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Paul Merrell

POGO Provides Statement for House Hearing on VA Whistleblowers - 0 views

www.pogo.org/...ring-on-va-whistleblowers.html

veterans healthcare DVA whistleblower-protection

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • In the spring of 2014, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) put out the call to whistleblowers within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to provide an inside perspective on the issues the Department was facing. In our 34-year history, POGO has never received as many submissions on a single issue. Nearly 800 current and former VA employees and veterans from 35 states and the District of Columbia contacted us. POGO reviewed each of the submissions, and found that concerns about the VA go far beyond long or falsified wait times for medical appointments; they extend to the quality of health care services veterans receive. A recurring and fundamental theme became clear: VA employees across the country fear they will face repercussions if they dare to raise a dissenting voice. POGO wrote a letter to Acting VA Secretary Sloan Gibson in July last year, highlighting three specific cases of current or former employees who agreed to share details about their personal experiences of retaliation.[1] In California, a VA inpatient pharmacy supervisor was placed on administrative leave and ordered not to speak out after protesting “inordinate delays” in delivering medication to patients and “refusal to comply with VHA regulations.” In one case, he said, a veteran’s epidural drip of pain control medication ran dry, and another veteran developed a high fever after he was administered a chemotherapy drug after its expiration point.
  • In Pennsylvania, a former VA doctor told POGO that he had been removed from clinical work and forced to spend his days in an office with nothing to do. This action occurred after he complained that, in medical emergencies, physicians who were supposed to be on call were failing or refusing to report to the hospital. The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) shared his concerns, writing “[w]e have concluded that there is a substantial likelihood that the information that you provided to OSC discloses a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety.”[2] In Appalachia, a former VA nurse told POGO she was intimidated by management and forced out of her job after she raised concerns that patients with serious injuries were being neglected. In one case she was reprimanded for referring a patient to the VA’s patient advocate after weeks of being unable to arrange transportation for a medical test to determine if he was in danger of sudden death. “Such an upsetting thing for a nurse just to see this blatant neglect occur almost on a daily basis. It was not only overlooked but appeared to be embraced,” she said. She also pointed out that there is “a culture of bullying employees….It’s just a culture of harassment that goes on if you report wrongdoing,” she said.
  • That culture doesn’t appear to be limited to just one or two VA clinics. Some people, including former employees who are now beyond the reach of VA management, were willing to be interviewed by POGO and to be quoted by name, but others said they contacted us anonymously because they are still employed at the VA and are worried about retaliation. One put it this way: “Management is extremely good at keeping things quiet and employees are very afraid to come forward.” This kind of fear and suppression of whistleblowers who report wrongdoing often culminates in the larger problems, as the VA is currently experiencing. By now it is well known that employees who recently raised concerns about veteran wait times faced reprisal. But whistleblower retaliation in the VA is nothing new. In 1992 a congressional report detailed the experiences of VA employees who were harassed or fired after reporting problems.[3] Throughout the 1990s there were several congressional hearings conducted on the quality of care at VA hospitals and on reprisal against VA employees who exposed inadequate care.[4] Despite then-Secretary Togo D. West’s declaration that such reprisals would not be tolerated, a House hearing in 1999 found that the reprisal problems still existed.[5] A Government Accountability Report from 2000 found that many VA employees were unaware of their rights to protections against retaliation for blowing the whistle on wrongdoing.[6] The report also found that the majority of employees feared retaliation and were therefore unwilling to report misconduct.
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  • The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) has been working to investigate claims of retaliation and get favorable actions for many of the VA whistleblowers who have come forward. Since April 2014, the OSC has successfully obtained corrective actions for over 25 whistleblowers.[7] But the OSC still has over 100 pending VA reprisal cases to investigate, among the highest of any government agency, according to Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner.[8] Although the VA has been cooperative with the OSC and their recommendations, merely addressing isolated incidents is not enough.[9] The VA has been struggling with a culture problem for decades and something more must be done.
  • VA employees who have concerns about management or fear retaliation are supposed to be able to turn to the VA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). But whistleblowers have come to doubt the VA IG’s willingness to hold wrongdoers accountable. Since 2014, the IG Office has not yet publically released any investigation into employee retaliation, making it difficult to assess how seriously the IG’s office is taking this issue. Furthermore, the VA IG’s office issued an administrative subpoena to POGO in May 2014 that was little more than an invasive fishing expedition for whistleblowers. The IG demanded “All records that POGO has received from current or former employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs, and other individuals or entities.”[10] Though POGO did not comply with the subpoena, such an action was cause for concern for many of the whistleblowers who had shared information with us. POGO remains concerned that there is not a permanent VA IG in place and that the position has been vacant for over a year.[11] Our own investigations have found that the absence of permanent leadership can have a serious impact on the effectiveness of an IG office.[12] Acting IGs do not undergo the same kind of extensive vetting process required of permanent IGs, and as a consequence usually lack the credibility of a permanent IG. Acting IGs also often seek appointment to the permanent position, which can compromise their independence by giving them an incentive to curry favor with the White House and the leadership of their agency.[13] Perhaps most worrisome, given the significant challenges facing the VA IG, a 2009 study found that vacancies in top agency positions promote agency inaction, create confusion among career employees, make an agency less likely to handle controversial issues, result in fewer enforcement actions by regulatory agencies and decrease public trust in government.[14]
  • It appears the VA IG may be subject to this dangerous lack of independence. For example, the VA OIG has failed to release the results of 140 health care investigations since 2006.[15] Furthermore, the Department of Treasury IG sent a letter to this Committee just last month raising concerns about another VA IG investigation. After speaking to witnesses familiar with the situation, the Treasury IG concluded that their testimony, “calls into question the integrity of the VA OIG’s actions in this particular manner.” The Treasury IG’s investigation also found that multiple witnesses stated a VA employee boasted about his ability to influence the VA OIG’s investigations.[16]
  • In POGO’s 2014 letter, we recommended concrete steps for incoming VA Secretary McDonald to take in order to demonstrate an agency-wide commitment to changing the VA’s culture of fear, bullying, and retaliation. Neither Acting Secretary Sloan Gibson nor Secretary McDonald have responded to our multiple requests for a meeting. Clearly, an important first step will be for the President to nominate a permanent IG for the VA. Hopefully strong and committed leadership in that office will correct its current course. POGO recommended that Secretary McDonald make a tangible and meaningful gesture to support those whistleblowers who have been trying to fix the VA from the inside. Once the OSC has identified meritorious cases, Secretary McDonald should personally meet with those whistleblowers and elevate their status from villain to hero. These employees should be publicly celebrated for their courage, and should receive positive recognition in their personnel files, including possibly receiving the types of bonuses that have been provided to wrongdoers in the past. Retaliation against whistleblowers is already a prohibited personnel practice, but it will be up to the senior-most VA leadership to ensure that this rule is enforced by the agency. This should not be an isolated event done in response to recent criticisms but an ongoing effort. Whistleblowing must be encouraged and celebrated or wrongdoing will continue.
  • But it’s not just the VA Secretary who can work to fix this problem. Congress should enact legislation that codifies accountability for those who retaliate against whistleblowers. The definition of “wrongdoing” must include retaliation. The cultural shift that is required inside the Department of Veterans Affairs must be accompanied by statutory mandates that protect whistleblowers and witnesses inside the agency from retaliation. Legislation should ensure that whistleblowers are able to be confident that stepping forward to expose wrongdoing will not result in retaliation, and should provide a system to hold retaliators within the VA accountable. Congress should also extend whistleblower protections to contractors and veterans who raise concerns about medical care provided by the VA. POGO’s investigation found that both of these groups also fear retaliation that prevents them from coming forward. While federal employees working at the VA enjoy whistleblower protections, contractors do not. Congress should extend the same protections to contractors in order to promote internal oversight in an increasingly contractor-heavy landscape.
  • In addition, a veteran who is receiving poor care should be able to speak to his or her patient advocate without fear of retaliation, including a reduction in the quality of health care. Without this reassurance, there is a disincentive to report poor care, allowing it to continue uncorrected. Congress should extend whistleblower protections to veteran whistleblowers. The VA and Congress must work together to end this culture of fear and retaliation. Whistleblowers who report concerns that affect veteran health must be lauded, not shunned. And the law must protect them.
Gary Edwards

Clinton Articles of Impeachment - Senate Votes - 1 views

law2.umkc.edu/...senatevotes.html

impeachment articles-of-impeachment

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Oct 12
     
    "Article One: In his conduct while President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has willfully corrupted and manipulated the judicial process of the United States for his personal gain and exoneration, impeding the administra tion of justice, in that: On August 17, 1998, William Jefferson Clinton swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth before a Federal grand jury of the United States. Contrary to that oath, William Jefferson Clinton willfully provided perjurious, false and misleading testimony to the grand jury concerning one or more of the following: (1) the nature and details of his relationship with a subordinate Government employee; (2) prior perjurious, false and misleading testimony he gave in a Federal civil rights action brought against him; (3) prior false and misleading statements he allowed his attorney to make to a Federal judge in that civil rights action; and (4) his corrupt efforts to influence the testimony of witnesses and to impede the discovery of evidence in that civil rights action. In doing this, William Jefferson Clinton has undermined the integrity of his office, has brought disrepute on the Presidency, has betrayed his trust as President, and has acted in a manner subversive of the rule of law and justice, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, William Jefferson Clinton, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States. Article Two: Obstruction of Justice .. In his conduct while President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton, in viola
Paul Merrell

Courthouse News Service - 0 views

www.courthousenews.com/...sive-testimony-for-chevron.htm

Ecuador Chevron litigation Guerra perjury Kaplan

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • During secret proceedings in Washington, a key witness in undermining the $9.5 billion judgment Chevron faces in Ecuador repudiated much of his explosive testimony, transcripts made public today show.     Since agreeing to testify for the oil giant, Judge Alberto Guerra's fortunes have changed, and so have Chevron's.     Roughly two years ago, Guerra took to the witness stand in a New York federal courtroom and swore that lawyers for rainforest villagers bribed him to ghostwrite a multibillion-dollar Ecuadorean court judgment against Chevron for oil contamination to the Amazon jungle.     About a year before he made a deal with Chevron, Guerra had little more than $100 to his name. He also owed tens of thousands of dollars in debt and could not afford to visit his children living in the United States.     U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan had warned early on in proceedings that he did not "assume that anyone's hands in this are clean," yet he credited Guerra's testimony last year in ruling that the Ecuadoreans obtained their award "by corrupt means."     The Ecuadoreans have long attacked Guerra, who has a contract with Chevron for various perks, including at least $326,000, an immigration attorney and a car, as a "paid-for" participant in the oil giant's self-styled witness-protection program.     Kaplan's decision conceded that "Guerra's credibility is not impeccable," but found that his account was "corroborated extensively by independent evidence."
  • Both that credibility and the corroborating evidence came under withering attack this year during closed-door proceedings before an international arbitration tribunal.     Though the hearings took place without press or public access at the World Bank in Washington on April 23 and 24, the tribunal agreed to release transcripts of the proceedings in response to a Courthouse News request that the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press supported.     Courthouse News obtained advanced copies of more than 3,000 pages of transcripts, which were formally released on Monday.     They show Guerra putting a new twist on an old saying. "Money talks, gold screams," Guerra said in a June 25, 2012, meeting with Chevron representatives - a meeting Chevron recorded.     Testifying about this comment at the arbitration hearing, Guerra said Chevron showed him a safe filled with money. He recounted Chevron's representatives telling him: "Look, look, look what's down there. We have $20,000 there."     He remembered replying: "Oh, OK, very well, very well."     Guerra said he had only $146 in his bank account a year earlier, and owed tens of thousands more to finish the construction of his house. He said he could not scrape money for airfare to visit his children in the United States.
  •  Minutes from Guerra's meeting with Chevron that came to light during the tribunal proceedings showed that Chevron's lawyers hoped to find evidence that the Ecuadorean government had pressured the Guerra to rule against the company.     Guerra disappointed by saying that Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa's administration "never butted in" to the process, the transcript shows.     "These guys are idiots, but the truth, the truth, I attest, damn, they never got involved," Guerra added, referring to Correa's government.     The remark appears to undercut the foundation of Chevron's arbitration case, which asks the tribunal to blame the Ecuadorean government for a miscarriage of justice.     Guerra stood by those comments on the arbitration panel's witness stand.      "My position is that the government did not intervene," Guerra said.     The only time an Ecuadorean government official tried to elbow into the case, Guerra testified, was under a prior administration. Correa's predecessors pushed to dismiss the case in Chevron's favor in 2003, he said.
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  •  Guerra also acknowledged bluntly on the witness stand that he had lied in telling Chevron's team that attorneys for the Ecuadoreans offered him $300,000.     "Yes, sir, I lied there," Guerra told Eric Bloom, who represents Ecuador for the firm Winston & Strawn. "I wasn't truthful."     Guerra maintains that other attorneys for the Ecuadoreans, specifically Steven Donziger and Pablo Fajardo, offered money in return for ghostwriting the judgment on behalf of Judge Nicolas Zambrano, the final jurist to preside over the case.     Shifting the details of this supposed arrangement, though, Guerra walked back his allegation that Zambrano offered him 20 percent.     "That was my sworn statement in New York, but what I said is that, because of a circumstance, because of a situation, I mentioned 20 percent when it wasn't true, and I think that, as a gentleman, I should say the truth, and we did not discuss - I did not discuss 20 percent with Mr. Zambrano - but we did discuss that he would share with me from what he received," he said.     In his nearly 500-page ruling, Judge Kaplan pointed to bank records, daily planners, shipping records and airplane tickets as corroborating evidence that outweighed Guerra's credibility problems.
  • Particularly persuasive for Kaplan was evidence that Ecuador's national airline, Tame, certified delivery of packages between Guerra and Zambrano.     Guerra told the arbitrators this spring, however, that all 11 of these packages "had nothing to do with the [Chevron] case."     As for his plane tickets to the rainforest from Aug. 11 and 12, 2010, Guerra said they occurred during an irrelevant time period.     "If I traveled during those dates, it wasn't for me to provide assistance to the Chevron case," he said.     Guerra testified that Chevron representatives told him that they would have raised his pay if he could provide them with the key physical evidence they were looking for: a draft of the judgment.     "We were unable to find the main document," Guerra recalled them saying. "Had we been able to find it, we would have been able to offer you a larger amount, something like that, we have $18,000 for you, and we're going to take the computer with us."     Though Guerra did not have a copy of the judgment, Ecuador's forensic expert Christopher Racich testified that he found a running draft of the judgment against Chevron on Zambrano's hard drives.
  • Ecuador now argues that this forensic evidence - which Courthouse News reported exclusively early this year - proves Zambrano painstakingly wrote the ruling and saved it hundreds of times throughout the case.     Chevron has not been able to produce emails between Guerra, Zambrano and the purported ghostwriters, Donziger and Fajardo, Ecuador's forensic expert says.     Guerra acknowledged to the arbitrators that that the bounty of physical evidence he promised Chevron fell short.     There are no calendars and day planners marked with meetings scheduled between Fajardo, Donziger or Guerra, he acknowledged.     While Guerra said he had payments from Zambrano from April 2011 and February 2012, he testified that these "had no connection to the Chevron case."     For Chevron, the thousands of pages of transcripts show that the company "proved its case before the International Arbitration Tribunal."     "Witness and expert testimony confirmed that the Ecuadorean judgment against Chevron was ghostwritten by Steven Donziger and his team and that the Ecuadorian government is responsible for any further remediation," Chevron spokesman Morgan Crinklaw said in a statement. "Chevron also proved that Ecuador breached the U.S.-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty and international law."     Donziger, who still works for the Ecuadorean villagers seeking to collect from Chevron, said in a statement that Guerra's latest testimony "demonstrates once and for all that Chevron's so-called racketeering case has completely fallen apart."
  •   "Guerra has been the linchpin of Chevron's entire body of trumped up evidence and he now stands not only as an admitted liar, but also as a shocking symbol of how Chevron's management has become so obsessed with evading its legal obligations in Ecuador that it is willing to risk presenting false evidence in court to try to frame adversary counsel and undermine the rule of law," Donziger added.
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 15
     
    Chevron has a "witness-protection program" as an excuse for paying off witnesses? And for paying them to lie under oath, it appears. Never in my legal career did I ever here of a non-governmental entity with a witness protection program. This reeks to high heavens.  Hats off to Courthouse News for digging deep on this one.   
Gary Edwards

Benghazi report: Trinkets of treason - 1 views

canadafreepress.com/...54740

Banksters-of-America Saudi-Arabia Saudi-Globalist

shared by Gary Edwards on 28 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 28 Apr 13
     
    The truth is dribbling out, thn=anks to Douglas J. Hagmann and Canada Free Press .....................  We've been aligned and hostage to the Saudi Royal Family ever since FDR met with King Ibn Saud, Feb 14th, 1945 near the end of WWII.  It was at this meeting that FDR promised protection for the Saudi family in exchange for the right to develop Saudi oil and sell that oil exclusively in dollars.  Hence the "petro dollar" - backed by Saudi oil instead of GOLD. That agreement, and our subsequent history of our military and state departments acting to further Saudi interests has dominated America.  Our troops and military resources ae mercenaries fighting for Saudi dominance of the Globalist ruling elites.  Our politicians are bought and paid for by the Saudi Globalist Alliance.  They have sold their souls for power and money, with the destruction of the USA Constitution the only thing standing between the Globalist and their quest to rule the world. excerpt: We are witnessing one of the biggest government cover-ups since Watergate. A cover-up that involves murder, arms trafficking, and lies by high ranking officials under oath. It involves the murderous attacks in Benghazi, and congressional investigators just released a 46-page interim progress report that at least exposes Hillary Rodham Clinton and the White House lying under oath. Where's the accountability? Where's the outrage? Where's the media? A 46-page interim progress report of an ongoing investigation across five House Committees by the U.S. House of Representatives was released on Tuesday, April 23, 2013. The executive summary states that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton signed off on a reduction of diplomatic security forces suggesting that this reduction of security was, in large part, to blame for the attack in Benghazi on September 11, 2012.  The report emphasizes that this is "inconsistent" with her sworn testimony of January 23, 2013. Simply stated, Hillary Rod
Gary Edwards

IRS Lawyer Carter Hull Confirms Tea Party Targeting Ordered By Washington - Investors.com - 0 views

news.investors.com/...hington-targeted-tea-party.htm

Christine-ODonnell IRS-gate irs

shared by Gary Edwards on 19 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Hull has confirmed the premeditated targeting of Tea Party groups went even higher than him or Lerner.
  • Apparently not only Tea Party groups were targeted but actual candidates as well. On March 9, 2010, the day Tea Party candidate Christine O'Donnell revealed her plan to run for Vice President Joe Biden's former Delaware Senate seat , an IRS tax lien was placed on a house purported to be hers, an action that was quickly publicized by those who did not wish her well.
  • Earlier this year, Dennis Martel, special agent with the Department of Treasury in Baltimore, left a message on O'Donnell's cell phone telling her that an official in Delaware state government had improperly accessed her records on that very same day. The problem was that the house was not hers in the first place and the IRS eventually blamed the lien on a computer glitch and withdrew it.
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  • To us it is inconceivable that one of only two political appointees was directly involved in targeting of Tea Party groups without White House knowledge and consent. It is said the fish rots from the head, and this one is really beginning to stink.
  • Gary Edwards on 19 Jul 13
     
    This has gone way too far.  The 2012 elections must be nullified and rescheduled.  Tens of millions of American citizens have been systematically targeted, their civil and Constitutional rights destroyed, and their voices and votes politically eliminated by a massive government conspiracy.  The 2012 election is a fraud.  And nothing short of complete nullification and recall, and the termination of the IRS will do the great Republic justice. excerpt: Scandal: A retiring IRS lawyer implicates the IRS chief counsel's office, headed by an Obama appointee, as well as the head of the IRS' exempt organizations office. The targeting included a Tea Party Senate candidate. In Thursday's hearing before the House Oversight Committee, 72-year-old retiring IRS lawyer Carter Hull implicated the IRS chief counsel's office headed by William J. Wilkins, who attended at least nine White House meetings, and Lois Lerner, head of the exempt-organizations office, in the IRS scandal. In so doing, he made clear the targeting of Tea Party groups started in Washington and was directed from Washington. A tax-law specialist with 48 years of IRS experience, Hull testified that Lerner, the former head of the exempt organizations division, demanded that he send some of the reviews of Tea Party groups to the IRS chief counsel's office in Washington. The chief counsel is one of two political appointees in the IRS. According to Hull's testimony, Lerner, who famously pleaded her Fifth Amendment rights before the same committee, gave an atypical instruction that the Tea Party applications undergo special scrutiny that included an uncommon multilayer review that involved a top adviser to Lerner as well as the chief counsel's office. Hull's name came up earlier in the testimony of Holly Paz, a D.C.-based supervisor in the IRS's tax-exempt status division, who reported to Lerner. It was on May 22, the day after Paz was interviewed by investigators, that Lerner refused to answer questions from
Paul Merrell

Testimony of the National Intelligence Director - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nal-intelligence-director.html

security state NSA lies Clapper

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • “Edward Snowden, Whistle-Blower” (editorial, Jan. 2) repeats the allegation that James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, “lied” to Congress about the collection of bulk telephony metadata. As a witness to the relevant events and a participant in them, I know that allegation is not true.
  • ROBERT S. LITT General Counsel, Office of the Director of National Intelligence Washington, Jan. 3, 2014
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Jan 14
     
    The NSA's General Counsel attempts to paint James Clapper's lie to Congress as not a lie while acknowledging that his answer was false. Don't look for logic here. Whatever happened to Clapper's later admission that his answer was "the least untruthful answer" he could give in a public session.  Clapper needs to be prosecuted for perjury in his Congressional testimony.   
Paul Merrell

Former public testimony disappears from Guantánamo transcripts | Miami Herald - 0 views

www.miamiherald.com/...article48324240.html

war & peace GITMO-detainees trials censorship

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • For hours on a Friday, a staff sergeant using the fake name “Jinx” testified in open court about her yearlong work here at a prison for suspected terrorists once considered the CIA’s prized war-on-terror captives.
  • The few reporters who went to court or watched on video feeds from Guantánamo to Fort Meade, Maryland, as well as a dozen legal observers and the mother and sister of a man killed in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, heard her say all that in open court. But as far as the public court record is concerned, those things were never said.
  • In a first for the war court, intelligence agencies scrubbed those and other facts — including questions asked by the judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl — from a 379-page transcript of the Oct. 30 pretrial hearing in the 9/11 death-penalty case. A Miami Herald examination counted more than 130 pages with blacked out public testimony. Of them, 37 pages are completely redacted in the latest challenge to the remote war court’s motto, “Fairness, Transparency, Justice.”　Typically the court releases the transcripts “word for word with no redactions,” chief prosecutor Brig. Gen. Mark Martins told reporters Saturday, defending the “rare” exception of “ex-post redactions” as a security necessity.“I have not encountered it actually thus far for a transcript to be redacted. But there is a rule that enables that,” he said. “The government is fully entitled to look and say in the aftermath … ‘It ought to be protected, it could be damaging.’”
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  • At issue on Oct. 30 was Pohl’s January restraining order forbidding female guards from touching the alleged Sept. 11 plotters as they come and go from court and legal meetings, an accommodation to their Islamic traditions. The restriction recently sparked outrage among top Pentagon brass and some in Congress. The issue is unlikely to be resolved before a closed session in February to hear classified testimony.But now, in light of the retroactive redacting, case lawyers and the Sept. 11 trial judge will spend Monday huddling in closed court — no public, none of the accused conspirators listening — as they discuss how to go forward with the testimony on Pohl’s controversial restraining order.Yale Law School lecturer Eugene Fidell, whose specialty has long been military justice, said the court has a 40-second audio delay to the public and a security officer assigned to block the feed with white noise and warned that the after-the-fact censorship could be “the new normal.”
  • “The military has a real allergy to transparency,” said Fidell after declaring himself dumfounded by the effort to “sanitize stuff that has already been uttered in open court.”“Obviously there are things that can and must be kept secret,” he said. “But to try to get the genie back in the bottle for information that has already been uttered in a public proceeding — especially where there’s a time delay to protect classified information — is preposterous.”
Gary Edwards

"High Crimes and Misdemeanors" - Tea Party Command Center - 0 views

teapartyorg.ning.com/...show

Impeachment USA-Constitution

shared by Gary Edwards on 26 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • high crimes and misdemeanors”
  • Officials accused of “high crimes and misdemeanors” were accused of offenses as varied as misappropriating government funds, appointing unfit subordinates, not prosecuting cases, not spending money allocated by Parliament, promoting themselves ahead of more deserving candidates, threatening a grand jury, disobeying an order from Parliament, arresting a man to keep him from running for Parliament, losing a ship by neglecting to moor it, helping “suppress petitions to the King to call a Parliament,” granting warrants without cause, and bribery. Some of these charges were crimes. Others were not. The one common denominator in all these accusations was that the official had somehow abused the power of his office and was unfit to serve.
  • Patriots plan for resisting the Globalist agenda: Develop Secure Community Co-ops (Interactive Neighborhood Watch on steroids).  Groups should be from about 5 to 15 people in the same general area, neighborhood.  All members should be conservative/responsible adults.Members should work at fortifying local, county and state govts. as well as joining Shrf. Reserve Forces (as long as the shrf. is an oathkeeper), Constitutional Sheriffs Assoc./ USCDA, State Militias, Constitutional Militias, etc.  Also,  should be involved in TP, 9-12, John Birch Soc., etc.SCC's should have a liason with other like-minded grps. in order to give/obtain support when needed.The states should and hopefully will be the first line of defense against an overreaching tyrannical govt.(Don't count on it if you are living in a Blue State)  Next, it would fall on the counties and local communities, working in concert with the various State Militia units, Co. Shrfs' Depts., Constitutional and SCC elements.  After that,  if needed,  Bug Out procedures should be implemented.  Hopefully, to safe areas.
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  • The Constitution defines treason in Article 3, Section 3, Clause 1: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
  • In all the articles of impeachment that the House has drawn, no official has been charged with treason
  • What are “high crimes and misdemeanors”?
  • Gary Edwards on 26 Jan 13
     
    "The U.S. Constitution provides impeachment as the method for removing the president, vice president, federal judges, and other federal officials from office. The impeachment process begins in the House of Representatives and follows these steps: The House Judiciary Committee holds hearings and, if necessary, prepares articles of impeachment. These are the charges against the official. If a majority of the committee votes to approve the articles, the whole House debates and votes on them. If a majority of the House votes to impeach the official on any article, then the official must then stand trial in the Senate. For the official to be removed from office, two-thirds of the Senate must vote to convict the official. Upon conviction, the official is automatically removed from office and, if the Senate so decides, may be forbidden from holding governmental office again. The impeachment process is political in nature, not criminal. Congress has no power to impose criminal penalties on impeached officials. But criminal courts may try and punish officials if they have committed crimes. The Constitution sets specific grounds for impeachment. They are "treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors." To be impeached and removed from office, the House and Senate must find that the official committed one of these acts. The Constitution defines treason in Article 3, Section 3, Clause 1: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."
Paul Merrell

Information Awareness Office - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...Information_Awareness_Office

surveillance state NSA DARPA Poindexter lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The Information Awareness Office (IAO) was established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in January 2002 to bring together several DARPA projects focused on applying surveillance and information technology to track and monitor terrorists and other asymmetric threats to U.S. national security, by achieving Total Information Awareness (TIA). This would be achieved by creating enormous computer databases to gather and store the personal information of everyone in the United States, including personal e-mails, social networks, credit card records, phone calls, medical records, and numerous other sources, without any requirement for a search warrant.[1] This information would then be analyzed to look for suspicious activities, connections between individuals, and "threats".[2] Additionally, the program included funding for biometric surveillance technologies that could identify and track individuals using surveillance cameras, and other methods.[2] Following public criticism that the development and deployment of this technology could potentially lead to a mass surveillance system, the IAO was defunded by Congress in 2003. However, several IAO projects continued to be funded, and merely run under different names.[3][4][5][6]
  • The IAO was established after Admiral John Poindexter, former United States National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan, and SAIC executive Brian Hicks approached the US Department of Defense with the idea for an information awareness program after the attacks of September 11, 2001.[5] Poindexter and Hicks had previously worked together on intelligence-technology programs for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA agreed to host the program and appointed Poindexter to run it in 2002. The IAO began funding research and development of the Total Information Awareness (TIA) Program in February 2003 but renamed the program the Terrorism Information Awareness Program in May that year after an adverse media reaction to the program's implications for public surveillance. Although TIA was only one of several IAO projects, many critics and news reports conflated TIA with other related research projects of the IAO, with the result that TIA came in popular usage to stand for an entire subset of IAO programs. The TIA program itself was the "systems-level" program of the IAO that intended to integrate information technologies into a prototype system to provide tools to better detect, classify, and identify potential foreign terrorists with the goal to increase the probability that authorized agencies of the United States could preempt adverse actions. As a systems-level program of programs, TIA's goal was the creation of a "counterterrorism information architecture" that integrated technologies from other IAO programs (and elsewhere, as appropriate). The TIA program was researching, developing, and integrating technologies to virtually aggregate data, to follow subject-oriented link analysis, to develop descriptive and predictive models through data mining or human hypothesis, and to apply such models to additional datasets to identify terrorists and terrorist groups.
  • Among the other IAO programs that were intended to provide TIA with component data aggregation and automated analysis technologies were the Genisys, Genisys Privacy Protection, Evidence Extraction and Link Discovery, and Scalable Social Network Analysis programs. On August 2, 2002, Dr. Poindexter gave a speech at DARPAtech 2002 entitled "Overview of the Information Awareness Office"[7] in which he described the TIA program. In addition to the program itself, the involvement of Poindexter as director of the IAO also raised concerns among some, since he had been earlier convicted of lying to Congress and altering and destroying documents pertaining to the Iran-Contra Affair, although those convictions were later overturned on the grounds that the testimony used against him was protected.
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  • On January 16, 2003, Senator Russ Feingold introduced legislation to suspend the activity of the IAO and the Total Information Awareness program pending a Congressional review of privacy issues involved.[8] A similar measure introduced by Senator Ron Wyden would have prohibited the IAO from operating within the United States unless specifically authorized to do so by Congress, and would have shut the IAO down entirely 60 days after passage unless either the Pentagon prepared a report to Congress assessing the impact of IAO activities on individual privacy and civil liberties or the President certified the program's research as vital to national security interests. In February 2003, Congress passed legislation suspending activities of the IAO pending a Congressional report of the office's activities (Consolidated Appropriations Resolution, 2003, No.108–7, Division M, §111(b) [signed Feb. 20, 2003]). In response to this legislation, DARPA provided Congress on May 20, 2003 with a report on its activities.[9] In this report, IAO changed the name of the program to the Terrorism Information Awareness Program and emphasized that the program was not designed to compile dossiers on US citizens, but rather to research and develop the tools that would allow authorized agencies to gather information on terrorist networks. Despite the name change and these assurances, the critics continued to see the system as prone to potential misuse or abuse. As a result House and Senate negotiators moved to prohibit further funding for the TIA program by adding provisions to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2004[10] (signed into law by President Bush on October 1, 2003). Further, the Joint Explanatory Statement included in the conference committee report specifically directed that the IAO as program manager for TIA be terminated immediately.[11]
  • Paul Merrell on 23 Jun 13
     
    What became today's NSA programs of public concern were the brain child of Admiral John Poindexter and a private sector compadre. U.S. v. Poindexter, 951 F.2d 369, 390 (D.C. Cir. 1991). Poindexter had previously been convicted on five criminal counts involving lying to Congress and destruction and alteration of evidence.  His convictions were overturned on appeal on grounds that some of the testimony against him had been immunized from use in prosecution by Congress. There was no claim on appeal that any such evidence had been false.  86 U.S. v. Poindexter, 951 F.2d 369, 390 (D.C. Cir. 1991), . For far more detail of the evidence against Poindexter, see the August 4, 1993 final report by independent prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, Vol 1, Part 4 section 3, .  So one might say that today's controversial NSA activities were the idea of and conceived by a government official more than willing to lie to Congress and  to destroy and alter evidence. 
Gary Edwards

Comey has Long History of Cases Ending Favorable to Clintons - Tea Party News - 0 views

www.teaparty.org/ding-favorable-clintons-174947

Clinton Hillary

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • Messages found stored on Clinton’s private email server show that Berger – a convicted thief of classified documents – had been advising Clinton while she served as secretary of state and had access to emails containing classified information. For example, in an email dated Sept. 22, 2009, Berger advised Clinton advised how she could leverage information to make Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu more cooperative in discussions with the Obama administration over a settlement freeze.
  • Law firm ties Berger, Lynch, Mills Berger worked as a partner in the Washington law firm Hogan & Hartson from 1973 to 1977, before taking a position as the deputy director of policy planning at the State Department in the Carter administration. When Carter lost his re-election bid, Berger returned to Hogan & Hartson, where he worked until he took leave in 1988 to act as foreign policy adviser in Gov. Michael Dukakis’ presidential campaign. When Dukakis was defeated, Berger returned to Hogan & Hartson until he became foreign policy adviser for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992. On March 28, WND reported Lynch was a litigation partner for eight years at Hogan & Hartson, from March 2002 through April 2010. Mills also worked at Hogan & Hartson, for two years, starting in 1990, before she joined then President-elect Bill Clinton’s transition team, on her way to securing a position as White House deputy counsel in the Clinton administration. According to documents Hillary Clinton’s first presidential campaign made public in 2008, Hogan & Hartson’s New York-based partner Howard Topaz was the tax lawyer who filed income tax returns for Bill and Hillary Clinton beginning in 2004. In addition, Hogan & Hartson in Virginia filed a patent trademark request on May 19, 2004, for Denver-based MX Logic Inc., the computer software firm that developed the email encryption system used to manage Clinton’s private email server beginning in July 2013. A tech expert has observed that employees of MX Logic could have had access to all the emails that went through her account.
  • In 1999, President Bill Clinton nominated Lynch for the first of her two terms as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, a position she held until she joined Hogan & Hartson in March 2002 to become a partner in the firm’s Litigation Practice Group. She left Hogan & Hartson in 2010, after being nominated by President Obama for her second term as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, a position she held until Obama nominated her to serve in her current position as attorney general. A report published April 8, 2008, by The American Lawyer noted Hogan & Hartson was among Hillary Clinton’s biggest financial supporters in the legal industry during her first presidential campaign. “Firm lawyers and staff have donated nearly $123,400 to her campaign so far, according to campaign contribution data from the Center for Responsive Politics,” Nate Raymond observed in The American Lawyer article. “Christine Varney, a partner in Hogan’s Washington, D.C., office, served as chief counsel to the Clinton-Gore Campaign in 1992.” While there is no evidence that Lynch played a direct role either in the tax work done by the firm for the Clintons or in linking Hillary’s private email server to MX Logic, the ethics of the legal profession hold all partners jointly liable for the actions of other partners in a business. “If Hogan and Hartson previously represented the Clintons on tax matters, it is incumbent upon U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to [disclose] what, if any, role she had in such tax matters,” said Tom Fitton, president of Washington-based Judicial Watch.
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  • HSBC link When Lynch’s nomination as attorney general was considered by the Senate one year ago, as WND reported, the Senate Judiciary Committee examined her role in the Obama administration’s decision not to prosecute the banking giant HSBC for laundering funds for Mexican drug cartels and Middle Eastern terrorists. WND was first to report in a series of articles beginning in 2012 money-laundering charges brought by John Cruz, a former HSBC vice president and relationship manager, based on his more than 1,000 pages of evidence and secret audio recordings. The staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee focused on Cruz’s allegations that Lynch, acting then in her capacity as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, engaged in a Department of Justice cover-up. Obama’s attorney general nominee allowed HSBC in December 2011 to enter into a “deferred prosecution” settlement in which the bank agreed to pay a $1.9 billion fine and admit “willful criminal conduct” in exchange for dropping criminal investigations and prosecutions of HSBC directors or employees. Cruz called the $1.92 billion fine the U.S. government imposed on HSBC “a joke” and filed a $10 million lawsuit for “retaliation and wrongful termination.” From 2002 to 2003, Comey held the position of U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the same position held by Lynch. On March 4, 2013, he joined the HSBC board of directors, agreeing to serve as an independent non-executive director and a member of the bank’s Financial System Vulnerabilities Committee, positions he held until he resigned on Aug. 3, 2013, to become head of the FBI.
  • Comey, Fitzgerald and Valerie Plame On Jan. 1, 2004, the Washington Post reported that after Attorney General John Aschroft recused himself and his staff from any involvement in the investigation of who leaked the name of CIA employee Valerie Plame after journalist Robert Novak named her in print as a CIA operative, Comey assumed the role of acting attorney general for the purposes of the investigation. Comey appointed Patrick J. Fitzgerald, a U.S. attorney in Chicago, to act as special counsel in conducting the inquiry into what became known as “Plamegate.” At the time Comey made the appointment, Fitzgerald was already godfather to one of Comey’s children. On April 13, 2015, co-authoring a USA Today op-ed piece, Plame and her husband, retired ambassador Joseph Wilson, made public their support for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, openly acknowledging their political closeness to both Hillary and Bill Clinton. The first two paragraphs of the editorial read: We have known Hillary Clinton both professionally and personally for close to 20 years, dating back to before President Bill Clinton’s first trip to Africa in 1998 — a trip that they both acknowledge changed their lives, and gave considerable meaning to their post-White House years and to the activities of the Clinton Foundation. Joe, serving as the National Security Council Senior Director for African Affairs, was instrumental in arranging that historic visit. Our history became entwined with Hillary further after Valerie’s identity as a CIA officer was deliberately exposed. That criminal act was taken in retribution for Joe’s article in The New York Times in which he explained he had discovered no basis for the Bush administration’s justification for the Iraq War that Saddam Hussein was seeking yellowcake uranium to develop a nuclear weapon.
  • In January 2016, Chuck Ross in the Daily Caller reported that Hillary Clinton emails made public made clear that one of her “most frequent favor-seekers when she was secretary of state was former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a longtime Clinton friend, an endorser of Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, and an Africa expert with deep business ties on the continent.” Ross noted that Wilson emailed Clinton on Dec. 22, 2009, seeking help for Symbion Power, an American engineering contractor for whom Wilson consulted, in the company’s bid to pursue a U.S. Agency of International Development contract for work in Afghanistan. In the case of the Afghanistan project, Ross noted, Clinton vouched for Wilson and Symbion as she forwarded the request to Jack Lew, who served then as deputy secretary of state for management and resources. Ross further reported Wilson’s request might also have been discussed with President Obama, as one email indicates. In 2005, Fitzgerald prosecuted Libby, a prominent adviser to then Vice President Dick Cheney, in the Plame investigation, charging him with two counts of perjury, two counts of making false statements to federal prosecutors and one count of obstruction of justice. On March 6, 2007, Libby was convicted of four of the five counts, and on June 5, 2007, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton to two and a half years in federal prison. On April 6, 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported the publication of New York Times reporter Judith Miller’s memoir “The Story: A Reporter’s Journey” exposed “unscrupulous conduct” by Fitzgerald in the 2007 trial of Libby.
  • WSJ reporter Peter Berkowitz noted Miller “writes that Mr. Fitzgerald induced her to give what she now realizes was false testimony.” “By withholding critical information and manipulating her memory as he prepared her to testify, Ms. Miller relates, Mr. Fitzgerald ‘steered’ her ‘in the wrong direction.’” http://www.wnd.com/2016/07/comey-has-long-history-of-clinton-related-cases/
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 16
     
    Bend over and grab your ankles. The rats nest of Clinton operatives in Washington DC is far deeper than anyone ever imagined. "FBI Director James Comey has a long history of involvement in Department of Justice actions that arguably ended up favorable to the Clintons. In 2004, Comey, then serving as a deputy attorney general in the Justice Department, apparently limited the scope of the criminal investigation of Sandy Berger, which left out former Clinton administration officials who may have coordinated with Berger in his removal and destruction of classified records from the National Archives. The documents were relevant to accusations that the Clinton administration was negligent in the build-up to the 9/11 terrorist attack. On Tuesday, Comey announced that despite evidence of "extreme negligence by Hillary Clinton and her top aides regarding the handling of classified information through a private email server, the FBI would not refer criminal charges to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the Justice Department. Curiously, Berger, Lynch and Cheryl Mills all worked as partners in the Washington law firm Hogan & Hartson, which prepared tax returns for the Clintons and did patent work for a software firm that played a role in the private email server Hillary Clinton used when she was secretary of state. Lynch and Comey both served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. They crossed paths in the investigation of HSBC bank, which avoided criminal charges in a massive money-laundering scandal for which the bank paid a $1.9 billion fine. After Attorney General John Aschroft recused himself in the Valerie Plame affair in 2004, Comey appointed as special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who ended up convicting "Scooter" Libby, a top aide to then Vice President Dick Cheney, of perjury and obstruction of justice. The charge affirmed the accusations of Plame and her former ambassador husband, Joe Wilson - both partisan supporters of Bill and
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Jul 16
     
    The "ethical" situation is far worse than described. Attorney disciplinary rules require that a lawyer, including all lawyers in the same firm, owe a lifetime duty of loyalty to a client, a duty that does not end with representation in a particular matter. Accordingly, Lynch had what the disciplinary rules refer to as an "actual conflict of interest" between her duties of loyalty to both Hillary and the U.S. government that required her withdrawal from representing either in the decision whether to prosecute Hillary. Saying that she would rubber stamp what Comey recommended was not the required withdrawal. Comey is an investigator, not a prosecutor. This was a situation for appointment of a special counsel to represent the Department of Justice in the decision whether to prosecute, not satisfied by rubber stamping Comey's recomendation,.
Gary Edwards

Catherine Engelbrecht Congressional Testimony Against the IRS | The Rugged Individualist - 0 views

theruggedindividualist.wordpress.com/...-tears-to-my-eyes-please-watch

Catherine-Engelbrecht IRS IRS-Patriot-War

shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Mar 14
     
    Congressional testimony concerning IRS Targeting of Conservative Tea Party Patriot Groups. Heart breaking stuff. The IRS and US Government targeted this woman's family and business because her political beliefs and belief in the USA Constitution run counter to the needs of Obama and his army of big government bureaucrats.
Paul Merrell

America's Lead Iran Negotiator Misrepresents U.S. Policy (and International Law) to Congress « Going to Tehran - 0 views

goingtotehran.com/-international-law-to-congress

war & peace Iran nuclear-non-proliferation-treaty NNTP Iranian-nukes-myth Obama lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Last month, while testifying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Wendy Sherman—Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and the senior U.S. representative in the P5+1 nuclear talks with Iran—said, with reference to Iranians, “We know that deception is part of the DNA.”  This statement goes beyond orientalist stereotyping; it is, in the most literal sense, racist.  And it evidently was not a mere “slip of the tongue”:  a former Obama administration senior official told us that Sherman has used such language before about Iranians. 
  • Putting aside Sherman’s glaring display of anti-Iranian racism, there was another egregious manifestation of prejudice-cum-lie in her testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that we want to explore more fully.  It came in a response to a question from Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) about whether states have a right to enrich under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).  Here is the relevant passage in Sherman’s reply:  “It has always been the U.S. position that Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty does not speak about the right of enrichment at all [and] doesn’t speak to enrichment, period.  It simply says that you have the right to research and development.”  Sherman goes on to acknowledge that “many countries such as Japan and Germany have taken that [uranium enrichment] to be a right.”  But, she says, “the United States does not take that position.  We take the position that we look at each one of these [cases].”  Or, as she put it at the beginning of her response to Sen. Rubio, “It has always been the U.S. position that Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty does not speak about the right of enrichment at all” (emphasis added). 
  • Two points should be made here.  First, the claim that the NPT’s Article IV does not affirm the right of non-nuclear-weapons states to pursue indigenous development of fuel-cycle capabilities, including uranium enrichment, under international safeguards is flat-out false.  Article IV makes a blanket statement that “nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.”  And it’s not just “countries such as Japan and Germany”—both close U.S. allies—which affirm that this includes the right of non-weapons states to enrich uranium under safeguards.  The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries and the Non-Aligned Movement (whose 120 countries represent a large majority of UN members) have all clearly affirmed the right of non-nuclear-weapons states, including the Islamic Republic of Iran, to pursue indigenous safeguarded enrichment.  In fact, just four countries in the world hold that there is no right to safeguarded enrichment under the NPT:  the United States, Britain, France, and Israel (which isn’t even a NPT signatory).  That’s it.  Moreover, the right to indigenous technological development—including nuclear fuel-cycle capabilities, should a state choose to pursue them—is a sovereign right.  It is not conferred by the NPT; the NPT’s Article IV recognizes states’ “inalienable right” in this regard, while other provisions bind non-weapons states that join the Treaty to exercise this right under international safeguards.       
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  • There have been many first-rate analyses demonstrating that the right to safeguarded enrichment under the NPT is crystal clear—from the Treaty itself, from its negotiating history, and from subsequent practice, with at least a dozen non-weapons states building fuel-cycle infrastructures potentially capable of supporting weapons programs.  Bill Beeman published a nice Op Ed in the Huffington Post on this question in response to Sherman’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony, see here and, for a text including references, here.  For truly definitive legal analyses, see the work of Daniel Joyner, for example here and here.  The issue will also be dealt with in articles by Flynt Leverett and Dan Joyner in a forthcoming special issue of the Penn State Journal of Law and International Affairs, which should appear within the next few days.         From any objectively informed legal perspective, denying non-weapons states’ right of safeguarded enrichment amounts to nothing more than a shameless effort to rewrite the NPT unilaterally.  And this brings us to our second point about Sherman’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony. 
  • Sherman claims that “It has always been the U.S. position that Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty does not speak about the right of enrichment at all [and] doesn’t speak to enrichment, period.”  But, in fact, the United States originally held that the right to peaceful use recognized in the NPT’s Article IV includes the indigenous development of safeguarded fuel-cycle capabilities.  In 1968, as America and the Soviet Union, the NPT’s sponsors, prepared to open it for signature, the founding Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, William Foster, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—the same committee to which Sherman untruthfully testified last month—that the Treaty permitted non-weapons states to pursue the fuel cycle.  We quote Foster on this point:   “Neither uranium enrichment nor the stockpiling of fissionable material in connection with a peaceful program would violate Article II so long as these activities were safeguarded under Article III.”  [Note:  In Article II of the NPT, non-weapons states commit not to build or acquire nuclear weapons; in Article III, they agree to accept safeguards on the nuclear activities, “as set forth in an agreement to be negotiated and concluded with the International Atomic Energy Agency.”] 
  • Thus, it is a bald-faced lie to say that the United States has “always” held that the NPT does not recognize a right to safeguarded enrichment.  As a matter of policy, the United States held that that the NPT recognized such a right even before it was opened for signature; this continued to be the U.S. position for more than a quarter century thereafter.  It was only after the Cold War ended that the United States—along with Britain, France, and Israel—decided that the NPT should be, in effect, unilaterally rewritten (by them) to constrain the diffusion of fuel-cycle capabilities to non-Western states.  And their main motive for trying to do so has been to maximize America’s freedom of unilateral military initiative and, in the Middle East, that of Israel.  This is the agenda for which Wendy Sherman tells falsehoods to a Congress that is all too happy to accept them.    
  • Paul Merrell on 14 Nov 13
     
    What should be the reaction of Congress upon discovering that the U.S. lead negotiator with Iran in regard to its budding peaceful use of nuclear power lies to Congress about the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty's applicability to Iran's actions? 
Paul Merrell

Edward Snowden: US government spied on human rights workers | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ent-spied-human-rights-workers

surveillance state Snowden Council-of-Europe testimony NSA-targets Amnesty Human-Rights-Watch NSA-docs warrantless-search

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • 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".
Paul Merrell

OPERATION CONDOR: National Security Archive Presents Trove of Declassified Documentation in Historic Trial in Argentina - 0 views

nsarchive.gwu.edu/...NSAEBB514

war & peace Operation-Condor U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 May 15 - No Cached
  • Argentine Newspaper, Pagina 12, Highlights Evidence Presented by Archive Southern Cone Project Director Carlos Osorio Documents given to Court Reveal Condor Precedents; Secret Summary of Inaugural Condor Meeting Introduced into Court for First Time National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 514
  • The National Security Archive today posted key documents on Operation Condor, presented by its Southern Cone analyst, Carlos Osorio, at a historic trial in Buenos Aires of former military officers. During 10 hours on the witness stand recently, Osorio introduced one hundred documents into evidence for the court proceedings. His testimony was profiled on May 3 in a major feature article published in the Buenos Aires daily, Pagina 12. Operation Condor was an infamous secret alliance between South American dictatorships in the mid and late 1970s - a Southern Cone rendition and repression program - formed to track down and eliminate enemies of their military regimes. The Condor trial charges 25 high-ranking officers, originally including former Argentine presidents Jorge Videla (deceased) and Reynaldo Bignone (aged 87), with conspiracy to "kidnap, disappear, torture and kill" 171 opponents of the regimes that dominated the Southern Cone in the 1970s and 1980s. Among the victims were approximately 80 Uruguayans, 50 Argentines, 20 Chileans and a dozen others from Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador who were targeted by Condor operatives.
  • The tribunal requested Osorio’s testimony, which took place over two days on March 6 and 7, 2015, and included presentation of an Excel data base of 900 documents drawn mostly from U.S. government sources and from the Archive of Terror in Paraguay. Of these, Osorio focused on 100 declassified records selected for the tribunal, which was presided over by Judge Oscar Amirante, president of Federal Tribunal N° 1. The National Security Archive obtained the U.S. documents through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), primarily from the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department. Other notable records originated from the Chilean former secret police, DINA. "We have been working on Operation Condor for years," Osorio said, "sifting through archives in many continents and building a body of knowledge and a trove of documents." The Pagina 12 feature entitled "The Evolution of Condor," described Osorio’s presentation of "dozens" of documents to the tribunal, and the contribution the documents made in educating the judges on the genesis and evolution of coordinated repression in the Southern Cone. Osorio’s testimony covered a range of topics including the breadth of Condor operations, U.S. knowledge of those operations and the authenticity of the records being introduced into evidence.
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  • The article highlighted one document Osorio presented that revealed the bilateral precedent for what would become a multilateral system of regional repression: a secret accord between the Argentine and Paraguayan military intelligence services to "Collaborate in the struggle against subversion…" and the "… internment [of dissenters]…" " The agreement was dated September 12,1972, and signed by Paraguayan intelligence officer Col. Benito Guanes Serrano. Three years later, Guanes would also be one of the five original signatories of the secret Condor accords. Osorio discovered the document in the Archive of Terror in Paraguay. In September 1975, an assessment by a State Department intelligence analyst concluded that "The national security forces of the southern cone surpass the terrorists in cooperation at the international level…" Six weeks later, in Santiago, Chile, intelligence chiefs from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay signed an "Acta" officially establishing Operation Condor. Osorio introduced that pivotal document - provided to the Archive by a source in Chile - into evidence as well.
  • Two declassified U.S. documents presented to the tribunal underscored the contradictory response of high U.S. officials as they became aware of Condor operations in the summer of 1976. One well-known 13-page memorandum of conversation between Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Argentine Foreign Minister Admiral Cesar Guzzetti dated June 10, 1976, revealed Kissinger’s endorsement of the regional collaboration to repress the left. After Guzzetti informed Kissinger that the Southern Cone regimes were engaged in "joint efforts" to fight "the terrorist problem," Kissinger essentially supported this approach: "If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly. But you should get back quickly to normal procedures," according to the declassified transcript Osorio provided to the court. "We want you to succeed. We do not want to harrass [sic] you," Kissinger concluded. "I will do what I can … "
  • After a CIA briefing to Kissinger’s top aides in late July 1976 on the Condor countries’ plans to send assassination teams around the world to eliminate opponents, the Secretary of State authorized a démarche to General Augusto Pinochet in Chile, General Jorge Videla in Argentina, and other military leaders in the region calling on them to cease and desist. "Government planned and directed assassinations within and outside the territory of Condor members has most serious implication which we must face squarely and rapidly," stated the secret August 13, 1976, cable to U.S. ambassadors in those nations. But the démarche was never delivered to any of the Condor regimes. After the U.S. ambassadors raised objections about presenting the démarche to the generals, on September 16, 1976, Kissinger rescinded it, and ordered "that no further action be taken on this matter." In addition to Osorio, the National Security Archive’s Chile Documentation Project director, Peter Kornbluh, testified in the Operation Condor trial for five hours in December 2014. Archive Advisory Board member, professor of journalism and author John Dinges presented evidence in April 2015. Read the Documents
Paul Merrell

Snowden ready to go to Germany under asylum as his letter to Berlin revealed - RT News - 0 views

rt.com/...wden-letter-germany-asylum-091

surveillance state NSA Snowden asylum Germany Snowden-statement

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, is ready to go to Germany and testify over the US wiretapping of Angela Merkel’s phone on condition of granting him political asylum, a German MP who met Snowden has said. He also revealed the text of Snowden’s letter.
  • The Federal Government of Germany reacted to Stroebele’s meeting with Snowden – of which they said they weren’t notified in advance – by calling an extraordinary Bundestag session. The German Federal Minister of the Interior, Hans-Peter Friedrich, announced that his government is interested in Snowden’s testimonies. “We will find ways, when Mr. Snowden is ready, to make his talk with the German officials possible,” Friedrich was quoted as saying by German media. “If the message means that Mr. Snowden wants to give us information, then we gladly accept that,” the CSU party politician said, adding that “every clarification, any information and facts that we can obtain is good.”
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Nov 13
     
    So Germany may grant Edward Snowden political asylum in exchange for testimony about NSA spying on German and its citizens, especially Angela Merkel. Or is this a German ruse to establish more leverage over the U.S. in negotiations over curtailment of U.S. spying on Germany? In any event, the text of Snowden's letter to the MP is embedded and well worth the read.  
Paul Merrell

Fire the Liar | War Is A Crime .org - 0 views

warisacrime.org/fire-liar

surveillance state Clapper VIPS lies Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Obama Urged to Fire DNI Clapper December 11, 2013 (Editor Note)  Last March – before Edward Snowden revealed the NSA’s sweeping collection of phone and other data – Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said no such operation existed. Now, a group of ex-national security officials urge President Obama to fire Clapper. MEMORANDUM FOR: The President FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) SUBJECT: Fire James Clapper
  • We wish to endorse the call by Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Chair of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, Committee on the Judiciary, that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper should be removed and prosecuted for lying to Congress. “Lying to Congress is a federal offense, and Clapper ought to be fired and prosecuted for it,” the Wisconsin Republican said in an interview with The Hill. “The only way laws are effective is if they’re enforced.” Sensenbrenner added, “If it’s a criminal offense — and I believe Mr. Clapper has committed a criminal offense — then the Justice Department ought to do its job.”
  • This brief Memorandum is to inform you that we agree that no intelligence director should be able to deceive Congress and suffer no consequences. No democracy that condones such deceit at the hands of powerful, secretive intelligence directors can long endure. It seems clear that you can expect no help from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to which Clapper has apologized for giving “clearly erroneous” testimony, and who, at the height of the controversy over his credibility, defended him as a “direct and honest” person. You must be well aware that few amendments to the U.S. Constitution are as clear as the fourth:
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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
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Dec 13
     
    Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity call on Obama to sack Director of National Intelligence James Clapper for perjured testimony to Congress and lying to the public, with a nice collection of Clapper's lies. And Sen. Diane Feinstein gets a share of their wrath.  In my book both Clapper and Gen. Keith Alexander must be fired in disgrace else the message to the intelligence community is that there is no penalty for lying to Congress and the People, which can only encourage further lies.  Moreover, it send a message to the People that the President is more loyal to his henchmen than he is to the public's interest.
Paul Merrell

Tomgram: Nick Turse, America's Non-Stop Ops in Africa | TomDispatch - 0 views

www.tomdispatch.com/...ica%27s_non-stop_ops_in_africa

war & peace Africa AFRICOM U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • The numbers tell the story: 10 exercises, 55 operations, 481 security cooperation activities. For years, the U.S. military has publicly insisted that its efforts in Africa are small scale. Its public affairs personnel and commanders have repeatedly claimed no more than a “light footprint” on that continent, including a remarkably modest presence when it comes to military personnel.  They have, however, balked at specifying just what that light footprint actually consists of.  During an interview, for instance, a U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) spokesman once expressed worry that tabulating the command’s deployments would offer a “skewed image” of U.S. efforts there. It turns out that the numbers do just the opposite. Last year, according AFRICOM commander General David Rodriguez, the U.S. military carried out a total of 546 “activities” on the continent -- a catch-all term for everything the military does in Africa.  In other words, it averages about one and a half missions a day.  This represents a 217% increase in operations, programs, and exercises since the command was established in 2008. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month, Rodriguez noted that the 10 exercises, 55 operations, and 481 security cooperation activities made AFRICOM “an extremely active geographic command.”  But exactly what the command is “active” in doing is often far from clear.
  • AFRICOM releases information about only a fraction of its activities.  It offers no breakdown on the nature of its operations.  And it allows only a handful of cherry-picked reporters the chance to observe a few select missions.  The command refuses even to offer a count of the countries in which it is “active,” preferring to keep most information about what it’s doing -- and when and where -- secret. While Rodriguez’s testimony offers but a glimpse of the scale of AFRICOM’s activities, a cache of previously undisclosed military briefing documents obtained by TomDispatch sheds additional light on the types of missions being carried out and their locations all across the continent.  These briefings prepared for top commanders and civilian officials in 2013 demonstrate a substantial increase in deployments in recent years and reveal U.S. military operations to be more extensive than previously reported.  They also indicate that the pace of operations in Africa will remain robust in 2014, with U.S. forces expected again to average far more than a mission each day on the continent.
Paul Merrell

U.S. Intel Chief Says Iran Isn't Building Nukes. - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34672.htm

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth Israel-lobby

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 May 14 - No Cached
  • In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday March 12, 2013, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper reaffirmed what the U.S. intelligence community has been saying for years: Iran has no nuclear weapons program, is not building a nuclear weapon and has not even made a decision to do so. The annual “Worldwide Threat Assessment,” which compiles the collective conclusions of all American intelligence agencies, has long held that Iran maintains defensive capabilities and has a military doctrine of deterrence and retaliation, but is not an aggressive state actor and has no intention of beginning a conflict, let alone triggering a nuclear apocalypse. While the U.S. intelligence community assumes that Iran already has the technical capability to produce nuclear weapons, “should a decision be made to do so,” Clapper’s report states (as it has for years now), “We do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.” Were this decision ever to be made, Iran wouldn’t even be able to secretly start building a nuclear bomb. “[W]e assess Iran could not divert safeguarded material and produce a weapon-worth of WGU [weapons-grade uranium] before this activity is discovered,” Clapper told Congress.
  • Even Clapper, who is no stranger to alarmism, acknowledges that “Iran prefers to avoid direct confrontation with the United States” and would only act defensively “in response to perceived offenses.”  Iran’s “decision making is guided by a cost-benefit approach” based on considerations of “security, prestige and influence, as well as the international political and security environment,” Clapper said, thereby dismissing allegations that the Islamic Republic is an irrational martyr state. Speaking at a national security conference in Herzliya on Thursday, Israel’s own military intelligence chief concurred with Clapper’s assessment. While sure to continue advancing its nuclear program in the coming year, he said, Iran had not actually decided to build a bomb. Such findings are wholly consistent with past assessments.
Paul Merrell

Risen Deflects Queries in Leak-Case Testimony | Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...queries-in-leak-case-testimony

surveillance state CIA secrecy Risen testimony

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • After years of pressuring New York Times national security correspondent James Risen to testify in the leak – or “Espionage Act” – case against ex-CIA official Jeffrey Sterling, the prosecutors never directly asked Risen to name Sterling as his source, as Sam Husseini describes.
  • Paul Merrell on 07 Jan 15
     
    Risen isn't out of the woods yet; notice that this was a pre-trial hearing; the trial is yet to coime.
Paul Merrell

Moussaoui Calls Saudi Princes Patrons of Al Qaeda - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...inces-patrons-of-al-qaeda.html

war & peace 9-11 Saudi-princes Moussaoui-testimony

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • In highly unusual testimony inside the federal supermax prison, a former operative for Al Qaeda has described prominent members of Saudi Arabia’s royal family as major donors to the terrorist network in the late 1990s and claimed that he discussed a plan to shoot down Air Force One with a Stinger missile with a staff member at the Saudi Embassy in Washington.The Qaeda member, Zacarias Moussaoui, wrote last year to Judge George B. Daniels of United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who is presiding over a lawsuit filed against Saudi Arabia by relatives of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He said he wanted to testify in the case, and after lengthy negotiations with Justice Department officials and the federal Bureau of Prisons, a team of lawyers was permitted to enter the prison and question him for two days last October.
  • He said in the prison deposition that he was directed in 1998 or 1999 by Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan to create a digital database of donors to the group. Among those he said he recalled listing in the database were Prince Turki al-Faisal, then the Saudi intelligence chief; Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the longtime Saudi ambassador to the United States; Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, a prominent billionaire investor; and many of the country’s leading clerics.“Sheikh Osama wanted to keep a record who give money,” he said in imperfect English — “who is to be listened to or who contributed to the jihad.”Mr. Moussaoui said he acted as a courier for Bin Laden, carrying personal messages to prominent Saudi princes and clerics. And he described his training in Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.
  • Transcripts of testimony by Zacarias Moussaoui, a former Qaeda operative, under questioning over two days in October by lawyers in a suit filed against Saudi Arabia by relatives of 9/11 victims. Exhibit 5 Exhibit 6 Exhibit 7 Exhibit 8
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  • He helped conduct a trial explosion of a 750-kilogram bomb as a trial run for a planned truck-bomb attack on the American Embassy in London, he said, using the same weapon used in the Qaeda attacks in 1998 on the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He also studied the possibility of staging attacks with crop-dusting aircraft.In addition, Mr. Moussaoui said, “We talk about the feasibility of shooting Air Force One.” Specifically, he said, he had met an official of the Islamic Affairs Department of the Saudi Embassy in Washington when the Saudi official visited Kandahar. “I was supposed to go to Washington and go with him” to “find a location where it may be suitable to launch a Stinger attack and then, after, be able to escape,” he said.
  • Also filed on Monday in the survivors’ lawsuit were affidavits from former Senators Bob Graham of Florida and Bob Kerrey of Nebraska and the former Navy secretary John Lehman, arguing that more investigation was needed into Saudi ties to the 9/11 plot. Mr. Graham was co-chairman of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into the attacks, and Mr. Kerrey and Mr. Lehman served on the 9/11 Commission.
  • “I am convinced that there was a direct line between at least some of the terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia,” wrote Mr. Graham, who has long demanded the release of 28 pages of the congressional report on the attacks that explore Saudi connections and remain classified.Mr. Kerrey said in the affidavit that it was “fundamentally inaccurate and misleading” to argue, as lawyers for Saudi Arabia have, that the 9/11 Commission exonerated the Saudi government.
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