SEPTEMBER 2006

BUSH'S HIDDEN SELF-PARDON IN THE TORTURE LEGISLATION

ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN, CHICAGO SUN TIMES - Thirty-two years ago, President Gerald Ford created a political firestorm by pardoning former President Richard Nixon of all crimes he may have committed in Watergate -- and lost his election as a result. Now, President Bush, to avoid a similar public outcry, is quietly trying to pardon himself of any crimes connected with the torture and mistreatment of U.S. detainees. The "pardon" is buried in Bush's proposed legislation to create a new kind of military tribunal for cases involving top al-Qaida operatives. The "pardon" provision has nothing to do with the tribunals. Instead, it guts the War Crimes Act of 1996, a federal law that makes it a crime, in some cases punishable by death, to mistreat detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions and makes the new, weaker terms of the War Crimes Act retroactive to 9/11. Press accounts of the provision have described it as providing immunity for CIA interrogators. But its terms cover the president and other top officials because the act applies to any U.S. national.

Avoiding prosecution under the War Crimes Act has been an obsession of this administration since shortly after 9/11. In a January 2002 memorandum to the president, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales pointed out the problem of prosecution for detainee mistreatment under the War Crimes Act. He notes that given the vague language of the statute, no one could predict what future "prosecutors and independent counsels" might do if they decided to bring charges under the act. As an author of the 1978 special prosecutor statute, I know that independent counsels (who used to be called "special prosecutors" prior to the statute's reauthorization in 1994) aren't for low-level government officials such as CIA interrogators, but for the president and his Cabinet. It is clear that Gonzales was concerned about top administration officials.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/otherviews/cst-edt-ref23b.html

NEW BILL COULD DEFINE ANTI-WAR PROTESTORS AS ENEMY COMBATANTS

Attorneys for the Center for Constitutional Rights claim that what appears to be the final version of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 could allow the government to detain the attorneys themselves as 'enemy combatants.' CCR Legal Director Bill Goodman said: "This bill makes a mockery of the rule of law."

The current version of the Military Commissions redefines an "unlawful enemy combatant" so broadly that it could include anyone who organizes a march against the war in Iraq. The bill defines a UEC as "a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States" or anyone who "has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense of the United States." The definition makes no reference to citizenship and therefore could be read to include any number of individuals, including:

- Attorneys including public defenders and military defense counsel for detainees at Guantánamo Bay

- Any person who has given $5 to a charity working with orphans in Afghanistan that turns out to be associated in some fashion with someone who may be a member of the Taliban

The bill also currently includes provisions so sweeping that they strip U.S. courts of jurisdiction over habeas petitions by any non-citizen detained by the government anywhere. Because there is no geographic limitation in the bill's language, it would allow the President to detain any non-citizen without their ever having the chance to challenge their detention in court: "No court. shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination." Examples of people who could be detained indefinitely with no access to a court include:

- A foreign tourist wearing an anti-Bush t-shirt at the Statue of Liberty

- A protester at an immigration rally who has lived in the U.S. since she was six months old and is a lawful, permanent resident

COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, HARVARD, OTHER UNIVERSITIES WORKING ON PLAN TO END UNITED STATES

WORLDNET DAILY - In another example of the way the three nations of North America are being drawn into a federation, or "merger," students from 10 universities in the U.S., Mexico and Canada are participating annually in a simulated "model parliament."

Under the sponsorship of the Canadian based North American Forum on Integration, students met in the Mexican Senate for five days in May in an event dubbed "Triumvirate," with organizers declaring "A North American Parliament is born."
A similar event took place in the Canadian Senate in 2005. . .

"The creation of a North American parliament, such as the one being simulated by these young people, should be considered," explained Raymond Chretien, the president of the Triumvirate and the former Canadian ambassador to both Mexico and the U.S. Participants discuss draft bills on trade corridors, immigration, provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement and produce a daily newspaper called "The TrilatHerald."

The 10 universities taking part include Harvard, American University, Carlton University, Simon Fraser, Universite de Montreal, Ecole nationale d'administration publique, Monterrey TEC, CIDE, Monterrey University and Instituto Mexicano de la Juventud. . .

The board of directors of NAFI include Robert A. Pastor, professor and director of the Center for North American Studies at American University and vice chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on North America. He has testified before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on the idea of merging the United States, Mexico and Canada in a North American union stretching from Prudhoe Bay to Guatemala.

"What we need to do," Pastor instructed, "is forge a new North American Community. ... Instead of stopping North Americans on the borders, we ought to provide them with a secure, biometric border pass that would ease transit across the border like an E-Z pass permits our cars to speed through tolls." . . .

As vice chairman of the May 2005 CFR task force, he is an architect of the Building a North American Community" plan that presents itself as a blueprint for using bureaucratic action within the executive branches of Mexico, the U.S. and Canada to transform the current trilateral Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America into a North American union regional government.

The CFR report is a five-year plan for the "establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community" with a common "outer security perimeter." Some see it as the blueprint for merger of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. It calls for "a common economic space ... for all people in the region, a space in which trade, capital and people flow freely." . . .

Geri Word, who heads the SPP office, told WND the work had not been disclosed because, "We did not want to get the contact people of the working groups distracted by calls from the public."

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52104

ELIMINATING REAL AMERICA TO BUILD CORPORATE AMERICA

SAM SMITH, 2002 - Bill Clinton told a 1995 Michigan State University commencement shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing, "There's nothing patriotic about hating your government or pretending you can hate your government but love your country." And in a few years, George Bush's attorney general would imply that even criticizing government policy was unpatriotic.

How had loyalty to government come to replace loyalty to ideals, place, and people in the pantheon of patriotism? In part because the American elite had decided that nations no longer mattered all that much. It was government we needed to honor lest our parochialism interfere with corporate multi-nationalism. In 1992, Strobe Talbott had written in Time Magazine, "Within the next hundred years . . . nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority . . . All countries are basically social arrangements, accommodations to changing circumstances. No matter how permanent and even sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary."

Talbott was expressing a centrist consensus later confirmed by that Washington favorite, Francis Fukuyama: "Globalization will not be reversed." And by Vaclav Havel, approvingly quoted in the New York Review of Books referring to nations as "cultlike entities charged with emotion."

It was not just a matter of words. No assault on American sovereignty has been more successful than that carried out in recent years by the globalization movement, using such mechanisms as NAFTA and the WTO. That which, over the course of our history, the British, Mexicans, Confederates, Spanish, Germans and Japanese had been unable to do was now being accomplished by a handful of lawyers armed only with cell phones, fax machines and the support of politicians willing to trade their country's nationhood for another campaign contribution.

And it wasn't just happening to America. By the 1990s, about half the top economies of the world were not nations, but corporations. Trade had replaced ideology as the engine of foreign affairs. Politics, nationhood and the idea of place itself was being supplanted by a huge, amorphous international corporate culture that ruled not by force but by market share. This culture, in the words of French writer Jacques Attali, sought an "ideologically homogenous market where life will be organized around common consumer desires."

http://prorev.com/patriot.htm

COURT RULES CUSTOMS CAN SEARCH YOUR LAPTOP

STEVE SEIDENBERG, ABA JOURNAL - In U.S. v. Romm, No. 04-10648, the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit ruled that customs officials can seize and search the contents of anyone's laptop computer, even in the absence of a search warrant or probable cause. Some attorneys say the ruling goes too far, invading the privacy of anyone who crosses into the United States. And the ruling may pose special problems for attorneys who need to keep client information confidential when they go on business trips overseas.

"What's dangerous about this opinion is that it pushes the line for searches along the border very far toward one end of the constitutional spectrum," says Shaun Martin, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law. "It is one thing to turn on your computer in the airport to make sure it is not a bomb. It is another thing for customs officials to turn on your computer and to read everything you ever wrote and to look at everything you ever downloaded." . . .

Even worse, the customs official might simply demand the attorney provide the password to the law firm's VPN. Paparelli is aware of at least one instance in which a customs agent asked for an e-mail password so the officer could examine the individual's e-mail correspondence. "Imagine if that were the password of a company employee, and it led the agent into a corporate network database," he says.

Perhaps the only way to guarantee protection for confidential data is to leave your laptop at home and connect to your data via a computer that stays overseas. "People should not carry laptops across borders if they don't want their laptops inspected by the government," Paparelli says.

http://www.abanet.org/journal/ereport/s15border.html

COLORADO WANTS RESIDENTS TO SPY ON OTHERS, ESTABLISHES STASI-STYLE SYSTEM

BRUCE FINLEY, DENVER POST - Colorado counterterrorism officials used the 9/11 anniversary to launch an Internet system that lets ordinary people electronically report "suspicious activity" - ferreting out possible terrorist bombers or plotters in their midst. "One person can make a difference in thwarting terrorism," State Patrol Chief Mark Tostel said Monday in unveiling the system.

Civil-liberties leaders immediately denounced the move as deeply destructive. The system lets anybody with Internet access send a report and photos (via www.ciac.co.gov) documenting anything that strikes them as suspicious.

Officials said suspicious activity may include "unusual requests for information," "unusual interest in high-risk or symbolic targets," "unusual purchases or thefts," "suspicious or unattended packages," "suspicious persons who appear out of place" or people acquiring weapons, uniforms or fraudulent identification. . .
"I hate it," said Cathryn Hazouri, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Colorado. "This is encouraging people to spy on one another."

It moves modern America in the direction of communist societies of the Soviet Union and China, "where people were encouraged to turn in their family members, or their neighbors, if they believed those people were not toeing the government line," Hazouri said. . .

"It's almost as though they are trying to tell people that they need to be afraid. Very afraid. Afraid of people they know, and especially of people they don't know."

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_4321274

AUGUST 2006

CHERTOFF WANTS TO TRASH CONSTITUTION

BRYAN BENDER, BOSTON GLOBE - Homeland security chief Michael Chertoff called yesterday for a review of domestic antiterrorism laws, saying the United States might benefit from the more aggressive surveillance and arrest powers used by British authorities last week to thwart an alleged plot to bomb airliners. . . British police have the ability to hold suspects without charges for nearly a month and a greater flexibility to eavesdrop on citizens.

AND THOSE WE DON'T LOCK UP WITHOUT CAUSE, WE JUST KILL

Clearly at the end of the day, we've got to eliminate that pool of people who are susceptible to becoming killers. - Michael Chertoff in an NPR interview

GREAT MOMENTS IN ANTI-TERRORISM ADVICE

We encourage everyone to pack gel-filled bras in their checked baggage. - TSA security advisory

My country used to be
Sweet land of liberty
That once was true
Until the FCC
Chose what we hear and see. . .

JULY 2006

FEMA CLAIMS CONSTITUTION DOESN'T APPLY IN TRAILER CAMPS

SANDY DAVIS, ADVOCATE - FEMA has said the reason it's not allowing media easy access to its trailer parks is to "protect the privacy" of the residents. Members of Louisiana's congressional delegation are criticizing FEMA's policy. Members of Louisiana's congressional delegation said Monday that FEMA's policy restricting media access to residents living in FEMA-managed trailer parks is absurd, outrageous and denies park residents their rights as American citizens.

"FEMA just strikes you as a bureaucracy that's out of control," said U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal, R-Kenner. "You don't lose your fundamental rights just because you're living in temporary housing. It's an outrageous pattern of behavior."

Jindal was referring to a July 15 article in which The Advocate detailed an incident in a Federal Emergency Management Agency-operated trailer park in Morgan City where a reporter and photographer were ordered off of the site. The two had been invited into a trailer occupied by resident Dekotha Devall and her family. But during the interview a security guard ordered the reporter and photographer to leave. The security guard called the police after the reporter attempted to give Devall a business card, an act the guard said was forbidden.

Later, the security guard told another resident, Pansy Ardeneaux, she was not allowed to speak to the media through a chain link fence surrounding the park and ordered Ardeneaux to return to her trailer. When FEMA officials were told of the incident, they said the media has to be escorted at all times by FEMA representatives.

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/3416941.html

JUDGE RULES AGAINST CONSTITUTION, SAYS FOURTH AMENDMENT DOESN'T APPLY TO ATT

ASSOCIATED PRESS - Citing national security, a federal judge Tuesday threw out a lawsuit aimed at blocking AT&T Inc. from giving telephone records to the government for use in the war on terror. "The court is persuaded that requiring AT&T to confirm or deny whether it has disclosed large quantities of telephone records to the federal government could give adversaries of this country valuable insight into the government's intelligence activities," U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly said. . . Kennelly's ruling was in sharp contrast to last week's decision from U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker of San Francisco, who said media reports of the program were so widespread there was no danger of spilling secrets.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4071709.html

ABA TELLS PRESIDENT TO VETO LAWS OR FOLLOW THEM

ROBERT PEAR, NY TIMES - The American Bar Association said Sunday that President Bush was flouting the Constitution and undermining the rule of law by claiming the power to disregard selected provisions of bills that he signed. In a comprehensive report, a bipartisan 11-member panel of the bar association said Mr. Bush had used such "signing statements" far more than his predecessors, raising constitutional objections to more than 800 provisions in more than 100 laws on the ground that they infringed on his prerogatives. These broad assertions of presidential power amount to a "line-item veto" and improperly deprive Congress of the opportunity to override the veto, the panel said. In signing a statutory ban on torture and other national security laws, Mr. Bush reserved the right to disregard them.

The bar association panel said the use of signing statements in this way was "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers." From the dawn of the Republic, it said, presidents have generally understood that, in the words of George Washington, a president "must approve all the parts of a bill, or reject it in toto."

If the president deems a bill unconstitutional, he can veto it, the panel said, but "signing statements should not be a substitute for a presidential veto."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/24/washington/24prexy.html?_r=1&oref=login

AIR MARSHALS PUTTING INNOCENT PEOPLE ON WATCH LIST TO MEET QUOTA

CHANNEL 7, DENVER - You could be on a secret government database or watch list for simply taking a picture on an airplane. Some federal air marshals say they're reporting your actions to meet a quota, even though some top officials deny it. The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told 7 News that they're required to submit at least one report a month. If they don't, there's no raise, no bonus, no awards and no special assignments.

"Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft ... and they did nothing wrong," said one federal air marshal.

These unknowing passengers who are doing nothing wrong are landing in a secret government document called a Surveillance Detection Report, or SDR. . .

"Do these reports have real life impacts on the people who are identified as potential terrorists?" 7 News Investigator Tony Kovaleski asked.

"Absolutely," a federal air marshal replied. . .

That's why several air marshals object to a July 2004 memo from top management in the Las Vegas office, a memo that reminded air marshals of the SDR requirement.

The body of the memo said, "Each federal air marshal is now expected to generate at least one SDR per month.". . .

A second management memo, also dated July 2004, said, "There may come an occasion when you just don't see anything out of the ordinary for a month at a time, but I'm sure that if you are looking for it, you'll see something."

One example, according to air marshals, occurred on one flight leaving Las Vegas, when an unknowing passenger, most likely a tourist, was identified in an SDR for doing nothing more than taking a photo of the Las Vegas skyline as his plane rolled down the runway.. . .

Although the agency strongly denies any presence of a quota system, Las Vegas-based air marshals have produced documents that show their performance review is directly linked to producing SDRs.

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/9559707/detail.html

JUNE 2006

BUSH REGIME COMES UP WITH NEW WAY TO SPY ON AMERICANS

MARK CLAYTON, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR - The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity. The system - parts of which are operational, parts of which are still under development - is already credited with helping to foil some plots. It is the federal government's latest attempt to use broad data-collection and powerful analysis in the fight against terrorism. But by delving deeply into the digital minutiae of American life, the program is also raising concerns that the government is intruding too deeply into citizens' privacy.

"We don't realize that, as we live our lives and make little choices, like buying groceries, buying on Amazon, Googling, we're leaving traces everywhere," says Lee Tien, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We have an attitude that no one will connect all those dots. But these programs are about connecting those dots - analyzing and aggregating them - in a way that we haven't thought about. It's one of the underlying fundamental issues we have yet to come to grips with.". . .

Privacy concerns have torpedoed federal data-mining efforts in the past. In 2002, news reports revealed that the Defense Department was working on Total Information Awareness, a project aimed at collecting and sifting vast amounts of personal and government data for clues to terrorism. An uproar caused Congress to cancel the TIA program a year later. Echoes of a past controversial plan ADVISE "looks very much like TIA," Mr. Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation writes in an e-mail. "There's the same emphasis on broad collection and pattern analysis." . . .

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0209/p01s02-uspo.html

GOP CONGRESS TRASHES CONSTITUTION, GIVES DICTATORIAL POWERS TO BUSH

[Under this legislation, Bush can imprison any American without cause, without trial, without limit]

GLENN GREENWALD - As Law Professors Marty Lederman and Bruce Ackerman each point out, many of the extraordinary powers vested in the President by this bill also apply to U.S. citizens, on U.S. soil. As Ackerman put it: "The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights." Similarly, Lederman explains: "this [subsection] means that if the Pentagon says you're an unlawful enemy combatant -- using whatever criteria they wish -- then as far as Congress, and U.S. law, is concerned, you are one, whether or not you have had any connection to 'hostilities' at all."

This last point means that even if there were a habeas corpus right inserted back into the legislation (which is unlikely at this point anyway), it wouldn't matter much, if at all, because the law would authorize your detention simply based on the DOD's decree that you are an enemy combatant, regardless of whether it was accurate. This is basically the legalization of the Jose Padilla treatment -- empowering the President to throw people into black holes with little or no recourse, based solely on his say-so.

There really is no other way to put it. Issues of torture to the side (a grotesque qualification, I know), we are legalizing tyranny in the United States. Period. Primary responsibility for this fact lies with the authoritarian Bush administration and its sickeningly submissive loyalists in Congress. That is true enough. But there is no point in trying to obscure the fact that it's happening with the cowardly collusion of the Senate Democratic leadership, which quite likely could have stopped this travesty via filibuster if it chose to (it certainly could have tried). . .

There is a profound and fundamental difference between an Executive engaging in shadowy acts of lawlessness and abuses of power on the one hand, and, on the other, having the American people, through their Congress, endorse, embrace and legalize that behavior out in the open, with barely a peep of real protest. . .

Executive imprisonment has been considered oppressive and lawless since John, at Runnymede, pledged that no free man should be imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, or exiled save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. The judges of England developed the writ of habeas corpus largely to preserve these immunities from executive restraint.

Thomas Jefferson, in his letter to Thomas Paine, 1789, said: "I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." And Patrick Henry warned us well in advance about Government officials who would seek to claim the right to imprison people without a trial:

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel.". . .

It was taken as an article of faith by Beltway Democrats that Americans want to relinquish these protections and radically change our system of government in the name of terrorism, so no political figures of national significance really tried to convince them they ought not to. We'll never really know whether Americans really wanted to do this or not because the debate was never engaged. It was ceded.

And as a result, we are now about to vest in the President the power to order anyone -- U.S. citizen, resident alien or foreign national -- detained indefinitely in a military prison regardless of where they are -- U.S. soil or outside of the country. American detainees are cut off from any meaningful judicial review and everyone else is cut off completely. They can be subject to torture with no recourse, and all of this happens on the unchecked say-so of the administration.

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/legalization-of-torture-an_115945829460324274.html

DAHLIA LITHWICK, SLATE - Last time Congress rubber-stamped a major terrorism-related law no one had bothered to read in the first place, we got the Patriot Act. That alone should lead us to wonder whether there shouldn't be a mandatory three-month cooling-off period whenever Congress enacts broad laws that rewrite the Constitution. . .

Appearing on Face the Nation, McCain claimed that the current bill "could mean that . . . extreme measures such as extreme deprivation-sleep deprivation, hypothermia, and others would be not allowed." This, on the same weekend that the editors at the Wall Street Journal crowed: "It's a fair bet that water boarding - or simulated drowning, the most controversial of the CIA's reported interrogation techniques - will not be allowed under the new White House rules. But sleep deprivation and temperature variations, to name two other methods, will likely pass muster." So, what did we agree to? Is hypothermia in or out? What about sexual degradation or forcing prisoners to bark like dogs? Stress positions?. . .

Not only do our elected officials have no idea what deal they've just struck, but they also have no idea what they were even bargaining about. In his Face the Nation interview, McCain revealed that he was in fact quite clueless as to what these "alternative interrogation measures" - the ones the president insists the CIA must use-actually include. "It's hard for me to get into these techniques," McCain said. "First of all, I'm not privy to them, but I only know what I've seen in public reporting.". . .

But that's not all. Congress doesn't want to know what it's bargaining away . . . In the Boston Globe this weekend, Rick Klein revealed that only "10 percent of the members of Congress have been told which interrogation techniques have been used in the past, and none of them know which ones would be permissible under proposed changes to the War Crimes Act." More troubling still, this congressional ignorance seems to be by choice. Klein quotes Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Republican, as saying, "I don't know what the CIA has been doing, nor should I know." . . .

We've reached a defining moment in our democracy when our elected officials are celebrating their own blind ignorance as a means of keeping the rest of us blindly ignorant as well. . .

No serious reader of the detainee-compromise bill can dispute that the whole point here is to sideline the courts. This bill immunizes some forms of detainee abuse and ignores others. It strips courts of habeas-corpus jurisdiction and denies so-called unlawful enemy combatants (a term that sweeps in citizens and non-citizens, Swiss grandmothers and Don Rumsfeld's neighbor if-that-bastard-doesn't-trim-his-hedge) the right to assert Geneva Convention claims in courts. Many detainees may never stand trial on the most basic question of whether they have done anything wrong. And courts will apparently now be powerless to do anything about any of this. . .

http://www.slate.com/id/2150495/

NY TIMES EDITORIAL - These are some of the bill's biggest flaws:

- A dangerously broad definition of "illegal enemy combatant" in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

- The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret - there's no requirement that this list be published.

- Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

- The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

- Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable - already a contradiction in terms - and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

- American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

- The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/opinion/28thu1.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

SEPTEMBER 27 HOUSE DEBATE
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_cr/h092706.html

SEPTEMBER 27 SENATE DEBATE
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_cr/s092706.html

BUSH REGIME SPYING ON YOUR CHECK TRANSACTIONS

LAURA BRUCE, BANKRATE - A government program designed to track down terrorists and money launderers is frightening bank customers, frustrating financial institutions and inundating federal agencies with secret reports of dubious value. It's called the Suspicious Activity Report, or SAR, and critics say it victimizes honest citizens who are conducting legitimate financial activities through legitimate banking channels, while generating a flood of useless paperwork and burdening financial institutions with billions of dollars in costs. Experts predict nearly 1 million will be filed in 2006, a bit more than half by depository institutions, the rest by money-services businesses, casinos, card clubs and the securities and futures industries. Insurance companies had to begin filing in spring 2006, and mutual fund companies will have to establish anti-money-laundering programs and file SARs in fall 2006. In total, 919,230 SARs were filed in 2005. You cannot find out if one has been filed on you; anyone revealing that information is breaking the law. What can trigger a SAR? Almost anything out of the ordinary that rouses the suspicion of the personnel where the transaction took place. According to their rules, any group of transactions totaling $5,000 or more that "is not the sort in which the particular customer would normally be expected to engage" can cause enough suspicion to create a SAR. The reports are filed with The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FINCEN, a division of the Department of the Treasury, and shared with law enforcement. To be sure, the reports have led to criminal investigations and prosecutions. But it also has mushroomed into a paper-generating monster that threatens to create Suspicious Activities Reports in government files on an increasing number of ordinary citizens. Unlike other government spying programs, this one is out in the open -- and it's creating fear among people doing ordinary banking activities. Take a recent college graduate from Columbus, Ohio, whose parents offered an interest-free loan to pay off his high-interest credit card debt. While surfing online, a message board post caught his attention. "A guy said he paid off his credit card and got a call from the bank," says the graduate, who asked not to be identified. "They held his funds for three weeks because his payment deviated from his normal payment. I did my own research and found it was realistic. "They could report you to Homeland Security if payments deviate from the norm. It sounded scary and made me nervous. I think it's ludicrous that anyone should be afraid of paying off their debt."

NSA PLANNING TO MINE MASSIVE PERSONAL DATA FROM INTERNET SITES

PAUL MARKS, NEW SCIENTIST - New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon's National Security Agency, which specializes in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. . . Americans are still reeling from last month's revelations that the NSA has been logging phone calls since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. The Congressional Research Service, which advises the US legislature, says phone companies that surrendered call records may have acted illegally. . .

Meanwhile, the NSA is pursuing its plans to tap the web, since phone logs have limited scope. They can only be used to build a very basic picture of someone's contact network, a process sometimes called "connecting the dots". Clusters of people in highly connected groups become apparent, as do people with few connections who appear to be the intermediaries between such groups. The idea is to see by how many links or "degrees" separate people from, say, a member of a blacklisted organization.

By adding online social networking data to its phone analyses, the NSA could connect people at deeper levels, through shared activities, such as taking flying lessons. Typically, online social networking sites ask members to enter details of their immediate and extended circles of friends, whose blogs they might follow. People often list other facets of their personality including political, sexual, entertainment, media and sporting preferences too. Some go much further, and a few have lost their jobs by publicly describing drinking and drug-taking exploits. Young people have even been barred from the orthodox religious colleges that they are enrolled in for revealing online that they are gay. . .

Other data the NSA could combine with social networking details includes information on purchases, where we go (available from cell phone records, which cite the base station a call came from) and what major financial transactions we make, such as buying a house.

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=mg19025556.200&feedId=online-news_rss20

FBI VIOLATED 4TH AMENDMENT AT LEAST 3,501 TIMES LAST YEAR

BRIAN ROSS AND MADDY SAUER, ABC NEWS - The Department of Justice says it secretly sought phone records and other documents of 3,501 people last year under a provision of the Patriot Act that does not require judicial oversight. The records were obtained with the use of what are known as National Security Letters, which can be signed by an FBI agent and are only for use in terrorism cases. The letters require telephone companies to keep secret even the existence of the request for records.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/05/3501_americans_.html

DARPA WANTS TO KNOW MORE ABOUT YOU THAN NSA

[Note that in DARPA's perverted mind, we all live in a battlefield now, neatly divided as "friendly, neutral or enemy"]

NOAH SHACHTMAN, WIRED - DARPA, the Pentagon's far-out research arm. . . wants to start planning for a blimp, three times the size of Goodyear's, that would keep watch over an entire city. Hovering 70,000 feet above ground, the ISIS airship (short for Integrated Sensor Is Structure) would use a giant, flexible radar antenna to give, in the words of Darpa program manager Larry Correy, a "dynamic, detailed, real-time picture of all movement on or above the battlefield: friendly, neutral or enemy."

"We will apply this technology to track people emerging from buildings of interest and follow them as they move to new locations," said DARPA's Paul Benda. "Imagine the impact it will have if ISIS tracks the movement of individuals for months. Hidden webs of connections between people and facilities will be revealed."

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,62646-0.html?tw=wn_story_mailer

AMERICA MOVES TOWARDS A 'NO WORK LIST'

LISA FRIEDMAN, ONTARIO DAILY BULLETIN - Remember the Department of Homeland Security's "no-fly" lists that erratically flagged 3-year-old children and dozens of men named David Nelson as terrorists seeking to board commercial airplanes? Well, now privacy experts are warning America to prepare for the "no-work" list.

As Congress debates immigration reform, experts say a little-discussed aspect of the bill, mandatory employee eligibility verification, is likely to have a colossal impact on the lives of every person in the U.S. labor market -- citizen and foreigner alike. "Everyone who wants to work will feel this provision," said Tim Sparapani, legal counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "People are just beginning to understand the implications of it, and they're big.". . .

Privacy advocates say the rush to mandate widespread eligibility checks is being done with little understanding of the technical snafus that could wrongly put thousands of people out of work each year while leading to rampant discrimination. . .

And, they warn, the government may also begin to compile new and vast stores of knowledge on every employable man, woman and child.

Department of Homeland Security officials and advocates of the employer verification system say privacy activists are fanning overblown fears .

No personal information is stored or tracked, they maintain, and the program is devised to protect employees from being left jobless while waiting for a green light from the system. Currently that system is called the Basic Pilot Program, and it is voluntary. About 6,000 participating employers use it annually to electronically check workers' I-9 forms against Social Security and visa info. Should the system go national, it will have to accommodate a U.S. work force of about 144 million people.

Mark Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said most Americans wrongly think they will be exempt from verification. "Generally speaking, people who aren't in the immigrant community assume it won't affect them. But for the system to work, it has to encompass the entire American work force," he said.

The bills, he said, "put the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security in the middle of every employment decision in the United States.''

Under the Senate bill, employers would be required to use the system to check every new employee, while the House requires employers to check current workers as well as prospective ones.

http://www.dailybulletin.com/news/ci_3925947

MAY 2006

BUSH HAS ASSUMED UNCONSTITUTIONAL POWER MORE OFTEN THAN ALL PREVIOUS PRESIDENTS PUT TOGETHER

CHARLIE SAVAGE, BOSTON GLOBE - The office of Vice President Dick Cheney routinely reviews pieces of legislation before they reach the president's desk, searching for provisions that Cheney believes would infringe on presidential power, according to former White House and Justice Department officials. The officials said Cheney's legal adviser and chief of staff, David Addington, is the Bush administration's leading architect of the "signing statements" the president has appended to more than 750 laws. The statements assert the president's right to ignore the laws because they conflict with his interpretation of the Constitution.

The Bush-Cheney administration has used such statements to claim for itself the option of bypassing a ban on torture, oversight provisions in the USA Patriot Act, and numerous requirements that they provide certain information to Congress, among other laws. . .

The administration insists that Bush's use of signing statements is not unprecedented. Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said, "President Bush's signing statements are lawful and indistinguishable from those issued on hundreds of occasions by past presidents."

The use of signing statements was rare until the 1980s, when President Ronald W. Reagan began issuing them more frequently. His successors continued the practice. George H. W. Bush used signing statements to challenge 232 laws over four years, and Bill Clinton challenged 140 over eight years, according to Christopher Kelley , a political science professor at Miami University of Ohio.

But in frequency and aggression, the current President Bush has gone far beyond his predecessors.

All previous presidents combined challenged fewer than 600 laws, Kelley's data show, compared with the more than 750 Bush has challenged in five years. Bush is also the first president since the 1800s who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments.

THE PERFECT CON: BUSH REGIME TELLS COURT ITS SPY POLICIES CAN'T BE QUESTIONED BECAUSE THEY'RE SECRET

DAVID B. CARUSO, ASSOCIATED PRESS - The Bush administration has asked federal judges in New York and Michigan to dismiss a pair of lawsuits filed over the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, saying litigating them would jeopardize state secrets. In papers filed late Friday, Justice Department lawyers said it would be impossible to defend the legality of the spying program without disclosing classified information that could be of value to suspected terrorists. National Intelligence Director John Negroponte invoked the state secrets privilege on behalf of the administration, writing that disclosure of such information would cause "exceptionally grave damage" to national security. The administration laid out some of its supporting arguments in classified memos that were filed under seal.

The government's motion, widely anticipated, involves two cases challenging an NSA program that allows investigators to eavesdrop on Americans who communicate with people outside the country suspected of terrorist ties.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-spy28.html

BLOOMBERG CALLS FOR POLICE STATE WITH FINGERPRINTS AND DNA ON ALL WORKERS

SARA KUGLER ASSOCIATED PRESS - Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg thrust himself into the national immigration debate Wednesday, advocating a plan that would establish a DNA or fingerprint database to track and verify all legal U.S. workers. . . Bloomberg compared his proposed federal identification database to the Social Security card, insisting that such a system would not violate citizens' privacy and was not a civil liberties issue. Donna Lieberman, director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said a DNA or fingerprint database "doesn't sound like the free society we think we're living in. It will inevitably be used not just by employers but by law enforcement, government agencies, schools and all over the private sector," she said.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/05/24/D8HQE6B80.html

JUDGE SAYS CIA CAN TORTURE YOU FOR NATIONAL SECURITY REASONS

BBC - A US court has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a German citizen who says he was kidnapped and beaten by the CIA. Khaled el-Masri aimed to sue former CIA chief George Tenet and other officials for their alleged role in the "extraordinary rendition" program. Mr el-Masri says he was picked up in Macedonia in 2003 and flown to Kabul, Afghanistan, where he alleges torture. The judge did not rule on the truth of the allegations, but said letting the case proceed might endanger security.

Rights group the American Civil Liberties Union brought the case on behalf of Mr el-Masri - who was never charged with any terrorist offences. . . However, the district court judge in Virginia rejected the challenge, saying Mr el-Masri's "private interests must give way to the national interest in preserving state secrets. . . In times of war, our country, chiefly through the executive branch, must often take exceptional steps to thwart the enemy."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4996140.stm

FIND THE LIAR

[From Daily Kos]

Our intelligence activities strictly target al-Qaida and their known affiliates. We are not mining or trolling through the personal lives of innocent Americans. -George Bush

I have met personally with prominent corporate executive officers. . . And last week we cemented a deal with another corporate giant to jointly develop a system to mine data that helps us learn about our targets. - Michael Hayden

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/5/11/125132/743

NEW CIA NOMINEE IN CHARGE OF MASSIVE UNCONSTITUTIONAL SPYING ON CITIZENS

LESLIE CAULEY, USA TODAY - The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA Today. The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans - most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made - across town or across the country - to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the sources said. The program is aimed at identifying and tracking suspected terrorists, they said. The sources would talk only under a guarantee of anonymity because the NSA program is secret. . .

The NSA's domestic program, as described by sources, is far more expansive than what the White House has acknowledged. Last year, Bush said he had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop - without warrants - on international calls and international e-mails of people suspected of having links to terrorists when one party to the communication is in the USA. Warrants have also not been used in the NSA's efforts to create a national call database.

In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. "In other words," Bush explained, "one end of the communication must be outside the United States."

As a result, domestic call records - those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders - were believed to be private.

Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information. . .

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm?ord=1

ROBERT SCHEER, TRUTH DIG - Hayden's track record does not justify this appointment. It was on Hayden's watch that the NSA, after all, failed to properly alert the president to the Al Qaeda threat. Of course, it is possible that the agency did alert the president of an imminent threat and that the information was ignored as the president traipsed off to his lengthy summer vacation on his ranch; we already know that the system, as Tenet has said, was "blinking red." But if that is the case, Hayden has not said so.

Unfortunately, Hayden has other disasters besides Sept. 11 on his resume. While at the NSA, he tried to implement the expensive, ambitious "Trailblazer" program, aimed at upgrading NSA's technology, but analysts have deemed the outcome a multibillion-dollar bust. Meanwhile, even a number of prominent Republicans have attacked his bypassing of laws protecting our civil liberties. . .

"You need someone who will stand up to pressure from the president," James Bamford, author of two books on the NSA, told the New York Times. "Instead, he's shown he's willing to throw out his own principles on civil liberties to please the president."

This ability to accommodate totalitarian values in exchange for career advancement is viewed as a terrific asset by Negroponte, who handpicked Hayden for this new job within hours of Goss' abrupt resignation. Negroponte, after all, is most infamous for his tenure as ambassador to Honduras during the Reagan years, when he exemplified that administration's see-no-evil approach to monitoring the malleable military dictatorship's human rights violations - which included everything from the army's torture and slaughter of nuns to the regime's arming and protecting the United States-created Contra guerrillas who were terrorizing civilians in next-door Nicaragua.. . .

The inescapable conclusion here is that Negroponte was picked by Bush to be the intelligence czar because of, rather than despite, this unsavory past. Negroponte, with a history of disastrous foreign adventures and contempt for the checks on power required for democratic governance, is an all-too-perfect Bush appointee. So, too, his deputy Hayden, nominated by Bush to head the CIA.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0510-22.htm

NSA DECLARES ITSELF IMMUNE TO LAWS, CONSTITUTION

AP - The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter. The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., on Wednesday saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers' role in the program. . . Jarrett wrote that beginning in January, his office has made a series of requests for the necessary clearances. Those requests were denied Tuesday. "Without these clearances, we cannot investigate this matter and therefore have closed our investigation," wrote Jarrett. Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the terrorist surveillance program "has been subject to extensive oversight both in the executive branch and in Congress from the time of its inception."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-11-domestic-spying_x.htm?ord=2

APRIL 2006

BUSH HAS VIOLATED CONSTITUTION AT LEAST 750 TIMES

CHARLIE SAVAGE, BOSTON GLOBE - President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, "whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to "execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional.

Former administration officials contend that just because Bush reserves the right to disobey a law does not mean he is not enforcing it: In many cases, he is simply asserting his belief that a certain requirement encroaches on presidential power.

But with the disclosure of Bush's domestic spying program, in which he ignored a law requiring warrants to tap the phones of Americans, many legal specialists say Bush is hardly reluctant to bypass laws he believes he has the constitutional authority to override.

Far more than any predecessor, Bush has been aggressive about declaring his right to ignore vast swaths of laws -- many of which he says infringe on power he believes the Constitution assigns to him alone as the head of the executive branch or the commander in chief of the military.

Many legal scholars say they believe that Bush's theory about his own powers goes too far and that he is seizing for himself some of the law-making role of Congress and the Constitution-interpreting role of the courts.

Phillip Cooper, a Portland State University law professor who has studied the executive power claims Bush made during his first term, said Bush and his legal team have spent the past five years quietly working to concentrate ever more governmental power into the White House.

"There is no question that this administration has been involved in a very carefully thought-out, systematic process of expanding presidential power at the expense of the other branches of government," Cooper said. "This is really big, very expansive, and very significant."

HOW TO SPOT A TERRORIST

DIANE E. DEES, MOTHER JONES - I really had no idea how to spot a terrorist until I studied the manuals published by the Phoenix FBI, the state employees of Virginia, and the Texas Department of Public Safety. Now that I have absorbed these manuals, I not only know how to spot a terrorist, but I have discovered that I probably am a terrorist.

The Phoenix FBI manual was published while Clinton was still president. The Joint Terrorism Task Force was formed to "help preserve the American way of life." Its flyer requested that citizens contact the task force if they saw any of the following:

- Defenders of the U.S. Constitution against federal government and the UN

- Groups of individuals engaging in paramilitary training

- Those who make numerous references to the U.S. Constitution

- Those who attempt to police the police

- Lone individuals

- Rebels

The Phoenix Sheriff's Office did not care for the flyer, and it had a short life. On to Virginia...This manual tells us to beware of the following people:

- Members of anti-government and militia movements

- Property rights activists

- Members of racist, separatist, and hate groups

- Environmental and animal rights activists

- Religious extremists

- Members of street gangs

According to the authorities in Virginia, terrorists stand out in the crowd because of the stuff they carry:

- Sketch pads or notebooks

- Maps or charts Still or video cameras

- Hand-held tape recorders

- SCUBA equipment disguises

And finally, there's Texas, whose manual shares with us some characteristics of terrorists:

- Focused and committed

- Team-oriented and disciplined

- Familiar with their physical environments

- Employ a variety of vehicles and communicate by cell phone, email, or text messaging

- Try not to draw attention to themselves Look like students, tourists, or businesspersons

- Travel in a mixed group of men, women, and children

- Avoid confrontations with law enforcement

- Use disguises or undergo cosmetic surgery

Well, there you are. Could someone pick you out of the crowd as a terrorist? As an emailing, camera-toting, focused and committed animal rights activist who sometimes looks like a businesswoman, frequently references the Constitution, and still has some leftover costumes from my years in New Orleans, I'm as good as gone.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2006/04/how_to_spot_a_t_1.html

FBI VIOLATED FOURTH AMENDMENT AT LEAST 3,501 TIMES LAST YEAR

AP - The FBI secretly sought information last year on 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal residents from their banks and credit card, telephone and Internet companies without a court's approval, the Justice Department said Friday. It was the first time the Bush administration has publicly disclosed how often it uses the administrative subpoena known as a National Security Letter, which allows the executive branch of government to obtain records about people in terrorism and espionage investigations without a judge's approval or a grand jury subpoena. Friday's disclosure was mandated as part of the renewal of the Patriot Act, the administration's sweeping anti-terror law. . . The numbers from previous years remain classified, officials said.

AMERICA'S NEW CONCENTRATION CAMPS

RUTH CONNIFF, PROGRESSIVE - The government was making plans for large-scale detention centers in case of an "emergency influx" of immigrants. KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary recently reprimanded for gross overcharging in its military contracts in Iraq, won a $385 million contract to build the centers. According to the Halliburton website --www.Halliburton.com -- "the contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs."

What new programs might those be? The web was abuzz with speculation after the contract was awarded on January 24. Pacific News Service gave the most detailed analysis.
It connected the new "immigration emergency" plans with older plans that involved imposing martial law. . .

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0418-27.htm

MARCH 2006

FBI OFFICIAL SAYS TEXAS PROGRESSIVE GROUPS ARE ON 'TERRORIST WATCH' LIST

AUSTIN INDYMEDIA - In a guest lecture at the University of Texas School of Law on Wednesday, FBI Supervisory Senior Resident Agent G. Charles Rasner listed Indymedia, Food Not Bombs, and the Communist Party of Texas as "Terrorist Watch" cause groups in Austin. Rasner gave a presentation entitled "Counter-Terrorism Efforts in Texas" to a U.S. Law and National Security class at the Law School. He used Power Point slides to illustrate the nature of the terrorist threat in Central Texas. The word "Unclassified" appeared prominently in bold red letters on the opening slide. Listing three categories of cause groups potentially linked to terrorist activity, Rasner named white supremacist groups, Islamic terrorist groups, and anarchists. . .

Rasner used a map of Texas to illustrate the existence of the three kinds of terrorist groups in the state. Austin was listed as a site of all three kinds of terrorist activity. Rasner then placed the FBI's Central Texas "Terrorist Watch List" on the screen. On a list of approximately ten groups, Food Not Bombs was listed seventh. Indymedia was listed tenth, with a reference specifically to Indy Conference 2005. The Communist Party of Texas also made the list. Rasner explained that these groups could have links to terrorist activity. He noted that peaceful-sounding group names could cover more violent extremist tactics.

Food Not Bombs is an all-volunteer organization that recovers food that would otherwise be thrown out and serves vegetarian meals to the public at no cost. Austin Indymedia is an open newswire in which readers may publish news, events, and commentary.

In response to a questioner, Rasner stated that the FBI will attend activist group meetings whenever it suspects that the group might engage in illegal activity. He said that he saw no problem with an agent failing to represent himself as a representative of the FBI and implied that the practice was common.

Student Elizabeth Wagoner requested a copy of the Power Point presentation at the end of the class. Rasner refused, claiming the presentation was private government property. He then refused a request for the contact information of the FOIA officer in his bureau, saying it "was not worth [his] time".

A copy of the Power Point presentation has been requested via the Freedom of Information Act. We will publish the presentation on Indymedia as soon as it becomes available.

http://austin.indymedia.org/feature/display/26838/index.php

FBI SPIED ON PENNSYLVANIA PACIFISTS

REUTERS - FBI antiterrorism agents spied on a US peace group simply because it opposed the Iraq war, part of an ''unprecedented campaign" to spy on innocent citizens, the American Civil Liberties Union said yesterday. FBI documents acquired under the Freedom of Information Act and provided to reporters show that the FBI conducted surveillance of the Pittsburgh-based Thomas Merton Center for Peace & Justice during antiwar demonstrations and leaflet distributions in 2002 and 2003. One document said the Pittsburgh Joint Terrorism Task Force had learned that ''The Thomas Merton Center . . . has been determined to be an organization which is opposed to the United States' war with Iraq.". . .

A November 2002 FBI memo said the Merton Center ''holds daily leaflet distribution activities in downtown Pittsburgh and is currently focused on its opposition to the potential war in Iraq." The war began in March 2003. The memo called the Merton Center ''a left-wing organization advocating, among many political causes, pacifism.". . .

The agent was pursuing leads ''from another source possibly establishing a link between an ongoing investigation and the group engaging in antiwar protests. Finding no such link, he terminated his surveillance," the FBI said in a statement. . .

''We know that this surveillance is about the political views of the Thomas Merton Center because that's what the documents say," said Mary Catherine Roper, a lawyer with the Pittsburgh ACLU.

U.S. COURT IN DC HANDLED 450 CASES IN SECRET IN LAST FIVE YEARS

REPORTERS COMMITTEE FOR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS - Defendants in more than 450 criminal cases in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., have been indicted and in many cases prosecuted, tried and sentenced to jail in complete secrecy during the past five years, an investigation by The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press shows.

During the five-year period ending Dec. 30, an average of 18 percent of nearly 3,000 federal criminal cases were not docketed in Washington, D.C., leaving the public in the dark about the cases' existence and unable to challenge the secrecy. Off-the-docket cases are different from sealed cases, which are assigned case numbers that appear on the public docket.

"Over the last five years, we had a sense that criminal cases were disappearing," said Executive Director Lucy A. Dalglish. "But we were astonished at how many there are. What this means is that we have federal convicts sitting in prison and there is no public track record of how they got there. That's not how democracy is supposed to work."

www.rcfp.org/news/mag/30-1/_contents.html

FEBRUARY 2006

MOST AMERICANS ACCEPT GROWING POLICE STATE

UPI - Most U.S. adults feel law enforcement is using its expanded surveillance powers in a proper way, although many express concern over civil liberty erosion. The Harris telephone poll of 1,016 U.S. adults found 57 percent of adults feel U.S. law enforcement is using its expanded surveillance powers in a proper way, while 40 percent feel they are not being used in a proper way. The survey also found that 66 percent think that it is very or somewhat likely that there will be a major terrorist attack in the next 12 months -- up from the 55 percent who felt that way in June 2005. Sixty-six percent U.S. adults feel that the government's anti-terrorist programs have taken only a little or none of their own personal privacy away. However, 14 percent feel the programs have taken away quite a lot or a great deal of their own personal privacy. Eighty-four percent of adults favor stronger document and physical security checks for travelers, 82 percent favor expanded undercover activity to penetrate groups under suspicion and 67 favor expanded camera surveillance on streets and in public places.

http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/view_upi.php?StoryID=20060226-013734-6024r

HOMELAND SECURITY GOES AFTER LIBRARY PORN

CAMERON W. BARR, WASHINGTON POST - Two uniformed men strolled into the main room of the Little Falls library in Bethesda [MD] one day last week and demanded the attention of all patrons using the computers. Then they made their announcement: The viewing of Internet pornography was forbidden.

The men looked stern and wore baseball caps emblazoned with the words "Homeland Security." The bizarre scene unfolded Feb. 9, leaving some residents confused and forcing county officials to explain how employees assigned to protect county buildings against terrorists came to see it as their job to police the viewing of pornography.

After the two men made their announcement, one of them challenged an Internet user's choice of viewing material and asked him to step outside, according to a witness. A librarian intervened, and the two men went into the library's work area to discuss the matter. A police officer arrived. In the end, no one had to step outside except the uniformed men…

Later that afternoon, Montgomery County's chief administrative officer, Bruce Romer, issued a statement calling the incident "unfortunate" and "regrettable" -- two words that bureaucrats often deploy when things have gone awry. He said the officers had been reassigned to other duties…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/16/AR2006021602066.html

CLINTON EXPANDED UNCONSTITUTIONAL POWERS OF FISA

PHILIP COLANGELO COVERT ACTION QUARTERLY, NOVEMBER 2000 - When Clinton signed Executive Order 12949 on February 9, the frightening mandate of the FISA, court was greatly expanded: It now has legal authority to approve black-bag operations to authorize Department of Justice requests to conduct physical as well as electronic searches, without obtaining a warrant in open court, without notifying the subject, without providing an inventory of items seized. The targets need not be under suspicion of committing a crime, but may be investigated when probable cause results solely from their associations or status: for example, belonging to, or aiding and abetting organizations deemed to pose a threat to U.S. national security. Furthermore, despite a lowered standard for applying the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure than is necessary in other U.S. courts, under the 1995 expansion, evidence gathered by the FISA court may now be used in criminal trials. Previously, evidence was collected and stockpiled solely for intelligence purposes.

Granting new powers to the FISA court was accomplished quietly and treated as a non-event in the national media. The lack of reporting was somehow fitting, though, following as it did the silent debate last year when Congress rubberstamped the annual Intelligence Authorization Act. . .

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a27337612f5.htm

ILLEGAL WIRETAPPING A DRY HOLE

WASHINGTON POST - Intelligence officers who eavesdropped on thousands of Americans in overseas calls under authority from President Bush have dismissed nearly all of them as potential suspects after hearing nothing pertinent to a terrorist threat, according to accounts from current and former government officials and private-sector sources with knowledge of the technologies in use. Bush has recently described the warrantless operation as "terrorist surveillance" and summed it up by declaring that "if you're talking to a member of al Qaeda, we want to know why." But officials conversant with the program said a far more common question for eavesdroppers is whether, not why, a terrorist plotter is on either end of the call. The answer, they said, is usually no.

Fewer than 10 U.S. citizens or residents a year, according to an authoritative account, have aroused enough suspicion during warrantless eavesdropping to justify interception of their domestic calls, as well. That step still requires a warrant from a federal judge, for which the government must supply evidence of probable cause. The Bush administration refuses to say -- in public or in closed session of Congress -- how many Americans in the past four years have had their conversations recorded or their e-mails read by intelligence analysts without court authority. Two knowledgeable sources placed that number in the thousands; one of them, more specific, said about 5,000.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/04/AR2006020401373.html

GITMO BY THE NUMBERS

CORINE HEGLAND, NATIONAL JOURNAL - As a result of the habeas corpus petitions filed by attorneys representing Guantanamo detainees, the Defense Department has had to file court documents on 132 of the enemy combatants, or just under a quarter of the prison's population. . .

Seventy-five of the 132 men, or more than half the group, are -- like Farouq Ali Ahmed, the subject of National Journal's accompanying story -- not accused of taking part in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners. (The 75 include 10 detainees whom the U.S. government "no longer" considers enemy combatants, although at least eight of the 10 are still being held at Guantanamo.) Typically, documents describe these men as "associated" with the Taliban or with Al Qaeda -- sometimes directly so, and sometimes through only weak or distant connections. Several men worked for charities that had some ties to Al Qaeda; Farouq lived in a house associated with the Taliban.

Some of the "associated" men are said to have attended jihadist training camps before September 11, an accusation admitted by some and denied by others. The U.S. government says that some of the suspected jihadists trained in Afghanistan, even though other records show that they had not yet entered the country at the time of the training camps. Just 57 of the 132 men, or 43 percent, are accused of being on a battlefield in post-9/11 Afghanistan.

The government's documents tie only eight of the 132 men directly to plans for terrorist attacks outside of Afghanistan. One of the eight, an Australian fundamentalist Muslim, admitted that he trained several of the 9/11 hijackers and intended to hijack a plane himself; another of the eight, a Briton, is said to have targeted 33 Jewish organizations in New York City. Both men were released to their home governments in January 2005. Neither one is facing charges at home.

The Australian says he falsely confessed while undergoing torture in Egypt; the Australian government, which was watching him well before 9/11, has revoked his passport but has said it lacks sufficient information to press terrorism charges against him. The British man was cleared after a few hours of questioning in London. The remaining six of the eight were arrested in Sarajevo, Bosnia, after being accused of planning to attack the American Embassy there; the charge was investigated and dismissed by a judge. The country's human-rights chamber issued an order prohibiting the men from being taken out of the country. The Americans seized them anyway.

http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2006/0203nj2.htm

"If you think of the people down there, these are people, all of whom were captured on a battlefield. They're terrorists, trainers, bomb makers, recruiters, financiers, [Osama bin Laden's] bodyguards, would-be suicide bombers, probably the 20th 9/11 hijacker." -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, June 27, 2005

NSA SPYING ON AMERICANS GOES BACK TO TELEGRAM ERA

SCOTT SHANE NY TIMES - Minaret was a watch list kept between 1967 and 1973 of Americans whose international communications - phone calls and telegrams in and out of the country - were collected by the security agency
The names were mostly submitted to the N.S.A. by other agencies because of targets' suspected involvement in four kinds of activities: terrorism; drug trafficking; threats to the president; and civil disturbances with "possible foreign support or influence," as Lt. Gen. Lew Allen Jr., then the N.S.A. director, told the Church Committee. That program ended up targeting some Vietnam War protesters and civil rights activists.

Shamrock began in 1947, growing out of a World War II program for government censorship of international telegrams. Until the program was shut down in 1975, the three major international carriers, RCA Global, ITT World Communications and Western Union International, delivered copies of messages sent each day to the N.S.A.

XENI JARDIN, BOING BOING -The NSA updated their children's outreach site recently. In the process, the previous mascot, Crypto Cat, has undergone some changes. Previously, Crypto Cat was a male dressed in a trench coat, but she is now a high school teenager in a midriff-baring sweater. In addition, the NSA has added new characters to make a spy supergroup known as the "CryptoKids (TM)". . . Each of them have their own special abilities -- they are like the Power Rangers for warrantless wiretaps. The U.S. trademark application shows they applied for the trademark on Crypto Cat on December 19, 2005; this was around the same time the scandal was just starting to heat up.

JANUARY 2006

IF NSA ISN'T LISTENING, MAYBE CIFA IS

JEFF STEIN, CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY - Since 2002, a murky Pentagon unit called the Counterintelligence Field Activity has been keeping tabs on people inside U.S. borders, including closely monitoring antiwar political groups and dissenters. . . Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy secretary of Defense, launched CIFA in 2002 "to usher in a revolutionary era of counterintelligence," according to a pamphlet the agency published last June that was obtained by CQ Homeland Security. CIFA's mission: to "deliver unique, actionable information to DOD decision makers." But nowhere in the pamphlet, designed as a handout for visitors to CIFA facilities, is there a hint that the unit has domestic intelligence or law enforcement roles - that is, beyond the traditional mission of military counterintelligence to protect U.S. bases and personnel from enemy spies. . .

CIFA, it says, takes "Counterintelligence to the Edge," which now reads like a wink-wink to the insiders. CIFA's definition of the edge, it turns out, includes spying on 10 people who put on some street theater outside the Houston headquarters of Halliburton, the giant contractor once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. They were protesting the hundreds of millions of dollars in overcharges the company had rung up in Iraq. CIFA opened a file on the demonstrators, who wore "papier-mache masks and handed out free peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches," according to one news account. The Pentagon says Halliburton merited intelligence coverage because it's a military contractor.

http://www.cq.com/public/20060127_homeland.html

HALLIBURTON GETS $385 MILLION TO BUILD IMMIGRANT CONCENTRATION CAMPS

MATT DAILY, REUTERS - Halliburton Co. said on Tuesday the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had awarded its KBR unit a contract worth up to $385 million to provide emergency immigration detention and processing facilities.
Under the contract with DHS's Immigration and Customs Enforcement, KBR's contract is set for one year, with four possible one-year extensions. . . The contract calls for KBR to augment the existing Detention and Removal Operations Program designed to be used in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the United States. KBR could also be asked to provide migrant detention support to other U.S. government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster, the company said

SUPREME COURT SAYS YOU CAN PETITION YOUR GOVERNMENT, BUT NOT WHERE IT MATTERS

AP - The Supreme Court today rejected an appeal from an anti-war protester who was convicted of violating the boundaries of a "restricted area" established during President Bush's visit to South Carolina in 2002. Brett Bursey had urged the justices to hear the appeal of a $500 fine he was assessed for entering a restricted area at near airport hangar in West Columbia on Oct. 24, 2002. In July 2005, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Bursey's conviction in U.S. v. Bursey. . . His lawyers wanted the high court to limit the government's ability to expand restricted areas during presidential events.. . . A Secret Service agent told Bursey he could protest in a designated demonstration area a half-mile away.

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=16319

WHISTLEBLOWER: MILLIONS OF AMERICANS CAUGHT IN NSA DRAGNET

DOUG IRELAND, DIRELAND - ABC's "Nightline" last night aired a terrifying scoop: a former senior insider at the National Security Agency said that the agency has illegally spied on "millions" of Americans who make telephone calls overseas. Russell Tice, a 20-year veteran with the NSA turned whistleblower, told ABC: "I specialized in what's called special access programs," Tice said of his job. "We called them 'black world' programs and operations." But now, Tice told ABC News that some of those secret "black world" operations run by the NSA were conducted in ways that he believes violated the law. He said he is prepared to tell Congress all he knows about the alleged wrongdoing in these programs run by the Defense Department snd the National Security Agency in the post-9/11 efforts to go after terrorists. . .

According to Tice, NSA intelligence analysts use the information to develop graphs that resemble spiderwebs linking one suspect's phone number to hundreds or even thousands more. Tice said the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions if the full range of secret NSA programs is used. "That would mean for most Americans that if they conducted, or you know, placed an overseas communication, more than likely they were sucked into that vacuum," Tice said.

http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2006/01/abcs_scoop_mill.html

ABC INTERVIEW
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1491889

BUSH REGIME OPENING PEOPLE'S MAIL

MSNBC In the 50 years that Grant Goodman has known and corresponded with a colleague in the Philippines he never had any reason to suspect that their friendship was anything but spectacularly ordinary. But now he believes that the relationship has somehow sparked the interest of the Department of Homeland Security and led the agency to place him under surveillance.

Last month Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words "by Border Protection" and carrying the official Homeland Security seal. . .

A spokesman for the Customs and Border Protection division said he couldn't speak directly to Goodman's case but acknowledged that the agency can, will and does open mail coming to U.S. citizens that originates from a foreign country whenever it's deemed necessary.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10740935

THE VICIOUS, ANTI-CONSTITUTIONAL LAW OF JOHN YOO

PETER SLEVIN WASHINGTON POST - John Yoo knows the epithets of the libertarians, the liberals and the lefties. Widely considered the intellectual architect of the most dramatic assertion of White House power since the Nixon era, he has seen constitutional scholars skewer his reasoning and students call for his ouster from the University of California at Berkeley.

Civil liberties advocates were appalled by a memo he helped draft on torture. The State Department's chief legal adviser at the time called his analysis of the Geneva Conventions "seriously flawed." Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote, in a critique of administration views espoused by Yoo, "a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens."

Yoo has alienated so many influential opponents that he is considered unconfirmable for a judgeship or high office, not unlike a certain conservative jurist rejected by the Senate for the Supreme Court.

"Someone said to me that I was the Robert Bork of my generation," he reported the other day.

Yet Yoo, 38, an engaging and outspoken lifelong conservative who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, can be found at seminars and radio microphones, standing up for Bush administration legal arguments that will be studied for decades. . .

Framing the battle against terrorism as a wartime emergency, Yoo redefined torture, reinterpreted the Constitution and classified as archaic the long-established humanitarian rules of the battlefield. Yoo wrote a memo that said the White House was not bound by a federal law prohibiting warrantless eavesdropping on communications that originated or ended in the United States. . .

An Aug. 1, 2002, memo on interrogation, written largely by Yoo, drew the most intense criticism. Saying the administration was not bound by federal anti-torture laws, it declared that, to be considered torture, techniques must produce lasting psychological damage or suffering "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.". . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/25/AR2005122500570_pf.html

WIKIPEDIA - It has recently come out that Yoo authored the position that the President had sufficient power to allow the NSA to monitor the communications of US citizens on US soil without a warrant. Yoo holds some controversial positions on executive authority, once asserting "in the exercise of his plenary power to use military force, the President's decisions are for him alone and are unreviewable."

Recently in a debate with Doug Cassel, John Yoo took part in the following exchange:

||||| Cassel: If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?

Yoo: No treaty...

Cassel: Also no law by Congress -- that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo. . .

Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.||||

USE OF SECRET COURT SOARS UNDER BUSH

REUTERS - Federal applications for a special U.S. court to authorize secret surveillance rose sharply after the September 11, 2001, attacks, and the panel required changes to the requests at an even greater rate, government documents show. . . The Justice Department's reports to the U.S. Congress on the surveillance court's activities show the Bush administration made 5,645 applications for electronic surveillance and physical searches from 2001 through 2004, the most recent year for which figures are available. In the previous four years, the court received a total of 3,436. The 11-judge panel modified 179 of the Bush administration's requests. By contrast, only one was modified in the preceding four years. The court has reportedly handled almost 20,000 applications since it was set up and has rejected only a handful.

WHY BUSH'S SPYING ON YOU IS ILLEGAL

ACLU - According to the NY Times, Bush signed a presidential order in 2002 allowing the National Security Agency to monitor without a warrant the international (and sometimes domestic) telephone calls and e-mail messages of hundreds or thousands of citizens and legal residents inside the United States. The program eventually came to include some purely internal controls - but no requirement that warrants be obtained from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as the 4th Amendment to the Constitution and the foreign intelligence surveillance laws require.

In other words, no independent review or judicial oversight.

That kind of surveillance is illegal. Period.

The law governing government eavesdropping on American citizens is well-established and crystal clear. President Bush's claim that he is not bound by that law is simply astounding. It is a Presidential power grab that poses a challenge in the deepest sense to the integrity of the American system of government - the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches, the concept of checks and balances on executive power, the notion that the president is subject to the law like everyone else, and the general respect for the "rule of law" on which our democratic system depends:

- Electronic surveillance by the government is strictly limited by the Constitution and federal Law

- There are only three laws that authorize any exceptions to the ban on electronic eavesdropping by the government. Congress has explicitly stated that these three laws are the exclusive means by which domestic electronic surveillance can be carried out.

- Congress's post-9/11 use-of-force resolution does not legitimize the Bush-NSA spying. That resolution contains no language changing, overriding or repealing any laws passed by Congress. Congress does not repeal legislation through hints and innuendos, and the authorization to Use Military Force does not authorize the president to violate the law against surveillance without a warrant any more than it authorizes him to carry out an armed robbery or seize control of Citibank in order to pay for operations against terrorists.

- The need for quick action does not justify an end-run around the courts The FISA law takes account of the need for emergency surveillance, and the need for quick action cannot be used as a rationale for going outside the law. FISA allows wiretapping without a court order in an emergency; the court must simply be notified within 72 hours. The government is aware of this emergency power and has used it repeatedly

http://www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/23279res20051229.html

DECEMBER 2005

BRITISH POLICE STATE CAR TRACKING SYSTEM MAY BE USED IN U.S. AS WELL

DECLAN MCCULLAGH, CNET - The U.S. Department of Transportation has been handing millions of dollars to state governments for GPS-tracking pilot projects designed to track vehicles wherever they go. So far, Washington state and Oregon have received fat federal checks to figure out how to levy these "mileage-based road user fees." . . .

The problem, though, is that these "road user fee" systems are being designed and built in a way that strips drivers of their privacy and invites constant surveillance by police, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. Details of the tracking systems vary. But the general idea is that a small GPS device, which knows its location by receiving satellite signals, is placed inside the vehicle.

Some GPS trackers constantly communicate their location back to the state DMV, while others record the location information for later retrieval. (In the Oregon pilot project, it's beamed out wirelessly when the driver pulls into a gas station.)

The problem, though, is that no privacy protections exist. No restrictions prevent police from continually monitoring, without a court order, the whereabouts of every vehicle on the road.

No rule prohibits that massive database of GPS trails from being subpoenaed by curious divorce attorneys, or handed to insurance companies that might raise rates for someone who spent too much time at a neighborhood bar. No policy bans police from automatically sending out speeding tickets based on what the GPS data say.

The Fourth Amendment provides no protection. The U.S. Supreme Court said in two cases, U.S. v. Knotts and U.S. v. Karo, that Americans have no reasonable expectation of privacy when they're driving on a public street.

Even more shocking are additional ideas that bureaucrats are hatching. A report prepared by a Transportation Department-funded program in Washington state says the GPS bugs must be made "tamper proof" and the vehicle should be disabled if the bugs are disconnected.

http://news.com.com/2102-1071_3-5980979.html?tag=st.util.print

TELECOM CORPS DELUGED WITH SPY REQUESTS

MILES BENSON, NEWHOUSE - Operating under new powers to combat terrorism, law enforcement agencies are making unprecedented demands on the telecommunications industry to provide information on subscribers, company attorneys say. These companies and Internet service providers face an escalating barrage of subpoenas for subscriber lists, personal credit reports, financial information, routing patterns that reveal individual computer use, even customer photographs. . .

"The amount of subpoenas that carriers receive today is roughly doubling every month -- we're talking about hundreds of thousands of subpoenas for customer records -- stuff that used to require a judge's approval," said Albert Gidari, a Seattle-based expert in privacy and security law who represents numerous technology companies. The Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters of Yahoo, an Internet search engine used by millions, now has a voicemail prompt that refers law enforcement authorities to a special telephone number to which they can fax criminal investigation subpoenas. "Everything is an emergency now," Gidari said, though he believes "a lot of it is just fishing.". . .

http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/story1a041002.htm

NSA DOMESTIC SPYING USES WEST VIRGINIA FACILITY

LOU KILZER, ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS - It's a good bet that Buckley Air Force Base is playing a key role in the interception of American phone communications authorized secretly by President Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to an expert on intelligence affairs. The Buckley facility forms a key part of the Air Force Space Command, and one of its official duties is to detect rocket launches. Unofficially, it has been widely reported to be a vital arm of the National Security Agency, the department carrying out the president's controversial order.

The Aurora facility, with its white "golf ball" domes, gathers communications intercepted by satellites, including calls on cell phones, said John Pike, director of Global Security, a Virginia-based intelligence research firm. John Spann, a Buckley spokesman, said he only knows about the missile detection system and added that he couldn't comment on Pike's assertion. "That's his guess," he said.

Pike said the top-secret program probably has intercepted millions of e-mail, fax and voice communications. The Bush plan likely started out as a search for "sleeper cells" of unknown terrorists, making it impossible to get a warrant in an ordinary fashion, Pike added.

Instead, he said he believes millions of communications were intercepted and then sifted through by computers run by the NSA. They look for key words, or patterns of speech, he said. "If you say 'send money' and the reply is 'the quick gray fox jumped through the loop,' it could come in for further review." . . .

How many messages are intercepted is not known, though in 1992 a former NSA director said that 2 million messages were being intercepted hourly. Data processing speed and storage capacity since then have mushroomed.

Pike said that before Sept. 11 parts of intercepted conversations originating from Americans were blanked out. It is the procedure, or at least part of it, that he believes was switched off after the attacks. He said he bases his reasoning on a careful reading of White House statements about the technical means used and the reasons given for not going to a special secret federal court to get warrants. If Pike is right, then the government's spy operations have been far larger than previously disclosed. . .

Pike said he does not believe the administration would have purposefully used the system to intercept calls that do not leave the United States, but the technology would be the same. Still, the extent could be breathtaking: "The number of people is in the millions," he said.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4339703,00.html

JAMES BAMFORD, NEW YORK TIMES - Deep in a remote, fog-layered hollow near Sugar Grove, W.Va., hidden by fortress-like mountains, sits the country's largest eavesdropping bug. Located in a "radio quiet" zone, the station's large parabolic dishes secretly and silently sweep