THIS JUST IN! MORE TAX DOLLARS WASTED!

BULLY BOY PRESS &   CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE


NEED ANOTHER REASON TO FIRE ERIC HOLDER?

TODAY THE FBI CONTINUES DIGGING AROUND MICHIGAN LOOKING FOR THE CORPSE OF JIMMY HOFFA.

THIS WILL BE DAY TWO.

DOES THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT REALLY HAVE THE MONEY TO WASTE ON THIS CRAP?

38 YEARS AGO, HOFFA DISAPPEARED.  HE WAS A CROOK, HE WAS SENT TO PRISON, HE WAS IN BED WITH THE MAFIA, WHY IS THIS A CONCERN WORTH WASTING AGENTS AND TIME OVER?

TURN THE MATTER OVER TO GERALDO A POSSE OF VOLUNTEER DEPUTIES. 

HOW DOES THE GOVERNMENT HAVE TIME OR MONEY TO WASTE ON THIS? 

ISN'T THE JUSTIFICATION FOR THE ILLEGAL SPYING ON AMERICANS THAT WE COULD BE HIT BY A TERRORIST ATTACK AT ANY MINUTE? 

SO HOW IS THERE TIME TO WASTE OBSESSING OVER A CROOK WHO DISAPPEARED 38 YEARS AGO?


FROM THE TCI WIRE:




Glenn Greenwald (Guardian) broke the news: two weeks ago about the NSA collecting metadata on all Americans phone calls and then the news that the NSA and FBI were using PRISM, a program collecting data from the internet -- video, photos, e-mails, you name it.  Ed Snowden is the whistle-blower who exposed the programs.  Today, at the Guardian, he participated in an online discussion.  Among those asking questions were AP's Kimberly Dozier:


Kimberly Dozier @KimberlyDozier

US officials say terrorists already altering TTPs because of your leaks, & calling you traitor. Respond? http://www.guardiannews.com  #AskSnowden

7:34 AM - 17 Jun 2013

Answer:

US officials say this every time there's a public discussion that could limit their authority. US officials also provide misleading or directly false assertions about the value of these programs, as they did just recently with the Zazi case, which court documents clearly show was not unveiled by PRISM.
Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to acheive that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.
Further, it's important to bear in mind I'm being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.

Kimberly Dozier's AP report on Snowden's chat is here.  Asked by Ryan Latvaitis about his advice to other potential whistle-blowers, Snowden replied, "This country is worth dying for."  That's not the talk of a Benedict Arnold, those are the words of someone concerned about democracy and the Constitution.  In response to a question from the Guardian's Spencer Ackerman, Snowden denied supplying the Chinese government with classified information.

On CBS This Morning today, Senate weakling Dick Durbin showed up to try to pretend he was finally on the job.


Charlie Rose: Britain's Guardian reports [. . .] the NSA spied on Russia's president and other foreign leaders at a G20 summit in London in 2009.

Norah O'Donnell:  Illinois Senator Dick Durbin is here, he's the number two Democrat in the Senate and Chairman of the Subcommittee that overseas funding for intelligence.  Senator, good morning.

Dick Durbin: Good morning. 

Norah O'Donnell:  The news today is that the head of the NSA is going to release new details where more than a dozen plots, terrorist plots were foiled in the US and other countries.  Is that enough to quiet some of the privacy concerns?

Little Dick Durbin: I think it's an important development and I'm glad they're doing it.  And this is an issue I've been on for years, I've offered admnents on the floor of the Senate and in the Judiciary Committee to try to narrow the gathering of information to what we need and not more. Uh, and now we're going to take a closer look.  What I need to know on these cases, if we had known the suspect and gone after those phone records after some suspicion could we have come up with the same information?  Rathter than the approach that's being used -- gather everything, hold everything, wait to see if maybe Charlie Rose's name is going to pop up at some point in the future so you can go back in phone records of four or five years ago?  Can you gather that information as needed with suspects?  Or do you have to gather all of that in advance?  That's the key question.

Charlie Rose: You say you've been working on this for a long time --

Little Dick Durbin:  I sure have.

Charlie Rose:  Has there been push back and resistance on security grounds and therfore no changes have been made?

Little Dick Durbin:  That's right.  Initially, under the PATRIOT Act, the provision I supported was there and it protected -- 

Charlie Rose:  Do you expect anything to change now?

Little Dick Durbin:  It can.   It depends on the appetite of the American people for privacy.  It's an interesting thing because you get different things in these polls -- 

And we'll stop mincing  Dick Durbin there because he's not cute and for a man his age and girth to act that way is really disgusting.  When Durbin was 18, The Four Seasons had a number on hit with "Walk Like A Man" -- at what point will Durbin?  Polls, he said.

He doesn't know a poll any better than the bulk of the press.  CNN has a new poll out.  It's shocking.  If you don't know how to read a poll.  The findings of this poll?  They were there weeks ago if you're educated in the social sciences, if you're actually educated, you knew to look at the independents when the press started polling.  That is always your clue.  This is not anything I invented with any alleged wisdom.  These are the basics of polling.  We've explained it and explained it -- most recently June 13th.  The press needs to learn how to interpret polls.  There's really no point in an 'insta poll' of asking people the weekend of revelations what they think.  Most haven't decided and most are attached to their partisanship.  The only value of those 'insta polls' is the numbers for the independent voters.  We're not going to review it again today, I'm getting tired of spoon feeding.

Regardless of Barack's very bad polling numbers, Little Dick Durbin did not take an oath to uphold a poll, he took an oath to uphold the Constitution.  Is that confusing to him?  If it's confusing, he needs to resign because he's clearly not qualified to hold office.  "I sure have" been working on this for a long time, he boasts.  Then he's done an awful job.  It shouldn't be that difficult.  As Senator Mark Udall Tweeted yesterday:

Mark Udall ‏@MarkUdall 3h

Americans deserve to know govt's secret interpretation of US #surveillance laws. Govt overreach is never good. #COpolitcs

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A comment left to the CBS News report is worth noting (and thanks to the CBS News friend who passed it on):

linkicon reporticon emailicon

ByrdSong says:

This country won't spend a few million to build a simple computer system to manage the VA claims to care for and compensate our wounded veterans of two illegal and totally unnecessary wars, yet it will spend untold billions building a top secret system to spy on, collect, store and peruse information on every person in this country. And yet many out here call Snowden and Bradley traitors. Go figure.

Go figure indeed.  Last week, I sat in a House Judiciary Committee hearing listening to FBI Director Robert Mueller lie that if they had the NSA spying program prior to 9-11, it would have prevented 9-11.  And people accepted this as fact on the Committee.  Despite the fact that the recent bombing in Boston stands out most infamously for the fact that the FBI never shared details with Boston authorities.  As Scott Shane and Michael S. Schmidt (New York Times) reported last month, "The F.B.I. did not tell the Boston police about the 2011 warning from Russia about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the two brothers accused in the Boston Marathon bombings, the city's police chief said Thursday during the first public Congressional hearing on the terrorist attack."  That had the program but nothing got shared then so stop lying to the American people, Robert Mueller.


Yesterday, Peter Eisler and Susan Page (USA Today) hosted a video chat with NSA whistle-blowers Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe  and with Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project.  Excerpt.

Susan Page:   All of you raised your objections to NSA programs in the extent of the surveillance that they involved for months or years before they erupted publicly.  With Edward Snowden, he went directly to the news media with his story.  Based on your experience, did he have another effective option? 

William Binney:  Well, I mean, we tried to stay, for the better part of seven years, inside the government.  Trying to get the government to recognize the unconstitutional, illegal activity that they were doing, openly admit that, and define ways that would be legal and Constitutionally acceptable to achieve the ends that they were after.  And that just failed totally because no one in Congress, we couldn't get anybody in the courts and certainly no one in the Inspector General's Justice Dept  didn't pay any attention to it.  And so all of the efforts we made just produced no change whatsoever.  All it did was continue to get worse and expand. 

Susan Page:  So he did the right thing?

William Binney: Yes.  Yes.  I think he did.

[. . .]

Thomas Drake:  There is a bottom line though.  The government unchained itself from the Constitution as a result of 9-11 and in the absolute darkest of secrecy, at the highest levels of government, approved by the White House, NSA became the executive agent for a surveillance program, extraordinarily broad surveillance program that turned the United States of America effectively into a foreign nation for electronic dragnet surveillance and it started with phone numbers.


Ed Snowden is the reason this conversation -- this overdue conversation is taking place.  Not Dick Durbin.  Ed Snowden risked a great deal to raise this issue.  The editorial board of the Guardian noted last night:

In unmasking himself as the leaker of the files showing the uses and abuses of western intelligence, Edward Snowden called for a wider public debate. He suggested that the public was sleepwalking into a surveillance society through a lack of knowledge about what was being done in their name. President Obama, reacting in a measured way to the fact of the leak, also welcomed the opportunity to have such a debate.
A meaningful debate cannot be held without information. Snowden's case is that almost no one – not ordinary citizens, not the press, not the courts, not even congress – is in a position to discuss the reasonable balance between security, privacy and openness because they are denied the full and true facts. From Snowden's vantage point – reading a great deal of source material – he believes the US National Security Agency "routinely" lies to congress.




Let's move over to the IRS scandal where apparently everyone's competing for Idiot of the Day.  Let's start with US House Rep Elijah Cummings.  He is the Ranking Member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.  The Chair is Darrell Issa.  Cummings and Issa are in conflict.  Cummings feels that since Issa is releasing transcripts to the press -- transcripts of interviews with IRS employees -- that the transcripts should be public and should be public right now.   That part actually makes sense -- and would even if the press wasn't seeing them.  The government needs to stop sitting on information and start informing the citizens what is going on.

Where Cummings is being stupid?  Josh Hicks (Washington Post) reports that Cummings is releasing his own excerpts "The Cummings release revealed that a self-described 'conservative Republican' in the agency’s Cincinnati office elevated the first tea party case to Washington, seeking guidance."  If tomorrow, which could happen, a Democrat in the Cincinnati office is found to have done something untoward, the "Demcorat" does not matter, the "Republican" does not matter.  The IRS is not supposed to be politicized nor are low level officials capable of carrying off political targeting.  Cummings is attempting to politicize the scandal and he needs to stop doing that.  It undercuts his overall argument and it sets him up to look very foolish if a minor member in the scandal turns out to be a Democrat or someone who donated or campaigned for Democrats.  It's not smart.  He also looks stupid when he makes statements about the White House not being involved.  A) Why is he reinforcing that possibility to begin with?  B) It makes it appear that his only interest is whether or not the White House was involved when the American people have made clear in polls that they find the targeting of political groups outrageous.  Is he serving the American people or the White House?  Since every member of the House who chooses to remain in Congress is up for re-election next year, he might want to concentrate a little more on how he is seen?


Was Cummings responding to Fox News reporting?  I have no idea but for him to make such a stupid move (and it's gravely stupid, you don't stake out a position like that until all the interviews are done), it seemed possible.  So I went to Fox News and found more stupidity in this article.  They bill it as a Fox News report and, at the end, offer that "The Associated Press contributed to this report."  If it's not entirely AP,  Fox News needs to do some firings because of the errors in the article that repeatedly downplay the actual events.   Take Lois Lerner who pleaded the Fifth and refused to testify before Congress.  That alone makes your character in question.  Lerner was not going to be asked whom she slept with or if she was a member of the Communist Party or the mob.  She was going to be asked about how she did her job.  A government employee who pleads the Fifth rather than answer those type of questions is questionable for that reason alone.  The press has no problem dragging whistle blowers' names through the mud but a government employee -- whose entire career is public as a result of being a government employee -- that takes the Fifth is off limits?

Apparently so, "Lerner is the IRS official who first disclosed the targeting at a legal conference May 10."  Is that how we tell the story now?  She lied in her disclosure at the ABA conference and, as we know now, she also planted the question with a friend.  That too goes to the character of Lois Lerner.  It's amazing the mud Ed Snowden's dragged through while the joke that is Lois Lerner gets a pass."


A version of the AP article with Stephen Ohlemacher's name attached to it can be found here. It's the height of stupidity.  And pair it with Tamara Keith's nonsense for NPR that we called out last week.  The key takeway of Tamara's article is that she found a connection to DC.  This is a major detail because IRS officials testifying to Congress have repeatedly blamed it on lower level officials in Cincinati.  At one point, the idiot states, "There's a second employee, Elizabeth Hofacre who, for six months, worked on these Tea Party cases. And she was actually working with a tax law specialist in Washington, D.C., and she talks about being frustrated about how long it took him to respond."  Who is the tax law specialist?  She never mentions his name.  Nailing down the specifics was apparently too much reporting for Tamara.   If Tamara was referring to IRS official Holly Paz (the IRS's director of rulings and agreements), that's especially sad because Paz's attorney told USA Today's Gregory Korte that Paz has been placed on administrative leave.  Korte has the best report on the IRS scandal.  He notes Paz insists that "tea party" was, she thought, just short hand and that it could require to any number of groups -- even liberal ones.  Is that true?

It's not hard to prove it true or false.  Paz states she personally worked on 30 cases.  So examine Holly Paz's cases -- are they a split (to any degree) of liberal groups and conservative ones (and are the liberal groups not liberal ones that called out Barack)?  If not, Holly Paz lied.  Regarding Paz's claims, Korte points out:

But Elizabeth Hofacre, the agency's emerging issues coordinator in Cincinnati when the targeting began, has told investigators that she kicked out any progressive groups that other agents tried to put in with the Tea Party cases. She said she understood the term to mean conservative or Republican groups. "I was tasked to do Tea Parties, and I wasn't — I wasn't equipped or set up to do anything else."


(To AP's Stephen Ohlemacher's credit, he does note that Paz's testimony contradicts what IRS officials have claimed and he leads with that unlike Tamara Keith last week.)

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THIS JUST IN! THE WORLD TURNS AGAINST HIM!

BULLY BOY PRESS &   CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE

BITCH BARRY.  HOW THE TIMES HAVE CHANGED.

HE WAS ONCE BELOVED.

NOW THE CELEBRITY IN CHIEF IS SEEN AS A CROOK AND IT'S NOT JUST IN AMERICA.

IN HONG KONG TODAY, PROTESTERS CARRIED SIGNS DENOUNCING BARRY O INCLUDING "FREE SNOWDEN, ARREST OBAMA."  DESPITE THE DOWNPOUR, HUNDREDS TURNED OUT TO SHOW SUPPORT FOR WHISTLE-BLOWER ED SNOWDEN AND OPPOSITION TO BARRY O.

AND RON PAUL'S AMONG THE MANY CALLING OUT BARRY O'S CLAIM OF 'EVIDENCE' THAT THE SYRIAN GOVERNMENT USED CHEMICAL WEAPONS.

HE USED TO BE SO BELOVED.

THEN PEOPLE GOT TO KNOW HIM.

"WHY DO YOU THINK MY MOMMY SENT ME AWAY TO HAWAII?" WHIMPERED BARRY O TO THESE REPORTERS.  "THE MORE PEOPLE GET TO KNOW ME, THE MORE THEY HATE ME."

POOR BITCH BARRY.


FROM THE TCI WIRE:

Yesterday, a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee held a hearing on human rights in Russia.  Why?  Because we're all so damn concerned about human rights?  Please.  Russia is blocking the US on the United Nations' Security Council with regards to Syria.  The hearing was little more than mua roi nuoc (a centuries old Vietnamese tradition of water puppetry).  In that hearing, you have everything that is wrong with the United States government.  Resources are wasted not just to allow the government to poke their nose in everything, resources are used to penalize anyone who doesn't fall in line with the US government.  Resources are wasted to defocus and ignore pressing US issues. That hearing was  a Subcommittee hearing and presiding was the always ridiculous Senator Barbara Boxer.

Committee Chair Robert Menedez is also becoming a joke -- not because the US Justice Dept stayed silent, until after the senator's November re-election, on Menedez' employment of a criminal who also happened to be a foreign national and undocumented worker.  Menedez is a joke because he wastes US tax dollars and refuses to do his job.  He only holds hearing on human rights if it's a country that the US is in conflict with.


Syria?  Oh, yeah, Menedez can schedule a hearing on that.  He can waste all of our time on that.  Where's the hearing on Iraq?


The US taxpayer isn't watching millions of US tax dollars be spent in Russia each day.  But, among foreign countries, the biggest budget item for the State Dept, billions each year, is Iraq.  So where's the Iraq hearing.  None so far in June and none on the schedule.  None in May.  None in April. None in March.  None in February.  None in January.

In the [PDF format warning] "Department of State and Other International Programs" Fiscal Year 2014 budget issued by the White House,

* Includes $6.8 billion for the frontline states of Iraq ($2.1 billion), Afghanistan ($3.4 billion), and Pakistan ($1.4 billion), including $3 billion in base funding and $3.8 billion in Overseas Contingency Operations funding.  The Budget prioritizes core diplomatic and development activities to ensure strong, lasting partnerships with these countries and to promote stability.

* The Budget continues to support U.S. security, diplomatic and development goals in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq while scaling down funding for operations and assistance, consistent with U.S. policy.

Now that's just some of what the State Dept wants for Iraq.  Let's move over to DoD.  DoD's requesting money for Iraq in Fiscal Year 2014.  Just for the Office of Security Cooperation - Iraq?
"Addendum A Overseas Contingency Operations" explains to us the amount is $200,000,000.   Although they make it much smaller by repeatedly referring to it -- not just in tables, which would be understandable, but in text as well -- as ".2" -- because they're doing billions (in tables, there's no excuse for rendering that way in text).  200 million dollars.

What could 200 million dollars do in US cities in the next fiscal year?  It's just part of what the Defense Dept 'needs' in Iraq -- you know, the country the press and White House press secretary keeps insisting the war is over in.   It's noted, "The OSC-I is the critical Defense component of the U.S. Mission Iraq and a foundational element of our long-term strategic partnership with Iraq."   This doesn't cover the Special Ops troops in Iraq or the 'counter-terrorism' efforts in Iraq.

No one will see that money spent in the United States and, apparently, Congress will provide no oversight as it is spent overseas.

That is their job, to provide oversight.  Not only has Menedez  failed to provide oversight on Iraq, he's failed to provide oversight on the State Dept.  This week's scandal about alleged wide-spread use of prostitution by State Dept officials and employees, pedophilia by the same and a drug ring that State supposedly ran in Iraq (runs in Iraq?), have gotten no attention from the Menedez.

As someone who reads the Iraqi press, let me steal Barack's "let me be clear," you get off your damn ass and you clear up the drug thing immediately.  Iraqi media has been covering an alleged huge increase in drugs for several years now.  Smart representatives of the US government would hear rumors of an alleged US State Dept drug ring in Iraq and say, "Damn, we better investigate this real quick before the rumors spread and Iraqis are saying, 'They brought drugs into our country!'  If we don't get to the bottom of this immediately, then -- true or false -- this is going to be another 'CIA brought cocaine in' scandal!"

That's when you provide oversight -- not just because the truth needs to be known but also, in case the rumors are completely unfounded, so that you can kill them quickly before they spread like wildfire.  Now why might there be a scandal on this?

Maybe because there's no Inspector General for the State Dept?

Mendez is aware of it.  With the Committee's Ranking Member Bob Corker, he drafted a letter to the White House on that this week:


We are deeply concerned that the two lead agencies carrying out the international programs and activities of the United States, the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), have been operating without permanent Inspectors General for a considerable period of time. The Department of State has not had an Inspector General since 2008 and USAID has had a vacancy since 2011. Inspectors General play a crucial role in identifying ineffective programs, process weaknesses, and wasteful spending that undermine public confidence in government.
It is critical that your administration provide this committee with highly qualified nominees who can function independently and objectively in these positions in the near future. In a recent hearing before this committee, Secretary Kerry testified that he would like to see the Department of State’s Inspector General vacancy filled quickly and noted that the White House had recently selected a highly qualified nominee. It has been over a month since that hearing and we await the nomination.
It is vitally important that the Inspectors General are able to function independently and objectively. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has, since 2007, documented the lack of adherence to proper auditing standards and the lack of independence and autonomy within the Department of State’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). In particular, GAO has noted that the Office is led by “management and Foreign Service officials [, which] is not consistent with professional standards for independence;” the “use of Foreign Service Officers ... to lead OIG inspections resulted in, at a minimum, the appearance of independence impairment;” and the “OIG relied on inspections rather than audits to provide oversight coverage resulting in gaps to the audit oversight of the department.” It is imperative that the next Inspector General at the Department of State resolves these matters and protects the independence and credibility of the OIG.


When there are no IGs and there is scandal and you're the Committee over the State Dept, you call for hearings.  You put Russia and the other Executive Branch grudge f**ks on hold and you provide the supervision that's lacking.

Protests have been ongoing in Iraq since December 21st.  The protests continued today.  Iraqi Spring MC noted the turnout in Baquba and that the spokesperson for those with special needs stated, "Disability will not keep us from rejecting injustice, tyranny and government repression."  Iraqi Spring MC also notes that the people turned out in Baghdad and in Ramadi.  National Iraq News Agency reports, "Thousands of citizens flocked since early hours of the day from from different parts and cities of Anbar Province to sit-ins of Falluja and Ramadi, to participate in Friday unified prayer."  NINA also notes police were deployed and set up checkpoints in Falluja and Ramadi, imposing "tight security measures in the sit-ins squares."  Iraqi Spring MC reports that Nouri's forces surrounded the platform at the Baquba sit-in in an attempt to frighten the protesters.  NINA notes that in Samarra, Imam Diab Hamid called on the security forces to stop using security forces against the people and the Imam told the demonstrators that "several weeks ago you voted to replace UN representative in Iraq, Martin Kobler, and now the oppressor has been relieved of his post" (UN Secretary-General announced this week Kobler will be moving onto the Congo).  The Imam congratulated the protesters on their peaceful accomplishments.  In Diyala the call was to preserve the unity and security.   In Balad Ruz, there was the call to continue the peaceful sit-ins.  In addition, Kitabat reports that in Ramadi there is a call for Nouri al-Maliki to come to the sit-in and dialogue with the protesters.


What sparked this wave of protests?  Oh, the Senate Foreign Affairs has never seen fit to explore that or acknowledge what's taking place in Iraq.  That would be oversight and, under Menedez, they don't do oversight.  It's sad that the Committee Vice President Joe Biden once led could, and did, in 2008, explore that the future of Iraq might mean Nouri using weapons on his own people.  That's come to pass, that's no longer a projection or a prediction.  And it's come to pass without any oversight from the Committee that Senator Robert Menedez chairs.


Why the protests?  The failure to implement the power-sharing agreement (the US-brokered Erbil Agreement) that ended the eight-month plus political stalemate of 2010.  The failure to fix public services (while spending billions on weapons).  The issue of the disappeared, Nouri's attacks on his political rivals in Iraqiya, and other longstanding issues.  But the spark that got people into the streets (again)?  Human Rights Watch's Sarah Leah Whitson:



 

 Following an outcry against revelations of abuse of women detainees and the arrest of several bodyguards of the popular Sunni finance minister, the government promised in January to reform the judicial system, including reviewing the cases of 6,000 people who have been detained but not tried or even ordered released, in some cases for years, under the country’s antiterrorism law, and initiating an inquiry into widespread allegations of forced confessions and reliance on secret informants.


And in addition to the abuse of females in Iraqi prisons, Nouri's forces have repeatedly attacked the protesters.  Most infamously there was the  Tuesday, April 23rd massacre of a sit-in in Hawija when Nouri's federal forces stormed it.  Alsumaria noted Kirkuk's Department of Health (Hawija is in Kirkuk)  announced 50 activists have died and 110 were injured in the assault.  UNICEF informed the world that 8 of the dead were children and twelve more children were left injured.


Neither Menedez nor Boxer felt the need to hold a hearing on that.  There concern for 'human rights' are based not on actual atrocities but on geography -- location, location, location!

Nouri's attacks on the protesters haven't stopped.  From yesterday's snapshot:

 Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com) notes:

The Iraqi military’s violent attacks on Sunni Arab protesters weren’t the panacea that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was expecting them to be, but it also cost the army 1,070 troops, according to officials.
The troops, ethnic Kurds, mutinied when they were ordered to attack a Sunni Arab town where protests were taking place, and then refused to attend “disciplinary re-training” meant to ensure that they wouldn’t hesitate to attack Iraqi towns if ordered in the future.

AFP reports that Tuz Khurmatu Mayor Shallal Abdul explains the troops are still in their same positions, they're just now working for and paid by the Peshmerga -- the elite Kurdish fighting force.


 Nouri's attacks on the Iraqi people are so out of control that over a thousand members of the Iraqi military defect to the Peshmerga and that's not cause for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to hold a hearing on Iraq?

Tuesday, Human Rights Watch issued a call:

 Iraqi authorities should immediately investigate evidence that federal police executed four men and a 15-year-old boy on May 3, 2013, south of Mosul. Witnesses last saw the victims in the custody of the federal police 3rd Division, commanded by Gen. Mehdi Gharawi, who had been removed from his post as a federal police commander following claims he was implicated in torture and other abuses but was later reinstated.  Villagers found the bodies of the five in a field three kilometers from East Mustantiq village on May 11, near where federal police were seen taking them immediately after their arrest. A witness said the bodies had multiple large gunshot wounds, and machine gun shells were found in the vicinity. But photos leaked to the media by a police officer show police officers with the bodies in a less decomposed state than they were when the villagers found them.
"The apparent police role in the machine gun execution of four men and a boy requires an immediate investigation and the prosecution of those responsible," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "That these killings may have been committed by a unit under a commander once implicated in torture shows why abuses can’t be swept under the rug and forgotten."


When exactly is the Senate Foreign Relations Committee going to provide oversight on Iraq?

April set a record for the most violent deaths in Iraq in five years . . . until May came along and set a record for the most violent deaths in Iraq in five years.


 All Iraq News reports 1 Sahwa leader was shot dead outside his Shurqat home today.  NINA notes a Tikrit roadside bombing claimed the life of 1 police officer and left another injured, a Kirkuk bombing injured one police officer, and Nineveh Province candidate Muhannad Ghazi al-Murad was shot dead today as he left a mosque.  Alsumaria notes a bombing targeting an truck load of oil left one civilian dead. Through Thursday, Iraq Body Count counts 195 violent deaths so far for the month.

And no concern from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee?  Just waive the billions on through for next year, provide no oversight at all, right?

As they repeatedly fail to provide oversight, they do get that they look like a joke, right?  They do get that the world sees Iraq falling further apart (as a direct result of the US-led invasion) and sees talk of 'human rights' from the US as laughably hypocritical, right?


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"Soledad O'Brien takes her lack of appeal to HBO"
"THIS JUST IN! SHE'S READY TO TANK HBO!"

THIS JUST IN! SHE'S READY TO TANK HBO!

BULLY BOY PRESS &   CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE

MEDIA MENACE SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, SPOOFED ON "30 ROCK" AS  CARMEN CHAO, HAS LANDED ON HER ASS YET AGAIN AND THIS TIME IT'S COVERING HBO.

THE FAILED NBC ENTERTAINMENT PERSONALITY WENT ON TO FAIL AT CNN.

NOW SHE'S GOING TO TRY TO TAKE DOWN HBO.

SHE TOLD THE PRESS SHE'S VERY EXCITED AND SHE KNEW SHE WASN'T GOING TO BE PART OF JEFFREY ZUCKER'S VISION OF CNN.

WHEN THESE REPORTERS POINTED OUT THAT SHE SAID SOMETHING DIFFERENT LAST DECEMBER, SOLEDAD O'BRIEN INSISTED THAT IT TOOK HER A BIT TO REALIZE WHAT WAS WHAT.

WHEN THESE REPORTERS ASKED HER HOW IT FELT TO BE SO UNWANTED, SHE CALLED FOR SECURITY.  WHEN ASKED IF SHE WAS MOVING TO HBO TO KEEP HER AWAY FROM UNSUSPECTING VIEWERS WHO MIGHT COME ACROSS HER ON BROADCAST TV OR EVEN BASIC CABLE, O'BRIEN GROWLED, BEGAN BARKING AND CHARGED AT THESE REPORTERS WHO WERE ABLE TO DISTRACT HER WITH A CHEW TOY.


FROM THE TCI WIRE:


 Alex Gibney's We Steal Secrets is the new documentary telling the story about WikiLeaks.  As a result, it's been trashed -- largely by trash.  Loved the comments (that's sarcasm) by the trash that wears a wire to a court-martial -- we all know who I mean, right? -- where no recording devices are allowed.  That is how you end up with audio of Bradly Manning speaking that you release to the world.

WikiLeaks was an organization that pledged to release secrets.  It was a cute stunt and that's what the documentary exposes that probably cuts to the core of too many people who are too invested in Julian Assange and really need to take a step back and get a little perspective.

In its brief history, WikiLeaks accomplished a great deal.  It was to be the people's intelligence agency.  You don't hear that anymore because that motive doesn't come with First Amendment protections in the US, but that's what it was presented as (and the documentary captures that).  It allowed for minor embarrassments in a series of minor -- on the world stage -- exposures.


Then came its biggest leak.   Monday April 5, 2010, WikiLeaks released US military video of a July 12, 2007 assault in Iraq. 12 people were killed in the assault including two Reuters journalists Namie Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh.  None of its subsequent leaks would ever be as massive or impressive.  That's because we are largely a visual people and this one had video.  It had video that the US government had refused to release.  Reuters had pressed forever to know how their two journalists were killed.  They were stonewalled.

The video contained the comments of those doing the killing.  To the shock of many, there was a cold hearted and a they-got-what-they-deserve attitude on the recording.  As though you could do that without hardening and removing yourself from questioning?  I don't know.  A lot of the shock over the video was about drawing lines between yourself and the ones doing the killing and, honestly, there's no great line there.  Anyone could have been the pawn that the killers were.  That is what the training and the socialization is about.

You got drama queens denouncing the killers.  But the killers killed on orders and acted as they were trained to do.  Meaning the problem went above them.  That was too much to explore, that was too much to acknowledge for the simplistic who need everything in black and white -- strangely, this is a group that bashed Bully Boy Bush for his either/or stances.

We didn't glom on the sugaring coating.  Check the archives, we were talking about the larger issues.  Also, you can go into archives before April 5, 2010 and you'll see we supported WikiLeaks.  You can go after, and you'll see the same thing.  When the cables came out, unlike all of the Julian Assange groupies (Greg Mitchell, etc.), we actually covered those in real time.  Democracy Now! couldn't be bothered.  We spent weeks on them here.  And we charted what was happening -- the silence -- at Third.  October 30, 2010, Ava and I wrote "TV: Media of the absurd:"

As two who've experienced not only multiple revivals of Albee's Tiny Alice but the canonization of the Twenty-First Century's two leading dim bulbs Bush and Barack, we thought we had a handle on the theatre of the absurd but, in fact, nothing prepares you.
That point became very clear in last week's coverage of the release of government documents. Friday October 22nd, WikiLeaks released 391,832 US military documents on the Iraq War. The documents -- US military field reports -- reveal torture and abuse and the ignoring of both. They reveal ongoing policies passed from the Bush administration onto the Obama one. They reveal that both administrations ignored and ignore international laws and conventions on torture. They reveal a much higher civilian death toll than was ever admitted to.
How would Panhandle Media handle this? The beggar media, for those who've forgotten, came to new levels of name-recognition (if not fame) and access to the pockets and, more importantly, pocket books of a huge number of Americans as a result of the illegal Iraq War. It was a cash cow, a rainmaker, for Panhandle Media. For the first time in it's 145 year history, The Nation magazine found itself raking in the dough and turning an actual profit, Pacifica Radio found itself flush with so much cash, local stations skimming off the top wasn't really a liability. Those with faces for radio, found a home on TV. It truly was a heady time during which many recast themselves as independent voices of the left when, in fact, they were nothing more than megaphones for the Democratic Party.
Bully Boy Bush's eight-year occupation of the White House was bad for the world but it put a shiny veneer and polish on a number of whores and that was never more clear than last week if you were waiting for WikiLeaks coverage from Panhandle Media.
The Nation magazine offered nothing on WikiLeaks last week. There was a video of Jeremy Schahill appearing on MSNBC talking about WikiLeaks -- that would be MSNBC's content that The Nation magazine reposted. They also reposted Laura Flanders GritTV 'commentary' that managed to buzzword WikiLeak without ever actually discussing it or explaining it. In fact, Laura's 'commentary' was like a trashy website listing porn terms in a desperate attempt to drive up traffic. Which, if you think about it, really does summarize The Nation today.
Yes, the same Laura who once declared it impossible to ignore WikiLeaks (look for her April 2010 column making that claim) ignored it. Despite having a half-hour TV show which airs Monday through Friday. She ignored it over and over. But that's what a whore does and that's all Laura Flanders has become, a cheap, tacky and, yes, ugly media whore.
She's far from alone. In These Times boasts no public access TV 'celebrity' but they couldn't be bothered writing one damn word last week about the documents WikiLeaks released. The Progressive?
Last week, the magazine published 15 online text pieces and not one was about WikiLeaks. That's appalling. In a ridiculous radio commentary last week, Matthew Rothschild opened with, "WikiLeaks has performed a service that our mainstream corporate media has failed to do."
Wow. They've failed! You know, Matt, it's too bad you don't run a magazine. If you did, you could get everyone to cover the WikiLeaks release . . . Oh, wait.
Matthew, you must have forgotten, you are the editor and the CEO of The Progressive magazine. You know what's "really ugly"? Your failure to publish even one article at the website. And you can trash US Senator John Ensign all you want (we have no need to defend Ensign) but if you don't want to look like a hypocrite, you shouldn't attack Ensign for not wanting a hearing on the revelations when you and your magazine can't even write about it. 'Not at all." [For more on Rothschild, refer to Elaine's "The Whoring of America" from last week.]
All last week, Beggar Media had time for every subject except the WikiLeaks release. An actress phoned us Friday to say of KPFK, "It's offered more 'news' of Obama on The Daily Show than on WikiLeaks." No, she wasn't joking. To listen to KPFK programming last week was to have no idea that WikiLeaks released any documents. During the Bush reign, KPFK had a number of hosts insisting no one cared more about the Iraq War than they did. Today? All quiet on the Democratic Party front.

We had no problem supporting WikiLeaks because we had no problem supporting the truth.  But Panhandle Media?  They couldn't take the truth in the releases.  They avoided one of the most serious revelations and you had to look to overseas media to find about that -- start with  Angus Stickler's "Obama administration handed over detainees despite reports of torture" (The Bureau of Investigative Journalism).  The notion that Panhandle Media supported WikiLeaks?  It's a myth, it's a revisionary myth.  They offered generic lip service 'support.' They refused to utilize the cables, to broadcast what was in them, to write about what was in them.  They sure as hell weren't going to go after their hero Barack.  But in their black and white world, they would use them to vilify Bully Boy Bush --  who Barack was never going to prosecute so we should all just take the 'win' and ignore now that he was finally evicted from the White House.

But it was all about yesteryear because focusing on that allowed these children posing as adults to pretend all was well in the world.  That's the lie WikiLeaks was fighting so don't even pretend that a Michael Ratner or an Amy Goodman or The Nation magazine was supporting WikiLeaks at that time.

This is important due to the reaction Alex Gibney's documentary has received from some.  I like the documentary, I applaud it.  But I understand film and I'm also not a cheap whore.  A friend at Universal (which has released the film) asked if I would give it a plug in a snapshot and couldn't understand why the film was so reviled by some.  I explained, "You understand film, you understand a documentary.  But these people don't understand anything but blind faith in their comic book heroes."

As they've demonstrated repeatedly, they're children who will not face truth.  They will lie that all US troops are out of Iraq -- a war they once decried and how they attacked lies about Iraq then -- because their hero is Barack Obama.  They're children who couldn't deal with the information that WikiLeaks released.  You had to be an adult especially to go through those cables because there were a ton of them and lazy children don't do that.  They instead offer generic statements about WikiLeaks and pretend that's covering the release of the cables.  Lazy children have to believe that Julian Assange is god and Superman and Buddah and ET rolled into one.  Because in their simplistic world, in their eternal childhood, that's how they see things.

The documentary's far from perfect.  I don't approve of the term "sex crimes."  Rape is rape but "rape" is only used in the documentary when we see text reports on camera.  The film doesn't pretend to know that Julian Assange raped the two women.  It does allow one woman to tell her side and offers frequent clips of Julian telling his side on that issue -- telling his side means attacking the women -- the thing that did more to destroy the myth of Julian than anything else as his howler monkeys echoed those attacks and the world recoiled.

What Michael Ratner -- who is part of Julian's defense and misuses the public airwaves every week on WBAI to promote his clients or his family (in the case most recently of Lizzy Ratner's appearance) -- wants is a film that says Julian Assange is a victim of others.  What the film argues is Assange is a victim of his own making.  Looking at British newspaper coverage of him, Julian declares, "Wow.  I'm untouchable now in this country."  How quickly that would change. 

Documentaries have a point of view.  Sorry this a surprise to some, sorry that so many never bothered to educate themselves.  If you think I'm a defender of the First Amendment (and I am), I'm an even bigger defender or art and do not suffer fools on that topic.

The documentary also tells Bradley Manning's story and that especially offends the children because Bradley's only of interest to them in terms of Julian Assange.  They've done damn little for Bradley the entire time he's been imprisoned.


Monday June 7, 2010, the US military announced that they had arrested Bradley Manning and he stood accused of being the leaker of the Collateral Damage video. Leila Fadel (Washington Post) reported in August 2010 that Manning had been charged -- "two charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The first encompasses four counts of violating Army regulations by transferring classified information to his personal computer between November and May and adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system. The second comprises eight counts of violating federal laws governing the handling of classified information." In March, 2011, David S. Cloud (Los Angeles Times) reported that the military has added 22 additional counts to the charges including one that could be seen as "aiding the enemy" which could result in the death penalty if convicted. The Article 32 hearing took place in December. At the start of this year, there was an Article 32 hearing and, February 3rd, it was announced that the government would be moving forward with a court-martial. Bradley has yet to enter a plea. The court-martial was supposed to begin before the November 2012 election but it was postponed until after the election so that Barack wouldn't have to run on a record of his actual actions.   February 28th, Bradley admitted he leaked to WikiLeaks.  And why.


Bradley Manning:   In attempting to conduct counter-terrorism or CT and counter-insurgency COIN operations we became obsessed with capturing and killing human targets on lists and not being suspicious of and avoiding cooperation with our Host Nation partners, and ignoring the second and third order effects of accomplishing short-term goals and missions. I believe that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information contained within the CIDNE-I and CIDNE-A tables this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as [missed word] as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan.
I also believed the detailed analysis of the data over a long period of time by different sectors of society might cause society to reevaluate the need or even the desire to even to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore the complex dynamics of the people living in the effected environment everyday.



No surprise, The Nation and so many of the we-love-Bradley! scribes ignored that -- just as they have refused to call out counterinsurgency throughout the last decade.  (And a reminder, the left always called out counter-insurgency in this country.  That's why The Battle of Algiers is such a well known film to this day and not just an obscure classic.)

We Steal Secrets takes you back to when the Collateral Murder video was released by WikiLeaks.




Alex Gibney: The team posted the unedited video on the WikiLeaks website.  They also posted a shorter version, edited for maximum impact.  Julian titled it "Collateral Murder."

TV anchor:  No surprise it's getting reaction in Washington.

White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs:  Our military will take every precaution necessary to ensure the safety and security of civilians.

Julian Assange: The behavior of the pilots is like they are playing a computer game.  Their desire was simply to kill.


TV anchor:  The Pentagon says that it sees no reason to investigate this any further.

TV reporter:  It's only inquiry found that the journalists' cameras were mistaken for weapons.


If Howard Zinn had been alive then, would it have gone down the same?  Maybe not.  If Zinn were alive, someone who had dropped bombs and regretted it, he might have been able to steer the spotlight above the ones who did the killing, to those who ordered, to those who created the culture for it.  But maturity was in short supply for the left then.  So, except for some hisses at Hillary Clinton, the administration would be ignored -- even though it was Barack deciding not to open a new investigation, even though it was Robert Gibbs lying to the American people. 

From We Steal Secrets:


Michael Hayden:  Frankly I'm not.  But I can understand someone who is troubled by that and someone who wants the American people to know that because the American people need to know what it is their government is doing for them.  I actually share that view.  When I was Director of the CIA, there was some stuff we were doing I wanted all 300 million of Americans to know.  But I never figured out a way without informing a whole bunch of other people who didn't have a right to that information, who may actually use that image, or that fact, or that data, or that image, or that message to harm my country men.

US Government Classification Czar J. William Leonard:  From a national security point of view, there was absolutely no justification for that videotape. Number one, gunship video is like trading cards among soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's freely exchanged back and forth.  What is even more disturbing is it was one in a series of efforts to withhold images of facts that were known.

Alex Gibney: Reuters knew its reporters had been killed.  The news agency requested the video but the Army refused claiming the video was classified.

J. William Leonard:  The fact that innocent people were killed in that helicopter attack, that was a known fact that was not classified.

Alex Gibney: A record of the incident and a word-for-word transcript of the pilot's conversation had had already been published in a book called The Good Soldiers by a writer embedded with the army [David Finkel]. The Army later confirmed that the information was not classified yet the Army would prosecute the man [Bradley Manning] who leaked the video to WikiLeaks.  What kind of games was the Army playing?  Why was a transcript less secret than a moving image?


That could be a defense argument if Bradley had real legal representation.  He clearly doesn't, his attorney is an idiot and so are a few of the 'talkers' pretending to support Brad.  Jodie Evans is guilty of taking her stupidity all over the airwaves.  The elderly woman with the Valley Girl speak who married for money is -- and always was -- a supreme idiot.  As she demonstrated on KPFK's Connect the Dots with Lila Garrett Monday.  Jodie marveled over how the prosecution presented their case (opening arguments) with precision.  She said that they had it all lined up and it left her cold.  Showing the xenophobia that's always been there (I've known Jodie since she was a gofer for Jerry Brown), she went on about how it sounded like a foreign language.  And then Daniel E. Coombs got up (Bradley's civilian attorney) and started talking about it in terms that touched her heart. 

Jodie was praising that.  It's a losing strategy and we explained that in the June 3rd snapshot:

Ian Simpson (Reuters) notes Bradley's civilian attorney David Coombs declared that Bradley was "young, naive, but good intentioned."  Is ignorance of the law going to be Coombs defense?  He is aware that's not an excuse, right?  And if he thinks he's laying the groundwork for ineptitude, he's doing it very poorly.  (Ineptitude is a recognized military defense.  If you were inept -- it has to be specific -- then you can be found not guilty.  Ineptitude is not ignorance.)  Also, it's "well intentioned," not "good intentioned."  What a moron.  Who is the idiot who paired Bradley with this attorney?
ITV (link is text and video)  quotes Coombs more fully, "He was 22-years old.  He was young.  A little naive, but good intentioned in that he was selecting information that he thought would make a difference.  He is not the typical soldier.  He was a humanist."
That argument?  It's meaningless.  It became meaningless when the decision was made by the defense not to seek a trial by his peers and instead allow the military official overseeing the court-martial to decide on guilt or innocence.  Denise Lind will be swayed only by the law.  Coombs is such an idiot he's making jury arguments when there's no jury present.  What an idiot.
[. . .]
So while the prosecution is being systematic in their presentation, Coombs is all over the board with idiotic statements which don't even rally public support outside the courtroom.  All weekend long we heard or read or saw one interview after another of Daniel Ellsberg and others maintaining, "I am Bradley Manning."  The point of that p.r. blitz is to normalize Bradley, to make him appear like someone you know, someone you can understand.  But Coombs is presenting Bradley as an "oddball."  While the p.r. campaign is saying we're all like Bradley, Coombs is arguing Bradley is nothing like others.
It's stupid.  It's stupid in that this part of the hearing is open and his statements could be used to rally the public but Coombs is too stupid to grasp that.  It's stupid because he already looks like an idiot before the judge while the prosecution looks methodical and informed.  It really says something when you think about the brain trust that devoted their time and energy to Julian Assange (including but not limited to American attorney Michael Ratner) but there's a brain drought when it comes to Bradley's defense.
What should Coombs be doing?  Having failed to get a plea deal that would allow Bradley to serve less than five years (that was possible), having failed to get a jury trial, having failed to stipulate so that the trial would not last (as many outlets insist it will) 12 weeks, what is Coombs left with?
He's left with the law.  You argue the law.  And it's not hard to argue the law.  The law is in conflict all the time.  You raise those conflicts before the judge, you make the judge explore those conflicts on her own, in her own mind.  You're not going to sway a military judge with kittens and sob stories. 
[. . .]
You make the legal argument.  You engage the judge's critical thinking and you do so grasping that judicial activism -- which happens across the political spectrum -- happens because judges think they know so much and think if writing the law was left up to them all the problems in the world would be solved.  You invite the judge into a legal maze and let the judge sort it out.  The vanity usually works to the defense's interest.


Jodie doesn't have a damn clue and as she marvels over the court-martial with Lila, you're left with the realization that this alleged 'activist,' this alleged 'anti-war' 'activist,' never got her ass into a court-martial before and never followed the coverage of one.  Despite the fact that court-martials have been held against war resisters Camilo Mejia, Robin Long, James Burmeister, Mark Wilkerson, Ehren Watada, Kimberly Rivera . . .   In fact, Kim Rivera's very telling.


Supposedly, Jodie Evans and Medea Benjamin created a group for women opposed to the war.  Kim Rivera is a war resister.  She and her family went to Canada because she refused to go back to the Iraq War which she found to be criminal.  In September of 2012, she was informed she would be deported back to the US.  We covered that repeatedly here, check the archives.  CODESTINK?  They had time to issue, among other nonsense, "Two Women Wrongfully Arrested for Standing on Sidewalk Holding Pink Bras in front of Bank of America."  They never issued one damn press release on Kim.  April 29th, Kim faced a court-martial.  They were too busy with the Bush library and with their idiotic hunger strike (are they dead yet?) to cover Kim. 


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"THIS JUST IN! NADER HARMS THE U.S.!"

THIS JUST IN! NADER HARMS THE U.S.!

BULLY BOY PRESS &   CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE

RALPH NADER NOTES THERE'S NEVER BEEN "A BIGGER CON-MAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE."

YET YESTERDAY NADER PUBLISHED ANOTHER ONE OF HIS OWN WEAK AND USELESS COLUMNS TRYING TO JUSTIFY BARRY O.

WHEN WILL NADER LEARN TO WRITE LIKE HE SPEAKS? WHEN WILL HE STOP CALLING BARRY O OUT IN SMALL GROUPS AND START MAKING A PUBLIC CASE OF IT?

UNTIL THEN, STOP PRETENDING YOU'RE DOING ANYTHING RALPH, YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.


FROM THE TCI WIRE:


Speaking of sour grapes . . .



Senator Dick Durbin:  I was on the intelligence community right at the time of 9-11. I saw what happened immediately afterwards.  There was a dramatic investment in intelligence resources for our nation, to keep us safe, a a dramatic investment in the personnel to execute the plan to keep us safe. I trusted, and I still do, that we were hiring the very best  -- trusting them to not only give us their best in terms of knowledge but also their loyalty to the country.  I'd like to ask you about one of those employees who is now in a Hong Kong hotel and what is as follows: He was a high school drop out, he was a community college drop out, he had a GED degree, he was injured in training for the US Army and had to leave as a result of that and he took a job as a security guard for the NSA in Maryland.  Shortly thereafter, he took a job for the CIA in what is characterized in the Guardian piece that was published.  At age 23, he was stationed in an undercover manner overseas for the CIA and was given clearance and access to a wide varray -- a wide array of classified documents.  At age 25, he went to work for a private contractor and most recently worked for Booz Allen, another private contractor, working for the government.  I'm trying to look at this resume and background.  It says he ended up earning somewhere between $122,000 and $200,00 a year.  [Fun facts: While 29-year-old Ed Snowden may have made $200,000 a year, 68-year-old Dick Durbin makes $174,000 a year as a senator.  Durbin hails from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and received his law degree from Georgetown University Law.] I'm trying to look at the resume background for this individual who had access to the highly classified material at such a young age with a limited educational and work experience, part of it as a security guard and ask if you were troubled that he was given that kind of opportunity to be so close to information that was critical to our security?


Well at least Dickie didn't cry in public, right?  That's a step up.  He was speaking at this afternoon's Senate Appropriations Committee hearing -- and maybe he's angling for a pay raise for senators?    Your pay is based on a skill set.  Director of National Security General Keith B. Alexander made that point. I'm not surprised by that at all.

Alexander, Homeland Security's Rand Beers ("acting deputy"), NIST Director Patrick Gallagher and Richard McFeely (Executive Assistant Director of Criminal, Cyber, Reponse, and Services Branch- FBI) appeared before the full Committee which Senator Barbara Mikulski is Chair of.  Ava will be addressing Mikulski tonight at Trina's site (and may grab Dianne Fienstein as well).  Wally will cover a topic -- possibly Mike Johanns but he and Ava are discussing that right now. Wally will be writing at Rebecca's site tonight.  Kat's going to do an overview which will include Feinstein.   By the way, Ava's going to let it rip including a phrase I don't say in my personal life but I do applaud her for it and agree with her and felt that way last week when we encountered Mikulski as a Chair for the first time last week.  And Wally's saying that he's covering Jeff Merkley instead and will also be noting the Committee Chair.


What we'll note here is Dianne Feinstein isn't the Chair of the Senate Appropriations Commitee but acted as though she were.  There was no reason for her to be at the hearing, she heard from the witness yesterday and will again tomorrow.  It's not as though she added a damn thing of value to the hearing.  She was there to run interference.  She broke into others questioning.  At a certain point, it stops looking DiFi's protecting the law breakers and it becomes more obvious that she's trying to prevent the public from grasping that DiFi is also responsible for the spying. 


In addition to that, we'll note this exchange.


Senator Patrick Leahy:  [. . .]  I've had a lot of concern about section 215 of The PATRIOT Act.  Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance [Act] -- FISA.  We've had a number of common sense proposals in the Judiciary Committee to improve these provisions but the intelligence community has told us that, really, we obviously don't have the ability as simple senators, to know anything as well as you do and so they don't need changes, we're told they're critical to our counterterrorism efforts, Congress shouldn't 'tinker,' we should simply trust you to use in the right way and they should be made permanent.  Now I don't think that's wise.  I think that there should be sunset [automatic expiration] provisions and we should look at them periodically.  We should actually debate them in a free and open society.  Now we have information recently declassified by the Director of National Intelligence -- and I'm not going into questions on whether he contradicted himself on a couple of answers -- but taking what he's recently declassified, it appears that Section 702 said was critical to upsetting the Zazhi case in New York City.  But it's not clear if data collected pursuant to Section 215 of the Patriot Act was similarly critical or crucial.  So, Gen Alexander, let me ask you this, has the intelligence community kept track of how many times phone records obtained through Section 215 of the Patriot Act were critical to the discovery and disruption of terrorist threats?  

Gen Keith Alexander: I don't have those figures today.  I --

Senator Patrick Leahy:  Are those -- are those figures available?

Gen Keith Alexander:  We're going to make those figures available.  We promise --

Senator Patrick Leahy:  How soon?

Gen Keith Alexander:  Over the next week, it would be our intent to get those figures out.  I talked to the Intell Committee [Senate Intelligence Committee] on that yesterday.  I think it's important to know --

Senator Patrick Leahy:  Wait a minute, wait a minute.  You talked to the Intell Community about this yesterday but you didn't have the figures yesterday?

Gen Keith Alexander:  I gave an approximate number to them --

Senator Patrick Leahy:   Okay, what's the approximate --

Gen Keith Alexander:  It's classified.  But it's dozens of terrorists events that these have helped prevent.

Senator Patrick Leahy:  Okay, so dozens.  Now we collect millions and millions and millions of records to, uh, 215, but dozens have proved crucial -- critical -- is that right?  Dozens?

Gen Keith Alexander:  For both here and abroad.  In disrupting or contributing to the disruption of terrorist attacks.

Senator Patrick Leahy:  Of all those millions, dozens have been critical? 

Gen Keith Alexander:  That's correct.

Senator Patrick Leahy:  Would you give me the specific -- even if that's classified -- the specific cases we're talking about?

Gen Keith Alexander:  We will.  But we're going through the Intell Committee to do this.  Tomorrow, I'll give as clear as we've vetted precisely what we've done on each of those.  And the reason I want to get this exactly right, Senator, is because I want the American people to know that we're being transparent in here. 

Senator Patrick Leahy:  No, no,  no, you're not giving it to the American people.  You're giving it classified to specific members of Congress.  Is that correct?

Gen Keith Alexander:   Well there's two parts.  We can give the classified.  That's easy.  But I think also for this debate, what you are asking -- and perhaps I misunderstood this -- but I thought you were also asking what we could put out unclassified.  So the intent would be to do both. 

Senator Patrick Leahy:  You can do that in a week?

Gen Keith Alexander:  That is our intent.  I am pushing for that and --

Senator Patrick Leahy:  Okay.

Gen Keith Alexander:  -- perhaps faster. If I don't get any kicks from behind me.

Senator Patrick Leahy:  If you don't get any what?

Gen Keith Alexander:  Kicks from the people behind me who are doing the work because we do want to get this right.  And it has to be vetted across the community so that what we give you, you know is accurate, and we have everybody here, especially between the FBI and the rest of the intell community can say this is exactly correct.

Senator Patrick Leahy:  Okay.  DNI [Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper said that Section 702 collection is critical to the discovery and disruption of the plot to bomb the New York City subway system -- the Zazi case -- is that correct?

Gen Keith Alexander:   Uhm, that is correct. In fact, not just critical, it is the one that developed the lead on it so I would say -- I would say it was the one that allowed us to know it was happening.

Senator Patrick Leahy:   But that is different than Section 215.

Gen Keith Alexander:  That is different than Section 215.

Senator Patrick Leahy:  215,  Phone records.  702 --

Gen Keith Alexander:  If I could, I could explain this.

Senator Patrick Leahy:  Go ahead.

Gen Keith Alexander:  Uhm, because I do think it's important that we get this right.  And, uh, I want the American people to know that we're trying to be transparent here, protect civil liberties and privacy but also the security of this country.  On the New York City one, the [Najibullah] Zazi case, it started with a 702 set of information based on operatives overseas.  We saw connections to a person in Colorado.  That was passed to the FBI.  The FBI determined who that person was and phone numbers that went to that.  The phone numbers on Zazi were the things that then allowed us to use the business records, uh, FISA, to go and find out connections from Zazi to other players, uh, to other players throughout the community in New York City.

Senator Patrick Leahy:  Was 215 critical?

Gen Keith Alexander:   That's how -- I think 215 is corroborating and to helping us understand --

Senator Patrick Leahy:   Was it critical in Zazi?


Gen Keith Alexander:  Not to  Zazi.  Because the first part in Zazi went to the 702.


Senator Patrick Leahy:  And, and [David] Headly, was either 702 or 215 critical?

Gen Keith Alexander:  702 on Headley and some on the business records FISA for corroboarting.  And I think it's important to understand because this is an issue that I think we'll be important to the debate.  And I put on there, Senator, obviously, the Boston.  I think we need to walk through that so that what we have on the business records, FISA, what we have on 702, what you debate, the facts that we can give you, what we do with that, how we take that to the FBI,  if we took that away what we could not do and is that something when we look at this from a security perspective --


Senator Patrick Leahy:    In Boston, you're talking about the marathon.  What the FBI could have done was to pass on the information to the Boston authorities who said they did not.  That might have been helpful too.  But my time is up.  I mention this only because before it's brought up in the Judiciary Committee, we're going to be asking some very, very specific questions.

Gen Keith Alexander:  So if I could, Senator, I'd just want to make sure we're clear on what we're talking about here is that these authorities compliment each other in helping us identify different terrorist actions and help disrupt them.






On the spying scandals, Penny Lee (US News and World Reports) wonders if there are 2016 implications:

Now, recent revelations of National Security Agency surveillance and the PRISM program have renewed outrage within the progressive wing of the Democratic Party over security matters – expressions of contempt for those who voted to authorize these broad uses of power and profound disappointment in the president over his administration's expansion of what he vigorously opposed as a candidate. The liberal base is now demanding a vote in Congress for a full repeal of the Patriot Act. 
In 2016, the Patriot Act could very well be the new "Iraq War Vote" litmus test for the Democratic field as it speaks to a core principal for the left – the need for fierce protection of personal liberties. Two potential candidates, Clinton and Biden, are in the awkward positions of having to both defend their past votes authorizing the original Patriot Act, and their implicit support for the expansion of the program while serving in the Obama Administration.


We'll come back to Congress later in the snapshot.    Spencer Ackerman has a report for the Guardian on the hearing (I haven't read it yet, a friend asked that we link to it). Turning to the topic of Iraq, Good is a US site which insists it's "A community of people who give a damn." Pity it's not a community of people who have a clue.  Adele Peters makes that very clear in her bad post about a library in Iraq.

Did Iraq get a new library?  Not yet.  But being "Good" apparently means applauding lip service.  Now there have been so many promised projects that have never materialized in post-2003 invasion Iraq but knowing that might make "people who give a damn" educated and they'd never hop on their high horses if they were smart enough to realize how harmed they could be in a fall. 

Here's another little clue for Good and Peters, buildings don't make libraries: Information does.  Considering some of the squabbling currently going on about the national museum in Iraq (it's not been made public yet so Good and Peters are forgiven for not knowing about it) and what qualifies as "art" -- a debate built not around artistic merit but on fundamentalist religious grounds -- I'd be really hesitant about applauding any proposed library in Iraq before it opens.  What will be on the shelves?

"People who give a damn" might try to also become "People who are factual."  Peters writes, "The roof is filled with skylights to illuminate the reading rooms, and solar panels to power the building.  It's scheduled to be built later this year." Until it's built, grasp this, there is no roof -- not one filled with skylights or one empty of skylights.

Peters has written an extremely idiotic post that's also highly misleading as it features photos -- of what?  What are these buildings?  Are these projections of what the library will look like?  When you run photos, if these are not photos, you need to say so.  The photo credit takes you to another site.  (At that site, click on "projects" and then select Baghdad library.)  There, via a 'ghosting' of people in one photo (you can see through the people) you realize these are not images that were captured of a building that is built but images that have been manipulated digitally.  You also find out that Good is cheering a project that they know will be open by the end of the year. My calendar says it's 2013.  The project was started in 2011 and is listed as "ongoing" for its current status.  I'm not so sure it's going to be finished this year -- especially with a pesky fact like the increased violence in Iraq the last two months.

At that site, you will find the claim, "This will be an accessible library for all ages with access to a collection of over three million books along with rare manuscripts, periodicals."  You'd think that -- and not building plans -- would be the focus of someone excited about a library.

But you'd think someone excited about a library, looking at these digital images would be concerned with access and quickly note that security's not a concern for the library and then quickly realize that this isn't in Baghdad.  Not Baghdad that Iraqis access.  This is a library that will be in the heavily fortified Green Zone that most Iraqis are prevented from entering.

I have no idea why anyone would go with "Good" as the name of a group or post -- to indicate others are "bad"?  Or why they'd proclaim that they were "a community of people who give a damn."   Are they unaware of Robert Burns' "To a Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough"?  "The best laid schemes of mice and men/ Often go awry."  Or of the saying, thought to have originated with St Bernard of Clairvaux, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."  Maybe instead of writing about a library, next time Good might try first visiting one.

While there, Peters can ask a reference librarian about books on attribution.  She's using  a long quote from a de zeen magazine article published yesterday and failed to attribute it to de zeen which, don't mean to upset "the people who give a damn" here, is also known as plagiarism. 



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