06.29.08

Hersh: Bush Admin in “Major Escalation” of Covert Ops Against Iran

Posted in News of the World, What I'm Reading, Spooks, Covert Action, Politics at 4:53 pm by Spencer

The July 7-14 issue of The New Yorker includes a major new piece by Seymour Hersh, “Preparing the Battlefield” (already available in its entirety online), which reveals that late in 2007…

…Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, …are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

Meanwhile, there has been mounting pressure within the Bush Administration for a military strike against Iran, the extent of which is unclear but various accounts and recent developments suggest it would be a major one.

Military and civilian leaders in the Pentagon share the White House’s concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but there is disagreement about whether a military strike is the right solution.

…The Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose chairman is Admiral Mike Mullen, were “pushing back very hard” against White House pressure to undertake a military strike against Iran, the person familiar with the Finding told me. Similarly, a Pentagon consultant who is involved in the war on terror said that “at least ten senior flag and general officers, including combatant commanders” — the four-star officers who direct military operations around the world — “have weighed in on that issue.”

The most outspoken of those officers is Admiral William Fallon, who until recently was the head of U.S. Central Command, and thus in charge of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In March [2008], Fallon resigned under pressure, after giving a series of interviews stating his reservations about an armed attack on Iran.

Read the latest article online. For further context, see also Hersh’s earlier reporting for The New Yorker on the Bush Administration’s covert policies viz. Iran:

“The Next Act” (Nov. 27, 2006) — The debate within the Bush Administration over the extent of Iran’s nuclear weapons program and how best to counter it.

“The Redirection” (March 5, 2007) — A major policy shift, or “redirection,” in the Bush Administration’s Middle East strategy. The redirection has brought the U.S. closer to an open confrontation with Iran and propelled it into the sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

“Shifting Targets” (Oct. 8, 2007) — The Bush Administration’s shifting policy toward Iran and the Pentagon’s preparations for possible “surgical strikes” against key Iranian targets. Hersh discusses how the Bush Administration is seeking to redefine the war in Iraq as a strategic battle between the United States and Iran.

04.05.08

Chinese Police Provocateurs Posing as Tibetan Monks

Posted in News of the World, Politics at 4:16 pm by Spencer

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve at least heard something about the current uprising in Tibet against oppressive Chinese rule and the resulting draconian crackdown, which began with the recent anniversary of the brutal 1959 invasion of Tibet.

This photo emerged about one week ago, on iReport.com:

Photo of Chinese police with the robes of Tibetan monks.

As you can see, the photograph clearly shows Chinese uniformed police holding the signature maroon-and-saffron robes of Tibetan Buddhist monks.

It is stunningly rare corroboration of reports that Chinese authorities are using provocateurs disguised as Tibetan monks to instigate violence and other incidents to discredit the Tibetan rights movement and its sympathizers.

Today’s New York Times reports that despite a massive crackdown by Chinese paramilitary police (ahead of the Olympic torch wending its way through the region), unrest not only continues with new fatalities in Tibet but is also spreading into nearby Muslim Uiger areas, which have also suffered under decades of Chinese efforts to control if not destroy their native religious and ethnic identity.

02.26.08

Al Jazeera on the Death of Malachi Ritscher

Posted in News of the World, Friends and Family, Chicago, Malachi Ritscher, 1954-2006, Online Video at 9:28 pm by Spencer

On January 13, 2008, Al Jazeera’s english-language station aired a story about my late friend Malachi Ritscher. As I posted here about at the time, he died on the morning November 3, 2006 when he set himself on fire next to the Kennedy Expressway in Chicago, before a statue named “The Flame of the Millennium”. He left a handmade sign that read “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” On his web site, before he killed himself, he posted last testaments that said he was immolating himself to protest the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Except for a handful of fleeting stories, US press coverage was essentially non-existent. Coverage in Europe was slightly more extensive, but equally fleeting. Malachi videotaped his self immolation but his family, understandably, has not released the tape and they have stated they never will. Further information about Malachi’s suicide and its impact can be found at the link above.

The Al Jazeera story was aired as part of their series People and Power, described as an investigative program “which looks at the use and abuse of power.” This particular episode was titled “The North Front Line.”

Streaming video of the segment has been posted on YouTube. I am also posting it here. Many thanks to  Eric Leonardson for bringing this to my attention.

01.15.08

Farewell, Walter Bowart

Posted in News of the World, Politics, Books at 11:47 pm by Spencer

Walter Bowart (photo by Sophia Bowart)

It was only recently announced that underground press pioneer and author Walter Bowart died from colon cancer on December 18, 2006 in Inchelium, Washington. He was 68.

Bowart is best remembered for co-founding, in 1965, The East Village Other — a seminal underground newspaper which he also edited for four years — and for his remarkable 1978 book, Operation Mind Control: Our Secret Government’s War Against Its Own People. He also co-founded the Underground Press Syndicate, an incredibly important if now little-known alternative “wire service” (actually, they mailed mimeographed copies of articles) that was a crucial nexus for underground publications of every size and description across the country during the pre-Internet ferment of the Vietnam War era.

If you’ve never heard of any one of these, then you really are not paying attention.

Mr. Bowart’s work has been a great inspiration to me for many, many years. My heartfelt condolences go out to his tribe, family, friends, and loved ones.

To borrow from the Columbia Journalism Review, a Dart goes to the New York Times, which chose to simultaneously impugn Bowart’s integrity and dismiss irrefutably established history when it published in their Jan. 14, 2008 obituary that in Operation Mind Control Bowart “argued that the United States government conducted covert psychological experiments on unwitting people.” [Emphasis added.] Screw you, NY Times and obit author Margalit Fox (or maybe just your dipshit editor). Walter didn’t “argue” the point, he quoted directly from the CIA’s own documents, which had been revealed thanks to a Congressional investigation…one assisted, it must be pointed out, by Mr. Bowart himself…and revelations only borne out in greater, more horrifying detail via lawsuits and subsequent publicly published interviews with agents directly involved in the crimes.

Related links:

10.26.07

Glowing Seafood? FDA Doesn’t Give a Crap.

Posted in News of the World, What I'm Reading, Science, Weird Science, Reality is Weird at 10:39 pm by Spencer

The article below just appeared on the front page of the Seattle P-I. According to multiple accounts, shrimp, crab, and fish being sold in groceries in the Seattle area actually glows in the dark. Does the FDA care? Hell no. Count on the Bush FDA to keep us safe from rogue bio-engineered mutants or possibly “nukuler” radiated food…not. They won’t even let their scientists comment on the subject, which is about what you’d expect from the cronyist “free market” retards.

Also so very reassuring is the fact the dumb-asses at Washington Poison Center “wouldn’t hesitate” to eat GLOWING FISH AND SHRIMP. According to this article, even cats know better than the idiots charged with “protecting” our food supply. What the hell?!?

Possibly worst of all, the story is being treated as a mildly humorous human interest piece! I can only conclude that Ming the Merciless on Planet Mongo has unleashed the StupidAssRetardifier Ray on humanity while I was resting in my handy lead box. I can see where this is leading, so please shoot me in the face when Paris Hilton is floated as a viable candidate for President, won’t you?

(And, alas, count on the P-I to be lame enough to actually lose the domain name seattlepi.com to bottom-feeding cybersquatters after owning it for more than a decade. Sigh.)

Glow-in-the-dark shrimp — it’s all a little fishy
Luminescent crustaceans bought in Seattle stores; FDA won’t investigate

By Andrew Schneider
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Thursday, October 25, 2007

It sounds like a Halloween joke. A pile of brightly glowing cooked shrimp sitting on the counter in a darkened kitchen.

But Randall Peters doesn’t see the humor in it. He bought the shrimp last week from the West Seattle Thriftway. He ate some that evening and returned to the kitchen a few minutes later.

“It was like a bright eerie light was shining on it,” said Peters, who works for a natural food store.

“I thought that maybe it had been overirradiated, you know, too much radiation. Now, whenever I buy seafood, I take it home and turn out the lights.”

Another batch of glowing shrimp apparently was bought at a Quality Food Center in Wallingford.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it was not going to investigate the Seattle episodes because no “official, through-the-proper-channels” report was made.

“Further,” a spokeswoman added, “it’s not a food safety issue because no one got sick.”

Glowing seafood has been reported in the past. A government report in the ’90s said some products exhibited luminescence from the presence of certain light-emitting bacteria — a chemical reaction similar to that found in fireflies. There are at least nine luminescent species of bacteria in salt water.

Andy Richards, manager of the seafood department at the Thriftway, calls the glowing shrimp “creepy.”

He said he took Peters’ report seriously but believes it’s an isolated incident and doesn’t present a health hazard.

“We don’t hear a lot of complaints about glowing seafood, but then people rarely look at their shrimp and crab in the dark.”

However, Richards admits that he might “take a peek” at the seafood now and then in a darkened freezer “just in case.”

A caller who identified herself only as Barbara told the Seattle P-I on Monday that she had given some cooked shrimp she bought at the QFC in Wallingford to her three “very large” cats Sunday night as a “birthday treat.”

An hour later, she said, she was frightened at what she found. She saw a greenish-blue glow coming from the cat bowl on the darkened porch. When she turned on the light, she found the six shrimp untouched. Her porky cats, which she said “would eat your leg off if you stood in one place long enough,” didn’t touch them.

She pulled open the refrigerator door. The light bulb had burned out weeks ago, she said, but the plastic bag holding the remaining shrimp glowed brightly in the chilled darkness.

Neither Peters nor Barbara, who also ate some of the shrimp, said they were made ill, just a bit queasy at the idea of consuming the glowing seafood.

“I wouldn’t hesitate to eat the stuff,” said Dr. Bill Robertson of the Washington Poison Center, when asked about the safety of consuming the glowing food.

“I don’t know of any studies that show it’s hazardous, but, then again, I can’t envision anyone spending the money to do the costly tests to prove it’s safe,” the medical toxicologist said.

Some might expect the FDA would test glowing seafood.

Fortunately, the agency’s Seafood Product Research Center is in Bothell. Unfortunately, it hasn’t done anything on glowing seafood for almost a decade, said the center’s spokeswoman, who declined to permit any of the scientists to discuss the topic. The spokeswoman said the only research into luminescent bacteria or phosphorescing phytoplankton in seafood was begun about 20 years ago by Patricia Sado, an FDA microbiologist.

Sado’s study, which was published in 1998, examined reports of glowing seafood in the mid-1990s to health departments, poison centers and FDA offices across the country.

The products involved were imitation crabmeat, lobster and shrimp, herring, sardines and the always mysterious seafood salads.

Sometimes all that was left were the glowing plastic foam trays or empty wrappers.

A man in Aberdeen reported his fingers glowed after he and his wife ate some crabmeat.

Fresh, uncooked fish also were reported as glowing in the dark. A team of Environmental Protection Agency investigators evaluating the pollution of the Columbia River near the Hanford Nuclear Reservation were stopped by members of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon. They had 200 to 300 pounds of brightly glowing fish — whole king salmon they planned to use in a ceremony.

They were afraid to eat it because they believed the fish were radioactive, Sado reported. The analysis found the salmon — skin, intestine and gills — heavily contaminated with a bacterium called Photobacterium phosphoreum.

The reports the microbiologist collected listed only one death attributed to a bioluminescent seafood, and this was not from consumption of the bacterium but rather a 72-year-old man who cut himself while cleaning fish.

The ailments most often reported by Sado were headaches, nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramping and diarrhea — symptoms similar to most food poisonings. However, many of her case studies — like Peters and Barbara — reported no health problems.

The FDA scientist — now retired and living in the Seattle area — still retains her interest in bioluminescence.

“It is just fascinating to study,” she said in an interview this week. “But people who see their seafood glowing should not think they’re crazy nor that the aliens have landed. There are reasons backed by solid science.”

She believes the problems at the Seattle stores probably were the result of cross-contamination. Cooking the product kills the luminescent bacteria and pathogens.

“Boiling the shrimp would have killed the P. phosphoreum, so the contamination probably happened after cooking,” she said. “Somewhere, either in the grocery that sold the product or the plant where the cooked shrimp were packed, contamination from uncooked seafood had to get on the shrimp. This could present a problem.”

The shrimp from the two stores were supplied by Ocean Beauty Seafood.

“We’ve spoken to the folks at Thriftway and QFC and are addressing their concerns,” said Jim Yonkers, director of corporate quality assurance for the Seattle-based seafood company, the largest in the Pacific Northwest.

“We’re going back to the eastern Canadian company that supplied the shrimp to us to discuss the procedures that they use. That’s only common sense.”

09.18.07

Jewish Neo-Nazis In Israel

Posted in News of the World, Politics, Reality is Weird at 10:15 pm by Spencer

Wow. Words pretty much fail me.  So here are someone else’s.

Israelis shocked as first neo-Nazi cell arrested
By Eric Silver in Jerusalem
The Independent (London), 10 September 2007

Six decades after Israel was founded to ensure that Jews would never suffer another Holocaust, the Jewish state has smashed its first cell of neo-Nazis. The idea was so unthinkable that the country has no law against neo-Nazi activity.

Eight Russian immigrants, aged 16 to 21, were remanded in custody in the Ramleh magistrates’ court, near Tel-Aviv, yesterday. They covered their faces with their shirts, baring arms tattooed with neo-Nazi insignia and slogans, and protested their innocence. A ninth suspect has fled the country. They are to be charged tomorrow with causing bodily harm, illegally possessing weapons and denying the Holocaust.

Superintendent Revital Almog, who headed the investigation, said: “The level of violence was outrageous.”

One of the young men was Jewish. The rest were admitted under Israeli legislation, which grants citizenship to anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent and entry permits to the families of gentiles married to Jews. About one million immigrants, many with tenuous ties to Judaism, moved to Israel in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The cell’s alleged leader was named as Eli Buanitov. Detectives said they found an email message on his computer saying: “I won’t have kids. My grandfather is half Yid, so that this piece of trash won’t have ancestors with even the smallest percent of Jewish blood.” In another file, he was quoted as writing: “I will never give up. I was a Nazi and will remain a Nazi. I won’t rest until we kill them all.”

Undercover police began tracking the cell after two synagogues in the Tel-Aviv satellite town of Petah Tikva were desecrated and yeshiva students were beaten. Internal and external walls were spray-painted with swastikas, as well as “Heil Hitler” and “Death to the Jews” graffiti.

The religious community in the town has complained of a reign of terror. “There are people here who simply hate Jews,” said Nahum Taub, a synagogue sexton. Rabbi Yigal Rosen, who heads a yeshiva, reported that three of his students were ambushed as they walked through a local park.

The assailants beat them, called them names and held a knife to the neck of one student before stealing their mobile phones.

Inspector Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said the suspects had filmed themselves beating 15 ultra-Orthodox Jews, foreign workers, homosexuals, homeless people, drunks and drug addicts. In one particularly brutal assault, the whole group set about a Thai worker in the old Tel-Aviv bus station. He had to be treated in hospital.

Detectives who raided their homes found the films and a photograph of one of the group brandishing an M-16 assault rifle. They also confiscated knives, an improvised pistol, TNT, wires and detonators.

Some of the footage was shown at yesterday’s cabinet meeting. Ehud Olmert, the Prime Minister, said: “We saw the appalling documentation of violence for its own sake. We as a society have failed in educating these youths and distancing them from crazy and dangerous ideologies.”

Inspector Rosenfeld said the eight had neo-Nazi tattoos on their arms. They would meet every few days and decide who and where to attack next. Searches of their computers and video cassettes revealed links to racist groups in Germany and the United States.

The case has shocked Israelis and prompted calls for the government to reconsider its immigration policy and to outlaw neo-Nazi and other hate crimes.

Efraim Zuroff, who is still hunting Nazi war criminals for the Simon Weisenthal Centre, said: “The writing was on the wall. This is what happens when you have laws that allow immediate citizenship to people with little connection to Jewish history, the Jewish people, the Jewish religion and Jewish culture.”

Avner Shalev, the chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial authority, said: “Neo-Nazi activity, wherever it appears, must be treated with the utmost seriousness and the perpetrators prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

“While this is a marginal and extreme case, it is nevertheless intolerable. It must be combated and addressed in the legal and educational systems.”

Colette Avital, a Labour MP, leads a group of about 20 legislators from all parties who have been pressing for a ban on neo-Nazi symbols and neo-Nazi activities. She was confident that their private members’ bill would now pass.

Ms Avital, who was a child fugitive in German-occupied Romania, urged the government to examine revoking the citizenship of anyone convicted of such crimes. “Neo-Nazism is a terrible thing. Israel is the one country where this shouldn’t happen,” she insisted. “But it’s not enough to ban it. You have to look at the root of things. What kind of education did these people receive? Kids like this don’t come from nowhere.”

08.26.07

Chinese Law Bans Reincarnation

Posted in News of the World, What I'm Reading, Reality is Weird at 12:46 am by Spencer

As reported by Matthew Philips on the Newsweek web site, from the Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue:

In one of history’s more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is “an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation.”

As the article notes, this is all about eliminating the influence of the Dalai Lama and (the Chinese hope) furthering its conquest of Tibet and the destruction of its culture.

In 1996, the Chinese abducted the last Panchen Lama Gedhun Choekyi Nyima (when he was 6 years old) for the same reasons. In Tibetan Buddhism, the Panchen Lama is the one who formally recognizes/proclaims the new incarnation of the Dalai Lama. And vice versa — the Dalai Lama formally recognizes incarnations of the Panchen Lama. In a sense, they are brothers who recognize each other across time.

The Panchen Lama and his parents have never been seen or heard from again. All the Chinese government will say is that they are still alive but held in secret “for their protection.” In all likelihood they were murdered long ago.

The Chinese later proclaimed another monk under their control as the Panchen Lama. He too is kept under wraps, though he is sometimes brought out for show. No Tibetan Buddhists recognize the Chinese Panchen Lama.

The Chinese Communist government is, basically, engaging in magical warfare against Tibetan Buddhism, and the Dalai Lama in particular.

The current Dalai Lama — Tenzin Gyatso — just turned 72, and since fleeing the Chinese invasion in 1959 he has lived in the remote refugee settlement of Dharamsala in northern India. The Dalai Lama is the head of the Tibetan Government in Exile, in accordance with Tibetan tradition. He also travels the world, a photogenic and lovable thorn in China’s world image.

The Dalai Lama is what the Tibetan Buddhists call a bodhisatva — a being who has achieved enlightment but rather than transcend has chosen instead to continue to incarnate so they can help other beings achieve enlightenment. Rather than escape hell, they stay and help others escape. In life after life. It is the ideal of compassion made most holy.

Tenzin Gyatso is the 14th incarnation of the Dalai Lama. He has said that his next incarnation will not be born in China.

In this context, the new Chinese “law” makes much more sense. And, really, is more disturbing than funny. (Though it’s awfully damn funny at first.)

Meanwhile, the first rail line to Tibet was opened just in the last couple years. It was built with the intention and expectation that it would greatly accelerate ethnic Chinese migration into Tibet, which is slowly being turned into an “exotic tourist destination”, and all that entails.

Hey, it worked great against the Native Americans, right?

Interview with National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell

Posted in News of the World, What I'm Reading, Spooks, ELINT, Covert Action, Politics at 12:06 am by Spencer

This week the El Paso Times ran a rare on the record interview with Mike McConnell. As the current National Intelligence Director, he is responsible for coordinating the entire US intelligence community (previously the job of the director of the CIA).

A complete transcript of the interview was published on the El Paso Times web site, and this is archived below.  Though a couple passages read a little incoherently, remember that this is a raw transcript of an actual conversation.  It also could’ve used one more pass by a copy editor.

Transcript: Debate on the foreign intelligence surveillance act
By Chris Roberts
El Paso Times (Texas), August 22, 2007
http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_6685679

The following is the transcript of a question and answer session with National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell.

Question: How much has President Bush or members of his administration formed your response to the FISA debate?

Answer: Not at all. When I came back in, remember my previous assignment was director of the NSA, so this was an area I have known a little bit about. So I came back in. I was nominated the first week of January. The administration had made a decision to put the terrorist surveillance program into the FISA court. I think that happened the 7th of Jan. So as I come in the door and I’m prepping for the hearings, this sort of all happened. So the first thing I want to know is what’s this program and what’s the background and I was pretty surprised at what I learned. First off, the issue was the technology had changed and we had worked ourselves into a position that we were focusing on foreign terrorist communications, and this was a terrorist foreigner in a foreign country. The issue was international communications are on a wire so all of a sudden we were in a position because of the wording in the law that we had to have a warrant to do that. So the most important thing to capture is that it’s a foreigner in a foreign country, required to get a warrant. Now if it were wireless, we would not be required to get a warrant. Plus we were limited in what we were doing to terrorism only and the last time I checked we had a mission called foreign intelligence, which should be construed to mean anything of a foreign intelligence interest, North Korea, China, Russia, Syria, weapons of mass destruction proliferation, military development and it goes on and on and on. So when I engaged with the administration, I said we’ve gotten ourselves into a position here where we need to clarify, so the FISA issue had been debated and legislation had been passed in the house in 2006, did not pass the Senate. Two bills were introduced in the Senate, I don’t know if it was co-sponsorship or two different bills, but Sen. (Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.) had a bill and Sen. Specter had a bill and it may have been the same bill, I don’t know, but the point is a lot of debate, a lot of dialogue. So, it was submitted to the FISA court and the first ruling in the FISA court was what we needed to do we could do with an approval process that was at a summary level and that was OK, we stayed in business and we’re doing our mission. Well in the FISA process, you may or may not be aware …

Q: When you say summary level, do you mean the FISA court?

A: The FISA court. The FISA court ruled presented the program to them and they said the program is what you say it is and it’s appropriate and it’s legitimate, it’s not an issue and was had approval. But the FISA process has a renewal. It comes up every so many days and there are 11 FISA judges. So the second judge looked at the same data and said well wait a minute I interpret the law, which is the FISA law, differently. And it came down to, if it’s on a wire and it’s foreign in a foreign country, you have to have a warrant and so we found ourselves in a position of actually losing ground because it was the first review was less capability, we got a stay and that took us to the 31st of May. After the 31st of May we were in extremis because now we have significantly less capability. And meantime, the community, before I came back, had been working on a National Intelligence Estimate on terrorist threat to the homeland. And the key elements of the terrorist threat to the homeland, there were four key elements, a resilient determined adversary with senior leadership willing to die for the cause, requiring a place to train and develop, think of it as safe haven, they had discovered that in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Now the Pakistani government is pushing and pressing and attempting to do something about it, but by and large they have areas of safe haven. So leadership that can adapt, safe haven, intermediate leadership, these are think of them as trainers, facilitators, operational control guys. And the fourth part is recruits. They have them, they’ve taken them. This area is referred to as the FATA, federally administered tribal areas, they have the recruits and now the objective is to get them into the United States for mass casualties to conduct terrorist operations to achieve mass casualties. All of those four parts have been carried out except the fourth. They have em, but they haven’t been successful. One of the major tools for us to keep them out is the FISA program, a significant tool and we’re going the wrong direction. So, for me it was extremis to start talking not only to the administration, but to members of the hill. So from June until the bill was passed, I think I talked to probably 260 members, senators and congressmen. We submitted the bill in April, had an open hearing 1 May, we had a closed hearing in May, I don’t remember the exact date. Chairman (U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas) had two hearings and I had a chance to brief the judiciary committee in the house, the intelligence committee in the house and I just mentioned the Senate, did not brief the full judiciary committee in the Senate, but I did meet with Sen. (Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.) and Sen. (Arlen Specter, R-Pa.), and I did have an opportunity on the Senate side, they have a tradition there of every quarter they invite the director of national intelligence in to talk to them update them on topics of interest. And that happened in (June 27). Well what they wanted to hear about was Iraq and Afghanistan and for whatever reason, I’m giving them my review and they ask questions in the order in which they arrive in the room. The second question was on FISA, so it gave me an opportunity to, here I am worrying about this problem and I have 41 senators and I said several things. The current threat is increasing, I’m worried about it. Our capability is decreasing and let me explain the problem.

Q: Can’t you get the warrant after the fact?

A: The issue is volume and time. Think about foreign intelligence. What it presented me with an opportunity is to make the case for something current, but what I was really also trying to put a strong emphasis on is the need to do foreign intelligence in any context. My argument was that the intelligence community should not be restricted when we are conducting foreign surveillance against a foreigner in a foreign country, just by dint of the fact that it happened to touch a wire. We haven’t done that in wireless for years.

Q: So you end up with people tied up doing paperwork?

A: It takes about 200 man hours to do one telephone number. Think about it from the judges standpoint. Well, is this foreign intelligence? Well how do you know it’s foreign intelligence? Well what does Abdul calling Mohammed mean, and how do I interpret that? So, it’s a very complex process, so now, I’ve got people speaking Urdu and Farsi and, you know, whatever, Arabic, pull them off the line have them go through this process to justify what it is they know and why and so on. And now you’ve got to write it all up and it goes through the signature process, take it through (the Justice Department), and take it down to the FISA court. So all that process is about 200 man hours for one number. We’re going backwards, we couldn’t keep up. So the issue was …

Q: How many calls? Thousands?

A: Don’t want to go there. Just think, lots. Too many. Now the second part of the issue was under the president’s program, the terrorist surveillance program, the private sector had assisted us. Because if you’re going to get access you’ve got to have a partner and they were being sued. Now if you play out the suits at the value they’re claimed, it would bankrupt these companies. So my position was we have to provide liability protection to these private sector entities. So that was part of the request. So we went through that and we argued it. Some wanted to limit us to terrorism. My argument was, wait a minute, why would I want to limit it to terrorism. It may be that terrorists are achieving weapons of mass destruction, the only way I would know that is if I’m doing foreign intelligence by who might be providing a weapon of mass destruction.

Q: And this is still all foreign to foreign communication?

A: All foreign to foreign. So, in the final analysis, I was after three points, no warrant for a foreigner overseas, a foreign intelligence target located overseas, liability protection for the private sector and the third point was we must be required to have a warrant for surveillance against a U.S. person. And when I say U.S. person I want to make sure you capture what that means. That does not mean citizen. That means a foreigner, who is here, we still have to have a warrant because he’s here. My view is that that’s the right check and balances and it’s the right protection for the country and lets us still do our mission for protection of the country. And we’re trying to fend off foreign threats.

Q: So are you satisfied with it the way it is now?

A: I am. The issue that we did not address, which has to be addressed is the liability protection for the private sector now is proscriptive, meaning going forward. We’ve got a retroactive problem. When I went through and briefed the various senators and congressmen, the issue was alright, look, we don’t want to work that right now, it’s too hard because we want to find out about some issues of the past. So what I recommended to the administration is, ‘Let’s take that off the table for now and take it up when Congress reconvenes in September.’

Q: With an eye toward the six-month review?

A: No, the retroactive liability protection has got to be addressed.

Q: And that’s not in the current law?

A: It is not. Now people have said that I negotiated in bad faith, or I did not keep my word or whatever…

Q: That you had an agenda that you weren’t honest about.

A: I’ll give you the facts from my point of view. When I checked on board I had my discussion with the president. I’m an apolitical figure. I’m not a Republican, I’m not a Democrat. I have voted for both. My job is as a professional to try to do this job the best way I can in terms of, from the intelligence community, protect the nation. So I made my argument that we should have the ability to do surveillance the same way we’ve done it for the past 50 years and not be inhibited when it’s a foreigner in a foreign country. The president’s guidance to me early in the process, was, ‘You’ve got the experience. I trust your judgement. You make the right call. There’s no pressure from anybody here to tell you how to do it. He did that early. He revisited with me in June. He did it again in July and he said it publicly on Friday before the bill was passed. We were at the FBI, it’s an annual thing, we go to the FBI and do a homeland security kind of update. So he came out at noon and said, ‘I’m requesting that Congress pass this bill. It’s essential. Do it before you go on recess. I’m depending on Mike McConnell’s recommendations. And that was the total sum and substance of the guidance and the involvement from the White House with regard to how I should make the call. Now, as we negotiated, we started with 66 pages, were trying to get everything cleaned up at once. When I reduced it to my three points, we went from 66 pages to 11. Now, this is a very, very complex bill. I had a team of 20 lawyers working. You can change a word in a paragraph and end up with some major catastrophe down in paragraph 27, subsection 2c, to shut yourself down, you’ll be out of business. So when we send up our 11 pages, we had a lot of help in making sure we got it just right so it would come back and we’d say wait a minute we can’t live with this or one of the lawyers would say, ‘Wait we tried that, it won’t work, here’s the problem.’ So we kept going back and forth, so we sent up a version like Monday, we sent up a version on Wednesday, we sent up a version on Thursday. The House leadership, or the Democratic leadership on Thursday took that bill and we talked about it. And my response was there are some things I can’t live with in this bill and they said alright we’re going to fix them. Now, here’s the issue. I never then had a chance to read it for the fix because, again, it’s so complex, if you change a word or phrase, or even a paragraph reference, you can cause unintended …

Q: You have to make sure it’s all consistent?

A: Right. So I can’t agree to it until it’s in writing and my 20 lawyers, who have been doing this for two years, can work through it. So in the final analysis, I was put in the position of making a call on something I hadn’t read. So when it came down to crunch time, we got a copy and it had some of the offending language back in it. So I said, ‘I can’t support it.’ And it played out in the House the way it played out in the House. Meantime on the Senate side, there were two versions being looked at. The Wednesday version and the Thursday version. And one side took one version and the other side took the other version. The Thursday version, we had some help, and I didn’t get a chance to review it. So now, it’s Friday night, the Senate’s voting. They were having their debate and I still had not had a chance to review it. So, I walked over, I was up visiting some senators trying to explain some of the background. So I walked over to the chamber and as I walked into the office just off the chamber, it’s the vice president’s office, somebody gave me a copy. So I looked at the version and said, ‘Can’t do it. The same language was back in there.’

Q: What was it?

A: Just let me leave it, not too much detail, there were things with regard to our authorities some language around minimization. So it put us in an untenable position. So then I had another version to take a look at, which was our Wednesday version, which basically was unchanged. So I said, well certainly, I’m going to support that Wednesday version. So that’s what I said and the vote happened in the Senate and that was on Friday. So now it rolled to the House on Saturday. They took up the bill, they had a spirited debate, my name was invoked several times, not in a favorable light in some cases. (laughs) And they took a vote and it passed 226 to 182, I think. So it’s law. The president signed it on Sunday and here we are.

Q: That’s far from unanimous. There’s obviously going to be more debate on this.

A: There are a couple of issues to just be sensitive to. There’s a claim of reverse targeting. Now what that means is we would target somebody in a foreign country who is calling into the United States and our intent is to not go after the bad guy, but to listen to somebody in the United States. That’s not legal, it’s, it would be a breach of the Fourth Amendment. You can go to jail for that sort of thing. And If a foreign bad guy is calling into the United States, if there’s a need to have a warrant, for the person in the United States, you just get a warrant. And so if a terrorist calls in and it’s another terrorist, I think the American public would want us to do surveillance of that U.S. person in this case. So we would just get a warrant and do that. It’s a manageable thing. On the U.S. persons side it’s 100 or less. And then the foreign side, it’s in the thousands. Now there’s a sense that we’re doing massive data mining. In fact, what we’re doing is surgical. A telephone number is surgical. So, if you know what number, you can select it out. So that’s, we’ve got a lot of territory to make up with people believing that we’re doing things we’re not doing.

Q: Even if it’s perception, how do you deal with that? You have to do public relations, I assume.

A: Well, one of the things you do is you talk to reporters. And you give them the facts the best you can. Now part of this is a classified world. The fact we’re doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die, because we do this mission unknown to the bad guys because they’re using a process that we can exploit and the more we talk about it, the more they will go with an alternative means and when they go to an alternative means, remember what I said, a significant portion of what we do, this is not just threats against the United States, this is war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Q. So you’re saying that the reporting and the debate in Congress means that some Americans are going to die?

A. That’s what I mean. Because we have made it so public. We used to do these things very differently, but for whatever reason, you know, it’s a democratic process and sunshine’s a good thing. We need to have the debate. The reason that the FISA law was passed in 1978 was an arrangement was worked out between the Congress and the administration, we did not want to allow this community to conduct surveillance, electronic surveillance, of Americans for foreign intelligence unless you had a warrant, so that was required. So there was no warrant required for a foreign target in a foreign land. And so we are trying to get back to what was the intention of ‘78. Now because of the claim, counterclaim, mistrust, suspicion, the only way you could make any progress was to have this debate in an open way.

Q. So you don’t think there was an alternative way to do this?

A. There may have been an alternative way, but we are where are …

Q. A better way, I should say.

A. All of my briefs initially were very classified. But it became apparent that we were not going to be able to carry the day if we don’t talk to more people.

Q. Some might say that’s the price you pay for living in a free society. Do you think that this is necessary that these Americans die?

A. We could have gotten there a different way. We conducted intelligence since World War II and we’ve maintained a sensitivity as far as sources and methods. It’s basically a sources and methods argument. If you don’t protect sources and methods then those you target will choose alternative means, different paths. As it is today al-Qaida in Iraq is targeting Americans, specifically the coalition. There are activities supported by other nations to import electronic, or explosively formed projectiles, to do these roadside attacks and what we know about that is often out of very sensitive sources and methods. So the more public it is, then they take it away from us. So that’s the tradeoff.

DIVERSITY IN THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

Q: I wanted to ask you about the diversity question. This has major ramifications here, we have this center of excellence program that’s recruiting high school kids, many of whom wouldn’t qualify if first generation American citizens weren’t allowed.

A: So you agree with me?

Q: It does sound like something that would benefit this area that would also allow you to get people from here who are bicultural and have an openness to seeing things …

A: You’re talking about Hispanics?

Q: Yes.

A: Hispanics are probably the most under-represented group if you think of America, what the ethic makeup of America, Hispanics are the most under-represented group in my community. Now, that said, and should increase that Hispanic population and programs like this will do that. That’s why the outreach. But also we need, particularly with the current problem of terrorism, we need to have speakers of Urdu and Farsi and Arabic and people from those cultures that understand the issues of tribes and clans and all the things that go with understanding that part of the world. Varying religions and so on. Because it is, it’s almost impossible, I’ve had the chance to live in the Middle East for years, I’ve studied it for years, it’s impossible to understand it without having some feel for the culture and so on. So while I’m all for increasing the diversity along the lines we talked about, I’m also very much in favor of first generation Americans from the countries that are causing issues and problems.

Q: What is the status of that program.

A: It is not in statue. It is not in policy. It has been habit. So we’ve stated, as a matter of policy, that we’re not going to abide by those habits.

Q: And that’s already the case?

A: Yes, and are we making progress? Not fast enough, but we will make progress over time.

Q: How do you measure that?

A: Very simple, you get to measure what are you and where are you trying go and are you making progress. I wrestled with this years ago when I was NSA ….

Q: You don’t want quotas, though?

A: Quotas are forbidden so we set goals. My way of thinking about it is what is your end state? Now some would say that federal governments should look like America, whatever that is. OK, that sounded like a reasonable metric, so I said, ‘Alright, what does America look like?’ So I got a bunch of numbers. I said, ‘Alright, what do we look like?’ and it didn’t match, and as I just told you, the one place where there’s the greatest mismatch is Hispanic. It’s much closer, as matter of fact, people would be surprised how close it is across, at least my community among the other minorities. Now, that said, numbers don’t necessarily equal positioning in the organization. So that’s another feature we have to work on, is placement of women and minorities in leadership positions.

Q: So, you’re quantifying that as well?

A: Yes.

TERRORIST ACTIVITY ON THE NATION’S SOUTHWEST BORDER

Q: There seems to be very little terrorist-related activity on the Southwest border, which is watched very closely because of the illegal immigration issue. Can you talk about why it’s important to be alert here?

A: Let me go back to my NIE, those are unclassified key judgements, pull them down and look at them. You’ve got committed leadership. You’ve got a place to train. They’ve got trainers and they’ve got recruits. The key now is getting recruits in. So if the key is getting recruits in. So, if you’re key is getting recruits in, how would you do that? And so, how would you do that?

Q: I’d go to the northern border where there’s nobody watching.

A: And that’s a path. Flying in is a path. Taking a ship in is a path. Coming up through the Mexican border is a path. Now are they doing it in great numbers, no. Because we’re finding them and we’re identifying them and we’ve got watch lists and we’re keeping them at bay. There are numerous situations where people are alive today because we caught them (terrorists). And my point earlier, we catch them or we prevent them because we’ve got the sources and methods that lets us identify them and do something about it. And you know the more sources and methods are compromised, we have that problem.

Q: And in many cases we don’t hear about them?

A: The vast majority you don’t hear about. Remember, let me give you a way to think about this. If you’ve got an issue, you have three potential outcomes, only three. A diplomatic success, an operational success or an intelligence failure. Because all those diplomatic successes and operations successes where there’s intelligence contribution, it’s not an intelligence success. It’s just part of the process. But if there’s an intelligence failure …

Q: Then you hear about it.

A: So, are terrorists coming across the Southwest border? Not in great numbers.

Q: There are some cases?

A: There are some. And would they use it as a path, given it was available to them? In time they will.

Q: If they’re successful at it, then they’ll probably repeat it.

A: Sure. There were a significant number of Iraqis who came across last year. Smuggled across illegally.

Q: Where was that?

A: Across the Southwest border.

Q: Can you give me anymore detail?

A: I probably could if I had my notebook. It’s significant numbers. I’ll have somebody get it for you. I don’t remember what it is.

Q: The point is it went from a number to (triple) in a single year, because they figured it out. Now some we caught, some we didn’t. The ones that get in, what are they going to do? They’re going to write home. So, it’s not rocket science, word will move around. There’s a program now in South America, where you can, once you’re in South American countries, you can move around in South America and Central America without a visa. So you get a forged passport in Lebanon or where ever that gets you to South America. Now, no visa, you can move around, and with you’re forged passport, as a citizen of whatever, you could come across that border. So, what I’m highlighting is that something …

Q: Is this how it happened, the cases you’re talking about?

A: Yes.

08.20.07

Weekly World News Abducted By Alien Love Cult; Beloved Tabloid Blown to Electrons By Mysterious Ray

Posted in Whatever, News of the World, What I'm Reading at 10:53 pm by Spencer

Cover of the final news stand issue of the Weekly World NewsAmerican Media Inc. (AMI) quietly announced on July 23, 2007, that The Weekly World News will no longer be published. The final issue of “The World’s Only Reliable Newspaper” is hitting news stands and subscribers’ mailboxes this week. The tabloid was 28.

“Due to the challenges in the retail and wholesale magazine marketplace that have impacted the newsstand, American Media, Inc. today announced it will close the print version of the Weekly World News, effective with the August 27 issue. Weekly World News was AMI’s smallest weekly publication,” the company said in a statement e-mailed to Reuters.

AMI, which also publishes The National Enquirer, has been struggling. According to Reuters, the company reported a $160 million net loss for 2006 and is struggling with $1 billion of debt and plummeting circulation. Sales of the Weekly World News dropped to 83,000 in 2006 from 153,000 in 2004.

Bob Greenberger, a writer for Weekly World News, wrote about the sudden closing on his blog.

Wednesday [July 18] we got word at work that management has some ideas for the paper and the next two weeks will be reprints as we begin to retool. For weeks now, we’ve been hearing some changes are in the wind that were likely to amend the game plan that went into action on April 1, the beginning of the new fiscal year….

Friday morning, Jeff Rovin comes in for a meeting and then the staff was to be called in. He’s looking harried, not at all relaxed. At 11:30, we’re finally shown into an office where we are told the Board of Directors has chosen to close Weekly World News. The reasons given make no sense. We’re stunned and shell-shocked. We’re to stay on through August 3, finishing the reprint issues and then we’re done. A glorious, funny, odd publication, born in 1979, will go out with a whimper and all I can think is that something’s going on that they’re not telling us because it just doesn’t make sense.

Subscribers (one of which is Mugu Brainpan) received little more warning in the following days. The only advance notice they got was the cover of the Aug. 20, 2007 issue, which had a blurb on the cover that announced “Weekly World News to Close: Details Inside.” In a tiny box at the bottom of page 31 was the following:

A Notice From Weekly World News

While we had every intention of sending the winning ‘Alien Ambassador Essay’ contestant off to the stars, the aliens have insisted that the staff of Weekly World News spearhead this historic mission! As a result, until further notice, the print edition of the paper will be shutting down. Details next week.

The final issue — volume 28, number 51, Aug. 27, 2007 (which arrived at the Mugu Brainpan offices today) — announced on the cover that it was indeed the “Final Issue of Weekly World News!” However, no “details” about the closure were included.

Presidential candidate George W. Bush on May 3, 2000, holding up an issue of Weekly World News revealing that 'Space Alien Back Bush for President.'

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04.12.07

So It Goes

Posted in News of the World, Indiana, Books at 8:40 pm by Spencer

“All the other species are dying and so will we. I’m whistling as I walk past the graveyard… whistling as beautifully as I can.”
– from Happy Birthday, Wanda June by Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007

“He’s the closest thing we’ve had to Voltaire.”
– Tom Wolfe

About The Year of Vonnegut in Indianapolis, IN.

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