Sunday, July 02, 2006

Why the fuss about the New York Times story?

Sen Lott charged that a Republican Senator leaked classified secret
prision operation

Commentary by Dick McManus

US Senator Lott charged that a Republican Senator must have leaked
classified CIA secret prision operation after the Republcan Senators
were briefed by VP Cheney at a lunchen.

What happened to the investigation of this matter? Where is the
news media in reporting this? Why were only Republican Senators
told about the secret prisions? And lastly, it is more damaging to
national security for a government official to confirm an alleged
leak of classified information.

See: http://mediamatters.org/items/200511090005

Why the fuss about the New York Times story?

Here is another attack on the free press by the press. In a May
8th, 2006 commentary in the US News and World Report Michael Barone
points out that there is an argument for forbearance by the NY Times
story about NSA domestic warrantless eavesdropping.
By "forbearance" he means self censorship.

Michael Barone states that CIA analyst (and one of the heads of the
CIA IG office) Mary McCarthy was fired for disclosing classified
information to a reporter; she was widely reported to be a source
for the Wash. Post story on secret prisions. Her lawyer denies it.

Kate Martin, executive director of the Center for National Security
Studies, said that "even if the espionage statutes were read to
apply to leaks of information, we would say the First Amendment
prohibits criminalizing leaks of information which reveal wrongful
or illegal activities by the government."

Ray McGovern, retired top CIA analysis and member of Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)has stated that CIA
Officer Mary McCarthy had a duty under the Nuremberg Principle to
report violations of the Geneva and Hague convention.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/

article/2006/04/24/AR2006042401601.html

A summary of an important article you should read : THREE DAYS IN ROME?

July-August 2006: The Bush administration is putting in place key
elements of the vision spun in part by the men at the Rome meeting.
In a new campaign to ramp up pressure on the Iranian regime,
millions of dollars are pouring into exile groups, anti-regime
propaganda, pro-democracy projects, and intelligence gathering.
State Department and intelligence personnel are being deployed to
the region and new Iran operations offices are being "stood up" in
the State Department and Pentagon -- the latter even featuring some
of the names familiar from the pre-Iraq-war Office of Special Plans.

Though little-known outside the Beltway, the Pentagon officials,
Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode, were at the height of their powers
among a small, tight-knit coterie of Washington Iran hawks
determined, in the wake of 9/11, to push for regime change not just
in Kabul and Baghdad, but in Tehran as well. Farsi speakers both,
they had become increasingly influential as advisers to top Pentagon
officials consumed with planning a response to the terror attacks.
Franklin was the Iran desk officer in a Pentagon policy office that
would eventually include the Office of Special Plans, an alternative
intelligence shop that became closely allied with Ahmed Chalabi and
his band of Iraqi exile informants. Joining the pair in Rome was
Michael Ledeen, aneoconservative historian and activist who is among
the most impassioned advocates for overthrowing the Iranian regime.

The Bush administration is putting in place key elements of the
vision spun in part by the men at the Rome meeting. In a new
campaign to ramp up pressure on the Iranian regime, millions of
dollars are pouring into exile groups, anti-regime propaganda, pro-
democracy projects, and intelligence gathering. State Department
and intelligence personnel are being deployed to the region and new
Iran operations offices are being "stood up" in the State Department
and Pentagon -- the latter even featuring some of the names familiar
from the pre-Iraq-war Office of Special Plans.

Background on Ledeen:

Ledeen -- who has argued in many articles and media appearances that
Tehran is the chief sponsor of Islamic terrorism -- is part of a
subclan of neoconservatives for whom Iran is not an afterthought to
Iraq but has long been the primary target. For almost a quarter
century, these hardliners have been waiting for Washington to go on
the offensive against the Islamic Republic. But to engineer such a
radical shift, to outmaneuver a CIA and State Department gone soft
on the mullahs, as they saw it, they had to
introduce the Pentagon and the White House to an alternate
intelligence network.

Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), has now published most of his claims in a
book, *Countdown to Terror*, that promises to reveal Iran as "the
iron glove behind all our enemies."

Continuation:

In February, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice requested an
additional $75 million for promoting democracy in Iran; that same
month, a team of U.S. government Iran experts traveled to Los
Angeles to talk to exiles there. State Department Iran watchers are
being "forward deployed" to the Persian Gulf and
surrounding region; in Washington, think tanks and exile groups are
launching Iran initiatives, all of them jostling for the money and
launching whisper campaigns against their competitors in a game
whose stakes have suddenly risen. More covert measures are also
reportedly under way, including the cultivating of proxies among the
Kurds and some of Iran's ethnic tribes to gather intelligence in the
border regions of Iran; and there have been reports that some in the
administration believe missile strikes against Iran's nuclear
program would embarrass the regime and lead to a revolution.

Background:

To many who saw the Iran-Contra scandal unfold, it all adds up to a
familiar picture. Jonathan Winer worked for a Senate committee led
by John Kerry that, in the mid-1980s, probed rumors of the secret
arms deals and of the funneling of the profits to Nicaragua's right-
wing Contra rebels. For years as the investigation continued,
critics -- led by then-congressman Dick Cheney -- "called us
conspiracy nuts," says Winer. The committee kept hearing tips about
private individuals secretly carrying out the government's business,
(foreign policy)
he recalls. "Officials tell you none of it is true, because there's
no record that any of these things took place. It creates a
situation where oversight is practically impossible because official
reality is completely misleading, and unofficial reality -- which is
the truth -- does not exist." In the end, the scandal was uncovered
after control of Congress shifted to the Democrats and,
simultaneously, more and more evidence was revealed (private
individuals secretly carrying out the government's business).

Comment: In addition we have evidence of the Economic Hit Man
operations possibly being run by a private group(s) or company(ies)
carrying out foreign policy on behalf of multi-national and US
corporations.

Source via Mark Jensen

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/07/three_days_in_rome.ht
ml

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NEWSLETTER has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this
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