I will not replicate all that is at www.oss.net and to a much lesser extent, www.earth-intelligence.net, but do want to recognize a handful of extraordinary individuals by isolating their especially meritorious contributiions to the long-running debate about national intelligence reform and re-invention.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in Amman this week to inaugurate the Centcom’s Forward Command in Jordan manned by 273 US officers. US media correspondents were permitted to visit the new war room for the first time on condition of non-disclosure of its location and secret facilities. debkafile’s military sources report that the installation is bomb- and missile-proof against a possible Syrian attack. The US Air Force command section is in direct communication with the US, Israeli, Jordanian and Saudi Air Force headquarters ready for an order by President Barack Obama to impose a partial no-fly zone over Syrian air space.
Another section is designed to coordinate operations between US and Jordanian special forces, as well as the units trained in commando combat by US instructors in Jordan. A closed section houses CIA personnel who control the work of US agents going in and out of Syria and also a communications center.
Since the revelations of confirmed National Security Agency spying in June, three different “investigations” have been announced. One by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), another by the Director of National Intelligence, Gen. James Clapper, and the third by the Senate Intelligence Committee, formally called the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).
All three investigations are insufficient, because they are unable to find out the full details needed to stop the government's abuse of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act and Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The PCLOB can only request—not require—documents from the NSA and must rely on its goodwill, while the investigation led by Gen. Clapper is led by a man who not only lied to Congress, but also oversees the spying. And the Senate Intelligence Committee—which was originally designed to effectively oversee the intelligence community—has failed time and time again. What's needed is a new, independent, Congressional committee to fully delve into the spying.
The PCLOB: Powerless to Obtain Documents
The PCLOB was created after a recommendation from the 9/11 Commission to ensure civil liberties and privacy were included in the government's surveillance and spying policies and practices.
But it languished. From 2008 until May of this year, the board was without a Chair and unable to hire staff or perform any work. It was only after the June revelations that the President asked the board to begin an investigation into the unconstituional NSA spying. Yet even with the full board constituted, it is unable to fulfill its mission as it has no choice but to base its analysis on a steady diet of carefully crafted statements from the intelligence community.
As we explained, the board must rely on the goodwill of the NSA's director, Gen. Keith Alexander, and Gen. Clapper—two men who have repeatedly said the NSA doesn't collect information on Americans.
This report provides a broad overview of the contribution of the Islamic Republic of Iran to reconstruction and development in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban. It complements previous CFC reports discussing the role of China, India and Pakistan in Afghanistan’s reconstruction, development and exploitation of natural resources. Related information is available at www.cimicweb.org.
Iran has been an active player in Afghanistan‟s reconstruction and development since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, with the Afghan government frequently lauding Iran for its assistance to the country. For instance, in June 2013, Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Janan Mosazai praised Iran as “a very good neighbour”, while stressing a need for expansion of ties and cooperation between the two countries. Similarly, in February 2013, Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul hailed Iran‟s positive role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. While this report primarily focuses on reconstruction and development – related projects, it is useful to situate these within a broader context of Iran‟s regional economic objectives and its foreign policy toward Afghanistan. As noted by Ellen Laipson of the Stimson Center, Iran would prefer to see Afghanistan
emerge from decades of conflict as “a more reliable trading partner, transit route, and competent state that can [reduce] the flow of drugs and refugees across its border, [as well as ] prevent non-state actors from operating on its territory”. These factors, among others, have guided Iran‟s reconstruction and development efforts in the country.
Detained in the U.S.: Filmmaker Laura Poitras Held, Questioned Some 40 Times at U.S. Airports
The Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Laura Poitras discusses how she has been repeatedly detained and questioned by federal agents whenever she enters the United States. Poitras said the interrogations began after she began working on her documentary, “My Country, My Country,” about post-invasion Iraq. Her most recent film, “The Oath,” was about Yemen and Guantánamo and follows the lives of two past associates of Osama bin Laden. She estimates she has been detained approximately 40 times and has had her laptop, cellphone and personal belongings repeatedly searched. Tonight she is leading a surveillance teach-in at the Whitney Museum in New York City with our other guests, computer security researcher and government target Jacob Appelbaum and National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney. Poiras is currently at work on a film about post-9/11 America. This interview is part of a 5-part special on growing state surveillance.. Click here to see segment 1, 3, 4 and 5. [includes rush transcript]
Transcript [Also Available as Video]
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN: Our guests are William Binney, who was technical director of the NSA’s World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group. He worked with the NSA for almost 40 years, National Security Agency. We’re also joined by Laura Poitras, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker, and Jacob Appelbaum, a computer security researcher.
You two have something in common with each other. You—every time you come into the United States by plane, you are stopped, you are searched, you are interrogated. Laura Poitras, tell us about your experience. Your latest one?
Former head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Counterterrorism Center and its former Deputy Director of Operations Jose Rodriguez appeared on CBS’ “60 Minutes” to flaunt his new book Hard Measures, which details how he came to be in charge of CIA torture against terror suspects at “black site” prisons, why he believes torture was effective and why it should not be vilified.
The segment with Lesley Stahl has the same title as Rodriguez’s book. The title sounds like the name of a film starring an action movie star like Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal, which makes it appropriate because each answer from Rodriguez is dripping with bravado. From Rodriguez’s first answer to the last, one cannot help but realize he believes it is somehow unmanly to be concerned that torture of terror suspects violates the rule of law. He appears in his sleek white Camaro rolling down the highway to the CIA. And he says at one point, “We needed to get everyone in government to put their big boy pants on and give us the authorities we needed.”
Of course, like most establishment media interviews, the torture is not called torture. It is called “harsh techniques.” Or the official term Cheney coined for it—“enhanced interrogation techniques.”
*Here are both parts of the interview: Part 1 / Part 2
The first words in the segment are, “After the attacks of 9/11…” That phrase is all one needs to hear to know that this is going to be a tireless exercise in explaining away acts that historically have been considered war crimes when carried out.
How to turn the US-Mexican border into a war zone [profitable for the few]
Todd Miller
al Jazeera, 3 August 2013
The first thing I did at the Border Security Expo in Phoenix this March was climb the brown “explosion-resistant” tower, 10 metres high and 3 metres wide, directly in the centre of the spacious room that holds this annual trade show. From a platform where, assumedly, a border guard would stand, you could take in the constellation of small booths offering the surveillance industry's finest products, including a staggering multitude of ways to monitor, chase, capture, or even kill people, thanks to modernistic arrays of cameras and sensors, up-armored jeeps, the latest in guns, and even surveillance balloons.
Although at the time, headlines in the Southwest emphasised potential cuts to future border-security budgets thanks to Congress's “sequester”, the vast Phoenix Convention Center hall – where the defence and security industries strut their stuff for law enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – told quite a different story. Clearly, the expanding global industry of border security wasn't about to go anywhere. It was as if the milling crowds of business people, government officials, and Border Patrol agents sensed that they were about to be truly in the money thanks to “immigration reform”, no matter what version of it did or didn't pass Congress. And it looks like they were absolutely right.
All around me in that tower were poster-sized fiery photos demonstrating ways it could help thwart massive attacks and fireball-style explosions. A border like the one just over 161 kilometres away between the United States and Mexico, it seemed to say, was not so much a place that divided people in situations of unprecedented global inequality, but a site of constant war-like danger.
Below me were booths as far as the eye could see surrounded by Disneyesque fake desert shrubbery, barbed wire, sand bags, and desert camouflage. Throw in the products on display and you could almost believe that you were wandering through a militarised border zone with a Hollywood flair.
To an awed potential customer, a salesman in a suit and tie demonstrated a mini-drone that fits in your hand like a Frisbee. It seemed to catch the technological fetishism that makes Expo the extravaganza it is. Later I asked him what such a drone would be used for. “To see what's over the next hill,” he replied.
