Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Communist Crackdown in Vietnam










THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Asia News
DECEMBER 29, 2009




Vietnam Convicts a Pro-Democracy Army Officer of Subversion
By JAMES HOOKWAY

Vietnam convicted a former army officer who pushed for democratic reforms of subversion on Monday, sentencing him to five and a half years in prison and sending a stark warning that the room for political dissent is quickly shrinking in this rigorously controlled Communist state.

The brief trial of Tran Anh Kim -- the court hearing in northern Thai Binh province began in the morning and was over by lunch -- is the first in a series of prosecutions of pro-democracy and human-rights activists in Vietnam. Four other people, including prominent human-rights lawyer Le Cong Dinh, were charged with subversion last week and potentially face the death penalty for allegedly attempting to undermine the state by promoting democratic freedoms.

Political analysts say the crackdown comes at a time when hard-liners in the ruling Communist Party are rolling back the few freedoms they had allowed as Vietnam's economy rapidly expanded over the past decade.

Authorities often turned a blind eye to criticism and allowed a greater degree of freedom for religious groups as they worked to smooth Vietnam's entry into the World Trade Organization in early 2007.

However, Vietnam's economy suffered a destabilizing bout of inflation in 2008, and its exports were badly rocked by the impact of the global economic crisis. The government's response has been to uproot dissent to prevent Vietnam's economic problems from weakening the Communist Party's hold on power, analysts say. Many expect the repression to deepen ahead of a party congress in January 2011. A congress takes place every five years and is often the focus of conflict between the party's reformist and conservative wings.

Mr. Kim, a 60-year-old former lieutenant colonel, was accused by authorities of joining Bloc 8406, an organization that promotes multiparty democracy -- an illegal act under Vietnam's constitution, which reserves power solely for the Communist Party. Prosecutors also said Mr. Kim posted pro-democracy articles on the Internet and joined the outlawed Democratic Party of Vietnam.

During the trial, Mr. Kim, who won three military-service medals during the Vietnam War before being dismissed from the army and expelled from the Communist Party for alleged financial mismanagement, told the court he stood up for his beliefs and for campaigning against corruption, according to the Associated Press.

"I am a person of merit," the AP quoted him as saying. "I did not commit crimes."

Foreign media and diplomats were allowed to follow Monday's court proceedings by closed-circuit television. The presiding judge, Tran Van Loan, said when announcing the sentence that Mr. Kim had helped organize crimes against the state and cooperated with "reactionary Vietnamese and hostile forces in exile."

Mr. Kim could have faced the death penalty, but prosecutors sought a more lenient sentence because of his military record. His conviction came less than a month before the trials of the human-rights lawyer, Mr. Dinh, and three other activists are due to begin.

Write to James Hookway at james.hookway@wsj.com

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Monday, December 28, 2009

Al Qaeda Emboldened by Spectral Presence [Annotated]

Al-Qaeda Chief Contained but Elusive
By David Blair in London
Published: December 27 2009 16:26 | Last updated: December 27 2009 20:13

As the US air force made entire mountains shake with the impact of “daisy-cutter” bombs weighing 7.5 tonnes, Osama bin Laden prepared for death.

On a frozen range of peaks, known as Tora Bora, he was driven to compose his will. “Allah bears witness that love of jihad and death in the cause of Allah has dominated my life,” wrote Mr bin Laden, according to an investigation last month by the Senate foreign relations committee before instructing his wives never to remarry and apologising to his children for having devoted everything to the struggle against “the pagans”.

That was December 14 2001, and the world’s most wanted man, the mastermind of the bloodiest terrorist attacks in history only three months earlier, had reached his nadir. In just a few weeks, the US onslaught in Afghanistan had toppled the Taliban regime, destroyed Mr bin Laden’s network of terrorist training camps and forced him to flee, in mid-winter, to this last redoubt on the frontier with Pakistan.

For a few tantalising days, Mr bin Laden was all but within America’s grasp. Yet in spite of their fury, the air strikes on Tora Bora were a sign, most analysts concur that US commanders had made a critical error. They had chosen to leave the task of finishing off Mr bin Laden to the air force, a few teams of US special forces soldiers, less than 100 strong, and a motley collection of about 2,000 Afghan militiamen.

On December 16, Mr bin Laden escaped over the border into the tribal areas of Pakistan. The trail went cold and, in spite of rumours and unsubstantiated reports, it has essentially remained so ever since.

The Senate committee report which disclosed that Mr bin Laden had written his will concluded that the swift deployment of 3,000 US troops could have prevented his escape, thus avoiding much of the subsequent bloodshed in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“The decisions that opened the door for his escape to Pakistan allowed bin Laden to emerge as a potent symbolic figure,” said the report. “The failure to finish the job represents a lost opportunity that forever altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism.”

So it was that Mr bin Laden, now 52, has retained his status as the world’s most wanted man. His supporters have been able to release at least 24 authenticated taped messages from him since the September 2001 attacks. The most brazen emerged shortly before polling day in the US presidential election in 2004, when Mr bin Laden apparently tried to alter the outcome by urging Americans to reject George W. Bush.

Expert opinion is divided over whether Mr bin Laden’s survival is still crucial. David Livingstone, from the security programme at London’s Chatham House think-tank believed killing him could be counter-productive.

“If you capture or execute him, you turn him into a martyr and al-Qaeda will continue because it has become a brand name. If you keep him alive, you don’t allow him to become a martyr. The aim, as a least worst option, has to be to contain him,” said Mr Livingstone.

The signs are that Mr bin Laden has been contained. One indicator is the dwindling flow of messages. This year, Mr bin Laden managed only four audiotapes – whereas seven emerged in 2007. Not a single videotape of him has appeared since 2004.

But even if Mr bin Laden has been reduced to doing nothing but hide, he remains of immense significance, according to Peter Bergen, an expert on terrorism who interviewed the al-Qaeda leader in 1997. “Al-Qaeda is bin Laden’s idea, it is his baby and 9/11 was his operation and it would psychologically be a victory for the civilised world if he was killed or captured.”

Mr Bergen added: “People make a difference. If von Stauffenberg had killed Hitler on July 20 1944, then world war two would have ended a year earlier.”

Moreover, constant attacks by US drones in the tribal areas of Pakistan have eliminated a raft of al-Qaeda’s core leaders. Mr bin Laden is no longer surrounded by possible successors. “There is nobody who could replace him as the head of this network,” said Mr Bergen.

General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, clearly agreed. Mr bin Laden’s very survival “emboldens al-Qaeda”, he told the Senate, adding: “I don’t think that we can finally defeat al-Qaeda until he is captured or killed.”

But first America will have to find him – and there is no hard information about his whereabouts, beyond a strong probability that he is somewhere along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Pakistan’s prime minister recently alleged that Mr bin Laden was in Afghanistan but these claims were routinely made by Pakistani leaders anxious to avoid responsibility for capturing al-Qaeda’s leader.

Simply by remaining a permanent if spectral presence for the last decade, Mr bin Laden can claim a victory of sorts.



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Russia: Same old, same old . . . "They Killed My Lawyer"


They Killed My Lawyer | Foreign Policy
A story of Putin's Russia.
BY WILLIAM BROWDER | DECEMBER 22, 2009

EXCERPT: Sergei Magnitsky was our attorney, and friend, who died under excruciating circumstances in a Moscow pre-trial detention center on Nov. 16, 2009. His story is one of extraordinary bravery and heroism, and ultimately tragedy. It is also a story about how Stalinism and the gulags are alive and well in Russia today.

Ultimately Sergei died for a principle -- he died because believed in the rule of law in Russia. When he stumbled upon an enormous fraud against his clients and the Russian government, he thought he was simply doing the right thing by reporting it. He never imagined that he would die for his efforts.

The precise circumstances of his death are still unclear. We do know Sergei died suddenly at the age of 37, after an 11-month detention. At first, the detention center where he died said the cause of his death was a rupture to his abdominal membrane, but on the same day the prison officials changed their story, saying he had died of a heart attack. They refused his family's request to conduct an independent autopsy. His diaries are reported to be missing.

Because Sergei is no longer alive to tell his story, I feel it is my duty to tell it for him. I am not a writer or a journalist, but a fund manager at Hermitage Capital Management. I ran what was the largest investment fund in Russia. Sergei was our Moscow-based outside counsel who worked for the American law firm Firestone Duncan.

Sergei wasn't involved in politics, he wasn't an oligarch, and he wasn't a human rights activist. He was just a highly competent professional -- the kind of person one could call up as the workday was finishing at 7 p.m. with a legal question and he would cancel his dinner plans and stay in the office until midnight to figure out the answer. He was a smart and honest man working hard to better himself and to make a good life for his wife and two kids.

The tragic events that led to his death began on June 4, 2007. That day, 50 police officers from the Moscow Interior Ministry raided Hermitage's and Firestone Duncan's offices, under the pretense of a tax investigation into a Hermitage client company. There was no reason for the raid, as the company they were investigating was regularly audited by the tax authorities, and they never found any violations.

In the course of the raid, the police officers took away all the corporate seals, charters, and articles of association of all of the fund's investment companies -- none of which had anything to do with their search warrant. The significance of these seizures would only become apparent later.

MORE . . .Sphere: Related Content

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Subversion Conviction for Liu Xiaobo by ChiComs Nets 11 Years


CHINA | 25.12.2009
Rights Groups, West Blast China Over Sentence for Leading Dissident

Western nations and human rights groups have reacted with concern to the sentencing of Liu Xiaobo by a Beijing court to 11 years' imprisonment for subversion. Liu is a leading pro-democracy campaigner in China.

China's most prominent dissident, Liu Xiaobo, has been sentenced by a Beijing court to 11 years in prison for "incitement to subvert state power." The verdict has been met with sharp criticism by rights groups and the international community.

Sweden, which holds the European Union's rotating presidency, condemned the decision, saying it raised concerns about freedom of speech and right to a fair trial in China.

"The Presidency of the European Union is deeply concerned by the disproportionate sentence against the prominent human rights defender Liu Xiaobo." it said in a statement.

The German government also strongly criticized the verdict.

"Despite the great progress in other areas in the expression of views, I regret that the Chinese government still massively restricts press freedom." said Chancellor Angela Merkel in a statement.

A US diplomat commented after the verdict that Washington would "continue to call on the government of China to release (Liu) immediately and to respect the rights of all Chinese citizens to peacefully express their political views in favor of universally recognized fundamental freedoms."

Human rights groups said the sentence was one of the longest a Chinese court has given on the subversion charge.

"Since 2003, China has sentenced more than 35 people using the vague charge of 'inciting subversion of state power' to prison terms ranging from 1.5 to 11 years," said Amnesty International in a statement.

"Among those, Liu Xiaobo's sentence is the longest to have been handed down since 2003, according to Amnesty International's records."

Human Rights Watch meanwhile called the sentence a "travesty of justice."

In Hong Kong, several people were injured in protests that broke out following Liu's sentencing, reported German news agency dpa.

Guilty for speaking freely

Liu, 53, was a main author of the "Charter 08" manifesto which called for sweeping political reforms in China. The Beijing court ruled Liu was guilty for his involvement in the manifesto and for publishing online essays critical of the ruling Communist Party.

Liu was not allowed to respond to the court's decision, though his wife, Liu Xia, said she "felt calm when the judge read out the sentence, because all signs were they wanted to hand out a long sentence." Liu's wife was allowed into the courtroom to hear the verdict being delivered, but she was prohibited from entering during the actual trial.

"Later we were allowed 10 minutes together and he told me he would appeal, even if the chances of success were low," she added.

Western diplomats from more than a dozen countries and journalists were also excluded from the court proceedings.

Liu had already served a prison sentence over his involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests.


Beijing rejects criticism

Western diplomats and officials were barred from the courtroom

In the weeks leading up to the trial, the European Union and the US had called on China to unconditionally release Liu and "end the harassment and detention" of fellow signatories of the "Charter 08" manifesto.

Beijing reacted angrily to those calls, referring to the EU and US statements as "unacceptable" and representing interference in China's internal affairs.

"China is a country ruled by law," a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry had responded. "The fundamental rights of Chinese citizens are guaranteed by the law."

The spokesperson said China's courts acted "independently" and other nations have "no right to interfere."


mk/dfm/AFP/Reuters/dpa
Editor: Andreas IllmerSphere: Related Content

Friday, December 25, 2009

US Intelligence: "We have NO friends." ~ But, hey, it's Canada -- eh.

Comment: Despite all the "happy talk" by politicians, defense analysts and other "experts" featured on TV -- any Counterintelligence or Human Intelligence Case Officer who has been in the field more than 5 minutes will solemnly assure you that the United States has NO friends. Yes that's right ~ NO friends. None. Not Canada, Not the UK or Australia, or Germany or anyone. No one. Sure, we have temporary, mutually beneficial relationships. The UK's has been termed "special" -- Israel has its own peculiar sponsorship arrangement. But, don't kid yourself -- the United States has NO friends. Be glad that our senior, professional, career intelligence officers ask "Who knows?" about the Canadians. That's because the answer to the question is: No one. It's not paranoia ~ it's experience.

Secret Pentagon e-mails: Trust Canada? 'Who knows'
By TED BRIDIS (AP) – Dec 3, 2009

WASHINGTON — Can Canada be trusted?

In the midst of what turned out to be a bogus espionage scare over commemorative coins, senior Pentagon officials speculated whether Canadians — widely considered to be among America's closest allies — might be "bad guys" involved in the spy caper. "Who knows?" one official wrote in secret e-mails obtained this week by The Associated Press.

The espionage warnings from the Defense Department caused an international sensation a few years ago over reports of mysterious coins with radio frequency transmitters, until they were debunked. The culprit turned out to be commemorative "poppy" quarters with a bright red flower manufactured in Canada.

But at the height of the mystery, senior Pentagon officials speculated about Canada's involvement, according to e-mails marked "Secret/NoForn" and obtained by the AP under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. The messages reflect the no-holds-barred attitudes over an inherent lack of trust within U.S. spy agencies.

"I don't think it is an issue of the Canadians being the bad guys," the Pentagon's counterintelligence chief wrote, "but then again, who knows."

In the e-mails, released to the AP with names blacked out but job titles disclosed, Pentagon officials question whether they should warn military officers in the U.S. Northern Command, who regularly met Canadian counterparts about classified subjects inside bug-proof, government meeting rooms. The rooms are known as secure compartmentalized information facilities, or SKIFs.

"Isn't the Canadian piece something that should be briefed to Northcom since the Canadians sit in their SKIFs?" asked the Pentagon's deputy director for counterintelligence oversight.

"Good point," replied the Pentagon's acting director for counterintelligence. "It is possible that DSS (the U.S. Defense Security Service) sent their report to Northcom. Then again, I don't think it is an issue of the Canadians being the bad guys, but then again, who knows."

Who knows?

Canada is among the closest of U.S. allies, its continental northern neighbor and the leading oil supplier for the U.S. The intelligence services of the two countries are extraordinarily tight and routinely share sensitive secrets. President Barack Obama chose Canada as the destination of his first foreign trip, to underscore what he described as the two countries' long-standing and growing friendship.

"I love this country and think that we could not have a better friend and ally," said Obama, whose brother-in-law is Canadian, during his February visit to Ottawa.

The State Department, with tongue in cheek, reiterated Thursday that the U.S. trusts Canada.

"From the State Department's point of view, Canada is a trustworthy ally," spokesman Mark Toner told reporters. "I'd refer you to the Pentagon for anything else."

In sensational warnings that circulated publicly in late 2006 and early 2007, the Pentagon's Defense Security Service said coins with radio transmitters were found planted on U.S. Army contractors with classified security clearances on at least three occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors traveled through Canada.

In January 2007, the government abruptly reversed itself and said the warnings weren't true. But the case remained a mystery until months later, when AP learned that the flap had been caused by suspicions over the odd-looking Canadian "poppy" quarter with a bright red flower. The silver-colored 25-cent piece features the red image of a poppy — Canada's flower of war remembrance — inlaid on a maple leaf.

What suspicious contractors believed to be "nanotechnology" on the coins actually was a protective coating the Royal Canadian Mint applied to prevent the poppy's red color from rubbing off. The mint produced nearly 30 million such quarters in 2004 commemorating Canada's 117,000 war dead.

The Pentagon turned over the latest e-mails from inside its Office of the Undersecretary for Defense for Intelligence nearly two years after the AP requested them under the Freedom of Information Act. Many of the e-mails were censored over what the Pentagon said was national security and personal privacy.

Pentagon spokesman Col. David Lapan declined to identify the names of the Defense Department officials who held those job titles in early 2007 and invited the AP to file a lawsuit to uncover their identities. "We're not going to be complicit in providing information that is protected," Lapan said in a statement.

One e-mail included a curious message on the same day the Defense Security Service publicly disavowed its warning about the spy coins. "I am guessing y'all know the status of the Canadian coin situation," it read. It called for an internal meeting "to chat about the next step to put Humpty together again" and suggested notifying the media — and the Canadians.
On the Net:

E-mails: http://wid.ap.org/documents/canada_northcom.pdf


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Wednesday, December 23, 2009

The CIA's "Italian Job" Gets Weirder


By Jeff Stein
SpyTalk Columnist
December 23, 2009

What good is a cover story if the U.S. government won't back it up?

That's essentially the question former CIA officer Sabrina DeSousa is asking a federal court to decide, in a lawsuit against the Departments of State and Justice and the CIA, accusing three of its operatives of incompetence and neglect for exposing her to criminal charges of kidnapping in Italy.

De Sousa, 53, was listed as an American diplomat in Milan on Feb. 17, 2003, when U.S. agents snatched an al Qaeda suspect, known as Abu Omar, off a local street and secretly flew him out of the country for interrogation.

Omar was taken to Egypt and tortured during an interrogation where he said an American was nearby.

The operation was plagued by miscues.

Because of lax CIA security, Italian police easily cracked the missing person case and charged over two dozen Americans, all but one CIA agents, with kidnapping.

In November, following a long, off-again, on-again trial in absentia, an Italian court convicted DeSousa and 22 other Americans, all but one alleged to be CIA personnel, on kidnapping charges.

The verdict means DeSousa (and the others) risk detention and prison in Italy if she travels outside the United States, but particularly in Europe, where a Europol warrant has been issued for her arrest.

DeSousa's suit -- technically a petition to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for permission to file suit -- maintains that because she was listed as a State Department political officer, first in the American embassy in Rome and later the U.S. consulate in Milan, the department should have shielded her from criminal charges by invoking her diplomatic immunity.

The Justice Department should have paid for her defense from the days she was named a defendant, she also says.

The suit also names Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, accusing her of ignoring DeSousa's pleas for help.

"By July 2006, having exhausted all available internal mechanisms, De Sousa began seeking assistance from then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice by way of written letters," says her suit, filed by the Washington, D.C., law firm of Mark S. Zaid, which specializes in representing CIA personnel with beefs against the spy agency.

"Specifically, [DeSousa] requested that the [U.S. government] formally invoke diplomatic/consular immunity with respect to De Sousa's alleged involvement in the kidnapping of Abu Omar and provide her with legal representation to counter the charges in the Italian criminal proceedings," the suit adds.

"She never received a response," the suit days, from either Rice or Clinton, when she became Secretary of State in January.

DeSousa says three former CIA officials share blame for her plight: Jeffrey Castelli, the spy agency's Rome station chief in 2003, Robert Seldon Lady, its Milan base chief, and Susan Czaska, listed as a "consulate official" in Milan.

Italian police discovered a treasure trove of CIA documents related to the Abu Omar rendition when they raided Lady's home.

"A reasonable official would have not have engaged in conduct which allegedly included maintaining classified files on a personal home computer and failing to maintain pre- or post-operation secrecy," DeSousa's suit says of Lady, now retired from the CIA.

"Castelli's alleged authorization of the alleged operation and alleged failure to maintain pre or post-operation secrecy ... subsequently resulted in the Italian criminal and civil proceedings implicating De Sousa," the suit also says.

DeSousa also blames her former colleague Susan Czaska for careless security, "sending an e-mail from an unclassified email account to another unclassified e-mail account in which an allegedly classified CIA operation is referenced and alleged CIA employees' identities and involvement are revealed" -- including DeSousa's.

"The lawsuit is designed to force the State Department to provide the protection Sabrina was deprived of when it failed to invoke diplomatic immunity for her when she was charged (and later convicted) in the Abu Omar case," says her lawyer, Zaid.

"It also seeks to clear her good name and hopefully restore her ability to serve this country again overseas. The suit also seeks an unstated amount of restitution for her legal costs."
The CIA has consistently refused go comment on the Milan case.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In August the Justice Department informed DeSousa that it would pay her legal costs, following her initial suit in May, after years of unsuccessfully pressing her case in private.

"Unbelievable! The United States Department of Justice just 'approved' an attorney to defend me, a month after the trial ended, knowing full well that an attorney at this stage will make little or no difference to the outcome or verdict," DeSousa said then.

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Sunday, November 8, 2009

Swiss Counterintelligence Increased & Consolidated

November 8, 2009
Secret Service Chief Calls for More Swiss Spies

The head of the newly unified Swiss foreign and domestic intelligence services, Markus Seiler, has called for more counterintelligence personnel.

In an interview published in the newspapers SonntagsZeitung and Le Matin Dimanche, Seiler revealed that the intelligence services also plan a greater presence in Swiss embassies.

"As an open country with an open economy and many international organisations, Switzerland is a stomping ground for secret services," Seiler said, adding that the growing number of spying cases worried him greatly.

"This is why more [Swiss] personnel have to be put in place for counterintelligence," he said.

Seiler has been in charge of unifying the foreign and domestic services under one ministry following a decision by parliament last year.

From the beginning of 2010 both units will pool data for evaluation, but information gathering will still be carried out separately.


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Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Russia Nukes Poland (Sort of)

Comment: Some things never change. I get the feeling this is material for a forthcoming book by Pat Buchanan.

Russia "Simulates" Nuclear Attack on Poland
Russia has provoked outrage in Poland by simulating an air and sea attack on the country during military exercises.

By Matthew Day in Warsaw
Published: 4:37PM GMT 01 Nov 2009
Telegraph.co.uk

The armed forces are said to have carried out "war games" in which nuclear missiles were fired and troops practised an amphibious landing on the country's coast.

Documents obtained by Wprost, one of Poland's leading news magazines, said the exercise was carried out in conjunction with soldiers from Belarus.

The manoeuvres are thought to have been held in September and involved about 13,000 Russian and Belarusian troops.

Poland, which has strained relations with both countries, was cast as the "potential aggressor".

The documents state the exercises, code-named "West", were officially classified as "defensive" but many of the operations appeared to have an offensive nature.

The Russian air force practised using weapons from its nuclear arsenal, while in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which neighbours Poland, Red Army forces stormed a "Polish" beach and attacked a gas pipeline.

The operation also involved the simulated suppression of an uprising by a national minority in Belarus – the country has a significant Polish population which has a strained relationship with authoritarian government of Belarus.

Karol Karski, an MP from Poland's Law and Justice, is to table parliamentary questions on Russia's war games and has protested to the European Commission.

His colleague, Marek Opiola MP, said: "It's an attempt to put us in our place. Don't forget all this happened on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland."

Ordinary Poles were outraged by news of the exercise and demanded a firm response from the government.

One man, identified only as Ted, told Polskie Radio: "Russia has laid bare its real intentions with respect to Poland. Every Pole most now get of the off the fence and be counted as a patriot or a traitor."

Donald Tusk, Poland's prime minister, has tried to build a pragmatic relationship with the Kremlin despite widespread and vocal calls in Poland for him to cool ties with Moscow.

After spending 40 years under Soviet domination few in Poland trust Russia, and many Poles have become increasingly wary of a country they consider as possessing a neo-imperialistic agenda.

Bogdan Klich, Poland’s defence minister, said: “It is a demonstration of strength. We are monitoring the exercises to see what has been planned.

Wladyslaw Stasiak, chief of President Lech Kaczynski’s office, and a former head of Poland’s National Security Council, added: “We didn’t like the appearance of the exercises and the name harked back to the days of the Warsaw Pact.”

The Russian troop exercises will come as an unwelcome sight to the states nestling on Russia’s western border who have deep-rooted anxieties over any Russian show of strength.

With a resurgent Moscow now more willing to flex its muscles, Central and Eastern Europeans have warned of Russia adopting a neo-imperialistic attitude to an area of the world it still regards as its sphere of influence.

In July, the region’s most famed and influential political figures, including Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel, wrote an open letter Barack Obama warning him that Russia “is back as a revisionist power pursuing a 19th-century agenda with 21st-century tactics and methods.”

Moscow and Minsk have insisted that Operation West was to help "ensure the strategic stability in the East European region".

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Monday, November 2, 2009

Mossad? Nope, FBI. Oops.

Scientist Pleads Not Guilty to Espionage
Published: Oct. 30, 2009 at 4:49 PM

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- A former U.S. government scientist with a top secret clearance was held without bond Friday after pleading not guilty to attempted espionage, authorities said.

Stewart David Nozette, 52, of Chevy Chase, Md., was accused of trying to deliver classified information to someone he thought was an Israeli intelligence official but who was actually an FBI undercover agent, CNN reported.

Asstistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Asuncion said evidence will show Nozette disclosed to investigators information that was "top secret, related to our national defense, that would cause exceptionally grave damage to national security" if revealed to a foreign country.

In arguing against bond, prosecutors played what they call an undercover videotape of a conversation 10 days ago between Nozette and an agent.

Nozette is heard negotiating for a false passport and a means to get to a country with no extradition policy with the United States and suggested his wife would not accompany him, the FBI said.

Nozette had a top secret clearance and served at the White House on the National Space Council for President George H.W. Bush, an FBI affidavit said.

The document says Nozette also acted as a technical consultant from 1998 until early 2008 "for an aerospace company that was wholly owned by the government of the state of Israel."

The company reportedly consulted with Nozette monthly, getting answers to questions and he received total payments of $225,000.Sphere: Related Content

"Schild und Schwert der Partei"


'Puzzlers' reassemble shredded Stasi files, bit by bit -- latimes.com

East German documents provide a crucial piece of history, supporters of the project say, but putting them back together could take hundreds of years. A computerized system would help, but it's costly.

November 1, 2009


EXCERPT: Reporting from Berlin and Zirndorf, Germany, - Martina Metzler peers at the piles of paper strips spread across four desks in her office. Seeing two jagged edges that match, her eyes light up and she tapes them together.


"Another join, another small success," she says with a wry smile -- even though at least two-thirds of the sheet is still missing.

Metzler, 45, is a "puzzler," one of a team of eight government workers that has attempted for the last 14 years to manually restore documents hurriedly shredded by East Germany's secret police, or Stasi, in the dying days of one of the Soviet bloc's most repressive regimes.

Two decades after the heady days when crowds danced atop the Berlin Wall, Germany has reunited and many of its people have moved on. But historians say it is important to establish the truth about the Communist era, and the work of the puzzlers has unmasked prominent figures in the former East Germany as Stasi agents. In addition, about 100,000 people annually apply to see their own files.

The Stasi, which is said to have had more than 170,000 informers, succeeded in destroying thousands of files, shredding them in machines called "ripping wolves" until the equipment broke down under the weight of the task, then through burning and pulping (the contents, held in buckets in the archive, are known as "Stasi porridge"). At the end, agents tore them by bare hand as the teeming crowds smashed down their doors.




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Sunday, November 1, 2009

Obama's Predator Drone Strikes in AfPak


As you consider Obama's decisions and actions concerning the Predator strikes and how he decides to move forward (or not) in Afghanistan, a little perspective is called for -- so let's remember what Candidate Obama said on 13 Aug 07. [". . . just air-raiding villages and killing civilians."]

The Predator War
Jane Mayer
The New Yorker
October 26, 2009

Excerpt: On August 5th, officials at the Central Intelligence Agency, in Langley, Virginia, watched a live video feed relaying closeup footage of one of the most wanted terrorists in Pakistan. Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Taliban in Pakistan, could be seen reclining on the rooftop of his father-in-law’s house, in Zanghara, a hamlet in South Waziristan. It was a hot summer night, and he was joined outside by his wife and his uncle, a medic; at one point, the remarkably crisp images showed that Mehsud, who suffered from diabetes and a kidney ailment, was receiving an intravenous drip.

The video was being captured by the infrared camera of a Predator drone, a remotely controlled, unmanned plane that had been hovering, undetected, two miles or so above the house. Pakistan’s Interior Minister, A. Rehman Malik, told me recently that Mehsud was resting on his back. Malik, using his hands to make a picture frame, explained that the Predator’s targeters could see Mehsud’s entire body, not just the top of his head. “It was a perfect picture,” Malik, who watched the videotape later, said. “We used to see James Bond movies where he talked into his shoe or his watch. We thought it was a fairy tale. But this was fact!” The image remained just as stable when the C.I.A. remotely launched two Hellfire missiles from the Predator. Authorities watched the fiery blast in real time. After the dust cloud dissipated, all that remained of Mehsud was a detached torso. Eleven others died: his wife, his father-in-law, his mother-in-law, a lieutenant, and seven bodyguards.

Pakistan’s government considered Mehsud its top enemy, holding him responsible for the vast majority of recent terrorist attacks inside the country, including the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, in December, 2007, and the bombing, last September, of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, which killed more than fifty people. Mehsud was also thought to have helped his Afghan confederates attack American and coalition troops across the border. Roger Cressey, a former counterterrorism official on the National Security Council, who is now a partner at Good Harbor, a consulting firm, told me, “Mehsud was someone both we and Pakistan were happy to see go up in smoke.” Indeed, there was no controversy when, a few days after the missile strike, CNN reported that President Barack Obama had authorized it.


More . . .

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Friday, October 30, 2009

China Is Trying a Tibetan Filmmaker for Subversion

China Is Trying a Tibetan Filmmaker for Subversion

By Andrew Jacobs
The New York Times
October 31, 2009

[Comment: We should all consider the incremental (or abrupt) shifts wherein peaceful political expression and petition are criminalized.]

EXCERPT:

CHONGQING, China — A self-taught filmmaker who spent five months interviewing Tibetans about their hopes and frustrations living under Chinese rule is facing charges of state subversion after the footage was smuggled abroad and distributed on the Internet and at film festivals around the world.

The filmmaker, Dhondup Wangchen, who has been detained since March 2008, just weeks after deadly rioting broke out in Tibet, managed to sneak a letter out of jail last month saying that his trial had begun.

“There is no good news I can share with you,” he wrote in the letter, which was provided by a cousin in Switzerland. “It is unclear what the sentence will be.”

As President Obama prepares for his first trip to China next month, rights advocates are clamoring for his attention in hopes that he will raise the plight of individuals like Mr. Wangchen or broach such thorny topics as free speech, democracy and greater religious freedom.

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Thursday, October 29, 2009

Pentagon Propaganda & "Retired Military Analysts"

The left-of-center news blog, Raw Story, has published Part III in a series of stories detailing the controversial propaganda activities of the Defense Department under the Bush Administration -- and now apparently continuing under Obama & Co.

Reporting focuses on“responsible senior officials” that are still employed by the Defense Department, including Bryan Whitman, who remains a chief Pentagon spokesman and head of all media operations, and Roxie Merritt, who is head of the Pentagon’s community relations office.

The documents produced/cited in the reporting are of particular interest:

With respect to the Pentagon and news media reporting, there's a very dangerous intersection where Information Operations, PsyOps, and Public Affairs all come together. There are laws governing how that's done ~ but, not very much analysis or discussion. If you're interested in reading more, allow me to recommend the following articles and the links embedded therein:







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Monday, October 26, 2009

China's Military Threat to U.S. (Who? Us?) [Annotated]

Chinese Military Backs Closer U.S. Ties
Mon Oct 26, 2009 5:25pm EDT
By Adam Entous | Reuters

[Blogger's annotations in Maoist Red]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China's military sought to assure [whew, thanks!] the United States on Monday that its arms buildup was not a threat and said Beijing wanted to expand cooperation with the Pentagon to reduce the risk of future conflicts.

At the start of a visit to Washington, Xu Caihou, vice chairman of the People's Liberation Army Central Military Commission, said military ties were generally moving in a "positive direction" and defended China's fast-paced military development as purely "defensive" and "limited" in scope.

"We are now predominantly committed to peaceful development and we will not and could not challenge or threaten any other country" and "certainly not the United States," [Read: You are the Main Enemy] Xu told a Washington think tank ahead of talks with Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Xu described China's development of advanced weapons systems, including cruise and ballistic missiles, as "entirely for self-defense" and justified "given the vast area of China, the severity of the challenges facing us."

"As you know, China has yet to realize complete unification," Xu said, in an apparent reference to Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province. "So I believe it is simply necessary for the PLA to have an appropriate level of modernity in terms of our weapons and equipment."

Xu's visit, which will include a tour of major U.S. military bases, including U.S. Strategic Command, was meant to give a boost to military-to-military dialogue, which Beijing resumed this year after halting it in 2008 to protest a $6.5 billion U.S. arms sale to Taiwan.

NAVAL INCIDENTS

U.S. officials have expressed alarm about what they see as China's unprecedented military expansion over the past year. Last week, Gates said better dialogue was needed to avoid "mistakes and miscalculations."

"I want to make clear that the limited weapons and equipment of China is entirely to meet the minimum requirements for meeting national security," Xu said through a translator.

He said military mechanization was still at an early stage. "China's defense policy remains defensive" and was designed to repel attacks, not initiate attacks, he said. "We will never seek hegemony ... military expansion." ["Baloney" -- a technical term]

Chinese vessels have confronted U.S. surveillance ships in Asian waters repeatedly this year and Beijing has called on the United States to reduce and eventually halt air and sea military surveillance close to its shores. [Expect us to comply. If not literally, we'll phase down.]

Xu said those U.S. missions "infringed upon Chinese interests," adding: "It is encouraging to see that both sides have recognized that we should not allow such incidents to damage our ... mil-to-mil relations."

Xu said U.S.-Chinese military relations have improved since President Barack Obama took office in January and can be expanded further. [Mmm, mmm, mmm . . .]

"The military-to-military relationship constitutes an important part of overall bilateral relations. It is important not only to strategic trust ... but also to regional stability," he said. "The Chinese military is positive toward developing mil-to-mil relations with the U.S. military." [Of course they are -- they're not morons.]

Last month, U.S. intelligence agencies singled out China as a challenge to the United States because of its "increasing natural resource-focused diplomacy and military modernization." [Duh.]

(Reporting by Adam Entous; editing by Stacey Joyce)

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Saturday, October 24, 2009

Mexican Zetas and Other Private Armies




A "New" Dynamic in the Western Hemisphere Security Environment: The Mexican Zetas and Other Private Armies
Authored by Dr. Max G. Manwaring. September 2009

EXCERPTED SUMMARY:

Summary
A new and dangerous dynamic has been introduced into the Mexican internal security environment. That new dynamic involves the migration of power from traditional state and nonstate adversaries to nontraditional nonstate private military organizations such as the Zetas, enforcer gangs like the Aztecas, Negros, and Polones, and paramilitary triggermen. Moreover, the actions of these irregular nonstate actors tend to be more political-psychological than military, and further move the threat from hard power to soft power solutions.

In this connection, we examine the macro "what, why, who, how, and so what?" questions concerning the resultant type of conflict that has been and is being fought in Mexico. A useful way to organize these questions is to adopt a matrix approach. The matrix may be viewed as having four sets of elements: (1) The Contextual Setting, (the "what?" and beginning "why" questions); (2) The Protagonist’s Background, Organization, Operations, Motives, and Linkages (the fundamental "who? why?" and "how" questions); (3) The Strategic-Level Outcomes and Consequences (the basic "so what?" question; and (4) Recommendations that address the salient implications. These various elements are mutually influencing and constitute the political-strategic level cause and effect dynamics of a given case.

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Friday, October 23, 2009

Iran & China Stealing U.S. Technology & Equipment



Iran, China Lead the World in Stealing U.S. Military Technology According to Documents Uncovered by Judicial Watch
Washington, DC -- October 21, 2009

EXCERPT: Iran and China lead the world in stealing sensitive U.S. military equipment and technology according to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from the Justice Department's National Security Division. The documents include a report entitled, "Significant Export Control Cases Since September 2001," which was prepared by the Counter Espionage Section (CES), and includes the charges, investigative agency, defendants and disposition of each case.

According to the Justice Department report, which was labeled "For Official Use Only," Iran and China were cited for 31 and 20 violations respectively between September 29, 2001 and May 16, 2008. Among the "significant" cases listed by the CES:

•U.S. v. Eugene Hsu, et al. (9/21/01): Eugene Hsu, David Chang and Wing Chang were charged with "Conspiracy and an attempt to export military encryption units to China through Singapore." All received guilty verdicts however Wing Chang is still listed as a fugitive.

•U.S. v. Avassapian (12/03): Sherzhik Avassapian was a Tehran-based broker working for the Iranian Ministry of Defense when he attempted to "solicit and inspect F-14 fighter components, military helicopters and C-130 aircraft which he intended to ship to Iran via Italy." Avassapian pleaded guilty to issuing false statements.

•U.S. v. Kwonhwan Park (11/04): Kwonhwan Park was charged with "Exporting Black Hawk engine parts and other military items to China." Pleaded guilty and sentenced to 32 months in prison.

•U.S. v. Ghassemi, et al. (10/06): Iranian national Jamshid Ghassemi and Aurel Fratila were charged with "Conspiracy to export munition list items &emdash; including accelerometers and gyroscopes for missiles and spacecraft &emdash; to Iran without a license." Ghassemi and Fratila are at large in Thailand and Romania respectively. Justice is currently seeking their deportation.

In October 2008, the Department of Justice announced that criminal charges had been issued against more than 145 defendants in the previous fiscal year. Approximately 43% of these cases involved munitions or other restricted technology bound for Iran or China.

More . . .

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Thursday, October 22, 2009

PsyOps and the American Public -- Unlawful Manipulation?

Comment: A favorite topic of mine is government manipulation of the media for propaganda purposes. It's often subtle and ubiquitous. Occasionally it's ham-handed and coarse. When the Department of Defense is involved and the target audience is the American public it's illegal.

I've covered the cartoonishly simplistic and amateurish (some would say dangerous and over-priced) work of The Rendon Group in earlier posts. Others, such as USAF COL Sam Gardiner, have written about the very dangerous intersection where Public Affairs, PsyOps and Information Warfare all meet. A few years ago I collaborated with Congressman Walter Jones (R-NC) to expose Rendon. Here's some new reporting from The Left -- "The Raw Story" -- who seem to have uncovered additional possible violations of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948.

Pentagon Used Psychological Operation on US Public, Documents Show

By Brad Jacobson
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 -- 10:12 am
The Raw Story

Figure in Bush propaganda operation remains Pentagon spokesman

In Part I of this series, Raw Story revealed that Bryan Whitman, the current deputy assistant secretary of defense for media operations, was an active senior participant in a Bush administration covert Pentagon program that used retired military analysts to generate positive wartime news coverage.

A months-long review of documents and interviews with Pentagon personnel has revealed that the Bush Administration's military analyst program -- aimed at selling the Iraq war to the American people -- operated through a secretive collaboration between the Defense Department's press and community relations offices.

Raw Story has also uncovered evidence that directly ties the activities undertaken in the military analyst program to an official US military document’s definition of psychological operations -- propaganda that is only supposed to be directed toward foreign audiences.

The investigation of Pentagon documents and interviews with Defense Department officials and experts in public relations found that the decision to fold the military analyst program into community relations and portray it as “outreach” served to obscure the intent of the project as well as that office’s partnership with the press office. It also helped shield its senior supervisor, Bryan Whitman, assistant secretary of defense for media operations, whose role was unknown when the original story of the analyst program broke.

In a nearly hour-long phone interview, Whitman asserted that since the program was not run from his office, he was neither involved nor culpable. Exposure of the collaboration between the Pentagon press and community relations offices on this program, however, as well as an effort to characterize it as a mere community outreach project, belie Whitman’s claim that he bears no responsibility for the program’s activities.

These new revelations come in addition to the evidence of Whitman’s active and extensive participation in the program, as Raw Story documented in part one of this series. Whitman remains a spokesman for the Pentagon today.

Whitman said he stood by an earlier statement in which he averred “the intent and purpose of the [program] is nothing other than an earnest attempt to inform the American public.”

In the interview, Whitman sought to portray his role as peripheral, noting that his position naturally demands he speak on a number of subjects in which he isn’t necessarily directly involved.

The record, however, suggests otherwise.

In a January 2005 memorandum to active members of both offices from then-Pentagon press office director, Navy Captain Roxie Merritt, who now leads the community relations office, emphasized the necessary “synergy of outreach shop and media ops working together” on the military analyst program. [p. 18-19]

Merritt recommended that both the press and community relations offices develop a “hot list” of analysts who could dependably “carry our water” and provide them with ultra-exclusive access that would compel the networks to “weed out the less reliably friendly analysts” on their own.

“Media ops and outreach can work on a plan to maximize use of the analysts and figure out a system by which we keep our most reliably friendly analysts plugged in on everything from crisis response to future plans,” Merritt remarked. “As evidenced by this analyst trip to Iraq, the synergy of outreach shop and media ops working together on these types of projects is enormous and effective. Will continue to examine ways to improve processes.”

In response, Lawrence Di Rita, then Pentagon public affairs chief, agreed. He told Merritt and both offices in an email, “I guess I thought we already were doing a lot of this.”

Several names on the memo are redacted. Those who are visible read like a who’s who of the Pentagon press and community relations offices: Whitman, Merritt, her deputy press office director Gary Keck (both of whom reported directly to Whitman) and two Bush political appointees, Dallas Lawrence and Allison Barber, then respectively director and head of community relations.

Merritt became director of the office, and its de facto chief until the appointment of a new deputy assistant secretary of defense, after the departures of Barber and Lawrence, the ostensible leaders of the military analyst program. She remains at the Defense Department today.

When reached through email, Merritt attempted to explain the function of her office's outreach program and what distinguishes it from press office activities.

“Essentially,” Merritt summarized, “we provide another avenue of communications for citizens and organizations wanting to communicate directly with DoD.”

Asked to clarify, she said that outreach’s purpose is to educate the public in a one-to-one manner about the Defense Department and military’s structure, history and operations. She also noted her office "does not handle [the] news media unless they have a specific question about one of our programs."

Merritt eventually admitted that it is not a function of the outreach program to provide either information or talking points to individuals or a group of individuals -- such as the retired military analysts -- with the intention that those recipients use them to directly engage with traditional news media and influence news coverage.

Asked directly if her office provides talking points for this purpose, she replied, “No. The talking points are developed for use by DoD personnel.”

Experts in public relations and propaganda say Raw Story's findings reveal the program itself was "unwise" and "inherently deceptive." One expressed surprise that one of the program's senior figures was still speaking for the Pentagon.

“Running the military analyst program from a community relations office is both surprising and unwise,” said Nicholas Cull, a professor of public diplomacy at USC’s Annenberg School and an expert on propaganda. “It is surprising because this is not what that office should be doing [and] unwise because the element of subterfuge is always a lightening rod for public criticism.”

Diane Farsetta, a senior researcher at the Center for Media and Democracy, which monitors publics relations and media manipulation, said calling the program “outreach” was “very calculatedly misleading” and another example of how the project was “inherently deceptive.”

“This has been their talking point in general on the Pentagon pundit program,” Farsetta explained. “You know, ‘We’re all just making sure that we’re sharing information.’”

Farsetta also said that it’s “pretty stunning” that no one, including Whitman, has been willing to take any responsibility for the program and that the Pentagon Inspector General’s office and Congress have yet to hold anyone accountable.

“It’s hard to think of a more blatant example of propaganda than this program,” Farsetta said.

Cull said the revelations are “just one more indication that the entire apparatus of the US government’s strategic communications -- civilian and military, at home and abroad -- is in dire need of review and repair.”

A PSYOPS Program Directed at American Public

When the military analyst program was first revealed by The New York Times in 2008, retired US Army Col. Ken Allard described it as “PSYOPS on steroids.”

It turns out this was far from a casual reference. Raw Story has discovered new evidence that directly exposes this stealth media project and the activities of its participants as matching the US government’s own definition of psychological operations, or PSYOPS.

The US Army Civil Affairs & Psychological Operations Command fact sheet, which states that PSYOPS should be directed “to foreign audiences” only, includes the following description:

“Used during peacetime, contingencies and declared war, these activities are not forms of force, but are force multipliers that use nonviolent means in often violent environments.”

Pentagon public affairs officials referred to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” in documented communications.

A prime example is a May 2006 memorandum from then community relations chief Allison Barber in which she proposes sending the military analysts on another trip to Iraq:

“Based on past trips, I would suggest limiting the group to 10 analysts, those with the greatest ability to serve as message force multipliers.”

Nicholas Cull, who also directs the public diplomacy master’s program at USC and has written extensively on propaganda and media history, found the Pentagon public affairs officials’ use of such terms both incriminating and reckless.

“[Their] use of psyop terminology is an ‘own goal,’” Cull explained in an email, “as it speaks directly to the American public’s underlying fear of being brainwashed by its own government.”

This new evidence provides further perspective on an incident cited by the Times.

Pentagon records show that the day after 14 marines died in Iraq on August 3, 2005, James T. Conway, then director of operations for the Joint Chiefs, instructed military analysts during a briefing to work to prevent the incident from weakening public support for the war. Conway reminded the military analysts assembled, “The strategic target remains our population.” [p. 102]

Same Strategy, Different Program

Bryan Whitman was also involved in a different Pentagon public affairs project during the lead-up to the war in Iraq: embedding reporters.

The embed and military analyst programs shared the same underlying strategy of “information dominance,” the same objective of selling Bush administration war policies by generating favorable news coverage and were directed at the same target -- the American public.

Torie Clarke, the first Pentagon public affairs chief, is often credited for conceiving both programs. But Clarke and Whitman have openly acknowledged his deep involvement in the embed project.

Clarke declined to be interviewed for this article.

Whitman said he was “heavily involved in the process” of the embed program's development, implementation and supervision.

Before embedding, reporters and media organizations were forced to sign a contract whose ground rules included allowing military officials to review articles for release, traveling with military personnel escorts at all times or remaining in designated areas, only conducting on-the-record interviews, and agreeing that the government may terminate the contract “at any time and for any reason.”

In May 2002, with planning for a possible invasion of Iraq already in progress, Clarke appointed Whitman to head all Pentagon media operations. Prior to that, he had served since 1995 in the Pentagon press office, both as deputy director for press operations and as a public affairs specialist.

The timing of Whitman’s appointment coincided with the development stages of the embed and military analyst programs. He was the ideal candidate for both projects.

Whitman had a military background, having served in combat as a Special Forces commander and as an Army public affairs officer with years of experience in messaging from the Pentagon. He also had experience in briefing and prepping civilian and military personnel.

Whitman's background provided him with a facility and familiarity in navigating military and civilian channels. With these tools in hand, he was able to create dialogue between the two and expedite action in a sprawling and sometimes contentious bureaucracy.

Buried in an obscure April 2008 online New York Times Q&A with readers, reporter David Barstow disclosed:

“As Lawrence Di Rita, a former senior Pentagon official told me, they viewed [the military analyst program] as the ‘mirror image’ of the Pentagon program for embedding reporters with units in the field. In this case, the military analysts were in effect ‘embedded’ with the senior leadership through a steady mix of private briefings, trips and talking points.”

Di Rita denied the conversation had occurred in a telephone interview.

“I don’t doubt that’s what he heard, but that’s not what I said,” Di Rita asserted.

Whitman said he'd never heard Di Rita make any such comparison between the programs.

Barstow, however, said he stood behind the veracity of the quote and the conversation he attributed to Di Rita.

Di Rita, who succeeded Clarke, also declined to answer any questions related to Whitman’s involvement in the military analyst program, including whether he had been involved in its creation.

Clarke and Whitman have both discussed information dominance and its role in the embed program.

In her 2006 book Lipstick on a Pig, Clarke revealed that “most importantly, embedding was a military strategy in addition to a public affairs one” (p. 62) and that the program’s strategy was “simple: information dominance” (p. 187). To achieve it, she explained, there was a need to circumvent the traditional news media “filter” where journalists act as “intermediaries.”

The goal, just as with the military analyst program, was not to spin a story but to control the narrative altogether.

At the 2003 Military-Media conference in Chicago, Whitman told the audience, “We wanted to take the offensive to achieve information dominance” because “information was going to play a major role in combat operations.” [pdf link p. 2] One of the other program’s objectives, he said, was “to build and maintain support for U.S. policy.” [pdf link, p. 16 – quote sourced in 2005 recap of 2003 mil-media conference]

At the March 2004 “Media at War” conference at UC Berkeley, Lt. Col. Rick Long, former head of media relations for the US Marine Corps, offered a candid view of the Pentagon’s engagement in “information warfare” during the Bush administration.

“Our job is to win, quite frankly,” said Long. “The reason why we wanted to embed so many media was we wanted to dominate the information environment. We wanted to beat any kind of propaganda or disinformation at its own game.”

“Overall,” he told the audience, “we’re happy with the outcome.”

The Appearance of Transparency

On a national radio program just before the invasion of Iraq, Whitman claimed that embedded reporters would have a firsthand perspective of “the good, the bad and the ugly.”

But veteran foreign correspondent Reese Erlich told Raw Story that the embed program was “a stroke of genius by the Bush administration” because it gave the appearance of transparency while “in reality, they were manipulating the news.”

In a phone interview, Erlich, who is currently covering the war in Afghanistan as a “unilateral” (which allows reporters to move around more freely without the restrictions of embed guidelines), also pointed out the psychological and practical influence the program has on reporters.

“You’re traveling with a particular group of soldiers,” he explained. “Your life literally depends on them. And you see only the firefights or slog that they’re involved in. So you’re not going to get anything close to balanced reporting.”

At the August 2003 Military-Media conference in Chicago, Jonathan Landay, who covered the initial stages of the war for Knight Ridder Newspapers, said that being a unilateral “gave me the flexibility to do my job.” [pdf link p. 2]

He added, “Donald Rumsfeld told the American people that what happened in northern Iraq after [the invasion] was a little ‘untidiness.’ What I saw, and what I reported, was a tsunami of murder, looting, arson and ethnic cleansing.”

Paul Workman, a journalist with over thirty years at CBC News, including foreign correspondent reporting on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, wrote of the program in April 2003, “It is a brilliant, persuasive conspiracy to control the images and the messages coming out of the battlefield and they've succeeded colossally.”

Erlich said he thought most mainstream US reporters have been unwilling to candidly discuss the program because they “weren’t interested in losing their jobs by revealing what they really thought about the embed process.”

Now embedded with troops in Afghanistan for McClatchy, Landay told Raw Story it’s not that reporters shouldn’t be embedded with troops at all, but that it should be only one facet of every news outlet’s war coverage.

Embedding, he said, offers a “soda-straw view of events.” This isn't necessarily negative “as long as a news outlet has a number of embeds and unilaterals whose pictures can be combined” with civilian perspectives available from international TV outlets such as Reuters TV, AP TV, and al Jazeera, he said.

Landay placed more blame on US network news outlets than on the embed program itself for failing to show a more balanced and accurate picture.

But when asked if the Pentagon and the designers of the embed program counted as part of their embedding strategy on the dismal track record of US network news outlets when it came to including international TV footage from civilian perspectives, he replied, “I will not second guess the Pentagon’s motives.”

Brad Jacobson is a contributing investigative reporter for Raw Story. Additional research was provided by Ron Brynaert.
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Friday, October 16, 2009

Zapruder 313 -- Back & to the Left

C.I.A. Is Still Cagey About Oswald Mystery
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: October 16, 2009

WASHINGTON — Is the Central Intelligence Agency covering up some dark secret about the assassination of John F. Kennedy?

Probably not. But you would not know it from the C.I.A.’s behavior.

For six years, the agency has fought in federal court to keep secret hundreds of documents from 1963, when an anti-Castro Cuban group it paid clashed publicly with the soon-to-be assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. The C.I.A. says it is only protecting legitimate secrets. But because of the agency’s history of stonewalling assassination inquiries, even researchers with no use for conspiracy thinking question its stance.

The files in question, some released under direction of the court and hundreds more that are still secret, involve the curious career of George E. Joannides, the case officer who oversaw the dissident Cubans in 1963. In 1978, the agency made Mr. Joannides the liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations — but never told the committee of his earlier role.

That concealment has fueled suspicion that Mr. Joannides’s real assignment was to limit what the House committee could learn about C.I.A. activities. The agency’s deception was first reported in 2001 by Jefferson Morley, a journalist and author who has doggedly pursued the files ever since, represented by James H. Lesar, a Washington lawyer specializing in Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.

“The C.I.A.’s conduct is maddening,” said Mr. Morley, 51, a former Washington Post reporter and the author of a 2008 biography of a former C.I.A. station chief in Mexico. After years of meticulous reporting on Mr. Joannides, who died at age 68 in 1990, he is convinced that there is more to learn.

“I know there’s a story here,” Mr. Morley said. “The confirmation is that the C.I.A. treats these documents as extremely sensitive.”

Mr. Morley’s quest has gained prominent supporters, including John R. Tunheim, a federal judge in Minnesota who served in 1994 and 1995 as chairman of the Assassination Records Review Board, created by Congress to unearth documents related to the case.

“I think we were probably misled by the agency,” Judge Tunheim said, referring to the Joannides records. “This material should be released.”

Gerald Posner, the author of an anti-conspiracy account of the J.F.K. assassination, “Case Closed,” said the C.I.A.’s withholding such aged documents was “a perfect example of why nobody trusts the agency.”

“It feeds the conspiracy theorists who say, ‘You’re hiding something,” ’ Mr. Posner said.

After losing an appeals court decision in Mr. Morley’s lawsuit, the C.I.A. released material last year confirming Mr. Joannides’s deep involvement with the anti-Castro Cubans who confronted Oswald. But the agency is withholding 295 specific documents from the 1960s and ’70s, while refusing to confirm or deny the existence of many others, saying their release would cause “extremely grave damage” to national security.

“The methods of defeating or deterring covert action in the 1960s and 1970s can still be instructive to the United States’ current enemies,” a C.I.A. official wrote in a court filing.

An agency spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, said the C.I.A. had opened all files relevant to the assassination to Judge Tunheim’s review board and denied that it was trying to avoid embarrassment. “The record doesn’t support that, any more than it supports conspiracy theories, offensive on their face, that the C.I.A. had a hand in President Kennedy’s death,” Mr. Gimigliano said.

C.I.A. secrecy has been hotly debated this year, with agency officials protesting the Obama administration’s decision to release legal opinions describing brutal interrogation methods. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, came under attack from Republicans after she accused the C.I.A. of misleading Congress about waterboarding, adding, “They mislead us all the time.”

On the Kennedy assassination, the deceptions began in 1964 with the Warren Commission. The C.I.A. concealed its unsuccessful schemes to kill Fidel Castro and its ties to the anti-Castro D.R.E., the Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil, or Cuban Student Directorate, which received $50,000 a month in C.I.A. support during 1963.

In August 1963, Oswald visited a New Orleans shop owned by a D.R.E. official, feigning sympathy with the group’s goal of overthrowing Castro. A few days later, D.R.E. members found Oswald handing out pro-Castro pamphlets and got into a brawl with him. Later that month, Oswald debated the anti-Castro Cubans on a local radio station.

In the years since Oswald was named as the assassin, speculation about who might have been behind him has never ended, with various theories focusing on Castro, the mob, rogue government agents or myriad combinations of the above. Mr. Morley, one of many writers to become entranced by the story, insists that he has no theory and is seeking only the facts.

His lawsuit has uncovered the central role in overseeing D.R.E. activities of Mr. Joannides, the deputy director for psychological warfare at the C.I.A.’s Miami station, code-named JM/WAVE. He worked closely with D.R.E. leaders, documents show, corresponding with them under pseudonyms, paying their travel expenses and achieving an “important degree of control” over the group, as a July 1963 agency fitness report put it.

Fifteen years later, Mr. Joannides turned up again as the agency’s representative to the House assassinations committee. Dan Hardway, then a law student working for the committee, recalled Mr. Joannides as “a cold fish,” thin and bespectacled, who firmly limited access to documents. Once, Mr. Hardway remembered: “he handed me a thin file and just stood there. I blew up, and he said, ‘This is all you’re going to get.’ ”

But neither Mr. Hardway nor the committee’s staff director, G. Robert Blakey, had any idea that Mr. Joannides had played a role in the very anti-Castro activities from 1963 that the committee was scrutinizing.

When Mr. Morley first informed him about it a decade ago, Mr. Blakey was flabbergasted. “If I’d known his role in 1963, I would have put Joannides under oath — he would have been a witness, not a facilitator,” said Mr. Blakey, a law professor at Notre Dame. “How do we know what he didn’t give us?”

After Oliver Stone’s 1991 film “J.F.K.” fed wild speculation about the Kennedy case, Congress created the Assassination Records Review Board to release documents. But because the board, too, was not told of Mr. Joannides’s 1963 work, it did not peruse his records, said Judge Tunheim, the chairman.

“If we’d known of his role in Miami in 1963, we would have pressed for all his records,” Judge Tunheim said. No matter what comes of Mr. Morley’s case in the United States District Court in Washington, he said he might ask the current C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, to release the records, even if the names of people who are still alive must be redacted for privacy.

What motive could C.I.A. officials have to bury the details of Mr. Joannides’s work for so long? Did C.I.A. officers or their Cuban contacts know more about Oswald than has been revealed? Or was the agency simply embarrassed by brushes with the future assassin — like the Dallas F.B.I. officials who, after the assassination, destroyed a handwritten note Oswald had previously left for an F.B.I. agent?

Or has Mr. Morley spent a decade on a wild goose chase?

Max Holland, who is writing a history of the Warren Commission, said the agency might be trying to preserve the principle of secrecy.

“If you start going through the files of every C.I.A. officer who had anything to do with anything that touched the assassination, that would have no end,” Mr. Holland said.

Mr. Posner, the anti-conspiracy author, said that if there really were something explosive involving the C.I.A. and President Kennedy, it wouldn’t be in the files — not even in the documents the C.I.A. has fought to keep secret.

“Most conspiracy theorists don’t understand this,” Mr. Posner said. “But if there really were a C.I.A. plot, no documents would exist.”

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