Friday, March 10, 2006
Pentagon Admits To Improperly Snooping on Peaceful War Protesters
Last December, NBC News obtained a 400-page compilation of reports from the Pentagon that revealed the Defense Department was conducting secret surveillance of peaceful war protesters.
Yesterday, in a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) pressed Rumsfeld about the Pentagon’s so-called TALON surveillance program which had conducted the snooping. Maintained by the Counterintelligence Field Agency (CIFA), the TALON database (short for Threat and Local Observation Notice) is a system that was devised in May 2003 by Paul Wolfowitz to collect “raw information” about “suspicious incidents.”
After nearly three months, three pointed letters, and one high-profile hearing, Leahy finally got the answers he was looking for. In a letter addressed to Leahy from Robert Rogalski, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Counterintelligence and Security, the Pentagon admits to improperly collecting information on innocent parties:
Adult Film Starlet and Former California Gubernatorial Candidate Mary Carey to attend Presidential Dinner to Receive Award for Businesswoman of the Year
Adult film starlet and former California gubernatorial candidate Mary Carey is scheduled to attend the prestigious United to Victory dinner with President George W. Bush in Washington D.C on March 15th - 16th. Due to Carey's efforts in starting Mary Carey Productions, Inc. in 2005, Carey will also be receiving the 2005 California Businesswoman of the Year.
Chatsworth, CA (PRWEB) March 10, 2006 -- Adult film starlet and former California gubernatorial candidate Mary Carey is scheduled to attend the prestigious United to Victory dinner with President George W. Bush in Washington D.C on March 15th - 16th.
In addition, due to Carey's efforts in starting Mary Carey Productions, Inc. in 2005, Carey will receive the 2005 California Businesswoman of the Year award.
"I'm always excited to learn more about what's going on in our nation's capital, since most people in the porn industry think an Iraqi pullout is a form of safe sex," quipped Carey. "Since I'm seriously considering running for governor of California again, I'm going to need a lot of support from Republican lawmakers nationwide - however I can get it."
At the invitation of the Nation Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), Mary Carey will meet and interact with key Congressional leaders and Administration officials to discuss advancing powerful pro-business, pro-family agendas and meeting positive legislative goals. She will join Karl Rove, senior advisor to the President, for lunch on Wednesday the 15th, and President Bush for dinner on Thursday the 16th.
"I'm really excited to be going back to Washington D.C. to see the president again," said Carey. "Everyone thinks that politicians are stuffy, but we all had a great time last year, and I had fun signing a lot of autographs. Wait till they see that I have lost 20 pounds since the last time they saw me. Watch out Mr. President!"
Carey made national headlines in June of 2005, when she attended a similar dinner with President George W. Bush, also at the invitation of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).
For further information and interview requests, contact:
Scott Newcomb
213.675.6476
# # #
Related
PBS Documentary - Frontline American Porn
Stop your meddling, Iraqi minister tells US - World - smh.com.au
AMID rising American frustration with the political deadlock in Iraq, the National Security Minister, Abdul Karim al-Enzy, has rebuked Washington for interfering in Iraq's domestic affairs.
In a remarkable broadside against the US, Mr Enzy charged that it was deliberately slowing Iraq's redevelopment because of a self-serving agenda that included oil and the "war on terror".
The attack came as the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, told a Senate inquiry in Washington that Iraq's political leaders needed "to recognise the seriousness of the situation and form a government of national unity that will govern from the centre, and to do it in a reasonably prompt manner".
To that end, US diplomats have demanded a more generous sharing of key portfolios among Iraq's religious and ethnic populations than the dominant Shiite religious parties are willing to concede.
In particular, they are urging the dismissal of the hardline Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr.
But in an interview with the Herald, Mr Enzy snapped: "The last time I checked, Bayan Jabr was Interior Minister of Iraq - not of the US or the UN. He is one of our best and this is interference in our business."
Mr Enzy argued that if the US-led coalition in Iraq had been more serious about rebuilding the country's security forces in the first year of the occupation, it could now be making substantial cuts in foreign troop numbers in Iraq. "We don't want foreign forces here, but it's impossible for them to leave now, because we're on the edge of civil war," he said.
"The truth is the Americans don't want us to reach the levels of courage and competence needed to deal with the insurgency because they want to stay here.
"They came for their own strategic interests. A lot of the world's oil is in this region and they want to use Iraq as a battlefield in the war on terror because they believe they can contain the terrorism in Iraq."
Asked if the West - and the US in particular - understood Iraq and the region, Mr Enzy said significant differences of culture and tradition complicated the relationship.
"We don't want to be a part of international problems - the US has a problem with Iran, but as an Iraqi government, we don't. We are not a part of the Israel-Palestine problem, but the deployment of foreign forces in Iraq puts pressure on that issue."
The minister's spiel was symptomatic of a rising anti-American sentiment among Iraq's Shiite majority. Mr Enzy said many Iraqis believed the US wanted civil war in the hope it would break the power of the religious parties still struggling to form a government.
"This is not the view of the Government; it is street talk. But it could be why the coalition forces are being targeted in the [Shiite areas] of the south and east."
At the Washington inquiry into the Bush Administration's request for $US70 billion ($95 billion) more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mr Rumsfeld told sceptical senators the plan was to prevent a civil war "and to the extent if one were to occur, to have … Iraqi security forces deal with it".
At the same time, Iraq's cabinet announced that 13 self-confessed insurgents had been hanged "by the competent authorities".
It named only one of them - Shukair Farid, a former police officer accused of working with Syrian fighters to enlist Iraqis to kill police and civilians.
Mystery still surrounds the abduction of about 50 guards from a private security firm in Baghdad on Wednesday.
There were claims they had collaborated with the insurgency and that the Iraqi guards were being held at a government detention centre.
But persistent government denials of any role in the round-ups of the Sunni guards heightened fears that it was the work of a Shiite death squad.
The US military has confirmed it plans to shut down the infamous Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad in the next three months.
A spokesman said that the more than 4500 people being held there would be transferred to a new US-run prison at Camp Cropper at Baghdad International Airport.
E-Voting System Adds 100,000+ Votes in One Texas County During Tuesday's Primary Election!
We hope to have much more on this tomorrow...but for now, this from the Star-Telegram today : An undetected computer glitch in Tarrant County led to inflated election returns in...
We hope to have much more on this tomorrow...but for now, this from the Star-Telegram today:
The error caused Tarrant County to report as many as 100,000 votes in both primaries that never were cast, dropping the local turnout from a possible record high of about 158,103 voters to about 58,000.
...
Questions about possible problems were raised by election staff late Tuesday night, as it became apparent to some that the county would far exceed the 76,000 votes cast in the 2002 primary elections.
But elections officials did not look into the discrepancies that night because they were dealing with a new system, new procedures and some new equipment, said Gayle Hamilton, Tarrant County's interim elections administrator.
"We didn't think there was a problem," Hamilton said. "We should have stopped right then.
"But we didn't question it at that time."
The problem stemmed from a programming error by Hart InterCivic, which manufactured the equipment and wrote the software for the local voting system.
...
"The system did what we told it to do," said John Covell, a vice president with Hart. "We told it incorrectly."
See this previous report for scores of additional e-voting problems reported yesterday, just after Texas' first Primary Election since adding loads of new electronic voting machines this year. (Keep an out for today's 'Daily Voting News' to be posted here shortly...where we expect there will be many more such reports.)
Thursday, March 09, 2006
VIDEO - UAE TV Reports on Prisoner Abuse in Iraq
Video in Streaming Flash format...
Video in Windows Media format...
Abu Dhabi TV which is located in The United Arab Emirates broadcasts this report on prisoner abuse by "Iraqis and Americans" in Iraq.
Amnesty International found crimes so severe that they are considered "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity." They also found that American forces have detained 14,000 Iraqis.
Iraqis that have been released are almost never given an explanation for their detention or compensation. In the video, one Iraq can seen being released decrying his imprisonment as "terrorism! terrorism! terrorism!"
Today, the United States Department of State released a report claiming human rights violations by The United Arab Emirates and the Iraqi Police. The report even hinted at abuses by the U.S.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
VA Watchdog dot Org - VA NEWS FLASH - 03-08-06 #2
Dear Mr. Speaker:
We believe that providing for our military veterans and their families is a continuing cost of war and an important component of our national defense. We simply have no excuse for not meeting their needs. For some, it easy to forget that budgets and numbers ultimately reflect our priorities and affect real people. Indeed, by failing to include any money for veterans’ health care and readjustment services in the $72.4 billion emergency war supplemental request, the Administration again has failed to acknowledge the added stress and resource demands the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are placing on the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Accordingly, we respectfully request that you work with the Appropriations Committee to provide additional resources for the VA within the emergency war supplemental.
We believe that at least $630 million is urgently needed to care for troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the heroes from prior conflicts who rely upon the VA for their health care. Specifically, we are seeking $250 million to support increased demand for mental health services for returning troops; $200 million for direct medical services, including treating traumatic brain injury and other complex blast injuries, and additional resources for the VA’s Polytrauma Rehabilitation Centers; $110 million for increased demand for VA prosthetics; $15 million for medical and vocational rehabilitation services; and $55 million for increased staff to process the growing disability claims backlog of more than 370,000, including claims homeless disabled veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who are waiting months for decisions.
Mr. Speaker, last year, we saw the VA face disgraceful shortfalls in its health care budget, shortfalls that had a direct impact upon the care received by veterans. Ultimately, the Administration begrudgingly admitted these shortfalls and was forced to request additional resources. We are concerned that the Administration may have once again underestimated the total number of veterans that will seek services at the VA, including new veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Mr. Speaker, we strongly urge you to correct the Administration’s oversight and recognize that caring for our veterans is an ongoing cost of war.
Sincerely,
John Salazar
Lane Evans
Nancy Pelosi
Steny Hoyer
James Clyburn
John Larson
John Spratt
Ike Skelton
Stephanie Herseth
Ted Strickland
Shelley Berkley
Vic Snyder
Tom Udall
Luis Gutierrez
Bob Filner
Darlene Hooley
Silvestre Reyes
Corrine Brown
Mike Michaud
Zoe Lofgren
Carolyn McCarthy
Ed Case
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
Lloyd Doggett
Robert Brady
Robert Wexler
Adam Smith
Mike Thompson
Mark Udall
Joe Crowley
Stephen Lynch
Joe Baca
Mike Doyle
Patrick Kennedy
Jim Davis
David Scott
Frank Pallone
Allyson Schwartz
Jim McGovern
Brian Higgins
Albert Wynn
Stephanie Tubbs Jones
Rush Holt
Tammy Baldwin
David Wu
Jan Schakowsky
Jim McDermott
Kendrick Mek
Tom Allen
Robert Scott
Susan Davis
Rahm Emanuel
Raul Grijalva
Ben Chandler
Donna Christian-Christensen
Eddie Bernice Johnson
Danny Davis
Diana DeGette
Al Green
Julia Carson
Grace Napolitano
Lois Capps
Hilda Solis
Dennis Kucinich
Ed Markey
William Jefferson
Peter DeFazio
Eleanor Holmes Norton
Rick Boucher
Paul Kanjorski
Henry Waxman
Bernard Sanders
Gary Ackerman
Barney Frank
Peter Visclosky
Rosa DeLauro
Jerry Costello
Alan Mollahan
Bart Gordon
Marion Berry
Doris Matsui
Gene Taylor
John Dingell
Nita Lowey
Lucille Roybal-Allard
Carolyn Maloney
Sherrod Brown
Alcee Hastings
Marcy Kaptur
Tom Lantos
Maurice Hinchey
Mike McIntyre
Robert Andrews
Solomon Ortiz
Madeline Bordallo
Barbara Lee
Ron Kind
Diane Watson
Charlie Gonzales
Tim Ryan
Martin Meehan
Chet Edwards
Ben Cardin
Earl Blumenauer
Jerrold Nadler
James Oberstar
Brian Baird
Sanford Bishop
Dan Lipinski
William Lacy Clay
Neil Abercrombie
Adam Schiff
Bart Stupak
Louise Slaughter
William Delahunt
Norm Dicks
Eliot Engel
Maxine Waters
Edolphus Towns
Rick Larsen
Xavier Becerra
David Price
Dale Kildee
Elijah Cummings
Mike Ross
Jim Langevin
cc: Honorable Jerry Lewis, Chairman, House Committee on Appropriations
Tom Manatos
Advisor to the Leader
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi
(202) 225-0100
tom.manatos@mail.house.gov
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) - Chairman of the Senate Cover-up Committee
Yesterday, the Senate Intelligence Committee led by Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) voted to block an investigation into the NSA’s warrantless domestic spying program and made a deal with the White House to produce legislation allowing “wiretapping without warrants for up to 45 days.” Ranking Member Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) called the move “proof that the White House controls the Intelligence Committee.”
This isn’t the first time Pat Roberts has covered up for the Bush administration. Far from it.
Pat Roberts has been instrumental in the cover-up of virtually every national security scandal of George W. Bush’s presidency. ThinkProgress has produced a comprehensive report showing how Roberts and his Senate Cover-up Committee have obstructed investigations into everything from false Iraq intelligence to detainee torture to the CIA leak scandal.
Check it out HERE.
'Moscow Times' Covers Diebold, Crumbling American Electoral System
A bit alarmist, perhaps, for our personal taste (though we've misunderstimated the amount of needed "alarm" in the past), Chris Floyd covers the state of American Democracy and the Rise of the Machines in Russia's Moscow Times.
Chris, of Empire Burlesque, who has popped up from time to time as a friendly BRAD BLOG Guest Blogger, covers some of our Diebold/California coverage in his article. So we have no complaints. And couldn't be prouder.
If only American Media would cover the fall of American Democracy as closely as the Moscow Times does. Remember what the Wingnuts like to say: The world is watching.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
When The Government Breaks The Law
By Barbara Bergman
The New York Times revealed in mid-December that for the past four years President Bush has repeatedly authorized the National Security Agency, a Defense Department intelligence agency, to conduct surveillance of domestic communications involving foreign contacts. Eventually, the Bush Administration admitted that the Times story is accurate. The President’s actions constitute an abuse of power and violate our Constitution and federal law.
The President attempted to justify his actions on three grounds:
(1) his notification to a few select members of Congress;
(2) Congress’ resolution authorizing him to make war on Iraq and Afghanistan; and
(3) his constitutional authority as Commander-in-Chief to maintain national security.
Merely notifying a few members of Congress that the Administration intended to violate the law does not justify bypassing existing legislation. We can imagine how successful we would be in defending our clients if we tried to argue that “well, he told his friends he was going to do it. . .” In addition, the 2001 authorization to use force against the perpetrators of 9/11 did not give the President any express or implied power to order the NSA to eavesdrop domestically on citizens and intercept their private telephone conversations and e-mail.
Contrary to the White House’s assertions, neither Congress nor the Supreme Court has ever explicitly given the Executive Branch a green light to conduct domestic electronic eavesdropping without a warrant in “national security” matters. Indeed, the Supreme Court held over 30 years ago in U.S. v. U.S. District Court,1 that domestic eavesdropping without prior judicial approval was not lawful as a reasonable exercise of the President’s power to protect the national security. As the Court concluded: “These Fourth Amendment freedoms cannot properly be guaranteed if domestic security surveillances may be conducted solely within the discretion of the Executive Branch.”2
Six years after that decision, Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to give the government power to tap individuals domestically who were believed to be operating for foreign powers. FISA creates a system of oversight that prohibits even the President from acting without judicial approval. FISA also creates an at least implicit recognition that all domestic surveillance, even for foreign intelligence gathering, must be subject to some warrant requirement. FISA was a compromise between law enforcement/intelligence and civil libertarians, and was designed to define the parameters for intelligence surveillance in the United States. Ours is a system of checks and balances and in enacting FISA, Congress recognized the potential for abuses when the President acts on his own. FISA also allows for swift action — active wiretapping up to 72 hours — prior to a warrant application in the event of a genuine emergency. The tools are in place to protect our nation if a real and immediate threat exists and wiretapping is thought to be essential to combat that threat.
I am not endorsing the FISA procedures, which are secret and non-adversarial, and which we do not believe always meet constitutional standards. For example, NACDL opposed, and still does, as a violation of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against illegal search and seizure, the PATRIOT Act’s elimination of the requirement that the primary purpose of a FISA application be intelligence gathering, rather than criminal investigation. But for all its shortcomings, FISA represents the minimum threshold Congress has established for foreign intelligence gathering in the United States.3 In contrast, the eavesdropping operations at issue here are hidden from any scrutiny whatsoever.
Domestic clandestine surveillance is not a role for the military in a free society. It is contrary to established law, the Constitution, and our way of life. As Justice William O. Douglas explained in Katz v. United States,4 the Fourth Amendment requires a neutral fact-finder to issue search warrants. Under the separation of powers doctrine created by the Constitution, the Executive Branch is not neutral and disinterested; that is the role of the courts. The protections of the Fourth Amendment cannot be assured when the President and the Attorney General reserve for themselves both the role of investigator-and-prosecutor and disinterested neutral magistrate.
Justice Brandeis foresaw the erosion of our civil liberties in his dissent in Olmstead v. U.S.,5 another government eavesdropping case almost 80 years ago. “Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent…. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”6 Our government, Brandeis said, teaches by example. “If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.” 7
Congress must hold hearings to determine the extent of this illegal tapping and to take appropriate action to prevent it from continuing or ever happening again — and NACDL must be active in insisting that such hearings be conducted. In the interim, attorneys who have cases in which the NSA intercept program may have relevance should take action to require the government to reveal whether anyone involved in any way in the case — defendants, lawyers, witnesses, etc. — had been subjected to such surveillance by any federal agency (including the Defense Intelligence Agency, which apparently was also active in the program). A related issue is seeking discovery of whether any of the warrantless surveillance contributed to and tainted FISA applications or other investigative methods.
It is time for Congress and the courts to exert their own independent roles to assure that no other executive agencies are being misused in contravention of U.S. laws or are otherwise impinging on the civil liberties of American citizens.
Notes
1. 407 U.S. 297 (1972).
2. Id. at 316-17.
3. It is interesting to note that the 26-year-old FISA Court modified more wiretap requests from the Bush Administration than from the four previous presidential administrations combined. The FISA judges modified only two search warrants out of the 13,102 applications that were approved over the first 22 years of the Court’s operation. But since 2001, the judges modified 179 out of the 5,645 requests for court-ordered surveillance. A total of 173 of those “substantive modifications” occurred in 2003 and 2004, the most recent years for which public records are available. See Stewart M. Powell, “Secret Court Modified Wiretap Requests,” The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 24, 2005.
4. 389 U.S. 347 (1967).
5. 277 U.S. 438 (1928).
6. Id. at 479.
7. Id. at 485. n
Rewriting The Rules
In dramatic letter carefully sent to Harry Reid at the end of the newscycle on Friday, ensuring that it has yet to be reported in a single major newspaper, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened to re-write the rules of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Due to the extremely sensitive nature of the work the committee does, it has up until now been uniquely bipartisan, giving both parties equal seats and co-chairmanship to allow full discussion. Frist is threatening to turn it into another Republican rubber stamp. Why?
Because tomorrow, March 7, the committee will decide whether or not to begin investigations into the administration's warrantless wiretapping of Americans. And Frist is worried that this critical use of the checks and balances of government is "of little or no value" to the nation.
Blogger Glenn Greenwald has full analysis here, and VichyDems has contact information for a state-by-state grass-roots campaign to contact Republican senators who have indicated they want an investigation, Democrats to urge them to fight and everyone to alert them of the danger if Frist is allowed to eviscerate Congressional oversight.
Telling the 'approved' story
On an unspecified day last week an employee of a federal agency that cannot be revealed delivered a document that cannot be identified to a company that cannot be named seeking information that cannot be discussed.
The aforementioned federal agent left the unidentified document with an employee of the unnamed company. That employee then called the owner, who must remain anonymous, to inform him that the document that could not be identified sought information that could not be discussed. The owner who must remain anonymous instructed the employee to deliver the unidentified document to a lawyer whose name is protected by attorney-client privilege.
The lawyer whose name is protected by attorney-client privilege examined the unidentified document and then reviewed the information that could not be discussed with the owner who must remain anonymous.
With the approval of the owner who must remain anonymous, the lawyer whose name is protected by attorney-client privilege contacted a U.S. attorney who demanded that his identity be concealed.
The U.S. attorney who demanded that his identity be concealed then claimed the owner who must remain anonymous violated a law that could not be disclosed and faced arrest for charges that could not be specified because he had referred to the document that cannot be identified in an article for a certain, but unnamed, web site.
The lawyer whose name is protected by attorney-client privilege argued that his client could not be charged under the undisclosed law because he had been acting as a journalist at the time of the alleged publication and not as the owner of the company that cannot be named. He had, in fact, learned of the existence of the document that cannot be identified from a third-party, who was not named, and was not aware of its exact contents because he had not seen or read the document and, therefore, was not aware of the exact contents that cannot be discussed.
The U.S. attorney who demanded his identity be concealed consulted with others who names are classified and concluded that the owner who must remain anonymous walked a fine line between legal and illegal and would not face arrest for violating a law that could not be disclosed on charges that could not be specified.
So walking this fine line of justice allowed the owner who must remain anonymous to avoid confinement at an institution at an unknown location for an unspecified length of time.
In exchange for his freedom, the owner who must remain anonymous agreed to write a "clarification" of what happened, following the guidelines for publication laid down by the Bush administration.
Which is what you just read.
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Canadian trash bad for Michigan?
Now Democrats are urging Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to release a recent DHS report. The report assessed the process for screening and inspecting trash trucks that cross the border between Michigan and Canada.
Democrats Levin, Stabenow and Dingell all agree, “The report from the DHS-OIG, which is labeled ‘For Official Use Only,' confirms exactly what we suspected. Municipal waste trucks that come into the United States from Canada cannot be adequately inspected.”
The report was prepared pursuant to a 2003 request by the members who argued that, for national security reasons, these shipments must be screened as effectively as other types of cargo.
Republicans agreed by saying, “The legislation steps toward helping Michigan solve its problems with garbage trucked into the state from Canada.”
Levin, Stabenow and Dingell say, “This problem is a threat to our security, since there is no practical way to adequately inspect these trash trucks, we simply should not allow them into this country.”
The state Senate passed the bill Wednesday by a 37-0 vote. The House of Representatives passed the legislation by a 70-4 vote later in the afternoon.
Although Michigan is a large importer of Canadian trash, state landfills generate a lot of money from the business. Trash companies and landfills have argured they will will have to raise fees if Canadian trash is outlawed.
EXPERTS CALL FOR RELEASE OF 9/11 EVIDENCE - Scholars for 9/11 Truth
Duluth, MN (PRLeap) March 4, 2006 — A society of experts and scholars has now joined with Judicial Watch in calling for release of videos that are being held by the Department of Defense, which are essential to understanding events at the Pentagon that transpired on September 11, 2001. Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which is dedicated to exposing falsehoods and establishing truths about the events of 9/11, has gone beyond Judicial Watch by calling for the release of other films and evidence that, its officers maintain, are essential to understanding 9/11.
"It is outrageous that the government is withholding this vital information", said James H. Fetzer, founder and co-chair of the society. "This concerns one of the monstrous events of our time and deserves to be in the public domain." The group, whose members include such prominent figures as David Ray Griffin, Morgan Reynolds, John McMurtry, Wayne Madsen, Robert Bowman, Webster Tarpley, and Andreas von Buelow, has been speaking out against what its own research suggests has been complicity by elements of the administration in the crime.
They are calling for immediate release of the full Pentagon surveillance tape as well as video tapes seized by FBI agents minutes after the Pentagon hit; a complete inventory of the plane wreckage and debris from Flights 11, 77, 93, 175 or any other aircraft that crashed or was destroyed on September 11, 2001, including, but not limited to their location (whether warehoused or otherwise), catalog of photographs and videotapes taken of any items from the planes, and results of all tests and examinations conducted concerning any of these items.
Judicial Watch has filed a lawsuit demanding that DoD release its film footage. In addition, the scholars call for the release of a complete inventory of any steel, other metal, or other materials from the World Trade Center, including, but not limited to the location (whether warehouses or otherwise) of all such items, catalog of photographs and videotapes of any items from the scene, and results of all tests and examinations conducted concerning any of those items.
Judy Wood, a professor of mechanical engineering at Clemson University and a full member of the society of scholars, has emphasized the importance of this material for those studying the collapse of the Twin Towers and World Trade Center 7. "This material has the potential to resolve crucial questions about the forces that were responsible for the buildings’ fall, including the possible use of incendiaries and explosives", she observed. "It is of great importance that we have access to it."
They also call for release of 6,899 photographs and 6,977 segments of video footage held by NIST; tape recordings of interviews by air traffic controllers, at least some of which were deliberately destroyed while in the possession of representatives of the government; a complete accounting of "terror drills" that were being conducted that morning, which may have been used to mask the attack; the cockpit voice recorders and other "black boxes", three of four of which are reported to have survived the Twin Towers’ collapse; and other related evidence.
According to Professor Fetzer, the SEC possesses knowledge of "put options" on American and United Airlines, which are suggestive of advanced knowledge that the attacks would take place; Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta gave very important testimony to The 9/11 Commission, which it chose not to include in its report; and the Secret Service conducted itself in a manner suggesting that it knew there was no serious threat to the President, even following the attacks in New York, while the Commander-in-Chief ignored the unfolding drama.
"We are inclined to believe that these events were orchestrated by the Bush administration in order to instill fear in the American people," Fetzer said. "The use of violence and threats of violence to manipulate a populace based on fear," he observed, "is the definition of terrorism. The release of this vital evidence will help to confirm or to dispel our concerns about what happened on 9/11." Added Wood, "The American people are entitled to know the truth about their own history. If the government has nothing to hide, it should have no objections to releasing all this evidence for experts and scholars to study."
Fetzer also noted today’s Zogby International Poll, which shows that 90% of American troops in Iraq believe that they are fighting to avenge Saddam Hussein’s role in 9/11. "This would be funny if it weren’t so sad", Fetzer said. "The administration falsely linked Iraq to 9/11 even though it knew better", he remarked. "Even the Osama Bin Laden ‘confession tape’ appears to have been faked. We want to know the identity of those who perpetrated these despicable acts."
Scholars for 9/11 Truth maintains its own public web site at www.st911.org. Documentary support for its request is available at www.st911.org/petition/.
AP: Thousands of Federal Cases Kept Secret - Yahoo! News
