Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, sat on the board of a company which three years ago sold two light water nuclear reactors to North Korea - a country he now regards as part of the "axis of evil" and which has been targeted for regime change by Washington because of its efforts to build nuclear weapons.

Former Intel Corp. engineer Maher Mofeid "Mike" Hawash apologized to his family and took full responsibility for his actions Monday as he was sentenced to seven years in federal prison for conspiring to fight against U.S. forces in Afghanistan....
Co-defendants Muhammad Ibrahim Bilal, 24, and his brother, Ahmed Ibrahim Bilal, 26, also were sentenced Monday to serve eight and 10 years, respectively.
The sentencings marked the apparent end of an odyssey that began in fall 2001, when six of the so-called Portland Seven flew to China in an attempt to enter Afghanistan for the purpose of fighting against forces of the United States....
Portlander Patrice Lumumba Ford, 32, whose advanced degree in Far East studies and fluency in Mandarin caused lead prosecutor Charles Gorder Jr. to suggest that he "should be working for the State Department" instead of heading off to prison.
Habis Abdulla Al Saoub, 38, a native of Jordan who prosecutors say was the group's leader because of his past experience as a "holy warrior" against the Russian army in Afghanistan....
Al Saoub, who reportedly had fought against the Soviet army in Afghanistan in the 1980s, was never arrested. According to CNN, he may have been killed in October while fighting near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, but the information has not been confirmed.
Hawash, 39, described the former mujahedeen "freedom fighter" Al Saoub as the group's leader and prime motivator....

"All seven of the Portland-area defendants charged with attempting to join the Taliban attended the mosque [Sheik Mohamed Abdirahman] Kariye leads, the Islamic Center of Portland....
PSU attracted Muslim students because of its well-regarded Middle East Studies Center, created in the 1960s with support from the CIA, which hoped to recruit some of the students as agents. The mosque that would grow into the Islamic Center of Portland was created by PSU students in 1983, and Kariye soon was an active member.

Like many Muslims around the world, he supported the cause of the Afghan rebels, who were fighting a CIA-supported war to drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan.....

In 1991, while in Pakistan, Kariye helped found an Islamic charity, the Global Relief Foundation...."

The Centers for Disease Control published a study last fall repudiating any possible link between thimerosal and developmental problems like autism in children. However, First Coast News has obtained non-published documents that show the CDC DID have data supporting such a link-- but kept it from the public.

Documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, detail the transcript of a meeting held in June of 2000 between members of the CDC, the FDA, and representatives from the vaccine industry.

The group discusses the results of a February 2000 study that finds a significant association between exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccines, and developmental issues like autism in children.

Some of the comments--

"There are just a host of neurodevelopmental data that would suggest we've got a serious problem."

"My gut feeling? It worries me. I don't want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what's going on."

The objective of the dawn raid according to the young company commander, Capt Anthony Gibbs, was "to capture or kill one of the US's most wanted", Jalalludin Haqqani, a former senior Taliban leader, and his sub-commanders.

But there is also the ever-present possibility of a huge bonus, an encounter with Osama bin Laden. "The hunt for Osama could be resolved by a routine patrol. Look how they found Saddam - it was a regular unit," said the 501st's commanding officer.....

Now American boys, affable GIs from rural states such as Oklahoma and Maine, are sent to risk their lives daily on far-flung frontiers peopled by tribes notorious for treachery and blood feuds.

The Americans are finding it a struggle to come to grips with the local ways. The 501st needs to find Haqqani, but tracking a guerrilla leader in these mountains is a fearsomely difficult process for foreigners. Haqqani is a fox, said by intelligence reports to move regularly through his area of Zadran clad as a woman in a burqa.

One of the most celebrated commanders in anti-Soviet war, he is now believed by the US to be organising attacks against coalition forces in alliance with al-Qa'eda.

"The Americans and its allies envision a new government in Afghanistan that would create a coalition between three main groups: moderate, breakaway factions of the Taliban, including veterans of the anti-Soviet guerrilla struggle like Haqqani;......"

"A US diplomat told Ahmed Rashid two months later that 'The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did. There will be Aramco, pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that' (Rashid, 179)."

WASHINGTON -- Another showdown between the national commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the White House may be in the offing, this time over whether all of the panel's 10 members or only some of them will be able to interview President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

The White House announced Friday evening that Bush had agreed to a request from former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, the commission's chairman, and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, the vice chairman, to meet in a closed-door session to discuss the 9/11 disaster. But it now appears the White House is trying to limit how many commissioners will meet with the president during the private session.

A Winchester man who survived a 2001 anthrax-by-mail attack is asking the federal government for $12 million to compensate for the disruption to his life.

David R. Hose worked for the U.S. Department of State in Sterling as a supervisor for the incoming diplomatic pouch and mail unit. He had been employed there since 1995.

In October 2001, an envelope laced with anthrax spores and addressed to U.S. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., arrived in Hose?s facility.
[...]
But researchers have concluded that the weapons-grade, Ames-strain anthrax spores were probably made at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., or at another laboratory working in the U.S. Defense Department?s germ warfare program, Hose?s claim states.

"The Defense Department had inadequate security measures in place to prevent such equipment from ending up in the hands of would-be bioterrorists," Hose?s claim states. "As the anthrax investigation continues, the evidence could ultimately establish that such negligence by the Defense Department was also a key ... cause of Mr. Hose?s injuries from inhalation anthrax."

Islamic radicals are being trained at terrorist camps in Pakistan and Kashmir as part of a conspiracy to send hundreds of operatives to "sleeper cells" in the United States, according to U.S. and foreign officials.
The intelligence and law-enforcement officials say dozens of Islamic extremists have already been routed through Europe to Muslim communities in the United States, based on secret intelligence data and information from terrorists and others detained by U.S. authorities....
The official said as many as 400 terrorists have been and are being trained at camps in Pakistan and Kashmir. ...
One veteran U.S. law-enforcement official with an extensive history in counterterrorism said many of the training camps in the Pakistan-controlled regions of Kashmir are operated by the Harakat ul-Ansar, an Islamic militant group tied to bin Laden.
The group's leaders joined with bin Laden in signing a February 1998 "fatwa" calling for attacks on U.S. and Western interests. Also known as the "Movement of Holy Warriors," Harakat ul-Ansar has been tied by U.S. and foreign intelligence officials to the January 2002 abduction and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
Several other camps are being operated by an anti-U.S. Muslim group known as Lashkar-e-Taiba, according to U.S. and foreign intelligence officials. Listed by the State Department in 2001 as a terrorist organization, Lashkar-e-Taiba is the armed wing of the Pakistan-based religious organization Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad.
Eleven men, including nine U.S. citizens, were arrested last year in Virginia in what authorities called the "Virginia jihad." ..

"Between 6,000 and 10,000 Muslims, the majority of them Arabs, went and fought against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan, with Saudi Arabia funding them, the ISI training and motivating them and the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies equipping them.....
A number of new pan-Islamic organisations of Wahabi-Deobandi-Ahle Hadith orientation sprang up in Pakistani soil and these were given the leadership role by the US for leading the mercenary brigade to battle. The most important amongst them were the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Harkat-ul-Jihad-Al-Islami (HUJI) and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET)....
The HUM, which produced some of the best fighters of the Afghan war, was favoured by the CIA and got the lion's share of the Stinger missiles, explosives and other equipment....
The Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) was formed in the beginning of 2000 by a split in the HUM.....
the CIA asked the ISI to divert part of the dregs of the HUM and the HUJI to Bosnia to assist the Muslims there in their fight against the Serbs. The transfer to Bosnia was funded by the Saudi Intelligence, the arms and ammunition were given by the Iranian Intelligence and the leadership and motivation were provided by serving and retired officers of the ISI and the Turkish intelligence. Omar Sheikh, who masterminded the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl of the "Wall Street Journal", had his jihadi inoculation in Bosnia just as bin Laden had his in Afghanistan. From Bosnia, they were diverted to Kosovo by the CIA ....."

"NEW DELHI: While the Pakistani Inter Services Public Relations claimed that former ISI director-general Lt-Gen Mahmud Ahmad sought retirement after being superseded on Monday, the truth is more shocking.
Top sources confirmed here on Tuesday, that the general lost his job because of the "evidence" India produced to show his links to one of the suicide bombers that wrecked the World Trade Centre. The US authorities sought his removal after confirming the fact that $100,000 were wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh at the instance of Gen Mahumd...."

During one of James Ujaama's trips to aid the Taliban government in Afghanistan in late 2000, the former Seattle native fell ill and was treated by Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of the most-wanted terrorists in the world and Osama bin Laden's adviser, confidant and personal physician....

Ujaama was arrested in July 2002 as part of an international investigation into radical members of a mosque in South Seattle who traveled to Bly, Ore., in 1999 to set up and participate in a terrorist-training camp. Federal law-enforcement sources have said Ujaama ? who was a key member at the now-closed Dar-us-Salaam mosque ? and his plans for the camp have been directly linked to Abu Hamza al-Masri, a fiery radical cleric in London who has praised bin Laden's attacks on the United States and the West.....

Al-Zawahiri, according to the FBI's "Most Wanted Terrorists" Web site, is the founder of the violent Egyptian Islamic Jihad and is believed to be an "adviser and doctor" to bin Laden, who is thought to be hiding in Afghanistan. The U.S. government has offered a $25 million reward for al-Zawahiri's arrest....
Ujaama lived for several years in London, where he designed and operated a Web site for Abu Hamza called the Supporters of Shariah, the fundamentalist Islamic law preached by the Taliban....
The plea agreement prohibits Ujaama from discussing his activities and information he has provided to the government for up to 10 years after his release.

"Within days of the minor surgery his health dramatically deteriorated and he slipped in to a coma. Medical records went missing arousing suspicion among those close to him..........
After he walked from the court, FBI sources in America confirmed that they were still investigating an alleged link between Zain-ul-abidin's security company Sakina and James Ujaama, another convert to Islam arrested in Denver, Colorado, on a material witness warrant. The FBI alleges that Ujaama delivered laptop computers to the Taliban......"

"It was alleged by some observers that Abu Hamza was running weekend military training camps for Islamic youth in Britain, including for volunteers to go to Kashmir, with the help of former British army officers and that the British authorities did not take any action against him since he had actively collaborated with the SIS in Afghanistan against the Soviet troops............ "

[Nov. 25, 2001] "The training and dispatching of mujahedeen, or holy warriors, has been a primary activity of bin Laden-sponsored camps in Afghanistan and Sudan since the early 1990s. The idea was borrowed from a U.S. program in the 1980s to train Muslim fighters to battle Soviet troops that occupied Afghanistan.
In radical mosques throughout the world, bin Laden loyalists have encouraged young Muslim men to take up the fight in places like Bosnia, Chechnya, Albania, Kosovo and Kashmir. Thousands have done so, either after training first in Afghanistan or going straight to the front......
Still others with Bosnian war experience are suspected of attacks in the Middle East. One of those is London cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, who is wanted on kidnapping and terrorism charges in Yemen. He commanded a unit of foreign soldiers during the war........."

Jordanian fugitive Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, wanted here in connection with the 2002 assassination of a US diplomat, is believed to be a top chemical and biological weapons expert for Al-Qaeda and leading an Iraqi affiliate of the terror group.
Zarqawi, 37, whose real name is Fadel Nazzal al-Khalayleh, is a veteran of the Afghan war against Soviet occupation, a US-backed conflict in the 1980s that drew many idealists from around the Muslim world......
"Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has had a long-standing connection to senior Al-Qaeda leadership and appears to be highly regarded among Al-Qaeda and a close associate of Osama bin Laden and (his top henchman) Saif al-Adel," the State Department said last October.
US intelligence services have described him as a top Al-Qaeda expert on chemical and biological weapons.
And US officials say he has emerged as the leader of Ansar al-Islam, a radical group in northern Iraq linked to Al-Qaeda.
On Wednesday, the US Army released a letter attributed to him by the US-led coalition in Iraq, branding it a "blueprint" for fomenting what the coalition said was a doomed civil war.
It also doubled to 10 million dollars a bounty initially posted on him in October.
Top coalition spokesman Dan Senor said the 17-page document "clearly calls for unleashing civil war" between the majority Shiite community and the unseated Sunni political and military elite.........
In December 2002, Jordanian authorities accused him of recruiting a Jordanian and a Libyan to gun down US diplomat Laurence Foley, who was murdered outside his Amman home two months earlier.......
Then Jordanian premier Ali Abu Ragheb said Zarqawi was hiding in Iraqi Kurdistan and had contacts with Ansar al-Islam.

"Ansar al-Islam, which controls mountains above Halabjah, began carving out territory for itself in September 2001. Over the past year, it has sought to institute Taliban-like strictures in the area they control. The group's leader, Mullah Krekar, has links with Afghanistan which date back to the war against Soviet occupation in the 1980s. He also studied Islamic law in Pakistan under Palestinian scholar and mentor of Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam."

"Saif al-Adel... then traveled to Pakistan in 1988 to join the mujaheddin rebels fighting against Soviet occupation in Afghanistan.
A member of al Qaeda since its founding in the early 1990s, he was trained by the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah. Al-Adel is believed to be a key figure in a tactical alliance between al Qaeda and Hezbollah, cutting across the traditional divide between the Shiite Muslims in Lebanon and the Sunni Muslims that make up al Qaeda."

California Democrat Henry Waxman is calling on Attorney General John Ashcroft to reveal who cleared members of Osama bin Laden?s family and other Saudi citizens to leave the country immediately following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

[The 9/11] commissioners were unaware of the crucial information given in an even more revealing phone call, made by another heroic flight attendant on the same plane, Madeline (Amy) Sweeney. They were unaware because their chief of staff, Philip Zelikow, chooses which evidence and witnesses to bring to their attention. Mr. Zelikow, as a former adviser to the pre-9/11 Bush administration, has a blatant conflict.

"My wife?s call was the first specific information the airline and the government got that day," said Mike Sweeney, the widowed husband of Amy Sweeney, who went face to face with the hijackers on Flight 11. She gave seat locations and physical descriptions of the hijackers, which allowed officials to identify them as Middle Eastern men?by name?even before the first crash. She gave officials key clues to the fact that this was not a traditional hijacking. And she gave the first and only eyewitness account of a bomb on board.

"How do you know it?s a bomb?" asked her phone contact.

"Because the hijackers showed me a bomb," Sweeney said, describing its yellow and red wires.

Quicktime video file

Well before dawn broke on a chilly Saturday, January 17, 2004 morning, volunteers of Civil Homeland Defense were in position atop ridges along the San Pedro River scouting for groups of people entering the country illegally. Through binoculars this reporter spotted two military type vehicles parked at an abandoned ranch just across the ?Line?, the U.S. - Mexico border.

RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie had this to say earlier today:

"We now know that some time this fall Kerry campaign operatives intend to go into pro-life chat rooms on the Internet to spread a scurrilous story that President Bush drove a former girlfriend to an abortion clinic, and paid for her abortion, according to the New York Daily News."

He's apparently referring to this article which does quote someone to that effect. Except "someone" is techno artist Moby, who (as far as I know) doesn't count as a "Kerry campaign operative." But hey, maybe he could get together with Joe Trippi and start a consulting firm.

SEN. BOB GRAHAM: We had a situation with our 9/11 review in which legally authorized subpoena was issued and the FBI refused to deliver it.

On November 7, 2001, BBC Television's Newsnight and the Guardian of London reported that the Bush administration thwarted investigations of Dr. A.Q. Khan, known as the "father" of Pakistan's atomic bomb. This week, Khan confessed to selling atomic secrets to Libya, North Korea, and Iran.

The Bush Administration has expressed shock at disclosures that Pakistan, our ally in the war on terror, has been running a nuclear secrets bazaar. In fact, according to the British news teams' sources within US intelligence agencies, shortly after President Bush's inauguration, his National Security Agency (NSA) effectively stymied the probe of Khan Research Laboratories, the Pakistani agency in charge of the bomb project. CIA and other agents told BBC they could not investigate the spread of ?Islamic Bombs? through Pakistan because funding appeared to originate in Saudi Arabia.

[Much more at source link]