-Caveat Lector-
-----Original Message-----
From: Das GOAT
To: Roads End
Cc: E Mael0; JusB; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wed, 21 Sep 2005 4:59:23 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Subject: Pentagon SUCCEEDS in Cover-Up of "Able Danger"
Pentagon Bars Military Officers and Analysts From Testifying
by PHILIP SHENON
NY Times, September 21, 2005
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 - The Pentagon said Tuesday that it had blocked
several military officers and intelligence analysts from testifying at
an open Congressional hearing about a highly classified intelligence
program that, the officers have said, identified a ringleader of the
Sept. 11 attacks as a potential terrorist a year before the attacks.
The officers and intelligence analysts had been scheduled to testify
on Wednesday about the program, known as Able Danger, at a hearing of
the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Bryan Whitman*, a Defense Department spokesman, said in a statement
that open testimony "would not be appropriate."
"We have expressed our security concerns and believe it is simply not
possible to discuss Able Danger in any great detail in an open public
forum," Mr. Whitman said.
He offered no other explanation of the Pentagon's reasoning.
Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the
committee, said he was surprised by the Pentagon's decision because "so
much of this has already been in the public domain, and I think that
the American people need to know what happened here."
Mr. Specter said in a telephone interview that he intended to go ahead
with the hearing on Wednesday and hoped that it "may produce a change
of heart by the Department of Defense in answering some very basic
questions."
Two military officers - an active-duty captain in the Navy and a
lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve - have recently said publicly
that they were involved with Able Danger and that the program's
analysts identified Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian-born ringleader of the
Sept. 11 attacks, by name as a potential terrorist by early 2000.
They said they tried to share the information with the Federal Bureau
of Investigation in the summer of 2000, more than a year before the
attacks, but were blocked by Defense Department lawyers. FBI officials,
who answer to the jurisdiction of Mr. Specter's committee, have
confirmed that the Defense Department abruptly canceled meetings in
2000 between the bureau's Washington field office and representatives
of the Able Danger team.
The Pentagon had said that it interviewed three other people who were
involved with Able Danger and who said that they, too, recalled the
identification of Mr. Atta as a terrorist suspect. Mr. Specter said his
staff had talked to all five of the potential witnesses and found that
"credibility has been established" for all of them.
-----------------------------------
*Bryan Whitman is RUMSFELD's personal hatchet man.
Report Critical of Rumsfeld Is Pulled After DOD Protest
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 16, 2005
A government commission studying overseas military bases sent Congress
a report that included criticism of Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld's strategy, then removed the document from the commission Web
site after the Pentagon complained that it divulged 'classified
information.'
The congressionally appointed panel contends that the 262-page report
is based only on public sources, and several commission officials say
they believe the Defense Department was annoyed because their
conclusions include harsh criticism of some elements of Rumsfeld's plan
for streamlining the military.
An official involved in the discussions, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity, said the Pentagon's primary complaint appeared to be that
the report specified Bulgaria and Romania as countries U.S. forces
would rotate through for training, rather than using a more vague
regional identification such as Eastern Europe.
The Overseas Basing Commission released a partial version of the
report at a news conference on May 9, but now the panel has removed
that version from its Web site because of the Pentagon's complaints.
The controversy was first reported yesterday by Newsweek.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Defense Department's
objections are not about the panel's views but about release of
classified information. "The commission was informed and agreed to the
requirement to submit their report for a security review in advance of
releasing it," Whitman said. "Their failure to do so appears to have
resulted in unauthorized disclosure of classified information. When the
department raised concerns over its premature posting to the Internet,
the commission removed the report. The department has initiated
appropriate procedures for security breaches of this nature and also
notified the congressional sponsors of this commission."
The commission chairman, Al Cornella, a Republican, said in an
interview that he was trying to cooperate but that he had not agreed to
have the Pentagon clear the report in advance. "The commission is
confident that everything in our report was obtained from unclassified
sources or settings," he said.
According to e-mails that an official involved in the dispute read to
The Washington Post, Barry Pavel, the Defense Department's director of
strategy on global posture, wrote to Cornella on May 7 to warn of "the
potential need to conduct an investigation regarding violation of
security classification procedures, including the IT-related aspects
(eg, possibly having to clean your servers, etc)."
Commission officials said they took that as a threat to revoke their
security clearances and to bring military police or information
technology agents to their Arlington offices.
The officials said Pavel raised the concerns with Cornella on May 6 in
an e-mail with the subject line, "Re: report." "I'll be frank," Pavel
wrote, according to the e-mail read to The Post. "I found it
professionally disappointing; riddled with errors of fact,
misperceptions, and misunderstandings; and divulging classified
information that will damage our foreign relations and national
security."
The officials said that after the complaint, they removed the original
report from their Web site, collected the printed copies that they
could retract, removed some appendixes and had the reports rebound
before the news conference.
Cornella asked Pavel to mark up a report with his objections. Another
Pentagon official replied, according to the official who read the
e-mail, which was casually punctuated, "Al A proper security review
cannot be done on the fly."
Pavel did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment.
The commission, asked to provide recommendations on Rumsfeld's plan to
return 70,000 troops from overseas and to reposition many of the
remaining forces, urged that "the pace of events be slowed and
re-ordered." The commission found "no evidence of an overwhelming
strategic or operational imperative" to handle the redeployment with
the speed the Pentagon had planned.
--------------------------
Rumsfeld Approved Methods for Guantanamo Interrogations
Jess Bravin
Greg Jaffe
The Wall Street Journal, 10 June 2004
U.S. military interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could put
prisoners in "stress positions" for as long as four hours, hood them
and subject them to 20-hour-long interrogations, "fear of dogs" and
"mild non-injurious physical contact," according to list of techniques
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved in December 2002.
The list, contained in a Jan. 8, 2003, memo reviewed by The Wall
Street Journal, was in effect for about one month until complaints
about the severity of the techniques from some military officers
prompted Mr. Rumsfeld to request a high-level review of interrogation
policy Jan. 17, 2003. The Defense Department has refused to disclose
how many of the methods remained on a new list Mr. Rumsfeld approved in
April 2003, a list that officials say is still in use at the offshore
prison.
It isn't clear whether the rules were applied to military prisons in
Iraq or elsewhere. But some of the practices disclosed this year at the
Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where prisoners were hooded and apparently
menaced with dogs, resemble methods on the December 2002 Guantanamo
list.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the December list was prompted
by intelligence reports during the summer and fall of 2002 suggesting
that a new al Qaeda attack on the U.S. might be imminent. The national
threat level was raised to "Orange," and commanders at the Guantanamo
prison camp asked for official clearance to use techniques outside
traditional Army doctrine in interrogations.
"Several of the detainees at Guantanamo were high-profile, high-value
detainees who were assessed to have important intelligence," Mr.
Whitman said.
Guantanamo officials, working with senior military officials at U.S.
Southern Command, compiled a list of 20 new techniques that were
forwarded to Mr. Rumsfeld's office and the Joint Chiefs of Staff for
their approval, Mr. Whitman said.
In early December 2002, Mr. Rumsfeld approved 17 of the techniques for
use at Guantanamo, a Pentagon official said. The Jan. 8, 2003, memo
appears to include the same 17 techniques approved by Mr. Rumsfeld for
use at Guantanamo in early December.
Only 10 of those techniques were ever used -- all of them on a single
detainee of Saudi nationality suspected of involvement in the Sept. 11
conspiracy, according to a Pentagon official. Officials declined to say
which techniques were used on the detainee, but Gen. James T. Hill, the
senior commander with authority over Guantanamo Bay, said recently that
interrogators at Guantanamo haven't used dogs.
Other military officials have said, however, that additional methods
not described on the list, including placing underwear on prisoners'
heads and, in at least one instance, threatening a recalcitrant
prisoner with the deaths of his relatives, were employed before Mr.
Rumsfeld ordered the January 2003 review.
The December 2002 interrogation methods ranged from "comfortable,
allowed to sit" and "use of direct approach, rewards and cigarettes,"
to others that required approval from superiors. "Physical contact such
as grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger and light pushing"
could be used with approval from the commander of the Guantanamo prison
and with the knowledge of Gen. Hill, who as head of the U.S. Southern
Command oversees Guantanamo.
Interrogators faced with uncooperative prisoners could disguise
themselves as linked "to a country with a reputation for harsh
treatment," according to the list, or yell at them, although "not
directly in ear or to the level it would cause physical pain."
Another set of methods required permission of the officer in charge of
Guantanamo interrogations. Those methods included "use of stress
positions (like standing) for a maximum of four hours," "isolation
facility for up to 30 days unless [commanding general] approves
extension" and "20-hour interrogations." Other such techniques were
"deprivation of light and sound," "use of hood as long as it does not
restrict breathing and under direct observation," "removal of clothing"
and "forced grooming (i.e., shaving of facial hair)."
The interrogation group's commander also would have to approve "using
individual phobias (e.g., fear of dogs) to induce stress" and "removal
of comfort items, including religious items."
Mark Jacobson, a former Pentagon official who worked on the
interrogation policy, said that "fear of dogs does not mean dogs
attacking, it means a properly muzzled dog with a handler." He said
that officials later decided not to remove religious items and that
several harsh methods weren't included in the April 2003 list.
A military intelligence official said that "humiliation techniques"
were a longstanding part of interrogations, where "domination is the
name of the game."
Portions of a March 2003 draft of the Pentagon's April interrogation
report, disclosed by the Journal on Monday, also included a legal
analysis contending that President Bush had the constitutional
authority to disregard laws prohibiting torture if he believed national
security was in jeopardy. Mr. Whitman described that portion as a
"scholarly" exercise and insisted that currently used interrogation
methods are humane.
www.ctrl.org
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substanceânot soap-boxingâplease! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'âwith its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsâis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
<A HREF="http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
