Sunday, July 10, 2005
AMERICAblog: Because a great nation deserves the truth
AMERICAblog: Because a great nation deserves the truth
BG: Things must have gotten so bad that a limited hang-out was called for.
BG: Things must have gotten so bad that a limited hang-out was called for.
We're Not in Watergate Anymore - New York Times
We're Not in Watergate Anymore - New York Times
July 10, 2005
We're Not in Watergate Anymore
By FRANK RICH
WHEN John Dean published his book "Worse Than Watergate" in the spring of 2004, it seemed rank hyperbole: an election-year screed and yet another attempt by a Nixon alumnus to downgrade Watergate crimes by unearthing worse "gates" thereafter. But it's hard to be dismissive now that my colleague Judy Miller has been taken away in shackles for refusing to name the source for a story she never wrote. No reporter went to jail during Watergate. No news organization buckled like Time. No one instigated a war on phony premises. This is worse than Watergate.
To start to see why, forget all the legalistic chatter about shield laws and turn instead to "The Secret Man," Bob Woodward's new memoir about life with Deep Throat. The book arrived in stores just as Judy Miller was jailed, as if by divine intervention to help illuminate her case.
Should a journalist protect a sleazy, possibly even criminal, source? Yes, sometimes, if the public is to get news of wrongdoing. Mark Felt was a turncoat with alternately impenetrable and self-interested motives who betrayed the F.B.I. and, in Mr. Woodward's words, "lied to his colleagues, friends and even his family." (Mr. Felt even lied in his own 1979 memoir.) Should a journalist break a promise of confidentiality after, let alone before, the story is over? "It is critical that confidential sources feel they would be protected for life," Mr. Woodward writes. "There needed to be a model out there where people could come forward or speak when contacted, knowing they would be protected. It was a matter of my work, a matter of honor."
That honorable model, which has now been demolished at Time, was a given in what seems like the halcyon Watergate era of "The Secret Man." Mr. Woodward and Carl Bernstein had confidence that The Washington Post's publisher, Katharine Graham, and editor, Ben Bradlee, would back them to the hilt, even though the Nixon White House demonized their reporting as inaccurate (as did some journalistic competitors) and threatened the licenses of television stations owned by the Post Company.
At Time, Norman Pearlstine - a member of the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists, no less - described his decision to turn over Matt Cooper's files to the feds as his own, made on the merits and without consulting any higher-ups at Time Warner. That's no doubt the truth, but a corporate mentality needn't be imposed by direct fiat; it's a virus that metastasizes in the bureaucratic bloodstream. I doubt anyone at Time Warner ever orders an editor to promote a schlocky Warner Brothers movie either. (Entertainment Weekly did two covers in one month on "The Matrix Reloaded.")
Time Warner seems to have far too much money on the table in Washington to exercise absolute editorial freedom when covering the government; at this moment it's awaiting an F.C.C. review of its joint acquisition (with Comcast) of the bankrupt cable company Adelphia. "Is this a journalistic company or an entertainment company?" David Halberstam asked after the Pearlstine decision. We have the answer now. What high-level source would risk talking to Time about governmental corruption after this cave-in? What top investigative reporter would choose to work there?
But the most important difference between the Bush and Nixon eras has less to do with the press than with the grave origins of the particular case that has sent Judy Miller to jail. This scandal didn't begin, as Watergate did, simply with dirty tricks and spying on the political opposition. It began with the sending of American men and women to war in Iraq.
Specifically, it began with the former ambassador Joseph Wilson's July 6, 2003, account on the Times Op-Ed page (and in concurrent broadcast appearances) of his 2002 C.I.A. mission to Africa to determine whether Saddam Hussein had struck a deal in Niger for uranium that might be used in nuclear weapons. Mr. Wilson concluded that there was no such deal, as my colleague Nicholas Kristof reported, without divulging Mr. Wilson's name, that spring. But the envoy's dramatic Op-Ed piece got everyone's attention: a government insider with firsthand knowledge had stepped out of the shadows of anonymity to expose the administration's game authoritatively on the record. He had made palpable what Bush critics increasingly suspected, writing that "some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."
Up until that point, the White House had consistently stuck by the 16 incendiary words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The administration had ignored all reports, not just Mr. Wilson's, that this information might well be bogus. But it still didn't retract Mr. Bush's fiction some five weeks after the State of the Union, when Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, announced that the uranium claim was based on fake documents. Instead, we marched on to war in Iraq days later. It was not until Mr. Wilson's public recounting of his African mission more than five months after the State of the Union that George Tenet at long last released a hasty statement (on a Friday evening, just after the Wilson Op-Ed piece) conceding that "these 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president."
The Niger uranium was hardly the only dubious evidence testifying to Saddam's supposed nuclear threat in the run-up to war. Judy Miller herself was one of two reporters responsible for a notoriously credulous front-page Times story about aluminum tubes that enabled the administration's propaganda campaign to trump up Saddam's W.M.D. arsenal. But red-hot uranium was sexy, and it was Mr. Wilson's flat refutation of it that drove administration officials to seek their revenge: they told the columnist Robert Novak that Mr. Wilson had secured his (nonpaying) African mission through the nepotistic intervention of his wife, a covert C.I.A. officer whom they outed by name. The pettiness of this retribution shows just how successfully Mr. Wilson hit the administration's jugular: his revelation threatened the legitimacy of the war on which both the president's reputation and re-election campaign had been staked.
This was another variation on a Watergate theme. Charles Colson's hit men broke into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, seeking information to smear Mr. Ellsberg after he leaked the Pentagon Papers, the classified history of the Vietnam War, to The Times. But there was even greater incentive to smear Mr. Wilson than Mr. Ellsberg. Nixon compounded the Vietnam War but didn't start it. The war in Iraq, by contrast, is Mr. Bush's invention.
Again following the Watergate template, the Bush administration at first tried to bury the whole Wilson affair by investigating itself. Even when The Washington Post reported two months after Mr. Wilson's Op-Ed that "two top White House officials" had called at least six reporters, not just Mr. Novak, to destroy Mr. Wilson and his wife, the inquiry was kept safely within the John Ashcroft Justice Department, with the attorney general, according to a Times report, being briefed regularly on details of the investigation. If that rings a Watergate bell now, that's because on Thursday you may have read the obituary of L. Patrick Gray, Mark Felt's F.B.I. boss, who, in a similarly cozy conflict of interest, kept the Nixon White House abreast of the supposedly independent Watergate inquiry in its early going.
Political pressure didn't force Mr. Ashcroft to relinquish control of the Wilson investigation to a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, until Dec. 30, 2003, more than five months after Mr. Novak's column ran. Now 18 more months have passed, and no one knows what crime Mr. Fitzgerald is investigating. Is it the tricky-to-prosecute outing of Mr. Wilson's wife, the story Judy Miller never even wrote about? Or has Mr. Fitzgerald moved on to perjury and obstruction of justice possibly committed by those who tried to hide their roles in that outing? If so, it would mean the Bush administration was too arrogant to heed the most basic lesson of Watergate: the cover-up is worse than the crime.
"Mr. Fitzgerald made his bones prosecuting the mob," intoned the pro-Bush editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, "and doesn't seem to realize that this case isn't about organized crime." But that may be exactly what it is about to an ambitious prosecutor with his own career on the line. That the Bush administration would risk breaking the law with an act as self-destructive to American interests as revealing a C.I.A. officer's identity smacks of desperation. It makes you wonder just what else might have been done to suppress embarrassing election-season questions about the war that has mired us in Iraq even as the true perpetrators of 9/11 resurface in Madrid, London and who knows where else.
IN his original Op-Ed piece in The Times, published two years to the day before Judy Miller went to jail, Mr. Wilson noted that "more than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already," before concluding that "we have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons." As that death toll surges past 1,700, that sacred duty cannot be abandoned by a free press now.
July 10, 2005
We're Not in Watergate Anymore
By FRANK RICH
WHEN John Dean published his book "Worse Than Watergate" in the spring of 2004, it seemed rank hyperbole: an election-year screed and yet another attempt by a Nixon alumnus to downgrade Watergate crimes by unearthing worse "gates" thereafter. But it's hard to be dismissive now that my colleague Judy Miller has been taken away in shackles for refusing to name the source for a story she never wrote. No reporter went to jail during Watergate. No news organization buckled like Time. No one instigated a war on phony premises. This is worse than Watergate.
To start to see why, forget all the legalistic chatter about shield laws and turn instead to "The Secret Man," Bob Woodward's new memoir about life with Deep Throat. The book arrived in stores just as Judy Miller was jailed, as if by divine intervention to help illuminate her case.
Should a journalist protect a sleazy, possibly even criminal, source? Yes, sometimes, if the public is to get news of wrongdoing. Mark Felt was a turncoat with alternately impenetrable and self-interested motives who betrayed the F.B.I. and, in Mr. Woodward's words, "lied to his colleagues, friends and even his family." (Mr. Felt even lied in his own 1979 memoir.) Should a journalist break a promise of confidentiality after, let alone before, the story is over? "It is critical that confidential sources feel they would be protected for life," Mr. Woodward writes. "There needed to be a model out there where people could come forward or speak when contacted, knowing they would be protected. It was a matter of my work, a matter of honor."
That honorable model, which has now been demolished at Time, was a given in what seems like the halcyon Watergate era of "The Secret Man." Mr. Woodward and Carl Bernstein had confidence that The Washington Post's publisher, Katharine Graham, and editor, Ben Bradlee, would back them to the hilt, even though the Nixon White House demonized their reporting as inaccurate (as did some journalistic competitors) and threatened the licenses of television stations owned by the Post Company.
At Time, Norman Pearlstine - a member of the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists, no less - described his decision to turn over Matt Cooper's files to the feds as his own, made on the merits and without consulting any higher-ups at Time Warner. That's no doubt the truth, but a corporate mentality needn't be imposed by direct fiat; it's a virus that metastasizes in the bureaucratic bloodstream. I doubt anyone at Time Warner ever orders an editor to promote a schlocky Warner Brothers movie either. (Entertainment Weekly did two covers in one month on "The Matrix Reloaded.")
Time Warner seems to have far too much money on the table in Washington to exercise absolute editorial freedom when covering the government; at this moment it's awaiting an F.C.C. review of its joint acquisition (with Comcast) of the bankrupt cable company Adelphia. "Is this a journalistic company or an entertainment company?" David Halberstam asked after the Pearlstine decision. We have the answer now. What high-level source would risk talking to Time about governmental corruption after this cave-in? What top investigative reporter would choose to work there?
But the most important difference between the Bush and Nixon eras has less to do with the press than with the grave origins of the particular case that has sent Judy Miller to jail. This scandal didn't begin, as Watergate did, simply with dirty tricks and spying on the political opposition. It began with the sending of American men and women to war in Iraq.
Specifically, it began with the former ambassador Joseph Wilson's July 6, 2003, account on the Times Op-Ed page (and in concurrent broadcast appearances) of his 2002 C.I.A. mission to Africa to determine whether Saddam Hussein had struck a deal in Niger for uranium that might be used in nuclear weapons. Mr. Wilson concluded that there was no such deal, as my colleague Nicholas Kristof reported, without divulging Mr. Wilson's name, that spring. But the envoy's dramatic Op-Ed piece got everyone's attention: a government insider with firsthand knowledge had stepped out of the shadows of anonymity to expose the administration's game authoritatively on the record. He had made palpable what Bush critics increasingly suspected, writing that "some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."
Up until that point, the White House had consistently stuck by the 16 incendiary words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The administration had ignored all reports, not just Mr. Wilson's, that this information might well be bogus. But it still didn't retract Mr. Bush's fiction some five weeks after the State of the Union, when Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, announced that the uranium claim was based on fake documents. Instead, we marched on to war in Iraq days later. It was not until Mr. Wilson's public recounting of his African mission more than five months after the State of the Union that George Tenet at long last released a hasty statement (on a Friday evening, just after the Wilson Op-Ed piece) conceding that "these 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president."
The Niger uranium was hardly the only dubious evidence testifying to Saddam's supposed nuclear threat in the run-up to war. Judy Miller herself was one of two reporters responsible for a notoriously credulous front-page Times story about aluminum tubes that enabled the administration's propaganda campaign to trump up Saddam's W.M.D. arsenal. But red-hot uranium was sexy, and it was Mr. Wilson's flat refutation of it that drove administration officials to seek their revenge: they told the columnist Robert Novak that Mr. Wilson had secured his (nonpaying) African mission through the nepotistic intervention of his wife, a covert C.I.A. officer whom they outed by name. The pettiness of this retribution shows just how successfully Mr. Wilson hit the administration's jugular: his revelation threatened the legitimacy of the war on which both the president's reputation and re-election campaign had been staked.
This was another variation on a Watergate theme. Charles Colson's hit men broke into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, seeking information to smear Mr. Ellsberg after he leaked the Pentagon Papers, the classified history of the Vietnam War, to The Times. But there was even greater incentive to smear Mr. Wilson than Mr. Ellsberg. Nixon compounded the Vietnam War but didn't start it. The war in Iraq, by contrast, is Mr. Bush's invention.
Again following the Watergate template, the Bush administration at first tried to bury the whole Wilson affair by investigating itself. Even when The Washington Post reported two months after Mr. Wilson's Op-Ed that "two top White House officials" had called at least six reporters, not just Mr. Novak, to destroy Mr. Wilson and his wife, the inquiry was kept safely within the John Ashcroft Justice Department, with the attorney general, according to a Times report, being briefed regularly on details of the investigation. If that rings a Watergate bell now, that's because on Thursday you may have read the obituary of L. Patrick Gray, Mark Felt's F.B.I. boss, who, in a similarly cozy conflict of interest, kept the Nixon White House abreast of the supposedly independent Watergate inquiry in its early going.
Political pressure didn't force Mr. Ashcroft to relinquish control of the Wilson investigation to a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, until Dec. 30, 2003, more than five months after Mr. Novak's column ran. Now 18 more months have passed, and no one knows what crime Mr. Fitzgerald is investigating. Is it the tricky-to-prosecute outing of Mr. Wilson's wife, the story Judy Miller never even wrote about? Or has Mr. Fitzgerald moved on to perjury and obstruction of justice possibly committed by those who tried to hide their roles in that outing? If so, it would mean the Bush administration was too arrogant to heed the most basic lesson of Watergate: the cover-up is worse than the crime.
"Mr. Fitzgerald made his bones prosecuting the mob," intoned the pro-Bush editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, "and doesn't seem to realize that this case isn't about organized crime." But that may be exactly what it is about to an ambitious prosecutor with his own career on the line. That the Bush administration would risk breaking the law with an act as self-destructive to American interests as revealing a C.I.A. officer's identity smacks of desperation. It makes you wonder just what else might have been done to suppress embarrassing election-season questions about the war that has mired us in Iraq even as the true perpetrators of 9/11 resurface in Madrid, London and who knows where else.
IN his original Op-Ed piece in The Times, published two years to the day before Judy Miller went to jail, Mr. Wilson noted that "more than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already," before concluding that "we have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons." As that death toll surges past 1,700, that sacred duty cannot be abandoned by a free press now.
US, Britain mull major troop pull-out from Iraq next year - Yahoo! News
US, Britain mull major troop pull-out from Iraq next year - Yahoo! News
BG: Is it a leak when it is intentional?
BG: Is it a leak when it is intentional?
As Shuttle Returns, Emotions Tug Columbia Families Anew - New York Times
As Shuttle Returns, Emotions Tug Columbia Families Anew - New York Times
BG: I hope to be proven wrong. However, I think they (whoever they are) have monkey business planned for the shuttle to be launched on 7/13.
BG: I hope to be proven wrong. However, I think they (whoever they are) have monkey business planned for the shuttle to be launched on 7/13.
The 18� Minute Gap: I can't believe he [Bush] said that.
The 18� Minute Gap: I can't believe he said that.: "London attacks were a reminder of the 'evil' of the Sept. 11 "
Gonzales Defends His White House Record
Gonzales Defends His White House Record
washingtonpost.com
Gonzales Defends His White House Record
Nominee Questioned On Detainee Policies
By Dan Eggen and R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 7, 2005; A01
Attorney general nominee Alberto R. Gonzales strongly defended his tenure as White House counsel yesterday, including his conclusion that the protections of the Geneva Conventions do not apply to alleged terrorists, and he suggested that the United States should consider renegotiating the international treaties to better wage its war on terrorism.
During a day-long hearing dominated by a debate over the Bush administration's detention and interrogation policies, Gonzales pledged to pursue any allegations of prisoner abuse in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that fall within the Justice Department's jurisdiction. He said he would honor the obligations of the Geneva Conventions and other international agreements on the treatment of detainees.
"Torture and abuse will not be tolerated by this administration," Gonzales said. "I will ensure the Department of Justice aggressively pursues those responsible for such abhorrent actions."
But under often tough questioning from Democrats and some Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales said he could not recall key details of his involvement in the production of an August 2002 memo that narrowly defined the tactics that constitute torture. He also declined repeated invitations to repudiate a past administration assertion that the president has the authority to ignore anti-torture statutes on national security grounds.
Gonzales testified that while he disagreed with portions of the Justice Department memo, he could not recall whether he conveyed those objections to other government lawyers at the time. He said he did not quarrel with its general findings.
Gonzales said he could not remember who had requested the legal guidance on permissible interrogation tactics -- many officials have said it was the CIA -- but he acknowledged under questioning that high-pressure interrogation techniques were discussed in White House meetings at which he was present. Others have said the tactics included mock burials and simulated drownings.
The memo -- which was used to formulate permissive Defense Department rules on interrogations -- was withdrawn by the Justice Department after it was revealed publicly in 2004 and has since been rewritten, reaching starkly different conclusions.
"There was discussion between the White House and the Department of Justice as well as other agencies about what does this statute mean," Gonzales said, referring to a 1994 anti-torture law. "I don't recall today whether I was in agreement with all the analysis, but I don't have a disagreement with the conclusions then reached by the [Justice] department. Ultimately it is the responsibility of the department to tell us what the law means."
Republicans and many Democrats have said that they expect the GOP-controlled Senate to easily approve the appointment of Gonzales, 49, a longtime confidant of President Bush whose inspirational rise from poverty to Harvard Law School and the White House was cited by supporters yesterday.
His exchanges with senators touched on a wide variety of issues, from Gonzales's defense of the USA Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law, to his acknowledgment that the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion "is the law of the land." Several Democratic senators, who have had increasingly sour relations with Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, said they were hopeful that their relationship with Gonzales would be more productive.
But many Democrats and at least one Republican argued that Gonzales had participated in formulating policy that laid the foundation for the abuse scandals in Afghanistan, Iraq and Cuba, which have generated global outrage. Gonzales declined to answer many questions and said he could not recall details in relation to many others, prompting complaints from some Democrats on the committee.
"We're looking for you, when we ask you questions, to give us an answer, which you haven't done yet," Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) told Gonzales. "I love you, but you're not very candid so far."
Gonzales said "it is appropriate to revisit" the Geneva Conventions, which provide an international standard of conduct for handling detainees during military conflicts. Gonzales disclosed that White House officials, including some lawyers, had held "some very preliminary discussion" about the idea, but he said "it's not been a systematic project or effort."
Gonzales did not say what revisions are under consideration, but he said they would not affect provisions requiring "basic, decent treatment of human beings."
An August report by a panel of experts appointed by the Defense Department endorsed the idea of adapting the 1949 conventions "to the realities of the nature of conflict in the 21st century." It particularly urged the creation of a legal category for detainees from terrorist groups, who presumably would not be afforded the same protections as other detainees. The International Committee of the Red Cross immediately condemned the idea of changing the Geneva Conventions.
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who is a judge advocate in the Air Force Reserve, joined Democrats in criticizing some of the administration's conclusions on detention and interrogation policies. He said policymakers ignored the advice of seasoned military professionals.
"When you start looking at torture statutes and you look at ways around the spirit of the law . . . you're losing the moral high ground," Graham said. "Once you start down this road, it is very hard to come back. So I do believe we have lost our way, and my challenge to you as a leader of this nation is to help us find our way without giving up our obligation and right to fight our enemy."
Other Republicans on the committee strongly defended Gonzales, a counsel to then-Gov. George W. Bush and a former Texas Supreme Court judge, saying he was being unfairly used as a scapegoat by critics of the administration's anti-terrorism policies. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said Gonzales's conclusion that al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are not protected under the Geneva Conventions is supported by other legal opinions. Cornyn characterized the 2002 memo on torture as "a memo he [Gonzales] didn't write, interpreting a law he didn't draft." The memo was written by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.
"President Bush and Judge Gonzales have both unequivocally, clearly and repeatedly rejected the use of torture," Cornyn said. "But is there anyone here today who would fail to use every legal means to collect intelligence from terrorists in order to protect American lives? I certainly hope not."
Four different senators tried to pin down Gonzales on the August 2002 memo's controversial assertion that a president had the power to authorize torture in unusual circumstances, but Gonzales deflected that, saying it was a "hypothetical question." A new memo issued by the Justice Department last month also avoided the question of presidential power.
At the same time, Gonzales did not rule out reaching such a conclusion in the future. "I would have to know what . . . is the national interest that the president may have to consider," he told Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.).
Gonzales acknowledged under questioning from Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) that he took part in discussions about the legality of high-pressure interrogation techniques. But he said it was not his "job to decide which methods of obtaining information from terrorists would be most effective" or whether such methods are prohibited by a 1994 law barring torture.
"That would be a job for the Department of Justice, and I never . . . influenced or pressured the department to bless any of those techniques," he said.
Kennedy responded that "just as an attorney, as a human being, I would have thought that . . . if there were recommendations that were so blatantly and flagrantly over the line in terms of torture, that you would have recognized them."
In response to a question from Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) about whether U.S. personnel could legally engage in torture under any circumstances, Gonzales said: "I don't believe so, but I'd want to get back to you on that and make sure I don't provide a misleading answer."
Gonzales expressed skepticism about the reliability of documents obtained in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union indicating that as many as 26 FBI agents had reported seeing the mistreatment of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison. He said that one FBI agent had asserted erroneously that a presidential order authorized aggressive interrogation techniques, and that "if something like that is wrong in these e-mails, there may be other facts that are wrong."
washingtonpost.com
Gonzales Defends His White House Record
Nominee Questioned On Detainee Policies
By Dan Eggen and R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 7, 2005; A01
Attorney general nominee Alberto R. Gonzales strongly defended his tenure as White House counsel yesterday, including his conclusion that the protections of the Geneva Conventions do not apply to alleged terrorists, and he suggested that the United States should consider renegotiating the international treaties to better wage its war on terrorism.
During a day-long hearing dominated by a debate over the Bush administration's detention and interrogation policies, Gonzales pledged to pursue any allegations of prisoner abuse in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that fall within the Justice Department's jurisdiction. He said he would honor the obligations of the Geneva Conventions and other international agreements on the treatment of detainees.
"Torture and abuse will not be tolerated by this administration," Gonzales said. "I will ensure the Department of Justice aggressively pursues those responsible for such abhorrent actions."
But under often tough questioning from Democrats and some Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales said he could not recall key details of his involvement in the production of an August 2002 memo that narrowly defined the tactics that constitute torture. He also declined repeated invitations to repudiate a past administration assertion that the president has the authority to ignore anti-torture statutes on national security grounds.
Gonzales testified that while he disagreed with portions of the Justice Department memo, he could not recall whether he conveyed those objections to other government lawyers at the time. He said he did not quarrel with its general findings.
Gonzales said he could not remember who had requested the legal guidance on permissible interrogation tactics -- many officials have said it was the CIA -- but he acknowledged under questioning that high-pressure interrogation techniques were discussed in White House meetings at which he was present. Others have said the tactics included mock burials and simulated drownings.
The memo -- which was used to formulate permissive Defense Department rules on interrogations -- was withdrawn by the Justice Department after it was revealed publicly in 2004 and has since been rewritten, reaching starkly different conclusions.
"There was discussion between the White House and the Department of Justice as well as other agencies about what does this statute mean," Gonzales said, referring to a 1994 anti-torture law. "I don't recall today whether I was in agreement with all the analysis, but I don't have a disagreement with the conclusions then reached by the [Justice] department. Ultimately it is the responsibility of the department to tell us what the law means."
Republicans and many Democrats have said that they expect the GOP-controlled Senate to easily approve the appointment of Gonzales, 49, a longtime confidant of President Bush whose inspirational rise from poverty to Harvard Law School and the White House was cited by supporters yesterday.
His exchanges with senators touched on a wide variety of issues, from Gonzales's defense of the USA Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law, to his acknowledgment that the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion "is the law of the land." Several Democratic senators, who have had increasingly sour relations with Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, said they were hopeful that their relationship with Gonzales would be more productive.
But many Democrats and at least one Republican argued that Gonzales had participated in formulating policy that laid the foundation for the abuse scandals in Afghanistan, Iraq and Cuba, which have generated global outrage. Gonzales declined to answer many questions and said he could not recall details in relation to many others, prompting complaints from some Democrats on the committee.
"We're looking for you, when we ask you questions, to give us an answer, which you haven't done yet," Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) told Gonzales. "I love you, but you're not very candid so far."
Gonzales said "it is appropriate to revisit" the Geneva Conventions, which provide an international standard of conduct for handling detainees during military conflicts. Gonzales disclosed that White House officials, including some lawyers, had held "some very preliminary discussion" about the idea, but he said "it's not been a systematic project or effort."
Gonzales did not say what revisions are under consideration, but he said they would not affect provisions requiring "basic, decent treatment of human beings."
An August report by a panel of experts appointed by the Defense Department endorsed the idea of adapting the 1949 conventions "to the realities of the nature of conflict in the 21st century." It particularly urged the creation of a legal category for detainees from terrorist groups, who presumably would not be afforded the same protections as other detainees. The International Committee of the Red Cross immediately condemned the idea of changing the Geneva Conventions.
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who is a judge advocate in the Air Force Reserve, joined Democrats in criticizing some of the administration's conclusions on detention and interrogation policies. He said policymakers ignored the advice of seasoned military professionals.
"When you start looking at torture statutes and you look at ways around the spirit of the law . . . you're losing the moral high ground," Graham said. "Once you start down this road, it is very hard to come back. So I do believe we have lost our way, and my challenge to you as a leader of this nation is to help us find our way without giving up our obligation and right to fight our enemy."
Other Republicans on the committee strongly defended Gonzales, a counsel to then-Gov. George W. Bush and a former Texas Supreme Court judge, saying he was being unfairly used as a scapegoat by critics of the administration's anti-terrorism policies. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said Gonzales's conclusion that al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are not protected under the Geneva Conventions is supported by other legal opinions. Cornyn characterized the 2002 memo on torture as "a memo he [Gonzales] didn't write, interpreting a law he didn't draft." The memo was written by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.
"President Bush and Judge Gonzales have both unequivocally, clearly and repeatedly rejected the use of torture," Cornyn said. "But is there anyone here today who would fail to use every legal means to collect intelligence from terrorists in order to protect American lives? I certainly hope not."
Four different senators tried to pin down Gonzales on the August 2002 memo's controversial assertion that a president had the power to authorize torture in unusual circumstances, but Gonzales deflected that, saying it was a "hypothetical question." A new memo issued by the Justice Department last month also avoided the question of presidential power.
At the same time, Gonzales did not rule out reaching such a conclusion in the future. "I would have to know what . . . is the national interest that the president may have to consider," he told Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.).
Gonzales acknowledged under questioning from Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) that he took part in discussions about the legality of high-pressure interrogation techniques. But he said it was not his "job to decide which methods of obtaining information from terrorists would be most effective" or whether such methods are prohibited by a 1994 law barring torture.
"That would be a job for the Department of Justice, and I never . . . influenced or pressured the department to bless any of those techniques," he said.
Kennedy responded that "just as an attorney, as a human being, I would have thought that . . . if there were recommendations that were so blatantly and flagrantly over the line in terms of torture, that you would have recognized them."
In response to a question from Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) about whether U.S. personnel could legally engage in torture under any circumstances, Gonzales said: "I don't believe so, but I'd want to get back to you on that and make sure I don't provide a misleading answer."
Gonzales expressed skepticism about the reliability of documents obtained in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union indicating that as many as 26 FBI agents had reported seeing the mistreatment of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison. He said that one FBI agent had asserted erroneously that a presidential order authorized aggressive interrogation techniques, and that "if something like that is wrong in these e-mails, there may be other facts that are wrong."
What's Behind the London Attacks?
What's Behind the London Attacks?
What's Behind the London Attacks?
The bombing of the London Underground was a false-flag operation designed to keep the West mired in war. Don't believe otherwise.
By Matt Hutaff Jul 7, 2005
Only one word sprang to mind when I heard about the bombings that claimed the lives of dozens of Londoners today – convenient.
Is there anything convenient in death, or in thousands of lives destroyed from catastrophe? No – and words cannot express the sorrow I feel for the men and women changed by today's events. But governments with skeletons in their closets have a great deal to gain from a national tragedy bolstered by "terrorism."
As I sit in my office today, I hear the whispers of co-workers now utterly convinced our war on terror must continue. Despite American and British involvement in the Middle East birthing wave after wave of rebel forces, the Bush doctrine is now justified in the minds of millions. Petty grievances such as the Downing Street Minutes, the President's flagging support and Karl Rove's treasonous outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame are unimportant. A shadowy conglomeration is out to kill us.
Sound familiar? It should – the same emotional ploy was used to great effect on Americans in the wake of September 11th. Question nothing, particularly your cries for vengeance or that nagging feeling in the back of your head. Justice delayed is justice denied.
Unlike four years ago, however, I refuse to accept that the attack on London was anything less than a false-flag operation designed to enrage Western "civilization" against the Middle East. Why? Because there is no reason for "terrorist" groups to attack England. As recently as this week, the Ministry of Defense announced that plans were being drafted that would pull British armed forces from the quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan. With the British effectively admitting they're throwing in the towel, the only motivation to stay could come from an attack that compels the forces to stay and fight "global terrorism."
Think about it. The attack only benefits empires desperate to maintain a foothold in the Middle East without further eroding public opinion. Will Parliament shrug their shoulders and push their soldiers into longer tours of duty because of this? Obviously it's too early to tell, but if that happens, insurgents and rebels will have lost more than they could have ever possibly gained in destroying part of the Underground.
Brian Kilmeade of Fox News agrees, claiming the sabotage "works to ... [the] Western world's advantage, for people to experience something like this together." It doesn't just make "terrorism" an American problem. It makes it a worldwide problem. The Number One problem.
No longer do we need to concern ourselves with two world leaders (who have spawned more worldwide terrorism than any fanatical religious organization) going unquestioned in their lies that started a war. We can cast off our sluggish economies, lack of freedoms and pitiful descent into draconian law. Terror is on the rise.
I feel like I'm sitting in my apartment watching the World Trade Center collapse all over again.
Everything is the same, right down to the previously unheard of Islamic group (The Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe? Are you kidding me?) taking credit – even though the translation falls apart under scrutiny and the Q'uran is improperly cited. Considering the only Al Qaeda cell to ever be uncovered was a front for the Mossad, you'd think the perpetrators could at least come up with a clever new booga-booga name to grab headlines. Their arrogance is startling.
As is the ever-present Israeli connection, a staple among false flag operations. Before today's attack, the Israeli Embassy in London was notified an attack was forthcoming. As a result, former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu remained in his hotel room rather than head towards a nearby hotel where he was to address an economic summit.
The embassy denies it had any prior knowledge, of course, but the story has changed dramatically in the process. If, as they say, Netanyahu was not warned, how did he know to stay in his room? How did he know the danger was so severe that he dare not venture out of the hotel?
Oops! The story's changed again – here Netanyahu says that British police had warned the Israelis (but not the rest of the city?) of a pending attack. Scotland Yard denies this; Israel's reply was to say Netanyahu received his warning after the first blast. How? It was initially reported as a power surge for hours. What is being hidden here? And why isn't there an investigation into these obvious discrepancies?
It's enough to make your head spin and your eyes cross with rage.
Regardless, I am making an appeal to Britons who are understandably wracked with grief at the moment – don't buy into the hatred the way we Americans did. Don't ignore the obvious evidence that this whole affair was orchestrated by your own government. Most importantly, don't let the deaths of the few, however tragic, plunge your nation into another fit of war and civic clampdowns.
Toying with your emotions is expected. Don't fall prey to ignorance. See the attack on your home for what it really is – a distraction that will keep your money, resources and troops mired in ceaseless battle for an ideology that betrays your democratic and civilized tenets.
Honor your dead with tears, not a cry for war or praise for a disgraced leader.
Canon Fodder is a weekly analysis of politics and society.
What's Behind the London Attacks?
The bombing of the London Underground was a false-flag operation designed to keep the West mired in war. Don't believe otherwise.
By Matt Hutaff Jul 7, 2005
Only one word sprang to mind when I heard about the bombings that claimed the lives of dozens of Londoners today – convenient.
Is there anything convenient in death, or in thousands of lives destroyed from catastrophe? No – and words cannot express the sorrow I feel for the men and women changed by today's events. But governments with skeletons in their closets have a great deal to gain from a national tragedy bolstered by "terrorism."
As I sit in my office today, I hear the whispers of co-workers now utterly convinced our war on terror must continue. Despite American and British involvement in the Middle East birthing wave after wave of rebel forces, the Bush doctrine is now justified in the minds of millions. Petty grievances such as the Downing Street Minutes, the President's flagging support and Karl Rove's treasonous outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame are unimportant. A shadowy conglomeration is out to kill us.
Sound familiar? It should – the same emotional ploy was used to great effect on Americans in the wake of September 11th. Question nothing, particularly your cries for vengeance or that nagging feeling in the back of your head. Justice delayed is justice denied.
Unlike four years ago, however, I refuse to accept that the attack on London was anything less than a false-flag operation designed to enrage Western "civilization" against the Middle East. Why? Because there is no reason for "terrorist" groups to attack England. As recently as this week, the Ministry of Defense announced that plans were being drafted that would pull British armed forces from the quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan. With the British effectively admitting they're throwing in the towel, the only motivation to stay could come from an attack that compels the forces to stay and fight "global terrorism."
Think about it. The attack only benefits empires desperate to maintain a foothold in the Middle East without further eroding public opinion. Will Parliament shrug their shoulders and push their soldiers into longer tours of duty because of this? Obviously it's too early to tell, but if that happens, insurgents and rebels will have lost more than they could have ever possibly gained in destroying part of the Underground.
Brian Kilmeade of Fox News agrees, claiming the sabotage "works to ... [the] Western world's advantage, for people to experience something like this together." It doesn't just make "terrorism" an American problem. It makes it a worldwide problem. The Number One problem.
No longer do we need to concern ourselves with two world leaders (who have spawned more worldwide terrorism than any fanatical religious organization) going unquestioned in their lies that started a war. We can cast off our sluggish economies, lack of freedoms and pitiful descent into draconian law. Terror is on the rise.
I feel like I'm sitting in my apartment watching the World Trade Center collapse all over again.
Everything is the same, right down to the previously unheard of Islamic group (The Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe? Are you kidding me?) taking credit – even though the translation falls apart under scrutiny and the Q'uran is improperly cited. Considering the only Al Qaeda cell to ever be uncovered was a front for the Mossad, you'd think the perpetrators could at least come up with a clever new booga-booga name to grab headlines. Their arrogance is startling.
As is the ever-present Israeli connection, a staple among false flag operations. Before today's attack, the Israeli Embassy in London was notified an attack was forthcoming. As a result, former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu remained in his hotel room rather than head towards a nearby hotel where he was to address an economic summit.
The embassy denies it had any prior knowledge, of course, but the story has changed dramatically in the process. If, as they say, Netanyahu was not warned, how did he know to stay in his room? How did he know the danger was so severe that he dare not venture out of the hotel?
Oops! The story's changed again – here Netanyahu says that British police had warned the Israelis (but not the rest of the city?) of a pending attack. Scotland Yard denies this; Israel's reply was to say Netanyahu received his warning after the first blast. How? It was initially reported as a power surge for hours. What is being hidden here? And why isn't there an investigation into these obvious discrepancies?
It's enough to make your head spin and your eyes cross with rage.
Regardless, I am making an appeal to Britons who are understandably wracked with grief at the moment – don't buy into the hatred the way we Americans did. Don't ignore the obvious evidence that this whole affair was orchestrated by your own government. Most importantly, don't let the deaths of the few, however tragic, plunge your nation into another fit of war and civic clampdowns.
Toying with your emotions is expected. Don't fall prey to ignorance. See the attack on your home for what it really is – a distraction that will keep your money, resources and troops mired in ceaseless battle for an ideology that betrays your democratic and civilized tenets.
Honor your dead with tears, not a cry for war or praise for a disgraced leader.
Canon Fodder is a weekly analysis of politics and society.
London Underground Bombing 'Exercises' Took Place at Same Time as Real Attack
London Underground Bombing 'Exercises' Took Place at Same Time as Real Attack
London Underground Bombing 'Exercises' Took Place at Same Time as Real Attack
Culpability cover scenario echoes 9/11 wargames
Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones/Prison Planet | July 9 2005
A consultancy agency with government and police connections was running an exercise for an unnamed company that revolved around the London Underground being bombed at the exact same times and locations as happened in real life on the morning of July 7th.
On a BBC Radio 5 interview that aired on the evening of the 7th, the host interviewed Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants, which bills itself as a 'crisis management' advice company, better known to you and I as a PR firm.
Peter Power was a former Scotland Yard official, working at one time with the Anti Terrorist Branch.
Power told the host that at the exact same time that the London bombings were taking place, his company was running a 1,000 person strong exercise which drilled the London Underground being bombed at the exact same locations, at the exact same times, as happened in real life.
The transcript is as follows.
POWER: At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now.
HOST: To get this quite straight, you were running an exercise to see how you would cope with this and it happened while you were running the exercise?
POWER: Precisely, and it was about half past nine this morning, we planned this for a company and for obvious reasons I don't want to reveal their name but they're listening and they'll know it. And we had a room full of crisis managers for the first time they'd met and so within five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision that this is the real one and so we went through the correct drills of activating crisis management procedures to jump from slow time to quick time thinking and so on.
Click here for a clip of this dialogue. Click here for a longer clip where the comments can be heard in their full context.
The fact that the exercise mirrored the exact locations and times of the bombings is light years beyond a coincidence. Power said the drill focused around 'simultaneous bombings'. At first the bombings were thought to have been spread over an hour, but the BBC reports just today that the bombings were in fact simultaneous.
Mr. Power (pictured above) and Visor Consultants need not have been 'in on the bombing' or anything of that nature for this to be of importance. The British government or one of their private company offshoots could have hired Visor to run the exercise for a number of purposes.
The exercise fulfils several different goals. It acts as a cover for the small compartamentalized government terrorists to carry out their operation without the larger security services becoming aware of what they're doing, and, more importantly, if they get caught during the attack or after with any incriminating evidence they can just claim that they were just taking part in the exercise.
This is precisely what happened on the morning of 9/11/2001. The CIA was conducting drills of flying hijacked planes into the WTC and Pentagon at 8:30 in the morning.
It is clear that at least five if not six training exercises were in operation in the days leading up to and on the morning of 9/11. This meant that NORAD radar screens showed as many as 22 hijacked airliners at the same time. NORAD had been briefed that this was part of the exercise drill and therefore normal reactive procedure was forestalled and delayed.
The large numbers of 'blips' on NORAD screens that displayed both real and 'drill' hijacked planes explain why confused press reports emerged hours after the attack stating that up to eight planes had been hijacked.
The Anglo-American establishment that controls the military-industrial complex of the West has been caught over a hundred times carrying out bombings and other terrorist attacks around the world to further their corporate aims and to blame their enemies.
The US government has been caught planning to carry out attacks and carrying out attacks. The British government has been caught red-handed as well. Members of Vladimir Putin's FSB were caught planting bombs in a Russian apartment building in 1999 by the Moscow police.
This is not speculation. Kermit Roosevelt admited on NPR radio that in 1953 the CIA and British intelligence carried out a wave of bombings and shootings in Iran. He then went on to brag about how they subsequently blamed the bombings on Iran's President, Mossadegh. Do you understand, these people brag about what they do 40 years later?
The London bombings have the same signature as the Madrild bombings of 3/11. Both of these bombings are almost indistinguishable from the Bolognia bombing in 1980 that killed over 80 people.
The bombing in Bolognia was part of a CIA operation code named Gladio, where the US government would pay right-wing terrorists to carry out bombings to be blamed on leftists in Europe. All of this was blown wide open when two of the Bolognia bombers were convited in an Italian court, forcing them to spill their guts admitting that they were neo-fascists contracted by the CIA. Operation Gladio documents have since been declassified.
The London terror alert level was lowered before the bombings took place. This gave the purpotrators extra cover to plan and execute the attack without having to evade the most stringent security.
In any crime you look at history and motive, The British government has been caught in multiple examples of carrying out bombings in London which were then blamed on the IRA. They even had one of their own MI5 agents wihin the Omagh bomb squad. Click here for an archive of this evidence.
The wider agenda will become clearer when Blair firmly points the finger at the selected patsies designated to take the fall. But for the moment he's happy to grandstand as the courageous leader who immedately returned to London to take control of the chaos.
BBC polls that were showing 80 per cent plus opposed the ID card will now likely flip back in the opposite direction. Support for the European Union and increased globalization through the G8 will rise. Who stands to gain from all this? Who has the motive?
From Putin blowing up his own apartment buildings to Israel being behind Hamas, the evidence is consistently clear that large scale terrorism is always state sponsored.
The Madrid train bombing is another example. The bombers were found to be police informants with close links to the Spanish security services. They had access to the most secure areas of the Madrid train system. The Spanish government initially tried to blaim the Basque group ETA for the blast in the hope that the people would rally behind the government and get them re-elected. After ETA denied involvement and the people started saying the government was involved, the Spanish government had to blame Al-Qaeda and kill some patsies by claiming they blew themselves up during a raid.
The London Underground exercises were used as the fallback cover to carry out the attack. This is the biggest smoking gun yet pointing directly to the most secretive levels of the British establishment itself being behind the attack.
More on this story as and when it develops.
London Underground Bombing 'Exercises' Took Place at Same Time as Real Attack
Culpability cover scenario echoes 9/11 wargames
Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones/Prison Planet | July 9 2005
A consultancy agency with government and police connections was running an exercise for an unnamed company that revolved around the London Underground being bombed at the exact same times and locations as happened in real life on the morning of July 7th.
On a BBC Radio 5 interview that aired on the evening of the 7th, the host interviewed Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants, which bills itself as a 'crisis management' advice company, better known to you and I as a PR firm.
Peter Power was a former Scotland Yard official, working at one time with the Anti Terrorist Branch.
Power told the host that at the exact same time that the London bombings were taking place, his company was running a 1,000 person strong exercise which drilled the London Underground being bombed at the exact same locations, at the exact same times, as happened in real life.
The transcript is as follows.
POWER: At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now.
HOST: To get this quite straight, you were running an exercise to see how you would cope with this and it happened while you were running the exercise?
POWER: Precisely, and it was about half past nine this morning, we planned this for a company and for obvious reasons I don't want to reveal their name but they're listening and they'll know it. And we had a room full of crisis managers for the first time they'd met and so within five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision that this is the real one and so we went through the correct drills of activating crisis management procedures to jump from slow time to quick time thinking and so on.
Click here for a clip of this dialogue. Click here for a longer clip where the comments can be heard in their full context.
The fact that the exercise mirrored the exact locations and times of the bombings is light years beyond a coincidence. Power said the drill focused around 'simultaneous bombings'. At first the bombings were thought to have been spread over an hour, but the BBC reports just today that the bombings were in fact simultaneous.
Mr. Power (pictured above) and Visor Consultants need not have been 'in on the bombing' or anything of that nature for this to be of importance. The British government or one of their private company offshoots could have hired Visor to run the exercise for a number of purposes.
The exercise fulfils several different goals. It acts as a cover for the small compartamentalized government terrorists to carry out their operation without the larger security services becoming aware of what they're doing, and, more importantly, if they get caught during the attack or after with any incriminating evidence they can just claim that they were just taking part in the exercise.
This is precisely what happened on the morning of 9/11/2001. The CIA was conducting drills of flying hijacked planes into the WTC and Pentagon at 8:30 in the morning.
It is clear that at least five if not six training exercises were in operation in the days leading up to and on the morning of 9/11. This meant that NORAD radar screens showed as many as 22 hijacked airliners at the same time. NORAD had been briefed that this was part of the exercise drill and therefore normal reactive procedure was forestalled and delayed.
The large numbers of 'blips' on NORAD screens that displayed both real and 'drill' hijacked planes explain why confused press reports emerged hours after the attack stating that up to eight planes had been hijacked.
The Anglo-American establishment that controls the military-industrial complex of the West has been caught over a hundred times carrying out bombings and other terrorist attacks around the world to further their corporate aims and to blame their enemies.
The US government has been caught planning to carry out attacks and carrying out attacks. The British government has been caught red-handed as well. Members of Vladimir Putin's FSB were caught planting bombs in a Russian apartment building in 1999 by the Moscow police.
This is not speculation. Kermit Roosevelt admited on NPR radio that in 1953 the CIA and British intelligence carried out a wave of bombings and shootings in Iran. He then went on to brag about how they subsequently blamed the bombings on Iran's President, Mossadegh. Do you understand, these people brag about what they do 40 years later?
The London bombings have the same signature as the Madrild bombings of 3/11. Both of these bombings are almost indistinguishable from the Bolognia bombing in 1980 that killed over 80 people.
The bombing in Bolognia was part of a CIA operation code named Gladio, where the US government would pay right-wing terrorists to carry out bombings to be blamed on leftists in Europe. All of this was blown wide open when two of the Bolognia bombers were convited in an Italian court, forcing them to spill their guts admitting that they were neo-fascists contracted by the CIA. Operation Gladio documents have since been declassified.
The London terror alert level was lowered before the bombings took place. This gave the purpotrators extra cover to plan and execute the attack without having to evade the most stringent security.
In any crime you look at history and motive, The British government has been caught in multiple examples of carrying out bombings in London which were then blamed on the IRA. They even had one of their own MI5 agents wihin the Omagh bomb squad. Click here for an archive of this evidence.
The wider agenda will become clearer when Blair firmly points the finger at the selected patsies designated to take the fall. But for the moment he's happy to grandstand as the courageous leader who immedately returned to London to take control of the chaos.
BBC polls that were showing 80 per cent plus opposed the ID card will now likely flip back in the opposite direction. Support for the European Union and increased globalization through the G8 will rise. Who stands to gain from all this? Who has the motive?
From Putin blowing up his own apartment buildings to Israel being behind Hamas, the evidence is consistently clear that large scale terrorism is always state sponsored.
The Madrid train bombing is another example. The bombers were found to be police informants with close links to the Spanish security services. They had access to the most secure areas of the Madrid train system. The Spanish government initially tried to blaim the Basque group ETA for the blast in the hope that the people would rally behind the government and get them re-elected. After ETA denied involvement and the people started saying the government was involved, the Spanish government had to blame Al-Qaeda and kill some patsies by claiming they blew themselves up during a raid.
The London Underground exercises were used as the fallback cover to carry out the attack. This is the biggest smoking gun yet pointing directly to the most secretive levels of the British establishment itself being behind the attack.
More on this story as and when it develops.
False flag over London
False flag over London
False flag over London
By John Leonard
Online Journal Contributing Writer
July 8, 2005—Yesterday we saw a classic false flag attack in London, organized by western secret services to distract attention from the deepening political troubles of Bush and Blair, and perhaps even to create the pretext for war on Iran. Of course, Bush and his poll ratings have been sinking under scandals and rumblings of impeachment. Blair too has been badly hurt by the Downing Street memo.
For giving the lowdown on the London underground, I was roundly rebuked today, accused of disgracing the dead. Yet I was the one speaking out to avenge their honor, defending their memory from the bloodstain of abuse by the vultures of war. But no, the shocked sheeple flocked to march in ever tighter lockstep for their Vaterland, with each new Reichstag Firemeisterwerk casting a stronger spell. . . .
The G-8 conference was an ideal, high-profile venue to mobilize the sympathy of world leaders behind their flagging amateur B&B show. Today's Guy Fawkeses, home-team self-terrorists in the heart of empire, thumbed their noses at mortal fools while they played their favorite base-eleven numerology game, on this 7/7 date—following on Madrid 3/11 and New York 9/11, with its Flights 11 and 77.
Cui bono. Wall Street closed on an uptick.
So how can I be so sure? The war-profiteer clique are not all that inventive. False terror is the only trick they know. If they had any idea of governance or statecraft, they wouldn't need to stoop to these toxic tactics.
One of the classic trademarks of false flag terror was on display yesterday: the "previously unknown" organization posting anonymously on a website. Of course, western intelligence, using Echelon and such tools, could track any web posting back to its source. If it wanted to.
"Real" terrorists are known groups that make concrete demands. They are an endangered species, if not extinct.
Fake terrorists—covert psy-war units of western intelligence—always invent a name of an "unknown" group. They have to do this, of course. If they claimed, say, that the PLO did it, the accused would energetically deny it, spoiling the show. So they use fictitious identities, which they can mold to suit the target of convenience.
Yesterday's fiction was a "secret" group affiliated—oh how wonderfully convenient—with Al Qaeda and Al Zarqawi. Yet the state-owned BBC itself has established that Al Qaeda does not even exist, in its documentary film, "The Terror Myth." And just this week Dahr Jamail wrote of his trip to the town of Zarqa, on the trail of the fabled Zarqawi. The man's family believe he died years ago—no recent photos exist. Certain is only that the mythical Zarqawi's base of operations always pops up wherever the Americans want to attack—Fallujah, Samarra, where do you want to go tomorrow?
Some other dead giveaway signs:
Scotland Yard warned Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu half an hour beforehand not to go to the bomb site, according to an AP wire from Jerusalem (a slip that was subsequently denied of course, but it was still up at Al Jazeera).
An MSNBC translator says an error in a verse from the Quran in a statement by the "unknown" group couldn't have been made by Al Qaeda, and he thinks it's phony. Blair's proofreaders are falling down on their dossiers again . . . they ought to be belted or suspended.
Train bombings like London 7/7and Madrid 3/11 are a speciality of NATO psy-war units. The expert on this since 1978 has been Webster Tarpley, who shows in his latest book, 9/11 Synthetic Terror, how the bombing of Bologna Stazione Centrale in 1980 by the so-called Red Brigades is of one cloth with the Madrid bombings. The supposed "communist terrorist" Red Brigades were phonies, a patsy outfit created by Lodge P2, the neofascist shadow government with Italy in its grip. The Madrid train bombing suspects were police agents, also run by a neo-fascist falange: as Tarpley notes, one suspect admitted he worked for the old guard, the Guardia Civil, Unidad Central Operativa.
Another possible motive, says Tarpley, is that the war party want to push Bush into Iran, but America has no stomach for it. They need another 9/11 so they can occupy both the Iraqi and Iranian oil fields, and hold the world, all of us, to ransom.
War and rumors of war—reports of covert American commando operations against targets inside Iran have prepared the ground for war. A storm of anti-American sentiment was aroused, sweeping the elections against the reformers in favor of radical dark horse candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—in turn paving the way to mobilize a war coalition against Iran. Failing that, he may replace Saddam as symbol of vilification while keeping Iran shackled by backward fundamentalism.
Tarpley's book has a chapter named "Islamic Fundamentalism: Fostered by U. S. Foreign Policy." It's a policy going back to the 19th century British Arab Bureau, crown purveyors of divide and conquer tactics, who hit on xenophobic fundamentalism as the tool to make the Arabs impossible partners for alliances with any of Britain's rivals.
"Poster boy" Osama bin Laden is only the latest product of this policy. Alternative writers in the West are quick to point out the demagogic effect his image has on Western publics. Few of them realize the deeply cynical obverse of the covert strategy: feeding the Arabs on the poison pills of false hopes in a terrorist hero.
Yet Arab admiration for Osama has remained platonic. Anthropologists long ago noted the Arab tendency to vent feelings in words rather than actions. Many Muslims felt bound to fight in Afghanistan against the atheist Soviet occupier, but the BBC's Terror Myth documentary recounts how bin Laden and Zawahiri utterly failed to mobilize real Arabs to the way of terrorism against innocent citizens. Tarpley adduces evidence that Zawahiri is probably bin Laden's handler from MI-6. Enter now the shadowy world of the alphabet agencies and their covert clients, the patsies and moles, who live a tunnel life, like the trains of London they have fed on this time.
O lovers of peace and opponents of war: never shall you see an end of calamities instigated by the war party, until the people see through the false flag trick. It is not in marching that wars are stopped, but by understanding.
We are working to bring out a new book that gives depth of historical background to this picture: The Nazi Hydra in America, currently online. It shows how the 1933 Reichstag fire, that most infamous false flag operation which catapulted the Bush-Harriman protégé, little Adolf Hitler, to power, was followed in 1934 by an attempted military putsch against FDR, launched by the Morgan interests—an episode that has been expunged from all schoolbooks. Yet if it had succeeded, with America and Germany both under Nazi control, the New World Fascist Order would have come into being 70 years ago.
They do not give up. They have time, money, and no project more captivating. They've been preparing the final putsch for at least a century, if not more.
Nor were they defeated in 1945. The postwar CIA and NSA are a Phoenix created from the ashes of Nazi assets. The enemy is within the gates.
Read, understand, and realize how bitter and lasting is the struggle against the corporatist hydra, which now lets show the true features behind that leering smiley face, as it grasps again for absolute world power.
John Leonard is the publisher of Webster Griffin Tarpley's "9/11 Synthetic Terror." It may be purchased from his website, Progressive Press. He also was editor and co-author of The War on Freedom (2002), the first exposé of 9/11 published in the United States.
False flag over London
By John Leonard
Online Journal Contributing Writer
July 8, 2005—Yesterday we saw a classic false flag attack in London, organized by western secret services to distract attention from the deepening political troubles of Bush and Blair, and perhaps even to create the pretext for war on Iran. Of course, Bush and his poll ratings have been sinking under scandals and rumblings of impeachment. Blair too has been badly hurt by the Downing Street memo.
For giving the lowdown on the London underground, I was roundly rebuked today, accused of disgracing the dead. Yet I was the one speaking out to avenge their honor, defending their memory from the bloodstain of abuse by the vultures of war. But no, the shocked sheeple flocked to march in ever tighter lockstep for their Vaterland, with each new Reichstag Firemeisterwerk casting a stronger spell. . . .
The G-8 conference was an ideal, high-profile venue to mobilize the sympathy of world leaders behind their flagging amateur B&B show. Today's Guy Fawkeses, home-team self-terrorists in the heart of empire, thumbed their noses at mortal fools while they played their favorite base-eleven numerology game, on this 7/7 date—following on Madrid 3/11 and New York 9/11, with its Flights 11 and 77.
Cui bono. Wall Street closed on an uptick.
So how can I be so sure? The war-profiteer clique are not all that inventive. False terror is the only trick they know. If they had any idea of governance or statecraft, they wouldn't need to stoop to these toxic tactics.
One of the classic trademarks of false flag terror was on display yesterday: the "previously unknown" organization posting anonymously on a website. Of course, western intelligence, using Echelon and such tools, could track any web posting back to its source. If it wanted to.
"Real" terrorists are known groups that make concrete demands. They are an endangered species, if not extinct.
Fake terrorists—covert psy-war units of western intelligence—always invent a name of an "unknown" group. They have to do this, of course. If they claimed, say, that the PLO did it, the accused would energetically deny it, spoiling the show. So they use fictitious identities, which they can mold to suit the target of convenience.
Yesterday's fiction was a "secret" group affiliated—oh how wonderfully convenient—with Al Qaeda and Al Zarqawi. Yet the state-owned BBC itself has established that Al Qaeda does not even exist, in its documentary film, "The Terror Myth." And just this week Dahr Jamail wrote of his trip to the town of Zarqa, on the trail of the fabled Zarqawi. The man's family believe he died years ago—no recent photos exist. Certain is only that the mythical Zarqawi's base of operations always pops up wherever the Americans want to attack—Fallujah, Samarra, where do you want to go tomorrow?
Some other dead giveaway signs:
Scotland Yard warned Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu half an hour beforehand not to go to the bomb site, according to an AP wire from Jerusalem (a slip that was subsequently denied of course, but it was still up at Al Jazeera).
An MSNBC translator says an error in a verse from the Quran in a statement by the "unknown" group couldn't have been made by Al Qaeda, and he thinks it's phony. Blair's proofreaders are falling down on their dossiers again . . . they ought to be belted or suspended.
Train bombings like London 7/7and Madrid 3/11 are a speciality of NATO psy-war units. The expert on this since 1978 has been Webster Tarpley, who shows in his latest book, 9/11 Synthetic Terror, how the bombing of Bologna Stazione Centrale in 1980 by the so-called Red Brigades is of one cloth with the Madrid bombings. The supposed "communist terrorist" Red Brigades were phonies, a patsy outfit created by Lodge P2, the neofascist shadow government with Italy in its grip. The Madrid train bombing suspects were police agents, also run by a neo-fascist falange: as Tarpley notes, one suspect admitted he worked for the old guard, the Guardia Civil, Unidad Central Operativa.
Another possible motive, says Tarpley, is that the war party want to push Bush into Iran, but America has no stomach for it. They need another 9/11 so they can occupy both the Iraqi and Iranian oil fields, and hold the world, all of us, to ransom.
War and rumors of war—reports of covert American commando operations against targets inside Iran have prepared the ground for war. A storm of anti-American sentiment was aroused, sweeping the elections against the reformers in favor of radical dark horse candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—in turn paving the way to mobilize a war coalition against Iran. Failing that, he may replace Saddam as symbol of vilification while keeping Iran shackled by backward fundamentalism.
Tarpley's book has a chapter named "Islamic Fundamentalism: Fostered by U. S. Foreign Policy." It's a policy going back to the 19th century British Arab Bureau, crown purveyors of divide and conquer tactics, who hit on xenophobic fundamentalism as the tool to make the Arabs impossible partners for alliances with any of Britain's rivals.
"Poster boy" Osama bin Laden is only the latest product of this policy. Alternative writers in the West are quick to point out the demagogic effect his image has on Western publics. Few of them realize the deeply cynical obverse of the covert strategy: feeding the Arabs on the poison pills of false hopes in a terrorist hero.
Yet Arab admiration for Osama has remained platonic. Anthropologists long ago noted the Arab tendency to vent feelings in words rather than actions. Many Muslims felt bound to fight in Afghanistan against the atheist Soviet occupier, but the BBC's Terror Myth documentary recounts how bin Laden and Zawahiri utterly failed to mobilize real Arabs to the way of terrorism against innocent citizens. Tarpley adduces evidence that Zawahiri is probably bin Laden's handler from MI-6. Enter now the shadowy world of the alphabet agencies and their covert clients, the patsies and moles, who live a tunnel life, like the trains of London they have fed on this time.
O lovers of peace and opponents of war: never shall you see an end of calamities instigated by the war party, until the people see through the false flag trick. It is not in marching that wars are stopped, but by understanding.
We are working to bring out a new book that gives depth of historical background to this picture: The Nazi Hydra in America, currently online. It shows how the 1933 Reichstag fire, that most infamous false flag operation which catapulted the Bush-Harriman protégé, little Adolf Hitler, to power, was followed in 1934 by an attempted military putsch against FDR, launched by the Morgan interests—an episode that has been expunged from all schoolbooks. Yet if it had succeeded, with America and Germany both under Nazi control, the New World Fascist Order would have come into being 70 years ago.
They do not give up. They have time, money, and no project more captivating. They've been preparing the final putsch for at least a century, if not more.
Nor were they defeated in 1945. The postwar CIA and NSA are a Phoenix created from the ashes of Nazi assets. The enemy is within the gates.
Read, understand, and realize how bitter and lasting is the struggle against the corporatist hydra, which now lets show the true features behind that leering smiley face, as it grasps again for absolute world power.
John Leonard is the publisher of Webster Griffin Tarpley's "9/11 Synthetic Terror." It may be purchased from his website, Progressive Press. He also was editor and co-author of The War on Freedom (2002), the first exposé of 9/11 published in the United States.
Taliban says beheads 'captured' U.S. commando
RESPONDING TO LONDON
The Washington Monthly: "And unless I've misunderstood the situation completely, there's only one thing preventing us from doing that right now: the sovereignty of Pakistan. Questions of manpower and international cooperation are moot unless we decide we're willing to invade Pakistan against their wishes. Are the hawks willing to do that?"
BG: I don't claim to know all the specifics. However, I do think Drum is misled just like a large number of journalists. How many are playing misled beats me. Specificly, I am stating that finding bin Laden has nothing to do with Pakistan prohibitions. That is a ruse.
When Fear Stalks, Tune Out - New York Times
When Fear Stalks, Tune Out - New York Times
BG: By the way, the snipers were almost certainly psyop as well.
greatscat! The online magazine: You asked for it, you got it, Toyota
greatscat! The online magazine: You asked for it, you got it, Toyota: "'The level of the workforce in general is so high that the training program you need for people, even for people who have not worked in a Toyota plant before, is minimal compared to what you have to go through in the southeastern United States,'"
This Terror Will Continue Until We Take Arab Grievances Seriously
This Terror Will Continue Until We Take Arab Grievances Seriously
BG: The War on Terror is a trojan horse to justify the actions of the elite behind it. As you are sadly missing, it is succeeding as designed. Wake Up.
London Terrorist Bombings Mirror Bush's Terrorist Energy Plan
London Terrorist Bombings Mirror Bush's Terrorist Energy Plan
BG: Wasserman may have a point, but I can't see how throwing rhetoric out there like this is going to win friends and influence people.
Can't we have 09/11/2001 Truth first, and then people may be receptive to saving the planet.
Wasserman, and others, you seem to be missing the real leverage point to exposing the Truth.
BG: Wasserman may have a point, but I can't see how throwing rhetoric out there like this is going to win friends and influence people.
Can't we have 09/11/2001 Truth first, and then people may be receptive to saving the planet.
Wasserman, and others, you seem to be missing the real leverage point to exposing the Truth.
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