09 Justice – Page 157 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/05/21

$1bn fraud at Kabul Bank upsets UK pull-out from AF

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government

Note buried within the report about classification of documents……..

$1bn fraud at Kabul Bank puts UK's Afghan pull-out in peril

IMF and Britain's foreign aid department both withhold money for reconstruction

By Jonathan Owen and Brian Brady

Sunday, 22 May 2011

EXTRACT:

The Department for International Development (DfID) confirmed last night that it had followed the lead of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in withholding contributions to bankroll hundreds of “nation-building” projects in Afghanistan.

The move, to “protect taxpayers' money”, came as the full extent of the scandal at Kabul Bank – described as the biggest fraud in modern times – became clear. A secret US government report into the debacle “indicates that insiders at Kabul Bank used fraudulent loans to misappropriate $850m (£525m), representing 94 per cent of outstanding loans”.

. . . . . . .

And it notes that, in addition to oversights by Deloitte, which failed to spot and report warning signs of fraud, a team from PwC didn't identify any fraud at Kabul Bank and gave it “a clean bill of health” – something
that “may have acted to delay understanding of the gravity of Kabul Bank's true financial condition both among the examination staff and the international community”, according to the document.

Full Story….

2011/05/212011/05/21

NIGHTWATCH: Pakistan Backlash Continues

02 Diplomacy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency

20 May

China-Pakistan: Update. On the third day of Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani's visit to China – and the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations, China warned that any attack on Pakistan would be tantamount to an attack on China, The News reported.

After the US, China is emerging as the largest beneficiary from the death of bin Laden!

21 May

Pakistan: An improvised explosive device attack against a two-vehicle US government motorcade on 20 May in Peshawar, western Pakistan, killed one Pakistani and injured 10 others, the Islamabad government said. A suicide bomber executed the attack, according to the US Embassy. No Americans were injured, though a vehicle was damaged. The Tehrik-e-Taliban claimed responsibility.

Comment: This is one of several directions in which the Pakistani Taliban are moving to avenge the death of Usama bin Laden.

Pakistan-US: Pakistan's Punjab Province government has canceled 18 memoranda of understanding with the United States, The Nation reported 20 May, according to the province's law minister, Rana Sanaullah. Speaking on 19 May, he said the federal government should reject foreign aid, as the province has done, and adopt a policy of self-reliance. He said Punjab's ban on aid only applies to the United States and not China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran and Turkey.

Comment: This is the first wave of a growing anti-American backlash. Pakistanis in the Army and civilians blame the US for driving bin Laden into Pakistan in the first place.

Americans in Pakistan must expect that Pakistani security forces will not protect them competently, will not respond in a timely fashion to requests for help and that emergency services will not arrive on time.

That is precisely the pattern of Pakistani official behavior when Pakistani rioters burned down the US Embassy in Islamabad after an Arab shooting crisis in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, that was blamed on the US. NightWatch was on duty that night in 1979. Pakistan Army troops are credited with having saved 100 US officials from the US Embassy, but that was after they and the police stood by and did nothing as the US Embassy burned and as a US Marine and another US official burned to death inside it. The British Embassy did more to rescue the 100 Americans than the Pakistanis.

The backlash against the “humiliation” of Pakistan is just beginning. The Tehrik-e-Taliban attack and the action of the Punjab provincial government are different manifestations of the same backlash, reminiscent of 1979. The American civilian community and US military personnel in Pakistan need to maintain special alert for the next few months. A drawdown of nonessential personnel – especially families with children — would be timely.

A period of re-evaluation and transition to a significantly modified and realigned Pakistani foreign policy is beginning. It will be much more hostile to the US.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

2011/05/182011/05/18

Supreme Court Says Warrants, States’ Rights Unnecessary

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Law Enforcement

Supreme Court Says Warrants, States' Rights Unnecessary

Thomas R. Eddlem, 18 May 2011

NewAmerican

States cannot grant their citizens wider freedoms from search and seizure than federal courts do, and police may manipulate events that allow them to avoid getting Fourth Amendment search warrants from judges for home searches, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled May 13 in the case of Kentucky v. King. The 8-1 decision included a stinging dissent from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, one of the most liberal justices on the bench.

Ginsberg argued in her dissent: “The Court today arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement in drug cases. In lieu of presenting their evidence to a neutral magistrate, police officers may now knock, listen, then break the door down, nevermind that they had ample time to obtain a warrant.”

Read rest of article….

Phi Beta Iota: We don't make this stuff up. The USA is down the toilet at multiple levels.

2011/05/182011/05/18

Secrecy News: USG Out of Control on Classification

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement

GOVERNMENT INSISTS ON RIGHT TO CENSOR BOOK

Government attorneys this week asked a court to dismiss a lawsuit brought by author Anthony Shaffer who claimed that his freedom to publish a memoir of his military service in Afghanistan had been violated. The government said that Mr. Shaffer's book, “Operation Dark Heart,” which appeared last September in censored form, contained properly classified information which the author has no right to publish.

What makes the case doubly strange is that uncensored review copies of the book are in circulation, along with the redacted version that has become a best seller. As a result, the case provides a unique opportunity for the public to assess the quality of official classification practices in real time by comparing the two (pdf).

The government has “unlawfully imposed a prior restraint upon the plaintiff by obstructing and infringing on his right to publish unclassified information,” author Shaffer stated in his December 14, 2010 complaint (pdf) against the Department of Defense and the CIA.

Not so, said the Justice Department in its new motion to dismiss (pdf), dated May 16. The book contains classified material and “Plaintiff has no First Amendment right to publish classified information.”

This week the government also told Mr. Shaffer's attorney, Mark S. Zaid, that several previously censored words or sentences in the book could now be disclosed. “While classified eight months ago, [they] no longer remain classified.” So, for example, the Justice Department said that this sentence was properly classified last September but is now unclassified and may be made public:

“Dawn was an awkward time of day when night-vision goggles were not effective, and it was hard to distinguish anything more than gray and purple shapes.”

A listing of other newly declassified words and sentences in the book was provided by the Justice Department on May 16.

A side-by-side presentation of several censored and uncensored pages from Mr. Shaffer's book, including some passages that have since been declassified and some that have not, may be found here (pdf).

See also “Behind the Censorship of Operation Dark Heart,” Secrecy News, September 29, 2010.

TRANSFORMING CLASSIFICATION, OR NOT

The Public Interest Declassification Board, a White House advisory body, was asked by President Obama to develop recommendations for a “fundamental transformation” of the national security classification system. The Board developed several proposals of its own and solicited others from interested members of the public. All of those, including one from the Federation of American Scientists, have now been posted online for public comment.

The Board will hold a public meeting on May 26 at the National Archives to discuss the proposals.

While well-intentioned, the process suffers from several limitations. First, the President did not specify what manner of “transformation” he had in mind. This is problematic because the path selected for transformation naturally depends on the desired goal. Second, the Board has no particular influence or leverage that it can exert to advance its ultimate recommendations. Even at the White House, most relevant national security personnel seem to be unaware of or uninterested in the Board's deliberations. Finally, there is no internal incentive to drive transformation and no visible leadership to compel it.

In truth, the classification system is undergoing transformation at every moment, but mostly in undesirable ways. Thus, during President Obama's first full year in office, the number of “original classification decisions,” or new secrets, grew by 22.6 percent, according to the latest annual report (pdf) from the Information Security Oversight Office.

Phi Beta Iota: In combination with the now documented and incredibly unconstitutional belief of the Department of Justice that it has the right to lie to the Court anytime it wishes to, and a Congress that abdicated its Article 1 responsibilities right after Newt Gingrich led the “revolution” that ended any form of bi-partisanship, it can safely be said that the US Government is out of control–not just on classification, but on everything else as well. This is UGLY.

Secrecy News: Executive Privilege–Thomas Drake, Whistleblower, as a Political Prisoner in the USA…

The Criminal Insanity of Both US Parties–Borrow One Trillion a Year, Debate About Tax Increases

2011/05/172016/06/04

Sterling Seagrave: Reflections of an Old China Hand

02 China, 03 Economy, 03 India, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, History, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

Gold rising further except for profit taking bursts. China is buying all the gold it can get, and unloading all the paper dollars it can dump.. Other countries, including Russia are buying gold. I can see the Yuan or RMB playing a larger role as a global currency, but most people are too ignorant of China to accept the Yuan quickly or easily. The Swiss have a huge mass of gold well stashed, so I can see the Swiss franc playing a larger role. It's hard to make a forecast for the Euro, although it will almost certainly survive the US dollar. It's also possible that the Swiss might make a deal with the EU that would result in the Euro being backed by Swiss gold. Now that the head of the IMF has been burned at the stake, his very good brain is of no further use. The EU is scrambled eggs right now. Sarko can't survive without a miracle. India's potential will take a very long time to organize and get rolling; I went to school there and it's a seething cesspit. It's time for the US to get out of foreign wars, but unlikely that it will because of the weapons market. Obama seems impotent. The Pentagon and its corporate backers and partners seems to be deciding policy. I'm not happy about Petraeus at the agency. I think the USG and the US are totally hosed. Desperate for a new demon. Good time for Lee Kuan-yew to retire. Wise of him. The immediate future does not look good. War and more war. Civil war. Revolution. Take your pick. The cupboard is bare. It's all been looted. What a mess America has made since 1945. Moments of glory, decades of folly and stupidity…. Israel and the Palestinians are a parody of the world as a whole.

I think the last real ingots of gold in Manhattan were in the basement of the Twin Towers. The Fed and the Treasury don't dare be transparent or audited, because whatever real (solid) gold they ever had was moved to Malta and other offshore or mountain stashes long ago, replaced with Play-Dough. Christ, even the Bureau of Engraving and Printing stops now and then to change engraving plates and produce “Presidential dollars” to be used as bribes by the White House (ever since Truman); we have that from a guy who is now retired after running the shop since 1945. The satellite imagery boys, where I have sources, dream of being about to electronically penetrate the earth to a depth of 100 feet or more from satellites but when I last checked 3 or 4 years ago they were still dreaming. They fiddle with HAARP trying to achieve earth-penetration, and only end up causing huge earthquakes and tsunamis; measurements already show the poles have begun to shift partly due to melting ice masses, but also due to fiddling with HAARP. The Fukushima quake and tsunami have been attributed to fiddling with HAARP, possibly the Sumatra disaster as well. Not all scientists are smart and prescient. We're damn lucky they haven't already blown us to smithereens, while scratching their backsides. Never forget that the Fed has always existed as a fraud by intent and design. President Wilson commented years after enabling the Fed in 1913: “I have destroyed my country.”

Review: Gold Warriors–America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold

2011/05/162011/05/16

Secrecy News: Executive Privilege–Thomas Drake, Whistleblower, as a Political Prisoner in the USA…

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

A CLOSE LOOK AT THE THOMAS DRAKE CASE

An insightful account of the pending prosecution under the Espionage Act of former National Security Agency official Thomas A. Drake appears this week in The New Yorker. Author Jane Mayer delves deeply into the origins of the case stemming from Drake's critical view of NSA management and surveillance practices. She explores the unfolding consequences of the case and its larger significance.

Among the article's many striking observations on the Drake case is the concluding quote from Mark Klein, a former AT&T employee who exposed warrantless surveillance activity by the Bush Administration. “I think it’s outrageous,” he says. “The Bush people have been let off. The telecom companies got immunity. The only people Obama has prosecuted are the whistle-blowers.”

See “The Secret Sharer” by Jane Mayer, The New Yorker, May 23, 2011.

Photo Caption: Drake, a former senior executive at the National Security Agency, faces some of the gravest charges that can be brought against an American citizen. Photograph by Martin Schoeller.

2011/05/152011/05/15

Reference: US DOJ Tells Court It Has Authority to Lie UPDATED to include Amended Order of 27 April 2011

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Officers Call

Source (2 Page PDF)

Tip of the Hat to Samurai Sam in the Far East for this one.

Phi Beta Iota: We don't make this stuff up.

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive)

UPDATE: Here is the full back story. What is revealed is a long-standing US Government practice of lying to Congress and the Judiciary, the other two “co-equal” branches of the federal government. More and more each day we see the naked unethical Emperor for what he/she is: naked unethical tyranny replete with impeachable acts each day.

Amended Order 27 April 2011

Tip of the Hat to Penguin for the update.