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What if a government spy agency had power to copy and data mine information about ordinary Americans from any government database? This could include records from law enforcement investigations, health information, employment history, travel and student records. Literally anything the government collects would be fair game, and the original agency in charge of protecting the privacy of those records would have little say over whether this happened, or what the spy agency did with the information afterward. What if that spy agency could add commercial information, anything it – or any other federal agency – could buy from the huge data aggregators that are monitoring our every move?
What if it wasn’t just collection but also sharing? Anything that was reasonably believed to be necessary to “protect the safety or security of persons, property or organizations” or “protect against or prevent a crime or threat to national security” could be shared. Imagine the dissemination was essentially unlimited, not just to federal, state, local or foreign governments but also to individuals or entities that are not part of the government
It has already happened.And almost no one seems to care. Even working on the assumption that the motives of everyone involved in this are pure, it's setting up a weapon in the name of national security aimed not at "the terrorists," but at everyone. In fact, if anyone would be safe from this it would be a skilled terrorist. It shines the light on the trivial at the expense of what might actually be useful, if the system were focused and operated in keeping with constitutional safeguards. It promises predictability. It delivers chaos. And in the meantime, it places whatever data exists--whether true or not--combined and analyzed by whatever algorithm is applied--however imperfect or biased--into the hands of politicians and bureaucrats--no matter how stupid or evil--to do with as they will.
THE informer, Shahed Hussain, had been charged with fraud, but avoided prison and deportation by working undercover in another investigation. He was being paid by the F.B.I. to pose as a wealthy Pakistani with ties to Jaish-e-Mohammed, a terrorist group that Mr. Cromitie apparently had never heard of before they met by chance in the parking lot of a mosque.
“Brother, did you ever try to do anything for the cause of Islam?” Mr. Hussain asked at one point.“O.K., brother,” Mr. Cromitie replied warily, “where you going with this, brother?”
Two days later, the informer told him, “Allah has more work for you to do,” and added, “Revelation is going to come in your dreams that you have to do this thing, O.K.?” About 15 minutes later, Mr. Hussain proposed the idea of using missiles, saying he could get them in a container from China. Mr. Cromitie laughed.
Reading hundreds of pages of transcripts of the recorded conversations is like looking at the inkblots of a Rorschach test. Patterns of willingness and hesitation overlap and merge. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” Mr. Cromitie said, and then explained that he meant women and children. “I don’t care if it’s a whole synagogue of men.” It took 11 months of meandering discussion and a promise of $250,000 to lead him, with three co-conspirators he recruited, to plant fake bombs at two Riverdale synagogues.
“Only the government could have made a ‘terrorist’ out of Mr. Cromitie, whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in its scope,” said Judge Colleen McMahon, sentencing him to 25 years. She branded it a “fantasy terror operation” but called his attempt “beyond despicable” and rejected his claim of entrapment.
Senator Carl Levin argued in these pages that the NDAA changes nothing. If that were true, there would have been no reason to pass the bill.The Senator, on the other hand, comes off looking like something of a cross between a fool and a cynic. I don't suppose there's any surprise there.
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What I find most interesting, though, is his statement that SOF are engaged in "more than one hundred countries worldwide."The direct approach is characterized by technologically-enabled small-unit precision lethality, focused intelligence, and interagency cooperation integrated on a digitally-networked battlefield…. Extreme in risk, precise in execution and able to deliver a high payoff, the impacts of the direct approach are immediate, visible to the public and have had tremendous effects on our enemies’ networks throughout the decade.However, the direct approach alone is not the solution to the challenges our Nation faces today as it ultimately only buys time and space for the indirect approach and broader governmental elements to take effect. Less well known but decisive in importance, the indirect approach is the complementary element that can counter the systemic components of the threat.The indirect approach includes empowering host nation forces, providing appropriate assistance to humanitarian agencies, and engaging key populations. These long-term efforts increase partner capabilities to generate sufficient security and rule of law, address local needs, and advance ideas that discredit and defeat the appeal of violent extremism.
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| Eric Holder at the signing of the NDAA by Getty Images via @daylife |
the United States will consider its military mission against terrorism to be over. Declaring an end to the military campaign, however, would remove the country's legal basis to hold enemy combatants. Pressure would increase to release detainees. While lawyers and legislators try to work out the ambiguous post-hostilities status of detainees, those convicted of crimes in civilian courts will remain locked away in jail, serving out fair sentences.
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II. The Attorney General Has the Authority to Appoint Special Counsel to Investigate and, Where Warranted, Prosecute Crimes Committed by United States Government Officials.... 20
A. Department of Justice Regulations grant the Attorney General authority to appoint Special Counsel............................................................................. 20
B. The Attorney General also has the power to delegate broad authority to a special prosecutor pursuant to the U.S. Code. ........................................... 32
C. Where the subject matter of the investigation could raise serious conflict of interest issues pertaining to the DOJ, the DOJ regulations should be invoked as the appropriate source of authority for appointing Special Counsel ............. 36
III. The Orchestrated Effort by Former Top-Level Administration Officials to Implement a Detainee Interrogation Program Resulted in the Widespread, Systematic, and Unlawful Abuse and Torture of Detainees ......................... 38
A. High-ranking members of the Bush Administration issued policies or directives
authorizing detainee abuse ................................................................ 39
B. Senior-level U.S. government officials set out to create a legal framework that would justify the use of unlawful interrogation tactics against detainees.......... 48
C. The policies and directives issued by top U.S. government officials authorizing specific interrogation tactics were the direct cause of detainee torture, and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment...................................................................82
IV. High-Ranking U.S. Government Officials Violated U.S. Domestic and International Law by Approving or Facilitating the Use of Torture and Other Forms of Human Rights ViolationsAgainst Terror Suspects ........................114
A. Top U.S. officials unlawfully conspired, facilitated, and directed the commission of torture and other human rights violations in violation of international law......................114
B. Top U.S. officials may also be held criminally accountable for contributing to, or conspiring to commit, crimes in violation of other U.S. federal criminal laws ...................... 117
C. Bush Administration officials conspired to violate the Torture Act by agreeing to, forming, and implementing policies and procedures detailing and recommending acts violating the Torture Act ........................................... 140
D. Officials who have either aided, commanded, or counseled for the commission of felonies, or who conspired to do the same, may be prosecuted in U.S. courts under 18 U.S.C. § 2 and 18 U.S.C. § 371 ...................................... 156
E. No legal defense may be raised that would preclude investigation or prosecution of individuals who approved or facilitated the commission of torture ..................................... 228
V. Conclusion....................................................240
Author Chuck Pfarrer is taking flack over his account of the Osama bin Laden raid in his new revisionist history, SEAL Target Geronimo. But that’s overshadowed another big problem with the book: Pfarrer’s claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction are absolutely bananas.This sounds a lot more plausible to me. If the rest of the book is as inaccurate as this--and so far as I've seen, it seems to be--I can only wonder about the agendas of those promoting and publishing it.
To read SEAL Target Geronimo is to get sucked into a vortex of WMD insanity. Pfarrer says that Saddam Hussein had dangerous, active chemical, biological and nuclear programs up until the day of his downfall. Worse, those weapons made it into the hands of Osama himself. Why didn’t you know about it? Because craven politicians and the lying media hid the truth about what U.S. military weapons experts uncovered.
Well, sorry, Charlie. I was one of those military experts in Iraq. I learned the full, underwhelming truth about Saddam’s programs because I was there to help the Iraqis settle the issue once and for all. And SEAL Target Geronimo’s claims are the literary equivalent of a smoking gun that could have been a mushroom cloud — a paranoid, evidence-free fantasy, fueled by ignorance.
Start with all that Iraqi WMD that U.S. forces found. Pfarrer gasps over an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit’s 2003 discovery of an artillery shell filled with the nerve agent sarin, part of an early homemade bomb. To Pfarrer, that bomb would have “spread a mortal, invisible cloud over a dozen city blocks” where “death would have come quickly for ten thousand Iraqi civilians living near the airport and three thousand coalition troops stationed at nearby Camp Victory.” If two of those sarin-laced bombs went off in a crowded football stadium, it would have caused more casualties than “those suffered by the United States during the entire Vietnam War.” His emphasis.
Absolutely none of this is plausible. You’re talking about a piece of steel that needs to survive being fired out of an artillery piece, and then burst apart by explosives in order to disseminate the chemicals inside. Much of the chemical material is destroyed in the process. And it would take a lot of sarin to achieve any deadly effect. Saddam’s vicious gassing of the Kurds at Halabja in March 1988, for example, was a coordinated military campaign lasting for two days. During that time, the Iraqis murdered up to 5,000 people — nowhere near Pfarrer’s stadium scenario. An actual chemical artillery round might — might — kill dozens. Not thousands.
Pakistan-North Korea: Special comment. The international news media have reported that Pakistan provided North Korea the technology and sample centrifuges for making Highly Enriched Uranium for nuclear weapons.
The source of the revelation is a newly disclosed letter sent in 1998 from a senior North Korean official to Abdul Qader Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. The letter contains details of bribes or payoffs to then Chief of Army Staff General Jehangir Karamat and another general. It was signed by North Korean National Defense Commission member Chon Pyong Ho. The letter mentions missile components sent to Pakistan and the dispatch of a new emissary who has been in Egypt, Libya, Syria and Iran - all conventional weapons or missile clients of North Korea.Pakistani officials have charged the letter is a forgery by A.Q. Khan so as to distribute blame for his conviction for selling strategic secrets. Khan is under house arrest, but always swore he acted under orders from the highest authorities. In 1998, those would have been General Karamat and then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Those luminaries always claimed Khan acted on his own in selling Pakistan's strategic nuclear secrets to North Korea.US intelligence people have said the letter looks authentic, according to press reports. And this time they have it right. The transaction in 1998 involved strategic assets which North Korea and Pakistan guard jealously. Pakistan desperately needed a reliable nuclear weapons delivery system after India tested its nuclear weapons in 1998. Pakistan had tested its nuclear technology in response. The date of the letter is July 1998.North Korea had plutonium for fissile material, but was in the market for uranium enrichment technology. North Korea had the NoDong medium range ballistic missile as a delivery system, a reliable weapons carrier, to trade for enrichment technology. Most nuclear weapons states have both plutonium and highly enriched uranium processes for producing fissile material.The individuals mentioned in the letter include people who must be involved in such a transaction, namely General Karamat and Chon. Chon Pyong Ho was the chief of the Second Economic Committee, the North Korean name for the group that supervises the military industrial complex - all the plants that make ballistic missiles, nuclear weapons and all other military ordnance. He is a classmate of Kim Chong-il, who still chairs the National Defense Commission.
Karamat probably did not take a bribe as he claims. Any money from North Korea would have been diverted into Pakistan Army secret funds. Chon Pyong Ho's involvement indicates the highest level of the North Korean government was involved directly in the transaction. That raises a prima facie inference that Chon was dealing with his counterparts in Pakistan. RThe Chief of the Army Staff is the highest ranking military officer in Pakistan. A.Q. Khan was the project director and middleman.The facts are that the four prototype uranium enrichment centrifuges that the North obtained were made in Pakistan and supplied by A.Q. Khan, by his own admission. The Ghauri missiles in the Pakistan Army came from North Korea and are NoDongs.The obvious inference is that this was a high level arrangement authorized by both governments. This was not a simple swap because of the huge follow-on investments in land and equipment required to build Ghauri missile production and testing facilities and bases in Pakistan and to build a nuclear enrichment centrifuge cascade in North Korea. These were large-scael and expensive undertakings by both countries.In short, in 1998, Pakistan, a US friend, provided nuclear weapons technology to North Korea, an enemy with whom the US was and is still at war. The letter adds details about the physical exchange of strategic assets in 1998.
Pakistan-US: Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral. Mike Mullen said 7July that the murder of a Pakistani journalist was sanctioned by the Pakistani government. Mullen said he did not have reason to disabuse that the Pakistani government knew about the murder.
Comment: The journalist was Syed Saleem Shahzad who was murdered in May for reporting on infiltration of the Pakistan armed forces by anti-government Islamic militants. For Mullen and other US officials to make unconditional statements about Pakistani government culpability means that the evidence is conclusive.
The above two reports are studies in Pakistani democracy.
If I had to guess whether humankind could possibly ever agree to take substantive action on climate change if the worst effects only really began in a hundred years time, I would be pessimistic. We would have to rely not on economics or even traditional moral arguments, which have all the weaknesses I have tried to identify above, but on what is essentially a religious faith – a view that respect for the Earth demands that we allow it to stay largely as it is. [emphasis mine] There's no doubt that this is an important force in human thinking, even among people without conventional theism. After all, we do all seem to care a lot about a few thousand polar bears of no direct economic value. But I strongly doubt whether the quasi-religious strand in our thinking is powerful enough to get us to take the really radical actions that we need.Is a theology of strong ecology the only (or best) way to go?
Glenn Greenwald does the service of contrasting Tom Freedman’s (approving) analysis of Israel’s tactics in Gaza, versus one of the standard definitions of terrorism. Freedman, on the Gaza campaign:
Israel basically said that when dealing with a nonstate actor, Hezbollah, nested among civilians, the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians — the families and employers of the militants — to restrain Hezbollah in the future.
Israel’s military was not focused on the morning after the war in Lebanon — when Hezbollah declared victory and the Israeli press declared defeat. It was focused on the morning after the morning after, when all the real business happens in the Middle East. That’s when Lebanese civilians, in anguish, said to Hezbollah: “What were you thinking? Look what destruction you have visited on your own community! For what? For whom?”
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In Gaza, I still can’t tell if Israel is trying to eradicate Hamas or trying to “educate” Hamas, by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population. If it is out to destroy Hamas, casualties will be horrific and the aftermath could be Somalia-like chaos. If it is out to educate Hamas, Israel may have achieved its aims.
The U.S. Department of State, in 2001:
No one definition of terrorism has gained universal acceptance. For the purposes of this report, however, we have chosen the definition of terrorism contained in Title 22 of the United States Code, Section 2656f(d). That statute contains the following definitions:
The term "terrorism" means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant (1) targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience. . . .
(1) For purposes of this definition, the term "noncombatant" is interpreted to include, in addition to civilians, military personnel who at the time of the incident are unarmed and/or not on duty.
Feel some dissonance? There seem to be three ways out.
First, simply assume that States can’t do terrorism (as the State Department does, by omission). Second, assume that “legitimate” States (ours and our allies) can’t do terrorism. The first means going back to the pre-Nuremburg (Westphalian) standard that governments owe nothing to civilians—their own, or anyone else’s. The second denies the idea of universal standards of law: law is what we impose on them, not something that applies to us.
Actually, classical realists have been facing this problem for millennia. Their answer: the world sucks; deal with it. Morality and law are for members of a community. Those fighting for survival must—and should--observe no limits on what they do to survive.
Intellectually, the answer is elegant. Ugly, yes, but clear. However, it completely obscures the question “survive as what?” If there is any meaning to life beyond simple survival, it is necessary to consider what brutality does not only to the victims, but to the brute.
We live in a world where moral absolutes have to give ground to the realities of what can be done. Sometimes, very, very rarely—there can be an evil so horrendous and options so limited that one must accept the responsibility for doing things that would normally be unthinkable. But even then, we are still responsible, and should be willing to pay for our crimes. Otherwise, we slide down a slope of self-justification that brutalizes ourselves almost us much as the harm we do to others. For a freedom-loving society, the goal has to be not only to provide “security” at any cost, but to achieve liberal security—protecting our lives while maintaining the values that give those lives meaning.
Tom Friedman offers a perfect definition of "terrorism" - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com
From the New York Post:
What's the easiest way to get a 25-foot-long missile into Manhattan?
Apparently, the Queens Midtown Tunnel.
A Long Island man offered up that astonishing answer yesterday to an incredulous judge in Manhattan federal court.
Arye Sachs, 48, is being sued for trademark infringement by Pfizer Inc. for hauling the fake rocket emblazoned with the words "Viva Viagra" through Midtown last month.
"It's been in the back of my mind since you first came in: How do you get the missile on the trailer into Manhattan?" federal Judge William Pauley III asked.
Sachs, from West Babylon, said cops just laughed as he passed through the Queens Midtown Tunnel on his way into the city Sept. 8.
Sachs also claimed he drove his "missile" through the Lincoln Tunnel five times, and was only stopped twice.
"They checked license and registration, but not the missile," he said.
"You're telling me that when you drove up to the Lincoln Tunnel -" Pauley said.
"They saluted," said Sachs, who is representing himself in court.
