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Scientists Find Ways to Make Us Slaves
2004-10-17, WantToKnow.info/London Times
http://www.WantToKnow.info/monkeydrones

Scientists have discovered a way of manipulating a gene that turns animals into drones that do not become bored with repetitive tasks. The experiments, conducted on monkeys, are the first to demonstrate that animal behaviour can be permanently changed, turning the subjects from aggressive to "compliant" creatures. The genes are identical in humans and although the discovery could help to treat depression and other types of mental illness, it will raise images of the Epsilon caste from Aldous Huxley's futuristic novel Brave New World. The experiments... involved blocking the effect of a gene called D2 in a particular part of the brain. This cut off the link between the rhesus monkeys' motivation and reward. Instead of speeding up with the approach of a deadline or the prospect of a "treat," the monkeys in the experiment could be made to work just as enthusiastically for long periods. The scientists say the identical technique would apply to humans. [They] found that they could make the monkeys work their hardest and fastest all the time, without any complaint or sign of slacking, just by manipulating D2 so that they forgot about the expectation of reward. Methods of manipulating human physical and psychological traits are just around the corner, and the technology will emerge first as a lucrative add-on available from in vitro fertilization clinics. "There's no doubt we will be able to influence behaviour," said Julian Savulescu, a professor of ethics at Oxford University.

Note: For lots more reliable information on how human behavior is already being manipulated, click here.

RNC [Republican National Convention] to Feature Unusual Forms of Sound
2004-08-25, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=99472

Outside the convention hall, New York City police plan to control protesters using a device that directs sound for up to 1,500 feet in a spotlight-like beam. Meanwhile, a display of former Republican presidents inside the hall will feature campaign speeches that are funneled to listeners through highly focused audio beams. Both technologies feature unprecedented manipulation of sound, but for very different purposes. And while both technologies have unique, "gee-whiz" factors, some remain uneasy with the idea of using sound to control crowds. When in weapon mode, LRAD blasts a tightly controlled stream of caustic sound that can be turned up to high enough levels to trigger nausea or possibly fainting. LRAD ... has been used by the U.S. military in Iraq and at sea as a non-lethal force. In these settings, operators can use the device not only to convey orders, but also as a weapon. In tests, police have shown how they can convey orders in a normal voice to someone as far as four blocks away. The sound beam is even equipped with a viewfinder so the operator can precisely target the audio by finding a person in cross hairs. Rather than using pure volume to throw sound far, the LRAD reaches distant ears by focusing the audio beam. Wherever the beam makes contact with air, the air molecules interact in a way that isolates the original audible sound. So if you're standing in front of the ultrasonic sound wave, you can hear the sound. If you're a few inches away, you hear nothing. Already, some Coca-Cola machines in Japan are equipped with the technology so passers-by hear the enticing sound of soda being poured into a glass of ice.

Note: For more reliable information on these "non-lethal weapons," click here.

Technology gets under clubbers' skin
2004-06-09, CNN News
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/06/09/spain.club

Queuing to get into one nightclub in Spain could soon be a thing of the past for regular customers thanks to a tiny computer chip implanted under their skin. The technology, known as a VeriChip, also means nightclubbers can leave their cash and cards at home and buy drinks using a scanner. The bill can then be paid later. Clubbers who want to join the scheme at Baja Beach Club in Barcelona pay 125 euros (about US $150) for the VeriChip -- about the size of a grain of rice -- to be implanted in their body. Then when they pass through a scanner the chip is activated and it emits a signal containing the individual's number, which is then transmitted to a secure data storage site. The club's director, Conrad Chase, said he began using the VeriChip, made by Applied Digital Solutions, in March 2004 because he needed something similar to a VIP card and wanted to provide his customers with better service. He said 10 of the club's regular customers, including himself, have been implanted with the chip, and predicted more would follow. "I know many people who want to be implanted," said Chase. "Almost everybody now has a piercing, tattoos or silicone. Why not get the chip and be original?" Chase said VeriChip could also boost security by speeding up checks at airports, for example. He denied the scheme had any drawbacks. The VeriChip is an in-house debit card and contains no personal information.

Note: Why is the media so upbeat about this? The article raises very few questions, yet seems to promote microchip implants in humans as the wave of the future for commerce.

Enough evidence for trial of CIA drugging
2004-05-25, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/05/25/BAGMH6R8OU1.DTL

A San Jose man who claimed the CIA secretly had given him LSD in 1957 as part of a mind-control experiment -- causing him to try to hold up a San Francisco bar ... offered enough evidence of possible drugging to go to trial on his $12 million damages suit. The decision by Chief U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel cited what appeared to be an admission by a former operative in the CIA program ... that he had slipped LSD into one of Wayne Ritchie's drinks. "I drugged guys involved in about 10, 12 (instances)," former federal narcotics agent Ira Feldman, who worked for the CIA's Project MKULTRA, told Ritchie's lawyer. The [MKULTRA] program ... was an attempt to find chemicals or techniques that could control human consciousness. The CIA and federal narcotics agents started giving mind-altering drugs to unsuspecting government employees, private citizens and prison volunteers in the early 1950s. Ritchie believes he was drugged during an office Christmas party. He ... was overcome with depression and a feeling that everyone had turned against him. He ... drove to a Fillmore District bar, demanded money ... and was hit over the head and knocked unconscious. He pleaded guilty to attempted robbery. Ritchie quit his job in disgrace, found work as a housepainter and spent years fighting off suicidal urges. Then in 1999, he read the obituary of MKULTRA's director, Sidney Gottlieb, and began to believe he had been one of the program's guinea pigs -- especially after the diary of a now-deceased MKULTRA agent showed he might have attended the same Christmas party.

Note: Though Ritchie lost the first round in court, he plans to appeal. For an abundance of reliable, verifiable information on secret government mind control programs, click here.

Professor has nightmare vision of global positioning technology
2003-05-07, WantToKnow.info/Kansas City Star (Leading newspaper of Kansas City)
http://www.WantToKnow.info/030307kansascitystar

Jerome Dobson is not joking. The University of Kansas research professor, a respected leader in the field of geographic information technologies [speculates about] "geoslavery" -- a form of technological human control that could make "George Orwell's `Big Brother' nightmare ... look amateurish." He's talking about overlords electronically punishing errant workers. He's talking about the possibility of people hooked to, tracked by, and potentially shocked or burned using inexpensive electronic bracelets, manacles or implants. Dobson worked for 26 years at Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory creating, for the government, the maps used in global tracking. He is the president of the American Geographical Society. And he is not alone in his thoughts. [In] the journal published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a paper titled "Geoslavery" is co-written by Dobson and Peter F. Fisher, British editor of the International Journal of Geographical Information Science. "Human tracking systems, currently sold commercially without restrictions, already empower those who would be masters. Safeguards have not yet evolved to protect those destined to be slaves," they wrote. With a laptop computer, employers can keep track of their drivers' every move. Implanted chips ... keep track of livestock or pets. Whereify Wireless Inc. sells its GPS Kids Locator for $400. The device, which also looks like a watch, can be locked to a child's wrist. Dobson said that ... none of the companies was thinking of anything nefarious. [Yet he] worries that where there is an evil will, there is an evil way. He hopes [to ] create debate and perhaps legislation or safeguards around the technology that will keep it from being misused.

US grants N Korea nuclear funds
2002-04-02, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1908571.stm

The US Government has announced that it will release $95m to North Korea as part of an agreement to replace the Stalinist country's own nuclear programme, which the US suspected was being misused. In releasing the funding, President George W Bush waived the Framework's requirement that North Korea allow inspectors to ensure it has not hidden away any weapons-grade plutonium from the original reactors. President Bush argued that the decision was "vital to the national security interests of the United States". The head of the Non-proliferation Policy Education Centre in Washington, a critic of the Agreed Framework, has warned that even when the new reactors are completed they may not be tamper-proof. "These reactors are like all reactors, They have the potential to make weapons. So you might end up supplying the worst nuclear violator with the means to acquire the very weapons we're trying to prevent it acquiring," Henry Sokolski told the Far Eastern Economic Review.

Note: Though this article is from 2002, one must ask why on earth President Bush would waive the requirement for inspectors who would ensure no nuclear weapons development? Wasn't this one of three countries he had already labeled as the axis of evil? For answers to these questions, click here.

History's Mysteries: Mind Control: America's Secret War
2001-08-01, History Channel
http://store.aetv.com/html/product/index.jhtml?id=73738&browseCategoryId=&loc...

It is one of the ill-kept secrets of America's intelligence agencies--for decades, they have worked virtually non-stop to perfect means of controlling the human mind. But while many have suspected the existence of these projects, the details have long been preserved. MIND CONTROL blows the lid off years of chilling experiments, drawing on documents reluctantly released through the Freedom of Information Act and interviews with some of the victims, including a woman whose past was literally taken away. Hear from John Marks, the author of In Search of the Manchurian Candidate, who broke the story of the CIA's abuses by unraveling the mysteries contained in financial records. All the other records pertaining to the experiments were destroyed by the agency in an attempt to prevent the details from ever being known.

Note: Interviews in this eye-opening documentary with top psychiatrists, lawyers, and victims send chills up the spine. A former head of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Ewen Cameron, is one of many highly respected doctors who erased the personalities of thousands of unsuspecting victims, while many in the profession simply turned a blind eye. To watch this powerful documentary free online, click here.

Conference on Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and U.S. Strategy
1997-04-28, Defense Link (Official Website of U.S. Department of Defense)
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/1997/t042897_t0428coh.html

Some countries have been trying to construct something like an Ebola Virus, and that would be a very dangerous phenomenon, to say the least. Alvin Toeffler has written about this in terms of some scientists in their laboratories trying to devise certain types of pathogens that would be ethnic specific so that they could just eliminate certain ethnic groups and races; and others are designing some sort of engineering, some sort of insects that can destroy specific crops. Others are engaging even in an eco- type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves. So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations. It's real, and that's the reason why we have to intensify our efforts.

If terrorist organizations have the capability to set off earthquakes and other major natural disasters, do you think huge military research laboratories with vast budgets might have some of the same capabilities? For more, click here and here.

New York City Mayor Hylan Foresees A Revolt
1922-12-10, New York Times
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F07EED6153AEF33A25753C1A96...

One of the most astounding facts about our American life is that the wealth and property of the country and the control of the machinery of government are in the hands of less than 2 per cent of the inhabitants. A small group of excessively wealthy individuals, members of the Republican and Democratic Parties alike, have, through the exercise of powerful, sinister and, too often, unlawful influence, usurped the government and seized public property on such a wholesale scale that they have become ... virtual dictators. A small group of international bankers and money lenders, public utility exploiters and tariff beneficiaries have actually dictated nominations for offices up to the Presidency. They have placed the slickest, cleverest, and most cunning manipulators in official positions, even in the minor posts, where they could be of service when called upon by the invisible power which, utterly devoid of all humanity, seeks but to wallow in riches. So absolute is the power of America's secret dynastic rulers that they have, without hindrance, written the very platforms and pledges of political parties, and because of substantial contributions to campaign chests they have arrogated to themselves the right to dictate the governmental policies of the administration elected to office regardless of party. Woe to the public officials who dare to resent their dictatorship! If there be such public officials who will not submit to their imperious dictation, then the flood-gates of lying press propaganda are released, sweeping the unhappy public servant to an earthly as well as political grave, or compelling him to compromise with his conscience and become their subservient tool to the end of his term.

Note: John F. Hylan was Mayor of New York City from 1918 to 1925. New York has long been the US banking and financial headquarters, with the mayor's office about a half-mile from the New York Stock Exchange. The rest of this important article can be accessed at this link as well as the one above. It is interesting to note that this article was published not long after the Federal Reserve was created, turning over huge amounts of control of the U.S. economy to the most powerful bankers in the country. For more on this, click here.

Bush Signs Law to Widen Legal Reach for Wiretapping
2007-08-06, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/washington/06nsa.html?ex=1344052800&en=5e75...

President Bush signed into law ... legislation that broadly [expands] the government’s authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants. The law [goes] far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists [and will] sharply alter the legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States. The new law for the first time [provides] a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens. “This more or less legalizes the N.S.A. program,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington. Previously, the government needed search warrants approved by a special intelligence court to eavesdrop on ... electronic communications between individuals inside the United States and people overseas. The new law gives the attorney general and the director of national intelligence the power to approve the international surveillance, rather than the special intelligence court. The law also gave the administration greater power to force telecommunications companies to cooperate with such spying operations. The companies can now be compelled to cooperate by orders from the attorney general and the director of national intelligence.

Files on Illegal Spying Show C.I.A. Skeletons From Cold War
2007-06-26, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/washington/27cia.html?ex=1340596800&en=3fa7...

Long-secret documents released Tuesday provide new details about how the Central Intelligence Agency illegally spied on Americans decades ago. Known inside the agency as the “family jewels,” the 702 pages of documents released Tuesday catalog domestic wiretapping operations, failed assassination plots, mind-control experiments and spying on journalists from the early years of the C.I.A. The papers provide evidence of paranoia and occasional incompetence as the agency began a string of illegal spying operations in the 1960s and 1970s, often to hunt links between Communist governments and the domestic protests that roiled the nation in that period. Yet the long-awaited documents leave out a great deal. Large sections are censored, showing that the C.I.A. still cannot bring itself to expose all the skeletons in its closet. And many activities about overseas operations disclosed years ago by journalists, Congressional investigators and a presidential commission — which led to reforms of the nation’s intelligence agencies — are not detailed in the papers. The 60-year-old agency has been under fire ... by critics [of] the secret prisons and harsh interrogation practices it has adopted since the Sept. 11 attacks. Some intelligence experts suggested ... that the release of the documents was intended to distract from the current controversies. And they and historians expressed disappointment that the documents were so heavily censored. Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive, the research group that filed the Freedom of Information request in 1992 that led to the documents’ becoming public, said he was initially underwhelmed by them because they contained little about the agency’s foreign operations. But Mr. Blanton said what was striking was the scope of the C.I.A’s domestic spying efforts.

Note: The entire body of the CIA's "Family Jewels" documents have been posted online by the National Security Archives, and can be read by clicking here.

White House revises post-disaster protocol
2007-06-02, Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/06/02/white_house_...

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. Discussion among legal specialists, homeland security experts and Internet commentators [includes] concerns that the policy may [make] it too easy to invoke emergency presidential powers such as martial law. 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. The unanswered questions have provoked anxiety across ideological lines. The conservative commentator Jerome Corsi [wrote] 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. Some specialists say that the White House should be more specific about its worst-case scenario plans, pointing out two unanswered questions: what circumstances would trigger implementation of the plan and what legal limits the White House recognizes on its own emergency powers. The policy ... does not contain a direct reference to statutes in which Congress has imposed checks and balances on the president's power to impose martial law or other extraordinary measures, [nor does it] explicitly acknowledge the National Emergencies Act, [a] law that gives Congress the right to override the president's determination that a national emergency still exists.

Police Log Confirms FBI Role In Arrests
2007-04-03, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/02/AR20070402015...

A secret FBI intelligence unit helped detain a group of war protesters in a downtown Washington parking garage in April 2002 and interrogated some of them on videotape about their political and religious beliefs. [Washington] D.C. police said authorities only recently found the logs of police responses to that day's events. That discovery came after three years of police assurances in federal court that no such records or logs existed showing the FBI's role. The FBI and D.C. police said they had no records of such an incident. And police told a federal court that no FBI agents were present when officers arrested more than 20 protesters that afternoon for trespassing; police viewed them as suspicious for milling around the parking garage entrance. Similar intelligence-gathering operations have been reported in New York, where a local police intelligence unit tried to infiltrate groups planning to protest at the Republican National Convention in 2004, and in Colorado, where records surfaced showing that the FBI collected names and license plates of people protesting timber industry practices at a 2002 industry convention.

Texas Governor Defends Vaccine Order
2007-02-22, MSNBC/Associated Press
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.aspx?feed=AP&Date=2...

Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday angrily defended his relationship with Merck & Co. and his executive order requiring that schoolgirls receive the drugmaker's vaccine against the sexually transmitted cervical-cancer virus. The Associated Press reported Wednesday that Perry's chief of staff had met with key aides about the vaccine on Oct. 16, the same day Merck's political action committee donated $5,000 to the governor's campaign. In issuing the order, the governor made Texas the first state to require the vaccine Gardasil for all schoolgirls. But many lawmakers have complained about his bypassing the Legislature altogether. The executive order has inflamed conservatives, who said it contradicts Texas' abstinence-only sexual education policies and intrudes into families' lives. Critics have previously questioned Perry's ties to Merck. Mike Toomey, Perry's former chief of staff, now lobbies for the drug company. And the governor accepted a total of $6,000 from Merck during his re-election campaign. Merck has waged a behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign to get state legislatures to require girls to get the three-dose vaccine to enroll in school. But on Tuesday the pharmaceutical company announced it was suspending the effort because of pressure from parents and medical groups. The Kentucky House on Thurday passed a bill that would require the vaccination for middle school girls unless their parents sign a form opposing it. Virginia lawmakers have also passed legislation requiring the vaccine, but the governor has not decided if he will sign it.

Note: The drug company lobby is the most powerful in the U.S., as reported by the former editor-in-chief of one of the most respected medical journals in the U.S. Click here for more.

Italy indicts 31 in alleged CIA kidnapping
2007-02-16, MSNBC/Associated Press
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17184663

A judge Friday indicted 26 Americans and five Italians in the abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect on a Milan street in what would be the first criminal trial stemming from the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. Prosecutors allege that five Italian intelligence officials worked with the Americans to seize Muslim cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr on Feb. 17, 2003. Nasr was allegedly transferred by vehicle to the Aviano Air Force base near Venice, then by air to the Ramstein Air Base in Germany, and on to Egypt, where his lawyer says he was tortured. Nasr was freed earlier this week by an Egyptian court that found his four years of detention in Egypt “unfounded.” All but one of the Americans have been identified as CIA agents, including the former Milan station chief Robert Seldon Lady and former Rome station chief Jeffrey Castelli. Among the Italians indicted by Judge Caterina Interlandi was the former chief of military intelligence, Nicolo Pollari, and his former deputy, Marco Mancini. The CIA has refused to comment on the case, which has put an uncomfortable spotlight on its operations. Prosecutors are pressing the Italian government to seek the extradition of the Americans. In Italy, defendants can be tried in absentia. Prosecutors elsewhere in Europe are moving ahead with cases aimed at the CIA program. A Munich prosecutor recently issued arrest warrants for 13 people in another alleged CIA-orchestrated kidnapping, that of a German citizen who says he was seized in December 2003 at the Serbian-Macedonia border and flown to Afghanistan.

Note: At long last, the CIA is beginning to be held accountable for flagrantly breaking laws resulting in torture.

Former top CIA official, contractor indicted
2007-02-13, MSNBC News/Associated Press
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17134253

The CIA’s former No. 3 official and a defense contractor were charged Tuesday with fraud and other offenses in the corruption investigation that sent former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham to prison. Federal indictments named Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, executive director of the CIA until he resigned in May, and his close friend, San Diego defense contractor Brent Wilkes, both 52, according to two government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. One of the officials said the grand jury heard claims that Foggo joined Wilkes on trips to Hawaii and Scotland, and was introduced to Wilkes’ employees as early as 2003 as a “future executive” of Wilkes’ company, Wilkes Corp., which allegedly received $12 million in illicit contracts from various government agencies. Cunningham, an eight-term Republican, served on the House Intelligence Committee and on the defense subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee — assignments that made him a key figure in the awarding of Pentagon contracts. Cunningham pleaded guilty in November 2005 to taking $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors and others, including mortgage payments and a yacht he named “Duke-Stir.” The indictments paint a stunning picture of corruption in Washington. The alleged crimes by Cunningham and defense contractors is, according to the U.S. Attorney in San Diego, "breathtaking in scope." Foggo was named executive director of the CIA in 2004, responsible for running the agency’s day-to-day operations. He retired in May while under investigation by the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, the Pentagon, the CIA and the U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego.

Note: This is very encouraging news as the once "untouchable" CIA is finally being subject to some of the same laws and justice as the rest of us.

Power is not only an aphrodisiac, it does weird things to some of us
2006-11-19, San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/19/INGT9MCJHJ1.DTL

Lyndon Johnson relished summoning underlings in to confer with him while he sat on the toilet. Richard Nixon authorized illegal wiretaps on perceived enemies because, as he later told an interviewer, "when the president does it, it's not illegal." Bill Clinton wantonly had sex with intern Monica Lewinsky. Why is it said that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely? In the past few years...research has zeroed in on what an intoxicating elixir power can be. And one thing has become clear: The phrase "drunk with power" is often a dead-on description. These new studies show that power acts to lower inhibitions, much the same as alcohol does. It explains why powerful people act with great daring and sometimes behave rather like gorillas. "Disinhibition is the very root of power," said Stanford Professor Deborah Gruenfeld, a social psychologist who focuses on the study of power. "For most people, what we think of as 'power plays' aren't calculated and Machiavellian -- they happen at the subconscious level. When people feel powerful, they stop trying to 'control themselves.'" People with power...tend to be more oblivious to what others think, more likely to pursue the satisfaction of their own appetites, poorer judges of other people's reactions, more likely to hold stereotypes, overly optimistic and more likely to take risks. People who are naturally selfish grow even more selfish if they attain power, while people who are naturally selfless and giving become more so with power. Henry Kissinger discerned that power is "the ultimate aphrodisiac." "Nearly all men can stand adversity," said Abraham Lincoln, "but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."

Note: This most excellent article graphically describes the problems that can occur when a hierarchical political systems places certain individuals in positions of great authority. For more on this fascinating topic, click here.

Pentagon boosts 'media war' unit
2006-10-31, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6100906.stm

The US defence department has set up a new unit to better promote its message across 24-hour rolling news outlets, and particularly on the internet. The Pentagon said the move would boost its ability to counter "inaccurate" news stories and exploit new media. The newly-established unit would use "new media" channels to push its message and "set the record straight", Pentagon press secretary Eric Ruff said. A Pentagon memo seen by the Associated Press news agency said the new unit would "develop messages" for the 24-hour news cycle and aim to "correct the record". The unit would reportedly monitor media such as weblogs and would also employ "surrogates", or top politicians or lobbyists who could be interviewed on TV and radio shows.

Don't Turn Us Into Poodles
2006-07-04, New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/opinion/04kristof.html

Journalists regularly hold back information for national security reasons; I recently withheld information at the request of the intelligence community. The one thing worse than a press that is "out of control" is one that is under control. Anybody who has lived in a Communist country knows that. Just consider what would happen if the news media as a whole were as docile to the administration as Fox News or The Wall Street Journal editorial page. When I was covering the war in Iraq, we reporters would sometimes tune to Fox News and watch, mystified, as it purported to describe how Iraqis loved Americans. Such coverage...misled conservatives about Iraq from the beginning. The real victims of Fox News weren't the liberals it attacked but the conservatives who believed it. Historically, we in the press have done more damage to our nation by withholding secret information than by publishing it. One example was this newspaper's withholding details of the plans for the Bay of Pigs invasion. President Kennedy himself suggested that the U.S. would have been better served if The Times had published the full story and derailed the invasion. Then there were the C.I.A. abuses that journalists kept mum about until they spilled over and prompted the Church Committee investigation in the 1970's. In the run-up to the Iraq war, the press...was too credulous about claims that Iraq possessed large amounts of W.M.D. In each of these cases...we failed in our watchdog role, and we failed our country. So be very wary of Mr. Bush's effort to tame the press. Watchdogs can be mean, dumb and obnoxious, but it would be even more dangerous to trade them in for lap dogs.

Bush Ignores Laws He Inks, Vexing Congress
2006-06-27, ABC News/Associated Press
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2122700

A bill becomes the rule of the land when Congress passes it and the president signs it into law, right? Not necessarily, according to the White House. A law is not binding when a president issues a separate statement saying he reserves the right to revise, interpret or disregard it on national security and constitutional grounds. That's the argument a Bush administration official is expected to make Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who has demanded a hearing on a practice he considers an example of the administration's abuse of power. "It's a challenge to the plain language of the Constitution," Specter said in an interview. [Bush has] challenge[d] many more statutes passed by Congress than any other president. Specter's hearing is about more than the statements. He's been compiling a list of White House practices he bluntly says could amount to abuse of executive power from warrantless domestic wiretapping program to sending officials to hearings who refuse to answer lawmakers' questions. But Specter and his allies maintain that Bush is doing an end-run around the veto process. In his presidency's sixth year, Bush has yet to issue a single veto. Instead, he has issued hundreds of signing statements invoking his right to interpret or ignore laws on everything from whistleblower protections to how Congress oversees the Patriot Act.

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