Cheney Admits Involvment in Authorizing Torture

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-cheney16-2008dec16,0,4343941.story

Cheney was key in clearing CIA interrogation tactics
========
The vice president says that the use of waterboarding was appropriate 
and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should stay open until 
'the end of the war on terror.'
========
By Greg Miller December 16, 2008

Reporting from Washington -- Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday 
that he was directly involved in approving severe interrogation 
methods used by the CIA, and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 
should remain open indefinitely.

Cheney's remarks on Guantanamo appear to put him at odds with 
President Bush, who has expressed a desire to close the prison, 
although the decision is expected to be left to the incoming 
administration of President-elect Barack Obama.

Cheney's comments also mark the first time that he has acknowledged 
playing a central role in clearing the CIA's use of an array of 
controversial interrogation tactics, including a simulated drowning 
method known as waterboarding.

"I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get 
the process cleared," Cheney said in an interview with ABC News.

Asked whether he still believes it was appropriate to use the 
waterboarding method on terrorism suspects, Cheney said: "I do."

His comments come on the heels of disclosures by a Senate committee 
showing that high-level officials in the Bush administration were 
intimately involved in reviewing and approving interrogation methods 
that have since been explicitly outlawed and that have been condemned 
internationally as torture.

Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney said, the CIA "in effect came 
in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do. And they 
talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. 
And I supported it."

Waterboarding involves strapping a prisoner to a tilted surface, 
covering his face with a towel and dousing it to simulate the 
sensation of drowning.

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden has said that the agency used the 
technique on three Al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003. But the 
practice was discontinued when lawyers from the Department of Justice 
and other agencies began backing away from their opinions endorsing 
its legality.

Cheney has long defended the technique. But he has not previously 
disclosed his role in pushing to give the CIA such authority.

Cheney's office is regarded as the most hawkish presence in the Bush 
administration, pushing the White House toward aggressive stances on 
the invasion of Iraq and the wiretapping of U.S. citizens.

Asked when the Guantanamo Bay prison would be shut down, Cheney said, 
"I think that that would come with the end of the war on terror." He 
went on to say that "nobody can specify" when that might occur, and 
likened the use of the detention facility to the imprisonment of 
Germans during World War II.

"We've always exercised the right to capture the enemy and hold them 
till the end of the conflict," Cheney said.

The administration's legal case for holding detainees indefinitely 
has been eroded by a series of court rulings. Obama has pledged to 
close the facility, which still holds 250 prisoners.

Cheney's remarks are the latest in a series of interviews granted by 
Bush and senior officials defending their decisions as they prepare 
to leave office. Bush recently said his main regret was that U.S. spy 
agencies had been so mistaken about Iraq's alleged weapons programs. 
Cheney and the Bush administration have been accused of 
"cherry-picking" intelligence to support going to war with Iraq.

Cheney said that those mistakes didn't matter, and that the U.S. 
invasion was justified by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's ability to 
reestablish destructive weapons programs. The vice president brushed 
off a series of findings questioning that view, including a 2006 
Senate report concluding that Hussein lacked a "coherent effort" to 
develop nuclear weapons and had only a "limited capability" for 
chemical weapons.

"This was a bad actor and the country's better off, the world's 
better off, with Saddam gone, and I think we made the right decision 
in spite of the fact that the original [intelligence] was off in some 
of its major judgments," he said.

Miller is a writer in our Washington bureau.

greg.miller@latimes.com

BORED?

These words rain down on the upturned faces of the insane, the fearful, the sick, and the exhausted. We are speaking to the people; the people know their symptoms. Alienation, technoboredom, neurosis, and frustration are not diseases of an unlucky few, nor even of the many. They are built into the structure of this society, twisting beggar and businessman alike, spitting them out like shards from a flawed machine, anemic shadows of human beings.

We do not profess to be immune. We claim only to have given some thought to the problems which affect all of us. This project is a desperate attempt to fill the unfillable void created by the conditions of existence in consumer culture — that gap in personality, the yawning but never sleeping of the work-leisure cycle, always one step removed from the immediacy of experience. And if, by our meager example, we inspire even a few people to re-examine themselves and their world, to find out what their lives could be like, then we will not have failed entirely.

How many people do you know who feel trapped where they are? How many of your friends have sworn to kill themselves or die trying? How many have you seen burning with that nameless fever — fingers closing around whatever’s closest, desperate to kill the pain, then, unsatisfied, dropping it to find something better? Do you really think this is natural human behavior? Do you really believe that a healthy society would create such dysfunction among its members? Trust us, friend, these aren’t problems you can solve with higher taxes, or by drawing peace symbols on your blue jeans, and it’s far too late to simply scrap everything and “go back to the basics.” To overcome, you need to shift your perception.So there you are, staring out at the world through bugging, bleary eyes, “entertained”, getting your buttons pushed, but always restless. You’re in slow-motion death on your feet, and you want to know what the hell we intend to do for you. Well, just putting up flyers isn’t going to fix it. We know that. But we’re trying to help. To solve any problem, you first have to know what it is. The real wound runs much, much deeper than the come-and-go “issues” in the media arena; it’s the arena itself which must be redefined . We can’t do it ourselves. What we are trying to do is change the way other people look at the world, because it’s people who ultimately make the system what it is.

Sound cliched? Just remember this: the decisive point which determines the quality of existence is the point of interaction between the individual and society. It’s not all in your head — the universe is quite real, despite all philosophy to the contrary — but neither is the world quite the same for any two individuals. Our individual perception shapes our experience of a very real world, and the bumps and jostles of life shape our perception. Only a sturdy bridge between mind and matter — or indeed, the realization that they’re one and the same — yields the proper balance. And only through significant interaction with other humans can that bridge be strengthened. There are many forces at work, but it is here that the doctors must shine their light if they want to find the tumor. Interpersonal relations: the frictional surfaces between one person’s awareness and another’s. These surfaces have grown flat and impassive as distrust, fear, and the lust for commodities have become standard modes of interaction, so that all we have to offer one another is an inventory of products and hobbies, draped in a sort of cynical self-consciousness.

FRUSTRATED?

Listen, your life can be an incredible and satisfying thing, but there are forces at work which deny you that. They make you bored. They make you hate yourself. They destroy your ability to find fulfillment in yourself and other people. They sell you cheap plastic substitutes for the REAL THING.

For all our bitching, though, we’re with you. We have no easy solutions. There are none. The choices are escape — be it through drugs, suicide, or madness — or struggle. We choose the latter, hoping that struggle itself will at least dull the pain in a non-self-destructive way. We are not Puritanical, we are pissed off! We want to be able to indulge our primitive desires. The difference is that we see the options for indulgence presented by this culture as inherently and deliberately unfulfilling. We have all been raised to be anxious and dissatisfied consumers, constantly in search of the right “fix”. Well, Abrupt isn’t buying any of it. At the very least, we hope to create an awareness of some of these problems, and perhaps give hope to people who currently just survive from day to day.

Do you think? That is, are there ideas in your head that are at least partially your own? (And even a creative synthesis of old ideas is better than repeating the same old commercial patter minute after minute.) Then make it move — find the words or the motions or the bodies that can carry your thoughts into the steam and whistles of the real world. It’s doesn’t help much sitting in your head — take it to the streets! Spray-paint stencils of cryptic symbols, ornament trash cans and cracking sidewalks, leave a message in a bottle with your address in it, sing in public restrooms, scratch your words on school desks and playgrounds, singe their skin with your molecular love, put up hundreds of flyers anonymously, make loud Doppler-shift sounds as you pass people on the street, or lace bank windows with shaving cream question marks. At every moment a million possibilities lie open, beckoning the explorer to break the patterns that trap and enchain, to find new ones that drive back the darkness.

We adhere to the credo “Make your mark heavy and dark.’ (Plus the qualifier, “If you must erase, erase completely.”) It seems that beneath the bureaucratic blandness and psychic trauma of our high school years was a call to action, an ontological rallying cry for those frantic souls out there who despaired of finding their voice. Make your mark heavy and dark. Be decisive. Know when to stop planning and act, and be ready to defend your position. Realize that you can’t please everybody, and use to your advantage the prejudices of those who disagree with you.

CONFUSED?

Sure, everyone is responsible for his or her actions; you can’t just run away. But that responsibility is the price you pay for freedom — and that’s not the freedom to buy any brand of shampoo you want. We’re talking about the freedom to set your sights higher than the school-work-nervous-breakdown cycle that most of us find ourselves in. Ask yourself, are you a hamster, or a human being? Do you dare to step off the treadmill and run amok in the pet store? If nothing else, it can be fun. And dangerous. But more importantly, you might learn to twist your perception enough to see the window, and the world beyond the pet store. It’s a world much bigger than you could ever see in its entirety, much stranger than drugs or God or UFO’s, but it’s there. It’s already around you right now; you’ve just forgotten how to see it: even as mass communications and transportation have made our planet seem a thousand times bigger than before, our private worlds have atrophied. Perception has been narrowed to a single dim point, experience has become an alternating parade of “stimulation” and frustration. We have memories, but our memories no longer tell a story. We have voices, but we have nothing to say. The struggle to survive no longer inspires us to transcend mere survival, so that at the moment of our greatest technological achievement we have become emotional infants, floundering in a pool of frustrated desires and failed illusions. Still, all is not lost. There will always be a demon in the human spirit, an animal raging in its cage. It can only be beaten or anesthetized so much before it gets fed up and breaks out, dragging its owner to either prison or Paradise. The nature of its restraints will determine the nature of its escape; as things stand now, most options for real animal passion are devastating, not to mention illegal. Rape, suicide, murder: symptoms of constriction, the starved Animal blindly feeding itself into extinction.

These are not the only options. There are healthier ones, and they need not take the form of sudden outbursts or compulsions. No, under healthier conditions, the release valves would be built in to our daily lives. Not a sudden seizure of hate, but a million tiny outlets would appease the monster inside us, or at least keep its rage in balance with its beauty, so that each of us would harbor a proud tiger, and not a rabid, mangy dog.

Defeatism is seductive, it’s true, and despair beckons at every corner when you look at what has been done to us over the past several decades. But total despair is useless, because it just reinforces the feelings of helplessness which you’ve been taught from day one. The only solution must start with the assumption that existence need not be miserable, and with the knowledge that the current state of affairs is relatively recent. Instead of giving up in any of the billion ways that you are told to give up, take an active role in pursuing life’s potential for intensity. Fight the pall of laziness and helplessness that weighs down on you all day long. You owe it to yourself to struggle.

GET MAD!!

Think about some of these things we’ve said. You’ll have to, since we can only tell you so much before we run out of words. It’s up to you to figure out what your own strengths are, and what exactly is wrong with you. Perhaps you will find out there’s much more wrong with you than you thought. Perhaps not. Just remember that this life is yours, and if nothing else, you deserve a shot at living it well. Do you believe this? Then begin making your plans today.

---

Abrupt Flyer #3, Jun. 1991 (Revised for WWW July 1995)

SOURCE: Abrupt.org

Cal Study Finds Ex-Guantanamo Prisoners Broken

Published on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 by The San Francisco Chronicle

by Bob Egelko

BERKELEY, California – The first extensive study of prisoners released from the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, finds that many of them are physically and psychologically traumatized, debt-ridden and shunned in their communities as terrorist suspects.

“I’ve lost my property. I’ve lost my job. I’ve lost my will,” said an Afghan man, one of 62 former inmates in nine countries interviewed anonymously by UC Berkeley researchers for a newly released report.

Another man, jobless and destitute, said his family kicked him out after he returned, and his wife went to live with her relatives. “I have a plastic bag holding my belongings that I carry with me all the time,” he said. “And I sleep every night in a different mosque.”

The report, “Guantanamo and its Aftermath,” also found that two-thirds of former prisoners interviewed between July 2007 and July 2008 suffered from psychological problems, including nightmares, angry outbursts, withdrawal and depression.

Many also reported recurring or constant pain from their treatment in captivity. Six men said that for them, the treatment included being suspended from the ceiling in chains at a U.S. air base.

Investigation urged

The authors called for a commission to investigate conditions at Guantanamo and other prisons where terrorist suspects are held and, if warranted, recommend criminal investigations “at all levels of the civilian and military command.”

“We cannot sweep this dark chapter in our nation’s history under the rug by simply closing the Guantanamo prison camp,” said Eric Stover, director of UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center. “The new administration must investigate what went wrong and who should be held accountable.”

Other co-authors are Laurel Fletcher, director of UC Berkeley’s International Human Rights Law Clinic, and Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a nonprofit legal group representing some Guantanamo inmates.

President-elect Barack Obama has said he plans to close Guantanamo. During the campaign, he criticized the military commissions that President Bush established to try a small number of prisoners at the base and said he preferred regular civilian or military courts, where defendants have more rights. But Obama has not yet announced his plans for the trials or for the majority of inmates who are being held without charges.

Asked for comment on the report, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, the government’s spokesman on Guantanamo, said, “Our policy is, and always has been, to treat detainees humanely.”

A few former inmates, their lawyers and interrogators have given personal accounts of Guantanamo and other prisons in memoirs and court affidavits. The 136-page UC Berkeley report is the first to examine the fate of large numbers of released prisoners.

The report acknowledged that the inmates’ narratives often lack independent confirmation. But it said they can be considered credible because they’re consistent with other accounts – by other former prisoners, and by 50 past and present U.S. officials, lawyers and others with firsthand knowledge of Guantanamo who were interviewed for the survey.

The 62 men in the study spent an average of three years at Guantanamo. Most were classified as enemy combatants before being released without charges, like two-thirds of the 775 men who have been held at the naval base. Of the 255 remaining prisoners, 23 have been charged with war crimes.

More than one-third of the 62 said they had been turned over to U.S. authorities in Pakistan for a bounty; one man described standing outside an airplane with other detainees, hooded and shackled, and hearing an American voice tell the Pakistanis, “Each person is $5,000.”

Others said they had been arrested on flimsy grounds – for carrying guns that they used for personal protection, for possessing binoculars that one man used for hunting birds, or for failing to pay bribes to local officials.

According to the men’s accounts, their most brutal treatment occurred at a U.S. air base in Bagram, Afghanistan, where half of them were held before being flown to Guantanamo. The men said American guards regularly beat them, left them in freezing temperatures with thin blankets, used dogs to terrorize them, and, in the cases of six men, hung them from ceilings by chains for hours.

At Guantanamo, 24 of the 55 men who were willing to discuss their interrogations reported no problems, and a few described their questioners as “very nice.” But others said they had been shackled in contorted positions and subjected to extreme heat or cold, both during interrogation and afterward.

Chained and cold

Eight men said their worst ordeal was being chained to the floor in a refrigerated isolation room, unable to move without being cut by the shackles. The report quoted a former U.S. military guard as saying prisoners were sometimes kept in such rooms in cramped positions for more than 10 hours.

Other men described sexual humiliation and barrages of loud music and strobe lights for extensive periods.

The cumulative effect of such treatment over time, combined with the prospect of indefinite confinement, would “in some cases clearly rise to the level of torture,” the report said.

Warren, the Center for Constitutional Rights director and attorney, said the nation owes the men an apology, compensation and a chance to clear their names.

Read the report

To read “Guantanamo and its Aftermath,” go to:

links.sfgate.com/ZFJQ

SOURCE: Common Dreams

Also see: Micromanaging Shock & Awe to Create “Deep Psychological Injury”

Dr. Mengele, call your office please…

In reference to this, see: Electroconvulsive Therapy Causes Permanent Amnesia and Cognitive Deficits, Prominent Researcher Admits

MindFreedom International — 7 November 2008
Human Rights Alert: Involuntary Electroshock
http://www.mindfreedom.org – please forward

If it’s Wednesday, then Ray Sandford is Getting
Escorted from His Home for Another Forced Electroshock

Minnesota Resident Gets Involuntary Electroconvulsive
Therapy (ECT) On A Weekly Ongoing *Outpatient* Basis

ACTION: How You Can Easily E-mail Minnesota Governor

by David W. Oaks, Director, MindFreedom International

The past Wednesday morning after the historic USA election what were
you doing?

I know what Ray Sandford, 54, was doing.

Each and every Wednesday, early in the morning, staff shows up at
Ray’s sheltered living home called Victory House in Columbia Heights,
Minnesota, adjacent to Minneapolis.

Staff escorts Ray the 15 miles to Mercy Hospital.

There, Ray is given another of his weekly electroconvulsive therapy
(ECT) treatments, also known as electroshock. All against his will.
On an outpatient basis.

And it’s been going on for months.

Ray says the weekly forced electroshocks are “scary as hell.” He
absolutely opposes having the procedure. He says it’s causing poor
memory for names such as of friends and his favorite niece. “What am
I supposed to do, run away?” Instead, Ray phoned his local library’s
reference desk to ask about human rights groups, and the librarian
referred him to MindFreedom International.

Ray called me at our office here at MindFreedom International about
two weeks ago. At first I wasn’t sure I believed him.

Of course, MindFreedom International has documented proven cases of
electroshock against the expressed wishes of the subject all over the
world, including in the USA. MindFreedom succeeded in having the
United Nations World Health Organization call in writing for a global
ban on all involuntary electroshock.

But this is the first time I’ve been on the phone with someone
getting court-ordered forced shock while living out in the community,
on an outpatient basis.

This is the ultimate double whammy.

I confirmed Ray’s story by calling two staff at Victory House as well
as his court-appointed conservator, Tonya Wilhelm of Luthern Support
Services of Minnesota.

Ms. Wilhelm said, “We are following the letter of the law.” She said
the State of Minnesota had secured a variety of court orders that
require Ray to have forced electroshock against his expressed wishes.
Ms. Wilehlm says it’s all legal and she can’t do anything about it.

Krista Erickson, chair of MindFreedom’s Shield Campaign, sees it
differently. “This is terrible. This is a serious human rights
violation that should stop. I hope MindFreedom members and supporters
speak out. Even if Minnesota is following the letter of the current
law, the law ought to be changed. And Ray has not had the legal power
to appeal to higher courts.”

I pointed out to Conservator Wilhelm that the public — when they
find out about forced electroshock — is passionately opposed to
their taxpayer money being used to force such brutality on citizens.
Ms. Wilhelm did let slip that what is happening to Ray — involuntary
outpatient electroshock — is not that uncommon in Minnesota.

But when Ms. Wilhelm found out we at MindFreedom are issuing one of
our public human rights alert to you and others, at Ray’s repeated
request, she said something chilling.

Ms. Wilhelm claimed she had a legal right to stop MindFreedom!

Ms. Wilhelm told me, “Only I can give you permission legally to say
anything publicly about this.”

I pointed out we are not a medical facility, and that if she falsely
claims we’re doing anything illegal then this is defamation. Which
really is illegal.

Ms. Wilhelm laughed loudly in the phone, said “let our lawyers talk,”
and hung up on me. I hope she hung up to read the First Amendment.

Let’s disobey Ms. Wilhelm!

Spread Ray’s alert far and wide! Speak out against this electrical
torture, now!

Because… Remember… While the world marvels at the power of USA
democracy:

If it’s Wednesday morning, then Ray Sandford is being led from his
home — which is supposed to be his castle — to get another weekly
forced procedure that can cause brain damage and wipe out memories.

- David W. Oaks, Director, MindFreedom International

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mind your freedom. Disobey Ray’s conservator now!

Forward this alert to all appropriate places on and off the Internet,
IMMEDIATELY!

And take the *below* actions. Thank you. Ray and I are counting on you!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

* * * ACTION * * * ACTION * * * ACTION * * *

You can do this in a moment. It’s free! DO IT NOW!

E-mail your firm but polite message to Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty.

SAMPLE MESSAGE — your own words are best:

“Investigate the weekly involuntary outpatient electroshock of Ray
Sandford. Every Wednesday morning, MindFreedom says Ray is brought
from Victory House in Columbia Heights, Minnesota to Mercy Hospital
for forced electroshock. Stop all forced electroshock today! Taxpayer
money should not fund torture!” [Your name/contact.]

E-mail address: tim.pawlenty@state.mn.us

Or use this handy web form:

http://www.governor.state.mn.us/contacts/Forms/askthegovernor/index.htm

or this link:

http://tinyurl.com/mn-governor

~~~~~~~~~~~~

* * * ADDITIONAL ACTIONS TO SUPPORT RAY! * * *

1) E-mail a complaint to Luthern Social Services of Minnesota (LSSMN)
about Ray’s conservator.

Sample message:

“Investigate allegations that LSSMN employee Tonya Wilhelm tried to
stop a public human rights alert by MindFreedom International about
her client, Ray Sandford, who is receiving weekly outpatient
involuntary electroshock at Mercy Hospital in Minneapolis. If
verified, please reprimand, fire and replace Ms. Wilhelm, and please
place this in her permanent personnel record. Please support human
rights.” [Your name/contact.]

Use LSSMN’s web page:

http://www.lssmn2.org/contact_lss.htm

Or phone Luthern Social Services at: (218) 726-4888

You can copy your message to headquarters of The Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America (ELCA):

info@elca.org

From ELCA’s web site about their church: “Its a story of a powerful
and patient God who has boundless love for all people of the world,
who brings justice for the oppressed.”

More at:

http://www.elca.org/What-We-Believe.aspx

2) E-mail a complaint to Allina Hospital and Clinics, owner of Mercy
Hospital.

Sample message:

“Investigate allegations that your patient Ray Sandford of Victory
House is receiving involuntary outpatient electroconvulsive therapy
against his will each Wednesday at Mercy Hospital.”

Use this web page:

http://www.allina.com/ahs/help.nsf/page/contact

Or phone: (763) 236-6000

3) Ray is open to visitors and supportive postal mail:

Ray Sandford
Victory House
4427 Monroe St.
Columbia Heights, MN 55421-2880 USA

MindFreedom will print out and mail to Ray some of your e-mail
messages to the Governor and others, and put some on the web. E-mail
a copy of what you write to news@mindfreedom.org.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

AND ONE MORE THING!

Say “no” to mental health system censorship!

Disobey Ray’s conservator now!

PLEASE forward this public human alert to all appropriate places on
and off the Internet, IMMEDIATELY! Thank you!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

More info:

See the latest news and updates at the MindFreedom website at:

http://www.mindfreedom.org

Plenty of data on electroshock on the MindFreedom web site, click here:

http://tinyurl.com/zapback

Watch upcoming blog entries by David W. Oaks, MFI Director:

http://www.mindfreedom.org/mfi-blog

~~~~~~~~~~~~

NONVIOLENTLY ZAP BACK against forced electroshock!

NOW are you ready for nonviolent revolution in mental health?

Join, renew, and support MindFreedom TODAY!

Be part of the MFI Fall 2008 Support Drive, click here:

http://www.mindfreedom.org/join-donate

Documents Linking Iran to Nuclear Weapons Push May Have Been Fabricated

Published on Tuesday, November 11, 2008 by Raw Story

by Gareth Porter

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has obtained evidence suggesting that documents which have been described as technical studies for a secret Iranian nuclear weapons-related research program may have been fabricated.

The documents in question were acquired by U.S. intelligence in 2004 from a still unknown source — most of them in the form of electronic files allegedly stolen from a laptop computer belonging to an Iranian researcher. The US has based much of its push for sanctions against Iran on these documents.

The new evidence of possible fraud has increased pressure within the IAEA secretariat to distance the agency from the laptop documents, according to a Vienna-based diplomatic source close to the IAEA, who spoke to RAW STORY on condition of anonymity.

The laptop documents include what the IAEA has described in a published report as technical drawings of efforts to redesign the nosecone of the Iranian Shahab-3 ballistic missile “to accommodate a nuclear warhead.” The documents are also said to include studies on the use of a high explosive detonation system, drawings of a shaft apparently to be used for nuclear tests, and studies on a bench-scale uranium conversion facility.

These technical papers, along with some correspondence related to the alleged secret Iranian program — referred to by the IAEA as “alleged studies” — have been the primary basis during 2008 for the insistence by the US-led international coalition pushing for sanctions against Iran that the Iranian case must be kept going in the United Nations Security Council.

Handwritten Notes

At the center of the internal IAEA struggle is an Iranian firm named Kimia Maadan, which is portrayed in the documents as responsible for studies on a uranium conversion facility, called the “green salt” project, as part of the alleged nuclear weapons program under the Iranian Ministry of Defense.According to a February 2006 Washington Post article, the United States and its allies believe that Kimia Maadan is a front for the Iranian military.

One of the communications included in the laptop documents – a letter allegedly sent to Kimia Maadan from an unnamed Iranian engineering firm in May 2003 – is at the center of the authenticity argument.

This letter is described in the May 26, 2008 IAEA report as “a one page annotated letter of May 2003 in Farsi.” According to a US source who has been briefed on the matter, the letter has handwritten notes on it which refer to studies on the redesign of a missile reentry vehicle.

Last January, however, Iran turned over to the IAEA a copy of the same May 2003 letter with no handwritten notes on it. This was confirmed by the director of the IAEA Safeguards Department, Olli Heinonen, during a February briefing for member states. Heinonen referred to “correspondence” related to Kimia Maadan that is “identical to that provided by Iran, with the addition of handwritten notes.”

Notes on the Heinonen briefing, compiled by unnamed diplomats who attended it, were posted on the website of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.

The copy of the letter without the handwritten notes was part of a larger collection of documentation concerning Kimia Maadan provided to IAEA by Iran in response to a request for an explanation of that firm’s role in the management of the Iranian Gchine uranium mine.

After the IAEA received the copy of the letter without notes from Iran, some officials began pushing for an acknowledgment by the Agency that there were serious questions about the whether the laptop documents were fabricated, according to the Vienna-based source close to the IAEA.

“There was an effort to point out that the Agency isn’t in a position to authenticate the documents,” said the source.

Heinonen and other IAEA Safeguards Department officials have continued, however, to defend the credibility of the document in question.

According to an American source briefed on the dispute, the defenders of the authenticity of the version of the letter with the handwritten notes say that the appearance of the clean copy can be attributed to Kimia Maadan making multiple copies of the original which have been circulated to various staff members.

Only an Ore-processing Plant

Further evidence damaging to the credibility of the letter and the handwritten notes was provided to the atomic energy watchdog last January by the Iranian government. According to Iran, Kimia Maadan was not working for the Defense Ministry but for the civilian Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI).The new Iranian documentation, described in the February 22, 2008 IAEA report, proved to IAEA’s satisfaction that the Kimia Maadan Company had been created in May 2000 solely to carry out a project to design, procure and install equipment for an ore processing plant.

The documents also showed that the core staff of Kimia Maadan was able to undertake the work on ore processing only because the nuclear agency had provided it with the technical drawings and reports as the basis for the contract.

“Information and explanations provided by Iran were supported by the documentation, the content of which is consistent with the information already available to the agency,” the IAEA concluded.

Marie Harff, a spokesperson for the CIA, declined to comment.

Additional Doubts About the Letter

Other questions surround the letter with the handwritten notes. The subject of the letter was Kimia Maadan’s inquiry to the engineering firm about procurement of a programmable logic control (PLC) system, according to the IAEA’s May 26 report.A PLC system is one of many types of technology that the United States has long sought to deny to the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. Iran had informed the IAEA even before 2006 that Kimia Maadan had assisted the AEOI in getting around that denial strategy by procuring various technologies for the planned uranium conversion facility at Esfahan.

Given that Kimia Maadan’s role in procurement for the conversion facility was both unrelated to its technical work for the AEOI and part of a covert effort to get around U.S. restrictions, it seems unlikely that they would have made multiple copies of the letter. Even if multiple copies were made, the firm would certainly have taken normal security precautions for a document of that type, marking each copy with a number or name.

A security procedure of that kind would have identified any missing copies. However, this was not the case with the 2003 letter. The United States, as its reason for refusing to provide a copy of the document to Iran, has argued that it would allow Iranian security personnel to identify the person who wrote the notes from their handwriting, according to the US source who has been briefed on the matter.

Another problem with the handwritten letter is the absence of any logical link between the subject of the letter and the alleged work on redesign of the missile. PLC systems, which are used for automation of industrial processes, such as control of machinery on factory assembly lines, would have been irrelevant to the technical studies on redesigning the Shahab-3 missile.

Other Documents Also Under Suspicion

Other documents from the laptop collection, allegedly showing that Kimia Maadan was working closely with the team trying to redesigning the Shahab-3 missile, have also come under suspicion of fraud.The IAEA’s May 2008 report describes a flowsheet under Kimia Maadan’s name, showing a “process for bench scale conversion of uranium oxide” to UF4 (uranium tetraflouride), also known as “green salt.” The project number shown in the disputed documents for the “green salt” subproject is 5.13.

However, Heinonen stated that the number given to the Gchine subproject was 5.15. According to the documents obtained by the IAEA from Iran last January, this was the number of the uranium ore processing project that was assigned in 1999 by the civilian AEOI, not by the Iranian Defense Ministry. This would mean that the author of the document used the project number 5.13 for the “green salt” subproject based on their knowledge of the AEOI numbering system and not on a military designation.

In his February 25 briefing, Heinonen additionally referred to an alleged letter sent by Kimia Maadan – as manager of three subprojects – to the “missile re-entry vehicle” project, asking for a “technical opinion” on the plans for equipment for a proposed “green salt” conversion facility.

However, it is difficult to understand why the team working on redesigning the missile would be asked for a “technical opinion” on equipment for a uranium conversion facility.

A spokesperson for the State Department’s Office of Arms Control and International Security, which is responsible for IAEA affairs, said in an e-mail that specialists in the office “aren’t able to comment” on the subject of the intelligence documents now being considered by the IAEA.

The IAEA also declined to comment.

Toward a Showdown on the Contradictions

As the contradictions between the new Iranian evidence and the laptop documents relating to Kimia Maadan became apparent, some IAEA officials argued that the Agency should distance itself from what they now suspect are forgeries. Despite that argument, the May 2008 report contained no reference to the issue.The next IAEA report, due out in mid-November, will include the first response by the Agency to a confidential 117-page Iranian critique of the laptop documents, according to the Vienna-based source.

In the past, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei has shown an ability to face off with the United States when evidence has been called into doubt. The infamous “Niger forgeries” – documents that purported to show an agreement between Niger and Iraq for the purchase of uranium oxide – were used by the White House as part of its case for war against Iraq.

In response, ElBaradei sent a letter to the White House and the National Security Council in December 2002, over three months before the US launched the Iraq War, warning that he believed the documents were forgeries and should not be cited as evidence of Iraqi intention to obtain nuclear weapons.

When ElBaradei received no response from the Bush administration, he went public to debunk the Niger forgeries. In a speech at the United Nations in March 2003, he declared that the IAEA, after “thorough analysis,” had concluded that the documents alleging the purchase of uranium by Iraqi from Niger “are in fact not authentic.”

The anomalies that have been revealed by the Iranian documents obtained from Iran last January may not be as obvious as the ones that made it clear the Niger documents were fabrications. Nevertheless, they appear to be red flags for IAEA analysts concerned with the issue.

Suspicion has surrounded the “alleged studies” documents from the beginning, because the United States has refused to say who brought the collection to US intelligence four years ago.

Gareth Porter is an investigative journalist and historian who has authored numerous foreign policy analyses and is the author of the book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam. In a 2006 article in the American Prospect, he revealed Iran’s spurned diplomatic outreach to the Bush Administration in 2003.

© 2008 Raw Story

SOURCE: Common Dreams

Spy Whistleblowers Await Bush Departure

Published on Tuesday, November 11, 2008 by Wired

Bush Spy Revelations Anticipated When Obama Is Sworn In

by Ryan Singel

When Barack Obama takes the oath of office on January 20, Americans won’t just get a new president; they might finally learn the full extent of George W. Bush’s warrantless domestic wiretapping.

Since The New York Times first revealed in 2005 that the NSA was eavesdropping on citizens’ overseas phone calls and e-mail, few additional details about the massive “Terrorist Surveillance Program” have emerged. That’s because the Bush administration has stonewalled, misled and denied documents to Congress, and subpoenaed the phone records of the investigative reporters.

Now privacy advocates are hopeful that President Obama will be more forthcoming with information. But for the quickest and most honest account of Bush’s illegal policies, they say don’t look to the incoming president. Watch instead for the hidden army of would-be whistle-blowers who’ve been waiting for Inauguration Day to open the spigot on the truth.

“I’d bet there are a lot of career employees in the intelligence agencies who’ll be glad to see Obama take the oath so they can finally speak out against all this illegal spying and get back to their real mission,” says Caroline Fredrickson, the ACLU’s Washington D.C. legislative director.

New Yorker investigative reporter Seymour Hersh already has a slew of sources waiting to spill the Bush administration’s darkest secrets, he said in an interview last month. “You cannot believe how many people have told me to call them on January 20. [They say,] ‘You wanna know about abuses and violations? Call me then.’”

So far, virtually everything we know about the NSA’s warrantless surveillance has come from whistle-blowers. Telecom executives told USA Today that they had turned over billions of phone records to the government. Former AT&T employee Mark Klein provided wiring diagrams detailing an internet-spying room in a San Francisco switching facility. And one Justice Department attorney had his house raided and his children’s computers seized as part of the FBI’s probe into who leaked the warrantless spying to The New York Times. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales even suggested the reporters could be prosecuted under antiquated treason statutes.

If new whistle-blowers do emerge, Fredrickson hopes the additional information will spur Congress to form a new Church Committee — the 1970s bipartisan committee that investigated and condemned the government’s secret spying on peace activists, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other political figures.

But even if the anticipated flood of leaks doesn’t materialize, advocates hope that Obama and the Democratic Congress will get around to airing out the White House closet anyway. “Obama has pledged a lot more openness,” says Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which was the first to file a federal lawsuit over the illegal eavesdropping.

One encouraging sign for civil liberties groups is that John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, is a key figure in Obama’s transition team, which will staff and set priorities for the new administration. The center was a tough and influential critic of the Bush administration’s warrantless spying.

Among the unanswered questions:

• Were there quid pro quo promises made to the phone companies and internet carriers who cooperated with the secret spying? For example, were co-conspirators promised lucrative government contracts?
• Did the program appropriate the CALEA wiretapping infrastructure? Under CALEA, Congress forced telecoms to build surveillance capabilities into the phone and internet network, but promised it would only be used with court orders.
• What did the first version of the surveillance program sweep into its net? In March 2004, a squadron of top officials at the Justice Department, including then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI head Robert Mueller, threatened to resign over the illegality of the program. The program was subsequently scaled back, but nobody knows what the NSA was doing that was bad enough to horrify Ashcroft.
• What was the legal rationale for the surveillance?FISA explicitly made warrantless domestic eavesdropping illegal, but the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a series of memos justifying the spying anyway. The ACLU is fighting the Bush administration for access to the documents, as well as secret memos justifying torture.

“It’s difficult to see how Sen. Obama could call his administration transparent if his administration continues to suppress non-sensitive information that should have been released a long time ago,” says the ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer.

The other looming question is whether, as president, Obama will continue the warrantless spying himself. Obama voted with the majority in Congress to legalize the Bush spying program in July, but the constitutionality of the measure is yet untested. An Obama administration is less likely than Bush to devise convoluted legal end-runs around the Constitution, according to Marc Rotenberg, the head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

“Keep in mind that Obama is a constitutional scholar and has a deep understanding of checks and balance,” says Rotenberg. “It’s hard to imagine that an Obama administration would support … warrantless wiretapping.”

With the financial markets and the economy in deep trouble, it’s unlikely that Obama will quickly turn to the issue of warrantless wiretapping. But the EFF’s lawsuit against AT&T over the surveillance could force the new administration to pick a side quickly. In December, a federal judge in San Francisco will hold a hearing on whether the retroactive immunity granted to AT&T and other telecoms as part of the FISA Amendments Act is Constitutional. Obama voted for the act in order to legalize the spying program, but tried unsuccessfully to strip out the immunity provision.

EFF’s Opsahl hopes that if EFF prevails in December, an Obama administration might let the decision stand, clearing the way for EFF’s lawsuit to proceed.

“If we are victorious in our constitutional challenge, I would hope the Obama administration would accept that loss and move on without an appeal,” says Opsahl. “But we will have to see.”

SOURCE: Common Dreams

NRA Wastes Members’ Money on Fear Mongering

By Pat Williams
Center for the Rocky Mountain West
Nov. 12, 2008

During my nine terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, I had a 100 percent voting record with the National Rifle Association.

Not once did I vote for gun control; not for the Brady Bill, nor ammunition registration, not for the assault weapons ban nor any of the other futile attempts to fight crime by simply putting people’s name on a list.

The NRA endorsed me in each of my election campaigns. For a time following my first election, I was a bit of an NRA poster boy and adorned the cover of one of their magazines. The honor was not because of my anti-gun control voting record, but because of my legislative efforts to improve game animal habitat here in Montana and West.

Thus, I have been both saddened and alarmed to watch that organization’s three-decade-long lurch toward the political Far Right.

Beginning in the 1980s, the NRA has done a disservice to both its members and the historic legacy of hunting and game habitat in the United States.

Far too much of the NRA’s time and its members’ money are consumed in the seemingly insatiable effort to elect candidates on the political fringe who also happen to oppose gun control.

The organization’s primary focus should be on vastly improving game habitat in America, advancing hunting fair play and the safety of our youngest hunters.

But this is not your grandfather’s NRA. This organization has eagerly espoused the politics of resentment and become a pawn of one political party.

In this there is good news and bad news for gun owners. First the good news: The federal government, your elected officials, never have and are not now conspiring to take our guns. No such legislation has ever been introduced in the U.S. Congress.

The bad news? Groups such as the NRA have been hoodwinking you about that very issue–wastefully spending your hard-earned dues money on politics, and useless protesting by having people like Charlton Heston give that phony “pry it from my cold dead fingers” speech.

A case in point is the recently publicized rush by some gun owners to “stock up” on assault weapons before they are banned by the NRA’s latest boogey man, Barack Obama.

The urge to blame President-elect Obama is a transparent example of how utterly partisan the gun groups and far too many of their adherents have become.

Sen. John McCain, not Barack Obama, is the person with the Congressional record of voting for gun control.

McCain is for registration at gun shows, supported a ban on assault weapons and, prior to his run for the presidency, was working with his friend Joe Lieberman to mandate trigger locks and close the gun-show loophole.

Obama’s votes in the Illinois Legislature have also been somewhat pro-gun control, but it is McCain, not Obama, who cast the pro-gun control votes in the Congress.

So, why don’t more gun owners understand what is really happening?

That’s a good question for the NRA and the other so-called pro-gun groups who are lining their pockets with your money.

---

Pat Williams served nine terms as a U.S. Representative from Montana. After his retirement, he returned to Montana and is teaching at The University of Montana where he also serves as a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Rocky Mountain West.

SOURCE: Headwaters News