• A wide variety of standard defense mechanisms designed to prevent such an attack systematically failed on 9/11. Especially notable are the atypical failures which occurred simultaneously within the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the National Military Command Center (NMCC), and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), all charged with protecting US airspace.

• Interceptor jets were not scrambled for more than thirty minutes after it was obvious that four airliners had gone off course and were presumably hijacked. In the case of Flight 77, which reportedly slammed into the Pentagon, an hour and forty-five minutes elapsed with no interception.

• Missile batteries designed to protect Washington, DC, failed to stop the strike on the Pentagon, one of the world's most protected structures, and fighter jets on constant alert at Andrews Air Force Base just twelve miles away were never scrambled.

• By a "bizarre coincidence," two government homeland defense agencies (NORAD and the NRO) were practicing war games on the morning of 9/11. The games simulated responses to a scenario in which hijacked planes were crashed into buildings. This fact could explain the government's lack of rapid response to the real hijackings, yet this plausible alibi has never been brought to public attention. One also wonders: How did the hijackers know the time and date of these war games in order to time their attacks to coincide with them?

• President Bush proceeded with a photo op at a Florida elementary school even after he and his aides knew that three planes had been hijacked. He lingered in the classroom for nearly twenty minutes after being informed that a second plane had struck the World Trade Center (WTC).

• Not one steel-framed high-rise building in history has collapsed solely due to fire. The free-fall speed collapse of the Trade Center towers, with attendant melted steel and powdery dust, exhibited all the characteristics of a controlled demolition.

• Just such a controlled demolition apparently occurred about 5 p.m. that same day when, according to the leaseholder of the WTC complex, the 47-story Building 7 was "pulled," i.e., intentionally demolished.

• Vital evidence, including the buildings' structural steel, was destroyed through rapid removal and destruction by US government officials with no investigation. This is only one of the many reasons why Fire Engineering magazine called the official investigation "a half-baked farce."

• An eight-mile-long debris trail indicated that Flight 93 was destroyed in the air rather than in the Pennsylvania crash reportedly caused by an onboard struggle between the hijackers and passengers.

• More than a dozen countries firmly warned US authorities that an attack on American soil was imminent, some only days before the events.

• Strong evidence points to complicity in the attacks by senior intelligence operatives from Israel and Pakistan who are closely aligned with American intelligence agencies.

• A classified Congressional report incriminates senior officials in the Saudi Arabian government, showing that they had close ties to the hijackers. The Saudis enjoy long-term business and social ties to the Bush family and close political ties to the US government.

• The US government expedited the swift departure of over 100 Saudis from the country, even as the American public had been denied the right to fly. Two dozen members of bin Laden's own family, presumably potential witnesses, were allowed to leave the country without interrogation.

• Insiders with foreknowledge of the events to come engaged in massive and highly profitable short-selling of shares in American Airlines and United Airlines, as well as other stocks readily affected by the disaster. The public has still not been presented with the final results of official investigations into these transactions-if there are any.

• A growing number of whistleblowers from within the federal government have pointed to evidence that various agencies were well aware of the possibility of attack, and were prevented by seniors officials from mounting full investigations.

• Far from being a mere reaction to 9/11, evidence now proves that the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were the culmination of long-standing plans which only awaited a provocation such as 9/11.

• The official explanations for the invasion of Iraq, such as the need to capture weapons of mass destruction, and to "bring democracy" to the country, have proven false.

• Within a few hours, the FBI released names and photos of the suspected hijackers although later many of those named turned up alive in the Middle East.

• Also within hours of the attacks, FBI agents were scouring the houses, restaurants, and flight schools they frequented. If no one had foreknowledge of the hijackers or their activities, how did they know where to look?

• Far from ordering a full and objective investigation to determine who was responsible for the 9/11 tragedies, the Bush administration dragged its feet and actually took actions to impede a swift and truthful probe into the events of that day. It was nearly two years after the events that mounting pressure from the public, led by families of 9/11 victims, finally forced the creation of an "independent" investigatory commission.

• No one in government has been reprimanded or even scolded for what we are told was the greatest intelligence and homeland-defense failure in US history. In fact, the very agencies which failed the nation watched their budgets increase dramatically, and some of the officials ostensibly at fault were actually promoted.
[...]

The United States has spent more than $126bn on the war in Iraq, which will ultimately cost every American family an estimated $3,415, according to a new report by two thinktanks.

The report, published yesterday by the leftwing Institute for Policy Studies and Foreign Policy in Focus also counts the human costs.

As of June 16, before yesterday's nationwide attacks, up to 11,317 Iraqi civilians and 6,370 Iraqi soldiers or insurgents had been killed, according to the report, which is titled Paying the Price: The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War.

The death toll among coalition troops was 952 by the same date, of which 853 were American. Some 694, were killed after George Bush declared the end of major combat operations on May 1 last year. Between 50 and 90 civilian contractors and missionaries and 30 journalists have also been killed, the report says.

In a separate USA Today/ CNN/Gallup Poll released last night, for the first time a majority of Americans said the US-led invasion of Iraq was a mistake. In all, 54% of those polled said the move was a mistake, compared to 41% three weeks ago.

Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein cut a deal with the United States before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, former Russian prime minister Yevgeny Primakov said in an interview published on Thursday.

“There was an understanding with the Americans, as paradoxical as it may seem,” Primakov told the Russian daily Gazeta in a lengthy interview.

“Why weren’t the bridges of the Tigris blown up when the American tanks approached Baghdad? Why weren’t Iraqi aviation and tanks used, and where are they now?” asked Primakov, a former head of the Russian secret service and a specialist in Arab affairs who was formerly on good terms with Saddam.

“Why was there an immediate ceasefire? Why was there practically no resistance a year ago?” he added.

Primakov, who now heads Russia’s chamber of trade and industry, also cast doubt on the authenticity of footage of Saddam’s reported capture that circled the world on December 14.

“They showed two soldiers with guns with palm trees in the background near the hole (where Saddam was reportedly hiding). At that time of year, date palms are never in bloom,” he said.

“Finally, any man can tell you that such a long beard (as Saddam had when he was reportedly caught) could not grow in seven months,” he said.

“All evidence suggests that Saddam surrendered earlier and the story of the hole was invented later,” he said. Primakov, who was also Russian foreign minister, made two secret trips to Iraq at the request of President Vladimir Putin, shortly before the invasion by US and British troops.

President George W. Bush intends to name U.S. Representative Porter Goss, a former intelligence officer, as the new head of the Central Intelligence Agency, a Bush administration official said.

Goss, 65, will take over the intelligence agency from George Tenet, who announced his resignation on June 3, the official, who spoke on the condition he not be identified, said.

The Florida Republican was a clandestine CIA officer for a decade before he entering politics in 1974 by running for local office in Sanibel Florida. He was elected to the House in 1988 and is chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. Calls to Goss's office weren't immediately returned.

On behalf of former FBI contract linguist Sibel Edmonds, The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) sued Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Department of Justice (DOJ) today, seeking judicial reclassification of information that alleges corruption, incompetence and cover-ups in an FBI investigation unit.

Sibel Edmonds was fired for reporting information she uncovered in the FBI's translation unit in Washington. Attorney General Ashcroft said the national interests of the United States "would be seriously impaired" if Edmonds' findings were to be made available to the public; so he made the decision to classify public information still available on the Internet.

The former FBI translator told TomFlocco.com that "translators before me had ongoing personal relationships with the subjects or targets of the FBI and DOJ pre 9-11 investigations--linked to intercepts and other intelligence--in June - July - August, just prior to the attacks."

Delta, Continental, America West, JetBlue and Frontier Airlines secretly turned over sensitive passenger data to Transportation Security Administration contractors in the spring and summer of 2002, according to the sworn statement of acting TSA chief David Stone. In addition, two of the four largest airline reservation centers, Galileo International and Sabre, also gave sensitive passenger information, including home phone numbers, credit card numbers and health data, without disclosing the transfers to travelers or asking their permission.

This is the third time in the past nine month that knowledge of the scope of secret information disclosures by airlines has expanded, and now six of the 10 largest airlines are known to have given data to the government secretly. Stone's disclosure also raises questions about whether TSA officials intentionally withheld information from previous inquiries by the Government Accounting Office, members of Congress and the Department of Homeland Security's chief privacy officer, Nuala O'Connor Kelly.

In addition, the TSA or its contractors may have violated the Privacy Act, which prohibits the government from compiling secret databases on Americans. Officials could face civil and criminal penalties.

The TSA and its contractors sought the data because they were working on an airline passenger screening system known as CAPPS II.

[....]

Congress has already stepped in to register it concerns about CAPPS II and has banned it from being deployed until the GAO certifies it meets eight privacy and effectiveness criteria. The GAO certified the program met only one of these criteria in its February report

Howdy Y'all.
For those interested, here's a preview of my new novel.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
Cheers - valis

"Shackle me not to this devine flesh"

THE man accused of supplying the dynamite used in the al-Qaeda train bombings in Madrid was in possession of the private telephone number of the head of Spain’s Civil Guard bomb squad, it emerged yesterday.

Emilio Suárez Trashorras, who is alleged to have supplied 200kg of dynamite used in the bombs, had obtained the number of Juan Jesús Sánchez Manzano, the head of Tedax.

The revelation has raised fresh concerns in Madrid about links between those held responsible for the March bombings, which killed 190 people, and Spain’s security services, and shortcomings in the police investigation. Señor Suárez Trashorras and two other men implicated in the bombings have already been identified as police informers.

Never mind the fact that Dick Cheney’s hands-on role in developing the prewar intelligence picture of Iraq is, by now, a matter of public record — the CIA has asked that the declassified version of a highly critical Senate Intelligence Committee report to redact references to the Vice President.

[....]

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss — a former CIA clandestine services officer and leading contender for CIA director if President Bush is re-elected — quietly introduced a bill that would significantly expand the CIA director's executive and management authority over the whole intelligence community,

Each and every weekday, 11 federal judges meet in secret in Washington and review FBI and Department of Homeland Security requests for warrants to spy on Americans.

And, on average, the court approves seven warrants a day, according to records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

[....]

Some privacy groups refer to the court as a "Star Chamber," a secret coven of judges who hold the future of Americans in their judicial hands. Although the court was created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, it has become recent tool of the Bush Administration to wiretap, follow, investigate and harass Americans under the guise of the war against terrorism.

And the law allows the court to conduct its business in secret, with no oversight from any federal agency or legislative body, including the U.S. Congress.

"This secrecy is unnecessary and allows problems in applying the law to fester," three U.S. Senators – one Democrat and two Republicans – told the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in a letter last year.

The three – Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Charles Grassley of Iowa – say their own investigations have found widespread inaccuracies in warrant applications, breaking of the law by top government attorneys and outright sloppiness in executing the warrants.

"Without oversight and public scrutiny, there is no compelling reason for the court or the Department of Justice to follow the rule of law," the letter said.

The Associated Press sued the Pentagon and the Air Force on Tuesday, seeking access to all records of George W. Bush's military service during the Vietnam War.

Filed in federal court in New York, where The AP is headquartered, the lawsuit seeks access to a copy of Bush's microfilmed personnel file from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission in Austin.

The White House says the government has already released all the records of Bush's military service.

Controversy surrounds Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard because it is unclear from the record what duties he performed for the military when he was working on the political campaign of a U.S. Senate candidate in Alabama.

[....]

The White House has yet to respond to a request by the AP in April asking the president to sign a written waiver of his right to keep records of his military service confidential. Bush gave an oral waiver in a TV appearance that preceded the White House's release this year of materials concerning his National Guard service.

The government "did not expedite their response ... they did not produce the file within the time required by law, and they will not now estimate when the file might be produced or even confirm that an effort has been initiated to retrieve a copy from the microfilm at the Texas archives," the lawsuit says.

The willingness of the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush to show greater deference to the United Nations and international law will be severely tested this week as it tries to persuade the Security Council to extend its exemption of U.S. troops serving in peacekeeping operations from the jurisdiction the new International Criminal Court (ICC) for another year.

To prevail, Washington must secure at least nine votes from the 15-member Council, but indications so far are that it is likely to fall short of that goal. In the past, the administration has threatened to veto UN peacekeeping operations if it does not get its way on the issue.

Despite widespread unhappiness with the resolution, which is vehemently opposed by international human rights groups who say that the exemption violates international law and undermines the global struggle to end impunity for the most serious human rights abuses, it was considered likely to be approved until the photographs of the abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq became public.

Subsequent revelations of more widespread abuses, as well as high-level administration policy memos that appeared to sanction torture, have greatly bolstered opposition to the resolution, provoking UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan himself to criticize it more harshly than ever before.

[....]

Debate on Washington's request, which appears to have the support of Angola, Britain, the Philippines, and Russia, is expected to begin this week, probably Thursday. To date, however, Benin, Brazil, Chile, China, France, Germany, and Spain have indicated they intend to abstain.

Seven abstentions would kill the resolution.

A US military judge agreed on Monday to call the two most senior American commanders for Iraq to testify at the court martial of three soldiers charged with prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.

At a pre-trial hearing in Baghdad, Judge Colonel James Pohl upheld a request by defence lawyers to question General John Abizaid, head of US Central Command, and Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, head of US forces in Iraq.

[...]

Paul Bergrin, defence counsel for Sergeant Javal Davis, said he hoped to call President George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, as witnesses on the grounds that they had sanctioned abuse of prisoners through statements that the Geneva Convention did not apply in the "war on terror".

However, John Hutson, former top navy judge advocate-general and now dean of Franklin Pierce Law Center, said there was little prospect of that happening.

"It is inconceivable that they would be called to testify. There is nothing that George Bush is going to be able to say on the stand that is going to be relevant. [But]it creates a potential issue on appeal."

Judge Pohl also said the prison, which was notorious for torture and executions under Saddam Hussein, was a "crime scene" and could not, at least for now, be demolished, as President George W. Bush had recently suggested.

According to the personal written statement of Navy Captain Charles J. Leidig, Jr., entered into the record during today’s hearings before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Leidig revealed that on September 10 he was asked by Brigadier General Montague Winfield to stand a portion of his duty as Deputy Director for Operations for the National Military Command Center (NMCC), which would require supervision and operation of all necessary communications as watch commander.

Leidig said "On 10 September 2001, Brigadier General Winfield, U.S. Army, asked that I stand a portion of his duty as Deputy Director for Operations, NMCC, on the following day. [September 11] I agreed and relieved Brigadier General Winfield at 0830 on 11 September 2001."

Winfield had requested Leidig to assume his watch at what turned out to be the very outset of the September 11 attacks--but even after American Flight 11 had already been determined to be hijacked just minutes before Winfield handed over his watch to Leidig.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that people do not have a constitutional right to refuse to tell police their names.

The 5-4 decision frees the government to arrest and punish people who won't cooperate by revealing their identity.

The decision was a defeat for privacy rights advocates who argued that the government could use this power to force people who have done nothing wrong, other than catch the attention of police, to divulge information that may be used for broad database searches.

It all began on Thursday when the Times, like most other papers in the country, featured on its front page news that the staff of the federal 9/11 commission had concluded, as the article put it, "that there did not appear to have been a 'collaborative relationship' between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein." It suggested that this conclusion put into question one of the administration's prime reasons for invading Iraq last year.

But what must have really gotten the vice president's goat was a Times editorial the same day. Noting the lack of evidence for an al Qaeda/Iraq/Sept. 11 link, it called on President Bush to "apologize to the American people, who were led to believe something different." It labeled as "plainly dishonest" the President's effort "to link his war of choice with the battle against terrorists worldwide."

Then the editorial chastised Cheney for "continuing to declare" a likely Saddam Hussein/Osama bin Laden connection.

Well, Cheney wasn't going to take that hunkering down. The following day, appearing on TV, he called the Times coverage of the commission's findings "outrageous," sometimes "malicious." He said the "vaunted" newspaper did "a lot of outrageous things." (He probably was not referring to the paper's pre-war promotion of the Saddam/WMD link, which proved useful for his administration.) He continued to call evidence of the Iraq connection to al Qaeda before the war "overwhelming."

Cheney also claimed "We still don't know" if Iraq had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks. For example, he said, the long-cited claim that chief hijacker Mohamed Atta met an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague in 2001 has "never been refuted." This seemed odd to some observers, since the commission staff had just declared that meeting could not have taken place, citing phone records and other evidence that Atta was in Florida at the same time he was said to be in Czechoslovakia.

A Pentagon effort to persuade Congress to allow military intelligence agents to work undercover in the United States met with resistance in the House Wednesday when the provision was left out of the highly secretive intelligence funding bill.

However, the Senate's version of the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2005 still includes the provision, which exempts Department of Defense intelligence agents from a portion of the Privacy Act, a 30-year-old law that outlaws secret databases on American citizens and green-card holders.

The bill would allow Pentagon intelligence agents to work undercover and question American citizens and legal residents without having to reveal that they are government agents.

[...]

In February, Army intelligence agents improperly sought information about attendees at a University of Texas law school conference about Muslim women. Conference organizers refused to provide a videotape of the event to the officers and publicized the request, leading to an apology by the Army.

The Pentagon's push for an exemption from the Privacy Act comes even as questions remain about the Army's compliance with the Privacy Act in its homeland security efforts.

A sweeping mental health initiative will be unveiled by President George W Bush in July. The plan promises to integrate mentally ill patients fully into the community by providing "services in the community, rather than institutions," according to a March 2004 progress report entitled New Freedom Initiative (www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/newfreedom/toc-2004.html). While some praise the plan's goals, others say it protects the profits of drug companies at the expense of the public.

Bush established the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health in April 2002 to conduct a "comprehensive study of the United States mental health service delivery system." The commission issued its recommendations in July 2003. Bush instructed more than 25 federal agencies to develop an implementation plan based on those recommendations.

[...]

According to the commission, "Each year, young children are expelled from preschools and childcare facilities for severely disruptive behaviours and emotional disorders." Schools, wrote the commission, are in a "key position" to screen the 52 million students and 6 million adults who work at the schools.

The commission also recommended "Linkage [of screening] with treatment and supports" including "state-of-the-art treatments" using "specific medications for specific conditions." The commission commended the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP) as a "model" medication treatment plan ...

[...]

But the Texas project, which promotes the use of newer, more expensive antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs, sparked off controversy when Allen Jones, an employee of the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General, revealed that key officials with influence over the medication plan in his state received money and perks from drug companies with a stake in the medication algorithm (15 May, p1153). He was sacked this week for speaking to the BMJ and the New York Times.

A forthcoming bill in the U.S. Senate would, if passed, dramatically reshape copyright law by prohibiting file-trading networks and some consumer electronics devices on the grounds that they could be used for unlawful purposes.

The proposal, called the Induce Act, says "whoever intentionally induces any violation" of copyright law would be legally liable for those violations, a prohibition that would effectively ban file-swapping networks like Kazaa and Morpheus. In the draft bill seen by CNET News.com, inducement is defined as "aids, abets, induces, counsels, or procures" and can be punished with civil fines and, in some circumstances, lengthy prison terms.
[...]
Originally, the Induce Act was scheduled to be introduced Thursday by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, but the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmed at the end of the day that the bill had been delayed.
[...]
Jessica Litman, a professor at Wayne State University who specializes in copyright law... said that under the Induce Act, products like ReplayTV, peer-to-peer networks and even the humble VCR could be outlawed because they can potentially be used to infringe copyrights.