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Blair WAS involved in Iraq inquiry talks, minister says

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

Gordon Brown is to promise that much of the Iraq inquiry will be held in the open in an attempt to avert a damaging Commons defeat for the Government this Wednesday.

Amid fury on the Labour back benches over Mr Brown’s initial decision to stage the inquiry in private, ministers now expect much of the evidence to be given publicly after a change of heart was forced on the Prime Minister.

The Labour rebels’ anger was intensified by the disclosure yesterday that Tony Blair, likely to be the key witness, had consulted with the Cabinet Secretary on the form of the inquiry. They want him to give evidence under oath.

Mr Blair’s involvement in discussions with Sir Gus O’Donnell over the nature of the hearings was confirmed by Shaun Woodward, the Northern Ireland Secretary. “Of course the Cabinet Secretary discussed this with the former prime minister,” Mr Woodward said, “because he obviously will be one of the major witnesses who will be giving evidence to Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry”.

The backbenchers also pointed to a leaked memo yesterday indicating that the former prime minister had been considering the possibility of going to war without a second UN resolution two months before the invasion.

The note, written by his foreign policy adviser Sir David Manning, indicated that Mr Blair and US President George Bush were already discussing ways of legitimising military invasion in case the UN failed to find weapons of mass destruction.

Such documents are likely to go to the heart of the inquiry; suggestions they could be examined in secret provoked uproar among MPs of all parties and senior military and intelligence officers. Mr Brown has already staged a partial retreat by asking Sir John Chilcot, the retired civil servant who will head the inquiry, to hold some sessions in public. But the concession did not go far enough to pacify Labour MPs threatening to support a Tory motion on Wednesday calling for all hearings to be held in public other than for security reasons.

Sir John will tomorrow meet David Cameron, the Tory leader, and Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, to discuss the form of the inquiry.

Ministers said yesterday that they expected the bulk of hearings to be held in public and one senior Whitehall source said: “It’s inevitable that will happen.”

Jack Straw, foreign secretary at the time of the war, said the indications from Sir John were that his hearings would be both public and private. He said: “I have no problem with giving most of the evidence I have in public.”

Mr Straw told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show that he was sure Mr Blair would also be happy to appear publicly.

Sadiq Khan, Britain’s most senior Muslim politician, admitted the controversy over the hearings “looked awful”, blaming the furore on ignorance over the autonomy given to the chairs of inquiries. Mr Khan, a Transport minister, told BBC1’s Politics Show: “I suspect there will be many, many parts of the inquiry held in public.”

The Government is preparing to table a rival motion on Wednesday promising widespread public hearings in an effort to peel off MPs reluctant to support a Conservative motion. Last night Labour MPs opposed to the war said they would only be satisfied by the majority of hearings being public.

Paul Flynn, the MP for Newport West, said: “We want a clear assurance that the inquiry will be open.” Gordon Prentice, MP for Pendle, argued: “The whole way this has been done is so cack-handed and inept it is unbelievable.

“The inquiry should be open with evidence given on oath. There must be an opportunity for the leading players to be cross-examined.”

By Nigel Morris

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CIA Looks to Colleges for Future Spies

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

To the list of collegiate types — nerds, jocks, Greeks — add one more: spies in training. The government is hoping they’ll be hard to spot.

The Obama administration has proposed the creation of an intelligence officer training program in colleges and universities that would function much like the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps run by the military services. The idea is to create a stream “of first- and second-generation Americans, who already have critical language and cultural knowledge, and prepare them for careers in the intelligence agencies,” according to a description sent to Congress by Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair.

In recent years, the CIA and other intelligence agencies have struggled to find qualified recruits who can work the streets of the Middle East and South Asia to penetrate terrorist groups and criminal enterprises. The proposed program is an effort to cultivate and educate a new generation of career intelligence officers from ethnically and culturally diverse backgrounds.

Under the proposal, part of the administration’s 2010 intelligence authorization bill, colleges and universities would apply for grants that would be used to expand or introduce courses of study to “meet the emerging needs of the intelligence community.” Those courses would include certain foreign languages, analysis and specific scientific and technical fields.

The students’ participation in the program would probably be kept secret to prevent them from being identified by foreign intelligence services, according to an official familiar with the proposal.

Students attending participating colleges and universities who agree to take the specialized courses would apply to the national intelligence director for admittance to the program, whose administrators would select individuals “competitively” for financial assistance. Much like the support provided to those in the military programs, the financial assistance could include “a monthly stipend, tuition assistance, book allowances and travel expenses,” according to the proposal. It also would involve paid summer internships at one or more intelligence agencies.

Applicants to the intelligence training program would have to pass a security background investigation, although it is unclear when they would have to do so. Students who receive a certain amount of financial assistance would be obligated to serve in an intelligence agency for the same length of time as they received their subsidy.

Students in the military programs typically participate for all four years of college, but the intelligence program would seek to recruit sophomores and juniors.

Through grants to colleges and universities, intelligence agencies have been building partnerships with academia and specific professors, some of whom in past decades served as channels for recommending applicants to the CIA and other intelligence agencies. The intelligence community already has a Centers of Academic Excellence Program that funds programs in national security studies at more than 14 colleges and universities, with a goal of having 20 participating schools by 2015. The programs receive between $500,000 and $750,000 a year.

The intelligence officer training program would build on two earlier efforts. One was a pilot program, first authorized in 2004, for as many as 400 students who took cryptologic training and agreed to work for the National Security Agency or another intelligence agency for each year they received financial assistance. That program will be replaced by the new one because cryptology is not as needed as it once was.

A second program provided financial assistance to selected intelligence community employees who agreed to study in specialized academic areas in which officials believed there were analytic deficiencies.

Named the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program, after the Kansas Republican who chaired the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, over the past four years it has provided funds to some 800 students and current employees.

The director of national intelligence would make the Roberts program permanent under the new proposal and expand it beyond analysts to include personnel in acquisition, science and technology. It also could be used to help recruit employees by reimbursing them for prior education in critical areas.

Walter Pincus

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Arrested for asking a policeman for his badge number

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

The Guardian has obtained this police footage of Emily Apple and Val Swain being arrested by surveillance officers after asking for their badge numbers at the Kingsnorth climate camp last year. The two women speak to Paul Lewis about their arrest, imprisonment and official complaint.

View the video here

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Agents say DEA is forcing them illegally to work in Afghanistan

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

As the Obama administration ramps up the Drug Enforcement Administration’s presence in Afghanistan, some special-agent pilots contend that they’re being illegally forced to go to a combat zone, while others who’ve volunteered say they’re not being properly equipped.

In interviews with McClatchy, more than a dozen DEA agents describe a badly managed system in which some pilots have been sent to Afghanistan under duress or as punishment for bucking their superiors.

Such complaints, so far mostly arising from the DEA’s Aviation Division, could complicate the Obama administration’s efforts to send dozens of additional DEA agents to Afghanistan as part of a civilian and military personnel “surge” that aims to stabilize the country.

Veteran DEA pilot Daniel Offield has alleged in an employment discrimination complaint he was told if he refuses to go to Afghanistan in July he’ll be demoted. The Stockton, Calif., agent asked for a reprieve because he was in the process of adopting two special needs children and offered to serve his required temporary duty in other countries.

Another agent, David Beavers, told McClatchy that he was ordered in July 2007 to prepare to go to Afghanistan in two weeks while he was on bereavement leave after his mother-in-law died. To avoid going, the Orlando, Fla., pilot decided to retire early.

Both men have flown for the DEA in Latin American countries wracked by drug violence, but they say service in a combat zone should be treated as voluntary because they’re not military personnel.

“You could say that the war on drugs is dangerous,” said Beavers, a DEA pilot for more than 20 years. “But it’s not quite like Afghanistan, where you can get your legs blown off by an (improvised explosive device).”

Agents said supervisors told them that working in dangerous countries is part of their job requirements, but Offield’s Sacramento-based lawyer said such compulsory duty violates a 2008 federal law that requires civilian personnel to serve voluntarily.

“The DEA is not only violating the law,” said attorney Richard Margarita, a former DEA agent and county prosecutor. “They could very well be sending Dan Offield to his death.”

The Obama administration has said it doesn’t expect problems with finding volunteers for Afghanistan missions, despite an ambitious strategy that calls for sending hundreds of additional civilian personnel. The plan already faces long odds in a country of resurgent Islamic militants, endemic corruption and widespread opium trafficking.

At least one other agency has faced similar complaints about compulsory duty.

Two years ago, the State Department told U.S. diplomats that they might be forced to serve in Iraq in the largest call-up since Vietnam. The announcement triggered an outcry, but the department eventually found enough volunteers to fill the jobs.

DEA officials with the Aviation Division referred questions about the Afghanistan assignments to agency headquarters. Garrison Courtney, a DEA spokesman who responded to written questions, said that agents aren’t being demoted, because even if they lose their pilot position, the salary is the same.

Courtney said pilots “are expected to support DEA’s global mission,” and that the Aviation Division “does not have the luxury” of allowing them to pick where they fly on temporary duty because many of the more than 100 pilots don’t have the experience to fly in Afghanistan.

He said if pilots don’t want to go, they have “the option to transfer back to an enforcement division and conduct domestic drug enforcement investigations.”

Courtney noted that DEA missions in Peru and Colombia “pose similar challenges” as Afghanistan because of the countries’ mountainous terrain.

More than a dozen agents told McClatchy that the experiences of the two pilots aren’t isolated and have continued over the past several years. The other agents asked to remain anonymous, saying they fear retaliation from the DEA.

“There are number of guys who say ‘I don’t want to go,’ but they suck it up and go,” one agent said. “What’s going to happen is somebody at some point is going to get killed.”

One official e-mail sent in 2007 demonstrates the pressure placed on agents to accept their assignments, warning agents that “it is not if, but when” that they’ll go to Afghanistan. The e-mail noted: “it is cold and miserable in the winter” in Afghanistan and added that pilots who volunteer might be able to choose what time of year they’ll go.

DEA agents said the decision to force some their peers to go to Afghanistan doesn’t appear related to a lack of qualified volunteers. One agent said he’d volunteered to go to Afghanistan and went through the required training. His superiors, however, denied his request without explanation. The agent said he knows plenty of others who are willing to go.

“With some people, if you want to go, they won’t send you,” the agent said. “They use Afghanistan as punishment for agents they don’t like.”

Offield, a 25-year DEA veteran who oversees marijuana eradication in California’s national forests, alleges in his complaint the agency’s decision to send him to Afghanistan is part of a larger pattern of harassment based on his age and sexual orientation. He responded to McClatchy’s questions through his attorney out of concern that he’d be punished for going outside the chain of command.

Offield, 47, alleges the harassment began soon after he told a colleague that he’s gay, although he said he’s generally chosen not to discuss his sexual orientation with his colleagues.

The retaliation, he said, became worse after he appeared on an MSNBC news program, where he told reporters that he didn’t think the DEA was winning the battle against California’s marijuana cultivators. Although he got clearance to appear on the show, Offield said his comments hardened the resolve of his superiors to punish him.

About a month later, he was told he was going to Afghanistan although he’d requested to go elsewhere.

Courtney said the DEA didn’t discriminate against Offield and said officials have offered to transfer him back to a street agent job that would allow him to work closer to his home.

He said Offield was punished — his government car was taken away for a week — but only because he didn’t respond to his supervisors’ e-mails. Margarita, however, said his client couldn’t respond immediately to a handful of e-mails because he was on duty and his inbox was full.

John Adler, the president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, said that each federal agency has its own set of policies for overseas duty ,and an agency’s ability to send an employee depends on the position description. FBI agents, for example, can be sent on compulsory duty, he said.

“We understand and accept that in national emergencies we have to go,” he said. “But an agency crosses the line when they target certain employees and they try to punish them by forcing into an undesirable assignment.”

Agents say the duty is made even more difficult because once they arrive in Afghanistan, they’re given inadequate equipment.

Pilots said they generally go on two-month tours and are given a machine gun, a semi-automatic pistol and bulletproof vest. Although pilots are required to file flight plans electronically, they aren’t given laptop computers.

Courtney said DEA pilots in Afghanistan can use computers in a common work area and that all agents are also given boots, flight suits, survival radios, helmets and other essential equipment.

However, after one agent asked in an August 2007 memo about getting additional equipment, including boots, for a two-month tour, then-Assistant Special Agent in Charge William F. Dionne dismissed the request, saying the agent would only get more equipment if he volunteered for a longer tour, agents familiar with the memo said. Dionne is now the acting special agent in charge of the DEA’s Aviation Division.

Yet when four supervisors, including Dionne, traveled on brief trip to Afghanistan in 2005, they spent more than $700 on boots and uniforms for themselves, according to DEA records.

On longer tours, agents complain that they’re not issued ammunition or magazines and are forced to borrow them from fellow agents. Ballistic vests aren’t fitted for specific agents. Rifles are issued without laser sights and optics like the military has, and personal locator beacons and GPS systems are hard to come by. Some agents said they end up buying thousands of dollars of equipment themselves.

“The DEA does not have enough resources or equipment to get the job done in Afghanistan,” one agent said.

The allegations come after McClatchy reported earlier this year on several other management problems within the aviation division. William Brown, the former special agent in charge of the division, stepped down soon after McClatchy revealed that he’d chartered a private plane for the DEA’s acting administrator at a cost of $123,000 and had invested in untested planes that agents feared were unsafe.

A permanent replacement for Brown hasn’t been named, but DEA agents said that current supervisors continue the practice of forcing some unwilling agents to go to Afghanistan.

By Marisa Taylor

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One in six are going hungry

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

The UN has warned that the global financial meltdown has pushed the ranks of the world’s hungry to a record 1 billion.

UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) officials reported at the weekend that, because of war, drought, political instability, high food prices and poverty, hunger now affects 1.02 billion - up 11 per cent from last year’s 915 million.

The financial meltdown has compounded the crisis in what FAO director-general Jacques Diouf called a “devastating combination for the world’s most vulnerable.”

Compared with last year, there are 100 million more people who are hungry, meaning they consume fewer than 1,800 calories a day, the agency said.

“No part of the world is immune,” Mr Diouf said, emphasising that “all world regions have been affected by the rise of food insecurity.”

The crisis is a humanitarian one but it is also a political issue.

Officials presenting the new estimates in Rome sought to stress the link between hunger and instability, noting that soaring prices for staples such as rice triggered riots in the developing world last year.

Josette Sheeran of the World Food Programme, another UN food agency, said hungry people had rioted in at least 30 countries last year. Most notably, soaring food prices led to deadly riots in Haiti and the overthrow of the prime minister.

“A hungry world is a dangerous world,” Ms Sheeran said. “Without food, people have only three options - they riot, they emigrate or they die. None of these are acceptable options.”

Even though prices have retreated from their mid-2008 highs, they are still “stubbornly high” in some domestic markets, according to the FAO.

On average, food prices were 24 percent higher in real terms at the end of 2008 compared to 2006, it said.

“Malnutrition kills through the fact that it weakens the immune system of a child,” said Andrei Engstrand-Neacsu, a Kenya-based spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in East Africa. Some 22 million of the 1 billion hungry people counted by the United Nations are in the drought-stricken Horn of Africa, he said.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 4:52 pm and is filed under UK-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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