Hmmn?

Spanish judge opens Guantanamo investigation

Garzon is opening a separate, broader probe that does not name any specific suspects but targets "possible material authors" of torture, accomplices and those who gave torture orders.

Garzon is acting on his own, rather than in response to a complaint filed with the National Court, which is the usual procedure for universal justice probes in Spain.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking with reporters in Berlin before the investigation was announced, did not rule out cooperating with such an investigation.

"Obviously, we would look at any request that would come from a court in any country and see how and whether we should comply with it," Holder said.

"This is an administration that is determined to conduct itself by the rule of law and to the extent that we receive lawful requests from an appropriately-created court, we would obviously respond to it," he said.

Responsible Journalism?

How does she talk while she is running for a plane at the same time?

Mexico tourism collapses, tourists flee

"We arrived from Peru last night. We were going to spend 10 days in Mexico but now we're going to miss it all. We're leaving as fast as possible," said Frenchwoman Aude Tersac, 36, running to catch a flight with her family to Miami.

Another Pony?

Poll: Bush Getting Even More Unpopular Out Of Office

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that former President Bush's popularity has dropped since he left office.

When he left office in January, 31 percent of American's viewed him positively. That number has now dropped to 26 percent.

There's Only One Johnny Pilger!

    Obama's 100 Days                   : Information Clearing House - ICH

The Mad Men Did Well

By John Pilger

April 29, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- The BBC's American television soap Mad Men offers a rare glimpse of the power of corporate advertising. The promotion of smoking half a century ago by the “smart” people of Madison Avenue, who knew the truth, led to countless deaths. Advertising and its twin, public relations, became a way of deceiving dreamt up by those who had read Freud and applied mass psychology to anything from cigarettes to politics. Just as Marlboro Man was virility itself, so politicians could be branded, packaged and sold.

It is more than 100 days since Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. The “Obama brand” has been named “Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008”, easily beating Apple computers. David Fenton of MoveOn.org describes Obama’s election campaign as “an institutionalised mass-level automated technological community organising that has never existed before and is a very, very powerful force”. Deploying the internet and a slogan plagiarised from the Latino union organiser César Chávez – “Sí, se puede!” or “Yes, we can” – the mass-level automated technological community marketed its brand to victory in a country desperate to be rid of George W Bush.

No one knew what the new brand actually stood for. So accomplished was the advertising (a record $75m was spent on television commercials alone) that many Americans actually believed Obama shared their opposition to Bush’s wars. In fact, he had repeatedly backed Bush’s warmongering and its congressional funding. Many Americans also believed he was the heir to Martin Luther King’s legacy of anti-colonialism. Yet if Obama had a theme at all, apart from the vacuous “Change you can believe in”, it was the renewal of America as a dominant, avaricious bully. “We will be the most powerful,” he often declared.

Perhaps the Obama brand’s most effective advertising was supplied free of charge by those journalists who, as courtiers of a rapacious system, promote shining knights. They depoliticised him, spinning his platitudinous speeches as “adroit literary creations, rich, like those Doric columns, with allusion...” (Charlotte Higgins in the Guardian). The San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford wrote: “Many spiritually advanced people I know... identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who... can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet.”

In his first 100 days, Obama has excused torture, opposed habeas corpus and demanded more secret government. He has kept Bush’s gulag intact and at least 17,000 prisoners beyond the reach of justice. On 24 April, his lawyers won an appeal that ruled Guantanamo Bay prisoners were not “persons”, and therefore had no right not to be tortured. His national intelligence director, Admiral Dennis Blair, says he believes torture works. One of his senior US intelligence officials in Latin America is accused of covering up the torture of an American nun in Guatemala in 1989; another is a Pinochet apologist. As Daniel Ellsberg has pointed out, the US experienced a military coup under Bush, whose secretary of “defence”, Robert Gates, along with the same warmaking officials, has been retained by Obama.

All over the world, America’s violent assault on innocent people, directly or by agents, has been stepped up. During the recent massacre in Gaza, reports Seymour Hersh, “the Obama team let it be known that it would not object to the planned resupply of ‘smart bombs’ and other hi-tech ordnance that was already flowing to Israel” and being used to slaughter mostly women and children. In Pakistan, the number of civilians killed by US missiles called drones has more than doubled since Obama took office.

In Afghanistan, the US “strategy” of killing Pashtun tribespeople (the “Taliban”) has been extended by Obama to give the Pentagon time to build a series of permanent bases right across the devastated country where, says Secretary Gates, the US military will remain indefinitely. Obama’s policy, one unchanged since the Cold War, is to intimidate Russia and China, now an imperial rival. He is proceeding with Bush’s provocation of placing missiles on Russia’s western border, justifying it as a counter to Iran, which he accuses, absurdly, of posing “a real threat” to Europe and the US. On 5 April in Prague, he made a speech reported as “anti-nuclear”. It was nothing of the kind. Under the Pentagon’s Reliable Replacement Warhead programme, the US is building new “tactical” nuclear weapons designed to blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional war.

Perhaps the biggest lie – the equivalent of smoking is good for you – is Obama’s announcement that the US is leaving Iraq, the country it has reduced to a river of blood. According to unabashed US army planners, as many as 70,000 troops will remain “for the next 15 to 20 years”. On 25 April, his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, alluded to this. It is not surprising that the polls are showing that a growing number of Americans believe they have been suckered – especially as the nation’s economy has been entrusted to the same fraudsters who destroyed it. Lawrence Summers, Obama’s principal economic adviser, is throwing $3trn at the same banks that paid him more than $8m last year, including $135,000 for one speech. Change you can believe in.

Much of the American establishment loathed Bush and Cheney for exposing, and threatening, the onward march of America’s “grand design”, as Henry Kissinger, war criminal and now Obama adviser, calls it. In advertising terms, Bush was a “brand collapse” whereas Obama, with his toothpaste advertisement smile and righteous clichés, is a godsend. At a stroke, he has seen off serious domestic dissent to war, and he brings tears to the eyes, from Washington to Whitehall. He is the BBC’s man, and CNN’s man, and Murdoch’s man, and Wall Street’s man, and the CIA’s man. The Madmen did well.

www.johnpilger.com

If You Work On The Theory That Zelikow Is Acting For Rice Then It Makes More Sense

Philip Zelikow: Bush White House Attempted to Destroy Alternative Memo on Torture | Video Cafe

I know copies that were retained in my building, and as I mentioned, Secretary Rice understood what I was doing on her behalf. I was her agent in these matters.

Bingo!

Eschaton wins the lucky meat hamper.

Who Could Have Guessed?

Pass me a glass of water, Mildred. NYT think Zelikow is a good guy. I guess he should have demanded decent information for his 911 Commission too, hunh???

In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Inquiry Into Their Past Use - NYTimes.com

Today, asked how it happened, Bush administration officials are finger-pointing. Some blame the C.I.A., while some former agency officials blame the Justice Department or the White House.

Philip D. Zelikow, who worked on interrogation issues as counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2005 and 2006, said the flawed decision-making badly served Mr. Bush and the country.

“Competent staff work could have quickly canvassed relevant history, insights from the best law enforcement and military interrogators, and lessons from the painful British and Israeli experience,” Mr. Zelikow said. “Especially in a time of great stress, walking into this minefield, the president was entitled to get the most thoughtful and searching analysis our government could muster.”

Not Born a Pratt, But Dies a Pratt

Crikey - Richard Pratt near death: a Crikey wrap - Richard Pratt near death: a Crikey wrap

All the newspapers this morning, it's all front page everywhere: who gets what, basically.

Meanwhile the Melbourne establishment is queuing up to say what a terrific bloke Dick Pratt is, all of them, you know, the usual suspects, Jeff Kennett, the trade union leader Bill Shorten, Carlton football players, Premier John Brumby comes out to say that Dick Pratt was a remarkable Australian, a stunning success story, all that, all of which is true but spare us the hypocrisy. He was also a crook.

He ran one of the crookest business operations in the country, a price fixing racket, a cartel in the packaging business which ripped off, cheated customers and companies out of about A$700 million.

So his philanthropy, his generosity, was with other people’s money. I mean, give me a break.

Australia Gets A "Peace" Corps

I guess this massive waste of money is Rudd's idea of stimulus. It will certainly stimulate the war-heads. Let's just hope it's a setup for downsizing Defense in the budget and White Paper. But don't bet on it. FFS!

Rudd to announce civilian corps

Glennzilla Does Sarcasm Very Well

Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

Jane Harman is so shrill and angry today. She sounds like some sort of unhinged leftist blogger. As The Washington Post's Dana Milbank so insightfully asked this week, what could any Democrat possibly have to be angry about? After all, they won. I wonder how long it's going to be before Harman joins the ACLU? What's that old saying -- a "civil liberties extremist" is a former Bush-enabling, Surveillance State-defending Blue Dog who learns that their own personal conversations were intercepted by the same government that they demanded be vested with unchecked power

Zelikow's Game

I can't work him out. Looks like he's applying pressure to his old neocon buddies - does he need a favour? Worried about being left swinging in the breeze? He could get the death penalty if US citizens ever learn the truth about his role in the 911 Commission.

State Dept Lawyer: White House Tried To Destroy My Alternative Memo On Torture | TPMMuckraker

The Lunatics Who Ran The Asylum Are Still Lunatics

Someone please tell Cheney he doesn't run the USA any more. And why isn't this guy in jail yet?

Doonesbury@Slate - Daily Dose

"All of these techniques have now been ruined."
-- Karl Rove, on torture memos

Guess Who's Going To Jail?

I wonder if Bybee, Yoo and Bradbury will soon be talking to the DoJ about Cheney and his friends.

Pressure Grows to Investigate Interrogations - NYTimes.com

The decision to promise no prosecution of those who followed the legal advice of the Bush administration lawyers was easier, aides said, because it would be hard to charge someone for doing something the administration had determined was legal. The lawyers, however, are another story.

Release All The Information That Hasn't Been Shredded

Cheney Calls for Release of Memos Showing Results of Interrogation Efforts - Presidential Politics | Political News - FOXNews.com

Comment Of The Day

The Harman-AIPAC Story: A Timeline | TPMMuckraker

I'm sorry to say I can't find a single mention of this story on a single cable news website. Not even Fox News is jumping on this one even though it's a Democrat accused of corruption.

AIPAC Runs The US Government! WHO KNEW??? LOL

What's funny is that Harman could end up in court facing the DoJ and being the first person to argue that she was illegally wiretapped so the evidence is inadmisible.

CQ Politics | Sources: Wiretap Recorded Rep. Harman Promising to Intervene for AIPAC

Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.

Harman was recorded saying she would “waddle into” the AIPAC case “if you think it’ll make a difference,” according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.

In exchange for Harman’s help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win.

Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung up after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”

Another Election Eve Story The NYT Did Not Publish

CQ Politics | Sources: Wiretap Recorded Rep. Harman Promising to Intervene for AIPAC

Sources: Wiretap Recorded Rep. Harman Promising to Intervene for AIPAC
By Jeff Stein, CQ SpyTalk Columnist

Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.

Harman was recorded saying she would “waddle into” the AIPAC case “if you think it’ll make a difference,” according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.

In exchange for Harman’s help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win.

Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung up after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”

Harman declined to discuss the wiretap allegations, instead issuing an angry denial through a spokesman.

“These claims are an outrageous and recycled canard, and have no basis in fact,” Harman said in a prepared statement. “I never engaged in any such activity. Those who are peddling these false accusations should be ashamed of themselves.”

It’s true that allegations of pro-Israel lobbyists trying to help Harman get the chairmanship of the intelligence panel by lobbying and raising money for Pelosi aren’t new.

They were widely reported in 2006, along with allegations that the FBI launched an investigation of Harman that was eventually dropped for a “lack of evidence.”

What is new is that Harman is said to have been picked up on a court-approved NSA tap directed at alleged Israel covert action operations in Washington.

And that, contrary to reports that the Harman investigation was dropped for “lack of evidence,” it was Alberto R. Gonzales, President Bush’s top counsel and then attorney general, who intervened to stop the Harman probe.

Why? Because, according to three top former national security officials, Gonzales wanted Harman to be able to help defend the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about break in The New York Times and engulf the White House.

As for there being “no evidence” to support the FBI probe, a source with first-hand knowledge of the wiretaps called that “bull****.”

“I read those transcripts,” said the source, who like other former national security officials familiar with the transcript discussed it only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of domestic NSA eavesdropping.

“It’s true,” added another former national security official who was briefed on the NSA intercepts involving Harman. “She was on there.”

Such accounts go a long way toward explaining not only why Harman was denied the gavel of the House Intelligence Committee, but failed to land a top job at the CIA or Homeland Security Department in the Obama administration.

Gonzales said through a spokesman that he would have no comment on the allegations in this story.

The identity of the “suspected Israeli agent” could not be determined with certainty, and officials were extremely skittish about going beyond Harman’s involvement to discuss other aspects of the NSA eavesdropping operation against Israeli targets, which remain highly classified.

But according to the former officials familiar with the transcripts, the alleged Israeli agent asked Harman if she could use any influence she had with Gonzales, who became attorney general in 2005, to get the charges against the AIPAC officials reduced to lesser felonies.

Rosen had been charged with two counts of conspiring to communicate, and commnicating national defense information to people not entitled to receive it. Weissman was charged with conspiracy.

AIPAC dismissed the two in May 2005, about five months before the events here unfolded.

Harman responded that Gonzales would be a difficult task, because he “just follows White House orders,” but that she might be able to influence lesser officials, according to an official who read the transcript.

Justice Department attorneys in the intelligence and public corruption units who read the transcripts decided that Harman had committed a “completed crime,” a legal term meaning that there was evidence that she had attempted to complete it, three former officials said.

And they were prepared to open a case on her, which would include electronic surveillance approved by the so-called FISA Court, the secret panel established by the 1979 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to hear government wiretap requests.

First, however, they needed the certification of top intelligence officials that Harman’s wiretapped conversations justified a national security investigation.

Then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss reviewed the Harman transcript and signed off on the Justice Department’s FISA application. He also decided that, under a protocol involving the separation of powers, it was time to notify then-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Minority Leader Pelosi, of the FBI’s impending national security investigation of a member of Congress — to wit, Harman.

Goss, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, deemed the matter particularly urgent because of Harman’s rank as the panel’s top Democrat.

But that’s when, according to knowledgeable officials, Attorney General Gonzales intervened.

According to two officials privy to the events, Gonzales said he “needed Jane” to help support the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to be exposed by the New York Times.

Harman, he told Goss, had helped persuade the newspaper to hold the wiretap story before, on the eve of the 2004 elections. And although it was too late to stop the Times from publishing now, she could be counted on again to help defend the program

He was right.

On Dec. 21, 2005, in the midst of a firestorm of criticism about the wiretaps, Harman issued a statement defending the operation and slamming the Times, saying, “I believe it essential to U.S. national security, and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities.”

Pelosi and Hastert never did get the briefing.

And thanks to grateful Bush administration officials, the investigation of Harman was effectively dead.

Many people want to keep it that way.

Josh Marhsll Gets a Big New Bone

Talking Points Memo | Breaking News and Analysis

04.19.09 -- 11:57PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (2)
Must Read

This story is so radioactive it's hard to know which of fifty different directions to go with it. In brief, Jeff Stein at CQ has a much, much more detailed account of the story, first reported in 2006, of Rep. Jane Harman getting wiretapped allegedly discussing a quid pro quo with "a suspected Israeli."

There are a lot of hairy details on this one. But the gist is that an NSA wiretap caught Rep. Jane Harman in a conversation with a "suspected Israeli agent" in which Harman allegedly agreed to use her influence with the DOJ to get them to drop the AIPAC spy case in exchange for help lobbying then-Speaker-in-waiting Nancy Pelosi to make Harman chair of the House Intelligence Committee -- a position she ended up not getting. (Remember, this was back when Rep. Alcee Hastings was the next person in line in terms of seniority. But there was intense opposition to his appointment because Congress had earlier impeached and removed him from a federal judgeship over bribery allegations. Pelosi eventually gave the nod to Silvestre Reyes rather than Harman.)

The story suggests that the tapes show Harman crossed the line. And the gears were in motion to open a full blown investigation. But then Alberto Gonzales intervened and shutdown the whole thing.

Why? Here's where it gets into the realm of bad novel writing -- because Gonzales (and the White House) needed Harman to go to bat for them on the warrantless wiretaping story that the New York Times was about to publish.

It's late. And we'll dig more into this tomorrow. But definitely give it a look yourself. Among the many questions this raises are some that Harman should probably answer, but not all. High on my list would be finding out more about the circumstances under which a member of Congress ended up having her phone conversations recorded by the NSA. The article suggests it was a by-the-books warrant -- part of a highly-classified probe of Israeli agents in the US -- and not one of the 'warrantless' ones. But we've seen so much funny business on that front that I'm not sure that's enough information.

Next, is it possible Harman knew these tapes existed and was compromised vis a vis the administration? That's purely speculation on my part. Nothing in the article suggests that. But hearing it alleged that Gonzales protected her because he knew she'd be so helpful -- that really makes me wonder.

This raises lots and lots of questions -- not least of which is why this is coming out right now. Any particular reason people in the intel community would want to start talking to the press right now?

--Josh Marshall

J'Accuse!

One of the problems with these demands for accountability is that most of the people making the demands - NTY, Post, Dems, etc - are themselves complicit in much of the crimes. Heck, even the US people voted for Bush again when they knew he was committing war crimes.

Oh well. I guess it's all good...

Opposition Grows To Obama's Decision Not To Prosecute CIA Agents

Good Post, Good Comment

We shouldn’t be grieving for the death of newspapers | Antony Loewenstein

My day begins with a brief glance at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and three or four other major papers; then it’s on to TPM, the Nation, War in Context, the Real News, a few other indies, and the blogs to find out what’s really going on. But not everybody has the time for this–and that is the problem.