Live from Austin!

From CQ Politics:

Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.

The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.

OK, I confess: I have purchased and eaten falafels on several occasions. I’ll come quietly.

Now that we’ve all accepted torture as a legitimate tool of the US government, the question is simply when it’s appropriate. The answer seems to be: pretty much any time the government doesn’t like what you’re doing.

Navy Veteran Donald Vance became aware of illegal arms sales in Iraq—land mines, rocket launchers, that sort of thing. He reported it to the FBI. In return, he was imprisoned as a “combatant” for 97 days and tortured.

There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.

The America-hating left-wing rumor sheet publishing this news?

Forbes.

Online forum SomethingAwful managed to raise $27,695 to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Then suddenly, PayPal locked the account.

When someone finally managed to contact PayPal, they were informed that PayPal has an exclusive contract with United Way—and that United Way’s contract would not allow PayPal funds to be transferred to the Red Cross.

Yup: United Way and PayPal would rather block $27k in relief funds, than allow the money to go to the Red Cross. So the money had to be refunded.

A lot of people are blaming PayPal for this. They certainly deserve a big chunk of blame; but really, what kind of charity makes you sign contracts saying you won’t let people donate to competing charities? Can you imagine if your bank bounced a check because they had signed a United Way contract and you were trying to give to the Red Cross?

Please, I beg you: do not donate through United Way or PayPal. If you want to donate to charity, send the money directly to The Red Cross.

The United Way also fund bigotry—they give funds to organizations which practice deliberate discrimination on the basis of religion and sexuality. If your local United Way has a non-discrimination statement, don’t believe it—at least one regional United Way has continued to fund organizations that don’t comply with their written policy. You need to specifically check what organizations your chosen United Way is funding; for example, Austin’s United Way no longer funds the Boy Scouts as of July 2005—but in Ohio, the BSA is still getting money. It looks as if United Way regional groups cutting off the BSA Are the exception rather than the rule—even in Vermont some are still funding the BSA.

I’m all for religious freedom, but if you want to teach kids about your god, be honest about it and send them to your church. And don’t expect me to pay for it, and don’t try to con or force other people to pay for it.

To me, having to read through a list of grand recipients seems like a lot of hassle when you could give to a charity that focuses purely on funding things that are actually important, like feeding the starving, rather than one that may siphon off money to teach kids not to be gay and indoctrinate them to believe in Jesus. You can also check sites like Charity Navigator for advice on which charities use the funds effectively, and which ones waste them on overheads and fat executive paychecks. (Hello, American Cancer Society.)

The Boy Scouts of America are a pretty sleazy organization all round. Not only was their director arrested for collecting kiddy porn, they also lied about their minority membership to try and get more money from United Way, and the FBI is investigating whether they might have made up names to boost their membership. Many local BSA groups also lie that they will not discriminate in the hope of getting funding.

Think you’re registered to vote? Better check, if you still have time…

An employee of a private voter registration firm alleges that his bosses trashed registration forms filled out by Democratic voters because they only wanted to sign up Republican voters.

[...]

Russell worked for a company called Voters Outreach of America, along with 300 other people. He says he got into a beef with the company over a pay dispute, and witnessed his bosses ripping up registration forms that had been filed by democrats.

“They were thrown away in the trash. I grabbed them out,” said Eric Russell. One of those forms belonged to Daren Gray, who was shocked to learn that the re-registration form he filled out was never turned in.

“I’m pretty mad, upset. I’m still gonna vote,” said Daren Gray. Russell doesn’t know how many democratic registrations were tossed in the trash but guesses the number could be very high since Voters Outreach of America operated in Las Vegas for more than two months.

[...]

The Republican National Committee acknowledges that it hired Voters Outreach of America to register voters, but in a statement said it had zero tolerance for any kind of fraud.

Local party officials said there is no way the GOP would instruct the company to trash democratic registrations. However, similar problems have been alleged elsewhere. In Washoe County, the registrar says he too has turned over information to the FBI about Republican backed registration efforts.

In Oregon, the same company that was operating here has been criticized for its tactics in signing up voters. There, it used the name America Votes, which is actually the name of a Democratic organization.

—KLAS-TV

Seymour Hersh is the journalist who broke the story of the My Lai massacre, a Pulitzer prize winner. He’s got a new book out. Expect to see it rubbished extensively on TV.

Evidence of prisoner abuse and possible war crimes at Guantánamo Bay reached the highest levels of the Bush administration as early as autumn 2002, but Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, chose to do nothing about it, according to a new investigation published exclusively in the Guardian today.

The investigation, by the veteran journalist Seymour Hersh, quotes one former marine at the camp recalling sessions in which guards would “fuck with [detainees] as much as we could” by inflicting pain on them.

[...]

Hersh provides details of how President George Bush signed off on the establishment of a secret unit that was given advance approval to kill or capture and interrogate “high-value” suspects—considered by many to be in defiance of international law—an officially “unacknowledged” programme that was eventually transferred wholesale from Guantánamo to the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

[...]

A CIA analyst visited Guantánamo in summer 2002 and returned “convinced that we were committing war crimes” and that “more than half the people there didn’t belong there. He found people lying in their own faeces,” a CIA source told Hersh.

[...]

A senior intelligence official told Hersh: “I was told [by FBI agents] that the military guards were slapping prisoners, stripping them, pouring cold water over them and making them stand until they got hypothermia.”

The secret “special access programme” facilitating much of the mistreatment of prisoners—widely held to have contravened the Geneva convention—was established after a direct order from the president.

Hersh reports that a secret document signed by Mr Bush in February 2002 stated: “I determine that none of the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with al-Qaida in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world.”

—Guardian

But in case there’s anyone out there thinking “Well, Americans raping Iraqi children is OK if it makes America safer”, consider the following insightful comments from a CIA analyst about Guantánamo Bay:

Two former administration officials who read the analyst’s highly classified report told me that its message was grim. According to a former White House official, the analyst’s disturbing conclusion was that “if we captured some people who weren’t terrorists when we got them, they are now”.

—Guardian

So, who’s going to vote for torture this November?

The 9/11 Commission recommended setting up an organization to help safeguard civil liberties. Sure enough the Bush administration has gone ahead and created a President’s Board on Safeguarding Americans’ Civil Liberties.

Ignoring for the moment the issue that civil liberties should, constitutionally, be protected for everyone and not just US citizens, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the people who are being put in charge of safeguarding your freedoms.

• The Deputy Attorney General, James B. Comey.

  Quote from Comey: A court of the United States has no jurisdiction…to enjoin the president in the performance of his official duties.

  He also explained at length why he thought it was right that Jose Padilla was thrown in a military jail indefinitely and not allowed to talk to a lawyer, even though he is a US citizen and was not officially charged with any crime. Comey’s position was overruled by the Supreme Court, thank goodness.

• The Assistant Attorney General (Civil Rights Division), R. Alexander Acosta.

  Acosta seems to be one of the Good Guys, having (amongst other things) defended a Muslim student’s right to wear her head scarf at school.

• The Assistant Attorney General (Office of Legal Policy), Daniel J. Bryant.

  Bryant is a strong supporter of a Constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning. Need I say more?

• The Under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security at the Department of Homeland Security, Asa Hutchinson.

  Hutchinson was formerly head of the DEA, that bastion of concern for the civil liberties of the individual. He pushed the “drugs support terrorism” angle, and favored intensifying the War On (Selected) Drugs. He also supports Constitutional Amendments to ban flag burning and allow official school prayer, and supports banning abortion and gay adoption.

• The Assistant Secretary for Information Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security, General Patrick Hughes. He was a member of the 9/11 Commission, and wrote a series of articles on the theme of global threats to the USA and its interests abroad, for various audiences. His major focus in recent years has been building a massive information sharing network to ensure that law enforcement, homeland security and private contractors at federal, state and local level share information freely, so I’m sure he’ll have something to say about preserving your privacy.

• The Assistant Secretary (Policy), Directorate of Border and Transportation Security, part of the Department of Homeland Security; that would be a Mr C. Stewart Verdery, I believe.

  Quote from his nomination speech: We all remember well the bipartisan effort which spawned a host of responses to the terrorist attacks, including the PATRIOT Act and the creation of the Transportation Security Administration. Those days exemplified the kind of public service which is truly gratifying.

  His department is responsible for visa policy, and is pushing biometric passports—including forcing foreign countries to use biometric passports if they wish to take part in US visa waiver programs.

• The Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security, Daniel W. Sutherland. He’s another of the good guys, having written in favor of immigration reform and against mandatory biometric national IDs.

• The Privacy Officer at the Department of Homeland Security, Nuala O’Connor Kelly. She was the Chief Privacy Officer for…wait for it…DoubleClick. Joking aside, though, she seems to be on the side of light.

• The Counsel for Intelligence Policy, Department of Justice, James A. Baker III. You might recognize that name if you’ve seen Farenheit 9/11. He’s the Senior Counsel for the Carlyle Group, the 10th largest defense contractor in the US, heavily tied to ENRON and the Bin Laden family. He even has a bio page on the George Bush Foundation web site.

• The Under Secretary for Enforcement, Department of the Treasury, Stuart Levey. Coincidentally, he’s was a partner in James Baker’s law firm.

• The Assistant Secretary (Terrorist Financing), Department of the Treasury, Juan Zarate. His job focus has been on stopping the flow of cash to terrorists—while assuring Muslim charities that Bush administration policies were not intended to hurt them.

• The General Counsel, Office of Management and Budget. I think that’s Raymond J. McKenna. His office is part of the General Services Administration, responsible for helping to improve government efficiency by providing office space, office supplies, technology, and services.

  I must confess to being unclear why he’s on this particular committee.

• The Deputy Director of Central Intelligence for Community Management, Larry C. Kindsvater. He’s strongly in favor of reorganizing the US intelligence system, which is probably why he was picked.

• The Chair of the Privacy Council at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I can’t find any record of a Privacy Council at the FBI; a search of their web site produces 0 hits.

• The General Counsel for the Central Intelligence Agency. These are the people who advise the CIA on the legality of their assassinations, foreign government coup attempts, and drug running.

  The CIA OGC web site doesn’t provide any information naming anyone who works there. They do mention that you can’t work for the CIA OGC in any capacity without a Top Secret clearance, polygraph test, and 6 month background screening. I believe the current General Counsel is still Scott W. Muller. Interestingly, Muller had no intelligence background before getting the job; his background was investigating white collar crime.

  Muller apparently thinks the PATRIOT Act didn’t go far enough. As he said at his nomination hearing:

  Well, let me start, Senator, by saying that I think the changes that were made in the U.S.A. Patriot Act were clearly necessary in light of the events of September 11 and I think have gone a long way toward creating at the operational level the kind of sharing and collaboration that this Committee and the Intelligence Community and the Bureau and law enforcement think need to occur. There’s a lot of work left to be done.

• The General Counsel for the National Security Agency. I believe this is still Vito T. Potenza, though obviously it’s very hard to find any information on who the NSA’s General Counsel is, or even who Mr Potenza is.

• The Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Stephen Cambone. The Center for American Progress describe his qualifications as a fierce loyalty to Donald Rumsfeld and an unshakeable right wing ideology and note that he was responsible for sending Major General Geoffrey Miller to Iraq with orders to find more effective ways to interrogate prisoners.

• The General Counsel of the Department of Defense, William J. Haynes II

  Mr Haynes is the man who wrote the infamous memo listing “interrogation techniques” (i.e. torture) authorized for use at Guantanamo Bay, and was also involved in numerous other dubious legal arguments.

• The Legal Adviser at the Department of State, James H. Thessin. I can’t find much of anything about him.

• The Director of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, John O. Brennan, a 23 year CIA veteran. His is the department which is supposed to glue together all the other departments and make sure that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing. It’s also the department that was blamed for embarrassing inaccuracies in the 2003 “Patterns of Global Terrorism” report. It was initially released to a fanfare of congratulation, as it showed that deaths from terrorist activity had fallen thanks to the Bush “War on Terror”. Then, the spurious figures were quietly revised to show that things had actually gotten worse. Brennan explained the errors by saying that their computers were too old and they were understaffed.

So, there we have it. Not a totally one sided panel, but definitely stacked carefully in a particular direction.

Two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, with most of the nation’s air traffic still grounded, a small jet landed at Tampa International Airport, picked up three young Saudi men and left.

[...]

For nearly three years, White House, aviation and law enforcement officials have insisted the flight never took place and have denied published reports and widespread Internet speculation about its purpose.

But now, at the request of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, TIA officials have confirmed that the flight did take place and have supplied details.

The odyssey of the small LearJet 35 is part of a larger controversy over the hasty exodus from the United States in the days immediately after 9/11 of members of the Saudi royal family and relatives of Osama bin Laden.

The terrorism panel, better known as the 9/11 Commission, said in April that it knew of six chartered flights with 142 people aboard, mostly Saudis, that left the United States between Sept. 14 and 24, 2001. But it has said nothing about the Tampa flight.

[...]

The Saudis asked the Tampa Police Department to escort the flight, but the department handed off the assignment to Dan Grossi, a former member of the force, Unger said. Grossi recruited Manuel Perez, a retired FBI agent, to accompany him. Both described the flight to Unger as somewhat surreal.

“They got the approval somewhere,” Perez is quoted as telling Unger. “It must have come from the highest levels of government.”

[...]

The 9/11 Commission, which has said the flights out of the United States were handled appropriately by the FBI, appears concerned with the handling of the Tampa flight.

“What information, if any, do you have about the screening by law enforcement personnel—including law enforcement personnel affiliated with the airport facility—of individuals on this flight?” the commission asked TIA.

The TIA Police Department said a check of its records indicated no member of its force screened the Lear’s passengers.

—Tampa Bay Tribune

So there we have it. Official confirmation that immediately after the 9/11 attacks were carried out by Saudi Arabians, the Bush administration organized a secret airlift of Saudis, including Osama’s family—and there was apparently absolutely no security screening.

Take note, as this will no doubt be one of the things Michael Moore is accused of having made up.

So, that memo which mentioned that Al Qaeda was in America, planning a terrorist action, probably involving hijacking a plane, probably like the attack on the World Trade Center… Remember how we were told there was no reason to take it seriously?

Well, in early 2000 a Muslim spent a ton of money in Atlantic City, then turned himself in to the FBI. He told them that he had been in training, learning to fly a passenger jet. He said that Al Qaeda was planning to hijack a plane, fly it somewhere, and blow it up.

So obviously, they gave him polygraph tests, established he seemed to be telling the truth… and then they let him go back to London, and they forgot about it.

Authorities have located weapons of mass destruction. Actual weapons of mass destruction, enough illegal chemical weapons to kill thousands of Americans. The weapons were located on American soil.

For years, William Krar lived with his common-law wife Judith Bruey in New Hampshire. Krar first came to the attention of police in 1985, when he was arrested in New Hampshire for impersonating a police officer. In 1989, he started fighting back against the Federal government in the traditional New Hampshire style—he stopped paying taxes.

Then in 1995, Krar was investigated by authorities. They discovered he was linked to a network of anti-government and white supremacist organizations in New Hampshire. Still, nothing unusual about that, so they dropped the inquiry.

Soon, Krar and Bruey had moved to Tyler, Texas. Then in January 2003, Krar was stopped by a state trooper in Tennessee. Inside Krar’s rental car the trooper found 2 handguns, 16 knives, a stun gun, a smoke grenade, a gas mask, and 40 bottles filled with an unknown substance. Coded documents labeled “trip” and “procedure” listed rendezvous locations across the US. You might think that that would be suspicious enough to get the attention of Homeland Security, but you’d be wrong.

Krar’s schemes were finally revealed to the FBI by accident. Krar mailed five fake ID cards to a member of the New Jersey Militia. One was a fake ID for the Pentagon; another was a fake Social Security Card. Also enclosed was a note saying “We would hate to have this fall into the wrong hands.” Unfortunately for Krar, the envelope was misdelivered, and the recipient called the police.

As a result, FBI investigators began monitoring Krar’s mail, as well as his (common law) wife’s. They discovered that Krar and Bruey were renting three lockup garages from Teresa Staples, and that they visited them every day. Each garage was piled high with clothing and garden equipment; Staples thought they were gardeners, or that they resold gardening supplies at flea markets.

FBI agents were more suspicious, and took a closer look. They discovered a cache of weapons hidden behind the gardening equipment. So they checked Krar’s home in Tyler, Texas, and discovered more.

The eventual haul totalled 500,000 rounds of ammunition, 65 pipe bombs, remote controlled briefcase bombs, machine guns, silencers, land mines, and plain old explosives. Krar wasn’t licensed to hold automatic weapons; I don’t know if Texas issues landmine licenses. The weapons cache wasn’t the disturbing part, however…

Teresa Staples realized something was seriously amiss when a team of agents turned up in HazMat suits. The FBI had opened an ammunitions canister and found nearly a kilo of sodium cyanide, packed next to a quantity of acid sufficient to dissolve it into cyanide gas. Enough cyanide gas to kill literally thousands of people, if released in an enclosed space like a stadium or subway.

There were also anti-Semitic, racist and anti-government publications in the lockups, in case you hadn’t guessed. The KKK had even left a business card.

Krar and Bruey have plead guilty to all charges, as has Edward Feltus, the person who was supposed to have received the fake IDs. While Feltus faces up to 15 years in jail, Bruey will be out in less than five. Krar’s crime of possessing dangerous chemical weapons is sufficiently rare that authorities don’t seem to have gotten around to setting minimum sentencing guidelines. Krar’s lawyer is pointing out that there’s no evidence he actually planned to use the cyanide bomb.

It could have been a bigger mass-murder than 9/11. The Justice Department seems keen to publicize victories in the war against terrorism, so why haven’t we heard more about this story?

Perhaps because the story isn’t over. More cyanide was found in Krar’s house, and in his car. Authorities think he might have already sold cyanide bombs to various right-wing militia organizations.

Last month, a letter laced with ricin nerve toxin was sent to the Senate. Last November, one was sent to the White House. The perpetrator of the anthrax attacks of 2001 is still at large. Sleep well.

[Guardian/Observer link]

It was recently uncovered that Denver Police Department’s intelligence database was being used to track members of Amnesty International and other similar groups, on the grounds that they were “criminal extremists”. None of the people being tracked had any criminal convictions or arrests on their records. The tracking began before 9/11.

Denver police blamed a secretary for the “mistake”. The “mistake” surfaced because Denver Police shared their database with neighboring cities, and someone with a conscience at one of the neighboring police departments leaked the documents to the press.

As a result, Denver was forced to delete 3,277 innocent people from its database, owing to a complete lack of evidence that they had ever been involved in any kind of criminal activity.

This is the same data which is now being shared with the FBI, and the Justice Department has told the FBI that they don’t need to check any of it for accuracy before adding it to their national database. (See earlier posting.)

If you’re reading this, please join Amnesty and the ACLU. As the saying goes, if we don’t hang together, we will all hang separately.