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The Future of Big Brother

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

Homeland Security is bankrolling futuristic profiling technology to nab terrorists before they strike.

As soon as you walk into the airport, the machines are watching. Are you a tourist — or a terrorist posing as one?

As you answer a few questions at the security checkpoint, the systems begin sizing you up. An array of sensors — video, audio, laser, infrared — feeds a stream of real-time data about you to a computer that uses specially developed algorithms to spot suspicious people.

The system interprets your gestures and facial expressions, analyzes your voice and virtually probes your body to determine your temperature, heart rate, respiration rate and other physiological characteristics — all in an effort to determine whether you are trying to deceive.

Fail the test, and you’ll be pulled aside for a more aggressive interrogation and searches.

That scenario may sound like science fiction, but the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is deadly serous about making it a reality.

Interest in the use of what some researchers call behavioral profiling (the DHS prefers the term “assessing culturally neutral behaviors”) for deception detection intensified last July, when the department’s human factors division asked researchers to develop technologies to support Project Hostile Intent, an initiative to build systems that automatically identify and analyze behavioral and physiological cues associated with deception.

That project is part of a broader initiative called the Future Attribute Screening Technologies Mobile Module, which seeks to create self-contained, automated screening systems that are portable and relatively easy to implement.

The DHS has aggressive plans for the technology. The schedule calls for an initial demonstration for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) early this year, followed by test deployments in 2010. By 2012, if all goes well, the agency hopes to begin deploying automated test systems at airports, border checkpoints and other points of entry.

If successful, the technology could also be used in private-sector areas such as building-access control and job-candidate screening. Critics, however, say that the system will take much longer to develop than the department is predicting — and that it might never work at all.

In the Details

“It’s a good idea fraught with difficulties,” says Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer at security consultancy BT Counterpane in Santa Clara, Calif.

Schneier says that focusing on suspicious people is a better idea than trying to detect suspicious objects. The metal-detecting magnetometers that airport screeners have relied on for more than 30 years are easily defeated, he says. But he thinks the technology needed for Project Hostile Intent to succeed is still at least 15 years out. “We can’t even do facial recognition,” he says. “Don’t hold your breath.”

But Sharla Rausch, director of the DHS’s human factors division, says the agency is already seeing positive results. In a controlled lab setting, she says, accuracy rates are in the range of 78 to 81%. The tests are still producing too many false positives, however. “In an operational setting, we need to be at a higher level than that,” Rausch says, and she’s confident that results will improve. At this point, though, it’s still unclear how well the systems will work in real-world settings.

Measuring Hostile Intent

Current research focuses on three key areas. The first is recognition of gestures and so-called “microfacial expressions” — a poker player might call them “tells” — that flash across a person’s face in about one third of a second. Some researchers say micro expressions can betray a person when he is trying to deceive.

The second area is analysis of variations in speech, such as pitch and loudness, for indicators of untruthfulness.

The third is measurement of physiological characteristics such as blood pressure, pulse, skin moisture and respiration that have been associated with polygraphs, or lie detectors.

By combining the results for all of these modalities, the DHS hopes to improve the overall predictive accuracy rate beyond what the polygraph — or any other means of testing an individual indicator — can deliver.

That’s not a very high bar. The validity of polygraphs has long been questioned by scientists, and despite decades of research and refinements, the results of lie-detector tests remain inadmissible in court. While the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment (DACA; formerly the Polygraph Institute) puts median accuracy percentage for polygraphs in the mid-80s when properly administered, others say that number is closer to 50% in the real world and that the results depend heavily on the skills of the examiner.

Schneier goes even further. He says lie detectors rely on “fake technology” that works only in the movies. They remain on the scene, he says, because people want them to work.

The presumption that combining the predictive results from the three areas being studied will increase predictive accuracy is also untested. “We can’t find any indicators that this stuff is being combined [in current research]. The feeling is that [the DHS is] doing some groundbreaking stuff here,” says Rausch.

Hearing Lies

Many researchers are already tackling different pieces of the Hostile Intent puzzle. Julia Hirschberg, a computer science professor at Columbia University, is investigating how deception can be detected by picking up on speech characteristics that vary when someone is lying. The research, funded by a DHS grant, has identified 250 “acoustic, intonational and lexical features” that may indicate when a subject is lying.

So far, the best accuracy rate is 67%. She admits that’s “not great,” but it’s better than human observation alone, she claims.

The results may not apply to real world situations, however. Her work is based on lab experiments in which the subject presses a pedal when he is lying, and machine-learning systems process the results. “It’s not ideal,” she acknowledges. Moreover, the accuracy rate in predicting deception varies with cultural background as well as personality type. Hirschberg says she has identified four or five personality types that could affect how the results should be interpreted.

Adjusting for personality type might improve accuracy in cases where the type can be identified, but it’s doubtful that interviewers in an airport or border setting will have the insight necessary to do so.

Dimitris Metaxas, a professor of computer science in biomedical engineering at Rutgers University, has received funding from both the DHS and the DACA to use technology to track and interpret the meaning of microexpressions and gestures. “I’m trying to find the expressions and body movements that are not normal and could be linked to deception,” he says.

Metaxas says his research focuses on movements of the eyebrows and mouth as well as various head and shoulder gestures, but he wouldn’t be more specific. That’s because the exact indicators that he is interested in remain secret.

Although the DHS’s Rausch believes that micro expressions are involuntary, she doesn’t want people to know exactly what expressions the agency will be measuring — just in case.

“Every system can be broken,” Metaxas points out.

Objections and Obstacles

Skeptics say that no tech-based system will work.

The Ekman Group has trained TSA staffers on techniques to help them recognize and interpret microexpressions. The consultancy was founded by Paul Ekman, a pioneer in research linking microexpressions to deception. At the TSA, trained officers use the techniques as part of the organization’s Screening Passengers Through Observation Techniques program.

John Yuille, the Ekman Group’s director, doesn’t think the technique can be automated. The discipline is a “social science,” he says, and microexpressions merely represent “clues to truthfulness” that require human interpretation. “Our methodology is not amenable to technological intervention,” Yuille says.

Metaxas says that what’s holding him back at this point isn’t technology. “The basic technology to track the face, I’ve solved that problem,” he says, claiming an accuracy rate of 70 to 80% with cameras positioned at distances up to nine feet from the subject.

The challenge is optimizing the algorithms that relate those expressions to deception. To do that, he needs more data from psychologists. The theories linking microexpressions to deception are largely based on academic research. Although it has been tested in lab settings, it has not been scientifically proved in large-scale, real-world studies.

Rules must also be applied in the correct context. For example, a measurement of something like a microexpression must be associated with what was being said at the time, and the meaning of what was said must be correctly interpreted, says Hirschberg. The system must also be able to determine whether there is a mismatch between a given expression or gesture and what was said.

“That is very difficult [for a computer] to do,” she says, so in the lab, the matching work has been done manually.

In an effort to refine the algorithms, Metaxas has collaborated with Judee Burgoon, a professor of communication, family studies and human development at the University of Arizona. She says the lack of rigorous research validating the use of microexpressions as indicators of deception “gives everyone pause.” It’s not known whether microexpressions correspond with underlying emotions or whether those emotional states correspond to deception, she says.

Although it is believed that microexpressions are involuntary, it’s unclear whether subjects can “game the system,” as they have done with polygraphs. And many researchers in the field believe that indicators of deception are culturally dependent. That means analysis that doesn’t take cultural background into account could amount to ethnic, rather than behavioral, profiling. That’s ironic, since using machines to analyze the data is supposed to help eliminate biases associated with human decision-making.

In fact, the development of “culturally neutral” indicators is a stated goal of Project Hostile Intent. Rausch believes that researchers can identify microexpressions and other indicators that are universal or “cross-cultural.” That won’t happen in time for the initial test systems. But by 2011, says Rausch, the DHS should have test systems that use only culturally neutral indicators.

For Metaxas, the challenge now is to prove that the fundamental assumptions linking microexpressions to deception are correct. “What I hope I can do is validate and verify the psychology,” he says.

To do that he needs to conduct further tests involving interviews in real-world situations. But that won’t be easy. Privacy and security concerns have prevented Metaxas and other researchers from monitoring interrogations or conducting interviews in real-world settings such as airports or immigration points. Even the DHS faces obstacles in testing the technology in the field, Rausch acknowledges. And in real-world testing, says Hirshberg, there’s another problem: “You don’t really know when the person’s lying.”

With an aggressive timeline for deployment, Rausch is well aware of the challenges, and she cautions that the technology is far from complete. “We’re very much in a basic research stage,” she says.

Beyond Hostile Intent

Project Hostile Intent is just one of the programs that the DHS’s human factors division is pursuing. Another is violent-intent modeling. By applying social behavior theory to terrorism, the division is hoping to assist analysts that must manually sift through thousands for publications, news feeds and other data.

Researchers are developing indicators for potential violent behavior, which are used in computerized architectural frameworks that help analysts extract relevant data as they review documents. “Computers help in running the models. As you put the data together, you get likelihood coefficients for violent behavior. Our goal is to get that automated for the analysts,” says Rausch.

The “information-extraction tools” will assist analysts by identifying important information as they’re reading it, but they won’t replace analysts. “We’re doing it in a way that’s consistent with the way analysts think,” Rausch says.

Another developing area is biometrics. Research is focused on developing mobile readers that can perform facial, fingerprint and iris recognition. “As we push out in years, we’ll get into remote biometric [sensors],” as well as more refined, “10-print” fingerprint recognition, says Rausch.

The systems will tap into “huge databases for identification and verification,” she says.

Other TSA Technologies

The TSA may eventually use the behavior profiling systems that come from Project Hostile Intent, but that’s just one part of the agency’s transportation security strategy. The layered approach includes “a technology factor, a human factor and shared intelligence,” a spokesperson says.

The TSA’s passenger screening technology hasn’t changed since the magnetometer, a metal detector, was introduced in 1973, but it’s working on other technologies including a so-called advanced technology X-ray. This high-resolution X-ray system provides clearer images of the contents of carry-on baggage and offers multiple viewing angles. The machines are already widely used in Europe. The TSA has purchased 250 of them and plans to have a total of 500 installed by the end of 2008.

That’s a fraction of the 751 checkpoints and 2,000 lanes in service, but 500 machines is enough to cover 75% of the security lanes at the nation’s largest airports, which represent 45% of all travelers.

Another technology is the puffer machine. The subject walks into this phone booth-like device, and translucent bifold doors close around him. The machine then blasts the subject with a burst of compressed air and analyzes it for trace amounts of explosives. The puffer is already in testing in some airports but hasn’t worked well. “They’re OK, but I think we’ll go more in the direction of whole-body imaging,” says a spokesperson.

In whole body imaging, a machine bombards the subject with radio-frequency energy as he walks through and creates a very accurate image of his body — perhaps too accurate — in order to detect any foreign objects. “There’s a whole lot of privacy issues with this,” a spokesperson acknowledges.

The TSA is testing two technologies: One, called back scatter, uses a privacy algorithm that changes the image to a “chalk outline” of the body while the other, called millimeter wave, creates what looks like a negative.

To address privacy concerns, facial images are blurred, and images aren’t saved. In addition, the screener who sees the passenger never sees the images.

The machines are already in use in Phoenix, where passengers can choose a pat-down instead, and will show up at Los Angeles International Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport soon. “You’ll see more whole-body imaging [in 2008], a spokesperson says.

Caveats and Ethical Issues

Even if Project Hostile Intent ultimately succeeds, it will not be a panacea for preventing terrorism, says Schneier. The risk can be reduced, but not eliminated, he says. “If we had perfect security in airports, terrorists would go bomb shopping malls,” he says. “You’ll never be secure by defending targets.”

Assuming that the system gets off the ground, Project Hostile Intent also faces challenges from privacy advocates.

Although the system would use remote sensors that are physically “noninvasive,” and there are no plans to store the information, the amount of personal data that would be gathered concerns privacy advocates — as does the possibility of false positives.

“We are not going to catch any terrorists, but a lot of innocent people, especially racial and ethnic minorities, are going to be trapped in a web of suspicion,” says Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Project at the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington.

But Steinhardt isn’t really worried. He says Project Hostile Intent is just the latest in a long string of expensive and failed initiatives at the DHS and the TSA. “I’ve done hundreds of interviews about these [airline-passenger screening] schemes,” he says. “They never work.” Steinhardt adds that “hundreds of billions” of dollars have been wasted on such initiatives since 9/11. “Show me it works before [we] debate the civil liberties consequences,” he says.

The perfect lie detector may be waiting in the wings. Read all about it.

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US Government to access any email or web search

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

US drafting plan to allow government access to any email or Web search

Rawstory

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is drawing up plans for cyberspace spying that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a “walk in the park,” according to an interview published in the New Yorker’s print edition today.

Debate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act “will be a walk in the park compared to this,” McConnell said. “this is going to be a goat rope on the Hill. My prediction is that we’re going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens.”

The article, which profiles the 65-year-old former admiral appointed by President George W. Bush in January 2007 to oversee all of America’s intelligence agencies, was not published on the New Yorker’s Web site.

McConnell is developing a Cyber-Security Policy, still in the draft stage, which will closely police Internet activity.

“Ed Giorgio, who is working with McConnell on the plan, said that would mean giving the government the autority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer or Web search,” author Lawrence Wright pens.

“Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation, he said,” Wright adds. “Giorgio warned me, ‘We have a saying in this business: ‘Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.’”

A zero-sum game is one in which gains by one side come at the expense of the other. In other words — McConnell’s aide believes greater security can only come at privacy’s expense.

McConnell has been an advocate for computer-network defense, which has previously not been the province of any intelligence agency.

According to a 2007 conversation in the Oval Office, McConnell told President Bush, “If the 9/11 perpetrators had focused on a single US bank through cyber-attack and it had been successful, it would have an order of magnitude greater impact on the US economy.”

Bush turned to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, asking him if it was true; Paulson said that it was. Bush then asked to McConnell to come up with a network security strategy.

“One proposal of McConnell’s Cyber-Security Policy, which is still in the draft stage, is to reduce the access points between government computers and the Internet from two thousand to fifty,” Wright notes. “He claimed that cyber-theft account for as much as a hundred billion dollars in annual losses to the American economy. ‘The real problem is the perpetrator who doesn’t care about stealing—he just wants to destroy.’”

The infrastructure to tap into Americans’ email and web search history may already be in place.

In November, a former technician at AT&T alleged that the telecom forwarded virtually all of its Internet traffic into a “secret room” to facilitate government spying.

Whistleblower Mark Klein said that a copy of all Internet traffic passing over AT&T lines was copied into a locked room at the company’s San Francisco office — to which only employees with National Security Agency clearance had access — via a cable splitting device.

“My job was to connect circuits into the splitter device which was hard-wired to the secret room,” Klein. said “And effectively, the splitter copied the entire data stream of those Internet cables into the secret room — and we’re talking about phone conversations, email web browsing, everything that goes across the Internet.”

“As a technician, I had the engineering wiring documents, which told me how the splitter was wired to the secret room,” Klein continued. “And so I know that whatever went across those cables was copied and the entire data stream was copied.”

According to Klein, that information included Internet activity about Americans.

“We’re talking about domestic traffic as well as international traffic,” Klein said. Previous Bush administration claims that only international communications were being intercepted aren’t accurate, he added.

“I know the physical equipment, and I know that statement is not true,” he added. “It involves millions of communications, a lot of it domestic communications that they’re copying wholesale.”

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Gitmo Torture Appeal Rejected

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

US appellate court rejects British victims’ suit for Guantánamo torture damages

By John Burton

On January 11, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed a case brought by four British citizens seeking money damages to compensate them for having been tortured by the US government. The four individuals were held for more than two years at the United States Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

With an outlandish display of convoluted and specious logic, the three-judge panel issued a precedent establishing that non-US citizens outside US national borders cannot seek any redress in any US court for torture or other deprivations of constitutional and statutory rights inflicted by US government officials.

Ironically, the decision was issued on the sixth anniversary of the Guantánamo Bay’s opening, which was marked by protests and demonstrations around the world. About 200 demonstrators, many wearing orange jumpsuits, marched from the US Capitol to the Supreme Court building in Washington, DC. Others demonstrations took place in London, Sydney, Rome, Athens and Madrid. Terry Hicks, the father of freed Australian Guantánamo prisoner David Hicks, participated in a protest in the Australian city of Adelaide.

Incarcerating as many as 800 prisoners at its peak, the Guantánamo prison population today is reportedly around 275.

To reach its politically pre-determined result—ratifying the Bush administration’s creation of a legal “black hole” beyond both domestic and international law—the three-judge panel concluded that Guantánamo Bay prisoners: (1) cannot sue under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) or the Geneva Conventions because their torturers acted within the scope of their federal employment; (2) have no rights under the US Constitution because they are neither US citizens nor within US territorial jurisdiction; and (3) are not “persons” protected by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).

Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Jamal Al-Harith were captured in Afghanistan by General Rashid Dostum, a Northern Alliance warlord, on November 28, 2001. They were turned over to the US military and held in Guantánamo until their release in March 2004. (See “Britain: Freed Guantánamo Bay detainees detail beatings and abuse”)

The following October, attorneys from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York City filed a complaint for damages in federal district court, alleging that then secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, along with several high ranking military officers, expressly approved and promulgated policies to abuse and torture Guantánamo Bay prisoners.

The CCR complaint sets out in detail the “cruel, inhuman and degrading” conditions to which the plaintiffs were subjected. They were placed in “wire cages of about 2 meters by 2 meters” exposed to the elements, including scorching sunlight, and often were removed only once a week for a two-minute shower and again once a week for “five minutes recreation while their hands remained chained.”

Throughout their ordeal, the prisoners were repeatedly “beaten, shackled in painful stress positions, threatened by dogs, subjected to extreme temperatures and deprived of adequate sleep, food, sanitation, medical care and communication,” while being subjected to repeated, lengthy and coercive interrogations.

In addition to such physical and mental abuse, the plaintiffs allege “they were harassed while practicing their religion, including forced shaving of their beards, banning or interrupting their prayers, denying them copies of the Koran and prayer mats and throwing a copy of the Koran in a toilet bucket.”

The government and military defendants filed a motion to dismiss the complaint. Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the reviewing court must accept all the factual allegations of the complaint as true and deny the motion to dismiss unless established law absolutely precludes recovery under any reasonable interpretation of the facts. In March 2005 the trial judge dismissed parts of the case, but allowed the claim that the defendants interfered with the prisoners’ religious freedom to go forward. Both sides appealed. Last Friday’s decision followed almost three years later.

Circuit Judge Karen Lecraft Henderson—appointed by George H.W. Bush to fill the seat vacated by Kenneth W. Starr in 1990—issued a 43-page opinion disposing of each claim on the most reactionary grounds possible.

Henderson was joined by Judge A. Raymond Randolph, also appointed by the first president Bush. Randolph has previously authored two noxious decisions upholding the Bush administration’s assault on democratic rights. In Al Odah v. United States, he ruled that Guantánamo prisoners have no habeas corpus rights (See “US appeals court upholds denial of habeas corpus rights to Guantánamo detainees”), and in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld he ruled that Guantánamo prisoners can be tried before military commissions that do not comply with the Uniform Code of Military Justice (See “US court upholds military trials for Guantánamo prisoners”).

The Supreme Court later reversed both of these earlier decisions. Because of subsequent Congressional actions, however, the issues presented by them remain unresolved.

Henderson wrote that the four plaintiffs could not sue the defendants under the Alien Tort Statute or the Geneva Conventions because each defendant was acting “within the scope of his employment.”

Henderson made the extraordinary declaration, “Torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants.” On this basis, she rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that the immunity for federal employees acting within the scope of employment should not apply because the defendants torture policy “was never authorized,” was “seriously criminal,” “has long [been] condemned” by the United States and was a “substantial departure from the government’s ‘normal method’ of detaining and interrogating persons of interest.”

Henderson then dismissed the constitutional claims based on denial of due process and cruel and unusual punishment by claiming, “Guantánamo detainees lack constitutional rights because they are aliens without property or presence in the United States.”

The argument is absurd as the US government exercises complete jurisdiction over the military base at Guantánamo, which it occupies pursuant to a perpetual $1 lease extracted from the Cuban government in 1903. The opinion also defies recent Supreme Court precedent directly on point. Even if this were not the case, the Bill of Rights to the US Constitution constitutes a restriction on US governmental power, not a grant of rights or special privileges limited to US citizens or people within the national borders.

The appellate court’s position means that under the Constitution anyone in the executive branch of the US government can go anywhere outside the strict territorial boundaries of the United States itself, capture anyone not a US citizen, and then subject him or her to extreme physical, mental and emotional abuse without any concern for liability in any US court arising from violations of US or international law.

Finally, the appellate court rejected the plaintiffs’ claim that the defendants “inhibited and constrained religiously motivated conduct central to Plaintiffs’ religious beliefs,” when they “imposed a substantial burden on Plaintiffs’ abilities to exercise or express their religious beliefs” and “regularly and systematically engaged in practices specifically aimed at disrupting Plaintiffs’ religious practices.”

In the most patently offensive part of her opinion, Henderson wrote that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which provides that the “Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion,” cannot be used by the British plaintiffs tortured at Guantánamo Bay because “persons”—as used in the statute—do not include “aliens … located outside sovereign United States territory.”

This argument was too much for the third member of the panel, Judge Janice Rogers Brown, a right-wing judge appointed by George W. Bush, who enjoys a well-deserved reputation as a judicial loose cannon. Brown attacked the majority’s reasoning, but not its result. “There is little mystery that a ‘person’ is an individual human being … as distinguished from an animal or thing,” Rogers wrote, adding that the opinion “leaves us with the unfortunate and quite dubious distinction of being the only court to declare those held at Guantánamo are not ‘person[s].’ This is a most regrettable holding in a case where plaintiffs have alleged high-level US government officials treated them as less than human.”

Eric Lewis, a law partner in Washington, DC’s Baach Robinson & Lewis, who argued the appeal for the plaintiffs, called it “an awful day for the rule of law and common decency when a court finds that torture is all in a day’s work for the Secretary of Defense and senior generals…. It is an awful day for our tradition of respect for religious freedom and for our moral standing in the world when a court finds that these detainees are not ‘persons’ whose rights to observe their religion with dignity and without harassment are worthy of protection.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights announced that it will be filing a petition for review in the Supreme Court.

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60 minutes after drinking soda

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

Soda is not considered a health drink as it can make individuals more prone to diseases like obesity, diabetes, cancer and DNA damage.

Each can of soda contains about 10 teaspoons of sugar, 30 to 55 milligrams of caffeine, and is loaded with artificial food colors and sulphites. It is also the largest source of dangerous high-fructose modified corn syrup.

The following shows what happens in the body after drinking a can of soda:

Within the first 10 minutes, 10 teaspoons of sugar hit the system. This is 100 percent of the recommended daily sugar intake. The only reason the overwhelming sweetness does not result in vomiting is because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor.

After 20 minutes, the blood sugar spikes, and the liver responds to the resulting insulin burst by turning massive amounts of sugar into fat. This can later lead to high cholesterol, heart disease, diabetes, weight gain, premature aging and many more negative side effects.

Within 40 minutes, caffeine absorption is complete; the pupils dilate, the blood pressure rises, and the liver releases more sugar into the bloodstream.

After 45 minutes, dopamine production increases. This stimulates the brain’s pleasure centers, similar to what happens following heroin use.

After 60 minutes, sugar crash begins.

In the long run the phosphoric acid in soda interferes with the body’s ability to use calcium, leading to osteoporosis or softening of the teeth and bones. It can also neutralize the hydrochloric acid in the stomach and cause indigestion.

PKH/HGH

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US spy chief puts security over privacy

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

Privacy will have to take a ‘back seat in the name of security’, warns Mike McConnell

By Iain Thomson

The Director of National Intelligence, who oversees all 16 US intelligence agencies, has revealed the extent to which domestic and international internet traffic is being monitored.

Mike McConnell, who advises President Bush directly on security issues, said in an article in the New Yorker that privacy will have to take a back seat in the name of security.

McConnell gave details of a proposed cyber-security policy which will closely police internet activity.

Lawrence Wright, the article’s author, claimed that Ed Giorgio, a former chief code breaker at the National Security Agency who is working with McConnell on the plan, had told him that this would mean giving the government the authority to examine the content of any email, file transfer or web search.

“Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation,” said Wright. “Giorgio warned me that ‘privacy and security are a zero-sum game’.”

McConnell, who keeps a clock on his desk counting down the seconds of the Bush presidency, admitted that the plans would be a tough sell to the legislature but insisted that they are necessary.

“My prediction is that we are going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens,” he told Wright.

Wright suggested that this kind of monitoring is already going on. He spoke to an AT& T employee, Mark Klein, who claimed that he installed data switching systems in the company’s exchange that copied all internet traffic to the National Security Agency.

“I know that whatever went across those cables was copied and the entire data stream was copied,” said Klein. “We are talking about domestic as well as international traffic.”

He added that previous claims by the Bush administration that only international communications were being intercepted are not accurate.

“I know the physical equipment, and I know that statement is not true,” said Klein. “It involves millions of communications, a lot of it domestic communications that they are copying wholesale.”

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No Immunity, No Testimony for CIA Official

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

By Scott Shane Washington - Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., the former Central Intelligence Agency official who ordered the destruction of interrogation videotapes in 2005, will not be required to appear on Wednesday at a closed Congressional hearing on the matter but may be called to testify later, an official briefed on the inquiry said Monday.

Mr. Rodriguez, who led the agency’s clandestine service in 2005 and recently retired, has demanded immunity before he will agree to testify before the House Intelligence Committee. The Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into the destruction of the videotapes, which recorded harsh interrogations of two suspected Qaeda figures.

The committee has made no decision on a possible grant of immunity, so it postponed Mr. Rodriguez’s appearance. He remains under subpoena, however, and the committee may call him later.

The only C.I.A. witness currently scheduled to appear Wednesday at the closed hearing is John A. Rizzo, the agency’s acting general counsel, who held that job when the tapes were destroyed.

Committee members want to ask Mr. Rizzo what guidance lawyers inside and outside the agency gave on the possible destruction of the tapes. They also want to question him about why the House and Senate Intelligence Committees were not officially informed of the destruction when it happened, and whether agency officials deliberately concealed the existence of the tapes from the Sept. 11 Commission, as the commission’s leaders have said.

Mr. Rodriguez has told colleagues he consulted two agency lawyers, who told him that he had the authority to destroy the tapes and that it would not be illegal.

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Station Chief Made Appeal To Destroy CIA Tapes

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

By Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus

In late 2005, the retiring CIA station chief in Bangkok sent a classified cable to his superiors in Langley asking if he could destroy videotapes recorded at a secret CIA prison in Thailand that in part portrayed intelligence officers using simulated drowning to extract information from suspected al-Qaeda members.

The tapes had been sitting in the station chief’s safe, in the U.S. Embassy compound, for nearly three years. Although those involved in the interrogations had pushed for the tapes’ destruction in those years and a secret debate about it had twice reached the White House, CIA officials had not acted on those requests. This time was different.

The CIA had a new director and an acting general counsel, neither of whom sought to block the destruction of the tapes, according to agency officials. The station chief was insistent because he was retiring and wanted to resolve the matter before he left, the officials said. And in November 2005, a published report that detailed a secret CIA prison system provoked an international outcry.

Those three circumstances pushed the CIA’s then-director of clandestine operations, Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., to act against the earlier advice of at least five senior CIA and White House officials, who had counseled the agency since 2003 that the tapes should be preserved. Rodriguez consulted CIA lawyers and officials, who told him that he had the legal right to order the destruction. In his view, he received their implicit support to do so, according to his attorney, Robert S. Bennett.

In a classified response to the station chief, Rodriguez ordered the tapes’ destruction, CIA officials say. The Justice Department and the House intelligence committee are now investigating whether that deed constituted a violation of law or an obstruction of justice. John A. Rizzo, the CIA’s acting general counsel, is scheduled to discuss the matter in a closed House intelligence committee hearing scheduled for today.

According to interviews with more than two dozen current and former U.S. officials familiar with the debate, the taping was conducted from August to December 2002 to demonstrate that interrogators were following the detailed rules set by lawyers and medical experts in Washington, and were not causing a detainee’s death.

The principal motive for the tapes’ destruction was the clandestine operations division’s worry that the tapes’ fate could be snatched out of their hands, the officials said. They feared that the agency could be publicly shamed and that those involved in waterboarding and other extreme interrogation techniques would be hauled before a grand jury or a congressional inquiry — a circumstance now partly unfolding anyway.

“The professionals said that we must destroy the tapes because they didn’t want to see the pictures all over television, and they knew they eventually would leak,” said a former agency official who took part in the discussions before the tapes were pulverized. The presence of the tapes in Bangkok and the CIA’s communications with the station chief there were described by current and former officials.

Congressional investigators have turned up no evidence that anyone in the Bush administration openly advocated the tapes’ destruction, according to officials familiar with a set of classified documents forwarded to Capitol Hill. “It was an agency decision — you can take it to the bank,” CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in an interview on Friday. “Other speculations that it may have been made in other compounds, in other parts of the capital region, are simply wrong.”

Many of those involved recalled conversations in which senior CIA and White House officials advised against destroying the tapes, but without expressly prohibiting it, leaving an odd vacuum of specific instructions on a such a politically sensitive matter. They said that Rodriguez then interpreted this silence — the absence of a decision to order the tapes’ preservation — as a tacit approval of their destruction.

“Jose could not get any specific direction out of his leadership” in 2005, one senior official said. Word of the resulting destruction, one former official said, was greeted by widespread relief among clandestine officers, and Rodriguez was neither penalized nor reprimanded, publicly or privately, by then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss, according to two officials briefed on exchanges between the two men.

“Frankly, there were more important issues that needed to be focused on, such as trying to preserve a critical [interrogation] program and salvage relationships that had been damaged because of the leaks” about the existence of the secret prisons, said a former agency official familiar with Goss’s position at the time.

Rodriguez, whom the CIA honored with a medal in August for “Extraordinary Fidelity and Essential Service,” declined requests for an interview. But his attorney said he acted in the belief that he was carrying out the agency’s stated intention for nearly three years. “Since 2002, the CIA wanted to destroy the tapes to protect the identity and lives of its officers and for other counterintelligence reasons,” Bennett said in a written response to questions from The Washington Post.

“In 2003 the leadership of intelligence committees were told about the CIA’s intent to destroy the tapes. In 2005, CIA lawyers again advised the National Clandestine Service that they had the authority to destroy the tapes and it was legal to do so. It is unfortunate,” Bennett continued, “that under the pressure of a Congressional and criminal investigation, history is now being revised, and some people are running for cover.”

Recorded on the tapes was the coercive questioning of two senior al-Qaeda suspects: Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, known as Abu Zubaida, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who were captured by U.S. forces in 2002. They show Zubaida undergoing waterboarding, which involved strapping him to a board and pouring water over his nose and mouth, creating the sensation of imminent drowning. Nashiri later also underwent the same treatment.

Some CIA officials say the agency’s use of waterboarding helped extract information that led to the capture of other key al-Qaeda members and prevented attacks. But others, including former CIA, FBI and military officials, say the practice constitutes torture.

The destruction of the tapes was not the first occasion in which Rodriguez got in trouble for taking a provocative action to help a colleague. While serving as the CIA’s Latin America division chief in 1996, he appealed to local Dominican Republic authorities to prevent a childhood friend, and CIA contractor, who had been arrested in a drug investigation, from being beaten up, according to a former CIA official familiar with the episode.

Such an intervention was forbidden by CIA rules, and so Rodriguez was stripped of his management post and reprimanded in an inspector general’s report. But shortly after the reprimand, he was named station chief in Mexico City and, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, was promoted to deputy director of the fast-expanding counterterrorism center. He served under the center’s director then, J. Cofer Black, who had been his subordinate in the Latin America division.

When Black — who played a key role in setting up the secret prisons and instituting the interrogation policy — left the CIA in December 2002, Rodriguez took his place. Colleagues recall that even in the deputy’s slot, Rodriguez was aware of the videotaping of Zubaida, and that he later told several it was necessary so that experts, such as psychologists not present during interrogations, could view Zubaida’s physical reactions to questions.

By December 2002, the taping was no longer needed, according to three former intelligence officials. “Zubaida’s health was better, and he was providing information that we could check out,” one said.

An internal probe of the interrogations by the CIA’s inspector general began in early 2003 for reasons that have not been disclosed. In February of that year, then-CIA General Counsel Scott W. Muller told lawmakers that the agency planned to destroy the tapes after the completion of the investigation. That year, all waterboarding was halted; and at an undisclosed time, several of the inspector general’s deputies traveled to Bangkok to view the tapes, officials said.

In May 2004, CIA operatives became concerned when a Washington Post article disclosed that the CIA had conducted its interrogations under a new, looser Bush administration definition of what legally constituted torture, several former CIA officials said. The disclosure sparked an internal Justice Department review of that definition and led to a suspension of the CIA’s harsh interrogation program.

The tapes were discussed with White House lawyers twice, according to a senior U.S. official. The first occasion was a meeting convened by Muller and senior lawyers of the White House and the Justice Department specifically to discuss their fate. The other discussion was described by one participant as “fleeting,” when the existence of the tapes came up during a spring 2004 meeting to discuss the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, the official said.

Those known to have counseled against the tapes’ destruction include John B. Bellinger III, while serving as the National Security Council’s top legal adviser; Harriet E. Miers, while serving as the top White House counsel; George J. Tenet, while serving as CIA director; Muller, while serving as the CIA’s general counsel; and John D. Negroponte, while serving as director of national intelligence.

Hayden, in an interview, said the advice expressed by administration lawyers was consistent. “To the degree this was discussed outside the agency, everyone counseled caution,” he said. But he said that, in 2005, it was “the agency’s view that there were no legal impediments” to the tapes’ destruction. There also was “genuine concern about agency people being identified,” were the tapes ever to be made public.

Hayden, who became CIA director last year, acknowledged that the questions raised about the tapes’ destruction, then and now, are legitimate. “One can ask if it was a good idea, or if there was a better way to do it,” he said. “We are very happy to let the facts take us where they will.”

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

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Real ID: From “No Fly” to “No Drive” Lists?

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

Kurt Nimmo
Truth News

ABC breaks the ice for us: in the future, and not too far into it, the process of getting and renewing a driver’s license will become more difficult, stressful, and fraught with all manner of unnecessary nonsense supposedly designed to protect us from terrorists, or rather CIA patsies paraded about to frighten us into submission, and as well prevent illegals from taking to the roads, never mind Alaska, Connecticut, Idaho, Louisiana, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, Washington and West Virginia allow illegals to hold a license, thus demonstrating the above is little more than a threadbare excuse.

Of course, when the rubber meets the road, we discern the real reason — a national ID, complete with RFID and possibly biometrics, is all about easing us into the control grid.

According to apparatchik Michael Chertoff and the commissariat of Homeland Security, the whole affair is a matter of national security. “We are now over six years from 9/11,” Chertoff impatiently declared, “we live every day with the problems of false identification. Simply kicking this problem down the road year after year after year for further discussion, further debate and analysis is a time-tested Washington way of smothering any proposal with process.”

In other words, never mind that most people oppose Real ID and civil libertarians warn of vexing abuse, Chertoff and the neocons are itching to get us all in lumbering databases, the next step in a plan that will ultimately result in the chipping of the population at large.

“I think the time has come to bite the bullet,” Chertoff continued, “and get the kind of secure identification I am convinced the American public wants to have,” or rather the government tells them they must have, as most people hate the idea and eighteen states have passed legislation rejecting the law and Congress has refused to put any money into implementing it.

But never mind. It is a win-win situation for AOL, Microsoft, Verizon and Yahoo, all who stand to clean up if Chertoff manages to force his card on Americans at large. “The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) sent a letter to Congress this week begging for more federal funding for Real ID,” Privacy Digest noted last October. In addition to the above corporate culprits, we can add Digimarc and Northrop Grumman, “companies that specialize in creating high-tech ID cards, as well as Choicepoint and LexisNexis, data brokers that make their money selling personal information about you to advertisers and the government. These companies stand to make millions in contracts from states who are struggling with a federal mandate to overhaul their licensing systems and share more data by the May 2008 deadline,” a date right around the corner, thus explaining Chertoff’s impatience.

“Real ID is so unpopular because in addition to being a $23 billion unfunded mandate, it will build a vast national database of personal information, expose us to a greater risk of identity theft, and move us ever closer to a total surveillance society.’

It may also be a way to keep “terrorists” off the roadways — not the Muslim cave dwelling brand of terrorist, mind you, but the kind that exercises his or her right to petition the government under that rusty old anachronism, the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights of the Constitution.

As we know, thousands of Americans are on the Federal Aviation Administration’s No-Fly List and the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center has compiled a terrorist watch list of over 700,000 people. Moreover, as Dave Lindorff writes, the government is in the business of passing this information out to private companies. “The Wall Street Journal reported that the FBI made its list of people with even remote links to terrorism — having associated, perhaps inadvertently, with a terror suspect, for example — available to a wide range of private companies, from banks and rental-car companies to casinos.”

And who exactly are these primary terrorists, the ones you don’t want to associate with, that is if you ever want to fly again? They are “law-abiding Americans” who were detained and questioned — we used to call this harassment — “based on their political viewpoints,” according to Nancy Chang, a senior litigation attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “I think what they are doing is harassing people who are opposing the war and publicly speaking out against administration policy,” John Dear, a Jesuit priest and member of the Catholic peace group Pax Christi, told Lindorff.

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Back in 2003, we learned that the FBI “collected extensive information on the tactics, training and organization of antiwar demonstrators and … advised local law enforcement officials to report any suspicious activity at protests to its counterterrorism squads,” the New York Times reported. Of course, this is simply a continuation of the FBI’s COINTELPRO, initiated in the 1960s to “neutralize” the opposition — i.e., render activists not only politically impotent, but often wreck their lives as well.

In 2006, we discovered that COINTELPRO didn’t go away, as the official history would have it, but lives on to this day at the Pentagon. “An antiterrorist database used by the Defense Department in an effort to prevent attacks against military installations included intelligence tips about antiwar planning meetings held at churches, libraries, college campuses and other locations,” reported the New York Times. The database, known as Talon, “showed that the military used a variety of sources to collect intelligence leads on antiwar protests, including an agent in the Department of Homeland Security, Google searches on the Internet and e-mail messages forwarded by apparent informants with ties to protest groups.”

In short, the FBI and the Pentagon are still in the business of compiling lists and checking them twice, and many if not most of these people end up grounded, as noted above.

Now we have Chertoff and ABC telling us the same rules may soon apply to driving a car. As Chertoff told ABC, the Real ID is about preventing “terrorists” from driving — with illegal immigration tacked on as a selling point — and, if the behavior of the FBI and the Pentagon are any indicator, the real terrorists are not Muslim guys who were trained on U.S. military bases and had a fondness for cruising topless bars, but are antiwar activists and other troublemakers.

Soon enough, many of us – those who believe the Constitution says what it means — may be reduced to walking to work and the grocery store… that is until a Real ID card will be required to hold job or buy a loaf of bread.

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Ron Paul and 9/11

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

Why Ron Paul is so popular

(And why the US media hates him)

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/257.html

Ron Paul and 9/11

Ron Paul may not believe (or want to get into the details of) the US government’s complicity in 9/11, but he sure understands the FUNCTION of 9/11.

Could this be why the US news media does everything it can to marginalize and neutralize Ron Paul’s obvious appeal?

Bottom line: If you’re a candidate and you’re against the idea of America as an ever-expanding, military-based, resource-looting empire, you’re not going to get a shot.

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If Clinton elected, Bill will have 3rd term

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

So Hillary won in New Hampshire. By the women vote, of course — Men for Obama over Clinton by 12 percent; women for Clinton over Obama by 13 percent. Clearly it’s a gender thing.The vote also introduced into American democracy kinship as another factor: The notion that lineage, either through blood or marriage, can be translated into “experience,” which qualifies as the right to rule.

“No third term!” was the rallying cry when FDR attempted to continue his possession of power. And so “no third term” became a part of constitutional law until Bill Clinton found a way to legally get around that law (namely, elect my wife and I will rule).

First the Kennedys, then the Bushes, now the Clintons. Tomorrow, Jeb Bush will be pitted against Chelsea Clinton, or perhaps another Kennedy, all on the grounds that they have “experience.” These are the ones whom the military will salute as “commanders in chief” after the civilian population is disarmed from self-protection.

My advice? Pay attention to the candidates who are least mentioned in newspapers or television. Therein lies our only hope for change. Ask yourselves what do they say, and why, and vote for that, rather than who won what or why.

Bob Doel

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The year of living dangerously: Bush in crisis

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

This year probably won’t be any worse for George W. Bush than last year or the year before, but it’s likely to be a wild ride for the rest of us. The president faces the prospect of leaving office, assuming we’re fortunate enough to actually get shed of him, in the throes of a recession inspired by a combination of laissez-faire lending and corporate socialism and without having accomplished anything other than leaving the world a much messier place than he found it, with the dead bearing witness because the living avert their faces.

The United States is nearly $10 trillion dollars in debt, and racking up more every second. That’s thanks in large part to Bush’s tax giveaways and the extra trillion dollars in defense spending racked up by the Iraq invasion and occupation. Big financial interests are cutting tens of thousands of jobs even as they reward feckless leadership with hundreds of millions in severance pay and retirement benefits. (But don’t mention that on the campaign stump, lest you go the way of John Edwards and get formally shunned by the press, risking the campaign cash and muscle people such as Hilary Clinton enjoy from people such as Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, the former Bush Ranger who now backs her).

Thanks to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and other graduates of the Miss Manners school of political confrontation, we have absolutely no chance of ridding ourselves of Bush and Cheney by means of impeachment. The executive pair have created a generation of orphans and refugees in Iraq, they’ve wrecked our ground-bound military, they’ve institutionalized torture as an official tool of US foreign policy, they’ve gutted the Constitution while inaugurating an illegal surveillance state, they’ve transformed Afghanistan into a narco-trafficking state on steroids, they’ve set back the fragile cause of peace in Palestine by a decade or more, and they’ve transformed our image abroad from one of a generally well-meaning if sometimes inexcusably clumsy giant to that of a frankly malevolent fiend. And that’s just a partial list, and the worst is undoubtedly yet to come.

Because time is running out. Even by their own increasingly low standards, Bush and Cheney have accomplished little of what they set out to do either at home or abroad. Sure, oil company profits are way up, as are the defense-related profits of organizations with which the pair of smash and grab artists have long-standing ties—think Halliburton and the defense industry pirates at the Carlyle Group, Bush père’s gravy train, among others—but Iran is still standing, the Palestinians are not completely broken, the poor still vote, however difficult and meaningless the process may be, and America’s middle class still has a grip on too much money that should be in the hands of America’s wealthy.

Dick Cheney is still running on borrowed time, four heart attacks past his expiration date and with his agenda in shreds. Bush, who is not the moron many people like to think he is, may just be smart enough to know he’s not smart enough to pull a Dick Nixon and rehabilitate himself as an elder statesman after a departure from office that may not be as abrupt as Nixon’s but will certainly be as widely celebrated. Neither man is temperamentally inclined to go out with a whimper, Bush because of his destructive petulance and Cheney because of his late-life fanaticism. As January 20 of next year draws closer, the temptation to double down with some grand, manic gesture will become overwhelming.

And who’s to stop them? Administration officials announced during Bush’s trip to the Middle East that they’re in the process of negotiating a status of forces agreement with Iraq to replace the UN mandate authorizing the presence of “coalition” troops, committing future US administrations to levels of military support far beyond what even the temporizing Clinton and Obama project. Clinton’s response to the prospect was to urge Bush to consult Congress. It wasn’t intended as a laugh line.

In truth, that bit of handcuffing probably doesn’t matter. Both Obama and Clinton have said they would keep sufficient US troops in Iraq to protect American diplomatic personnel and contractors, and to conduct anti-terrorism operations; raise your hand if you think anything less than a major US troop presence will stave off the collapse of the current Iraqi government and keep the Green Zone from turning scarlet. If one of them becomes president, he or she will probably be grateful that Bush is making the decision for them.

But other things do matter. Impeachment may be off the table, but Bush made clear this past week that an attack on Iran isn’t when he told Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, who is little more popular in Israel than Bush is here, that the National Intelligence Estimate downplaying Iran’s capacity and ambition for producing nuclear weapons doesn’t reflect his own views. And Olmert, in kind, told Israeli parliamentarians that “[a]ll options that prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capabilities are legitimate within the context of how to grapple with this matter.” With Bush’s departure from office marking the likely end of the current US policy toward Israel—absolutely anything goes, as opposed to the modest restraints a less nihilistic administration might try to impose—Olmert is as much a hostage to January 20, 2009, as Bush is. As we all are.

Add the impending nasty recession to the current mix, with Iraq about to erupt again, Afghanistan in deep, deep trouble, our man in Pakistan struggling to keep his job and his life while we threaten to do for his border regions what we’ve done for Iraq, and the recipe for a magnificent disaster, an even more catastrophic success than the ones Bush and Cheney have delivered us to date, is about complete.

What will Democrats do about this? Nothing. As senators, Obama and Clinton have been spectacularly ineffective, and they’re doing little on the campaign trail to address the worst failures (or the worst successes) of the administration. About the only chance for reining in Bush and Cheney is to make supporting them or ineffectually opposing them a matter of political suicide on both sides of the congressional aisle. But the big money from establishment Democrats continues to flow to people such as Al Wynn while progressive Democrats remain party pariahs, and Republicans have for the most part staked their futures on running to the right of rabid.

Barring an unprecedented explosion of conscience and courage, no one is going to stop the administration from taking us further through the looking glass. I haven’t made many predictions about what 2008 will bring, but the one thing I can say with complete assurance is that whenever you think Bush and Cheney have done their absolute worst, they’ll prove you wrong. This will be a bad, bad, nasty year.

http://www.btcnews.com/btcnews/1808

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Iran says Bush’s accusations “words without value”

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran denounced on Monday as “words without value” President George W. Bush’s remarks that the Islamic state was threatening security around the world by backing militants.

Speaking in Abu Dhabi on Sunday, Bush said Iran was the world’s top sponsor of terrorism and accused it of undermining peace by supporting the Hezbollah guerrilla group in Lebanon, Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and Shi’ite militants in Iraq.

“Bush should understand that the hatred towards his policies exists … it has real and logical roots,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini was quoted as saying by state radio.

“Bush’s remarks display his desperation and disappointment because of his failures in the region … He is trying to divert attention from his failed policies,” he said, adding Bush’s comments were “repeated words without value”.

Iran blames sectarian violence in Iraq on the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003 and has repeatedly called on the United States to withdraw its forces.

Tehran and Washington are at odds over Iran’s nuclear work, which the West fears is a cover to build nuclear weapons, and Washington is pushing for a third set of sanctions on Iran for refusing to halt enrichment work, as demand by the United Nations.

Tehran says it wants nuclear technology for civilian purposes.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi, Editing by Dominic Evans)

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Gates recommends additional troops for Afghanistan

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

By David Morgan

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has recommended sending additional troops to Afghanistan to reinforce NATO forces but there is no final decision yet, defense officials said on Monday.

The Pentagon chief will consult with President George W. Bush soon on a proposal to send 3,200 Marines to the South Asian nation, where stability is threatened by a surge in violence over the past two years, officials said.

One senior official said a decision could be imminent.

Gates has forwarded his recommendation to the White House and officials said the defense secretary would not order a deployment without first speaking to Bush, who returns from the Middle East on Wednesday.

“A recommendation has been forwarded for discussion. But at this point, no decision has been made. We’re still waiting,” Pentagon spokesman Army Lt. Col. Mark Wright told Reuters, declining to discuss further details.

The White House said Bush looked forward to hearing from Gates.

“President Bush is committed to helping the Afghan people deal with the Taliban and other extremists who continue to take innocent life and attempt to derail Afghanistan’s progress,” spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

A decision to send extra U.S. troops to Afghanistan could be seen as a reverse for NATO, whose member nations have been unable to respond to U.S. calls for additional forces.

Lawrence Korb, a former defense official now with the Center for American Progress, said the Bush administration mishandled NATO involvement by delaying its role in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

“It’s a step in the right direction because we have not had enough troops in Afghanistan. But does it bode well for the alliance? No. The way this was handled has made it more difficult to get NATO to do what it needs to do,” Korb said.

Violence in Afghanistan has increased, with the fundamentalist Islamist Taliban fighting a guerrilla war in the south and east and carrying out suicide and car bombings across the country.

The United States has about 27,000 troops in Afghanistan — the most since leading the 2001 invasion. About half serve in a 40,000-strong NATO-led force, while the rest conduct missions ranging from counterterrorism to training Afghan troops.

For months, Gates pressed NATO allies to provide more troops for Afghanistan. But after meeting allies in Scotland last month, he signaled a shift away from pushing them to make politically difficult decisions to provide combat troops.

A senior Pentagon official said the United States was expected to proceed with the deployment of some 3,000 Marines to make up for the NATO shortfall.

“It is widely anticipated that the secretary will soon approve a deployment of additional U.S. forces to Afghanistan to fulfill unmet NATO requirements,” said a second senior defense official.

CNN reported on Monday that 3,200 Marines had been notified about an impending deployment to Afghanistan. The Marine Corps had no comment. (Additional reporting by Caren Bohan)

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 at 3:32 pm and is filed under General, 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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