by Eric Black
March 11 2009

At a "Great Conversations" event at the University of Minnesota last night, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh may have made a little more news than he intended by talking about new alleged instances of domestic spying by the CIA, and about an ongoing covert military operation that he called an "executive assassination ring."

Hersh spoke with great confidence about these findings from his current reporting, which he hasn't written about yet.

In an email exchange afterward, Hersh said that his statements were "an honest response to a question" from the event's moderator, U of M Political Scientist Larry Jacobs and "not something I wanted to dwell about in public."

Hersh didn't take back the statements, which he said arise from reporting he is doing for a book, but that it might be a year or two before he has what he needs on the topic to be "effective...that is, empirical, for even the most skeptical."

The evening of great conversation, featuring Walter Mondale and Hersh, moderated by Jacobs and titled "America's Constitutional Crisis," looked to be a mostly historical review of events that have tested our Constitution, by a journalist and a high government officials who had experience with many of the crises.

Larisa Alexandrovna
March 11, 2009
atlargely.com

Can someone explain to me how 5 suspected members of Al Qaeda (although there is no question regarding KSM) suddenly got their own PR machine from inside Gitmo and at the hands of a military judge, not to mention getting a world stage through which to frighten Americans some more? And the media? Well, they are too well versed in stupid to ask any sensible questions:

"Five Guantanamo prisoners accused in the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the U.S. staunchly defended their actions, calling the operation "blessed" and "great" and the accusations against them "badges of honor."

read more

 

Update at bottom: White House not concerned by judge's actions

The ACLU is angry that a military judge has accepted an incendiary legal pleading filed by five 9/11 suspects, despite President Obama's order stopping the Guantanamo military commissions and even though attorneys for some of the defendants were unaware of it.

Judge Col. Stephen Henley, the appointed chief trial judge in the case ordered the public release of the legal pleading even though all other legal filings have been kept sealed for months by the military commissions, said the American Civil Liberties Union in a release, adding that the competency of two of the men has not yet been determined.

The Smoking Gun has the released six-page legal pleading here.
RELATED:
"Yoo is sorry for nothing," Salon.com
Sneering with contempt, the unrepentant Bush attorney has challenged "Obama's antiwar base" to read his infamous memos closely. So I did. ... (click title to read full article)

by Michael Collins
March 10, 2009 -- Washington, DC (electionfraudnews.com) -- In March, 2004 Susan Lindauer was arrested for allegedly acting as an "unregistered agent" for prewar Iraq.  She challenged the government's assertion and sought the right to prove at Trial that she'd been a United States intelligence asset covering Iraq and Libya from the early 1990's through 2003 (see articles).

In an unprecedented judicial ploy that lasted five years, federal prosecutors blocked Ms. Lindauer's rights to trial or any other sort of evidentiary hearings that would test her story. For 11 months, she was confined at Carswell federal prison on a Texas military base and at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, without a conviction or plea bargain.

During the indictment, she was conveniently gagged from sharing her direct knowledge of Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence, which she gained as a primary asset covering the Iraqi Embassy at the United Nations from August, 1996 onwards. She was also silenced from talking about the advance warning she gave the Office of Counter-Terrorism and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft's private staff in August, 2001, about possible airplane hijackings and a reprise of the 1993 World Trade Center attack.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The five detainees at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay prison camp charged with plotting the September 11 attacks have filed a document expressing pride at their accomplishment and accepting responsibility for the deaths of nearly 3,000 people, The New York Times reported on Monday.

The document, which the newspaper said may be released publicly on Tuesday, describes the five men as the "9/11 Shura Council," and says their actions were an offering to God, according to excerpts of the document read to a reporter by an unidentified government official, the report said.

"'To us,' the official read, 'they are not accusations. To us they are a badge of honor, which we carry with honor,'" the paper said.

by Rachel Oswald
RawStory.com
March 10, 2009

Last week's resignation of the top cybersecurity official for the Department of Homeland Security has revealed a thorny bureaucratic rivalry between the National Security Agency and the resigned official who accuses NSA of having too tight a hold on cybersecurity.

After less than a year as director of the National Cyber Security Center, Rod Beckstrom resigned on Friday, citing a lack of funding and efforts by the NSA to dominate government cypersecurity. The Wall Street Journal has his letter of resignation, which can be read here.

In the letter to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, Beckstrom charged that NSA "effectively controls DHS cyber efforts" through employee detailees to NCSC from NSA, technology insertions and the proposed move of the NCSC to NSA's Fort Meade facility.

(For presentation as the annual distinguished lecture sponsored by the Sociology Department of the University of Winnipeg, 6 March, 2009)

George W. Bush and Omar al-Bashir

Serious allegations of criminality are swirling around ex-US President George W. Bush and current Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. In late February of 2009 it was reported that the Hague-based International Criminal Court was preparing to issue a warrant for al-Bashir alleging his culpability for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. As the documents were being prepared against Sudan’s head of state, ex-President Bush was preparing to initiate a series of high-paying speaking engagements beginning in Calgary Alberta on March 17. Bush’s visit to Alberta’s oil capital tests the consistency and authenticity of the Canadian government’s “unequivocal” position that “Canada is not and will not become a safe haven for persons involved in war crimes, crimes against humanity or other reprehensible acts.”¹

THE HAGUE -- George W. Bush could one day be the International Criminal Court's next target.

David Crane, an international law professor at Syracuse University, said the principle of law used to issue an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir could extend to former US President Bush over claims officials from his Administration may have engaged in torture by using coercive interrogation techniques on terror suspects. ...
--and--

War Crimes and Double Standards
By Robert Parry

"It's also not true that any investigation is always better than no investigation. I have witnessed cover-up investigations that not only failed to get anywhere near the truth but tried to discredit and destroy whistleblowers who came forward with important evidence.

"In other words, bogus and self-interested investigations can advance bogus and self-interested history, which only emboldens corrupt officials to commit similar crimes again."

by Mickey S. Huff and Paul W. Rea
March 5, 2009

For the past eight years, American culture has seen an outburst of media-driven mythmaking. Corporate mainstream media organizations, the pundits they sponsor, and politicians from both major parties have formed a new contextual chorus singing the same refrain: "On September 11th, 2001, everything changed." From cable TV to AM radio, from the blogosphere to the town-hall meeting, Americans repeatedly hear that "this is a post-9/11 world."

Although there is some truth to this platitude of pivotal change, independently minded citizens may also wonder whether such mass media messages have become self-fulfilling prophecies. This provides an interesting point of debate about what has or has not changed in America since 9/11.

This chapter concerns itself with the ongoing phenomena of media mythmaking and how, like many Americans surmised just after 9/11, everything has not changed.¹ Corporate mainstream media have resurrected powerful myths from America's past to shape public perception in the present. Through the prism of 9/11, one can see how the corporate mass media are in fact doing more mythmaking than news reporting. Here, the authors will examine central historic American myths the corporate media and even much of the alternative independent media have extended into the post-9/11 era. This analysis looks at how media mythmaking surrounding the events of 9/11, exploiting the strong emotions these events aroused, has prevented a dispassionate inquiry of its causes or of those responsible.

Physics professor Dr. Steven Jones was forced out of Brigham Young University for his research suggesting the World Trade Center was destroyed by controlled demolition. Dr. Jones is the lead author of the first two scholarly articles in mainstream academic journals disputing the official story of 9/11 -- and a third is on the way! Kevin Ryan told us during his interview Tuesday, March 3rd that the upcoming article will include research by many respected scientists worldwide, and will for all intents and purposes seal the case that nanothermates were used in the controlled demolition of the WTC.

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009, 9:00 am PDT - 12:00 Noon EDT - 16:00 GMT

Listen live at http://noliesradio.org (or http://67.18.54.205/~nolies)

The interview will be archived for later listening after the broadcast.

Deadline for emailed questions is 9pm Pacific Time, Monday, March 9th. Not all emailed questions will be answered on the air. Email your questions now: (fb@noliesradio.org)