Group items tagged

Former Rep. Ron Paul does not just oppose a potential military intervention in Syria, or think the government is exaggerating the case for war, or think we’re moving too quickly, but thinks the government is outright lying — “I think it’s a false flag,” he says, invoking the favorite phrase of conspiracy theorists everywhere.“[Syrian President Bashar al] Assad, I don’t think is an idiot. I don’t think he would do this on purpose,” Paul told Fox Business host Neil Cavuto of the allegation that Assad used chemical weapons on civilians.“Oh, so you question whether  Assad even used the gas, of if he’s just being set up?” an incredulous Cavuto responded.“Yeah, just look at how many lies were told us about Saddam Hussein prior to that buildup. More propaganda. It happens all the time,” Paul replied. “I think it’s a false flag. I think really, indeed. And nobody knows if indeed he was slaughtering people by the thousands with poison gas. If he was that’s a different story, but that’s not the case.”

The White House on Thursday disputed the findings of an independent review board that said the National Security Agency's mass data collection program is illegal and should be ended, indicating the administration would not be taking that advice.  "We simply disagree with the board's analysis on the legality of the program," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said.  He was responding to a scathing report from The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), which said the program ran afoul of the law on several fronts.  "The ... bulk telephone records program lacks a viable legal foundation," the board's report said, adding that it raises "serious threats to privacy and civil liberties" and has "only limited value." The report, further, said the NSA should "purge" the files. 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has indicated he would bring a new Iran sanctions bill for a vote. On Thursday, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Illinois) introduced a new sanctions bill against Iran which was co-sponsored by 24 other senators across the aisle. The White House was quick to condemn the new anti-Iran effort by the hawkish senators on Capitol Hill with Obama’s Press Secretary Jay Carney saying that the president would veto the bill “if it were to pass” Congress. However, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) told Fox News that he was seeking to secure a veto-proof majority of 67 senators for the bill. “If the president wants to veto [the bill], we’ll override his veto,” Graham said.

Iranian Foreign Minister and top nuclear negotiator Mohammad Javad Zarif have already warned that any new sanctions against Iran passed by US Congress would kill “the entire deal” reached between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the US, Britain, Russia, France and China — plus Germany on November 24.

The tentative security deal reached between Secretary of State John Kerry and Afghan President Hamid Karzai could be at risk after Karzai told a gathering of elders that the signing should be put off until after next year's Afghan presidential election -- and signed only if it is approved by the council and the parliament. 

A delay in the signing would be problematic for the U.S. government, which wants an agreement as soon as possible to allow American planners to prepare for a military presence after 2014, when the majority of foreign combat forces will have left Afghanistan.  Despite the decision to defer signing the agreement until after the scheduled April 5 election, Karzai spoke in support of the deal on the first day of the meeting of the 2,500-member national consultative council of Afghan elders known as the Loya Jirga Thursday in Kabul.  At one point, Karzai acknowledged there was little trust between his government and Washington. He was quoted by Reuters as saying "My trust with America is not good. I don't trust them and they don't trust me. During the past 10 years I have fought with them and they have made propaganda against me.'' 

Karzai did not address one of the biggest points of contention in the proposed deal, the U.S. request for jurisdiction over its own troops. Lack of agreement over that issue helped scuttle a similar agreement with Iraq and prompted Washington to order most troops out of that country in 2011.  The Loya Jirga retains the right to revise or reject any clause of the deal. If the deal is approved by the council, whatever version of the pact that is extant must also be approved by the Afghan parliament. 

The global war on heroin, cocaine and cannabis is failing to stem supply, as prices of these drugs have tumbled while seizures of them have risen, according to a study published Monday.Researchers analysed data from seven government-funded programmes that tracked the illegal drug market over more than a decade.

The prices of heroin, cocaine and cannabis tumbled by 81 percent, 80 percent and 86 percent respectively between 1990 and 2007 in the United States when adjusted for inflation, the researchers found.Over the same period, the average purity of these drugs rose by 60 percent, 11 percent and 161 percent respectively.

"With few exceptions... illegal drug prices have generally decreased while drug purity has generally increased since 1990," they added.The global supply of illicit drugs had likely not been reduced in the last two decades, the study said, and the availability of cannabis and opiates like heroin may even have increased."These findings suggest that expanding efforts at controlling the global illegal drug market though law enforcement are failing," said the paper published in the open-access journal BMJ Open.

During the public debate around the question of whether to attack Syria, Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser to George W. Bush, made a series of high-profile media appearances. Hadley argued strenuously for military intervention in appearances on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and Bloomberg TV, and authored a Washington Post op-ed headlined “To stop Iran, Obama must enforce red lines with Assad.” In each case, Hadley’s audience was not informed that he serves as a director of Raytheon, the weapons manufacturer that makes the Tomahawk cruise missiles that were widely cited as a weapon of choice in a potential strike against Syria. Hadley earns $128,500 in annual cash compensation from the company and chairs its public affairs committee. He also owns 11,477 shares of Raytheon stock, which traded at all-time highs during the Syria debate ($77.65 on August 23, making Hadley’s share’s worth $891,189). Despite this financial stake, Hadley was presented to his audience as an experienced, independent national security expert.

Though Hadley’s undisclosed conflict is particularly egregious, it is not unique. The following report documents the industry ties of Hadley, 21 other media commentators, and seven think tanks that participated in the media debate around Syria. Like Hadley, these individuals and organizations have strong ties to defense contractors and other defense- and foreign policy-focused firms with a vested interest in the Syria debate, but they were presented to their audiences with a veneer of expertise and independence, as former military officials, retired diplomats, and independent think tanks. The report offers a new look at an issue raised by David Barstow’s 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times series on the role military analysts played in promoting the Bush Administration’s narrative on Iraq. In addition to exposing coordination with the Pentagon, Barstow found that many cable news analysts had industry ties that were not disclosed on air. If the recent debate around Syria is any guide, media outlets have done very little to address the gaps in disclosure and abuses of the public trust that Barstow exposed. Some analysts have stayed the same, others are new, and the issues and range of opinion are different. But the media continues to present former military and government officials as venerated experts without informing the public of their industry ties – the personal financial interests that may be shaping their opinions of what is in the national interest.

This report details these ties, in addition to documenting the industry backing of think tanks that played a prominent role in the Syria debate. It reveals the extent to which the public discourse around Syria was corrupted by the pervasive influence of the defense industry, to the point where many of the so-called experts appearing on American television screens were actually representatives of companies that profit from heightened US military activity abroad. The threat of war with Syria may or may not have passed, but the threat that these conflicts of interest pose to our public discourse – and our democracy – is still very real.

A century ago, crowds in Paris were cheering, “on to Berlin!” Crowds in Berlin cried, “on to Paris.” World War I, the supreme example of nationalist/militaristic stupidity, was about to begin.One hundred years later we hear cries across America to “get tough” with Moscow over fragmenting Ukraine. A dozen US F-16 fighters are being sent to the Baltic, a squadron of F-15’s to Poland, and a US warship to the Black Sea. In short, just enough to spark a war but certainly not enough to win one.No one seems to have remembered – except Vlad Putin, of course – that the roughly 50,000 US troops and officials now based in Afghanistan are in large part at the mercy of Russia which controls their major supply and exit routes.As the Ukraine crisis continues to build, it’s absolutely horrifying to recall that most of the American politicians and general public now lustily shouting “on to…where was it again?….oh yes….Kharkov” had no idea where Ukraine is, never mind Kharkov or Luhansk.Ignorance is a primary fuel of nationalism and aggression. Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrel, as Dr . Johnson observed, and the first platform of fools.

Leading US newspapers – “The Wall Street Journal” and “New York Times” – have been beating the war drums. The most-watched TV network, Fox, is a mouthpiece for the War Party. Millions of Americans and Canadians of Ukrainian background are naturally deeply concerned by events there. Israel is now involved in Ukraine.Too few voice urge calm and restraint. President Putin is being demonized into America’s leading hate figure. Few in the media dare say that Putin is reacting in Russia’s interests to NATO’s foolish push right up to his borders.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has given notice of its intent to database a large number of very personal data points on every American who possesses a mortgage — which may include as many as 227 million Americans.   These points include things like financial histories, credit card balances, credit scores, personal demographics, lists of assets and property, family information, and more. Assembled with the help of the the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, the database’s stated purpose is for research and modeling.  The agencies have been collecting data for modeling for years, but the addition of many new pieces of personally identifiable information is a reversal of previously stated policy.

The database will include very specific and personal information on the borrowers and co-borrowers.  According to the Federal Register Notice on April 16, 2014, the database includes: Individual’s name, address, and phone number; Individual’s Social Security Number; Individual’s gender, race, ethnicity, and religion; Individual’s marital status; Individual’s household composition (number and ages of males, females, children); Individual’s household income; Individual’s credit score; Individual’s education records; Individual’s military status/records; Individual’s employment status/records; Individual’s bank account numbers; List of individual’s “financial events in the last few years”; List of individual’s “life events in the last few years”;

List of individual’s other assets/wealth; Individual’s current mortgage balance; Individual’s current monthly mortgage payment; Individual’s payment delinquency records; Individual’s bankruptcy records; Individual’s credit card numbers; Individual’s credit card balances; Individual’s credit card charge limit and the highest balance charged; Individual’s minimum payments due on all loans; Attributes of the property (square footage, number of rooms, lot size…); Sale price and down payment of the property; Mortgage information (dates, interest rate, amount, loan servicer…);

And here's the spin war verdict: the current Malaysia Airlines tragedy - the second in four months - is "terrorism" perpetrated by "pro-Russian separatists", armed by Russia, and Vladimir Putin is the main culprit. End of story. Anyone who believes otherwise, shut up. Why? Because the CIA said so. Because Hillary "We came, we saw, he died" Clinton said so. Because batshit crazy Samantha "R2P" Power said so - thundering at the UN, everything duly printed by the neo-con infested Washington Post. [1] Because Anglo-American corporate media - from CNN to Fox (who tried to buy Time Warner, which owns CNN) - said so. Because the President of the United States (POTUS) said so. And mostly because Kiev had vociferously said so in the first place.

Right off the bat they were all lined up - the invariably hysterical reams of "experts" of the "US intelligence community" literally foaming at their palatial mouths at "evil" Russia and "evil" Putin; intel "experts" who could not identify a convoy of gleaming white Toyotas crossing the Iraqi desert to take Mosul. And yet they have already sentenced they don't need to look any further, instantly solving the MH17 riddle.

It doesn't matter that President Putin has stressed the MH17 tragedy must be investigated objectively. And "objectively" certainly does not mean that fictional "international community" notion construed by Washington - the usual congregation of pliable vassals/patsies. And what about Carlos?

When German Chancellor Angela Merkel celebrated the opening of the new U.S. embassy in Berlin in 2008, she could not have imagined that she was blessing the workplace for the largest and most effective gaggle of American spies anywhere outside of the U.S. It seems straight out of a grade-B movie, but it has been happening for the past eleven years: The NSA has been using Merkel as an instrument to spy on the president of the United States.  We now know that the NSA has been listening to and recording Merkel’s cellphone calls since 2002. 

In 2008, when the new embassy opened, the NSA began using more sophisticated techniques that included not only listening, but also following her.  Merkel uses her cellphone more frequently than her landline, and she uses it to communicate with her husband and family members, the leadership of her political party, and her colleagues and officials in the German government. She also uses her cellphone to speak with foreign leaders, among whom have been President George W. Bush and President Obama. 

Thus, the NSA -- which Bush and Obama have unlawfully and unconstitutionally authorized to obtain and retain digital copies of all telephone conversations, texts and emails of everyone in the U.S., as well as those of hundreds of millions of persons in Europe and Latin America -- has been listening to the telephone calls of both American presidents whenever they have spoken with the chancellor.

The chairman of the House Benghazi Committee said on Sunday former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s scheduled Oct. 22 committee testimony on the 2012 terrorist attack in Libya will take as long as necessary for all of the committee’s questions to be answered. “If she is going to insist on only coming once, I’m going to insist that all questions are asked and answered, so she’s going to be there for a while,” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said on “Fox News Sunday.” Story Continued Below The questions, he said, will include why Clinton set up a private email account to use at the State Department and why some classified documents were on her private server. “I don’t have any yoga emails, but the greater steps you take to delete something or clean something — that is a higher level of concealment,” Gowdy said, referring to comments that Clinton deleted private emails related to yoga classes and her daughter Chelsea’s wedding.

Gowdy insisted the committee’s investigation is to determine how four Americans died at the U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya and is not politically motivated. “We are trying to run this in the way serious investigations are run,” he said. “We are going to follow the facts wherever they go — and if that impacts people’s perception of her fitness to be commander and chief, so be it.”

In the aftermath of Senate Republicans’ failed efforts to derail the plan agreed on in July to limit Iran’s nuclear program, responsibility has fallen on AIPAC for its inability to persuade a meaningful number of Senate Democrats to join their GOP colleagues in opposing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). To put it bluntly, AIPAC, a group with historically stronger ties to the Democratic Party, failed miserably. Only four Senators—Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Joe Manchin (D-WV)—broke ranks with their colleagues and minority leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) to oppose the nuclear deal. But AIPAC didn’t fail on the cheap. They raised and spent a staggering sum of money in an effort to tilt public opinion against the White House’s signature second-term foreign policy initiative. This summer, AIPAC announced the formation of a new dark money group, “Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran,” dedicated exclusively to opposing the emerging nuclear deal with Iran. The Jewish Telegraph Agency’s Ron Kampeas reported that the group raised “nearly $30 million.” After a review of over 700 FCC disclosures, helpfully tagged by the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation’s “political ad sleuth,” we can confirm that the AIPAC spin-off spent at least $14.5 million on television commercials airing on broadcast television networks (ABC, NBC, FOX, and CBS) from mid-July until mid-September. This period coincides with the intensive two-month lobbying period from the announcement of the JCPOA in Vienna to the failure of the Senate resolution of disapproval.

These numbers don’t take into account the cost of ad buys on cable networks and any lag in the Sunlight Foundation’s Political Ad Sleuth’s tagging of relevant FCC filings. But the broad outlines of AIPAC’s well-moneyed opposition to the Iran deal indicate that the pro-Israel group quickly raised a significant amount of money to blanket the airwaves with anti-deal television commercials, dwarfing any efforts by J Street or other pro-deal groups to air competing ads.

Judicial Watch announced today that on April 18, 2014, it obtained 41 new Benghazi-related State Department documents. They include a newly declassified email showing then-White House Deputy Strategic Communications Adviser Ben Rhodes and other Obama administration public relations officials attempting to orchestrate a campaign to “reinforce” President Obama and to portray the Benghazi consulate terrorist attack as being “rooted in an Internet video, and not a failure of policy.”  Other documents show that State Department officials initially described the incident as an “attack” and a possible kidnap attempt. The documents were released Friday as result of a June 21, 2013, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against the Department of State (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-00951)) to gain access to documents about the controversial talking points used by then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice for a series of appearances on television Sunday news programs on September 16, 2012.  Judicial Watch had been seeking these documents since October 18, 2012. The Rhodes email was sent on sent on Friday, September 14, 2012, at 8:09 p.m. with the subject line:  “RE: PREP CALL with Susan, Saturday at 4:00 pm ET.”  The documents show that the “prep” was for Amb. Rice’s Sunday news show appearances to discuss the Benghazi attack.

The document lists as a “Goal”: “To underscore that these protests are rooted in and Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy.” Rhodes returns to the “Internet video” scenario later in the email, the first point in a section labeled “Top-lines”: [W]e’ve made our views on this video crystal clear. The United States government had nothing to do with it. We reject its message and its contents. We find it disgusting and reprehensible. But there is absolutely no justification at all for responding to this movie with violence. And we are working to make sure that people around the globe hear that message. Among the top administration PR personnel who received the Rhodes memo were White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, Deputy Press Secretary Joshua Earnest, then-White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, then-White House Deputy Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri, then-National Security Council Director of Communications Erin Pelton, Special Assistant to the Press Secretary Howli Ledbetter, and then-White House Senior Advisor and political strategist David Plouffe. The Rhodes communications strategy email also instructs recipients to portray Obama as “steady and statesmanlike” throughout the crisis. Another of the “Goals” of the PR offensive, Rhodes says, is “[T]o reinforce the President and Administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.” He later includes as a PR “Top-line” talking point: I think that people have come to trust that President Obama provides leadership that is steady and statesmanlike. There are always going to be challenges that emerge around the world, and time and again, he has shown that we can meet them.

The documents Judicial Watch obtained also include a September 12, 2012, email from former Deputy Spokesman at U.S. Mission to the United Nations Payton Knopf to Susan Rice, noting that at a press briefing earlier that day, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland explicitly stated that the attack on the consulate had been well planned.  The email sent by Knopf to Rice at 5:42 pm said: Responding to a question about whether it was an organized terror attack, Toria said that she couldn’t speak to the identity of the perpetrators but that it was clearly a complex attack. In the days following the Knopf email, Rice appeared on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News and CNN still claiming the assaults occurred “spontaneously” in response to the “hateful video.” On Sunday, September 16 Rice told CBS’s “Face the Nation:” But based on the best information we have to date, what our assessment is as of the present is in fact what began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy–sparked by this hateful video. The Judicial Watch documents confirm that CIA talking points, that were prepared for Congress and may have been used by Rice on “Face the Nation” and four additional Sunday talk shows on September 16, had been heavily edited by then-CIA deputy director Mike Morell. According to one email: The first draft apparently seemed unsuitable….because they seemed to encourage the reader to infer incorrectly that the CIA had warned about a specific attack on our embassy.  On the SVTS, Morell noted that these points were not good and he had taken a heavy hand to editing them. He noted that he would be happy to work with [then deputy chief of staff to Hillary Clinton]] Jake Sullivan and Rhodes to develop appropriate talking points.

Appearing on Fox News Channel on Sunday, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) dismissed members of Congress calling for the National Security Agency to reform its information gathering practices. He insisted that even members of Congress should be monitored by the NSA, just like every other American, in case they are “talking to an Al Qaeda leader in Iraq or Afghanistan.”

King objected to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) who objected to the NSA monitoring the communications of elected representatives. “I think members of Congress should be treated the same as everyone else,” King said. “If a member of Congress is talking to an Al Qaeda leader in Iraq or Afghanistan, why should that member of Congress be any different from any person on the street?” He added that Sanders was attempting to imply that the NSA is “spying” on Congress. “They’re not spying on anyone,” he added.

For her public act of protest against Russia Today’s coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory and supposedly advancing the agenda of Vladimir Putin in Washington, D.C., previously unknown news anchor Liz Wahl has suddenly become one of the most famous unemployed people in America. After her on-air resignation from the cable news channel, Wahl appeared on the three major American cable news outlets—CNN, Fox News, MSNBC—to denounce the heavy-handed editorial line she claims her bosses imposed on her and other staffers.

Behind the coverage of Wahl’s dramatic protest, a cadre of neoconservatives was celebrating a public relations coup. Desperate to revive the Cold War, head off further cuts to the defense budget and restore the legitimacy they lost in the ruins of Iraq, the tightknit group of neoconservative writers and stewards had opened up a new PR front through Wahl’s resignation. And they succeeded with no shortage of help from an ossified media establishment struggling to maintain credibility in an increasingly anarchic online news environment. With isolated skeptics branded as useful idiots for Putin, the scene has been kept clean of neoconservative fingerprints, obscuring their interest in Wahl’s resignation and the broader push to deepen tensions with Russia. Through interviews with six current RT employees—all Americans with no particular affection for Russian President Vladimir Putin or his policies—and an investigation into the political forces managing the spectacle, a story has emerged that stands in stark contrast to the one advanced by Wahl, her supporters and the mainstream American press.

It was a full 19 minutes before Wahl resigned. Inside the offices of the Foreign Policy Initiative, a neoconservative think tank in Washington D.C., a staffer logged on to the group’s Twitter account to announce the following: “#WordOnTheStreet says that something big might happen on RT in about 20-25 minutes.” Then, at 5:16, exactly 10 minutes before Wahl would quit on air, FPI tweeted: “#WordOnTheStreet says you’re really going to want to tune in to RT: http://rt.com/on-air/rt-america-air/ #SomethinBigMayBeGoingDown” Up until two minutes before Wahl’s resignation, FPI took to Twitter again to urge its followers to tune in to RT.  And finally, at 5:26 p.m., at the very moment Wahl quit, FPI’s Twitter account broke the news: “RT Anchor RESIGNS ON AIR. She ‘cannot be part of a network that whitewashes the actions of Putin.’ ” The tweets from FPI suggested a direct level of coordination between Wahl and the neoconservative think tank. Several calls to FPI for this story were not answered.

Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton spoke out against former government contractor Edward Snowden for leaking classified details on the National Security Agency's controversial surveillance practices, suggesting Snowden should "swing from a tall oak tree" as punishment. Speaking on Fox News on Monday, Bolton, who served under former President George W. Bush, characterized Snowden's actions as treason, and urged against any public talk of amnesty.

“Almost Orwellian” -- that’s the description a federal judge gave earlier this week to the massive spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) on virtually all 380 million cellphones in the United States. In the first meaningful and jurisdictionally grounded judicial review of the NSA cellphone spying program, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee sitting in Washington, D.C., ruled that the scheme of asking a secret judge on a secret court for a general warrant to spy on all American cellphone users without providing evidence of probable cause of criminal behavior against any of them is unconstitutional because it directly violates the Fourth Amendment.

In a bid to clear the way for a controversial Senate nominee, the Obama administration signaled it will publicly reveal a secret memo explaining its legal justification for using drones to kill American citizens overseas.  The Justice Department, officials say, has decided not to appeal a Court of Appeals ruling requiring disclosure of a redacted version of the memo under the Freedom of Information Act. ADVERTISEMENTADVERTISEMENT The decision to release the documents comes as the Senate is to vote Wednesday on advancing President Obama's nomination of the memo's author, Harvard professor and former Justice Department official David Barron, to sit on the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. 

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has vowed to fight Barron's confirmation, and some Democratic senators had called for the memo's public release before a final vote. Paul reiterated his opposition on Wednesday.  "I cannot support and will not support a lifetime appointment of anyone who believes it's OK to kill an American citizen not involved in combat without a trial," Paul said in the Senate.  But a key Democratic holdout against Barron's nomination, Sen. Mark Udall D-Colo., announced Tuesday night he will now support Barron because the memo is being released. "This is a welcome development for government transparency and affirms that although the government does have the right to keep national security secrets, it does not get to have secret law," Udall said in a statement.  Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., had also been pushing for public disclosure of Barron's writings and was one of several Democrats who had been refusing to say whether he'd vote for confirmation without it. "That's certainly very constructive," Wyden said when told of the decision not to appeal.

Wednesday's expected procedural vote would allow the Senate to move ahead with a final vote on Barron on Thursday. "I think we'll be OK," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said earlier Tuesday. Anwar al-Awlaki, an Al Qaeda leader born in the United States, was killed after being targeted by a drone strike in Yemen in September 2011. Some legal scholars and human rights activists complained that it was illegal for the U.S. to kill American citizens away from the battlefield without a trial. The White House had agreed under the pressure to show senators unredacted copies of all written legal advice written by Barron regarding the potential use of lethal force against U.S. citizens in counterterrorism operations. Until now, the administration has fought in court to keep the writings from public view. But administration officials said that Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. decided this week not appeal an April 21 ruling requiring disclosure by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York and that Attorney General Eric Holder concurred with his opinion.