Child Victims Incite Anger in Lebanon and Beyond
New York Times | July 31, 2006
DAMASCUS, Syria, July 30 — The images of the dead children in southern Lebanon played across the television screens on Sunday over and over again — small and caked in dirt and as lifeless as rag dolls as rescuers hauled them from the wreckage of several residential buildings pulverized hours earlier by the Israeli Air Force.
A protester with a Lebanese flag railed against Israel and the United States Sunday at a march in Amman.
The images were broadcast on all of the Arab-language satellite channels, but it was the most popular station, Al Jazeera, that made the starkest point. For several hours after rescuers reached Qana, Lebanon, the station took its anchors off the air and just continuously played images of the little bodies there.
“This is the new Middle East,” one report from the shattered town began, making a sarcastic reference to a phrase Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice uttered last week when visiting Beirut and rejecting calls for an immediate cease-fire. American weapons caused the deaths, the report said. Village men were seen weeping over the children as they were laid out under blankets in front of damaged buildings.
The anger the deaths caused in Lebanon and elsewhere was palpable. Within hours, thousands of demonstrators filled the streets in downtown Beirut, smashing windows at the United Nations headquarters, one of the few foreign buildings readily accessible.
“American-made bombs, dropped by Israeli planes, with Arab cover,” said one sign in Arabic. The last phrase referred to the initial criticism of Hezbollah by the leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan when the fighting erupted nearly three weeks ago. Already worried about the growing appeal of political Islam, those governments worried that Hezbollah’s success would only bolster the strength of Islamists.
Arab public opinion, already holding that Americans do not care about Arab lives, given the dozens killed daily in Iraq, will undoubtedly sour even more on the United States.
“There is a feeling right now that this war is not really an Israeli war against Hezbollah, but an American war to get rid of Hezbollah,” said Hussein Amin, the chairman of the journalism department at the American University in Cairo. “I think most of the coverage, in showing the dead children repeatedly, is something that is going to provoke rage and anger throughout the Arab world.”
Protesters marched through downtown Cairo, too, chanting support for “the resistance,” as Arabs call the increasingly popular Hezbollah, and issuing calls “to liquidate Zionists.” One of the signs asked, “Where are the Arab armies?”
Shaimaa Mohamed, 23, walked by the demonstration with her fiancé, though they did not take part. As they passed, she broke into tears. “You see the images of what’s happening: wouldn’t you cry when you see these images?” she said. “Then there is absolutely nothing that you can do!”
Faweya Ali, a protester, held up a yellow Hezbollah flag and a picture of the group’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. “We are with the resistance, all of the Egyptian people are with the resistance in Iraq, in Palestine and in Lebanon!” she shouted. “All Arab rulers and our ruler here is an oppressor, and an agent and a conspirator!”
The leaders of Egypt and Jordan, which have peace treaties with Israel but face mounting public anger over their close ties with the Bush administration, condemned Israel for the deaths.
King Abdullah II of Jordan called the attack “an ugly crime,” while President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt labeled it “irresponsible.”
The official Syrian news agency released a statement by President Bashar al-Assad, made in a condolence call to his Lebanese counterpart, in which he labeled the attack “state terrorism.”
Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, called for an international investigation.
Hassan M. Fattah contributed reporting from Beirut for this article, and Mona el-Naggar from Cairo.
Cleveland Plain Dealer : Conspiracy: Prosecutors' tool in fight against terror
Monday, July 31, 2006
Conspiracy: Prosecutors' tool in fight against terror
Mark Rollenhagen and Amanda Garrett | Plain Dealer Reporters | Monday, July 31, 2006
Narseal Batiste often carried a long, crooked cane through his Miami neighborhood while wearing a bathrobe and a cape.
Many wrote him off as a harmless eccentric who looked like Moses, but federal investigators say Batiste is a terrorist, the leader of a cell bent on toppling Chicago's soaring Sears tower.
Prosecutors used a conspiracy law to pluck Batiste and his followers off the streets last month, long before their plans turned to action.
It was the same ap proach prosecutors used in Toledo, where three men were indicted earlier this year on charges they conspired to kill and maim U.S. troops in Iraq.
While the Patriot Act has gotten much press since its passage after the 9/11 attacks, prosecutors rely on federal conspiracy laws to make terror cases.
They've used conspiracy prosecutions for decades to bring down mobsters, drug lords and white-collar criminals.
The plot doesn't have to unfold as intended -- or at all -- to convict someone of conspiracy. The crime is the plot. It doesn't even need to be viable. No weapons or explosives were found in the Toledo and Miami cases.
"This group was more aspirational than operational," John Pistole, the FBI's deputy director, said after the Miami group's arrest.
The Miami men, if convicted of the conspiracy charge alone, face up to 20 years in prison. The Toledo trio could face up to life behind bars.
To reach these Plain Dealer reporters:
mrollenhagen@plaind.com, 216-999-6326
agarrett@plaind.com, 216-999-4814
Mark Rollenhagen and Amanda Garrett | Plain Dealer Reporters | Monday, July 31, 2006
Narseal Batiste often carried a long, crooked cane through his Miami neighborhood while wearing a bathrobe and a cape.
Many wrote him off as a harmless eccentric who looked like Moses, but federal investigators say Batiste is a terrorist, the leader of a cell bent on toppling Chicago's soaring Sears tower.
Prosecutors used a conspiracy law to pluck Batiste and his followers off the streets last month, long before their plans turned to action.
It was the same ap proach prosecutors used in Toledo, where three men were indicted earlier this year on charges they conspired to kill and maim U.S. troops in Iraq.
While the Patriot Act has gotten much press since its passage after the 9/11 attacks, prosecutors rely on federal conspiracy laws to make terror cases.
They've used conspiracy prosecutions for decades to bring down mobsters, drug lords and white-collar criminals.
The plot doesn't have to unfold as intended -- or at all -- to convict someone of conspiracy. The crime is the plot. It doesn't even need to be viable. No weapons or explosives were found in the Toledo and Miami cases.
"This group was more aspirational than operational," John Pistole, the FBI's deputy director, said after the Miami group's arrest.
The Miami men, if convicted of the conspiracy charge alone, face up to 20 years in prison. The Toledo trio could face up to life behind bars.
To reach these Plain Dealer reporters:
mrollenhagen@plaind.com, 216-999-6326
agarrett@plaind.com, 216-999-4814
Sibel Edmonds : All That's Given Up In The Name Of Security
Monday, July 31, 2006
ALL THAT’S GIVEN UP IN THE NAME OF SECURITY
By Sibel Edmonds and William Weaver | July 31, 2006
Two days ago we made available to the public news that one of our members, Russell Tice, a former NSA Senior Analyst, had been served with a subpoena asking him to appear before a federal grand jury regarding the criminal investigation of recent disclosures which involved NSA warrantless eavesdropping. Our announcement was followed up in both the main and alternative media, and started heated discussions among online activists. We have received e-mails and letters from people who expressed their support and solidarity with Mr. Tice and other patriotic public servants who have chosen to place our nation, its Constitution, its liberty, thus its public’s right to know, above their future security, careers and livelihood.
We have also received e-mails from individuals who argued against the public’s right to know when it comes to issues such as NSA warrantless eavesdropping or mass collection of citizens’ financial and other personal data by various intelligence and defense related agencies. They unite in their argument that any measure to protect us from the terrorists is welcomed and justified. One individual wrote: “so what if they are listening to our conversations. I have nothing to hide, so I don’t mind the government eavesdropping on my phone conversations. Only those engaged in evil deeds would worry about the government placing them under surveillance.” But how far can one let the government go based on this rationale? This issue is well articulated in Federalist, No. 51, “You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” How do we oblige our government to control itself?
You may ask how NSA eavesdropping affects you when you have nothing to hide. Let us try to explain why you should worry. Even if, as the government claims, this program is only looking for “terrorist activity,” still all your conversations have to be processed; have to be linked to other calls and sources of “possible” terrorist activity. All it takes is an innocent phone call to a friend, who has placed a call to a friend or relative, who has legitimate business or personal contacts in a foreign country where there may be “suspected terrorists.” You have just become a potential target of government investigation – you may be a terrorist supporter, or even a terrorist. Remember “Six Degrees of Separation” (the theory that anyone on earth can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances with no more than five intermediaries)? The NSA program can easily mistakenly connect you to a terrorist. Furthermore, since the program is being conducted without judicial oversight and under no recognized process there is nothing to restrict how the information obtained under the program is being used.
But let us take things from the widely shared point of view of the individual quoted above; the view that there is nothing for honest people to fear from warrantless, presidentially-ordered surveillance. What other invasions of rights would such acquiescence to government authority inevitably lead to?
Our government will argue its right to break into your house and search it without warrant based on some tip, intelligence, or information that is considered classified, which you have no right or clearance to know about. It will argue that the search and the secrecy are necessary for reasons of “national security” and within the “inherent powers” of the executive branch, therefore not requiring congressional authorization or judicial oversight.
What is next in the name of national security? Will our government call out to all citizens in particular communities to turn in their weapons to law enforcement agencies? Perhaps it will cite the following reason for such call: “We already know that several Al Qaeda cells reside in the affected communities. Our intelligence agencies have received credible information concerning these cells’ intention to break into Americans’ homes to obtain firearms, since they do not want to risk detection by purchasing firearms from the market.” Would our compliant citizen quoted above be more than happy to give up his right under the Second Amendment for possible security promised to him by his government? When the agents show up at his door asking for his legally registered Colt, what will he do?
There are those well-meaning “conservative” Americans who have been lead to believe that our nation’s security is somehow damaged when an employee of one of our “security” agencies comes forward to shed light on activities by our government that may be illegal, may be un-constitutional, and may be a danger to the nation’s security. These Americans have accepted too easily the government’s propaganda sold to them shrewdly packaged in a wrapping of fear of terror – that if you expose any government action, however misguided or un-constitutional, then you are jeopardizing our security; you are aiding the terrorists. This quote from Benjamin Franklin sums it up well: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
What price our imagined security? If we now would allow the NSA to listen in to our most private conversations without objection, then when next the knock comes on our door, or our door is knocked down, in the interest of “national security” what will we say? Will we say “come on in and search me, my house and my family; after all, it is in the interest of ‘national security’ and we have nothing to hide”? Generations of Americans have fought and died so that we can today enjoy the precious fruits of their struggles – the right to our privacy, the right to our freedom from government intrusion, the right to our freedom of speech, the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” the right to simply be left alone. Are we to become the generation that loses those freedoms, not only for ourselves, but for the generations that follow? And will it be us who lets it happen because of some misplaced belief that government “oppression” equals “national security”?
Since when did true conservatives agree to surrender their individual rights under the Constitution for the sake of some imagined temporary security? Since when have we become so afraid of some foreign terrorists that we shiver and hide under a blanket of imagined security offered up by those in power who feed on our fears? Since when have we forgotten the messages of the Founding Fathers, who understood so clearly that the greatest danger to our liberties is an oppressive government, not outside foreign forces? We should never fear those who are brave enough to speak out, but we should fear greatly those who would silence them.
We like to believe our nation is one that prizes individual liberty and freedom from authoritarian restraint, the dictates of hierarchy, or governmental limits. Throughout its history our nation’s soul has been based on anti-authoritarianism and fear of a large, tyrannical government. Our notion of liberty has been built upon a philosophy of limited government with the highest value placed on preservation of individual rights. Our nation’s political thought found its roots in the writings of John Locke, who stressed an insistence on imposing limits on authority, on governmental authority, in order to further individual rights and liberty. No wonder both liberal and republican traditions, although each in its own way and style, pride themselves in their eternal quest for ‘limited government’.
Our entire system of government and its institutions is grounded in an insistence that tyranny be combated and that individual liberty be protected from a potentially tyrannical government. The result is a suspicion of authority and an emphasis on limited government. Samuel Huntington, a well-known conservative Republican, states in American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony: “The distinctive aspect of the American Creed is its antigovernment character. Opposition to power, and suspicion of government as the most dangerous embodiment of power, are the central themes of American political thought.”
After 9/11 our president came out and warned us: “the terrorists are resolved to change the way of our lives. They hate our freedom and our way of life here.” Well Mr. President, we have come a long way since that awful day. Our way of privacy in communicating on the phone and through our computers, our way of detaining and prosecuting people, our way of trusting our records with our librarians, our way of reading and discussing dissent, our way of treating our ally nations, our way of making it from the airport gates to the airplanes…simply, our way of life, has surely changed drastically in five years. But, Mr. President, we don’t have the terrorists to blame for this. We only have you and our three branches of government to blame.
Sibel Edmonds is the founder and director of National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC). Ms. Edmonds worked as a language specialist for the FBI. During her work with the bureau, she discovered and reported serious acts of security breaches, cover-ups, and intentional blocking of intelligence that had national security implications. After she reported these acts to FBI management, she was retaliated against by the FBI and ultimately fired in March 2002. Since that time, court proceedings on her case have been blocked by the assertion of “State Secret Privilege”; the Congress of the United States has been gagged and prevented from any discussion of her case through retroactive re-classification by the Department of Justice. Ms. Edmonds is fluent in Turkish, Farsi and Azerbaijani; and has a MA in Public Policy and International Commerce from George Mason University, and a BA in Criminal Justice and Psychology from George Washington University. PEN American Center awarded Ms. Edmonds the 2006 PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award.
Professor William Weaver is the senior advisor and a board member of National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC). Mr. Weaver served in U.S. Army signals intelligence for eight years in Berlin and Augsburg, Germany, in the late 1970s and 1980s. He subsequently received his law degree and Ph.D. in politics from the University of Virginia, where he was on the editorial board of the Virginia Law Review. He is presently an Associate Professor of political science and an Associate in the Center for Law and Border Studies at the University of Texas at El Paso. He specializes in executive branch secrecy policy, governmental abuse, and law and bureaucracy. His articles have appeared in American Political Science Review, Political Science Quarterly, Virginia Law Review, Journal of Business Ethics, Organization and other journals. With co-author Robert Pallitto, his book Presidential Secrecy and the Law is forthcoming from Johns Hopkins University Press in the spring of 2007.
# # # #
© Copyright 2006, National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. Information in this release may be freely distributed and published provided that all such distributions make appropriate attribution to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition
By Sibel Edmonds and William Weaver | July 31, 2006
Two days ago we made available to the public news that one of our members, Russell Tice, a former NSA Senior Analyst, had been served with a subpoena asking him to appear before a federal grand jury regarding the criminal investigation of recent disclosures which involved NSA warrantless eavesdropping. Our announcement was followed up in both the main and alternative media, and started heated discussions among online activists. We have received e-mails and letters from people who expressed their support and solidarity with Mr. Tice and other patriotic public servants who have chosen to place our nation, its Constitution, its liberty, thus its public’s right to know, above their future security, careers and livelihood.
We have also received e-mails from individuals who argued against the public’s right to know when it comes to issues such as NSA warrantless eavesdropping or mass collection of citizens’ financial and other personal data by various intelligence and defense related agencies. They unite in their argument that any measure to protect us from the terrorists is welcomed and justified. One individual wrote: “so what if they are listening to our conversations. I have nothing to hide, so I don’t mind the government eavesdropping on my phone conversations. Only those engaged in evil deeds would worry about the government placing them under surveillance.” But how far can one let the government go based on this rationale? This issue is well articulated in Federalist, No. 51, “You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” How do we oblige our government to control itself?
You may ask how NSA eavesdropping affects you when you have nothing to hide. Let us try to explain why you should worry. Even if, as the government claims, this program is only looking for “terrorist activity,” still all your conversations have to be processed; have to be linked to other calls and sources of “possible” terrorist activity. All it takes is an innocent phone call to a friend, who has placed a call to a friend or relative, who has legitimate business or personal contacts in a foreign country where there may be “suspected terrorists.” You have just become a potential target of government investigation – you may be a terrorist supporter, or even a terrorist. Remember “Six Degrees of Separation” (the theory that anyone on earth can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances with no more than five intermediaries)? The NSA program can easily mistakenly connect you to a terrorist. Furthermore, since the program is being conducted without judicial oversight and under no recognized process there is nothing to restrict how the information obtained under the program is being used.
But let us take things from the widely shared point of view of the individual quoted above; the view that there is nothing for honest people to fear from warrantless, presidentially-ordered surveillance. What other invasions of rights would such acquiescence to government authority inevitably lead to?
Our government will argue its right to break into your house and search it without warrant based on some tip, intelligence, or information that is considered classified, which you have no right or clearance to know about. It will argue that the search and the secrecy are necessary for reasons of “national security” and within the “inherent powers” of the executive branch, therefore not requiring congressional authorization or judicial oversight.
What is next in the name of national security? Will our government call out to all citizens in particular communities to turn in their weapons to law enforcement agencies? Perhaps it will cite the following reason for such call: “We already know that several Al Qaeda cells reside in the affected communities. Our intelligence agencies have received credible information concerning these cells’ intention to break into Americans’ homes to obtain firearms, since they do not want to risk detection by purchasing firearms from the market.” Would our compliant citizen quoted above be more than happy to give up his right under the Second Amendment for possible security promised to him by his government? When the agents show up at his door asking for his legally registered Colt, what will he do?
There are those well-meaning “conservative” Americans who have been lead to believe that our nation’s security is somehow damaged when an employee of one of our “security” agencies comes forward to shed light on activities by our government that may be illegal, may be un-constitutional, and may be a danger to the nation’s security. These Americans have accepted too easily the government’s propaganda sold to them shrewdly packaged in a wrapping of fear of terror – that if you expose any government action, however misguided or un-constitutional, then you are jeopardizing our security; you are aiding the terrorists. This quote from Benjamin Franklin sums it up well: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
What price our imagined security? If we now would allow the NSA to listen in to our most private conversations without objection, then when next the knock comes on our door, or our door is knocked down, in the interest of “national security” what will we say? Will we say “come on in and search me, my house and my family; after all, it is in the interest of ‘national security’ and we have nothing to hide”? Generations of Americans have fought and died so that we can today enjoy the precious fruits of their struggles – the right to our privacy, the right to our freedom from government intrusion, the right to our freedom of speech, the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” the right to simply be left alone. Are we to become the generation that loses those freedoms, not only for ourselves, but for the generations that follow? And will it be us who lets it happen because of some misplaced belief that government “oppression” equals “national security”?
Since when did true conservatives agree to surrender their individual rights under the Constitution for the sake of some imagined temporary security? Since when have we become so afraid of some foreign terrorists that we shiver and hide under a blanket of imagined security offered up by those in power who feed on our fears? Since when have we forgotten the messages of the Founding Fathers, who understood so clearly that the greatest danger to our liberties is an oppressive government, not outside foreign forces? We should never fear those who are brave enough to speak out, but we should fear greatly those who would silence them.
We like to believe our nation is one that prizes individual liberty and freedom from authoritarian restraint, the dictates of hierarchy, or governmental limits. Throughout its history our nation’s soul has been based on anti-authoritarianism and fear of a large, tyrannical government. Our notion of liberty has been built upon a philosophy of limited government with the highest value placed on preservation of individual rights. Our nation’s political thought found its roots in the writings of John Locke, who stressed an insistence on imposing limits on authority, on governmental authority, in order to further individual rights and liberty. No wonder both liberal and republican traditions, although each in its own way and style, pride themselves in their eternal quest for ‘limited government’.
Our entire system of government and its institutions is grounded in an insistence that tyranny be combated and that individual liberty be protected from a potentially tyrannical government. The result is a suspicion of authority and an emphasis on limited government. Samuel Huntington, a well-known conservative Republican, states in American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony: “The distinctive aspect of the American Creed is its antigovernment character. Opposition to power, and suspicion of government as the most dangerous embodiment of power, are the central themes of American political thought.”
After 9/11 our president came out and warned us: “the terrorists are resolved to change the way of our lives. They hate our freedom and our way of life here.” Well Mr. President, we have come a long way since that awful day. Our way of privacy in communicating on the phone and through our computers, our way of detaining and prosecuting people, our way of trusting our records with our librarians, our way of reading and discussing dissent, our way of treating our ally nations, our way of making it from the airport gates to the airplanes…simply, our way of life, has surely changed drastically in five years. But, Mr. President, we don’t have the terrorists to blame for this. We only have you and our three branches of government to blame.
Sibel Edmonds is the founder and director of National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC). Ms. Edmonds worked as a language specialist for the FBI. During her work with the bureau, she discovered and reported serious acts of security breaches, cover-ups, and intentional blocking of intelligence that had national security implications. After she reported these acts to FBI management, she was retaliated against by the FBI and ultimately fired in March 2002. Since that time, court proceedings on her case have been blocked by the assertion of “State Secret Privilege”; the Congress of the United States has been gagged and prevented from any discussion of her case through retroactive re-classification by the Department of Justice. Ms. Edmonds is fluent in Turkish, Farsi and Azerbaijani; and has a MA in Public Policy and International Commerce from George Mason University, and a BA in Criminal Justice and Psychology from George Washington University. PEN American Center awarded Ms. Edmonds the 2006 PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award.
Professor William Weaver is the senior advisor and a board member of National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC). Mr. Weaver served in U.S. Army signals intelligence for eight years in Berlin and Augsburg, Germany, in the late 1970s and 1980s. He subsequently received his law degree and Ph.D. in politics from the University of Virginia, where he was on the editorial board of the Virginia Law Review. He is presently an Associate Professor of political science and an Associate in the Center for Law and Border Studies at the University of Texas at El Paso. He specializes in executive branch secrecy policy, governmental abuse, and law and bureaucracy. His articles have appeared in American Political Science Review, Political Science Quarterly, Virginia Law Review, Journal of Business Ethics, Organization and other journals. With co-author Robert Pallitto, his book Presidential Secrecy and the Law is forthcoming from Johns Hopkins University Press in the spring of 2007.
# # # #
© Copyright 2006, National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. Information in this release may be freely distributed and published provided that all such distributions make appropriate attribution to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition
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by Winter Patriot
on Monday, July 31, 2006
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NYT : U.S. Hid Actual Cost of Iraq Projects
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Audit Finds U.S. Hid Actual Cost of Iraq Projects
By JAMES GLANZ | Published: July 30, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 29 — The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects in Iraq and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found.
The agency hid construction overruns by listing them as overhead or administrative costs, according to the audit, written by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent office that reports to Congress and the Pentagon.
Called the United States Agency for International Development, or USAid, the agency administers foreign aid projects around the world. It has been working in Iraq on reconstruction since shortly after the 2003 invasion.
The report by the inspector general’s office does not give a full accounting of all projects financed by the agency’s $1.4 billion budget, but cites several examples.
The findings appeared in an audit of a children’s hospital in Basra, but they referred to the wider reconstruction activities of the development agency in Iraq. American and Iraqi officials reported this week that the State Department planned to drop Bechtel, its contractor on that project, as signs of budget and scheduling problems began to surface.
The United States Embassy in Baghdad referred questions to the State Department in Washington, which declined to comment immediately.
In March 2005, USAid asked the Iraq Reconstruction and Management Office at the United States Embassy in Baghdad for permission to downsize some projects to ease widespread financing problems. In its request, it said that it had to “to absorb greatly increased construction costs” at the Basra hospital, and that it would make a modest shift of priorities and reduce “contractor overhead” on the project.
The embassy office approved the request. But the audit found that the agency interpreted the document as permission to change reporting of costs across its program.
Referring to the embassy office’s approval, the inspector general wrote, “The memorandum was not intended to give USAid blanket permission to change the reporting of all indirect costs.”
The hospital’s construction budget was $50 million. By April of this year, Bechtel had told the aid agency that because of escalating costs for security and other problems, the project would actually cost $98 million to complete. But in an official report to Congress that month, the agency “was reporting the hospital project cost as $50 million,” the inspector general wrote in his report.
The rest was reclassified as overhead, or “indirect costs.” According a contracting officer at the agency who was cited in the report, the agency “did not report these costs so it could stay within the $50 million authorization.”
“We find the entire agreement unclear,” the inspector general wrote of the USAid request approved by the embassy. “The document states that hospital project cost increases would be offset by reducing contractor overhead allocated to the project, but project reports for the period show no effort to reduce overhead.”
The report said it suspected that other unreported costs on the hospital could drive the tab even higher. In another case cited in the report, a power station project in Musayyib, the direct construction cost cited by the development agency was $6.6 million, while the overhead cost was $27.6 million.
The result is that the project’s overhead, a figure that normally runs to a maximum of 30 percent, was a stunning 418 percent.
The figures were even adjusted in the opposite direction when that helped the agency balance its books, the inspector general found. On an electricity project at the Baghdad South power station, direct construction costs were reported by the agency as $164.3 million and indirect or overhead costs as $1.4 million.
That is just 0.8 percent overhead in a country where security costs are often staggering. A contracting officer told the inspector general that the agency adjusted the figures “to stay within the authorization for each project.”
The overall effect, the report said, was a “serious misstatement of hospital project costs.” The true cost could rise as high as $169.5 million, even after accounting for at least $30 million pledged for medical equipment by a charitable organization.
The inspector general also found that the agency failed to report known schedule delays to Congress. On March 26, 2006, Bechtel informed the agency that the hospital project was 273 days behind, the inspector general wrote. But in its April report to Congress on the status of all projects, “USAid reported no problems with the project schedule.”
In a letter responding to the inspector general’s findings, Joseph A. Saloom, the newly appointed director of the reconstruction office at the United States Embassy, said he would take steps to improve the reporting of the costs of reconstruction projects in Iraq. Mr. Saloom took little exception with the main findings.
In the letter, Mr. Saloom said that his office had been given new powers by the American ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, to request clear financing information on American reconstruction projects. Mr. Saloom wrote that he agreed with the inspector general’s conclusion that this shift would help “preclude surprises such as occurred on the Basra hospital project.”
“The U.S. Mission agrees that accurate monitoring of projects requires allocating indirect costs in a systematic way that reflects accurately the true indirect costs attributable to specific activities and projects, such as a Basra children’s hospital,” Mr. Saloom wrote.
By JAMES GLANZ | Published: July 30, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 29 — The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects in Iraq and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found.
The agency hid construction overruns by listing them as overhead or administrative costs, according to the audit, written by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent office that reports to Congress and the Pentagon.
Called the United States Agency for International Development, or USAid, the agency administers foreign aid projects around the world. It has been working in Iraq on reconstruction since shortly after the 2003 invasion.
The report by the inspector general’s office does not give a full accounting of all projects financed by the agency’s $1.4 billion budget, but cites several examples.
The findings appeared in an audit of a children’s hospital in Basra, but they referred to the wider reconstruction activities of the development agency in Iraq. American and Iraqi officials reported this week that the State Department planned to drop Bechtel, its contractor on that project, as signs of budget and scheduling problems began to surface.
The United States Embassy in Baghdad referred questions to the State Department in Washington, which declined to comment immediately.
In March 2005, USAid asked the Iraq Reconstruction and Management Office at the United States Embassy in Baghdad for permission to downsize some projects to ease widespread financing problems. In its request, it said that it had to “to absorb greatly increased construction costs” at the Basra hospital, and that it would make a modest shift of priorities and reduce “contractor overhead” on the project.
The embassy office approved the request. But the audit found that the agency interpreted the document as permission to change reporting of costs across its program.
Referring to the embassy office’s approval, the inspector general wrote, “The memorandum was not intended to give USAid blanket permission to change the reporting of all indirect costs.”
The hospital’s construction budget was $50 million. By April of this year, Bechtel had told the aid agency that because of escalating costs for security and other problems, the project would actually cost $98 million to complete. But in an official report to Congress that month, the agency “was reporting the hospital project cost as $50 million,” the inspector general wrote in his report.
The rest was reclassified as overhead, or “indirect costs.” According a contracting officer at the agency who was cited in the report, the agency “did not report these costs so it could stay within the $50 million authorization.”
“We find the entire agreement unclear,” the inspector general wrote of the USAid request approved by the embassy. “The document states that hospital project cost increases would be offset by reducing contractor overhead allocated to the project, but project reports for the period show no effort to reduce overhead.”
The report said it suspected that other unreported costs on the hospital could drive the tab even higher. In another case cited in the report, a power station project in Musayyib, the direct construction cost cited by the development agency was $6.6 million, while the overhead cost was $27.6 million.
The result is that the project’s overhead, a figure that normally runs to a maximum of 30 percent, was a stunning 418 percent.
The figures were even adjusted in the opposite direction when that helped the agency balance its books, the inspector general found. On an electricity project at the Baghdad South power station, direct construction costs were reported by the agency as $164.3 million and indirect or overhead costs as $1.4 million.
That is just 0.8 percent overhead in a country where security costs are often staggering. A contracting officer told the inspector general that the agency adjusted the figures “to stay within the authorization for each project.”
The overall effect, the report said, was a “serious misstatement of hospital project costs.” The true cost could rise as high as $169.5 million, even after accounting for at least $30 million pledged for medical equipment by a charitable organization.
The inspector general also found that the agency failed to report known schedule delays to Congress. On March 26, 2006, Bechtel informed the agency that the hospital project was 273 days behind, the inspector general wrote. But in its April report to Congress on the status of all projects, “USAid reported no problems with the project schedule.”
In a letter responding to the inspector general’s findings, Joseph A. Saloom, the newly appointed director of the reconstruction office at the United States Embassy, said he would take steps to improve the reporting of the costs of reconstruction projects in Iraq. Mr. Saloom took little exception with the main findings.
In the letter, Mr. Saloom said that his office had been given new powers by the American ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, to request clear financing information on American reconstruction projects. Mr. Saloom wrote that he agreed with the inspector general’s conclusion that this shift would help “preclude surprises such as occurred on the Basra hospital project.”
“The U.S. Mission agrees that accurate monitoring of projects requires allocating indirect costs in a systematic way that reflects accurately the true indirect costs attributable to specific activities and projects, such as a Basra children’s hospital,” Mr. Saloom wrote.
Prensa Latina: Global Oil Gnaws the Forbidden Apple
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Global Oil Gnaws the Forbidden Apple
by Elsy Fors | July 29, 2006
Central Bureau -- A windfall of profits has been announced every quarter over the last three years for big oil companies, but easy money is sure to dig everyone´s graves, including their own.
The war on Iraq in 2003 and its occupation gave way to a new era of conflict and shortage of fossil fuels like the planet had not known since the end of World War II.
Crude oil prices rocketed from the $20-$30 dollar a barrel level to almost $80 dollars. No wonder Exxon Mobil, the largest corporation quoted in stock markets, reported a 36 percent gain in second-quarter earnings, bolstered by robust oil and gas prices, improving refining margins and the start of production in Nigerian waters.
In all, Exxon Mobil reported a profit of $10.36 billion, its second-best quarter ever. That amounts to the GDP of many poor nations.
According to many analysts, a new order is taking form, driven by the greed of the United States and big energy consumers, while developing oil producing countries are more cautious of their sometimes only source of revenue.
The main oil importing countries are having increasing difficulties to meet their wasteful lifestyles. Energy security has become a central issue of foreign policy.
Last May, a subcommittee of the US Congress organized public hearings on how to negotiate with countries using fuel as a weapon.
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Secretary General of NATO, declared in May that this grouping would consider the use of force if energy supplies were threatened.
As for oil and gas, said De Hoop Scheffer before the European Parliament, NATO could play a decisive role in the maritime defense of supplies.
According to some estimates, 90% of non exploited oil reserves are controlled by governments or state companies, a greater proportion than 30 years ago. While the planet does not seem to be running out of crude, it has become more difficult for big oil companies to get hold of the reserves.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts crude demand will go up by 37% from now until 2030, but some producer countries will not or cannot meet the demand.
In addition, countries like Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia are not willing to let foreign companies get hold of their natural resources without any consideration for environmental, economic or social issues of the proprietor nations as was the case before.
The new world map depicting the situation of supply and demand of hydrocarbons has made developed countries more vulnerable. The IEA estimates that its 26 member countries will need to import 85% of their energy needs by 2030, compared to the current 63% per cent.
These hard facts have made many analysts fear for the outburst of a new world war. It may already be under way, driven by the conservative and even fascist ideals of the US administration, with the support of its Middle-East bully, Israel.
The goal is control over oil and gas reserves. Iran and Venezuela, however, have warned they would interrupt oil supplies if threatened by the US.
Henry Groppe, founder of an energy consultancy based in Houston, has analyzed the oil industry over half a century and points out three stages in the history of oil.
The first one was the century of easy oil under US control that lasted until the 70s with an average price of $13 dollars a barrel.
The second time was a transition period and the increasing influence of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which lasted until 2004, and the barrel averaged $36 dollars.
The most recent stage, barely two years old, is more convulsive and prone to supply quakes, where prices are fickle and consumers compete ever more ferociously for supplies, says Groppe.
Alas, the last frontier of energy sources may be the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska or the Orinoco basin, all with their fragile ecosystems whose destruction may put the human species on the list of endangered species.
by Elsy Fors | July 29, 2006
Central Bureau -- A windfall of profits has been announced every quarter over the last three years for big oil companies, but easy money is sure to dig everyone´s graves, including their own.
The war on Iraq in 2003 and its occupation gave way to a new era of conflict and shortage of fossil fuels like the planet had not known since the end of World War II.
Crude oil prices rocketed from the $20-$30 dollar a barrel level to almost $80 dollars. No wonder Exxon Mobil, the largest corporation quoted in stock markets, reported a 36 percent gain in second-quarter earnings, bolstered by robust oil and gas prices, improving refining margins and the start of production in Nigerian waters.
In all, Exxon Mobil reported a profit of $10.36 billion, its second-best quarter ever. That amounts to the GDP of many poor nations.
According to many analysts, a new order is taking form, driven by the greed of the United States and big energy consumers, while developing oil producing countries are more cautious of their sometimes only source of revenue.
The main oil importing countries are having increasing difficulties to meet their wasteful lifestyles. Energy security has become a central issue of foreign policy.
Last May, a subcommittee of the US Congress organized public hearings on how to negotiate with countries using fuel as a weapon.
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Secretary General of NATO, declared in May that this grouping would consider the use of force if energy supplies were threatened.
As for oil and gas, said De Hoop Scheffer before the European Parliament, NATO could play a decisive role in the maritime defense of supplies.
According to some estimates, 90% of non exploited oil reserves are controlled by governments or state companies, a greater proportion than 30 years ago. While the planet does not seem to be running out of crude, it has become more difficult for big oil companies to get hold of the reserves.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts crude demand will go up by 37% from now until 2030, but some producer countries will not or cannot meet the demand.
In addition, countries like Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia are not willing to let foreign companies get hold of their natural resources without any consideration for environmental, economic or social issues of the proprietor nations as was the case before.
The new world map depicting the situation of supply and demand of hydrocarbons has made developed countries more vulnerable. The IEA estimates that its 26 member countries will need to import 85% of their energy needs by 2030, compared to the current 63% per cent.
These hard facts have made many analysts fear for the outburst of a new world war. It may already be under way, driven by the conservative and even fascist ideals of the US administration, with the support of its Middle-East bully, Israel.
The goal is control over oil and gas reserves. Iran and Venezuela, however, have warned they would interrupt oil supplies if threatened by the US.
Henry Groppe, founder of an energy consultancy based in Houston, has analyzed the oil industry over half a century and points out three stages in the history of oil.
The first one was the century of easy oil under US control that lasted until the 70s with an average price of $13 dollars a barrel.
The second time was a transition period and the increasing influence of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which lasted until 2004, and the barrel averaged $36 dollars.
The most recent stage, barely two years old, is more convulsive and prone to supply quakes, where prices are fickle and consumers compete ever more ferociously for supplies, says Groppe.
Alas, the last frontier of energy sources may be the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska or the Orinoco basin, all with their fragile ecosystems whose destruction may put the human species on the list of endangered species.
BBC : Iran leader's warning to Israel
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Iran leader's warning to Israel
BBC News | July 23, 2006
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has warned Israel that it has "pushed the button of its own destruction" because of its actions in Lebanon.
He also said Israel should "pack up" and move elsewhere, repeating comments made last year.
Israel has accused Iran of involvement in the capture of the two Israeli soldiers, which sparked the current crisis, claims Iran denies.
Iran has also been accused of supplying Hezbollah with money and arms.
"Israel pushed the button of its own destruction by attacking Lebanon," Mr Ahmadinejad said while addressing an education conference.
He did not give further information but suggested Islamic nations and others could isolate Israel and its supporters, AP news agency reported.
He also repeated last year's calls for Israel to move out of the Middle East, comments which sparked widespread condemnation.
"I advise them to pack up and move out of the region before being caught in the fire they have started in Lebanon," he said.
Iran helped found the Lebanese-based Hezbollah in 1982, but says it only gives spiritual and political support to the group, not financial aid, training or weapons.
It has also rejected Israeli claims it was involved in the capture by Hezbollah of two Israeli soldiers two weeks ago, which led to the Israeli strikes on Lebanon.
BBC News | July 23, 2006
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has warned Israel that it has "pushed the button of its own destruction" because of its actions in Lebanon.
He also said Israel should "pack up" and move elsewhere, repeating comments made last year.
Israel has accused Iran of involvement in the capture of the two Israeli soldiers, which sparked the current crisis, claims Iran denies.
Iran has also been accused of supplying Hezbollah with money and arms.
"Israel pushed the button of its own destruction by attacking Lebanon," Mr Ahmadinejad said while addressing an education conference.
He did not give further information but suggested Islamic nations and others could isolate Israel and its supporters, AP news agency reported.
He also repeated last year's calls for Israel to move out of the Middle East, comments which sparked widespread condemnation.
"I advise them to pack up and move out of the region before being caught in the fire they have started in Lebanon," he said.
Iran helped found the Lebanese-based Hezbollah in 1982, but says it only gives spiritual and political support to the group, not financial aid, training or weapons.
It has also rejected Israeli claims it was involved in the capture by Hezbollah of two Israeli soldiers two weeks ago, which led to the Israeli strikes on Lebanon.
BBC : First arrests in Mumbai bombings
Friday, July 21, 2006
First arrests in Mumbai bombings
BBC News | July 21, 2006
Police in India have arrested three men in connection with a series of bombings that killed more than 180 people in the city of Mumbai (Bombay) last week.
The police have detained more than 300 suspects but these are the first arrests in the case.
Two of the men were detained on Thursday in the northern state of Bihar and the third later in Mumbai.
The three belong to a banned group, the Students Islamic Movement of India (Simi), officials say.
Some Simi members were held earlier in the inquiry.
The organisation has denied any involvement in the attacks.
A senior police official involved in the investigation, K P Raghuvanshi, told reporters that the men have links to Nepal or Bangladesh, which point "directly or indirectly to Pakistan".
Foiled attack
The BBC's Zubair Ahmed in Mumbai says it is not clear how significant the arrests are.
The three accused are suspected to have played minor roles in the blasts, but a senior police officer told the BBC that the arrests might lead them to the brains behind the operation.
He said the attacks were the most precise ever carried out in India.
Policeman by candles lit in memory of the blast victims
Security has been stepped up since the bomb attacks
He also said that police had foiled a major attack only weeks before the explosions in Mumbai.
The three suspects are due to appear before a court in Mumbai on Friday.
Arrests in connection with previous attacks in Mumbai have not always led to successful prosecutions.
A court in Mumbai recently acquitted all the men who had been charged with carrying out bomb attacks in the city four years ago.
At the time, police had treated the arrests as a major breakthrough, our correspondent says.
The blasts took place on 11 July, when seven commuter trains were bombed in less than 15 minutes.
'Unsubstantiated comments'
Indian security officials had earlier suggested that the Mumbai bombings bore the hallmarks of Lashkar-e-Toiba, a Pakistan-based militant group fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.
Pakistan has denied any involvement in the blasts.
On Thursday evening President Pervez Musharraf gave a televised address in which he warned against unsubstantiated comments from India and hoped peace moves would continue.
"Pakistan will co-operate to identify the terrorists, if you give us proof," he said.
India postponed talks after the bombs but says it is still committed to the peace process.
BBC News | July 21, 2006
Police in India have arrested three men in connection with a series of bombings that killed more than 180 people in the city of Mumbai (Bombay) last week.
The police have detained more than 300 suspects but these are the first arrests in the case.
Two of the men were detained on Thursday in the northern state of Bihar and the third later in Mumbai.
The three belong to a banned group, the Students Islamic Movement of India (Simi), officials say.
Some Simi members were held earlier in the inquiry.
The organisation has denied any involvement in the attacks.
A senior police official involved in the investigation, K P Raghuvanshi, told reporters that the men have links to Nepal or Bangladesh, which point "directly or indirectly to Pakistan".
Foiled attack
The BBC's Zubair Ahmed in Mumbai says it is not clear how significant the arrests are.
The three accused are suspected to have played minor roles in the blasts, but a senior police officer told the BBC that the arrests might lead them to the brains behind the operation.
He said the attacks were the most precise ever carried out in India.
Policeman by candles lit in memory of the blast victims
Security has been stepped up since the bomb attacks
He also said that police had foiled a major attack only weeks before the explosions in Mumbai.
The three suspects are due to appear before a court in Mumbai on Friday.
Arrests in connection with previous attacks in Mumbai have not always led to successful prosecutions.
A court in Mumbai recently acquitted all the men who had been charged with carrying out bomb attacks in the city four years ago.
At the time, police had treated the arrests as a major breakthrough, our correspondent says.
The blasts took place on 11 July, when seven commuter trains were bombed in less than 15 minutes.
'Unsubstantiated comments'
Indian security officials had earlier suggested that the Mumbai bombings bore the hallmarks of Lashkar-e-Toiba, a Pakistan-based militant group fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.
Pakistan has denied any involvement in the blasts.
On Thursday evening President Pervez Musharraf gave a televised address in which he warned against unsubstantiated comments from India and hoped peace moves would continue.
"Pakistan will co-operate to identify the terrorists, if you give us proof," he said.
India postponed talks after the bombs but says it is still committed to the peace process.
Gainesville Sun : Israel Plans Week Of Bombing
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Israel Plans Week Of Bombing
By HELENE COOPER and STEVEN ERLANGER | The New York Times | July 19, 2006
WASHINGTON - The outlines of an American-Israeli consensus began to emerge Tuesday in which Israel would continue to bombard Lebanon for about another week to degrade the militia's capabilities, officials of the two countries said.
Then, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would go to the region and seek to establish a buffer zone in southern Lebanon and perhaps an international force to monitor Lebanon's borders to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining more rockets with which to bombard Israel.
American officials signaled that Rice was waiting at least a few more days before wading into the conflict, in part to give Israel more time to weaken Hezbollah forces.
The strategy carries risk, partly because it remains unclear just how long the rest of the world, particularly America's Arab allies, will be willing to stomach the sight of newspaper photos and television footage of besieged Lebanese civilians.
On Tuesday, the seventh day of the face-off, Israeli warplanes battered more targets in Lebanon, killing 30 people, including 11 members of the Lebanese army when bombs hit their barracks east of Beirut. Four of the dead were officers, and 30 more soldiers were wounded.
In southern Lebanon, nine members of a single family were killed and four wounded in an Israeli airstrike on their house in the village of Aitaroun, near the Israeli border.
Some 500,000 Lebanese have fled their homes to escape the violence, the United Nations estimated.
Hezbollah rockets again hit Israel's port city of Haifa and also Nahariya, a coastal town just south of the border, where one man died and several were wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis continued to spend their time in shelters, and Haifa was largely shut down. More than 130 rockets were fired, Israeli officials said.
American officials said that Washington is discussing with Arab allies and Israel how to strengthen Lebanon's borders, a key Israeli demand. Israel has been lukewarm to the idea of international troops in Lebanon, but is willing to consider such troop deployment if it includes troops of major powers and is used to prevent Hezbollah from supplementing its arsenal.
On Tuesday, Israel said it destroyed six more long-range rockets that it said were being transported by road into Lebanon from Syria.
American and Israeli officials are also contemplating a 12-mile buffer zone in southern Lebanon to keep Hezbollah away from the Israeli border. While disarming Hezbollah entirely remains Israel's goal, it is no longer demanding that as a condition of a cease-fire, officials said.
Israeli airplanes have been pounding Hezbollah targets, in particular going after the two dozen or so long-range rockets in the militant group's arsenal believed to be capable of hitting Tel Aviv.
Israel had made clear it does not want Rice to begin a peacemaking effort yet, and the Bush administration has, for the time being, gone along with an Israeli request for more latitude. President Bush and American officials have resisted joining other world leaders in calling for an immediate cease-fire, reflecting the Israeli view that reaching a truce before destroying a significant number of Hezbollah's missiles would open Israel up to the possibility of more attacks in the future.
President Bush, as he has repeatedly, said Tuesday that Israel must be allowed to defend itself. "Everybody abhors the loss of innocent life," he said, speaking at the White House before a meeting with congressional members. "On the other hand, what we recognize is that the root cause of the problem is Hezbollah."
"Some people are uncomfortable with the American position, and we're very careful how we talk about it," a senior U.S. official said Tuesday. "We are not going to be wagering with the lives of innocent people here," he said, adding that privately, Bush officials are telling the Israelis that there is a limit to how much more time the United States will be able to give Israel.
He spoke on condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic rules. Beyond the desire to give Israel time to weaken Hezbollah militarily, administration officials say Rice should not go to the region until she can actually produce results.
Israel, which is trying to destroy the military capacity of the Hezbollah militia and secure the release of two captured soldiers, said it is targeting only Hezbollah and not the Lebanese army, although attacks Monday and Tuesday killed 19 soldiers.
Again on Tuesday cities and towns in southern Lebanon and the densely packed slums at the southern edge of Beirut that are Hezbollah's stronghold bore the brunt of the barrage. While the Israelis say they have carefully targeted 1,000 sites thus far, the attacks seem to have spread almost randomly across the country.
A cement truck near Jbeil, also known as the ancient city of Byblos, for example, far up the coastline in Christian territory, was hit Tuesday. The Israeli military said it was suspected of carrying weapons.
The Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, criticized foreign leaders for not stopping the Israeli offensive. "The international community is not doing all that is can in order to stop Israel continuing its aggression against Lebanon," Siniora said in an interview in his Beirut office. "They are stopping short of exercising the necessary pressure on Israel while Israel is taking this as a green light."
As the bombs and rockets fell, diplomats and officials continued to debate the effectiveness of any new international force that could patrol the border and help Lebanon implement U.N. Security Council resolutions that call for Hezbollah to be disarmed and for the Lebanese government to extend its authority over the whole country.
A team sent by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan met in Jerusalem with senior Israeli officials, including the foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, and top aides to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Olmert arrived at the end of the meeting to explain the Israeli position, Israeli officials said, underlining his skepticism about how any new force might work.
Olmert, in a televised speech to parliament Monday night, said Israel would continue fighting until its soldiers were free, the Lebanese Army was deployed along the border, and Hezbollah was effectively disarmed in line with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559. Hezbollah has consistently rejected those terms.
In the last seven days, Israelis have carried out about 2,000 sorties of warplanes and attack helicopters and hit 650 targets, the Israeli army said.
After meeting the U.N. envoys, Livni said that Israel would insist that any settlement include provisions to ensure that Iran and Syria cannot rearm Hezbollah, apparently through some form of international monitoring at the Syrian border and the Beirut airport. Israel bombed the airport and routes from Syria, and has a sea blockade on Lebanese ports.
She said any settlement must "end the Iranian and Syrian control over Lebanese and Israeli lives" and repeated Israel's demand that its three captured soldiers - two by Hezbollah and one by Hamas and other militants in Gaza - be released "immediately and without conditions."
Annan said in Brussels that any new international security force must have a different set of instructions from the current, toothless U.N. security force still in southern Lebanon. "It is urgent that the international community acts to make a difference on the ground," Annan said.
Giora Eiland, until recently Israel's national security adviser, said an international force is not in Israel's interest if it acts only as a buffer. It can only be effective, he said, "if the other side does not want any provocation and wants to maintain quiet" and "if there's a credible address on the other side" with control over Lebanon. Israel should, he said, insist that any international force "make it possible for Lebanon to do what it has to do and not be a buffer between us and them, which would reduce the Lebanese government's responsibility."
A senior Iranian politician, Gholam Ali Hadad-Adel, the president of the Iranian parliament, told a rally in Tehran that Israelis should "flee occupied Palestine." He called Israel "this filthy tumor" that "lies in the body of the Islamic world," and he warned the United States that so long as Israel exists, "Muslims will not stop hating America."
In other attacks on Tuesday in Lebanon, a convoy of medical goods donated by the United Arab Emirates was hit in the Bekaa valley near Zahle, a mostly Christian town on one of the few open roads linking Syria and Beirut. Two trucks were destroyed and their drivers killed.
Samer Jundi, 27, said he lost a relative in a raid on village in the south. "He was an innocent man who minds his own business," Jundi said. "He never harmed anyone and was never involved in politics, and yet Israel killed him. And it seems that many more as innocent as he was will die as our government and the whole world watches passively." Meanwhile, evacuation of foreigners continued Tuesday as a ferry chartered by the French government carrying evacuees reached Cyprus. The American Embassy began airlifting its citizens by helicopter, with about 320 Americans scheduled to leave by the end of the day, and another 1,000 today. About 8,000 Americans are registered with the embassy, but there are about 25,000 Americans or dual-nationals in Lebanon. Britain sent six ships to the region.
In the interview, Siniora, the Lebanese prime minister, said that he favored a release of the two Israeli soldiers. But he coupled that call with other requirements.
Any solution to the crisis, he said, should include Israel's withdrawal from the disputed Shebaa Farms area of the border, the release of Lebanese detainees in Israeli jails, and a return to the terms of the 1949 armistice between the two countries.
He suggested the Lebanese army would move to southern Lebanon once these conditions were met. He backed the idea of a more robust international force, but only after "all the issues" were put on the table, and he stopped short of condemning Hezbollah for inviting the Israeli attacks on the rest of the country.
Meanwhile, Beirut settled into its first week of violence and conflict. Many shops, banks and stores opened for a few hours in the morning, but closed much earlier than usual. The city streets were calm, with little traffic.
In the newly rebuilt city center, where thousands of tourists and Lebanese usually gather at the end of the day to smoke a water pipe, meet for a drink before diner, or take the children for a walk, there were only private security guards and soldiers. Beirut's luxury stores, famous throughout the region, were shut.
Copyright 2006, The Gainesville Sun.
By HELENE COOPER and STEVEN ERLANGER | The New York Times | July 19, 2006
WASHINGTON - The outlines of an American-Israeli consensus began to emerge Tuesday in which Israel would continue to bombard Lebanon for about another week to degrade the militia's capabilities, officials of the two countries said.
Then, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would go to the region and seek to establish a buffer zone in southern Lebanon and perhaps an international force to monitor Lebanon's borders to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining more rockets with which to bombard Israel.
American officials signaled that Rice was waiting at least a few more days before wading into the conflict, in part to give Israel more time to weaken Hezbollah forces.
The strategy carries risk, partly because it remains unclear just how long the rest of the world, particularly America's Arab allies, will be willing to stomach the sight of newspaper photos and television footage of besieged Lebanese civilians.
On Tuesday, the seventh day of the face-off, Israeli warplanes battered more targets in Lebanon, killing 30 people, including 11 members of the Lebanese army when bombs hit their barracks east of Beirut. Four of the dead were officers, and 30 more soldiers were wounded.
In southern Lebanon, nine members of a single family were killed and four wounded in an Israeli airstrike on their house in the village of Aitaroun, near the Israeli border.
Some 500,000 Lebanese have fled their homes to escape the violence, the United Nations estimated.
Hezbollah rockets again hit Israel's port city of Haifa and also Nahariya, a coastal town just south of the border, where one man died and several were wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis continued to spend their time in shelters, and Haifa was largely shut down. More than 130 rockets were fired, Israeli officials said.
American officials said that Washington is discussing with Arab allies and Israel how to strengthen Lebanon's borders, a key Israeli demand. Israel has been lukewarm to the idea of international troops in Lebanon, but is willing to consider such troop deployment if it includes troops of major powers and is used to prevent Hezbollah from supplementing its arsenal.
On Tuesday, Israel said it destroyed six more long-range rockets that it said were being transported by road into Lebanon from Syria.
American and Israeli officials are also contemplating a 12-mile buffer zone in southern Lebanon to keep Hezbollah away from the Israeli border. While disarming Hezbollah entirely remains Israel's goal, it is no longer demanding that as a condition of a cease-fire, officials said.
Israeli airplanes have been pounding Hezbollah targets, in particular going after the two dozen or so long-range rockets in the militant group's arsenal believed to be capable of hitting Tel Aviv.
Israel had made clear it does not want Rice to begin a peacemaking effort yet, and the Bush administration has, for the time being, gone along with an Israeli request for more latitude. President Bush and American officials have resisted joining other world leaders in calling for an immediate cease-fire, reflecting the Israeli view that reaching a truce before destroying a significant number of Hezbollah's missiles would open Israel up to the possibility of more attacks in the future.
President Bush, as he has repeatedly, said Tuesday that Israel must be allowed to defend itself. "Everybody abhors the loss of innocent life," he said, speaking at the White House before a meeting with congressional members. "On the other hand, what we recognize is that the root cause of the problem is Hezbollah."
"Some people are uncomfortable with the American position, and we're very careful how we talk about it," a senior U.S. official said Tuesday. "We are not going to be wagering with the lives of innocent people here," he said, adding that privately, Bush officials are telling the Israelis that there is a limit to how much more time the United States will be able to give Israel.
He spoke on condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic rules. Beyond the desire to give Israel time to weaken Hezbollah militarily, administration officials say Rice should not go to the region until she can actually produce results.
Israel, which is trying to destroy the military capacity of the Hezbollah militia and secure the release of two captured soldiers, said it is targeting only Hezbollah and not the Lebanese army, although attacks Monday and Tuesday killed 19 soldiers.
Again on Tuesday cities and towns in southern Lebanon and the densely packed slums at the southern edge of Beirut that are Hezbollah's stronghold bore the brunt of the barrage. While the Israelis say they have carefully targeted 1,000 sites thus far, the attacks seem to have spread almost randomly across the country.
A cement truck near Jbeil, also known as the ancient city of Byblos, for example, far up the coastline in Christian territory, was hit Tuesday. The Israeli military said it was suspected of carrying weapons.
The Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, criticized foreign leaders for not stopping the Israeli offensive. "The international community is not doing all that is can in order to stop Israel continuing its aggression against Lebanon," Siniora said in an interview in his Beirut office. "They are stopping short of exercising the necessary pressure on Israel while Israel is taking this as a green light."
As the bombs and rockets fell, diplomats and officials continued to debate the effectiveness of any new international force that could patrol the border and help Lebanon implement U.N. Security Council resolutions that call for Hezbollah to be disarmed and for the Lebanese government to extend its authority over the whole country.
A team sent by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan met in Jerusalem with senior Israeli officials, including the foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, and top aides to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Olmert arrived at the end of the meeting to explain the Israeli position, Israeli officials said, underlining his skepticism about how any new force might work.
Olmert, in a televised speech to parliament Monday night, said Israel would continue fighting until its soldiers were free, the Lebanese Army was deployed along the border, and Hezbollah was effectively disarmed in line with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559. Hezbollah has consistently rejected those terms.
In the last seven days, Israelis have carried out about 2,000 sorties of warplanes and attack helicopters and hit 650 targets, the Israeli army said.
After meeting the U.N. envoys, Livni said that Israel would insist that any settlement include provisions to ensure that Iran and Syria cannot rearm Hezbollah, apparently through some form of international monitoring at the Syrian border and the Beirut airport. Israel bombed the airport and routes from Syria, and has a sea blockade on Lebanese ports.
She said any settlement must "end the Iranian and Syrian control over Lebanese and Israeli lives" and repeated Israel's demand that its three captured soldiers - two by Hezbollah and one by Hamas and other militants in Gaza - be released "immediately and without conditions."
Annan said in Brussels that any new international security force must have a different set of instructions from the current, toothless U.N. security force still in southern Lebanon. "It is urgent that the international community acts to make a difference on the ground," Annan said.
Giora Eiland, until recently Israel's national security adviser, said an international force is not in Israel's interest if it acts only as a buffer. It can only be effective, he said, "if the other side does not want any provocation and wants to maintain quiet" and "if there's a credible address on the other side" with control over Lebanon. Israel should, he said, insist that any international force "make it possible for Lebanon to do what it has to do and not be a buffer between us and them, which would reduce the Lebanese government's responsibility."
A senior Iranian politician, Gholam Ali Hadad-Adel, the president of the Iranian parliament, told a rally in Tehran that Israelis should "flee occupied Palestine." He called Israel "this filthy tumor" that "lies in the body of the Islamic world," and he warned the United States that so long as Israel exists, "Muslims will not stop hating America."
In other attacks on Tuesday in Lebanon, a convoy of medical goods donated by the United Arab Emirates was hit in the Bekaa valley near Zahle, a mostly Christian town on one of the few open roads linking Syria and Beirut. Two trucks were destroyed and their drivers killed.
Samer Jundi, 27, said he lost a relative in a raid on village in the south. "He was an innocent man who minds his own business," Jundi said. "He never harmed anyone and was never involved in politics, and yet Israel killed him. And it seems that many more as innocent as he was will die as our government and the whole world watches passively." Meanwhile, evacuation of foreigners continued Tuesday as a ferry chartered by the French government carrying evacuees reached Cyprus. The American Embassy began airlifting its citizens by helicopter, with about 320 Americans scheduled to leave by the end of the day, and another 1,000 today. About 8,000 Americans are registered with the embassy, but there are about 25,000 Americans or dual-nationals in Lebanon. Britain sent six ships to the region.
In the interview, Siniora, the Lebanese prime minister, said that he favored a release of the two Israeli soldiers. But he coupled that call with other requirements.
Any solution to the crisis, he said, should include Israel's withdrawal from the disputed Shebaa Farms area of the border, the release of Lebanese detainees in Israeli jails, and a return to the terms of the 1949 armistice between the two countries.
He suggested the Lebanese army would move to southern Lebanon once these conditions were met. He backed the idea of a more robust international force, but only after "all the issues" were put on the table, and he stopped short of condemning Hezbollah for inviting the Israeli attacks on the rest of the country.
Meanwhile, Beirut settled into its first week of violence and conflict. Many shops, banks and stores opened for a few hours in the morning, but closed much earlier than usual. The city streets were calm, with little traffic.
In the newly rebuilt city center, where thousands of tourists and Lebanese usually gather at the end of the day to smoke a water pipe, meet for a drink before diner, or take the children for a walk, there were only private security guards and soldiers. Beirut's luxury stores, famous throughout the region, were shut.
Copyright 2006, The Gainesville Sun.
IHT : Israel Adds Ground Troops To Air Assault
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Israel Adds Ground Troops To Air Assault
AP/NYT | July 19, 2006
BEIRUT -- Israeli ground troops clashed with Hezbollah guerrillas on the Lebanese side of the border Wednesday, while warplanes flattened 20 buildings and killed at least 19 people, officials said, as fighting between the two sides entered its second week.
Military officials said Israeli troops crossed the Lebanese border in search of tunnels and weapons. Hezbollah claimed to have "repelled" Israeli forces near the coastal border town of Naqoura. Casualties were reported on both sides.
Israeli bombers hit a Christian suburb on the eastern side of Lebanon's capital for the first time. The target was a truck-mounted machine that was used to drill for water but could have been mistaken for a missile launcher.
Israel stressed on Wednesday it did not plan to target Hezbollah's main sponsors, Iran and Syria, during the current fighting.
"We will leave Iran to the world community, and Syria as well," Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres told Army Radio. "It's very important to understand that we are not instilling world order."
The outlines of an American-Israeli consensus began to emerge Tuesday, in which Israel would continue to bombard Lebanon for about another week to degrade the capabilities of the Hezbollah militia, officials of the two countries said.
Then, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would go to the region and seek to establish a buffer zone in southern Lebanon and perhaps an international force to monitor Lebanon's borders to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining more rockets with which to bombard Israel.
U.S. officials signaled that Rice was waiting at least a few more days before wading into the conflict, in part to give Israel more time to weaken Hezbollah.
The strategy carries risk, partly because it remains unclear just how long the rest of the world, particularly America's Arab allies, will remain silent as the toll on Lebanese civilians rises.
The fighting has already dealt a blow to diplomatic efforts to broker a cease- fire, and sending a new international force to bolster the 2,000-member UN force in south Lebanon seemed stalled.
American officials said that Washington is discussing with its Arab allies and Israel how to strengthen Lebanon's borders, a key Israeli demand. Israel has been lukewarm to the idea of international troops in Lebanon, but is willing to consider such troop deployment if it includes troops of major powers and is used to prevent Hezbollah from supplementing its arsenal.
American and Israeli officials are also contemplating a 12-mile, or 19-kilometer, buffer zone in southern Lebanon to keep Hezbollah away from the Israeli border. While disarming Hezbollah entirely remains Israel's goal, it is no longer demanding that as a condition of a cease-fire, officials said.
The estimated 19 Lebanese fatalities from Israeli airstrikes late Tuesday and early Wednesday brought to at least 245 the number of people killed in Lebanon since the fighting began on July 12, when Hezbollah guerrillas raided an Israeli border outpost and kidnapped two soldiers.
Twenty-five Israelis also have been killed in the past eight days as Hezbollah fired rockets across the border.
The UN children's and health agencies said Wednesday they were concerned about civilian casualties and new health risks because of escalating violence in Lebanon and Israel.
"Civilian deaths include dozens of children, with many more injured," the joint statement said. "The psychological impact is serious as people, including children, have witnessed the death or injury of loved ones and destruction of their homes and communities," Unicef and the World Health Organization said.
Movement of medical supplies and ambulances to affected areas is seriously limited, the statement added.
Five people were killed when a missile struck the southern Lebanese town of Nabatiyeh, police and hospital officials said. The target was a commercial office of a firm belonging to Hezbollah, but those killed were residents.
In the village of Srifa, near Tyre in southern Lebanon, the airstrikes flattened 15 houses. The village's leader, Hussein Kamaledine, said 25 to 30 people lived in the houses, but it was not known if they were at home at the time.
"This is a real massacre," Kamaledine told Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV as fire engines extinguished the blaze and rescue workers searched for survivors.
In the southern Lebanese village of Ghaziyeh, one person was killed and two were wounded when a missile struck a nearby building that housed a Hezbollah-affiliated social institution.
In the eastern Bekaa Valley, four people were killed and three were wounded in an air raid on the village of Loussi, police said.
Hundreds of Americans, meanwhile, boarded a luxury ship at Beirut's port that was to carry them from the country, with many complaining about the slow pace of the U.S. evacuation effort.
Europeans and Lebanese with foreign passports already have fled in large numbers. Some 500,000 Lebanese have left their homes to escape the violence, the United Nations estimated.
President Jacques Chirac of France said Wednesday his country would send an aircraft to Cyprus with humanitarian aid for Lebanon and urged the creation of "humanitarian corridors" to help civilian evacuations. $@
9 Palestinians killed in Gaza
Israeli troops killed nine Palestinians in clashes in the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank on Wednesday, including four gunmen and two civilians as tanks pushed into a central Gaza refugee camp, Reuters reported.
Three militants from the governing Hamas group were killed, along with one gunman from President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction, medics and Palestinian security sources said.
In the West Bank, troops backed by armored vehicles surrounded a Palestinian security compound in the city of Nablus and killed three gunmen of the Fatah faction, medics said.
Troops detained Palestinian security men at the scene, an Israeli military source said. Israeli bulldozers then tore down a building in Nablus used by the Hamas-led Interior Ministry as well as offices used by a security service that falls under Hamas's jurisdiction.
About 100 Palestinians, over half of them militants, have been killed in the Israeli offensive.
Israel holds Hamas responsible for the capture of Gilad Shalit, 19, by three militant groups. Israel has rejected a demand to swap more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for the tank gunner.
AP/NYT | July 19, 2006
BEIRUT -- Israeli ground troops clashed with Hezbollah guerrillas on the Lebanese side of the border Wednesday, while warplanes flattened 20 buildings and killed at least 19 people, officials said, as fighting between the two sides entered its second week.
Military officials said Israeli troops crossed the Lebanese border in search of tunnels and weapons. Hezbollah claimed to have "repelled" Israeli forces near the coastal border town of Naqoura. Casualties were reported on both sides.
Israeli bombers hit a Christian suburb on the eastern side of Lebanon's capital for the first time. The target was a truck-mounted machine that was used to drill for water but could have been mistaken for a missile launcher.
Israel stressed on Wednesday it did not plan to target Hezbollah's main sponsors, Iran and Syria, during the current fighting.
"We will leave Iran to the world community, and Syria as well," Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres told Army Radio. "It's very important to understand that we are not instilling world order."
The outlines of an American-Israeli consensus began to emerge Tuesday, in which Israel would continue to bombard Lebanon for about another week to degrade the capabilities of the Hezbollah militia, officials of the two countries said.
Then, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would go to the region and seek to establish a buffer zone in southern Lebanon and perhaps an international force to monitor Lebanon's borders to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining more rockets with which to bombard Israel.
U.S. officials signaled that Rice was waiting at least a few more days before wading into the conflict, in part to give Israel more time to weaken Hezbollah.
The strategy carries risk, partly because it remains unclear just how long the rest of the world, particularly America's Arab allies, will remain silent as the toll on Lebanese civilians rises.
The fighting has already dealt a blow to diplomatic efforts to broker a cease- fire, and sending a new international force to bolster the 2,000-member UN force in south Lebanon seemed stalled.
American officials said that Washington is discussing with its Arab allies and Israel how to strengthen Lebanon's borders, a key Israeli demand. Israel has been lukewarm to the idea of international troops in Lebanon, but is willing to consider such troop deployment if it includes troops of major powers and is used to prevent Hezbollah from supplementing its arsenal.
American and Israeli officials are also contemplating a 12-mile, or 19-kilometer, buffer zone in southern Lebanon to keep Hezbollah away from the Israeli border. While disarming Hezbollah entirely remains Israel's goal, it is no longer demanding that as a condition of a cease-fire, officials said.
The estimated 19 Lebanese fatalities from Israeli airstrikes late Tuesday and early Wednesday brought to at least 245 the number of people killed in Lebanon since the fighting began on July 12, when Hezbollah guerrillas raided an Israeli border outpost and kidnapped two soldiers.
Twenty-five Israelis also have been killed in the past eight days as Hezbollah fired rockets across the border.
The UN children's and health agencies said Wednesday they were concerned about civilian casualties and new health risks because of escalating violence in Lebanon and Israel.
"Civilian deaths include dozens of children, with many more injured," the joint statement said. "The psychological impact is serious as people, including children, have witnessed the death or injury of loved ones and destruction of their homes and communities," Unicef and the World Health Organization said.
Movement of medical supplies and ambulances to affected areas is seriously limited, the statement added.
Five people were killed when a missile struck the southern Lebanese town of Nabatiyeh, police and hospital officials said. The target was a commercial office of a firm belonging to Hezbollah, but those killed were residents.
In the village of Srifa, near Tyre in southern Lebanon, the airstrikes flattened 15 houses. The village's leader, Hussein Kamaledine, said 25 to 30 people lived in the houses, but it was not known if they were at home at the time.
"This is a real massacre," Kamaledine told Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV as fire engines extinguished the blaze and rescue workers searched for survivors.
In the southern Lebanese village of Ghaziyeh, one person was killed and two were wounded when a missile struck a nearby building that housed a Hezbollah-affiliated social institution.
In the eastern Bekaa Valley, four people were killed and three were wounded in an air raid on the village of Loussi, police said.
Hundreds of Americans, meanwhile, boarded a luxury ship at Beirut's port that was to carry them from the country, with many complaining about the slow pace of the U.S. evacuation effort.
Europeans and Lebanese with foreign passports already have fled in large numbers. Some 500,000 Lebanese have left their homes to escape the violence, the United Nations estimated.
President Jacques Chirac of France said Wednesday his country would send an aircraft to Cyprus with humanitarian aid for Lebanon and urged the creation of "humanitarian corridors" to help civilian evacuations. $@
9 Palestinians killed in Gaza
Israeli troops killed nine Palestinians in clashes in the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank on Wednesday, including four gunmen and two civilians as tanks pushed into a central Gaza refugee camp, Reuters reported.
Three militants from the governing Hamas group were killed, along with one gunman from President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction, medics and Palestinian security sources said.
In the West Bank, troops backed by armored vehicles surrounded a Palestinian security compound in the city of Nablus and killed three gunmen of the Fatah faction, medics said.
Troops detained Palestinian security men at the scene, an Israeli military source said. Israeli bulldozers then tore down a building in Nablus used by the Hamas-led Interior Ministry as well as offices used by a security service that falls under Hamas's jurisdiction.
About 100 Palestinians, over half of them militants, have been killed in the Israeli offensive.
Israel holds Hamas responsible for the capture of Gilad Shalit, 19, by three militant groups. Israel has rejected a demand to swap more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for the tank gunner.
NYT : The Real Agenda
Sunday, July 16, 2006
The Real Agenda
NYT Editorial | July 16, 2006
It is only now, nearly five years after Sept. 11, that the full picture of the Bush administration’s response to the terror attacks is becoming clear. Much of it, we can see now, had far less to do with fighting Osama bin Laden than with expanding presidential power.
Over and over again, the same pattern emerges: Given a choice between following the rules or carving out some unprecedented executive power, the White House always shrugged off the legal constraints. Even when the only challenge was to get required approval from an ever-cooperative Congress, the president and his staff preferred to go it alone. While no one questions the determination of the White House to fight terrorism, the methods this administration has used to do it have been shaped by another, perverse determination: never to consult, never to ask and always to fight against any constraint on the executive branch.
One result has been a frayed democratic fabric in a country founded on a constitutional system of checks and balances. Another has been a less effective war on terror.
The Guantánamo Bay Prison
This whole sorry story has been on vivid display since the Supreme Court ruled that the Geneva Conventions and United States law both applied to the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. For one brief, shining moment, it appeared that the administration realized it had met a check that it could not simply ignore. The White House sent out signals that the president was ready to work with Congress in creating a proper procedure for trying the hundreds of men who have spent years now locked up as suspected terrorists without any hope of due process.
But by week’s end it was clear that the president’s idea of cooperation was purely cosmetic. At hearings last week, the administration made it clear that it merely wanted Congress to legalize President Bush’s illegal actions — to amend the law to negate the court’s ruling instead of creating a system of justice within the law. As for the Geneva Conventions, administration witnesses and some of their more ideologically blinkered supporters in Congress want to scrap the international consensus that no prisoner may be robbed of basic human dignity.
The hearings were a bizarre spectacle in which the top military lawyers — who had been elbowed aside when the procedures at Guantánamo were established — endorsed the idea that the prisoners were covered by the Geneva Convention protections. Meanwhile, administration officials and obedient Republican lawmakers offered a lot of silly talk about not coddling the masterminds of terror.
The divide made it clear how little this all has to do with fighting terrorism. Undoing the Geneva Conventions would further endanger the life of every member of the American military who might ever be taken captive in the future. And if the prisoners scooped up in Afghanistan and sent to Guantánamo had been properly processed first — as military lawyers wanted to do — many would never have been kept in custody, a continuing reproach to the country that is holding them. Others would actually have been able to be tried under a fair system that would give the world a less perverse vision of American justice. The recent disbanding of the C.I.A. unit charged with finding Osama bin Laden is a reminder that the American people may never see anyone brought to trial for the terrible crimes of 9/11.
The hearings were supposed to produce a hopeful vision of a newly humbled and cooperative administration working with Congress to undo the mess it had created in stashing away hundreds of people, many with limited connections to terrorism at the most, without any plan for what to do with them over the long run. Instead, we saw an administration whose political core was still intent on hunkering down. The most embarrassing moment came when Bush loyalists argued that the United States could not follow the Geneva Conventions because Common Article Three, which has governed the treatment of wartime prisoners for more than half a century, was too vague. Which part of “civilized peoples,” “judicial guarantees” or “humiliating and degrading treatment” do they find confusing?
Eavesdropping on Americans
The administration’s intent to use the war on terror to buttress presidential power was never clearer than in the case of its wiretapping program. The president had legal means of listening in on the phone calls of suspected terrorists and checking their e-mail messages. A special court was established through a 1978 law to give the executive branch warrants for just this purpose, efficiently and in secrecy. And Republicans in Congress were all but begging for a chance to change the process in any way the president requested. Instead, of course, the administration did what it wanted without asking anyone. When the program became public, the administration ignored calls for it to comply with the rules. As usual, the president’s most loyal supporters simply urged that Congress pass a law allowing him to go on doing whatever he wanted to do.
Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced on Thursday that he had obtained a concession from Mr. Bush on how to handle this problem. Once again, the early perception that the president was going to bend to the rules turned out to be premature.
The bill the president has agreed to accept would allow him to go on ignoring the eavesdropping law. It does not require the president to obtain warrants for the one domestic spying program we know about — or for any other program — from the special intelligence surveillance court. It makes that an option and sets the precedent of giving blanket approval to programs, rather than insisting on the individual warrants required by the Constitution. Once again, the president has refused to acknowledge that there are rules he is required to follow.
And while the bill would establish new rules that Mr. Bush could voluntarily follow, it strips the federal courts of the right to hear legal challenges to the president’s wiretapping authority. The Supreme Court made it clear in the Guantánamo Bay case that this sort of meddling is unconstitutional.
If Congress accepts this deal, Mr. Specter said, the president will promise to ask the surveillance court to assess the constitutionality of the domestic spying program he has acknowledged. Even if Mr. Bush had a record of keeping such bargains, that is not the right court to make the determination. In addition, Mr. Bush could appeal if the court ruled against him, but the measure provides no avenue of appeal if the surveillance court decides the spying program is constitutional.
The Cost of Executive Arrogance
The president’s constant efforts to assert his power to act without consent or consultation has warped the war on terror. The unity and sense of national purpose that followed 9/11 is gone, replaced by suspicion and divisiveness that never needed to emerge. The president had no need to go it alone — everyone wanted to go with him. Both parties in Congress were eager to show they were tough on terrorism. But the obsession with presidential prerogatives created fights where no fights needed to occur and made huge messes out of programs that could have functioned more efficiently within the rules.
Jane Mayer provided a close look at this effort to undermine the constitutional separation of powers in a chilling article in the July 3 issue of The New Yorker. She showed how it grew out of Vice President Dick Cheney’s long and deeply held conviction that the real lesson of Watergate and the later Iran-contra debacle was that the president needed more power and that Congress and the courts should get out of the way.
To a disturbing degree, the horror of 9/11 became an excuse to take up this cause behind the shield of Americans’ deep insecurity. The results have been devastating. Americans’ civil liberties have been trampled. The nation’s image as a champion of human rights has been gravely harmed. Prisoners have been abused, tortured and even killed at the prisons we know about, while other prisons operate in secret. American agents “disappear” people, some entirely innocent, and send them off to torture chambers in distant lands. Hundreds of innocent men have been jailed at Guantánamo Bay without charges or rudimentary rights. And Congress has shirked its duty to correct this out of fear of being painted as pro-terrorist at election time.
We still hope Congress will respond to the Supreme Court’s powerful and unequivocal ruling on Guantánamo Bay and also hold Mr. Bush to account for ignoring the law on wiretapping. Certainly, the president has made it clear that he is not giving an inch of ground.
Copyright 2006 by The New York Times. All rights reserved.
NYT Editorial | July 16, 2006
It is only now, nearly five years after Sept. 11, that the full picture of the Bush administration’s response to the terror attacks is becoming clear. Much of it, we can see now, had far less to do with fighting Osama bin Laden than with expanding presidential power.
Over and over again, the same pattern emerges: Given a choice between following the rules or carving out some unprecedented executive power, the White House always shrugged off the legal constraints. Even when the only challenge was to get required approval from an ever-cooperative Congress, the president and his staff preferred to go it alone. While no one questions the determination of the White House to fight terrorism, the methods this administration has used to do it have been shaped by another, perverse determination: never to consult, never to ask and always to fight against any constraint on the executive branch.
One result has been a frayed democratic fabric in a country founded on a constitutional system of checks and balances. Another has been a less effective war on terror.
The Guantánamo Bay Prison
This whole sorry story has been on vivid display since the Supreme Court ruled that the Geneva Conventions and United States law both applied to the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. For one brief, shining moment, it appeared that the administration realized it had met a check that it could not simply ignore. The White House sent out signals that the president was ready to work with Congress in creating a proper procedure for trying the hundreds of men who have spent years now locked up as suspected terrorists without any hope of due process.
But by week’s end it was clear that the president’s idea of cooperation was purely cosmetic. At hearings last week, the administration made it clear that it merely wanted Congress to legalize President Bush’s illegal actions — to amend the law to negate the court’s ruling instead of creating a system of justice within the law. As for the Geneva Conventions, administration witnesses and some of their more ideologically blinkered supporters in Congress want to scrap the international consensus that no prisoner may be robbed of basic human dignity.
The hearings were a bizarre spectacle in which the top military lawyers — who had been elbowed aside when the procedures at Guantánamo were established — endorsed the idea that the prisoners were covered by the Geneva Convention protections. Meanwhile, administration officials and obedient Republican lawmakers offered a lot of silly talk about not coddling the masterminds of terror.
The divide made it clear how little this all has to do with fighting terrorism. Undoing the Geneva Conventions would further endanger the life of every member of the American military who might ever be taken captive in the future. And if the prisoners scooped up in Afghanistan and sent to Guantánamo had been properly processed first — as military lawyers wanted to do — many would never have been kept in custody, a continuing reproach to the country that is holding them. Others would actually have been able to be tried under a fair system that would give the world a less perverse vision of American justice. The recent disbanding of the C.I.A. unit charged with finding Osama bin Laden is a reminder that the American people may never see anyone brought to trial for the terrible crimes of 9/11.
The hearings were supposed to produce a hopeful vision of a newly humbled and cooperative administration working with Congress to undo the mess it had created in stashing away hundreds of people, many with limited connections to terrorism at the most, without any plan for what to do with them over the long run. Instead, we saw an administration whose political core was still intent on hunkering down. The most embarrassing moment came when Bush loyalists argued that the United States could not follow the Geneva Conventions because Common Article Three, which has governed the treatment of wartime prisoners for more than half a century, was too vague. Which part of “civilized peoples,” “judicial guarantees” or “humiliating and degrading treatment” do they find confusing?
Eavesdropping on Americans
The administration’s intent to use the war on terror to buttress presidential power was never clearer than in the case of its wiretapping program. The president had legal means of listening in on the phone calls of suspected terrorists and checking their e-mail messages. A special court was established through a 1978 law to give the executive branch warrants for just this purpose, efficiently and in secrecy. And Republicans in Congress were all but begging for a chance to change the process in any way the president requested. Instead, of course, the administration did what it wanted without asking anyone. When the program became public, the administration ignored calls for it to comply with the rules. As usual, the president’s most loyal supporters simply urged that Congress pass a law allowing him to go on doing whatever he wanted to do.
Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced on Thursday that he had obtained a concession from Mr. Bush on how to handle this problem. Once again, the early perception that the president was going to bend to the rules turned out to be premature.
The bill the president has agreed to accept would allow him to go on ignoring the eavesdropping law. It does not require the president to obtain warrants for the one domestic spying program we know about — or for any other program — from the special intelligence surveillance court. It makes that an option and sets the precedent of giving blanket approval to programs, rather than insisting on the individual warrants required by the Constitution. Once again, the president has refused to acknowledge that there are rules he is required to follow.
And while the bill would establish new rules that Mr. Bush could voluntarily follow, it strips the federal courts of the right to hear legal challenges to the president’s wiretapping authority. The Supreme Court made it clear in the Guantánamo Bay case that this sort of meddling is unconstitutional.
If Congress accepts this deal, Mr. Specter said, the president will promise to ask the surveillance court to assess the constitutionality of the domestic spying program he has acknowledged. Even if Mr. Bush had a record of keeping such bargains, that is not the right court to make the determination. In addition, Mr. Bush could appeal if the court ruled against him, but the measure provides no avenue of appeal if the surveillance court decides the spying program is constitutional.
The Cost of Executive Arrogance
The president’s constant efforts to assert his power to act without consent or consultation has warped the war on terror. The unity and sense of national purpose that followed 9/11 is gone, replaced by suspicion and divisiveness that never needed to emerge. The president had no need to go it alone — everyone wanted to go with him. Both parties in Congress were eager to show they were tough on terrorism. But the obsession with presidential prerogatives created fights where no fights needed to occur and made huge messes out of programs that could have functioned more efficiently within the rules.
Jane Mayer provided a close look at this effort to undermine the constitutional separation of powers in a chilling article in the July 3 issue of The New Yorker. She showed how it grew out of Vice President Dick Cheney’s long and deeply held conviction that the real lesson of Watergate and the later Iran-contra debacle was that the president needed more power and that Congress and the courts should get out of the way.
To a disturbing degree, the horror of 9/11 became an excuse to take up this cause behind the shield of Americans’ deep insecurity. The results have been devastating. Americans’ civil liberties have been trampled. The nation’s image as a champion of human rights has been gravely harmed. Prisoners have been abused, tortured and even killed at the prisons we know about, while other prisons operate in secret. American agents “disappear” people, some entirely innocent, and send them off to torture chambers in distant lands. Hundreds of innocent men have been jailed at Guantánamo Bay without charges or rudimentary rights. And Congress has shirked its duty to correct this out of fear of being painted as pro-terrorist at election time.
We still hope Congress will respond to the Supreme Court’s powerful and unequivocal ruling on Guantánamo Bay and also hold Mr. Bush to account for ignoring the law on wiretapping. Certainly, the president has made it clear that he is not giving an inch of ground.
Copyright 2006 by The New York Times. All rights reserved.
Filed under
Afghanistan,
Congress,
Dick Cheney,
Iran
by Winter Patriot
on Sunday, July 16, 2006
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BBC : Mumbai blasts: Who are the suspects?
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Mumbai blasts: Who are the suspects?
By Gordon Corera | BBC News security correspondent | July 12, 2006
The initial investigation of the Indian authorities will focus on two areas - firstly a forensic examination of the scene of the explosions for any clues on the types of explosives and detonators used.
The second area will be a search for witnesses who may have seen the bombers, coupled with a broader intelligence effort to establish what information there might be about them.
The authorities have already hinted that they had some idea that an attack was in the offing, but did not have specific details.
That may mean they have a strong idea about the identity of the cell.
Pakistani intelligence
There are three broad groups of suspects. In the past, the authorities have been quick to point the finger at militant groups such as Lashkar-e Toiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), whose main cause has been Kashmiri separatism.
India says such groups have in the past been trained and supported by Pakistan.
Following an attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001, India and Pakistan nearly went to war over claims that Pakistan was supporting or not stopping the activities of these groups.
They are again likely to be high on the list of suspects, although a spokesman for LeT denied responsibility.
The group's spokesman in Pakistani-administered Kashmir said that LeT could "feel the pain of the victims" of the attacks as the people of Kashmir have been suffering "the same pain for the last 17 years at the hands of the Indian security forces".
The spokesman said that an "independent investigation should be carried out... so that the people behind the attack can be exposed".
Al-Qaeda connection?
India has so far been more cautious of pointing the finger of blame towards Pakistan. Delhi wants to gather harder evidence at a time when relations with Pakistan are on a slightly stronger footing.
It was also noticeable that the Pakistani president and prime minister were among the first to condemn the attacks.
The sophisticated nature of the bombings - and their similarity to train bombs in London and Madrid - has led to some speculation of an al-Qaeda link.
While it is true that recent statements from al-Qaeda's number two, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, have mentioned India and Hindus more prominently than in the past, there is as yet no hard evidence of a link to the Mumbai bombings.
A third possibility is some kind of association to the Indian and Mumbai underworld. A set of deadly 1993 bombings in the city - which killed about 250 people - were thought to have been planned by a Mafia don, Dawood Ibrahim.
Indians say they now believe he is based in Pakistan, and that he has developed links to both al-Qaeda and LeT. If these links have developed, it is possible that the attack could involve some form of co-operation between all three groups.
But on the other hand, such is the paucity of evidence so soon after the blasts that it could be an entirely different group altogether.
Establishing exactly who was responsible is an urgent task, particularly because of the fear of more attacks, but it will also be a sensitive task in which public pressure for answers will grow.
By Gordon Corera | BBC News security correspondent | July 12, 2006
The initial investigation of the Indian authorities will focus on two areas - firstly a forensic examination of the scene of the explosions for any clues on the types of explosives and detonators used.
The second area will be a search for witnesses who may have seen the bombers, coupled with a broader intelligence effort to establish what information there might be about them.
The authorities have already hinted that they had some idea that an attack was in the offing, but did not have specific details.
That may mean they have a strong idea about the identity of the cell.
Pakistani intelligence
There are three broad groups of suspects. In the past, the authorities have been quick to point the finger at militant groups such as Lashkar-e Toiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), whose main cause has been Kashmiri separatism.
India says such groups have in the past been trained and supported by Pakistan.
Following an attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001, India and Pakistan nearly went to war over claims that Pakistan was supporting or not stopping the activities of these groups.
They are again likely to be high on the list of suspects, although a spokesman for LeT denied responsibility.
The group's spokesman in Pakistani-administered Kashmir said that LeT could "feel the pain of the victims" of the attacks as the people of Kashmir have been suffering "the same pain for the last 17 years at the hands of the Indian security forces".
The spokesman said that an "independent investigation should be carried out... so that the people behind the attack can be exposed".
Al-Qaeda connection?
India has so far been more cautious of pointing the finger of blame towards Pakistan. Delhi wants to gather harder evidence at a time when relations with Pakistan are on a slightly stronger footing.
It was also noticeable that the Pakistani president and prime minister were among the first to condemn the attacks.
The sophisticated nature of the bombings - and their similarity to train bombs in London and Madrid - has led to some speculation of an al-Qaeda link.
While it is true that recent statements from al-Qaeda's number two, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, have mentioned India and Hindus more prominently than in the past, there is as yet no hard evidence of a link to the Mumbai bombings.
A third possibility is some kind of association to the Indian and Mumbai underworld. A set of deadly 1993 bombings in the city - which killed about 250 people - were thought to have been planned by a Mafia don, Dawood Ibrahim.
Indians say they now believe he is based in Pakistan, and that he has developed links to both al-Qaeda and LeT. If these links have developed, it is possible that the attack could involve some form of co-operation between all three groups.
But on the other hand, such is the paucity of evidence so soon after the blasts that it could be an entirely different group altogether.
Establishing exactly who was responsible is an urgent task, particularly because of the fear of more attacks, but it will also be a sensitive task in which public pressure for answers will grow.
Filed under
Ayman al Zawahri,
Pakistan
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on Wednesday, July 12, 2006
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BBC : Experts puzzle over Mumbai blasts
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Experts puzzle over Mumbai blasts
By Sanjoy Majumder | BBC News, Mumbai | July 12, 2006
A day after a seven blasts rocked India's commercial capital, Mumbai, the focus is turning swiftly to the investigation.
The wreckage from the blast sites has been carted to a railway yard in the far north of the city where forensic experts and special branch police are sifting through it looking for any leads.
And they are keeping their cards very closely to their chest.
Senior police officials and government ministers are broadly describing it as a terrorist attack, but saying it is too early to point a finger at any particular group.
Privately, many of them say that there are very few groups in the region who have the resources and skills to carry out what were highly coordinated attacks involving the use of high-grade explosives.
"The list of groups who could have carried out this attack is very small," says Ajai Sahni of the Indian Institute of Conflict Management.
Militant links?
Mumbai is no stranger to violence.
In August 2003, more than 55 people died in twin bomb blasts in the city's financial district.
First class train carriage in Mumbai, the day after the blasts
People were back on the railways on Wednesday, despite the blasts
And in 1993, some 250 people died and nearly 1,000 were injured in a series of bomb explosions.
Both attacks were said to have carried out by Islamic militants, allegedly at the behest of Mumbai's criminal underworld.
Already fingers are being pointed at one of the major militant groups operating in Indian-administered Kashmir, the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Lashkar is one of the deadliest groups in the region, believed to have close ties with al-Qaeda and banned in both India and Pakistan.
The group has condemned the Mumbai bombings.
On Tuesday, the summer capital of Indian-administered Kashmir witnessed a series of grenade attacks carried out by suspected separatists.
map
It is unlikely that the two are related, although India's security agencies will certainly look for any links.
But perhaps the closest related event took place last year, when the Indian capital Delhi was also rocked by a series of blasts.
As was the case in Mumbai, ordinary Indians were targeted in a series of blasts in congested markets and shopping areas, where the impact was greatest.
Widest possible impact
Mumbai is India 's commercial capital and its rail network is often described as the city's lifeline.
Many here will invariable draw comparisons with attacks elsewhere - including the Madrid and London bombings.
Two major lines cut through the city, running north to south, bringing in commuters from distant suburbs.
An attack on the rail network does not merely affect a large number of people - it is also designed to bring the city to a halt.
Tuesday's blasts took place on the city's Western Line, which connects the city centre with some of the more affluent suburbs.
The victims cut across the city's ethnic, religious and class lines - affecting both blue and white-collar workers.
It was clearly meant have the widest possible impact.
The city is India 's financial capital and home to some of its richest business leaders - any attack on it is often seen as a direct assault on the country's economy.
Many here will invariable draw comparisons with attacks elsewhere - including the Madrid and London bombings.
While it is likely to be some time before the investigators announce any specific leads, it is possible that they will examine if groups operating in India are drawing inspiration from others around the globe.
And that is something that could well concern the country's security and intelligence community.
By Sanjoy Majumder | BBC News, Mumbai | July 12, 2006
A day after a seven blasts rocked India's commercial capital, Mumbai, the focus is turning swiftly to the investigation.
The wreckage from the blast sites has been carted to a railway yard in the far north of the city where forensic experts and special branch police are sifting through it looking for any leads.
And they are keeping their cards very closely to their chest.
Senior police officials and government ministers are broadly describing it as a terrorist attack, but saying it is too early to point a finger at any particular group.
Privately, many of them say that there are very few groups in the region who have the resources and skills to carry out what were highly coordinated attacks involving the use of high-grade explosives.
"The list of groups who could have carried out this attack is very small," says Ajai Sahni of the Indian Institute of Conflict Management.
Militant links?
Mumbai is no stranger to violence.
In August 2003, more than 55 people died in twin bomb blasts in the city's financial district.
First class train carriage in Mumbai, the day after the blasts
People were back on the railways on Wednesday, despite the blasts
And in 1993, some 250 people died and nearly 1,000 were injured in a series of bomb explosions.
Both attacks were said to have carried out by Islamic militants, allegedly at the behest of Mumbai's criminal underworld.
Already fingers are being pointed at one of the major militant groups operating in Indian-administered Kashmir, the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Lashkar is one of the deadliest groups in the region, believed to have close ties with al-Qaeda and banned in both India and Pakistan.
The group has condemned the Mumbai bombings.
On Tuesday, the summer capital of Indian-administered Kashmir witnessed a series of grenade attacks carried out by suspected separatists.
map
It is unlikely that the two are related, although India's security agencies will certainly look for any links.
But perhaps the closest related event took place last year, when the Indian capital Delhi was also rocked by a series of blasts.
As was the case in Mumbai, ordinary Indians were targeted in a series of blasts in congested markets and shopping areas, where the impact was greatest.
Widest possible impact
Mumbai is India 's commercial capital and its rail network is often described as the city's lifeline.
Many here will invariable draw comparisons with attacks elsewhere - including the Madrid and London bombings.
Two major lines cut through the city, running north to south, bringing in commuters from distant suburbs.
An attack on the rail network does not merely affect a large number of people - it is also designed to bring the city to a halt.
Tuesday's blasts took place on the city's Western Line, which connects the city centre with some of the more affluent suburbs.
The victims cut across the city's ethnic, religious and class lines - affecting both blue and white-collar workers.
It was clearly meant have the widest possible impact.
The city is India 's financial capital and home to some of its richest business leaders - any attack on it is often seen as a direct assault on the country's economy.
Many here will invariable draw comparisons with attacks elsewhere - including the Madrid and London bombings.
While it is likely to be some time before the investigators announce any specific leads, it is possible that they will examine if groups operating in India are drawing inspiration from others around the globe.
And that is something that could well concern the country's security and intelligence community.
BBC : Experts puzzle over Mumbai blasts
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Experts puzzle over Mumbai blasts
By Sanjoy Majumder | BBC News, Mumbai | July 12, 2006
A day after a seven blasts rocked India's commercial capital, Mumbai, the focus is turning swiftly to the investigation.
The wreckage from the blast sites has been carted to a railway yard in the far north of the city where forensic experts and special branch police are sifting through it looking for any leads.
And they are keeping their cards very closely to their chest.
Senior police officials and government ministers are broadly describing it as a terrorist attack, but saying it is too early to point a finger at any particular group.
Privately, many of them say that there are very few groups in the region who have the resources and skills to carry out what were highly coordinated attacks involving the use of high-grade explosives.
"The list of groups who could have carried out this attack is very small," says Ajai Sahni of the Indian Institute of Conflict Management.
Militant links?
Mumbai is no stranger to violence.
In August 2003, more than 55 people died in twin bomb blasts in the city's financial district.
And in 1993, some 250 people died and nearly 1,000 were injured in a series of bomb explosions.
Both attacks were said to have carried out by Islamic militants, allegedly at the behest of Mumbai's criminal underworld.
Already fingers are being pointed at one of the major militant groups operating in Indian-administered Kashmir, the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Lashkar is one of the deadliest groups in the region, believed to have close ties with al-Qaeda and banned in both India and Pakistan.
The group has condemned the Mumbai bombings.
On Tuesday, the summer capital of Indian-administered Kashmir witnessed a series of grenade attacks carried out by suspected separatists.
It is unlikely that the two are related, although India's security agencies will certainly look for any links.
But perhaps the closest related event took place last year, when the Indian capital Delhi was also rocked by a series of blasts.
As was the case in Mumbai, ordinary Indians were targeted in a series of blasts in congested markets and shopping areas, where the impact was greatest.
Widest possible impact
Mumbai is India 's commercial capital and its rail network is often described as the city's lifeline.
Two major lines cut through the city, running north to south, bringing in commuters from distant suburbs.
An attack on the rail network does not merely affect a large number of people - it is also designed to bring the city to a halt.
Tuesday's blasts took place on the city's Western Line, which connects the city centre with some of the more affluent suburbs.
The victims cut across the city's ethnic, religious and class lines - affecting both blue and white-collar workers.
It was clearly meant have the widest possible impact.
The city is India 's financial capital and home to some of its richest business leaders - any attack on it is often seen as a direct assault on the country's economy.
Many here will invariable draw comparisons with attacks elsewhere - including the Madrid and London bombings.
While it is likely to be some time before the investigators announce any specific leads, it is possible that they will examine if groups operating in India are drawing inspiration from others around the globe.
And that is something that could well concern the country's security and intelligence community.
By Sanjoy Majumder | BBC News, Mumbai | July 12, 2006
A day after a seven blasts rocked India's commercial capital, Mumbai, the focus is turning swiftly to the investigation.
The wreckage from the blast sites has been carted to a railway yard in the far north of the city where forensic experts and special branch police are sifting through it looking for any leads.
And they are keeping their cards very closely to their chest.
Senior police officials and government ministers are broadly describing it as a terrorist attack, but saying it is too early to point a finger at any particular group.
Privately, many of them say that there are very few groups in the region who have the resources and skills to carry out what were highly coordinated attacks involving the use of high-grade explosives.
"The list of groups who could have carried out this attack is very small," says Ajai Sahni of the Indian Institute of Conflict Management.
Militant links?
Mumbai is no stranger to violence.
In August 2003, more than 55 people died in twin bomb blasts in the city's financial district.
And in 1993, some 250 people died and nearly 1,000 were injured in a series of bomb explosions.
Both attacks were said to have carried out by Islamic militants, allegedly at the behest of Mumbai's criminal underworld.
Already fingers are being pointed at one of the major militant groups operating in Indian-administered Kashmir, the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Lashkar is one of the deadliest groups in the region, believed to have close ties with al-Qaeda and banned in both India and Pakistan.
The group has condemned the Mumbai bombings.
On Tuesday, the summer capital of Indian-administered Kashmir witnessed a series of grenade attacks carried out by suspected separatists.
It is unlikely that the two are related, although India's security agencies will certainly look for any links.
But perhaps the closest related event took place last year, when the Indian capital Delhi was also rocked by a series of blasts.
As was the case in Mumbai, ordinary Indians were targeted in a series of blasts in congested markets and shopping areas, where the impact was greatest.
Widest possible impact
Mumbai is India 's commercial capital and its rail network is often described as the city's lifeline.
Two major lines cut through the city, running north to south, bringing in commuters from distant suburbs.
An attack on the rail network does not merely affect a large number of people - it is also designed to bring the city to a halt.
Tuesday's blasts took place on the city's Western Line, which connects the city centre with some of the more affluent suburbs.
The victims cut across the city's ethnic, religious and class lines - affecting both blue and white-collar workers.
It was clearly meant have the widest possible impact.
The city is India 's financial capital and home to some of its richest business leaders - any attack on it is often seen as a direct assault on the country's economy.
Many here will invariable draw comparisons with attacks elsewhere - including the Madrid and London bombings.
While it is likely to be some time before the investigators announce any specific leads, it is possible that they will examine if groups operating in India are drawing inspiration from others around the globe.
And that is something that could well concern the country's security and intelligence community.
BBC : Britons wait on Mumbai blast news
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Britons wait on Mumbai blast news
BBC News | July 11, 2006
Many Britons are facing an anxious wait for news of friends and relatives following a series of bombings in the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay).
Telecommunications have been affected by seven blasts on the train network which killed at least 160 people.
The Foreign Office said there were no reports of UK casualties, but it was considering whether to set up a helpline for worried people in the UK.
The Hindu Forum of Britain said it was also pondering the best way to help.
It was discussing options with the Indian High Commission in London, it said.
The forum set up a helpline following the Asian tsunami, when it received thousands of calls.
'Orange flames'
Readers of the BBC News website have reported difficulties in contacting relatives in the city as telephone lines became jammed.
Sanjay from Bristol said his family had sent a text message to him saying landlines were malfunctioning.
Nimesh, from Leicester, is waiting for news of his cousin.
He said: "All communications are down in India. We have been trying to communicate ever since the news broke out."
Harpreet, from Birmingham, had better luck, getting through to a friend.
"Her husband is traumatised from the blasts. He was on the same train when the first-class compartment exploded. He saw an orange flame and then smoke.
"People were jumping out of the running train. When he got off, he saw bodies on the tracks.
"She told me that her husband is too shocked to even believe that he saw it with his own eyes," Harpreet said.
'Stand united'
Prime Minister Tony Blair condemned what he called "brutal and shameful attacks", saying there could "never be any justification for terrorism".
"Our thoughts are with the victims and their families.
"We stand united with India as the world's largest democracy, through our shared values and our shared determination to defeat terrorism in all its forms."
A Foreign Office spokeswoman said its staff were meeting to decide whether to send a rapid reaction team to the city.
She said staff in India were monitoring the situation.
She said a helpline would be set up if there were a lot of calls to the Foreign Office's main switchboard.
Hindu Forum spokesman Ramesh Kallidai called for western governments to rally behind India.
"The international communities need to take these blasts as seriously as the London blasts last year," he said.
BBC News | July 11, 2006
Many Britons are facing an anxious wait for news of friends and relatives following a series of bombings in the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay).
Telecommunications have been affected by seven blasts on the train network which killed at least 160 people.
The Foreign Office said there were no reports of UK casualties, but it was considering whether to set up a helpline for worried people in the UK.
The Hindu Forum of Britain said it was also pondering the best way to help.
It was discussing options with the Indian High Commission in London, it said.
The forum set up a helpline following the Asian tsunami, when it received thousands of calls.
'Orange flames'
Readers of the BBC News website have reported difficulties in contacting relatives in the city as telephone lines became jammed.
Sanjay from Bristol said his family had sent a text message to him saying landlines were malfunctioning.
Nimesh, from Leicester, is waiting for news of his cousin.
He said: "All communications are down in India. We have been trying to communicate ever since the news broke out."
Harpreet, from Birmingham, had better luck, getting through to a friend.
"Her husband is traumatised from the blasts. He was on the same train when the first-class compartment exploded. He saw an orange flame and then smoke.
"People were jumping out of the running train. When he got off, he saw bodies on the tracks.
"She told me that her husband is too shocked to even believe that he saw it with his own eyes," Harpreet said.
'Stand united'
Prime Minister Tony Blair condemned what he called "brutal and shameful attacks", saying there could "never be any justification for terrorism".
"Our thoughts are with the victims and their families.
"We stand united with India as the world's largest democracy, through our shared values and our shared determination to defeat terrorism in all its forms."
A Foreign Office spokeswoman said its staff were meeting to decide whether to send a rapid reaction team to the city.
She said staff in India were monitoring the situation.
She said a helpline would be set up if there were a lot of calls to the Foreign Office's main switchboard.
Hindu Forum spokesman Ramesh Kallidai called for western governments to rally behind India.
"The international communities need to take these blasts as seriously as the London blasts last year," he said.
WP : Plot to Attack N.Y. Foiled -- Transit Tunnels to N.J. Called Targets
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Plot to Attack N.Y. Foiled -- Transit Tunnels to N.J. Called Targets
By Spencer S. Hsu and Robin Wright | Washington Post Staff Writers | July 8, 2006
A terrorist plot to attack transit tunnels under New York's Hudson River was broken up in its early planning stages, U.S. authorities said yesterday, with three suspects arrested overseas, including a Lebanese man the FBI said was an al-Qaeda follower.
FBI assistant director for New York Mark J. Mershon said investigators had disrupted the plot before the suspects could come to the United States and begin to gather intelligence and explosives for the attack. He said there was no threat now to the PATH commuter lines, which carry tens of thousands of people between New York and New Jersey each day.
The FBI uncovered the alleged plot last summer and intercepted e-mails and chat-room postings on Web sites used to recruit Islamic terrorists. U.S. authorities turned in April to Lebanese officials for help in tracking one of the suspects, Assem Hammoud. The 31-year-old man, who the FBI said was the group's leader, was arrested in Beirut on April 27 and has confessed, officials said.
"This is a plot that would have involved martyrdom, explosives and certain of the tubes that connect New Jersey with Lower Manhattan," Mershon said. He called the threat "the real deal."
Hammoud was arrested before leaving for four months of training in Pakistan, and Lebanese investigators discovered details of a terrorist "project" on his computer that included a map "with a lot of details about New York," Lebanon's acting Interior Minister Ahmed Fatfat said in a telephone interview.
But authorities said there was no evidence that the plotters had taken any actions, such as buying explosives or sending money. They cast doubt on the feasibility of initial reports, which first appeared in the New York Daily News, that terrorists sought to flood Lower Manhattan and the Financial District by bombing tunnels.
There were conflicting assessments among U.S. counterterrorism officials about the significance of the alleged plot.
Two U.S. counterterrorism officials, speaking on the condition that their names and agencies not be identified because the FBI is the government's lead agency, discounted the ability of the conspirators to carry out an attack.
One said the alleged plot was "not as far along" as described and was "more aspirational in nature." The other described the threat as "jihadi bravado," adding "somebody talks about tunnels, it lights people up," but that there was little activity to back up the talk.
Speaking to reporters, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said, "It was never a concern that this would actually be executed. We were . . . all over this."
Authorities provided few details on two of the suspects who were arrested, declining to say where they had been apprehended. An FBI official said one was Canadian but was not being held in Canada. Mershon said officials had not planned to announce the arrests yesterday and criticized the leak to the media, saying it upset cooperation between the United States and six foreign governments assisting in the investigation.
Authorities said Hammoud, who also used the name Amir Andalousli, told investigators that he had planned the attacks for October or November and had sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden.
His family insisted he had no connection to al-Qaeda. His mother, Nabila Qotob, told the Associated Press in Beirut that Hammoud taught economics at a local university. "His morale is high because he is confident he is innocent," she told the AP.
Fatfat said Hammoud appeared to reaching out to al-Qaeda and did not appear to have been assigned a specific mission by the group. "It seems to us they are working as an independent group," the Lebanese official said. "It seems it was his idea. He contacted many others by Internet."
Fatfat said Hammoud, a Sunni Muslim, lived in Ain al-Hilweh, Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp. Al-Qaeda members are reported to be active in the camp, according to the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin.
The alleged plotters appear to reflect the ad hoc, self-organizing nature of many alleged terrorist groups. Connecting suspects directly to known terrorist organizers is often difficult, and many recent arrests have been of people who were allegedly at the beginning of their planning. Sorting bravado from real treachery can be difficult, according to terrorism experts.
Last month, the FBI arrested seven Miami men and charged them with terrorism. They had allegedly planned to attack the Sears Tower in Chicago. But the men had no contact with al-Qaeda, other than an FBI informant who was posing as a representative of the terrorist organization. And the group had neither money nor equipment before its members were arrested.
Like the plot announced yesterday, the Miami group's plans were described by investigators as "aspirational."
But U.S. authorities say that even if plots seem improbable, it is essential for arrests to be made as early as possible to prevent any real threat.
Speaking about yesterday's announcement, the FBI's Mershon said, "They were about to go to a phase where they would attempt to surveil targets, establish a regimen of attack and acquire the resources necessary to effectuate the attacks. And at that point, I think it's entirely appropriate to take it down."
The Hudson River tunnel threat appeared to combine several themes that have emerged as sources of anxiety for U.S. authorities over the past 18 months.
They include terrorists using the Internet to accomplish tasks that used to require travel and in-person meetings, such as casing targets and recruiting members. The alleged plots also brought a renewed focus on the vulnerability of rail and transit systems, which have gotten less federal aid for security than other transportation modes, such as commercial aviation.
Those financial concerns are often cited by local officials in New York and Washington, who say that federal authorities are not directing enough money their way. Yesterday, New York political leaders used the announcement of the alleged plot to renew their call for more funding.
Yesterday's report came one year after the London train and bus bombings that killed 52 people. In recent weeks, the New York Police Department had deployed additional personnel in Lower Manhattan. In Washington, Metro transit police said they were alerted to the threat along with national transit officials, and increased tunnel inspections over the past year.
Staff writers Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus in Washington and Michelle Garc?a in New York, and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
By Spencer S. Hsu and Robin Wright | Washington Post Staff Writers | July 8, 2006
A terrorist plot to attack transit tunnels under New York's Hudson River was broken up in its early planning stages, U.S. authorities said yesterday, with three suspects arrested overseas, including a Lebanese man the FBI said was an al-Qaeda follower.
FBI assistant director for New York Mark J. Mershon said investigators had disrupted the plot before the suspects could come to the United States and begin to gather intelligence and explosives for the attack. He said there was no threat now to the PATH commuter lines, which carry tens of thousands of people between New York and New Jersey each day.
The FBI uncovered the alleged plot last summer and intercepted e-mails and chat-room postings on Web sites used to recruit Islamic terrorists. U.S. authorities turned in April to Lebanese officials for help in tracking one of the suspects, Assem Hammoud. The 31-year-old man, who the FBI said was the group's leader, was arrested in Beirut on April 27 and has confessed, officials said.
"This is a plot that would have involved martyrdom, explosives and certain of the tubes that connect New Jersey with Lower Manhattan," Mershon said. He called the threat "the real deal."
Hammoud was arrested before leaving for four months of training in Pakistan, and Lebanese investigators discovered details of a terrorist "project" on his computer that included a map "with a lot of details about New York," Lebanon's acting Interior Minister Ahmed Fatfat said in a telephone interview.
But authorities said there was no evidence that the plotters had taken any actions, such as buying explosives or sending money. They cast doubt on the feasibility of initial reports, which first appeared in the New York Daily News, that terrorists sought to flood Lower Manhattan and the Financial District by bombing tunnels.
There were conflicting assessments among U.S. counterterrorism officials about the significance of the alleged plot.
Two U.S. counterterrorism officials, speaking on the condition that their names and agencies not be identified because the FBI is the government's lead agency, discounted the ability of the conspirators to carry out an attack.
One said the alleged plot was "not as far along" as described and was "more aspirational in nature." The other described the threat as "jihadi bravado," adding "somebody talks about tunnels, it lights people up," but that there was little activity to back up the talk.
Speaking to reporters, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said, "It was never a concern that this would actually be executed. We were . . . all over this."
Authorities provided few details on two of the suspects who were arrested, declining to say where they had been apprehended. An FBI official said one was Canadian but was not being held in Canada. Mershon said officials had not planned to announce the arrests yesterday and criticized the leak to the media, saying it upset cooperation between the United States and six foreign governments assisting in the investigation.
Authorities said Hammoud, who also used the name Amir Andalousli, told investigators that he had planned the attacks for October or November and had sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden.
His family insisted he had no connection to al-Qaeda. His mother, Nabila Qotob, told the Associated Press in Beirut that Hammoud taught economics at a local university. "His morale is high because he is confident he is innocent," she told the AP.
Fatfat said Hammoud appeared to reaching out to al-Qaeda and did not appear to have been assigned a specific mission by the group. "It seems to us they are working as an independent group," the Lebanese official said. "It seems it was his idea. He contacted many others by Internet."
Fatfat said Hammoud, a Sunni Muslim, lived in Ain al-Hilweh, Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp. Al-Qaeda members are reported to be active in the camp, according to the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin.
The alleged plotters appear to reflect the ad hoc, self-organizing nature of many alleged terrorist groups. Connecting suspects directly to known terrorist organizers is often difficult, and many recent arrests have been of people who were allegedly at the beginning of their planning. Sorting bravado from real treachery can be difficult, according to terrorism experts.
Last month, the FBI arrested seven Miami men and charged them with terrorism. They had allegedly planned to attack the Sears Tower in Chicago. But the men had no contact with al-Qaeda, other than an FBI informant who was posing as a representative of the terrorist organization. And the group had neither money nor equipment before its members were arrested.
Like the plot announced yesterday, the Miami group's plans were described by investigators as "aspirational."
But U.S. authorities say that even if plots seem improbable, it is essential for arrests to be made as early as possible to prevent any real threat.
Speaking about yesterday's announcement, the FBI's Mershon said, "They were about to go to a phase where they would attempt to surveil targets, establish a regimen of attack and acquire the resources necessary to effectuate the attacks. And at that point, I think it's entirely appropriate to take it down."
The Hudson River tunnel threat appeared to combine several themes that have emerged as sources of anxiety for U.S. authorities over the past 18 months.
They include terrorists using the Internet to accomplish tasks that used to require travel and in-person meetings, such as casing targets and recruiting members. The alleged plots also brought a renewed focus on the vulnerability of rail and transit systems, which have gotten less federal aid for security than other transportation modes, such as commercial aviation.
Those financial concerns are often cited by local officials in New York and Washington, who say that federal authorities are not directing enough money their way. Yesterday, New York political leaders used the announcement of the alleged plot to renew their call for more funding.
Yesterday's report came one year after the London train and bus bombings that killed 52 people. In recent weeks, the New York Police Department had deployed additional personnel in Lower Manhattan. In Washington, Metro transit police said they were alerted to the threat along with national transit officials, and increased tunnel inspections over the past year.
Staff writers Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus in Washington and Michelle Garc?a in New York, and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
Filed under
Michael Chertoff,
Pakistan,
refugees
by Winter Patriot
on Saturday, July 08, 2006
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BBC : Were bombers linked to al-Qaeda?
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Were bombers linked to al-Qaeda?
By Gordon Corera | BBC security correspondent | July 6, 2006
The video of London bomber Shehzad Tanweer shown on al-Jazeera TV on the eve of the attack's first anniversary provides more evidence linking the bombers to al-Qaeda.
But questions still remain, and the answers to many of those questions lie in Pakistan.
In the wake of last July's bombings, it did not take long for Pakistan to become almost as much a focus of attention as the Yorkshire base of the bombers.
Were the men really home-grown terrorists or were they directed by al-Qaeda? What was the significance of their time in the country where much of the remaining al-Qaeda leadership is thought to operate?
Officials have been cautious in confirming that a direct link exists between the men and those around Osama Bin Laden.
"It is not easy to find out what happened... such information as we do have does suggest there is probably a link to al-Qaeda," Peter Clarke, head of anti-terrorism at the Metropolitan Police, told the BBC earlier in the week.
What evidence is there linking the bombers to al-Qaeda in Pakistan?
Suspicion
We know, from official reports, that two of the bombers - Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammad Sidique Khan travelled together to Pakistan between November 2004 and February 2005.
No one knows for sure what they did out there but the suspicion will be that this is when both men made their videotaped testimonies.
Khan also travelled to Pakistan on at least one earlier occasion and may have been to Afghanistan in the late 1990s or soon after.
British intelligence agencies believe some form of operational training is likely to have taken place while Khan and Tanweer were in Pakistan together and that it is likely they did have contact with al-Qaeda figures.
Pakistani intelligence sources have suggested the men may have met with al-Qaeda's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in Pakistan's tribal areas sometime in January 2005. British officials say they have no evidence confirming the meeting but they don't discount the possibility that it took place.
Whoever the bombers met, straight after their return, Khan and Tanweer began putting in place the key elements of their plan. They both left their jobs, rented a place in which to build the bombs and began purchasing material.
And in the three months leading up to the bombing, the men were in contact with an individual or individuals in Pakistan who may have been giving them advice and direction.
It is not known who it was or the exact nature of the contacts but the methods used, designed to make it difficult to identify the individual, makes the contacts look suspicious.
Mastermind
When I met some of Pakistan's top counter-terrorist officials during a visit earlier in the year, they declined to speak on the record.
The notion that it was Pakistan rather than the UK that was responsible for the bombers' radicalisation raises particular ire
But they did say they had been given 299 telephone numbers in Pakistan linked directly or indirectly to the bombing - but had not found a mastermind.
They argued that al-Qaeda's leadership did not have the capability to plan or direct operations because it was under pressure.
But in recent months Western intelligence agencies have begun shifting away from the notion that al-Qaeda has largely become an ideology rather than a structured operation, to once again believing that there remains some capability for direct operational planning within al-Qaeda's leadership.
There are sensitivities in Pakistan over any links to 7 July. Pakistani officials strongly reject the notion that they are not co-operating fully in fighting terrorism and point to the deaths of soldiers fighting in the wild border region of Waziristan.
And the notion that it was Pakistan rather than the UK that was responsible for the bombers' radicalisation raises particular ire.
"If an individual commits an act who was bred and brought up and educated not in Pakistan but elsewhere and since he visited Pakistan for a few days or weeks (it) does not mean that it is Pakistan that is responsible in his conversion as (a) terrorist," Major General Shaukat Sultan, Pakistan's military spokesman explained.
Another problem is the growing complexity of al-Qaeda.
Tracking difficult
"There is very much an integration between the Pakistani jihadi community and al-Qaeda's leadership and I think this is the galaxy that spawned the 7 July bombings," explains Alexis Debat, a counter-terrorism expert.
"But it's very hard for investigators to find out where the Pakistani jihadi community stops and al-Qaeda starts. And it's much more difficult for the Pakistani government to go after the Pakistani jihadis."
The coincidence of al-Qaeda basing itself in Pakistan, increasingly overlapping itself with Pakistani jihadist groups and the high transit of people from Britain's Pakistani community back to the country makes investigating links and travel particularly difficult.
There were 400,000 visits by UK residents to Pakistan in 2004 - and the average length was 41 days.
There is considerable intelligence liaison between Pakistan and countries such as the US and UK. But it is always on Pakistan's terms.
According to Pakistani officials, when someone is picked up, Pakistani interrogators will talk to them first and begin by asking them about any threat within Pakistan.
If they later divulge any information about threats to another country, officials from that country are told and may be invited to become "actively involved" in the investigation.
This may involve watching an interrogation take place through video monitors.
If the Pakistani officials decide to allow direct interrogations to take place by a foreign intelligence service then this will be done jointly, with Pakistani officials present.
This might involve officers from the CIA or FBI in the US or MI6 or MI5 in the UK (MI5 is the domestic security service but tends to push to take the lead in foreign investigations where there is a possible threat to UK security).
A year on, the exact role of the bombers' travels to Pakistan in the run-up to the attack remains unclear but the evidence pointing to a major role for al-Qaeda is mounting.
By Gordon Corera | BBC security correspondent | July 6, 2006
The video of London bomber Shehzad Tanweer shown on al-Jazeera TV on the eve of the attack's first anniversary provides more evidence linking the bombers to al-Qaeda.
But questions still remain, and the answers to many of those questions lie in Pakistan.
In the wake of last July's bombings, it did not take long for Pakistan to become almost as much a focus of attention as the Yorkshire base of the bombers.
Were the men really home-grown terrorists or were they directed by al-Qaeda? What was the significance of their time in the country where much of the remaining al-Qaeda leadership is thought to operate?
Officials have been cautious in confirming that a direct link exists between the men and those around Osama Bin Laden.
"It is not easy to find out what happened... such information as we do have does suggest there is probably a link to al-Qaeda," Peter Clarke, head of anti-terrorism at the Metropolitan Police, told the BBC earlier in the week.
What evidence is there linking the bombers to al-Qaeda in Pakistan?
Suspicion
We know, from official reports, that two of the bombers - Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammad Sidique Khan travelled together to Pakistan between November 2004 and February 2005.
No one knows for sure what they did out there but the suspicion will be that this is when both men made their videotaped testimonies.
Khan also travelled to Pakistan on at least one earlier occasion and may have been to Afghanistan in the late 1990s or soon after.
British intelligence agencies believe some form of operational training is likely to have taken place while Khan and Tanweer were in Pakistan together and that it is likely they did have contact with al-Qaeda figures.
Pakistani intelligence sources have suggested the men may have met with al-Qaeda's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in Pakistan's tribal areas sometime in January 2005. British officials say they have no evidence confirming the meeting but they don't discount the possibility that it took place.
Whoever the bombers met, straight after their return, Khan and Tanweer began putting in place the key elements of their plan. They both left their jobs, rented a place in which to build the bombs and began purchasing material.
And in the three months leading up to the bombing, the men were in contact with an individual or individuals in Pakistan who may have been giving them advice and direction.
It is not known who it was or the exact nature of the contacts but the methods used, designed to make it difficult to identify the individual, makes the contacts look suspicious.
Mastermind
When I met some of Pakistan's top counter-terrorist officials during a visit earlier in the year, they declined to speak on the record.
The notion that it was Pakistan rather than the UK that was responsible for the bombers' radicalisation raises particular ire
But they did say they had been given 299 telephone numbers in Pakistan linked directly or indirectly to the bombing - but had not found a mastermind.
They argued that al-Qaeda's leadership did not have the capability to plan or direct operations because it was under pressure.
But in recent months Western intelligence agencies have begun shifting away from the notion that al-Qaeda has largely become an ideology rather than a structured operation, to once again believing that there remains some capability for direct operational planning within al-Qaeda's leadership.
There are sensitivities in Pakistan over any links to 7 July. Pakistani officials strongly reject the notion that they are not co-operating fully in fighting terrorism and point to the deaths of soldiers fighting in the wild border region of Waziristan.
And the notion that it was Pakistan rather than the UK that was responsible for the bombers' radicalisation raises particular ire.
"If an individual commits an act who was bred and brought up and educated not in Pakistan but elsewhere and since he visited Pakistan for a few days or weeks (it) does not mean that it is Pakistan that is responsible in his conversion as (a) terrorist," Major General Shaukat Sultan, Pakistan's military spokesman explained.
Another problem is the growing complexity of al-Qaeda.
Tracking difficult
"There is very much an integration between the Pakistani jihadi community and al-Qaeda's leadership and I think this is the galaxy that spawned the 7 July bombings," explains Alexis Debat, a counter-terrorism expert.
"But it's very hard for investigators to find out where the Pakistani jihadi community stops and al-Qaeda starts. And it's much more difficult for the Pakistani government to go after the Pakistani jihadis."
The coincidence of al-Qaeda basing itself in Pakistan, increasingly overlapping itself with Pakistani jihadist groups and the high transit of people from Britain's Pakistani community back to the country makes investigating links and travel particularly difficult.
There were 400,000 visits by UK residents to Pakistan in 2004 - and the average length was 41 days.
There is considerable intelligence liaison between Pakistan and countries such as the US and UK. But it is always on Pakistan's terms.
According to Pakistani officials, when someone is picked up, Pakistani interrogators will talk to them first and begin by asking them about any threat within Pakistan.
If they later divulge any information about threats to another country, officials from that country are told and may be invited to become "actively involved" in the investigation.
This may involve watching an interrogation take place through video monitors.
If the Pakistani officials decide to allow direct interrogations to take place by a foreign intelligence service then this will be done jointly, with Pakistani officials present.
This might involve officers from the CIA or FBI in the US or MI6 or MI5 in the UK (MI5 is the domestic security service but tends to push to take the lead in foreign investigations where there is a possible threat to UK security).
A year on, the exact role of the bombers' travels to Pakistan in the run-up to the attack remains unclear but the evidence pointing to a major role for al-Qaeda is mounting.
Filed under
Afghanistan,
Ayman al Zawahri,
MI5,
MI6,
Pakistan,
Waziristan
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on Thursday, July 06, 2006
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BBC : Reid appeals over terror ruling
Monday, July 03, 2006
Reid appeals over terror ruling
July 3, 2006
The government has accused a High Court judge of "misunderstandings and errors" over his ruling that a key anti-terror law contravenes human rights.
Mr Justice Sullivan ruled in April and again last week that control orders which impose detention without charge break European human rights laws.
Home Secretary John Reid is asking the Court of Appeal to overturn the ruling.
The appeal centres on one man who was put under house arrest but not taken to court because of insufficient evidence.
In April, the High Court ruled that evidence behind the home secretary's decision to place the man, known as "MB", under a control order was so weak that it was a breach of his right to a fair trial.
The government had alleged he wanted to go to Iraq to fight coalition forces.
In his ruling last week, Mr Justice Sullivan said control orders were incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, which outlaws indefinite detention without trial.
The home secretary had no power to make the orders against six men and they must therefore all be quashed, he said.
But on Monday, Ian Burnett QC, for the home secretary, told the Court of Appeal Mr Justice Sullivan had "misapplied" the requirements of the convention.
"Parliament has crafted a very careful and elaborate statutory regime, which passes muster for all purposes under the convention," he said.
Mr Burnett accused Mr Justice Sullivan of making the "surprising" suggestion that Parliament was "not competent" to legislate and give the government powers to make control orders in the way that it had.
The judge had interpreted the 2005 Prevention of Terrorism Act, which conferred powers to make the orders, "in an artificially restrictive way" and failed to pay proper regard to the nature of the task entrusted to the home secretary by Parliament, Mr Burnett told the Court of Appeal.
The government, not the courts, should decide whether control orders were necessary, he added
"The taking of measures to combat terrorism involves a heavy political responsibility, and it is critical that there be proper political accountability if errors are made.
"Taking steps to protect against risks to national security, of which protecting against terrorism is the most obvious component, is one of the first responsibilities of government.
"Taking precautionary measures on the basis of valuation of risk is part of that task."
"A central part of the government's response to the threat of terrorism", control orders were made only when "necessary and proportionate" with proper safeguards in place, Mr Burnett told the Court of Appeal.
Control orders mean terror suspects can be tagged, confined to their homes and banned from communicating with others.
The orders are imposed on people suspected of terrorism but where there is not enough evidence to go to court.
Under the control orders restrictions, the suspects have to stay indoors for 18 hours a day, between 4pm and 10am, and are not allowed to use mobile phones or the internet.
July 3, 2006
The government has accused a High Court judge of "misunderstandings and errors" over his ruling that a key anti-terror law contravenes human rights.
Mr Justice Sullivan ruled in April and again last week that control orders which impose detention without charge break European human rights laws.
Home Secretary John Reid is asking the Court of Appeal to overturn the ruling.
The appeal centres on one man who was put under house arrest but not taken to court because of insufficient evidence.
In April, the High Court ruled that evidence behind the home secretary's decision to place the man, known as "MB", under a control order was so weak that it was a breach of his right to a fair trial.
The government had alleged he wanted to go to Iraq to fight coalition forces.
In his ruling last week, Mr Justice Sullivan said control orders were incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, which outlaws indefinite detention without trial.
The home secretary had no power to make the orders against six men and they must therefore all be quashed, he said.
But on Monday, Ian Burnett QC, for the home secretary, told the Court of Appeal Mr Justice Sullivan had "misapplied" the requirements of the convention.
"Parliament has crafted a very careful and elaborate statutory regime, which passes muster for all purposes under the convention," he said.
Mr Burnett accused Mr Justice Sullivan of making the "surprising" suggestion that Parliament was "not competent" to legislate and give the government powers to make control orders in the way that it had.
The judge had interpreted the 2005 Prevention of Terrorism Act, which conferred powers to make the orders, "in an artificially restrictive way" and failed to pay proper regard to the nature of the task entrusted to the home secretary by Parliament, Mr Burnett told the Court of Appeal.
The government, not the courts, should decide whether control orders were necessary, he added
"The taking of measures to combat terrorism involves a heavy political responsibility, and it is critical that there be proper political accountability if errors are made.
"Taking steps to protect against risks to national security, of which protecting against terrorism is the most obvious component, is one of the first responsibilities of government.
"Taking precautionary measures on the basis of valuation of risk is part of that task."
"A central part of the government's response to the threat of terrorism", control orders were made only when "necessary and proportionate" with proper safeguards in place, Mr Burnett told the Court of Appeal.
Control orders mean terror suspects can be tagged, confined to their homes and banned from communicating with others.
The orders are imposed on people suspected of terrorism but where there is not enough evidence to go to court.
Under the control orders restrictions, the suspects have to stay indoors for 18 hours a day, between 4pm and 10am, and are not allowed to use mobile phones or the internet.
New Yorker : Missed Opportunities
Monday, July 03, 2006
Missed Opportunities
Lawrence Wright talks with Amy Davidson about the F.B.I. agent who had the best chance of foiling the 9/11 plot, and how turf wars with the C.I.A. got in the way.
Issue of July 10, 2006 | Posted July 3, 2006
This week in the magazine, Lawrence Wright tells, for the first time, the story of the F.B.I. agent who had the best chance of foiling the 9/11 plot. Here, with Amy Davidson, Wright talks about how turf wars with the C.I.A. got in the way. Wright’s book “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” will be published by Knopf in August.
AMY DAVIDSON: The question your article asks is whether the C.I.A. stopped an F.B.I. agent from preventing 9/11. Let’s start with the F.B.I. agent. Who was he, and why was he remarkable?
LAWRENCE WRIGHT: On 9/11, Ali Soufan, an Arab-American F.B.I. agent, was one of only eight agents in the F.B.I. who spoke Arabic, and the only one in New York City. He was absolutely invaluable to the bureau because of his skills, his innate talent, and his relentless nature. At the age of twenty-nine, he was appointed the chief agent in charge of investigating the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, in the harbor of Aden, Yemen, which killed seventeen American soldiers in October of 2000.
That was an Al Qaeda attack as well?
As it turned out—Soufan’s investigation proved that it was.
What could he have done to stop Osama bin Laden from attacking the World Trade Center?
People who were involved in the planning of the Cole bombing were connected to the people who planned 9/11. There was a meeting in Malaysia in January, 2000, where at least two of the 9/11 hijackers and the mastermind behind the Cole bombing, a man named Khallad, met with other Al Qaeda operatives. After that meeting, two of the hijackers flew to the United States and settled in San Diego. The C.I.A. knew about the meeting; the agency had had it monitored by Malaysia’s secret service, Special Branch, which took surveillance photos and sent them to the C.I.A. So the agency had in its file pictures of Khallad and of people who turned out to be among the hijackers. Had the C.I.A. told Soufan what it knew about the meeting, he might have uncovered the plot.
The C.I.A. knew that Soufan had an interest in this information?
Yes. He specifically asked the C.I.A. three times for information about the Cole bombers and their meetings in Malaysia and Southeast Asia—information that the C.I.A. had and knew was relevant to his Cole investigation but did not turn over to him.
Now, assuming that it wasn’t sheer ill will on the C.I.A.’s part, why would it withhold that information?
Well, there are various theories. One is that the C.I.A. simply wanted to hang on to the information for itself. The agency was afraid of disclosing something to the F.B.I. that would then come out in a trial. Once intelligence is made public, it’s no longer useful to the agency. There are people in the F.B.I. who believed that the C.I.A. had hoped to recruit, as informers, the two Al Qaeda cell members who arrived in America in 2000. It had nobody inside the Al Qaeda organization, and here were two members of the inner circle, in America. I think the most likely answer to your question is that the problem was a mix of personality clashes and the C.I.A. being overwhelmed by the number of threats that were coming in at that time.
In the article, you mention a policy that people referred to as “the Wall.” What was that?
The Wall stemmed from a 1995 law that sought to keep from criminal investigators information that was deemed to be relevant solely to foreign intelligence. It was originally designed to prevent such information from flowing out of the intelligence division of the F.B.I. into the hands of criminal prosecutors and into trials. But the bureau misinterpreted the law and used it to force its agents to withhold information from one another—even agents who were on the same squad. So if you have a criminal agent and an intelligence agent on the same squad, investigating the same crimes, one cannot disclose to the other what he knows.
Were there reasons for that divide? For instance, there’s a different standard for wiretapping suspects with links to terrorist organizations. Was there a concern that if the F.B.I. could use intelligence information in criminal investigations this would create a loophole that would allow it to evade civil-rights protections?
That’s exactly correct. There’s a different standard, a lower one, for obtaining wiretap information on foreign intelligence, and there was a fear in the Justice Department that F.B.I. agents would be tempted to label cases as being related to foreign intelligence rather than as criminal cases because it would be far easier to gain permission to surveil suspects. So the Justice Department erected the Wall. And the arbiter of what could be “thrown over the Wall,” in the bureaucratic parlance of the bureau, was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, fisa, which was passed in 1978.
You said that the F.B.I. misinterpreted the Wall, and so did the C.I.A. Was it a good idea that was misused and misunderstood, or was the whole idea a mistake?
I think it was a terrible idea from the beginning. Criminal agents and intelligence agents have always worked together. For instance, after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, there was a subsequent plot by Islamic extremists in New York to destroy the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels and landmark buildings in the city, and it was intelligence wiretaps that uncovered the plan and the involvement of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. The wiretaps produced evidence that was used to convict the Sheikh in court. Had it not been for the free flow of information between the two halves of the bureau, it’s inconceivable that he could ever have been put on trial.
At the same time, the Justice Department never meant the Wall to be the phenomenon that it became. It was designed so that intelligence would be carefully monitored and not arbitrarily wind up in criminal prosecutions. No one intended the Wall to become an artificial device that restricted the flow of information to agents who badly needed access to certain kinds of intelligence. I should also mention that the Wall has now come down.
How did Soufan react when he realized what had happened—when he learned that the C.I.A. had this information?
Soufan finally received the information he’d been asking for on September 12, 2001. He was given the information in a manila envelope by the chief of the C.I.A. station in Yemen. And when he received the account of the Malaysia meeting, which he had been requesting for a year and a half, and saw that the agency had known for twenty months that the agents of Al Qaeda were in America, he ran into the bathroom and retched.
We’ve heard about the warnings that went unheeded before 9/11, and the famous Presidential daily intelligence briefing with the headline “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the U.S.” Do you think that a warning from Soufan would have been received differently? Or do you think it would have been lost in what we’ve come to call the “chatter” of missed signals before 9/11?
It might have been yet another failure on the part of the bureau. There’s no question that it had other opportunities, but none was as striking as this one. These were two Al Qaeda operatives inside America more than a year and a half before 9/11. Now, it’s conceivable, as one agent told me, that we might have followed them right up to the point where they got on the plane. But because of the connection of these two hijackers, Khaled al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, to bin Laden, and because there was already an indictment of bin Laden, the bureau had the authority to do what is called a full-field investigation on these men. That means that it had the authority to wiretap, to surveil them, to clone their computer hard drives—every single thing you can imagine, it had the authority to do. It could have easily disrupted the cell, at least, if not exposed the entire 9/11 plot. It was certainly its best opportunity, one that it wasn’t given.
Zacarias Moussaoui was recently shown to have done what you say the C.I.A. did: withholding information from the F.B.I. that might have allowed it to uncover the 9/11 plot. What do you think of his prosecution, in light of your reporting on this story?
It is a mystery to me that people in the C.I.A. have not been held accountable. The office of the inspector general in the Justice Department did two internal investigations, one of the F.B.I. and one of the C.I.A. The report on the F.B.I. was declassified and released to the public, and the F.B.I. took a lot of heat for the revelations about its pre-9/11 missteps. The report on the C.I.A. has not been released to the public. I believe that the story of Ali Soufan is part of what is in that report. I’d like to see it made public, so the full story can be told.
In your article, you describe Soufan’s interrogation techniques. He engaged the suspects; he won their respect; he debated them on theological issues. In interrogations he carried out just after 9/11, these techniques worked very well; he got crucial information about the hijackers and their connections. His methods were very different from the “extreme measures” that we’ve been hearing about—waterboarding, sleep deprivation, humiliation—and that are being justified on the grounds that they’re the only way to get this kind of information. Have we been given a false choice between abusing prisoners or letting something terrible happen?
Ali Soufan has shown that intelligent and careful interrogation can achieve real results. And it helps immensely, obviously, to have the language and cultural skills that he does. There are very few people in the American intelligence community that have his set of talents. The U.S. is known to have used these sorts of tactics. You mention the C.I.A.’s impulse has been to deliver Al Qaeda suspects to foreign intelligence agencies that could torture them and extract information the C.I.A. thought it couldn’t otherwise obtain. However, what this abuse has yielded from the top Al Qaeda lieutenants is questionable. And I think that’s because it’s untrustworthy information obtained under torture.
So the problem with torture isn’t just that it’s torture — that it compromises America ethically, morally — but that torture doesn’t always work.
It doesn’t work. It often is misleading, as in the case of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, an Al Qaeda lieutenant who was tortured into saying that Saddam Hussein worked with Al Qaeda and had weapons of mass destruction. That was the information that the U.S. was trying to get out of him, and he gave it to the interrogators under torture, and that became part of the rationale for the U.S. going to war with Iraq—a disastrous consequence of choosing an unethical approach to gaining information.
You mentioned that Soufan was the only Arabic-speaking F.B.I. agent in New York, and one of only eight in the country. Why was that? This is a country of immigrants—there must be a large pool of native speakers to draw on.
There is a large pool, but, unfortunately, the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. are very narrow cultures. The F.B.I., especially in the hierarchy, is made up largely of Irish and Italian men. You go to the seventh floor of the F.B.I. and you feel like you’ve walked back in time. It’s like being in a Cagney movie. And it was a real failure on their part not to have expanded to incorporate more American faces.
Soufan was spotted by a legendary F.B.I. official named John O’Neill, as you’ve mentioned. You wrote about O’Neill for The New Yorker in 2002. Who was he and how does he fit into this story?
John O’Neill was the head of the counterterrorism center in the New York office of the F.B.I. It became the nexus of America’s efforts to counter Al Qaeda. O’Neill was one of the first in the bureau to recognize the danger that Al Qaeda posed. And, through the force of his amazing personality, he made New York the center of America’s efforts to stop bin Laden. Early on, he recognized the talent that Ali Soufan brought to the table, and he drafted him to the I-49 squad in New York, which was devoted largely to stopping Al Qaeda. Under O’Neill, the New York squad was able to obtain the information that led to several successful terrorism convictions.
But, on 9/11, John O’Neill was no longer with the F.B.I.
In the summer of 2001, there was a damaging leak in the New York Times that exposed the fact that John O’Neill had taken classified information out of the bureau to an F.B.I. pre-retirement conference in Florida. His briefcase was stolen. It was discovered within hours and the information had not been touched, but because of this revelation he decided to retire. And he took a job as the head of security at the World Trade Center. He died on 9/11.
This week’s story is taken from your forthcoming book, “The Looming Tower.” There’s a lot in your book, of course, that’s not in your article.
That’s true. This is just a portion of a vast saga, beginning in 1948, with the arrival of Sayyid Qutb in America, and ending shortly after 9/11. It’s a story of the terrorists and the counter-terrorists, of two cultures in collision. It’s told equally from each side. Much of it has to do with the rise of radical Islam and our failed efforts to counter it. It’s told through the lives of four individuals: Osama bin Laden; Ayman al-Zawahiri, his deputy; Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence; and John O’Neill.
Lawrence Wright talks with Amy Davidson about the F.B.I. agent who had the best chance of foiling the 9/11 plot, and how turf wars with the C.I.A. got in the way.
Issue of July 10, 2006 | Posted July 3, 2006
This week in the magazine, Lawrence Wright tells, for the first time, the story of the F.B.I. agent who had the best chance of foiling the 9/11 plot. Here, with Amy Davidson, Wright talks about how turf wars with the C.I.A. got in the way. Wright’s book “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” will be published by Knopf in August.
AMY DAVIDSON: The question your article asks is whether the C.I.A. stopped an F.B.I. agent from preventing 9/11. Let’s start with the F.B.I. agent. Who was he, and why was he remarkable?
LAWRENCE WRIGHT: On 9/11, Ali Soufan, an Arab-American F.B.I. agent, was one of only eight agents in the F.B.I. who spoke Arabic, and the only one in New York City. He was absolutely invaluable to the bureau because of his skills, his innate talent, and his relentless nature. At the age of twenty-nine, he was appointed the chief agent in charge of investigating the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, in the harbor of Aden, Yemen, which killed seventeen American soldiers in October of 2000.
That was an Al Qaeda attack as well?
As it turned out—Soufan’s investigation proved that it was.
What could he have done to stop Osama bin Laden from attacking the World Trade Center?
People who were involved in the planning of the Cole bombing were connected to the people who planned 9/11. There was a meeting in Malaysia in January, 2000, where at least two of the 9/11 hijackers and the mastermind behind the Cole bombing, a man named Khallad, met with other Al Qaeda operatives. After that meeting, two of the hijackers flew to the United States and settled in San Diego. The C.I.A. knew about the meeting; the agency had had it monitored by Malaysia’s secret service, Special Branch, which took surveillance photos and sent them to the C.I.A. So the agency had in its file pictures of Khallad and of people who turned out to be among the hijackers. Had the C.I.A. told Soufan what it knew about the meeting, he might have uncovered the plot.
The C.I.A. knew that Soufan had an interest in this information?
Yes. He specifically asked the C.I.A. three times for information about the Cole bombers and their meetings in Malaysia and Southeast Asia—information that the C.I.A. had and knew was relevant to his Cole investigation but did not turn over to him.
Now, assuming that it wasn’t sheer ill will on the C.I.A.’s part, why would it withhold that information?
Well, there are various theories. One is that the C.I.A. simply wanted to hang on to the information for itself. The agency was afraid of disclosing something to the F.B.I. that would then come out in a trial. Once intelligence is made public, it’s no longer useful to the agency. There are people in the F.B.I. who believed that the C.I.A. had hoped to recruit, as informers, the two Al Qaeda cell members who arrived in America in 2000. It had nobody inside the Al Qaeda organization, and here were two members of the inner circle, in America. I think the most likely answer to your question is that the problem was a mix of personality clashes and the C.I.A. being overwhelmed by the number of threats that were coming in at that time.
In the article, you mention a policy that people referred to as “the Wall.” What was that?
The Wall stemmed from a 1995 law that sought to keep from criminal investigators information that was deemed to be relevant solely to foreign intelligence. It was originally designed to prevent such information from flowing out of the intelligence division of the F.B.I. into the hands of criminal prosecutors and into trials. But the bureau misinterpreted the law and used it to force its agents to withhold information from one another—even agents who were on the same squad. So if you have a criminal agent and an intelligence agent on the same squad, investigating the same crimes, one cannot disclose to the other what he knows.
Were there reasons for that divide? For instance, there’s a different standard for wiretapping suspects with links to terrorist organizations. Was there a concern that if the F.B.I. could use intelligence information in criminal investigations this would create a loophole that would allow it to evade civil-rights protections?
That’s exactly correct. There’s a different standard, a lower one, for obtaining wiretap information on foreign intelligence, and there was a fear in the Justice Department that F.B.I. agents would be tempted to label cases as being related to foreign intelligence rather than as criminal cases because it would be far easier to gain permission to surveil suspects. So the Justice Department erected the Wall. And the arbiter of what could be “thrown over the Wall,” in the bureaucratic parlance of the bureau, was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, fisa, which was passed in 1978.
You said that the F.B.I. misinterpreted the Wall, and so did the C.I.A. Was it a good idea that was misused and misunderstood, or was the whole idea a mistake?
I think it was a terrible idea from the beginning. Criminal agents and intelligence agents have always worked together. For instance, after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, there was a subsequent plot by Islamic extremists in New York to destroy the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels and landmark buildings in the city, and it was intelligence wiretaps that uncovered the plan and the involvement of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. The wiretaps produced evidence that was used to convict the Sheikh in court. Had it not been for the free flow of information between the two halves of the bureau, it’s inconceivable that he could ever have been put on trial.
At the same time, the Justice Department never meant the Wall to be the phenomenon that it became. It was designed so that intelligence would be carefully monitored and not arbitrarily wind up in criminal prosecutions. No one intended the Wall to become an artificial device that restricted the flow of information to agents who badly needed access to certain kinds of intelligence. I should also mention that the Wall has now come down.
How did Soufan react when he realized what had happened—when he learned that the C.I.A. had this information?
Soufan finally received the information he’d been asking for on September 12, 2001. He was given the information in a manila envelope by the chief of the C.I.A. station in Yemen. And when he received the account of the Malaysia meeting, which he had been requesting for a year and a half, and saw that the agency had known for twenty months that the agents of Al Qaeda were in America, he ran into the bathroom and retched.
We’ve heard about the warnings that went unheeded before 9/11, and the famous Presidential daily intelligence briefing with the headline “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the U.S.” Do you think that a warning from Soufan would have been received differently? Or do you think it would have been lost in what we’ve come to call the “chatter” of missed signals before 9/11?
It might have been yet another failure on the part of the bureau. There’s no question that it had other opportunities, but none was as striking as this one. These were two Al Qaeda operatives inside America more than a year and a half before 9/11. Now, it’s conceivable, as one agent told me, that we might have followed them right up to the point where they got on the plane. But because of the connection of these two hijackers, Khaled al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, to bin Laden, and because there was already an indictment of bin Laden, the bureau had the authority to do what is called a full-field investigation on these men. That means that it had the authority to wiretap, to surveil them, to clone their computer hard drives—every single thing you can imagine, it had the authority to do. It could have easily disrupted the cell, at least, if not exposed the entire 9/11 plot. It was certainly its best opportunity, one that it wasn’t given.
Zacarias Moussaoui was recently shown to have done what you say the C.I.A. did: withholding information from the F.B.I. that might have allowed it to uncover the 9/11 plot. What do you think of his prosecution, in light of your reporting on this story?
It is a mystery to me that people in the C.I.A. have not been held accountable. The office of the inspector general in the Justice Department did two internal investigations, one of the F.B.I. and one of the C.I.A. The report on the F.B.I. was declassified and released to the public, and the F.B.I. took a lot of heat for the revelations about its pre-9/11 missteps. The report on the C.I.A. has not been released to the public. I believe that the story of Ali Soufan is part of what is in that report. I’d like to see it made public, so the full story can be told.
In your article, you describe Soufan’s interrogation techniques. He engaged the suspects; he won their respect; he debated them on theological issues. In interrogations he carried out just after 9/11, these techniques worked very well; he got crucial information about the hijackers and their connections. His methods were very different from the “extreme measures” that we’ve been hearing about—waterboarding, sleep deprivation, humiliation—and that are being justified on the grounds that they’re the only way to get this kind of information. Have we been given a false choice between abusing prisoners or letting something terrible happen?
Ali Soufan has shown that intelligent and careful interrogation can achieve real results. And it helps immensely, obviously, to have the language and cultural skills that he does. There are very few people in the American intelligence community that have his set of talents. The U.S. is known to have used these sorts of tactics. You mention the C.I.A.’s impulse has been to deliver Al Qaeda suspects to foreign intelligence agencies that could torture them and extract information the C.I.A. thought it couldn’t otherwise obtain. However, what this abuse has yielded from the top Al Qaeda lieutenants is questionable. And I think that’s because it’s untrustworthy information obtained under torture.
So the problem with torture isn’t just that it’s torture — that it compromises America ethically, morally — but that torture doesn’t always work.
It doesn’t work. It often is misleading, as in the case of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, an Al Qaeda lieutenant who was tortured into saying that Saddam Hussein worked with Al Qaeda and had weapons of mass destruction. That was the information that the U.S. was trying to get out of him, and he gave it to the interrogators under torture, and that became part of the rationale for the U.S. going to war with Iraq—a disastrous consequence of choosing an unethical approach to gaining information.
You mentioned that Soufan was the only Arabic-speaking F.B.I. agent in New York, and one of only eight in the country. Why was that? This is a country of immigrants—there must be a large pool of native speakers to draw on.
There is a large pool, but, unfortunately, the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. are very narrow cultures. The F.B.I., especially in the hierarchy, is made up largely of Irish and Italian men. You go to the seventh floor of the F.B.I. and you feel like you’ve walked back in time. It’s like being in a Cagney movie. And it was a real failure on their part not to have expanded to incorporate more American faces.
Soufan was spotted by a legendary F.B.I. official named John O’Neill, as you’ve mentioned. You wrote about O’Neill for The New Yorker in 2002. Who was he and how does he fit into this story?
John O’Neill was the head of the counterterrorism center in the New York office of the F.B.I. It became the nexus of America’s efforts to counter Al Qaeda. O’Neill was one of the first in the bureau to recognize the danger that Al Qaeda posed. And, through the force of his amazing personality, he made New York the center of America’s efforts to stop bin Laden. Early on, he recognized the talent that Ali Soufan brought to the table, and he drafted him to the I-49 squad in New York, which was devoted largely to stopping Al Qaeda. Under O’Neill, the New York squad was able to obtain the information that led to several successful terrorism convictions.
But, on 9/11, John O’Neill was no longer with the F.B.I.
In the summer of 2001, there was a damaging leak in the New York Times that exposed the fact that John O’Neill had taken classified information out of the bureau to an F.B.I. pre-retirement conference in Florida. His briefcase was stolen. It was discovered within hours and the information had not been touched, but because of this revelation he decided to retire. And he took a job as the head of security at the World Trade Center. He died on 9/11.
This week’s story is taken from your forthcoming book, “The Looming Tower.” There’s a lot in your book, of course, that’s not in your article.
That’s true. This is just a portion of a vast saga, beginning in 1948, with the arrival of Sayyid Qutb in America, and ending shortly after 9/11. It’s a story of the terrorists and the counter-terrorists, of two cultures in collision. It’s told equally from each side. Much of it has to do with the rise of radical Islam and our failed efforts to counter it. It’s told through the lives of four individuals: Osama bin Laden; Ayman al-Zawahiri, his deputy; Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence; and John O’Neill.
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