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President Barack Obama’s top foreign policy advisor Susan Rice on Friday said Washington was providing “lethal and non-lethal” support to select members of the Syrian opposition, offering more detail than usual on US assistance. Top Obama administration officials typically decline to say exactly what equipment, arms or ammunition the United States is providing to moderate Syrian opposition forces. But President Barack Obama said in a major foreign policy speech last week that the United States would “ramp up” support for rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad. National Security Advisor Susan Rice said in an interview with CNN while she was traveling with Obama to D-Day 70th anniversary celebrations in Normandy that she was heartbroken about the carnage in Syria’s civil war. “That’s why the United States has ramped up its support for the moderate vetted opposition, providing lethal and non-lethal support where we can to support both the civilian opposition and the military opposition.”

The Congressional harrying of former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over emails concerning the 2012 death of an American Ambassador and three staff members in Benghazi, Libya, has become a sort of running joke, with Republicans claiming “cover-up” and Democrats dismissing the whole matter as nothing more than election year politics. But there is indeed a story embedded in the emails, one that is deeply damning of American and French actions in the Libyan civil war, from secretly funding the revolt against Muammar Gaddafi, to the willingness to use journalism as a cover for covert action. The latest round of emails came to light June 22 in a fit of Republican pique over Clinton’s prevarications concerning whether she solicited intelligence from her advisor, journalist and former aide to President Bill Clinton, Sidney Blumenthal. If most newspaper readers rolled their eyes at this point and decided to check out the ball scores, one can hardly blame them. But that would be a big mistake.

The Congressional harrying of former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over emails concerning the 2012 death of an American Ambassador and three staff members in Benghazi, Libya, has become a sort of running joke, with Republicans claiming “cover-up” and Democrats dismissing the whole matter as nothing more than election year politics. But there is indeed a story embedded in the emails, one that is deeply damning of American and French actions in the Libyan civil war, from secretly funding the revolt against Muammar Gaddafi, to the willingness to use journalism as a cover for covert action. The latest round of emails came to light June 22 in a fit of Republican pique over Clinton’s prevarications concerning whether she solicited intelligence from her advisor, journalist and former aide to President Bill Clinton, Sidney Blumenthal. If most newspaper readers rolled their eyes at this point and decided to check out the ball scores, one can hardly blame them. But that would be a big mistake. While the emails do raise questions about Hillary Clinton’s veracity, the real story is how French intelligence plotted to overthrow the Libyan leader in order to claim a hefty slice of Libya’s oil production and “favorable consideration” for French businesses.

Clinton was aware of everything the French were up to and apparently had little objection to the cold-blooded cynicism behind Paris’s policies in the region.

Senator Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat, has often used his perch on the Senate Intelligence Committee to ask national-security officials if they're misbehaving. He typically focuses on abuses that are actually happening, so his latest exchange with CIA Director John Brennan demands wider attention. Udall asked if the CIA is engaged in domestic spying or searches on American citizens. An idle question? One wouldn't think so. And the CIA director appeared to evade the question. For that reason, I suspect, but certainly cannot prove, that the intelligence agency is, in fact, engaged in this behavior. But don't take my word for it. Look at the transcript and judge for yourself:  UDALL: This committee was created to address a severe breach of trust that developed when it was revealed that the CIA was conducting unlawful domestic searches. The Church Committee went to work, found that to be true.

I want to be able to reassure the American people ... that the CIA and the director understand the limits of their mission and authorities. We're all aware of executive order 12333. That order prohibits the CIA from engaging in domestic spying and searches of US citizens within our borders. Can you assure the committee that the CIA does not conduct such domestic spying and searches?  BRENNAN: I can assure the committee that the CIA follows the letter and the spirit of the law in terms of what the CIA's authorities are, in terms of its responsibilities to collect intelligence that will keep this country safe. Yes, Senator, I do.  Hmm. Reframing the question. Answering indirectly. Concluding with syntax that doesn't fit. It all seems suspicious. When Udall asked, "Can you assure the committee that the CIA does not conduct such domestic spying and searches?" Brennan could've replied, "Yes." But that isn't what he said at all. Why, do you think? There could be an explanation I'm missing, but Udall doesn't typically mislead with questions. This is a subject to watch.

The US has spied on the staff of prominent human rights organisations, Edward Snowden has told the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, Europe's top human rights body.Giving evidence via a videolink from Moscow, Snowden said the National Security Agency – for which he worked as a contractor – had deliberately snooped on bodies like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.He told council members: "The NSA has specifically targeted either leaders or staff members in a number of civil and non-governmental organisations … including domestically within the borders of the United States." Snowden did not reveal which groups the NSA had bugged.The assembly asked Snowden if the US spied on the "highly sensitive and confidential communications" of major rights bodies such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, as well as on similar smaller regional and national groups. He replied: "The answer is, without question, yes. Absolutely."

Snowden, meanwhile, dismissed NSA claims that he had swiped as many as 1.7m documents from the agency's servers in an interview with Vanity Fair. He described the number released by investigators as "simply a scare number based on an intentionally crude metric: everything that I ever digitally interacted with in my career."He added: "Look at the language officials use in sworn testimony about these records: 'could have,' 'may have,' 'potentially.' They're prevaricating. Every single one of those officials knows I don't have 1.7m files, but what are they going to say? What senior official is going to go in front of Congress and say, 'We have no idea what he has, because the NSA's auditing of systems holding hundreds of millions of Americans' data is so negligent that any high-school dropout can walk out the door with it'?"In live testimony to the Council of Europe, Snowden also gave a forensic account of how the NSA's powerful surveillance programs violate the EU's privacy laws. He said programs such as XKeyscore, revealed by the Guardian last July, use sophisticated data mining techniques to screen "trillions" of private communications."This technology represents the most significant new threat to civil liberties in modern times," he declared.

XKeyscore allows analysts to search with no prior authorisation through vast databases containing emails, online chats, and the browsing histories of millions of individuals.Snowden said on Tuesday that he and other analysts were able to use the tool to select an individual's metadata and content "without judicial approval or prior review".In practical terms, this meant the agency tracked citizens not involved in any nefarious activities, he stressed. The NSA operated a "de facto policy of guilt by association", he added.Snowden said the agency, for example, monitored the travel patterns of innocent EU and other citizens not involved in terrorism or any wrongdoing.The 30-year-old whistleblower – who began his intelligence career working for the CIA in Geneva – said the NSA also routinely monitored the communications of Swiss nationals "across specific routes".

Two decades ago I was the investigator for the legal team that sold you the bullshit that a drunken captain was the principal cause of the Exxon Valdez disaster, the oil tanker crackup that poisoned over a thousand miles of Alaska’s coastline 25 years ago on March 24, 1989. The truth is far uglier, and the real culprit—British Petroleum, now BP—got away without a scratch to its reputation or to its pocketbook. And because BP’s willful negligence, prevarications and fraud in the Exxon Valdez spill cost the company nothing, its disdain for the law, for the environment and for the safety of its workers was repeated in the Gulf of Mexico with deadly consequences, resulting, two decades later, in the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Just this month, the Obama administration authorized BP to return to drilling in the Gulf.

It would be worth the time of our ever-trusting regulators to take a look at my Exxon Valdez BP files. They would see a decades-long pattern of BP’s lies, bribes and cover-ups that led, inexorably, to the Deepwater Horizon blowout—and that continue today within BP’s worldwide oil operations. Advertisement <a href='http://www.truthdig.com/banners/www/delivery/ck.php?n=abee66dc&cb=453495791' target='_blank'><img src='http://www.truthdig.com/banners/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=8&cb=453495791&n=abee66dc' border='0' alt='' /></a> Here is a sample from my files on BP from the original Exxon Valdez fraud and racketeering investigation: