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The Road to Area 51
2009-04-05, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/la-mag-april052009-backstory,0,786384.story

Area 51. It's the most famous military institution in the world that doesn't officially exist. If it did, it would be found about 100 miles outside Las Vegas in Nevada's high desert. Then again, maybe not — the U.S. government refuses to say. You can't drive anywhere close to it, and until recently, the airspace overhead was restricted — all the way to outer space. Any mention of Area 51 gets redacted from official documents, even those that have been declassified for decades. It has become the holy grail for conspiracy theorists, with UFOlogists positing that the Pentagon reverse engineers flying saucers and keeps extraterrestrial beings stored in freezers. Urban legend has it that Area 51 is connected by underground tunnels and trains to other secret facilities around the country. Well, now, for the first time, someone is ready to talk — in fact, five men are, and their stories rival the most outrageous of rumors. Colonel Hugh "Slip" Slater, 87, was commander of the Area 51 base in the 1960s. Edward Lovick, 90, ... spent three decades radar testing some of the world's most famous aircraft. Kenneth Collins, 80, a CIA experimental test pilot, was given the silver star. Thornton "T.D." Barnes, 72, was an Area 51 special-projects engineer. And Harry Martin, 77, was one of the men in charge of the base's half-million-gallon monthly supply of spy-plane fuels. As for the underground-tunnel talk ... Barnes worked on a nuclear-rocket program ... in Area 51's backyard. "Three test-cell facilities were connected by railroad, but everything else was underground," he says.

Note: So the government has been lying to us for 50 years about Area 51 and underground research there. What else are they lying to us about? For a more powerful, incisive article on this development, click here. And why isn't this getting more coverage? For another report showing major media cover-up of UFOs, click here.

Handling Of 'State Secrets' At Issue
2009-03-25, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/24/AR20090324035...

Civil liberties advocates are accusing the Obama administration of ... adopting the same expansive arguments that his predecessor used to cloak some of the most sensitive intelligence-gathering programs of the Bush White House. The first signs have come just weeks into the new administration, in a case filed by an Oregon charity [accused] of funding terrorism. President Obama's Justice Department not only sought to dismiss the lawsuit by arguing that it implicated "state secrets," but also escalated the standoff -- proposing that government lawyers might take classified documents from the court's custody to keep the charity's representatives from reviewing them. The suit by the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation has proceeded further than any other in challenging the use of warrantless wiretaps, threatening to expose the inner workings of that program. In his campaign plan to "change Washington," Obama criticized the Bush administration, saying that it had "ignored public disclosure rules" and that it too often invoked the state-secrets privilege. Now, Obama's claim of state secrets has prompted criticism. "There [have] to be other ways to protect secret information without having to block accountability," said Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at the University of California at Irvine. He said that "state secrets" has become a sort of "talismanic phrase" uttered by government officials who want to dispose of inconvenient or troubling challenges to their authority.

Note: For many reports from major media sources on government secrecy, click here.

The 9/11 Commission and Torture
2009-03-14, Newsweek Magazine
http://www.newsweek.com/id/189251

Powerful Democrats on Capitol Hill are clamoring for creation of a bipartisan "9/11 style" commission to investigate the legality of the Bush administration's antiterrorism tactics—especially its use of harsh interrogation techniques. The case for a "truth" commission was bolstered by the disclosure this month that the CIA had destroyed 92 videotapes of the interrogations and confinement of Al Qaeda suspects. A dozen showed the use of ... torture. Lawmakers say the obvious model for such an inquiry would be the 9/11 Commission. [But] the commission appears to have ignored obvious clues throughout 2003 and 2004 that its account of the 9/11 plot and Al Qaeda's history relied heavily on information obtained from detainees who had been subjected to torture, or something not far from it. The [Commission] raised no public protest over the CIA's interrogation methods. In fact, the Commission demanded that the CIA carry out new rounds of interrogations in 2004 to get answers to its questions. That has troubling implications for the credibility of the commission's final report. In intelligence circles, testimony obtained through torture is typically discredited; research shows that people will say anything under threat of intense physical pain. Former senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, a Democrat on the commission, told me last year he had long feared that the investigation depended too heavily on the accounts of Al Qaeda detainees who were physically coerced into talking. Kerrey said it might take "a permanent 9/11 commission" to end the remaining mysteries of September 11.

Note: For key statements by hundreds of respected scholars and professionals questioning the accuracy of the 9/11 Commission's report, click here.

Secret Bush Anti-Terror Memos Revealed
2009-03-02, CBS News/Associated Press
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/02/national/main4839662.shtml

The Obama administration threw open the curtain on years of Bush-era secrets Monday, revealing anti-terror memos that claimed exceptional search-and-seizure powers and divulging that the CIA destroyed nearly 100 videotapes of interrogations and other treatment of terror suspects. The Justice Department released nine legal opinions showing that, following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration determined that certain constitutional rights would not apply during the coming fight. Within two weeks, government lawyers were already discussing ways to wiretap U.S. conversations without warrants. An October 2001 memo by the Justice Department's John Yoo authorized the use of the U.S. military within the United States in combating terrorists. Yoo defined the 9/11 attacks as "war" and therefore concluded the President could employ the military domestically in a "military action" rather than a police action. Under Posse Comitatus Act, the American armed forces are forbidden from operating domestically. A March 2003 memo gave the President broad powers to transfer captured al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners to third countries. It also stipulated that the torture provisions of the Geneva Convention did not apply, because these prisoners were "non state" enemy combatants and therefore not entitled to Geneva protections. The Obama administration also acknowledged in court documents Monday that the CIA destroyed 92 videos involving terror suspects, including interrogations - far more than had been known.

Note: For key reports from major media sources on the hidden realities of the war on terror, click here.

Obama administration defending Bush secrets
2009-02-16, MSNBC/Associated Press
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29225492/

Despite President Barack Obama's vow to open government more than ever, the Justice Department is defending Bush administration decisions to keep secret many documents about domestic wiretapping, data collection on travelers and U.S. citizens, and interrogation of suspected terrorists. "The signs in the last few days are not ... encouraging," said Jameel Jaffer, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed several lawsuits seeking the Bush administration's legal rationales for warrantless domestic wiretapping and for its treatment of terrorism detainees. The documents sought in these lawsuits "are in many cases the documents that the public most needs to see," Jaffer said. "It makes no sense to say that these documents are somehow exempt from President Obama's directives." Groups that advocate open government, civil liberties and privacy were overjoyed that Obama on his first day in office reversed the FOIA policy imposed by Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft. Obama pledged "an unprecedented level of openness in government" and ordered new FOIA guidelines written with a "presumption in favor of disclosure." But Justice's actions in courts since then have cast doubt on how far the new administration will go. "This is not change," said ACLU executive director Anthony Romero. "President Obama's Justice Department has disappointingly reneged" on his promise to end "abuse of state secrets."

Note: For lots more on state secrecy from reliable, verifiable sources, click here.

Under Obama, same stance on rendition suit
2009-02-10, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/09/BAGS15QB5B.DTL

President Obama's Justice Department signaled in a San Francisco courtroom Monday that the change in administrations has not changed the government's position on secrecy and the rights of foreign prisoners - and that lawsuits by alleged victims of CIA kidnappings and torture must be dismissed on national security grounds. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ... is considering a suit accusing a San Jose company, Jeppesen Dataplan, of arranging so-called extraordinary rendition flights for the CIA. Although Obama has issued orders banning torture and closing secret CIA prisons, his administration has sent mixed signals on extraordinary rendition and the legitimacy of court challenges. Obama's nominee for CIA director, Leon Panetta, said last week that he approved of rendition for foreign prosecution or brief CIA detention. The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents five men suing Jeppesen for allegedly flying them to foreign torture chambers, said this case is the new administration's chance to live up to its promises. ACLU attorney Ben Wizner told the court that the supposedly ultra-secret rendition program is widely known. He noted that Sweden recently awarded $450,000 in damages to one of the plaintiffs, Ahmed Agiza, for helping the CIA transport him to Egypt, where he is still being held and allegedly has been tortured. "The notion that you have to close your eyes and ears to what the whole world knows is absurd," Wizner said.

Note: For lots more from major media sources on the disturbing trend toward ever-greater restrictions on civil liberties and due process, click here.

US using British atomic weapons factory for its nuclear programme
2009-02-09, The Guardian (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/09/us-uk-atomic-weapons-nuclear-power

The US military has been using Britain's atomic weapons factory to carry out research into its own nuclear warhead programme. US defence officials said that "very valuable" warhead research has taken place at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire as part of an ongoing and secretive deal between the British and American governments. Campaign groups warned any such deal was in breach of international law. Kate Hudson, of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said: "Any work preparing the way for new warheads cuts right across the UK's commitment to disarm, which it signed up to in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. That this work may be contributing to both future US and British warheads is nothing short of scandalous." The extent of US involvement at Aldermaston came to light in an interview with John Harvey, policy and planning director at the US National Nuclear Security Administration. Harvey said: "There are some capabilities that the UK has that we don't have and that we borrow... that I believe we have been able to exploit [and] that's been very valuable to us." In the same interview, Harvey admitted that the US and UK had struck a new deal over the level of cooperation, including work on ... a new generation of nuclear warhead known as the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW).

Executive Order -- Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel
2009-01-21, The White House Press Office
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ExecutiveOrder-EthicsCommitments/

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, ... it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. Ethics Pledge. Every appointee in every executive agency appointed on or after January 20, 2009, shall sign ... the following pledge: "As a condition, and in consideration, of my employment in the United States Government in a position invested with the public trust, I commit myself to the following obligations, which I understand are binding on me and are enforceable under law: "1. Lobbyist Gift Ban. I will not accept gifts from registered lobbyists or lobbying organizations for the duration of my service as an appointee. "2. Revolving Door Ban All Appointees Entering Government. I will not for a period of 2 years from the date of my appointment participate in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients, including regulations and contracts. "3. Revolving Door Ban Lobbyists Entering Government. If I was a registered lobbyist within the 2 years before the date of my appointment, in addition to abiding by the limitations of paragraph 2, I will not for a period of 2 years after the date of my appointment: (a) participate in any particular matter on which I lobbied within the 2 years before the date of my appointment; (b) participate in the specific issue area in which that particular matter falls; or (c) seek or accept employment with any executive agency that I lobbied within the 2 years before the date of my appointment.

Note: For lots more on government corruption, click here.

New Obama Orders on Transparency, FOIA Requests
2009-01-21, Washington Post
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2009/01/_in_a_move_that.html

In a move that pleased good government groups and some journalists, President Obama issued new orders today designed to improve the federal government's openness and transparency. The first memo instructs all agencies and departments to "adopt a presumption in favor" of Freedom of Information Act requests, while the second memo orders the director of the Office of Management and Budget to issue recommendations on making the federal government more transparent. His memo on government transparency ... directs the yet-to-be-named chief technology officer to work with the OMB director to develop an "Open Government Directive" in the next four months. Just in case new OMB director Peter R. Orszag needs any suggestions, the Sunlight Foundation -- a group dedicated to improving government transparency -- has several. Each agency should do an audit of its information and data how it makes it available, [director Ellen] Miller said. The administration should also redefine the definition of "public information" to mean that government information is not public until it is posted online in an easy-to-download format. "The devil is in the details," Miller cautions. Obama today also froze the salaries of senior White House staffers and issued executive orders on presidential records and new ethics guidelines for presidential appointees.

Note: For revealing reports on government secrecy, click here.

Cheney: A VP With Unprecedented Power
2009-01-15, NPR All Things Considered
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99422633

President Bush's vice president, Dick Cheney, is like no other in American history. Before Cheney, discussion about the vice presidency focused on how to make the office stronger, more effective. Not any more. "Vice President Cheney has been the most powerful vice president that we've ever had," said Joel Goldstein, author of The Modern American Vice Presidency. In the first term, Cheney reshaped national security law, expanded the prerogatives of the executive branch and orchestrated secret, warrantless domestic surveillance, circumventing a court set up by Congress specifically to oversee such surveillance. He ... played a major role in persuading President Bush to go to war against Iraq. On the domestic front, he screened potential Supreme Court nominees, presided over the budget, led the selection of personnel from Cabinet officers to key lower-level positions. Cheney assumed the role of chief operating officer for a president who disdained details. Bush was the decider, but Cheney, by limiting options and sometimes suppressing information, often framed the decision. Washington Post reporter Bart Gellman, author of Angler, an extraordinary book on the Cheney vice presidency, reports that Cheney was a ... skilled bureaucratic infighter [who] drove policy on the issues he cared about. Nothing better defines Cheney's influence than his domination of policy on the war on terror, setting up Guantanamo, getting waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques authorized, and circumventing established laws on domestic surveillance.

Note: Dick Cheney used secrecy as his principal means to control government policy -- secrecy not just from the public but even from much of the Bush/Cheney administration. For lots more on government secrecy from reliable sources, click here.

Where'd the Bailout Money Go? Shhhh, It's a Secret
2008-12-22, ABC News/Associated Press
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=6508158

It's something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where's the money going? But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation's largest banks say they can't track exactly how they're spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it. "We've lent some of it. We've not lent some of it. We've not given any accounting of, 'Here's how we're doing it,"' said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. "We have not disclosed that to the public. We're declining to." The Associated Press contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what's the plan for the rest? None of the banks provided specific answers. "We're not providing dollar-in, dollar-out tracking," said Barry Koling, a spokesman for Atlanta, Ga.-based SunTrust Banks Inc., which got $3.5 billion in taxpayer dollars. The answers highlight the secrecy surrounding the Troubled Assets Relief Program, which earmarked $700 billion—about the size of the Netherlands' economy—to help rescue the financial industry. There has been no accounting of how banks spend that money. "It is entirely appropriate for the American people to know how their taxpayer dollars are being spent in private industry," said Elizabeth Warren, the top congressional watchdog overseeing the financial bailout. But, at least for now, there's no way for taxpayers to find that out.

Note: For more key information that the bankers don't want you to know, click here. For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Cheney says he gets to decide which records to archive
2008-12-19, Los Angeles Times/Associated Press
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cheney19-2008dec19,0,781...

Dick Cheney's lawyers are asserting that the vice president alone has the authority to determine which records, if any, from his tenure will be handed over to the National Archives when he leaves office in January. That claim is in federal court documents asking that a lawsuit over the records be dismissed. Cheney leaves office Jan. 20, potentially taking millions of records that might otherwise become public. Cheney is being sued by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group that is trying to ensure that no presidential records are destroyed or handled in a way that makes them unavailable to the public. The 1978 Presidential Records Act requires that all presidential and vice presidential records to be transferred to the National Archives immediately upon the end of the president's last term and charges the archivist with preserving and controlling access to presidential records. The law allows exceptions for personal or purely party records. But the law is unclear on how disagreements will be resolved about disputed records, said Steven Aftergood, a government secrecy expert at the Federation of American Scientists. "Decisions that are made in the next couple of weeks may prove irrevocable. If records are held from the archivist now, they may never be recovered," Aftergood said. A judge in September ordered Cheney to preserve all records while the suit continued.

Note: For many reports from reliable sources on government secrecy, click here.

A.I.G. Secures $150 Billion Assistance Package
2008-11-11, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/business/11insure.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&...

The American International Group said on Monday that it ... had secured a new $150 billion government assistance package intended to stem the bleeding from its complex financial contracts. A central component of the new package will be to get the most tainted assets out of the company, in an effort to stop the collateral calls that have been rapidly draining A.I.G.’s cash. A.I.G.’s trading partners in these financial contracts will largely be made whole in the process. [An] important feature will be government investments of about $50 billion to create special-purpose entities to relieve the company of its most tainted assets. About $30 billion of the government money will be used to buy complex debt securities that were insured by A.I.G. and about $20 billion more will be used to buy securities backed by home loans. A.I.G.’s counterparties — financial institutions in the United States and Europe — have not borne significant losses on the financial contracts that led A.I.G. to the brink, and the new program suggests they will not. “We’re funding somebody on the other side” of A.I.G.’s derivatives contracts, said Lynn E. Turner, a former chief accountant with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Neither A.I.G. nor the federal government has been willing to provide the names of the company’s biggest counterparties, or their amount of exposure. “We’ve had way too many things here that nobody knows anything about,” said Mr. Turner, who is on the Treasury’s Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession. “That’s why no one has faith in the capital markets.”

Note: The culture of secrecy around this bailout using nearly $1 trillion of taxpayer money is appalling. For many revealing and reliable reports on the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Fed Defies Transparency Aim in Refusal to Disclose
2008-11-10, Bloomberg News
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aatlky_cH.tY

The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return. Bloomberg News has requested details of the Fed lending under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and filed a federal lawsuit Nov. 7 seeking to force disclosure. The Fed made the loans under terms of 11 programs, eight of them created in the past 15 months. The Fed's lending is significant because the central bank has stepped into a rescue role that was also the purpose of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, bailout plan -- without safeguards put into the TARP legislation by Congress. Total Fed lending topped $2 trillion for the first time last week and has risen by 140 percent, or $1.172 trillion, in the seven weeks since Fed governors relaxed the collateral standards on Sept. 14. The nation's biggest banks, Citigroup, Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, declined to comment on whether they have borrowed money from the Fed. They received $120 billion in capital from the TARP, which was signed into law Oct. 3.

Note: For many revealing and reliable reports on the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Secret Order Lets U.S. Raid Al Qaeda
2008-11-10, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/washington/10military.html?partner=rssuserl...

The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere. These military raids, typically carried out by Special Operations forces, were authorized by a classified order that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed in the spring of 2004 with the approval of President Bush. The secret order gave the military new authority to attack the Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States. In 2006, for example, a Navy Seal team raided a suspected militants’ compound in the Bajaur region of Pakistan. Some of the military missions have been conducted in close coordination with the C.I.A.. In others, like the Special Operations raid in Syria on Oct. 26 of this year, the military commandos acted in support of C.I.A.-directed operations. Apart from the 2006 raid into Pakistan, the American officials refused to describe in detail what they said had been nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks, except to say they had been carried out in Syria, Pakistan and other countries. The new authority was spelled out in a classified document called “Al Qaeda Network Exord,” or execute order. The 2004 order identifies 15 to 20 countries, including Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and several other Persian Gulf states.

Note: For key reports on government secrecy from major media sources, click here.

New Terrain for Panel on Bailout
2008-11-04, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/business/economy/04bailout.html?partner=rss...

Having been handed vast authority and almost no restrictions in the bailout law that Congress passed ... a committee of five little-known government officials, aided by a bare-bones staff of 40, is picking winners and losers among thousands of banks, savings and loans, insurers and other institutions. It is new and unfamiliar terrain for the officials, who are making monumental decisions — a form of industrial policy, some critics say — that contradict the free market philosophy they usually espouse. Predictably, the process is stirring alarm from Capitol Hill to Wall Street. Among the problems, critics say, is that despite earlier promises of transparency, the process is shrouded in secrecy, its precise goals opaque. Treasury officials have refused to disclose their criteria for deciding which banks ... get money. And officials have yet to say they even have a broader strategy, though banking executives are convinced the government wants to encourage acquisitions. Already, critics from Capitol Hill to Wall Street are lashing out at the program, saying the banks are misusing the capital infusions by hoarding the money rather than lending it. The government, the critics say, is wrongly steering funds to banks to take over weaker rivals. All this comes after Mr. Paulson abruptly shifted the focus of the program to injecting capital rather than buying distressed mortgage-related assets from the banks. This meant that Congress had never debated the details of how the government ought to carry out a recapitalization.

Note: With the intense secrecy and all of the lobbyist and big guns for banking fighting for hundreds of billions of dollars given practically free by the government, do you really think these "five little-known government officials" will be impartial in their decisions? For many revealing, reliable reports on the Wall Street bailout, click here.

Europe's secret plan to boost GM crop production
2008-10-26, The Independent (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/europes-secret-plan-to-...

Gordon Brown and other European leaders are secretly preparing an unprecedented campaign to spread GM crops and foods in Britain and throughout the continent, confidential documents obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveal. The documents –- minutes of a series of private meetings of representatives of 27 governments –- disclose plans to "speed up" the introduction of the modified crops and foods and to "deal with" public resistance to them. The secret meetings were convened by Jose Manuel Barroso, the pro-GM President of the Commission, and chaired by his head of cabinet, Joao Vale de Almeida. The prime ministers of each of the EU's 27 member states were asked to nominate a special representative. Neither the membership of the group, nor its objectives, nor the outcomes of its meetings have been made public. But The IoS has obtained confidential documents, including an attendance list and the conclusions of the two meetings held so far – on 17 July and just two weeks ago on 10 October – written by the chairman. The list shows that President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany sent close aides. Britain was represented by Sonia Phippard, director for food and farming at the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The conclusions reveal the discussions were mainly preoccupied with how to speed up the introduction of GM crops and food and how to persuade the public to accept them. The documents also make clear that Mr Barroso is going beyond mere exhortation by trying to get prime ministers to overrule their own agriculture and environment ministers in favour of GM.

Note: For an excellent summary of the many health risks posed by genetically modified foods, click here.

Wiretap lawsuit defense challenged in court
2008-10-18, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/18/BATN13JVOG.DTL

Civil liberties groups started a legal challenge ... to the new federal law designed to dismiss their wiretapping suits against telecommunications companies, saying the statute violates phone customers' constitutional rights and tramples on judicial authority. The law ... granted retroactive protection to AT&T, Verizon and other companies against lawsuits accusing them of illegally sharing their telephone and e-mail networks and millions of customer records with the National Security Agency. Almost 40 such suits from around the nation are pending before Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco. The law requires him to dismiss the cases if the Justice Department tells him the companies had cooperated in a surveillance program authorized by President Bush. Details of the department's filing and the judge's dismissal order are to be kept secret. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation attacked the secrecy requirements and argued that Congress and President Bush lack authority to order courts to whitewash constitutional violations. "If Congress can give the executive the power to exclude the judiciary from considering the constitutional claims of millions of Americans ... then the judiciary will no longer be functioning as a coequal branch of government," Cindy Cohn, the foundation's legal director, said in court papers. She said the law's secrecy makes the proceedings one-sided. "Due process requires more than the chance to shadow-box with the government," Cohn wrote.

Note: For many reports from reliable, verifiable sources on threats to civil liberties, click here.

The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America
2008-10-14, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/10/09/DI20081009...

By exploring the current, post-9/11 operations of the NSA [National Security Agency, James] Bamford ... goes where congressional oversight committees and investigative journalists still struggle to go. [When] the Bush administration declared its ... global war on terror, Congress agreed to most of the White House's demands. According to Bamford, the NSA's expanded powers and resources enabled it to collect communications both inside and outside the United States. He quotes a former NSA employee as a witness to the agency's spying on the conversations of Americans who have no connection to terrorism. After suing the NSA for documents, [Bamford] obtained considerable evidence that telecommunication companies (with the notable exception of Qwest) knowingly violated U.S. law by cooperating with the NSA to tap fiber optic lines. In impressive detail, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America tells how private contractors, including some little-known entities with foreign owners, have done the sensitive work of storing and processing the voices and written data of Americans and non-Americans alike. In the book, he offers new revelations about the National Security Agency's counterterrorism tactics, including its controversial domestic surveillance programs. Bamford warns of worse to come: 'There is now the capacity to make tyranny total in America. Only law ensures that we never fall into that abyss -- the abyss from which there is no return.'"

Note: Bamford is the author of two other books on the NSA: Body of Secrets and The Puzzle Palace.

Report Implicates White House: E-Mails Hint at Involvement in Prosecutor Firings
2008-10-01, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/30/AR20080930026...

In 18 months of searching, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine and Office of Professional Responsibility chief H. Marshall Jarrett have uncovered new e-mail messages hinting at heightened involvement of White House lawyers and political aides in the firings of nine federal prosecutors two years ago. But they could not probe much deeper because key officials declined to be interviewed and a critical timeline drafted by the White House was so heavily redacted that it was "virtually worthless as an investigative tool," the authorities said. "We were unable to fully develop the facts regarding the removal of [David C.] Iglesias and several other U.S. Attorneys because of the refusal by certain key witnesses to be interviewed by us, as well as the White House's decision not to provide ... internal documents to us," the investigators concluded in their report. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey on Monday named a veteran public-corruption prosecutor, Nora R. Dannehy, to continue the investigation. Investigators urged Dannehy to focus on the dismissal of Iglesias in New Mexico. He was the subject of repeated complaints by Republican lawmakers to White House and Justice Department officials in 2005 and 2006 over not bringing voter-fraud and corruption charges against Democrats. Their report said the internal probe at Justice could not reach Miers and Rove, "both of whom appear to have significant first-hand knowledge regarding Iglesias's dismissal."

Note: For many reports on government secrecy from reliable sources, click here.

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