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Rudy plays the security card: ID for all tourists

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

EVERY foreigner in America, including British visitors, would be required to carry an ID card bearing photograph and fingerprints under plans drawn up by Rudolph Giuliani, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination.

Giuliani is hoping to cement his status as the Republican favourite by promising to enforce immigration and border controls, drawing on expertise in combating crime from his time as mayor of New York. He announced last week that all foreigners, including holiday-makers, would be obliged to carry a “tamper-proof” biometric card, which could be issued at ports of entry.

“If you don’t have that card, you get thrown out of the country,” Giuliani said. He intends to call it a Safe card (for secure authorised foreign entry).

The proposal plays to his reputation for being tough on terrorism and shores up his credentials on immigration, but at the price of a row over civil liberties.

“The question is: in what circumstances will people be asked for their IDs?” said Jay Stanley, a privacy expert at the American Civil Liberties Union. “Will dark-skinned foreigners be asked for their IDs while a Caucasian person isn’t?” Opponents also believe it could be costly, cumbersome and could affect trade and tourism.

Giuliani said: “I did it back in 1994 with welfare people. It was a big, big, horrible thing that I was doing. I was asking welfare people to be biometrically identified by their fingerprints.

“It worked. It got rid of the duplicates and triplicates, people who were getting welfare at three different places.”

Giuliani has a liberal history of supporting immigration, which Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and a leading rival for the Republican nomination, is trying to twist against him. Romney accused Giuliani last week of running New York as a “sanctuary” for illegal immigrants while mayor, provoking bitter ripostes about Romney’s own record as governor of the most left-wing state in America.

Under Giuliani’s plan, illegal immigrants would be allowed to obtain a card, work and ultimately become citizens - a route to legitimacy derided by some hardline Republicans as an “amnesty”. But Giuliani’s success as a former prosecutor and mayor who cracked down on criminals has given him unique credibility. He has vowed to strengthen patrols along the most porous parts of the border with Mexico and deport illegal immigrants who have been convicted of drug dealing and other crimes.

The intensity of the clash between Giuliani and Romney comes as the former mayor is proving his durability as the Republican favourite, despite many predictions of his demise at the hands of social conservatives.

Fred Siegel, author of The Prince of the City, a biography of Giuliani, said: “I feel I’m in the ‘I told you so’ position. People didn’t realise how good he is at what he does. He is a tough guy.”

Giuliani has a 10-point lead over Fred Thompson, the Hollywood actor and former Tennessee senator and his nearest rival for the nomination. Thompson is expected to enter the race officially after Labour Day, September 4, and spent last week gathering support in Iowa, an early voting state. But Thompson has lost some of the momentum and excitement that surrounded early predictions of his White House run, although he still has the potential to unite conservatives and take the lead.

Romney trails in fourth place in national polls, but remains strong in key states such as Iowa and New Hampshire and is hoping for early success there to propel him to victory in the Republican primaries.

Tom Edmonds, a Republican consultant who is supporting Giuliani, believes the party is beginning to take a good look at which candidate is the most electable. “We can be hard-nosed and lose or make the camp bigger and increase our chance of winning. The party realises it has to do more than ‘turn out the base’. It has to reach for the undecided voter and turn out the centre.”

A poll by Rasmussen last week showed Giuliani would beat Hillary Clinton in a head-to-head race by 47-40 points, a wider margin than any other Republican candidate. He has also won support by taking the fight to the Democrats – chiding them, for instance, for being too politically correct to mention Islamic terrorism in their televised debates.

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US agencies train spy satellites on civilians

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

ERIC SCHMITT

FICTIONAL agent Jack Bauer famously uses America’s spies in the sky in his personal war on terror in TV series 24.

But that’s make-believe. In real life, US civilian agencies have used limited spy-satellite images of their country only to track hurricane damage, monitor climate change and create topographical maps.

But a plan to allow emergency response, border control and, eventually, law enforcement agencies greater access to the sophisticated satellites and other sensors that monitor American territory has drawn sharp criticism from civil liberties advocates, who say the government is overstepping the use of military technology for domestic surveillance.

“It potentially marks a transformation of American political culture toward a surveillance state, in which the entire public domain is subject to official monitoring,” said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists. “There’s the possibility of a recurrence of past abuses: surveillance used against political opponents, as in the Civil Rights and McCarthy eras.

“There’s also an incidental erosion of personal privacy, in which one now has to assume that anywhere you are, you are subject to overhead surveillance by the government. And that is a change in what it means to be an American.”

At issue is a newly disclosed plan that Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence, approved in May in a memorandum to homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff, which puts some of the nation’s most powerful intelligence-gathering tools at the disposal of domestic security officials as early as this autumn.

The uses include enhancing seaport and land-border security, improving planning to mitigate natural disasters, and securing major events, such as the Super Bowl or national political conventions. Eventually, state and local law enforcement officials could be allowed to tap into the technology on a case-by-case basis, once legal guidelines are worked out, administration officials say.

Spy satellites, which provide higher resolution photographs than commercial satellite imagery, and in real time, have traditionally been used overseas to monitor terrorist movements, such as at al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and nuclear tests in places such as North Korea. Their expanded use in domestic surveillance marks a new era in intelligence gathering, conjuring up images of ‘Big Brother’ and raising civil liberties fears.

“This touches so many Americans. It can’t be allowed to be discussed behind closed doors,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The new data sharing comes after Congress passed legislation this month that broadened the Bush administration’s authority to eavesdrop without warrants on some citizens’ international communications.

Administration officials say that after the September 11 attacks, the government has been looking for ways to use spy satellites and other sensors to strengthen US defences.

This article: http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1311872007

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Police gun that makes you sick

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

By Justin Penrose

The latest weapon in the fight against crime is a “sick gun” that makes you vomit.

It looks like a normal torch but sends out rapidly-changing, different-coloured strobelights which blind and disorientate whoever it is shined at. Like the Taser stun gun it is designed as a “non-lethal” weapon to disable suspects so they can be arrested. And it could soon be used by police forces over here. Authorities in the US have already ordered the LED Incapacitator which has a range of 30 feet. It is expected to be used by border guards and air marshals. Its creator, Bob Lieberman, said: “There are often confrontations with illegal aliens or drugs runners.

“You don’t want to hurt or kill them, just take them into custody.” The effects of the gun, which can incapacitate several people at once, wear off after a few minutes.

Developers have come up with the exact frequency and colour for maximum effect. Mr Lieberman said: “There’s one wavelength that gets everyone. We call it the evil colour.”

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Raid on parliament square

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

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Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

By Jeremy Scahill

Blackwater is a private company that does the dirty work for America in various wars, both covert and those we know about all too well. It began only 10 years ago as a sort of cheerful paintball and shooting range in the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina, but these days it has some 20,000 mercenaries on its books (the “whores of war”), not to mention a whole bunch of quasi-military aircraft, a military base, lots and lots of guns and connections with precisely the right people.

It was brought into existence by Erik Prince, a somewhat right-of-centre Roman Catholic zealot who hails from a singularly unlikable, filthy-rich Michigan dynasty. Prince has the ear of the White House and his firm has been rewarded with plenty of extraordinarily lucrative no-bid contracts for security work in, for example, Iraq – where Blackwater’s most prominent task was to look after the idiotic and fanatical L Paul Bremer III during his term as US administrator immediately after the war.

Unfortunately, you might feel, they did their job rather well in this regard, and Bremer survived his term of office. Elsewhere, however, Blackwater was conspicuously catastrophic; it was four of its men who, during a singularly ill-advised sortie in unquelled Fallujah, found themselves ambushed, machine-gunned and hacked to bits in the most bestial manner by inflamed locals. Their dismembered bodies were slung above power cables on a bridge in the city – and their murder brought furious and deadly reprisals from the US military, aided once again by more Blackwater employees.

Jeremy Scahill, a journalist of some repute, is not quite sure if he should blame Blackwater for being incompetent and negligent in sending these men to what was almost certain death, or for playing a far darker game and (in cahoots with the Bush regime) effectively engineering an atrocity to which America had no option but to respond in the most stringent manner. This is symptomatic of a recurrent problem throughout this otherwise meticulously researched and fascinating book: we are in no doubt as to where the author comes from, politically, and his peacenik disposition sometimes distorts his judgment. Given the chance, Scahill would blame Bush and Blackwater for every conceivable crime, all the time (for both gross incompetence and the most astonishing Machiavellian cunning, for example), when a less partial observer might suspect such qualities to be mutually exclusive. Also, and I write as someone who thought the war and occupation of Iraq woefully misguided and criminal, Scahill seems to have much more sympathy for the vicious and medieval Islamists of Fallujah who wish to murder every American on sight than he does for his own people, who want to kill Iraqis only when they themselves are under attack.

Typical of the tenor of this book is the author’s pious opprobrium when a Blackwater soldier, alone under fire on three sides from 1,200 heavily armed and enraged Iraqis, dares issue the unfortunate exclamation “nigger!”. This undoubted contravention of etiquette merits a couple of pages of concentrated hand-wringing. Appalling though it might seem to Scahill, Blackwater’s mercenary soldiers do not always behave in the manner of Polly Toynbee. They instead comprise macho retired US grunts, former Pinochet guardsmen, pensioned-off members of the Israeli Defence Force, white South African soldiers, cheap-as-chips Colombians and so on. The armed mercenary business is of a distinctly rightish political hue, I think it’s fair to say – and Scahill spends far too long belabouring the point. Some Blackwater executive doesn’t have much time for homosexuals or abortionists – no, you’re kidding? There are bigger issues here and Scahill, good journalist that he is, does eventually get on to them.

First and foremost is Blackwater’s apparently cavalier attitude towards its employees and its utter lack of accountability. Scahill also does a fine job tying the firm, financially and politically, to the current Bush administration – despite Prince’s considered view that George W is a lily-livered liberal, all too soft on queers and commies. The contracts roll in, usually without competition, and Blackwater cleans up, bending the rules of engagement by occasionally using what is euphemistically described as “unapproved ammunition”, its euphemistically named contractors swanning around Baghdad and Fallujah armed to the teeth, wearing wraparound mirror shades, driving expensive SUVs.

Clearly, though, they love their work for the excitement, comparatively high wages and other sundry spin-offs: “The chicks dig it,” one cheerful Neanderthal mercenary proclaims of his high-risk, highly paid work. Scahill also discovers Blackwater “contractors” setting up bases in former Russian secret-service headquarters in Georgia and Azerbaijan, their guns pointed in two directions: towards Russia, towards Iran. Ready for the next conflagration. There’s some evidence in the book that the firm was also involved in the “renditioning” of prisoners, transporting suspects for interrogation to countries with an imperfect grasp of what is meant by human rights.

Blackwater operates in a deliberately hazy area, a private company beholden to the state for its work, yet free from those legal and moral responsibilities imposed upon the state, nationally and internationally. Scahill reports that the same mirror shades, big guns and SUVs were seen tearing around New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina, the contractors charged with the task of keeping order and “confronting criminals”. If so, it is a scary development. You might hope that when the current US administration bites the dust, Blackwater might do so, too. But that would be a bit naive. The relationship between mercenary and government is now far too convenient and lucrative to be abandoned.

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Terror law puts Britons at risk of surveillance by US agents

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

Jamie Doward, home affairs editor
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer

A new law swept through Congress by the US government before the summer recess is to give American security agencies unprecedented powers to spy on British citizens without a warrant.The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was approved by Congress earlier this month to help the National Security Agency in the fight against terrorism. But it has now emerged that the bill gives the security services powers to intercept all telephone calls, internet traffic and emails made by British citizens across US-based networks.

As much of the world’s telecoms networks and internet infrastructure runs through the US, the new act will give the security services huge scope for monitoring and intercepting Britons’ private communications, as well as those of other foreign citizens. The new act has led to fears it will see a huge increase in the number of British citizens being extradited to the US.

‘Just because it happens to pass through the US they claim they can do whatever they want,’ said Tony Bunyan, director of Statewatch, the civil rights group that campaigns against state surveillance. ‘Where is the EU saying, “What’s going on here, we’ve got to protect the rights of our citizens?”‘

The Dutch Liberal Democrat MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld has tabled a series of questions demanding answers from the EU parliament. In a statement to European politicians, In ‘t Veld warns the US law will ‘directly apply to EU citizens and constitutes a major violation of privacy and civil liberties’.

The law has prompted a furore in the US, where it was opposed by Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. But other countries seem ignorant of its consequences. ‘There’s been a lot of upheaval in Congress about this new act over fears Bush will use it to eavesdrop on US citizens,’ In ‘t Veld said. ‘But it can and will be used for the communications of Europeans.’

She pointed out many companies and organisations are based in the US and that the new law will give the US powers to monitor their communications. ‘For example, I would like to know what sort of communications go via the UN,’ In ‘t Veld said.

Concern over US powers to monitor foreign citizens is growing. European privacy watchdogs have expressed fears that the US authorities are to be handed powers to check the personal details of travellers entering America and store them on databases alongside details such as their sexuality and religious beliefs for up to 15 years. The watchdogs, including the Information Commissioner of England and Wales, Richard Thomas, have been scathing in their criticism of the European Commission for granting the US its demand for the new powers.

In a coded statement the Information Commissioner’s office yesterday acknowledged concerns that the privacy of some four million Britons who travel to the US each year is at risk because of the new powers.

‘We will continue to work alongside our European data protection colleagues to try to ensure that airline passengers’ details are protected by the appropriate data protection safeguards,’ a spokeswoman told The Observer.

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Psychologists group weighs ban on military interrogations

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

SUDHIN THANAWALA

The nation’s largest group of psychologists is set to decide what role, if any, its members can play in interrogating terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay and other U.S. military detention centers.

The American Psychological Association, which is holding its annual meeting in San Francisco, is scheduled to vote Sunday on two competing measures concerning its 148,000 members’ participation in military interrogations.

One proposal, which is backed by APA’s board of directors, would reaffirm the group’s opposition to torture and prohibit members from taking part in more than a dozen specific practices, including forced nakedness, mock executions and simulated drowning.

An APA member who violates the torture resolution could be expelled from the Washington-based organization, which could lead to the loss of the professional’s state license to practice, said spokeswoman Rhea Farberman.

The other measure would bar members from any involvement in interrogations at U.S. detention facilities where foreigners are held. The moratorium would not be backed by sanctions, but it would carry the APA’s “moral authority,” said psychologist Neil Altman, who wrote the proposed resolution.

The association’s vote follows reports that have implicated mental health specialists in prisoner abuse scandals at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Among other things, psychiatrists and psychologists are accused of helping interrogators increase prisoners’ stress levels by exploiting their fears.

A recently declassified Defense Department report said that since 2002 psychiatrists and psychologists have helped military interrogators develop new techniques to extract information from detainees.

Military interrogation has become a dominant issue at this year’s meeting of the APA, which represents most of the nation’s psychologists.

Psychologists for an Ethical APA, which supports the moratorium, rallied Friday outside the Moscone Center, where the conference is being held. Supporters wore buttons that read “Do No Harm” and carried signs condemning torture. A person in an orange jumpsuit and black hood stood in the middle of the crowd.

Moratorium backers say psychologists should not assist with interrogations where foreigners are held indefinitely and could be tortured because their involvement discredits the profession.

“We will not be satisfied until we get a resolution that says psychologists cannot be part of interrogations at sites where detainees’ human rights are being violated,” said New York psychologist Steven Reisner.

Supporters of the moratorium say they want the APA to follow the examples of the American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association, which have said their members have no legitimate role in interrogations at detention centers like Guantanamo. The U.S. military has indicated it would favor using psychologists, who are not affected by the other groups’ policies.

Critics of the moratorium say the presence of psychologists helps ensure interrogations are not abusive.

APA spokeswoman Farberman said psychologists help interrogators build rapport with detainees, so they don’t have to resort to abusive behavior.

“We want to stay engaged in the discussion about appropriate and effective interrogation techniques,” Farberman said.

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Uncertainty in UK’s ID card plans

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

CBR

The UK government has started the tender process to allow suppliers to join those that will be registered as potentially available to meet the technological requirements of its identity card program. However, there are significant areas of uncertainty as to what the system will encompass and provide.

Known as the National Identity Scheme (NIS) Strategic Supplier Framework, this marks the stage in this long-running program at which, at last, there exists some formal declaration of what the system will encompass and provide. However, the information published in support of the tender process reveals that even the type of biometrics that will be used to underpin the scheme is yet to be decided.

Currently, the expectation is that fingerprints will be used as identifying characteristics, but guidance mentions that NIS might yet require iris �prints� to be recorded as well. Given that the scheme has been under consideration for years already, and that both these biometric technologies are well established, it seems surprising that no decision has been reached on what are deemed to be sufficiently rigorous identity criteria.

Perhaps even more surprising is that the government has stated that it wishes suppliers to be prepared to provide guidance on the way forward. At the very least, this seems to accommodate a potential clash of interests, as suppliers could be motivated to advise a large technology footprint, for the sake of sales rather than benefits.

In any case, there must be a question as to whether iris recognition technology is appropriate over such a large user population. Although it has one of the lowest rates of error of the range of biometric technologies available, it is expensive to deploy equipment to take iris readings. Additionally, many organizations may feel that asking customers, or other people with whom they interact, to undergo iris readings, might be intrusive and may be detrimental to their relationship.

Guidance on the cost of ID cards to consumers is now also available, and is stated as an expected GBP30 (extra to the cost of a passport) for a card valid for 10 years. It is also surprising that outline costs for consumers can be so well defined, given the uncertainty as to whether iris biometrics will be included on cards, and leads to the assumption that the government will bear the cost of any extra investment for iris registration. However, if that part of NIS does go ahead, organizations that are required to undertake iris checking will have to invest in new equipment themselves, and it is unlikely that these costs are being reflected within the totals that the government is currently stating.

A minister from the Home Office (the area of government responsible for the NIS), commenting on the launch of the framework for supplier registration, proudly remarked that “this is a groundbreaking project” - seemingly unaware that, in many experienced minds, the association between the government and “groundbreaking projects” throws up images of out-of-control spending, unfulfilled requirements, and a ‘gravy train’ (now with conveniently online ‘ticket booking’).

We remain skeptical of any tangible benefit being realized from NIS, and believe that commercial organizations will find it hard to justify the expense and investment necessary to widen its overall participation. Given that there seems to be an iron political will to create the NIS, the public sector, meanwhile, is likely to be propelled by directive to spend on its involvement, regardless of benefits or costs. In late 2005, the London School of Economics revised its estimate of the total cost of all activities in the UK public sector attributable to ID cards, stating that up to GBP30 billion could be spent. It is all too easy to see how such a horrific prospect could come to pass.

Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)

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Concern Over Wider Spying Under New Law

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

By James Risen and Eric Lichtblau

Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include — without court approval — certain types of physical searches of American citizens and the collection of their business records, Democratic Congressional officials and other experts said.

Administration officials acknowledged that they had heard such concerns from Democrats in Congress recently, and that there was a continuing debate over the meaning of the legislative language. But they said the Democrats were simply raising theoretical questions based on a harsh interpretation of the legislation.

They also emphasized that there would be strict rules in place to minimize the extent to which Americans would be caught up in the surveillance.

The dispute illustrates how lawmakers, in a frenetic, end-of-session scramble, passed legislation they may not have fully understood and may have given the administration more surveillance powers than it sought. It also offers a case study in how changing a few words in a complex piece of legislation has the potential to fundamentally alter the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a landmark national security law. Two weeks after the legislation was signed into law, there is still heated debate over how much power Congress gave to the president.

“This may give the administration even more authority than people thought,” said David Kris, a former senior Justice Department lawyer in the Bush and Clinton administrations and a co-author of “National Security Investigation and Prosecutions,” a new book on surveillance law.

Several legal experts said that by redefining the meaning of “electronic surveillance,” the new law narrows the types of communications covered in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, by indirectly giving the government the power to use intelligence collection methods far beyond wiretapping that previously required court approval if conducted inside the United States.

These new powers include the collection of business records, physical searches and so-called “trap and trace” operations, analyzing specific calling patterns.

For instance, the legislation would allow the government, under certain circumstances, to demand the business records of an American in Chicago without a warrant if it asserts that the search concerns its surveillance of a person who is in Paris, experts said.

It is possible that some of the changes were the unintended consequences of the rushed legislative process just before this month’s Congressional recess, rather than a purposeful effort by the administration to enhance its ability to spy on Americans.

“We did not cover ourselves in glory,” said one Democratic aide, referring to how the bill was compiled.

But a senior intelligence official who has been involved in the discussions on behalf of the administration said that the legislation was seen solely as a way to speed access to the communications of foreign targets, not to sweep up the communications of Americans by claiming to focus on foreigners.

“I don’t think it’s a fair reading,” the official said. “The intent here was pure: if you’re targeting someone outside the country, the fact that you’re doing the collection inside the country, that shouldn’t matter.” Democratic leaders have said they plan to push for a revision of the legislation as soon as September. “It was a legislative over-reach, limited in time,” said one Congressional Democratic aide. “But Democrats feel like they can regroup.”

Some civil rights advocates said they suspected that the administration made the language of the bill intentionally vague to allow it even broader discretion over wiretapping decisions. Whether intentional or not, the end result — according to top Democratic aides and other experts on national security law — is that the legislation may grant the government the right to collect a range of information on American citizens inside the United States without warrants, as long as the administration asserts that the spying concerns the monitoring of a person believed to be overseas.

In effect, they say, the legislation significantly relaxes the restrictions on how the government can conduct spying operations aimed at foreigners at the same time that it allows authorities to sweep up information about Americans.

These new powers are considered overly broad and troubling by some Congressional Democrats who raised their concerns with administration officials in private meetings this week.

“This shows why it is so risky to change the law by changing the definition” of something as basic as the meaning of electronic surveillance, said Suzanne Spaulding, a former Congressional staff member who is now a national security legal expert. “You end up with a broad range of consequences that you might not realize.”

The senior intelligence official acknowledged that Congressional staff members had raised concerns about the law in the meetings this week, and that ambiguities in the bill’s wording may have led to some confusion. “I’m sure there will be discussions about how and whether it should be fixed,” the official said.

Vanee Vines, a spokeswoman for the office of the director of national intelligence, said the concerns raised by Congressional officials about the wide scope of the new legislation were “speculative.” But she declined to discuss specific aspects of how the legislation would be enacted. The legislation gives the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales broad discretion in enacting the new procedures and approving the way surveillance is conducted.

The new legislation amends FISA, but is set to expire in six months. Bush administration officials said the legislation was critical to fill an “intelligence gap” that had left the United States vulnerable to attack.

The legislation “restores FISA to its original and appropriate focus — protecting the privacy of Americans,” said Brian Roehrkasse, Justice Department spokesman. “The act makes clear that we do not need a court order to target for foreign intelligence collection persons located outside the United States, but it also retains FISA’s fundamental requirement of court orders when the target is in the United States.”

The measure, which President Bush signed into law on Aug. 5, was written and pushed through both the House and Senate so quickly that few in Congress had time to absorb its full impact, some Congressional aides say.

Though many Democratic leaders opposed the final version of the legislation, they did not work forcefully to block its passage, largely out of fear that they would be criticized by President Bush and Republican leaders during the August recess as being soft on terrorism.

Yet Bush administration officials have already signaled that, in their view, the president retains his constitutional authority to do whatever it takes to protect the country, regardless of any action Congress takes. At a tense meeting last week with lawyers from a range of private groups active in the wiretapping issue, senior Justice Department officials refused to commit the administration to adhering to the limits laid out in the new legislation and left open the possibility that the president could once again use what they have said in other instances is his constitutional authority to act outside the regulations set by Congress.

At the meeting, Bruce Fein, a Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration, along with other critics of the legislation, pressed Justice Department officials repeatedly for an assurance that the administration considered itself bound by the restrictions imposed by Congress. The Justice Department, led by Ken Wainstein, the assistant attorney general for national security, refused to do so, according to three participants in the meeting. That stance angered Mr. Fein and others. It sent the message, Mr. Fein said in an interview, that the new legislation, though it is already broadly worded, “is just advisory. The president can still do whatever he wants to do. They have not changed their position that the president’s Article II powers trump any ability by Congress to regulate the collection of foreign intelligence.”

Brian Walsh, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation who attended the same private meeting with Justice Department officials, acknowledged that the meeting — intended by the administration to solicit recommendations on the wiretapping legislation — became quite heated at times. But he said he thought the administration’s stance on the president’s commander-in-chief powers was “a wise course.”

“They were careful not to concede any authority that they believe they have under Article II,” Mr. Walsh said. “If they think they have the constitutional authority, it wouldn’t make sense to commit to not using it.”

Asked whether the administration considered the new legislation legally binding, Ms. Vines, the national intelligence office spokeswoman, said: “We’re going to follow the law and carry it out as it’s been passed.”

Mr. Bush issued a so-called signing statement about the legislation when he signed it into law, but the statement did not assert his presidential authority to override the legislative limits.

At the Justice Department session, critics of the legislation also complained to administration officials about the diminished role of the FISA court, which is limited to determining whether the procedures set up by the executive administration for intercepting foreign intelligence are “clearly erroneous” or not.

That limitation sets a high bar to set off any court intervention, argued Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, who also attended the Justice Department meeting.

“You’ve turned the court into a spectator,” Mr. Rotenberg said.

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Military commanders tell Brown to withdraw from Iraq without delay

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

By Raymond Whitaker and Robert Fox

Senior military commanders have told the Government that Britain can achieve “nothing more” in south-east Iraq, and that the 5,500 British troops still deployed there should move towards withdrawal without further delay.

Last month Gordon Brown said after meeting George Bush at Camp David that the decision to hand over security in Basra province – the last of the four held by the British – “will be made on the military advice of our commanders on the ground”. He added: “Whatever happens, we will make a full statement to Parliament when it returns [in October].”

Two generals told The Independent on Sunday last week that the military advice given to the Prime Minister was, “We’ve done what we can in the south [of Iraq]“. Commanders want to hand over Basra Palace – where 500 British troops are subjected to up to 60 rocket and mortar strikes a day, and resupply convoys have been described as “nightly suicide missions” – by the end of August. The withdrawal of 500 soldiers has already been announced by the Government. The Army is drawing up plans to “reposture” the 5,000 that will be left at Basra airport, and aims to bring the bulk of them home in the next few months.

Before the invasion in 2003, officers were told that the Army’s war aims were to bring stability and democracy to Iraq and to the Middle East as a whole. Those ambitions have been drastically revised, the IoS understands. The priorities now are an orderly withdrawal, with the reputation and capability of the Army “reasonably intact”, and for Britain to remain a “credible ally”. The final phrase appears to refer to tensions with the US, which has more troops in Iraq than at any other time, including the invasion, as it seeks to impose order in Baghdad and neighbouring provinces.

American criticism of Britain’s desire to pull back in southern Iraq has recently become public, with a US intelligence official telling The Washington Post this month that “the British have basically been defeated in the south”. A senior British commander countered, “That’s to miss the point. It was never that kind of battle, in which we set out to defeat an enemy.” Other officers said the British force was never configured to “clear and hold” Basra in the way the Americans are seeking to do in Baghdad.

Immediate American discontent is said to centre on the CIA’s reluctance to leave Basra Palace, an important base for watching Iran, which may explain why Britain has held on to the complex until now. But last week it was reported that US intelligence operatives were in the process of pulling out. Further ahead, the US is concerned over the security of its vital supply line from Kuwait, with some American commanders saying that if the British withdraw, American troops will have to be sent south to replace them. As the hub of Iraq’s oil industry, Basra is also a tempting prize for the Shia militias battling each other for control.

There are fears that the bloody power struggle in Basra will escalate sharply if and when British troops depart, but commanders point out that up to 90 per cent of the violence is directed against their forces. They are understood to believe it was never the role of occupation troops to intervene in a “turf war” among factions from the same community, all of which have links to the government coalition in Baghdad.

Mr Brown will have to take these wider concerns into account, in reaching a decision that has political as well as military implications. At Camp David he stressed that “we have duties to discharge and responsibilities to keep” in support of the Iraqi government and “the explicit will” of the international community. The 15 September report on the progress of the security “surge” by the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and the American ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, will be crucial to British as well as US military plans.

General Petraeus is expected to report mixed results, and to plead for more time for the surge to work. But the White House, under pressure from Republicans facing disaster in the 2008 elections, is likely to announce at least some troop reductions. British commanders, and some US commentators, believe that will enable the Prime Minister to spell out plans for a British withdrawal when MPs return in October, although the process may last well into next year.

Have Your Say: Military commanders tell Brown to withdraw from Iraq without delay
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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 19th, 2007 at 10:15 pm and is filed under Surveillance, Civil Liberties & Human Rights News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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