Retired AT&T engineer Mark Klein has condemned the Senate’s Wednesday cloture vote on the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.
The bill, if passed by final vote planned for July 8, would revise the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to retroactively grant immunity to customers’ civil lawsuits against telecommunications companies who participated in the National Security Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, on the condition that they can provide documentation that they were told ahead of time that their activities were legal.
Klein, in November 2007, urged Congress not to allow such immunity, having gone public with his story of a secret room in AT&T’s San Francisco switching center, which required NSA clearance to enter. All Internet traffic, he said, was being diverted to equipment in the room, as he discovered during his time maintaining optical splitters that handled data to and from AT&T customers.
“[My] thought was George Orwell’s 1984 and here I am forced to connect to the Big Brother machine,” Klein told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann in a November 2007 interview.
Documents Klein obtained, along with conversations he had with colleagues, suggested that 15 to 20 other sites such as this were in other offices across the country, ABC News reported. The documents, acquired by Wired.com, were submitted as part of a 2006 class action lawsuit, currently awaiting further action in the 9th Circuit US Appeals Court, filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“[Wednesday]’s vote by Congress effectively gives retroactive immunity to the telecom companies and endorses an all-powerful president,” Klein said. “It’s a Congressional coup against the Constitution.”
Leaked confidential NIST documents concerning the investigation into the collapse of WTC 7, the 47-storey skyscraper that was not hit by a plane but imploded in under seven seconds on 9/11, reveal that an “unusual” event preceded the collapse of the building - a “jet of flames” that shot out of several windows after most of the fire had already died down.
The documents - entitled Confidential and Predecisonal Document NIST Report on Building 7 - form the preamble for a long-awaited final verdict on what caused a structurally reinforced building to fall like a controlled demolition despite suffering relatively minimal fire damage.
Chapter 1: WTC 7 Visual Evidence, Damage Estimates, and Timeline Analysis (William Pitts) is a thorough analysis of window fires by video and picture evidence, which concludes that all major fires before floors 7 and 13 died out prior to collapse.
The report states, “At 4:38 p.m. all of the windows between 13-44A and 13-47C were open, and the fires responsible for opening the windows had died down to the point where they could no longer be observed.”
“Just prior to the collapse of the building at 5:20:52 p.m. a jet of flames was pushed from windows in the same area. The event that caused this unusual behavior has not been identified.”
The report describes the nature of fires from floors 7-13 and also states, “With the exception of the fires on the 19th, 22nd, 29th, and 30th floors discussed at the start of this section, there is essentially no direct visual evidence of fires on other floors of WTC 7.”
The U.S. general who led the Army’s investigation of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal says the Bush administration “has committed war crimes” as a result of what happened to detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay “when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture.”
Those declarations, by retired Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, are contained in the preface he wrote for a new report by Physicians for Human Rights, “Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact.” The group said its findings — “based on internationally accepted standards for clinical assessment of torture claims” — are the first to use medical evidence to document first-hand accounts of torture. Eleven former detainees were examined.
Taguba testified before Congress in 2004 about the abuses at Abu Ghraib after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. His damning report ultimately led to his being pushed out of the Army.
In a statement released to the media today, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) cites the comments made by Major General Taguba in a report released by the human rights organization Physician’s for Human Rights as adding weight to his recently submitted articles of impeachment.
Congressman Kucinich’s remarks today as follows:
“Major General Taguba’s comments confirm my long standing assertion that President Bush and Vice President Cheney have committed war crimes in violation of the War Crimes Act, Section 18 of U.S.Code § 2441. Commission of war crimes is an impeachable offense,” Kucinich said.
In the preface to a recently released report by the Physicians for Human Rights on the potential criminality of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, Major General Taguba writes:
“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts,
and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt
as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes.
The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who
ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
Tom Burghardt
Antifascist Calling
June 21, 2008
You knew it would eventually come to this: a huge victory for the Bush regime and a gigantic swindle by Democratic party sell-outs posing as an “opposition.”
Thursday, House and Senate leaders in a bipartisan Washington love-fest, stooped to new lows of dissimulation as they reached agreement on a bill that gives the nation’s spy agencies and their outsourced “partners” in the telecommunications industry carte blanche to illegally spy on Americans.
By Friday afternoon the votes were in and, surprise! the bill passed by a lopsided 293-129. The bill now moves to the Senate where easy passage is expected next week. The White House immediately endorsed the bill.
According to The Washington Post,
White House spokesman Tony Fratto called the measure “a bipartisan bill” that “will give the intelligence professionals the long-term tools they need to protect the nation, and liability protection for those who may have assisted the government after the 9/11 attacks.” (Dan Eggen and Paul Kane, “Surveillance Bill Offers Protection to Telecom Firms,” The Washington Post, Friday, June 20, 2008)
“Bipartisan” indeed! House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) described it as a “balanced bill.” True enough, if by “balanced” Ms. Pelosi means that it protects her “constituents”–the giant telecoms–while telling Americans, in the ignoble words of former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, to “watch what they say, watch what they do.”
Gloating over the Democrats’ “capitulation,” as Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) characterized the deal, Senator Christopher “Kit” Bond (R-MO) who led Republicans during negotiations, told The New York Times, “I think the White House got a better deal than even they had hoped to get.”
Mike personally called me an apologized for his outrageous and dangerous remarks which aired live Tuesday June 10th. He admitted that he crossed the line, and invited me on his show and will apologize to me and to his audience Monday, June 16th at 3:30 pm Pacific Time.
While I understand different political opinions can result in heated arguments, Reagan’s statements are completely unacceptable, un-American, and extremely dangerous. Reagan has elevated the hate and rhetoric aimed at those who disagree with this war to new and unprecedented level. He must be fired immediately and no other radio or TV network should let his voice be heard, or his face be seen.
Despite Reagan’s apology, the Pandora’s box that he opened can never be closed. The ramifications of his threats and suggestions are enormous and frightening. In an age where a few clicks of a keyboard can result in anyone’s home address being found, Reagan’s comments open the door for stalking, vandalism, and worse. Any threats made will be forwarded immediately to the FBI and the appropriate legal action will be taken.
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.
The justices handed the Bush administration its third setback at the high court since 2004 over its treatment of prisoners who are being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The vote was 5-4, with the court’s liberal justices in the majority.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”
It was not immediately clear whether this ruling, unlike the first two, would lead to prompt hearings for the detainees, some who have been held more than 6 years. Roughly 270 men remain at the island prison, classified as enemy combatants and held on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaida and the Taliban.
The administration opened the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to hold enemy combatants, people suspected of ties to al-Qaida or the Taliban.
The Guantanamo prison has been harshly criticized at home and abroad for the detentions themselves and the aggressive interrogations that were conducted there.
Senator Barack Obama’s office has refused to deny that the Democratic nominee attended Bilderberg last night following reports that he and Hillary Clinton were present at “an event in Northern Virginia.”
As we reported earlier today, Obama’s press entourage were not informed of his secret meeting with Hillary Clinton in Northern Virginia until they were literally locked inside a plane that was taxiing down the runway on its way to Chicago.
Reporters were duped into believing that they were getting on a plane back to the campaign headquarters in Chicago with the presumptive nominee, while in reality Obama’s motorcade instead sped off in secrecy to Northern Virginia, which is also the scene of this week’s Bilderberg conference. The plane was stationed at Dulles International, which is less than a 20 minute drive from Chantilly Virginia as is shown below.
Over the last few months, city officials in Washington, DC, have instituted an array of tactics that has civil libertarians fearing the nation’s capital is looking at the Bill of Rights as little more than a suggestion.
The latest proposal from DC’s mayor and police chief would have officers patrolling Soviet-esque checkpoints limiting residents’ ability to travel to and from targeted neighborhoods. The plan was reported Wednesday in The Examiner:
D.C. police will seal off entire neighborhoods, set up checkpoints and kick out strangers under a new program that D.C. officials hope will help them rescue the city from its out-of-control violence. Under an executive order expected to be announced today, police Chief Cathy L. Lanier will have the authority to designate “Neighborhood Safety Zones.” At least six officers will man cordons around those zones and demand identification from people coming in and out of them. Anyone who doesn’t live there, work there or have “legitimate reason” to be there will be sent away or face arrest, documents obtained by The Examiner show.
A city councilman who represents some of the affected neighborhoods — in the District’s northeast quadrant — was cautiously optimistic about the proposal’s potential to “crack down on … open-air drug markets.” But the local lawmaker, Harry Thomas, did express worries about DC “moving towards a police state.”
