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The US is seeking to block a proposal Gazprom made in Athens on a Greek leg of the so-called "Turkish Stream" pipeline, the Greek Foreign Minister has said.In an interview with the Associated Press Greece's top diplomat Nikos Kotzias quoted US Secretary of State  John Kerry as saying Washington would send its top energy envoy Amos Hochstein to Athens to make a "counter-offer", according to Sputnik International and the Athens News Agency.Kotzias is currently on a five-day US visit whose schedule coincides with Tuesday's talks between Greek PM Alexis Tsipras and the Russian energy giant's CEO Alexey Miller. Miller also met with Greek Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, telling him "47 billion cubic meters of gas will be transited through Greece".The Greek leg is planned as an extension to the "Turkish Stream" gas pipeline which was announced as an alternative to the abandoned South Stream project in December of last year. The idea is now to link Turkish Stream, which will start from Russia, go across the Black Sea and reach the Turkey-Greece border, with the EU pipeline network, a move for which the EU is not beginning preparation despite assurances from Moscow that gas transit via Ukraine will be halted once that Turkish Stream is ready in end-2010s.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a bill, enabling the designation of foreign and foreign-funded NGOs as undesirables after the bill passed both the Lower and Upper House of Parliament.

The bill authorizes the designation of foreign and foreign funded non-profit as well as for profit NGOs as “undesirables” on grounds of “national security. The bill passed the second reading in Russia’s Lower House of Parliament (State Duma), last week and was approved by the Upper House of Parliament, the Federation Council. The bill had been proposed by legislators of the governing United Russia party of President Vladimir Putin, The passing of the bill in both houses of parliament and the signing of the bill by Putin was no surprise since United Russia has a majority in both chambers. The bill has been heavily criticized by foreign, particularly western media, western politicians and primarily western-based or funded NGOs, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, among many others. One of the NGOs that is certain to fall under the provisions of the bill is USAID.

he new law follows up on a law that was adopted in 2012 that obliged foreign-funded non-governmental organizations to register as “foreign agents”. The law provides for declaring foreigners and foreign-funded NGOs as“undesirable”. Persons who are violating the newly adopted law could face a fine up to 10,000 dollar to be paid in local currency and up to six years imprisonment. Supporters of the bill are referring to the risk that foreign-funded NGOs could pose to the Russian Federation’s national security while critics maintain that the wording of the legislation and especially the term “undesirable” is ambiguous and opens the floodgates for the abuse of the law to crack down on legal and legitimate dissent.

A summary of a draft bill, which I obtained from a source who asked to remain anonymous, is circulating that is designed (almost certainly by AIPAC) to appeal to those Democrats eager to “kiss and make up” after their defiance of Washington’s most powerful foreign-policy lobby group (whose reputation for omnipotence just took a very heavy hit) and its funders. While much of the summary appears innocuous and consistent with the administration’s own policy and intentions, it also contains a number of “poison pills,” which, if approved, appear calculated to raise new obstacles to implementation and Tehran’s confidence that the U.S. will fully comply with both the spirit and the letter of the JCPOA. With proposed banking sanctions, for example, it appears to do what Fred Kagan and the policy director of the neo-conservative Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), Juan Zarate, have urged with respect to codifying existing non-nuclear sanctions and reducing or eliminating the president’s waiver authority. (See the Mikulski post for more details.) It also would set up a process for “expedited procedures” that can be used by Congress to approve new terrorism-related sanctions against Iran under certain circumstances and create a Coordinator for Compliance whose responsibilities include not only overseeing Iran’s implementation of the JCPOA but also reporting on non-nuclear issues (like terrorism) that are outside the scope of the agreement.

Yet another provision would authorize the delivery to Israel of Washington’s most powerful Massive Ordinance Penetration munitions (MOPs) and the means to deliver them against Iran’s nuclear facilities, a move that administration officials have long said they strongly oppose. This would be one part of a much-enhanced package of military assistance for Israel. Other provisions appear designed to effectively “renegotiate” certain provisions of the JCPOA; for example, by eliminating the exemption of any contracts agreed between Iran and foreign companies during the agreement’s implementation phase in the event that sanctions are “snapped back.” It also requires Iran to abide by the Non-Proliferation Treaty’s (NPT) Additional Protocol as of “adoption day,” even if the Iranian parliament has not yet ratified the Protocol. We hear that the sponsors intend to push this through Congress as a companion to the disapproval resolution. The idea is to enable nervous Democrats to demonstrate their strong support for Israel and their undiluted distrust and hostility toward Iran. They reportedly fear that if this measure isn’t enacted now, then it could prove much more difficult to pass once Iran begins implementing the JCPOA, and particularly if and when the IAEA declares that Iran has cleared up long-pending questions regarding “possible military dimensions” (PMD) of its nuclear program. The IAEA expects to conclude its PMD-related inspections by mid-October and issue a final report by December 15. Here is the summary of the draft bill which, as I understand it, is still very much a work in progress. The Iran Policy Oversight Act of 2015

Russia has proposed sharing the coordinates of possible ISIL targets with the US-led anti-ISIL coalition, but has not received a response, Colonel-General Andrei Kartapolov, head of the Main Operations Directorate of the Russian General Staff, told media at a press briefing on Wednesday."This means that either our partners do not have such coordinates, or that they for some reason do not want us to hit these targets. The reason for this remains unclear to us," Kartapolov said, cited by RIA Novosti.

Failure to act in Syria risks stoking a "total war" in the Middle East, French President François Hollande said in a landmark speech to the European Parliament alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel."What happens in Syria concerns Europe, what happens there will determine the balance of the whole region for a long time," Hollande told European lawmakers in Strasbourg."If we leave these religious clashes between Sunnis and Shias, they will grow. Don't think we will be sheltered, this will be a total war."Hollande, whose country has launched airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Syria, appeared to criticise Russia for its air attacks in support of President Bashar al-Assad's regime."We have to construct in Syria, with all those who can contribute, a political future which gives the Syrian people an alternative to Bashar or Daesh," Hollande said, using another name for IS.

"I appeal for a new procedure" to redistribute asylum seekers "fairly" throughout the 28-nation EU bloc, she said. Merkel added: "It is exactly now that we need more Europe. We need courage and cohesion, which Europe has always shown when it was necessary."Germany is Europe's top destination for people fleeing war and misery in the continent's greatest migrant influx since World War II. The EU's richest economy expects between 800,000 and one million newcomers this year alone. German authorities said Wednesday that they had registered around 577,000 asylum seekers in the first nine months of the year, a third of whom claim to be Syrian.

Hollande warned that an influx of refugees, many from Syria, could undermine European cohesion if member nations were not unified in their response."There is a humanitarian crisis which we need to confront, with an influx of refugees," he said. "The only solution is a strong Europe."We need not less Europe but more Europe. Europe must affirm itself otherwise we will see the end of Europe, our demise."Merkel echoed Hollande's statement warning of the consequences of unilateral action by member states."In the refugee crisis, we must not succumb to the temptation of falling back into national action. Quite the contrary, now we need more Europe,"  Merkel said."We must see them (migrants) as people, whether they have the prospect of remaining or not. Humanitarian standards of accommodation and claim processing must be upheld."She then went on to say that Europe needs to rewrite its "obsolete" asylum rules to tackle the crisis as European warships went into action against people smugglers in the Mediterranean.

Moscow is sending an advanced anti-aircraft missile system to Syria, two Western officials and a Russian source said, as part of what the West believes is stepped-up military support for embattled President Bashar Assad. The Western officials said the SA-22 system would be operated by Russian troops, rather than Syrians. It was on its way to Syria but had not yet arrived.  "This system is the advanced version used by Russia and it's meant to be operated by Russians in Syria," said one of the sources, a Western diplomat who is regularly briefed on U.S., Israeli and other intelligence assessments.  A U.S. official separately confirmed the information.  The Russian source, who is close to the Russian navy, said the delivery would not be the first time Moscow had sent the SA-22 system, known as Pantsir-S1 in Russian, to Syria. It had been sent in 2013, the source said. 

"There are plans now to send a new set," the source said, without detailing how far along the process was. However, the Western diplomat said the version of the SA-22 on its way to Syria was newer than previous missile systems deployed there. Syrian officials could not be reached for comment.  The United States has been leading a campaign of air strikes in Syrian air space for a year, joined by aircraft from European and regional allies including Britain, France, Jordan and Turkey. U.S. forces operating in the area are concerned about the potential introduction of the weapon, the diplomat said. U.S. officials say they believe Moscow has been sending troops and equipment to Syria, although they say Russia's intentions are not clear.

Lebanese sources have told Reuters that Russian troops have begun participating in combat operations on behalf of the Assad government. Moscow has not commented on those reports. Speaking at a news conference in Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia was sending military equipment to Syria to help the Assad government combat Islamic State fighters, and had sent experts to help train the Syrian army to use it.  However, the dispatch of advanced anti-aircraft missiles would appear to undermine that justification, since neither Islamic State nor any other Syrian rebel group possesses any aircraft. Lavrov also said coordination was needed between Russia's military and the Pentagon to avoid "unintended incidents" around Syria. Russia was conducting pre-planned naval drills in the eastern Mediterranean, he said.

How many times over the years have we heard promises that the United States would get out of Afghanistan by such-and-such a date, only to have those promises retracted due to exigent circumstances of one kind or another? Too many to count.And now, just when we thought the longest war in American history was finally at an end, comes this headline:US Military Commanders Favor Keeping Troops In Afghanistan Beyond 2016Here’s the Associated Press lead on that story:With the Taliban gaining new ground, US military commanders are arguing for keeping at least a few thousand American troops in Afghanistan beyond 2016, a move that would mark a departure from President Barack Obama’s current policy.

Why the never-ending carnage?For another perspective on the importance of Afghanistan — the strategic importance — we invite you to click here and view an interesting treasure map of the region. We’ve run it in the past but it surely warrants renewed attention, given this latest proposal to commit American boots on the ground there for an indefinite future.A good look at the map, which details the wealth of natural resources buried beneath the soil of Afghanistan, raises the question: Which “interests” actually stand to benefit from a prolonged US military presence in Afghanistan? When these troops are drawn, as they inevitably will be, into deadly combat, what exactly will they be sacrificing their lives for: the defense of liberty in the name of US security or the fattening of some corporation’s bottom line?

The Capture of Mosul:  US-NATO Covert Support to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) Something unusual occurred in Mosul which cannot be explained in strictly military terms. On June 10, the insurgent forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) captured Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, with a population of close to 1.5 million people.  While these developments were “unexpected” according to the Obama administration, they were known to the Pentagon and US intelligence, which were not only providing weapons, logistics and financial support to the ISIS rebels, they were also coordinating, behind the scenes, the ISIS attack on the city of Mosul. While ISIS is a well equipped and disciplined rebel army when compared to other Al Qaeda affiliated formations, the capture of Mosul, did not hinge upon ISIS’s military capabilities. Quite the opposite: Iraqi forces which outnumbered the rebels by far, equipped with advanced weapons systems could have easily repelled the ISIS rebels. There were 30,000 government forces in Mosul as opposed to 1000 ISIS rebels, according to reports. The Iraqi army chose not to intervene. The media reports explained without evidence that the decision of the Iraqi armed forces not to intervene was spontaneous characterized by mass defections.

Iraqi officials told the Guardian that two divisions of Iraqi soldiers – roughly 30,000 men – simply turned and ran in the face of the assault by an insurgent force of just 800 fighters. Isis extremists roamed freely on Wednesday through the streets of Mosul, openly surprised at the ease with which they took Iraq’s second largest city after three days of sporadic fighting. (Guardian, June 12, 2014, emphasis added) The reports point to the fact that Iraqi military commanders were sympathetic with the Sunni led ISIS insurgency: Speaking from the Kurdish city of Erbil, the defectors accused their officers of cowardice and betrayal, saying generals in Mosul “handed over” the city over to Sunni insurgents, with whom they shared sectarian and historical ties. (Daily Telegraph,  13 June 2014) What is important to understand, is that both sides, namely the regular Iraqi forces and the ISIS rebel army are supported by US-NATO. There were US military advisers and special forces including operatives from private military companies on location in Mosul working with Iraq’s regular armed forces. In turn, there are Western special forces or mercenaries within ISIS (acting on contract to the CIA or the Pentagon) who are in liaison with US-NATO (e.g. through satellite phones).

Under these circumstances, with US intelligence amply involved, there would have been routine communication, coordination, logistics and exchange of intelligence between a US-NATO military and intelligence command center, US-NATO military advisers forces or private military contractors on the ground assigned to the Iraqi Army and Western special forces attached to the ISIS brigades. These Western special forces operating covertly within the ISIS could have been dispatched by a private security company on contract to US-NATO.

Following through on intentions he announced earlier this week, Senator Rand Paul today offered an amendment to the pending National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would require the president to declassify 28 pages on foreign government links to the 9/11 hijackers. The language is identical to S.1471, the bill Paul introduced on Monday with Senators Ron Wyden and Kirsten Gillibrand. In a story on Paul’s new move, The Hill’s Julian Hattem said the proposed amendment “heightens the profile of the fight and may increase the stakes for the opponents.”

While there are a growing number of vocal champions of the declassification of the 28 pages, those who want the 28 pages kept under wraps have worked quietly and effectively out of public view. As we wrote earlier this year, “It’s likely that among the most powerful of those unseen opponents of 9/11 transparency are two strange bedfellows: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—which has fueled the growth of terror, and the U.S. intelligence community—which is charged with thwarting terror.” Paul’s amendment to the must-pass NDAA could force some of those opponents—and, more specifically, their Senate allies—out of the shadows.

However, the language may also offer President Obama an opportunity to continue his administration’s refusal to release the 28 pages, as it says he is not required to declassify sources and methods if that release would “result in imminent lawless action or comprise presently on-going national security operations.”

ISLAMABAD: On day five of the joint parliamentary session on Yemen, lawmakers approved a draft resolution proposing that Pakistan "should maintain neutrality in the conflict so as to be able to play a proactive diplomatic role to end the crisis”. Although implying that Islamabad should refrain from assisting Riyadh militarily, the resolution added that Pakistan should stand shoulder to shoulder with Saudi Arabia to protect the latter's territorial integrity. No direct clarity was provided on whether Pakistan would, or would not involve itself militarily at any point.The lawmakers okayed the resolution unanimously on the fifth day of the joint parliamentary session on the Saudi-led offensive against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The session was summoned after the Saudi government approached Islamabad for Pakistani warplanes, warships and soldiers to assist in the conflict and join the Saudi-led military coalition that began conducting air strikes last month against Houthi forces in Yemen.Expressing “unequivocal support for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia”, the resolution that the lawmakers agreed upon stated that “in case of any violation of its territorial integrity or any threat to Haramain Sharifain, Pakistan will stand shoulder to shoulder with Saudi Arabia and its people”.

It further said that the crisis in Yemen could “plunge the region into turmoil”, calling upon the warring factions in Yemen to resolve their differences "peacefully and through dialogue". The resolution noted that while the war in Yemen was not sectarian in nature, it had the potential of turning into a sectarian conflict and thereby having a critical fallout in the region, including within Pakistan. It added that the government should initiate steps to move the UN Security Council and the OIC to bring about an immediate ceasefire in Yemen.

South American governments have rejected an effort by U.S. lawmakers to apply sanctions on Venezuela over human rights concerns. Foreign ministers from the 12-member Union of South American Nations issued a statement Friday saying that the proposed legislation would constitute a violation of Venezuela's internal affairs and undermine attempts by regional diplomats and the Vatican to foster dialogue between the government and opposition.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday is expected to debate a bipartisan bill that would order the Obama administration to ban visas and freeze the assets of Venezuelan officials who've committed abuses during the past three months of unrest. Similar legislation has already cleared the Senate foreign relations committee. The Obama administration has condemned President Nicolas Maduro's crackdown on protests but wants to hold off on applying sanctions to give more time to dialogue.

In a scathing two-page letter by 43 Republican senators to US President Barack Obama dated this Wednesdasy, the senators, led by Mark Kirk and Marco Rubio, warned that they were "alarmed" by reported plans to bypass Congress and reach a nuclear deal with Iran. The senators were alarmed at "reports that your administration plans to circumvent Congress and unilaterally provide significant sanctions relief under a comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran.” US Secretary of State John Kerry insisted Wednesday that the US and Iran would reach a nuclear deal by November 24, indicating the stage may be set for a titanic battle between the Obama Administration and the incoming Republican-majority US Senate on the exact terms of any Obama-Iran nuclear deal. Most noticeably absent from the signatories to the senators' missive was Senator Rand Paul, who has a history of not signing any pro-Israel letters. By contrast Senator Ted Cruz, Paul’s likely Republican nomination presidential contender, was a signatory to the Rubio-Kirk Letter.

The Senate Republican letter goes on to state, “Reported plans to circumvent Congress suggest that your negotiators may be concluding a weak and dangerous deal which...would ensure the ultimate failure of any agreement, and runs directly counter to Secretary of State John Kerry's April 2014 statement to the Senate that your administration was absolutely obligated by law to come back to Congress in order to lift sanctions as part of the final deal with Iran.” Arutz Sheva reported in October that Ben Rhodes, a senior White House adviser, had been secretly taped bragging that a nuclear deal with Iran was Obama’s foreign-policy “signature” equivalent of “ObamaCare,” and that they working to structure a deal that would evade any congressional approval or ratification.

With the Republicans poised in control of the US Senate for the next two years, the Republican senators threatened that “unless the White House genuinely engages with Congress, we see no way that any agreement consisting of your administration's current proposals to Iran will endure the 114th Congress and after your presidential term ends.”

Here are the emails. An article written by Umar Cheema is also on the Web, will post link once I am on my laptop. http://cirp.pk/e-mail.htm (edit: although some names have been blacked out, you can still view them by taking mouse over the links! e.g. First email is by Hassan Noor.. to Mike Novell, tkrift (??), Amanullah Khan.. CC is Afnan Aleem) These basically proves that everyone in the Abbotabad commission (except Mr Ashraf Qazi), including a very senior judge and general, were working under the influence of Save The Children NGO Retired General Nadeem was directly working under them! Afridi was NOT tortured by ISI. He did give ISI some false statements which the ISI didn't dig deeper because it suited them! (Example he was working for CIA since 2008, not 2009 as ISI was led to believe) Edit: Here is the article: http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-Ne...s-Abbottabad-Commission-was-penetrated-by-CIA -- All these NGOs should be banned and thrashed! ISI should publically hang foreign agents! (Even if they are Generals)

The NGO has neither denied the email record and the contents it carried (when shown by The News for seeking version) nor offered specific comments but that: “Our assistance to the Abbottabad Commission and its members including Gen Nadeem was within the legal parameters and Abbottabad Commission mandate to find facts.” Nadeem was not available for comments, however, his close aide termed the allegations as utterly “rubbish and non-sense” when comments were sought after showing the email record A transcript of internal wrangling: Muhammad Hassan Noor Saadi, deputy country director of Save the Children, met Gen (R) Nadeem on November 20, 2012 that followed his email to four senior colleagues. The report was primarily compiled by ‘our friend’, his email reads, and was endorsed by the Chairman but one of the members, Ashraf Qazi, was not in agreement with them. He wrote a dissenting note criticising Chairman Justice (R) Javed Iqbal and Gen (R) Nadeem ‘for being soft on certain institutions (including Save the Children).’

Another member, Abbas Khan, was neither willing to sign the report in its current shape, discloses email record, nor wanted to put a dissenting note hence decided to prolong his stay in the US where he went on the ‘pretext of medical ground’. More alarmingly, the NGO was granted access to the Commission’s report well before it was sent to the prime minister. Save the Children had uninterrupted access to the four drafts prepared in June 2012 by the members including the chairman, email record available with The News indicates. All favours granted to Save the Children on behalf of the Commission were in clear breach of public trust raising question marks about the integrity of the members. The chairman of the NGO, Save the Children, was contacted by The News. He initially agreed to meet but later stopped taking calls and did not respond to messages sent to him.Nadeem also felt confident, the email record shows, that he would be able to convince the panel with the answers given by the NGO and urge his colleagues to go by the facts presented by Save the Children instead of believing on the contents of Afridi’s statement. Gen (R) Nadeem also advised the NGO, an email of the country director reads, to fight the expulsion of our expatriate as otherwise the ISI would move quickly to close down the country programme before the Commission report comes out.

UN General Assembly’s Third Committee passed a Russia-proposed resolution condemning attempts to glorify Nazism ideology and denial of German Nazi war crimes. The US, Canada and Ukraine were the only countries to vote against it. The resolution was passed on Friday by the committee, which is tasked with tackling social and humanitarian issues and human rights abuses, by 115 votes against three, with 55 nations abstaining, Tass news agency reported.

The resolution also decried attempts to whitewash Nazi collaborators by depicting them as fighters of nationalist resistance movements and honoring them as such. It condemned any form of denial of Nazi war crimes, including the Jewish Holocaust.

After months of internal wrangling, the Senate Intelligence Committee is finally set to release its report on President George W. Bush-era CIA practices, which among other details will contain information about foreign countries that aided in the secret detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists. Several U.S. officials told us that the negotiations are nearly complete between the Central Intelligence Agency and the committee's Democratic staff, which prepared the classified 6,300-page report and its 600-page, soon-to-be-released declassified executive summary. Dianne Feinstein, the committee's chairman, is set to release the summary early next week. Her staff members had objected vigorously to hundreds of redactions the CIA had proposed in the executive summary. After an often-contentious process to resolve the disputes, managed by top White House officials, Feinstein was able to roll back the majority of the disputed CIA redactions.

Among the most significant of Feinstein’s victories, the report will retain information on countries that aided the CIA program by hosting black sites or otherwise participating in the secret rendition of suspected terrorists. The countries will not be identified by name, but in other ways, such as code names like “Country A.” This falls short of Feinstein’s original desire, which was to name the countries explicitly, but represents a big victory for the committee nonetheless. In a victory for the CIA, Feinstein reluctantly agreed to allow the redactions of the pseudonyms of agency personnel mentioned in the report. The CIA maintained that any reference to individuals working under cover that offered clues to their identities could place them in harm’s way. “We need to understand the role that particular countries played across time. Even having pseudonyms for countries in the report is important for a full accounting,” said Raha Wala, senior counsel at Human Rights First, which advocated on behalf of the report’s declassification.

The CIA and some Republican senators had argued that even such masked identifications could be deciphered, leading to compromised relationships with those countries’ governments. In June 2013, the top intelligence official at the State Department, Philip Goldberg, wrote a classified letter to Congress warning against the disclosure of the names of countries who had participated in the program.

Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro has warned of “interventionist” activity emanating from the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, and says he is reevaluating relations with his country’s northern neighbour. In an interview with Telesur on Saturday Maduro claimed that actions being taken by the U.S. embassy were aimed at undermining Venezuela’s stability and were “beginning to become intolerable” despite Venezuelan efforts to “normalise diplomatic relations”.

“It’s lamentable that [U.S. president Barack] Obama allows his own U.S. embassy in Venezuela to act in a dangerous way…I have a lot of information about the interventionism of the U.S. embassy,” he said. The Venezuelan head of state explained that as a result his administration was “reevaluating” relations with the U.S. “At the right moment I will pertinently explain to our nation the actions that I have to take,” he added. Maduro also gave his opinion that racism had worsened in the U.S. under Obama. He said that the U.S. president had become “tired” of struggling for a progressive agenda and had “joined the worst causes, in the United States and the world”. The comments are the latest indicator of the poor state of U.S. – Venezuelan relations, which have remained frosty since the early years of the administration of former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.

Venezuela accuses the U.S. of having supported the short-lived coup against Chavez in 2002 and of plotting to destabilise and overthrow the Bolivarian government. U.S. government agencies have funneled over $100 million to pro-opposition groups since 2002. The U.S. meanwhile has expressed worry over some of Venezuela’s international alliances and has claimed the Bolivarian government displays authoritarian practices and tendencies domestically. In July the United States introduced a visa and travel ban against a handful of top Venezuelan officials for what it says were “human rights abuses” committed during an opposition-led wave of unrest in the country earlier this year which caused 43 deaths. Venezuelan officials counter that the opposition was responsible for the violence, and that any member of security forces suspected of using excessive force has been arrested or investigated.

Late on Wednesday the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to introduce sanctions against Venezuela. The bill was also passed by the Senate on Monday, and White House officials have indicated that President Barack Obama will sign the bill into law, although it was not specified when. The Venezuelan Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act seeks to sanction high ranking Venezuelan officials accused of being responsible for human rights abuses during the opposition unrest movement earlier this year. Primarily, it will sanction such officials with a visa ban and a freeze on any U.S. assets they possess. Democrat senator Robert Menendez, the Act’s main sponsor, said of the bill’s passage that, “The absence of justice and the denial of human rights in Venezuela must end, and the U.S. Congress is playing a powerful part in righting this wrong”. The Act also calls for a U.S. government strategy to increase funding for and availability of anti-government media in Venezuela, including utilizing the Voice of America for this end. The bill states that U.S. foreign policy should aim to “continue to support the development of democratic political processes and independent civil society in Venezuela”.

Investigative journalist Eva Golinger has documented how over the last twelve years U.S. government agencies have provided well over $100 million to opposition groups in Venezuela for their activities. The Venezuelan government rejects the Act’s narrative of the opposition’s unrest movement from February to May this year, which led to 43 deaths, including members of security forces and supporters of both sides. It states that the opposition was responsible for violence against civilians and public infrastructure, and that the unrest was aimed at provoking a state coup. Officials also argue that members of security forces accused of abuses against opposition activists were investigated and detained.

The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), which counts Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador and Nicaragua among its members, issued a statement on Thursday opposing the proposed U.S. sanctions. “The countries of the ALBA wish to emphasise that they won’t allow the utilisation of old practices already applied in the region which are directed at fomenting a change in political regime. In this sense, we express our deepest support and solidarity with the people and government of Venezuela,” read the strongly worded statement. The Venezuelan officials who would be sanctioned by the bill have not been named, however Republican senator Marco Rubio recently issued a list of 27 names he suggested should be included.

Buried in the SSCI’s report is an arresting passage that suggests that the CIA was quietly releasing information about the torture program to journalists while it was contending in court that release of such information to the public would compromise national security. After the April 15, 2005 National Security Principals Committee meeting, the CIA drafted an extensive document describing the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program for an anticipated media campaign.  CIA attorneys, discussing aspects of the campaign involving off-the-record disclosures, cautioned against attributing the information to the CIA itself.  One senior attorney stated that the proposed press briefing was “minimally acceptable, but only if not attributed to a CIA official.”  The CIA attorney continued: “This should be attributed to an ‘official knowledgeable’ about the program (or some similar obfuscation), but should not be attributed to a CIA or intelligence official.”

Referring to CIA efforts to deny Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for previously acknowledged information, the attorney noted that, “[o]ur Glomar fig leaf is getting pretty thin.”  Another CIA attorney noted that the draft “makes the [legal] declaration I just wrote about the secrecy of the interrogation program a work of fiction.” The reference to the “Glomar fig leaf” related to an argument the CIA was making in ACLU litigation that was pending before Judge Alvin K.  Hellerstein in the Southern District of New York.  In connection with Freedom of Information Act requests we’d filed in October 2003 and June 2004, we were seeking, among other things, three documents we’d learned of from media reports: the Memorandum of Notification (MON) in which President Bush had authorized the CIA to establish black sites overseas, and two memos in which lawyers from the Office of Legal Counsel had concluded that CIA interrogators could lawfully torture prisoners in their custody.  The CIA responded with a “Glomar” response—it argued that the existence or non-existence of the three documents was a properly classified fact. 

As the SSCI report makes clear, CIA lawyers didn’t really believe what the agency was saying in its sworn declarations.  They understood that the sworn declarations the agency was filing in federal court were “work[s] of fiction.”  The agency was telling the courts that nothing could be disclosed about its torture program without compromising national security, but at the same time, it was providing quotations and “facts” to the media in order to persuade the public that its activities were lawful, necessary and effective. If all of this sounds familiar, it’s because the CIA is now doing precisely the same thing with respect to the targeted-killing program. To the courts, the CIA says that any disclosure about the program will gravely compromise national security.  To the media, it supplies a continuous stream of cherry-picked facts meant to cast the program in the most favorable light.

The release of the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA’s post-9/11 interrogation program is, among other things, an epic act of record preservation. Numerous CIA records that might not have been disclosed for decades, or ever, were rescued from oblivion by the Senate report and are now indelibly cited and quoted, even if many of them are not yet released in full. That’s not a small thing, since the history of the CIA interrogation program was not a story that the Agency was motivated or equipped to tell. “The CIA informed the Committee that due to CIA record retention policies, the CIA could not produce all CIA email communications requested by the Committee,” the report noted, explaining that the desired information was sometimes recovered from a reply message when the original email was missing. Agency emails turned out to be a critical source of information, a fact that illuminates the Committee’s sharp response recently to the (now suspended) CIA proposal to the National Archives (NARA) to destroy most Agency emails of non-senior officials.

Thus, the gruesome record of the waterboarding of al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah “was referenced in emails, but was not documented or otherwise noted in CIA cables.” (This is at odds with NARA’s initial view that “It is unlikely that permanent records will be found in these email accounts that is not filed in other appropriate files.”) The Committee report is also a remarkable demonstration of the congressional oversight function that is all the more impressive because it was performed in adverse, unfavorable conditions. It is striking to see how the CIA sometimes treated the Senate Intelligence Committee, its leadership and its staff with the same disdain and evasiveness that is often perceived by FOIA requesters and other members of the public. Committee questions were ignored, inaccurate information was provided, and the oversight process was gamed.

“Internal CIA emails include discussion of how the CIA could ‘get… off the hook on the cheap’ regarding [then-Committee] Chairman [Bob] Graham’s requests for additional information…. In the end, CIA officials simply did not respond to Graham’s requests prior to his departure from the Committee in January 2003,” the report said. “I am deeply disturbed by the implications of the study for the committee’s ability to discharge its oversight responsibility,” wrote Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) in his additional remarks. “Because it appears from the study that the committee was continuously misled as to virtually all aspects of this program, it naturally raises the extremely troubling question as to whether we can trust the representations of the agency in connection with difficult or sensitive issues in the future.” But minority members of the Committee disputed this characterization: “In reality, the overall pattern of engagement with the Congress shows that the CIA attempted to keep the Congress informed of its activities,” they wrote in their extensive dissenting views. Perhaps the most important achievement of the Committee report was to document and memorialize the fact that agents of the US Government practiced torture. Not “harsh measures” or “enhanced techniques,” but torture.

The U.S. House Intelligence Committee has denied a Florida congressman’s request for access to 28 classified pages from the 2002 report of Congress’ Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Orlando, told BrowardBulldog.org he made his request at the suggestion of House colleagues who have read them as they consider whether to support a proposed resolution urging President Obama to open those long-censored pages to the public. “Why was I denied? I have been instrumental in publicizing the Snowden revelations regarding pervasive domestic spying by the government and this is a petty means for the spying industrial complex to lash back,” Grayson said last week, referring to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.

In a party line vote, the House Intelligence Committee voted 8-4 on Dec. 1 to deny Democrat Grayson access to the 28 pages. The same day, the committee unanimously approved requests to access classified committee documents – not necessarily the 28 pages – by 11 other House members. Grayson, an outspoken liberal and a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said his denial was engineered by outgoing Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich. Rogers is a former FBI agent who did not seek re-election in November. “Congressman Rogers made serious misrepresentations to other committee members when he brought this up,” Grayson in a telephone interview. “When the Guardian reported on the fact that there was universal domestic surveillance regarding every single phone call, including this one, I went to the floor of the House and gave a lengthy speech decrying it.”

“Chairman Rogers told the committee that I had discussed classified information on the floor. He left out the most important part that I was discussing what was reported in the newspaper,” said Grayson. “He clearly misled the committee for an improper purpose: to deny a sitting member of Congress important classified information necessary for me to do my job.” Rogers did not respond to a request for comment. An aide in his Lansing, Michigan office referred callers to a spokeswoman for the House Intelligence Committee who could not be reached for comment.