Witnesses in Defense Department Report Suggest Cover-Up of 9/11 Findings. A document obtained and witnesses interviewed by Fox News raise new questions over whether there was an effort by the Defense Department to cover up a pre-9/11 military intelligence program known as “Able Danger.”

At least five witnesses questioned by the Defense Department's Inspector General told Fox News that their statements were distorted by investigators in the final IG's report – or it left out key information, backing up assertions that lead hijacker Mohammed Atta was identified a year before 9/11.

Atta is believed to have been the ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackers who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center. Claims about how early Atta first tripped the radar of the Department of Defense date back to 2005, but those claims never made it into the Inspector General's report. The report was completed in 2006 and, until now, has been available only in a version with the names of virtually all of the witnesses blacked out.

Fox News, as part of an ongoing investigation, exclusively obtained a clean copy of the report and spoke to several principal witnesses, including an intelligence and data collector who asked that she not be named.

911 pentagon — No Plane, No Seats, No Bodies, No Luggage....Go Figure...

IBD: Did We Know About Mohamed Atta? Why would the Pentagon buy and destroy copies of a book by a former Army intelligence officer? Could it be perhaps because it contained information on how the 9/11 attacks might have been prevented?

The impulse to dismiss this as just another conspiracy theory is overwhelming. Yet the fact is that the Pentagon bought and destroyed 10,000 copies of a book, “Operation Dark Heart,” written by Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a Bronze Star recipient and career Army intelligence officer, that contained a chapter on a pre-9/11 intelligence operation, Able Danger.

Tip of the Hat to the Association for Intelligence Officers (AFIO)

Phi Beta Iota: The precision hit allegedly wiped out all the computers holding all the forensic evidence on the missing $2.3. trillion that Rumsfeld was being grilled on the day before, 10 September, by Cynthia McKinney. One day, between this and the $240 billion “settled” without record, this will be known as the Mother of All Atrocities.

Review: Operation Dark Heart–Spycraft and Special Ops on the Frontlines of Afghanistan — and the Path to Victory

9-11 Truth Books & DVDs (29)

2010/10/12

Journal: China the Adult, US Barely Out of Diapers

02 China, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Cultural Intelligence, Military, Peace Intelligence

China-US-Vietnam: Defense Minister Liang Guanglie held talks with US Defense Secretary Gates in Hanoi on Monday on the sidelines of the 1st ASEAN Defense Ministers' Meeting Plus (ADMM-Plus) on bilateral military ties.

Defense Minister Liang invited Gates to visit China early next year, a Chinese official said. Gates accepted the invitation, according to the deputy head of external relations in the Chinese Defense Ministry.

The meeting in which the Chinese made the offer is the first meeting between the two senior defense officials in a year.

NIGHTWATCH Comment: The Chinese characterization of US ties bears attention. Liang said Sino-U.S. relations have maintained momentum of stable development in recent years as China and the United States have agreed to build a positive, cooperative and comprehensive relationship for the 21st century. China-U.S. relations are of increasing global influence, he added.

Liang said military relations constitute an important part of bilateral ties. Currently, the two countries are facing some obstacles in developing military relations, with the U.S. arm sales to Taiwan being the main reason.

NIGHTWATCH Comment: This part of Liang's remarks glosses over the brittleness of the “obstacles” involving Taiwan. The opening part of the comment minimizes the extent of US concern about China's lack of opacity and unwillingness to cooperate. The Chinese definition of a “positive, cooperative and comprehensive relationship” does not match the US definition. In the US definition, a positive, cooperative and comprehensive relationship does not yet exist. To try to develop such a relationship is the reason for Gates' persistence in soliciting an invitation.

NIGHTWATCH Comment on perception management: The US media has made clear that the US is the supplicant seeking a Chinese invitation for the US Secretary, after several Chinese rejections, most sensationally in Singapore by a low ranking Chinese general. Ties were set back by a US decision to sell Taiwan $6.4 billion in defensive arms, to which the Chinese objected strongly and froze defense contacts.

The imagery in Asia is that the rulers of the Central Kingdom finally granted the request for an audience from a recalcitrant supplicant because of his persistence. This is a scenario out of Chinese folklore. The folklore imagery and analogy suggest the Secretary should expect little because he is a player in a modern version of an old folk tale whose primary purpose was to showcase the superiority of the Central KIngdom.

The US is prone to interpret an invitation as a small political breakthrough. That might be an exaggeration. The Chinese are more likely to interpret it as their politicial victory that requires kneeling, head knockings (the imperial kowtow ritual was 3 kneelings and nine knocking of the head) and gifts.

Regarding Southeast Asia, Defense Minister Liang played to the audience and was his most unctuous. His purpose was to reassure China's Southeast Asian neighbors about China' s peaceful intentions. A quick look at Chinese territorial sea claims in the South China Sea puts the lie to China's peaceful intentions, but the Southeast Asian memory of resisting Chinese hegemony is long and fresh.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota: China is a perfect and worthy counter-part for thinking about Whole of Government and 21st Century Leadership, both of which escape the US Government and its two-party political monopoly. Strategic analytics is not something that CIA is capable of, nor is it something that the White House or Congress “compute” as essential to their still-imperial view of hegemony by right and ideological fantasy. Beyond Chna lie Brazil, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, and Wild Cards such as Turkey. The incapacity of the US Government to get its act together is brutally obvious and viscerally troubling.

2010/10/112010/10/11

Journal: Pentagon Salad to Go With the Spagetti

Cultural Intelligence, Military

Phi Beta Iota: Our newest Contributing Editor, Defense Dog (DefDog), thought to add to Chuck Spinney's earlier sharing of the Pentagon spagetti charts by adding a touch of colorful salad–such good salad it has even been covered by WIRED Magazine.

Read ‘Em All: Pentagon’s 193 Mind-Numbing Cybersecurity Regs

cyberregs small — Just a Hint--Click for the Whole Enchilada

NOTE: The version at WIRED is High Resolution suitable for expanding to achieve drill down to every precious word.

And then, also from WIRED Magazine and courtesy of the same author, Noah Shachtman:

Pentagon’s Craziest PowerPoint Slide Revealed

acquisition small — Acquisition in Theory

Graphic: DoD Intellectual Spagetti Cold War Version

2010/10/102010/10/10

Worth a Look: Robert Young Pelton Goes Fishing…

08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, Law Enforcement, Media, Military, Peace Intelligence

pelton in colombia — DuckDuckGo Update on RYP

Robert Young Pelton, along with Stephen E. Arnold, was the only “repeat” speaker year after year at the multinational open source intelligence event that ran from 1992-2006. Here is a photo of RYP that just came to our attention while discussing how to fish for drug dealers crossing border lakes.

Review: Licensed to Kill–Hired Guns in the War on Terror (Hardcover)

Review: Robert Young Pelton’s The World’s Most Dangerous Places: 5th Edition

2006 Pelton (US) Recommends The Changing Face of Global Violence

2004 Pelton (US) Value-added Citizen Blogs, Forums, and Wars

2003 Pelton (US) World’s Most Dangerous Places

2010/10/10

Journal: US Terrorism Outside, CEO High Crimes Inside

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, Commerce, Corruption, Military

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends

Surprise — The Very Dark Side of U.S. History

Many Americans view their country and its soldiers as the “good guys” spreading “democracy” and “liberty” around the world. It just ain't so.

October 8, 2010

Peter Dale Scott, Robert Parry / Consortium News

Alter.Net Editor's Note: Many Americans view their country and its soldiers as the “good guys” spreading “democracy” and “liberty” around the world. When the United States inflicts unnecessary death and destruction, it's viewed as a mistake or an aberration.

In the following article Peter Dale Scott and Robert Parry examine the long history of these acts of brutality, a record that suggests they are neither a “mistake” nor an “aberration” but rather conscious counterinsurgency doctrine on the “dark side.”

Full Story Online

The Great Transformation

America's Third World Economy

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Counterpunch

For a number of years I reported on the monthly nonfarm payroll jobs data. The data did not support the praises economists were singing to the “New Economy.” The “New Economy” consisted, allegedly, of financial services, innovation, and high-tech services.

This economy was taking the place of the old “dirty fingernail” economy of industry and manufacturing. Education would retrain the workforce, and we would move on to a higher level of prosperity.

Time after time I reported that there was no sign of the “New Economy” jobs, but that the old economy jobs were disappearing. The only net new jobs were in lowly paid domestic services such as waitresses and bartenders, retail clerks, health care and social assistance (mainly ambulatory health care services), and, before the bubble burst, construction.

The facts, issued monthly by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, had no impact on the ”New Economy” propaganda. Economists continued to wax eloquently about how globalism was a boon for our future.

. . . . . .

The wage and salary cost savings obtained by giving Americans’ jobs to Chinese and Indians have enriched corporate CEOs, shareholders, and Wall Street at the expense of the middle class and America’s consumer economy.

Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press.

Full Story Online

2010/10/092010/10/09

Journal: Who Controls (and Secures) the Internet?

10 Security, Computer/online security, Cyberscams, malware, spam, IO Secrets, Military, Officers Call

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius Recommends

Who controls the internet?

By Misha Glenny

Published: October 8 2010 23:40 | Last updated: October 8 2010 23:40

Squared-jawed, with four stars decorating each shoulder, General Keith Alexander looks like a character straight out of an old American war movie. But his old-fashioned appearance belies the fact that the general has a new job that is so 21st-century it could have been dreamed up by a computer games designer. Alexander is the first boss of USCybercom, the United States Cyber Command, in charge of the Pentagon’s sprawling cyber networks and tasked with battling unknown enemies in a virtual world.

Last year, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared cyberspace to be the “fifth domain” of military operations, alongside land, sea, air and space. It is the first man-made military domain, requiring an entirely new Pentagon command. That went fully operational a week ago, marking a new chapter in the history of both warfare and the world wide web.

In his confirmation hearing, General Alexander sounded the alarm, declaring that the Pentagon’s computer systems “are probed 250,000 times an hour, up to six million per day”, and that among those attempting to break in were “more than 140 foreign spy organisations trying to infiltrate US networks”. Congress was left with a dark prophecy ringing in its ears: “It’s only a small step from disrupting to destroying parts of the network.”

Phi Beta Iota: Of the $12 billion a year to be spent, roughly 90% if not more will be spent on “vapor-ware.” To understand the gap between the 67 people who actually know what needs to be done, and the hundreds of thousands who will be employed in cyber-theater (pun intended), see below. There are multiple sucking chest wounds in this enterprise, the two largest are a) the DoD Grid is a mess with no integrity in the fullest sense of the word, trying to “secure” that mess is next to impossible; and b) the only way to make Pentagon information operations safe is to make ALL operations safe, but this is not how the US Government and especially not how the Pentagon thinks–hence, another decade will be wasted. The upside is that OpenBTS and all sorts of other opens are emergent, and we may all end up going to Web 4.0 while the Pentagon stays at Web 2.0.

See Also:

2010: OPINION–America’s Cyber Scam

1994 Sounding the Alarm on Cyber-Security

Continue reading “Journal: Who Controls (and Secures) the Internet?”

2010/10/082010/10/08

Journal: NATO Blind to Supply Route Hollowness

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, Military, Officers Call

Nato contractors ‘attacking own vehicles' in Pakistan

By Riaz Sohail

BBC News, Karachi,6 October 2010

Khyber Pass

• Up to 80% of Nato supplies for Afghanistan pass through Pakistan

• Majority are driven 1,200 miles (1,931km) from port of Karachi to Kabul via Khyber Pass

• 1,000 container lorries and tankers travel daily through the pass to Kabul

• Khyber Pass is 53km long (33 miles) and up to a height of 1,070m (3,444ft)

• About 150 lorries go via the southern supply route through Chaman to Kandahar.

Phi Beta Iota: Now here is the big picture. First, never get in a fight on the Asian landmass. Our politicians do not read a lot and can be considered very isolated from both reality and history. Second, understand your supply line vulnerabilities. This story tells the tale of the very contractors being hired by NATO bombing their own trucks, in part to conceal the fact that the trucks are near empty when bombed–they are optimizing profits three ways: sell and then burn; reimbursed for old trucks as if new; and premium pricing for risk they create themselves. Doesn't get much better than this.

POSTSCRIPT: The US and NATO are stuck with land routes because the US Air Force has for decades refused to be responsible for long-haul airlift at the same time that the US Army has been logistically insane and built a force that is not air mobile. We could not do a Berlin Airlift today, nor can we lift the minimal needed forces to a distant theater in anything near the Marine Corps 911 standard that we defined in 1992: a platoon with two Cobras in 24 hours, a company with Harriers in 48, a light battalion landing team with organic air in 72, and a full up Marine Amphibious Brigade in 96 (four days). The Navy is not much better, big ships and few of them mean that the Navy remains 5-7 steaming days away from anywhere that matters, and when they get there, they are out-gunned by Third World coastal artillery and missiles and have no Naval Gunfire capabilities because a series of Marine Corps Commandants have rolled over and played dead for the sake of getting along with the Chief of Naval Operations. Bottom line: US global strategy is non-existent; US force structure is incoherent, and the people responsible for it, past and present, lack integrity in the holistic sense of the word.

Category: Military

Journal: Fox Finds DoD 9/11 Cover-Up, Forgets that It Started under Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld