Friday, November 30, 2007

Hagel: Would Consider Running On The Dem Ticket

...and almost all of us would consider voting for him, as the GOP implodes. Some of them deserve to be salvaged and Hagel is one. Sen Hagel may have his faults, just as the rest of humanity does, but nowhere in him have I seen the kind of pure evil we have all witnessed in this administration and many in the GOP controlled congress that helped the administration cover up crime after crime from 9/11 until they lost the House and Senate last year.

Hagel: Bush administration is 'incompetent' and he would consider joining a Dem ticket

"This is one of the most arrogant, incompetent administrations I've ever seen personally or ever read about," the always blunt and frequently quotable Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said yesterday during an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

"This administration in my opinion has been as unprepared as any administration I'm aware of," Hagel added, "not only the ones that I have been somehow connected to and that's been every administration -- either I've been in Washington or worked within an administration or Congress or some way dealing with them since the first Nixon administration. I would rate this one the lowest in capacity, in capability, in policy, in consensus -- almost every area, I would give it the lowest grade. ...

Unprepared? I'm not so sure about that one Chuck. If you are talking about the Iraq debacle, they could not have possibly been as unprepared as they seem, since they were planning to invade Iraq since before the Supremes installed the them in the most powerful positions in the world. "We" may not have accomplished the many the goals the administration set forth as their reasons for the illegal, unjust invasion and occupation of Iraq, but "they" seem to be accomplishing theirs.

"And you know, I think of this administration, what they could have done after 9/11, what was within their grasp. Every poll in the world showed 90% of the world for us. Iran had some of the first spontaneous demonstrations on the streets of Tehran supporting America. They squandered a tremendous amount of opportunity."

Chuck, wake up, for Pete's sake. They didn't want Iran's sympathy or support. Iran was already on the NeoCon hit list. As a matter of fact, even today, we hear the right-wing echo chamber yap on about how the Iranians celebrated the attacks. As I recall, it was reported Iran's president, at the time, was one of the first to offer his nation's support and that Iran did help with Intel. as we attacked Afghanistan.

Hagel, who toyed with the idea of running for president himself, also said:

He would be open to the idea of either working in a Democratic administration or even running as the vice presidential nominee on a Democratic ticket -- though, he conceded, "I probably won't have to worry about it" because he's unlikely to be asked.

The Dems would be fools not to take him up on his offer to serve in a Democratic administration. He has alot to offer - more than McCain, that's for sure.

"If there was an area that I thought I could make a difference and influence policy, leadership, outcome ... then I would entertain those possibilities, Hagel said.

He called Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton "capable." As for the speculation that he and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg might form an independent ticket, Hagel joked that "Bloomberg's got the money. I think it'd be Bloomberg-Hagel" ticket.

The council has posted a transcript of Hagel's remarks here.

Hagel has already announced he won't seek re-election to his Senate seat next year.

Seems like even the Goopers know that their party has been all but destroyed by the Bushies. Has anyone ever seen an exodus from Capitol Hill like the one currently under way? Not even when Nixon faced impeachment and sure conviction by the senate of very serious crimes did the Republicans run like they are now, as if from a burning building.



(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Incontriverable Evidence Bush Not Involved In U.S. Attorney Mess

Therefore, the claim of executive privilege is out the window. If these criminal tricksters don't show up, hit 'em with contempt and send the capitol police to put them in jail until they honor the congressional subpoenas.

As far as Bush goes, he is does seem guilty of participating in the cover-up that followed.

Leahy: White House aides must comply with subpoenas

From Ted Barrett
CNN Washington Bureau
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected White House claims of executive privilege and demanded Thursday that key White House aides testify in the case of the controversial firings of U.S. attorneys.

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Sen. Patrick Leahy ruled that president has no claim of executive privilege protecting Karl Rove and others.

The committee's investigation has found "significant and uncontroverted evidence that the president had no involvement in these firings," Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, said. Thus, the White House can't claim executive privilege or immunity, which are meant to protect private communications between a president and White House aides, he ruled.

The committee has issued subpoenas for White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former political adviser Karl Rove, among others.

The Bush administration has insisted that last year's firing of the attorneys was handled properly, but critics have charged that they were forced out for political motives and, in one case, to allow a protégé of Rove's to take one of the posts.

The ruling, which was expected, is a formal step necessary before the committee can vote to find the White House in contempt. Such a move would require a vote of the full Senate before being turned over to the U.S. attorney in Washington.

The attorney would have to decide whether to prosecute the administration that appointed him.

Besides Bolten and Rove, the committee issued subpoenas for former White House political director Sara Taylor and her deputy, Scott Jennings, both of whom Leahy and others on the committee think were involved in making political judgments on which U.S. attorneys to fire.

"In light of the evidence gathered by the committee showing the significant involvement of White House political officials in improper politicization of law enforcement, the White House is not entitled to withhold key evidence," Leahy wrote in his ruling.

He accused the White House and Justice Department of "lying, misleading, stonewalling, and ignoring the Congress" in its investigation.

"It is obvious that the reasons given for these firings were contrived as part of a cover-up and that the stonewalling by the White House is part and parcel of that same effort," Leahy wrote.

The White House has offered to allow Rove and others to be interviewed privately about their actions. The Democratic-led Congress has rejected that offer, in part, because of White House insistence no transcript be made.

The Judiciary Committee is likely to move on the matter in December, an aide to Leahy said.

Though U.S. attorneys are political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president, the Justice Department's initial characterization of the dismissals as "performance-related" triggered angry protests from the former prosecutors

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Rudy G Teoorrist Connection

Rudy's Ties to a Terror Sheikh

Giuliani's business contracts tie him to the man who let 9/11's mastermind escape the FBI
by Wayne Barrett

November 27th, 2007 3:39 PM
Illustration by Wes Duvall
Special reporting by Samuel Rubenfeld and additional research by Adrienne Gaffney and Danielle Schiffman


Three weeks after 9/11, when the roar of fighter jets still haunted the city's skyline, the emir of gas-rich Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani, toured Ground Zero. Although a member of the emir's own royal family had harbored the man who would later be identified as the mastermind of the attack—a man named Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, often referred to in intelligence circles by his initials, KSM—al-Thani rushed to New York in its aftermath, offering to make a $3 million donation, principally to the families of its victims. Rudy Giuliani, apparently unaware of what the FBI and CIA had long known about Qatari links to Al Qaeda, appeared on CNN with al-Thani that night and vouched for the emir when Larry King asked the mayor: "You are a friend of his, are you not?"

"We had a very good meeting yesterday. Very good," said Giuliani, adding that he was "very, very grateful" for al-Thani's generosity. It was no cinch, of course, that Giuliani would take the money: A week later, he famously rejected a $10 million donation from a Saudi prince who advised America that it should "adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause." (Giuliani continues to congratulate himself for that snub on the campaign trail.) Al-Thani waited a month before expressing essentially the same feelings when he returned to New York for a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly and stressed how important it was to "distinguish" between the "phenomenon" of 9/11 and "the legitimate struggles" of the Palestinians "to get rid of the yoke of illegitimate occupation and subjugation." Al-Thani then accused Israel of "state terrorism" against the Palestinians.

But there was another reason to think twice about accepting al-Thani's generosity that Giuliani had to have been aware of, even as he heaped praise on the emir. Al Jazeera, the Arabic news network based in Qatar (pronounced "Cutter"), had been all but created by al-Thani, who was its largest shareholder. The Bush administration was so upset with the coverage of Osama bin Laden's pronouncements and the U.S. threats to bomb Afghanistan that Secretary of State Colin Powell met the emir just hours before Giuliani's on-air endorsement and asked him to tone down the state-subsidized channel's Islamist footage and rhetoric. The six-foot-eight, 350-pound al-Thani, who was pumping about $30 million a year into Al Jazeera at the time, refused Powell's request, citing the need for "a free and credible media." The administration's burgeoning distaste for what it would later brand "Terror TV" was already so palpable that King—hardly a newsman—asked the emir if he would help "spread the word" that the U.S. was "not targeting the average Afghan citizen." Al-Thani ignored the question—right before Giuliani rushed in to praise him again.

In retrospect, Giuliani's embrace of the emir appears peculiar. But it was only a sign of bigger things to come: the launching of a cozy business relationship with terrorist-tolerant Qatar that is inconsistent with the core message of Giuliani's current presidential campaign, namely that his experience and toughness uniquely equip him to protect America from what he tauntingly calls "Islamic terrorists"—an enemy that he always portrays himself as ready to confront, and the Democrats as ready to accommodate.

The contradictory and stunning reality is that Giuliani Partners, the consulting company that has made Giuliani rich, feasts at the Qatar trough, doing business with the ministry run by the very member of the royal family identified in news and government reports as having concealed KSM—the terrorist mastermind who wired funds from Qatar to his nephew Ramzi Yousef prior to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and who also sold the idea of a plane attack on the towers to Osama bin Laden—on his Qatar farm in the mid-1990s.

This royal family member is Abdallah bin Khalid al-Thani, Qatar's minister of Islamic affairs at the time, who was later installed at the interior ministry in January 2001 and reappointed by the emir during a government shake-up earlier this year. Abdallah al-Thani is also said to have welcomed Osama bin Laden on two visits to the farm, a charge repeated as recently as October 10, 2007, in a Congressional Research Service study. Abdallah al-Thani's interior ministry or the state-owned company it helps oversee, Qatar Petroleum, has worked with Giuliani Security & Safety LLC, a subsidiary of Giuliani Partners, on an undisclosed number of contracts, the value of which neither the government nor the company will release. But there's little question that a security agreement with Qatar's government, or with Qatar Petroleum, would put a company like Giuliani's in direct contact with the ministry run by Abdallah al-Thani: The website of Qatar's government, and the interior ministry's press office, as well as numerous press stories, all confirm that the ministry controls a 2,500-member police force, the General Administration of Public Security, and the Mubahathat, or secret police. The ministry's charge under law is to "create and institute security in this country." Hassan Sidibe, a public-relations officer for the ministry, says that "a company that does security work, they have to get permission from the interior ministry."

What's most shocking is that Abdallah al-Thani has been widely accused of helping to spirit KSM out of Qatar in 1996, just as the FBI was closing in on him. Robert Baer, a former CIA supervisor in the region, contends in a 2003 memoir that the emir himself actually sanctioned tipping KSM. The staff of the 9/11 Commission, meanwhile, noted that the FBI and CIA "were reluctant to seek help from the Qatari government" in the arrest of KSM, "fearing that he might be tipped off." When Qatar's emir was finally "asked for his help" in January 1996, Qatari authorities "first reported that KSM was under surveillance," then "asked for an alternative plan that would conceal their aid to Americans," and finally "reported that KSM had disappeared."


Giuliani's lifelong friend Louis Freeh, the FBI head who talked to Giuliani periodically about terrorist threats during Giuliani's mayoral years and has endorsed him for president, was so outraged that he wrote a formal letter to Qatar's foreign minister complaining that he'd received "disturbing information" that KSM "has again escaped the surveillance of your Security Services and that he appears to be aware of FBI interest in him."

Abdallah al-Thani remains a named defendant in the 9/11 lawsuits that are still proceeding in Manhattan federal court, but his Washington lawyers declined to address the charges that he shielded KSM, insisting only that he never "supported" any "terrorist acts." Asked if Abdallah al-Thani ever supported any terrorists rather than their acts, his lawyer David Nachman declined to comment further. The Congressional Research Service report summarized the evidence against him: "According to the 9/11 Commission Report and former U.S. government officials, royal family member and current Qatari Interior Minister, Sheikh Abdullah (Abdallah) bin Khalid Al Thani, provided safe harbor and assistance to Al Qaeda leaders during the 1990s," including KSM. While numerous accounts have named Abdallah as the KSM tipster, the report simply says that "a high ranking member of the Qatari government" is believed to have "alerted" KSM "to the impending raid."

Freeh's letter in 1996 highlighted the consequences of this government-orchestrated escape with a prophetic declaration, saying that the "failure to apprehend KSM would allow him and other associates to continue to conduct terrorist operations." Indeed, had KSM, who was even then focused on the use of hijacked planes as weapons, been captured in 1996, 9/11 might well have never happened.

In other words, as incredible as it might seem, Rudy Giuliani—whose presidential candidacy is steeped in 9/11 iconography—has been doing business with a government agency run by the very man who made the attacks on 9/11 possible.


This startling revelation is not a sudden disclosure from new sources. It has, in fact, been staring us in the face for many months.

The Wall Street Journal reported on November 7 that one Giuliani Partners client the former mayor hadn't previously disclosed was, in fact, the government of Qatar. Quoting the recently retired Bush envoy to Qatar, Chase Untermeyer, the Journal reported that state-run Qatar Petroleum had signed a contract with Giuliani Security "around 2005" and that the firm (of which Giuliani has a 30 percent equity stake) is offering security advice to a giant natural-gas processing facility called Ras Laffan. While the interior ministry wouldn't confirm individual contracts, it did tell the Voice that Qatar Petroleum and security "purchasing" are part of its portfolio.

(The Journal story was followed by a similar piece in the Chicago Tribune last week, which revealed that Giuliani's firm has also represented a complex casino partnership seeking to build a $3.5 billion Singapore resort. The partnership included "the family of a controversial Hong Kong billionaire who has ties to the regime of North Korea's Kim Jong II and has been linked to international organized crime by the U.S. government.")

The Journal story, however, didn't go into detail about the unsavory connections that Giuliani had made in the Middle East. The Journal wrote that it learned about the Qatar contract after reading a speech that Untermeyer gave in 2006, when he said that Giuliani's firm had "important contracts" in Qatar. In fact, Untermeyer—who returned to Texas when he stepped down as ambassador to join a real-estate firm partnered with the National Bank of Qatar—told the Houston Forum that Giuliani's "security company" has "several" contracts in Qatar, and that Giuliani himself "comes to Doha [Qatar's capital] twice a year." Untermeyer's wife Diana spoke at the same event about their daughter Elly, who she said "makes friends with all she meets—other kids, generals, sheikhs, and even our famous American visitors like former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whom she deems 'cool.' "

While it is true that Giuliani hasn't disclosed the particulars of his Qatar business, he and others at the firm have been bragging about it for years, presumably on the assumption that mentioning good-paying clients is the best way to generate more of the same. Giuliani told South Africa's Business Times in June 2006, for example, that he'd "recently helped Qatar" to transform Doha in preparation for the Asian Games, an Olympics- sanctioned, 45-country competition that occurred last December. He was in Johannesburg in part to offer to do the same before South Africa hosts the 2010 World Cup. "They had the same concerns as you," he said at the Global Leaders Africa summit, "and I helped them pull things together. You can see not only how they pulled together physical things that were necessary, such as stadiums, but how they used the plan to improve their security."

Richard Bradshaw, a consulting-services manager for an Australian security firm that played a two-and-a-half-year role in planning the Asian Games, says that "the ministry of the interior is essentially the chief ministry in charge of internal security"—for the games and other matters. Bradshaw says that he "heard the name of Giuliani Partners quoted in this town," but that he knew nothing directly about their Asian Games involvement, adding that "maybe they just dealt with high levels in the government." But Hassan Sidibe, the interior ministry's press officer, says that a special organizing committee handled contracts for the Asian Games and that "the minister of interior was part of that committee."


In addition to specific references to the natural-gas and Asian Games deals, Giuliani Partners has hinted at broader ties to Qatar. A New York Post story in January that was filled with quotes about Giuliani Partners' clients from Michael Hess, a managing partner at the firm, reported that Giuliani himself "has given advice from Qatar to Spain." Another Post story in May reported that Giuliani had made lucrative speeches in 30 countries—which he does in addition to his Giuliani Partners business—and named Qatar as one of those locations. A New York Times story in January, also laced with Hess quotes, reported that Pasquale J. D'Amuro, the ex-FBI chief who replaced Bernard Kerik as the head of Giuliani's security division, "has traveled to meet with executives in Japan, Qatar, and other nations, often focusing on clients who seek the firm out for advice on how to protect against a terrorist attack." Any of these dealings in Qatar that involved security would necessarily connect the firm with the interior ministry run by Abdallah al-Thani.

Peter Boyer, whose New Yorker profile of Giuliani appeared this August, quoted D'Amuro and Giuliani about the expertise and work of Ali Soufan, an Arabic-speaking Lebanese-American who also left the FBI to become the international director of Giuliani Security. Both D'Amuro and Giuliani said that Soufan, the lead investigator in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, had been spending "most of his time" in a Persian Gulf country that is a Giuliani client. Boyer didn't identify the country, but another source familiar with Soufan's assignment has confirmed that Soufan has, until recently, been based in Qatar. "The firm has helped the country with training, and with a revamping of its security infrastructure," Boyer wrote. "The locale is an ideal listening post for someone whose expertise is unraveling the tangle of international terror." Soufan was the firm's point man with the royal family, according to another former FBI operative, even providing security advice for Her Highness Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned, the emir's favorite of his three wives.

Gulf States Newsletter, a respected news publication in the region, used similar language this October to describe the firm's business in Qatar. Closing a lengthy piece of boosterism that assessed who was getting security contracts in Qatar, the newsletter cited a sole example "in the field of high-end consultancy," namely what it called "well-partnered players like Giuliani Associates." It said the firm had, "through a combination of luck and good positioning, become trusted partners" of the Qatari government. The "key lesson for any security sector incomer," concluded the newsletter, is that "in Qatar it is necessary but not sufficient to be technically competent. As ever, it may be who you know, not what you know, that wins the day."

Despite this ample supply of evidence, Sunny Mindel, the firm's spokeswoman, denied in a November 11 Post story that Giuliani Partners "had any ties to Qatar Petroleum." Mindel may have meant that the company's business in Qatar had come to an end, parsing her verbs carefully, or she may have been denying that the contract came directly from the petroleum entity, suggesting that the government itself paid for this security advice. Mindel's elusive answers are consistent with other efforts by the company to conceal the Qatar deals, even as Giuliani and others have occasionally talked openly about them. These efforts suggest that Giuliani is aware the association could prove disquieting, even without the embarrassing connection to the notorious KSM.

The best example of how Giuliani's Qatar ties could prove disastrous for his presidential candidacy occurred a year ago, at the opening of the Asian Games on December 1, 2006, eleven days after Giuliani registered his presidential exploratory committee. Ben Smith, then of the Daily News and now with Politico.com, obtained a detailed internal memo from the Giuliani campaign in January, and it contained a travel schedule. Smith wrote that "Giuliani spent the first weekend in December in Doha, Qatar, at the Qatari-government sponsored Asian Games, on which he had reportedly worked as a consultant." Giuliani's calendar indicates that he arrived in Qatar on December 2 and left on December 3, heading to Las Vegas to address the state's GOP. The Qatari government spent $2.8 billion to host the games, building a massive sports complex with security very much in mind. "We have 8,000 well-trained security members and the latest technology that were used in the Olympics," said a security spokesman.

On December 1, the day before Giuliani arrived, the emir's special guests at the lavish opening, attended by 55,000, were Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniyeh and Syrian president Bashar Assad, all of whom are Qatar allies and were pictured sitting together on television. Giuliani's presence that weekend wasn't noted in news coverage at the time, even though his firm had apparently provided security advice for an event that included Ahmadinejad, whose country Giuliani has since promised to "set back five years" should it pursue its nuclear program. Ahmadinejad was later assailed by opponents in his own country for watching a female song-and-dance show that was part of the opening extravaganza. The presence of Hamas's Haniyeh, who attended private meetings with the emir while Giuliani was in Qatar, might also have been embarrassing to Giuliani, since Qatar agreed to pay $22.5 million a month to cover the salaries of 40,000 Palestinian teachers, as well as to create a bank in the territories with a $50 million initial deposit. This break in the boycott against Hamas orchestrated by the U.S. and Israel prompted a stern rebuke from the State Department on December 5.


While Qatar's emir has allowed the U.S. to locate its central command and other strategic facilities in the country, including the largest pre-positioning base in the region, his government was also the only member of the U.N. Security Council to oppose the July 2006 resolution that called on Iran to suspend all nuclear research and development activities. Indeed, Iran and Qatar share the North Field/South Pars natural-gas deposit off the Qatari coast, the very one that includes the Giuliani-advised Ras Laffan project. Similarly, the emir praised the Hezbollah resistance in Lebanon during the 2006 war with Israel, calling it "the first Arab victory, something we had longed for," and he visited southern Lebanon after the war, meeting with families and giving away $250 million to rebuild destroyed homes. While Qatar had allowed Israel to open a small trade mission in Doha amid much fanfare in the mid-'90s, it had virtually shut down the office by 2000, and the last of the Israeli envoys left in 2003.

Also, Saddam Hussein's wife, Sajida Khayrallah Tilfa, lives in Qatar, in defiance of an Interpol arrest warrant and her appearance on the Iraqi government's 2006 most-wanted list for allegedly providing financial support to Iraqi insurgents, according to an October 2007 report by the Congressional Research Service. Invited with her daughter to Qatar by the deputy prime minister, she has not returned to Iraq despite an extradition demand issued months before Giuliani's December visit.

Another potentially uncomfortable Giuliani visit to Doha also stayed under the radar. On January 16, 2006, Giuliani visited the Aspire Academy for Sports Excellence and the Aspire Zone, the largest sports dome in the world, built for the Asian Games as well as future international events (including the Olympic Games, which Qatar hopes to host someday). Giuliani praised the academy, which he called "a fantastic achievement," adding that he was "looking forward to seeing it develop in the coming years." Aspire's communications director says that Giuliani "spent more than an hour and a half" touring its facilities, adding that the former mayor "spoke very eloquently." But even putting his stamp of approval on such apparently benign facilities could come back to bite Giuliani: The academy, a $1.3 billion facility designed to move Qatar into the top ranks of international soccer, has been denounced in unusually blunt terms by Sepp Blatter, the head of world football's governing body, FIFA. Blatter called Qatar's "establishment of recruitment networks"—using 6,000 staff members to assess a half-million young footballers in seven African countries and then moving the best to Qatar—"a good example of exploitation."

The Aspire facilities were part of the Asian Games security preparations that Giuliani told the Business Times his firm had participated in planning, since the dome allowed 10 sports to be staged simultaneously under one roof. But even the notice of Giuliani's January appearance, which was posted on the website of an English newspaper there, made no mention of his consulting work for the government. The ex-FBI source says that Giuliani's secretive security work in Qatar—which also includes vulnerability assessments on port facilities in Doha and pipeline security—would necessarily have involved the interior ministry.


A case officer in the CIA's Directorate of Operations for nearly 19 years, Robert Baer—who calls Qatar "the center of intrigue in the Gulf"—laid out the KSM escape story in his 2003 book, Sleeping with the Devil. His source was Hamad bin Jasim bin Hamad al-Thani, a close relative of the emir who was once the finance minister and chief of police. (An exile living in Beirut in 1997 when Baer began a relationship with him, Hamad al-Thani has since been captured by Qatar and is serving a life sentence for attempting to overthrow the emir.) Hamad told Baer that Abdallah al-Thani, whom he described as "a fanatic Wahhabi," had taken KSM "under his wing" and that the emir had ordered Hamad to help Abdallah. He gave 20 blank Qatari passports to Abdallah, who he said gave them to KSM. "As soon as the FBI showed up in Doha" in 1996, the emir, according to Hamad, ordered Abdallah to move KSM out of his apartment to his beach estate, and eventually out of the country. "Flew the coop. Sayonara," Hamad concluded.

Baer's account of how KSM got away is the most far-reaching, implicating the emir himself. Since KSM "moved his family to Qatar at the suggestion" of Abdallah al-Thani, according to the 9/11 Commission, and held a job at the Ministry of Electricity and Water, Baer's account is hardly implausible. The commission even found that Abdallah ah-Thani "underwrote a 1995 trip KSM took to join the Bosnia jihad." Bill Gertz, the Washington Times reporter whose ties to the Bush White House are well established, affirmed Baer's version in his 2002 book, Breakdown. Another CIA agent, Melissa Boyle Mahle, who was assigned to the KSM probe in Qatar in 1995, said that she tried to convince the FBI to do a snatch operation rather than taking the diplomatic approach, concerned about "certain Qatari officials known for their sympathies for Islamic extremists." Instead, "Muhammad disappeared immediately after the request to the government was made," making it "obvious to me what had happened." Louis Freeh's book says simply: "We believe he was tipped off; but however he got away, it was a slipup with tragic consequences." Neither Mahle nor Freeh named names.


Counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke so mistrusted the Qataris that he plotted an extraordinary rendition, but the FBI, CIA, and Defense Department said they couldn’t pull it off. Then he asked the ambassador to “obtain the Emir’s approval for a snatch, without the word getting to anyone else.” Despite assurances that “only a few senior officials knew about our plan, KSM learned of it and fled the country ahead of the FBI’s arrest team’s arrival,” Clarke concluded in his book, Against All Enemies. “We were of course outraged at Qatari security and assumed the leak came from within the palace.” Clarke noted that “one report” indicated that KSM had evaporated on a passport supplied by Abdallah al-Thani’s Islamic-affairs ministry. When Clarke was told by the Los Angeles Times in 2003 that Abdallah had been elevated to interior minister, he said: “I’m shocked to hear that. You’re telling me that al-Thani is in charge of security inside Qatar. I hope that’s not true.” Having just left the Bush administration, Clarke added that Abdallah “had great sympathy for bin Laden, great sympathy for terrorist groups, [and] was using his personal money and ministry money to transfer to al Qaeda front groups that were allegedly charities.” The Los Angeles Times quoted “several U.S. officials involved in the hunt” for KSM who fingered Abdallah as “the one who learned of the imminent FBI dragnet and tipped off Muhammad.”

Even earlier than the Los Angeles Times report, ABC News' Brian Ross reported that Abdallah had warned KSM, citing American intelligence officials, and added that KSM had left Qatar "with a passport provided by that country's government." Ross didn't limit his broadside to Abdallah, saying that "there were others in the Qatari royal family who were sympathetic and provided safe havens for Al Qaeda." A New York Times story in 2003 said that Abdallah "harbored as many as 100 Arab extremists on his farm." The story also quoted Freeh as saying that KSM had "over 20 false passports at his disposal" and cited American officials who suspected Abdallah of tipping him off. However, the Times story also quoted a Qatari official who claimed that Abdallah "always provided support for Islamic extremists with the knowledge and acceptance of Qatar's emir."

Indeed, the Times reported in another 2003 story that after 9/11, KSM was said by Saudi intelligence officials to have "spent two weeks hiding in Qatar, with the help of prominent patrons." Abdul Karim al-Thani, a royal family member who did not hold a government post, was also accused in the story of operating a safe house for Abu Massab al-Zarqawi, who later became the face of the early Iraqi insurgency but was depicted then as an Al Qaeda operative moving from Baghdad to Afghanistan. Abdul al-Thani, according to a senior coalition official, provided Qatari passports and a million-dollar bank account to finance the network.

Other connections between Qatar and terrorism have been reported in the press. Newsweek identified an Iraqi living in Doha and working at Abdallah's Islamic-affairs ministry as being detained by Qatar police because of the ties he had to 9/11 hijackers—yet he was released even though phone records linked him as well to the 1993 bombers and the so-called "Bojinka" plot hatched in Manila to blow up civilian airlines. A Chechen terrorist financier harbored in Qatar was assassinated there by a Russian hit squad in 2004. Yousef Qardawi, a cleric with a talk show on Al Jazeera and ties to the emir, issued a fatwa against Americans the same year. An engineer at Qatar Petroleum carried out a suicide bomb attack at a theater popular with Westerners in early 2005, killing one and wounding 12.

Finally, the long-smoldering question of whether Osama bin Laden played a role in the 1996 bombing of the American barracks at Khobar Towers—funneling 20 tons of C-4 explosives into Saudi Arabia through Qatar—resurfaced in a story based intelligence reports and endorsed by none other than Dick Cheney. In 2003, Steven Hayes of The Weekly Standard wrote a celebrated story based on a 16-page Defense Department intelligence assessment. The thrust of the story was to advance the administration's thesis about Al Qaeda's ties to Iraq, but Hayes also found that in a January 1996 visit to Qatar, Osama bin Laden "discussed the successful movement of explosives into Saudi Arabia, and operations targeted against U.S. interests" in Khobar and two other locations, "using clandestine al Qaeda cells in Saudi Arabia." The 2007 CRS study says that it is "unclear" if those conversations were "related to the preparations for the June 1996 attack" that killed 19 servicemen, but that the "Qatari individual" who reportedly hosted bin Laden for these discussions was none other than Abdallah al-Thani. Bill Gertz and others have been writing for years that the path to the carnage at Khobar led through Doha.

The Khobar attack closely followed an unsuccessful coup attempt against the emir on February 20, 1996, which Qatar officials, in later criminal prosecutions, formally accused Saudi Arabia of fomenting. Analysts in the region have suggested that any use of Qatar as a launching pad for the Khobar attack so soon after the coup attempt was likely to have been approved at the highest levels of the government. In October 1996, within months of both the KSM escape and the Khobar bombing, Abdallah al-Thani got his first major promotion, elevated by the emir to Minister of State for Interior Affairs, a cabinet position.

All of this evidence of Qatar's role as a facilitator of terrorism—reaching even to the emir himself—was reported well before Giuliani Partners began its business there "around 2005." Yet even the New York Times story, filled with quotes from Giuliani's friend Freeh, didn't deter him. Nor did the firm's retention of D'Amuro and Soufan, two ex-FBI counterterrorism experts who certainly knew the terror landscape of Qatar.

Soufan, in fact, was the primary investigator who assembled the case against the terrorists who bombed American embassies in Africa in 1998. And the testimony in that 2001 trial established that the Qatar Charitable Society, a nongovernmental agency that is said to "draw much of its funding from official sources," helped finance the attack. Daniel Pipes, a foreign-policy adviser to the Giuliani campaign, has branded the Qatar Charitable Society "one of bin Laden's de facto banks." Reached at home and asked about his work in Qatar, Soufan declined to comment.

Even the revelations about Khobar Towers didn't slow Giuliani down, though he's subsequently made the bombing a central feature in his stump-speech litany of the Clinton administration's failings. Giuliani also ignored an official State Department report on terrorism for 2003—released in mid-2004, just before his firm began doing business in Qatar—which said that the country's security services "monitored extremists passively," and that "members of transnational terrorist groups and state sponsors of terror are present in Qatar." The report added that Qatar's government "remains cautious about taking any action that would cause embarrassment or public scrutiny" when nationals from the Gulf countries were involved. (Later reports issued by the new secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, moderated the department's Qatar assessment.) Also in 2004, Michael Knights, an analyst at the Washington Institute who works with the Defense Department, wrote that a "Wahhabi clique" tied to extremists "is still in charge [in Qatar], and seeded the security establishment with personnel of their choosing." But even this strong, specific warning didn't deter Giuliani Partners' interest in Qatar.

Presumably, Giuliani's rationale for doing business there was that Qatar had become an American ally, hosting up to 40,000 troops. The CRS report put the complexity of the relationship well, noting that American concerns about Qatari support for terrorists "have been balanced over time by Qatar's counterterrorism efforts and its broader, long-term commitment to host and support U.S. military forces." In a footnote, the CRS report adds that the emir may finally be downplaying Abdallah al-Thani's influence, even as he reappointed him this year. The U.S. government may have to be satisfied with that suggestion of progress; it does not have limitless military options in the Middle East. (The emir, for his part, once reportedly explained his willingness to host U.S. forces by saying: "The only way we can be sure the Americans will answer our 911 call is if we have the police at our own house.")

Giuliani Partners, however, has a world of choices, quite literally. Some American companies who do business in Qatar, like Shell and ExxonMobil, have to chase the gas and oil wherever they are. But a consulting company with instant name recognition like Giuliani's—and which claims to carefully vet its clients—can be both profitable and selective. Moreover, it's the only American company known to be providing security advice to Qatar; the rest hail from Singapore, Australia, and France. A company headed by a man who has known that he would make this presidential run for years—and with 9/11 as its rationale—could have chosen to make his millions elsewhere. Especially a candidate who divides the world into good guys and bad guys, claims that this war is a "divine" mission, and shuns complexity. For that kind of a candidate, Qatar may become one Giuliani contradiction too many.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

America' s Top Crime Family andThe BFEE

We got the "BFEE" from BartCop. It is an acronym; "Bush Family Evil Empire."

There are those who are a part of the BFEE who are not, biologically, a member of the Bush family. Most of them are corporate officers; others are in government. They all suck!

The Bush Family Gets Away with Crimes That Would Land Anyone Else in Jail


By Robert Parry, Consortium News
Posted on November 26, 2007, Printed on November 28, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/68843/

In the history of the American Republic, perhaps no political family has been more protected from scandal than the Bushes.

When the Bushes are involved in dirty deals or even criminal activity, standards of evidence change. Instead of proof "beyond a reasonable doubt" that would lock up an average citizen, the evidence must be perfect.

If there's any doubt at all, the Bushes must be presumed innocent. Even when their guilt is obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense, it's their accusers and those who dare investigate who get the worst of it. Their motives are challenged and their own shortcomings are cast in the harshest possible light.

For decades -- arguably going back generations -- the Bushes have been protected by their unique position straddling two centers of national power, the family's blueblood Eastern Establishment ties and the Texas oil crowd with strong links to the Republican Right. [For details on this family phenomenon, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]

This reality was underscored again by how major news outlets and the right-wing press reacted to a new piece of evidence implicating George W. Bush in a criminal cover-up in the "Plame-gate" scandal.

Though the evidence is now overwhelming that President Bush was part of a White House cabal that leaked Valerie Plame Wilson's identity as a covert CIA officer and then covered up the facts, major newspapers, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, continue to pooh-pooh this extraordinary scandal.

The latest piece of evidence was the statement from former White House press secretary Scott McClellan that Bush was one of five senior officials who had him clear Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby in the leak when, in fact, they were two of the leakers.

"The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore the credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," McClellan said in a snippet released by the publisher of his upcoming memoir.

"So I stood at the White House briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby," McClellan said. "There was one problem. It was not true."

After McClellan's statement touched off a brief furor on the Internet and cable TV shows, his publisher Peter Osnos tried to soften the blow. Osnos told Bloomberg News that McClellan didn't mean that Bush deliberately ordered his press secretary to lie.

"He told him something that wasn't true, but the President didn't know it wasn't true," Osnos said.

(What a load of manure this is. If Bush didn't know, it is because he did not want to know. Does anyone believe for one minute that Libby and Rove would commit what they knew damn well was treason without the go ahead from the president himself, even if that go ahead was given to them directly by the Veep?)

What Bush Knew

But neither McClennan nor Osnos knows what Bush really knew.

The revelatory point in McClellan's statement was that Bush was a direct participant in the campaign to protect Rove and Libby as they lied about their roles in the leak. Previously that was an inference one could draw from the facts, but it had not been confirmed by a White House official.

Indeed, looking at the available evidence, it would defy credulity that Bush wasn't implicated in the Plame-gate leak and the subsequent cover-up, which led to Libby's conviction earlier this year on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice.

For Bush not to have been involved would have required him to be oblivious to the inner workings of the White House and the actions of his closest advisers on an issue of great importance to him.

From the evidence at Libby's trial, it was already clear that Bush had a direct hand in the effort to discredit Plame's husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, after he had gone public in July 2003 with his role in a CIA investigation of what turned out to be bogus claims that Iraq had sought yellowcake uranium from Niger.

Bush, who had cited those bogus claims in his 2003 State of the Union Address in making his case for invading Iraq, was worried about his credibility when U.S. forces failed to find WMD evidence and when Wilson became the first Washington insider to start questioning Bush's case for war.

He should have been concerned about his credibility when he failed to find Osama bin Laden, the most blamed man on earth for the horror of 9/11. We would not be in a war today were it not for 9/11. Dick Cheney would be several million less wealthy and so would many, many other members of the BFEE. Bush and Cheney would have been long gone from the White House as Bush was clearly headed to be a one-term president. The NeoCons would still be trying to sell their insane foreign policy to another president and the nation would not be nearing bankruptcy, both micro and macro, and the entire world, beginning with the U.S., would not be facing an economic meltdown that may well make the Great Depression look like a picnic the beach. The constitution would surely not be quite so tattered.

So, Bush collaborated with Vice President Dick Cheney in mounting a counter-attack against Wilson. Bush decided to selectively declassify portions of a National Intelligence Estimate in order to undercut Wilson's credibility and agreed to have that information leaked to friendly reporters.

(We, the people, must insist that the president of the United States, or his/her spokesman, speak from the podium alone, anything he/she wishes to communicate to the people. How do we do that? We ignore leaks by anonymous sources when the information being put forth is clearly meant to absolve the president and his/her people of wrong doing and, perhaps, crimes. We don't need to pass a law, that politicians will only find a way of breaking. We only need to make it clear to our elected officials and to the news media that anonymous sources will not be heard. Only the people with the bully pulpit, using the presidential podium will be heard and evaluated by us.)

It was in that context that Libby, Rove and other administration officials went forth to brief reporters, contacts that ended up disclosing that Wilson's CIA wife, Plame, played a role in arranging his work on the CIA investigation. The suggestion was that Wilson's unpaid fact-finding trip to Niger was a case of nepotism or a junket.

(I still don't get this one. Never have. It isn't as if her husband had no knowledge and expertise about Niger and its uranium supply. Joe Wilson had some fairly impressive credentials. The CIA betrayal scandal is so much like Watergate it makes ones head spin. Stupid to the extreme, unless one grasps the whole picture instead of slide by slide....piece by piece.)

Following these press contacts, Plame's identity surfaced in a July 14, 2003, article by right-wing columnist Robert Novak, who had gotten his information from two sources, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and his friend, the president's chief political adviser Karl Rove.

But Rove's work on the Plame leak didn't stop with Novak's article; he continued to peddle the information to other journalists, such as MSNBC's Chris Matthews, who told Wilson a week after Novak's column, "I just got off the phone with Karl Rove. He says and I quote, 'Wilson's wife is fair game.'"

Rove has since disputed the precise "fair game" quote, but he doesn't deny talking to Matthews about Plame's identity. So, we know that a week after the original leaks had blown Plame's undercover status, Bush had not called off the dogs. His closest political adviser still was using the information to undermine Wilson.

Hardball Politics

This pattern of hardball politics, of course, fits with how George W. Bush and others in his family play the game.

His father, George H.W. Bush, would talk about how rough he could be when in "campaign mode." The younger George Bush just extended that pugnacious approach to full-time, aided and abetted by a powerful right-wing media that has carried water for him consistently over the past eight years.

Even American citizens who get in Bush's way feel the lash. Just ask the likes of former weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who challenged Bush's pre-Iraq War claims about WMD, or the Dixie Chicks, who dared to diss the Commander in Chief at one of their concerts.

So, the treatment of Wilson/Plame was part of the standard fare for what happened to Americans who dissented on Bush's war policies. However, this one was a little different because the leak destroyed the career of a covert CIA officer and endangered her network of foreign agents who had been supplying information about WMD in the Middle East.

In September 2003, upset about this collateral damage, the CIA forwarded a criminal complaint to the Justice Department seeking an investigation into the outing of Plame. As far as the CIA was concerned, her classified identity was covered by a 1982 law barring willful exposure of CIA officers who had "served" abroad in the preceding five years.

But Bush and his inner circle could still breathe easily since the probe was under the control of Attorney General John Ashcroft, considered to be a right-wing Bush ally. The White House responded to press inquiries disingenuously, claiming Bush took the leak very seriously and would punish anyone involved.

"The President has set high standards, the highest of standards, for people in his administration," McClellan said on Sept. 29, 2003. "If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration."

Bush personally announced his determination to get to the bottom of the matter.

"If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is," Bush said on Sept. 30, 2003. "I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true."

Yet, even as Bush was professing his curiosity and calling for anyone with information to step forward, he was withholding the fact that he had authorized the declassification of some secrets about the Niger uranium issue and had ordered Cheney to arrange for those secrets to be given to reporters.

In other words, though Bush knew a great deal about how the anti-Wilson scheme got started -- since he was involved in starting it -- he uttered misleading public statements to conceal the White House role.

Spreading Lies

Also, since the other conspirators knew that Bush already was in the know, they would have read his comments as a signal to lie, which is what they did. In early October, press secretary McClellan said he could report that political adviser Karl Rove and National Security Council aide Elliott Abrams were not involved in the Plame leak.

That comment riled Libby, who feared that he was being hung out to dry. Libby went to his boss, Dick Cheney, and complained that "they're trying to set me up; they want me to be the sacrificial lamb," Libby's lawyer Theodore Wells later said.

Cheney scribbled down his feelings in a note to press secretary McClellan: "Not going to protect one staffer + sacrifice the guy the Pres that was asked to stick his head in the meat grinder because of incompetence of others."

Cheney initially ascribed Libby's role in going after Wilson to Bush's orders, but the Vice President apparently thought better of it, crossing out "the Pres" and putting the clause in a passive tense.

Cheney has never explained publicly the meaning of his note, but it suggests that it was Bush who sent Libby out on the get-Wilson mission to limit damage from Wilson's criticism of Bush's false Niger-yellowcake claim in the State of the Union Address.

Cheney's reference to the "incompetence of others" may refer to those who cleared the false Niger claim in the first place.

We seriously doubt that. Those very same people had knocked down the Niger-claim for the Oct speech. Cheney was probably referring to the people who got caught doing something that could effect the national security for years to come. Incompetence, to the Bushies, always means "getting caught."

Bush's subsequent behavior in the latter half of 2003 adds to the evidence of his guilt.

Assuming Bush was sincere in his desire to get to the bottom of who leaked Plame's identity -- or just wanted to make sure there was no security risk in his inner circle -- he presumably would have ordered an internal White House security probe. But he didn't.

James Knodell, director of the White House security office, conceded before a congressional committee in March 2007 that no internal security investigation was performed; no security clearances were suspended or revoked; no punishment of any kind was meted out to White House political adviser Rove, even after his role in leaking Plame's classified identity was determined.

Knodell, whose job included assessing Executive Branch security breaches, said that what he knew about the Plame case was "through the press." A logical inference from Knodell's inaction was that Bush already knew who had leaked Plame's identity because he was involved in the leak.

(Well, of course he did and it was obvious from the get-go.)

In fall 2003, with no White House security review underway and the criminal probe presumably bottled up in the Justice Department, the cover-up broadened. On Oct. 4, 2003, McClellan added Libby to the list of officials who have "assured me that they were not involved in this."

So, Libby had a motive to lie to the FBI when he was first interviewed about the case. He had gone to the mat with his boss to get his name cleared in the press, meaning it would make little sense to then admit involvement to FBI investigators, especially when it looked as if the cover-up would hold.

"The White House had staked its credibility on there being no White House involvement in the leaking of information about Ms. Wilson," a federal court filing later noted. For his part, Libby began claiming that he had first learned about Plame's CIA identity from NBC's Washington bureau chief Tim Russert after Wilson had gone public.

Reversal of Fortune

This White House cover-up might have worked, except in late 2003, Ashcroft decided he wouldn't be the loyal foot soldier and recused himself because of a conflict of interest. Deputy Attorney General James Comey then picked Patrick Fitzgerald -- the U.S. Attorney in Chicago -- to serve as special prosecutor.

Actually, Ashcroft was caught getting regular briefings about the case. It was only then that Ashcroft recused himself. I remember that it was Chuck Schumer, from New York that outed Ashcroft and demanded that Ashcroft step aside.

Fitzgerald pursued the investigation far more aggressively. Bush's White House countered with a combination of public stonewalling and a continued PR campaign to further discredit Wilson.

Bush's political and media allies dissected every nuance of the Wilson/Plame case to highlight supposed inconsistencies and contradictions.

The Republican National Committee put out nasty anti-Wilson talking points; senior Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee called Wilson a liar; the right-wing media -- aided and abetted by the Washington Post's neoconservative editorial page -- amplified these ugly attacks to the public.

Right-wing lawyer Victoria Toensing received widespread media coverage when she claimed that Plame was not a "covert" officer under the definition of the 1982 law protecting the identities of intelligence agents because it only applied to CIA personnel who had "resided" or were "stationed" abroad in the previous five years.

Toensing argued that since Plame, the mother of young twins, was stationed at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and resided in the Washington area, she wasn't "covert" even if that was her official CIA status. But Toensing was misrepresenting the law that she said she had helped draft while a congressional staffer in the early 1980s.

The actual wording of the law as it pertained to CIA and other clandestine officers was "served" abroad, which is not synonymous with "stationed" or "resided," the words that Toensing had substituted.

One can be stationed or reside inside the United States and still "serve" abroad by undertaking secret missions overseas, which Plame had done.

But many in the right-wing news media and even at prestige newspapers like the Washington Post adopted Toensing's word games as reality. It became an article of faith in some political circles that Plame was not a "covert" officer and that therefore there was "no underlying crime" in the leaking of her identity.

Bush's Guilt?

But what does this ongoing pattern of deception and character assassination against Wilson and Plame suggest about Bush's innocence or guilt?

If Bush were the innocent party that we are supposed to believe, wouldn't he have acted differently? Wouldn't he have called for an end to these attacks on two American citizens who had served their country?

But Bush never tried to halt these cruel diversionary tactics. The White House goal, it appears, was to stir up enough confusion so that the public wouldn't focus on the logical conclusion that Bush was responsible for damaging a CIA operation intended to protect national security.

Chaos and confusion is one of the Bushies favorite tools of war against Americans just as is is the Iraqis.

In October 2005, Fitzgerald indicted Libby on five counts of lying to federal investigators and obstructing justice. Libby was convicted on four of five counts in March 2007 and sentenced to 30 months in jail.

But Bush's role in the cover-up wasn't finished. On July 2, 2007, Bush commuted Libby's sentence to spare him any jail time. The President also left open the possibility that Libby might receive a full pardon before Bush left the White House.

(So much for wanting to get those leakers)

The combination of taking away the stick of jail time and dangling the carrot of a full pardon eliminated any incentive for Libby to turn state's evidence against Bush, Cheney and other senior officials.

In a different era, one might expect major newspapers, like the New York Times and the Washington Post, to erupt in fury over such an obvious case of presidential wrongdoing. One also might have anticipated serious hearings by a Democratic-controlled Congress to get to the bottom of this sorry affair.

But not in this era. Even when former press secretary McClellan became the first White House insider to acknowledge that senior officials, including Bush and Cheney, put him up to spreading lies about the Plame-gate scandal (whatever they knew at the time), there was almost no reaction, except on the Internet and some cable TV shows.

The Post and Times essentially ignored McClellan's statement, apparently buying into the later spin that Bush might not have known then that Libby and Rove were lying. Bush's right-wing apologists already are back on the attack, claiming that McClellan's back-tracking supports Bush's innocence.

The Democrats also don't seem to have the stomach to hold Bush accountable. One presidential hopeful, Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Connecticut, called for the Justice Department to investigate whether Bush had intentionally misled the public.

But the Democrats control both houses of Congress and presumably could compel testimony from many of the principals. They might even be able to force an explanation from special prosecutor Fitzgerald about why he didn't pursue a broader case and what Bush and Cheney told him during their interviews about the Plame leak.

Instead the Democrats appear frightened of the counter-attack that the right-wing media could unleash, especially when major mainstream publications like the Times show little interest in the story and others like the Post actually are helping Bush in his cover-up.

The Dems do appear to be not only afraid but terrified. Wonder why? Couldn't possibly have anything to do with the wire tapping that has been going on since shortly after the Bushies took office, the anthrax attacks on two leading Dems on the Hill (no Republicans received any anthrax laced missives, neither did Fox News.) So, how is the hunt for the anthrax killer going?

But the broader picture appears to be that George W. Bush is just the latest member of the Bush family who can skate away from nearly any wrongdoing without paying a price.

They are a family of evil. From laundering money for Hitler to the Iraq war, these people are criminals who never are punished for their crimes.

Robert Parry's new book is Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq."

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Why Won't The Boys Let Condi Have A Blackberry?

CREW wants to know: What is the current e-mail policy for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice? And why did it change?

Earlier this year, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice discussed technology and e-mails with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo. Rice indicated that the State Department has changed its policy regarding e-mail and blackberrys:

QUESTION: So do you not take your blackberry when you go to China?

SECRETARY RICE: The truth of the matter is I don't have one. But I used to, but I don't now.

QUESTION: Is that because of security reasons?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, they don't let me play with almost anything technological now, Maria. Funny, but it seems they all want to do it for me. And it's too bad because, you know, I love the internet, I love e-mail and --

Who are "they"? What is the policy? And, why and when did the policy change? Given the major scandals surrounding the Bush administration involving e-mails, CREW wants to know. Last week, CREW filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request "seeking documents stating the Department of State’s policies governing the Secretary of State’s methods of communicating via e-mail with audiences both internal and external to the U.S. government."

One of the myriad Bush administration's e-mail controversies was exposed by CREW in our report, WITHOUT A TRACE: The Missing White House Emails and the Violations of the Presidential Records Act. That report details the legal issues behind the story of the White House e-mail scandal. Earlier this month, in a lawsuit brought by CREW, a U.S. Federal District Court Judge issued the first-ever Temporary Restraining Order against the Bush administration. The order prevents the Bush White House from destroying back-up copies of millions of deleted emails while the lawsuit is pending.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Stop Blackwater Investigation Immediately!

WASHINGTON — The State Department's acerbic top auditor wasn't happy when Justice Department officials told one of his aides to leave the room so they could discuss a criminal investigation of Blackwater Worldwide, the contractor protecting U.S. diplomats in Iraq.

The episode reveals the badly strained relationship between Bush administration officials over the probe into whether Blackwater smuggled weapons into Iraq that could have gotten into insurgents' hands.

As a result of the bureaucratic crosscurrents between State's top auditor and Justice, the investigation has been bogged down for months.

A key date was July 11, when Howard Krongard, State's inspector general, sent an e-mail to one of his assistant inspector generals, telling him to "IMMEDIATELY" stop work on the Blackwater investigation. That lead to criticisms by Democrats that Krongard has tried to protect Blackwater and block investigations into contractor-related wrongdoing in Iraq.

"Instead of cooperating, Mr. Krongard apparently created a series of obstacles to the inquiry," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee examining Krongard's performance as the State Department official responsible for stamping out waste, fraud and abuse.

Krongard, whose credibility was damaged by the recent disclosure that his brother had a business affiliation with Blackwater, has disputed the charge, though he recused himself from Blackwater matters after the potential conflict of interest emerged.

His aide, Terry Heide, who was kicked out of the July 31 meeting, also says she's been unfairly blamed for slowing the Blackwater probe. Her role was to collect State Department documents for the investigators - a job she did well, according to her lawyer. But even Krongard's own staff saw her as a hindrance.

Brian Rubendall, a senior State Department investigator, has questioned the halt in the inquiry, telling the oversight committee in an October interview that there was no justifiable "reason for us to stop that investigation. None."

Krongard said he put the brakes on because he was concerned a separate audit of Blackwater contracts might "contaminate" the Justice Department's work.

Blackwater has called the smuggling allegations baseless. However, earlier this year two former Blackwater employees pleaded guilty to possession of stolen firearms that were shipped in interstate or foreign commerce. They are cooperating with federal agents. Blackwater said the two were fired after it was learned they were stealing from the company.

Altogether, the trail of internal e-mails, testimony from a Nov. 14 oversight hearing and interviews with participants form a picture of bureaucratic infighting with consequences far beyond Washington.

The State Department's role in the Blackwater weapons probe began months before the Sept. 16 Baghdad shootings by Blackwater guards that killed 17 Iraqis and escalated public scrutiny of the company.

In March, Ron Militana, a special agent in the investigations unit, received Rubendall's approval to interview State Department personnel and meet with Blackwater attorneys about allegations the company was illegally transporting arms into Iraq. Militana also discussed potential criminal proceedings in the case with a federal prosecutor.

In late June, John DeDona, then chief of the IG's investigative unit, e-mailed Krongard and his deputy, William Todd, to alert them to the probe. Krongard responded cryptically: "Please do not treat anything in the e-mail below as having been seen by me, advised to me, or understood or approved by me. If there is something significant in the message below, please come and tell me about it."

Two weeks later, as Militana was trying to obtain copies of Blackwater contracts from the department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, DeDona sent another message to Krongard telling him of Militana's work.

In a July 11 e-mail to DeDona, Krongard told him Militana was to "IMMEDIATELY" stop the work. Krongard said he wanted a briefing from the U.S. Attorney's office in North Carolina on its Blackwater investigation before his agents went farther.

Waxman and other critics say Howard Krongard's order to halt came at the same time Blackwater CEO Erik Prince was considering whether to offer his brother, Alvin "Buzzy" Krongard, a spot on the company's newly forming advisory board.

On July 26, Prince invited Alvin Krongard to join Blackwater's advisory board. A week later, Robert Higdon, chief of the criminal division in the U.S. Attorney's office for the eastern district of North Carolina, and James Candelmo, Higdon's deputy, were in Washington for the July 31 meeting with Krongard and his investigators.

Blackwater is based in Moyock, N.C.

Howard Krongard initially said his brother had no ties to Blackwater. But during the Nov. 14 oversight hearing, he recused himself from inquiries related to the company, explaining that Alvin Krongard had just told him he had attended an advisory board meeting. Alvin Krongard resigned from the board two days later because of the uproar the arrangement created.

While Democrats claimed a glaring conflict of interest, Krongard said he pulled his staff off the Blackwater probe so they wouldn't step on work being done by Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

Bowen had sought help from Krongard's office to audit two Blackwater contracts _ the same ones Militana was helping the U.S. Attorney's office examine, according to Krongard, who said alarms went off when he realized the potential overlap.

"To be assisting a criminal investigation into the exact same two contracts that we were already assisting a civil audit into, raised a question of parallel proceedings, which needed to be deconflicted before one infected or contaminated the other," he said.

Krongard did not say what the contracts are for or give their value. The State Department pays Blackwater and two other firms $570 million a year for security services.

In a deposition to the oversight committee, Todd, the deputy inspector general, supported Krongard. "We had basically several of the same organizations looking at the exact same stuff," Todd said.

But Waxman rejected the rationale. "You halted an investigation, demanded a personal briefing from the Justice Department, (and) assigned your congressional affairs director to keep tabs on the investigation," Waxman said to Krongard at the hearing. Waxman called the moves "highly unorthodox."

Heide, the congressional affairs director Krongard called his "alter ego," was collecting the documents needed by Bowen and the U.S Attorney's office, e-mails show.

But members of Krongard's own staff, along with Higdon and Candelmo of the U.S. attorney's office in North Carolina, saw her as a roadblock. Rubendall told the committee Candelmo and Higdon planned in advance to raise grand jury information during the July 31 meeting in order to force Heide out of the room.

"We weren't going to discuss grand jury material, but that was the ruse that they were going to use to get her out of the meeting," Rubendall said.

Heide referred questions to her attorney, David Laufman, who said an e-mail exchange between Krongard and Heide indicated she was doing as directed.

"I am trying to stay only situationally aware," she wrote Aug. 8, "so I can keep any conflicts at bay."

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd would not comment on the investigation, but said, "The suggestion that the Justice Department engaged in a ruse in this matter is flatly incorrect."

According to Waxman, the problems hampering the Blackwater probe persist. Justice investigators have been unable to get needed documents. Militana has not been allowed to give his full attention to the criminal investigation even though Krongard said he would.

"I think that the State Department is responsible for investigating crimes perpetrated against the State Department," Militana said in an October interview with the committee. "The (Justice Department) can do it, of course, but there has to be some involvement by the State Department."


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Monday, November 26, 2007

Why Won't Congress Call Sibil Edmonds

Neither Congress nor the corporate press/media seem to have any interest in what Ms. Edmonds has to say, even though we have known for years that what she has to say is blockbusting.

We can only conclude that the Democrats are as guilty as the Republicans in the crimes she wants to report. The American people have a right to know what she has to say no matter who is guilty of what.

It is, however, interesting to watch the parade of senators and reps. who are leaving D.C.. Could their decision have anything to do with what Sibil knows? Hastert for sure.

Gagged' FBI Whistleblower, Risking Jail, Says American Media Has Refused Her Offer to Disclose Classified Information, Including Criminal Allegations, Information Concerning 'Security of Americans'

Charges Several Mainstream Publications Have Been Informed of 'Full Story' by Other FBI Leakers Nearly a Year Ago, Have Remained Mum...

"I'd say what she has is far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers," Daniel Ellsberg told us in regard to former FBI translator turned whistleblower Sibel Edmonds.

"From what I understand, from what she has to tell, it has a major difference from the Pentagon Papers in that it deals directly with criminal activity and may involve impeachable offenses," Ellsberg explained. "And I don't necessarily mean the President or the Vice-President, though I wouldn't be surprised if the information reached up that high. But other members of the Executive Branch may be impeached as well. And she says similar about Congress."

The BRAD BLOG spoke recently with the legendary 1970's-era whistleblower in the wake of our recent exclusive, detailing Edmonds' announcement that she was prepared to risk prosecution to expose the entirety of the still-classified information that the Bush Administration has "gagged" her from revealing for the past five years under claims of the arcane "State Secrets Privilege".

Ellsberg, the former defense analyst and one-time State Department official, knows well the plight of whistle-blowers. He himself was prepared to spend his life in prison for the exposure of some 7,000 pages of classified Department of Defense documents, concerning Executive Branch manipulation of facts and outright lies leading the country into an extended war in Vietnam.

Ellsberg seemed hardly surprised that today's American mainstream broadcast media has so far failed to take Edmonds up on her offer, despite the blockbuster nature of her allegations.

As Edmonds has also alluded, Ellsberg pointed to the New York Times, who "sat on the NSA spying story for over a year" when they "could have put it out before the 2004 election, which might have changed the outcome."

"There will be phone calls going out to the media saying 'don't even think of touching it, you will be prosecuted for violating national security,'" he told us.

"I have been receiving calls from the mainstream media all day," Edmonds recounted the day after we ran the story announcing that she was prepared to violate her gag-order to disclose all of the national security-related criminal allegations she has been kept from disclosing for the past five years.

"The media called from Japan and France and Belgium and Germany and Canada and from all over the world," she told The BRAD BLOG.

"But not from here?," we asked incredulously.

"I'm getting contact from all over the world, but not from here. Isn't that disgusting?," she shot back.

An Iranian-born American citizen, the linguistics expert Edmonds has been described by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as "the most gagged person in the history of the United States of America" since filing her original complaints at the FBI, where she had been hired in late 2001 to translate a backlog of pre-9/11 wiretaps.

She has previously indicated a litany of criminal corruption, malfeasance, and cover-ups concerning the penetration of the FBI and Departments of State and Defense by foreign agents in senior positions; influence-peddling and bribery by shadowy Turkish interests throughout the U.S. government over several administrations; undisclosed information related to 9/11; including alleged illegal activities of former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, and, most recently, two other "well-known" members of Congress who she will now name to the mainstream media.

Edmonds has taken her whistle-blower case all the way to the Supreme Court. She, and her allegations, have been confirmed as both serious and extremely credible by the FBI Inspector General, several sitting Senators, both Republican and Democratic, several senior FBI agents, the 9/11 Commission, and dozens of national security and whistle-blower advocacy groups. She was even offered the possibility of public hearings on these matters by the Chairman of the U.S. House Government Accountability and Oversight Committee, after briefing his staff in a special high-security area of the U.S. Capitol reserved for the exchange of classified information.

Her extraordinary story was first aired by CBS' 60 Minutes in 2002 (and re-run twice thereafter), and via a detailed 2005 exposé in Vanity Fair.

All while she was unable to violate the yoke of the unprecedented use of the arcane "States Secrets Privilege", invoked by the DoJ in such a draconian fashion that she is still "gagged" from disclosing even innocuous personal details such as her date of birth.

After five years of being vetted and investigated, with a great deal of her allegations having leaked out via others sources and confirmed by myriad sources, her publicly undisclosed claims would appear to be as credible -- and as critically serious to national security -- as any whistle-blower in the history of the nation.

After bringing her charges to the FBI, Congress and the nation's highest court -- all of whom failed to take action or legitimately pursue her claims -- she now feels "obligated" to share the information with the American public. But the American Mainstream Media are apparently unwilling to air it.

Three weeks ago, she told The BRAD BLOG she had "exhausted every channel" and was prepared to "let them see how far they're going to get [by bringing] criminal charges against someone who divulges criminal activity." She was ready to disclose all.

Her "promise to the American public" at the time: "If anyone of the major networks -- ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, FOX -- promise to air the entire segment, without editing, I promise to tell them everything that I know."

"I don't think any of the mainstream media are going to have the guts to do it," she told us. We didn't believe that could be the case. Surely, we thought, loads of folks in the mainstream broadcast media would jump at the chance for such an explosive exclusive. 60 Minutes, after all, had re-run their initial story on her, including interviews with her, Senators Grassley and Leahy, and several FBI agents, not once, but twice!

It turns out, however, that she was correct. So far.

"How Do We Deal With Sibel?"

"I am confident that there is conversation inside the Government as to 'How do we deal with Sibel?'" contends Ellsberg. "The first line of defense is to ensure that she doesn't get into the media. I think any outlet that thought of using her materials would go to to the government and they would be told 'don't touch this, it's communications intelligence.'"

Edmonds, who founded the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), contends that she's very sensitive to matters of national security and would never reveal information that could put the country at risk.

"I am not about to expose any methods of intelligence gathering. I am not going to expose any ongoing investigations, or even any investigations that may be ongoing," she told us, explaining that all relevant investigations about which she has information were long ago shut down by the government.

"I am not going to name any informant's name. I am not going to jeopardize any ongoing intelligence. Anything I'm going to be talking about, I know they are investigations that have been shut down by January and February of 2002."

"I am Obligated"

When it comes to the sort of Executive Branch classification of information that's been used to stop Edmonds from revealing alleged criminal culpability, she contends it is the government, not she, who is violating the law.

Legally and constitutionally, she asserts, such classification "may not be used to cover up illegal criminal activities with consequences to public health, security, safety and welfare. It cannot be used to cover up illegal activities."

"The reason I went to Congress, the reason I went to the IG, all of this, is that I was obligated to do so. Because they are covering up illegal activities that effect the public health, security and welfare."

"I am obligated," she repeated again.

Ellsberg agrees. "What is involved in protecting Executive Branch crimes, the duty is to protect the law and to uphold and defend the Constitution. Though most don't understand that and they see loyalty to their boss and their party and their secrecy agreement as more important."

"They'll never get in trouble for that," he emphasized. "But they'll get in a lot of trouble if they are truthful to their oath to defend the Constitution."

Whether Edmonds will ever get that opportunity remains unclear.

Why Not YouTube It?

"When you have a publication like Vanity Fair, running a piece and naming someone like Dennis Hastert [as being allegedly involved in bribery by shadowy Turkish interests involved in narcotics trafficking] and nothing happens with it, you think they are going to pay attention to YouTube?" Edmonds explained when we asked why she didn't release the information herself as a video on the Internet.

Readers around the web have asked the same question in the wake of our previous story, which climbed to the top ranks of most linked and recommended at a number of Internet sites such as Digg.com, Reddit.com, DailyKos and others.

(We have wondered the same things. If a person is ready to face the possibility of life in prison to get an important truth out to the American people, why not use every tood available, from You-tube to Good Year blimps?)

"Listen, I'm willing to have these people come after me with a prosecution -- they [the media] should be willing to do their part."

"This is the biggest risk that a citizen has ever taken...I guess, after Ellsberg...And I know why he did that with the New York Times," she explained referring to his giving thousands of pages of documents to the paper, who, at the time, went all the way to the Supreme Court to fight for their right to publish them, as they eventually did.

"What about the BBC? Would you do that?," we asked.

"Why am I going on BBC? This is about this country! This is about this country, and more of America needs to know the true face of the mainstream media," she exclaimed.

More and more people in the USA are looking to foreign press and electronic media for their news, especially the media of Britain since, after all, we are partners in crime as well as partners in peacemaking regarding the same horrid circumstance.

"The only way they got away with it was because of the mainstream media. They are the biggest culprit for the state of our country. Whether it's Iraq, or torture or the NSA wiretapping -- which the New York Times sat on for over a year! -- these people are the real culprit."

So, why not throw the first grenade at their very foundation; make them incredible and irrelevant? Put it in the Huffington Post, Raw Story, Buzzflash, Information Clearing House and others? Make sure that you tell your story to blogs and websites who have remained fairly centrist and independent throughout these past 4 to 7 years.

Civil-disobedience and non-cooperation are as American as Apple Pie and flag-waving, at the most inappropriate times, I might add. Times have changed drastically since Daniel outed the bastards about Vietnam and the horrors circling around that nightmare. What Daniel revealed poured ash and cinders on both parties. My hunch is that you're information is bipartisan as well. Perhaps it is time to trust the people. If we really can't trust each other, what do any of us have left.....really...what do any of us have left, but delusional psyches and a truly psychotic, spiritually agonizing future for our progeny?


"Nibbles"

There were some "nibbles," as she called them. A producer from CBS Evening News had contacted The BRAD BLOG within hours of publishing our previous story, asking for Edmonds' contact information to forward to 60 Minutes producers. Nothing has come of it so far.

ABC News also inquired. Despite allowing Presidents and other officials to make previously undisclosed claims on live programs such as This Week and others, they declined to extend the same opportunity to Edmonds. That, despite dozens of high-ranking officials, elected and otherwise, who have heard her claims over the years and repeatedly declared them to be exceedingly credible and meriting serious investigation.

What about Kieth Olbermann? Surely he'd pick up this story! A producer at MSNBC's Countdown -- perhaps the outlet most often suggested to us as likely willing to interview her -- expressed interest during multiple inquiries we'd made to them. Each time, the promise was made to call us back with on the record information on whether they would do the interview, and if not, why not. They never called us back.

Edmonds' phone was "ringing off the hook" for requests for interviews from independent radio shows. Ours was too, and our email inbox yielded dozens of similar requests.

But Edmonds has been clear: "I'm gonna do one major interview" to tell all of the 'states secret' information. "Afterwards, I'll do the others. But this is gonna be one round, give it all and say 'here it is.'"

The ground rules seem fair enough. She is risking being rushed off to prison after all.

They have already imprisoned your soul in a cage of fear. I would be the last to blame you. No one in their right mind would envy you. You are, indeed, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. I would say, however, that time is flying; the time is coming fast when what you have to say will no longer matter.

"Setting Records for Shamelessness"

The mainstream media is "shameless", Ellsberg says, so is Congress, so is Bush.

"He's setting records for shamelessness. He should probably be in the Guinness Book of Records. He doesn't care what he says. And the media is shameless as well, as they'll run anything he says. And Congress is pretty shameless as well. You can't really shame these people."

Without mainstream corporate media attention, Ellsberg contends, Edmonds' story will stay off the radar, and her damaging contentions will do no harm to the powers that be.

"She's not going to shame the media, unless the public are aware that there is a conflict going on. And only the blog-reading public is aware of that. It's a fairly large audience, but it's a small segment of the populace at large."

Unless her claims reach the mainstream, he says, "they don't suffer any risk of being shamed. As long as they hold a united front on this, they don't run the risk of being shamed."

They Already Know

Edmonds revealed an additional tasty morsel while wrapping up one of our recent conversations. One that might help explain the American media's reluctance to jump at the chance for a scoop: apparently many of them already know the story.

"I will name the name of major publications who know the story, and have been sitting on it -- almost a year and a half."

"How do you know they have the story?," we asked.

"I know they have it because people from the FBI have come in and given it to them. They've given them the documents and specific case-numbers on my case."

"These are agents that have said to me, 'if you can get Congress to subpoena me I'll come in and tell it under oath.'"

Yet, despite promises she says she had received from staffers in Rep. Henry Waxman's (D-CA) office to hold hearings once he became chairman of the House Oversight Committee, they no longer respond to her. "The only reason they couldn't hold hearings [previously]," they'd told her, "was because the Republicans were blocking it."

They're not blocking it anymore. Ever since the Democrats have taken control of the House. Nonetheless, there are still no plans for hearings. Even with more than 30,000 people having signed her petition, calling on Waxman to do so.

A spokesperson from his office finally replied to our repeated requests for comment on why they had not yet held hearings on Edmonds' case.

We were told only that there are no hearings currently scheduled on her case. Repeated attempts to gather a more specific explanation or confirmation that the office had previously promised hearings yielded the same answer, and nothing more. No hearing is presently scheduled on the matter.

"It's disgusting," Edmonds said about the broken promises. "They won't do it anymore. It's disgusting."

"This is criminal activity. That's why I went to Congress, to the Courts, to the [FBI] IG. I am obligated to do so. And that's what I've been doing since 2002."

"By not doing so, someone should charge me for not coming forward to say something about this," she continued.

"If they come after me...when they come after me -- to indict me, to bring charges -- it's going to be up to the American public to see it's not about some bogeyman in some Afghanistan cave. It's about an American citizen coming forward to expose information that concerns the security of Americans."

"An American citizen is coming forward to say that, no, they are depriving you of your security."

Ellsberg says there's a reason that the Government, and both political parties, would rather not deal with something as explosive as Sibel's charges. Much like his own case, when the Republican Nixon administration fought against publication of the Pentagon Papers even though they were bound to embarrass the Democratic Johnson administration far more than Nixon's.

"It involves our allies in various places in the Middle East. It involves our allies in Turkey and in Afghanistan and involves people in our Congress and our State Department," he says.

Yes, Israel and the extremely powerful AIPAC lobby which supports both parties, is said to be involved as well.

"There's no way that the President and Vice-President can escape culpability in this case," Ellsberg charges. "If they claim they don't know about it, then they are culpable in not knowing about it, and that's impeachable right there."

Just as Ellsberg had hoped in 1971, and later encouraged others over the years, Edmonds remains hopeful that somehow, in telling her story -- if she will be allowed tell her story -- it will help others to step forward and do the same.

"Maybe it'll cause other whistleblowers at NSA, FBI...to see that they should come forward and tell what they know," she said in a telephone interview yesterday. "We haven't been seeing them come forward. Maybe it takes just one person to see what's going to happen."

"For now, as you can see," she added, "the fear tactics have worked."


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.