BREAKING: Discover How A Slacker Makes $100,000 A Year!

WEBMASTERS! Get Your Website To The Top Of Google

Court Documents Shed Light on CIA Illegal Operations

Saturday, July 12th, 2008

Sibel Edmonds State Secrets Gallery Connects Pipeline Politics, Madrassas & the Turkish Proxies
By Lukery 

In a recent immigration court case involving Turkish Islamic Leader, Fetullah Gulen, US prosecutors exposed an illegal, covert, CIA operation involving the intentional Islamization of Central Asia. This operation has been ongoing since the fall of the Soviet Union in an ongoing Cold War to control the vast energy resources of the region - Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan - estimated to be worth $3 trillion.

Court Case
The scene for these dramatic disclosures was an application for a Green Card in the Eastern District Court in Philadelphia by “controversial Islamic scholar” Fetullah Gulen. Gulen, who has been living in the United States since 1998, argued that he qualified for the Green Card as “an extraordinarily talented academic.”

The court case was covered extensively by the Turkish press. Leading Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported:

“Gülen’s financial resources were detailed in the public prosecutor’s arguments, which claimed that Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Turkish government, and the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA, were behind the Gülen movement. It stated that some businessmen in Ankara donated 10 to 70 percent of their annual income to the movement and that it corresponded to $20,000 to $300,000 per year per person. It added that one businessman in Istanbul donated $4-5 million each year and that young people graduating from Gülen’s schools donated between $2,000 and $5,000 each year.”

Another leading Turkish newspaper reported (translated by Rastibini)

Among the reasons given by the US State Department’s attorneys as to why Gülen’s permanent residence application was refused, is the suspicion of CIA financing of his movement.
[ . . . ]
“There is even CIA suspicion”

“Because of the large amount of money that Gülen’s movement uses to finance his projects, there are claims that he has secret agreements with Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkic governments. There are suspicions that the CIA is a co-payer in financing these projects,” claimed the attorneys.
[ . . . ]
Among the documents that the state attorneys presented, there are claims about the Gülen movement’s financial structure and it was emphasized that the movement’s economic power reached $25 billion. “Schools, newspapers, universities, unions, television channels . . . The relationship among these are being debated. There is no transparency in their work,” claimed the attorneys.”

Who is Gulen?
Fetullah Gulen is “a 67-year-old Turkish Sufi cleric, author and theoretician,” according to a recent profile in the UK’s Prospect magazine. Prospect ran a public poll last month to find the world’s greatest living intellectual. Gulen ‘won’ the poll after his newspapers alerted readers to the poll’s existence. Gulen is also the leader of the so-called ‘Gulen Movement’ which claims to have seven million followers worldwide. The Gulen Movement has extensive business interests, including “publishing activities (books, newspapers, and magazines), construction, healthcare, and education.”

Gulen and the CIA
The fact that the prosecutors in the court cite documents that claim that Gulen has been financed in part by the CIA is remarkable for a number of reasons, even though there have been strong suspicions about the CIA’s involvement in the Gulen Movement for years. The Russian intelligence agency, the FSB, has repeatedly taken action against the Gulen movement for acting as a front organization for the CIA. In December 2002, Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported:

“Russian secret service claims: Turkish religious brotherhood works for CIA

The FSB, the Russian intelligence organization formerly called the KGB, has claimed that the ‘Nurcus’ religious brotherhood in Turkey has engaged in espionage on behalf of the CIA through the companies and foundations it has founded. FSB head Nikolay Patrushev has mentioned the names of these companies and foundations, saying, ‘The brotherhood engages in anti-Russian activities via two companies, Serhad and Eflak, as well as foundations such as Toros, Tolerans and Ufuk.’ Patrushev has accused the brotherhood of conducting pan-Turkish propaganda, of trying to convert Russian youths to Islam by sowing the seeds of enmity, and of engaging in certain lobbying activities. These companies and foundations have turned up in the internet site of Fethullah Gulen [alleged leader of the Nurcu religious community currently living in the United States who is a defendant in several court cases in Turkey, accused of engaging in anti-secularist activities.]“”

Russia has banned all of Gulen’s madrassas, and in April of this year, banned the Nurcu Movement completely.

Gulen’s Madrassas
The Gulen Movement founded madrassas all over the world in the 1990’s, most of them in the newly independent Turkic republics of Central Asia - Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan - and Russia.

These madrassas appear to be used as a front for enabling CIA and State Department officials to operate undercover in the region, with many of the teachers operating under diplomatic passports.

Why Central Asia?
Central Asia, with its vast energy wealth, is of major interest to US oil and gas companies. The region is also of key strategic interest in the ‘Great Game’ as Russia, China and the US compete for dwindling energy supplies. The US government has been using Turkey as a proxy to gain control over Central Asia via Pan-Turkic nationalism and religion.

Sibel Edmonds Case
Twenty six people wrote reference letters supporting Gulen’s application for a Green Card - most notably ex-CIA agent George Fidas, former Turkish ambassador Morton Abramowitz, and former CIA Deputy Director Graham Fuller who appears in Sibel Edmonds’ State Secrets Privilege Gallery.

I called Sibel Edmonds to comment on the latest revelations. She said:

You’ve got to look at the big picture. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the super powers began to fight over control of Central Asia, particularly the oil and gas wealth, as well as the strategic value of the region.

Given the history, and the distrust of the West, the US realized that it couldn’t get direct control, and therefore would need to use a proxy to gain control quickly and effectively. Turkey was the perfect proxy; a NATO ally and a puppet regime. Turkey shares the same heritage/race as the entire population of Central Asia, the same language (Turkic), the same religion (Sunni Islam), and of course, the strategic location and proximity.

This started more than a decade-long illegal, covert operation in Central Asia by a small group in the US intent on furthering the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex, using Turkish operatives, Saudi partners and Pakistani allies, furthering this objective in the name of Islam.

This is why I have been saying repeatedly that these illegal covert operations by the Turks and certain US persons dates back to 1996, and involves terrorist activities, narcotics, weapons smuggling and money laundering, converging around the same operations and involving the same actors.

And I want to emphasize that this is “illegal” because most, if not all, of the funding for these operations is not congressionally approved funding, but it comes from illegal activities.

And one last thing, take a look at the people in the State Secrets Privilege Gallery on my website and you will see how these individuals can be traced to the following; Turkey, Central Asia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia - and the activities involving these countries.

Many of the people in Sibel’s State Secrets Privilege Gallery are closely connected to Gulen, and each other, as well as the operations that Sibel mentions. Many of them have actively advocated for using Muslims to further their own needs - from Turkistan to Albania and Central Asia.

Marc Grossman, former State Department #3 and former Turkish ambassador, and one of the key named individuals in Sibel’s case, is currently receiving $1.2 million per annum from Ihlas Holding, a Gulen-linked Turkish conglomerate. Sibel has previously referred to Ihlas as ’semi-legitimate’ and ‘alleged shady’ - and emphasized that Grossman’s current payoff is a result of services performed while he was in office.

Grossman’s predecessor as ambassador in Turkey was Morton Abramowitz - in fact, Grossman actually worked under Abramowitz in Ankara for a number of years. During that period, the US opened an espionage investigation into activities at the embassy involving Major Douglas Dickerson, a weapons procurement specialist for Central Asia. Dickerson and his wife, an FBI translator, later became famous when they tried to recruit Sibel to spy for this criminal network.

Abramowitz, who is not listed in Sibel’s State Secrets Privilege Gallery, wrote a letter in support of Gulen for his immigration case. He has long advocated the use of Islamic fighters in furtherance of US interests, including the Afghan mujaheddin against the Soviets and the Kosovo Liberation Army during the war in the Balkans, acting as an advisor to the Kosovar Albanians.

Another player from Sibel’s Gallery is Enver Yusuf Turani - Prime Minister of East Turkistan, a ‘country’ recognized by only one country, the United States. East Turkistan, aka Xinjiang, is officially a part of China, and home to the Uyghur people and the “Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement,” a UN-nominated terrorist organization “funded mainly by Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network and received training, support and personnel from both the al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime of Afghanistan.” In fact, the Uyghurs constitute a significant percentage of detainees - at least 22 - at Guantanamo Bay since 2001. Five of those have been set free, and were eventually sent to Albania, amid much controversy.

According to TurkPulse:

“One of the main tools Washington is using in this affair in order to get Turkey involved in the Xinjiang affair is some Turkish Americans, primarily the Fetullah Gulen team who are prosecuted in absentia in Turkey for trying to found a theocratic State order in this country because he runs his activities from the United States, his protégé. Another Turk used in this affair is Enver Yusuf Turani, who is the self styled Foreign and Prime Minister of the East Turkistan Government in exile. He has been an American citizen since 1998. Enver Yusuf is in close cooperation with Fetullah Gulen… Their activities for the government in exile are based on a report entitled “the Xinjiang Project” drafted by Graham Fuller in 1998 for the Rand Corporation and revised in 2003 under the title “the Xinjiang Problem.” It emphasises the importance of the Xinjiang Autonomous region in encircling China and provides a strategy for it.”

In fact, Abramowitz and Fuller were key players in the establishment of ‘East Turkistan,’

“proclaiming the government in exile within 4-5 months, starting in May (2004) and completing the proclamation in mid- September. The ceremony was held at Capitol Hill under American flags in Washington.”

Two others from Sibel’s gallery, Sabri Sayari and Alan Makovsky, have been similarly involved with Gulen, Fuller, and Abramowitz - co-authoring books and articles, making joint appearances, dinners etc.

Illegal Operations
Earlier I quoted Sibel saying

“And I want to emphasize that this is “illegal” because most, if not all, of the funding for these operations is not congressionally approved funding, but it comes from illegal activities.”

Where does this funding come from? Narcotics trafficking, nuclear black market, weapons smuggling, and terrorist activities. As Sibel makes clear in her The Highjacking of a Nation article, the management of the heroin industry from the farms in Afghanistan to the streets of London and elsewhere “requires highly sophisticated networks,” from the protection of the convoys from Afghanistan through Central Asia to their final destination, to the laundering of the billions of dollars in proceeds in Central Asian casinos and financial institutions in Dubai and Cyprus. “So, who are the real lords of Afghanistan’s poppy fields?” Sibel asks. The heroin trade finances al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but they aren’t the real lords of the poppy fields. Journalist Ahmed Rashid, author of “Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia ” and other similar books about these issues recently noted on Democracy Now that a “cartel” controls Afghanistan’s heroin, which supplies 93% of global heroin supply.

Sibel has been trying to tell us about these operations for years, but has been gagged by the State Secrets Privilege which was invoked citing certain ’sensitive foreign diplomatic and business relationships.’ These ’sensitive relationships’ have now been exposed to a degree, thanks to the immigration case against Mr Gulen - one of the Turkish operatives who have been fronting for the CIA in the Islamization of Central Asia, incorporating drug trafficking, money laundering, and the nuclear black market, and the convergence with terrorism.

One Last Question
At the end of our interview, Sibel asked me to leave you with this question:

“After 911, the US Government engaged in mock investigations and shut down many small Islamic charities and organizations, giving the appearance of action in the so-called ‘War on Terror.’ Why did they harbor, support and resource Fethullah Gulen’s $25 billion madrassa-and-mosque-establishment efforts throughout the Central Asian region and the Balkans?”

Have Your Say: Court Documents Shed Light on CIA Illegal Operations
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Pentagon Claims Cluster Bombs ‘Save Lives’

Saturday, July 12th, 2008

By Noah Shachtman  |The Pentagon not only told the world yesterday that it would keep on using cluster bombs — it called the controversial weapons life-savers, too.

The Defense Department unveiled its new policy on cluster munitions. In it, the weapons, which scatter tiny bomblets over huge swaths of territory, are described as “legitimate weapons with clear military utility.” Not only do “they provide distinct advantages against a range of targets,” a Defense Department press release notes, but “their use reduces risks to U.S. forces and can save U.S. lives.” The Pentagon says the munitions will continue to be used, “in a manner consistent with the law of armed conflict.”

But the law is changing. In May, just about every country on the planet signed a treaty banning cluster bombs. The U.S. was one of four holdouts.

The problem with the weapons, critics tell the Los Angeles Times, is that they “have a high failure rate. Many bomblets may not explode on contact, and later can be accidentally triggered by civilians.”

Have Your Say: Pentagon Claims Cluster Bombs ‘Save Lives’
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Mukasey Refuses to Probe CIA Interrogations

Saturday, July 12th, 2008

By JASON RYAN | Attorney General Michael Mukasey has notified the House Judiciary Committee that he will not appoint special counsel to investigate the actions of CIA officers and agents who conducted detainee interrogations that included controversial methods such as waterboarding, which simulates drowning.

The controversial interrogation practices were authorized by lawyers from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

In a letter to House Judiciary Chairman Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., who had requested special counsel on the matter, Mukasey noted that “it would be unwise and unjust to expose to possible criminal penalties those who relied in good faith on those prior Justice Department opinions.”

Referencing “The Terror Presidency,” a book by Jack Goldsmith — former head of the Office of Legal Counsel — Mukasey said that the intelligence community was exposed to “cycles of timidity and aggression.”

Mukasey also noted in the letter that opening a criminal investigation of the interrogators “would not only, in my judgment, be unjust but would also have potentially grave national security consequences. There could be no more certain way to usher in a new ‘cycle of timidity’ in the intelligence community than to tell the government’s national security policymakers and lawyers that, if they support an aggressive counterterrorism policy based on their good-faith belief that such a policy is lawful, they may nevertheless one day be prosecuted for doing so.”

The issue of the interrogation practices gained renewed attention when the CIA acknowledged in December that interrogation video tapes of two Al Qaeda detainees who had been waterboarded had been destroyed.

The video tapes have become a critical point in the appeal of convicted terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui. The main point of Moussaoui’s appeal is that government officials withheld evidence from his defense, and that the CIA had submitted inaccurate declarations to the U.S. District Court that no recordings of detainee interrogations existed.

Shortly after being sworn in as attorney general, Mukasey appointed John Durham to serve as acting U.S. attorney in the investigation of the tapes’ destruction.

A little noticed court filing in the litigation of the appeal of Moussaoui’s conviction noted in court papers filed last week that Durham had recently uncovered new information in the case: “The Acting United States Attorney and his staff have very recently uncovered new information that may be relevant to the issues that were addressed … and have been raised again on appeal.”

The Justice Department has declined to elaborate on Durham’s new information from that filing but it indicates the investigation into the tapes’ destruction is ongoing.

Have Your Say: Mukasey Refuses to Probe CIA Interrogations
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

The Police force with a £320 million budget – but no crime!

Saturday, July 12th, 2008

NORTHUMBRIA Police is one of Britain’s biggest and busiest forces. It employs more than 4,000 officers and has a budget of around £320 million a year. Of that, more than £1 million is spent on its PR department. However, as a freelance journalist based in Northumberland, I am frequently amazed at how peaceful the area is – or at least if you believe the force’s press office. Despite the force now paying to staff its press office on Saturdays and Sundays, there are whole weekends when not one crime is released to the media.
 It would be easy to argue that, as a journalist, I only believe in the police being more open because it will help me to do my job. Yes, that’s true.

But there is a more fundamental principle here and that is the age-old tradition of the police using the media to warn the public about what is going on – and to help them catch criminals.

For the last decade, I have campaigned for Northumbria Police to be more open with the public – i.e. the people who pay their wages.

I have collected hundreds of examples of serious crimes that have either not been released to the media or have been released weeks or even months later.

These include rapes, armed robberies and other horrendous attacks that have been kept hidden from the public.

After having a number of meetings with the Chief Constable Michael Craik over the years, I have been repeatedly promised the service would improve.

And yes, the budget for the press office, has been boosted – growing from £620,000 two years ago to the £1 million it now consumes.

There has also been a big increase in the number of stories about how senior officers are cutting crime figures.

Indeed, every time there is a horrific crime – such as a murder or a knife attack – the PR machine kicks into life with a quote from a senior officer stressing how “rare” such crimes are.

As well as stretching credibility, some of these statements are appallingly insensitive.
One chief inspector recently went as far as describing a double murder as an “isolated incident”.

In fact, it would appear they are cutting them so dramatically that one recent weekend saw not one crime worthy of being given out by Northumbria….
Not one incident from Friday afternoon to Monday morning that was worth putting on the tape-recorded telephone “voice-bank” which journalists now have to rely on for their information.

However, through an application under the Freedom of Information Act, I discovered there had been more than 4,800 incidents that weekend, including 161 serious crimes.
So why may you ask were none of these released to the public ?

A good question – and one I’ve been trying to have answered for nearly 10 years now.

In the past, I have taken the liberty of occasionally writing to or telephoning the senior officer concerned.

There then usually followed a reasonable and well-mannered debate in which they would either quote particular “operational reasons” or admit there was no good reason why the public had not been warned.

But now, following the publication of a series of articles in The Guardian, The Times, Press Gazette and other publications, I have been banned from even daring to ask such questions.

In a letter, Deputy Chief Constable David Warcup claims crimes are not released for “operational reasons” and the force does not have to “justify” such decisions.
Needless to say, my correspondence on the issue now goes unanswered.

As a journalist with more than 23 years’ experience – most of it spent specialising in crime – I appreciate there are times when crimes might have to be held back for genuine “operational reasons”.

But there is no way they have to be held back in such huge numbers.
No, the simple truth is that the £1 million spent on Northumbria’s press office is more interested in promoting the image of the force’s senior officers.

My contacts tell me that, as part of that strategy, they have to reduce the “fear of crime” and, if that means telling the public less, then so be it.

Mr Warcup recently defended the force’s expenditure on PR by saying: “Although crime in Northumbria has fallen significantly in the past 10 years, our research shows that the perception of crime has not.

“We have therefore invested a significant amount in services which aim to make sure people have a better understanding of crime in their region.”
In other words, he is spending more money making sure people believe the crime figures they put out.

Ironically, since the publication of my comments, I have been contacted by a number of police contacts who agree with my stance.

Like me, they are not anti-police.

However, as well as being police officers, they are also members of the public – and taxpayers.

And, like me, they believe that, in a democracy, the likes of Mr Warcup should have to justify why the public are kept in the dark about what is happening in their area.

For more information visit: www.nigelgreenmedia.com

Have Your Say: The Police force with a £320 million budget – but no crime!
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

EPA Won’t Act on Emissions

Saturday, July 12th, 2008

By Juliet Eilperin and R. Jeffrey Smith | The Bush administration has decided not to take any new steps to regulate greenhouse gas emissions before the president leaves office, despite pressure from the Supreme Court and broad accord among senior federal officials that new regulation is appropriate now.

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to announce today that it will seek months of further public comment on the threat posed by global warming to human health and welfare — a matter that federal climate experts and international scientists have repeatedly said should be urgently addressed.

The Supreme Court, in a decision 15 months ago that startled the government, ordered the EPA to decide whether human health and welfare are being harmed by greenhouse gas pollution from cars, power plants and other sources, or to provide a good explanation for not doing so. But the administration has opted to postpone action instead, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Post.

To defer compliance with the Supreme Court’s demand, the White House has walked a tortured policy path, editing its officials’ congressional testimony, refusing to read documents prepared by career employees and approved by top appointees, requesting changes in computer models to lower estimates of the benefits of curbing carbon dioxide, and pushing narrowly drafted legislation on fuel-economy standards that officials said was meant to sap public interest in wider regulatory action.

The decision to solicit further comment overrides the EPA’s written recommendation from December. Officials said a few senior White House officials were unwilling to allow the EPA to state officially that global warming harms human welfare. Doing so would legally trigger sweeping regulatory requirements under the 45-year-old Clean Air Act, one of the pillars of U.S. environmental protection, and would cost utilities, automakers and others billions of dollars while also bringing economic benefits, EPA’s analyses found.

“They argued that this increase in regulation should be on the next president’s record,” not Bush’s, said a participant in the lengthy interagency debate, referring principally to officials in the office of Vice President Cheney, on the White House Council on Environmental Quality, on the National Economic Council and in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Several EPA officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that throughout the process, White House officials instructed the agency to change their calculations with the aim of reducing the “social cost of carbon,” a regulatory term that reflects the economic burdens stemming from greenhouse gas emissions.

Career EPA officials argued that the global benefits of reducing carbon are worth at least $40 per ton, but Bush appointees changed the final document to say the figure is just an example, not an official estimate. They prohibited the agency from submitting a 21-page document titled “Technical Support Document on Benefits of Reducing GHG Emissions” as part of today’s announcement.

“The administration didn’t want to show a high-dollar value for reducing carbon,” said one EPA official, adding that the administration cut dozens of pages from a draft that outlined cost-effective ways to reduce greenhouse gases.

Some officials said the administration has also minimized the benefits of tighter fuel-economy standards by assuming that oil will cost $58 a barrel in the future, compared with its current price of $141.65. While the EPA calculated in a May 30 draft that stricter standards would save U.S. society $2 trillion by 2020, officials revised that figure last month — using the $58 estimate — to predict that they would save only between $340 billion and $830 billion.

The proposal that the EPA will unveil today, known as an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, stands in stark contrast to the agency’s original Dec. 5 finding — backed up by a lengthy scientific analysis — that global warming is unequivocal, that there is “compelling and robust” evidence that the emissions endanger public welfare and that the EPA administrator is “required by law” to act to protect Americans from future harm.

That finding appeared in a 37-page document prepared by an EPA task force of 60 to 70 people that was discussed at dozens of interagency meetings led by Susan Dudley, the head of the OMB’s regulatory review office. She “understood that some regulation was inevitable,” a participant in these meetings said, particularly since Bush promised, a month after the April 2007 Supreme Court ruling, to “take the first steps toward regulations” to curb emissions by the end of last year.

Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said yesterday, “If this administration spent the same effort fighting global warming as they do editing and censoring global warming documents, the planet might not be in such dire straits.”

Markey, whose staff was allowed to review the Dec. 5 EPA document but not to keep a copy, called the White House’s reaction to its own experts’ opinions “distressing and unjust.”

White House spokesman Tony Fratto declined to discuss the administration’s decision-making but disputed the assertion that “we are trying to drag our feet.” He said regulating is “a long process” and it is wrong to assert that it “could be done quickly and easily” in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision. “The EPA has worked diligently to try to get this done,” he added.

EPA spokesman Jonathan Shradar said: “You don’t just wake up one day and say, ‘Here’s the decision.’ It’s a long process with lots of thought, lots of analysis and lots of research that gets you to that decision point.” When the EPA releases its notice today, he said, “We’re going to be more transparent than we’ve been, laying it all out and saying, ‘How should we do this?’ ”

The full story of how the finding of public endangerment and Bush’s promised greenhouse regulations got sidetracked is still not known. Participants have not disclosed, for example, which White House official ordered an EPA deputy associate administrator to withdraw the finding last December after it was transmitted by e-mail to Dudley’s office. An official said the person involved was “more senior than the head of OMB,” but declined to be more precise.

The idea of instituting complex new controls on emissions by cars, ships, aircraft, power plants, factories and office buildings was never greeted warmly by any senior Bush appointees, but officials said that after the Supreme Court’s slap they divided into roughly two groups: those who felt that regulating under the Clean Air Act was unavoidable, reasonable and best done under Bush; and those who wished to sidestep the law and press for its eventual modification after delay and public debate.

In the former camp, at least initially, was EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson, a career official who previously oversaw pesticide regulations, and much of the agency’s senior ranks. After the court ruling, in Massachusetts et al. v. Environmental Protection Agency et al.,“people were bouncing back and forth into each other’s offices, saying, ‘Can you believe this? Look at this decision; look at the language; this is so strong,’ ” recalled one agency official, who like the others asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. “People thought, ‘We are going to move forward and do the right thing.’ ”

Within a week, Johnson met with roughly 20 officials in the EPA’s fifth-floor conference room and said they would undertake a major effort to meet the court’s demand. Despite what one participant described as resistance from Cheney’s office and other opponents of regulation, Bush signed an executive order on May 14, 2007, directing the EPA to work with the Transportation, Energy and Agriculture departments to “take the first steps toward regulations” to reduce the nation’s gas usage by 20 percent over the next decade.

The agency subsequently spent $5.3 million on contractors and solicited 500 comments from government experts on the technical underpinning for a formal finding that man-made global warming caused dangers; the question was, to what? Officials said some advocated saying that it endangered both human welfare and health, instead of just welfare; while others — reflecting broad utility and coal industry concerns — argued that invoking health would lead more quickly to costly regulation of carbon dioxide emissions by power plants as well as cars.

In a late October briefing, Johnson’s staff warned him against leaving out health risks, noting in a PowerPoint presentation that doing so “creates potential for confusion, criticism, suspicion — e.g., is EPA downplaying public health risks and/or ignoring the science of climate change, in order to avoid doing more?”

But Johnson, seconded by top deputies such as then-Deputy Associate Administrator Jason Burnett, decided he could sidestep the health issue. “The idea was to cabin it off to ‘welfare,’ ” a former EPA official said. “There was a general feeling that you wanted to limit the findings as much as you could.”

Even within the EPA, the details of how much auto emissions should be limited provoked fierce arguments. Some officials began carrying around copies of Bush’s executive order, waving it while arguing with senior political appointees.

But broader concerns over the regulatory “domino effect” that would be caused by any endangerment finding were expressed by members of the National Economic Council, the Council on Environmental Quality, and officials such as OMB general counsel Jeffrey A. Rosen and Cheney energy adviser F. Chase Hutto III, several meeting participants said.

One said that Rosen asked at one meeting if carbon dioxide emissions from a tailpipe could be treated differently than those from a power plant, wondering if the molecules are different. The answer was that they are not.

Hutto, a former Cato Institute intern and Bush campaign volunteer during the Florida vote recount in 2000, whose grandfather patented at least seven piston inventions for the Ford Motor Company, has “an anti-regulatory philosophy and concern about what regulation means for the American way of life. He would talk, for example, about not wanting greenhouse gas controls to do away with the large American automobile,” said the meeting participant.

A spokeswoman for Cheney’s office said Hutto had expressed opinions at the interagency meetings, but she declined to discuss what they were.

By late November, Johnson had held a meeting with his staff at which he advocated finding a danger to public welfare and praised the agency’s technical supporting document as “excellent.” But when Burnett sent the proposal to the White House, the OMB staff refused to open it, and it sat in limbo for months.

Instead, the Bush administration supported legislation to tighten fuel-economy standards, but by less than the EPA had been considering.

Then, on March 27, Johnson returned to the EPA’s fifth-floor conference room to inform his staff that he would abandon the idea of drafting a formal rule and would instead call for the “advanced notice,” which only invited comment on possible regulation. This would avoid “any unintended consequences” that could stem from a broad rule curbing carbon dioxide, he said.

“I know some people are going to say we’re kicking the can down the road,” Johnson said as he faced a group of angry career officials. But he said that was not the case.

Staff researchers Julie Tate and Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

Have Your Say: EPA Won’t Act on Emissions
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

SECRET RED CROSS REPORT SAYS THE CIA TORTURED AL QAEDA DETAINEES

Saturday, July 12th, 2008

Progress Report | “Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation methods for high-level al Qaeda prisoners constituted torture,” according to a new book by investigative reporter Jane Mayer.

The report found that the Bush administration “may have committed ‘grave breaches’ of the Geneva Conventions” and that the officials who approved the methods could be “guilty of war crimes.” The report, which Mayer cited in less detail last year in the New Yorker, says that al Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah told the Red Cross “that he had been waterboarded at least 10 times in a single week and as many as three times in a day.”

Abu Zubaydah also was confined in a box “so small he said he had to double up his limbs in the fetal position” and was “one of several prisoners to be ’slammed against the walls.’” The Red Cross concluded that the methods used on Zubaydah were “categorically” torture. In August 2007, after Mayer’s initial New Yorker article on the report was published, President Bush replied, “[I] haven’t seen it; we don’t torture” when asked about the report. But according to Mayer’s book, the CIA showed the report to both Bush and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

Have Your Say: SECRET RED CROSS REPORT SAYS THE CIA TORTURED AL QAEDA DETAINEES
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Marine Describes Killing Prisoners In Iraq

Saturday, July 12th, 2008

Sgt. Jermaine Nelson, in a tape-recorded interview, says he and a fellow sergeant were ordered to kill the prisoners during a sweep through a Fallouja neighborhood in 2004.

By Tony Perry

 CAMP PENDLETON — A graphic, vulgarity-laced interview in which a Marine described how he and two other Marines killed four unarmed prisoners in Iraq was played today during a preliminary hearing in the case.

Sgt. Jermaine Nelson, in a tape-recorded interview with a Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent, said he and Sgt. Ryan Weemer were ordered by Sgt. Jose Nazario to kill the prisoners as the Marines swept through a neighborhood in Fallouja in late 2004.

Several minutes of the tape were played at the hearing for Weemer, who faces murder and dereliction of duty charges. Nelson faces similar charges, and Nazario faces manslaughter charges in federal court in Riverside.

Nelson told the investigator that Nazario told him, “I’m not doing all this [expletive] by myself. You’re doing one and Weemer is doing one.”

Nelson said that he watched in shock as Nazario shot a kneeling prisoner at point-blank range: “He hit the dude in the forehead, the dude went down and there was blood . . . all over his [Nazario's] boots.”

Weemer then used his service pistol to shoot one of the prisoners, Nelson said. “He shot him and the dude was on the ground and rolling and [Weemer] was shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting.”

The case began when Weemer, who had left the Marine Corps, told a job interviewer from the Secret Service about the killings. The Marine Corps recalled him to active-duty so he could be charged.

Nelson and Weemer, in their interviews, said that Nazario ordered the killings after getting a radio message from a superior that ordered the Marines not to take time to process the prisoners according to the rules. The Marines were needed to support other Marines sweeping through the insurgent-held city, Weemer said in his interview.

A hearing officer, at the conclusion of the preliminary hearing, will recommend to Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland whether the case should go to court martial, be dropped or be handled through an administrative procedure.

After seeing Weemer and Nazario shot prisoners, Nelson said he lost his reluctance to join in the killings. “I said [expletive] and I shot my dude.”

Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times

Have Your Say: Marine Describes Killing Prisoners In Iraq
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Related News

• Turkey rejects US bank request on Iran
• British Media Confirms Fbi Nuke Cover-up
• The new invasion of Iraq
• VIDEO: Sibel Edmonds - Kill The Messenger
• New US plot against Iranian banks

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 12th, 2008 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Contributions & Guests . 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.