Clark Claims He Doesn?t Know About CAPPS II, He Was ?Consultant For Acxiom,? And He Was Not On Board During Privacy Scandal. ?I don?t know about CAPPS II because I have not seen the program and I don?t know that people who are worried about it have. ? When I was ? a consultant with them and I took them around and introduced them to various members of the government and the Defense department because their technology will improve our security ? Had I still been on that board when this was going through I would have insisted that the ACLU and others be brought in to approve CAPPS II. Whether that was done I have no idea.? (Wesley Clark, Democrat Presidential Candidates Debate, Manchester, New Hampshire, 1/22/04)

Clark Pitched CAPPS II To Government Before And After Joining Company?s Board In December 2001. "Mr. Clark, who had voluntarily pitched the company?s idea to some government officials before being hired, joined Acxiom?s board in December 2001 and immediately began opening influential doors.? (Jeanne Cummings, ?Clark Earned About $500,000 As Lobbyist For Arkansas Firm,? The Wall Street Journal, 1/19/04)

Clark Did More Than Introduce Acxiom To Low-Level Government Officials. "[Clark] arranged a meeting with then-U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O?Neill, for whom he once worked. A month later, Acxiom executives gave an hour-long presentation to Department of Transportation officials, including Secretary Norman Mineta, who stayed for part of the session ? Using Mr. Clark?s connections, Acxiom executives gave extended briefings to Army and Air Force intelligence agencies in the spring and the Central Intelligence Agency in June. They secured a rare 25-minute meeting with Mr. Cheney on July 16, 2002 - the same day President Bush unveiled his homeland-security program at the White House." (Jeanne Cummings, "Clark Earned About $500,000 As Lobbyist For Arkansas Firm," The Wall Street Journal, 1/19/04)

Clark Claimed He Didn?t Cash In On "Pentagon Buddies." "I tried not to rely on my Pentagon buddies for consulting contracts, I didn?t do very much of that at all.? (Wesley Clark, Remarks At Town Hall Meeting, Henniker, NH, 9/26/03)

But Clark Was Washington Lobbyist, Not Consultant, For Acxiom. "Clark spokesman Chris Lehane said Clark was registered as a lobbyist for one company, Little Rock-based data firm Acxiom Corp., for which he said Clark received a $150,000 retainer." ("Lieberman Campaign Accuses Clark Of Selective Resume," The Associated Press, 12/15/03)

In August 2002, While Clark Was On Its Board, Acxiom May Have Violated Airline Passengers? Privacy Rights. ?[T]he Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), has filed a complaint with the FTC against both JetBlue and a data-mining company used by the defense contractor that received JetBlue?s records. The complaint accuses the airline and Little Rock-based Acxiom of unfair and deceptive business practices and seeks a federal investigation. ? Last week, the fast-growing, New York-based airline apologized to millions of customers for the unauthorized release of their data to a Defense Department contractor said to be developing software to improve security at U.S. military bases. JetBlue?s privacy policy prohibits release of such data. The airline gave the information to Huntsville, Ala.-based Torch Concepts in August 2002 at the Defense Department?s request, and Torch hired Acxiom to marry it with other data.? (Marilyn Adams and Dan Reed, ?Passengers Sue JetBlue For Sharing Their Data,? USA Today, 9/24/03)

Here is the money behind the new top dog in the Democratic dog pound, John Kerry's Top Ten Career Patrons calculated by the Center for Public Integrity, Washington.

1. Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo PC, Boston $223,046
2. Fleet Boston Financial Corp., Boston $172,387
3. AOL Time Warner Inc., New York $134,960
4. Hale and Dorr LLP, Boston $123,258
5. Hill, Holiday, Connors, Cosmopulos Inc., Boston $119,300
6. Harvard University $108,700
7. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, NY $105,150
8. Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi LLP, Minneapolis $103,450
9. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., NY $100,000
10. Piper Rudnick, Baltimore $92,300

Dr. Andreas von Bulow, author of The CIA and 9-11, was an active politician in the SPD (German Parliament). He was a member of the German federal parliament from 1969-1994. His responsibilities encompassed among other things overseeing the German intelligence services. From 1976 to 1980 he was Undersecretary of Defense, from 1980 to 1981 Minister of Research and Technology under the Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

AUDIO LINK

A meeting between senior Airline executives and Homeland Security officials takes place today at the Washington, DC headquarters of the Air Transport Association.

Nuala O'Conner-Kelly and other senior apologists will attempt to get the execs to put on a pair of jackboots and 'only follow orders' when Homeland Security issues a directive that will compel the airlines to turn over the personal travel information, including credit card and other financial information, of every American that wishes to fly within his or her own country.

Tell the airline execs that CAPPS II will not fly. Call the Air Transport Association at 1-202-626-4000 or the ATA's flack Doug Wills 1-202-626-4172. You can email their PR flacks at prata@airlines.org. . . .

Remind them what happened to Delta Air Lines, JetBlue, and Northwest when they collaborated in this un-American, Soviet-style program.

Tell them that 6 million Americans a year won't be allowed to fly because of CAPPS II... and it will be the airlines that will have to deal with the fallout. .. .

Tell them that Soviet-style internal border controls are unacceptable in the United States of America.

Here's the complete text of the New York Court's decision denying the press' right to access the complete oral histories/interviews taken of firefighters' and other workers about 9/11 -- as well as access to phonecalls made to 911 on that day.

Before the records of the oral histories are released to the press, all mention of the opinions and recommendations of those interviewed will be deleted first, so the press will only get the interviewees' "personal expressions of feelings".

In other words, if a firefighter who was interviewed said, "I heard what sounded like explosions and I think it was bombs that took down those towers, it was all so horrible", the press will merely get the portion that says: "it was all so horrible".

Additionally, transcripts of tapes of the calls that people made to 911 on that day will not be released at all because the Court said they would invade the privacy of the surviving families - even though surviving family members indicated to the Court that they waived such rights to privacy.

This decision could be appealed to the New York Court of Appeals, but . . . no reports on whether the New York Times plans on appealing.

These same records will not even make it to the 9-11 Commission without deletions. From what I remember, the deal the Commission made with NYC is that the corrupt Commissioners will be able to view the records in NYC in their entirety but only be able to take back redacted portions and without names of people interviewed, etc., and of course we can't count on the Commission to release to the public even the redacted portions of records they receive.

BUSH: Key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year,
(awkward pause)

[silent beat]
[light, tentative applause - weakly builds as . . .]

BUSH (wags finger): The terrorist threat --

CHENEY (snickers)

BUSH: The terrorist threat will not expire on that schedule.

[Wild, drooling applause from Congresscritters -- Republican cabal stands in ovation.)

A federally funded Internet-based voting system due for release in less than two weeks is inherently flawed and should be scuttled because of weak security, according to a report by a team of computer scientists.

The system, called the Secure Electronic Registration and Voter Experiment, or SERVE, is designed to allow U.S. military personnel and civilians living overseas to log onto a computer terminal and cast an absentee ballot.
[...]
The online nature of SERVE could easily allow a hacker to tamper with the voting results.
[...]
The Federal Voting Assistance Program, part of the Defense Department, is moving ahead with the system.
[...]
The report's authors are computer scientists David Wagner, Avi Rubin and David Jefferson from the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, respectively, and Barbara Simons, a computer scientist and leading technology policy consultant. . . .

The system is targeted for use in 50 counties and seven states during this year's primary and general elections, and could handle up to 100,000 votes. . . .

First tryout is slated for February 3 during South Carolina's presidential primary.

Associated Press takes over vote-tallying chores for the defunct Voter News Service, the exit poll consortium that previously provided network news divisions with race projections. VNS was funded by the Associated Press, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and CNN.
[...]
AP refined the Sun Microsystems computer system to analyze results more closely for vote drops, inconsistencies, changes in leadership in races, order-entry mistakes and other nuances, Mr. Jory said. Algorithms built into the computer system should be able to pinpoint data that seems off, but the people running the system on election night also must be vigilant when eyeballing information.

The Republican Caucus, broadcast on C-Span from Precinct 3 in Decorah, Iowa, showed the Caucus Temporary Chairman, Jim Burns, responding to a question about WHERE he was calling the precinct vote. Mr. Burns responded that the Party had set up a "Central Location" in Des Moines into which results were to be called and punched in on the touch tone phone. On the screen, as a subheading superimposed on the precinct, C-Span showed this quizzical statement: "At each of the precinct caucuses, the chairmen phones the results to a central location in Des Moines." ? Run by who? Does the phone forward the call to New York City? We don't know. ? Significantly, the EXACT same wording was displayed on the screen during the Democratic Caucus which C-Span broadcast from Ames, Iowa. This heightens our suspicion that this "central location in Des Moines" is a "touch tone" front for Voter News Service, which entity, we suspect, is counting both Caucuses. Probably this has been obscured from even the rank and file in both parties.
[...]
They have made a touch tone telephone system the reporting system, thus taking the county chairmen out of the loop - if C-Span was given proper information that all precinct chairmen report straight to the touch tone system. This touch tone system would make it even more difficult to check the results, since only each Precinct Chairman and the "Central location" would have the results. This makes it a near Herculean task for the average citizen to be able to verify the results, unless County Chairmen went to the extra effort to track down all their precinct chairmen and get the results separately. And then check them against the published results
[. . .]
News reminder: The overwhelming number of Big Media polls until the last week or so told everyone that G.W. Bush had 60% to 70% of support in the Iowa GOP. Near-final results show both at only 41%.

Higher-res mpg on another server

RealVideo clip

I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, "We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it." And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse.

The specifics of the fires in WTC 7 and how they caused the building to collapse remain unknown at this time. Although the total diesel fuel on the premises contained massive potential energy, the best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence. Further research, investigation, and analyses are needed to resolve this issue.

MEMPHIS -- The family of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. finally has what it has sought for years -- a jury verdict saying the civil rights leader was the victim of a murder conspiracy, not the lone gunman.
[...]
The Kings had sued Loyd Jowers, a retired Memphis businessman who claimed six years ago that he paid someone other than confessed killer James Earl Ray to kill King.

The trial, which began Nov. 15, for the first time gave a jury the opportunity to hear theories of a murder conspiracy in the 1968 assassination at a Memphis motel.
[...]
The suit named Jowers and other "unnamed conspirators" . . . William Pepper, the Kings' lawyer, told jurors that Jowers, 73, was part of a vast conspiracy involving the Mafia and agents of the federal government. He said King was targeted because of his opposition to the Vietnam War and plans for a huge "poor peoples' march" on Washington.

A cover-up following the assassination involved the FBI, CIA, the news media and Army intelligence, as well as many state and city officials, said Pepper, who represented Ray for years.
[...]
Juror Robert Tucker said the assassination was too complex for one person to handle.

He noted Pepper's assertions that King's police guard was pulled back shortly before the murder and that Army agents had King under surveillance at the time he was felled by a single rifle shot.

"All of those things added up, it wasn't just one guy acting alone," Tucker said.

Documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) reveal that Northwest Airlines, in clear violation of its stated privacy policy, provided the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) with personal data about millions of its passengers. The federal agency retained the information for almost two years, and returned it to the airline only after the public outcry that followed the revelation that JetBlue Airways had made similar disclosures of passenger data.
[...]
The massive disclosure, which likely involved information about more than 10 million Northwest passengers, clearly violated the privacy policy posted on the airline's website. . . .

While it is unclear how NASA may have used the passenger information, the data formed the basis of NASA research contained in a published study. The agency continues to withhold an unspecified number of documents detailing its receipt and use of the personal data.

This week, EPIC will file suit against NASA to seek release of the withheld material.

H. Paul Rico, the retired Boston FBI agent who created Stephen "The Rifleman'' Flemmi's double life as an informant in 1965, died yesterday at a Tulsa Hospital while awaiting trial on charges he conspired with his ex-informants to commit murder.

Tulsa police said no cause of death has been determined . . .

Police launched an investigation into Rico's death and were forced to retrieve his body from a funeral home yesterday. His body should have gone directly to the medical examiner's office. . .

A judge on Friday had put the case on hold until Rico faced a competency evaluation . . .

Rico was accused of conspiring with Flemmi and James ``Whitey'' Bulger to kill World Jai Alai owner Roger Wheeler in 1981 in a bid to take over Wheeler's gambling fronts . . .

"I'm about to join the grassy knoll club myself here,'' said Frank Libby, attorney for the Wheeler family, yesterday.

Said retired FBI agent Mike McPheters of Moses Lake, Wash., . . . "He had to die for something that no one knows he ever did.''
[...]
Rico's death cancels a raft of subpoenas for testimony that could have shed more light on the Boston FBI's use of murderous informants and Rico's bond with Flemmi and Bulger after his 1975 retirement from the FBI.

In this RealVideo

RUSSERT: You both were members of Skull and Bones, a secret society at Yale. What does that tell us?

SEN. KERRY: Not much, because it's a secret.

RUSSERT: Is there a secret handshake? Is there a secret code?

SEN. KERRY: I wish there were something secret I could manifest there.

RUSSERT: Three twenty-two, a secret number?

SEN. KERRY: There are all kinds of secrets, Tim.

Also available as WindowsMedia

"If we had an animal ID and tracking system that was uniform and nationwide and enforceable, we'd have all those animals by now," said Carol Tucker Foreman of the Consumer Federation of America.

Cows' ear tags can also fall out and producers are not required to use the same number.

Because of the added impetus from mad cow, most people in the cattle industry believe the ID system will come soon - they just aren't sure what type of system it will be. The objective is to set up a centralized database that would track the animals . . .

"Animal ID is coming," said Maralee Johnson, executive vice president of the Illinois Beef Association, at a recent IBA meeting held in Freeport.
[...]
The IBA believes the ID system would serve as a uniform, basic framework from which more sophisticated information could later be retrieved.

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags maintain an assortment of animal data, including breeding, age and medical history. The information is sent to a computer database through sensors at feed lots, slaughterhouses, or any point in between.

There is also a company, Optibrand Ltd., that has devised a system using retinal scans with positioning chips to identify the cattle. Chips that can be implanted - similar to those used with dogs and cats - are another option.

It is estimated by industry researchers that the RFID tag systems could cost owners of small herds about $25 per head. The cost would drop to about $4 per head in larger herds.

The executive director of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has become a witness in the inquiry and has been interviewed by his own staff about his involvement in shaping the Bush administration's early counterterrorism strategy, officials said on Wednesday.
[...]
Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband died in the World Trade Center and who has helped lead a group of survivors pushing for more answers about the attacks, said the situation called into question the independence of the commission.

"He has a huge conflict of interest," Ms. Breitweiser said when told that Mr. Zelikow had been interviewed. "This is what we've been concerned about from Day 1."

Her concern, Ms. Breitweiser said, is that the commission report "is going to be a whitewash."

"What we want to know is why they didn't investigate Osama bin Laden sooner," she added.

Her group plans to meet commission officials on Thursday, and family members are likely to raise their concerns about possible conflicts, she said.