Ohio Election Looks Grim Already

OpEdNews:

"Based on reports from the Conyers Congressional Committee, the Government Accountability Office, the Brennan Center, Princeton University and the Carter-Baker Commission among others, the vote count reported by Ohio's voting machines could be flipped by J. Kenneth Blackwell or other election official---or even amateur hackers---in a matter of moments, with a few simple keystrokes.

In sum: there is no way such a manipulation could be definitively stopped, monitored, proven or reversed.

Thus Ohio enters the last week prior to this most critical mid-term election in recent memory in utter vulnerability and chaos. Tens of thousands of absentee ballots already cast are in limbo. Their ultimate status may not be determined until hours before election day, if then. Hundreds of thousands of potential voters remain uncertain about what, if any, forms of identification they will be required to include on their absentee ballots or to present at their polling stations. If the experience of 2004 is repeated, many of those polling stations will be incorrectly listed on the Secretary of State's official web site.

Thousands of Ohio citizens may also not know if they are actually registered to vote. All 88 of Ohio's county boards of election are effectively controlled by Secretary of State Blackwell. Since 2000, without official notification, some 170,000 voters have been stripped from the registration rolls in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), 170,000 in Franklin County (Columbus), 105,000 in Hamilton County (Cincinnati) and 28,000 in Lucas County (Toledo).

Overall nearly 500,000 registered voters are known to have been eliminated from the rolls in overwhelmingly Democratic districts in a state where 5.6 million people voted in 2004, and where George W. Bush won with an alleged margin of less than 119,000 ballots. There is no evidence similar eliminations have occurred in Republican areas.

While reports of widespread purges have not proved true, there is increasing evidence that county boards of elections used voter notification cards required by HB3 that were returned by the post office to flag hundreds of thousands of voters' names at the polls throughout Ohio and force them to vote provisionally. An Erie County official placed the number of flagged voters at about 24% in his county.

Blackwell has further ruled that citizens who vote with provisional ballots at their correct polling place but in the wrong precinct (which may be housed in the same building) will not have their vote counted. Back ups of provisional voters created long lines in 2004. The only safe place to cast a provisional ballot is at the county board of elections, but often these votes are disqualified because voters fail to check off a small affirmation box, or do not supply a date of birth or other requested technical information.

Ohio's electoral process is thus once again sinking into a fog of confusion, disenfranchisement and theft perfectly designed to prolong the GOP control of the government. There is every reason to believe that in the week now remaining before the actual election, the GOP and its allies in the federal court system will use the escalating chaos to their advantage in attempting to keep control of the U.S. Congress, here and in other states.

The definitive question hovering over the future of American democracy thus remains: who will do what about it, and when?"

The Sad and Thoroughly Disgusting Story of How the Medicare Drug Bill was Passed

Right down to forming bogus "non-profits" who financed dirty campaigns which ousted congressmen who were against it, coincidentally giving the Senate to the Republicans and promoting Tom DeLay to house speaker.

Featuring: the fingerprints of lobbyists such as Abramoff.

Like this lady, Susan Hirschmann.

Washington Monthly: Poison Pill - Barbara T. Dreyfuss:

"It’s well known that in his crusade to pass the bill, DeLay drew on more than 800 pharmaceutical-industry lobbyists, millions of dollars in campaign contributions, and the efforts of numerous business and healthcare groups. But this grossly flawed legislation could never have passed without the help of the same players who were central to Abramoff’s lobbying operation: Tony Rudy and Ed Buckham. Using a nest of nonprofits flush with corporate cash, the discredited lobbyists played a vital, albeit hidden, role in whittling down congressional opposition to the bill for more than a year before the final vote. In particular, Alexander Strategy made use of three senior nonprofit groups—the United Seniors Association, the Seniors Coalition and 60 Plus—and a Christian evangelical group, America 21, which were all funded heavily by the pharmaceutical industry. This is the story of how this shadowy network helped saddle the American public with the Medicare drug bill—the biggest, most important piece of policy in which the dubious talents of Abramoff’s acolytes were brought to bear."

The Real Reason for the Iraq Invasion—The Coalition of the Drilling in Iraq

This is just a small part of an article—

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News - 'Stability first': Newspeak for rape of Iraq:

"
It's true that Saddam's regime had already started to disintegrate from the inside after the Gulf War of 1991 - a process coupled with the devastating effects of UN sanctions. The resulting loss of civic spirit accelerated the re-tribalization of Iraq. Even as tribal affiliation nowadays is the only way to solve any problem in Iraq, for the silent majority what really matters is security: nobody is troubled by perceived (by the West) Sunni and Shi'ite divisions; and most Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen share plenty of social, cultural and commercial interests. Contrary to Western-propagated myth, Iraqi civil society as a whole - apart from a few factions - abhors civil war.

The coalition of the drilling
World public opinion must switch to red alert. The real, not virtual, future of Iraq will be decided in December. The whole point is a new oil law - which is in fact a debt-for-oil program concocted and imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This is the point of the US invasion - a return on investment on the hundreds of billions of dollars of US taxpayers' money spent. It's not war as politics by other means; it's war as free-market opening by other means - full US access to the epicenter of the energy wars and the perfect geostrategic location for 'taming', in the near future, both Russia and China.

Very few observers have detailed what's at stake. In US corporate media the silence is stratospheric.

US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman duly landed in Baghdad this past summer, insisting that Iraqis must 'pass a hydrocarbon law under which foreign companies can invest'. Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani was convinced, and said the law would be passed by the end of 2006, as promised to the IMF.

No wonder: the Green Zone US Embassy colossus has always made sure that the US controls - via well-paid Iraqi servants - the Petroleum Ministry, as well as all key management posts in key Iraqi ministries. The draft hydrocarbon law was reviewed by the IMF, reviewed by Bodman and reviewed by Big Oil executives. It was not and it will not be reviewed by Iraqi civil society: that was left to the fractious Iraqi parliament - which can be largely bought for a fistful of dinars. "

LifeScience.com

There are just too too many intriguing articles sitting in LifeScience.com right now. Like:

• Platelets from patient's own blood used to cure tendon injuries like tennis elbow
• A drink or two each day cuts heart attack risk dramatically even in healthy men who exercise
• A tiny robot no bigger than the thickness of a dime may be used in surgery
• A widely prescribed diabetes drug, pioglitazone (brand name Actos,) provides no proven benefit, but does increase edema and heart failure

Bush Strategy of Fear Promotes Cancer?

Well, why not?

• Young female rats afraid of new environments developed cancer tumors sooner than their more adventuresome sisters, a new study finds. The researchers called the difference "striking." The apprehensive rodents died sooner than others in the study because they got cancer earlier in life, on average. Importantly, however, the study found no difference in the length of time between onset of cancer and death in the two sets of rats.

• And here is a video of Olbermann's latest, about the Bush administration Advertising Fear.

Bush reveals real Iraq policy

Joe Quinn:

I used to have a little sympathy for those people who were still sitting on the fence over the justness of the Iraq invasion. I understood that the US government and mainstream media talking heads made an effort to imbue their official claims with a semblance of logic and reason, and that the American public could, to some extent, be forgiven for sanctioning illegal war and suffering. They were, after all being deceived.

Not anymore.

It seems that the years of government double-speak and subtle manipulation have led the Bush administration to feel confident that the ability of the average American to think critically has now been compromised to such an extent that they will easily swallow blatant and verifiable fantasy.

The Iraq invasion, we were told, was all about protecting the world against the threat of Saddam's WMDs, yet it was a claim that was inherently flawed because the logical response was to attempt to prove or disprove it - either Saddam had WMDs or he didn't. As we all found out too late, the claim was little more than the product of the minds of American and British spin doctors. A few more hours in the spin room however, and they were back on track, but the back-room boys had learned their lesson, they weren't going to make the mistake of throwing around allegations that were based on something as empirical, and therefore provable or disprovable, as the existence or otherwise of WMDs. This time, it was going to be something much more intangible, like the needs of the Iraqi people and how much happier they (and the rest of the world) would be under American style democracy and without the 'tyrant' Saddam.

This second claim had the potential to fool the American people at least a little longer than the first, appealing as it did to their artificially pumped egos as well as their morbid fear of the unknown i.e. anything outside America's borders. After all, look at how happy the American people are! But really look, not at the details, but the broad panacea of American life, such as it is displayed in Hollywood movies for but one example. Who would not wish such hedonistic revelry for the whole world? In the end however, it seems that the true intention of the Bush cabal towards Iraq is, in its nature, so depraved and far-removed from their claimed altruism, that its face was never going to take long to manifest.

That face today is seen in:

the fact that 655,000 Iraqi people have been murdered since the beginning of the invasion, at least 50% by US forces directly.

that 1.6 million Iraqis have fled the country as a result of the presence of US troops.

that Iraq's health service has disintegrated, with even the most basic treatments unavailable, and that up to half of the aforementioned 655,000 deaths might have been avoided if proper medical care had been available. 2,000 doctors and nurses have been killed with 18,000 more choosing to leave the country in fear of their lives.

the 'Iraqization' of the conflict, where US-sponsored deaths squads being run out of the Iraqi interior ministry are murdering dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians daily in an attempt to twist the root cause of Iraq's problems - the invasion of a sovereign nation by a foreign aggressor - and create the appearance of an internal 'sectarian' conflict between rival Iraqi ethnic and religious factions, when no such serious sectarian strife has ever existed in recent Iraqi history.

the chilling report that the Bush government and its generals are planning to "penalize Iraq if it fails to stop the violence", violence for which the Bush government itself is responsible.

Under this last, the US military would launch an assault on the densely populated neighborhoods of Baghdad, beginning with Sadr City, the home of some 2 million impoverished Shia and the stronghold of the anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia, that is, one of the groups representing the will of the Iraqi people.

In layman's terms, this means that the Bush government has decided that to "win the Iraq war" and "liberate the Iraqi people", it must wage a wholesale war on the Iraqi people in order to coerce them to accept US government rule over their country and lives. Those that submit will live, those that do not, will die. It couldn't be more simple. Iraq has been destroyed, not liberated.

Here, of course, we are a long way from what "folks back home" believe is being done by their government in their name. Yet there is no real reason that such should be the case, because all of the information I present here is freely available in mainstream publications to the American and 'Western' populations. If there is one thing lacking, some piece of data that is preventing many people from fully awakening to the horror and brutality that is being wrought by their (un)elected officials, then it is perhaps the hard evidence that not all human beings are like you and I - not all human beings possess an innate tendency towards the rejection of mass murder of the innocent. Some of them actively engage in acts of depravity, and seek out positions of power from which they can give vent to their deviant natures with impunity.

Remembering all I have just said, can you think of anyone, or any group, that fits this profile?

Take your time.

Why is the Dollar still strong?

Gabor Steingart: America and the Dollar Illusion:

" But why are the same traders who used to purchase products now so mad about dollar bills? Why do they rely on the good called security - a commodity whose quantity cannot be increased at all? Doesn't every business student learn that the currency of a country is only as stable - and hence as valuable - as what the national economy of that country has to offer and produces? Does no one see that the tension between the dream and the reality is increasing and that this tension will snap, leading to suffering for millions?

Of course they see it! Investors can see what is happening. They wonder about it and shake their heads. It even scares them a little, sending chills down their spine. But they keep buying dollars as though possessed. The greater their doubts, the more greedily they order dollars. Indeed, that's exactly what is so crazy about these investors and their behavior: The client isn't just a client. He creates the security he's purchasing by the very act of purchasing it. If he were to stop buying dollars tomorrow, suspicion about the currency would spread and insecurity would grow. Then the dream would end. The dollar would start to falter and all the wealth held in dollars would lose its value. Of course, that's not something investors want to see happen.

The only way to fight a weak dollar is to strengthen it. Many people no longer care whether the US currency still justifies the faith people seem to have in it. The new game, which amounts to playing with fire, works exactly the other way around: The dollar deserves the faith it gets because otherwise it loses that faith. Dollars are bought so they don't have to be sold. The dollar is strong because that's the only thing that can prevent it from growing weak. Reality is ignored because only by ignoring it can the dream come true. Or, to put it still more clearly: Behaving irrationally has become rational behavior."

A Note about Philip Zelikow

You know. Philip Zelikow. Mastermind of the 9/11 Commission whitewash. Co-author with Condi Rice of Germany Unified and Europe Transformed. That Philip Zelikow.

Mike Whitney -Atlantic Free Press:

"In researching the Bush administration’s manipulation of public perceptions, I came across an interesting summary of the State Department’s Philip Zelikow, who was Executive Director on the 9-11 Commission, that greatest of all charades. According to Wikipedia:

“Prof. Zelikow’s area of academic expertise is the creation and maintenance of, in his words, ‘public myths’ or ‘public presumptions’ which he defines as ‘beliefs (1) thought to be true ( although not necessarily known with certainty) and (2) shared in common within the relevant political community.’ In his academic work and elsewhere he has taken a special interest in what he has called ‘searing’ or ‘molding’ events (that) take on transcendent’ importance and therefore retain their power even as the experiencing generation passes from the scene….He has noted that ‘a history’s narrative power is typically linked to how readers relate to the actions of individuals in the history; if readers cannot make the connection to their own lives, then a history may fail to engage them at all.” (“Thinking about Political History” Miller center Report, winter 1999, p 5-7)

Isn’t that the same as saying there is neither history nor truth; that what is really important is the manipulation of epochal events so they serve the interests of society’s managers? Thus, it follows that if the government can create their own “galvanizing events”, then they can write history any way they choose.

If that’s the case, then perhaps the entire war on terror is cut from whole cloth; a garish public relations maneuver devoid of meaning.

Wikipedia adds this about Zelikow which may help to clarify this point:

“In the Nov-Dec 1998 issue of Foreign Affairs he (Zelikow) co-authored (with the former head of the CIA) an article entitled “Catastrophic Terrorism” in which he speculated that if the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center had succeeded ‘the resulting horror and chaos would have exceeded our ability to describe it. Such an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history. It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America’s fundamental sense of security, as did the Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949. Like Pearl Harbor, the event would divide our past and future into a before and after. The United States might respond with draconian measures scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_D._Zelikow)

That was written in 1998!?!

Amazing. It is almost like Zelikow knew what was going to happen on 9-11 and was drawing attention to the “draconian measures” (scaling back civil liberties) which may seem attractive to elites in the policy establishment."

Home of the Brave, Land of the Fifty-Third-Most Free

Reporters sans frontieres - Annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index - 2006:

"Deterioration in the United States and Japan, with France also slipping

The United States (53rd) has fallen nine places since last year, after being in 17th position in the first year of the Index, in 2002. Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of “national security” to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his “war on terrorism.” The zeal of federal courts which, unlike those in 33 US states, refuse to recognise the media’s right not to reveal its sources, even threatens journalists whose investigations have no connection at all with terrorism."

more Madsen, more Madsen

I know some of his reports border on gossip, rumors and anonymous whisperings.

But he consistantly has the most intriguing news items as well. Where does one end and the other begin?

For instance, right now among his top stories:

• A new division of the Air Force has been created - the Psyberspace command (or if you prefer, it's actual name is the "Cyberspace Command" but, Bonnie, I'm leaving in "Psyberspace" because it looks so cool and Psychic)—under the control of a former Major in the Israeli Defense Force.
• A French intelligence officer confirmed to Madsen that Lebanon's ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was killed by a bomb from the Mossad, not from Syria as the US and Israel insisted.
• Bush and Cheney, and their respective supporting groups, are massing for a mutual slaughter to determine who is to be the official scapegoat for the failed Iraq war.

"Dynasty of Death"

Global Research:

PART I

There is no historic parallel that can be drawn, nothing compares with the accomplishments of the Bush family. No dictator or tyrant can equal the suffering and destruction they have wrought on humanity, as they are not mere tyrants themselves, but the makers and breakers of tyrants, the organizers and profiteers of war and death. They are not alone and solely responsible for creating the present day military industrial complex, however since 1915 the Bush family has been directly involved in World War One and Two, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, numerous CIA secret wars, the Gulf War, and now a “Never Ending War”. The past four generations of this one family have had a hand in promoting and profiting from most of major wars that America has waged since the beginning of the industrialized age.


Oh, it's a nice little story, indeed... give a somewhat nuanced meaning to the "Bay of Pigs" affair...and puts the Dulles boys center stage as well.

Otherworldly bacteria lives completely independent of the sun

www.physorg.com:

"Researchers have discovered an isolated, self-sustaining, bacterial community living under extreme conditions almost two miles deep beneath the surface in a South African gold mine. It is the first microbial community demonstrated to be exclusively dependent on geologically produced sulfur and hydrogen and one of the few ecosystems found on Earth that does not depend on energy from the Sun in any way. The discovery, appearing in the October 20 issue of Science, raises the possibility that similar bacteria could live beneath the surface of other worlds, such as Mars or Jupiter's moon Europa.

'These bacteria are truly unique, in the purest sense of the word,' said lead author Li-Hung Lin, now at National Taiwan University, who performed many of the analyses as a doctoral student at Princeton and as a postdoctoral researcher at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory. "

US internet addicts 'as ill as alcoholics' - tech - 18 October 2006 - New Scientist Tech

18 October 2006 - New Scientist Tech:

"The US could be rife with 'internet addicts' who are as clinically ill as alcoholics, according to psychiatrists involved in a nationwide study.

The study, carried out by researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine in California, US, indicates that more than one in eight US residents show signs of 'problematic internet use'.

The Stanford researchers interviewed 2513 adults in a nationwide survey. Because internet addiction is not a clinically defined medical condition, the questions used were based on analysis of other addiction disorders.

Most disturbing, according to the study's lead author Elias Aboujaoude, is the discovery that some people hide their internet surfing, or go online to cure foul moods – behaviour that mirrors the way alcoholics behave.

'In a sense, they're using the internet to self-medicate,' Aboujaoude says. 'And, obviously, something is wrong when people go out of their way to hide their internet activity.'
Non-essential use

Nearly 14% of respondents said they found it difficult to stay away from the internet for several days and 12% admitted that they often remain online longer than expected.

More than 8% of those surveyed said they hid internet use from family, friends and employers, and the same percentage confessed to going online to flee from real-world problems. Approximately 6% also said their personal relationships had suffered as a result of excessive internet usage.

'Potential markers of problematic internet use are present in a sizeable portion of the population,' the researchers note.
Compulsive drive

Aboujaoude, a psychiatry professor at Stanford's Impulse Control Disorders Clinic, says an increasing number of people are seeking help from doctors because of unhealthy internet use.

He compares the compulsive drive to check email, make blog entries or visit websites to substance abuse – an irresistible urge to perform a temporarily pleasurable act."

Naturally, I had to put this in my blog.

Sentiment Analysis

Chris Floyd:

"As with so many of the Bush measures that have quietly stripped away America's liberties, this one too is beginning with a whimper, not a bang: a modest $2.4 Department of Homeland Security million grant to develop 'sentiment analysis' software that will allow the government's 'security organs' to sift millions of articles for 'negative opinions of the United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas,' as the New York Times reported earlier this month. Such negative opinions must be caught and catalogued because they could pose 'potential threats to the nation,' security apparatchiks told the Times.

This hydra-headed snooping program is based on 'information extraction,' which, as a chipper PR piece from Cornell tells us, is a process by which 'computers scan text to find meaning in natural language,' rather than the rigid literalism ordinarily demanded by silicon cogitators. Under the gentle tutelage of Homeland Security, the universities 'will use machine-learning algorithms to give computers examples of text expressing both fact and opinion and teach them to tell the difference,' says the Cornell blurb.

At this point, the ancient and ever-pertinent question of Pontius Pilate comes to mind: 'What is truth?' Of course, Pilate, being a devotee of what George W. Bush likes to call 'the path of action,' gave the answer to his philosophical inquiry in brute physical form: truth is whatever the empire says it is - so take this Galilean rabble-rouser out and crucify him already. In like manner, it will certainly be the government 'security organs' who ultimately determine the criteria for what is fact and what is opinion - and whether the latter is positive or negative, perhaps even a candidate for the Bush-Pilate 'path.'"

Our Rigged Elections - Mark Crispin Miller

I saw Miller just over a week ago, for the second time. He's electrifying. He's terrifying. If you get a chance to see Miller in person, do it. Read his book, Fooled Again.

Washington Spectator Online:

"Even though this election could go either way, neither way will benefit the Democrats. Either the Republicans will steal their 're-election' on Election Day, just as they did two years ago, or they will slime their way to 'victory' through force and fraud and strident propaganda, as they did after Election Day 2000. Whichever strategy they use, the only way to stop it is to face it, and then shout so long and loud about it that the people finally perceive, at last, that their suspicions are entirely just—and, this time, just say no."

Speed may protect the brain against stroke damage

First the article about marijuana protecting against Alzheimers, and how this...

13 October 2006 - New Scientist:

"Researchers induced strokes in gerbils, causing them to become twice as active and agitated as normal gerbils. But when the animals were given a low dose of methamphetamine up to 16 hours after the event, the animals became calmer. Dissection later showed that the neurons of the gerbils given methamphetamine were as intact as in animals that had not suffered stroke.

“Methamphetamine is a drug that has been shown to exacerbate stroke damage when administered before a stroke, but we have seen roughly 80% to 90% protection of neurons when administered after a stroke,” says Dave Poulsen, who led the research at the University of Montana in the US.
Simulated stroke

The team also looked at slices of rat brain taken from the hippocampus – a region involved in memory and learning – which they kept in a nutritious culture for nine days. The slices were then deprived of glucose and oxygen for 90 minutes to mimic the conditions of a stroke.

A low dose of methamphetamine was added to some of the brain slices, and had a protective effect. There was less neuronal damage in the slices that received the drug compared to those that did not, the researchers say.

Poulsen confesses he has no idea why the drug has this effect, although he repeated the gerbil experiment four times and “it worked again and again”."

Security Experts' 'Suicides' Called Into Question -- European Media Probe Dangers of Secret Surveillance Systems

NewAmericanMedia:

"Just after noon on Friday, July 21, Adamo Bove -- head of security at Telecom Italia, the country's largest telecommunications firm -- told his wife he had some errands to run as he left their Naples apartment. Hours later, police found his car parked atop a freeway overpass. Bove's body lay on the pavement some 100 feet below.

Bove was a master at detecting hidden phone networks. Recently, at the direction of Milan prosecutors, he'd used mobile phone records to trace how a 'Special Removal Unit' composed of CIA and SISMI (the Italian CIA) agents abducted Abu Omar, an Egyptian cleric, and flew him to Cairo where he was tortured. The Omar kidnapping and the alleged involvement of 26 CIA agents, whom prosecutors seek to arrest and extradite, electrified Italian media. U.S. media noted the story, then dropped it. "
[ . . . ]
About 16 months earlier, in March of 2005, Costas Tsalikidis, a 38-year-old software engineer for Vodaphone in Greece had just discovered a highly sophisticated bug embedded in the company's mobile network. The spyware eavesdropped on the prime minister's and other top officials' cell phone calls; it even monitored the car phone of Greece's secret service chief. Others bugged included civil rights activists, the head of Greece's "Stop the War" coalition, journalists and Arab businessmen based in Athens. All the wiretapping began about two months before the Olympics were hosted by Greece in August 2004, according to a subsequent investigation by the Greek authorities.

Tsalikidis, according to friends and family, was excited about his work and was looking forward to marrying his longtime girlfriend. But on March 9, 2005, his elderly mother found him hanging from a white rope tied to pipes outside of his apartment bathroom. His limp feet dangled a mere three inches above the floor. His death was ruled a suicide; he, like Adamo Bove, left no suicide note.

hmm...smells like the CIA....

thanks to the Meatball for the lead.

A message from David Mann, SPC US Army 2003 & 2005

For two years, I risked my life in the Iraq war. I'm writing to invite you this weekend to see what I saw over there and take action to keep my fellow soldiers safe.

This weekend, MoveOn members across the country are opening their homes to screen a powerful new film, Iraq for Sale, about the big corporations that are endangering soldiers' lives and ruining the chance for peace. I'm asking all of you to go see this groundbreaking movie and to bring as many friends as you can. There is a screening near you. To find the closest one and R.S.V.P., just click here.

When you see what's in this movie, you're going to want to do something about it—and you can. At these same parties, we'll be calling key voters through MoveOn's Call for Change program and reminding them to get to the polls. The calls are simple and easy, and—speaking as someone who has seen the consequences of Republican misrule first hand—they're well worth it.

Why do I know this film is so powerful? Because I'm in it. Here's a little more about my story.

I am the child of a career Army man, and when it came time to decide what to do after high school, I knew I wanted to follow the same path. In 2003 and then again in 2005, my unit was deployed to Iraq. As a maintenance unit, we were responsible for repairing everything and anything soldiers used to do their jobs and stay alive: weapons, radios, trucks, computers—you name it. So you can imagine our shock, weeks after getting to Iraq, when we were ordered to hand our mission over to private contractors employed by Halliburton.

But there's a catch: Halliburton had neither the training nor the equipment to take over our mission. Most of the contractors had no previous knowledge at all of our equipment before coming to Iraq. One of the contractors I "trained" was not even remotely familiar with radio systems, but had been a missile systems repairman while he was in the Army.

Because our unit no longer had a mission, we were forced into other things that we weren't trained to do. Mechanics found themselves on guntruck missions escorting convoys between bases. Many of us were forced onto guard duty while the contractors fumbled through our old jobs getting paid way more than any soldier. I spent months checking ID cards at the Post Exchange and Recreation facility. I felt helpless and awful, like I was letting down my fellow soldiers while they were being put into life-threatening situations with unsafe equipment, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Since I returned to the States, I've learned more about why all that happened—about how the Republicans gave Dick Cheney's old company all these huge contracts and didn't care at all how it endangered us soldiers. And now, there is something I can do about it—I can speak out .

This weekend, there's something you can do about it, too. You can come and bring your friends to watch this amazing movie, (my story is just one small part of this shocking film), and spread the word about what's really happening. And while you're there, make a few simple reminder calls to progressive voters in key districts to help win these elections. Please find a party near you and RSVP right here.


I've come to realize that the only way we can keep our soldiers safe is by electing leaders who will put our safety above the profit of their corporate friends. I hope you'll join me at a screening this weekend to help do just that.

Respectfully,

—David Mann, SPC US Army 2003 & 2005
Tuesday, October 10th, 2006

P.S. Please consider forwarding this note as an invitation to friends. There are screenings all over the country, so chances are there's one near the folks you know no matter where they live.

P.P.S. If you can't make it this weekend, or you'd just like to own your own copy of this extraordinary film, you can purchase the DVD here.

Giant Balls of 'Snot' Explain Ocean Mystery

Honestly, how could I have missed this story last year?

LiveScience.com:

"Scientists have discovered giant sinking mucus 'houses' that double the amount of food on the sea floor.

The mucus houses, or 'sinkers,' are produced by tadpole-like animals not much bigger than your index finger. As sinkers drop to the sea floor, small sea critters and other food particles get stuck to the mucus and end up on the bottom of the ocean."
[ . . . ]
The animals responsible for making sinkers are called giant larvaceans. They spin a mucus web, about a yard in diameter. They sit in the middle of the house and use it to filter food that is small enough for them to eat. "Larger particles get stuck to the outside of these filters, and after some amount of time the filters get plugged and the animal moves out," Sherlock said. "The house deflates and begins to sink, picking up more particles. It’s a fast-sinking carbon bomb."
{ . . . }
"A sinker is basically snot," Sherlock said.

Ironic Alzheimers news

A new simple eye exam can detect the formation of clumps of proteins well before they are detectable inside the brain.

The problem is preventing these clumps from forming. Another report about trying to prevent just that found

"Two drugs approved for use against Alzheimer's, donepezil and tacrine, reduced clumping by only 22 and 7 percent, respectively."

But THC, the ingredient in marijuana which effects the brain, stopped the clumping completely.

The report ends by making it clear that:

...marijuana is not necessarily good for the mind. Prior investigations have shown that years of heavy marijuana use, consisting of four or more joints a week, can impair memory, decision making, and the ability to pay attention to more than one thing at a time.

But, if you think about it, so does Alzheimers!

"Quite a coincidence" that Navy lawyer who successfully defended client in Guantanamo trial before the Supreme Court was forced to retire

The problem was that, under Navy regulations, the only alternative would have been to promote him...

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift defended bin Laden driver

The Seatle Times:

"In the opinion of Washington, D.C., attorney Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, Swift was "a no-brainer for promotion," given his devotion to the Navy, the law and his client.

But, he said, Swift is part of a long line of Navy defense lawyers "of tremendous distinction" who were not made full commander and "had their careers terminated prematurely."

"He brought real credit to the Navy," said Fidell. "It's too bad that it's unrequited love."

Swift's supervisor, the Pentagon's chief defense counsel for Military Commissions, said the career Navy officer had served with distinction.

"Charlie has obviously done an exceptional job, a really extraordinary job," said Marine Col. Dwight Sullivan, a former American Civil Liberties Union attorney, calling it "quite a coincidence" that the Navy promotion board passed on promoting Swift "within two weeks of the Supreme Court opinion."

In June, the prestigious National Law Journal listed Swift among the nation's top 100 lawyers, with such legal luminaries as former Bush administration Solicitor General Theodore Olson, 66; Stanford Law constitutional-law expert Kathleen Sullivan, 50; and former Bush campaign recount attorney Fred Bartlit, 73.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, Pentagon spokesman on Guantánamo topics, did not respond to a query about the up-or-out system by which Navy lieutenant commanders are retired if they aren't promoted.

Winning those ole' hearts and minds in Iraq

Watching America (original article in Al Zaraa (Arabic):

"Babylon: While driving on the wrong road in the Nile region of Babil Province, an Iraqi citizen driving an Opel was killed in a collision with a vehicle belonging to American forces, eyewitnesses have told the Zarwaa Media Network. The incident took place at 7:30 am yesterday morning [September 24th].

U.S. troops remained at the scene to inspect the vehicle, examine documents and generally act aggressively toward the passenger that survived the incident. Two Iraqi bystanders tried to apologize to the American troops and clarify the matter, saying that it was merely a traffic accident. But the Americans were unconcerned and wouldn't listen. Then, after spraying the two bystanders with incendiary materiel, the Americans set the two Iraqis alight and departed in their vehicle, leaving the flames to consume their corpses."

Doesn't really matter if it's true. It's what's believed by the Iraqis that counts. And, of course, it just might be true...

"August terror plot is a 'fiction' underscoring police failures"

The Raw Story:

"Lieutenant-Colonel (ret.) Nigel Wylde, a former senior British Army Intelligence Officer, has suggested that the police and government story about the "terror plot" revealed on 10th August was part of a "pattern of lies and deceit."
[ . . . ]

But Lt. Col. Wylde, who was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal for his command of the Belfast Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit in 1974, described this scenario as a "fiction." Creating liquid explosives is a "highly dangerous and sophisticated task," he states, one that requires not only significant chemical expertise but also appropriate equipment.

Terror plot scenario "untenable"

"The idea that these people could sit in the plane toilet and simply mix together these normal household fluids to create a high explosive capable of blowing up the entire aircraft is untenable," said Lt. Col. Wylde, who was trained as an ammunition technical officer responsible for terrorist bomb disposal at the Royal Army Ordnance Corps in Sandhurst.

After working as a bomb defuser in Northern Ireland, Lt. Col. Wylde became a senior officer in British Army Intelligence in 1977. During the Cold War, he collected intelligence as part of an undercover East German "liaison unit," then went on to work in the Ministry of Defense to review its communications systems.

"So who came up with the idea that a bomb could be made on board? Not Al Qaeda for sure. It would not work. Bin Laden is interested in success not deterrence by failure," Wylde stated.

"This story has been blown out of all proportion. The liquids would need to be carefully distilled at freezing temperatures to extract the required chemicals, which are very difficult to obtain in the purities needed."

Once the fluids have been extracted, the process of mixing them produces significant amounts of heat and vile fumes. "The resulting liquid then needs some hours at room temperature for the white crystals that are the explosive to develop." The whole process, which can take between 12 and 36 hours, is "very dangerous, even in a lab, and can lead to premature detonation," said Lt. Col. Wylde.

If there was a conspiracy, he added, "it did not involve manufacturing the explosives in the loo," as this simply "could not have worked." The process would be quickly and easily detected. The fumes of the chemicals in the toilet "would be smelt by anybody in the area." They would also inevitably "cause the alarms in the toilet and in the air change system in the aircraft to be triggered. The pilot has the ability to dump all the air from an aircraft as a fire-fighting measure, leaving people to use oxygen masks. All this means the planned attack would be detected long before the queues outside the loo had grown to enormous lengths."
[ . . . ]
'I've been closely monitoring the internet communications of extremist Muslim groups inside the UK both before and after 7/7, and they are intimately interconnected,' said Jenvey, who is affiliated with the London-based terror watch group VIGIL. 'We've identified a coordinated leadership of at least 20 and up to 60 people, extremist preachers with blatant international al-Qaeda terrorist connections.'

Jenvey noted that even though they are known to the authorities and are monitored while breaking the law with impunity, particularly in their private sermons, the police have failed to take appropriate action against them. 'The police don't need to round up and detain thousands of British Muslims. If they only arrested, charged and prosecuted these 20 key terrorist leaders, they will have a struck a fatal blow against the epicentres of al-Qaeda extremism in the UK. But they're sitting on this.'"
[ . . . ]
The official reluctance to act against Bakri and his active associates in the UK does not match the government's willingness to act pre-emptively to foil a plot of doubtful reality. Official reluctance to acknowledge the significance of the detonators used in the 7/7 terrorist operation suggests that the threat is far more sophisticated than authorities have admitted, and that emphasis on home-grown amateurs is mistaken. Lt. Col. Wylde's observations would seem to indicate that the terror-threat narrative is being manipulated for reasons of political expediency.

How the Supreme Court Mangled My Research

You assume judges hear expert testimony and know if it's trustworthy or not. You know what they say about assumptions...

This is a very sobering article.

Counterpunch:

"What the Supreme Court Doesn't Know

By PAULA J. CAPLAN

I should have been thrilled. And I was, for five minutes. 'Your book about psychiatric diagnosis was cited in the latest United States Supreme Court decision,' read a colleague's email message to me.

For five minutes I felt gratified, thinking my report that many psychiatric diagnostic categories are unscientific had been helpful. Then I saw that what the Clark v. Arizona decision, the last in the Court's most recent term, included was a serious mischaracterization and misapplication of my work. I wondered how the Court had heard of my book and soon discovered that the writer of an amicus curiae brief had cited it in a way that, through implication and omission, was misleading."

What Iran looks like today

Here's some photos

Kinda looks like Yugoslovia before it was destroyed. Let's hope the US doesn't bomb another country into rubble.

Marc Grossman, his wife Malek Can, the ATA, Sibel Edmonds, Brewster-Jennings, and various blown investigations and cover ups

Wayne Madsen:

Sep. 28, 2006 -- SPECIAL REPORT. CIA counter-proliferation front company's cover blown by State Department official two years before White House leak to media.

U.S. intelligence sources, speaking on conditions of strict anonymity, have told WMR that the cover status of Brewster Jennings & Associates, the counter-proliferation front company that Valerie Plame Wilson and her CIA counter-proliferation non-official cover (NOC) colleagues used as a front for their operations, was blown in two phone calls placed in June 2001 to two foreign intelligence agents in Washington, DC by then-Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman. The calls were intercepted by the FBI, which had targeted the communications of Grossman and the two foreign intelligence agents as part of a counter-intelligence investigation, according to the sources.

The FBI counter-intelligence operation was investigating a weapons smuggling and influence-peddling ring that was centered on the activities of the American Turkish Council (ATC). a major Turkish lobbying organization in Washington, DC headed up by George H. W. Bush National Security Adviser, retired Gen. Brent Scowcroft. According to U.S. intelligence sources, a principal player in the ring was Grossman, a career foreign service officer who served as U.S. ambassador to Turkey from 1994 to 1997 and then moved back to Washington where he served as Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs.

At the end of June 2001, the FBI learned, through its surveillance of the ring, Beyaz Enerji (White Energy), a Turkish energy firm, told its ATC interlocutors in Washington that it was sending a high-level team to the United States to negotiate the procurement of nuclear materials for Turkey's nuclear power program (the term "white" or "beyaz" in the name of the firm refers to "clean" energy). In turn, the ATC contacted four individuals who had access to Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico and asked them to arrange a three month visit to the labs by the Turkish nuclear specialists (October through December 2001) to ascertain Turkish requirements.

The Beyaz Energy group also made known its desire to purchase U.S. nuclear energy consulting firms that maintained access to facilities like Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, and Lawrence Livermore in California. However, at the same time Beyaz Energy was making its play for access into U.S. nuclear labs, Brewster Jennings and Associates, the CIA cover company of Valerie Plame Wilson, was very close to penetrating the Beyaz Energy ring, known to the CIA as part of a major nuclear black market operation involving key players in Turkey, Pakistan, Israel, Iran, and the former Soviet Central Asian states. According to CIA sources, the ring also involved a key ATC ally in Washington -- the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a group that provided important access to top U.S. political leaders for Turkish military and industrial chiefs.

When Beyaz Energy began to encounter "consultants" with Brewster Jennings, they expressed an interest to their ATC interlocutors in buying the firm along with other energy consulting companies.

According to U.S. intelligence sources, at the end of June 2001, the FBI intercepted two phone calls from Grossman in which he told the called parties to "stay away from Brewster Jennings . . . they're the government . . . they're nothing but a cover." One of the calls was to a Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) top agent in Washington. The other call, bearing an almost identical message, was made to a Northrop Grumman official who was a key player with the ATC. The Northrop Grumman official made a phone call to his ATC handler, stating, "Our guy warned us off Brewster Jennings." A U.S. intelligence source stated that "Grossman's name was all over the FBI wiretaps in 2001" and the name "Brewster Jennings" first became known to the FBI counter-intelligence agents from these intercepts.

According to CIA sources, Brewster Jennings and Associates was "finished" in the Summer of 2001. Plame was transferred to the CIA's Counter-proliferation Division's Joint Task Force on Iraq (JTFI), where she and her colleagues were pressured to come up with "evidence" of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

Grossman, who now works for the Cohen Group of former Defense Secretary William Cohen, was, according to U.S. intelligence sources, a subject of interest to counter-intelligence agents since his stint as U.S. ambassador in Ankara. One of Grossman's embassy officials was U.S. Air Force Major Douglas Dickerson, who worked in the embassy's military attaché office and was responsible for logistics matters with the Turkish military. While in Ankara, Dickerson met and later married Melek Can Harputlu, who U.S. intelligence sources claim was on the payroll of the MIT (Mýllý Ýstýhbarat Teskýlati) -- the Turkish Intelligence Agency. U.S. intelligence sources confirmed that Grossman ordered Dickerson to assist International Advisors, Inc. (IAI), a lobbying firm registered in 1989 by Douglas Feith under the stewardship of Richard Perle. The main task of IAI was to represent the government of Turkey in the United States and "promote the objective of U.S.-Turkey defense industrial cooperation."

IAI, for which Feith was CEO and sole stockholder, also steered hundreds of thousands of dollars to Feith's law firm, Feith and Zell (FANZ), which, along with Perle, was involved in setting up the Bosnia Defense Fund and amassed millions of dollars of contributions from Muslim countries for Bosnia. A Riggs Bank source confirmed that Perle was not concerned when it was discovered that Bosnian funds were being used to buy arms that were falling into the hands of Iranian and Al Qaeda units in Bosnia and that when confronted with these problems, shouted to the Riggs interlocutor, "just make it fucking happen!"

Soon, Dickerson, under Grossman's aegis, was promoted to handle all U.S. weapons procurement for Turkey, Azerbaijan (where Richard Armitage was heading up the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce), Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. In 1996, the Defense Department's Inspector General's office launched an investigation of a U.S. military officer at the Ankara embassy who was caught receiving a bribe from MIT agents. Shortly after the investigation started, Dickerson was transferred to a U.S. Air Force base in Germany. Dickerson's wife, Melek Can worked for the German-Turkish Business and Cultural Association, known to be a cover for MIT activities in Germany. In 1997, Grossman left Ankara to head up the State Department's European Bureau.

In 1998, Dickerson was transferred from Germany to Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. In 2001, after George W. Bush became president, Dickerson was promoted and placed in charge of weapons procurement for Turkey, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington. Melek Can obtained positions with the ATC and Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA).

Following the 911 attacks, Melek Can applied for a translator job at the FBI's Washington Field Office. In a Justice Department Inspector General report, it is stated that Melek Can failed to list on her application her prior jobs with ATA, ATAA, and the German-Turkish Business and Cultural Association. When FBI translator Sibel Edmonds (a Turkish, Farsi, and Azerbaijani translator who worked with Melek Can) complained publicly about MIT's penetration of the FBI, Senators Patrick Leahy and Charles Grassley pointedly asked the FBI why no Special Background Investigation (SBI) was conducted on Melek Can. The FBI's responded that Melek Can entered the FBI "through the backdoor" with her husband's Top Secret/SBI being sufficient grounds to grant Melek Can access to FBI classified information. At the same time, the Dickersons were, according to U.S. intelligence sources, working closely with the ATC.

Edmonds' charges against the Dickersons were highlighted in a June 2002 Washington Post article. On September 9, 2002, the Dickersons left Washington for Belgium, where Major Dickerson was assigned to the U.S. Air Force NATO office. Soon, there were three separate investigations of Edmonds' espionage charges against the Dickersons: the Justice Department IG probe, a similar probe by the Department of Defense IG led by Joseph Schmitz, and a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee investigation led by Leahy and Grassley.

Two weeks after the Dickerons arrived in Belgium, Schmitz sent a letter stating that Major Dickerson's relationship with the ATC while at DIA was "within the scope of his duties." The DOD IG terminated the investigation.

Two weeks after the DoD shut down its investigation of Major Dickerson, Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the State Secrets Privilege and imposed a "gag order" on Edmonds' making any further comments to the media about her wrongful termination suit against the FBI, which was prompted by her raising concerns about the Dickersons. The invocation of the State Secrets Privilege by Ashcroft was specifically requested by the Defense and State Departments.

Upon publication of a Vanity Fair article in August 2005 about the Edmonds case and those of other national security whistleblowers, the Department of Defense and U.S. Air Force opened a joint IG investigation of Major Dickerson and Edmonds' charges, who was still safely ensconced at the NATO office in Belgium. When the DoD invited Edmonds to be interviewed without her lawyer present at a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) at Fort Myer, Virginia, she declined, citing the potential threats inherent in such a solo appearance. Schmitz (the son of racist California Republican Rep. John Schmitz and brother of pedophile schoolteacher Mary Kay Letourneau) resigned on Sept. 9, 2005 to take the general counsel job with the Prince Group, the holding company for Blackwater USA, the private military contractor that was amassing lucrative Pentagon contracts.

When the DoD/USAF IG investigators asked Major Dickerson once again about the allegations that had re-surfaced against him, U.S. intelligence sources report he told them that he would "start talking" if the investigation proceeded. The DoD/USAF IG investigation of Dickerson was once again quickly terminated. In January 2006, Dickerson was promoted in rank to Lieutenant Colonel and transferred to the U.S. Air Force base in Yokota, Japan, where he was assigned as the 374th Logistics Readiness Squadron’s acting commander.

U.S. intelligence sources stated that the "same people" who have continually protected Perle and Feith since the 1980s were also protecting Dickerson and Grossman. CIA sources, including those who served in Istanbul tracking nuclear smuggling in the late 1980s, also confirm that the Turkish-U.S. nuclear black marketeering ring was directly tied to the Abdul Qadeer Khan nuclear smuggling ring in Pakistan, an operation that sold sensitive nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea, and Libya. The ATC and ATAA in Washington is directly tied to and supported by AIPAC and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) reported a U.S. counter-intelligence source. In fact, JINSA is an "Aegean" member of the ATC. The source said that Valerie Plame Wilson was targeting the ATC and Turkey at the height of her counter-proliferation work in 2001, but special interests associated with AIPAC and JINSA, which the source claims control ATC, scuttled Plame Wilson's operation by exposing Brewster Jennings as a CIA front company.

The CIA's counter-narcotics division is also keenly interested in ATC and its connections to NATO. A Turkish hashish kingpin, Huseyin Baybasin, now jailed in the Netherlands for narcotics smuggling, stated that the Turkish military and its NATO interlocutors are totally involved in the drug trade in Turkey. He said the Turkish military uses MIT and Turkish embassies, consulates, military missions (particularly the Turkish military attaché offices in London and Amsterdam) as drug smuggling facilitators. The Turkish military also reportedly uses its hated Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) enemies to help transport drugs throughout Western Asia, especially heroin now being produced in Afghanistan at record high levels.

On June 10, 2003, Grossman, who was trusted by the Cheney neocon cabal in the White House, received a memo drafted by an analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR's) on INR's skepticism about President Bush's State of the Union charge that Iraq had tried to procure uranium from Niger. The memo described a February 2002 CIA meeting at which Joseph Wilson was mentioned as the best candidate to undertake a mission to Niger to check on the uranium allegations. The memo also reportedly identified Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA counter-proliferation officer and associated her with the Brewster Jennings & Associates cover company (keep in mind that Grossman had already compromised the company's covert status in June 2001).

Since Grossman joined the Cohen Group as Vice Chairman in January 2005, the firm has become a top client for the ATC. In October 2005, Grossman was appointed a board member of Ihlas Holding, a media corporation that recently sold its TGRT Television network to Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp. U.S. law enforcement sources confirm that Feith remains under a DoD IG investigation that is being spurred by North Carolina Republican Rep. Walter Jones.

August 13, 2002

Hon. John Ashcroft
Attorney General
United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20530

Dear General Ashcroft:

We are writing jointly in order that you might allay our concern about the status of the investigation into allegations made by Sibel Edmonds, a former contract linguist in the Washington Field Office of the FBI. Although we understand that the matter is currently under investigation by the Inspector General, we are troubled that the Department of Justice, including the FBI, may not be acting quickly enough to address the issues raised by Ms. Edmonds' complaints or cooperating fully with the Inspector General's office.

By way of background, Ms. Edmonds first raised concerns about security problems and the integrity of important translations earlier this year. Unfortunately, nearly every person at the FBI who was notified of the situation reacted by questioning why Ms. Edmonds was "causing trouble." Indeed, the FBI's first internal security action in this case focused on Ms. Edmonds, instead of the allegations that she raised in good faith as a whistleblower and which bore on national security and the war against terrorism.

Ms. Edmonds has made a number of serious allegations, some of which the FBI verified during an unclassified briefing for Judiciary Committee staff on June 17. First, Ms. Edmonds has alleged that a contract monitor in her unit ("monitor") chose not to translate important, intelligence-related information, instead limiting her translation to unimportant and innocuous information. The FBI has verified that this monitor indeed failed to translate intelligence-related information, but has attributed the failure to a lack of training as opposed to a malicious act.

That conclusion is directly related to Ms. Edmond's second allegation. Ms. Edmonds alleged that the same contract monitor once worked for an organization associated with the target of a counter-intelligence investigation and that the monitor had unreported contacts with a foreign national who was a member of the target institution. Additionally, Ms. Edmonds states that some of the mistranslated recordings on which the monitor actually worked contained conversations by this same foreign national with whom the monitor had such contacts. Finally, the foreign national disclosed in recorded conversations that he handled intelligence matters. This fact was among the information that was not translated or summarized by the monitor.

Even after verifying these allegations, the FBI downplayed the importance of this matter and seemed to imply that it had ceased looking into the complaints as a security matter until after the Inspector General Office finishes its investigation. Anyone who remembers the long-time treachery of former FBI Agent Robert Hanssen would be concerned at this reaction. For years, Hanssen's bizarre actions were also written off as minor security breaches and unworthy of serious consideration. If even routine diligence had been exercised earlier, Hanssen could have been stopped from doing untold damage. The FBI needs to learn from its mistakes.

In addition to general concerns raised by this case, we have several specific concerns we wish to raise for your review. First, we have learned that a person central to the investigation -- the monitor referred to earlier -- will be leaving the country in early September, which most likely will be before the investigation is resolved. If you or your staff would like to know the identity of the monitor, please contact Inspector General Fine's office, with whom Senator Grassley's staff has been in touch. The monitor may hold dual citizenship with the United States and a foreign country and may possess a valid passport issued by that foreign country. Thus, there will be little or no assurance that the monitor will return or cooperate with an investigation in the future. Based on these facts, we would like your assurance that you are satisfied that there has been and will be no delay that will prejudice, in any way, the outcome of this investigation.

Furthermore, we would like your assurance that the Department of Justice, including the FBI, will fully cooperate in all aspects of the inquiry. For instance, we draw your attention to the fact that the FBI currently opposes depositions of the monitor and her husband as part of the investigation into this case. The FBI takes this position despite the fact that the monitor is no longer employed by the FBI, that the monitor's husband never worked at the FBI and even though the military agency that employs the monitor's husband does not oppose a deposition. Moreover, we understand that the monitor and her husband have signed a letter stating they will make themselves available for depositions. It is unclear, then, why the FBI is taking this position in the wake of such important allegations bearing on national security. We hope that you will ensure that the FBI is fully compliant with the Inspector General's inquiry as it proceeds.

Finally, we are concerned about the most crucial evidence in the case -- the recordings that were allegedly improperly translated. Because these bear directly on the veracity of Ms. Edmonds' allegations, we seek your assurance that the recordings will be properly maintained, turned over to the Inspector General's Office and promptly translated by a competent and independent authority. That way the validity of the complaint can be quickly evaluated.

We know that you share our concern that the FBI address issues bearing on national security in a prompt manner, regardless of whether or not they cast the FBI in a positive light. Only by honest evaluation can the FBI learn from its past mistakes. We thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter. We request a reply in writing by Wednesday, August 28, 2002.

Sincerely,

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy

Sen. Chuck Grassley
Chairman, Ranking Member
Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs