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Wednesday, June 11, 2003 |
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Re: Further attacks on Blair Dear Friends: Questions about the invasion of Iraq and purported weapons of mass destruction just won't go away, no matter how much Blair and Bush wish they would. Nor should they. We have seen the abuse of power both at home and abroad, and there are many serious questions that have yet to be asked, let alone answered. The scathing report by Parliamentary watchdog the Intelligence and Security Committee is one of many to come. _______________________________ The Independent (UK) June 11, 2003 Security Watchdog Attacks Blair Over Iraq Intelligence by Kim Sengupta The Parliamentary watchdog responsible for security accused the Government yesterday of manipulating intelligence on Iraq while failing to provide political leadership for the war on terror. In a hard-hitting annual report, the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) censured Downing Street for publishing a dossier on Iraq's weapons in which security information was combined with a student's thesis that was taken from the internet. At the same time, there was strong personal criticism of Tony Blair for failing to hold a meeting of a cabinet committee set up to combat terrorism. The report portrays a government willing to spice official intelligence with uncorroborated material, while ministers remain badly informed and "not sufficiently engaged" in the fight against groups such as al-Qa'ida. It maintains that senior ministers did not read all the espionage material available to them, including vital intelligence in tackling weapons of mass destruction. The ISC said it decided to highlight the crucial Downing Street document on Iraq - the so-called dodgy dossier published in February - after consultations with members of the intelligence community. The committee was so worried by the additions to the initial intelligence information - made by a team under Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's communications director - that it had obtained reassurance it would not occur again. The report states: "It is imperative that the agencies are consulted before any material is published. This process was not followed. We believe CSI ministers are not sufficiently engaged in the setting of requirements and priorities for secret intelligence." © 2001 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd _______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to: Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact: Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================== 11:13:02 AM 
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Re: Justice Department surveillance Dear Friends: Civil liberties groups state that the Justice Department has not provided enough detail about how it uses the broad surveillance powers granted under the USA Patriot Act to monitor Internet use. The critique comes as the Justice Department is expected to seek an extension of authorities granted under the controversial act. Patriot II, a draft proposal extending the act, lays out a wish list of new powers. The proposal would broadly expand the government's surveillance and detention powers, including extending authorization periods for secret wiretaps and Internet surveillance. ________________________ Wired News June 10, 2003 DOJ Net Surveillance Under Fire by Joanna Glasner The Justice Department's statements -- and what it did not say -- in a congressional inquiry on the use of broadened surveillance powers authorized after the Sept. 11 attacks is raising a red flag among civil liberties groups. A central concern is the lack of clarity regarding the scope of Internet surveillance powers granted in the controversial USA Patriot Act. In response to testimony last week by Attorney General John Ashcroft before the House Judiciary Committee, the American Civil Liberties Union published a memo criticizing the government's attempts to apply the methodology for tracing phone calls to tracking Internet use. Timothy Edgar, an ACLU legislative counsel and the report's author, argued that so-called "trap and trace" devices, traditionally used to capture telephone numbers but not the content of conversations, could potentially violate a subject's privacy if it's used to watch Web activity. On the Internet, investigators use "trap and trace" technology to monitor e-mail, Web surfing and other activity to search for clues about potentially illegal activity. The problem, according to Edgar, is that a URL, unlike a phone number, provides detailed information about the content a person is obtaining. "It isn't always technologically feasible to separate content information from routing information," said Edgar. An overly intrusive application of tracing devices online was one of several Internet-related red flags raised by civil rights advocates following Ashcroft's testimony and the release last month of a Justice Department document answering lawmakers' questions about the Patriot Act. Another Net-related concern in the ACLU memo is the potential use of Web-surfing records in data-mining projects, allowing investigators to fish for illicit activity unrelated to the original inquiry. The ACLU also criticized the paucity of information provided by the Justice Department regarding what Internet content it considers off-limits in searches. It also questioned the application of some surveillance technologies in garden-variety criminal cases. The critique comes as the Justice Department is expected to seek an extension of authorities granted under the Patriot Act. The agency has not said when it will seek Congressional approval of a Patriot Act extension. But a draft proposal laying out a wish list of new powers, nicknamed "Patriot II," surfaced earlier this year, indicating that the Justice Department has already expended considerable effort planning its appeal. The proposal would broadly expand the government's surveillance and detention powers, including extending authorization periods for secret wiretaps and Internet surveillance. The Justice Department has a limited time to seek a follow-up bill. Many of the authorities granted under the original Patriot Act -- enacted two months after the Sept.11 attacks -- expire at the end of 2005. But before approving broad new powers for federal investigators, civil rights groups say Congress must ensure that the government is doing what it can to see that existing powers are applied responsibly. That could be a difficult task, considering that thus far the Justice Department has been tight-lipped about Patriot Act-related activities, said Lee Tien, attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. As far as Internet surveillance is concerned, Tien said the Justice Department's preference for minimal disclosure is aided by the fact that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act covers authorization for communications monitoring in anti-terrorism cases. Under FISA, investigators obtain authorization to conduct surveillance through a secret court, leaving the public out of the loop. "What we're concerned about is you have a situation where the government, because there is less accountability, can engage in more surveillance without people knowing about it," Tien said. The ACLU, meanwhile, says it would like to see more disclosure regarding the amount and types of data investigators obtain when monitoring Internet use. So far, the Justice Department has provided limited guidance on this subject. A memo (PDF) authored last year by Deputy Attorney General Larry D. Thompson states that the policy of the Justice Department is to use "reasonably available technology" in order to avoid collection of any content when trap and trace devices are employed. If content still gets collected, the memo states that "no affirmative investigative use may be made of that content." But the ACLU's Edgar maintains that the Patriot Act does not clearly define what constitutes content in the context of the Internet. For example, he notes, it is unclear whether an investigator, without probable cause, would find out only that a subject has visited the Google website, or also that he or she entered the search terms "Bush" and "Halliburton," or "Clinton" and "Whitewater." Edgar said the Department of Justice also failed to clarify whether or not it considers subject lines in e-mail messages to be content, as he has recommended. Moreover, the ACLU notes that trap-and-trace powers have not been limited to terrorism investigations, and have been applied to track Internet use in drug- and fraud-related cases. Mark Corallo, a Justice Department spokesman, said that in the overwhelming majority of cases, powers granted under the Patriot Act have been used for the purpose of combating terrorism. And while the act does address monitoring of Internet activities, it does not provide a blank check to federal investigators to spy on ordinary Americans. "What the Patriot Act allows us to do is to go to the FISA court and seek a warrant from a judge to monitor the Internet usage of the target of an investigation," he said. "It doesn't authorize the FBI to just go to the Internet and look at who's looking at what." --Wired News © Copyright 2003, Lycos, Inc. All Rights Reserved. _______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to: Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact: Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment for research and educational purposes only.) ====================================== 10:47:02 AM
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Re: Why Lies About WMD Matter Dear Friends: Former CIA-analyst Ray Close writes of his concern that America, with its short attention span, no longer seems especially interested in learning the truth about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Meanwhile, the rest of the world seems troubled that America's declared reasons for launching a war are turning out to be somewhat dubious. Ray Close is a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) and can be reached at: close@counterpunch.org. Carrying an anti-war bent, the VIPS invoke the names of whistle-blowers like Daniel Ellsberg and others. "They have to basically put conscience before career." _________________________ Counterpunch Why the Lies About WMD Matter It seems to me that the public controversy over the WMD issue has gotten considerably off track --- in a way that diminishes its overall importance to the country and, incidentally, depreciates our contribution to the debate. This became clear to me the other evening when I watched a discussion between Senators Richard Lugar and Joseph Biden, senior Republican and Democratic members of the Foreign Relations Committee, respectively. They both agreed that the task of collecting and evaluating intelligence about a subject like WMD was very difficult, but that in the case of Iraq, it really didn't matter very much whether prohibited weaponry was ever discovered. After all, it was clear that Saddam Hussein was a monster, and that a commendable service was performed by the United States in eliminating him. The rest of the world seems to be concerned that America's declared reasons for launching a war are turning out to be somewhat dubious, observed both Lugar and Biden, but the important thing is that the American people don't seem to care very much about that; the great majority feel that the outcome has been a resounding national triumph. That attitude has contributed to what I see today as a real diversion from the important central issue. The debate has indeed now degenerated almost entirely into a mean-spirited squabble between various bureaucratic elements in Washington over how certain intelligence about Iraq was evaluated, and whether partisan elements might have manipulated the raw intelligence data to support particular policy objectives. On a certain level these are still very legitimate issues that deserve to be investigated with great care. The debate surrounding them has not been irrelevant or without purpose. But that's not really my point. Rather, I think the time has come to try to lift the substance of the dialogue to a much higher level. We need to leave behind the haggling over methods and procedures and get back to some very important principles that have been violated. We might start by reminding our audience that there are several subjects that are NOT germane to the current debate, because they are not questioned by anyone. These include the following: 1. That Saddam Hussein was a vile despot who terrified and enslaved the population of Iraq; 2. That Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, that he used them against his own people, and that he probably would not have hesitated to reconstitute his WMD program at some future date if given the opportunity. Those subjects should be excluded from the debate entirely. The issues that are critically important, on the other hand, are these: 1. The Bush Administration declared that it had irrefutable, ironclad proof that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat to the safety and security of the United States, and this claim was used as the justification for launching a preemptive war. The whole question of whether initiating preemptive military action is appropriate at all for a democracy like ours, under any circumstances, is a subject that deserves much more careful debate on the national level here in the United States than it has received --- in terms of its moral justification, its constitutional legitimacy and its practical utility as an instrument of national policy. But on one vital point EVERYONE is already in complete agreement --- that preemptive war cannot possibly be considered unless there is compelling evidence of an imminent threat to our national security. Not an unprovoked attack against a POTENTIAL FUTURE threat; not a war based on an intellectual conviction that harm COULD be done to us someday by a particular foreign enemy. Those are ideas that are new and unique to the self-proclaimed "Bush Doctrine". We are, by our own established moral and legal constraints, limited to launching military attacks ONLY against an enemy who poses an IMMINENT threat to our physical safety and our vital national interests, or who has already committed an act of war against the United States. There has been no national debate in which a change in those long-accepted and time-honored criteria has even been proposed for consideration, much less approved. Today, it is very clear that no legitimate casus belli existed. In fact, many of the intelligence reports on which this momentous decision was based, and which were used to give that decision a patina of moral justification, were largely unsubstantiated. Some of the intelligence was even based on documentation that was known at the time to have been forged. In other words, it should be acknowledged beyond any question that the claimed "imminent threat to the safety of America" was a complete myth. 2. The main issue, we must conclude, goes far beyond the question of how available information was evaluated and used in making policy decisions. We are not talking just about errors of judgment on the part of earnest and conscientious analysts in Washington, and we are not denigrating the quality of U.S. surveillance technology or challenging the probity of our human intelligence sources. Nor are we limiting our concern to the question of whether or not certain individual officials in the Administration tinkered with the intelligence process to please their bosses or to support partisan political agendas --- serious as such corruption would certainly be. What emerges as beyond dispute is the simple and straightforward reality that a preemptive war was launched on the basis of intelligence information that was represented to the American people and to the world by our leadership as incontrovertible proof of conditions that they must have known perfectly well did not really exist. Thousands died in that war. Immeasurable physical damage was done to an entire nation. A critically important principle of international law was violated and mocked. That was not only dishonest and immoral. It was a crime against those values for which America stands most proud. --Ray Close was a CIA analyst in the Near East division. He is a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) and can be reached at: close@counterpunch.org. CounterPunch _______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. 10:45:17 AM
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Re: I was smeared by the Pentagon 10:37:07 AM
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Last update: 6/3/2005; 8:12:32 PM .
