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WikiLeaks Prompts New Diplomatic Uproar
2011-09-01, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/01/us/01wikileaks.html

News organizations in dozens of countries are panning for nuggets in the latest and largest dump of diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks, which last week suddenly accelerated its posting of the confidential State Department documents. Over a few days, the group made public nearly 134,000 cables — more than six times the total number published by WikiLeaks and many news organizations over the past nine months. On top of the new WikiLeaks posting, news media reports have suggested that a file containing all 251,287 diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks last year might soon be made public. Late Wednesday, WikiLeaks accused the British newspaper The Guardian of revealing a secret password that could lead to the exposure of the entire cable collection. In a statement, the group said it was that expectation that prompted its release of the cables. WikiLeaks has been a magnet for controversy since it began large-scale disclosures of American documents last year, and the new release stirred the same strong emotions. A cyberattack took down the main WikiLeaks Web site for a time on Tuesday, and speculation about possible perpetrators ranged from a number of governments to former WikiLeaks associates now estranged from Mr. Assange. The State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, while declining to confirm the cables’ authenticity, denounced the disclosure of classified information. Most of the cables are unclassified, but some are classified up to the level of “secret.”

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

Area 51: the plane truth
2011-06-18, The Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8579490/Area-51-the-plane-truth.html

What is definitely known about Area 51 is that it’s used by the US government to develop and test experimental aircraft and weapons systems and that it’s been doing this since flight-testing of the U-2 spy plane began there in 1955. Designed by Lockheed, on behalf of the CIA, the U-2 was a high-altitude, long-range aircraft capable of flying over enemy territory and taking pictures, unobserved. The site is bordered to the west by the Nevada test site – a vast tract of desert sequestered by the Department of Energy, ... very much off-limits to the public. Area 51 was the perfect place to develop and test the “black projects” – military aircraft so vital to America’s national security that even most members of the government had no “need to know” that they even existed. West of the base’s main living quarters, on a piece of ground slightly above the lake bed, a waste dump had been constructed. Vehicles with California license plates would head up to the dump to unload cargoes of waste too secret to dispose of normally. While a lot of waste material put into the pits was generated on-site, there were also the contents of those trucks that hauled up every week from California.

Note: Although this is an unusually informative article about Area 51, it dismisses any UFO involvement there, despite much evidence. See our informative UFO Information Center for additional perspectives.

'Guantanamo North': Inside Secretive U.S. Prisons
2011-03-03, NPR
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/03/134168714/guantanamo-north-inside-u-s-secretive...

Reports about what life is like inside the military prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay are not uncommon. But very little is reported about two secretive units for convicted terrorists and other inmates who get 24-hour surveillance, right here in the U.S. For the first time, an NPR investigation has identified 86 of the more than 100 men who have lived in the special units that some people are calling "Guantanamo North." The Communications Management Units [CMU] in Terre Haute, Ind., and Marion, Ill., are mostly filled with Muslims. About two-thirds of the inmates identified by NPR are U.S. citizens. Prison officials opened the first CMU with no public notice four years ago, something inmates say they had no right to do under the federal law known as the Administrative Procedures Act. The units' population has included men convicted in well-known post-Sept. 11 cases, as well as defendants from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1999 "millennium" plot ... and hijacking cases in 1976, 1985 and 1996. When the Terre Haute unit opened in December 2006, 15 of the first 17 inmates were Muslim. As word got out that the special units were disproportionately Muslim ... the Bureau of Prisons started moving in non-Muslims. Guards and cameras watch the CMU inmates' every move. Every word they speak is picked up by a counterterrorism team that eavesdrops from West Virginia. [Several] inmates have been suing the Federal Bureau of Prisons. They say the special units were set up outside the law and raise serious due process issues. Unlike prisoners who are convicted of serious crimes and sent to a federal supermax facility, CMU inmates have no way to review the evidence that sent them there or to challenge that evidence to get out.

Note: For other major media articles exposing excessive secrecy in government and elsewhere, click here.

Hiding Details of Dubious Deal, U.S. Invokes National Security
2011-02-20, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/us/politics/20data.html

For eight years, government officials turned to Dennis Montgomery, a California computer programmer, for eye-popping technology that he said could catch terrorists. Now, federal officials want nothing to do with him and are going to extraordinary lengths to ensure that his dealings with Washington stay secret. The Justice Department, which in the last few months has gotten protective orders from two federal judges keeping details of the technology out of court, says it is guarding state secrets that would threaten national security if disclosed. But others involved in the case say that what the government is trying to avoid is public embarrassment over evidence that Mr. Montgomery bamboozled federal officials. A onetime biomedical technician with a penchant for gambling, Mr. Montgomery is at the center of a tale that features terrorism scares, secret White House briefings, backing from prominent Republicans, backdoor deal-making and fantastic-sounding computer technology. Mr. Montgomery and his associates received more than $20 million in government contracts by claiming that software he had developed could help stop Al Qaeda’s next attack on the United States. But the technology appears to have been a hoax, and a series of government agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency and the Air Force, repeatedly missed the warning signs, the records and interviews show.

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

The Shock Doctrine with Naomi Klein
2011-02-18, MSNBC News
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41702708

Chris Hayes: With me now is journalist and author Naomi Klein whose books include “No Logo” and “The Shock Doctrine. The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.” Not all of our viewers have “The Shock Doctrine.” I‘ve seen a few people recently talking about how ... they were skeptical of the thesis before, but what‘s happening in Wisconsin is making them a little more receptive to it. Describe what the thesis of “The Shock Doctrine” is and how it applies in what we‘re seeing play out in Wisconsin. Naomi Klein: What I argue in “The Shock Doctrine” is that if you look at the 30-year history of the triumph of [disastrous] policies around the world, what you see is that you‘re great leaps forward happened during times of extreme crisis. That‘s because in a time of crisis, you have politicians able to do exactly what Scott Walker is doing right now in Wisconsin, which is say, the roof is falling in, we have a state of emergency here, we don‘t have time for democracy or public consent or deliberation or collective bargaining. So, it becomes an opportunity to ram through these unpopular policies. You have a budget crisis. You exaggerate the extent of the crisis and ... say we don‘t have any alternative but to push through these very unpopular measures. I think it‘s [particularly] significant that they‘re going after collective bargaining. They‘re trying to reduce the ability of participation of the workers in their own futures. It‘s a constricting of democracy. I end the book by saying that the way you resist these tactics is by understanding that they‘re happening while they‘re happening. What‘s happening in Wisconsin, is an excellent example of what I describe as shock resistance, because people are naming this while its happening.

Note: Many don't know that when Wisconsin Governor Walker ordered police to remove protestors from the state capitol building, the police refused, stating that they took an oath to serve the people and not the governor. To see a two-minute video clip of this amazing event, click here. To see how the major media greatly downplayed this event, read the New York Times coverage available here.

Mystery Over Detained American Angers Pakistan
2011-02-08, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/world/asia/09pakistan.html

The case of Raymond A. Davis, a former United States Special Forces soldier who is being held in connection with the deaths of two Pakistanis, has stirred a diplomatic furor, sending the precarious relationship between the United States and Pakistan to a new low, both sides say. Mr. Davis, 36, was driving in dense traffic [when] two Pakistani men on a motorcycle tried to rob him. He shot and killed both and was arrested immediately afterward by police officers who say he was carrying a Glock handgun, a flashlight that attached to a headband and a pocket telescope. The mystery about what Mr. Davis was doing with this inventory of gadgets has touched directly on Pakistani resentments that members of the large American security presence here roam the country freely and are not answerable to the Pakistani authorities. The United States has warned Pakistan that if Mr. Davis is not released ... badly needed financial assistance could be cut. The public furor increased Sunday when the 18-year-old wife of one of the men Mr. Davis shot committed suicide, after saying she believed that the American would be unfairly freed. At the heart of the public outcry seems to be uncertainty over the nature of Mr. Davis’s work, and questions about why his camera, according to police investigators, had pictures of buildings in Pakistani cities. One of the identification cards confiscated by the police after his arrest ... said he was a Defense Department contractor. Another ... said he was attached to the consulate in Peshawar, which contradicts an initial American Embassy statement on the day of the shooting that described Mr. Davis as a staff member of the consulate in Lahore.

Note: There is likely much more to this than meets the eye.

Exclusive video of HPD beating of teen burglar
2011-02-03, KTRK-TV (Houston ABC affiliate)
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/13_undercover&id=7936228

Months after four Houston police officers were indicted following the violent videotaped arrest of a teenage suspect ... 13 Undercover's Wayne Dolcefino obtained it exclusively. The reaction was overwhelming. The images were clear and graphic -- Houston police kicking, punching, and stomping teenage burglary suspect Chad Holley who had run, but was now clearly trying to surrender. The video showed the most physical cop that March day appeared to be Raad Hassan. His termination letter listed 15 kicks. There were a lot of them, and there was one kick after Holley was clearly handcuffed. The video created another firestorm ... after the mayor declared [that] the person who gave us the video should be prosecuted. The mayor said Channel 13 was "irresponsible" for showing you a controversial police arrest that happened ten months ago. Twelve officers were disciplined in the wake of the Holley case, but many have been given their jobs back against the city's will.

Note: Click on the above link if you want to see this shocking video showing how brutal some police can be.

Egypt protests: America's secret backing for rebel leaders behind uprising
2011-01-28, The Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/8289686/...

The American Embassy in Cairo helped a young ["activist"] attend a US-sponsored summit for activists in New York. On his return to Cairo in December 2008, [he] told US diplomats that an alliance of opposition groups had drawn up a plan to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak and install a democratic government in 2011. The disclosures, contained in previously secret US diplomatic dispatches released by the WikiLeaks website, show American officials pressed the Egyptian government to release other dissidents who had been detained by the police. In a secret diplomatic dispatch, sent on December 30 2008, Margaret Scobey, the US Ambassador to Cairo, recorded that opposition groups had allegedly drawn up secret plans for “regime change” to take place before elections, scheduled for September this year. The memo, which Ambassador Scobey sent to the US Secretary of State in Washington DC, was marked “confidential” and headed: “April 6 activist on his US visit and regime change in Egypt.” It said the activist claimed “several opposition forces” had “agreed to support an unwritten plan for a transition to a parliamentary democracy, involving a weakened presidency and an empowered prime minister and parliament, before the scheduled 2011 presidential elections”.

Note: As brought out in comments on this report, The Telegraph's interpretation of the leaked document is not the only possible one. To verify the claims of The Telegraph, you can read the leaked document in full by clicking here.

Army edits its history of the deadly battle of Wanat
2010-12-29, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/28/AR20101228043...

The Army's official history of the battle of Wanat - one of the most intensely scrutinized engagements of the Afghan war - largely absolves top commanders of the deaths of nine U.S. soldiers and instead blames the confusing and unpredictable nature of war. An initial draft of the Wanat history, which was obtained by The Washington Post and other media outlets in the summer of 2009, placed the preponderance of blame for the losses on the higher-level battalion and brigade commanders who oversaw the mission, saying they failed to provide the proper resources to the unit in Wanat. The final history, released in recent weeks, drops many of the earlier conclusions and instead focuses on failures of lower-level commanders. Family members of the deceased at Wanat reacted with anger and disappointment to the final version of the Army history. "They blame the platoon-level leadership for all the mistakes at Wanat," said retired Col. David Brostrom, whose son was killed in the fighting. "It blames my dead son. They really missed the point." The initial investigation, conducted by a three-star Marine Corps general and completed in the spring, found that the company and battalion commanders were "derelict in their duty" to provide proper oversight and resources to the soldiers fighting at Wanat.

Note: For many key reports from reliable sources on the horrific realities of the US wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq, click here.

In a Computer Worm, a Possible Biblical Clue
2010-09-30, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/world/middleeast/30worm.html

Deep inside the computer worm that some specialists suspect is aimed at slowing Iran’s race for a nuclear weapon lies what could be a fleeting reference to the Book of Esther, the Old Testament tale in which the Jews pre-empt a Persian plot to destroy them. That use of the word “Myrtus” — which can be read as an allusion to Esther — to name a file inside the code is one of several murky clues that have emerged as computer experts try to trace the origin and purpose of the rogue Stuxnet program, which seeks out a specific kind of command module for industrial equipment. Not surprisingly, the Israelis are not saying whether Stuxnet has any connection to the secretive cyberwar unit it has built inside Israel’s intelligence service. Nor is the Obama administration, which while talking about cyberdefenses has also rapidly ramped up a broad covert program, inherited from the Bush administration, to undermine Iran’s nuclear program. The difficulty experts have had in figuring out the origin of Stuxnet points to both the appeal and the danger of computer attacks in a new age of cyberwar. For intelligence agencies they are an almost irresistible weapon, free of fingerprints. Israel has poured huge resources into Unit 8200, its secretive cyberwar operation, and the United States has built its capacity inside the National Security Agency and inside the military, which just opened a Cyber Command.

Note: For many key reports from reliable sources on the ever-expanding "global war on terror," click here.

Pentagon workers tied to child porn
2010-07-23, Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/07/23/pentagon_wor...

Federal investigators have identified several dozen Pentagon officials and contractors with high-level security clearances who allegedly purchased and downloaded child pornography, including an undisclosed number who used their government computers to obtain the illegal material, according to investigative reports. The investigations have included employees of the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — which deal with some of the most sensitive work in intelligence and defense — among other organizations within the Defense Department. The fact that offenders include people with access to government secrets puts national security agencies “at risk of blackmail, bribery, and threats, especially since these individuals typically have access to military installations,’’ according to one report by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service from late 2009. At least two of the cases were contractors with top secret clearances at the National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on foreign communications. A separate case involves a contractor working at the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that builds and operates the nation’s spy satellites. A large amount of pornography was found on the office computer of a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA is responsible for developing some of the military’s most secret weapons and technologies.

Child abuse 'big business online'
2010-05-12, BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10108720

There are around 450 criminal gangs around the world making money from images of child sex abuse, the UK's Internet Watch Foundation has said. The watchdog's annual report says that the 10 most prolific of these account for more than 650 web pages. But despite these gangs being well-established online, the IWF says the the industry is not growing. To help obscure their movements, they move their distribution networks regularly between different providers and countries. Most of the gangs operate a pay-per-view system, charging a monthly fee of around '55 for access to images and videos. Critics have accused the IWF of being ineffective, partly because it is separate from the police and partly because much of the illegal material online does not originate from the UK. IWF spokeswoman Sarah Robertson admits that it is not a policing body but denies that means it cannot act. "The amount of child abuse content hosted in the UK has fallen from 18% to 1% in the last seven years," she said. It is important to remember the serious nature of the content the IWF polices, she said, and that behind every image is a child being abused. Some 44% of the content highlighted to the IWF last year depicted the rape of a child and 23% of it featured children below the age of six.

Note: For powerful evidence that this kind of abuse is much more widespread than believed, and even goes to the highest level of government, click here.

Jung at Heart
2009-11-12, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/11/AR20091111253...

Starting in 1912, Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), a specialist in the treatment of schizophrenia, began to experience strange dreams and frightening visions. He ... concluded that he had entered what we would now call a midlife crisis, a period in which he was being compelled to reexamine his life and explore his deepest self. To do this, he ... began a remarkable visionary text, illustrated with his own bizarre paintings: The Red Book. This he composed during a state of "active imagination" -- that is, of reverie or waking dream. As he said, he wanted to see what would happen when he "switched off consciousness." When Jung emerged from this period of crisis, he brought with him the first inklings of his most important contributions to psychology -- positing the existence of a collective unconscious common to all human beings. Gradually, Jung also shifted the focus of psychoanalytic therapy. Early on he had speculated that our libidinal energies are either outer-directed or inner-directed, i.e., people are primarily extroverts or introverts. But this was just a beginning. Jung soon directed his clinical attention to the second half of life and to the process he called individuation. According to editor Shamdasani, "The Red Book" presents "the prototype of Jung's conception of the individuation process." In Jung's view a successful life was all about balance, wholeness.

Note: For more on the fascinating book about Jung's hidden life, read the New York Times article available here.

Anti-war activist's works banned at prison camps
2009-10-11, Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/guantanamo/v-fullstory/story/1275646...

Professor Noam Chomsky may be among America's most enduring anti-war activists. But the leftist intellectual's anthology of post-9/11 commentary is taboo at Guantánamo's prison camp library, which offers books and videos on Harry Potter, World Cup soccer and Islam. U.S. military censors recently rejected a Pentagon lawyer's donation of an Arabic-language copy of the political activist and linguistic professor's 2007 anthology Interventions for the library. Chomsky, 80, who has been voicing disgust with U.S. foreign policy since the Vietnam War, reacted with irritation and derision. "This happens sometimes in totalitarian regimes," he told The Miami Herald by e-mail after learning of the decision. "Of some incidental interest, perhaps, is the nature of the book they banned. It consists of op-eds written for The New York Times syndicate and distributed by them. The subversive rot must run very deep." Prison camp officials would not say specifically why the book was rejected. A rejection slip accompanying the Chomsky book did not explain the reason but listed categories of restricted literature to include those espousing "Anti-American, Anti-Semitic, Anti-Western" ideology, literature on "military topics." Prison camp staff would not say how many donated books have been refused.

Spy tales: a TV chef, Oscar winner, JFK adviser
2008-08-14, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/14/AR20080814002...

Where do you look when you want to recruit spies? Just about everywhere, judging from the formerly top-secret records of the World War II agency that became today's CIA. There was the young woman who became TV chef Julia Child. And labor lawyer Arthur Goldberg who became a Supreme Court justice. And young scholar Arthur Schlesinger who became a presidential adviser. Names and details on nearly 24,000 one-time intelligence workers are included among 750,000 formerly top-secret government records released Thursday by the National Archives. The documents describe a worldwide spy network during World War II managed by the Office of Strategic Services, the intelligence outfit that later became the CIA. The personnel files, long withheld from the public, provide insights into young agents now known for other careers. Julia McWilliams, later the ebullient chef, ... was hired in the summer of 1942 for clerical work with the intelligence agency and later worked directly for OSS Director William Donovan, the personnel records show. Some of the others: Acclaimed movie director John Ford, whose skill as a videographer qualified him to manage wartime spy photography. Chicago lawyer Goldberg, whose early legal work with labor unions made him an attractive spy candidate to rally European labor unions to help with the war effort, years before President Kennedy appointed him to the Supreme Court. And Schlesinger, who spent much of his time with OSS working in London as an intelligence officer and writer on the political staff, producing reports on political activities.

Note: To examine the newly-released OSS personnel files at the National Archives, start here. For many revealing articles on government secrecy from verifiable sources, click here.

A History of Abuse in the War on Terror
2008-07-22, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/books/22schuessler.html?partner=rssuserland...

The Dark Side, Jane Mayer’s gripping new account of the war on terror, is really the story of two wars: the far-flung battle against Islamic radicalism, and the bitter, closed-doors domestic struggle over whether the president should have limitless power to wage it. The war on terror, according to Ms. Mayer, ... was a "political battle cloaked in legal strategy, an ideological trench war" waged by a small group of true believers whose expansive views of executive power she traces from the Nixon administration through the Iran-contra scandal to the panicked days after 9/11. Ms. Mayer’s prime movers and main villains are Vice President Dick Cheney and his legal counsel (now chief of staff) David Addington, who after the terrorist attacks moved to establish "a policy of deliberate cruelty that would’ve been unthinkable on Sept. 10." As the leader of the self-styled "war council," a group of lawyers who took the lead in making the rules for the war on terror, Mr. Addington startled many colleagues with the depth of his fervor and the reach of his power. The war council settled on a "pre-emptive criminal model," in which suspects would be used — more or less indefinitely — to gather evidence of future crimes rather than held accountable for previous ones. There would be minimal oversight from Congress. The C.I.A. would take the lead, developing aggressive new interrogation methods that would be described as “enhanced,” “robust,” “special.” What they were not, a series of secret memos issued by John Yoo and others at the Office of Legal Council would attempt to certify, was “torture.”

Note: For lots more on the realities behind the "war on terror", click here.

CIA whistle-blower Philip Agee dies in Cuba
2008-01-09, Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN0959077820080109

Philip Agee, a former CIA agent who exposed its undercover operations in Latin America in a 1975 book, died in Havana ... on Monday night. Agee worked for the CIA for 12 years in Washington, Ecuador, Uruguay and Mexico. He resigned in 1968 in disagreement with U.S. support for military dictatorships in Latin America and became one of the first to blow the whistle on the CIA's activities around the world. His exposé Inside the Company: CIA Diary revealed the names of dozens of agents working undercover in Latin America and elsewhere in the world. It was published in 27 languages. The CIA declined to comment on his death. Florida-born Agee said working as a case officer in South America opened his eyes to the CIA's ... goal in the region: to prop up traditional elites against perceived leftist threats through political repression and torture. "It was a time in the '70s when the worst imaginable horrors were going on in Latin America -- Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Guatemala, El Salvador -- they were military dictatorships with death squads, all with the backing of the CIA and the U.S. government," he told the British newspaper The Guardian in an interview published last year. "That was what motivated me to name all the names and work with journalists who were interested in knowing just who the CIA were in their countries," he said. Barbara Bush, the wife of former U.S. President George H.W. Bush, who was CIA director in 1976, blamed Agee in her memoirs for the murder of the Athens station chief, Richard Welch, in 1975. Agee denied any connection and sued her for $4 million, forcing her to revise the book to settle the libel case. In his autobiography On the Run, Agee detailed how he was hounded from five NATO countries, including the Netherlands, France and West Germany, after incurring the CIA's wrath.

Freedom of Information Act strengthened
2007-12-19, Baltimore Sun/Associated Press
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.foia19dec19,0,2394913.story

Congress struck back yesterday at the Bush administration's trend toward secrecy since the 2001 terrorist attacks, passing legislation to toughen the Freedom of Information Act and increasing penalties on agencies that don't comply. It [will] be the first makeover of the FOIA in a decade, among other things bringing nonproprietary information held by government contractors under the law. The legislation also is aimed at reversing an order by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, in which he instructed agencies to tend against releasing information when there was uncertainty about how doing so would affect national security. "No matter who is the next president, he will have to run a government that is more open than in the past" ... said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who chairs the Judiciary Committee. Supporting changes in the law were dozens of news outlets, including the Associated Press. "After years of growing government secrecy, today's vote reaffirms the public's fundamental right to know," said Rick Blum of the Sunshine in Government Initiative, which represents 10 news organizations. The bill restores a presumption of disclosure standard committing government agencies to releasing requested information unless there is a finding that such disclosure could do harm. Agencies would be required to meet a 20-day deadline for responding to FOIA requests. If they fail to meet the 20-day deadline, agencies would have to refund search and duplication fees for noncommercial requesters. They also would have to explain any redaction by citing the specific exemption under which the deletion qualifies. Nonproprietary information held by government contractors also would be subject to the law.

Note: For powerful reports exposing government secrecy, click here.

U.S. Secretly Aids Pakistan in Guarding Nuclear Arms
2007-11-18, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/washington/18nuke.html?ex=1353042000&en=1cc...

Over the past six years, the Bush administration has spent almost $100 million on a highly classified program to help Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, secure his country’s nuclear weapons. The aid, buried in secret portions of the federal budget, paid for the training of Pakistani personnel in the United States and the construction of a nuclear security training center in Pakistan, a facility that American officials say is nowhere near completion, even though it was supposed to be in operation this year. A raft of equipment — from helicopters to night-vision goggles to nuclear detection equipment — was given to Pakistan to help secure its nuclear material, its warheads, and the laboratories that were the site of the worst known case of nuclear proliferation in the atomic age. While American officials say that they believe the arsenal is safe at the moment, and that they take at face value Pakistani assurances that security is vastly improved, in many cases the Pakistani government has been reluctant to show American officials how or where the gear is actually used. That is because the Pakistanis do not want to reveal the locations of their weapons or the amount or type of new bomb-grade fuel the country is now producing. In addition, the Pakistanis were suspicious that any American-made technology in their warheads could include a secret “kill switch,” enabling the Americans to turn off their weapons. While Pakistan is formally considered a “major non-NATO ally,” the program has been hindered by a deep suspicion among Pakistan’s military that the secret goal of the United States was to gather intelligence about how to locate and, if necessary, disable Pakistan’s arsenal, which is the pride of the country.

Note: Isn't it interesting that the U.S. administration has so fervently attacked Iraq and Iran for developing nuclear weapons, yet they seem unconcerned about Pakistan, which is known to have supported terrorist groups.

Immunity for Telecoms May Set Bad Precedent, Legal Scholars Say
2007-10-22, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/21/AR20071021010...

When previous Republican administrations were accused of illegality in the FBI and CIA spying abuses of the 1970s or the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, Democrats in Congress launched investigations or pushed for legislative reforms. But last week, faced with admissions by several telecommunication companies that they assisted the Bush administration in warrantless spying on Americans, leaders of the Senate intelligence committee took a much different tack -- proposing legislation that would grant those companies retroactive immunity from prosecution or lawsuits. The proposal marks the second time in recent years that Congress has moved toward providing legal immunity for past actions that may have been illegal. The Military Commissions Act, passed by a GOP-led Congress in September 2006, provided retroactive immunity for CIA interrogators who could have been accused of war crimes for mistreating detainees. Legal experts say the granting of such retroactive immunity by Congress is unusual, particularly in a case involving private companies. "It's particularly unusual in the case of the telecoms because you don't really know what you're immunizing," said Louis Fisher, a specialist in constitutional law with the Law Library of the Library of Congress. Civil liberties groups and many academics argue that Congress is allowing the government to cover up possible wrongdoing and is inappropriately interfering in disputes that the courts should decide. The American Civil Liberties Union [said] in a news release Friday that "the administration is trying to cover its tracks."

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