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Entries Tagged as 'National Security'

Gitmo’s Indefensible Lawyers

March 15th, 2010 · Corruption, Deception, Defense, Democrats, Homeland Security, National Security, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within, Treason, War on Terrorism

Legal counsel to some of the detainees went far beyond vigorous representation of their clients. Doesn’t the public have a right to know?

Wall Street Journal – MARCH 15, 2010
By Debra Burlingame and Thomas Joscelyn

On the evening of Jan. 26, 2006, military guards at Guantanamo Bay made an alarming discovery during a routine cell check. Lying on the bed of a Saudi detainee was an 18-page color brochure. The cover consisted of the now famous photograph of newly-arrived detainees dressed in orange jumpsuits—masked, bound and kneeling on the ground at Camp X-Ray—just four months after 9/11. Written entirely in Arabic, it also included pictures of what appeared to be detainee operations in Iraq. Major General Jay W. Hood, then the commander of Joint Task Force-Guantanamo, concurred with the guards that this represented a serious breach of security.

Maj. Gen. Hood asked his Islamic cultural adviser to translate. The cover read: “Cruel. Inhuman. Degrades Us All: Stop Torture and Ill-Treatment in the ‘War on Terror.’” It was published by Amnesty International in the United Kingdom and portrayed America and its allies as waging a campaign of torture against Muslims around the globe.

“One thread that runs through many of the testimonies from prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq, and from Guantanamo,” the brochure read, “is that of anti-Arab, anti-Islamic, and other racist abuse.”

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Obama, Biden and Senate Dems more concerned with fair CRACK & COCAINE penalties than Economy.

March 13th, 2010 · Corruption, Deception, Democrats, Ethics, Government Control, National Security, Non-Transparency, Selling Out the US, Senate, Terrorism from Within, Treason

Senate bill would reduce sentencing disparities in crack, powder cocaine cases

By Carrie Johnson Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 13, 2010

A long-standing dispute over huge disparities in sentencing between crack vs. powdered cocaine appears to be headed for a resolution in Congress.

Senate lawmakers reached across the aisle and brokered a landmark deal this week to reduce criminal penalties for defendants caught with crack cocaine, hashing out the terms in, of all places, a congressional gym.

Opportunity struck when Sen. Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) encountered colleagues Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) in the Senate gym early Thursday, before they had started their workouts. Durbin seized the moment to advance the legislation and sent his aides an e-mail at 7:35 a.m., outlining the terms of his offer. The deal was sealed with a handshake two hours later at a committee meeting in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

The often-divided Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously passed the measure 19 to 0 the same day, addressing for the first time in two decades a sentencing disparity that has troubled civil rights organizations, prisoners rights advocates and officials in the Obama White House.

The compromise would reduce the sentencing disparity to 18 to 1 for people caught with crack cocaine vs. those who carry the drug in powdered form. The current ratio has rested since 1986 at 100 to 1, disproportionately hurting African Americans, who are convicted of crack possession at far greater numbers.

The Senate bill would increase the amount of crack cocaine required to trigger a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for possession with an intent to distribute from 5 grams to 28 grams. Possessing cocaine in rock form would no longer carry a mandatory minimum prison term, equalizing that penalty to that of other drugs and marking the first time that Congress has overturned a mandatory minimum.

The House Judiciary Committee passed a cocaine sentencing reform bill in July. That bill would treat all forms of cocaine the same for sentencing purposes, lowering the ratio to 1 to 1.

Durbin and Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) continue to argue that equalizing the penalties would be the fairest approach, but gaining Republican and law enforcement support proved difficult.

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Use of private security guards at government buildings comes under scrutiny

March 13th, 2010 · Accountability, Government, Homeland Security, National Security

By Ed O’Keefe Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 11, 2010

There’s a saying among some private security guards in the Washington region: “There’s no security in security.”

Poor job security and the potential dangers that come with protecting government buildings make it a risky line of work, said guards interviewed this week.

Unlike officers with the Pentagon Force Protection Agency who gunned down shooter John Patrick Bedell last week, most security guards at federal buildings in the Washington region are employed by private firms that have contracts with the Federal Protective Service.

The FPS, part of the Department of Homeland Security, provides security at more than 9,000 federal buildings across the country and uses about 15,000 contract security guards to support about 1,200 officers, inspectors and administrative staffers, according to agency officials. A House hearing Tuesday will focus on the FPS’s future and its response to a 2009 Government Accountability Office investigation that exposed security gaps at 10 major federal buildings. The GAO report also faulted the FPS for inconsistent training and poor oversight of private guards.

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U.S. reportedly gives billions to firms doing business with Iran

March 8th, 2010 · Defense, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, National Security, Non-Transparency, Politics

Monday, March 8, 2010

The U.S. government, while pushing for tougher sanctions against Tehran, has given $107 billion in the past 10 years to U.S. and foreign companies doing business in Iran, much of it in the energy sector, the New York Times reported in its Sunday editions.

Despite the threat of punishment for companies that seek U.S. federal contracts while dealing with Iran, the Times said successive administrations have struggled to exert authority over foreign companies and overseas units of U.S. firms.

Of the 74 companies the newspaper said it had identified as doing business with both the U.S. government and Iran, 49 still work with Iran and have no announced plans to leave.

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Obama advisers (NOW) set to recommend military tribunals for alleged 9/11 plotters

March 6th, 2010 · Deception, Defense, Democrats, Ethics, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, National Security, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within, Treason

By Anne E. Kornblut and Peter Finn Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 5, 2010

President Obama’s advisers are nearing a recommendation that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, be prosecuted in a military tribunal, administration officials said, a step that would reverse Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s plan to try him in civilian court in New York City.

The president’s advisers feel increasingly hemmed in by bipartisan opposition to a federal trial in New York and demands, mainly from Republicans, that Mohammed and his accused co-conspirators remain under military jurisdiction, officials said. While Obama has favored trying some terrorism suspects in civilian courts as a symbol of U.S. commitment to the rule of law, critics have said military tribunals are the appropriate venue for those accused of attacking the United States.

If Obama accepts the likely recommendation of his advisers, the White House may be able to secure from Congress the funding and legal authority it needs to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and replace it with a facility within the United States. The administration has failed to meet a self-imposed one-year deadline to close Guantanamo.

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Obama appointees to the Justice Department represented detainees earlier in their careers.

March 4th, 2010 · Corruption, Deception, Defense, Democrats, Ethics, Government, Government Control, Homeland Security, Immigration, National Security, Obama Nominees, Obama's Scheme, Terrorism from Within, Treason

Conservatives raise ruckus over Justice appointees’ prior work with detainees

By Carrie Johnson Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 4, 2010

Conservatives who are unhappy with the decision to close the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have trained their fire on an unusual target: political appointees in the Obama Justice Department who represented detainees earlier in their careers.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) has been demanding for months the names of nine appointees who previously advocated for or represented detainees in their private law practices. Grassley has argued that the lawyers’ backgrounds could pose “conflicts of interest” and complained that the department had been “nonresponsive” to his requests.

The rhetoric reached new levels this week when Keep America Safe, a group affiliated with Elizabeth Cheney, the daughter of former vice president Richard B. Cheney, released a YouTube video that featured the headline “DOJ: Department of Jihad?” and asked, “Who are these government officials? . . . Whose values do they share?”

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Court dismisses appeal of Uighurs detained at Guantanamo Bay

March 1st, 2010 · Homeland Security, National Security, Supreme Court, War on Terrorism

By Robert Barnes Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 1, 2010; 11:38 AM

The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a major separation of powers case that would have determined what rights judges have to free detainees at Guantanamo Bay who have been found not to be enemy combatants.

The justices, without recorded dissent, agreed with the Obama administration that changed circumstances meant that the challenge brought by a group of Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs was not ripe for the court’s consideration.

At the same time, the justices wiped out a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that had been challenged by attorneys for the detainees. The ruling said that the judicial branch had no power to release into the United States detainees who had been cleared of wrongdoing who cannot be returned to their home countries for fear of persecution.

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Death toll in Afghan war nears 1,000

February 24th, 2010 · Defense, National Security, War on Terrorism

By Craig Whitlock, Greg Jaffe and Julie Tate Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 24, 2010

More than eight years after the Taliban was toppled from power, the number of U.S. military fatalities in the war in Afghanistan is nearing 1,000, a grim milestone in a resurgent conflict that is claiming the lives of an increasing number of troops who had survived previous combat tours in Iraq.

As of Tuesday, 996 U.S. military personnel had died while serving in Operation Enduring Freedom. The roll call of the fallen began on Oct. 10, 2001, when Air Force Master Sgt. Evander E. Andrews was killed in a forklift accident in Qatar while building an airstrip in preparation for the invasion of Afghanistan. The latest confirmed addition came Sunday, when Army Pfc. J.R. Salvacion, 27, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, died of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit near Kandahar.

The number of dead is small in comparison with U.S. casualties in Iraq, where 4,366 uniformed personnel have died since 2003. But as operations intensify in Afghanistan, the war is killing more and more service members who came home safely after serving in Iraq, only to return to the battlefield in another theater.

Since Dec. 1, at least 30 percent of the American military personnel who have died in Afghanistan have been veterans of the Iraq war, according to a Washington Post analysis.

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NYC terrorism suspect cites subway attack plan

February 22nd, 2010 · Homeland Security, National Security, Terrorism from Within, Terrorist Attack

By TOM HAYS and ADAM GOLDMAN

The Associated Press
Monday, February 22, 2010; 3:40 PM

NEW YORK — A former Denver airport shuttle driver admitted Monday to a plot to bomb the New York City subways, saying he was recruited by al-Qaida in Pakistan for a “martyrdom plan” against the United States.

“I would sacrifice myself to bring attention to what the U.S. military was doing to civilians in Afghanistan,” Najibullah Zazi, 25, told a federal judge in a Brooklyn courtroom.

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FBI investigation of 2001 anthrax attacks concluded; U.S. releases details

February 20th, 2010 · Defense, Homeland Security, National Security, War on Terrorism

By Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 20, 2010

The Justice Department officially ended its eight-year investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks Friday with the release of hundreds of pages of documents that starkly portray the mental unraveling of the deceased Army scientist accused of committing the worst act of bioterrorism in U.S. history.

The records offer substantial support for the FBI’s contention that biologist Bruce E. Ivins single-handedly prepared and mailed deadly anthrax spores that killed five people and terrorized a nation still reeling from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

Drawing from the suspect’s e-mails and recorded conversations, the FBI documents show an increasingly agitated Ivins seeking to implicate colleagues while misleading investigators about his ability to make the deadly powder used in the attacks.

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