 |
HavenWorks.com/intelligence/archive/2004 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
/ 
/ Archive
/ 2004 Intelligence News |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Larry
Franklin - 
Douglas
Feith - 
Criminal
Investigation - 
US
- 
Israel
- 
Italy
- 
Iran
- 
Military
- Intelligence
- 
History
- "Iran-Contra
II? Fresh scrutiny on a rogue Pentagon operation."
... "On Friday evening, CBS News reported that the FBI [Federal Bureau
of Investigation ] is investigating a suspected mole in the Department
of Defense who allegedly passed to Israel, via a pro-Israeli lobbying organization
[AIPAC], classified American intelligence about Iran. The focus of the
investigation, according to [United States] U.S. government officials,
is Larry Franklin, a veteran Defense Intelligence Agency Iran analyst now
working in the office of the Pentagon's number three civilian official,
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith." ... "The investigation
of Franklin is now shining a bright light on a shadowy struggle within
the [Republican President] Bush administration over the direction of U.S.
policy toward Iran. In particular, the FBI is looking with renewed interest
at an unauthorized back-channel between Iranian dissidents and advisers
in Feith's office, which more-senior administration officials first tried
in vain to shut down and then later attempted to cover up." ... "Franklin,
along with another colleague from Feith's office, a polyglot Middle East
expert named Harold Rhode, were the two officials involved in the back-channel,
which involved on-going meetings and contacts with Iranian arms dealer
Manucher Ghorbanifar and other Iranian exiles, dissidents and government
officials. Ghorbanifar is a storied figure who played a key role in embroiling
the Reagan administration in the Iran-Contra affair. The meetings were
both a conduit for intelligence about Iran and Iraq and part of a bitter
administration power-struggle pitting officials at [the Department of Defense]
DoD who have been pushing for a hard-line policy of "regime change" in
Iran, against other officials at the State Department and the CIA [Central
Intelligence Agency] who have been counseling a more cautious approach."
... "Reports of two of these meetings first surfaced a year ago in Newsday,
and have since been the subject of an ongoing investigation by the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence. Whether or how the meetings are connected
to the alleged espionage remains unknown. But the FBI is now closely scrutinizing
them." ... "While the FBI is looking at the meetings as part of its criminal
investigation, to congressional investigators the Ghorbanifar back-channel
typifies the out-of-control bureaucratic turf wars which have characterized
and often hobbled Bush administration policy-making. And an investigation
by The Washington Monthly -- including a rare interview with Ghorbanifar
-- adds weight to those concerns. The meetings turn out to have been far
more extensive and much less under White House control than originally
reported. One of the meetings, which Pentagon officials have long characterized
as merely a "chance encounter" seems in fact to have been planned long
in advance by Rhode and Ghorbanifar. Another has never been reported in
the American press. The administration's reluctance to disclose these details
seems clear: the DoD-Ghorbanifar meetings suggest the possibility that
a rogue faction at the Pentagon was trying to work outside normal US foreign
policy channels to advance a "regime change" agenda not approved by the
president's foreign policy principals or even the president himself." ...
"The Italian Job" ... "The first meeting occurred in Rome [Italy's
capital] in December, 2001. It included Franklin, Rhode, and another American,
the neoconservative writer and operative Michael Ledeen, who organized
the meeting. (According to UPI, Ledeen was then working for Feith as a
consultant.) Also in attendance was Ghorbanifar and a number of other Iranians.
One of the Iranians, according to two sources familiar with the meeting,
was a former senior member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard who claimed
to have information about dissident ranks within the Iranian security services.
The
Washington Monthly has also learned from U.S. government sources that
Nicolo Pollari, the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, SISMI,
attended the meetings, as did the Italian Minister of Defense Antonio Martino,
who is well-known in neoconservative circles in Washington." ... "Alarm
bells about the December 2001 meeting began going off in U.S. government
channels only days after it occurred." ... "Since the late 1980s Ghorbanifar
has been the subject of two CIA "burn notices." The Agency believes Ghorbanifar
is a serial "fabricator" and forbids its officers from having anything
to do with him." -By Joshua
Micah Marshall, Laura Rozen,
and Paul Glastris with contributions by Claudio Lavanga
-WashingtonMonthly.com
- [PDF]
- "The
9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks Upon the United States. Official government edition."
(7 MB, 585 pages) ... "The Commission’s Final Report provides a full and
complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11th, 2001,
terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response
to the attacks. It also includes recommendations designed to guard against
future attacks." ... "An Executive
Summary (344 KB, 35 pages) of the Final Report is also available."
-GPOAccess.gov/911
-
- 
- 
- 
Religion
- Osama
bin Laden
- "9/11:
The Iran Factor: The final report of the 9-11 Commission
reveals troubling new evidence that Tehran was closer to Al Qaeda than
Iraq was." ... "U.S. intelligence believes that in faraway Tehran, the
hard-line Islamist clerics who now exercise near total control over Iran
directed their border guards to help jihadists coming from Afghanistan.
And sometime between October 2000 and February 2001, according to the forthcoming
final report of the 9-11 Commission, eight to 10 of the "muscle" hijackers
of the September 11 plot were among those who benefited from this Iranian
good-fellowship." ... "According to a December 2001 memo buried in the
files of the National Security Agency, obtained by the commission, Iranian
officials instructed their border inspectors not to place Iranian or Afghan
stamps in the passports of Saudi terrorists traveling from Osama bin Laden's
training camps through Iran. Such "clean" passports undoubtedly helped
the 9/11 terrorists pass into the United States without raising alarms
among U.S. Customs and visa officials, sources familiar with the report
told NEWSWEEK." -By Michael Isikoff and Michael Hirsh
with contributions by Mark Hosenball and Steve Tuttle
-Newsweek 20040726
ed. via -MSNBC
- Osama
bin Laden - "Intelligence
failures cited in 9/11 report: Doesn't conclude whether
attacks were preventable." ... "The report, to be released publicly tomorrow,
includes a list of 10 ''operational opportunities" that the government
missed to potentially unravel the Sept. 11 plot, according to a government
official who has read the document. Six of the incidents listed came during
the Bush administration and four were during the Clinton years, the official
said." ... "Another government official who has been briefed on the report
said the tally of missed opportunities includes the CIA's failure to add
two hijackers' names to a terrorism watchlist; the FBI's handling of the
August 2001 arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, who has been accused of conspiring
in the plot; and several failed attempts to kill or capture Osama bin Laden."
-By Dan Eggen and Mike Allen
-Boston/Globe
via -WashingtonPost
-
- 
- 
-
- Osama
bin Laden
- "9/11
Panel's Report to Offer New Evidence of Iran-Qaeda Ties."
... "The final report of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks
will offer new evidence of cooperative ties between Iran and Al Qaeda,
including information drawn from intelligence reports suggesting that Iran
provided several of the hijackers with safe passage in the year before
the attacks, government officials said yesterday." ... "The officials emphasized
that the commission had no evidence to suggest that Iranian officials knew
of the Sept. 11 plot. But they said the evidence raised new questions about
why the Bush administration focused on the possibility of Iraqi ties to
Osama bin Laden's terror network after Sept. 11, 2001, when there may have
been far more extensive evidence of an Iranian connection." -By
Philip Shenon -NYTimes
-
-
-
-
- "9/11
Commission Finds Ties Between al-Qaeda and Iran:
Senior U.S. officials have told TIME that the 9/11 Commission's report
will cite evidence suggesting that the 9/11 hijackers had previously passed
through Iran." ... "A senior U.S. official told TIME that the Commission
has uncovered evidence suggesting that between eight and ten of the 14
"muscle" hijackers—that is, those involved in gaining control of the four
9/11 aircraft and subduing the crew and passengers—passed through Iran
in the period from October 2000 to February 2001. Sources also tell TIME
that Commission investigators found that Iran had a history of allowing
al-Qaeda members to enter and exit Iran across the Afghan border. This
practice dated back to October 2000, with Iranian officials issuing specific
instructions to their border guards—in some cases not to put stamps in
the passports of al-Qaeda personnel—and otherwise not harass them and to
facilitate their travel across the frontier. The report does not, however,
offer evidence that Iran was aware of the plans for the 9/11 attacks."
-By Adam Zagorin and Joe Klein
-TIME
Stephen
Cambone - Torture
- Prisons
- Classified
- Military
- Intelligence
- US
- Iraq
- Afghanistan
- Noteworthy
- "Implausible
Denial II." ... "On Saturday, May 15--twenty-four
hours after The Nation published "Implausible
Denial"--The New Yorker posted on its website Seymour Hersh's latest
Abu Ghraib-related investigative report. Its central revelation: The interrogations
at [Iraq prison] Abu Ghraib were part of a highly classified Special Access
Program (SAP) code-named Copper Green, authorized by [Republican President
Bush's] Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and ultimately overseen by Under
Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone. Originally a joint
[Central Intelligence Agency] CIA-Pentagon program in Afghanistan that
utilized highly trained Special Operations personnel, Copper Green eventually
expanded to Iraq, Hersh reports, where Cambone decided it would begin using
non-Special Operations personnel--including military intelligence officers
and other military personnel--to begin questioning prisoners whose status
was outside the program's original brief. The CIA objected and withdrew
from the program, while Cambone apparently tasked [Major General] Maj.
Gen. Geoffrey Miller, former Guantánamo Bay interrogations chief,
with "Gitmo-izing" Iraq's prison system." ... "What may be more surprising
than the revelations in Hersh's piece is the fact that leads to the Abu
Ghraib skullduggery were hidden in plain sight--and that the Pentagon press
corps all but ignored them. Though Cambone has been an exceptionally sub
rosa figure in his position as DoD's intelligence chief, on November 21,
2003, he sat down for a rare on-record meeting over breakfast with the
Defense Writers Group. Again in contrast to his May 11 comments, in which
he cast himself as a benign bureaucrat largely out of the loop, his November
comments offer a glimpse into the mechanics of how Cambone's office was
assertively taking the lead in coordinating intelligence operations in
Iraq." ... "Noting first that his office has "one group of people over
to do an assessment" and that another was getting ready to go, Cambone
said that "the requirement for an increased level of intelligence support
became increasingly evident as we went through a period between early July/late
August.... In that late August time frame, a delegation went over there
from the Department and included people from the CIA to look at how we
were structured, whether we had proper arrangement at the division level,
whether that information, as it was being compiled at the divisional level,
was being moved from that level up to the CJTF-7 [Combined Joint Task Force-7]
level in an expeditious manner."" ... "Cambone further stated that the
group "came back with a list of somewhere close to eighty or ninety recommendations,"
and went on to describe a rapid infusion of personnel and technology for
intelligence-related endeavors. He also noted that the Director of Central
Intelligence, George Tenet, had "made a number of adjustments in his complement
of people in Iraq" as part of a "concerted effort to lash up much more
tightly the work that is done in the context of the CIA activities with
those being done by the Department to ensure there is [a] cross-flow of
information and cooperation."" ... "Cambone's remarks at the breakfast
also bring into potentially clearer focus the role in Abu Ghraib of [Lieutenant
General] Lieut. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, his deputy for intelligence
and warfighting support. "It is an office," Cambone says of Boykin's shop,
"that is designed to assure the types of capabilities we have just been
talking about here, whether it is people, or it is resources, or it is
material, or it is information, is moved forward to the people who need
it at various levels of command and operation in order for them to execute
their mission."" -By Jason
West -TheNation.com
Stephen
Cambone - Torture
- Prison
- Military
- Intelligence
- Police
- Human
Rights - 
Law
- 
Politics
- US
- 
Syria
- Iraq
- "Knowledge
of Abusive Tactics May Go Higher." ... "Army intelligence
officers suspected that a Syrian and admitted jihadist who was detained
at [Iraq's] Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad [Iraq's capital] knew about
the illegal flow of money, arms and foreign fighters into Iraq. But he
was smug, the officers said, and refused to talk. So last November, they
devised a special plan for his interrogation, going beyond what Army rules
normally allowed." ... "An Army colonel [Thomas M. Pappas] in charge of
intelligence-gathering at the prison, spelling out the plan in a classified
cable to the top [United States] U.S. military officer in Iraq, said interrogators
would use a method known as "fear up harsh," which military documents said
meant "significantly increasing the fear level in a security detainee."
The aim was to make the 31-year-old Syrian think his only hope in life
was to talk, undermining his confidence in what they termed "the Allah
factor."" ... "According to the plan, interrogators needed the assistance
of military police supervising his detention at the prison, who ordinarily
play no role in interrogations under Army regulations. First, the interrogators
were to throw chairs and tables in the man's presence at the prison and
"invade his personal space."" ... "Then the police were to put a hood on
his head and take him to an isolated cell through a gantlet of barking
guard dogs; there, the police were to strip-search him and interrupt his
sleep for three days with interrogations, barking and loud music, according
to Army documents. The plan was sent to [Lieutenant General] Lt. Gen. Ricardo
Sanchez." ... "Congressional testimony by Defense Department and Army officials
over the past two weeks has highlighted the fact that the abuses in Iraq
-- which mostly occurred in the last quarter of 2003 -- came at a time
of heightened pressures in Washington for more robust intelligence-gathering,
because of proliferating attacks on U.S. forces and the dwindling intelligence
on Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction." ... "Although
no direct links have been found between the documented abuses and orders
from Washington, Pentagon officials who spoke on the condition that they
not be named say that the hunt for data on these two topics was coordinated
during this period by Defense Undersecretary Stephen A. Cambone, the top
U.S. military intelligence official and long one of the closest aides to
[Republican President Bush's] Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld."
... ""We've got no proof that a person in authority told them to do this
activity," [Lieutenant General] Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, the Army's deputy
chief of staff, said on May 11." ... "But three directives in particular
have already begun to attract congressional scrutiny: The first is a classified
report by Army [Major General] Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller on [September]
Sept. 9, 2003, demanding that the military police at Abu Ghraib be dedicated
and trained to set "the conditions for the successful interrogation and
exploitation of internees/detainees." The report, which Cambone has testified
was presented to his deputy William Boykin, contained five recommendations
spelling out how this was to occur and reported it had already begun."
... "The second is an [October] Oct. 12 classified memo signed by Sanchez
that demanded a "harmonization" of military policing and intelligence work
at Abu Ghraib for the purpose of ensuring "consistency with the interrogation
policies . . . and maximiz[ing] the efficiency of the interrogation.""
... "The memo, obtained by The Washington Post, also states "it is imperative
that interrogators be provided reasonable latitude to vary their approach,"
depending on a detainee's background, strengths, resistance and other factors.
It also explicitly demands humane treatment and requires that any dogs
present during the interrogations be muzzled." ... "The third is a [November]
Nov. 19 memo from Sanchez's office that formally placed the two key Abu
Ghraib cellblocks where the abuses occurred under the control of Pappas
and his 205th Military Intelligence Brigade. It was 11 days later, after
this memo placed the military police responsible for "security of detainees
and base protection" in Pappas's hands, that he sought, in his memo to
Sanchez, to draw military police explicitly into applying pressure on the
Syrian." ... "The fact that prison interrogations were so directly controlled
by these military directives, as well as the apparent cultural sophistication
of some of the abuses, has already led some lawmakers to conclude that
much more experienced and senior officers were involved than the seven
military police now charged by the Army with wrongdoing. " (1, 2,
3)
-By R. Jeffrey Smith with contributions by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
and Sewell Chan -WashingtonPost
Stephen
Cambone - Torture
- Prisons
- Military
- Intelligence
- Police
- Human
Rights - Law
- Politics
- Feith
- 
Rhode
Island - 
Virginia
- US
- Iraq
- Guantánamo
Bay - 
Cuba
- Noteworthy
- "Implausible
Denial." ... "Writing in the December 16, 2002, edition
of The Nation, I broke the news--and explored the concerns many
in the [United States] US intelligence community had--about [Republican
President Bush's] Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's quiet success in
prevailing upon Congress to authorize the creation of a new senior position
at the Pentagon,the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. Several
months later, in the pages of the Columbia Journalism Review, I
followed up with a piece devoted to the media's utter lack of interest--perhaps
best demonstrated by the absence of any reporter from a farcical confirmation
hearing--in the new Under Secretary himself, Stephen Cambone." ... "Despite
his status as the Pentagon's über-intelligence authority, in the initial
days of the breaking [Iraq prison] Abu Ghraib scandal Cambone was virtually
invisible. When Rumsfeld was called to the Hill to testify before the Armed
Services Committee on May 7, however, Cambone was unexpectedly summoned
to the witness table from his chair behind Rumsfeld. That cameo appearance
resulted in a more expansive return appearance on May 11, in which Cambone
less than deftly tried to undermine Abu Ghraib investigator [Major General]
Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba. (Cambone disputed the general's conclusion that
military intelligence units effectively controlled the prison's military
police detachment.) Cambone also reacted adversely to [Rhode Island Democratic]
Senator Jack Reed's assertion (confirmed by Taguba) that recommendations
made in a report on improving intelligence collection at Abu Ghraib by
then-chief Guantánamo Bay [Cuba] interrogator [Major General] Maj.
Gen. Geoffrey Miller clearly called for the use of [Military Police] MPs
in interrogations, which helped create an environment that begot the subsequent
abuse and torture in the tiers. As a May 12 Washington Post editorial
points out, Cambone's office approved interrogation practices that are
in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions." ... "At the May 11 hearings,
Cambone and another senior Defense Department official, Army intelligence
chief [Lieutenant General] Lieut. Gen Keith Alexander, essentially cast
themselves as mere Pentagon representatives fielding questions about Abu
Ghraib--and not as men who might bear any responsibility for what they
desperately tried to cast as an aberrant and isolated incident. Yet many
of their assertions on May 11 are in fact contradicted by statements they
made before the same committee a month before, as well as a year-old memo
outlining the responsibilities of Cambone's office." ... "The Under Secretary
of Defense for Intelligence, or OUSD(I) in Pentagonese, was originally
conceived by Rumsfeld as a centralizing measure, a way to give him "one
dog to kick" rather than a "whole kennel" of individual civilian and uniformed
defense intelligence agencies. In choosing the person responsible for ostensibly
bringing unprecedented order and control to the Pentagon's spy shops, the
Secretary chose Cambone, a man with no intelligence experience but a favored
protégé and loyal partisan who had served on Rumsfeld's ballistic
missile threat commission and worked with the neoconservative Project for
the New American Century. Previously principal deputy to Under Secretary
for Policy Doug Feith (and, in that capacity, liaison between Feith and
the ideological intelligence analysis unit that would later morph into
the notorious Office of Special Plans), Cambone went out of his way in
his confirmation hearings to say that he would closely "consult and coordinate"
with Feith to "insure [that Department of Defense] DoD-related intelligence
activity supports the goals" of the Pentagon's policy shop." ... "Two months
after Cambone's confirmation, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz described
his new portfolio in a detailed internal Pentagon memo. Reflecting the
seriousness and specificity of Cambone's mission, an organizational chart
appended to the memo shows a generic under secretary with six deputies,
including one for warfighting and operations, whose duties include specific
liaison with the intelligence elements of each of the armed services, each
individual combatant command, and the under secretary for policy. The document
itself explicitly states that Cambone's office will, among other things:"
... "provide oversight and policy guidance for all DoD intelligence activities;
provide policy oversight of all the intelligence organizations within the
DoD, to include ensuring these organizations are manned, trained, equipped
and structured to support the missions of the Department; provide
assessments of and advice [to] the Secretary and CJCS [Chairman, Joint
Chiefs of Staff] on the adequacy of military intelligence performance;
exercise management and oversight of all DoD counterintelligence and security
activities; coordinate DoD intelligence and intelligence-related policy,
plans, programs, requirements and resource allocations; oversee provision
of intelligence support and involvement in information operations, focused
on assessments in support of operations." ... "None of this should leave
much to the imagination, especially when it comes to policies and practices
pertaining to the dimensions of human intelligence collection that involve
interrogations conducted by military intelligence. Yet when asked by [Virginia
Republican] Senator John Warner if his office has "overall responsibility
for policy concerning the handling of detainees," Cambone dodged with a
"not precisely, sir," effectively denying any responsibility as set forth
in his charge by Wolfowitz. Rather, Cambone said, he only reactively "became
involved in this issue from the perspective of assuring there was a flow
of intelligence back to the commands and done in an efficient and effective
way."" -By Jason
West -TheNation.com
- 
- 
-
- "Israeli
Nuclear Whistleblower Vanunu to Go Free." ... "Israeli
nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu goes free on Wednesday after 18
years in jail for spilling secrets that publicly placed the Jewish state
among the world's top atomic powers." ... "But the former nuclear technician
-- whose revelations to a British newspaper led analysts to conclude Israel
had an arsenal of more than 100 nuclear warheads -- will still be subject
to a list of stringent security measures to keep him silent." ... "Vanunu
was jailed in 1986 for treason after disclosing information to Britain's
Sunday Times." (1, 2)
-By Megan Goldin -Reuters
-
-
- Osama
bin Laden -
"'Bin
Laden' tape offers peace deal with Europe." ... "Osama
bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, sought to split the US-led coalition
in Iraq by offering European countries a three-month respite from terrorist
attacks if they withdrew their forces and left the US to fight alone."
... "The statement said: "I offer a truce to them (Europe), with a commitment
to stop operations against any state which vows to stop attacking Muslims
or interfere in their affairs, including (participating) in the American
conspiracy against the wider Muslim world."" ... "It went on to say that
the truce would start "with the withdrawal of the last soldier from our
land," and said that the offer to implement it would last for three months
from the date of Thursday's statement. "Whoever rejects this truce and
wants war, we are its [war's] sons and whoever wants this truce, here we
bring it," it said." -By Mark Huband
-FT.com
-
- Osama
bin Laden -
"C.I.A.
Says Voice on Tape Likely bin Laden." ... "The CIA
said Thursday that a tape of a man identifying himself as Osama bin Laden
probably is an authentic recording of the al-Qaida leader." ... "The official,
speaking on condition of anonymity, said the tape was probably recorded
in the past several weeks because of its reference to Israel's killing
last month of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin. In the tape, the speaker
vows revenge against the United States for the killing."
-AP via -NYTimes
via -AltaVista-News
- "Danish
furore over Iraq secrets: Denmark is to declassify
intelligence assessments of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction after newspaper
leaks led to criminal charges against three men.'Prime Minister Anders
Fogh Rasmussen said the publication of classified material had given rise
to doubts about the government's credibility." ... "An intelligence officer
had told two journalists that the government knew Iraq was unlikely to
have the weapons." ... "His claims contradicted Mr Fogh Rasmussen's stance
on the issue." ... "The prime minister supported the US-led invasion and
told parliament that he was convinced Iraq was in possession of such weapons."
... "Former intelligence officer Major Frank Soeholm Grevil has been charged
with breaching the official information act and the two journalists, Jesper
Larsen and Michael Bjerre, are charged with exploiting information emerging
from a crime." -BBC/News
-
- "9/11
Panel Report Finds FBI Counterterror Efforts Lacking:
Freeh, Reno Argue Against Setting Up a Domestic Intelligence Agency." ...
"The commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks provided
details today of a number of shortcomings in the FBI's counterterrorism
efforts, saying the agency was not properly structured to root out terrorists
in the United States and that the Justice Department was not sufficiently
focused on the issue during the first months of the Bush administration."
... "In a 12-page staff report issued before today's hearings, the commission
said that, among other failings, the FBI lacked the ability to carry out
"strategic analysis" of the terrorist threat, the kind of work required
to pull disparate bits of intelligence together and connect the dots to
pinpoint potential attacks." ... "In fact, before Sept. 11, "the FBI had
never completed an assessment of the overall terrorist threat to the U.S.
homeland," said the report, read to the commission by executive director
Philip D. Zelikow." (1, 2)
-By William Branigin contributed to by Dan Eggen -WashingtonPost
- "Ashcroft
now under scrutiny: Report allegedly calls him 'largely
uninterested' in terrorism issues." ... "Draft reports by the independent
commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks portray Attorney General
John Ashcroft as largely uninterested in counterterrorism issues before
Sept. 11 despite intelligence warnings that summer that al-Qaida was planning
a large, perhaps catastrophic terrorist attack, according to panel officials
and others with access to the reports." ... "They said the draft reports,
which are expected to be completed and made public during two days of hearings
by the commission this week, show that FBI officials were alarmed throughout
2001 by what they perceived as Ashcroft's lack of interest in terrorism
issues and his decision in August 2001 to turn down the bureau's request
for a large expansion of its counterterrorism programs." -By
Philip Shenon -SeattlePI.NWsource
-
- "9-11
panel wants CIA analyst to testify." ... "The commission
investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, rebuffed once previously, asked again
yesterday to interview the CIA analyst who wrote the Aug. 6, 2001, intelligence
briefing given to President Bush on al-Qaida's threat to the United States,
according to administration sources." ... "The commission wants to interview
the author of the article in the now-famous President's Daily Brief to
determine her purpose in assembling the document and how much information
she sought in doing so." -By Walter Pincus
-WashingtonPost via -SeattleTimes.NWsource
-
- "Top focus before
9/11 wasn't terrorism: Rice speech cited missile
defense." ... "On Sept. 11, 2001, national security adviser Condoleezza
Rice was scheduled to outline a Bush administration policy that would address
"the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of
yesterday" — but the focus was largely on missile defense, not terrorism
from Islamic radicals." ... "The speech provides telling insight into the
administration's thinking on the very day that the United States suffered
the most devastating attack since the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. The
address was designed to promote missile defense as the cornerstone of a
new national security strategy, and contained no mention of al Qaeda, Osama
bin Laden or Islamic extremist groups, according to former U.S. officials
who have seen the text." -By Robin Wright
-WashingtonPost via -MSNBC
-
- 
- "Sept.
11 Panel Scrutinizing Past Testimony." ... "The staff
of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is conducting
a detailed review of all discrepancies found in public and private statements
by Condoleezza Rice and Richard A. Clarke in drawing up questions for Ms.
Rice when she testifies before the panel, probably next week, commission
officials said Wednesday." ... "The White House, they said, is hoping to
limit any political damage to the president by having Ms. Rice testify
quickly in the hope of ending the furor over the accusations made by Mr.
Clarke, Mr. Bush's former counterterrorism director." ... "Mr. Clarke said
in testimony before the commission last week and in his new best-selling
memoir that the Bush administration — and Ms. Rice, in particular — largely
ignored threats by Al Qaeda before the Sept. 11 attacks." (1, 2)
-By Philip Shenon and Doublas Jehl -NYTimes
via -Google-News
-
-
-
- Osama
bin Laden
- "Panel
probing terrorism faults 2 administrations: Says
efforts feel short; officials defend actions." ... "The US government had
substantial intelligence about key Al Qaeda figures indicating the possibility
of a catastrophic terrorist attack beginning in the mid-1990s, but failed
to act forcefully enough to thwart the Islamic terrorist network, the bipartisan
commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks said in an interim report
yesterday." ... "Diplomatic initiatives urging other countries to bring
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to justice were unsuccessful, yet the Clinton
administration could not reach a consensus on a sustained military effort
to kill the terrorist leader or disrupt the organization's home base in
Afghanistan, according to the report released yesterday, at the start of
two days of public testimony from Bush and Clinton administration leaders."
-By Bryan Bender -Boston/Globe
- "9/11
panel blames Bush, Clinton failures in attacks."
... "The independent commission reviewing the Sept. 11 attacks said in
a preliminary report that the decision to use diplomatic rather than military
options against al-Qaeda allowed the Sept. 11 terrorists to elude capture
years before the attacks." ... "The panel, known formally as the National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, presented its findings
as it began hearings with top-level Bush and Clinton administration officials.
The aim was to question officials on their efforts to stop bin Laden in
the years leading up to the attacks." -AP
via -USATODAY
-
-
- "Spain
Studies Alleged al-Qaida Tape Claim." ... "Investigators
analyzed a videotape in which al-Qaida reportedly claimed responsibility
for the deadly railway bombings earlier this week amid criticism Sunday
that Spanish intelligence blundered in failing to foresee the attack."
... "With a mourning nation voting in general elections overshadowed by
the attacks that killed 200 and wounded 1,500, officials said five suspects
arrested Saturday can remain in police custody for 72 hours, after which
police would need a court order for an extension." -By
Daniel Woolls -AP
via -Miami/Herald
-
-
-
- "Md.
Woman Accused of Acting as Iraqi Agent." ... "Federal
agents today arrested a Maryland woman at her home on charges of acting
as an agent for the Iraqi government of former president Saddam Hussein
and plotting to aid resistance groups in Iraq after Hussein was ousted
by U.S. forces." ... "Susan Lindauer, 40, a former journalist and congressional
aide in Washington, was taken into custody by the FBI at her home in Takoma
Park after federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment against her and two
Iraqis, the sons of a former diplomat, who were charged with similar offenses."
-By William Branigin -WashingtonPost
- 
- "Alarm
Raised Over Quality of Uranium Found in Iran." ...
"United Nations nuclear inspectors have found traces of extremely highly
enriched uranium in Iran, of a purity reserved for use in a nuclear bomb,
European and American diplomats said Wednesday." ... "Among traces that
inspectors detected last year are some refined to 90 percent of the rare
235 isotope, the diplomats said. While the International Atomic Energy
Agency has previously reported finding "weapons grade" traces, it has not
revealed that some reached such a high degree of enrichment." ... "The
presence of such traces raises the stakes in the international debate over
Iran's nuclear program and increases the urgency of determining the uranium's
origin. If the enrichment took place in Iran, it means the country is much
further along the road to becoming a nuclear weapons power than even the
most aggressive intelligence estimates anticipated." -By
Craig S. Smith with contributions by David E. Sanger -NYTimes
-
-
- "Speaking
in 'approved' tongues: Should the government be allowed
more oversight of foreign language study?" ... "As in many college departments,
intellectual independence is a theme at Columbia's Department of Middle
East and Asian Languages and Cultures." ... "An office door is decorated
with a sticker that reads "Subvert the dominant paradigm," and the topics
of faculty-authored books on display range from Iranian cinema to Israeli
literature. But some academics worry this independence may be at risk as
legislation increasing oversight of international studies programs makes
its way through Congress." ... "The bill, called the International Studies
Higher Education Act (HR 3077), reauthorizes about $80 million in funding
for international and foreign language study, but with a twist - now the
government would allocate more resources to programs that emphasize national
security." -By Kimberly Chase
-CSMonitor
- 2004
ELECTION - "Bush
Attacks Kerry on Bill to Trim Intelligence Budget."
... "President Bush accused Senator John Kerry on Monday of having tried
to "gut" the nation's intelligence services in 1995 when Mr. Kerry introduced
legislation that would have cut intelligence spending by $1.5 billion over
five years." ... "On a day of rock-'em, sock-'em politics unusual for such
an early stage of a presidential campaign, Mr. Bush said the 1995 legislation,
proposed two years after the first attack on the World Trade Center, undermined
Mr. Kerry's claim to have given the nation the intelligence tools it needs."
... "Mr. Kerry's campaign responded that Mr. Bush's attacks were misleading
and that Mr. Kerry had a long record of supporting increased spending on
intelligence agencies." -By Richard W. Stevenson and
Jodi Wilgoren -NYTimes
via -Google-News
- 
-
-
- Anthrax
News
- "Tenet
Warns of Al Qaeda Threat: CIA Chief Says Group Is
Fragmented but Still Dangerous." ... "Despite U.S. success in attacking
al Qaeda's hierarchy, the network is still capable of "catastrophic attacks"
against the United States, and acquiring chemical, biological and radiological
weapons remains a "religious obligation" in Osama bin Laden's eyes, CIA
Director George J. Tenet told the Senate intelligence committee yesterday."
... "The most immediate threats include the possibility of "poison attacks"
and al Qaeda's ongoing effort to produce anthrax material, he said: "Extremists
have widely disseminated assembly instructions for an improvised chemical
weapon using common materials that could cause a large number of casualties
in a crowded, enclosed area."" (1, 2)
-By Dana Priest -WashingtonPost
-
-
- "U.N.
Inspectors Report Evidence That Iran Itself Made Fuel That Could Be Used
for A-Bombs." ... "Despite Iranian disavowals, International
Atomic Energy Agency experts in Iran have found evidence of indigenous
production of a concentrated fuel that, if pure enough, can be used to
make nuclear weapons. They said in an inspection report that equipment
made there showed many traces of the fuel, highly enriched uranium." ...
"Iran has consistently argued that any traces of concentrated fuel must
have come from equipment contaminated before it was imported, presumably
from Pakistan. But the report, distributed yesterday to the agency's board,
found the fuel on parts Iranians had made, and "only negligible traces"
on imported parts." (1, 2)
-By William J. Broad and David E. Sanger -NYTimes
via -Google-News
-
-
- "Guardsman
Charged With Trying to Spy for Al Qaeda." ... "The
Army has charged a member of the Washington State National Guard with attempting
to supply intelligence of Army organizations and weapons systems to the
Qaeda terrorist network, Army officials said on Wednesday. The intelligence
included details about military personnel, troop movement, tactics and
"vulnerabilities," the charges said." ... "Specialist Ryan G. Anderson,
26, a Muslim convert who Army officials said also went by the name Amir
Abdul Rashid, was charged on Feb. 12 at the Fort Lewis base south of here
[Seattle, Washington] with four counts of attempting to supply information
to the enemy, but the charges were not made public until Wednesday." -By
Sarah Kershaw -NYTimes
via -Google-News
-
- -
- "Al
Qaeda 'plan civil war in Iraq'." ... "The United
States says an al Qaeda operative is plotting to provoke a civil war in
Iraq as U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed concern over divisions
among Iraqis on a plan to assume power." ... "U.S. officials in Baghdad
said U.S. forces had seized a computer disc that contained a letter outlining
the plan written by Abu Musab Zarqawi, who Washington suspects of links
to Ansar al-Islam -- a Muslim militant group operating in Iraq." -By
Joseph Logan -Reuters
via -Reuters.co.uk
-
-
- "CIA
tries to staunch wounds opened by Kay." ... "Mr Tenet
[the director of the Central Intelligence Agency] was disarmingly frank
on Thursday, admitting that while more time was needed to reach definitive
conclusions, the agency's judgments now looked suspect on all the key elements
of Iraq's weapons programmes - its nuclear, chemical and biological capabilities.
He acknowledged that CIA human intelligence was lacking in Iraq, forcing
it to rely on what turned out to be less than accurate sources provided
by other countries." ... ""Our record was mixed," he said. "While we had
voluminous reporting, the major judgments reached were based on a narrower
band of data." But he said that based on Saddam Hussein's history and on
the technical and human intelligence gathered by the agency, "it would
have been difficult for analysts to come to any different conclusions than
the ones we reached"." -By Edward Alden and Mark Huband
with contributions by Salamander Davoudi -FT.com
-
-
- "Bush
to pick panel for WMD inquiry, official says: Independent
probe of intelligence has bipartisan support." ... "The intelligence to
be reviewed was used to justify the U.S.-led war in Iraq, the first under
Bush's national security strategy calling for pre-emptive attacks against
terrorist groups and nations that possess or are developing weapons of
mass destruction." ... "David Kay, the former U.S. chief weapons inspector
in Iraq, told a Senate panel last week that his group did not find such
weapons and that he didn't believe stockpiles of banned weapons would turn
up either." -CNN
-
-
-
-
- "Bush
to Establish Panel to Examine U.S. Intelligence."
... "President Bush will establish a bipartisan commission in the next
few days to examine American intelligence operations, including a study
of possible misjudgments about Iraq's unconventional weapons, senior administration
officials said Sunday. They said the panel would also investigate failures
to penetrate secretive governments and stateless groups that could attempt
new attacks on the United States." ... "The pressure to establish such
a panel became irresistible after David A. Kay, the former chief weapons
inspector, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that "it
turns out we were all wrong, probably," about the perceived Iraqi threat,
which was the administration's basic justification for the war." ... "The
commission will not report back until after the November elections. Some
former officials who have been approached about taking part say they believe
it may take 18 months or more to reach its conclusions." (1, 2)
-By David E. Sanger -NYTimes
- 
- "Senator:
Flight cancellations necessary." ... " A key member
of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Sunday the United States has
no defense against threats to release biological weapons inside airplanes
except to cancel suspect flights." ... "Asked about reports that a biological
or chemical agent might be used in an attack on a U.S.-bound airline, Sen.
Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, said the United States would have no
way to counter such moves." -CNN
-
-
- "2
congressional panels echo Kay on Iraqi weaponry."
... "The House and Senate intelligence committees have unearthed a series
of failures in the prewar intelligence on Iraq similar to those identified
by former weapons inspector David Kay, leading them to believe that CIA
analysts and their superiors did not seriously consider the possibility
that Saddam Hussein no longer possessed weapons of mass destruction, according
to congressional officials." ... "The committees, working separately for
the past seven months, have determined that the CIA relied too heavily
on circumstantial, outdated intelligence and became overly dependent on
satellite and spy-plane imagery and communications intercepts." -By
Dana Priest & Walter Pincus -WashingtonPost
via -SFGate.com
-
- 
- "Second
BBC Exec Resigns Over Iraq Story: Second BBC Executive
Resigns, Shaken Broadcaster Apologizes Over Report on Iraq Intelligence."
... "The chief of the BBC stepped down Thursday as the badly rattled broadcaster
struggled to respond to harsh criticism from a judge who repudiated its
report that the government "sexed up" intelligence on Iraq." ... "The resignation
of British Broadcasting Corp. director-general Greg Dyke stunned BBC employees,
and hundreds of them rallied outside the network's offices around Britain
to show their support for him. One local BBC radio station briefly went
off the air in protest." -AP
via -ABCNEWS.com
-
-
- "Kay
to Testify About Iraqi WMD Search: Kay to Testify
About Search for Iraq's Weapons As Some in Bush Administration Shift Positions."
... "Senators want to speak with the former top U.S. weapons inspector
who said he couldn't find evidence that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons
of mass destruction, a primary justification by President Bush for the
war in Iraq." ... "As special adviser to CIA Director George Tenet, Kay
was chosen last year as the Iraq Survey Group leader in part because he
was convinced weapons would be found. "My suspicions are that we'll find
in the chemical and biological areas, in fact, I think there may be some
surprises coming rather quickly in that area," he said on CNN in June."
-AP via -ABCNEWS.com
-
-
-
- "BBC
Chairman Resigns After Hutton Criticism." ... "The
chairman of the BBC resigned on Wednesday and the broadcaster apologized
for some of its reporting on the buildup to the war in Iraq after an inquiry
by a senior judge lambasted the corporation." ... "The report by Lord Hutton
criticized journalist Andrew Gilligan, the BBC's management and its supervisory
board of governors, for a radio report saying the government "sexed up"
intelligence in a dossier on Iraqi weapons." -By Adam
Pasick -Reuters
-
-
-
- "Judicial
Inquiry Clears Blair on Iraq Intelligence Claims:
BBC Blamed for Broadcasting 'Unfounded' Allegations." ... "A judicial inquiry
cleared Prime Minister Tony Blair on Wednesday of allegations aired by
the BBC that he and his aides had exaggerated intelligence claims about
Iraq's access to weapons of mass destruction and drove to suicide a British
weapons expert who raised questions about those claims." ... "While exonerating
Blair, Lord Brian Hutton blamed the BBC for broadcasting what he called
"unfounded" allegations in May of 2003 that the government had published
a "sexed-up" claim that Iraq could launch such weapons within 45 minutes
of an order despite knowing it was probably wrong." -By
Glenn Frankel -WashingtonPost
-
- "Tracking
kids 24/7: Using high-tech products, parents can
instantly find out where a child is or what he's doing on the computer.
But what does this do to the parent-child relationship?" ... "Besides limiting
children's access to certain websites, parents can now keep tabs on the
Internet sites they surf, read the instant messages and e-mails they send,
and even delegate the task of monitoring screen time with a device they
install in Junior's computer." ... "But that's not all. The growing business
of child surveillance now extends into the offline world, thanks to new
GPS devices - including cellphones, wristwatches, and even a surgically
implanted chip - that enable adults to track down kids almost anywhere."
-By Jennifer Wolcott -CSMonitor
- 
-
- 
- 
-
- "From
Iraq to Libya, US knew little on weapons: Doubts
that Hussein had WMD raise questions about war's rationale and intelligence
reliability." ... "When it comes to unconventional weapons, Iraq may have
been far from the most dangerous country in the world after all. In recent
days a string of surprising revelations has scrambled the world's proliferation
threat assessments." ... "Iraq's weapons programs were apparently in shambles,
for instance, while Libya's were surprisingly advanced. Pakistan's nuclear
scientists might have been rogue agents, proffering secrets for cash. And
it appears that North Korea may be the most advanced rogue nuclear nation
of all, with an advanced capacity to produce fissile material." -By
Peter Grier -CSMonitor
-
-
-
- "WMD
hunter: No stockpiles in Iraq." ... "The man who
has led Washington's search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, David
Kay, says he doesn't think large weapons stockpiles existed there past
the mid-1990s." ... "Kay quit his post as the CIA's chief weapons hunter
in Iraq and will be replaced by Charles Duelfer -- a former official with
the U.N.'s inspection team in Iraq." ... "Though Kay has said new information
has been uncovered about Iraq's programs --particularly its efforts to
build missiles --he has since concluded there are no weapons stockpiles
to be found." -CNN
- "Infiltration
of files seen as extensive: Senate panel's GOP staff
pried on Democrats." ... "Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary
Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret
strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate
officials told The Globe." ... "From the spring of 2002 until at least
April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch
that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without
a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read
talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial
nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what tactics." -By
Charlie Savage -Boston/Globe
-
- "U.S.
Withdraws a Team of Weapons Hunters From Iraq." ...
"The Bush administration has quietly withdrawn from Iraq a 400-member military
team [the Joint Captured Matériel Exploitation Group] whose job
was to scour the country for military equipment, according to senior government
officials." ... "The step was described by some military officials as a
sign that the administration might have lowered its sights and no longer
expected to uncover the caches of chemical and biological weapons that
the White House cited as a principal reason for going to war last March."
... "A separate military team that specializes in disposing of chemical
and biological weapons remains part of the 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group,
which has been searching Iraq for more that seven months at a cost of hundreds
of millions of dollars." (1, 2)
-By Douglas Jehl -NYTimes
via -Google-News
- Osama
bin Laden
- "CIA:
Voice on tape "likely" bin Laden's: Early analysis
indicates al-Qaida leader is alive." ... "CIA analysts have concluded that
the voice on an audiotape sent to an Arab television network is "likely"
that of Osama bin Laden, sources told NBC News on Monday. Meanwhile, British
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told an interviewer that it is safe to assume
that the fugitive al-Qaida leader is alive." ... "If authenticated, the
tape would appear to indicate that bin Laden was alive at least as late
as last month, because it includes references to the capture of
topped [sic] Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein." -Contributed
to by Tammy Kupperman, Mike Brunker and the
-AP via -MSNBC
-
-
-
-
- "U.S.
today starts digital inventory of foreign visitors."
... "The system — United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator
Technology, or US-VISIT — will be formally inaugurated today at 113 airports
and 14 seaports." ... "Critics note the program has a giant loophole because
it doesn't apply to citizens of 27 countries where a U.S. visa is not needed
for entry — mostly Western European nations, plus Canada, Australia and
Japan. (A complete list and more detailed information on US-VISIT are available
on the Internet at www.dhs.gov/us-visit.)"
-LAtimesand
New York Daily News via -SeattleTimes.NWsource
-
- "FBI
Checked Las Vegas Hotel Lists in Terror Alert." ...
"The FBI demanded Las Vegas hotels turn over their guest lists leading
up to New Year's Eve to check against a U.S. master list of suspected terrorists,
a law enforcement official said on Sunday." ... "The demand for "patron
information" went to all major hotels in the Nevada casino and entertainment
city, said the official who declined to be named." -By
Jim Wolf -Reuters
via -Wired