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“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Even the cleverest lawyers cannot square with the Fourth Amendment many of the NSA activities that Clapper and Feinstein have defended, winked at, or lied about. Only you can get rid of James Clapper. We suspect that a certain awkwardness — and perhaps also a misguided sense of loyalty to a colleague — militate against your senior staff giving you an unvarnished critique of how badly you have been served by Clapper. And so we decided to give you a candid reminder from us former intelligence and national security officials with a total of hundreds of years of experience, much of it at senior levels, in the hope you will find it helpful. Statements by DNI Clapper re Eavesdropping on Americans

Mr. President, are you not also troubled by those misleading statements? We strongly believe you must fire Jim Clapper for his lies to the Congress and the American people and that you must appoint someone who will tell the truth. * * * For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

The release could take some time, since the redactions are subject to court approval. And the administration also is insisting that a classified ruling on the case also be redacted to protect information classified for national security, but not the legal reasoning, one of the officials said. The drone strike that killed al-Awlaki also killed another U.S. citizen, Samir Khan, an Al Qaeda propagandist. Al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, was killed the following month in another drone attack. The American Civil Liberties Union and two reporters for The New York Times, Charlie Savage and Scott Shane, filed a FOIA suit. In January 2013, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon ruled that she had no authority to order the documents disclosed, although she chided the Obama administration for refusing to release them. But a three-judge appeals court panel noted that after McMahon ruled, senior government officials spoke about the subject. The panel rejected the government's claim that the court could not consider official disclosures made after McMahon's ruling, including a 16-page Justice Department white paper on the subject and public comments by Obama in May in which he acknowledged his role in the al-Awlaki killing, saying he had "authorized the strike that took him out."

The ACLU urged senators in a letter Tuesday not to move forward on the confirmation vote until they have a chance to see any Barron memos on the administration's drone program, not just those involving U.S. citizens. Paul issued a statement Tuesday saying he still opposes Barron's nomination. "I rise today to say that there is no legal precedent for killing American citizens not directly involved in combat and that any nominee who rubber stamps and grants such power to a president is not worthy of being placed one step away from the Supreme Court," Paul said in remarks prepared for delivery on the Senate floor Wednesday provided by his office.

Al Jazeera English investigative reporting since 2012 has revealed that Arafat’s personal effects contained high levels of the radioactive element polonium. Independent Swiss scientists later conducted tests on Arafat’s exhumed remains and concluded there was “moderate” support for the theory that Yasser Arafat was poisoned. While separate French and Russian scientific reports, also based on samples of Arafat’s remains, cast doubt on the conclusions by the Swiss radiation scientists at the Radiophysics Institute in Lausanne, the Swiss have hit back explaining why the French conclusions were flawed.

The French and Russian reports – unlike the Swiss findings – were never made public, but the Swiss scientists obtained copies and have explained, in an article in the Swiss magazine Le Temps last month, why the French and Russian test results actually support their conclusions. All three reports found high levels of polonium-210 in Arafat’s body. “Not only were the levels of polonium of the same order” in all three reports, Le Temps says, “but the scientists also noted similar differences” among the samples from different parts of Arafat’s remains. The key difference was not therefore in the test results, but in the interpretation.

The French concluded that the high level of the radioactive element was caused by radon, a naturally occurring element in the environment, but had not taken any measurements from the surrounding area to support this thesis. According to the Swiss, the French conclusion amounts to speculation. The more thorough Swiss, by contrast, did take samples from the surrounding area. Le Temps reports: “The Swiss anticipated the possible interference of radon. In their report they demolish the hypothesis. Not only was the level of radon in the sealed tomb very weak, but the soil situated under [Arafat’s] abdominal cavity, and therefore in contact with the body, was 17 times more ‘contaminated’ than soil situated far from the body.”

The presence of radon, which would be the same throughout the area, could not possibly explain such concentrations. While the Swiss findings look stronger than ever, the debate continues. Bregman’s revelations add a new, albeit circumstantial element, showing that Israeli intelligence, which has assassinated many Palestinian leaders, saw a rationale for eliminating Arafat as well.

Citigroup’s top economist Willem Buitler said in 2011 that the water market will soon be hotter the oil market (for example, see this and this): “Water as an asset class will, in my view, become eventually the single most important physical-commodity based asset class, dwarfing oil, copper, agricultural commodities and precious metals.” In its recent 2012 Water Investment Conference, Citigroup has identified top 10 trends in the water sector, as follows:

Specifically, a lucrative opportunity in water is in hydraulic fracturing (or fracking), as it generates massive demand for water and water services. Each oil well developed requires 3 to 5 million gallons of water, and 80% of this water cannot be reused because it’s three to 10 times saltier than seawater. Citigroup recommends water-rights owners sell water to fracking companies instead of to farmers because water for fracking can be sold for as much as $3,000 per acre-foot instead of only $50 per acre/foot to farmers.

One of the world’s largest banks, JPMorgan Chase has aggressively pursued water and infrastructure worldwide. In October 2007, it beat out rivals Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to buy U.K.’s water utility Southern Water with partners Swiss-based UBS and Australia’s Challenger Infrastructure Fund. This banking empire is controlled by the Rockefeller family; the family patriarch David Rockefeller is a member of the elite and secretive Bilderberg Group, Council on Foreign Relations, and Trilateral Commission.

Barclays PLC is a U.K.-based major global financial services provider operating in all over the world with roots in London since 1690; it operates through its subsidiary Barclays Bank PLC and its investment bank called Barclays Capital. Barclays Bank’s unit Barclays Global Investors manages an exchange-traded fund (ETF) called iShares S&P Global Water, which is listed on the London Stock Exchanges and can be purchased like any ordinary share through a broker. Touting the iShares S&P Global Water as offering “a broad based exposure to shares of the world’s largest water companies, including water utilities and water equipment stocks” of water companies around the world, this fund as of March 31, 2007 was valued at U.S.$33.8 million.

Deutsche Bank is one of the major players in the water sector worldwide. Its Deutsche Bank Advisors have identified water as a part of the climate investment strategies. In its presentation, “Global Warming: Implications for Investors,” they have identified the four following major areas for water investment: § Distribution and management: (1) Supply and recycling, (2) water distribution and sewage, (3) water management and engineering. § Water purification: (1) Sewage purification, (2) disinfection, (3) desalination, (4) monitoring. § Water efficiency (demand): (1) Home installation, (2) gray-water recycling, (3) water meters. § Water and nutrition: (1) Irrigation, (2) bottled water.

Moreover, Deutsche Bank has channeled €6 billion (U.S.$8.55 billion) into climate change funds, which will target companies with products that cut greenhouse gases or help people adapt to a warmer world, in sectors from agriculture to power and construction (Reuters, October 18, 2007). In addition to SCM, Deutsche Bank also has the RREEF Infrastructure, part of RREEF Alternative Investments, headquartered in New York with main hubs in Sydney, Singapore, and London. RREEF Infrastructure has more than €6.7 billion in assets under management. One of its main targets is utilities, including electricity networks, water-treatment or distribution operations, and natural-gas networks. In October 2007, RREEF partnered with Goldman Sachs, GE, Prudential, and Babcok & Brown Ltd. to bid unsuccessfully for U.K.’s water utility Southern Water. § Crediting the boom in European infrastructure investment, the RREEF fund by August 2007 had raised €2 billion (U.S.$2.8 billion); Europe’s infrastructure market is valued at between U.S.$4 trillion to U.S.$6 trillion (DowJones Financial News Online, August 7, 2007). § Bulgaria --- Deutsche Bank Bulgaria is planning to participate in large infrastructure projects, including public-private partnership projects in water and sewage worth up to €1 billion (Sofia Echo Media, February 26, 2008). § Middle East --- Along with Ithmaar Bank B.S.C. (an private-equity investment bank in Bahrain), Deutsche Bank co-managed a U.S.$2 billion Shari'a-compliant Infrastructure and Growth Capital Fund and plans to target U.S.$630 billion in regional infrastructure.

In my 2008 article, I overlooked the astonishingly large land purchases (298,840 acres, to be exact) by the Bush family in 2005 and 2006. In 2006, while on a trip to Paraguay for the United Nation’s children’s group UNICEF, Jenna Bush (daughter of former President George W. Bush and granddaughter of former President George H.W. Bush) reportedly bought 98,840 acres of land in Chaco, Paraguay, near the Triple Frontier (Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay). This land is said to be near the 200,000 acres purchased by her grandfather, George H.W. Bush, in 2005. The lands purchased by the Bush family sit over not only South America’s largest aquifer --- but the world’s as well --- Acuifero Guaraní, which runs beneath Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. This aquifer is larger than Texas and California combined. Online political magazine Counterpunch quoted Argentinean pacifist Adolfo Perez Esquivel, the winner of 1981 Nobel Peace Prize, who “warned that the real war will be fought not for oil, but for water, and recalled that Acuifero Guaraní is one of the largest underground water reserves in South America….”

NSA may intentionally collect US person content (including Internet metadata that legally qualifies as content) overseas (it won’t count this data, so we don’t know how systematic it is). If it does, it may be a violation of Section 703 of FISA. Rather than discussing any of these violations, the NSA has waved around a few cases of LOVEINT (most, if not all, of which have not been prosecuted) as part of a successful ploy to distract from much more systemic abuses of its authority, affecting far more Americans. But there has been abuse, even beyond practices (like back door searches) that gut the Fourth Amendment or (like NSA’s approach to encryption) that hurt Americans’ security. President Obama will spend a lot of time saying there have been no abuses. He’s wrong.

The reaction of Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia and Serbia to the South Stream collapse of course expressed disappointment over the impact on their economies. But their muted regret was more a reflection of consternation with Brussels for its policy of antagonism with Russia. Brussels’ high-handed slapping on of sanctions against Moscow and its repeated baseless accusations of Russian expansionism in Ukraine have led to the present juncture of badly frayed relations. That has, in turn, put the kibosh on what would have been a critically important improvement in Europe’s energy security, with financial benefits to several countries and millions of EU citizens.   It’s one thing for Brussels to be cavalier towards Russia; it’s quite another for the same elitist power centre to be cavalier towards its own increasingly hard-pressed citizens and their best interests. 

he debacle over the South Stream clearly shows that the European political elite have no interest in the welfare of its ordinary citizens or poorer member states. It is reported that cancellation of the project will cost manufacturing firms and other businesses at least $2 billion in the immediate term. These firms include German and Italian pipe manufacturers. Thousands of jobs across recession-hit Europe are thus being put at risk by political games that Brussels is playing against Russia for its own arcane geopolitical reasons in cahoots with Washington. 

According to sources in the law-enforcement community who I have interviewed over the years, and who I spoke to again this week, this woman—whose name the C.I.A. has asked the news media to withhold—had supervision over an underling at the agency who failed to share with the F.B.I. the news that two of the future 9/11 hijackers had entered the United States prior to the terrorist attacks.

As NBC recounts, this egregious chapter was apparently only the first in a long tale, in which the same C.I.A. official became a driving force in the use of waterboarding and other sadistic interrogation techniques that were later described by President Obama as “torture.” She personally partook in the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks, at a black site in Poland. According to the Senate report, she sent a bubbly cable back to C.I.A. headquarters in 2003, anticipating the pain they planned to inflict on K.S.M. in an attempt to get him to confirm a report from another detainee, about a plot to use African-American Muslims training in Afghanistan for future terrorist attacks. “i love the Black American Muslim at AQ camps in Afghanuistan (sic). … Mukie (K.S.M.) is going to be hatin’ life on this one,” she wrote, according to the report. But, as NBC notes, she misconstrued the intelligence gathered from the other detainee. Somehow, the C.I.A. mistakenly believed that African-American Muslim terrorists were already in the United States. The intelligence officials evidently pressed K.S.M. so hard to confirm this, under such physical duress, that he eventually did, even though it was false—leading U.S. officials on a wild-goose chase for black Muslim Al Qaeda operatives in Montana. According to the report, the same woman oversaw the extraction of this false lead, as well as the months-long rendition and gruesome interrogation of another detainee whose detention was a case of mistaken identity. Later, in 2007, she accompanied then C.I.A. director Michael Hayden to brief Congress, where she insisted forcefully that the torture program had been a tremendous and indispensable success.

Readers can speculate on how the pieces fit together, and who the personalities behind this program are. But without even pseudonyms, it is exceedingly hard to connect the dots. It seems entirely possible—though, again, one can only speculate—that the C.I.A. overcompensated for its pre-9/11 intelligence failures by employing overly harsh measures later. Once they’d made a choice that America had never officially made before—of sanctioning torture—it seems possible that they felt they had to defend its efficacy, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. If so, this would be worth learning. But without names, or even pseudonyms, it is almost impossible to piece together the puzzle, or hold anyone in the American government accountable. Evidently, that is exactly what the C.I.A. was fighting for during its eight-month-long redaction process, behind all those closed doors.

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko asserted that the CSTO has been created and operates to protect the interests of all of its member states, reports the Belarus news agency BelTa. The news agency quotes Lukashenko added: “As the common economic space grows larger and more advanced within the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union, which members are now virtually identical to those of the CSTO, the importance of protecting economic interests will be pushed to the forefront. .. The existing mechanism of interaction between the special services and other services can be used for that. The services are capable of putting a stop to organized criminal groups, which are now trying to find loopholes and exploit the new economic conditions for their criminal gains.”

The members of the post-Soviet Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) countered the push for a NATO expansion to Ukraine by incorporating their national military forces into the National Defense Control Center of Russia. The announcement about the move was made by Putin, during the opening of the CSTO session in Moscow on December 23, that was held parallel to a final meeting before the formal establishment of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) on January 1, 2015.

Moscow repeatedly warned against NATO’s eastwards expansion. Earlier this year Russian President Putin noted that one of the important reasons behind Moscow’s acceptance of the Crimean referendum and Crimea’s accession into the Russian Federation was the prospect of the deployment of NATO forces, especially naval forces to Crimea. Putin commented that Russia was more comfortable with Russia’s Western “Partners for peace” visiting a Russian naval base in Crimea than the other way around.

Among the primary initiatives following the CSTO’s counter-moves to NATO’s eastward expansion in Ukraine is the integration of CSTO member states’ Air Forces, a highly sophisticated electronic command and control center, and thus far, the delivery of new Russian-built, state of the art jets to Belarus.