June 04, 2004
Suppressed Book on China's Nukes
In 2001 and 2002, a bunch of articles covered the struggle of Danny Stillman to publish his book on China's nuclear program. Formerly the head of Los Alamos, Stillman traveled as a private citizen to China and, incredibly, was given access to almost all of that country's nuclear weapons facilities. He was quoted: "More Americans have walked on the surface of the moon than have walked on the surface of the Chinese nuclear test site."
The government was blocking publication of his book, and Stillman was fighting back in the courts. In the latest article I can find, from Nov 2002, the battle had reached the federal appeals level.
A search on Amazon reveals that the book has not been published. Does anyone know what's happened in the last year and a half? Have there been more court decisions? Is Stillman still attempting to get his book published?
MIT's website contains an interesting talk by Stillman in which he reveals some of the particulars of his book and travels, while this article adds other details.
Rumsfeld Withholding Boeing-Scandal Documents From Senate
From Knight Ridder Newspapers:
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has sharply limited the information he is willing to let Congress see on a controversial defense contract that is the focus of multiple investigations.
Rumsfeld took a hard line even with fellow Republicans who want information from him about a proposed $23 billion deal for the Air Force to buy and lease 100 Boeing 767 aerial refueling tankers. Rumsfeld's refusal to give senators all the materials they requested could provoke a rare congressional subpoena. ...
The Boeing deal, which for a time looked like it was heading for a fast passage through Congress, descended into scandal when it was revealed that the Air Force's chief negotiator with Boeing on the deal, Darleen Druyun, also had negotiated a vice president's job for herself with the aircraft manufacturer. Druyun last month pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges, and a grand jury in northern Virginia is investigating.
First Radio and Network TV, Now Cable and Satellite TV
Adam Thierer, director of telecommunications studies at the Cato Institute, writes about the expanding censorship of broadcast media:
Building on the momentum of the new indecency witch hunt that is driving many talk shows hosts off broadcast radio, and has television shows like "E.R." altering their content to keep censors happy, lawmakers are now putting cable and satellite programming in their crosshairs. There are discussions taking place in Congress today about "codes of conduct" for cable TV, and even a government-approved "family-friendly" tier on cable systems. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Commerce Committee, which oversees media industry regulation, recently told a crowd of cable industry officials that censorship of pay TV is "an issue whose time is coming. I think we're approaching the time when whatever we apply to the broadcasters, in some way, voluntarily or involuntarily, is going to be applied to cable."
June 03, 2004
News Dump
FBI Documents: Bush Administration Freed Terror Suspect
"Nabil al-Marabh, once imprisoned as the No. 27 man on the FBI's list of must-capture terror suspects, is free again. ... The Bush administration in January deported al-Marabh to Syria — his home and a country the U.S. government long has regarded as a sponsor of terrorism."
Polygraph Testing Starts at Pentagon in Chalabi Inquiry
FBI chief proposes new intelligence service within agency
Sexual Assaults In Army On Rise
"Allegations of sexual assault in the U.S. Army have climbed steadily over the past five years, and the problem has been abetted by weak prevention efforts, slow investigations, inadequate field reporting and poor managerial oversight, according to internal Army data and a new report from an Army task force."
Enron Traders Caught On Tape
Four years after California's disastrous experiment with energy deregulation, Enron energy traders can be heard – on audiotapes obtained by CBS News – gloating and praising each other as they helped bring on, and cash-in on, the Western power crisis.
Secretive NSA is open for business
Attack on the Liberty: Lifting the “Fog of War”
NY: Access to reports on use of force scrutinized
U.K.: Plan To Influence Country's Muslim Community Revealed
article: Judge Orders Tobacco Firm to Turn Over Key Memo
From the Washington Post:
A federal judge yesterday ordered the British American Tobacco Co. to turn over a long-sought document that allegedly served as a corporate blueprint for destroying damaging tobacco company records under the guise of document preservation.
British American has fought for two years to keep the memo private, raising interest in its contents. U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ruled yesterday that the Australian company could no longer claim the document was protected because the company had engaged in "inexcusable conduct" by initially concealing the memo's existence. ...
"BATCo's actions in the course of its dogged fight against release of the Foyle Memorandum constitute inexcusable conduct," she [the judge] wrote. "It was only by pure accident . . . that the government even learned of the existence of the Foyle Memorandum."
June 02, 2004
Fed Agencies Sued For Withholding Torture Docs
From Reuters:
Civil-rights and veterans groups on Wednesday sued the U.S. government for what they said was illegally withholding records about American military abuse of prisoners held in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and other locations.
The suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, charges that the U.S. departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice and State have failed to comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the groups last year. Other defendants in the suit include the FBI and CIA.
The plaintiffs are seeking records documenting torture and abuse which they said has occurred since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
More on Military Access to The Memory Hole
My little blogpost about a soldier in Iraq who found my site blocked has taken on a life of its own, with lots of blogs pondering why it happened, what can be done, etc.
The general view seems to be that the military is using commercial software that blocks allegedly undesirable sites.
Nart over at ICE has dug up some interesting details about the blocking. And RSC lists the ways you can use proxies to get around the block (of course, these tips apply to all blocked sites).
I'm not Web-savvy enough to know if simply using a site's IP address, rather than its domain name, will do an end-run around filters, but just in case, here's the IP address for The Memory Hole: http://209.126.184.168/
May 31, 2004
News Dump
Abuse of Captives More Widespread, Says Army Survey
"An Army summary of deaths and mistreatment involving prisoners in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan shows a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known. The cases from Iraq date back to April 15, 2003, a few days after Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled in a Baghdad square, and they extend up to last month, when a prisoner detained by Navy commandos died in a suspected case of homicide blamed on 'blunt force trauma to the torso and positional asphyxia.'"
Memos Reveal War Crimes Warnings
"Could Bush administration officials be prosecuted for 'war crimes' as a result of new measures used in the war on terror? The White House's top lawyer thought so"
Military Takes Action Against Key Witness in Abu Ghraib Abuse Scandal
Former FBI lab biologist pleads guilty to falsifying DNA evidence reports
FBI lab finds oversight problems but no science flaws
The full report [PDF format]
Tobacco firm accused over access to files
"British American Tobacco was yesterday accused by academics of doctoring one of the sensitive internal documents it agreed to make public and impeding access to millions of pages of others stored in a fortress-like depository in Guildford, Surrey."
press release: Public Health Experts Act to Expose Tobacco Giant’s Secrets
website: Guildford Archiving Project (GAP)
Iran Turns in secret 1,000-page report on its nuclear power program
Says its will sue if classified info is leaked by IAEA
UK: Leaked safety report claims testing reveals Eurofighter to be a crash risk
France to declassify secret documents in Taiwan warship affair
Russia: Enviro Group Wins Case on Secrets of Nuclear Submarines
Good Freedom of Info News From Texas
Abu Ghraib Interrogations "A Total Waste of Time"
The Wall Street Journal has a long article titled "At Abu Ghraib, Soldiers Faced Pressure to Produce Intelligence." Based on "interviews with more than 20 interrogators and analysts at the prison," the crux of the matter is this:
But despite the arrival of two teams of interrogation experts, special training by interrogators from the U.S. facility for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and a crack-the-whip command, the Abu Ghraib intelligence operation appears to have produced little useful information.
"At first I thought it was going to be really interesting," says Spc. Gabriel Teaca, who served out the fall and winter on an interrogation team at Abu Ghraib. "It was just a total waste of time."
Among some of the interesting nuggets:
Prisoners poured into Abu Ghraib at a rate of more than 60 per day, said Chief Warrant Officer Jeffrey Hanson, who screened prisoners at the facility until February. The vast majority had virtually no intelligence value, said Chief Hanson, a reservist who in civilian life is director of the Utah State Veterans Home. "It seemed like when something bad happened the infantry would just roll up" a dozen Iraqis in the area, most of whom were not involved. ...
Interrogators complained that the need for more and better intelligence drove them to disseminate intelligence reports to field units that were half-baked and of dubious worth. "We'd get information that wasn't corroborated or that we thought probably wasn't true. But [Col. Pappas] was so desperate for numbers that we sent out the report anyway," says Spc. Monath, an intelligence analyst who was responsible for drafting the final reports.
The bad intelligence gave way to raids on innocent people, he said. In one case, he said, an entire Iraqi family was arrested while eating dinner because an interrogator's raw notes containing bad coordinates were sent to a field unit.
Artist Enters Nightmare World of Orwell and Kafka
I've been avoiding posting the same items here in my blog and at BoingBoing (where I'm guestblogging), but this is just too important. A man's life has been turned into a nightmare because of terror-noia.
From those subverters of corporate paradigms at RTMark:
FBI ABDUCTS ARTIST, SEIZES ART
Feds Unable to Distinguish Art from Bioterrorism
Grieving Artist Denied Access to Deceased Wife's Body
Steve Kurtz was already suffering from one tragedy when he called 911 early in the morning to tell them his wife had suffered a cardiac arrest and died in her sleep. The police arrived and, cranked up on the rhetoric of the "War on Terror," decided Kurtz's art supplies were actually bioterrorism weapons.
Thus began an Orwellian stream of events in which FBI agents abducted Kurtz without charges, sealed off his entire block, and confiscated his computers, manuscripts, art supplies... and even his wife's body.
The full article contains info about donating to Kurtz's legal defense, plus mirrors of local news articles about the fiasco. [Thanks to R.A.]
UPDATE > Washington Post article: "The FBI's Art Attack"
May 29, 2004
Scientology Suit Secretly Settled
From the St. Petersburg Times:
A 7-year-old wrongful death lawsuit filed by the estate of Lisa McPherson against the Church of Scientology reached a surprise settlement this week, ending one of the most fiercely contested and enduring legal battles in Pinellas County history.
The out-of-court agreement ends the last remaining legal threat facing the church after the widely publicized 1995 death of McPherson, a Scientologist who died after 17 days in the care of church members in Clearwater.
Terms of the settlement, reached after several days of mediation in a St. Petersburg law office, were confidential.
The full article contains a timeline and other good background on the case, and you'll find out even more in this article from Razor magazine.
Thanks to xenu.net for the links