How does public transportation affect education? What impact does population density have on public health? Is there a connection between CO2 levels and obesity?
Officials in the City of Portland, Ore., have collaborated with IBM to find answers to those and other questions, developing an interactive model that connects the relationships between the city’s core systems that handle the economy, housing, education, public safety, transportation and health care.
Delivery of first-class mail is falling at a staggering rate. Facing insolvency, can the USPS reinvent itself like European services have—or will it implode?
Koko Signs: In debt, taxpayer subsidizing junk mail, zero innovation. A superb seven screen article, an in-depth look at a side of the US Government that is representative of the bloat, waste, and myopia of the rest of government.
Did the CIA keep mum about two 9/11 hijackers because it tried and failed to recruit them? Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, authors of ‘The Eleventh Day,' on whether there’s any truth behind ex-Bush official Richard Clarke’s claim.
Daily Beast, 12 April 2011
EXTRACT
At the heart of the suggestion that the agency intentionally withheld information was the discovery by the Justice Department’s inspector-general of a draft cable—one that was prepared but never sent—by an FBI agent on attachment to the CIA’s bin Laden unit.
The CIA’s “screw-up” explanation of its lamentable failure to act remains at best unconvincing, at worst indicative that it conceals a very different, secret scenario.
In a new documentary, former national-security aide Richard Clarke suggests the CIA tried to recruit 9/11 hijackers—then covered it up. Philip Shenon on George Tenet’s denial.
With the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks only a month away, former CIA Director George Tenet and two former top aides are fighting back hard against allegations that they engaged in a massive cover-up in 2000 and 2001 to hide intelligence from the White House and the FBI that might have prevented the attacks.
The source of the explosive, unproved allegations is a man who once considered Tenet a close friend: former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, who makes the charges against Tenet and the CIA in an interview for a radio documentary timed to the 10th anniversary next month. Portions of the Clarke interview were made available to The Daily Beast by the producers of the documentary.
The story continues to develop. This “house arrest” thing popped up when the US was beating on the Talibs to hand him over in Kandahar in 2001, then some faux intel from Brad Thor about Mullah Omar being under “house arrest” in Karachi and then now this. Sounds very familiar. Two fiction authors in the intel field being played for reasons unknown. My jury is out on how much I want to believe Raelynn. There are some holes you can drive a truck through in flaws in logic but some ideas could be untangled to pick up a few new truths. Kinda like the blind man and the elephant.
Forget the cover story of waterboarding-leads-to-courier-leads-to bin Laden (not to deny the effectiveness of waterboarding, but it’s just not applicable in this case.) Sources in the intelligence community tell me that after years of trying and one bureaucratically insane near-miss in Yemen, the US government killed OBL because a Pakistani intelligence officer came forward to collect the approximately $25 million reward from the State Department's Rewards for Justice program.
The informant was a walk-in. The ISI officer came forward to claim the substantial reward and to broker US citizenship for his family.
The real story of how the US found bin Laden raises some key questions, namely:
Why did the Saudis pay the Pakistanis to keep bin Laden?
Why did the Pakistani's cooperate?
Did the ISI run the safe house itself or did it use a third party?
How permeable was the safe house?
A key to understanding why Saudi Arabia would finance bin Laden's hideout is clarifying what the Saudis were actually paying for. Bin Laden was esentially being kept under house arrest.
WASHINGTON — American counterterrorism officials are increasingly concerned that the most dangerous regional arm of Al Qaeda is trying to produce the lethal poison ricin, to be packed around small explosives for attacks against the United States.
. . . . . .
But senior American officials say they are tracking the possibility of a threat very closely, given the Yemeni affiliate’s proven ability to devise plots, including some thwarted only at the last minute: a bomb sewn into the underwear of a Nigerian man aboard a commercial jetliner to Detroit in December 2009, and printer cartridges packed with powerful explosives in cargo bound for Chicago 10 months later.
Phi Beta Iota: The insular insanity of the US Government continues. We note with interest that the NYT does not qualify either of the two preceeding plots, both of which are very likely to have been Israeli false flag operations to keep the “terror” myth alive, neither of which was properly investigated. We are right back in the 1970's, and repeat below what Daniel Elsberg said then to Henry Kissinger:
The danger is, you’ll become like a moron. You’ll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours” [because of your blind faith in the value of your narrow and often incorrect secret information].
The Science of Spying. NBC show narrated by John Chancellor donated to the US government. Purchased from the US National Archives via Amazon. Also can be downloaded free.
Koko: See the comments for insights on how the attentive public is reacting to this film.
Phi Beta Iota: The reason we emphasize integrity on this website is because it has been so visibly lacking in the US Government, and especially so in relations between the secret intelligence world and the White House. It is now clear that a series of Presidents have abused their power when directors of central or national intelligence have been willing to prostitute themselves; while at the same time, and mostly during the Allen Dulles era, but also under others, the secret world has lied–has committed treason–to the President and his senior advisors. We continue to be skeptical of the alleged assassination and disposal of Bin Laden. More generally, the secret world today is largely worthless to the public or the public interest, and exists primarily to channel taxpayer resources to beltway bandits who fund corrupt members of Congress (in fairness to the beltway bandits, it is the corrupt Representatives doing the shaking down). “Intelligence” today is grotesquely immature and ill-suited to the complexities and nuances of the age.
