2007 September 09

NEW YORK - Media activist Alex Jones was arrested by New York Police Department officers while filming a documentary about the sixth anniversary of September 11th and joining the protest against the official version of what happened on 9/11.

According to Infowars sources Jones was singled out by police from the head of a crowd of about 400 9/11 Truth Activists and protesters. He was verbally accosted and forced by the police officers to present identification which he was not carrying at the time.

NYPD officers arrested Jones for “unspecified charges” and removed from the protest crowd to be taken to the nearest police precinct where he currently remains.

Rob Jacobson, camera operator on Jones’ documentary production crew indicated that a large portion of the protest crowd has moved to the precinct where Jones is being held to ensure his fair treatment and safe release.

UPDATE: Alex Jones has been released, he was arrested for using a sound device without a permit.

Former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment Senior Staff Member Calls for New Investigation of 9/11

In an online editorial yesterday, Joel S. Hirschhorn, PhD, former Senior Staff Member of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), called for a new investigation of 9/11. “First, let the technical truth emerge. Then, if necessary, cope with the inevitable political, conspiracy and other questions. But let us not allow a possible painful truth block the primary task of determining once and for all what caused the collapse of the WTC towers and building no. 7.”

Dr. Hirschhorn is a nationally recognized engineer who has testified before Congress more than 50 times on technology, science, and environmental issues. In addition to his work for the OTA, Dr. Hirschhorn also served as Director of Environment, Energy and Natural Resources for the National Governors Association.

Dr. Hirschhorn admitted to his own personal “growing skepticism about the official WTC story”. He wrote “analyses by many experts reveal the collapse of the three WTC buildings was not caused by the two airplanes exploding into the twin towers.” He noted “the general view is that the buildings were brought down by controlled demolition.”

Dr. Hirschhorn endorsed the efforts of a new group, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, to launch a new, honest and comprehensive investigation that considers all the evidence and which examines the possibility of controlled demolition.

Dr. Hirschhorn issued a challenge to supporters of the official account of 9/11, “If those that believe the official 9/11 story - especially elected officials - trust their views, then let them support a serious effort to test the validity of the controlled demolition hypothesis. If they fear and reject doing so, then let us see that as suspicious and unacceptable.”

He concluded, “Horrific possible answers can cause us to shun a question. But clearing our minds of the fear of painful truths is essential to clearing our nation of destructive lies. Otherwise, we stay stuck in a delusional democracy.”

Prior to his 13 years of service at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, Dr. Hirschhorn was Professor of Metallurgical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison from 1965 - 1978. He has a Bachelors and Masters degree in Metallurgical Engineering and a PhD in Materials Engineering. He has been a consultant to industrial and chemical companies, DOE laboratories, state governments, and public interest organizations. He currently is a Member of the Board of Directors of the National Foundation for Environmental Education and a Member of the Board of Directors of Sustainability Now! He is the author of more than 150 papers, articles, guest editorials, and book chapters on environmental science and technology.

Dr. Hirschhorn is one of 200 engineers and architects who have publicly criticized the official account of 9/11. Statements and short bios of many of the others can be found at PatriotsQuestion911.com .

Government rejects 7 July inquiry

The government has officially confirmed it will not hold a public inquiry into the 7 July London bombings. Survivors and relatives of those killed have received a letter from government lawyers outlining their position.

The group want an independent review of the way security agencies and others acted in the run-up to the attacks.

They have applied for a judicial review of the government’s refusal to launch a full review into the 2005 attacks which killed 56 people and injured about 800.

A Home Office spokesman said: “The home secretary has reiterated her sympathy for the families and survivors of the July 7 attacks.

“The government remains of the opinion that a public inquiry is not necessary.

The letter is in response to correspondence received from solicitors acting for the 7 July group, Oury Clark Solicitors.

The group applied at the end of August for a judicial review of the government’s continued refusal to launch a full review.

“The government… have refused our clients’ request for an independent public inquiry and suggested that our clients should withdraw these proceedings.

“They have given no comfort as to costs and no indication as to when the inquests will take place.”

The group says an inquiry is necessary to allow public scrutiny of events and to enable the families of those killed, survivors and other agencies to be involved.

Members of the group argue the government’s refusal to hold an inquiry breaches the Human Rights Act because it is failing in its duty to protect life.

The government is against holding such an inquiry saying it would be a drain on resources and tie up key officials and police officers.

Homeless numbers rocket in US‏

Homeowners, struggling to deal with sharp increases in their adjustable mortgage payments, are being hit with a record number of foreclosure notices.
Alan Greenspan former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, said: “What we are observing in the last seven weeks is identical in many respects to what we saw in 1998, what we saw in the stock market crash of 1987.”
Countrywide Financial Corp plans to cut 12,000 jobs. I hope some of those that lose their jobs will be pissed off enough to expose the predatory lending practices of Countrywide Financial Corp., but I’m not holding my breath for that to occur.

How can George W. Bush say he supports the Troops when he is allowing the homes of their families, and friends to be foreclosed?

Bin Laden’s FBI Poster Omits Any 9/11 Connection

Typically, when someone commits a crime and the government wants to prove the fact, an indictment is written up, evidence is presented and the alleged perpetrator is formally charged with a crime.

The Bush gangsters have jailed and tortured thousands, invaded Afghanistan, and destroyed Iraqi society resulting in the deaths of over 600,000 civilians since 2003 - but six years later, they still have not gotten around to indicting or even formally seeking Osama bin Laden’s arrest in connection with the 9/11 attacks.

Over 10,000 Protesters welcome Bush

Australian police clad in riot gear faced 10,000 demonstrators in downtown Sydney protesting against a visit by U.S. President George W. Bush.

Protesters gathered at Sydney Town Hall today and marched toward the city’s Hyde Park, where helicopters hovered, police vans blocked streets and a water cannon was on standby. Bush, Chinese President Hu Jintao and leaders from 19 other economies have gathered in Australia’s biggest city for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting.

“There are no leaders here, so I thought I would bring one,” said Jon Lewis, a protester carrying a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi. “Howard and Bush are just cowboys.”

Demonstrators carrying banners that said “save Iraq, disarm America” and “drop Bush, not bombs,” were protesting against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, climate change and labor rights. About 100 protesters yesterday dropped their trousers in a “21-bum salute” to APEC leaders.

Protesters were also seen carrying banners asking Bush to help end military rule in Thailand as well as against China’s human rights record. Another banner said: “I don’t believe in anything, I am here for the violence.”

Police updated their estimate of the number of protesters, who banged drums as they marched through the city, to 10,000 from an earlier estimate of 3,000. Some marchers wore polar bear costumes, while others were dressed as sunflowers.

“It’s our day in the sun to protest against the warmongers,” said Rachel Evans of the Socialist Alliance.

Police vans were used as road blocks in the city to guard leaders, meeting six blocks away at Sydney’s Opera House. A section of downtown where leaders are meeting has been walled by a three- mile, nine-foot-high steel and concrete fence. Some 3,500 police and soldiers are guarding the city.

“When a man of peace comes, the whole city opens up, when a man of war comes the whole city closes down because he is afraid,” said Keysar Trad, a member of the Islamic Friendship Association. “Bush has blood on his hands. They even bring their own cook, because they don’t trust our cooking.”

Jake Lynch, director for the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at Sydney University, said: “The world is dominated by two super-powers: the Pentagon and public opinion. This is a high- profile occasion and Bush has become a focal point for a number of concerns.”

Two policemen were injured during the protest and taken to St Vincent’s Hospital today. A police spokeswoman said nine people were arrested. No charges have been filed against them yet.

The Australian government has committed A$196.9 million ($167 million) on security for APEC meetings, including A$77.8 million for a leaders meeting scheduled in Sydney from Sept. 2-9.

“The police presence is over the top,” said Peter Blank, a New Zealand protester living in Sydney. “This is to demonize normal citizens.”

A majority of Australians in a survey conducted by the Medical Association for the Prevention of War say Bush is the worst U.S. president in history.

Howard and Bush are leading a bid to convince APEC leaders to agree on “aspirational” goals on cutting energy intensity, and to try to revive World Trade Organization talks that collapsed last year.

Howard, trailing in voter opinion polls, will face an election by January. Bush, whose approval rating is the weakest of any second-term president since Harry Truman, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll, has 16 months left in office.

Australia has 1,575 soldiers in Iraq serving with U.S.-led coalition forces. Howard has refused to set a timetable for withdrawing troops.

Australia’s opposition Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd has promised to negotiate a “staged withdrawal” of Australian troops with the U.S. if he wins office.

Is Bush High?

Even for someone as gaffe-prone as US President George W Bush, he was in rare form on Friday, confusing Apec with Opec and transforming Australian troops into Austrians. President Bush’s tongue started slipping almost as soon as he started talking at a business forum on the eve of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in Sydney.

“Mr Prime Minister, thank you for your introduction,” he told Prime Minister John Howard. “Thank you for being such a fine host for the Opec summit .”

As the audience of several hundred people erupted in laughter , Mr Bush corrected himself and joked, “He invited me to the Opec summit next year.”Australia has never been a member of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Later in his speech, Mr Bush recounted how Mr Howard had gone to visit “Austrian troops” last year in Iraq. There are, in fact, no Austrian troops there. But Australia has about 1,500 military personnel in and around the country.

Upon finishing his speech, the US president took the wrong way off-stage and, looking perplexed, had to be re-directed by Mr Howard to a centre-stage exit. But not before a veteran White House correspondent seized the opportunity to ask Mr Bush whether there had been any new message in his speech. Apparently misunderstanding the question, he bristled and asked, “Haven’t you been listening to my past speeches?” before turning away.

Mr Bush is no stranger to the occasional faux pas, and often jokes about his habit of mangling the English language. One of his gaffes came in May when, at a welcoming ceremony for Queen Elizabeth II, he nearly placed her in the 18th century.

We’re Winning the Battle for 9/11 Truth

A new poll by reputable pollster Zogby International shows that 51% of Americans want Congress to probe Bush and Cheney regarding 9/11, and 67% fault the 9/11 Commission for failing to investigate the collapse of World Trade Center 7. The poll was sponsored by 911Truth.org

Despite its efforts to intimidate and harass, and despite its huge investment in propaganda, the government is losing its effort to cover up the 9/11 false flag.

For the many folks who like to back a winner, 9/11 truth is going to win. Its now time to join the fight on the side of truth .

Rudy took good photo op on 911, but that was all he did

Dear activists, colleagues, and friends,
“It’s just not possible.”
That was the sentence we heard over and over from families who had firefighter sons, brothers, husbands and fathers killed on 9/11, from experts on emergency response, and from investigative journalists. It was just not possible that Rudy could so distort what happened on 9/11 and his role on that terrible day.
These experts, these grieving and furious family members, were united only by the fact that this story had to be told. Republicans, Independents, and Democrats could agree on just one thing: the cold hard facts about Rudy’s terrible handling of 9/11 and the aftermath.
And so we went to work. We researched, we read, we interviewed. Jason locked himself in a quiet room, working late into the night. Christopher flew across the country at a moment’s notice to interview. Lissette went over and over the footage. Leda kept juggling schedules so we could get the film done. Jimmy worked the phones to try and raise some funds.
And here it is… The REAL Rudy: Command Center. The first of a devastating four-part series.

Watch the video, and share your thoughts on why Rudy failed us on 9/11.
We need your help. We don’t have ad budgets, so like all our videos, we are counting on you to spread these to your email list, to your local paper, to blogs, to websites. We are fortunate that today we have the new technology and ability to reach millions, but it only happens when you send the video with notes to as many people as possible.
It’s time to expose the truth of Rudy’s failures on 9/11.
Robert Greenwald
and the Brave New Films team
P.S. The AP just did a story on our campaign this morning, a good sign that our message is getting out there!

Has anyone lost any Plutonium?‏

Well, well, well. Bombs over America. Bombs in our backyard. Bombs away! While MS-NBC was reporting five nuclear warheads were accidentally flown across the country last week, CNN was reporting it was six. Nobody seems to know for sure.

We’re being told that even if there was an accident, the plutonium in the bombs wouldn’t go far.

The HE (high explosives) could scatter the plutonium far and wide. How far? How wide?

One bomb that fell off a jet years ago over Mars Bluff, South Carolina created a hole 50 feet across and 35 feet deep when the conventional explosives detonated. Obviously, there was no nuclear explosion, but there was significant contamination.

Each nuclear bomb in last week’s incident — W-80 model cruise missiles of up to 150 kilotons each — contains about 10 pounds of highly radioactive material (Plutonium-239, possibly “supergrade” (very low in Plutonium-240)). Additionally, there is highly poisonous Hydrogen-3 (”tritium”) which is injected into the center of the bomb moments before the explosion, and beryllium is used both to initiate the explosion (as a “neutron generator”) and to reflect the neutrons released in the initial nanoseconds of the explosion back into the “pit.” There is also Lithium-6, and Depleted Uranium (Uranium-238) encases the “pit.” The Uranium-238 acts as a shield to protect the military personnel who handle the bomb. Then, at the moment of explosion, it too will fission.

So even without a nuclear explosion, there could be an enormous environmental problem.

And it’s not like this has never happened before. Below is only a PARTIAL LIST of “Broken Arrows,” “Bent Spears,” “Dull Swords,” and “Faded Giants” (endearing military terms for various levels of nuclear weapons accidents, all short of a “Nucflash.” You can guess what that is — it’s the one they say can’t happen (but then, why do they have a name for it?).

March 10, 1956: A B-47 bomber with two nuclear weapons was lost over the Mediterranean Sea. Despite an extensive search, nothing was ever recovered.

July 28th, 1957: Off Cape May, New Jersey: Three nuclear weapons without their fissile cores, and a “nuclear capsule” (the part that detonates) were lost at sea and never recovered. Other reports say only two of the nuclear weapons were jettisoned, and the other was brought back, along with the nuclear capsule. The damaged C-124 landed at an air base near Atlantic City.

February 5th, 1958, off Tybee Island, Georgia, a 7,000 pound, 4-megaton hydrogen bomb was jettisoned after a mid-air collision between a B-47 bomber and an F-86 fighter jet, and never recovered. It’s still lost in the mud amongst old civil war ordinance. The Air Force insisted the bomb was not “nuclear-capable” (was missing the nuclear capsule) but this is probably untrue. At least two former Air Force personnel involved in the incident testified otherwise under oath.

In 1959 a B-52 crashed in Kentucky with two nuclear weapons on board. There were no explosions.

January 24th, 1961: Near Goldsboro, North Carolina a B-52 broke apart in mid-air. This incident was probably closest to being a “Nucflash” because apparently FIVE OF SIX SAFETY SYSTEMS FAILED!

On December 8th, 1964, a B-58 bomber skidded off the runway, and “portions” of five nuclear weapons burned.

In 1965 an aircraft rolled off an aircraft carrier with a “live hydrogen bomb” and sank. Fortunately, it didn’t go off. This was near Okinawa. Years later it was still leaking radioactive material.

On January 17th, 1966 a B-52 collided with a KC-135 refueling tanker and crashed in Spain. Seven crew members of the KC-135 were burned to death. The clean-up cost millions of dollars. More than a thousand tons of dirt were brought back to America and dumped at the Savannah River Site, but nevertheless, the cleanup was only partially successful and people in Spain are still being sickened by the radioactive materials that remain.

January 22nd, 1968: Near Thule, Greenland, four hydrogen bombs were “scattered” over the ice (supposedly the contaminated ice was later shipped to America). This incident sparked massive protests since Greenland had banned such flights over their soil.

These accidents — and many more — and this latest incident prove that there is no safe place for nuclear weapons. No country, no ocean, no lake can withstand the devastation.

The last B-52 was manufactured in 1962, so the youngest the plane that was used in this latest incident could possibly be is 45 years old — quite possibly older than the pilot and co-pilot together. Is this safe?

It’s time to stop this foolishness before something really terrible happens! We’re not getting ANY BETTER at handling nukes, and firing or demoting those involved, while proper, WON’T address the root cause one little bit, because the root cause is that humans make mistakes. ALL humans make mistakes, and they will continue to do so.

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“Nuclear weapons are designed with great care to explode only when deliberately armed and fired. Nevertheless, there is always a possibility that, as a result of accidental circumstances, an explosion will take place inadvertently. Although all conceivable precautions are taken to prevent them, such accidents might occur in areas where weapons are assembled and stored, during the course of loading and transportation on the ground, or when actually in the delivery vehicle, e.g., an airplane or a missile.”

-Atomic Energy Commission/Department of Defense, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 1962. (quote presented by Jaya Tiwari and Cleve J. Gray).
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Had these bombs exploded, who do you think would have been blamed? Al Qaeda? Iran? North Korea? China?

FBI’s data gathering went far beyond target suspect

The FBI cast a much wider net in its terrorism investigations than it has previously acknowledged by relying on telecommunications companies to analyze phone-call and e-mail patterns of the associates of Americans who had come under suspicion, according to newly obtained bureau records.

The documents indicate the Federal Bureau of Investigation used secret demands for records to obtain data not only on individuals it saw as targets but also details on their “community of interest” — the network of people that the target in turn was in contact with.

The bureau recently stopped the practice in part because of broader questions raised about its aggressive use of the records demands, which are known as national security letters, officials said Friday.

The community-of-interest data sought by the FBI is central to a data-mining technique intelligence officials call link analysis. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, American counterterrorism officials have turned more frequently to the technique, using communications patterns and other data to identify suspects who may not have any other known links to extremists.

The concept has strong government proponents who see it as a vital tool in predicting and preventing attacks, and it also is thought to have helped the National Security Agency identify targets for its domestic eavesdropping program. But privacy advocates, civil rights leaders and even some counterterrorism officials warn that link analysis can be misused to establish tenuous links to people who have no real connection to terrorism but may be drawn into an investigation nonetheless.

Typically, community-of-interest data might include an analysis of which people the targets called most frequently, how long they generally talked and at what times of day, sudden fluctuations in activity, geographic regions that were called, and other data, law enforcement and industry officials said.

The FBI declined to say exactly what data had been turned over. It was limited to people, phone numbers and e-mail “once removed” from the actual target of the national security letters, said a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a continuing review by the Justice Department.

Mike Kortan, a spokesman for the FBI, said in a statement Saturday that “it is important to emphasize that it is no longer being used pending the development of an appropriate oversight and approval policy, was used infrequently, and was never used for e-mail communications.”

The scope of the demands for information could be seen in an August 2005 letter seeking the call records for particular phone numbers that had come under suspicion. The letter closed by saying: “Additionally, please provide a community of interest for the telephone numbers in the attached list.”

The requests for such data showed up a dozen times, using nearly identical language, in records from one six-month period in 2005 obtained by a nonprofit advocacy group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that it brought against the government.

The FBI recently turned over 2,500 pages of documents to the group. The boilerplate language suggests that the requests may have been used in many of more than 700 emergency or “exigent” national security letters. Earlier this year, the bureau banned the use of the exigent letters because they had never been authorized by law.

The bureau declined to discuss any aspect of the community-of-interest requests because it said the issue was part of an investigation by the Justice Department inspector general’s office into national security letters. An initial review in March by the inspector general found widespread violations and possible illegality in the FBI’s use of the letters, but did not mention the use of community-of-interest data.

The government official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the FBI recently stopped asking the telecommunications companies for the community-of-interest data. The exact time of and reason for the suspension is unclear, but it appears to have been set off in part by the questions raised earlier this year by the inspector general’s initial review into abuses in the use of national security letters.

The official said the FBI itself was examining the use of the community-of-interest requests to get a better understanding of how and when they were used, but he added that they appeared to have been used in a relatively small percentage of the tens of thousands of the records requests each year. “In an exigent circumstance, that’s information that may be relevant to an investigation,” the official said.

A federal judge in New York last week struck down parts of the USA Patriot Act that had authorized the FBI’s use of the national security letters, saying that some provisions violated the First Amendment and the constitutional separation of powers guarantee.

Some legal analysts and privacy advocates suggested the disclosure of the FBI’s collection of community-of-interest records offered another example of the bureau exceeding the substantial powers already granted it by Congress.

Age of the cyber spy

”Checking the computer systems, he found a file listing user names and passwords. He deleted it and forgot it.

Until it happened again. A similar file re-appeared, within days, in the same system, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

“With a lot of help,” says a US security source, “He discovered that someone had put a programme copying the first 120 characters of every transaction through that base. So it was sending everyone’s login details to… someone.”

“We did some more digging,” the source adds, “We found over half a million compromised computer accounts across the US. These guys were going after Wright-Patterson, which was developing stealth technology, the Naval Research Centre, all the research facilities.

“We chased them for over a year. We used the FBI, the secret service, computer crime squads.

We never found them. Who do I think it was? Officially? Not a clue. Unofficially? It was state-sponsored.”

The Wright-Patterson administrator, working when the Internet was still relatively young in the early 1990s, had stumbled upon a whole new dimension to warfare: cyberoperations.

This breaks down into two categories: cyberespionage, in which the spies are not humans, but hacked computers; an the more openly aggressive field of cyberwarfare, in which “logic bombs” are used to hit military communications computers, rendering adversaries “deaf, dumb and blind”.

A terrorist might target the underbelly of a superpower’s civilian infrastructure, hacking into power and even hospital networks to create a cocktail of chaos.

Even a cursory check leaves the strong impression that the Ohio administrator’s experience was just the start.

In March 2002, nearly a decade after that first attack on Wright-Patterson, the base was bombarded by 125,000 attempts to hack into its systems. On a single Friday.

A little noticed Parliamentary answer last year revealed that a total of 225 British Ministry of Defence computers were feared to have been infected by 104 different malicious programmes in 2004 and 2005. A US defence official told The Sunday Telegraph bluntly: “They are waging a constant hidden campaign. It’s a battle every day.”

Some analysts go even further, warning of a revolution in warfare comparable to the advent of atomic weapons.

They have called – urgently – for a new Manhattan Project to ensure the Western world is defended.

Last week, they claim, the British public received its wake-up call. Reports claimed that Chinese hackers, some believed to be from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), had hit the Foreign Office computer network. Up to ten Whitehall departments were allegedly being targeted for state secrets.

US officials were quoted as confirming that in June there had been a “detected penetration” in the Pentagon.

According to one quoted source, there was “a very high level of confidence… tending towards certainty” of PLA responsibility. The US codename for the alleged Chinese attacks emerged: “Titan Rain”. Vehement official Chinese denials followed.

British intelligence sources, however, told The Sunday Telegraph that the suspected Chinese infiltrations are sophisticated and serious. “The classified networks are reasonably secure,” said one former British intelligence officer, “But lots of smaller suppliers and subcontractors are naïve about what the Chinese, in particular, will do.

“In some companies they can probably read what they like, perhaps giving them information to crack more classified systems.”

“We haven’t got the people to monitor what they are doing,” he admitted, “Because we’re so focused on the war on terror.”

If China is doing anything, however, she is hardly alone. Claims of 120 nations conducting cyberoperations were, sources hinted, an underestimate.

Indeed, one British security source revealed a new country may be entering the field: Iran.

As British military commanders spoke of fighting a proxy war with Iran in Basra, the source said: “People are concerned about Iranian activity on the Internet, although they don’t know how much of it is state sponsored.

“There have been a number of efforts against defence websites and British commercial concerns connected to the national infrastructure.”

An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman denied his country had been involved in anything like cyberespionage and suggested it may have be the victim of Western governments’ “black propaganda”: “usually such baseless stories show only aggressive approaches aimed at falsifying Western public opinion’s perception of the stance of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

In the 1990s, at about the same time that the Wright-Patterson administrator discovered the harsh realities of cyberespionage, our US security source spoke to an altogether friendlier group.

“They were British military. An offensive programme is taking place in the UK. The existence of any such programme anywhere is classified, but the Brits have it, the French have it, the US has it.”

He explained his British contacts were interested in disabling a putative enemy’s computers. This is cyberwarfare.

“There are white operations. A tremendous amount of publicly available information can be gathered from the Internet if you know how.

“Then there are black operations, where you are covertly and illegally trying to access somebody’s computer. No-one admits to that.

“I would just like to think that an organisation as respected as Britain’s is doing something that every other intelligence service in the world is doing.”

The US has, uniquely, been relatively open about its interest in the cyberoperations, dropping hints that these are not solely defensive, and announcing the creation of a new “cyber command”, to become fully operational by October 2009.

Dr Lani Kass, the director of the Air Force Cyberspace Task Force, explained: “Cyberspace is a domain, just like air, space, land and sea. It allows us to help find, fix and finish the targets we’re after.” Cyber Command’s apparent novelty may disguise the (potentially reassuring) possibility that rival nations have, in fact, learned the art of cyberwarfare from us.

At the time of the first Gulf War, rumours abounded of American and British hacking, even the insertion of viruses into Iraqi command and control computers.

The US source, with more than two decades of senior experience in US defence institutions, confirmed: “I won’t go into specifics, but it happened. “And when the Iraqi command and control system collapsed in 2003 – do you think that was achieved solely by bombing?”

It has now emerged that by 1995 a Chinese major general was writing a paper noting the use of computer viruses in the first Gulf War.

“Our sights,” he declared, “Must not be fixed on the firepower warfare of the industrial age. They must be trained on the information warfare of the information age.”

What worries many analysts, however, is not the infiltrations that have been detected, but the sleepers: the malicious software sitting unnoticed, waiting to give a remote user access when the time comes.

In testimony to a Congressional committee last April, Sami Saydjari, a former Department of Defense executive, warned: “Such weapons may well be deployed already and we wouldn’t know it.”

He explained his vision of a massive strategic cyberoffensive, where an undetected adversary patiently compromises key computer after key computer, until ready to attack.

“Imagine the lights in this room suddenly go out. We venture into the streets. The power is out as far as the eye can see. The streets are jammed because the traffic lights are out. Day turns to night, but the power hasn’t returned. TV stations aren’t broadcasting. People begin to panic. Our national grid, telecommunications, and financial systems won’t be back for months. We’ve gone from a superpower to a third-world nation practically overnight.”

First, ethnic Russians clashed with Estonian police, causing Vladimir Putin to express “serious concern”, after the authorities removed a Soviet war memorial.

Then, on April 27, computer attacks started swamping Estonian telephone exchanges, banks and government departments. Nato observers were sent, Putin’s government denied any involvement, and it remains possible that it was the work of patriotic, civilian Russian hackers.

“We are several orders of magnitude below the level of countermeasures we need,” insisted Mr Saydjari last week. In a globalised economy, for example, an attack on the British banking system would quickly affect the rest of the world.

“In 1939 Einstein felt duty-bound to warn President Roosevelt of a strategic threat from nuclear weapons. Now, again, we need a high-priority government programme on the order of the Manhattan Project.” Whether this is merely alarmist, or realistic, time, unfortunately, may tell.

Asked about the level of sleeper penetration of key computer networks, however, the US source simply admitted: “It terrifies me.”

A GCHQ spokeswoman explained protection came from the National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre, part of MI5. “We can’t comment on the details, but the UK is prepared,” she insisted.

It was when we asked further – about Britain’s possible offensive cyberoperations – that we perhaps discovered how those in the field may have been working, and may continue working, for years. “I think,” she said, “We have reached the extent of helpfulness here.”

9/11 blame game goes on

CIA Director Michael Hayden’s release of an internal report on the agency’s performance prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks has triggered a predictable result: more of the blame game.

While not claiming the CIA could have prevented September 11 — the report says only that if intelligence officers “had been able to view and analyse the full range of information before 11 September 2001, they could have developed a more informed context in which to assess the threat reporting of the spring and summer of that year” — the report contends that then CIA director George Tenet “was either unwilling or unable to marshal the full range of IC (intelligence community) necessary to combat the growing terrorist threat to the US.”

To be sure, the CIA and others made mistakes. For example, an FBI memo warning of the activities of Middle Eastern men at US flight schools never went beyond the desk of a midlevel unit chief in the bureau’s counterterrorism division, though it arrived at headquarters two months before Septemvber 11.

If such mistakes had not happened, perhaps the attacks could have been prevented.
But “could have” is not the same thing as “would have”. Those who believe the latter assume that intelligence is a perfect science, but it is as much art as science.

It is easy with 20–20 hindsight to connect the dots, because you can trace backward from a known event. But that’s not the same thing as trying to connect dots to an event that’s still a work in progress, where, even if the dots were clearly visible beforehand (a big assumption), they could have been connected in different ways to paint very different pictures.
Although the CIA inspector general’s report focuses solely on CIA accountability, it identifies a larger problem which extends far beyond the CIA: “Neither the US government nor the IC had a comprehensive strategy for combating Al Qaeda.”

Before September 11, for example, President Bush didn’t mention Al Qaeda at all in discussing US national security. His focus was on rogue states, weapons of mass destruction, and ballistic missile defence.

And to be fair, the Clinton administration didn’t have bin Laden and Al Qaeda squarely in its sights either.

Trying to understand how September 11 might have been averted requires more than a postmortem on CIA procedures and a second look at the government’s nonexistent strategy for dealing with Al Qaeda. Ultimately, the September 11 terrorist attacks are inextricably linked to US foreign policy.

The September 11 Commission concluded that the rising tide of anti-American Muslim hatred, which draws Muslims to the radical cause, is fuelled more by what we do — that is, by US policies — than by who we are. Our values, culture, and way of life are not the problem; our actions are the problem.

Yet, while the September 11 Commission understood that point, it did not prescribe any real change in America’s post-Cold War foreign policy.

If we are unable to admit that some of our policy choices are wrong, how can we hope to correct them? Certainly, Al Qaeda — not Americans or American society — is solely responsible for the death and destruction of those attacks.

But the US government — under Republican and Democratic administrations alike — must be held accountable for ill-conceived policies that have helped motivate terrorism against the US.
US foreign policy that results in unnecessary military intervention — the Balkans under President Clinton and Iraq under George W Bush — is one of the main causes of the virulent anti-American sentiment fuelling terrorism.

To understand what the US government could have done better to prevent September 11, and, more importantly, to understand how we might prevent future terrorist attacks, we need to adopt a more humble foreign policy, as candidate Bush advocated in 2000.

That responsibility rests squarely in the Oval office, not at CIA headquarters in Virginia. – MCT
* Charles V Pena is a senior fellow at The Independent Institute (www.independent.org), 100 Swan Way, Oakland, California 94621, and author of Winning the Un-War: A New Strategy for Winning the War on Terrorism.

Judge rules internet spying illegal

A US judge has ruled that the FBI cannot spy on people’s internet and telephone use without a warrant.

Judge Victor Marrero, of the District of Columbia, determined that the rules under the Patriot Act that allowed the FBI to secretly request telephone, internet and email logs without applying for a warrant were barred by the constitution.

The Patriot Act was passed 43 days after the terrorist attacks in the US on 11 September 2001.

Judge Marrero found that the practice offended constitutional principles of checks and balances, and violated the guarantee of free speech.

In a 24-page summation the judge concluded that the government would also have to hand over evidence requested on under the Freedom of Information act or explain why it would not.

“Today’s ruling deals a blow to the administration’s sweeping and often unfounded secrecy claims,” said Nasrina Bargzie, an attorney with the National Security Project at the American Civil Liberties Union.

“When documents are withheld under the Freedom of Information Act, the government must have a better excuse for keeping the documents secret than ‘because we said so’.”

The judge found that the government’s reasons for not releasing documents were “too vague and general” and that the FBI’s justifications were “wholly inadequate”.

The case will now go to the appeal courts and the government has until 12 October to respond.

Author of secret Iraq report declares Iraqi government ‘in collapse’

The confidential version of Congress’ Congressional Research Report on Iraq declares that Iraq’s government is “in collapse,” according to the New York Daily News‘ James Meek, who first acquired the report.

The report was completed Aug. 15 for the House and Senate, as President Bush geared up for a fresh battle with Congress over his intent to ’stay the course.’

“My assessment is that because of the number and breadth of parties boycotting the cabinet, the Iraqi government is in essential collapse,” Kenneth Katzman, the author of the report, said, according to Meek. “That argues against any real prospects for political reconciliation.”

Without a political infrastructure in Iraq, any military progress would be short-lived, he added.

As a whole, the 62-page report is typical of those conducted by the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan arm of Congress tasked with investigating topics of interest to members. The report expounds on myriad aspects of Iraq’s political, economic and security challenges.

A top diplomat — who remained unnamed — told Meek any political solution to the war is now “hopeless.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is trying to stave off the collapse of his government while fending off rivals at a time when the country has already spun out of control.