT TANNER AP National Writer

(AP) - The 2004 election campaigns that ultimately banned same-sex marriages in 13 states were funded by a mix of national groups, churches and individuals, with ban supporters narrowly outraising opponents and total contributions breaking $13 million, according to a new analysis of state-level fundraising.

Supporters of the state constitutional amendments raised $6.8 million for ballot committees; opponents raised $6.5 million, according to the study by The Institute on Money in State Politics, a nonpartisan research organization in Helena, Mont.



The single largest block of givers were advocates of gay and lesbian rights, donating more than $3 million.

Conservative organizations affiliated with a network called the Arlington Group gave nearly $2 million, the report found. Churches also invested heavily, contributing $1.9 million, overwhelmingly in favor of bans on same-sex marriage.

Despite the nearly even split of the $13.3 million raised by ballot committees, the amendments passed overwhelmingly, sometimes by as much as a 3-to-1 ratio. The closest vote, in Oregon, passed with 57 percent in favor of a ban and 43 percent against.

The two sides together spent more than $2 million in each of several battleground states, including Michigan, Oregon and Ohio. But much less went into campaigns elsewhere, with under $100,000 spent in a half-dozen states, and less than $10,000 total in Mississippi and North Dakota.

The fight over gay marriages isn't over. Texas voters in November approved a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, though Maine voters rejected a conservative push to repeal a new law that outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Efforts have begun to put same-sex bans before voters in at least seven more states, according to the report.

"There was a coordinated effort to bring this issue to the ballot in a number of states," said research director Sue O'Connell.

Conservative groups affiliated with the Arlington Group included Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, whose leaders had been outspoken against gay and lesbian marriages after Massachusetts' high court found that the state constitution allowed same-sex marriages.

Among the big-spending advocates of gay and lesbian rights were the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force.

In all, 19 states have passed constitutional amendments outlawing same-sex marriage. Only one state - Connecticut - has enacted a law legalizing civil unions without a court order.

2006-01-24T15:00:26Z

--------------------
Pentagon Planning Document Leaves Iraq Out of Equation
--------------------

A four-year blueprint for the military reflects a view that the war is an anomaly. There's talk of robots and drones, but no force buildup.

By Mark Mazzetti
Times Staff Writer

January 24 2006

WASHINGTON; The U.S. military has long been accused of always planning to fight its last war. But as the Pentagon assesses threats to national security over the next four years, a major blueprint being completed in the shadow of the Iraq war will do largely the opposite.

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

OutsideView: How Big Is The Defense Budget
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/OutsideVie...nse_Budget.html

Washington (UPI) Jan 23, 2006 - On Dec. 21, 2005, Congress passed a defense appropriations bill, which according to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, funded "defense spending" for the United States for the current fiscal year, 2006. But the impression that the $453 billion authorized in the bill constitutes America's defense budget for 2006 would be quite incorrect. Depending on how you count it, the numbers in the bill understate U.S. military and defense spending by more than $200 billion.

Boeing Introduces New 737 Signals Intelligence Aircraft
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Boeing_Int...e_Aircraft.html

St. Louis MO (SPX) Jan 25, 2006 - Boeing has announced plans for a new 737 signals intelligence (SIGINT) aircraft that can be used for airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and also advanced network centric communications.

CYBERWARS

- FBI Survey Finds Cybercrime Rising
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/FBI_Survey...ime_Rising.html

Washington (UPI) Jan 23, 2006 - Nearly nine out of 10 public and private institutions suffered computer security incidents in 2005, but less than 10 percent of those report the incidents to law enforcement, according to a FBI survey.

2005 Was The Warmest Year In A Century
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/2005_Was..._A_Century.html

New York NY (SPX) Jan 25, 2006 - The year 2005 may have been the warmest year in a century, according to NASA scientists studying temperature data from around the world.


NJIT Solar Physicists Report Paradox: Less Sunlight, But Temps Rise
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/NJIT_Sol...Temps_Rise.html

Airline captain adds NSA to TWA Flight 800 case:

More than five years ago, retired United Airline Capt. Ray Lahr began his FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) petition to discover why TWA Flight 800 blew up on the night of July 17, 1996, off the coast of Long Island.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article....RTICLE_ID=48470

January 25, 2006
White House Declines to Provide Storm Papers
By ERIC LIPTON
WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 - The Bush administration, citing the confidentiality of executive branch communications, said Tuesday that it did not plan to turn over certain documents about Hurricane Katrina or make senior White House officials available for sworn testimony before two Congressional committees investigating the storm response.

The White House this week also formally notified Representative Richard H. Baker, Republican of Louisiana, that it would not support his legislation creating a federally financed reconstruction program for the state that would bail out homeowners and mortgage lenders. Many Louisiana officials consider the bill crucial to recovery, but administration officials said the state would have to use community development money appropriated by Congress.

The White House's stance on storm-related documents, along with slow or incomplete responses by other agencies, threatens to undermine efforts to identify what went wrong, Democrats on the committees said Tuesday.

"There has been a near total lack of cooperation that has made it impossible, in my opinion, for us to do the thorough investigation that we have a responsibility to do," Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, said at Tuesday's hearing of the Senate committee investigating the response. His spokeswoman said he would ask for a subpoena for documents and testimony if the White House did not comply.

In response to questions later from a reporter, the deputy White House spokesman, Trent Duffy, said the administration had declined requests to provide testimony by Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff; Mr. Card's deputy, Joe Hagin; Frances Fragos Townsend, the domestic security adviser; and her deputy, Ken Rapuano.

Mr. Duffy said the administration had also declined to provide storm-related e-mail correspondence and other communications involving White House staff members. Mr. Rapuano has given briefings to the committees, but the sessions were closed to the public and were not considered formal testimony.

"The White House and the administration are cooperating with both the House and Senate," Mr. Duffy said. "But we have also maintained the president's ability to get advice and have conversations with his top advisers that remain confidential."

Yet even Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, objected when administration officials who were not part of the president's staff said they could not testify about communications with the White House.

"I completely disagree with that practice," Ms. Collins, chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in an interview Tuesday.

According to Mr. Lieberman, Michael D. Brown, the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, cited such a restriction on Monday, as agency lawyers had advised him not to say whether he had spoken to President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney or to comment on the substance of any conversations with any other high-level White House officials.

Nevertheless, both Ms. Collins and Representative Thomas M. Davis III, a Virginia Republican who is leading the House inquiry, said that despite some frustration with the administration's response, they remained confident that the investigations would produce meaningful results.

Other members of the committees said the executive branch communications were essential because it had become apparent that one of the most significant failures was the apparent lack of complete engagement by the White House and the federal government in the days immediately before and after the storm.

"When you have a natural disaster, the president needs to be hands-on, and if anyone in his staff gets in the way, he needs to push them away," said Representative Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican and member of the House investigating committee. "The response was pathetic."

Even before the House and Senate investigations began, Democrats called for the appointment of an independent commission, like the one set up after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to investigate the response to the most costly natural disaster in United States history. The 9/11 Commission, after extensive negotiations, questioned Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney and received sworn testimony from Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser.

"Our fears are turning out to be accurate," Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, said Tuesday. "The Bush administration is stonewalling the Congress."

Mr. Duffy, along with officials from the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, said that although not every request had been met, the administration had provided an enormous amount of detailed information about nearly every aspect of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

The Department of Defense, for example, has provided 18 officials for testimony, and 57 others have been interviewed by Congressional staff members, said Maj. Paul Swiergosz, a Pentagon spokesman. It has also turned over an estimated 240,000 pages of documents.

Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, said his agency, which oversees FEMA, had been similarly responsive, providing 60 officials as witnesses and producing 300,000 pages of documents.

But the White House and other federal agencies have been less helpful, members of the investigating committees said, particularly the Pentagon and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is the subject of the sole subpoena issued so far.

"We have been trying - without success - to obtain Secretary Rumsfeld's cooperation for months," Representative Charlie Melancon, Democrat of Louisiana, said in a letter to Representative Davis on Monday. "The situation is not acceptable."

Mr. Davis, in a written response to Mr. Melancon on Tuesday, said he felt that the Pentagon, after the subpoena, had largely honored the committee's requests.

The Congressional investigations began in September, shortly after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, flooding New Orleans, devastating much of the rest of the region and causing more than $100 billion in damage.

Both of the committees are rushing to try to complete their investigations - the House by Feb. 15, and the Senate by the middle of March - in part because of the approaching Atlantic hurricane season, which starts on June 1.

The separate action this week by the Bush administration to oppose an effort to create what would have been called the Louisiana Recovery Corporation evoked great disappointment among state officials.

Mr. Baker's bill would have bought out owners of ruined homes, offering them at least 60 percent of their pre-storm equity, while also giving mortgage companies 60 percent of their loans on damaged properties. The bonds needed for the project would have been paid off through the sale of federally acquired land to developers.

"The Baker bill as a tool was very efficient in terms of helping people sell out, or clear title to the land," said Sean Reilly, a member of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. "We're going to have to go back to the drawing board and do the best with the tools we have."

Donald E. Powell, the Bush administration's Gulf Coast recovery coordinator, said in a statement that the government was prepared to help victims in other ways.

"We share the common vision, the common objective of Congressman Baker, to assist uninsured homeowners outside the flood plain," Mr. Powell said.

Mr. Powell's spokeswoman, D. J. Nordquist, said the administration was open to discussion if the community development money turned out to be insufficient.

Adam Nossiter contributed reporting from New Orleans for this article.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

January 25, 2006
Internet Users Thinking Twice Before a Search
By KATIE HAFNER
Kathryn Hanson, a former telecommunications engineer who lives in Oakland, Calif., was looking at BBC News online last week when she came across an item about a British politician who had resigned over a reported affair with a "rent boy."

It was the first time Ms. Hanson had seen the term, so, in search of a definition, she typed it into Google. As Ms. Hanson scrolled through the results, she saw that several of the sites were available only to people over 18. She suddenly had a frightening thought. Would Google have to inform the government that she was looking for a rent boy - a young male prostitute?

Ms. Hanson, 45, immediately told her boyfriend what she had done. "I told him I'd Googled 'rent boy,' just in case I got whisked off to some Navy prison in the dead of night," she said.

Ms. Hanson's reaction arose from last week's reports that as part of its effort to uphold an online pornography law, the Justice Department had asked a federal judge to compel Google to turn over records on millions of its users' search queries. Google is resisting the request, but three of its competitors - Yahoo, MSN and America Online - have turned over similar information.

The government and the cooperating companies say the search queries cannot be traced to their source, and therefore no personal information about users is being given up. But the government's move is one of several recent episodes that have caused some people to think twice about the information they type into a search engine, or the opinions they express in an e-mail message.

The government has been more aggressive recently in its efforts to obtain data on Internet activity, invoking the fight against terrorism and the prosecution of online crime. A surveillance program in which the National Security Agency intercepted certain international phone calls and e-mail in the United States without court-approved warrants prompted an outcry among civil libertarians. And under the antiterrorism USA Patriot Act, the Justice Department has demanded records on library patrons' Internet use.

Those actions have put some Internet users on edge, as they confront the complications and contradictions of online life.

Jim Kowats, 34, a television producer who lives in Washington, has been growing increasingly concerned about the government's data collection efforts. "I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I just feel like it's one step away from ... what's the next step?" Mr. Kowats said. "The government's going to start looking into all this other stuff."

Until last year, Mr. Kowats worked at the Discovery Channel, and a few years ago, in the course of putting together a documentary on circumcision, he and his colleagues were doing much of the research online. "When you're researching something like that and you look up the word 'circumcision,' you're going to end up with all kinds of pictures of naked children," he said. "And that can be misconstrued."

"There're so many things you can accidentally fall into when you're surfing on the Internet," he said. "I mean, you can type in almost anything and you're going to end up with something you didn't expect."

Privacy is an elusive concept, and when it comes to what is considered acceptable, people tend to draw the line at different points on the privacy spectrum.

Ming-Wai Farrell, 25, who works for a legal industry trade association in Washington, is one of those who draw the line somewhere in the middle. They are willing to part with personal information as long as they get something in return - the convenience of online banking, for example, or useful information from a search engine - and as long as they know what is to be done with the information.

Yet these same people are sometimes appalled when they learn of wholesale data gathering. Ms. Farrell said she would not be able to live without online banking, electronic bill paying or Google, but she would consider revising her Web activity if she had to question every search term, online donation or purchase.

"It's scary to think that it may just be a matter of time before Googling will invite an F.B.I. agent to tap your phone or interrogate you," Ms. Farrell said.

Mike Winkleman, 27, a law student who lives in Miami and, like Ms. Farrell, belongs to the generation of people who came of age with the Internet, said he would like to think that the erosion of his privacy was for "a good cause, like national security or preventing child porn," he said. "But I can't help but feel that for each inch I give, a mile will be taken."

But Josh Cohen, a financial adviser in Chicago, identifies more closely with a subset of Internet users who see the loss of at least some privacy as the price they pay for being on the Web. Mr. Cohen, 34, said he was willing to accept that tradeoff in the pursuit of national security.

"We as U.S. citizens have got to start making concessions," he said. "In order for the government to catch people that prey on children, or fight the war on terror, they are going to need the help of the search engines."

Mr. Cohen said he doubted there would be much compromising of his individual privacy because the amount of data collected by the government was so voluminous. "My rationale tells me that with close to 300 million people in the U.S., and about 45 to 50 percent of households having Internet access, that I don't need to be too concerned with my search engine behavior," he said.

Susan P. Crawford, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York, agreed that the sheer volume of information obtained by the government was likely to dilute privacy threats.

"More experienced Internet users would understand that in the mountain of search-related data available in response to a subpoena, it is very unlikely that anything referring to them personally would be revealed," Professor Crawford said.

She likened one's online activity to walking down the street. "We walk down the street all the time and we can be seen there," she said. "We also move around online, and can be 'seen' to some extent there as well. But we continue to go for walks."

Nevertheless, last week's court motion is giving some people pause. Sheryl Decker, 47, an information technology manager in Seattle, said she was now thinking twice about what she said in her personal e-mail correspondence. "I have been known to send very unflattering things about our government and our president," Ms. Decker said. "I still do, but I am careful about using certain phrases that I once wouldn't have given a second thought."

Ms. Decker's caution is being echoed by others. Genny Ballard, 36, a professor of Spanish at Centre College in Danville, Ky., said she had grown more conscious about what she typed into the Google search box. "Each time I put something in, I think about how it could be reconstructed to mean that I have more than an academic curiosity," Ms. Ballard said.

To be sure, Google is citing a number of reasons for resisting the government's subpoena, including concern about trade secrets and the burden of compliance. While it does not directly assert that surrendering the data would expose personal information, it has told the government that "one can envision scenarios where queries alone could reveal identifying information about a specific Google user, which is another outcome that Google cannot accept."

Ms. Hanson, who did the "rent boy" search, said that although she was aware that personal information was not being required in the Google case, she remained uneasy.

She pointed to a continuing interest she has in the Palestinian elections. "If I followed my curiosity and did some Web research, going to Web sites of the parties involved, I would honestly wonder whether someone in my government would someday see my name on a list of people who went to 'terrorist' Web sites," she said.

Mr. Kowats, the television producer, shares that fear. "Where does it stop?" he said. "What about file sharing? Scalping tickets? Or traveling to Cuba? What if you look up abortion? Who says you can't look up those things? What are the limits? It's the little chipping away. It's a slippery slope."

David Bernstein and Michael Falcone contributed reporting for this article.





Copyright 2006The New York Times

January 25, 2006
As Manhattan Booms, Inflation Squeezes Rest of New York
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
As the pay and purchasing power of Manhattan residents have moved higher and higher, incomes in all four of the boroughs outside Manhattan have trailed inflation over the last few years, in a stark example of the increasing income disparity in New York City. In terms of wages, Manhattan families are doing better on average than those in the rest of the nation, while families in the four other boroughs are doing worse.

In Manhattan, real wages - earnings adjusted for inflation - rose 5.4 percent between the first quarters of 2002 and 2005, led by the finance and information industries, while the national average was flat.

Soaring year-end bonuses seemed to play a major role in the Manhattan increase. Economists generally look on first-quarter results as providing the best indicators of trends.

But in the rest of the city, those wages fell at least 2.9 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The drop was biggest on Staten Island at 8.3 percent, although that figure may be more volatile because that borough has the smallest population in New York City.

Real wages are one of the best indicators of how people are doing financially. Driving the buying power of these wages down, it appears, is inflation. There is also an absence of serious upward pressure on wages in most industries, especially those that employ the lowest earners. The number of both high- and low-wage jobs has grown, but there is little mobility between the two.

Stories of financial frustration abound in the boroughs outside Manhattan.

Joshua Henderson, who is 29 and works in Queens as a case manager for a welfare-to-work company, said his salary had gone up about $10,000 since he left his former teaching job.

But a rise in rent on his apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn - to $950 a month from $850 - and increases in telephone, cellphone and utility costs have eaten up much of his salary increase, he said.

Mr. Henderson feels "priced out of Brooklyn, where I was born and bred," he said, adding: "I feel disgusted. I feel like the 'Sex and the City' set has taken over, spending most of their money on rents, which puts pressure on the rest of us."

Limits on opportunity have also contributed to the trend toward lower real wages. Low-skilled workers - many of them immigrants - now tend to get the lowest-paying jobs in the market, like restaurant jobs, in contrast to unskilled laborers of the past, who often found work in manufacturing, shipping and other industries that offered benefits and a chance for advancement.

"The typical jobs for immigrants with health benefits and union benefits don't exist anymore," said Frank J. Franz, president of the Belmont Small Business Association in the Bronx.

"My father had no skills at all, but he worked in a paper manufacturing plant on Bruckner Boulevard and ended up at the post office, bought a house, sent us to Fordham, and threw my sister a big wedding," he said. "You think a guy who works at a post office now who has a wife who doesn't work can send a kid to Fordham University today?"

New data compiled by the federal government suggests that New Yorkers who work outside Manhattan are being increasingly squeezed by inflation and slow wage growth - the bookends of economic struggle. And while inflation may vary somewhat from borough to borough, economists say that those variations do not affect the overall trend.

"There are two dynamics at work," said Michael L. Dolfman, the regional commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in New York. "You had, in all boroughs except Manhattan, increases in wages and salaries that were less than in the rest of the country but inflation being greater. And this has had a significant impact on the purchasing power of people who live in the city."

Workers who toil in Manhattan but who live in the four other boroughs may be earning more than those working in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx, Mr. Dolfman said, but their wages would not change the data, because by and large those earners tend not to have the highest-earning jobs in Manhattan.

To be sure, most workers in New York City benefited from the economic boom of the 1990's, and the recovery after a recession in 2001. From 1996 to 2005, the real wages of Manhattan workers grew almost 40 percent, and grew 2.5 percent in Queens and Staten Island. They were flat in the Bronx and fell 1 percent in Brooklyn.

But while prices have risen on health care and education around the country in recent years, and housing prices in major cities have also soared, inflation has hit harder in New York in other areas.

The Consumer Price Index rose 24 percent from 1996 to 2005 nationwide but grew 27.6 percent in every borough of New York. In the last three years, New Yorkers saw fuel prices rise 27 percent, while they grew 19 percent nationwide. And while the housing prices rose 8.4 percent nationwide, they went up 14.7 percent in New York. At the same time, benefits have decreased in many professions.

"My salary has gone up 40 percent over the last several years because I have had several promotions," said Loreto Porte, a professor at Hostos Community College in the Bronx who lives in Queens. "But my expenses have gone up 50 percent. We have lost health benefits." She said that the electricity bill for her house had climbed, adding: "Property taxes have gone up. It's everything."

While Manhattan workers were not impervious to inflation, their wages helped shield its blow. Indeed, the number of families in Manhattan earning more than $200,000 a year rose almost 20 percent from 2002 to 2004 alone, according to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Economists are divided on what this data means. Some say that rising tides still lift all economic boats, even if some of those are actually ships with giant lido decks and an open bar while others remain dinghies bobbing precariously.

They argue that low crime, which has led to soaring real estate prices, has helped improve nearly every corner of the city.

"The tangible C.P.I. and income is good summary measure," said Jason Bram, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. "But then you have to ask, if you take a family in Bushwick and you look at them and their income in mid-90's and now it is this much higher but prices have gone up more than their average in income. The next question you have to ask is does that fully capture their quality of life."

"Because," Mr. Bram continued, "one statistic that really strikes me is that in the poorest neighborhoods the rate of crime and other indicators like abandoned houses have improved more dramatically than in New York City as a whole."



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

4 Killed in Small-Plane Crash in Calif. ABC News
A private jet overshot a runway and crashed in flames Tuesday, killing all four people aboard, authorities said. The Cessna 560 came in for a landing at Southern California McClellan-Palomar Airport on a flight from Hailey, Idaho, but went about 150 yards beyond the runway, smashing through scaffolding and into a commercial storage facility, said Bill Polick, spokesman for the San Diego County Department of Public Works. The cause of the crash was not immediately known. Polick said the weather was clear with only light wind.
4 Killed in Small-Plane Crash in Calif. Forbes
Plane crashes at airport in California; 4 killed USA Today
Los Angeles Times - Independent Online - San Diego Union Tribune - North County Times - all 402 related »

Gonzales Echoes Defense of Wiretaps Washington Post
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales argued yesterday that the requirements of a secret intelligence court are too cumbersome for rapid pursuit of suspected terrorists, repeating the administration's position that warrantless wiretapping authorized by President Bush does not violate the Constitution or federal law. Gonzales's speech at Georgetown University's law school was part of the Bush administration's effort to defend a program that allows the National Security Agency to intercept calls to and from the United States without warrants. He used the appearance to echo statements made Monday by Bush, who referred to the effort as a "terrorist surveillance program" and characterized it as a crucial tool against violent militants.
Permission to Eavesdrop? TIME
Gonzales Says NSA Criticism Misleading Forbes
New York Times - Reuters AlertNet - Bloomberg - International Herald Tribune - all 268 related »

Study: Army Stretched to Breaking Point
- By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
Tuesday, January 24, 2006


(01-24) 20:04 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) --


Stretched by frequent troop rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has become a "thin green line" that could snap unless relief comes soon, according to a study for the Pentagon.


Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who wrote the report under a Pentagon contract, concluded that the Army cannot sustain the pace of troop deployments to Iraq long enough to break the back of the insurgency. He also suggested that the Pentagon's decision, announced in December, to begin reducing the force in Iraq this year was driven in part by a realization that the Army was overextended.


As evidence, Krepinevich points to the Army's 2005 recruiting slump — missing its recruiting goal for the first time since 1999 — and its decision to offer much bigger enlistment bonuses and other incentives.


"You really begin to wonder just how much stress and strain there is on the Army, how much longer it can continue," he said in an interview. He added that the Army is still a highly effective fighting force and is implementing a plan that will expand the number of combat brigades available for rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan.


The 136-page report represents a more sobering picture of the Army's condition than military officials offer in public. While not released publicly, a copy of the report was provided in response to an Associated Press inquiry.


Illustrating his level of concern about strain on the Army, Krepinevich titled one of his report's chapters, "The Thin Green Line."


He wrote that the Army is "in a race against time" to adjust to the demands of war "or risk `breaking' the force in the form of a catastrophic decline" in recruitment and re-enlistment.


Col. Lewis Boone, spokesman for Army Forces Command, which is responsible for providing troops to war commanders, said it would be "a very extreme characterization" to call the Army broken. He said his organization has been able to fulfill every request for troops that it has received from field commanders.


The Krepinevich assessment is the latest in the debate over whether the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have worn out the Army, how the strains can be eased and whether the U.S. military is too burdened to defeat other threats.


Rep. John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat and Vietnam veteran, created a political storm last fall when he called for an early exit from Iraq, arguing that the Army was "broken, worn out" and fueling the insurgency by its mere presence. Administration officials have hotly contested that view.


George Joulwan, a retired four-star Army general and former NATO commander, agrees the Army is stretched thin.


"Whether they're broken or not, I think I would say if we don't change the way we're doing business, they're in danger of being fractured and broken, and I would agree with that," Joulwan told CNN last month.


Krepinevich did not conclude that U.S. forces should quit Iraq now, but said it may be possible to reduce troop levels below 100,000 by the end of the year. There now are about 136,000, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.


For an Army of about 500,000 soldiers — not counting the thousands of National Guard and Reserve soldiers now on active duty — the commitment of 100,000 or so to Iraq might not seem an excessive burden. But because the war has lasted longer than expected, the Army has had to regularly rotate fresh units in while maintaining its normal training efforts and reorganizing the force from top to bottom.


Krepinevich's analysis, while consistent with the conclusions of some outside the Bush administration, is in stark contrast with the public statements of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and senior Army officials.


Army Secretary Francis Harvey, for example, opened a Pentagon news conference last week by denying the Army was in trouble. "Today's Army is the most capable, best-trained, best-equipped and most experienced force our nation has fielded in well over a decade," he said, adding that recruiting has picked up.


Rumsfeld has argued that the experience of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has made the Army stronger, not weaker.


"The Army is probably as strong and capable as it ever has been in the history of this country," he said in an appearance at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington on Dec. 5. "They are more experienced, more capable, better equipped than ever before."


Krepinevich said in the interview that he understands why Pentagon officials do not state publicly that they are being forced to reduce troop levels in Iraq because of stress on the Army. "That gives too much encouragement to the enemy," he said, even if a number of signs, such as a recruiting slump, point in that direction.


Krepinevich is executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonprofit policy research institute.


He said he concluded that even Army leaders are not sure how much longer they can keep up the unusually high pace of combat tours in Iraq before they trigger an institutional crisis. Some major Army divisions are serving their second yearlong tours in Iraq, and some smaller units have served three times.


Michael O'Hanlon, a military expert at the private Brookings Institution, said in a recent interview that "it's a judgment call" whether the risk of breaking the Army is great enough to warrant expanding its size.


"I say yes. But it's a judgment call, because so far the Army isn't broken," O'Hanlon said.


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file.../w133017S88.DTL


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
©2006 Associated Press

http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view....23-060241-9534r
United Press International
News. Analysis.
U.S. forces must learn to fight 'Long War'
WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 (UPI) -- U.S. military personnel have to make a cultural shift in the "Long War" on terror, a senior DoD official said Monday.

Army Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the American Forces Press Service in an interview that the generation of servicemembers entering the military must focus on how the United States will deal with extremist networks that threaten America and its allies.

Odierno said the situation was analogous to the situation confronting servicemembers who fought the Cold War.

"This generation of servicemembers will be in what we're calling the Long War," the general said. "Our estimate is that for at least the next 20 years, part of our focus will be on how do we deal with the extremist networks that will continue to threaten the United States and its allies."

Conventional forces must remain robust and their capabilities must remain second to none, but the military's focus would have to broaden to include a greater emphasis on special operations, Odierno said. "We have to be able to respond conventionally if necessary, but we must provide more focus on irregular warfare missions," he said.

The Long War will require different military capabilities and require U.S. leaders to develop a holistic concept of how to defeat these networks.

Odierno said this would entail being able to coordinate the military aspect of the fight with the efforts of diplomats, financial experts, police officials and others. It also would entail countering propaganda and misinformation extremists release.



© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Boy Shoots Girl Washington Post
AT A DAY-CARE center in Germantown, an 8-year-old boy shot a 7-year-old girl with a handgun yesterday, hitting her in the arm but not killing her. The boy, whose father is a convicted felon with a long rap sheet, had bragged that he had access to guns. But why is it that after years of similar incidents and anguish and debate, the country has yet to enact laws to prevent such tragedies? In the late 1990s, then-Gov. Parris N. Glendening's task force on gun violence in Maryland pushed for tougher rules mandating safety devices on handguns. In the following years, the state adopted a number of laws -- stronger than most in the nation -- including a requirement that handguns sold in Maryland be equipped with a childproof locking device, and another forbidding people from leaving loaded firearms within reach of unsupervised children. But other regulations -- potentially more effective ones in preventing accidents such as yesterday's -- went nowhere. Most notable was a proposal that guns be "personalized" by incorporating technology restricting a gun's use to its owner, for instance by using fingerprint recognition. In a study published in 2003, researchers led by Jon S. Vernick of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health examined 117 unintentional homicide deaths in Maryland from 1991 to 1998, four-fifths of them involving handguns. The conclusion: 37 percent of the deaths could have been prevented by a "personalized" gun.
Girl, 7, Shot in Arm by 8-Year-Old Boy Los Angeles Times
Police: Girl Shot, Wounded at Md. Day Care Forbes
The Age - Capital News 9 - WJACtv.com - WLTX.com - all 407 related »

Bush visits super-secret spies CNN
While pressing his campaign to explain stepped-up domestic spying in the terrorism era, President Bush is taking time out to boost the morale of people carrying out this work at the National Security Agency. Bush was traveling to the heavily secured site of the super-secret spy agency in suburban Maryland Wednesday to give a speech behind closed doors and meet with employees in advance of Senate hearings on the much-criticized domestic surveillance. Responding to an outcry from many congressional Democrats, human rights and civil liberties groups about warrantless eavesdropping of calls and other communications made overseas from the United States, Bush has recently stepped up a series of public appearances. In Manhattan, Kansas, on Monday, he brushed aside arguments by critics that he broke the law by authorizing domestic eavesdropping without a warrant, saying he was doing what Congress authorized him to do to protect Americans from terrorist attacks. His attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, repeated that argument in a speech Tuesday.
Permission to Eavesdrop? TIME
Bush to Visit NSA for Pep Talk Forbes
MSNBC - New York Times - San Francisco Chronicle - Los Angeles Times - all 326 related »

SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2006, Issue No. 10
January 25, 2006


** WHITE HOUSE REBUFFED 2002 EFFORT TO RELAX FISA STANDARD
** CLASSIFICATION LAWS APPLY TO EVERYONE, JUDGE SAYS
** HANDBOOK ON MAKING INTELLIGENCE ACCOUNTABLE
** NSA DECLASSIFICATION PLAN


WHITE HOUSE REBUFFED 2002 EFFORT TO RELAX FISA STANDARD

The Bush Administration rejected a Congressional initiative in 2002
that would have lowered the legal threshold for conducting
surveillance of non-US persons under the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act from "probable cause" that the target is a
terrorist or agent of a foreign power to "reasonable suspicion."

Administration officials said at the time that the legislative
proposal was unnecessary and possibly unconstitutional.

Yet in a speech this week on the NSA domestic surveillance program,
Deputy Director of National Intelligence Gen. Michael V. Hayden
indicated that the executive branch had unilaterally adopted a
similar "reasonable suspicion" standard.

Instead of FISA's more stringent "probable cause" requirement, the
presidentially-directed NSA surveillance operation applied to
international calls that "we have a reasonable basis to believe
involve al Qaeda or one of its affiliates," Gen. Hayden said on
January 23.

The unexplained contradiction between the Administration's public
rejection of the "reasonable suspicion" standard for FISA, and its
secret adoption of that same standard was noted yesterday by
attorney and blogger Glenn Greenwald.

See "The Administration's New FISA Defense is Factually False,"
January 24:

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/

The 2002 legislative proposed, S. 2659 introduced by Rep. Michael
DeWine (R-OH), "raises both significant legal and practical issues
[and] the Administration at this time is not prepared to support
it," said James A. Baker of the Justice Department.

Among other concerns, Mr. Baker said, "If we err in our analysis and
courts were ultimately to find a 'reasonable suspicion' standard
unconstitutional, we could potentially put at risk ongoing
investigations and prosecutions."

See Mr. Baker's prepared statement from the July 31, 2002 hearing of
the Senate Intelligence Committee here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_hr/073102baker.html

The transcript and other prepared statements from that Senate
Intelligence Committee hearing on "Proposals to Amend the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act" are available here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_hr/index.html#fisa


CLASSIFICATION LAWS APPLY TO EVERYONE, JUDGE SAYS

In a startling pronouncement that can only heighten tensions between
the press and the government, a federal judge said last week that
the laws governing classified information apply to anyone who is in
receipt of such information, including reporters who are the
recipients of "leaks."

"Persons who have unauthorized possession, who come into
unauthorized possession of classified information, must abide by
the law," said Judge T.S. Ellis III. "That applies to academics,
lawyers, journalists, professors, whatever."

Judge Ellis's statement came at the conclusion of a sentencing
hearing for Lawrence Franklin, the former Pentagon analyst who was
charged along with two former officials of the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) with felony violations of the
Espionage Act.

The extraordinary claim that mere possession of classified
information triggers legal obligations leads to absurd conclusions,
particularly since anyone who reads the daily newspaper comes into
"unauthorized possession of classified information."

More importantly, it serves to discourage investigative reporting of
illegal government activities that happen to be classified.

The provisions of the Espionage Act to which Judge Ellis was
referring are "in many respects incomprehensible," wrote Harold
Edgar and Benno C. Schmidt, Jr. in their definitive1973 study "The
Espionage Statutes and Publication of Defense Information,"
Columbia Law Review, May 1973, vol. 73, pp. 929-1087 (Secrecy News,
10/19/05).

Judge Ellis's statement was first reported in "Sentence in Franklin
case sends chill through free-speech community" by Ron Kampeas,
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, January 24:

http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=16239

Lawrence A. Franklin was sentenced January 20 on three felony
counts: conspiracy to communicate national defense information to
persons not entitled to receive it; conspiracy to communicate
classified information to an agent of a foreign government; and the
unlawful retention of national defense information. See this
January 20 news release from the Department of Justice:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2006/01/doj012006.pdf

The prosecution of the two former AIPAC officials who were charged
with Franklin, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, raises press freedom
issues with even greater urgency since neither of them, unlike
Franklin, held a security clearance.

Their attorneys last week filed motions to dismiss the case, but
those motions are sealed pending a security review.


HANDBOOK ON MAKING INTELLIGENCE ACCOUNTABLE

To promote intelligence accountability in new democracies and
elsewhere, a new publication addresses the principles of
intelligence oversight and presents draft legal provisions to
govern intelligence. The document is being published in seven
languages from Albanian to Ukrainian.

See "Making Intelligence Accountable: Legal Standards and Best
Practice for Oversight of Intelligence Agencies" by Hans Born and
Ian Leigh, Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed
Forces (DCAF):

http://www.dcaf.ch/handbook_intelligence/_index.cfm


NSA DECLASSIFICATION PLAN

The National Security Agency has 46 million pages of historically
valuable classified records more than 25 years old that are subject
to automatic declassification by the end of December 2006,
according to a new NSA declassification plan.

Another 4.5 million pages of 25 year old records have been
categorically exempted from automatic declassification because they
"contain information relating to our core capabilities and
vulnerabilities."

The millions of pages that are subject to "automatic
declassification" this year "will require close and careful
review," the NSA said.

But NSA "is committed to declassifying national security information
as instructed in Executive Order 12958, as amended. The Agency
will use all available resources to successfully accomplish the
provisions of the E.O. within the required time."

A copy of the new NSA declassification plan was obtained under the
Freedom of Information Act by researcher Mike Ravnitzky.

See "NSA/CSS Declassification Plan for Executive Order 12958,"
Memorandum for Deputy Under Secretary of Defense
(Counterintelligence & Security), January 5, 2006:

http://www.fas.org/irp/nsa/declass.pdf




_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.

Study: Army Stretched to Breaking Point
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
Tue Jan 24, 6:43 PM ET



Stretched by frequent troop rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has become a "thin green line" that could snap unless relief comes soon, according to a study for the Pentagon.

Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who wrote the report under a Pentagon contract, concluded that the Army cannot sustain the pace of troop deployments to Iraq long enough to break the back of the insurgency. He also suggested that the Pentagon's decision, announced in December, to begin reducing the force in Iraq this year was driven in part by a realization that the Army was overextended.

As evidence, Krepinevich points to the Army's 2005 recruiting slump — missing its recruiting goal for the first time since 1999 — and its decision to offer much bigger enlistment bonuses and other incentives.

"You really begin to wonder just how much stress and strain there is on the Army, how much longer it can continue," he said in an interview. He added that the Army is still a highly effective fighting force and is implementing a plan that will expand the number of combat brigades available for rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The 136-page report represents a more sobering picture of the Army's condition than military officials offer in public. While not released publicly, a copy of the report was provided in response to an Associated Press inquiry.

Illustrating his level of concern about strain on the Army, Krepinevich titled one of his report's chapters, "The Thin Green Line."

He wrote that the Army is "in a race against time" to adjust to the demands of war "or risk `breaking' the force in the form of a catastrophic decline" in recruitment and re-enlistment.

Col. Lewis Boone, spokesman for Army Forces Command, which is responsible for providing troops to war commanders, said it would be "a very extreme characterization" to call the Army broken. He said his organization has been able to fulfill every request for troops that it has received from field commanders.

The Krepinevich assessment is the latest in the debate over whether the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have worn out the Army, how the strains can be eased and whether the U.S. military is too burdened to defeat other threats.

Rep. John Murtha (news, bio, voting record), the Pennsylvania Democrat and Vietnam veteran, created a political storm last fall when he called for an early exit from Iraq, arguing that the Army was "broken, worn out" and fueling the insurgency by its mere presence. Administration officials have hotly contested that view.

George Joulwan, a retired four-star Army general and former NATO commander, agrees the Army is stretched thin.

"Whether they're broken or not, I think I would say if we don't change the way we're doing business, they're in danger of being fractured and broken, and I would agree with that," Joulwan told CNN last month.

Krepinevich did not conclude that U.S. forces should quit Iraq now, but said it may be possible to reduce troop levels below 100,000 by the end of the year. There now are about 136,000, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.

For an Army of about 500,000 soldiers — not counting the thousands of National Guard and Reserve soldiers now on active duty — the commitment of 100,000 or so to Iraq might not seem an excessive burden. But because the war has lasted longer than expected, the Army has had to regularly rotate fresh units in while maintaining its normal training efforts and reorganizing the force from top to bottom.

Krepinevich's analysis, while consistent with the conclusions of some outside the Bush administration, is in stark contrast with the public statements of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and senior Army officials.

Army Secretary Francis Harvey, for example, opened a Pentagon news conference last week by denying the Army was in trouble. "Today's Army is the most capable, best-trained, best-equipped and most experienced force our nation has fielded in well over a decade," he said, adding that recruiting has picked up.

Rumsfeld has argued that the experience of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has made the Army stronger, not weaker.

"The Army is probably as strong and capable as it ever has been in the history of this country," he said in an appearance at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington on Dec. 5. "They are more experienced, more capable, better equipped than ever before."

Krepinevich said in the interview that he understands why Pentagon officials do not state publicly that they are being forced to reduce troop levels in Iraq because of stress on the Army. "That gives too much encouragement to the enemy," he said, even if a number of signs, such as a recruiting slump, point in that direction.

Krepinevich is executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonprofit policy research institute.

He said he concluded that even Army leaders are not sure how much longer they can keep up the unusually high pace of combat tours in Iraq before they trigger an institutional crisis. Some major Army divisions are serving their second yearlong tours in Iraq, and some smaller units have served three times.

Michael O'Hanlon, a military expert at the private Brookings Institution, said in a recent interview that "it's a judgment call" whether the risk of breaking the Army is great enough to warrant expanding its size.

"I say yes. But it's a judgment call, because so far the Army isn't broken," O'Hanlon said.



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


Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

January 25, 2006
Software
Privacy for People Who Don't Show Their Navels
By JONATHAN D. GLATER
IT may be easy to forget that there are people who want to remain anonymous on the Web while the online world is full of those who happily post pictures of themselves and their navels for all to see. But interest in software that allows people to send e-mail messages that cannot be traced to their source or to maintain anonymous blogs has quietly increased over the last few years, say experts who monitor Internet security and privacy.

"People in the world are more interested in anonymity now than they were in the 1990's," when the popularity of the Internet first surged, said Chris Palmer, technology manager at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group in San Francisco dedicated to protecting issues like free speech on the Web.

Increasingly, consumers appear to be downloading free anonymity software like Tor, which makes it harder to trace visits to Web sites, online posts, instant messages and other communication forms back to their authors. Sales are also up at companies like Anonymizer.com, which among other things sells software that protects anonymity.

"I get the feeling it's going up," said Roger Dingledine, Tor's project leader. "But one of the features I've been adding recently," he said, enhances anonymity protection by making it harder to count downloads of the software. Still, the number of servers forming layers in the Tor network has risen to 300 from 50 in the last year, Mr. Dingledine added.

A few reasons exist for the surge, which is hard to measure - it is nearly impossible to track how many people have made themselves invisible online. People who want to continue to swap music via the Internet but fear lawsuits brought by the recording industry want to hide their identity. Some people wish to describe personal experiences that could land them in jail. And some Web authors share their thoughts about repressive regimes and face government reprisal if they are caught.

"The more equipment is acquired and produced by a repressive regime, the more important anonymity is," said Julien Pain, who heads the Internet freedom desk for Reporters Without Borders, an advocacy group that supports press freedom. The group has produced a guide, www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=542, for bloggers trying to protect their identities.

"We realized that bloggers were being arrested everywhere in the world," Mr. Pain said. One blogger in Nepal, for example, may risk arrest with every time he comments on the country's monarchy, he said.

"The problem is, you have on one side states with a lot of money," he said. "On the other side, you have small businesses" and nongovernmental organizations. Law enforcement or other government agencies have tremendous legal and technological resources to discover the identities and locations of people communicating online, though consumer software can make the task more difficult.

Despite the increased interest in anonymity, software companies have moved away from marketing products that protect identities, said Chris Jay Hoofnagle, senior counsel and director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center's office in San Francisco, a public research group that focuses on privacy and free speech issues.

"When I came into this field, it was on the heels of the failure of a number of companies that tried very hard to create privacy enhancing technologies," Mr. Hoofnagle said.

Now, though, people are more concerned about defenses that block unwanted e-mail messages and hackers seeking to steal bank accounts, credit card numbers or whole identities, said Alex Fowler, co-head of the national privacy practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

"The visibility and awareness of these issues goes much deeper into the general public than it did even five or six years ago," Mr. Fowler said.

Despite increased interest in anonymity and security, some providers of online anonymity protection have not been able to turn their products into successful businesses. People who want to communicate anonymously may not want anyone to know that they have obtained software to do so, and some of the available software is free, including the Java Anonymous Proxy (anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html).

Tor, first financed by the United States Department of Defense, received support from the Electronic Frontier Foundation for a year, but the money has run out, and Mr. Dingledine is working on the project unpaid and is looking for sponsors.

Tor uses "onion routing," in which layers of servers separate computer users from the Web sites they visit to hide a user's location. The software is easily installed and operates in the background, simply adding icons in Windows.

To make sure it is working, users can visit a site like www.showmyip.com and verify that their Internet Protocol address has changed. If it has, the software is working. The software may slow browsing, because Web pages must be transmitted through various servers around the world to get to your computer.

Software bundled with Tor, called Privoxy, prevents your computer from automatically sending certain personal information to Web sites. It does not block sites from finding existing cookies on the computer, so those sites will still know you are you (but not where you are because of Tor), but it does delete new cookies after rebooting.

Some companies that focused several years ago on anonymity now focus on security, and rather than trying to sell sophisticated software to consumers, they sell to Internet service providers like Verizon and EarthLink, who in turn can promise customers protection from spam and hacker attacks.

"Privacy is a concern, it just isn't mass market," said Hamnett Hill, president and chief executive of Radialpoint, a Montreal company that provides security services for Internet customers of BellSouth, Adelphia and other companies. "One of the big enlightenments that we had at a certain point is that people don't want to buy security software. They want peace of mind."

Radialpoint used to offer software to protect identity. The idea was not enough to carry the business, which is why the company no longer focuses on such products. Of course, there still are businesses that sell software that provides anonymity protection. For example, there is Anonymizer.com and GhostSurf, which is sold by Tenebril (www.tenebril.com). And some companies sell services to protect privacy in a way that is only tangentially related to the Internet. PrivateTel, for example, offers to provide temporary phone numbers for people who, say, post personal ads.

"The need to have a conversation and to complete the actual telephone call and remain anonymous is what is the driving force," said Dan Kaluzny, the company's chief executive.

More people who use the Internet know that if they disclose any personal information online, they may receive a flood of unwanted marketing calls and e-mail messages as a result, he said.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

January 25, 2006
Version of Google in China Won't Offer E-Mail or Blogs
By DAVID BARBOZA
SHANGHAI, Jan. 24 - Google is bringing a special version of its powerful search engine to China, leaving behind two of its most popular features in the United States.

In an effort to cope with China's increasingly pervasive Internet controls, Google said Tuesday that it would introduce a search engine here this week that excludes e-mail messaging and the ability to create blogs.

Google officials said the new search engine, Google.cn, was created partly as a way to avoid potential legal conflicts with the Chinese government, which has become much more sophisticated at policing and monitoring material appearing on the Internet.

Web sites have exploded in popularity in a country eager for freer flow of information. But Web portals and search engines trying to win Chinese users face a significant balancing act: they do not want to flout government rules and guidelines that restrict the spread of sensitive content, but they want to attract users with interesting content.

One result has been that search engines and Web portals have censored their sites and cooperated with Chinese authorities. Indeed, the move to create a new site comes after Google itself, as well as Yahoo and Microsoft, have come under scrutiny over the last few years for cooperating with the Chinese government to censor or block online content.

Currently, people in China use Google by accessing its global engine, Google.com. But industry experts say that the site is often not accessible from inside China, possibly because it is blocked by Chinese authorities culling what is deemed to be sensitive or illegal information.

Google's new Chinese platform, which will not allow users to create personal links with Google e-mail or blog sites, will comply with Chinese law and censor information deemed inappropriate or illegal by the Chinese authorities. This approach might help the company navigate the legal thickets that competitors have encountered in China.

Foreign companies say they must abide by Chinese laws and pass personal information about users on to the Chinese government. In one case two years ago, Yahoo provided information that helped the government convict a Chinese journalist, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison, on charges of leaking state secrets to a foreign Web site.

Another challenge, though, is trying to attract Chinese users to a censored engine. Google officials conceded that the company was struggling to balance the need to bolster its presence in the China market with the increasingly stringent regulations that govern Internet use here.

"Google is mindful that governments around the world impose restriction on access to information," a senior executive wrote, responding to questions. "In order to operate from China, we have removed some content from the search results available on Google.cn, in response to local law, regulation or policy. While removing search results is inconsistent with Google's mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission."

The Chinese government has been particularly strict in recent years about filtering antigovernment news and opinion pieces from the Web and blocking Web sites or blogs that question governmental authority.

The government also has employed a variety of techniques to control what appears on the Web - temporarily blocking sites, redirecting viewers to government-controlled sites and even shutting sites altogether. Government officials have even been able to block references to specific words, like Tibet, Falun Gong and Tiananmen Square.

A year ago, when Google first started a Chinese-language version of its global service, the company filtered out and omitted some news sources that were already being blocked in China. The company said at the time: "There is nothing Google can do about it."

Now, Google officials say they hope they have struck the right compromise. The new site will improve access and speed up regular search engine service in a country where Internet traffic is skyrocketing, even if that service is limited in scope, the company said.

China has more than 100 million Internet users, making it second only to the United States in Web surfers; and blogging, podcasting, playing online games and surfing the Web are wildly popular.

Google says it plans to disclose when information has been blocked or censored from its new site, just as it does in the United States, Germany and other countries.

The regular Google.com site, based outside China, will continue to be available for access from China.

Difficulties using the site have put Google at a disadvantage in China, where the Google.com site had lost ground to a Chinese rival, Baidu.com, which went public last year.

Baidu is called the Chinese Google, and Google even has a stake in the company. But officials at Google say that recently they have been losing share in China, partly because of difficulty people had using Google.com.

The Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders, which tracks the activities of Western technology companies seeking to do business with repressive regimes, condemned the Google-China deal as "hypocrisy" and called it "a black day for freedom of expression in China" in a statement published on its Web site.

"The firm defends the rights of U.S. Internet users" the statement added, "but fails to defend its Chinese users against theirs."



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company