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HOW WILL REAL ID AFFECT YOU? GUIDE TO CIVIL LIBERTIES LOST SINCE 9/11
CLUES YOUR COUNTRY MAY BE TURNING INTO A FASCIST STATE
MISSION CREEP: THE MILITARIZATION OF DOMESTIC LIFE
MYTHS AND REALITIES ABOUT THE PATRIOT ACT
A HISTORY OF RECENT PLANS FOR MARTIAL LAW
BOOKS
THE CUNNING OF HISTORY by Richard Rubenstein
RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH: A History of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer
FRIENDLY FASCISM : The New Face of Power in America by Bertram Myron Gross
THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE FREE: The Germans, 1933-35 by Milton Sanford Mayer
JUNE 2008
BAGHDAD ON THE POTOMAC
CHECKPOINT FENTY RAISING OPPOSITIONANTI-TERRORISM CENTERS DON'T HAVE ENOUGH BUSINESS, SO WHY NOT SPY ON ALL OF US?
BUSH FINDS NEW WAYS TO KEEP THINGS SECRET
BUSH HAS SEIZED MORE POWER THAN ANY BRITISH OR AMERICAN LEADER SINCE 17TH CENTURY
The Bush administration has arrogated powers to itself that the British people even refused to grant King George III at the time of the Revolutionary War, a political scientist says. "No executive in the history of the Anglo-American world since the Civil War in England in the 17th century has laid claim to such broad power," said David Adler, a prolific author of articles on the U.S. Constitution. "George Bush has exceeded the claims of Oliver Cromwell who anointed himself Lord Protector of England."
Adler, a professor of political science at Idaho State University at Pocatello, is the author of some 100 scholarly articles in his field. Speaking at the Massachusetts School of Law, Adler said, Bush has "claimed the authority to suspend the Geneva Convention, to terminate treaties, to seize American citizens from the streets to detain them indefinitely without benefit of legal counseling, without benefit of judicial review. He has ordered a domestic surveillance program which violates the statutory law of the United States as well as the Fourth Amendment."
Adler said the authors of the U.S. Constitution wrote that the president "shall take care to faithfully execute the laws of the land" because "the king of England possessed a suspending power" to set aside laws with which he disagreed, "the very same kind of power that the Bush Administration has claimed."
Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, Adler said, repeatedly referred to the President's "override" authority, "which effectively meant that the Bush Administration was claiming on behalf of President Bush a power that the English people themselves had rejected by the time of the framing of the Constitution."
Adler said the Framers sought an "Administrator in Chief" that would execute the will of Congress and the Framers understood that the President, as Commander-in-Chief "was subordinate to Congress." The very C-in-C concept, the historian said, derived from the British, who conferred it on one of their battlefield commanders in a war on Scotland in 1639 and it "did not carry with it the power over war and peace" or "authority to conduct foreign policy or to formulate foreign policy."
That the C-in-C was subordinate to the will of Congress was demonstrated in the Revolutionary War when George Washington, granted that title by Congress, "was ordered punctually to respond to instructions and directions by Congress and the dutiful Washington did that," Adler said.
Adler said that John Yoo, formerly of the Office of Legal Counsel, wrote in 2003 that the President as C-in-C could authorize the CIA or other intelligence agencies to resort to torture to extract information from suspects based on his authority. However, Adler said, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1804 in Little vs. Barreme affirmed the President is duty-bound to obey statutory instructions and reaffirmed opinion two years later in United States vs. Smith.
"In these last eight years," Adler said, "we have seen presidential powers soar beyond the confines of the Constitution. We have understood that his presidency bears no resemblance to the Office created by the Framers… This is the time for us to demand a return to the constitutional presidency. If we don't, we will have only ourselves to blame as we go marching into the next war as we witness even greater claims of presidential power."
MAY 2008
THE NEW INTERNET & THE POLICE STATE
BUSH CLAIMS RIGHT TO ARREST & SEND YOU TO A MILITARY BRIG
BECAUSE HE THINKS YOU'RE A DANGERAP If his cell were at Guantanamo Bay, the prisoner would be just one of hundreds of suspected terrorists detained offshore, where the U.S. says the Constitution does not apply.
But Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is a U.S. resident being held in a South Carolina military brig; he is the only enemy combatant held on U.S. soil. That makes his case very different.
Al-Marri's capture six years ago might be the Bush administration's biggest domestic counterterrorism success story. Authorities say he was an al-Qaida sleeper agent living in middle America, researching poisonous gasses and plotting a cyberattack.
To justify holding him, the government claimed a broad interpretation of the president's wartime powers, one that goes beyond warrantless wiretapping or monitoring banking transactions. Government lawyers told federal judges that the president can send the military into any U.S. neighborhood, capture a citizen and hold him in prison without charge, indefinitely.
There is little middle ground between the two sides in al-Marri's case, which is before a federal appeals court in Virginia. The government says the president needs this power to keep the nation safe. Al-Marri's lawyers say that as long as the president can detain anyone he wants, nobody is safe.
BUSH TERROR TACTICS AGAINST CITIZENS INCREASE AS TERROR PROSECUTIONS DECLINE
SENATOR RUSS FEINGOLD, LA TIMES - The Bush administration recently announced it will allow select members of Congress to read Justice Department legal opinions about the CIA's controversial detainee interrogation program that have been hidden from Congress until now. But as the administration allows a glimpse of this secret law -- and it is law -- we are left wondering what other laws it is still keeping under lock and key.
It's a given in our democracy that laws should be a matter of public record. But the law in this country includes not just statutes and regulations, which the public can readily access. It also includes binding legal interpretations made by courts and the executive branch. These interpretations are increasingly being withheld from the public and Congress.
Perhaps the most notorious example is the recently released 2003 Justice Department memorandum on torture written by John Yoo. The memorandum was, for a nine-month period in 2003, the law that the administration followed when it came to matters of torture. And that law was essentially a declaration that the administration could ignore the laws passed by Congress.
The content of the memo was deeply troubling, but just as troubling was the fact that this legal opinion was classified and its content kept secret for years. As we now know, the memo should never have been classified because it contains no information that could compromise national security if released. In a Senate hearing that I chaired April 30, the top official in charge of classification policy from 2002 to 2007 testified that classification of this memo showed "either profound ignorance of or deep contempt for" the standards for classification.
The memos on torture policy that have been released or leaked hint at a much bigger body of law about which we know virtually nothing. The Yoo memo was filled with references to other Justice Department memos that have yet to see the light of day, on subjects including the government's ability to detain U.S. citizens without congressional authorization and the government's ability to bypass the 4th Amendment in domestic military operations.
Another body of secret law involves the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In 1978, Congress created the special FISA court to review the government's requests for wiretaps in intelligence investigations, which is -- and should be -- done behind closed doors. But with changes in technology and with this administration's efforts to expand its surveillance powers, the court today is doing more than just reviewing warrant applications. It is issuing important interpretations of FISA that have effectively made new law.
These interpretations deeply affect Americans' privacy rights, and yet Americans don't know about them because they are not allowed to see them. Very few members of Congress have been allowed to see them either. When the Senate recently approved some broad and controversial changes to FISA, almost none of the senators voting on the bill could know what the law currently is.
The code of secrecy also extends to yet another body of law: changes to executive orders. The administration takes the position that a president can "waive" or "modify" a published executive order without any public notice -- simply by not following it. It's every president's prerogative to change an executive order, but doing so without public notice works a secret change in the law. And, because the published order stays on the books, Congress and the public have no idea that it's no longer in effect. We don't know how many of these covert changes have been made by this administration or, for that matter, by past administrations.
No one questions the need for the government to protect information about intelligence sources and methods, troop movements or weapons systems. But there's a big difference between withholding information about military or intelligence operations from the public and withholding the law that governs the executive branch. Keeping the law secret doesn't enhance national security, but it does give the government free rein to operate without oversight or accountability. Even the congressional intelligence committees, which are supposed to oversee the intelligence community, have been denied access to some of these legal opinions.
Congress should pass legislation to require the administration to alert Congress when the law created by Justice Department opinions ignores or even violates the laws passed by Congress, and to require public notice when it is waiving or modifying a published executive order. Congress and the public shouldn't have to wonder whether the executive branch is following the laws that are on the books or some other, secret law.
BUSHJUNGEN CHARTER SCHOOL PLANNED CHENEY'S LAWYER SAYS CONGRESS HAS NO POWER OVER VICE PRESIDENT
APRIL 2008
BUSH AIDE MADE LEGAL CASE FOR CRUEL DICTATORSHIP
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT CLAIMED FOURTH AMENDMENT DIDN'T APPLY TO MILITARY
AP The Constitution's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures on U.S. soil didn't apply to its efforts to protect against terrorism. That view was expressed in a secret Justice Department legal memo dated Oct. 23, 2001. The administration on Wednesday stressed that it now disavows that view.
The October 2001 memo was written at the request of the White House by John Yoo, then the deputy assistant attorney general, and addressed to Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel at the time. The administration had asked the department for an opinion on the legality of potential responses to terrorist activity.
The 37-page memo is classified and has not been released. Its existence was disclosed Tuesday in a footnote of a separate secret memo, dated March 14, 2003, released by the Pentagon in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union.
"Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations," the footnote states, referring to a document titled "Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States."
Exactly what domestic military action was covered by the October memo is unclear. But federal documents indicate that the memo relates to the National Security Agency's Terrorist Surveillance Program.
That program intercepted phone calls and e-mails on U.S. soil, bypassing the normal legal requirement that such eavesdropping be authorized by a secret federal court. The program began after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and continued until Jan. 17, 2007, when the White House resumed seeking surveillance warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
MARCH 2008
d FBI S prolly readN yr txt msgs
HOMELAND SECURITY'S FIVE YEARS OF SCREW UPS
BUSH REGIME ENGAGING IN MASSIVE ILLEGAL SPYING ON AMERICANS
FEBRUARY 2008
VIRGINIA SETTING UP ITS OWN BIG BROTHER OPERATION
BUSH REGIME BUILDING CONCENTRATION CAMPS BACKED BY DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS' APPROVAL OF MARTIAL LAW
LEWIS SEILER & DAN HAMBURG, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the federal government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and non-citizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse in the event of "an emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs."
Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees.
According to diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of "all removable aliens" and "potential terrorists."
Fraud-busters such as Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, have complained about these contracts, saying that more taxpayer dollars should not go to taxpayer-gouging Halliburton. But the real question is: What kind of "new programs" require the construction and refurbishment of detention facilities in nearly every state of the union with the capacity to house perhaps millions of people?
Sect. 1042 of the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act, "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies," gives the executive the power to invoke martial law. For the first time in more than a century, the president is now authorized to use the military in response to "a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, a terrorist attack or any other condition in which the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to the extent that state officials cannot maintain public order."
The Military Commissions Act of 2006, rammed through Congress just before the 2006 midterm elections, allows for the indefinite imprisonment of anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on a list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies. The law calls for secret trials for citizens and non-citizens alike.
Also in 2007, the White House quietly issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD-51), to ensure "continuity of government" in the event of what the document vaguely calls a "catastrophic emergency." Should the president determine that such an emergency has occurred, he and he alone is empowered to do whatever he deems necessary to ensure "continuity of government." This could include everything from canceling elections to suspending the Constitution to launching a nuclear attack. Congress has yet to hold a single hearing on NSPD-51.
U.S. Rep. Jane Harman, D-Venice has come up with a new way to expand the domestic "war on terror." Her Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 (HR1955), which passed the House by the lopsided vote of 404-6, would set up a commission to "examine and report upon the facts and causes" of so-called violent radicalism and extremist ideology, then make legislative recommendations on combating it. . . investigative power to combat it.
A clue as to where Harman's commission might be aiming is the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, a law that labels those who "engage in sit-ins, civil disobedience, trespass, or any other crime in the name of animal rights" as terrorists. Other groups in the crosshairs could be anti-abortion protesters, anti-tax agitators, immigration activists, environmentalists, peace demonstrators, Second Amendment rights supporters ... the list goes on and on. According to author Naomi Wolf, the National Counterterrorism Center holds the names of roughly 775,000 "terror suspects" with the number increasing by 20,000 per month.
What could the government be contemplating that leads it to make contingency plans to detain without recourse millions of its own citizens?
The Constitution does not allow the executive to have unchecked power under any circumstances. The people must not allow the president to use the war on terrorism to rule by fear instead of by law.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8067
LOCAL HEROES: OHIO MAYOR REPELS MARINES WHO WANT TO PLAY WAR GAMES IN HIS TOWN
FOX NEWS - The Toledo Blade reports that Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner ordered the Marines out as their buses were arriving for a three-day training mission in the city, where they have periodically trained since 2004. The 200 Marines, based in Grand Rapids, Mich., had planned to participate in urban patrol exercises in downtown streets and a vacant building, according to the Blade, which reports that past exercises have included mock gun fights, ambushes and the firing of blank ammunition to simulate urban combat.
Finkbeiner said that would be alarming. "The mayor asked them to leave because they frighten people," Brian Schwartz, the mayor's spokesman, told the newspaper. "He did not want them practicing and drilling in a highly visible area."
Toledo police knew of the plan days in advance, but Finkbeiner apparently didn't, the Blade reports. The Marines turned around and went home to Grand Rapids.
THE FBI'S SECRET PRIVATE DEPUTIES - WITH PERMISSION TO SHOOT TO KILL?
MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD, THE PROGRESSIVE - Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does -- and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to "shoot to kill" in the event of martial law. InfraGard is "a child of the FBI," says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm. . .
InfraGard itself is still an FBI operation, with FBI agents in each state overseeing the local InfraGard chapters. (There are now eighty-six of them.) The alliance is a nonprofit organization of private sector InfraGard members.
"We are the owners, operators, and experts of our critical infrastructure, from the CEO of a large company in agriculture or high finance to the guy who turns the valve at the water utility," says Schneck, who by day is the vice president of research integration at Secure Computing.
"At its most basic level, InfraGard is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the private sector," the InfraGard website states. "InfraGard chapters are geographically linked with FBI Field Office territories."
In November 2001, InfraGard had around 1,700 members. As of late January, InfraGard had 23,682 members, according to its website, www.infragard.net, which adds that "350 of our nation's Fortune 500 have a representative in InfraGard."
To join, each person must be sponsored by "an existing InfraGard member, chapter, or partner organization." The FBI then vets the applicant. On the application form, prospective members are asked which aspect of the critical infrastructure their organization deals with. These include: agriculture, banking and finance, the chemical industry, defense, energy, food, information and telecommunications, law enforcement, public health, and transportation. . .
InfraGard is not readily accessible to the general public. Its communications with the FBI and Homeland Security are beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act under the "trade secrets" exemption, its website says. And any conversation with the public or the media is supposed to be carefully rehearsed.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/76388/
CONYERS GIVES BUSH REGIME A PASS ON ITS CRIMES
PENTAGON: TREAT INTERNET LIKE AN ENEMY WEAPONS SYSTEM
GLOBAL RESEARCH - The Pentagon's Information Operations Roadmap is blunt about the fact that an internet, with the potential for free speech, is in direct opposition to their goals. The internet needs to be dealt with as if it were an enemy "weapons system".
The 2003 Pentagon document entitled the Information Operation Roadmap was released to the public after a Freedom of Information Request by the National Security Archive at George Washington University in 2006. . .
From the Information Operation Roadmap. . .
"We Must Fight the Net. DoD [Department of Defense] is building an information-centric force. Networks are increasingly the operational center of gravity, and the Department must be prepared to fight the net. DoD's Defense in Depth strategy should operate on the premise that the Department will fight the net as it would a weapons system."
It should come as no surprise that the Pentagon would aggressively attack the information highway in their attempt to achieve dominance in information warfare. Donald Rumsfeld's involvement in the Project for a New American Century sheds more light on the need and desire to control information.
The Project for a New American Century was founded in 1997 with many members that later became the nucleus of the George W. Bush administration. The list includes: Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, I. Lewis Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz among many other powerful but less well know names. Their stated purpose was to use a hugely expanded U.S. military to project "American global leadership." In September of 2000, PNAC published a now infamous document entitled Rebuilding America's Defences. This document has a very similar theme as the Pentagon's Information Operations Roadmap which was signed by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
From Rebuilding America's Defenses:
"It is now commonly understood that information and other new technologies... are creating a dynamic that may threaten America's ability to exercise its dominant military power."
"Much as control of the high seas - and the protection of international commerce - defined global powers in the past, so will control of the new "international commons" be a key to world power in the future. An America incapable of protecting its interests or that of its allies in space or the infosphere will find it difficult to exert global political leadership.
"Although it may take several decades for the process of transformation to unfold, in time, the art of warfare on air, land, and sea will be vastly different than it is today, and "combat" likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, cyber-space," and perhaps the world of microbes. . .
Part of the Information Operation Roadmap's plans for the internet are to "ensure the graceful degradation of the network rather than its collapse. . .
As far as the Pentagon is concerned the internet is not all bad, after all, it was the Department of Defense through DARPA that gave us the internet in the first place. The internet is useful not only as a business tool but also is excellent for monitoring and tracking users, acclimatizing people to a virtual world, and developing detailed psychological profiles of every user, among many other Pentagon positives. But, one problem with the current internet is the potential for the dissemination of ideas and information not consistent with US government themes and messages, commonly known as free speech. Naturally, since the plan was to completely dominate the infosphere, the internet would have to be adjusted or replaced with an upgraded and even more Pentagon friendly successor.
JANUARY 2008
TERROR JUNKIES TAKING OVER CAMPUSES
MICHAEL GOULD-WARTOFSKY, NATION - From Harvard to UCLA, the ivory tower is fast becoming the latest watchtower in Fortress America. The terror warriors, having turned their attention to "violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism prevention"--as it was recently dubbed in a House of Representatives bill of the same name--have set out to reconquer that traditional hotbed of radicalization, the university.
Building a homeland security campus and bringing the university to heel is a seven-step mission:
1. Target dissidents. As the warfare state has triggered dissent, the campus has attracted increasing scrutiny--with student protesters in the cross hairs. The government's number-one target? Peace and justice organizations.
From 2003 to 2007 an unknown number of them made it into the Pentagon's Threat and Local Observation Notice system, a secretive domestic spying program ostensibly designed to track direct "potential terrorist threats" to the Defense Department itself. In 2006 the ACLU uncovered, via Freedom of Information Act requests, at least 186 specific TALON reports on "anti-military protests" in the United States--some listed as "credible threats"--from student groups at the University of California, Santa Cruz; State University of New York, Albany; Georgia State University; and New Mexico State University, among other campuses.. . .
2. Lock and load. Many campus police departments are morphing into heavily armed garrisons, equipped with a wide array of weaponry, from Taser stun guns and pepper guns to shotguns and semiautomatic rifles. Lock-and-load policies that began in the 1990s under the rubric of the "war on crime" only escalated with the President's "war on terror." Each school shooting--most recently the massacre at Virginia Tech--adds fuel to the armament flames. . .
3. Keep an eye (or hundreds of them) focused on campus. Surveillance has become a boom industry nationally--one that now reaches deep into the heart of campuses. In fact, universities have witnessed explosive growth since 2001 in the electronic surveillance of students, faculty and campus workers. . . The International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators reports that surveillance cameras have found their way onto at least half of all colleges, their numbers on any given campus doubling, tripling or, in a few cases, rising tenfold since September 11, 2001. Such cameras have proliferated by the hundreds on private campuses, in particular. The University of Pennsylvania, for instance, has more than 400 watching over it, while Harvard and Brown have about 200 each. . .
4. Mine student records. Student records have in recent years been opened up to all manner of data mining for purposes of investigation, recruitment or just all-purpose tracking. From 2001 to 2006, in an operation code-named Project Strike Back, the Education Department teamed up with the FBI to scour the records of the 14 million students who applied for federal financial aid each year. The objective? "To identify potential people of interest," explained an FBI spokesperson cryptically, especially those linked to "potential terrorist activity.". . .
5. Track foreign-born students; keep the undocumented out. Under the auspices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been keeping close tabs on foreign students . . . As of October 2007, ICE reported that it was actively following 713,000 internationals on campuses, while keeping more than 4.7 million names in the database.
6. Take over the curriculum, the classroom and the laboratory. . . . DHS has launched its own curriculum under its Office of University Programs, intended, it says, to "foster a homeland security culture within the academic community."
The record so far is impressive: DHS has doled out 439 federal fellowships and scholarships since 2003, providing full tuition to students who fit "within the homeland security research enterprise." . . .http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20080128&s=gould-wartofsky
HOW CHENEY FOUGHT TO GIVE BUSH DICTATOR STATUS
PBS - For three decades Vice President Dick Cheney conducted a secretive, behind-closed-doors campaign to give the president virtually unlimited wartime power. Finally, in the aftermath of 9/11, the Justice Department and the White House made a number of controversial legal decisions. Orchestrated by Cheney and his lawyer David Addington, the department interpreted executive power in an expansive and extraordinary way, granting President George W. Bush the power to detain, interrogate, torture, wiretap and spy -- without congressional approval or judicial review. . .
"The vice president believes that Congress has very few powers to actually constrain the president and the executive branch," former Justice Department attorney Marty Lederman tells Frontline. "He believes the president should have the final word -- indeed the only word -- on all matters within the executive branch."
After Sept. 11, Cheney and Addington were determined to implement their vision -- in secret. The vice president and his counsel found an ally in John Yoo, a lawyer at the Justice Department's extraordinarily powerful Office of Legal Counsel. In concert with Addington, Yoo wrote memoranda authorizing the president to act with unparalleled authority.
"Through interviews with key administration figures, Cheney's Law documents the bruising bureaucratic battles between a group of conservative Justice Department lawyers and the Office of the Vice President over the legal foundation for the most closely guarded programs in the war on terror," says Frontline producer Michael Kirk. . .
In his most extensive television interview since leaving the Justice Department, former Assistant Attorney General Jack L. Goldsmith describes his initial days at the OLC in the fall of 2003 as he learned about the government's most secret and controversial covert operations. Goldsmith was shocked by the administration's secret assertion of unlimited power.
"There were extravagant and unnecessary claims of presidential power that were wildly overbroad to the tasks at hand," Goldsmith says. "I had a whole flurry of emotions. My first one was disbelief that programs of this importance could be supported by legal opinions that were this flawed. My second was the realization that I would have a very, very hard time standing by these opinions if pressed. My third was the sinking feeling, what was I going to do if I was pressed about reaffirming these opinions?"
As Goldsmith began to question his colleagues' claims that the administration could ignore domestic laws and international treaties, he began to clash with Cheney's office. According to Goldsmith, Addington warned him, "If you rule that way, the blood of the 100,000 people who die in the next attack will be on your hands."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/cheney/etc/synopsis.html
STUDY: YOU'RE AS LIKELY TO DROWN IN A TOILET AS TO BE KILLED BY A TERRORIST
POLICE STATE NATIONAL ID CARD COMES CLOSER
TSA CRIBS DIRECTLY FROM OWELL'S '1984'
CORY DOCTOROW, BOING BOING - TSA screeners are learning to recognize a set of secret, forbidden facial expressions. If your face slips into one of these during a TSA inspection, you will be taken off and given a thorough, secondary screening. . . Making Light's Avram Grumer draws a vivid parallel to Orwell's facecrime:
"He did not know how long she had been looking at him, but perhaps for as much as five minutes, and it was possible that his features had not been perfectly under control. It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself - anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called. (Nineteen Eighty-Four, Part 1, Chapter 5)"
It's a complicated issue: on the one hand, this beats racial profiling. On the other hand, the penalty for wearing the wrong face is nigh-unlimited. We've all heard stories of screeners detaining people, forbidding them to fly, and so on, in a kind of bottomless expression of authority without oversight. I'd feel a lot better about this if the TSA would publish the forbidden faces (look, if it's peer-reviewed science, that means terrorists can just look it up in the damned journals, and if it's not science, why should we believe it works?) so that we can all verify for ourselves whether this actually works or whether it's just a bunch of hooey; I'd also feel better if the TSA acted as though the Constitution mattered to them, securing us from unreasonable search and seizure, being answerable to us as their tax-paying employers, and maintaining the presumption of innocence throughout our traveling experience.
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/01/tsa-to-punish-fliers.html
DECEMBER 2007
CONGRESS WEAKENS BUSH'S GRAB OF NATIONAL GUARD
STATELINE - Congress has approved legislation that would strip President Bush of the power to call up National Guard troops during terrorist attacks, natural disasters and other domestic emergencies, returning that authority exclusively to the nation's governors after little more than a year in the commander-in-chief's hands.
A little-noticed provision in last year's National Defense Authorization Act - an annual bill that lays out priorities and expenditures for the Defense Department - gave the president new power to go over governors' heads and activate National Guard troops during stateside crises ranging from hurricanes to health epidemics. The provision came in the form of an amendment to the 200-year-old Insurrection Act, which originally said the president could use the National Guard domestically only to put down rebellions or enforce constitutional rights if states failed to do so.
The 2008 Defense Authorization Act after being approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Dec. 12 - would repeal the president's expanded authority over the National Guard, leaving governors as sole commanders of the state-run militias during disasters on U.S. soil. The president maintains the right to deploy the Guard to foreign countries during wartime.
Bush is expected to approve the change as part of a much-broader $696 billion military package that includes a number of other key provisions sought by state officials across the country. . .
None of the changes, however, drew as much attention from all 50 governors as the provision renewing their exclusive authority over the National Guard during domestic disasters, such as this month's flooding in Oregon and Washington state and California's wildfires in October. All three states mobilized Guard units to help during those crises.
While President Bush has not used his new authority to call up state Guard units during the past year, governors from both parties have argued that states are always better poised than federal authorities to control Guard troops at home.
BUSH IS NOT the only one to seek unconstitutional powers over the National guard. Bill Clinton used the Guard for everything from Waco and Ruby Ridge to domestic law enforcement in the inner city. Clinton, who has rarely seen a civil liberty worth standing up for, even submitted legislation that would have virtually overturned the Posse Comitatus Act. His bill would have allowed the military to provide "technical assistance" to civilian law enforcement, a term Clinton himself defined as including "conducting searches, taking evidence and disarming and disabling individuals." So awful was this measure that even Casper Weinberger and Sam Nunn objected. As the director of the Florida ACLU, Robbyn E. Blumner, wrote in the St Petersburg Times: "Throughout history and around the world, involvement by the armed forces in civilian law enforcement is one of the trademarks of a repressive regime. Yet the administration's proposals would chip away at the wall that separates the two and, by that action, greatly enhance the power of the presidency. In the wrong hands, the results could be devastating to freedom."
A decade earlier Ronald Reagan illegally sent the National Guard to Honduras to help in the war against the Sandanistas. Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis went to the Supreme Court in a futile effort to stop it but Clinton is happy to oblige, even sending his own security chief, Buddy Young, along to keep an eye on things. Winding up its tour, the Arkansas Guard declares large quantities of its weapons "excess" and left them behind for the Contras.
http://prorev.com/2007/12/congress-weakens-bushs-grab-of-national.html
BUSH REGIME TRIED TO SPY ON NEIGHBORHOOD TO NEIGHBORHOOD PHONE CALLS
NY TIMES - For months, the Bush administration has waged a high-profile campaign, including personal lobbying by President Bush and closed-door briefings by top officials, to persuade Congress to pass legislation protecting companies from lawsuits for aiding the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping program.
But the battle is really about something much bigger. At stake is the federal government's extensive but uneasy partnership with industry to conduct a wide range of secret surveillance operations in fighting terrorism and crime.
The N.S.A.'s reliance on telecommunications companies is broader and deeper than ever before, according to government and industry officials, yet that alliance is strained by legal worries and the fear of public exposure.
To detect narcotics trafficking, for example, the government has been collecting the phone records of thousands of Americans and others inside the United States who call people in Latin America, according to several government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the program remains classified. But in 2004, one major phone carrier balked at turning over its customers' records. Worried about possible privacy violations or public relations problems, company executives declined to help the operation, which has not been previously disclosed.
In a separate N.S.A. project, executives at a Denver phone carrier, Qwest, refused in early 2001 to give the agency access to their most localized communications switches, which primarily carry domestic calls, according to people aware of the request, which has not been previously reported. They say the arrangement could have permitted neighborhood-by-neighborhood surveillance of phone traffic without a court order, which alarmed them. . .
After the disclosure two years ago that the N.S.A. was eavesdropping on the international communications of terrorism suspects inside the United States without warrants, more than 40 lawsuits were filed against the government and phone carriers. As a result, skittish companies and their lawyers have been demanding stricter safeguards before they provide access to the government and, in some cases, are refusing outright to cooperate, officials said.
THE SIGNING STATEMENT: KEY TO THE BUSH COUP AGAINST CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT RAW STORY - Bush has issued 1100 signing statements -- almost twice as many as all previous presidents put together -- often completely reversing the intended effect of legislation. For example, when Congress voted overwhelmingly to ban torture, Bush announced that this would "make it clear to the world that this government does not torture." Two weeks later, he added a signing statement to the bill that allowed him to ignore it.
Similarly, when a bill required the Justice Department to report to Congress on the use of the Patriot Act, Bush added a proviso that he could override this requirement any time he thought necessary.
Law professor Jonathan Turley told Abrams that the practice has two very serious effects. On one hand, "by using signing statements to this extent, the president becomes a government unto himself." But it also gives lower-level officials cover for their own illegal behavior by creating a deliberate area of ambiguity about the meaning of the laws.
"How does he get away with it?" [MSNBC'S Dan] Abrams asked Boston Globe reporter Charlie Savage. Savage explained that signing statements have previously been considered merely as instructions to the executive branch on how to interpret legislation, and typically no one outside the executive branch even reads them.
"It's an extraordinarily destabilizing effect upon our system," Turley emphasized. "Our system really only has one rule that can't be broken ... That one rule is, you can't go outside the rules." Once the executive ceases to respect the authority of the legislative branch, everything else is thrown into doubt.
Savage noted that Dick Cheney appears to be the motivating force in this expansion of presidential power. Cheney was chief of staff to President Gerald Ford in the 1970's, when Congress was taking steps to prevent any future Watergate-style excesses, and he has never ceased trying to bring things back to the way they were under Nixon.
According to Savage, Cheney's aide David Addington, who has been with him since the 1980's "is said to be the chief architect of these signing statements" and is the leader of the legal team pushing the most radical theories of presidential power.
"It's astounding to me how they continue to get away with this," Abrams concluded.
DAN ABRAMS VIDEO REPORT
BUSH REGIME TO LAUNCH MASSIVE DOMESTIC SPYING PROGRAM
TIM SHORROCK, CORPWATCH - A new intelligence institution to be inaugurated soon by the Bush administration will allow government spying agencies to conduct broad surveillance and reconnaissance inside the United States for the first time. Under a proposal being reviewed by Congress, a National Applications Office will be established to coordinate how the Department of Homeland Security and domestic law enforcement and rescue agencies use imagery and communications intelligence picked up by U.S. spy satellites. If the plan goes forward, the NAO will create the legal mechanism for an unprecedented degree of domestic intelligence gathering that would make the U.S. one of the world's most closely monitored nations. Until now, domestic use of electronic intelligence from spy satellites was limited to scientific agencies with no responsibility for national security or law enforcement.
The intelligence-sharing system to be managed by the NAO will rely heavily on private contractors including Boeing, BAE Systems, L-3 Communications and Science Applications International Corporation. . .
The NAO is "an idea whose time has arrived," Charles Allen, a top U.S. intelligence official, told the Wall Street Journal in August 2007 after it broke the news of the creation of the NAO. Allen, the DHS's chief intelligence officer, will head the new program. The announcement came just days after President George W. Bush signed a new law approved by Congress to expand the ability of the NSA to eavesdrop, without warrants, on telephone calls, e-mail and faxes passing through telecommunications hubs in the U.S. when the government suspects agents of a foreign power may be involved. . .
Donald Kerr, a former NRO director who is now the number two at ODNI, recently explained to reporters that the intelligence community was no longer discussing whether or not to spy on U.S. citizens: "Our job now is to engage in a productive debate, which focuses on privacy as a component of appropriate levels of security and public safety," Kerr said. "I think all of us have to really take stock of what we already are willing to give up, in terms of anonymity, but [also] what safeguards we want in place to be sure that giving that doesn't empty our bank account or do something equally bad elsewhere."
NOVEMBER 2007
CORPORATIONS HELPING BUSH REGIME IN HUGE DOMESTIC SPYING PROGRAM
FEDS HAVE DONE BACKGROUND CHECKS ON 25 MILLION AMERICANS THIS YEAR
LOS ANGELES POLICE PLAN TO STEREOTYPE WHOLE MUSLIM COMMUNITIES
CORPORATIONS HELPING BUSH REGIME IN HUGE DOMESTIC SPYING PROGRAM
ELECTRONIC PRIVACY INFORMATION CENTER - In September 2006 the Department of Homeland Security reported that 38 state and local Information Fusion Centers supported by $380 million in federal dollars were operational. The investment in time, energy, and resources are focused on one objective: maximizing access to the greatest amount of information as possible.
The range of information to be collected by service providers who participate in the fusion center effort could include: all sources of financial records kept by banking institutions; all contacts with the criminal justice system by criminals and non-criminals, all forms of education (day cares, preschools, primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities, and technical schools); government issued licenses and permits, access to medical records held by hospitals, public health, and primary care physicians, hospitality and lodging, information and telecommunication service providers, military facilities and defense industrial base; postal and shipping services, private security (alarm companies, armored car companies, investigative firms, corporate security offices); public works; social services; and transportation. . .
Strategic information may provide data on individuals not under criminal investigation or operations that an entity manages, and tactical information may provide data be in support of ongoing criminal investigations. It would be very difficult to imagine someone living within the United States who would not have one or multiple points of information confluence in the proposed system. The Fusion Center guidance said the following about the "Fusion Center Functions"
Along with a host of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, private companies also participated in the Public Safety Fusion Group, which included Walt Disney World Company, Fidelity Investments, Microsoft, and Archer Daniels Midland. . . . The intelligence and analysis of information is proposed to be based on the needs of users. With the list of users including all levels and types of law enforcement, intelligence community, DOD, private sector entities, it appears the official uses could be limitless.
The Fusion Center guidelines repeatedly stress the importance of collaboration and cooperation, to the success of the center. The focus of the work of fusion centers will not be limited to terrorism or terrorist activity, but will according to the appendices of the Fusion Center guidelines extend to among other things the investigation of persons on public assistance, illicit drugs, traffic accidents, and aviation accident analysis.
Exchanging information is only the beginning of the process, the goal is "institutionalizing the relationships between the fusion center and the public safety and private sector partners."
http://www.epic.org/privacy/fusion/
AUGUST 2007
HOMELAND STASI SEARCH URBAN BUS RIDERS
INDIANAPOLIS STAR - Screeners from the Transportation Security Administration checked passengers at two downtown city bus stops this morning, looking for weapons and suspicious behavior. David Kane, federal security director for TSA in Indianapolis, called it a "VIPR" operation.
"It's called Visual Intermodal Prevention Response. We have plainclothes inspectors, blue-gloved uniformed security officers who are checking baggage, the behavior detection officers, and federal air marshals, which are the law enforcement arm of TSA."
Security stations were set up at bus stops at Capitol Avenue and Market Street, and Ohio and Meridian streets. Some passengers were patted down or submitted to having bags checked. TSA said the searches were "by-permission," meaning patrons could decline to be checked. Those who did would not be turned away, an official said, unless they otherwise appeared to be a security threat.
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070802/LOCAL/70802006
BLUE DOT RED FIELD, DAILY KOS - Federal agents, including Air Marshals were present and patted people down, looked in bags, and performed "behavior" tests for the stated purpose of finding weapons and people who were a threat to public safety. . .
20 or more agents of the federal government came to Indianapolis, downtown, and setup two search stops for those wanting to ride the bus. People could decline, legally, but only if the knew they could. Traveler safety was the excuse, but in reality all the were on an explicit fishing operation that included everything plus "behavior detection officers."
Did people even know they could decline the search? That is unclear. But at least one report indicates that they TSA weren't even aware of local law. Indiana allows licensed individuals to carry firearms and accepts permits from other states for individuals to carry firearms as well. We have the highest per capita concealed carry population in the nation and the TSA was not even aware of our laws.
"My wife has a cousin who lives in Indy and he was one of the lucky ones volunteered for a pat-down. He, like me, recognizes the value in being prepared for one's own self defense. The screener asked if he could be patted down for weapons to which he responded "I'll save you the trouble, my licensed handgun is on my right hip." The screener thought he was joking. Once she realized he was serious she announced that there was a situation and called in the reinforcements."He was told rudely 'YOOOOUUU CAN'T CARRY A GUN AROUND HERE!' And he replied 'I bet I can, this isn't an airport...' By then a supervisor walked over, took a quick look at his Kentucky CCW and asked the Indianapolis PD next to him if it was any good. The Indy cop replied that a CCW from any state or country is valid in Indiana. So the supervisor declared in a loud voice to let him proceed, treat anyone with a CCW like a cop and pass them on. Needless to say though, he had a very quiet bus ride with lots of passengers staring at him the whole time.
Aside from being galled at the concept of this kind of thing, I think it's pretty sad that the federal security professionals need to learn the rules as they go. One would think that if you were supposed to set up a checkpoint to screen for weapons, you'd do a preliminary check to see what was against the law in Indiana, what was permitted, etc. Goes to show how arbitrary the whole thing is. "So what was this operation, why was it needed, and what does it mean for us all?
First, it was a clear encroachment on our 4th Amendment rights. Even if it was legal (because individuals could refuse it), the fact that law enforcement is searching people without cause is an encroachment.
Second, it was an encroachment done by the Federal Government in the guise of proposed safety. While Indianapolis has had crime problems, the bus system has not been the hub of those problems. Nor have any federal crimes been committed on Indianapolis busses.
Third, it was a Federal operation performed by those who are not even aware of the law. Since they had no understanding of Indiana weapons laws and were performing weapons searches, why should I have any confidence in their understanding of, and care for Constitutional law in regards to personal searches.
Fourth, it was a Federal invasion of civilians that used our federal tax dollars to search bus passengers, who if criminal could have moved on to the next bus stop or just declined the search. The very same Air Marshals that are supposed to be protecting our plans are searching people at bus stops. This operation could hardly have been an effective expenditure of resources, especially as no reported arrests or confiscations took place.
Fifth, the stops seem to be better explained as a test of what encroachments Americans will accept, and the fact that only one article has mentioned it, sparsely at that, makes their test a likely success for federal agencies that seek to expand their powers.
So now it is up to us to decide, again, what is acceptable and what is not.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/8/3/03736/76330
AMERICANS SUPPORT BIGGER POLICE STATE
MICHAELLE LIRTZMAN, ABC - Americans, by nearly a 3-to-1 margin, support the increased use of surveillance cameras - a measure decried by some civil libertarians, but credited in London with helping to catch a variety of perpetrators since the early 1990s. Given the chief arguments, pro and con - a way to help solve crimes vs. too much of a government intrusion on privacy - it isn't close: 71 percent of Americans favor the increased use of surveillance cameras, while 25 percent oppose it.
London's surveillance network, known as the "Ring of Steel," is said to have aided in the capture of suspects, including those accused of a pair of attempted car bombings in June. A similar system is coming to New York City, which plans 100 new surveillance cameras in downtown Manhattan by year's end and 3,000 - public and private - by 2010. Chicago and Baltimore plan expanded surveillance systems as well.
Critics, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, have opposed such systems, arguing that they invade privacy, and could be used to track innocent people.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3422372&page=1
BUSH'S NEW ORDER STILL VIOLATES GENEVA CONVENTION
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH - President George W. Bush's new executive order on the Central Intelligence Agency's detention and interrogation program is contrary to the Geneva Conventions. The new order, issued today, purports to determine that the CIA's detention and interrogation program "fully complies" with US obligations under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 as long as the CIA follows a series of requirements in carrying out the program.
But enforced disappearance - the hallmark of the CIA program, involving secret, incommunicado detention - is itself inconsistent with the requirement under Common Article 3 that detainees be treated humanely. A number of CIA prisoners were held for three or more years in secret detention facilities, known as "black sites," before being transferred to military custody at Guantanamo Bay in September 2006. Others who were believed to have been held in CIA detention remain "disappeared."
"By international human rights and humanitarian law standards, the CIA program is illegal to its core," said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director at Human Rights Watch.
Human Rights Watch also expressed skepticism that the treatment requirements set out in the new order - that detainees not be tortured or ill-treated, and be fed adequately, among others - will be followed. It is well documented that holding detainees in prolonged incommunicado detention, without judicial or other independent oversight, is an invitation to torture and other abuse. Human Rights Watch pointed out that even the International Committee of the Red Cross has not been allowed to visit detainees in CIA custody.
In addition, because the written policies governing the CIA interrogation program will be classified, it will be impossible for any outside monitor to assess whether the interrogation practices they allow are consistent with international standards. Given that then-CIA director Porter Goss once referred to waterboarding - a form of mock drowning - as a "professional interrogation technique," Human Rights Watch is concerned that abusive methods might still be authorized.
Notably, US officials have still refused to publicly denounce waterboarding as torture.
In criticizing the CIA program, Human Rights Watch continued to draw attention to more than three dozen missing CIA detainees. In June, Human Rights Watch and five other human rights groups published a report listing 39 people who were believed to have been held at some time in CIA prisons, and who remain "disappeared". One of the missing detainees, Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, recently reappeared in Pakistan.
"Detainees in CIA custody were in many cases 'disappeared' for years," Mariner said. "Several dozen are still 'disappeared' with no information about their fate."
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/07/20/usdom16444.htm
BUSH WON'T REVEAL MARTIAL LAW PLAN TO CONGRESS
PAUL JOSEPH WATSON PRISON PLANET - Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-OR) was asked by his constituents to see what was contained within the classified portion of the White House's plan for operating the government after a terrorist attack.
Since DeFazio also sits on the Homeland Security Committee and has clearance to view classified material, the request would have appeared to be routine, but the Congressman was unceremoniously denied all access to view the documents, and the White House wouldn't even give an excuse as to why he was barred.
"I just can't believe they're going to deny a member of Congress the right of reviewing how they plan to conduct the government of the United States after a significant terrorist attack," DeFazio told the Oregonian on Friday.
"We're talking about the continuity of the government of the United States of America," DeFazio says. "I would think that would be relevant to any member of Congress, let alone a member of the Homeland Security Committee."
"Maybe the people who think there's a conspiracy out there are right," DeFazio concluded.
The article also quotes Norm Ornstein, a legal scholar who studies government continuity at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who told the paper he "cannot think of one good reason" to deny access to a member of Congress who serves on the Homeland Security Committee.
"I find it inexplicable and probably reflective of the usual, knee-jerk overextension of executive power that we see from this White House," Ornstein said.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/july2007/230707martiallaw.htm
FBI PLANNING EAST GERMAN STASI STYLE SPY NETWORK
ABC NEWS BLOTTER - The FBI is taking cues from the CIA to recruit thousands of covert informants in the United States as part of a sprawling effort to boost its intelligence capabilities. According to a recent unclassified report to Congress, the FBI expects its informants to provide secrets about possible terrorists and foreign spies, although some may also be expected to aid with criminal investigations, in the tradition of law enforcement confidential informants. The FBI did not respond to requests for comment on this story. . .
The aggressive push for more secret informants appears to be part of a new effort to grow its intelligence and counterterrorism efforts. Other recent proposals include expanding its collection and analysis of data on U.S. persons, retaining years' worth of Americans' phone records and even increasing so-called "black bag" secret entry operations.
To handle the increase in so-called human sources, the FBI also plans to overhaul its database system, so it can manage records and verify the accuracy of information from "more than 15,000" informants, according to the document. While many of the recruited informants will apparently be U.S. residents, some informants may be overseas, recruited by FBI agents in foreign offices, the report indicates.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/07/fbi-proposes-bu.html
JULY 2007
THE BANDERLOGCOURT RULES BUSH CAN IGNORE CONSTITUTION
IF YOU CAN'T CATCH HIM DOING ITFIRM MARKETS CHEAP COFFIN TO HANDLE AMERICA'S GROWING DISASTERS JUNE 2007
THE HIDDEN DANGER OF BLACKWATER
CHRIS HEDGES, NY TIMES - There are an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 armed security contractors working in Iraq, although there are no official figures and some estimates run much higher. . . The privatization of war hands an incentive to American corporations, many with tremendous political clout, to keep us mired down in Iraq. But even more disturbing is the steady rise of this modern Praetorian Guard. The Praetorian Guard in ancient Rome was a paramilitary force that defied legal constraints, made violence part of the political discourse, and eventually plunged the Roman Republic into tyranny and despotism. Despotic movements need paramilitary forces that operate outside the law, forces that sow fear among potential opponents, and are capable of physically silencing those branded by their leaders as traitors. And in the wrong hands, a Blackwater could well become that force.
American taxpayers have so far handed a staggering $4 billion to "armed security" companies in Iraq such as Blackwater, according to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif. . .
Mercenary forces like Blackwater operate beyond civilian and military law. They are covered by a 2004 edict passed by American occupation authorities in Iraq that immunizes all civilian contractors in Iraq from prosecution.
Blackwater, barely a decade old, has migrated from Iraq to set up operations in the United States and nine other countries. It trains Afghan security forces and has established a base a few miles from the Iranian border. The huge contracts from the war - including $750 million from the State Department since 2004 - have allowed Blackwater to amass a fleet of more than 20 aircraft, including helicopter gunships. Jeremy Scahill, the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, points out that Blackwater has also constructed "the world's largest private military facility - a 7,000-acre compound near the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina." Blackwater also recently opened a facility in Illinois ("Blackwater North") and, despite local opposition, is moving ahead with plans to build another huge training base near San Diego. The company recently announced it was creating a private intelligence branch called "Total Intelligence."
Erik Prince, who founded and runs Blackwater, is a man who appears to have little time for the niceties of democracy. He has close ties with the radical Christian Right and the Bush White House. He champions his company as a patriotic extension of the U.S. military. His employees, in an act as cynical as it is dishonest, take an oath of loyalty to the Constitution. But what he and his allies have built is a mercenary army, paid for with government money, which operates outside the law and without constitutional constraint. . .
If the United States falls into a period of instability caused by another catastrophic terrorist attack, an economic meltdown that triggers social unrest, or a series of environmental disasters, such paramilitary forces, protected and assisted by fellow ideologues in the police and military, could ruthlessly abolish what is left of our eroding democracy. War, with the huge profits it hands to corporations, and to right-wing interests such as the Christian Right, could become a permanent condition. And the thugs with automatic weapons, black uniforms and wraparound sunglasses who appeared on the streets in New Orleans could appear on our streets.
FBI TERRORIST WATCH LIST HAS A HALF MILLION NAMES
JUSTIN ROOD, ABC NEW BLOTTER - A terrorist watch list compiled by the FBI has apparently swelled to include more than half a million names. Privacy and civil liberties advocates say the list is growing uncontrollably, threatening its usefulness in the war on terror. . . A portion of the FBI's unclassified 2008 budget request posted to the Department of Justice Web site, however, refers to "the entire watch list of 509,000 names," which is utilized by its Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force.
A spokesman for the interagency National Counterterrorism Center, which maintains the government's list of all suspected terrorists with links to international organizations, said they had 465,000 names covering 350,000 individuals. Many names are different versions of the same identity -- "Usama bin Laden" and "Osama bin Laden" for the al Qaeda chief, for example.
In addition to the NCTC list, the FBI keeps a list of U.S. persons who are believed to be domestic terrorists -- abortion clinic bombers, for example, or firebombing environmental extremists, who have no known tie to an international terrorist group. . .
"It grows seemingly without control or limitation," said ACLU senior legislative counsel Tim Sparapani of the terrorism watch list. Sparapani called the 509,000 figure "stunning." . . . "If we have 509,000 names on that list, the watch list is virtually useless," he told ABC News. "You'll be capturing innocent individuals with no connection to crime or terror."
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/06/fbi_terror_watc.html
GO OUTBOARDING AND THE TERRORISTS WIN
JACKELYN BARNARD, FIRST COAST NEWS, FL - With thousands of boats on the waterways, the worry is the recreational boat is now a Homeland Security threat.
"Just the sheer numbers and ability to hide among recreational traffic is something that makes it difficult for me to find the threat and address it," said Admiral Thad Allen, Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard.A simple boat could be used as a weapon. . . The head of the U.S. Coast Guard is throwing around a couple of ideas on how to keep you safe. One would require licenses for all boaters in all states. The other would call for transponders on recreational boats so authorities can track their location. . .
http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/topstories/news-article.aspx?storyid=82887
HIDDEN COUP PLANS REVISED AGAIN
[The Globe does not deal with the fact that the Constitution makes no provision for martial law of the sort contemplated in these plans. In the event of a real emergency, under the Constitution power should devolve to the states and not to individuals illegally named in a presidential executive order. This is not only the law, but it makes sense as the governors are those best situated and best trained for handling catastrophes unlike, say, Michael Brown late of FEMA or some political pal of the president]
CHARLIE SAVAGE, BOSTON GLOBE - The Bush administration is writing a new plan to maintain governmental control in the wake of an apocalyptic terrorist attack or overwhelming natural disaster, moving such doomsday planning for the first time from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to officials inside the White House.
The policy requires all government agencies to have clear lines of succession if top officials are killed and be prepared to operate from a new headquarters within 12 hours of a catastrophe. They must be prepared "to lead and sustain the nation during a crisis" - - a charge ranging from "providing leadership visible to the nation and the world" to "bringing to justice perpetrators of crimes or attacks."
The policy replaces a Clinton - era "continuity in government" post - disaster plan. The old plan is classified, but security specialists and administration officials said the new policy centralizes control of such planning in the White House and puts a greater emphasis on terrorism spurring the catastrophe. . .
The public portion of the new "National Continuity Policy" contains few details about how surviving officials would invoke emergency powers, or when emergency powers should be deemed to be no longer necessary so that the elected democracy can resume. The answers to such questions may be contained in a classified appendix which has not been made public.
The unanswered questions have provoked anxiety across ideological lines. The conservative commentator Jerome Corsi, for example, wrote in a much - linked online column that the directive looked like a recipe for allowing the office of the presidency to seize "dictatorial powers" because the policy does not discuss consulting Congress about when to invoke emergency powers - or when to turn them off. . .
White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said that because of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the American public needs no explanation of such plans. "It's well known that the vice president was in a secure, undisclosed location for a period of time for continuity - of - government reasons, so these considerations are not unknown to the American people in a post - 9/11 world," he said. . .
The policy broadly defines a "catastrophic emergency" - - the triggering event for the plan - - as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions."
Sharon Bradford Franklin, the senior counsel at the Constitution Project, a bipartisan think-tank that promotes constitutional safeguards, said the policy's definition "is so broad that it raises serious concerns about when and how this might be used to authorize unchecked executive action."
APRIL 2007
LAWYERS FOR BUSH GROUP SAY HE HAS DICTATORIAL POWERS TO STOP DISSENT AT APPEARANCES
JON SARCHE, ASSOCIATED PRESS - White House officials can exclude dissenters from taxpayer-funded appearances by President Bush without violating the protesters' rights, according to lawyers for volunteers who helped eject three people from a hall where Bush was to speak. Attorneys for Michael Casper and Jay Bob Klinkerman said the government has the same rights as a private corporation when its officials speak.
"The president may constitutionally make viewpoint-based exclusionary determinations in conveying his own message," the attorneys said in a filing last week. "So in following the instructions of the White House and carrying out its viewpoint-based exclusions, Casper and Klinkerman did not violate any of plaintiffs' constitutional rights."
Plaintiffs Leslie Weise and Alex Young were among the three told to leave just before Bush was to talk about his plans for Social Security at the March 21, 2005, event in Denver. Weise and Young argue they were ejected for their political views. They had arrived in a car bearing a "No blood for oil" bumper sticker. They were also wearing T-shirts saying "Stop the lies" under their clothes but did not show them.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070416/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_protesters
MARCH 2007
ESTABLISHMENT VOICE TAKES ON TERROR HYSTERIA
[This issue is not unfamiliar to Review readers but it is interesting that it is being raised by such a stolid member of the establishment and published in the equally stolid Washington Post. Google, incidentally, only reports four sites picking up this interesting development. Brezesinski is clearly a spoil sport, threatening the future of media hysteria on the topic]
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, WASHINGTON POST - The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us.
The damage these three words have done -- a classic self-inflicted wound -- is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves. The phrase itself is meaningless. It defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare -- political intimidation through the killing of unarmed non-combatants. . .
The culture of fear is like a genie that has been let out of its bottle. It acquires a life of its own -- and can become demoralizing. America today is not the self-confident and determined nation that responded to Pearl Harbor; nor is it the America that heard from its leader, at another moment of crisis, the powerful words "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"; nor is it the calm America that waged the Cold War with quiet persistence despite the knowledge that a real war could be initiated abruptly within minutes and prompt the death of 100 million Americans within just a few hours. We are now divided, uncertain and potentially very susceptible to panic in the event of another terrorist act in the United States itself.
That is the result of five years of almost continuous national brainwashing on the subject of terror, quite unlike the more muted reactions of several other nations (Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan, to mention just a few) that also have suffered painful terrorist acts. In his latest justification for his war in Iraq, President Bush even claims absurdly that he has to continue waging it lest al-Qaeda cross the Atlantic to launch a war of terror here in the United States.
Such fear-mongering, reinforced by security entrepreneurs, the mass media and the entertainment industry, generates its own momentum. The terror entrepreneurs, usually described as experts on terrorism, are necessarily engaged in competition to justify their existence. Hence their task is to convince the public that it faces new threats. That puts a premium on the presentation of credible scenarios of ever-more-horrifying acts of violence, sometimes even with blueprints for their implementation.
TERROR LIST APPROACHES A HALF MILLION
KAREN DEYOUNG, WASHINGTON POST Each day, thousands of pieces of intelligence information from around the world -- field reports, captured documents, news from foreign allies and sometimes idle gossip -- arrive in a computer-filled office in McLean, where analysts feed them into the nation's central list of terrorists and terrorism suspects. Called TIDE, for Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, the list is a storehouse for data about individuals that the intelligence community believes might harm the United States. It is the wellspring for watch lists distributed to airlines, law enforcement, border posts and U.S. consulates, created to close one of the key intelligence gaps revealed after Sept. 11, 2001: the failure of federal agencies to share what they knew about al-Qaeda operatives.
But in addressing one problem, TIDE has spawned others.. . . Ballooning from fewer than 100,000 files in 2003 to about 435,000, the growing database threatens to overwhelm the people who manage it. . .
TIDE has also created concerns about secrecy, errors and privacy. The list marks the first time foreigners and U.S. citizens are combined in an intelligence database. The bar for inclusion is low, and once someone is on the list, it is virtually impossible to get off it. At any stage, the process can lead to "horror stories" of mixed-up names and unconfirmed information, Travers acknowledged.
COURT DECISIONS BLESS DICTATORSHIP
AP - Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cannot be tried on allegations of torture in overseas military prisons, a federal judge said Tuesday in a case he described as "lamentable." U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan threw out a lawsuit brought on behalf of nine former prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said Rumsfeld cannot be held personally responsible for actions taken in connection with his government job. The lawsuit contends the prisoners were beaten, suspended upside down from the ceiling by chains, urinated on, shocked, sexually humiliated, burned, locked inside boxes and subjected to mock executions. Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First had argued that Rumsfeld and top military officials disregarded warnings about the abuse and authorized the use of illegal interrogation tactics that violated the constitutional and human rights of prisoners. . . No matter how appealing it might seem to use the courts to correct allegations of severe abuses of power, Hogan wrote, government officials are immune from such lawsuits. Additionally, foreigners held overseas are not normally afforded U.S. constitutional rights. "Despite the horrifying torture allegations," Hogan said, he could find no case law supporting the lawsuit, which he previously had described as unprecedented.
REAGAN ERA JUDGE SENT JUDITH MILLER TO JAIL & ORDERED ONLY FBI RAID ON CONGRESSIONAL OFFICE IN U.S. HISTORY
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_HoganJACOB G. HORNBERGER, LEW ROCKWELL SITE - The presiding judge in the Jose Padilla case has held that the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of a speedy trial does not protect American citizens from being indefinitely incarcerated by the Pentagon. Padilla had filed a motion to dismiss the case on the ground that the federal government had denied him his right to a speedy trial. Padilla has been in custody since May 2002 and his trial, which is scheduled to begin in April, is not being held until some five years later. . .
The presiding judge in the case, Marcia Cooke, denied Padilla's motion to dismiss. The judge held that when a person, including an American citizen, is held in custody by the Pentagon as an "enemy combatant," the time doesn't start running with respect to his right to a speedy trial. It begins running, she held, only when he becomes part of the federal criminal-justice system.
Gee, I wonder if the judge's reasoning applies to the rest of the Bill of Rights as well. Maybe the First Amendment doesn't apply if it's the Pentagon that is suppressing speech and assembly as part of its perpetual "war on terror." Or maybe the Second Amendment prohibits only the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), not the Pentagon, from seizing guns from the American people, as it is doing as part of the "war on terror" in Iraq.
Our 18th-century American ancestors would have found Judge Cooke's ruling to be ludicrous. If a military department of government is exempt from the restrictions of the Bill of Rights, then the entire executive branch is exempt for the obvious reason: Whenever the government wants to exempt itself from the Bill of Rights, all it has to do is employ the military to do the dirty deed. The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to protect the American people from the federal government, not a particular department of the federal government.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/hornberger/hornberger122.html
FEBRUARY 2007
NY TIMES FINALLY NOTICES THE CREEPING COUP
NY TIMES EDITORIAL - A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night. So it was with a provision quietly tucked into the enormous defense budget bill at the Bush administration's behest that makes it easier for a president to override local control of law enforcement and declare martial law.
The provision, signed into law in October, weakens two obscure but important bulwarks of liberty. One is the doctrine that bars military forces, including a federalized National Guard, from engaging in law enforcement. Called posse comitatus, it was enshrined in law after the Civil War to preserve the line between civil government and the military. The other is the Insurrection Act of 1807, which provides the major exemptions to posse comitatus. It essentially limits a president's use of the military in law enforcement to putting down lawlessness, insurrection and rebellion, where a state is violating federal law or depriving people of constitutional rights.
The newly enacted provisions upset this careful balance. They shift the focus from making sure that federal laws are enforced to restoring public order. Beyond cases of actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or to any "other condition."
Changes of this magnitude should be made only after a thorough public airing. But these new presidential powers were slipped into the law without hearings or public debate. The president made no mention of the changes when he signed the measure, and neither the White House nor Congress consulted in advance with the nation's governors.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/19/opinion/19mon3.html
PAID FBI INFORMANT STAGED NEO-NAZI MARCH
HENRY PIERSON CURTIS, SUN SENTINEL, FL - A paid FBI informant was the man behind a neo-Nazi march through the streets of Parramore that stirred up anxiety in Orlando's black community and fears of racial unrest that triggered a major police mobilization. That revelation came in an unrelated federal court hearing and has prompted outrage from black leaders, some of whom demanded an investigation into whether the February 2006 march was, itself, an event staged by law-enforcement agencies.
The FBI would not comment on what it knew about the involvement of its informant, 39-year-old David Gletty of Orlando, in the neo-Nazi event. In court Wednesday, an FBI agent said the bureau has paid its informant at least $20,000 during the past two years to pursue other projects, Farrington testified.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/orl- mhate1507feb15,0,268096.story?coll=sfla-news-florida
JANUARY 2007
PEOPLE CHIPS: THE ULTIMATE NATIONAL ID
DAVID E. GUMPERT, BUSINESS WEEK - [Scott] Silverman's company, Verichip Corp., is preparing for widespread marketing of its people chips with an initial public offering that it expects to complete within the next 60 days. It has begun building what he refers to as "the infrastructure" by signing up more than 400 hospitals to adopt system scanners and databases and about 1,200 physicians to make chips available to patients likeliest to benefit from them, such as diabetics. . .
The big attraction . . . and the reason for the upcoming Verichip public offering, is the lure of implanting the chips into people. . . Of course, no discussion . . . It's important to remember that adoption of the RFID chips doesn't necessarily need to be legislated to become nearly universal. If enough hospitals and insurance companies begin requiring them, or treating patients wearing them more expeditiously than nonusers, or providing discounts for usage of the chips, they well could become the norm. Then, not wearing a chip might be akin to not having a bank ATM card or, increasingly in Eastern states with toll roads and turnpikes, not having a transponder to pay tolls in your car.
http://www.businessweek.com/print/smallbiz/content/jan2007/ sb20070111_186325.htm
BUSH INVADES STATES' POWERS TO TAKE OVER NATIONAL GUARD
[One of America's most important defenses against a dictatorship has been power of the governors over their state militias: the National Guard. Bush's action dramatically changes this]
KAVAN PETERSON, STATELINE - A little-noticed change in federal law packs an important change in who is in charge the next time a state is devastated by a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina. To the dismay of the nation's governors, the White House now will be empowered to go over a governor's head and call up National Guard troops to aid a state in time of natural disasters or other public emergencies. Up to now, governors were the sole commanders in chief of citizen soldiers in local Guard units during emergencies within the state. . .
President Bush sought to federalize control of Guardsmen in Louisiana in the chaos after the hurricane, but Gov. Kathleen Blanco(D) refused to relinquish command.
Over objections from all 50 governors, Congress in October tweaked the 200-year-old Insurrection Act to empower the hand of the president in future stateside emergencies. In a letter to Congress, the governors called the change "a dramatic expansion of federal authority during natural disasters that could cause confusion in the command-and-control of the National Guard and interfere with states' ability to respond to natural disasters within their borders."
The change adds to tensions between governors and the White House after more than four years of heavy federal deployment of state-based Guard forces to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, four out of five guardsmen have been sent overseas in the largest deployment of the National Guard since World War II. Shortage of the Guard's military equipment - such as helicopters to drop hay to snow-stranded cattle in Colorado - also is a nagging issue as much of units' heavy equipment is left overseas and unavailable in case of a natural disaster at home.
A bipartisan majority of both chambers of Congress adopted the change as part of the 439-page, $538 billion 2007 Defense Authorization Bill signed into law last October.
http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=170453
CIA, MILITARY EXPAND SPYING ON U.S. CITIZENS
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE - US Vice-President Dick Cheney has admitted that the US military and CIA have been spying on the financial dealings of Americans -- intelligence gathering normally authorized only by civilian policing agencies. The New York Times broke the story, reporting that the Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency had been using "national security letters" to obtain the banking and credit records of Americans and foreigners suspected of terrorist activities in the United States. The US military and the CIA have long been restricted in their spying activities inside the United States and are barred from conducting traditional domestic law enforcement work in the country. . . [Cheney] called the spying "a perfectly legitimate activity" . . .
Citing unnamed intelligence officials, The New York Times said the Pentagon and CIA actions were part of an aggressive expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering which is traditionally the realm of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2007/01/14/070114153813.ahatfwm8.html
NY TIMES - "There's a strong tradition of not using our military for domestic law enforcement," said Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, a former general counsel at both the National Security Agency and the C.I.A. who is the dean at the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific. "They're moving into territory where historically they have not been authorized or presumed to be operating."
Similarly, John Radsan, an assistant general counsel at the C.I.A. from 2002 to 2004 and now a law professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, said, "The C.I.A. is not supposed to have any law enforcement powers, or internal security functions, so if they've been issuing their own national security letters, they better be able to explain how they don't cross the line.". . .
In the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has complained about military officials dealing directly with local police - rather than through the bureau - for assistance in responding to possible terrorist threats against a military base. F.B.I. officials say the threats have often turned out to be uncorroborated and, at times, have stirred needless anxiety.
The military's frequent use of national security letters has sometimes caused concerns from the businesses receiving them, a counterterrorism official said. Lawyers at financial institutions, which routinely provide records to the F.B.I. in law enforcement investigations, have contacted bureau officials to say they were confused by the scope of the military's requests and whether they were obligated to turn the records over, the off
