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Cynthia McKinney’s Big Issue - 9/11 Truth

Monday, October 15th, 2007

The following is a story which appeared in Big Issue No. 765, 8-15 October, 2007, pp. 6-9. John Bird, the publisher, was intent upon meeting her in person, but was off to Japan just as she was arriving in the UK. The reporter, Helena Drakakis, was one of the few British journalists who has covered the 9/11 Truth Movement, having done a story about William Rodriguez and his tour of the UK earlier this year.

Courage Under Fire

A constant thorn in the US government’ side, controversial former congresswoman Cynthia Mckinney tells Helena Drakakis why the authorities have been revealed as ‘huge liars’

Cynthia McKinney hates the word ‘conspiracy’. As a former democrat and congresswoman she is never more than one step away from controversy, and she’s in London to promote the 9/11 Truth Movement, an organisation which disputes the official version of the Twin Towers attacks in 2001.

“I am just asking for the truth,” she says as she carefully files her nails on the kitchen table of a west London flat. “I am not into conspiracy, but there has been no independent commission over the events of that day. There are explanations that don’t explain and conclusions that don’t conclude. I just want people to demand the truth.”

Whatever accusations have been levelled at McKinney (and there are many), no one could deny that she is determined. Not acting that way would betray her heritage, she says.

“I understand state-sponsored terrorism, but I am not scared. Malcolm X knew he was going to be assassinated, but on that day he told his wife to get dressed, to dress his children and he left to make his final speech. How can I ever say I am afraid of anything? That would be cowardice,” she says.

McKinney, 52, was born in Atlanta, Georgia in the same year Rosa Parks sparked the black civil rights movement by refusing to give up her seat to a white bus passenger. McKinney didn’t know Martin Luther King personally, but she is close to people who did.

Her father Billy McKinney was one of Atlanta’s first black law enforcement officers, and a former Georgia state representative.

As a black single mother, she has attracted disapproval and support in equal measure – and at times she’s appeared as a lone crusader and voice on Capitol Hill.

Since her debut into public office in 1988 she has been a constant thorn in the side of consecutive US governments – always the one to ask those awkward questions government officials would rather avoid answering. Her dogmatic approach has led to her being branded a “loony”, a “loose cannon” and “dangerous” by the US media and by members of her own party.

After George Bush Snr’s departure from the White House in 1993, she was the only member of Congress to demand a hearing on his involvement with Canadian gold-mining company, Barrick Gold. She wanted wanted to know whether its Congolese mining operations had fuelled a civil war.

After 9/11 she asked why certain groups and individuals – some of them members of the Bin Laden family – escaped investigation prior to the World Trade Center attacks, even though the FBI and CIA had recognised them as suspect terrorist organisations.

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina she questioned why African-Americans are still twice as likely than any other race to be paid less than the minimum wage, and why – in a report by US homeless organisations Hull House – that in a city such as Chicago it would take 200 years for black quality of life to equal that of whites.

So far, she says, she has not received any credible answers.

She hesitates when she’s asked about the PhD she’s planning at the Univeristy of California, Berkely.

“I’m not sure I want to tell people because it’s controversial,” she laughs. But, after a short pause, she can’t help herself. “I’m looking at Cointelpro – the US government intelligence programme which targeted political dissidents. There are documents dating back to 1919 proving the US government used surveillance to target the black community,” she says. Although the FBI claims Cointelpro no longer exists, McKinney is resolute that it still remains in all but name.

She also claims, in the aftermath of 9/11, that she was also under surveillance.

As was her father: “We got used to it as kids,” she says casually.

But far from seeing successive US governments through Machiavellian-tinted glasses, she’s insistent when she talks about government as capable of being “an agent of positive change.”

“In 1954, under Eisenhower, the government began to be seen acting for the people. Jimmy Carter proved state power could be used with conscience. That is why I am appalled at what happened under the Bush administration. The government was illegitimate in the first place. The election was stolen from the people,” she says. “My father taught me service without expectation of reward. That is not the motivation of those running for office.”

She admits that the efforts of the 9/11 Truth Movement in holding the government accountable, in part, attracted her to the cause. That a group of people from “different strains of outrage” can be moved enough to mobilise themselves at a grassroots level interest her even more.

“People of conscience see the government as having taken a wrong turn and they have begun mobilising for a different path. Elected officials have lost their principles and the American people need to reclaim the government for themselves,” she says.

According to McKinney, this reality did not hit home in the aftermath of 9/11 but only in the months and now years since Hurricane Katrina destroyed most of New Orleans. She describes the catastrophe as a “revelation for the world” and the government’s response to it as “an insult to all intelligent American people.”

“It showed the US government to be a hugely successful propagandist and a huge liar,” she says, her southern drawl suddenly reaching crescendo. “Katrina unveiled shocking statistics. Black people have known them for years but suddenly those figures meant something to white people. The pauperisation of this country at the expense of a war has moved people of conscience. It feels the same as when the American people woke up to what was happening in Vietnam.”

It is perhaps no surprise that McKinney has spent the last year being courted by the US Green Party as their next leader and 2008 presidential candidate – an offer she has gracefully bowed out from earlier this month but is thought now to be reconsidering.

Her dalliance with the Green Party came after the Democratic Party ousted her (she claims) from Congress in January before a vote over funding for the Iraq war, which she vehemently opposed. It was reminiscent of 1991 when her colleagues walked out on her after she spoke on the floor of the Georgia House of Representatives against Bush Snr’s bombing of Baghdad.

“The Greens are good people. They are idealistic, but at heart they want the best for the planet and people. Their activists have always supported me politically,” she reflects.

What McKinney will do next is unclear, but it is doubtful she will stay on the sidelines of political life for long. “I guess I am a voice people like. It has been hard for me, but I know I have to get up every morning and just keep on truckin’,” she says.

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DRIVER ‘MET MI6 SPY’ ON CRASH NIGHT

Monday, October 15th, 2007

James Murray and Gordon Thomas

Renegade spy Richard Tomlinson will tell the Princess Diana inquest that he believes Ritz hotel security chief Henri Paul met an MI6 handler on the night she died.

Today we also reveal a French spy chief allegedly seen chatting to Paul on the night of the crash is refusing to give evidence at the inquest.

Mr Tomlinson, a former MI6 officer once jailed for leaking Government secrets, will make sensational claims via a videolink from his bolthole in France to the inquest in London.

He is refusing to return to Britain to give evidence in person because he fears he will be arrested and jailed. Cambridge-educated Mr Tomlinson, 40, will give evidence supporting the claim by Harrods tycoon Mohamed Al Fayed that there was an Establishment plot to kill Diana to stop her marrying his son, Dodi, a Muslim.

Private testimony that Mr Tomlinson gave earlier caused ructions within MI6, leading to him being closely monitored by the British security services. Mr Tomlinson told the French examining magistrate Herve Stephan that a Frenchman working in the security department at the Paris Ritz was on MI6’s books.

He added: “I cannot claim that I remember from reading this file that the name of the person was Henri Paul but I have no doubt with the benefit of hindsight that it was he.”

In 2001 he claimed: “Henri Paul, who was the driver at the time of the accident, was an MI6 informer and, rather interestingly, he was missing for about half an hour before the accident.

“No one knows where he was and then when he was killed he was found with a very high alcohol level in his blood and a very substantial amount of money in his pocket.

“Now putting those three pieces of circumstantial evidence together, I suspect that shortly prior to his death he was in a meeting with his MI6 handler.

“I think that MI6 should hand over his personal file as a witness statement because clearly in an inquest into his death, knowing where he was for that missing half hour, who he was with and how much alcohol he had drunk are very important factors.

“What I am saying is that there is important information in MI6 files and I think that they should be handed over to the judge in charge of the inquest.”

Speaking exclusively to the Sunday Express from his home in France, Mr Tomlinson said he will reveal discussions he had within MI6 in May 1992 with a colleague about an assassination plot.

The Sunday Express has been given the identity of the MI6 man he spoke to but we are not publishing his name on the grounds that his security may be compromised.

Mr Tomlinson said: “I was having a serious discussion with a colleague on developing and targeting operations in the Balkans. These were known as P/40s. He handed me a Y-file, identified as most restricted by the yellow stripe on the front. Inside was a document, two typed pages long, with a small yellow card attached to signify it was an accountable account rather than a draft proposal.

“Accountable meant it was in a ready to act state. It was entitled ‘The Need to Assassinate President Milosevic of Serbia’. I distributed it to senior MI6 officers.

“There were detailed discussions and the consensus was that a stun device could be used to dazzle the driver’s gaze of Milosevic’s car as it passed through the Geneva tunnel, forcing him to crash.”

Milosevic was to attend an international conference on the former Yugoslavia.

Mr Tomlinson added: “What later struck me about the deaths of Diana and Dodi was that the claims how they had died mimicked what was in the document on how to assassinate Milosevic.

“I will testify that the Y-file document shows Henri Paul could have been blinded as he drove through the Paris underpass by a high-powered flashlight.

“The Y-file proves this was a technique which, at the time of Diana and Dodi’s deaths, was consistent with MI6 methods.”

The inquest into the death of Diana and Dodi has seen CCTV footage of the couple in and around the Ritz Hotel in Paris on the night of August 30, 1997.

But the inquest has been told there were gaps in the movements of Henri Paul, the hotel’s acting head of security. He left the hotel between 7pm and 10pm, thinking his duties were over, but returned when Diana and Mr Fayed unexpectedly returned to the hotel for a meal.

Where Mr Paul went during those crucial three hours has never been fully explained. There is also a period when he went missing for eight and a half minutes from 10.22pm when he was not picked up on any CCTV cameras.

The investigation into the crash carried out by former Metropolitan Police chief Lord Stevens decided that Mr Tomlinson was unreliable and that he had embellished his accounts.

Scotland Yard detectives working for Lord Stevens carried out detailed investigations at MI6. They discovered that an MI6 officer, codenamed Fish, did write a proposal in 1993 to assassinate an extremist Balkans leader, but it was not Milosevic, and senior officers in the service said the man was acting alone and the plan would not have been sanctioned.

Mr Tomlinson said: “The two Stevens’ detectives said in their own inquiries at MI6 that it became very clear that what I had told them, and which they had confirmed in the MI6 files, would have an important influence on how the Stevens inquiry finally reported.

“There is no doubt at all there was a major intelligence presence in events leading up to the death of Princess Diana and Dodi.”

New Zealand born Mr Tomlinson joined MI6 as agent D/813317 in 1991. He worked as a “targeting officer”, serving in the Balkans and Moscow. Later he served in the East European Controllerate, one of the most important departments in the Secret Intelligence Service. It gave him access to the highly restricted Y-files.

He was sacked in 1995 and was jailed for a year in December 1997 for breaching the Official Secrets Act, a sentence which has left him with bitter memories.

He says he does not know why he was sacked, but admits he was depressed when he finished working in Bosnia because of the dreadful sights he witnessed. Last March the Crown Prosecution Service announced that it would not be prosecuting Mr Tomlinson for offences under the Official Secrets Act.

The then Attorney General Lord Goldsmith decided it would not be in the public interest to continue legal action against him.

It was alleged that Mr Tomlinson had committed blackmail offences by threatening to make more disclosures because Scotland Yard would not return computers seized from him.

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CCTV proves police lied: de Menezes behaved normally before being murdered

Monday, October 15th, 2007

Aftermath News

The murder scene. Jean Charles de Menezes ‘ body in a puddle of blood after police pumped seven slugs into him.

The cops claimed Jean Charles de Menezes was wearing a bulky coat to hide a bomb. But they lied. He was wearing a light denim jacket. They said he was running away, jumping turnstiles. But they lied. He walked nonchalantly like everyone else, completely unsuspecting that he was about to be murdered by a bloodthirsty gang of Israeli-trained London cops, who lie, lie and lie some more. The entire operation was a lie from it’s inception, through its execution and into its continuing subsequent whitewashing and coverup.

They could have easily detained him outside the station, which is the logical thing to do with a “suicide bomber” to prevent catastrophe, but the “controllers” purposely stalled to allow their prey to end up down in the tube where he could be properly dispatched out of the light of day. They say it was a “botched operation”, but the way these thugs operate, I doubt there was any mistake made on the part of the controllers. It was just another deception. They meant to have him killed to make an example out of him. In other words, “We have the power of life over death. We decide when you live and when you die. We are the new overlords. And best of all, we’re untouchable! hahahahaha!”

9/11 is a proven lie, another Hollywood production for an ignorant dumbed-down public. So was 7/7, yet another false-flag operation, with simultaneous drills in exactly the same three stations, designed to get people to surrender their liberties for “security” from the loving Big Brother global fascist state.

So, will you believe what they say now about Mr de Menezes? They are still lying you know, and won’t stop lying about this crime probably for the rest of their lives. And for their loyalty and devotion to the job, they will get their medals of dishonor, their elevation in the masonic lodge and maybe even knighthoods. Mmm, wouldn’t that be nice?

And since these disgusting lying cops are now the new gods, whose boots must now be licked with complete subservience, they will maintain immunity from prosecution just as murdering troops, commanders and mercenaries in Iraq keep getting off virtually scott-free for gunning down entire families in their homes, on the sidewalks and in their cars. British police now have shoot-to-kill powers of anyone suspected of being a terrorist and de Menezes will not be the last to die like this. How would you like it if this happened to your dear sweet son, or your loving brother? No matter who you are, you must see the total absurdity, criminal brutality and injustice of this heinous event and you must speak out against it. If not, then don’t cry when they kill or maim your own loved ones.

This type of garbage will just go on and on, getting worse and worse unless people wake up and realize that all of their freedoms are being stripped from them by a neofeudal elite, unrestrained by traditional values like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Stop them now, before we are all microchipped, because by then, it will be just about too late.

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De Menezes officer knew he wasn’t bomber

Monday, October 15th, 2007

By Caroline Gammell

The Metropolitan Police commander who ordered the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes knew the Brazilian was not one of the wanted July 21 bombers some time before he was killed, the Old Bailey heard yesterday.


	Jean Charles de Menezes

Surveillance officers following the 27-year-old formally identified him as not being Hussain Osman, who they were hunting over the failed suicide attempts on London’s transport network the day before.

Commander Cressida Dick, who oversaw Operation Theseus, ordered the surveillance Grey Team to stop Mr de Menezes and question him about the area in which he lived.

He had been spotted in Scotia Road in Tulse Hill, south London, which was linked to 28-year-old Osman after the terrorist’s gym card was found bearing the same address.

But despite being negatively identified “in minutes”, Mr de Menezes was followed from his home, onto a bus and into Stockwell Tube station where he was killed on July 22, 2005.

Cdr Dick ordered a “hard stop” to be carried out by firearms officers after anti-terror and surveillance teams failed to stop him, the court heard.

Details of the identification came from a surveillance co-ordinator giving evidence during the health and safety trial against the Metropolitan Police.

The officer, known only as “Owen”, told the court: “There was a point when the senior management group knew that it wasn’t Nettletip (Osman’s codename). I believe that came across on the radio.

“I can’t say what the exact words were but there was a discussion about the situation on the bus and they wanted SO13 anti-terror police to stop the subject and establish intelligence about the residents and flats at Scotia Road.


	Cressida Dick ordered officers to stop Mr de Menezes

“If he lived next to the subject he may have been able to tell us things of relevance. It later emerged that they (surveillance) had continued and Cressida Dick asked why the unidentified individual was still being followed if it was not Nettletip.”

Clare Montgomery, QC, prosecuting, asked: “Was he identified as positively not Nettletip?”

Owen replied: “Yes, the direction was for the surveillance teams to stop and for the anti-terror officers to gather the intelligence about the block of flats.

“After three or four minutes Cressida Dick and I were aware that the surveillance team had not pulled back and they were still following the male. Her belief was it definitely wasn’t the suspect.”

Owen said that at no time during the operation was Mr de Menezes, who came to Britain in 2002, “positively identified” as Osman.

A second surveillance officer, identified as “Pat”, told jurors how it had been difficult to communicate over the racket in the control room.

“People were shouting to make themselves heard,” he said. “I had difficulty getting people’s attention because I couldn’t leave my seat.”

He said there had been trouble with the radio link to the undercover and firearms teams: “There seemed to be problems with the system, but that is not uncommon.”

The hearing continues.

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A Nuclear Nightmare — The Portland Plot

Monday, October 15th, 2007

By Captain Eric H. May

Forward and Forewarning

The satiric article below is only hypothetical, an attempt to write what could be the news on Friday, October 19, 2007, a week from now. According to official sources and official media, an attack like the one I will describe is not a matter of if, but of when. They do not present it as a possibility but as a probability, and even as an inevitability. I have often wondered — and often written — about how it is that they can be so sure of what’s in our future. Given that they are so sure, though, it seems prudent to present this plausible scenario to an interested public.

A Nuclear Nightmare — The Portland Plot

By Rosy Palmer
The Oregonist

Portland, OREGON (10/19) — Oregon City, Oregon became ground zero for the latest attack by Islamic terrorism against American freedom when its Old Oregon City Bridge on the Williamette River was shattered by a “dirty nuke” radiological dispersion device at 10:19 a.m. (PST).

Federal officials have ordered Oregon National Guard troops, supplemented by private security contracting firms, to lock down Interstate 205, to the north and west of the radiological contamination zone, which is dispersing and defusing as it travels southeast into mostly agricultural areas.

“It could have been much worse,” said Army Captain Amy Rice, a spokesperson for the US Northern Command, which has sent civil support teams to the area to do a detailed assessment of damage and estimate mortality rates. “This could have been inside the Portland city limits, or the radiation could have blown there, had it not been for the prevailing northwesterly wind, which is blowing it all to the southeast.”

“Our current estimate is that fewer than 200 Oregon City residents are dead so far,” she said, “but another 2,000 will likely die from radiation poisoning within the next 72 hours.”

“Military and contractor forces are moving into the contamination zone to extract those who are unable to move themselves to decontamination sites,” Rice added, “but we ask that the public be as patient as possible, because official personnel are wearing full protective gear to avoid becoming casualties themselves, and wearing all that equipment slows things down considerably.”

She concedes that as many as 20,000 people have been exposed to radioactive fallout, and their survivability will depend on their levels of exposure.

Vice President Dick Cheney was in nearby Portland when the catastrophic attack occurred, observing the massive federal exercises TOPOFF and Vigilant Shield, which were to conclude today. Ironically, the dual exercises were simulating exactly the kind of incident that occurred in Oregon City, 10 miles southeast of Portland.

“We’ll extend the mobilization of all federal, state, local and tribal personnel indefinitely,” Cheney said at a hastily summoned press conference early this afternoon, in which he announced the implementation of National Security Presidential Directive 51, signed into effect by the Bush administration May 9 in anticipation of the kind of terror attack we experienced today.

“We had a pretty good idea that something was up as early as the spring,” he said, “and Secretary Chertoff said as much in July when he said that he had a gut feeling we would come under attack.”

Several reporters asked the vice president whether TOPOFF and Vigilant Shield, exercises preparing for a Portland dirty nuke attack, were being held here because of advanced knowledge that the Portland area was being set up. Cheney refused to answer, citing national security considerations. In August another terror exercise, Noble Resolve, simulated a nuclear attack on the Portland area.

“I’m not going to aid and abet terrorism by letting the terrorists know how much we knew or know about what they were doing, are doing, or may still be doing,” he said. “There has been far too much conspiracy speculation already, and it’s criminal under the circumstances we face today. We are doing our best to keep things under control, to better protect the public and ensure the continuity of constitutional government.”

Portland city police are leading a newly designated “Patriot Posse,” which federal officials have tasked with carrying out a dragnet operation against terrorists and terror enablers in the city. For the most part arrests, assisted by Homeland Security, FBI and private contractors, have been orderly. In a few notable instances, though, suspects have resisted arrest by the heavily armed police forces, and as many as a dozen suspects are reported dead, along with two law enforcement officers. Anonymous insiders suggest that private contractors have been “trigger-happy,” and that the two dead police officers were shot from behind by overzealous assistants who “lack fire discipline.”

“I want to assure the public that everything we are doing is completely legal and absolutely necessary,” Cheney said, “and every one of the individuals we have arrested was first officially declared an enemy combatant by informed counter-terrorism officials.”

Military roadblocks have been set up around the city of Portland and, in the interest of public safety, no travel beyond the cordon is allowed at present. By tomorrow officials hope to have a functional system by which Portlanders can apply for permission to travel out of town, after passing through armed checkpoints.

Cheney affirmed that emergency detention centers were being set up in the area, but declined to specify where, citing national security considerations.

“Let’s just say enemy combatants will be taken care of and leave it at that,” he said. “We’ve learned a lot about what to do and not to do to ensure co-operation from terrorists and their enablers, and the public can rest assured that we’ll get to the bottom of this, one way or another.”

Conspiracy theorists are a major problem in keeping control of the catastrophic situation, according to Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, who just arrived in Portland this afternoon to assist Cheney in maintaining domestic order. Chertoff would not confirm rumors that Homeland Security personnel are responsible for a nationwide shutdown of Internet service providers, as well as international telephone services.

“I’m not going to dignify rumor mongering and conspiracy theory with either attention or answers,” Chertoff said. “Every front line first responder is doing everything possible to protect our American freedoms.”

Various conspiracy theory leaders in the Portland area have been rounded up, leading to speculation that they may have been involved in what is coming to be called The Portland Plot. They include Theresa Mitchell, host for KBOO public radio’s Presswatch; Patti Woodard, moderator of the Portland Nuclear Inquest; and Ginny Ross, founder of Oregon Truth Alliance. KBOO has taken over by military public affairs personnel, while PNI and OTA have been shut down for subverting public order. Members of all three groups are said to be in hiding.

At the time of the terrorist attack on Oregon City, President George W. Bush was in Texas playing golf in a charity event with his brother, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, and his father, former president George H. W. Bush. Upon receiving the news, the family was immediately moved to a secure location by Secret Service personnel. Before leaving, though, the younger Bush president read a prepared statement to the accompanying media:

“Thanks to the foresight of some dedicated members of this administration, America will weather the nuclear storm. The evil-doers who will hope to enslave us with terror have only filled us with a noble resolve to free the world of them. It is our national mission — and my personal mission — to protect the American people and punish those behind The Portland Plot. We will avenge our tragic losses by attacking the terrorist governments who assisted in these attacks. I ask the public to stay informed about what is happening in our nation by turning to established and trusted patriotic media sources. I further urge the public to report to their local police any Internet terrorist enablers who try to undermine our national security by spreading outrageous conspiracy theories about this terrorist attack, which was carried out by radical Islamists. God bless America as we struggle to create a new world order in a new American century.”

Afterword and Advisory

Lest anyone think that I am encouraging a public panic on the day before TOPOFF and Vigilant Shield, be assured that the nuclear scenarios envisioned by official sources predict far worse results than those I have hypothesized. On April 15, Vice President Dick Cheney, appearing on Meet the Press, worried aloud that we might be hit by a nuclear attack that could kill a million people. An attack against Iran, triggered by a catastrophic event in United States, has already been prepared by CONPLAN 8022, which was put into effect through the efforts of Dick Cheney in 2005. My inferences on the extent of police powers and domestic detentions are derived from NSPD 51 — the details of which have been withheld from Congress despite repeated requests to view them by Congressman Peter DeFazio of Oregon and the House Homeland Security Committee.

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Sorry about the torture; we thought you were one of the terrorists

Monday, October 15th, 2007

By A. Barton Hinkle

Here’s the problem with Guantanamo Bay – and secret CIA prisons on foreign soil – in a nutshell: If the prisoners being held there are illegal enemy combatants, then most Americans believe they do not deserve all the procedural niceties afforded by the Constitution. But the only fair way to figure out if a prisoner qualifies as an illegal enemy combatant is to follow the procedural niceties guaranteed by the Constitution.

And the Bush administration hasn’t even come close.

Take Khaled el-Masri. He was kidnapped by American agents while he was vacationing in Macedonia in 2003. He was beaten, stripped, dressed in a diaper and sweatsuit, and then chained, spread-eagle, to the floor of an airplane. He was flown to Afghanistan – where he was held incommunicado and, he says, tortured in a secret prison for five months. By then, U.S. agents realized they had the wrong guy. Khaled el-Masri was not, in fact, Khalid al-Masri, the terrorist. Whoops, sorry about that! El-Masri was then dumped in Albania and left to find his way home.

ON TUESDAY, citing the state secrets doctrine, the Supreme Court said el-Masri could not bring a civil suit in U.S. court. Germany’s parliament continues to investigate the episode.

If el-Masri’s were an isolated case, that would be one thing. But it is not. Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, was kidnapped by U.S. agents and spirited to Syria, where authorities tortured him for 10 months. A subsequent inquiry by Canadian authorities determined “categorically” that there was “no evidence to indicate that Arar has committed any offense.” El-Masri and Arar are not alone.

How do Americans know the prisoners held captive in Guantanamo are not also victims of the fog of war but are, as the Bush administration claims, the “worst of the worst”? We don’t.

Take Australian David Hicks, the first Guantanamo prisoner to be convicted under the 2006 Military Commissions Act. According to press reports, “The high school dropout, Muslim convert, and al-Qaida recruit fought for two hours alongside the Taliban before he sold his rifle for taxi fare and was captured trying to escape Afghanistan in December 2001.” He was held at Guantanamo for more than five years before pressure from the Australian government led to a plea agreement – in which Hicks was sentenced to all of nine months’ imprisonment, on condition that he stop alleging that he was physically abused.

THE ADMINISTRATION has turned other Guantanamo prisoners loose. And theoretically, each of the remaining prisoners was determined to be rightfully held by the Combatant Status Review Tribunals established by the Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants.

But in late July U.S. Army Reserve Col. Stephen Abraham testified before Congress that those tribunals, in which he played a key role, were a charade.

The military intelligence officer and former lead counter-terrorism analyst for the Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Command told the House Armed Services Committee “there is no question that individuals who have attacked the United States should be punished, and that those who are preparing to attack the United States must be stopped. I have devoted my military career to identifying such individuals and their organizations, and to helping our country counter such threats.”

But, as he explained at length to the committee, the CSRT system “was designed to fail. This committee should place no reliance on the procedures or the outcomes of those tribunals. The CSRT panels were an effort to lend a veneer of legitimacy to the detentions, to ‘launder’ decisions already made. The CSRTs were not provided with the information necessary to make any sound, fact-based determinations as to whether detainees were enemy combatants. Instead, the OARDEC leadership exerted considerable pressure, and was under considerable pressure itself, to confirm prior determinations that the detainees in Guantanamo were enemy combatants and should not be released.”

UNDER THE Military Commissions Act, new combatant-status reviews have been ordered. But although the accused can appeal their convictions on technical grounds, actual innocence is not a basis for overturning a verdict. And statements obtained through torture before 2006 are still admissible as evidence.

President Bush himself has said Guantanamo should be closed. But what to do with the prisoners there? They cannot all simply be released – in some cases because their nation of origin will not take them back, in others because they constitute too great a threat to national security. But they cannot easily be moved to prisons in the U.S. According to Philip Zelikow, former legal counsel at the State Department, “litigation risk has been, by far, the No. 1 argument against shutting down Guantanamo.” Once on U.S. territory, the detainees would automatically gain more legal rights. And in some instances that could prove embarrassing to the U.S.

Thus the Bush administration has painted itself into a corner. It might need to keep some prisoners at Guantanamo in perpetuity – in order to avoid admitting they never should have been sent there in the first place.

A. Barton Hinkle is deputy editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s editorial pages.

http://www.tricities.com/tristate/tri/opinions.apx.-content-articles-TRI-2007-10-14-0004.html

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Retired Lieutenant lambasted US political leaders as “incompetent” and “corrupt‏”

Monday, October 15th, 2007

Former US commander labels Iraq ‘nightmare with no end’

A former top US military commander in Iraq says that the current White House strategy in Iraq will not achieve victory in the four-and-a-half-year war, which he described as “a nightmare with no end in sight.”

In the bluntest assessment of Iraq by a former senior Pentagon official yet, retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez also lambasted US political leaders as “incompetent”, “corrupted”, “derelict in the performance of their duty” and suggested they would have been court martialled had they been members of the US military.

“There is no question that America is living a nightmare with no end in sight,” Lt Gen Sanchez said, addressing a meeting of military correspondents and editors in Arlington, a Virginia suburb of Washington.

He blasted President George W Bush’s “surge” strategy that calls for maintaining more than 160,000 US troops in Iraq until the end of the year, in the hope of reducing sectarian violence and bringing about a modicum of political stability.

The strategy has since been adjusted, with the current plan calling for the withdrawal of about 21,500 combat troops by July to bring the total to the “pre-surge” level of 130,000 servicemen.

But Lt Gen Sanchez said he did not believe in these changes would prove effective.

“Continued manipulations and adjustments to our military strategy will not achieve victory,” he said.

“The best we can do with this flawed approach is stave off defeat.”

- AFP

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Warrantless wiretapping in place before 9/11

Monday, October 15th, 2007

Washington Post publishes additional details about the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping, noting that the National Security Agency approached Qwest “more than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.” But the Body Politik’s Igor Volsky points out that President Bush has claimed that the program was put in place in response to 9/11:”

After September the 11th, I vowed to the American people that our government would do everything within the law to protect them against another terrorist attack. As part of this effort, I authorized the National Security Agency to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations. [5/11/06]

Kagro X adds, “If Qwest’s competitors were already abetting this bloodless(?) coup before 9/11, then the ‘administration’s’ domestic spying not only has little if anything to do with response to terrorism, but it also objectively failed to prevent 9/11.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/10/13/warrantless-wiretapping-in-place-before-911/

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Guards acquitted over juvenile’s death

Monday, October 15th, 2007

A Florida jury has acquitted seven guards and a nurse of manslaughter in the death of a 14-year-old boy whose beating by guards at a juvenile boot camp was caught on videotape.

Martin Lee Anderson was sent to the camp for joyriding in his grandmother’s car.

His death, initially not acted on by officials, sparked outrage when the tape was made public, leading to accusations of a cover-up against then governor Jeb Bush and the closure of Florida’s boot camps.

Florida has agreed to pay $US5 million to the boy’s family.

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BBC stars keep sky high pay, yet support staff face cuts

Monday, October 15th, 2007

By Chris Hastings

The BBC’s highest-paid stars including Jonathan Ross, Terry Wogan and Graham Norton will keep their huge pay packets despite drastic cuts to the corporation’s budget.

The Sunday Telegraph understands that Mark Thompson, the director-general, has ruled out any move to slash salaries of big names for fear that they will defect to ITV.

Mr Thompson is struggling to fill a £2 billion black hole in the BBC’s finances. The loss of up to 2,800 jobs, the sale of assets and a massive reduction in programme budgets are likely.

Ross has a three-year deal worth £18 million, Norton has a £5 million contract and Wogan earns £800,000 a year. Other high earners include the Radio 1 DJs Jo Whiley and Chris Moyles who are reportedly paid £250,000 and £630,000 a year respectively.

Speculation about salary cuts emerged last week when it was claimed that Mr Thompson had called 100 of the corporation’s biggest names to a meeting this Wednesday, when the package of cuts will be signed off by the BBC Trust. Sources insisted last night, however, that only full-time staff got the summons and that most of the highest paid personalities are freelance. The sources claim the meeting is more likely to be a briefing about the cuts in general.

One source, who asked not to be named, said: “Not one of the very high earners or their representatives has been approached on pay. Any self-respecting channel controller would give up the job rather than let the director-general interfere in these kinds of negotiations.”

The last details of the cuts package are still being finalised. Mr Thompson and Sir Michael Lyons, the chairman of the BBC Trust, are due to meet at 7.30am tomorrow to thrash out further details.

The news operation and the corporation’s factual progamming division are expected to be the hardest hit. Managers in BBC News have told staff to brace themselves for around 520 job cuts.

Full details of the proposals will be presented to staff on Thursday.

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DIANA TRUTH WILL DESTROY BRITAIN

Monday, October 15th, 2007

By Tom Hutchison

THE truth about Princess Diana’s death could “spell the ruination of Britain”, it was claimed last night.

The allegation was made by the father of Henri Paul, who was driving Diana’s car on the night of the Paris crash.

Jean Paul says his son is being made a scapegoat by the authorities for the crash that killed him, Diana, 36, and her lover Dodi Fayed, 42.

With the six-month inquest on Diana set to continue today, Mr Paul claimed Henri, 41, had to discreetly eject a mystery intruder at the Ritz minutes before he took to the road – proving he could not have been drunk at the wheel. And he says French police are refusing to hand back some of Henri’s blood-covered possessions because they do not want him to have access to his blood from that night.

Jean Paul also says that claims his son was in the pay of secret services are rubbish as the broke security chief had asked him for a £1,000 loan for a deposit on a flat.

Mr Paul Snr, 76, said a treasured photo ID card his son was carrying in his wallet during the 1997 crash had never been returned.

He suggested the authorities did not want him to have the blood-stained card because he would be able to prove through lab tests that his son was not drunk at the wheel.

He added: “We were also told Henri had no wallet on him. I don’t believe that.”

Mr Paul said a lot of things did not add up about the whole case.

But he said: “In my heart there is a flame of hope that, one day, the truth will come out.

“And it could spell the ruination of Great Britain.”

A spokesman for Dodi’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed, has urged dad-of-five Mr Paul to address the inquest with his claims.

He said: “Anyone who has relevant information must bring it before the coroner so that the jury can hear it and assess it.”

French police would not comment on his claims last night.

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Fingerprint doubt over Kelly ’suicide’

Monday, October 15th, 2007

Secret knife evidence points to murder, says MP

By Stewart Whittingham And Graham Brough

Newly released evidence adds to the theory that MoD scientist Dr David Kelly was murdered and did not commit suicide, an MP has claimed.

Norman Baker revealed that the penknife Dr Kelly apparently used to slash his wrist did not carry his own fingerprints.

Lib Dem Mr Baker said: “The angle you pick up a knife to kill yourself means there would be fingerprints.

“Someone who wanted to kill themselves wouldn’t go to the lengths of wiping the knife clean of fingerprints.

“It is just very suspicious. It is one of the things that makes me think Dr Kelly was murdered. The case should be re-opened.”

UN weapons inspector Dr Kelly, 59, was found dead near his Oxfordshire home in 2003, days after he was named as the source of a BBC story that claimed the Government had “sexed up” a dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

The dossier said Saddam Hussein could launch conventional nuclear or biological weapons within 45 minutes.

Independent doctors have said neither the cut to Dr Kelly’s wrist nor the drugs found in his body were enough to kill him.

And they claimed the official cause of death, a severed ulnar artery in the wrist, was extremely unlikely to be fatal.

Mr Baker, who is writing a book on Dr Kelly, used the Freedom of Information Act to discover from Thames Valley police that no fingerprints were on the penknife. The MoD germ warfare expert was not wearing gloves nor were any found at the scene.

An inquest ruled his death was suicide and the Hutton Inquiry exonerated then-PM Tony Blair.

Dr Kelly’s former colleague, UN weapons expert Richard Spertzel, claimed the scientist was on Saddam’s hitlist because his work in the 90s had forced Iraq to admit to a secret biological arsenal.

A Thames Valley police spokeswoman said: “There were no fingerprints on the knife.

“This, however, does not change the official explanation for his death.”

Dr Kelly’s wife Janice has said she is certain he committed suicide.

She refused to comment on Mr Baker’s murder theory.

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