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Ex-Iraq expert: Britain saw no threat before war
2006-12-15, CNN/Associated Press
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/12/15/iraq.uk.report

Britain's former top Iraq expert at the United Nations said in previously secret testimony that most government officials did not believe Iraq posed a threat in the months leading to the U.S.-led invasion. Carne Ross ... told a House of Commons committee that he and other analysts believed that Iraq had only a "very limited" ability to mount an attack of any kind, including one using weapons of mass destruction. The committee published Ross' testimony after assuring him that parliamentary privilege would protect him from prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. "It was the commonly held view among officials that the threat had been contained," Ross said in the written testimony. "Iraq's ability to launch a WMD or any form of attack was very limited. Iraq's air force was depleted to the point of total ineffectiveness; its army was but a pale shadow of its earlier might; there was no evidence of any connection between Iraq and any terrorist organization that might have planned an attack," he wrote. During the months leading up to the war, he said, there was no new evidence that Saddam Hussein posed a threat. "What changed was the government's determination to present available evidence in a different light," he testified. Ross told the committee that he resigned from the government in September 2004 because of his misgivings over the war. John Major, Britain's former prime minister, raised concerns ... that other issues remain to be resolved, including the distribution of oil revenues.

Note: This recently released testimony was given in 2004, but kept secret for reasons of "national security."

The Umbrella Assassin
2006-10-04, PBS
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/previous_seasons/case_umbrella/interview.html

The investigation into the assassination of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, murdered with a poison-filled pellet shot into his leg (possibly with a converted "umbrella gun") at a bus stop in Britain in 1978, was the most unusual and significant case that medical doctor and forensic specialist Christopher C. Green participated in during his twenty year career as an investigative officer with the Central Intelligence Agency. The reason it was so unique, he says, is that "we had pretty much all of the story from a forensic point of view. We had the body, the thing in the body that he was hit with -- the pellet -- and the stuff from the pellet. We knew that the material used to kill him, ricin, had been under development by a foreign service linked to the incident. We also knew that he had been a target of assassination attempts in the past. The story of him being a target was very well known. So we had information on the means, motive, and the opportunity." In the Markov case, "we had 80 percent of the story," says Green, who is now a professor of diagnostic radiology and psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at Wayne State University's Detroit Medical Center, where he uses brain imaging techniques to watch how the brain functions as people make decisions. His current work, he says, is a logical outgrowth of his service at the CIA -- where he still serves as a consultant. At the CIA, Green studied how the brain responds to chemicals and neurological agents.

Note: For more on this bizarre case, click here. A 2008 Reuters article on the case is also available here, as is a 2006 New York Times article at this link.

President Bush is trying to pardon himself
2006-09-27, CNN The Situation Room
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0609/27/sitroom.02.html

BLITZER: Let's check in with Jack Cafferty right now. JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: The House just passed President Bush's bill to redefine the treatment of detainees, and the Senate's expected to do the same thing tomorrow. Buried deep inside this legislation is a provision that will pardon President Bush and all the members of his administration of any possible crimes connected with the torture and mistreatment of detainees dated all the way back to September 11, 2001. At least President Nixon had Gerald Ford to do his dirty work. President Bush is trying to pardon himself. Under the War Crimes Act, violations of the Geneva Conventions are felonies. In some cases, punishable by death. When the Supreme Court ruled the Geneva Conventions applied to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, President Bush and his boys were suddenly in big trouble. They had been working these prisoners over pretty good. In an effort to avoid possible prosecution, they're trying to cram this bill through Congress before the end of the week when Congress adjourns. The reason there's such a rush to do this, if the Democrats get control of the House in November, well, this kind of legislation probably wouldn't pass. You want to know the real disgrace of what these people are about to do or are in the process of doing? Senator Bill Frist and Congressman Dennis Hastert and their Republican stooges apparently don't see anything wrong with this. I really do wonder sometimes what we're becoming in this country. The question is this: Should Congress pass a bill giving retroactive immunity to President Bush for possible war crimes?

Note: To watch a video clip of this broadcast, click here.

Bin Laden, Most Wanted For Embassy Bombings?
2006-08-28, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/27/AR20060827006...

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is a longtime and prominent member of the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list, which notes his role as the suspected mastermind of the deadly U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa on Aug. 7, 1998. But another more infamous date -- Sept. 11, 2001 -- is nowhere to be found on the same FBI notice. The curious omission underscores the Justice Department's decision, so far, to not seek formal criminal charges against bin Laden for approving al-Qaeda's most notorious and successful terrorist attack. The notice says bin Laden is "a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world" but does not provide details. The absence has also provided fodder for conspiracy theorists who think the U.S. government or another power was behind the Sept. 11 hijackings. From this point of view, the lack of a Sept. 11 reference suggests that the connection to al-Qaeda is uncertain. FBI officials say the wanted poster merely reflects the government's long-standing practice of relying on actual criminal charges. Bin Laden was placed on the Ten Most Wanted list in June 1999 after being indicted for murder, conspiracy and other charges in connection with the embassy bombings, and a $5 million reward was put on his head at that time. The listing was updated after Sept. 11, 2001, to include a higher reward of $25 million, but no mention of the attacks was added.

Note: For an article in the Ithaca Journal which probes much deeper into this matter, click here. To see the FBI's page on bin Laden: http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm. Many people forget that Bin Laden initially stated that though he applauded the attacks, he did not plan them. To see this reported on CNN, click here. Why would he deny involvement? For lots more, click here.

Shocking ruling
2005-09-13, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-09-13-other-news-edit_x.htm

Jose Padilla, who was born in New York and grew up in Chicago, landed at O'Hare airport more than three years ago and hasn't been seen since. He disappeared into a succession of jails and military prisons without being charged with a crime, without trial and without even a hearing on the allegations against him. In a ruling that puts the liberties of every citizen at risk, a federal appeals court said Friday there's nothing wrong with that. Worse, the ruling -- expected to be appealed -- isn't limited to O'Hare airport or to Padilla. The court said Congress has given the president authority to order the jailing of anyone anywhere for as long as he wishes, as long as he claims it's connected to the war on terrorism. That sounds more like the power accorded a dictator than the president of the United States. Repeal of the Constitution's Fourth, Fifth and Sixth amendments wasn't part of the package when Congress passed that anti-terrorism resolution after the 9/11 attacks.

UPI Hears...
2005-06-13, Washington Times/United Press International
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20050613-102755-6408r.htm

A former Bush team member during his first administration is now voicing serious doubts about the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9-11. Former chief economist for the Department of Labor during President George W. Bush's first term Morgan Reynolds comments that the official story about the collapse of the WTC is "bogus" and that it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7. Reynolds, who also served as director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas and is now professor emeritus at Texas A&M University said, "If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an 'inside job' and a government attack on America would be compelling." Reynolds commented from his Texas A&M office, "It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause of the collapse of the twin towers and building 7. If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is, then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis is not likely to be correct either. The government's collapse theory is highly vulnerable on its own terms. Only professional demolition appears to account for the full range of facts associated with the collapse of the three buildings."

Note: If the above link fails, click here. Why wasn't this widely reported? For 50 other senior government officials who have seriously questioned the 9/11 Commission Report, click here.

MI6 protected Nazi who killed 100 British agents
2005-05-14, London Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1611185,00.html

ONE of Hitler’s top intelligence officers, who ordered the murders of more than 100 British secret agents in concentration camps, was spared execution as a war criminal and selected to work for MI6. Newly opened papers contain startling evidence that...British Intelligence “turned” Horst Kopkow, faked his death and used him to fight the Cold War. The Atkins documents have been corroborated by newly declassified secret papers in the British and American National Archives. Britain has denied that it engaged in the dark arts used by the Americans, whose employment of Nazis to catch Communists has been well-documented. British intelligence sources pointed out that Kopkow was not in the league of “the butcher of Lyons”, a reference to Klaus Barbie, the most notorious war criminal employed by the Americans. The Kopkow case is uniquely chilling because the MI6 men who spared him were colleagues and “handlers” of his victims. Among those whose torture and death he sanctioned were men and women of the SOE and MI6 agents.

True Tales Odd Enough to Stop a Farm Animal's Heart
2005-04-07, New York Times
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01EFDD163EF934A35757C0A9639C...

At the start of the twisted treasure hunt that is "The Men Who Stare at Goats," the journalist Jon Ronson appears to be looking for furtive, paranoid quacks who play mind games. Take the goats of the title: Mr. Ronson cites a hundred of them. They have been used in top-secret experiments by psychic spies whose existence is not officially acknowledged by the United States Army. Military psychics are so well hidden that they aren't covered by the Army's coffee budget. It makes them cranky to have to bring their own coffee to work. "The damn psychic spies should be keeping their damn mouths shut, instead of chitchatting all over town about what they did." So says retired Maj. Gen. Albert N. Stubblebine III, the first of the many characters redolent of "Dr. Strangelove" who are found in this jaw-dropper of a -- hard to believe, but, yes -- nonfiction story. Some of these experts contend that a goat's heart can be stopped by the intense gaze of a certain kind of supersoldier. "Goat didn't have a chance," one of these tough guys [says]. Mr. Ronson ... describes the effort to deploy a Moscow scientist who had previously sent subliminal messages to Red Army troops ... in the Branch Davidian standoff. This scientist didn't work out because he was unwilling to transmit ... a bogus voice of God. He finds a prologue in MK-ULTRA, the real C.I.A. "Manchurian Candidate" research of the 1950's, which involved the disastrous use of LSD as a potential truth serum. And somehow Mr. Ronson is able to keep his book both light and nightmarish. [He] remains terrifically adept at capturing the horror of these developments without losing track of their lunacy.

Note: For the above article and lots more reliable information on these mind control programs, click here. For another excellent book by Ronson titled "Them: Adventure with Extremists," click here.

Dayton: FAA, NORAD hid 9/11 failures
2004-07-31, Minneapolis Star Tribune (leading newspaper of Minneapolis)
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1576/4904237.html

Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., charged Friday that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) have covered up "catastrophic failures" that left the nation vulnerable during the Sept. 11 hijackings. "For almost three years now, NORAD officials and FAA officials have been able to hide their critical failures that left this country defenseless during two of the worst hours in our history," Dayton declared during a Senate Governmental Affairs Committee hearing. Dayton told leaders of the Sept. 11 commission, that, based on the commission's report, a NORAD chronology ... said the FAA notified the military's emergency air command of three of the hijackings while those jetliners were still airborne. Dayton cited commission findings that the FAA failed to inform NORAD about three of the planes until after they had crashed. Dayton said NORAD officials "lied to the American people, they lied to Congress and they lied to your 9/11 commission to create a false impression of competence, communication and protection of the American people." He [said] if the commission's report is correct, President Bush "should fire whoever at FAA, at NORAD ... betrayed their public trust by not telling us the truth." Dayton argued that if the FAA had promptly sent a systemwide message about the hijackings, the pilot of the fourth plane seized, United Airlines Flight 93, might have been able to secure the cockpit doors and land the plane. Dayton said NORAD also falsely claimed that during the hijackings, it had F-16 Combat Air Patrol planes in place at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia and an AWAC command ship in the air to protect the nation's capital.

Note: Click here to visit the Internet archive, where you will see this article was removed not long after it was published. No other major media reported this vital news. To see the original, click here or here.

Columbine: Were There Warnings?
2004-02-26, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/26/national/main602460.shtml

A report on the Columbine High School massacre ... could answer questions about what police knew before the shootings that left 13 victims and two gunmen dead. The families of the victims of the April 20, 1999 massacre were the first to see, in private, [a] mountain of evidence. Some of the evidence is expected to show that Harris and Klebold were on police radar nearly two years before the attack. Brian Rohrbough, whose son, Danny, died at Columbine, said he was hopeful that he would get the answers he and other family members have been seeking. Rohrbough [has] been one of the most vocal critics of the sheriff department's failure to follow up on tips about Harris in the 18 months before Columbine. "I have a hard time sleeping at night because I cannot share with you what I know," he said hours before the report was to be released. Rohrbough and some other relatives of victims have seen a deposition given by Wayne Harris, father of Eric Harris. A federal magistrate has ordered the deposition, which is already sealed, destroyed. Rohrbough also is pressing for release of an investigation by the school district, which the district insists it must withhold because teachers questioned during the probe haven't given their permission. Rohrbough is convinced school staff saw a video the teen killers made that gave a hint of their plans. "We were lied to about a number of things and it seems like that things were hidden from us and we never understood why," said Scott. "And I honestly think the answers are not in the things we looked at yesterday. I think they're in sealed reports and possibly things that have been destroyed," he said.

Note: Why is the government destroying key evidence in this crucial case? Could it be that the government is somehow implicated? To explore this disturbing possibility, click here.

Ex-minister attacks US over war
2003-09-06, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3085656.stm

Former minister Michael Meacher has blamed the Iraq war on the US desire for world domination. Mr Meacher also suggested the Americans might have failed to prevent 11 September as it gave a pretext for military action. Mr Meacher was environment minister until three months ago and has already spoken out in opposition to the war. Writing in the Guardian newspaper, Mr Meacher said the 11 September attacks gave an invaluable excuse for attacking Afghanistan. And he said the US Government intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power because of its need for further secure oil supplies. In his piece Mr Meacher wrote: "It seems that the so-called war on terrorism is being used largely as a bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives. The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 11 September. The global war on terrorism has all the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project." Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said this agenda had been outlined by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) - a thinktank associated with leading neoconservative hawks within the US administration. In his article, Mr Meacher also said the US had passed up opportunities to catch Osama Bin Laden and other senior al-Qaeda figures.

Note: Mr. Meacher's comments were actually much stronger than the BBC reports. He stated publicy on the front page of the Guardian his belief that the U.S. government was very possibly behind the 9/11 attacks. To verify this, see the Guardian article mentioned in the BBC article above available here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blackwater Guards Tied to Secret C.I.A. Raids
2009-12-11, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/us/politics/11blackwater.html

Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the C.I.A.’s most sensitive activities — clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, according to former company employees and intelligence officials. The raids against suspects occurred on an almost nightly basis during the height of the Iraqi insurgency from 2004 to 2006, with Blackwater personnel playing central roles in what company insiders called “snatch and grab” operations. Several former Blackwater guards said that their involvement in the operations became so routine that the lines supposedly dividing the Central Intelligence Agency, the military and Blackwater became blurred. Instead of simply providing security for C.I.A. officers, they say, Blackwater personnel at times became partners in missions to capture or kill militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, a practice that raises questions about the use of guns for hire on the battlefield. The secret missions illuminate a far deeper relationship between the spy agency and the private security company than government officials had acknowledged. Blackwater’s ties to the C.I.A. have emerged in recent months, beginning with disclosures in The New York Times that the agency had hired the company as part of a program to assassinate leaders of Al Qaeda and to assist in the C.I.A.’s Predator drone program in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Note: After this report was published, the CIA announced it had terminated contracts with Blackwater. The reality is that many of Blackwater's services are provided under classified contracts, with both the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command, so the denial of "contracts" with Blackwater may be deceptive.

A list for those who complain
2009-11-29, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/29/IN941APQS7.DTL

In spring 2007, as one of many American air travelers who were inconvenienced when our names popped up on a federal "watch list," I never could get straight answers from my government. Was this a mistake, or was I being flagged for some reason? How many Americans were on that watch list? What were the criteria for getting on it? I filed my appeal with the Department of Homeland Security's Travel Redress Inquiry Program (TRIP). The Department of Homeland Security received 75,315 requests for redress under the TRIP program as of Oct. 31. Of those requests, 49,826 have been adjudicated, 7,217 are under review, and 18,272 are awaiting supporting documentation, according to the DHS. "Absolutely, the system didn't work as well as it should have," said Suzanne Trevino, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration. Once an airline receives a passenger's control number, along with full name, date of birth and gender, that information is transmitted to the government for clearance. Fewer than 2,500 known and suspected terrorists are actually on the "no fly" list, according to Trevino. And less than 10 percent of them are Americans. [Yet] the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center has acknowledged that its watch list has more than 1 million entries of names and aliases representing about 400,000 people [with] with an average of 1,600 people who presented a "reasonable suspicion" being added every day.

Note: For many revealing reports from major media sources on the worsening threats to civil liberties, click here.

Report: Blackwater Sent $1M Bribe to Iraq
2009-11-11, CBS News/Associated Press
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/11/national/main5611339.shtml

[Four] former top executives at Blackwater Worldwide say the U.S. security contractor sent about $1 million to its Iraq office with the intention of paying off officials in the country who were angry about the fatal shootings of 17 civilians by Blackwater employees. Iraqis had long complained about ground operations by the North Carolina-based company, now known as Xe Corp. Then the shooting by Blackwater guards in Baghdad's Nisoor Square in September 2007 left 17 civilians dead, further strained relations between Baghdad and Washington and led U.S. prosecutors to bring charges against the Blackwater contractors involved. The State Department has since turned to DynCorp and another private security firm, Triple Canopy, to handle diplomatic protective services in the country. But Xe continues to provide security for diplomats in other nations, most notably in Afghanistan. The former executives told the [New York Times] that the payments were approved by the company's then-president, Gary Jackson. They did not know if he came up with the idea. Any payments would have been illegal under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bans bribes to foreign officials. Two of the former executives said they were directly involved in discussions about paying Iraqi officials, and the other two said they were told about the discussions by others at Blackwater.

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

Italy Convicts 23 Americans for C.I.A. Renditions
2009-11-05, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/world/europe/05italy.html

In a landmark ruling, an Italian judge ... convicted a base chief for the Central Intelligence Agency and 22 other Americans, almost all C.I.A. operatives, of kidnapping a Muslim cleric from the streets of Milan in 2003. The case was a huge symbolic victory for Italian prosecutors, who drew the first convictions involving the American practice of rendition, in which terrorism suspects are captured in one country and taken for questioning in another, often one more open to [torture]. The fact that Italy would actually convict intelligence agents of an allied country was seen as a bold move that could set a precedent in other cases. Judge Oscar Magi handed an eight-year sentence to Robert Seldon Lady, a former C.I.A. base chief in Milan, and five-year sentences to the 22 other Americans, including an Air Force colonel and 21 C.I.A. operatives. Three of the other high-ranking Americans were given diplomatic immunity, including Jeffrey Castelli, a former C.I.A. station chief in Rome. Citing state secrecy, the judge did not convict five high-ranking Italians charged in the abduction, including a former head of Italian military intelligence, Nicolò Pollari. All the Americans were tried in absentia and are considered fugitives. Armando Spataro, the counterterrorism prosecutor who brought the case, said he was considering asking the Italian government for an international arrest warrant for the fugitive Americans. Tom Parker, Amnesty International’s United States point man for terrorism issues, called on the Obama administration to “repudiate the unlawful practice of extraordinary rendition.”

Note: The US government has refused to extradite to Italy the 23 Americans convicted in absentia of kidnapping. Yet the US is pressing for the extradition of 76-year-old Roman Polanski for fleeing the US after serious judicial malfeasance. For an analysis of these contradictions by US authorities over extradition, click here.

Court to reconsider CIA torture flight ruling
2009-10-28, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/28/BAMQ1AB9KF.DTL

A federal appeals court granted the Obama administration's request ... to rehear a case over a Bay Area company's alleged participation in CIA torture flights, setting the stage for a critical test of government claims of secrecy and national security. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco had reinstated a suit in April by five men who accused the company, Jeppesen Dataplan of San Jose, of taking part in the CIA's extraordinary rendition program that led to their imprisonment and torture. The 3-0 ruling rejected arguments by the Bush and Obama administrations that the case concerned secrets too sensitive to disclose in court. The full appeals court set aside that ruling. President Obama criticized the practice [of extraordinary rendition] but refused to disavow it, promising only that no prisoners would be tortured. Ben Wizner, an ACLU attorney, said ... that he was "disappointed that the Obama administration continues to stand in the way of torture victims having their day in court. This case is not about secrecy. It's about immunity from accountability," Wizner said. In the April ruling reinstating the lawsuit, the three-judge appeals court panel said the government and Jeppesen could take steps to protect national secrets as the case proceeded. The panel said the administration's argument, if accepted, would "cordon off all secret government actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the CIA and its contractors from the demands and limits of the law."

Note: For many reports from major media sources of growing government threats to civil liberties, click here.

Pittsburgh police used acoustic warfare during G-20 protests, drawing legal groups' ire
2009-10-01, ABC News/Associated Press
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=8719560

Police ordered protesters to disperse at the Group of 20 summit last week with a device that can beam earsplitting alarm tones and verbal instructions that the manufacturer likens to a "spotlight of sound," but that legal groups called potentially dangerous. The device, called a Long Range Acoustic Device, concentrates voice commands and a car alarm-like sound in a 30- or 60-degree cone that can be heard nearly two miles away. The volume measures 140-150 decibels three feet away – louder than a jet engine. During the Pittsburgh protests, police used the device to order demonstrators to disperse and to play a high-pitched "deterrent tone" designed to drive people away. It was the first time the device was used in a riot-control situation on U.S. soil. Those who heard it said ... the "deterrent tone" as unbearable. Joel Kupferman, who was at Thursday's march as a legal observer for the National Lawyer's Guild, said he was overwhelmed by the tone and called it "overkill." "When people were moving and they still continued to use it, it was an excessive use of weaponry," Kupferman said. Witold "Vic" Walczak, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union in Pennsylvania, said the device is a military weapon capable of producing permanent hearing loss, something he called "an invitation to an excessive-force lawsuit." Catherine Palmer, director of audiology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said 140 decibels can cause immediate hearing loss. ["Public safety"] officials said the complaints prove the device worked as designed.

Note: To watch a disturbing 10-minute clip of the use of this weapon at the G-20 meeting, click here. For many revealing reports from major media sources on increasing threats to civil liberties, click here.

Rush for Clues Before Charges in Terror Case
2009-10-01, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/nyregion/01terror.html

Federal prosecutors have said they possess a trove of evidence in their terrorism case against Najibullah Zazi, a set of damning accusations laid out in a powerful narrative. But interviews with people briefed on the case — and an examination of court papers filed by prosecutors — show that a great deal of the evidence presented against Mr. Zazi was not the result of a lengthy investigation. Instead, much of it was collected on the fly in the last two weeks, with hundreds of F.B.I. agents, federal prosecutors and detectives rushing to fashion a mosaic of details into a case that could be brought to court. The review of the government’s presentation, which is largely contained in a preliminary court document filed last week, suggests that many important facts asserted by prosecutors were discovered after Mr. Zazi was told by a Queens imam on Sept. 10 that investigators were looking for him. Moreover, several crucial discoveries were made after Mr. Zazi, a 24-year-old airport shuttle bus driver, had returned on Sept. 12 to Colorado, with his mission, if he had one, aborted. Some store and hotel employees in the Denver area said F.B.I. agents did not ask about Mr. Zazi’s purchases of beauty salon products that contained the raw materials to make explosives or his stay in a hotel suite to mix them until Sept. 17, five days after his return to Colorado. The lawyer who appeared beside him in Brooklyn, J. Michael Dowling, said after the hearing that prosecutors could not secure a conviction of his client on the conspiracy charge based solely on the evidence presented in the detention memorandum, because it contained no proof that he conspired with anyone to commit a crime.

Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the highly dubious "evidence" presented by federal authorities in their prosecutions of domestic "terror" cases, click here. For a powerful BBC documentary which shows how cases like these are used by politicians to manipulate public opinion to their advantage, click here.

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