By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 58 minutes ago
Newly released grand jury transcripts add strong evidence to the argument that the conviction and execution of Ethel Rosenberg in the Cold War's biggest espionage case were based on perjured testimony.
In recent years, one of the two key witnesses against Rosenberg recanted his testimony. It now appears that the other witness made up her testimony. too. The witnesses were Ethel's brother and sister-in-law, David and Ruth Greenglass.
Thanks to the work of a team of lawyers and historians, the government released the grand jury testimony that formed the basis for the charges against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
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New-September 10, 2008
New Kissinger 'Telcons' Reveal Chile Plotting at Highest Levels of U.S. Government
Nixon Vetoed Proposed Coexistence with Allende Government; Kissinger to the CIA : "We will not let Chile go down the drain."
Nixon Vetoed Proposed Coexistence with an Allende Government
Kissinger to the CIA: “We will not let Chile go down the drain.”
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 255
Posted - September 10, 2008
For more information contact:
Peter Kornbluh- (202) 994-7116, peter.kornbluh@gmail.com
Washington D.C., September 10, 2008 - On the eve of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the military coup in Chile, the National Security Archive today published for the first time formerly secret transcripts of Henry Kissinger’s telephone conversations that set in motion a massive U.S. effort to overthrow the newly-elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. “We will not let Chile go down the drain,” Kissinger told CIA director Richard Helms in one phone call. “I am with you,” the September 12, 1970 transcript records Helms responding.
The telephone call transcripts—known as ‘telcons’—include previously-unreported conversations between Kissinger and President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State William Rogers. Just eight days after Allende's election, Kissinger informed the president that the State Department had recommended an approach to “see what we can work out [with Allende].” Nixon responded by instructing Kissinger: “Don’t let them do it.”
After Nixon spoke directly to Rogers, Kissinger recorded a conversation in which the Secretary of State agreed that “we ought, as you say, to cold-bloodedly decide what to do and then do it,” but warned it should be done “discreetly so that it doesn’t backfire.” Secretary Rogers predicted that “after all we have said about elections, if the first time a Communist wins the U.S. tries to prevent the constitutional process from coming into play we will look very bad.”
--MORE--Independent.co.uk
By James Macintyre, Political Correspondent
Thursday, 4 September 2008
Secret emails and memos showing how the Iraq war dossier was "sexed-up" must be released by the Cabinet Office, The Independent has learnt.
Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, has told civil servants to release undisclosed material which could provide "evidence that the dossier was deliberately manipulated in order to present an exaggerated case for military action".
After repeated freedom of information requests, Mr Thomas says in a 20-page ruling given to The Independent that there is a clear public interest in seeing comments about drafts of the dossier between 11 and 16 September 2002, in the days before Alastair Campbell suggested changes. Mr Thomas adds that there is no national security justification for keeping these comments from politicians secret.
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Report: Gonzales mishandled classified data
By LARA JAKES JORDAN – 2 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Justice Department report scolds former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for mishandling highly classified documents about an eavesdropping program and interrogating terror detainees — two of the Bush administration's most sensitive counter-terror efforts.
The report says Gonzales failed to store the documents in proper secure facilities and at one point took them home. The report released Tuesday also says he stored them in his briefcase because he did not know the combination to the safe at his house.
Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine referred the security breach to the department's National Security Division. But the reports says prosecutors there declined to bring charges against Gonzales.
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A Walter Mitty type convinced the Americans he was a Libyan intelligence agent when he worked in the agency's garage
By Guy Smith
Sunday, 31 August 2008
A Libyan "double agent" who was central to the CIA's investigation into the Lockerbie bombing exaggerated his importance in Tripoli's intelligence apparatus and gave little information of value, yet is still living at the US taxpayers' expense in a witness protection programme, according to previously unseen CIA cables.
Five months before the destruction of Pan Am flight 103 in December 1988, 27-year-old Majid Giaka turned up at the US embassy in Malta and "expressed a desire to relocate ... in return for sensitive information on Libya", in the words of a cable sent by a CIA case officer to his headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the same day. Mr Giaka claimed he was an agent of Libya's feared Jamahiriya security organisation, but it later turned out that he worked in the agency's garage.
More than 60 cables, uncovered in a BBC investigation, detail the relations between the Americans and a man later described in court as a real-life Walter Mitty. Mr Giaka, who said that he worked for Libyan Arab Airlines at Malta's Luqa airport as a cover, told the CIA that he wanted to remain in Malta. He promised he would co-operate fully with the CIA – in return for money.
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13 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Formerly classified files on famous US ex-spies such as chef Julia Child, Arab-Israeli peace negotiator Ralph Bunche, and Hollywood actor Sterling Hayden were unveiled to the public Thursday by the National Archives.
The 35,000 documents are part of a massive archive, much of which has been previously released, on the first-ever US wartime intelligence unit known as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).
The OSS was the precursor to the Central Intelligence agency (CIA), and its clandestine network sprung up in the 1940s, mainly in Europe and North Africa.
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A complete index to the internal communications referenced in "The Front-Runner's Fall"
by Joshua Green
The Hillary Clinton Memos
“The Plan,” October 2006
Clinton had forbidden her advisers from openly discussing her presidential ambitions until after she’d won reelection to the Senate. But behind the scenes, planning was already underway. In this October 2006 strategy memo, Mark Penn sketched out the campaign’s strategic principles (“HRC is the power candidate”) and assessed potential opponents. He worried that Al Gore was “waiting to swoop in later.”
Penn’s “Launch Strategy” Ideas, December 21, 2006
Shortly after Clinton’s reelection, Penn tried out some themes in this flattering memo to his boss. He suggested former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as a role model: “We are more Thatcher than anyone else.” Penn believed that voters view their president as the “father” of the country. “They do not want someone who would be the first mama,” he counseled. “But there is a yearning for a kind of tough single parent.” (He did not propose divorce.) Penn thought voters were “open to the first father being a woman.” But he warned again about the perils of being seen as too soft. “A word about being human,” he wrote. “Bill Gates once asked me, ‘Could you make me more human?’ I said, ‘Being human is overrated.’”
Penn Strategy Memo, March 19, 2007
More than anything else, this memo captures the full essence of Mark Penn’s campaign strategy—its brilliance and its breathtaking attacks. Penn identified with impressive specificity the very coalition of women and blue-collar workers that Clinton ended up winning a year later. But he also called Obama “unelectable except perhaps against Attila the Hun,” and wrote, “I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values.” Penn proposed targeting Obama’s “lack of American roots.”
Posted by willyloman on August 2, 2008
by Scott Creighton
“This is rumor control! Here are the facts…”
It is not surprising that the government’s official story about the second worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil should have nearly as many holes in it and unanswered questions, as it’s prequel; 9/11. And it is ALL based on one court document witness statement, that originated… with the FBI.
But as hastily as the “official spokespersons” and the MSM are rushing to hang this heinous crime around the neck of Dr. Bruce Ivins, people like Glenn Greenwald, Rachel Maddow, and Atrios are trying to kick open the shutters to shed a little light on the matter. Let’s see if we can help them out, shall we?
(photo copies of the official “court documents” after the break)
--MORE--
After Running Failed Bank
Subprime Lender
Made Problem Loans
On Regulators' Watch
By MARK MAREMONT
July 21, 2008; Page A1
Federal officials heap much of the blame for the subprime mortgage mess on lenders, claiming they recklessly made too many high-cost home loans to borrowers who couldn't afford them.
[Loan Troubles]
It turns out that the U.S. government itself was one of the lenders giving out high-interest, subprime mortgages, some of them predatory, according to government documents filed in federal court.
The unusual situation, which is still bedeviling bank regulators, stems from the 2001 seizure by federal officials of Superior Bank FSB, then a national subprime lender based in Hinsdale, Ill. Rather than immediately shuttering or selling Superior, as it normally does with failed banks, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. continued to run the bank's subprime-mortgage business for months as it looked for a buyer. With FDIC people supervising day-to-day operations, Superior funded more than 6,700 new subprime loans worth more than $550 million, according to federal mortgage data.
The FDIC then sold a big chunk of the loans to another bank. That loan pool was afflicted by the same problems for which regulators have faulted the industry: lending to unqualified borrowers, inflated appraisals and poor verification of borrowers' incomes, according to a written report from a government-hired expert. The report said that many of the loans never should have been made in the first place.
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Salon has uncovered new evidence of post-9/11 spying on Americans. Obtained documents point to a potential investigation of the White House that could rival Watergate.
By Tim Shorrock
Jul. 23, 2008 | The last several years have brought a parade of dark revelations about the George W. Bush administration, from the manipulation of intelligence to torture to extrajudicial spying inside the United States. But there are growing indications that these known abuses of power may only be the tip of the iceberg. Now, in the twilight of the Bush presidency, a movement is stirring in Washington for a sweeping new inquiry into White House malfeasance that would be modeled after the famous Church Committee congressional investigation of the 1970s.
While reporting on domestic surveillance under Bush, Salon obtained a detailed memo proposing such an inquiry, and spoke with several sources involved in recent discussions around it on Capitol Hill. The memo was written by a former senior member of the original Church Committee; the discussions have included aides to top House Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers, and until now have not been disclosed publicly.
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The “Foreign Relations of the United States” (FRUS) series, which is the official documentary history of U.S. foreign policy, remains unlikely to meet the legal requirement that it be published no later than 30 years after the events that it describes, an official advisory committee has told the Secretary of State.
“Despite many and repeated assurances that this problem would be addressed by 2010, the committee is now very skeptical that the Office of the Historian will succeed in meeting the 30-year requirement for the Foreign Relations series at any time within the next decade,” the State Department Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation wrote in its new annual report.
Compliance with the 30 year deadline is not optional; it is a binding legal requirement. “The Secretary of State shall ensure that the FRUS series shall be published not more than 30 years after the events recorded,” according to a statute enacted in 1991.
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Friday, July 11, 2008
Court Documents Shed Light on CIA Illegal Operations in Central Asia Using Islam & Madrassas- Sibel Edmonds State Secrets Gallery Connects Pipeline Politics, Madrassas & the Turkish Proxies
In a recent immigration court case involving Turkish Islamic Leader, Fetullah Gulen, US prosecutors exposed an illegal, covert, CIA operation involving the intentional Islamization of Central Asia. This operation has been ongoing since the fall of the Soviet Union in an ongoing Cold War to control the vast energy resources of the region - Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan - estimated to be worth $3 trillion.
Court Case
The scene for these dramatic disclosures was an application for a Green Card in the Eastern District Court in Philadelphia by "controversial Islamic scholar" Fetullah Gulen. Gulen, who has been living in the United States since 1998, argued that he qualified for the Green Card as "an extraordinarily talented academic."
The court case was covered extensively by the Turkish press. Leading Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported:
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Public Has A Right To Unfiltered Information About The Human Cost Of War, ACLU Says
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org
NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union today released thousands of pages of documents related to Navy investigations of civilians killed by Coalition Forces in Iraq, including the cousin of the Iraqi ambassador to the United States. Released today in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the ACLU filed in June 2006, these records provide a vivid snapshot of the circumstances surrounding civilian deaths in Iraq.
"At every step of the way, the Bush administration and Defense Department have gone to unprecedented lengths to control and suppress information about the human cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Nasrina Bargzie, an attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. "Our democracy depends on an informed public and that is why it is so important that the American people see these documents. These documents will help to fill the information void around the issue of civilian casualties in Iraq and will lead to a more complete understanding of the prosecution of the war."
The ACLU obtained documents from eight Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) investigations. One of the files documents the investigation of the death of Mohammed al-Sumaidaie, a cousin of the Iraqi ambassador to the U.S, Samir al-Sumaidaie. In 2006, the ambassador accused Marines of "intentionally" killing his cousin and today's records shed light on al-Sumaidaie's NCIS investigation for the first time. Among the findings uncovered in this file are conflicting accounts of events, questions of credibility, possible command influence issues and cover-ups.
***
Today's documents are available online at: www.aclu.org/natsec/foia/NCIS_log.html
LONDON: Britain has turned over classified material to U.S. military prosecutors at Guantánamo Bay about a British prisoner's allegations that he was interrogated and tortured in Morocco after secretly being taken there by the CIA, according to the British Foreign Office.
The prisoner, Binyam Mohamed, was charged by U.S. military prosecutors last month with conspiracy and material support for terrorism, and the Foreign Office said in a letter to his lawyer that the evidence it gave to the Pentagon could be "exculpatory and relevant."
In the letter, which has not been made public, the Foreign Office acknowledged that it had previously denied - to the defendant's lawyers and to a parliamentary committee - having had any information pertaining to Mohamed.
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I've got a few items today.
Firstly, former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds and I were interviewed by Scott Horton for Antiwar Radio last week. The interview went live on Monday. From the blurb:
"Sibel Edmonds and Luke Ryland discuss the London Times series on her case and the international nuclear black-market network surrounding A.Q. Kahn, the U.S. government’s total clamp-down by gag orders even against Congress, the American foreign policy hypocrisy of demonizing certain nuclear ambitions and supporting others, the military-industrial-congressional complex revolving door, the bipartisan lack of enthusiasm in pursuing whistleblower cases, the movie about Sibel’s case “Kill The Messenger,” and how it only takes one congressman to call her to testify to blow the case wide open."You can listen (50 mins) to it here (mp3), and read the transcript here. Youtube version is here
For the first time, the redacted version of the Department of Justice's Inspector General's report into Sibel's case has been released - parts 1, 2, & 3 (pdfs)
The DoJ has previously released a 35 page unclassified summary of the report, but this is the first time that the 100 page redacted version has been released publicly. You won't learn much from trying to read the report but it is striking to see how much of the report is redacted. Here is the 'Introduction':
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McClatchy Washington Bureau
Posted on Mon, Jun. 16, 2008
Documents undercut Pentagon's denial of routine abuse
Tom Lasseter | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: June 15, 2008 08:55:29 PM
WASHINGTON — Although Defense Department officials deny that detainees at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or in other American camps were routinely mistreated, official statements and court testimony undercut the claim.
FBI agents witnessed mistreatment at Guantanamo, according to accounts gathered for a Justice Department report released May 20, 2008. One agent reported seeing detainees in interrogation rooms "chained hand and foot in a fetal position on the floor. ... Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18, 24 hours or more."
Another agent wrote that in October of 2002, a U.S. Marine Corps captain squatted over a Quran during an interrogation to get a rise out of the detainee being questioned.
Secret Spy Court Repeatedly Questions FBI Wiretap Network
Does the FBI track cellphone users' physical movements without a warrant? Does the Bureau store recordings of innocent Americans caught up in wiretaps in a searchable database? Does the FBI's wiretap equipment store information like voicemail passwords and bank account numbers without legal authorization to do so?
That's what the nation's Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court wanted to know, in a series of secret inquiries in 2005 and 2006 into the bureau's counterterrorism electronic surveillance efforts, revealed for the first time in newly declassified documents.
The inquires are the first publicly known questioning of the FBI's post-9/11 surveillance activities by the secret court, which has historically approved nearly every wiretap application submitted to it. The court handles surveillance requests in counterterrorism and foreign espionage investigations. The inquiries add to questions surrounding how the FBI has used the broad powers handed to it by Congress in the 2001 USA Patriot Act, including the FBI's admitted abuse of so-called National Security Letters to get stored telephone and financial records.
--MORE--High Court Rules Against White House on Detainees
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Morning Edition, June 12, 2008 · The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have the right to challenge their detention in U.S. courts. It's the third time the high court has ruled against the Bush administration over its treatment of detainees in the war on terrorism. The justices voted 5-4, with the court's liberal members in the majority.
Supreme Court Backs Rights for Terror Detainees
Listen: Ari Shapiro discusses the court's rulingThe Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are protected by the Constitution and can appeal their detention in U.S. civilian courts.
In a 5 to 4 ruling, the court also said that the Bush administration's system for classifying detainees as enemy combatants does not meet basic legal standards.
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