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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.

Durbin kept silent on prewar knowledge
2007-04-27, Washington Times
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20070427-124842-1706r.htm

The Senate's No. 2 Democrat says he knew that the American public was being misled into the Iraq war but remained silent because he was sworn to secrecy as a member of the intelligence committee. "The information we had in the intelligence committee was not the same information being given to the American people. I couldn't believe it," Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, said Wednesday when talking on the Senate floor about the run-up to the Iraq war in 2002. "I was angry about it. [But] frankly, I couldn't do much about it because, in the intelligence committee, we are sworn to secrecy. We can't walk outside the door and say the statement made yesterday by the White House is in direct contradiction to classified information that is being given to this Congress." Mr. Durbin yesterday said there was no "ethical" way to notify the public of specific misleading information being touted by the Bush administration because it would have required revealing top-secret information being provided to the intelligence committee. Mr. Durbin, whose floor comments were part of the debate before yesterday's passage of an emergency war-funding bill, said he and half the Democrats on the intelligence committee voted against the war over concerns of the White House's "very flimsy case, but it was given to the American people as a proven fact." Congress authorized the 2003 use of armed force against Iraq by votes of 296-133 in the House and 77-23 in the Senate. Five of nine Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence voted for the measure as did all eight Republicans.

Note: Why wasn't this key information reported in other major media? And if it is clear that the public is being blatantly lied to by politicians with hidden agendas, doesn't that justify the breaking of secrecy oaths?

Journalists: U.S. military deleted photos of attack
2007-03-05, CNN News
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/03/04/afghan.photos.ap

Afghan journalists covering the aftermath of a suicide bomb attack ... said U.S. troops deleted their photos and video and warned them not to publish or air any images of U.S. troops or a car where three Afghans were shot to death. A freelance photographer working for The Associated Press and a cameraman working for AP Television News said a U.S. soldier deleted their photos and video showing a four-wheel drive vehicle in which three people were shot to death. The photographer, Rahmat Gul, said witnesses at the scene told him the three had been shot to death by U.S. forces fleeing the attack. "When I went near the four-wheel drive, I saw the Americans taking pictures of the same car, so I started taking pictures," Gul said. "Two soldiers with a translator came and said, 'Why are you taking pictures?."' It wasn't clear why the accredited journalists would need permission to take photos of a civilian car on a public highway. The American ... warned him that he did not want to see any AP photos published anywhere. The American also raised his fist in anger as if he were going to hit him, but he did not strike, Gul said. Taqiullah Taqi, a reporter for Afghanistan's largest television station, Tolo TV, said Americans were using abusive language. "They said, 'Delete them, or we will delete you,"' Taqi said. A freelance cameraman for AP Television News said ... a U.S. officer told him that he could not go any closer to the scene but that he could shoot footage. The cameraman asked not to be named for his own safety. As he was filming, he said, a U.S. soldier and translator "ordered us not to move." The cameraman said they were very angry and deleted any footage that included the Americans.

Note: Why is this kind of media censorship not being more widely reported? For more, click here.

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.

Ex-employee says FAA warned before 9/11
2006-11-24, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-11-23-whistle-blower-faa_x.htm

From 1995 to 2001, Bogdan Dzakovic served as a team leader on the Federal Aviation Administration's Red Team. Set up by Congress to help the FAA ... the elite squad tested airport security systems. In the years leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Dzakovic says, the team was able to breach security about 90% of the time, sneaking bombs and submachine guns past airport screeners. Expensive new bomb detection machines consistently failed. The team repeatedly warned the FAA of the potential for security breaches and hijackings but was told to cover up its findings. Eventually, the FAA began notifying airports in advance when the Red Team would be doing its undercover testing. He and other Red Team members approached the Department of Transportation's Office of the Inspector General, the General Accounting Office and members of Congress about the FAA's alleged misconduct. No one did anything. "Immediately (after 9/11), numerous government officials from FAA as well as other government agencies made defensive statements such as, 'How could we have known this was going to happen?' " Dzakovic testified later before the 9/11 Commission. After filing [a] complaint, Dzakovic was removed from his Red Team leadership position. He now works for the Transportation Security Administration. His primary assignments include tasks such as hole-punching, updating agency phonebooks and "thumb-twiddling." At least he hasn't received a pay cut, he says. He makes about $110,000 a year for what he describes as "entry-level idiot work."

Whistle-blowers tell of cost of conscience
2006-11-24, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-11-23-whistle-blowers_x.htm

In 2002, decorated FBI Special Agent Mike German was investigating meetings between terrorism suspects. When he discovered other officers had jeopardized the investigation by violating wiretapping regulations, he reported what he found to his supervisors. German says he had ... just received a mass e-mail from FBI Director Robert Mueller, urging other whistle-blowers to come forward. "I was assuming he'd protect me," German says. Instead ... his accusations were ignored, his reputation ruined and his career obliterated. Although the Justice Department's inspector general confirmed German's allegations ... he says he was barred from further undercover work and eventually compelled to resign. The experience is familiar to other government employees who have blown the whistle on matters of national security since 9/11. An increasing number of whistle-blowers allege that rather than being embraced, they're being retaliated against for coming forward. Those who come forward often face harassment, investigation, character assassination and firing. For those who are fired ... there is little recourse. Most national security whistle-blowers are not protected from retaliation by law. That's because the intelligence-gathering agencies are exempted from the 1989 whistle-blower Protection Act. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled against whistle-blowers in 125 of 127 of the reprisal cases seen by the court since 1994. Many had been star employees at the top of the pay scale and had spent decades in civil service. "I'm one of the last people who survived," says [Coleen] Rowley, the former FBI whistle-blower and Time magazine "Person of the Year." She says widespread, favorable media coverage saved her FBI career.

Sept. 11 Panel Doubted Officials
2006-08-05, MSNBC/Associated Press
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14191255/

The Sept. 11 commission was so frustrated with repeated misstatements by the Pentagon and FAA about their response to the 2001 terror attacks that it considered an investigation into possible deception, the panel's chairmen say in a new book. Republican Thomas Kean and Democrat Lee Hamilton also say in "Without Precedent" that their panel was too soft in questioning former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and that the 20-month investigation may have suffered for it. The book...recounts obstacles the authors say were thrown up by the Bush administration, internal disputes over President Bush's use of the attacks as a reason for invading Iraq, and the way the final report avoided questioning whether U.S. policy in the Middle East may have contributed to the attacks. "Fog of war...could not explain why all of the after-action reports, accident investigations and public testimony by FAA and NORAD officials advanced an account of 9/11 that was untrue," the book states. The questioning of Giuliani was considered by Kean and Hamilton "a low point" in the commission's examination of witnesses during public hearings. "We did not ask tough questions, nor did we get all of the information we needed to put on the public record." In their book, which goes on sale Aug. 15, Kean and Hamilton recap obstacles they say the panel faced in putting out a credible report in a presidential election year, including fights for access to government documents and an effort to reach unanimity.

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.

Forty years ago, public gained its right to know
2006-07-04, Kansas City Star
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/opinion/14960808.htm

An important anniversary will likely go unnoticed today, amidst all the hoopla surrounding the nation's 230th birthday. It's also the 40th anniversary of the federal Freedom of Information Act. Little known, poorly understood and, it seems, constantly embattled, the act stands as one of the most important pieces of legislation ever passed by the U.S. Congress. So important, in fact, that the Congress quickly exempted itself from its provisions. It required for the first time that broad categories of federal records be made available to the public. Today, the act remains the public's only legislative window on how government really works -- or doesn't. We can thank the act for the fact that we know that servicemen were once used as human nuclear guinea pigs; that 'detainees' in the war on terror were abused, and that the Central Intelligence Agency conducted mind-control experiments on Americans in the 1950s. But there is a mighty force working against open government. And that is the government itself. According to a report released last week, the federal government is falling further and further behind in filling requests under the law; is more often refusing to release documents, and is spending more money doing it. But perhaps the most distressing finding in the report, from the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government, is that the government has increased its use of broad discretionary exemptions to withhold documents from the public and the press.

Kicked out of Gitmo
2006-06-18, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-williams18jun18,0,339329...

Covering Guantanamo means wrangling with...logistics so nonsensical that they turn two hours of reporting into an 18-hour day...with hostile escorts who seem to think you're in league with Al Qaeda...a Pentagon power play that muzzles already reluctant sources and an unceremonious expulsion to Miami on a military plane, safety-belted onto whatever seat is available. In this case, that seat was the toilet. I ended up on that plane, on that seat, because...the only three newspaper reporters who managed to surmount Pentagon obstacles to covering the first deaths at Guantanamo were ordered off the base. When unexpected news breaks, like the suicides, the Pentagon's knee-jerk reflex to thwart coverage reminds me of how Communist officials used to organize Cold War-era propaganda trips for Moscow correspondents but then pull the plug when embarrassing realities intruded. What little we learn often comes to light by accident. During my first visit in January 2005...I asked...if the facility had ever been at or near capacity. "Only during the mass-hanging incident," the Navy doctor replied, provoking audible gasps and horrified expressions among the public affairs minders...none of whom were particularly pleased with the disclosure that 23 prisoners had attempted simultaneously to hang themselves with torn bed sheets in late 2003. Under ground rules we must agree to if we want access to the base, journalists may not have any contact with detainees, who are removed from sight at all but one camp during media tours.

Iraq's Pentagon Papers (by Daniel Ellsberg)
2006-06-12, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-ellsberg11jun11,0,977634...

A January poll [found] that 64% of Iraqis believe that crime and violent attacks will decrease if the U.S. leaves Iraq within six months. If that's true, then what are we doing there? It was questions very much like [this]...that led, eventually, to the publication of the first of the Pentagon Papers on June 13, 1971, 35 years ago this week. Nearly two years earlier...I first started copying the 7,000 pages of top-secret documents from my office safe at Rand...an act that I fully expected would send me to prison for life. It became increasingly clear that the whole chain of command, civilian and military, was participating in a coverup. It's a system that lies reflexively, at every level from sergeant to commander in chief, about murder. And I had...7,000 pages of documentary evidence to prove it. The papers documented in stunning detail a pattern of lies and deceptions by four presidents and their administrations over 23 years to conceal their war plans. It became clear to me that the justifications that had been given for our involvement were false. I thought to myself: I don't want to be part of this lying machine anymore. Today, there must be, at the very least, hundreds of civilian and military officials...who have in their safes and computers comparable documentation of intense internal debates -- the Pentagon Papers of Iraq, Iran or the ongoing war on U.S. liberties. Some of those officials, I hope, will choose to accept the personal risks of revealing the truth -- earlier than I did -- before more lives are lost or a new war is launched.

Note: If you have time to read only one full article on war deception, I can't recommend this one highly enough. Daniel Ellsberg, a former Marine, Pentagon official, and State Department officer in Vietnam, more than any single person exposed the huge deception involved in the Vietnam War. The story of his experience is astonishingly similar to what is happening today.

Molly Ivins: The Israeli lobby
2006-05-26, CNN News
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/04/26/ivins.israelilobby/index.html

A working paper by John Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, called "The Israel Lobby" was printed in the London Review of Books...and all hell broke loose. For having the sheer effrontery to point out the painfully obvious -- that there is an Israel lobby in the United States -- Mearsheimer and Walt have been accused of being anti-Semitic, nutty and guilty of "kooky academic work." Of course there is an Israeli lobby in America. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)...calls itself "America's Pro-Israel Lobby." In the United States, we do not have...full-throttle debate about Israel. Jews who criticize Israel are charmingly labeled "self-hating Jews." As I have often pointed out, that must mean there are a lot of self-hating Israelis, because those folks raise hell over their own government's policies all the time. It's...the vehemence of the attacks on anyone perceived as criticizing Israel that makes them so odious. Israel is the No. 1 recipient of American foreign aid, and it seems an easy case can be made that the United States has subjugated its own interests to those of Israel. Whether you agree or not, it is a discussion well worth having and one that should not be shut down before it can start by unfair accusations of "anti-Semitism."

Note In this article, Molly Ivans acknowledges that she is a pro-Israel Jew who believes we need to talk about the powerful influence of the Jewish lobby on American government. For information on how Harvard distanced itself from the above paper: http://www.nysun.com/article/29638. For the mixed reaction to this academic paper in Israel: http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0324/dailyUpdate.html

New U.S. Embassy in Iraq cloaked in mystery
2006-04-14, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12319798

The fortress-like compound rising beside the Tigris River here will be the largest of its kind in the world, the size of Vatican City, with the population of a small town, its own defense force, [and] self-contained power and water. The new U.S. Embassy also seems as cloaked in secrecy as the ministate in Rome. “We can’t talk about it. Security reasons,” Roberta Rossi, a spokeswoman at the current embassy, said. The embassy complex — 21 buildings on 104 acres — is taking shape on riverside parkland in the fortified “Green Zone,” just east of al-Samoud, a former palace of Saddam Hussein’s. The 5,500 Americans and Iraqis working at the embassy, almost half listed as security, are far more numerous than at any other U.S. mission worldwide. They rarely venture out into the “Red Zone,” that is, violence-torn Iraq. Large numbers of non-diplomats work at the mission — hundreds of military personnel and dozens of FBI agents, for example. U.S. embassies elsewhere ... typically cover 10 acres. Original cost estimates ranged over $1 billion, but Congress appropriated only $592 million in the emergency Iraq budget adopted last year. Most has gone to a Kuwait builder, First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting, with the rest awarded to six contractors working on the project’s “classified” portion — the actual embassy offices. Higgins declined to identify those builders, citing security reasons, but said five were American companies. The designs aren’t publicly available. Security, overseen by U.S. Marines, will be extraordinary: setbacks and perimeter no-go areas that will be especially deep, structures reinforced to 2.5-times the standard, and five high-security entrances, plus an emergency entrance-exit.

Note: For more perplexing facts on this secretive fortress in a Times of London article, click here.

Exposed: the secret corporate funding behind health research
2006-02-07, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1703694,00.html

Academics and the media have failed dismally to ask the crucial question of scientists' claims: who is paying you? In the 1990s...[Arise] was one of the world's most influential public-health groups. It described itself as "a worldwide association of eminent scientists who act as independent commentators". Its purpose...was to show how "everyday pleasures, such as eating chocolate, smoking, drinking tea, coffee and alcohol, contribute to the quality of life". "Scientific studies show that enjoying the simple pleasures in life, without feeling guilty, can reduce stress and increase resistance to disease". Between September 1993 and March 1994,...[Arise] generated 195 newspaper articles and radio and television interviews, in places such as the Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune, the Independent, the Evening Standard, El País, La Repubblica, Rai and the BBC. In 1998...[tobacco] firms were obliged to place their internal documents in a public archive. Among them...is a memo from...Philip Morris - the world's largest tobacco company. The title is "Arise 1994-95 Activities and Funding". This showed that in the previous financial year Arise had received $373,400: ...over 99% - from Philip Morris, British American Tobacco, RJ Reynolds and Rothmans. The memo suggests Arise was run not by eminent scientists but by eminent tobacco companies. How much more science is being published in academic journals with undeclared interests like these? How many more media campaigns...have been secretly funded and steered by corporations?

Note: If you want to understand how corporate interests secretly manipulate both scientific results and public perception, this excellent article is well worth reading.

Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him
2006-01-29, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/earth/29climate.html?ex=1296190800&...

After [a] speech and the release of data by Dr. Hansen on Dec. 15 showing that 2005 was probably the warmest year in at least a century, officials at the headquarters of the space agency repeatedly [warned] Dr. Hansen that there would be "dire consequences" if such statements continued. Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists. Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at the space agency, said...the restrictions on Dr. Hansen applied to all [NASA] personnel. "This is not about any individual or any issue like global warming," he said. Dr. Hansen strongly disagreed...saying such procedures had already prevented the public from fully grasping recent findings. Dr. Hansen said that nothing in 30 years equaled the push made since early December to keep him from publicly discussing what he says are clear-cut dangers from further delay in curbing carbon dioxide. The fight between Dr. Hansen and administration officials echoes other recent disputes. At climate laboratories of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, many scientists who routinely took calls from reporters five years ago can now do so only if the interview is approved by administration officials in Washington, and then only if a public affairs officer is present or on the phone.

Senators: White House Stalls Katrina Probe
2006-01-24, ABC/Associated Press
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=1537047

The White House is crippling a Senate inquiry into the government's sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina by barring administration officials from answering questions and failing to hand over documents, senators leading the investigation said Tuesday. In some cases, staff at the White House and other federal agencies have refused to be interviewed by congressional investigators, said the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. In addition, agency officials won't answer seemingly innocuous questions about times and dates of meetings and telephone calls with the White House, the senators said. A White House spokesman said the administration is committed to working with separate Senate and House investigations of the Katrina response but wants to protect the confidentiality of presidential advisers. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the committee's Republican chair, said "We are entitled to know if someone from the Department of Homeland Security calls someone at the White House during this whole crisis period." She added, "It is completely inappropriate" for the White House to bar agency officials from talking to the Senate committee.

Pentagon rolls out stealth PR
2005-12-14, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-12-14-pentagon-pr_x.htm

A $300 million Pentagon psychological warfare operation includes plans for placing pro-American messages in foreign media outlets without disclosing the U.S. government as the source, one of the military officials in charge of the program says. Run by psychological warfare experts at the U.S. Special Operations Command, the media campaign is being designed to counter terrorist ideology and sway foreign audiences to support American policies. The program will operate throughout the world, including in allied nations and in countries where the United States is not involved in armed conflict. The three companies handling the campaign include the Lincoln Group, the company being investigated by the Pentagon for paying Iraqi newspapers to run pro-U.S. stories. (Related story: Contracts for pro-U.S. propaganda) It's legal for the government to plant propaganda in other countries but not in the USA.

Vietnam Study, Casting Doubts, Remains Secret
2005-10-31, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/31/politics/31war.html?ex=1288414800&en=e2f5e3...

The National Security Agency has kept secret since 2001 a finding by an agency historian that during the Tonkin Gulf episode, which helped precipitate the Vietnam War, N.S.A. officers deliberately distorted critical intelligence to cover up their mistakes. The historian's conclusion is the first serious accusation that communications intercepted by the N.S.A., the secretive eavesdropping and code-breaking agency, were falsified so that they made it look as if North Vietnam had attacked American destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964, two days after a previous clash. President Lyndon B. Johnson cited the supposed attack to persuade Congress to authorize broad military action in Vietnam, but most historians have concluded in recent years that there was no second attack. The N.S.A. historian, Robert J. Hanyok, found a pattern of translation mistakes that went uncorrected, altered intercept times and selective citation of intelligence that persuaded him that midlevel agency officers had deliberately skewed the evidence. Mr. Hanyok's findings were published nearly five years ago in a classified in-house journal, and starting in 2002 he and other government historians argued that it should be made public. But their effort was rebuffed by higher-level agency policymakers, according to an intelligence official. The intelligence official said the evidence for deliberate falsification is "about as certain as it can be."

Note: For lots more on war fabrication see the excellent information in our War Information Center and the released FOIA documents from the early 1960s showing that top Pentagon officials planned to kill innocent Americans in order to provoke a war against Cuba at http://www.WantToKnow.info/010501operationnorthwoods

Dick Cheney's Song of America
2005-10-26, Harpers Magazine
http://www.harpers.org/DickCheneysSongOfAmerica.html

Drafting a plan for global dominance. Few writers are more ambitious than the writers of government policy papers, and few policy papers are more ambitious than Dick Cheney's masterwork. It has taken several forms over the last decade and is in fact the product of several ghostwriters (notably Paul Wolfowitz and Colin Powell), but Cheney has been consistent in his dedication to the ideas in the documents that bear his name, and he has maintained a close association with the ideologues behind them. Let us, therefore, call Cheney the author, and this series of documents the Plan. The Plan was published in unclassified form most recently under the title of Defense Strategy for the 1990s, as Cheney ended his term as secretary of defense under the elder George Bush in early 1993. The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the United States to maintain its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful. The Plan is disturbing in many ways, and ultimately unworkable. Yet it is being sold now as an answer to the 'new realities' of the post-September 11 world, even as it was sold previously as the answer to the new realities of the post-Cold War world. For Cheney, the Plan has always been the right answer, no matter how different the questions.

Bush's Veil Over History
2005-10-10, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/10/opinion/10kelley.html?ex=1286596800&en=0619...

Secrecy has been perhaps the most consistent trait of the George W. Bush presidency. Whether it involves refusing to provide the names of oil executives who advised Vice President Dick Cheney on energy policy, prohibiting photographs of flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq, or forbidding the release of files pertaining to Chief Justice John Roberts...President Bush seems determined to control what the public is permitted to know. Perhaps the most egregious example occurred on Nov. 1, 2001, when President Bush signed Executive Order 13233, under which a former president's private papers can be released only with the approval of both that former president (or his heirs) and the current one. Before that executive order, the National Archives had controlled the release of documents under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which stipulated that all papers, except those pertaining to national security, had to be made available 12 years after a president left office. Now, however, Mr. Bush can prevent the public from knowing not only what he did in office, but what Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan did in the name of democracy. The best interests of the nation are at stake. As the American Political Science Association, one plaintiff in the federal lawsuit, put it: "The only way we can improve the operation of government, enhance the accountability of decision-makers and ultimately help maintain public trust in government is for people to understand how it worked in the past."

Note: For more on secrecy and what we can do about it, click here.

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