The CIA Returns to Campus and Resistance Begins Again

By By Philip Zwerling - Posting #176 [pdf Version]

Like recurring bad dreams of Freddy Krueger in endless iterations of Nightmare on Elm Street, after 9/11 the Central Intelligence Agency and its friends in the warm-and-fuzzy sounding Intelligence Community (the 16 spy agencies constituting the ODNI, the Office of the Director of National Security) have set up shop again on university and college campuses across the U.S., procuring students, “modifying” curricula, and spying on faculty just as they did in the 1960s and 1990s. But this time, few professors raised dissenting voices, fewer students demonstrated, and academic freedom took a direct hit in the name of patriotism and jobs.

Emboldened, the spies even reached out to high school and middle school students, sponsoring free summer “spy camps,” linking government agents with impressionable teens. At one such program, Reagan Thompson, 17, told a reporter, “I want to be a spy when I grow up. You learn different perspectives and it opens your mind.” Meriam Fadli, also 17, said: “I was like, ‘Oh my God, I am so joining the FBI’.”

As Former CIA Personnel Director F.W.M. Janney wrote: “It is absolutely essential that the Agency have available to it the greatest single source of expertise: the American academic community.” As CIA spokesperson Sharon Foster bragged 20 years later: “The CIA has enough professors under Agency contract to staff a large university.”

Steadfast Goals - Lest We Forget - Philip Agee - CovertAction Quarterly

The CIA has penetrated U.S. campuses for the past 60 years with 3 steadfast goals: (1) To recruit students. They target institutions like mine, the University of Texas Pan American, and 22 other racial minority majority campuses (historically black colleges, hispanic serving institutions, tribal institutions, and majority female campuses) to set up, beginning in 2006, Intelligence Community Centers of Academic Excellence (IC/CAE) and spending millions of dollars because, as Congressperson Jane Harmon stated: “We need spies who look like their targets.” The IC/CAEs recruit minorities and the poor during an economic recession that leaves our young people few other career options: enrolling them for all of the assassinations, coups d’etat, extraordinary renditions (read kidnapping), enhanced interrogations (read torture), and “black site” imprisonment that the CIA has practiced throughout its history, as documented by the 1975 Frank Church and 1977 Otis Pike Congressional inquiries.

(2) To conduct “research.” In the past this included using LSD and other drugs in mind control experiments conducted on unsuspecting college students on 44 campuses (Project MK- ULTRA) that resulted in depressions, breakdowns and suicides—and the training of Salvadoran death squads as at Northwestern University. Today, as Stephen Soldz, President of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, has shown it means recruiting university psychology professors for CIA torture research.

(3) To spy on faculty. In MH- CHAOS, the CIA collected files on 13,000 individuals and 1,000 legal organizations. Former CIA agent Verne Lyon has recounted how he received monthly payoffs and a draft exemption to spy on faculty and students for the Agency at Iowa State University in the mid 1960s. Students on the CIA payroll played the same role on 30 other campuses.

Buying Access

Today the ODNI/CIA Centers of Academic Excellence and their millions of dollars buy access to campuses across the country. This money funds undergraduate degree programs, certificate programs, and masters degrees in innocuously titled “Global Security Studies” programs. How do we know there are strings attached to these funds? IC/CAE grants require that universities host CIA speakers at annual campus conferences, sponsor summer camps for teenagers, set aside a named room in the campus library stocked with ODNI/CIA brochures, subsidize study abroad programs in countries of national security interest, and, in the CIA’s words, “modify curriculum,” often complete with CIA officers teaching such credit-bearing classes as Officers in Residence.

Section 38 of the 2004 Intelligence Authorization Act set up the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program with $4 million a year to recruit and train graduate students for the CIA. The identities of those participating in the program, faculty and students, are kept secret. The 2010 intelligence authorization bill “invites schools to apply for grants for courses that would meet the needs of the intelligence community. Students taking the courses would have to receive security clearances and their participation would remain secret. After graduation the students would be required to work for the CIA.

In the end, scholars who do research for the CIA find their research classified. This scholarship cannot be shared in the academic community where the very reason for research is dissemination and discussion. Such scholars simultaneously become complicit in the nefarious workings of the CIA. Imagine how suspect medical research touting a major drug benefit becomes when other researchers and the public find out it has been funded by the drug manufacturer. Imagine as well how researchers may trim their inquiries and tune their conclusions not to offend a major funding source, whether that source be Merck, R.J. Reynolds, or the CIA.

This conflict of interest extends to publication where we must wonder whether CIA-sponsored scholars who submit work to CIA-funded publications where their work is peer reviewed by other CIA-funded scholars do not find a friendlier reception than scholars who refuse CIA funding. In this manner the CIA affects not only which scholars get published (and what we get to read), but indirectly affects academic promotion and tenure which ensures that professors who go along get along.

The CIA funding largesse may also explain the absence of articles critical of CIA activities in academic journals. Researcher George Gibbs, associate professor of political science at the University of Arizona, reports: “I surveyed the five top journals in political science that specialize in international relations during the period 1991-2000. I did not find a single article in any of these journals that focused on CIA covert operations.” CIA money can publish articles and it can also ensure silence.

The CIA returned to campus with a free hand because, by and large, faculties forgot and current students never learned the dark history of the CIA on campus. Those faculty and administrators who today collaborate with the CIA in spite of this past either argue that the CIA has changed its ways or that their personal involvement may moderate future CIA activity. Both attitudes were adopted by American intellectuals in every decade since the 1950s and have proved naive and illusory every time. Clearly individuals’ scruples have had less impact than the culture, mission, history, and raison d’etre for this secret organization. A bad system does not allow much room for people to do good.

The Struggle Begins Again

So the struggle against the CIA on campus begins again. Past models of success abound. In 1984, at the University of Colorado at Boulder, civil disobedience demonstrations outside school buildings where CIA recruiters set up shop led to arrests by campus police, then more demonstrations, more arrests, and then more demonstrations. The CIA finally stopped visiting UC-Boulder for the next ten years. In April 2005, the CIA withdrew from recruiting events at New York University when they learned of planned student demonstrations.

Since 2006, the presence of an IC/CAE at the University of Washington has ignited faculty senate debates and student demonstrations. In fall 2010, at the University of Texas Pan American, the College Council of the College of Arts and Humanities unanimously passed a resolution stating the Council: “opposes...further ODNI funding for academic programs at UTPA, rejects establishing an ‘Intelligence Analysis Campus’ as incompatible with the independence of the University and the traditional mission of liberal education and asks the Faculty Senate to initiate a public inquiry into the appropriateness of the de facto collusion between the University and these intelligence agencies....”

The Senate responded by sponsoring a public debate on the subject in Spring 2011. The IC/CAE grant ended at UTPA in May 2011 and the Intelligence Analysis Campus proposal died.

Dissecting CIA’s History

I began researching this issue two years ago when I discovered the CIA on my campus. With the help of college professors across the country we produced The CIA on Campus: Academic Freedom and the National Security State (McFarland and Company). In this book, seven academics on five campuses dissect CIA history, current college outreach, and how to get the spies off campus. Perhaps the most disturbing essay is by Verne Lyon who describes step by step how, when recruited by the CIA as an apolitical college student, his life became a descent into secrecy, lies, and criminal activity that negatively impacted the careers and lives of his fellow students and corrupted the ideal of an academy that values a search for truth. _Z

Philip Zwerling is a college professor in Texas and editor of The CIA on Campus: Essays on Academic Freedom and the National Security State. Photo credits: Sit-in at Notre Dame to protest CIA and Dow Chemical campus recruitment, 1960s. Photo from Notre Dame archives; Iraq Veterans Against the War protest CIA recruitment at the University of Illinois, Campaign-Urbana, 2009. Photo from Champaign-Urbana online magazine.

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References: Freeing the World to Death - The Pike Report [.pdf]

Jailed CIA Operatives Spied In Every Field (The United States of Oil Corporations Scarfices)

Secrets of the CIA Video!

CIA on Campus

The CIA on Campus: Essays on Academic Freedom and the National Security State

American Counterinsurgency: Human Science and the Human Terrain

The CIA slips onto campus to conduct 'a Model U.N. for the intelligence community

WC Wins High Honors at CIA Tri-State Intelligence Simulation

Intelligence Community Center of Excellent (CAE)

Church Committee Hearings

Peter B. Collins & Boiling Frogs: Prof. Philip Zwerling, The CIA On Campus Part 1

Peter B. Collins & Boiling Frogs: Prof. Stephen Soldz, The CIA on Campus Part 2

Peter B. Collins & Boiling Frogs: Prof. Roberto Gonzalez, The CIA on Campus Part 3

Recent Declassified CIA Files |-:o

The CIA on Campus: Essays on Academic Freedom and the National Security State

Operation CHAOS

Declassified CIA Profile Requirements |-:o

Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004

Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010

A Terrible Mistake

Declassified MK-Ultra Project Documents

Declassified Internal IG Report on (A)buse |-:o

CIA Support of Death Squads

Top Secret Investigation Findings on CIA (A)buse |-:o

America's Premier International Terrorist Organization

Mapping the FBI: Uncovering Abusive Surveillance and Racial Profiling -- TIs -- Heads Up!

By the ACLU - Posting #175

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is collecting racial and ethnic information and “mapping” American communities around the country based on crude stereotypes about which groups commit different types of crimes.

Nationwide, the FBI is gathering reports on innocent Americans' so-called “suspicious activity” and sharing it with unknown numbers of federal, state and local government agencies.

In response, the ACLU's “Mapping the FBI” initiative seeks to expose misconduct, abuse of authority, and unconstitutional profiling and other violations of Americans' rights and liberties across the country.

As our nation's predominant law enforcement agency, the FBI should be tracking true threats, not wasting resources and inappropriately mapping American communities on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion. Law enforcement programs based on evidence and facts are more effective than a system based on racial stereotypes or mass suspicion.

Yet, in the decade since 9/11, long-standing safeguards on the FBI's investigative and intelligence collection activities have been erased, allowing it to engage in racial and profiling and to initiate intrusive investigations with little or no suspicion of wrongdoing.

Taken together, the changes in the FBI's authority have vastly expanding its ability to engage in unlawful and abusive surveillance of innocent Americans. See: Expanded FBI Authority »

The ACLU is working in the courts, in Congress and in communities to expose the ways in which the FBI's expanded authority threatens civil rights and civil liberties. Our work includes:

* Eye on the FBI: Consolidating information obtained through ACLU records requests, lawsuits and reports, the ACLU's “Eye on the FBI” alerts provide regular and detailed analysis of FBI activities that pose a threat to civil liberties. These activities include the use of factually incorrect and bigoted biased counterterrorism materials and FBI racial profiling. Learn more »

* Racial and Ethnic Mapping: 34 ACLU affiliates have filed public records requests to uncover how the FBI is using racial and ethnic demographic information and data about “ethnic-oriented” business and facilities to “map” and investigate local communities. ACLU affiliates in Michigan, New Jersey and Northern California are in federal court to enforce their records requests and secure information for the public. Learn more »

* eGuardian: The ACLU has sued the FBI and the Justice Department to learn more about an FBI monitoring and information-sharing program known as “eGuardian,” through which the bureau collects so-called “Suspicious Activities Reports” (SARs) from local, state and federal law enforcement agencies nationwide. Learn more »

* Spy Files: This ACLU effort paints a comprehensive picture of the vast and expanding infrastructure of surveillance in the U.S. today by local, state and federal law enforcement—including the FBI. Documents obtained by the ACLU show that through this de facto domestic intelligence system, our government is monitoring and recording Americans' First Amendment-protected beliefs and activities. Learn more »

* FBI Interviews: The ACLU is working to educate individuals and community organizations across the country about their rights when encountering law enforcement. Over the past two years, the FBI has significantly increased its use of “voluntary” interviews – especially within specific racial, ethnic, and religious communities – often encouraging interviewees to serve as informants in their communities. LOL Know Your Rights » LOL

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References: Fake terror plots, paid informants: the tactics of FBI 'entrapment' questioned

ACLU Spy Files

Eye on the FBI: Exposing Misconduct and Abuse of Authority

Mapping the FBI

Tell the FBI: Don't Map Me or My Community!

Expanded FBI Authority

ACLU Letter to Attorney General Holder

Learn more: Expanded FBI Authority

Yet More Spy Vultures Take Flight From The Tor Nest

By: Anon - Posting #174 - Original by Cryptome

Note* Anon exposes some disturbing issues concerning rouge developers working under the Tor umbrella. Can some of the security issues surrounding SSL be traced back to Tor development and developers.

An interesting bug report was filed on the Mozilla bug tracker in September. [1] It is titled ``Addons can silently disable certificate validation and alter errors that are presented to the user'' and names the Convergence Firefox plugin what it really is -- a spy tool.

But first, recall my expose of the EFF's Firefox plugin -- the Decentralized SSL Observatory. [2] This plugin was a joint effort by the EFF and the Tor Project, with Mike Perry as a developer. Another of the developers is Peter Eckersley who maintains the plugin's source code repository on Tor's servers. [3] The purpose of this plugin was to intercept all SSL certificates seen by the user's browser and secretly send them all back to EFF servers for `observation'. It was shown how all this was to be pushed to users' machines without their knowledge nor consent. I'll take this opportunity to remind the EFF -- as a legal entity in the United States -- of the possible implications of not reigning in their wannabe spy friends' behaviour.

This brings us to the Convergence Firefox plugin. [4] The author, `Moxie Marlinspike' (real name unknown) openly bragged in 2009 of intercepting Tor exit node traffic. [5] In fact, passive spying was not enough for `Moxie', he actively tampered with exit node traffic, specifically the SSL layer, removing any encryption which got in the way of his spying. This way, he was able to collect passwords and credit card numbers alike. Supposedly all this was to raise awareness of the insecurity of HTTPS. However, not only did Tor users remain oblivious to his actions -- the Tor Project kept mute -- so that they could perhaps modify their behaviour accordingly (like, say, not using Tor), but `Moxie' then went on to lecture cadets at West Point about his spying skills. [6] An anarchist security researcher wanting to raise awareness? Or a wannabe spy wanting a piece of the spy establishment's pie?

Back to that Mozilla bug. `Moxie' has been itching to push his plugin on ignorant users -- which, he openly brags, intercepts users' SSL certificates and distributes them to his network of servers (just like the EFF/Tor Project's Distributed SSL Observatory plugin). Seeing this, a Mozilla developer opened the bug to discuss how to protect users from these malicious plugins. The reply from `Moxie', apart from flames on Twitter, was:

``Addons can execute arbitrary code, and the potential for malicious addons is somewhat infinite.'' [7]

Apart from being absurd (in the logical sense), this sentence is incorrect. Something is either finite or infinite, there is no ``somewhat infinite.'' Machines are finite, and their possibilities are also finite. His reponse to developers trying to protect users by fixing a bug he exploits to spy on them is ``There's so many other bugs, and I will never give up trying to spy on people, so just give up now.''

Note that Google LOL not only makes Moxie's spying on Chrome users impossible by design (Google's policy is only NSA gets to spy on you, no one else), but Google Chrome developers have outright rejected the possibility. LOL (Does someone smell bullshit here)[8] Not because Google is concerned about user privacy, but because Google wants to own all the notaries first...

Finally, note that Jacob Appelbaum has been one of the few vocal supporters of Moxie's work. Appelbaum has also been outed as a spy of Tor users' traffic. Note also that Anonymous recently outed Mike Perry as a Tor exit spy -- and worse, as probably the target of their recent takedown of child pornography. Anonymous' expose is well worth the read. [9]

The moral of this story is that birds of a feather flock together -- `Moxie' is a one trick poney and is looking to replicate his success in spying on Tor users by bringing the spying straight to the browsers of a wider audience (maybe West Point will fly him out again and put him up in a nice hotel). This person has no integrity, they don't even use their real name.

SSL, like Tor, were designed from the bottom up as spy tools. Only once another government gets a clue and begins exploiting them (cf. Comodo/DigiNotar) do the wannabe spies take exception. Keep this pattern in mind, it is important.

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References:

Bug 686095 - Addons can silently disable certificate validation and alter errors that are presented to the user

Planned not-so-secret Backdoor in Tor/EFF Software Exposed

In this memo, a planned not-so-secret backdoor in Tor/EFF software is exposed. ``HTTPS Everywhere'' is a Firefox extension developed by the EFF. [1] Basically, this extension forces your browser to use HTTP with SSL (HTTPS), when browsing common websites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Wikipedia. HTTPS Everywhere intercepts the (unencrypted) HTTP requests your browser sends when browsing various websites, and replaces these on the fly with (encrypted) HTTPS requests, whenever possible. This is great, since HTTPS is supposedly more secure than HTTP (cf. Firesheep). Note, however, that this browser extension now has access to: all your browsing habits -- visited sites, precise timestamps, etc.; all content -- whether it's encrypted on the wire or not; and specifics of the SSL connection -- SSL certificates contain a bundle of metadata. The importance and relevance of this fact will become clear briefly.

Projects / pde/https-everywhere.git / summary

An agile, distributed,and secure strategy for replacing Certificate Authorities

[Tor-talk] Tor spying

Video - Beginning at 55 minutes into the video.

Moxie 2011-09-10 08:54:27 PDT:

Agreed, I think this bug is a step backwards. Addons can execute arbitrary code, and the potential for malicious addons is somewhat infinite. Even if malicious addons were not able to intercept SSL traffic, they could simply intercept keystrokes and transmit those home instead. It'd be a lot easier.

Why not Convergence? (07 Sep 2011)

False stories were planted against the IT community LOL [I wonder WHO did this?] LOL

At-last, we cracked the lock and found the true identity of the builder and architect of Freedom Hosting. What we found was truly shocking, it was the deeds to a California, USA 'shell' company for 12 Tor Exit Nodes named Formless Networking LLC.

Top Secret America: The Rise of the Nazi American Security State

By Dana Priest and William M. Arkin - Posting #173
Analysis of the FY 2011 Defense Budget
State of Homelessness in America 2011 
Report: Military Blew $1 Trillion on Weapons Since 9/11

A Perpetual State of Yellow

Though she could barely walk anymore at age seventy-six, Joy Whiteman remained calm as she fumbled to remove her new white tennis shoes, lift herself out of her wheelchair, and grab the side of the X-ray machine. She teetered slowly, in socks, through the security scanner at the Boise Airport in Idaho. Airport security guards folded her wheelchair and rolled it through the scanner, keeping an eye on the frail woman in a bright flowered jacket.

“Can you make it without pain?” a guard asked her.

“Oh, sure,” she replied.

Whiteman followed instructions, lifted her hands above her head, emptied her pockets of crumpled pieces of paper, then apologized for having left her driver’s license in her purse rather than having it in hand for the guards to examine with her plane ticket. The line slowed behind her. Some people sighed at the inconvenience. Others smiled in sympathy at the awkward sight. I grimaced. What were the odds that she was a terrorist?

But Whiteman didn’t mind at all. “I have no problem with it. I don’t want to blow up,” she said when I asked about the hassle. “I could be carrying a gun or something.”

“Yeah,” her husband, Bill, 72, said. “These people are always one step ahead of us.”

Whiteman’s smile faded. “Last time, they wheeled me through without looking at the X-ray,” she said. “I could have had a bomb or explosives.”

A decade of terrorism warnings about possible attacks in the United States had convinced Whiteman that she had much to fear. Walking through a body scanner without her wheelchair was a small price to pay for safety. Never mind that no terrorist had ever fit her profile or been foiled walking through a security scanner. Never mind that the Department of Homeland Security, which was responsible for setting airport security policy, was ridiculed by people at every other intelligence agency because it hadn’t learned to hone its focus and still saw threats everywhere.

The scene of Joy Whiteman holding herself up with the walls of the body scanner while a crew of security guards, paid by taxpayers, made sure she didn’t fall, seemed a perfect metaphor for what has transpired in the United States over the past ten years. Having been given a steady diet of vague but terrifying information from national security officials about the possibility of dirty bombs, chemical weapons, biotoxins, exploding airliners, and suicide bombers, a nation of men and women like the Whitemans have shelled out hundreds of billions dollars to turn the machine of government over to defeating terrorism without ever really questioning what they were getting for their money. And even if they did want an answer to that question, they would not be given one, both because those same officials have decided it would gravely harm national security to share such classified information— and because the officials themselves don’t actually know.

LOL - In the panic-filled chaos of late 2001 through 2002, this dragnet approach to terrorism was understandable, given how little the CIA, the FBI, and military intelligence agencies knew then about al(cia)-Qaeda.- LOL But in ten years, they have made vast strides in technical surveillance capabilities and intelligence analysis. They have killed so many al(cia)-Qaeda operatives that only hundreds are left in the world (in addition to the organization’s post-9/11 affiliates). The dragnet approach no longer makes much sense.

One reason America is stuck at Yellow Alert — “Significant Risk” of terrorist attack accompanied by no specific information — and stuck with such an enormous complex of organizations and agencies trying to defend the country is that being wrong is too costly for politicians in Washington. “Who wants to be the guy that says we don’t need this anymore and then three weeks later something happens?” asked Obama national security adviser James Jones, former commandant of the Marine Corps. “I don’t think you can ever get it back” to a smaller size.

We believe the primary reason for this is that the government has still not engaged the American people in an honest conversation about terrorism and the appropriate U.S. response to it. We hope our book will promote one.

Many people in the intelligence community wish this book were not being published at all. Before publishing our initial series on Top Secret America in the Washington Post in July 2010, we showed the government a database of government organizations and private companies working at the top secret level, assembled over several years as part of our research. We described how the data had been culled from publicly available information, and asked to hear any national security concerns. After detailed discussions with most of the sixteen agencies of the intelligence community, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is supposed to lead those agencies, returned with a surprising request: don’t publish the database. It might harm national security, we were told. The office declined to offer specifics and issued a warning to contractors about the impending publication of the series. The Post, meanwhile, had already begun to identify possible national security issues, and executive editor Marcus Brauchli ordered appropriate changes.

We are grateful to Little, Brown for allowing us to put this case before readers in much greater detail.

Despite all the unauthorized disclosures of classified information and programs in scores of articles since September 11, 2001, our military and intelligence sources cannot think of an instance in which security has been seriously damaged by the release of information. On the contrary, much harm has been done to the counterterrorism effort itself, and to the American economy and U.S. strategic goals, by allowing the government to operate in the dark, by continuing to dole out taxpayer money to programs that have no value and to employees, many of them private contractors, who are making no significant contribution to the country’s safety. Allowing outsiders like us to signal shortcomings is one of the great protections the U.S. Constitution gives to the media.

Calling the reaction to al(cia)-Qaeda’s 9/11 attack a “war” ensured that the government could justify classifying everything associated with fighting it. Under President George Bush, journalists’ efforts to figure out how the United States was waging this war against al-Qaeda were often criticized by senior administration leaders, members of Congress, cable television pundits, even the public. Many of those journalists hoped that would change under the presidency of Barack Obama. It is true the president and his cabinet members have not publicly disparaged the news media as much as his predecessor did. But behind the scenes, the situation is actually much worse. President Obama’s Justice Department has taken a more aggressive tack against the unauthorized disclosure of classified information by pursuing more so-called leak investigations than the Bush administration. Recent indictments were issued against a former CIA employee who allegedly talked to book author James Risen, a New York Times reporter, about a botched attempt to slip faulty nuclear plans to Iran; and a former National Security Agency official, Thomas Drake, who helped a Baltimore Sun reporter detail the waste of billions of dollars at his agency. In early June 2011, the government was forced to offer Drake a deal because its lawyers said they did not want to reveal classified information related to the case in court. Drake accepted the prosecution’s offer to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor of misusing a government computer to provide information to an unauthorized person. He is expected to serve no prison time. Then there is the case of former Justice Department official Thomas Tamm. In August 2007, eighteen FBI agents, some with their guns drawn, burst into his home with only his wife and children present, to raid his files during an investigation into his alleged role in helping the New York Times develop its seminal warrantless surveillance story in 2004. The government dropped his case nearly four years later, in April 2011, after Tamm’s career had been ruined and he faced financial peril.

The Justice Department is also mulling an indictment on LOL espionage charges LOL against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing tens of thousands of pages of classified U.S. diplomatic cables and war-related field reports, some of them allegedly provided by a young army private first class, who is also under arrest. Regardless of Assange’s publicly stated bias against U.S. policies and the allegations against his personal behavior, this unprecedented trove of material has allowed reporters around the world to write some of the most insightful and revealing stories of our time. In some cases those revelations even fueled brave public protests against undemocratic, corrupt regimes, developments the U.S. government says it supports in the name of promoting democracy.

Congress has jumped on the secrecy bandwagon, too. Maryland senator Benjamin Cardin — whose state is home to the National Security Agency, the nation’s eavesdroppers — introduced a bill in 2011 making it a felony to disclose classified information to an unauthorized person. This legislation expands considerably the current law that makes it illegal to disclose information on nuclear codes, cryptography, electronic intercepts, nuclear weapons designs, and the identities of covert agents. But most important, it places even greater power into the hands of the executive branch to just declare something classified rather than to have to demonstrate that harm would be done if the information were to be made public.

Had Cardin’s law been on the books shortly after 9/11, newspapers would have had a much harder time publishing stories about the CIA’s covert prisons and waterboarding and other harsh treatment of detainees. Journalists may have been kept from revealing that many of the captives held at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, turned out not to be terrorists at all; that U.S. Army soldiers were abusing Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison; that the National Security Agency was collecting communications of people living in the United States without the required permission; and even that in 2011 Pakistan had rounded up men in their country they believed had helped U.S. authorities find Osama bin Laden.

The laws under consideration also would have made it illegal for government employees to help reporters research articles in 2002 and 2003 about the weakness of evidence surrounding Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction or, seven years later, the stunning admission by the key one-time German intelligence source, code-named Curveball, that his story was entirely fabricated.

Another piece of legislation now under consideration would criminalize the disclosure and publication of information about human intelligence — spies and informants. That law may have made it illegal for newspapers to have published articles about Canadian citizen Maher Arar, whom U.S. authorities turned over to the infamously inhumane Syrian police in 2002 after mistakenly deciding he was a terrorist. Or the CIA’s bungled operation in Macedonia, where case officers mistook German citizen Khalid al-Masri for someone else and disappeared him for months, something that has cost him his sanity. He is a broken man today, one without even a public apology from the United States.

This book offers a counterproposal: that only more transparency and debate will make us safe from terrorism and the other serious challenges the United States faces. Terrorism is not just about indiscriminate violence. As its name suggests, it is about instilling paranoia and profound anxiety. It aims to disrupt economies and inspire government clampdowns. It is time to close the decade-long chapter of fear, to confront the colossal sum of money that could have been saved or better spent, to remember what we are truly defending, and in doing so, to begin a new era of openness and better security against our enemies.

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References: [Just for you PeRpS] [CIAIdiots following Twitter, Facebook] LOL LOL LOL

The Ominous Parallels

The Ominous Parallels [Mirror]

The Ominous Parallels [Library]

Google Complied With 93% of U.S. Law Enforcement Data Requests

by Dennis Fisher - Posting #172

Google complied with 93 percent of the requests for user data that it received from U.S. law enforcement agencies through the first six months of this year. In the latest update to its Transparency Report, Google for the first time not only disclosed the number of requests that it receives, but also the number of user accounts that those requests encompass.

The data disclosed by Google on Tuesday provides an unusual, if incomplete, picture of the amount and kind of requests that the company gets from law enforcement agencies, not only in the U.S., but around the world. From January through June of 2011, Google and YouTube received 5,950 requests for users data from law enforcement agencies in the U.S. alone, and those requests were seeking data on 11,057 users or accounts. Google began publishing some of this data last year, but this is the first time it has disclosed the raw number of users and accounts affected by those requests.

"The number of requests we receive for user account information as part of criminal investigations has increased year after year. The increase isn’t surprising, since each year we offer more products and services, and we have a larger number of users," the company said in the notes accompanying the data.

"The statistics here reflect the number of law enforcement agency requests for information we receive at Google and YouTube, and, for the period from July-December 2010 and onward, the number of those requests where we produced at least some responsive information. We didn’t necessarily include requests that were addressed to the wrong Google company. We review each request to make sure that it complies with both the spirit and the letter of the law (LOL), and we may refuse to produce information or try to narrow the request in some cases."

No other country came anywhere close to issuing as many requests as agencies in the U.S. did, with India claiming second place with 1,739 requests covering 2,439 users or accounts. Google also detailed the number of requests it received from law enforcement regarding the removal of a piece of content for one reason or another. The company got 92 such requests in the first half of this year and complied, at least in part, with 63 percent of them. Many of the removal requests were for content that was thought to be defamatory, but others were for privacy or security reasons or for copyright infringement.

In a blog post about the data release, Dorothy Chou, a senior policy analyst at Google, said that the company intends the data to give users a picture of how the privacy and security laws are being used.

"All too often, policy that affects how information flows on the Internet is created in the absence of empirical data. But by showing traffic patterns and disruptions to our services, and by sharing how many government requests for content removal and user data we receive from around the world, we hope to offer up some metrics to contribute to a public conversation about the laws that influence how people communicate online," Chou wrote.

" We believe that providing this level of detail highlights the need to modernize laws like the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which regulates government access to user information and was written 25 years ago—long before the average person had ever heard of email. Yet at the end of the day, the information that we’re disclosing offers only a limited snapshot. We hope others join us in the effort to provide more transparency, so we’ll be better able to see the bigger picture of how regulatory environments affect the entire web."

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References:

HERDICTWEB

OpenNet Initiative

Google Public Policy

Google Transpareny Report

What Is The OpenNet Initiative

House Committee Passes Bill to Force ISPs to Retain User Data For 12 Months

Did the German Government Break The Law With Its Lawful Intercept Trojan?

Covert Operative For Israel Achieves Prosecutorial Immunity

By The Israel Lobby Archive - Posting #170

Today the Israel Lobby Archive releases declassified Justice Department documents that shed light on how US based covert operatives for Israel obtain near complete prosecutorial immunity.

After leaving the OSS , Nahum Bernstein quickly deployed his covert operations skills for Israel by forming front organizations to smuggle arms and wire-tap opponents in the United States. Mastermind Bernstein escaped the felony charges and prison sentences awaiting lower level operatives through his prosecutorial immunity network which stretched from New York City police officers on his payroll, his District Attorney law partner, up to the President of the United States (through associate Abraham Feinberg).

Bernstein's declassified file, like associate Abraham Feinberg's, sheds light on the model by which subsequent US operatives entered the Israel lobby's prosecutorial immunity network.

*Declassified 2010* J.W.Fulbright - Early in 1961 Senator J. W. Fulbright, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, secretly chartered an investigation utilizing the Senate's full subpoena power. A declassified committee charter reads:

In recent years there has been an increasing number of incidents involving attempts by foreign governments, or their agents, to influence the conduct of American foreign policy by techniques outside normal diplomatic channels...there have been occasions when representatives of other governments have been privately accused of engaging in covert activities within the United States and elsewhere, for the purpose of influencing United States Policy (the Lavon Affair).

Fulbright's committee focused on averting future repeats of such operations as an Israeli false flag terrorist attack on US facilities in Egypt (Operation Susannah) about which few Americans had ever heard. His committee's investigation into the Israel lobby ultimately forced the reconstitution of the American Zionist Council into AIPAC.

Today the possibility of Israeli false flag attacks and operations geared to influence policy have triggered growing American suspicion about pretexts for the Iraq war such as "Niger yellowcake" affair and the current "Iranian Used Car-Cartel" assassination plot. Fulbright's warning is both timely, prescient and informative.

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References:

OSS

The Lavon Affair

Nahum A. Bernstein - FBI File

Abraham Feinberg's - FBI File

Israeli Covert Operations to Influence US Policy

Declassified Report: Senate Investigates Foreign Agents

DOJ orders the AZC to Register as a Foreign Agent

Lest We Forget - The Graham Report - Attn: Richard Clark

By David M. Huntwork - Posting #169 - To the Juggernaut
Do you like a good 9/11 mystery? -- Footnote 44

The footnote indicates a CIA desk officer instructed an FBI agent not to send a cable with information about Khalid al Mihdhar and Nawaf al Hazmi to his colleagues at FBI headquarters.

A man named Stuart Buck blogs on his website The Buck Stops Here. It is apparently a credible site (Michael Barone, Instapundit, and Jonah Goldberg vouch for it).

Two years ago, he first wrote about the mysterious case of Dr. David Graham, a dentist in Shreveport, Louisiana. Graham said that he had met three of the 9/11 hijackers a year before the attacks at a home in Shreveport. (Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar and Jamal Khan) He became suspicious of them (he thought they were planning attacks on nearby Barksdale AFB) and contacted the FBI.

The man who hosted the hijackers in Shreveport was a Pakistani named Jamal Khan. In 2004, Khan pled guilty to hiding cash transfers to Pakistan, and in an unusual plea deal the government stated that nothing in this deal would absolve Khan from any future prosecution regarding the attacks of September 11.

Dr. Graham apparently met Khan in conjunction with the 9/11 conspirators and was set to testify against him at a deportation hearing sometime in 2004, following Khan's conviction on the money transfer charge. He was also trying to publish a manuscript about meeting the three men and his contacts with the FBI.

Then, Dr. Graham fell seriously ill from what his family says was poison. Shortly thereafter, Jamal Khan disappeared.

The story fell silent for a couple years until Buck's site did some more digging.

Dr. David Graham is dead.

Jamal Khan has vanished.

And the FBI claims that Graham never contacted them until after 9/11 — except that one guy says that he knows personally that Graham talked to the FBI in 2000, and he can even tell you the specific name of the G-Man he spoke to (Agent Spoon of the Shreveport FBI office, if you must know).

So who killed Dr. David Graham? Was it Jamal Khan? Was Khan a co-conspirator of 9/11? And where is he now? How did the FBI let him get away (one comment suggests that they didn't)? Did the FBI really have prior warning of these three 9/11 conspirators? And if so, why do they deny it now...

An intriguing mystery indeed, so I did a little research.

Dr. Graham fell seriously ill two years ago and medical tests revealed possible poisoning that led to organ failure. His family is convinced that he was poisoned. At the time, Dr. Graham was attempting to publish his manuscript "The Graham Report: The true story of three 9-11 hijackers who were reported to the FBI 10 months before 9-11.".....................continued
"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References: 9/11: Unanswered Questions (I) - Wayne Madsen Report

9/11: The Ultimate Triumph of the Strategy of Tension (II)

The CIA and 9/11 Part 3: The Shouting Match - ribit ribit ribit

This amazing story will make all Americans angry upon learning the “how and why” that vital security information, reported to both the Shreveport FBI and to the U.S. Secret Service, was either ignored or mishandled. Truth ~ this book is about the truth of the disturbing pre-9/11 hijacker activity that occurred inside the United States, specifically in Shreveport, and was reported to the FBI over ten months before 9/11.

The 9/11 Graham Report Manuscript -- [Right click -- save as]

Treason in Shreveport

Who Killed Dr. Graham?

Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar

Boiling Frogs Exclusive: September 11th Advocates’ Statement on Recent Developments Involving 9/11, CIA & Richard Clarke
Former Government Officials Stand To Profit From Cybersecurity Boom

Richard Clarke Crawls Back to the Edge of the Limelight

For the first time, a 9/11 Whistle-Blower has been murdered. The FBI is involved.

Who Poisoned Shreveport Dentist & 9/11 Researcher Dr. David Graham

Former Senator Bob Graham Urges Obama to Reopen Investigation into Saudi Role in 9/11 Attacks

By Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman - Posting #168

Former Florida governor and senator Bob Graham is calling on President Obama to reopen the investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks after new information has emerged about the possible role of prominent Saudis in the 9/11 plot.

Yea Bob - Sure: WTF! - Zelikow Appointed to Obama's Intelligence Advisory Board - WTF!

According to recent news reports, a wealthy young Saudi couple fled their home in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida, just a week or so before Sept. 11, 2001, leaving behind three cars and nearly all of their possessions. Indira Singh Testimony 2004

The FBI was tipped off about the couple but never passed the information on to the 9/11 Commission investigating the attacks, even though phone records showed the couple had ties to Mohamed Atta and at least 10 other al-Qaeda suspects. Graham joins us to discuss the news he’s called "the most important thing about 9/11 to surface in the last seven or eight years." As the former chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a post he held on September 11, 2001, Graham chaired the Congressional Joint Inquiry into the attacks.

He’s just written a novel called "Keys to the Kingdom,” which follows a fictitious former senator and co-chair of the 9/11 congressional inquiry who is murdered near his Florida home after he uncovers an international conspiracy linking the Saudi Kingdom to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Graham says he chose to write the novel after his 2000 non-fiction book, "Intelligence Matters," was heavily censored.

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References:

Recently Deceased Crown Prince Sultan and his son Bandar “Bush” Epitomize Highly Questionable Saudi 9/11 Connections

Zelikow: 9/11 Master Criminal Appointed By Obama

Report: Intelligence Unit Told Before 9/11 to Stop Tracking Bin Laden

EXCLUSIVE: New Documents Claim Intelligence on Bin Laden, al-Qaeda Targets Withheld From Congress' 9/11 Probe

New Documents Suggest DoD Watchdog Covered Up Intelligence Unit's Work Tracking 9/11 Terrorists

New Documents Suggest DoD Watchdog Covered Up Intelligence Unit's Work Tracking 9/11 Terrorists

By Jeffrey Kaye and Jason Leopold - Posting #167

Senior Pentagon officials scrubbed key details about a top-secret military intelligence unit's efforts in tracking Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda from official reports they prepared for a Congressional committee probing the 9/11 terrorist attacks, new documents obtained by Truthout reveal.

Moreover, in what appears to be an attempt to cover up the military unit's intelligence work on al-Qaeda and Bin Laden prior to 9/11, a September 2008 Defense Department (DoD) Inspector General's (IG) report that probed complaints lodged by the former deputy chief of the military unit in question, the Asymmetrical Threats Division of Joint Forces Intelligence Command (JFIC), also known as DO5, about the crucial information withheld from Congress, claimed "the tracking of Usama Bin Ladin did not fall within JFIC's mission."

But the IG's assertion is untrue, according to the documents obtained by Truthout, and the discrepancy undercuts the official narrative about who knew what and when in the months leading up to 9/11.

Much of JFIC's work on al-Qaeda and Bin Laden remains shrouded in secrecy and has not been cited in media reports revolving around pre-9/11 intelligence, which has focused heavily over the past decade on CIA and FBI "intelligence failures." Only a few details about the military intelligence unit have surfaced since then, notably in two previous reports published recently by Truthout.

JFIC was the intelligence component of United States Joint Forces Command (JFCOM). In 2005, it was renamed the Joint Intelligence Command for Intelligence. Last month, JFCOM was shuttered, reportedly the victim of Pentagon budget cuts, and as a subcommand, JFIC was believed to have been disbanded along with it.

Truthout had previously reported that the deputy chief of the Asymmetrical Threats Division, who is identified in government documents by the code name "Iron Man," alleged his unit was told to stop tracking Bin Laden as well as suspected al-Qaeda terrorists and members of the Taliban some months prior to 9/11.

Iron Man, whose unit developed original intelligence on al-Qaeda targets, which included the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, documents show, further claimed that the orders his unit received, as well as the work it conducted, was knowingly withheld from investigators working for the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, who were tasked with probing the circumstances behind the 9/11 attacks.

When the DoD prepared its report based on Iron Man's complaints, the IG concluded Iron Man's most explosive allegations were unfounded. But a close look at the report reveals numerous flaws.

Although the IG did confirm that Asymmetrical Threats Division analysts were told to stop tracking Bin Laden, suspected al-Qaeda terrorists and members of the Taliban, the watchdog determined that the Asymmetrical Threat Division had "not completed original intelligence reporting" and that "JFIC did not" specifically have a "mission to track Usama bin Ladin or predict imminent US targets." (Emphasis added.)

Furthermore, the appendices in the IG's report shows significant changes were made to JFIC's original responses to Congressional investigators about its pre-9/11 intelligence work on al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Bin Laden. The information regarding the military unit's work turned over to Congress described a substantially attenuated picture of JFIC's operations.

The report also determined "operational information in response to the 9/11 Commission" about Asymmetrical Threats Division had not been withheld. Yet, Iron Man had charged the information was withheld from Congressional investigators probing the 9/11 attacks, not the independent 9/11 commission. The IG's report repeatedly confused the two investigative bodies.

A Pentagon spokesman and officials who helped prepare the report did not return calls for comment.

New Documents Challenge Watchdog's Conclusions

Iron Man, who requested anonymity in order to protect his family's privacy, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in 2006 seeking a copy of the complaint he filed with the IG and other documents pertaining to JFIC's duties. He received a copy of his complaint in April, just a few weeks prior to the death of Bin Laden. That document, as well as the IG's findings, formed the basis of Truthout's two previous reports on JFIC's activities. But over the past month, Iron Man provided Truthout with documents he received in March 2010 in response to his FOIA request that shed additional light into JFIC's work and called into question the veracity of the IG's investigation into the charges he leveled.

Indeed, one batch of documents Truthout obtained from Iron Man consists of a slide presentation for a briefing to be held for the head of counterintelligence and counterterrorism at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). The date of the meeting could not be confirmed, but appears to have taken place sometime in 2000 or earlier.

The slides, "NCIS Support to Joint Forces Intelligence Command and NCIS Field Office, Norfolk," describe the duties assigned to an NCIS transfer of one of its counterintelligence, counterterrorism (CT) agents, who was made deputy chief of JFIC's Asymmetric Threat Division. This slide appears to be a description of Iron Man's responsibilities.

Contradicting the IG's conclusion on JFIC's work, one of the slides explicitly states, "JFIC routinely supplements national agencies with original intelligence on UBL [Usama Bin Ladin] and Afghanistan." (Emphasis added.)

The slide presentation further notes that the Asymmetrical Threats Division has "primary division focus" on both counterterrorism and military "force protection." Moreover, the briefing slides state that JFIC's "Primary CT/force protection concerns" as "UBL [Usama Bin Ladin] and associated terrorist groups," adding that its goal was to determine when Bin Laden and other terrorists would strike, "How they will strike" and "Where they will strike."

According to the documents, Asymmetrical Threats Division personnel monitored open-source intelligence, national imagery data and sensitive compartmented intelligence, as well as worldwide counterterrorism and counterintelligence communications, including communications and electronic intelligence databases from the National Security Agency (NSA).

The information from the briefing backs up what Iron Man previously told Truthout: that Asymmetrical Threats Division "worked closely" with the counterterrorism office at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, which collects, analyzes and distributes geospatial intelligence related to national security, or that, "upon request," it provided information on terrorist movements to the CIA.

According to the slide briefing, the Asymmetrical Threats Division had what is known as "gamma" security clearance, indicating analysts had access to extremely sensitive classified information, according to a description of the classification level by Matthew Aid in an unrelated New York Times report.

Another document Iron Man turned over to Truthout is a January 2001 confidential "Point Paper" that describes the Asymmetrical Threats Division as having "prepared numerous assessments of those cities most likely to be targeted by international and domestic terrorists," confirming Iron Man's claims that part of his unit's work did consist of producing intelligence on domestic targets by terrorists.

Definition of "Hijackers"

In attempting to refute Iron Man's claims about JFIC's work, the IG's report stated, "the 9/11 Commission questions were very specific and asked for information which involved the 'imminent attack' or 'hijackers involved.' Evidence indicated that the JFIC did not have knowledge regarding imminent domestic targets prior to 9/11 or specific 9/11 hijacker operations."

Truthout has learned that the definition of "hijackers," as perceived by the military intelligence unit, was overly restrictive. The definition of "hijackers" only referred to the hijackers in the planes and not the alleged planners, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or Bin Laden.

In his complaint to the IG, Iron Man wrote that the Asymmetrical Threats Division had produced "numerous original reports, with original imagery, measurements & signatures intelligence, or electronic intelligence, identifying probably [sic] and possible movements and locations of Usama bin Ladin and Mullah Omar." The intelligence included "bin Ladin's likely residence in Qandahar ... evidently the house in which Khalid Shaykh Muhammed planned the 9/11 attacks."

In summer 2000, the Asymmetrical Threats Division briefed "a DIA senior intelligence officer" on "The Search (for UBL Usama Bin Ladin]) - A CINC [Commander-in-chief] Level View." According to the complaint letter to the IG, "The briefing provided numerous examples and suggestions of how UBL was being hunted by JFIC and could be hunted by the IC [intelligence community]."

Iron Man would not provide the names of the individuals that the Asymmetrical Threats Division briefed because that information is classified. But the personnel included intelligence officials from CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, NCIS, NSA and high-level command officials at JFIC. The most senior official briefed appeared to be Vice Adm. Martin J. Meyer, the deputy commander-in-chief of Joint Forces Command.

Vice Admiral Meyer, as Truthout previously reported, told Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold, the commander of the Continental United States North American Aerospace Defense Command Region (CONR) and other high-level CONR staffers two weeks before the 9/11 attacks that "their concern about Osama bin Laden as a possible threat to America was unfounded and that, to repeat, 'If everyone would just turn off CNN, there wouldn't be a threat from Osama bin Laden.'"

Since Meyer was specifically briefed on al-Qaeda's interest in attacking targets in the United States and in particular New York and the Pentagon, it is difficult to understand why he would call threats related to Bin Laden as "unfounded."

Significant Changes Made to JFIC's Official Response

Perhaps the most salient issue with the IG's report is that it completely conceals the information that was withheld from Congressional investigators.

According to the report, on March 11, 2002, the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Vice Adm. Thomas R. Wilson tasked JFCOM to provide it with information concerning its activities "in support of the 9/11 Commission." As the IG's report points out, the public law creating the 9/11 Commission was not effective until November 2002, so Vice Admiral Wilson can only be responding to a request from the Congressional joint inquiry and not the 9/11 Commission.

The IG's report indicates JFCOM sent a "tasker" to JFIC two days later, indicating it was an urgent matter and the 13 items "derived from the original DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency] tasker" were due by March 22.

A "JFIC senior naval officer," the report states, gathered the information from the different departments within the military unit. The responses were then returned to JFCOM, where the Intelligence Director "reviewed the JFIC's input prior to release" to the DIA Congressional Affairs Office on March 25, 2002.

The original JFIC response was scanned and printed as Appendix B of the IG report. According to the IG, the "original questions and answers to 13 questions that USJFCOM [United States Joint Forces Command] forwarded" to the Defense Intelligence Agency were also scanned and are printed as the report's Appendix C. The scanned questions and answers that ultimately were sent to the Defense Intelligence Agency's Congressional Affairs Office and presumably on to Congressional investigators, are preceded by ten pages of superfluous material relating to JFIC actions taken after 9/11.

But the original questions and answers JFIC officials produced prior to March 22 (Appendix B) are not the same as the edited version that was sent to the Defense Intelligence Agency and Congress (Appendix C). Four questions and answers from Appendix C were deleted and one subsection and some of the other responses were scrubbed.

The IG report failed to highlight the difference and, indeed, the report still maintains the JFCOM version has "13 questions," though four questions were omitted after another "review."

There is no indication the scanned documents were redacted, which would have helped explain the omission, since the original material that was deleted and/or rewritten shows up unredacted in Appendix B.

According to the executive summary of the IG's report, JFIC's replies "were accurate and substantiated by our extensive review of available documentation and our 14 personnel interviews at all levels of Joint Forces Intelligence Command. We concluded that the Joint Forces Intelligence Command provided a timely and accurate reply in response to the 9/11 Commission. The United States Joint Forces Command forwarded the response to the Defense Intelligence Agency's Congressional Affairs Office."

JFlC's original responses "were forwarded to the USJFCOM [United States Joint Forces Command]. The USJFCOM Intelligence Director reviewed the JFIC's input prior to release to the DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency]."

The report, however, fails to note that the JFCOM review removed substantial portions of JFIC's replies to Congress.

What Was Missing

The missing portions largely relate to aspects of JFIC's mission that had to do with the breadth and depth of its anti-terrorism work. For instance, in item one, JFCOM deleted the original JFIC reply that it conducted "in depth discussions about potential terrorist attacks since Dec. 00."

The second item in the inquiry asked whether JFIC had information prior to 9/11 about "international terrorist cells operating in the United States." While JFIC answered this question in the negative, in their original response JFIC indicated they maintained "global situational awareness for areas such as CONUS [Continental United States] outside of the USJFCOM [United States Joint Forces Command] AOR [area of responsibility.]" They briefed pertinent information" at morning briefings, "but we did not track it." JFIC indicated the information "generally consisted of CIA and NSA reports."

In the altered version of the response sent to Congress, the words "such as CONUS" are deleted, as is the reference to CIA and NSA reports. The edited version completely eliminates the fact that JFIC was keeping track of NSA and CIA reports of terrorist activity as it related to the United States. Indeed, later in the report, the fact that JFIC also maintained a "24-hour watch floor," whose responsibility included monitoring of "worldwide events and terrorist issues," was also deleted.

According to the original JFIC response, after 9/11, it officially did take on responsibility for tracking "potential threats to CONUS." "As far as we know," the JFIC original responses state, "JFIC is one of the few DoD entities attempting to track potential terrorist activities within CONUS."

One of the missing items in the version of the JFIC answers sent to Congress concerned the names and positions of JFIC counterterror personnel. This was not redacted for classification purposes, as they appear in the IG report, Appendix B. Instead, back in 2002, the lack of any such names meant there was no one identifiable from JFIC to call as a witness.

At other points in the edited version of the JFIC responses, descriptions of the unit's analytic work, in particular aspects that seem pertinent to Asymmetrical Threats Division's work, are left out. It is noteworthy that even in the original JFIC response to the questionnaire, the mission Joint Forces Command was given was distorted.

According to the original inquiry response (and left out of the final version), "Prior to Sept. 11, JFIC did not have a robust counter-terrorism mission. We did do some analysis, but since it did not directly support Joint Forces Command's AOR [area of responsibility], the analysts were directed to stop. As a result of this and normal military rotation, we did not have a large counter-terrorism analysis base to build on" after 9/11. (Emphasis added.)

Yet, in another portion of the original JFIC response and also deleted in the final version of the response, JFIC discusses its "process." According to JFIC, while they do "not conduct unilateral collection" of intelligence in the United States, nor liaison with "foreign counterparts," they do receive reports from "other agencies." "JFIC's process is to fuse all of the information that we have visibility on into one all-source threat picture," the questionnaire stated, noting JFIC reviewed 2,275 messages daily from intelligence and military sources.

Subsequently, JFIC personnel decide what to do with this information, noting that sometimes they may "try to do further analysis (connect the dots, possibly produces a special analytic product), or ... follow-up with the reporting agency."

In a section erased from the JFIC response to Question 12 from Congressional investigators, JFIC describes their process as one of fusing "all of the information that we have visibility on into one all-source threat picture." This is similar to Iron Man's description of the Asymmetrical Threats Division in his complaint to the IG, when he described his former unit as "a forerunner of current all-source fusion centers.... able to develop and use all-source, original analysis in a manner probably then unprecedented within the intelligence community."

If the report's narrative sequence can be trusted, the JFCOM director either directly, or under his or her supervision, significantly altered the reply to Congressional Joint Inquiry investigators. Furthermore, due to the fact that items 7, 9, 11 and 13 are missing from the final document sent to the Defense Intelligence Agency it would have had to be apparent to the individual(s) reading that a chunk of information was missing.

While Congressional investigators were not provided with this intelligence on JFIC's work, there were still other opportunities to pass the information along. In Spring 2002, a colleague informed Iron Man that none of the documents that could verify Asymmetrical Threats Division's work was being sent to Congress.

The former deputy chief and later "Acting Chief" of Asymmetrical Threats Division contacted the Defense Intelligence Agency's Congressional Affairs Office himself and offered to personally send the documentation, including the slides and "point paper."

Those materials were instead sent to the Defense Intelligence Agency. Whether it made its way to Congress is unknown. The December 2002 unclassified Congressional Joint Inquiry report never mentions US Joint Forces Command, JFIC, or Asymmetrical Threats Division or their work, nor does the 9/11 Commission Report published several years later.

Current and former lawmakers who worked on the Congressional committees probing the 9/11 attacks, including former Senator Bob Graham (D-Florida), did not respond to phone calls and emails seeking comment about whether they received any briefings about the military intelligence unit's counterterrorism work pertaining to al-Qaeda, Bin Laden, and the Taliban.

Iron Man told Truthout, however, that he and his colleagues would "damn sure comment" on JFIC's work if given the opportunity to speak with lawmakers.

But, Iron Man said, "the only manner in which any former DO5 [another name for JFIC] personnel could probably comment would be if requested by Congress/Congressional staff and permitted by DoD."

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References:

IronMan Slides

IG Report

Intelligence on Bin Laden, al-Qaeda Targets Withheld From Congress'9/11 Probe

Dignitaries, brass to officially dissolve JFCOM today

Profile: Martin Mayer

Intelligence Unit Told Before 9/11 to Stop Tracking Bin Laden

Geospatial Intelligence